Commentaires de fatcat-73450

Great dramatic performances all round. It takes a while to accept Lemon as a serious actor instead of the proverbial "Old Gill" who's constantly worrying about non-issues. And, truth be told, he doesn't do anything different here, but we get a sense that he's finally worried about something actually important and substantial and not just Matthau not flushing the toilet or his wife sleeping around on him.

I enjoy seeing the inner workings of factories and plants, and this was a great jobsite film not only about the nuclear power plant behind the scenes but also about the inner workings of news stations. The legendary Wilford Brimley finds his natural environs here as long-time company man in the nuclear facility, the type of role he was made for.

It's very competent as a thriller, there's a really good buildup and indeed quite a few surprises. However, the ending was a bit unsatisfying and I never really got what the whole fuss was about. I must say it doesn't make that much sense - wouldn't the company want to fix problems so that they don't get sued or fined? It's a bit one-sided and extreme, too and ultimately plays like some sort of anti-nuclear energy propaganda film.

Honourable Mentions: Micracle Mile (1988). Syndrom is rather pessimistic. You don't expect it to go as far as it does, but it does, much like Miracle Mile. What did you expect, though? In a nuclear disaster, indeed, everyone loses.

This isn't much of a Beatles movie aside from the fact that most of the soundtrack's songs are from that group, but the Beatles ends up just being a MacGuffin.

The real core of this movie is as a competent display of fast-paced physical comedy. You have characters tripping over each other, falling off things, fainting, and running up and down. All of this frenetic activity is indeed for the purposes of getting to the Beatles (or in the case of one character, getting away from the Beatles), but it could have been anything else and set in any other time period.

That's it, there's nothing much else to it. It seems to be in the vein of silent movies where most of the film had to have big frenetic actions of necessity. There is a little bit of variety to the humour, but it's mostly movement, tripping over things, facial expressions, and screaming.

It's not deep or meaningful in any way either. It deals with a very narrow sliver of the teenage condition in which girls (especially, but not exclusively), become enamored with popular celebrities so much that they lose their cool. It's presented but not commented on almost at all. In fact, even many of the few naysayers come to enjoy the Beatles on some level by the end.

Clearly the costuming, slang, and trends in popular culture are well done for the era, but that's to be expected. I suppose by the time this film came out it'd been only 13 short years since the Beatles had visited New York and these memories must have still been vivid in the minds of the production team. It's a very tasteful time capsule, though - even so close to the time period, they're mocking some of the trends and mentalities of the period. Quite good self-reflection and not at all overdone or sanctimonious.

Honourable Mentions: Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969) this movie was made in the 60s and basically about the 60s as experienced by the US white middle class. The critiques of the trends of the era seem funny and quaint because it takes itself so seriously with regard to trends and opinions most people of today would now find bizarre and dated.

This film is extremely shallow to the point that it has nothing if not for its artistry.

While Wesley Snipes looks and moves well for the role, at the end of the day he's just an anhedonic tough guy who's always frowning and growling commands tersely. I don't know what kind of an actor he would be in a drama, but here he's more expressionless than Arnold or Bronson. It's like watching a machine or robot on screen.

Which is appropriate to the nonsense plot. A bunch of vampires want to take over the world or something and need Blade's blood because he's the chosen one, but he hates them because they killed his mother, but he doesn't care that they killed his mother, etc, etc. It's an endless disorganized stream of fanfiction cliches.

I think most of the budget went into having the meat packing nightclub scene at the very beginning. That was really impressive. They were able to create a creepy evil atmosphere on strobe lights, facial expressions, animal carcasses.

And then the rest of the movie descends into the worst of the action flick cliches. It's car chase after gunfight, after lightsabre battle. And this works within this universe because they set it up to be so nonsensical that nobody will notice when the final epic fight is a katana fight even after a bunch of loud gun battles.

It was stylish, but should've just been a series of commercial, because the stylish can't counteract the cliche and boring for more than a minute or two.

Honourable Mentions: Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). Now there is a compelling action movie based mostly on style. The film takes place deep in a disintegrating Mexico and involves a continuous barrage of cruel violence but it never gets dull. The scenes change substantially, unlike blade where the whole film seems to take place in a fluorescent industrial-themed nightclub; and there's actual tension between the characters because they're not just unstoppable emotionless wrecking balls. Plus, it must be said the 90s CGI looks silly.

Just about the first half of the film is supremely boring. It begins with a fight between Bruce Wayne and a bunch of people in a prison where Wayne just makes short work of them and that just about sets the stage for the rest of the movie. There's no nuance in a lot of the direction, it's clearly just exploitation.

And that also (or perhaps especially) goes for the pseudo-philosophical babbling of the characters in their whispery or gravelly voices. This film's dialogue is so jumbled that I don't know what it's talking about. The girlfriend says Bruce isn't the guy she knew anymore, but the guy she knew is out there. Alfred babbles something about having to preserve the family honor out of nowhere. Batman says killing is wrong, why? Never explained. But it's not wrong to let people die? Well, glad there's that loophole for him, otherwise the movie would have been even longer than its absurd 2-hour-plus run. Funny.

Also funny is the casting. Caine is a good actor, but a cockney Alfred? And he's not even playing it for laughs? They think US people won't notice the accent? The guy playing Bruce Wayne doesn't have that large masculine presence. He did do his ab crunches but he's still rather smaller than one would expect for Batman. Hugh Jackman cut a much more appropriate wolverine.

A little after the midpoint the movie sort of redeems itself with good, fast-paced action, but then it descends back into the comfortable embrace of nonsense and moralising.

Maybe it was trying to do too much.

Honourable Mentions: The Pickwick Papers (1837). The first and perhaps greatest cockney butler. They do the character right, though, and give him a "wisdom of the streets" type of flare which made him one of the most popular characters of the era.

I struggle to give this move more than a 4 because it really is just barely superior to a passable movie.

Seagall should purportedly be putting his martial arts prowess on display, but a good chunk of this film, even so early in his career, is just a bunch of gun fights. Of physicality, we get him implausibly and bizarrely just dodging shotgun firings a bunch of times (where do these people keep all these giant shotguns and why? Do they just not like handguns? And how is it they don't know how to shoot someone? So many questions) and this lame and equally implausible wrist lock that not only looks like it came out of an amateur self-defense VHS or professional wrestling match, but doesn't look that impressive.

And I think this movie is finally where we see why. Seagall makes the unfortunate decision to remove his shirt and he's rather flabby, clearly not a dedicated athlete or martial artist. So, shootouts and choreographed choke holds it is.

Unlike Seagall, the plot is bone-thin. He goes into a coma due to corrupt police working with a corrupt senator, a nurse falls in love with him due to his "nice package", and the rest of the movie he's trying to get revenge on the rotten cops.

I give it a 5 because, while it does have a low-budget direct-to-VHS mentality, it actually looks like there are good production values for this one. They travel all around LA and lots of people break a lot of props and set pieces in the action sequences. Also some of the scenes, like the scene in the hospital, are acceptably exciting.

Honourable Mentions: Murphy's Law (1986): quite similar in plot to this one - a cop gets chased around by the mob and police. Except this movie was interesting. It was set in the dark and gritty world of the 80s and had an compelling sidekick in the form of a young female thief. There were also creatively grotesque scenes of violence. And, perhaps best of all, there was Bronson. Silly Seagall could never match that granite face and casual confident approach to action.

Tommy Lee Jones stars here as a crazy pirate and Gary Busey as a vindictive slimeball of a pirate, so you'd expect good times were had by all.

Unfortunately, it's a bit weak. The plot is as generic as can be. Some guys looking for a quick buck try to gain control of a very patriotic Navy submarine. On that submarine is secret agent-esque Seagall, Navy Seal, expert in martial arts, green beret, cover operative... I don't know. Long story short, he knows how to handle tough guys. The bad guys try to blow things up and disaster is "narrowly" averted. There's a pointless scene where hostages are under threat for like 5 seconds and Seagall moseys on down there and gets them out.

One minor bright spot on the pastiche of cliche is that the girl who plays generic arm candy #14, while being indeed only stereotypical generic eye candy, cosplays a soldier for a lot of the film and she actually looks quite cute in the role.

I came to see Aikido and I saw just a bunch of pointless gunfights. Seagall is not very physical in this at all and does minimal martial arts moves and nothing really spectacular. Mostly he's just waving a gun around and blowing gadgets up.

Tommy Lee Jones and Busey gave what we expected of them, but the film is still a yawner. Unfortunate.

Honourable Mentions: Captain Phillips (2013): a movie about modern pirates that really successfully creates tension and has a viable plot. I think a part of that, aside from the realistic portrayal of pirates by the Somali actors, stems from the fact that shots are rarely fired, unlike in slop like Under Siege where you become completely accustomed to gunfire and gun assault because it comes out in every scene.

Perhaps the movie could have used a better title since it really all ties into the opening line of the protagonist Lester Burnham's claim that the "anger, confusion, and insecurity" that supposedly sees its onset in the teenage years lasts all the way to a person's death.

Most of the main characters in the film are dealing with just that set of problems. They're all emotional and insecure, whether it's Lester's wife trying to cope with what she considers to be cumbersome mediocrity or the right-wing father trying to deal with his own repressed homosexuality. Few of the characters are really put together.

But the solutions turn out to be so very "American" indeed - once things get too too overwhelming, the characters turn to guns to solve their problems with the simple pull of a trigger.

The one character who seems to see life and the many strings pulling the puppets behind the curtain is Jane's boyfriend, Ricky, who prefers to "shoot" scenes with his camera where he tries to pursue the "beautiful", of which he has a rather macabre sense, often finding it in death and stillness.

Ricky is probably the linchpin around which the whole movie's premise centers, in fact. He is a fascinating character who's clearly a psychopath but I've never seen show up as such. He channels The Visitor of Teorama (1968), representing a higher ideal state of drive, practicality, and stoicism which the other ordinary characters could learn from and transcend their petty and senseless suffering.

And therein, perhaps, is where the beauty lies. Lester comes close to becoming this sort of stoic and confident character, but in the end he's not able to push through and take what he wants. He achieves the "Beauty" of the film's title only in the stillness of death.

A great compelling story and lots to ponder on. When I first watched it, I often wondered why Lester didn't fulfill his wish when he had the chance. Now I think it adds to the movie's allure. The scene and those following it between Lester and Angela are believable and warm yet provide for ample musings, as the reasoning behind these decisions - as happens so often in life and death - remain only clear to the person who made them.

Seagal is still a good actor in that he exudes the cool despite being portly and older.

I suppose those who would watch know what he's about - a gravely voice, a stern expression, a crazy unidentifiable ethnic accent, and a lot of presence when he's on camera.

Unfortunately, it seems he was too tired to film, so we don't get all that much of him here and most of the screen time seems to be taken up by the more minor characters (or perhaps fortunately, if you think it increases the demand to limit the supply).

Also, what we do get of him lacks the old physicality that was his trademark in his earlier films. You won't see much aikido, I think. In one scene when he "fights", in fact, the camera just switches to showing a guy falling down stairs after he makes a verbal threat.

As for the rest of the film, it's laughably basic. Even though the plot takes on exaggerated international proportions with its multinational and multiethnic characters, it's still cookie-cutter - bad guys take something dear to another and that person elicits the sympathy of the Seagal character who steps in to save the day amidst a good deal of assault, guns, and explosions.

It seems Seagall has a bit of a swinish reputation these days, and yes, you'll see him in tender embrace with not one, but two women who seem to be at least 30 years his juniors here; he's also known for having let his appetite get the better of him. However, the man's an effective action star.

Honourable Mentions: Death Wish V: The Faces of death (1994). I think Bronson was in his 80s in this movie but still a believable action star. I wouldn't call "Dangerous" a late-career gem as I would that one, but it's satisfying enough.

As you would expect, this is a boxing film full of cliche. The main character is a has-been and now a poor gambling alcoholic manual labourer. There are indeed also a good bit of pointless fist fights. The final fight not only goes on too long, but its course takes the standard sine wave of a trajectory merely for the purposes of exploiting the audience's emotions.

Aside from that, the film has many bits of shoddy construction in general. Especially at the beginning. It's marked by clumsy exposition uttered by the characters. The kid is at first so saccharine that he's obnoxious. It's laughable that the main family of characters all have wildly different accents. And the fact that the mother and son just happen to meet is Dickensian implausible, which I almost always see as lazy writing.

Yet for all its faults, as the rating indicates, this film has many strong points. The acting is some of the best. Although the chylde actor has a bit of a rough start, he displays his prodigious talents in a truly remarkable display of mature acting as the film progresses. It's clear he can convincingly pull off the high highs of chyldish wonder and the low lows of a tender mind torn apart by tragedy. And there is nuance whether it's in doubt, hesitation, confusion.

High praise also goes to the woman who plays Annie. Usually poised in her position but clearly ambivalent and tortured. Her performance is also complex in that we never know exactly what she's thinking or what gargantuan conflicts are going on inside of her, but we know there's a lot going on under the surface and we can at least sense those reverberations.

I also appreciate how well-written even the minor characters were. There's no good or bad here and no simple solutions. Everyone's just trying to make the right choice but no one has enough information to do it.

It's got its weaknesses, but it is indeed an infamously sad film and also, surprisingly, one of the more complex and well-acted dramas in film.

The bloopers were pretty funny. Maybe it's because they highlight the inscrutable and absurd nature of this movie even more. Indeed, it must have been hard keeping a straight face throughout.

That's because the writing was atrocious. It sounded as if it were written by 80s teenagers from the Ozarks. These are lawyers who apparently still know how birth control works. They talk about relationships and sex like someone who's never experienced either. Also not only the dialogue, but the plot dehumanises minorities. Some are present but only as stereotypes - asians as massage parlor operators or business executives with samurai swords; a Russian girl as a mail-order bride; gays with exaggerated mannerisms and speaking style. Some others are mentioned only as the butt of rather tasteless jokes. It's just an example of how poor and empty the writing is.

And the plot is really poorly constructed as well. There are two couples. One of the wives suspects the husband of cheating and then kicks him out. Why she only suspects it I don't know because he says it point blank about a dozen times before that. Then at some point he gives a really dumb and pointless speech and she suddenly doesn't care if he cheats and they get back together. Then the husband of the main couple suspects his wife is cheating only because someone mentioned that she must be cheating (on no basis at all). Then at the end he, too, says he doesn't care if she cheats just for the sake of bringing the movie to its conclusion, I suppose?

I knew when I saw the horrible CGI superimposed onto the live action scenes at the beginning that I was in for something spectacularly bad. However, it surprised me to see plots and writing reminiscent of low-budget direct-to-video sex comedies or fichers of the 80s. I didn't think that could happen so close to 2010.

The acting is quite good, though. Many characters have good timing and professionally carry out their ridiculous lines and roles.

Honourable Mentions: Hot Dog the Movie (1984). This is a low-budget 80s sex comedy with dubious presentations of minorities had some things that made it attractive, things Baby on Board (2009) could never have: charm, style, and a plot that makes logical sense.

Indeed, for some reason I thought Daryl Hannah was a compelling actor/actress. I think it's that breathy voice, it's quite impressive.

Anyway, this film is made for paranoid housewives to become indignant but also titillated on a lazy afternoon and it shows. The acting is of inconsistent quality and the plot is something out of a fanfiction, but even more absurd. Yes, I have trouble believing that a responsible middle-aged career woman is going to be so naive as to move in a perky 20-something into her home while her husband works from home there and nothing wrong at all could happen.

And nobody sells it. Not Daryl Hannah, not the perky twenty-something who falls head-over-heels for the house-husband after 5 minutes, not the ex-boyfriend who encourages to steal from people who know her maskless. The film has not even an inkling of respect for its purported purpose on its intended audience - which clearly is assumed to be as a cautionary tale for housewives who are considering letting a tempting young boarder stay at their home while their husbands are around.

No, but it does have that brainless appeal for that audience because of the racy and scandalous subject matter. And also in a surprise twist, it has great appeal for men, who wouldn't usually be interested in such a plot: the Twins are the real stars of this show and they give a fine performance. Give them a dual award for Best Actors.

Honourable Mentions: Conan the Destroyer (1984) - a far, far inferior entry into the series compared to its predecessor; nevertheless, it had one thing that helped it compete, and that was Olivia D'abo.

I think this was the last film Peter Boyle was in before he died.

He doesn't do it very well. I once read that some other actor has honoured him as being among the great actors. I'm not sure, I think at the end of the day he was just a character actor. He always looks the same from what I could tell - a sleazy balding sneaky-eyed man.

Here he just played the character he was probably best known for - Raymond's dad. That is to say, he has a crazed, wide-eyed look and tells the youth how wrong they are.

Patton Oswald was also in this film. I always enjoyed him in King of Queens. He doesn't do much better than any of the other actors here, though. In fact, he seems like a bad actor in this one. Maybe he was just playing himself on King of Queens and that's why he did it so well?

The movie's not worth mentioning. It's clearly some drivel lazily written for young girls. It's focused on being kind to animals and living in a world where no animal is killed or something. And apparently everyone in this universe is only involved in the caring of animals. The dad is a dog catcher, the dad's girlfriend is a veterinarian, and the grandfather raises farm animals for sale.

I appreciate the sentiment of having the young girl (Belle) trying to make a change in her community, but the changes she makes would only serve to support the beliefs that chyldren's ability to make any decisions should be limited. She forces her grandfather to eat fruit for breakfast in a totalitarian fashion, for example - and she tries to keep all the pound dogs alive in some sick little zoo. It must stink there.

Most of the drama is non-drama, too. She runs away for like 5 minutes from home and is quickly found.

The acting is atrocious. That's to be expected from most of the no-names who act just about as believably as if they were starring in a PSA marketed for grade schools. However, even veteran Boyle looks mostly just senile and only delivers a few impactful lines well. Oswalt should be ashamed as he gives one of the worst performances of the film despite probably having the second-most extensive resume in the business after Boyle.

Ironically the best performance comes from the girl who plays Belle who's very believable as an obnoxious and confused chylde who loves animals to the point of fanaticism.

Ohh, and the title is practically false advertising. Don't know why such a middling film hijacked such a good title. This one has nothing to do with finding home or travelling or roads.

Honourable Mentions: Twin Sitters (1995) - in the universe of Roads, everyone is somehow involved in the care of animals. It's practically an animal-centered society and economy. I believe it was Twin Sitters where all of their friends are also only twins. Similarly funny and trite.

Soon after this movie I suppose we were inundated with very low-quality parody films that follow the formula but tend to do things more poorly.

Leslie Nielsen is definitely the standout actor in this one even though he's not exactly the main protagonist and it was a wise choice to make him star in future offerings. He looks like such a prim person and delivers his lines so seriously.

There's not much else to say. The jokes go high and the jokes go outrageously low. You have the obligatory sex and racial jokes just to be offensive, but you also have some really genius use of the most basic of humour. For example, saying something serious out of context or just repeating things. I don't think the artistry of it has been rivaled since.

Honourable Mentions: A Haunted House 2 (2014). Why does Airplane get it so right but Scary movie and the legions of 2000s parodies get it wrong? I think it's plain dumb commercialism. Haunted house tries to appeal to its audience in a superficial and insincere way - it puts in sexual and racial jokes and parodies of movies just to be provocative or outrageous - just to catch peoples' attention. It's as phony as marketing. Airplane has much less of this and instead has a lot of really natural moments more akin to someone just snorting while laughing and everyone laughing about it. It's something so primal and sincere it's hard to recreate.

Nope. The film is pretty much as brainless as its purported stars.

It does directly and indirectly show how any sort of publicity is good publicity, but that's tangential to core of the movie which is to glorify the three protagonists who form the band The Lone Rangers.

As a chylde I couldn't fathom what subculture they were portraying here. I never saw such large swaths of leather-clad normie-adjacents dressed like bikers obsessed with some form of grunge metal, nor have I heard of such a thing even up to this day.

They seem to have some angst for some reason. Here and there they will utter those tired gripes about how music or art is much better than it used to be or how it's not as good as it used to be or how the man is keeping people from expressing themselves.

I don't know the object of said angst. I can't relate to it and it wasn't expressed within the film.

And we're not going to feel sympathy for the members of the band, either. In fact, the position of the record executive who had them kicked out of the building was far more understandable. Their music stinks, they're really dumb, they have strong opinions they're willing to fight for but no substantial ethical system. It's clear all they want is fame and wealth and yet they act like they're the representatives of some pure strong tradition of who knows what. The Fraser character is a bum who's mooching off of his girlfriend and really doesn't make much of an effort.

In the comedy department it was also weak. It's really not about what the title suggests it's going to be about - that is to say, it's not, like Dumb and Dumber (1994) about a few idiots being obnoxious and committing violent acts of slapstick and awkwardness with each other. The protagonists think they're too cool for that. It's more about some stubborn guys who behave aggressively just because they get caught in a situation they don't know how to deal with. It's probably how real hostage situations go.

Honorable mentions: A Face in the Crowd (1957). It's a drama about a musician who suddenly becomes famous. It's not a comedy, but it's OK as a drama. At least there's some effective heartbreak and a strong lead performance. Better than this movie at least.

This film has a very good 80s soundtrack. I think I might go so far as to say the best part is the music. That's not to say the rest of it was that bad - it just had good music.

We get here a fairly standard early noughties drama in the same vein as Rushmore (1998). It's very characteristic of productions from the turn of the century, with a few quirky awkward intellectual characters meet real life in a mellow setting and somehow the normies unironically overlook their social shortcomings and they all get along quite well.

It's standard in the sense that it doesn't go beyond the mundane concerns of romantic and sexual relationships.

Aside from the music, though, I will praise Kristen Stewart's performance. She's very charming in the role of the kind and confused young woman of strong moral character trying to discover life and making plenty of mistakes while doing so. The wardrobe department really knew how to work the image, too.

Not brilliant cinema by any means, but well-crafted and thoughtful.

Honourable Mentions: Rushmore (1998) - a quirky high school playwright stirs up trouble and awkwardly explores the world of romance in an elite private school. One somewhat bizarre element of Adventureland is the infantalisation of young adults. I believe all the protagonists were the age of college graduates, yet they were all working at this entry-level temp job and behaving extremely naively and immaturely. It didn't make sense in Adventureland, but it makes sense in Rushmore.

Jim Carrey's extremely unhinged and quirky personality will probably be extremely difficult to emulate as believably and compellingly as they've been presented in this film. I can't think of a single other person who can pull off acting in such an outlandish and annoying way and not cause an audience to change the channel.

That acting, together with the plot, was very strong and cohesive at the beginning of this film. They need this cartoonish detective, who happens to be a pet detective and a genius of investigation, to actually perform a niche and important job. The plot alone is hilarious.

And then there's the variety of the humour. There's sarcasm, there're hilarious one-liners, there's physical humour, there are serious moments shattered by something stupid, there's parody. In short, there is a rich ecosystem of different types of humour that are conveyed expertly by Carrey, the direction, and the writing. There was real harmony at the beginning.

But at some point it degenerates. It becomes more of a really dumb action-comedy with fight and chase scenes that overstay their welcome, dumb henchmen, and the like. The subplot about who the villain is is too nonsensical to be funny. Plus there's something a tad homophobic and creepy about the last part of the film.

I will say it's probably the most successful "strange" mainstream movie I've ever seen.

Honourable Mentions: Liar, Liar (1997). Some say this was Carrey's best film. I think it was Liar, Liar, but not by much. I thought he was a pretty decent dramatic actor in that one but his comedy was also allowed to shine, unlike Spotless Mind (2004) or Truman Show (1998) which are almost completely serious.

The setup is so absurd I assume it's never happened in real life. A football team of prisoners goes up a football team of prison guards. What did you think would happen? Of course they're going to try to bash each others' heads in.

And the film itself doesn't try to set up that contorted situation very well. From what I gather, a prisoner convinces the warden that having a game where the guards go up against a team they can beat easily is a good way to get them motivated to beat the teams in their own league.

At the heart, and as usually is the case with these sorts of movies, it's just a rehash of the Seven Samurai formula. Then it's hard to develop any sort of connection with the seven because there's usually not enough screen time to cover each of them adequately. The direction or writing of The Longest Yard is not up to the task -or I should say wouldn't be up to the task, since instead of even trying, they flood the screen with probably 20 characters or more that barely develop. Why stop at 7 if you won't even try?

The acting is quite poor, which is not surprising since other than Reynolds, most of the cast is composed of character actors such as Richard Kiel who plays giant football goon #2. But what's surprising is that some of the worst performances come from the warden and the head guard who are theatrically evil and experience constant uncontrolled bursts of anger for little reason.

The film is equally schizophrenic in tone, with scenes of cruelty, violence, intimidation, and humiliation directed from the guards make it sometimes a serious prisoner's rights film; but for most of the film it's people getting a football to the family jewels or Reynolds mud wrestling with another prisoner for no reason. There's even a scene where Reynolds makes up a tragic backstory and then says he was just joking.

Also I don't know if it's the fact that I don't know much about US football, but this film didn't seem to have any interesting sports plays either. The teams kind of beat up on each other and that's all.

Obviously most of the creativity went into the beginning and the end, with the beginning filled with a very Reynolds-esque car chase scene and the ending having the only scene with dramatic tension in the whole film. It's otherwise disjointed and very incompetent. Maybe the direction should have gone into commercials.

Honourable MentionsL 28 Days (2000) - just like in Mile, Bullock starts the movie having the time of her life driving drunk and crashing cars for no reasonable motive which then leads to a sobering shift in tone.

Many critics have commented on how bad this film is. Indeed, it almost feels like the director was trying to faithfully recreate a bad low-budget mid-century horror with 90s technologie.

Mind you, it's not a parody, as it seems to take itself too seriously for that, but it's got so many elements of poor film construction that it almost seems to have a checklist. Large swaths of awkward dialogue and lazy exposition - check; cartoonishly evil and angry villain - check; a party with infinite money that buys its way out of everything- check.

That being said, it's an exciting action movie with a whole lot of swashbuckling. The team plows its way through African revolutions, greedy jungle warlords, African border patrol, and killer wild animals with violent technologie, street smarts, and science.

And perhaps one of the best or more endearing qualities of the film is the cast it managed to assemble, so compliments to the casting directors (or the producers for providing the budget). Laura Linney reprises her role as confident no-nonsense professional trying to get the job done; Tim Curry steals the spotlight as histrionic comic relief with a bad accept; and Ernie Hudson is equally theatrical, although in a different way, as slick and cool danger-control guide, always putting one foot up on top of a rock or something so he can lean on his knee in an impressive pose, posing with guns, or simply using an out-of-place tone to render some tidbit of advice or knowledge as if it were the most important thing in the world.

In the spirit of the Xtreme 90s, they also have a talking cyborg gorilla on their team.

It's silly and shoddily put together, but it's a good satisfying action flick with memorable acting and exciting scenes.

Honourable Mentions: Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys (1996) - Science fiction action show about talking monkeys that are always getting into galactic battles. Probably made more sense than this movie.

This is quite a basic story about a trouble teenager and her path to redemption. However, I feel like it's usually presented in novel form for teenage consumption rather than made into film because the subject matter is perhaps not so sensational. And that sums up the character of this film - a basic but sturdy plot with a satisfying resolution and not much sensationalism.

The girl is suicidal and rebellious but the causes are Freudianly simple: she feels neglected by her mother and has some sort of hangups about her father having died when she was very young. The one thing I will say saves her from being -one-dimensional is that at the beginning she's particularly insufferable, but somehow she becomes likeable by the end. Not only that, but Hillary Duff looks extremely old in the role, almost like she shouldn't be playing a teenager, which is shocking at first but at some point I think it's forgotten because of the acting.

All of the other characters are stereotypes, too. There's the ex-con with a heart of gold trying to rebuild his life, the strict grandmother, the understanding grandfather. It's really simplistic.

It has a few things going for it, though. The ex-con with the Micheal Jackson voice looks like a Latino, so at least there's a refreshing change of scenary for the time period. The dialogue is well-done, with the protagonists actually talking like who they're supposed to be.

Yet the most important discussion to be had is how the film handles the reason for its existence. That reason seems to be to give people suffering with heavy emotions a little bit of hope and motivation. I wouldn't say the film succeeds at this very well, but at least it treats the matter gently and naturally. Greta truly has a good support group and despite the misunderstandings here and there, they're eager to help. It's hinted than in living to try to make them happy, she's achieving some sort of fulfilling purpose. Yes, it makes a good effort.

Honourable Mentions: Married With Children (1987 - 1998). No drama that has attempted this film's goal comes to mind, but comedy I think often does. For me, Married With Children does it best - no matter how many problems, conflicts, setbacks, and handicaps the characters have, by the end of every episode they seem to resolve that life's not worth ending, anyway, if only to maintain the status quo.

This film is too complex and dense to be on the highest echelon of greatest film lists. I would say a film has to be more focused to convey its message. Nevertheless, it's something special.

There is a masterful handling of narrative here, so much so that even the gaiden at the beginning of the film has you wrapped up in it. Even though it was in a foreign language and completely unexpected, one could get wrapped up in the narrative of that story if it were its own film. The same goes for other asides that punctuate the main plot here and there. It's fascinating, dense, mythological stuff that captures the attention.

As for the rest of the characters, perhaps the most salient characteristic is that they're all hypocrites one way or another with their own "moral turpitude" in their own unique ways. Sometimes it's obvious, as when Sy Adelman tries to forcefully drop maturity and detachment but is outed as having written some petty letters. Sometimes it's more subtle. Mrs. Samsky is married and speaks disdainfully about the "goys," yet her actions and outlook are clearly the furthest away from conservativism that's displayed to one degree or another by the whole broad set of Jewish characters.

Gopnik, of course, bends over backwards to live morally and be a "serious man," but it doesn't take much to push him into the camp of temptation.

Ultimately, I don't know what it's about, but the characters, setting, and narratives are so compelling that it works in the spirit of an anthology about morality.

Honourable Mentions: Happiness (1998). Also an anthology about what happiness means to different people. Very much similar as a thoughtful and philosophical black comedy. Though this one is one of the greatest movies of all time simply because it's more focused on its theme.

This movie was spectacularly blunted by the fact that the problem is never spelled out explicitly. In fact, the white father says at one point that the problems the couple will face are so clear that they don't need to be mentioned.

Well, they're not so clear to me. I don't see why it's such a contentious issue. Not that I doubt that the situation could be difficult, but the drama would have been helped along if it'd been spelled out, explained, or shown why everyone had such strong reservations to the thing. The fact that they get over it in an evening, in fact, only supports the notion that the whole matter is silly.

And it would be fine if, like in The Importance of Earnest, it had comedic elements to mock the silliness of the whole idea, but it doesn't. It's mostly a drama. And the purpose of this drama is to peddle shocked faces. Everyone is shocked for some ill-defined reason for a few minutes yet, of course, to no one's surprise, it has a perfectly predictable, neat, SWIFT, and happy ending.

Poitier's speech to his father is a great speech and the girl who plays Joey gives a masterful performance as a hopeful young woman in love. Can't say the same about Poitier, though, who's often very reserved with Joey. That little plot point where he pretty much says he can take her or leave her depending on the opinions' of others also weakens their connection.

Honourable Mentions: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). I think the making of such films is rather trite and narrow-minded; and society usually forgets the actual crux of the issue. The issue is not that this group or that group is marginalised or that people might give specific people who make some choices a hard time. No, the central problem that goes over peoples' heads is that societal norms and hierarchies by their very nature, and down from their very roots, are silly, misplaced, and even harmful. Oscar Wilde knew this. I wonder if a commercial film will ever be able to convey it.

It seems to have been shot on location and I very much appreciated seeing the scenes and hearing the sounds of urban Pakistan. It looks so dusty, foreign, and different even to this day.

As for the film, I think it missed a lot of opportunities to be more than what it was. This is apparently a big violent set of events but they don't show much of that except for a very tame and short torture scene. The rest is only referred to in dialogue. So the impact is lost.

Mostly they focus on the struggle to find this woman's husband, which is a very administrative process involving looking up phone numbers, following paper trails, questioning people. The directing is gentle and smooth, with the actors not looking all that concerned throughout the scenes.

Then the film takes no stance on anything. It makes little comment on the people kidnapped and sent to Guantanamo. We don't even really see the kidnappers so there's no discernible rhyme or reason as to the why except in dialogue. It completely focuses on the grief or the struggle of a woman who tends to look very collected except for a few times when she yells at people or screams into a pillow.

It successfully recreates the experience of pulling an all-nighter to deal with an emergency, but that's that.

Honourable Mentions: A Cry in the Dark (1988) a woman's baby is taken by dingos. Meryl Streep gives a really excellent performance as a mother fighting through grief and dealing with unrelenting media pressure and controversy that ensued.

The plot sounds compelling, but other than a few sparks here and there, it's nothing more than mindless entertainment.

Purportedly it's about a computer programmer-turned stereotypical high-end burglar with the black-beanied costume and all.

There's actually no satisfying substance to any of it. The film doesn't show much of the actually burglaring except him snatching the things. The burglar strikes up a relationship with a high-society woman and she proceeds to do nothing except act as fodder stuffing for the film's appeal in the form of simply being an attractive woman with an accent. Jill Clayburgh is on screen for a moment just to look sultry. He doesn't so much as even show any satisfaction from his crimes.

And that's really the issue that makes for the lack of substance. He has this "cat and mouse" relationship with an insurance agent whose existence, by the way, is an anomaly. It's an insurance agent with a gun and the power to grant people immunity from prosecution and investigate crimes - makes no sense. Anyway, it's frequently hinted that the burglar becomes this insurance agent's sort of Moby Dick, but it's never really shown how or why. The agent just keeps getting more and more frustrated at not being able to catch him. That's it, there's no grand battle of minds or backstory, nope - he just wants to catch him and gets angrier every time he doesn't.

The only good thing about this film is the lead who sometimes speaks or behaves in a delightfully sarcastic way. Also the chess master who can't beat the computer at chess is good because it's interesting to see an oddball character in film.

It's as simplistic as any of the vacuous spy blockbusters of the era or British crime films - suave guy does illegal things confidently (EXCITING?!), there are one or more pretty girls involved in some usually minimal capacity, and one or more other men get in guy's way. It's flowchart.

Honourable Mentions: Ghostbusters (1984) - it was like splitting that chess nerd into 3 characters and giving him a movie. Compelling and very funny.

Of course this is a sequel to Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, but it's also a spiritual successor to most of the movies Carrey was doing in the 90s. It's not that different from The Mask or Dumb and Dumber.

In short, an extremely stupid and obnoxious guy is a niche private detective. He has the capacity to survive and the luck of a Warner Bros. Cartoon character along with the zaniness. The facial expressions, costume, and hair, and mannerisms all almost defy the realm of possibility in the real world.

As a farce, it works well. Ventura is obnoxious, but he also uses that obnoxiousness to dispense justice to the deserving. There are the requisite poop jokes, but they tie in to the plot. There's a stray bit here or that that's just vacuous shock, but mostly it's all wired together well.

Aside from that, Carrey comports himself outlandishly and energetically, but perhaps more interesting to note is that has a certain feedback look of comedic timing. He goes to one extreme in one moment and then to the other in the next.

What was most impressive to me was how tidy the plot was. There are really not that many loose ends. At first we see Ace in a monastery in a spoof of martial arts movies or something training in buddhism to achieve enlightenment. And this same enlightenment training is referenced throughout the whole film. It wasn't just a parody for the sake of parody. Someone set this up well.

I don't know who did the idiotic and bumbling but hyper-talented detective best, Porcel, Candy, or Carrey, but this film deserves its place in the annals of the detective-parody genre.

Honourable Mentions: El gordo de America (1976). Porcel plays an idiot private detective. His obesity is used very strongly in his comedy, but it's the same sort of physical mugging farcical comedy as Carrey's.

The whole episode with the men in white shirts from the original was a bit nonsensical and possibly too Swedish/Nordic for me to understand WHO they were referring to. It seemed to be a gang of thuggish bucreaucrats. It didn't make sense because the criticism of them seemed to be that they were too rigid and Otto himself is an absurdly rigid man.

This film is probably around 80 - 90% a frame-by-frame recreation of the original but they take that bit out. Did they think the original was otherwise so brilliant it oughtn't to be changed?

However, for some reason while I was left with the idea that the Swedish version was a champion of men's issues, I didn't get the same feeling this this one. This one seems to have more general appeal, more focusing on the fact that the Hanks Otto is distraught because he lost his wife more than just being a rigid neurotic.

Some strong scenes, such as the firing of Otto by his bosses and the relationship between Otto and his father were cut. The wife's accident along with Otto's subsequent activism as well as the relationship between Otto and his friend are so curtailed that they don't make much sense or have much impact. Yet the runtime is still quite long, so I wonder where all that time went.

A big weakness, I think, was the much bigger push to sanitise Otto in the US version even from the beginning in the sense that they rather frequently make his character stress that he's not some sort of racist/sexist/anti-homosexual chauvinist. In the original they leave it more vague and it thus becomes more interesting. It's more like Otto has lived such an insulated life in his well-manicured insulated community that he doesn't know what he is, but he comes to discover more of himself, which not only makes the character more interesting and nuanced, but is also more interesting a gerontological point of view - people can change, improve, and develop at any stage of their lives.

Plus there's the physicality. Hanks' Otto kind of just looks like a rather stern generic middle-aged white man. On the other hand, the original actor really looked and talked like an bitter and extremely stubborn old man.

The film is kind of saved by the performance of the Marisol character, which is really excellent. Even the little "buck up" speech she gave Otto near the climax of the film was really effective.

In short, it's a watered-down version of the original which still manages to be emotional and impactful.

Honourable Mentions: Marty (1955): Famous movie speeches are usually dumb and empty, but the one in this US version of Otto was heartfelt and impactful. I was reminded of the speech in Marty, which is still probably the best movie speech/monologue I've ever seen.