Got out of work early on a Saturday in April 2001 and went to see a matinee of Crocodile Dundee 3 (in Los Angeles). It was dreadful and forgettable. I had brought my newspaper with me to read while waiting for the curtain to rise. I saw an ad for a movie that wasn't going to be released for another week. It was "A Knight's Tale" and there was a preview of it at 7PM in the same theatre I was watching Paul Hogan embarrass himself in. What caught my eye about the ad was that the producers ran a full page transcript of the review from Peter Travers. It was glowing and anyone who reads Rolling Stone knows Travers is one of the toughest critics out there. I went back on line, bought a ticket and had a wonderful experience. 2001, despite being a tragic one for this city and country, had also been a notoriously dull year at the movies and other than Shrek this was the one movie I loved. I was challenged again tonight by people who don't understand its greatness. So I figured I'd let Travers tell you in his words why we love it so. (Unfortunately, I could not find the entire review, but this snippet gets the point across.)
The Freditor
The runt in a summer litter of over-hyped epics is fractured fun and a stout showcase for Heath Ledger, a new Aussie gladiator.
Right out of the gate in this fourteenth-century medieval action saga, a jousting match heats up and the crowd roars its approval while lip-syncing to Queen's "We Will Rock You." Holy anachronisms! If using classic rock to screw with chronology doesn't drive you bugfuck (and if it does, God help you at Moulin Rouge), you should lap up this merry mischief from writer-director Brian Helgeland. An Oscar winner for the screenplay for L.A. Confidential and a battle-scarred veteran of tailoring scripts for such star egos as Stallone (Assassins), Costner (The Postman) and Gibson (Conspiracy Theory), Helgeland is working loose, low-budget and star-free this time. Lucky him. Lucky us. Helgeland's 1999 directorial debut, Payback, had him jousting with leading man Gibson. Gibson won. Heath Ledger, the twenty-two-year-old Aussie who plays William Thatcher, the commoner who tries to pass for a knight, isn't a star. Yet. And though Helgeland deploys Ledger's looks and charm to solid effect, he doesn't let him hog the show. Mark Addy and Alan Tudyk score laughs as William's loyal pals. Shannyn Sossamon makes a feisty lady fair. And Paul Bettany gives the film's best performance as Geoff Chaucer, the extroverted writer who warms up the crowd for William against the villain (Rufus Sewell). Rumor hath it that Helgeland picked jousting so he could knock a bully (a metaphorical Mel?) off his high horse. More likely, he's just having fun with the frenzy behind spectator sports through the ages. Either way, you're left with something to chew on. It's a dumb summer movie done with smarts. What'll they think of next.
PETER TRAVERS-RS 870
(Posted: May 9, 2001)
Friday, June 27, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Mad Magazine's Up The Academy is one of the worst comedies I've ever seen
1/2* (out of 5)
When I rent a movie on NetFlix I have three possible reasons. One, it is a new film that I either wanted to wait for or never got a chance to see in the theatre. Two, it is an older film I haven't seen that someone perceives as a classic, such as the American Film Institute. I've seen a lot of great older films, but there's about 90 years of movie history I have to catch up with. Or three, a movie came out during my youth that I always wanted to see, but was either too young to see (Rated R), couldn't find a friend to go with or it was out of the theatres much too quickly to catch up with. Other things came up over the years and I never did catch them. Now I have the opportunity. Sometimes they are jewels, but many times they are as bad as the critics said they were.
"Mad Magazine's Up the Academy" might actually be worse than the critics said it was. An answer of sorts to "National Lampoon's Animal House", this film was going to raise the stakes of the comedy magazine wars. How many young people heard of National Lampoon before that movie came out? I didn't. It became a must read after John Belushi's classic. Mad Magazine was much more famous to younger readers, but had lost some credibility in the Saturday Night Live era. This Up the Academy was aimed at that adolescent crowd and meant to give Mad back its irreverent crown. It didn't work. Not even close.
Joel Siegel reviewed the movie for Channel 7 News back then and I believe it had the dishonor of being released without a pre-screening for critics. A sign that the producers know how bad it is and hope to make some money before the critics tear it apart. You want to make a critic mad, force him to pay money for a ticket and see the film with the unwashed masses. You are almost certain to get a horrible review.
Siegel was a nice, easy going fella who understood the value of fun popcorn films. He hated Up the Academy and to show how bad it was, he mentioned how star Ron Leibman (Norma Rae, Super Cops), had sued to take his name off the credits. It worked. He doesn't have his name on the credits, but the suit brought more negative attention to him and the film. I always liked Leibman, I love Super Cops and he had a great detective show on CBS called Kaz that didn't last too long. If he hated his role in this film, how bad was it? I liked Mad Magazine, loved Animal House, loved snobs vs. slobs comedies and always wanted to like a comedy that critics hated. So this movie always stuck out for me as one I wanted to see.
So finally after 28 years, I rented this "comedy" and man am I laughing...at how bad it is. Oh Leibman is in it. He's in almost every scene as the cruel, tough Major Vaughn Liceman of the Weinstein Military Academy. Think Sgt. Ermey from Full Metal Jacket, but without any laughs, unintentional or not. Leibman is one of those actors who can make you laugh in a heavy drama because he has a natural, unforced acting style, but not here. Oh no, he tries hard with his Southern drawl and in your face attitude to be something he's not. He repeats "say it again" and you can tell this was supposed to be a big laugh line, as it gets beat to death throughout the movie, but never once even elicits a chuckle. Ralph Macchio plays a young recruit, a son of a Mafia don who refuses to learn the family business. He's so bad you wish a burning barn would fall on him like in The Outsiders. The other cast members are either terrible actors or decent actors who look embarrassed by their roles. Poor Tom Poston (Newhart, Mork and Mindy) must have really needed the money playing the floating gay instructor.
This movie deserved so much better. It was directed without a shred of humor by indie film maker Robert Downey Sr. (yes Iron Man's father, and now I know why his son took drugs); and written by Jay Tarses (a big writer for Bob Newhart, Buffalo Bill, and another great '80s sitcom Open All Night). They even have a person dressed as Alfred E. Newman in a general's uniform in the opening and closing sequences, but instead of being funny, he looks a like a disturbing creature from an Italian horror film. I gave this film a Half a Star only because it has some semblance of a forgettable plot that is followed through with a decent ending. Without that it has absolutely nothing going for it.
The Freditor
When I rent a movie on NetFlix I have three possible reasons. One, it is a new film that I either wanted to wait for or never got a chance to see in the theatre. Two, it is an older film I haven't seen that someone perceives as a classic, such as the American Film Institute. I've seen a lot of great older films, but there's about 90 years of movie history I have to catch up with. Or three, a movie came out during my youth that I always wanted to see, but was either too young to see (Rated R), couldn't find a friend to go with or it was out of the theatres much too quickly to catch up with. Other things came up over the years and I never did catch them. Now I have the opportunity. Sometimes they are jewels, but many times they are as bad as the critics said they were.
"Mad Magazine's Up the Academy" might actually be worse than the critics said it was. An answer of sorts to "National Lampoon's Animal House", this film was going to raise the stakes of the comedy magazine wars. How many young people heard of National Lampoon before that movie came out? I didn't. It became a must read after John Belushi's classic. Mad Magazine was much more famous to younger readers, but had lost some credibility in the Saturday Night Live era. This Up the Academy was aimed at that adolescent crowd and meant to give Mad back its irreverent crown. It didn't work. Not even close.
Joel Siegel reviewed the movie for Channel 7 News back then and I believe it had the dishonor of being released without a pre-screening for critics. A sign that the producers know how bad it is and hope to make some money before the critics tear it apart. You want to make a critic mad, force him to pay money for a ticket and see the film with the unwashed masses. You are almost certain to get a horrible review.
Siegel was a nice, easy going fella who understood the value of fun popcorn films. He hated Up the Academy and to show how bad it was, he mentioned how star Ron Leibman (Norma Rae, Super Cops), had sued to take his name off the credits. It worked. He doesn't have his name on the credits, but the suit brought more negative attention to him and the film. I always liked Leibman, I love Super Cops and he had a great detective show on CBS called Kaz that didn't last too long. If he hated his role in this film, how bad was it? I liked Mad Magazine, loved Animal House, loved snobs vs. slobs comedies and always wanted to like a comedy that critics hated. So this movie always stuck out for me as one I wanted to see.
So finally after 28 years, I rented this "comedy" and man am I laughing...at how bad it is. Oh Leibman is in it. He's in almost every scene as the cruel, tough Major Vaughn Liceman of the Weinstein Military Academy. Think Sgt. Ermey from Full Metal Jacket, but without any laughs, unintentional or not. Leibman is one of those actors who can make you laugh in a heavy drama because he has a natural, unforced acting style, but not here. Oh no, he tries hard with his Southern drawl and in your face attitude to be something he's not. He repeats "say it again" and you can tell this was supposed to be a big laugh line, as it gets beat to death throughout the movie, but never once even elicits a chuckle. Ralph Macchio plays a young recruit, a son of a Mafia don who refuses to learn the family business. He's so bad you wish a burning barn would fall on him like in The Outsiders. The other cast members are either terrible actors or decent actors who look embarrassed by their roles. Poor Tom Poston (Newhart, Mork and Mindy) must have really needed the money playing the floating gay instructor.
This movie deserved so much better. It was directed without a shred of humor by indie film maker Robert Downey Sr. (yes Iron Man's father, and now I know why his son took drugs); and written by Jay Tarses (a big writer for Bob Newhart, Buffalo Bill, and another great '80s sitcom Open All Night). They even have a person dressed as Alfred E. Newman in a general's uniform in the opening and closing sequences, but instead of being funny, he looks a like a disturbing creature from an Italian horror film. I gave this film a Half a Star only because it has some semblance of a forgettable plot that is followed through with a decent ending. Without that it has absolutely nothing going for it.
The Freditor
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Fred's Top 10 Movies of 2004
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind ---Sometimes a movie works to confuse you, but after a while you lose interest and don't care what the answers are. ESSM draws you into a world that you've never been to before and makes you want to discover where you're going. This was the best fictional movie of the year. I was sucked in and loved the combination of a dreamlike state and the real world. Jim Carrey is tremendous as a heartbroken man looking to erase all the memories of a relationship gone wrong. You feel his pain as he first wants to wash it away and then struggles to keep those memories when they become entangled with the good thoughts.
This movie shows the true highs and lows of love that you rarely see on screen. Kate Winslet, who I usually do not like, was incredible here as the free spirited girl who he loves desperately but doesn't fully trust. She can be sweet or a nasty piece of work, but as the movie unfolds backwards you see where the nastiness comes from. The side stories involving the people doing the brain cleansing are just as interesting. Awards are rendered virtually meaningless to me, when movies like this are jilted out of Oscars or even nominations.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11 ---Michael Moore may not share your political viewpoints, but he sure knows how to make an entertaining film. Bowling at Columbine was a brilliant, funny, heartbreaking documentary and this film was an equally great follow up. He throws a lot of info at you and a lot of what if's, which the Republicans try to ridicule as outlandish. Some of the questions are regarding the Bushes unseemly relationship with the Saudis (the people most involved in 9/11). But they are questions that deserve some attention and are getting none from the traditional media. In the film, when the Secret Service makes a special trip to the Saudi Arabian embassy to protect it from Michael and his cameras, you realize that he's onto something here. My taxes are paying for the protection of our enemies? But my favorite part is when he asks several Congressmen to talk their kids into going into the military. Not one member has a child in the service and yet they willingly send other people's children to do the fighting. If it weren't for a few reporting errors, I would call this my favorite movie of the year.
Incredibles, The --Pixar knocks another one out of the park. After slipping with Finding Nemo they come back with this very funny, very exciting, CGI-animated tribute to superheroes. My favorite character is the little boy, Dash, who runs faster than The Flash. I really could relate to him, because what little boy would not like to have a superpower? I loved how The Incredibles were in real mortal danger (despite what the namby-pamby Newsweek critic wrote). And if you are going to have a mid-life crisis, potbellied former superhero, who better to play him than voice-weary "Coach" Craig T. Nelson. Another aspect that I loved is that Holly Hunter's mother character has the same twisted-up mouth when she speaks as she does in real life.
Aviator, The ---Goodfellas is Martin Scorsese's best. A big movie told in a small way. But Aviator is a big movie told in a big way, the first time Martin has been able to get his hands around such a project and bring it on home. He does it here with grace. The scenes recreating Howard Hughes' 1920's airplane movies are great, as are the flying lessons for Katherine Hepburn and the spectacular crash in Beverly Hills. Martin brought his A Game here and got wonderful performances out of all of his stars. Leo does a great Texas accent and plays obsessive compulsive disorder beautifully, especially in the beginning when it's just a subtle part of his character. Cate Blanchett's Katherine Hepburn is so perfect she deserves any award she gets. Alan Alda makes a great comeback as a Congressman deep in Pan-Am's pockets. I loved this movie and if it won Best Picture I'd have no problem with it.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY ---The funny thing about a Clint Eastwood movie these days, is that unlike Bill Murray, you still get the same style of film from him that his fans have always loved, but they just have better scripts. Think of Dirty Harry's The Enforcer. Crusted hard veteran is forced to team up with a little Irish firebrand (Tyne Daly), who is determined to show she can keep up with the vet and he grows a grudging respect and a non-sexual love for this woman. Take away the police story and replace guns with boxing gloves and you have Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood is Eastwood here, except a little more moist-eyed and the firebrand is Hillary Swank as Maggie Fitzgerald. Maggie wants to be a female boxer and a good one, and wants Frank's help. She gets it thanks to the always great Morgan Freeman. I loved the fight scenes, because they show how ferocity, determination and great training can overcome speed and youth. Maggie is like an older, white trash Mike Tyson. The ending comes out of left field, but is appropriate.
BEFORE SUNSET ---Sequel to one of my favorite romantics films of all time, Before Sunrise, is very good in its own right and has the added benefit of real time. Meeting in Paris, the characters have 90 minutes to talk, before a flight leaves for New York and the movie watches them the whole way. These two are meant to be together. Funny and incredibly touching.
SPARTAN ---Val Kilmer is the most underrated actor of his generation. (Thanks to The Practice/Boston Legal, James Spader is no longer underrated.) Here is one movie that slipped way under the radar, but is a phenomenal piece of work. Written and directed by the always great David Mamet, Kilmer plays a CIA assassin out to find the daughter of a mysterious government employee (the president?). He gets himself in deep and finds he's part of a bigger conspiracy. I reveal nothing, but tell you to just sit back and watch as he uses any means necessary to accomplish his goal. When he interrogates one escaping suspect the guy screams "you broke my arm." "No, I didn't." The guy lies to him, then crack, "Now I broke your arm."
Shrek 2 ---It starts off slow and doesn't produce too many laughs in the first half, but the second half makes it the funniest movie of the year. I enjoyed the second half more than the entire first Shrek movie. And the key ingredient to this sequel was Antonio Banderas' cat assassin--Puss-In Boots.
MAN ON FIRE --In our post-9/11 world we start to feel better knowing that there are trained assassins out there willing to go the extra mile to keep us safe. Like Spartan, Man on Fire is about those kind of men. Denzel Washington hires himself out to protect a little girl from being kidnapped in the ever dangerous Latin America. Kidnapping rich relatives for profit has become a big industry down there and adorable little Dakota Fanning is a ripe target. When she does get snatched and the money trade off goes awry, Denzel is determined to make the kidnappers pay. That Denzel starts off the movie as an alcoholic with suicidal tendencies because of the things he's done, makes the transformation to his old self that much more heavy.
MARIA FULL OF GRACE ---Sometimes you watch a movie about a subject you know very little about. The heroin mule trade (swallowing condoms of heroin to get past the border guards) is one of those subjects. I assumed these people sucked down 10 or so, not 50+. If just one condom has a leak you digest all that heroin and die. You might say good for them, but when you think about it, as this movie forces you to do: How desperate do you have to be to actually take this chance? Your choices: death, prison or a few thousand dollars to help your family in dirt poor Colombia. This movie concerns itself with the characters muling the drugs and not those the drugs will eventually poison, but it does have one moral center in the disapproving sister of one of the mules. After seeing the conditions these girls come from it's a wonder any of them ever leave the U.S.
Honorable Mentions:
Shaun of the Dead --A comical tribute to zombie movies, this one has plenty of in-jokes, but is not an Airplane/Scary Movie type of comedy. This film reimagines a zombie invasion in a plain English world and how real people would handle the situation, which means to say not well at all. When these people get a gun they can't shoot straight and when stressful times come they can't think straight. Just like the rest of us. I love how the pub is the answer to all their questions. The fat "flatmate" is the best.
DAWN OF THE DEAD ---Just like the sequel, the remake is becoming less of a dirty word thanks to great ones like this. A good cast of actors rather than action heroes and a tight script makes this retelling of the classic zombie film a worthy successor. And I love that the zombies run fast. It bothers the hell out of one of my friends, but if you can suspend your imagination enough to allow the dead to walk why can't they run?
SUPER SIZE ME ---The year of the entertaining documentary. (Bush's Brain and Fog of War were other notables.) This guy brings fast food down to its knees and managed to have Super-sized meals wiped off McDonald's menus. He ate McDonald's every day for 30 days, breakfast, lunch and dinner and ended up with a sick liver and other health problems. If he drank like a fish he couldn't have damaged his liver as quickly as his high fat diet did. Granted he was a bit of a lightweight to start out. Only weighing 185 and being 6 feet tall. He throws up after his third day on this diet, which made me laugh very hard. But his point was made about the fast-food industrial complex that is poisoning our kids and making us all unhealthy. Oddly, I have to admit that after watching this movie, I got an incredible craving for McDonald's and went and got a Big Mac. Happened to my friend Paul, too. And neither of us are McDonald's fans. LOL
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS ---Sports movies have gotten much better in the last 20 years. Few have been as a detail-honest as this one. The story of a real Texas high school football team back in 1988, it stars Billy Bob Thornton as the coach of the team that was expected to win the State title and lost its star running back in the first game. My friend Paul was a high school football coach for a number of years and loved its authenticity. It almost makes me want to read the book, but let's not get crazy. :))
SIDEWAYS ---Very funny at times and very downbeat at times. As the weeks goes by I appreciate it, but realize how overhyped it was. I just finished watching Midnight Run, which is as good a road trip comedy as you'll ever see and that was both funny and poignant, but kept it all moving nicely. Something Sideways had a problem doing. Three weeks ago this movie would have made my Top 10, but after seeing Million Dollar Baby and Maria Full of Grace it fell precipitously.
Hero ---Jet Li is not much of an actor, but what he brings in physical skills to a role can never be diminished. I love Jackie Chan, but Jet Li is not human with his contortionist moves. This movie employs too much Crouching Tiger fly-away fighting, but if viewed as pure art it works beautifully. I've never seen a movie use such a rich array of colors. The red autumn leaves flying around during one fighting scene has to be experienced in a theater or a very large screen TV. This movie is a treat for the eyes.
POLAR EXPRESS, THE ---Like Hero another feast for the eyes. The story is very nice and the trip to the North Pole is full of wonder and excitement, but their is a distance in this film that kind of leaves you cold. That one little thing that was missing, could have turned this film into a classic. It might still be, but I saw it twice and didn't have that same feeling I had after The Incredibles or especially Elf.
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE ---South Park boys hit a bases-clearing double. Best puppet movie I've ever seen. Although I don't know what number 2 is. When it's funny it's very very funny, but there are some dry moments. The attack on celebrities for being anti-American is a bit right-wingish for me, but they do deserve to be smacked for their pomposity. "I'm Matt Damon."
Spiderman 2 ---Did the Elevated train running through Manhattan bother you? I kept saying to myself, it's Queens Blvd., it's Queens Blvd., but Queens Blvd. doesn't have tall buildings like that and Manhattan doesn't have El trains. I'm sorry, but such an exciting moment in a movie should not be undone by such a suspension of disbelief. Maybe if you've never been to New York you'd love the scene, but for New Yorkers it had to give you major pause. And could someone buy Kirsten Dunst a buffet meal at Sizzler's? Mary Jane is supposed to be voluptuous not anorexic. The Aunt was great though.
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN ---Wow, the first really good Harry Potter movie. Ever major character in Harry Potter movies are now played by the best English actors around. Add Gary Sinise to the fold as the chief villain and Emma Thompson as the wacky palmreader. I loved the second view of life in this film. How what we perceive may not actually be what's happening. Too bad people can't experience this in real life.
MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE ---A superior remake to the original. Denzel Washington plays Frank Sinatra's part of a returning soldier (from the Gulf War), who experiences terrible dreams and thinks he may have been brainwashed. Denzel is believable in this part whereas little Frank looked like a child in his military uniform. The use of a CNN/Fox News Network style ticker to feed us BS, while the real events are playing out was brilliant. Silence of the Lambs' Jonathan Demme makes a big comeback after The Truth About Charlie. This movie scores major points for resurrecting the classic Kinks song, Better Things.
Passion OF THE CHRIST, The ---I saw it about a year ago and there are scenes that still creep into my mind from time to time. Going to church and seeing Christ on the cross I'm sure helps, but it's not just then. It's pain. A heel spur, a sore back, a sunburn, some other ailment that comes up and I flash back to Jesus being whipped or worse yet, getting his arm pulled out of its socket to reach the other side of the cross. For all its faults, Mel made a movie that stays with you and even though the script was something you'd hear on classroom educational TV, you can't diminish the horror of the images. Has anyone made a scarier manifestation of the devil than Mel does in this film? And I think the movie loses some of its power by not being in English. If it was in English, I think it would be less foreign and you couldn't distance yourself the way you try to here. Just a thought.
The Freditor
This movie shows the true highs and lows of love that you rarely see on screen. Kate Winslet, who I usually do not like, was incredible here as the free spirited girl who he loves desperately but doesn't fully trust. She can be sweet or a nasty piece of work, but as the movie unfolds backwards you see where the nastiness comes from. The side stories involving the people doing the brain cleansing are just as interesting. Awards are rendered virtually meaningless to me, when movies like this are jilted out of Oscars or even nominations.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11 ---Michael Moore may not share your political viewpoints, but he sure knows how to make an entertaining film. Bowling at Columbine was a brilliant, funny, heartbreaking documentary and this film was an equally great follow up. He throws a lot of info at you and a lot of what if's, which the Republicans try to ridicule as outlandish. Some of the questions are regarding the Bushes unseemly relationship with the Saudis (the people most involved in 9/11). But they are questions that deserve some attention and are getting none from the traditional media. In the film, when the Secret Service makes a special trip to the Saudi Arabian embassy to protect it from Michael and his cameras, you realize that he's onto something here. My taxes are paying for the protection of our enemies? But my favorite part is when he asks several Congressmen to talk their kids into going into the military. Not one member has a child in the service and yet they willingly send other people's children to do the fighting. If it weren't for a few reporting errors, I would call this my favorite movie of the year.
Incredibles, The --Pixar knocks another one out of the park. After slipping with Finding Nemo they come back with this very funny, very exciting, CGI-animated tribute to superheroes. My favorite character is the little boy, Dash, who runs faster than The Flash. I really could relate to him, because what little boy would not like to have a superpower? I loved how The Incredibles were in real mortal danger (despite what the namby-pamby Newsweek critic wrote). And if you are going to have a mid-life crisis, potbellied former superhero, who better to play him than voice-weary "Coach" Craig T. Nelson. Another aspect that I loved is that Holly Hunter's mother character has the same twisted-up mouth when she speaks as she does in real life.
Aviator, The ---Goodfellas is Martin Scorsese's best. A big movie told in a small way. But Aviator is a big movie told in a big way, the first time Martin has been able to get his hands around such a project and bring it on home. He does it here with grace. The scenes recreating Howard Hughes' 1920's airplane movies are great, as are the flying lessons for Katherine Hepburn and the spectacular crash in Beverly Hills. Martin brought his A Game here and got wonderful performances out of all of his stars. Leo does a great Texas accent and plays obsessive compulsive disorder beautifully, especially in the beginning when it's just a subtle part of his character. Cate Blanchett's Katherine Hepburn is so perfect she deserves any award she gets. Alan Alda makes a great comeback as a Congressman deep in Pan-Am's pockets. I loved this movie and if it won Best Picture I'd have no problem with it.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY ---The funny thing about a Clint Eastwood movie these days, is that unlike Bill Murray, you still get the same style of film from him that his fans have always loved, but they just have better scripts. Think of Dirty Harry's The Enforcer. Crusted hard veteran is forced to team up with a little Irish firebrand (Tyne Daly), who is determined to show she can keep up with the vet and he grows a grudging respect and a non-sexual love for this woman. Take away the police story and replace guns with boxing gloves and you have Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood is Eastwood here, except a little more moist-eyed and the firebrand is Hillary Swank as Maggie Fitzgerald. Maggie wants to be a female boxer and a good one, and wants Frank's help. She gets it thanks to the always great Morgan Freeman. I loved the fight scenes, because they show how ferocity, determination and great training can overcome speed and youth. Maggie is like an older, white trash Mike Tyson. The ending comes out of left field, but is appropriate.
BEFORE SUNSET ---Sequel to one of my favorite romantics films of all time, Before Sunrise, is very good in its own right and has the added benefit of real time. Meeting in Paris, the characters have 90 minutes to talk, before a flight leaves for New York and the movie watches them the whole way. These two are meant to be together. Funny and incredibly touching.
SPARTAN ---Val Kilmer is the most underrated actor of his generation. (Thanks to The Practice/Boston Legal, James Spader is no longer underrated.) Here is one movie that slipped way under the radar, but is a phenomenal piece of work. Written and directed by the always great David Mamet, Kilmer plays a CIA assassin out to find the daughter of a mysterious government employee (the president?). He gets himself in deep and finds he's part of a bigger conspiracy. I reveal nothing, but tell you to just sit back and watch as he uses any means necessary to accomplish his goal. When he interrogates one escaping suspect the guy screams "you broke my arm." "No, I didn't." The guy lies to him, then crack, "Now I broke your arm."
Shrek 2 ---It starts off slow and doesn't produce too many laughs in the first half, but the second half makes it the funniest movie of the year. I enjoyed the second half more than the entire first Shrek movie. And the key ingredient to this sequel was Antonio Banderas' cat assassin--Puss-In Boots.
MAN ON FIRE --In our post-9/11 world we start to feel better knowing that there are trained assassins out there willing to go the extra mile to keep us safe. Like Spartan, Man on Fire is about those kind of men. Denzel Washington hires himself out to protect a little girl from being kidnapped in the ever dangerous Latin America. Kidnapping rich relatives for profit has become a big industry down there and adorable little Dakota Fanning is a ripe target. When she does get snatched and the money trade off goes awry, Denzel is determined to make the kidnappers pay. That Denzel starts off the movie as an alcoholic with suicidal tendencies because of the things he's done, makes the transformation to his old self that much more heavy.
MARIA FULL OF GRACE ---Sometimes you watch a movie about a subject you know very little about. The heroin mule trade (swallowing condoms of heroin to get past the border guards) is one of those subjects. I assumed these people sucked down 10 or so, not 50+. If just one condom has a leak you digest all that heroin and die. You might say good for them, but when you think about it, as this movie forces you to do: How desperate do you have to be to actually take this chance? Your choices: death, prison or a few thousand dollars to help your family in dirt poor Colombia. This movie concerns itself with the characters muling the drugs and not those the drugs will eventually poison, but it does have one moral center in the disapproving sister of one of the mules. After seeing the conditions these girls come from it's a wonder any of them ever leave the U.S.
Honorable Mentions:
Shaun of the Dead --A comical tribute to zombie movies, this one has plenty of in-jokes, but is not an Airplane/Scary Movie type of comedy. This film reimagines a zombie invasion in a plain English world and how real people would handle the situation, which means to say not well at all. When these people get a gun they can't shoot straight and when stressful times come they can't think straight. Just like the rest of us. I love how the pub is the answer to all their questions. The fat "flatmate" is the best.
DAWN OF THE DEAD ---Just like the sequel, the remake is becoming less of a dirty word thanks to great ones like this. A good cast of actors rather than action heroes and a tight script makes this retelling of the classic zombie film a worthy successor. And I love that the zombies run fast. It bothers the hell out of one of my friends, but if you can suspend your imagination enough to allow the dead to walk why can't they run?
SUPER SIZE ME ---The year of the entertaining documentary. (Bush's Brain and Fog of War were other notables.) This guy brings fast food down to its knees and managed to have Super-sized meals wiped off McDonald's menus. He ate McDonald's every day for 30 days, breakfast, lunch and dinner and ended up with a sick liver and other health problems. If he drank like a fish he couldn't have damaged his liver as quickly as his high fat diet did. Granted he was a bit of a lightweight to start out. Only weighing 185 and being 6 feet tall. He throws up after his third day on this diet, which made me laugh very hard. But his point was made about the fast-food industrial complex that is poisoning our kids and making us all unhealthy. Oddly, I have to admit that after watching this movie, I got an incredible craving for McDonald's and went and got a Big Mac. Happened to my friend Paul, too. And neither of us are McDonald's fans. LOL
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS ---Sports movies have gotten much better in the last 20 years. Few have been as a detail-honest as this one. The story of a real Texas high school football team back in 1988, it stars Billy Bob Thornton as the coach of the team that was expected to win the State title and lost its star running back in the first game. My friend Paul was a high school football coach for a number of years and loved its authenticity. It almost makes me want to read the book, but let's not get crazy. :))
SIDEWAYS ---Very funny at times and very downbeat at times. As the weeks goes by I appreciate it, but realize how overhyped it was. I just finished watching Midnight Run, which is as good a road trip comedy as you'll ever see and that was both funny and poignant, but kept it all moving nicely. Something Sideways had a problem doing. Three weeks ago this movie would have made my Top 10, but after seeing Million Dollar Baby and Maria Full of Grace it fell precipitously.
Hero ---Jet Li is not much of an actor, but what he brings in physical skills to a role can never be diminished. I love Jackie Chan, but Jet Li is not human with his contortionist moves. This movie employs too much Crouching Tiger fly-away fighting, but if viewed as pure art it works beautifully. I've never seen a movie use such a rich array of colors. The red autumn leaves flying around during one fighting scene has to be experienced in a theater or a very large screen TV. This movie is a treat for the eyes.
POLAR EXPRESS, THE ---Like Hero another feast for the eyes. The story is very nice and the trip to the North Pole is full of wonder and excitement, but their is a distance in this film that kind of leaves you cold. That one little thing that was missing, could have turned this film into a classic. It might still be, but I saw it twice and didn't have that same feeling I had after The Incredibles or especially Elf.
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE ---South Park boys hit a bases-clearing double. Best puppet movie I've ever seen. Although I don't know what number 2 is. When it's funny it's very very funny, but there are some dry moments. The attack on celebrities for being anti-American is a bit right-wingish for me, but they do deserve to be smacked for their pomposity. "I'm Matt Damon."
Spiderman 2 ---Did the Elevated train running through Manhattan bother you? I kept saying to myself, it's Queens Blvd., it's Queens Blvd., but Queens Blvd. doesn't have tall buildings like that and Manhattan doesn't have El trains. I'm sorry, but such an exciting moment in a movie should not be undone by such a suspension of disbelief. Maybe if you've never been to New York you'd love the scene, but for New Yorkers it had to give you major pause. And could someone buy Kirsten Dunst a buffet meal at Sizzler's? Mary Jane is supposed to be voluptuous not anorexic. The Aunt was great though.
HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN ---Wow, the first really good Harry Potter movie. Ever major character in Harry Potter movies are now played by the best English actors around. Add Gary Sinise to the fold as the chief villain and Emma Thompson as the wacky palmreader. I loved the second view of life in this film. How what we perceive may not actually be what's happening. Too bad people can't experience this in real life.
MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, THE ---A superior remake to the original. Denzel Washington plays Frank Sinatra's part of a returning soldier (from the Gulf War), who experiences terrible dreams and thinks he may have been brainwashed. Denzel is believable in this part whereas little Frank looked like a child in his military uniform. The use of a CNN/Fox News Network style ticker to feed us BS, while the real events are playing out was brilliant. Silence of the Lambs' Jonathan Demme makes a big comeback after The Truth About Charlie. This movie scores major points for resurrecting the classic Kinks song, Better Things.
Passion OF THE CHRIST, The ---I saw it about a year ago and there are scenes that still creep into my mind from time to time. Going to church and seeing Christ on the cross I'm sure helps, but it's not just then. It's pain. A heel spur, a sore back, a sunburn, some other ailment that comes up and I flash back to Jesus being whipped or worse yet, getting his arm pulled out of its socket to reach the other side of the cross. For all its faults, Mel made a movie that stays with you and even though the script was something you'd hear on classroom educational TV, you can't diminish the horror of the images. Has anyone made a scarier manifestation of the devil than Mel does in this film? And I think the movie loses some of its power by not being in English. If it was in English, I think it would be less foreign and you couldn't distance yourself the way you try to here. Just a thought.
The Freditor
Friday, June 6, 2008
Spike Lee challenges Clint Eastwood, Clint fights back hurts & Spike's feelings
Clint, Spike Trade Barbs Over WWII Films - AOL News
I accept that history gets compromised in movies, but it should be used sparingly and only to move the story along, like condescending several characters into one or two, but I hate when it's done for so-called Political Correctness. Steven Spielberg was attacked by people who didn't know history for not having black soldiers in Saving Private Ryan, when there were no black soldiers at Normandy. They weren't allowed to fight in the war until later.
Now Spike Lee (who fancies himself a student of history) attacks Clint Eastwood over the lack of black soldiers in Clint's two Iwo Jima films. Clint says that the only black soldiers were in munitions and nowhere near the raising of the flag and Letters From our Fathers is virtually all Japanese. What is Spike's point? That Clint should pretend that black people raised the flag? Should Abraham Lincoln be played by a black man?
This is not the first problem these two have had. Back in 1988, Clint made a good movie about jazz player Charlie Parker called Bird. The whole cast was practically black as it should have been for the subject and time. But Spike had a problem with a white man making a movie about Charlie Parker at all. WHAT???!! Eastwood is a renowned jazz fan and even plays jazz for fun. His movie was far better than Spike's jazz movie, Mo' Better Blues. I don't care who makes what movie about what subject, just as long as they do a good job.
There are plenty of crappy movies about black people made by black directors, I dare you to try and watch Cotton Comes to Harlem as I just did. I'll agree that maybe 30+ years ago white directors watered down black people's stories, but I don't think that's an issue anymore. A Soldier's Story, Color Purple, and Amistad are all good movies made by white directors. Except for Malcolm X, Spike Lee has never made a movie better than any of those three.
The Freditor
I accept that history gets compromised in movies, but it should be used sparingly and only to move the story along, like condescending several characters into one or two, but I hate when it's done for so-called Political Correctness. Steven Spielberg was attacked by people who didn't know history for not having black soldiers in Saving Private Ryan, when there were no black soldiers at Normandy. They weren't allowed to fight in the war until later.
Now Spike Lee (who fancies himself a student of history) attacks Clint Eastwood over the lack of black soldiers in Clint's two Iwo Jima films. Clint says that the only black soldiers were in munitions and nowhere near the raising of the flag and Letters From our Fathers is virtually all Japanese. What is Spike's point? That Clint should pretend that black people raised the flag? Should Abraham Lincoln be played by a black man?
This is not the first problem these two have had. Back in 1988, Clint made a good movie about jazz player Charlie Parker called Bird. The whole cast was practically black as it should have been for the subject and time. But Spike had a problem with a white man making a movie about Charlie Parker at all. WHAT???!! Eastwood is a renowned jazz fan and even plays jazz for fun. His movie was far better than Spike's jazz movie, Mo' Better Blues. I don't care who makes what movie about what subject, just as long as they do a good job.
There are plenty of crappy movies about black people made by black directors, I dare you to try and watch Cotton Comes to Harlem as I just did. I'll agree that maybe 30+ years ago white directors watered down black people's stories, but I don't think that's an issue anymore. A Soldier's Story, Color Purple, and Amistad are all good movies made by white directors. Except for Malcolm X, Spike Lee has never made a movie better than any of those three.
The Freditor
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