Tag Archives: drama

The Poseidon Adventure

I thought I ought to ground myself in history, so thanks to my good friends at Netflix, I snagged The Poseidon Adventure no more than a week after its remake’s release date, to watch prior to catching said remake. (Because I am nothing if not timely. Also: product endorsements deserve to be rewarded with free stuff. Just saying, good friends at Netflix.) The seventies were a different time is what I have learned. Sure, blah blah blah special effects cakes, but that’s not the thing. The thing is the acting. With the exception of Ernest Borgnine (who was frankly superb) and Roddy McDowall, every single male in the cast acted via angry loud voice. It was just bizarre to watch, especially in Gene Hackman, who I have certainly seen perform well enough in other (notably later) roles. Meanwhile, the women were mostly called upon to scream a lot. This is somewhat less surprising on the whole, but still pretty sad. As the main exception here was Ernest Borgnine’s wife, I am forced to assume that it was talent by osmosis.

As for the plot? Well, you know, boat flips over, people try to survive in upside-down boat. Is there more that you need to know? I will say that the set design did an almost non-existent job of conveying upside-downness, which robbed the movie of a good third of its purported impact. I expect that the remake will handle that part, at least. And maybe less shouting. But mostly better special effects traded in for someone not as good as Borgnine. Probably this is a bad thing; it certainly would be if the original had been a tour de force, but since it was not, I’ll take what I can get.

16 Blocks

Obligatory action movie time! Except, 16 Blocks wasn’t quite as action-oriented as I thought, which was mostly good and slightly bad. Sure, there’s gunplay and chases and car crashes and whatnot, but with neither explosions nor fountains of blood. It’s mostly a talking movie, between Bruce Willis and his fellow cops, Willis and his somewhat crooked grand jury witness, Willis and his estranged family. Mostly, they talk about right and wrong and redemption, and about the line between any two of the three. It wasn’t especially trite, but it was definitely a retread. On the bright side, it had heart.

That said, I’m not sure about Willis’s career these days. ‘Cause, seriously, who can remember the last time he didn’t play a sad-eyed cop trying to protect a person or people from a corrupt system? (Okay, sure, that one time he was a sad-eyed psychiatrist instead.) I know for a fact that he was once funny. Can’t we have that guy, every now and then? This is an unreasonable complaint, though, because I am in no way dismissing his sad-eyed talent. That man can carry the weight of the world on his shoulders at the drop of a hat, and I believe it every time. I bet it’s because he has a kid named Rumor. That would wear on anyone.

Glory (1989)

Another movie night just past, and thusly do I dash off another quick correspondence. Although there are not always themes, the theme this week was ‘movies with Denzel Washington’, and the one that got picked was Glory. (Actually, part of that is a lie; it was picked last week but not watched in favor of general jabbering. So, this week instead. Now You Know!)

The thing I don’t like about period pieces are all the touches of accuracy. I’d rather not hear the soldiers sitting around their campfires or the officers in their captured mansions playing tootley music of the type I associate with Yankee Doodle Dandy. I understand that something being right is supposed to immerse me in the moment, but having to contemplate how bad peoples’ taste used to be ends up jerking me out of it.

My bitch out of the way, this was a really good movie. I mean, it was a really good movie all on its own, about what people find to be worth fighting and dying for, about the way that officers and enlisted men can, should, and do interact, and to a much lesser extent than the title would have you believe, about what honor and what accolades are to be found on the field of war. Then, on top of that, you’ve got the shades of our racist past that I find it all too easy to forget probably still exists even today, when I’m not busy contemplating it (like now). I can’t say exactly why, nor what it says about my psyche, but I always tend to enjoy more a movie that makes me mad because the characters are being so stupid about a question that I find it hard to remember wasn’t always long ago answered. Probably I just like the adrenaline rush of being angry, though.

Also, there should be more movies with Ferris, Morgan Freeman, and Westley all sharing screen space.

Citizen Kane

A new feature in my life is the weekly movie night on Fridays, this whole big thing where a group of my local friends and I gather together and watch a movie. Not always good, not always important, often both. I’ll never know what it is next until the day comes, and that’s just how it’s gonna be.

This week, Citizen Kane, the original spoiler-at-the-end film. If you don’t know what Rosebud means, I suppose I can go ahead and not say. In some ways, though, I think viewing the movie was more enjoyable for knowing and being able to watch it happen, instead of wondering the whole time like the audience was supposed to back in the day.

As far as the brilliance of the movie, well, it had its good points. Lots of innovative cinematography that I was unable to appreciate. In a way, it’s hard to credit that film is the same basic physical thing it was 65 years ago; the part where the way it’s used has changed dramatically was inevitable, so innovative for then gets as far as looks pretty decent for now. The acting was top notch, which doesn’t surprise me. It had better be, if you’re going to call something the best movie of all time, AFI.

The downside was the plot. Sure, the quest for Rosebud worked fine, but all the little stories on Kane’s life that were the true point of the movie? I felt like those failed me. There was some crucial point where Kane shifted from youthful idealism to nonchalant decadence, and I was completely unable to tell what it was. I have my guesses, and maybe the point is that we don’t know how it happened, only that it did. But it felt like a missing piece of the movie, and considering how engrossed I was in the story, it was very disappointing to have this sudden paradigm shift in character and not be able to understand what happened.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it yet, you should; it’s that kind of movie. But don’t feel pressured about it or anything. It’ll keep.

Hotel Rwanda

It’s a lot to take in, is the thing. Sure, you’ve got the whole Germany and the Jews thing, but that’s so internalized into our culture that it doesn’t pack the same visceral punch. I didn’t know that yet, at this time yesterday. But, back a couple of months ago, the girl told me I should go see Hotel Rwanda. I doubt it would have crossed my mind to, on my own. This, also, is part of what there is that’s a lot to take in. So I looked for it, and kept looking for it, but it was a small distribution and was never local. Until last night, when the dear, dear Alamo Drafthouse started a three day run. I managed to escape work early enough for the run to downtown, so I got to go.

Really, there’s too much to tell about what went through my head while I was watching. It could be that there’s be too much to get it all out even if I waited a week, but I’m going to see another movie tonight, so now is the best time. Therefore, I try.

It’s a true story thing in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994. The comparisons to Schindler’s List are inevitable, but I’ll try to avoid them. I haven’t seen that movie since before the events of this one actually happened, so it’s possible my memory of it is flawed. On top of which, like I said earlier: Unfamiliarity has bred a deeper reaction, maybe. As for the film elements, they’re all fine. Unobtrusive cinematography, just as I prefer. Excellent acting, never over the top despite subject matter that would all too easily create that kind of thing. A script that only crossed the preachy line once, so that’s forgivable, and it made up for it by humanizing characters that could have been too noble or too tragic or too evil.

Anyway, though, it’s a film based on a true story, and the story is probably easy to learn about, so I need not go into it here. I say probably easy to learn about, and that’s the part of what’s in my head what I will go into. I feel bad about myself, that I’d have to poke around to see how well-documented things are. I remember it happening, and sure, I was in college, but hell, that’s exactly the time I ought to have been the most fired up about it. And it barely registered. Now, it has registered. I got a little choked up looking at a billboard on the way up to Dallas today, because the subject matter reminded me of a line from the movie despite an only tenuous connection. I’m pretty sure I’ll have a nightmare sometime in the next week where a man will tell me to “Take the river road; it’s clear.” I feel bad about myself all over again for the things I thought would be pretty good ideas, for a few hours on a Tuesday in 2001.

Despite all that, I doubt my life will really change. The way I think about some things has changed, and I hope I keep that. I’m going to pay more attention, and maybe I’ll find a way to do something that would make a difference, someday. Probably not, and I won’t feel bad about that, because the main thing that makes heroes is circumstance. And no matter how I may feel about myself for never making that kind of difference, having the circumstance to allow for it would be far, far worse. That’s where the paying attention and the seeing things differently comes in, is by helping to avoid that kind of circumstance in the first place, maybe. And I can definitely get on that bus.

Sideways

So, early this week, I saw Sideways. Without a doubt, the best thing about it was the bleu cheese burger that accompanied it, since I was at the Alamo Drafthouse, prince among movie theaters that it is. Other than that… this review is going to have spoilers, because it’s hard enough to come up with anything to say even if I don’t worry about them.
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The Phantom of the Opera

Musicals: sometimes I like them. It helps if the entire world doesn’t join in randomly and without feeling the slightest bit self-conscious about it (see South Pacific, although there are exceptions that can make this work, such as if it’s happening due to demonic interference). And it probably makes me overly trendy and without taste that I like Andrew Lloyd Webber better than the generic musicalisician, but nevertheless I do, and it’s too late to do anything about it now. Although in my defense, I hate Cats, as is good and proper.

The upshot of all this is that it was inevitable that I’d go see The Phantom of the Opera as a movie, despite the near universal panning it took. And here’s the thing. It didn’t only not suck, but was, with just a few exceptions, really good. In some aspects better than I’ve ever seen it onstage.

Problems: Too melodramatic. This went away after the first few scenes, which is good. Because that kind of thing works on stage, but makes a movie feel goofy. I’m not sure why there should be such a difference here, but there is. Also: too musical. Like I said, the singing randomly thing, it grates in a cinematic experience. I think it bugged me this time because I was prepared for all the singing, but then they did some of the scenes straight, speaking where I was expecting music. Thusly was the illusion broken, so that when they did sing, some of that failed to fit after all. And, too much naked statuary. Yes, it was in the time before Victorian England took over the social mores of the western world. And it’s not like exquisite (and I should think frightfully expensive) gold statues of women quarter-dressed in sheets bothers me, either aesthetically or pruriently, in an opera house. But the equally detailed granite naked statuary in the cemetary seemed, well, out of place. I’m just saying.

Now, the good stuff. I’m not going to worry about spoilers, a) because if you don’t know the basic story by now, it was by choice and so why should you care about being spoiled, and b) because for a movie like this, the comparison with forebears is the only really important thing to review.

In no particular order, things I liked: The gradual reveal of the Phantom’s madness, via the skew between his perceptions of himself and his world, and external perceptions of the way his world really was. Emmy Rossum‘s portrayal of Christine as a sympathetic character, which is the first I’ve ever seen. (I’ll come back to that.) The chandelier scene, which was greatly improved over past productions (and I’m not talking about the limitations of a movie vs. the stage here, so don’t start). Oh, and the opera house itself, although clearly too large to fit in the external structure they showed, was just really cool in every room.

The random over-exposition scenes were a wash, because on the one hand, blatant exposition makes for a bad film, but on the other, it was (mostly, and here I do not include the cringeworthy Little Lotte lines) interesting and depth-adding exposition.

Cutting here, as the rest contains spoilers for the movie only. Still, they’re the reasons to see the movie, so you should click through anyway.
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Cry No More

I got a book from my grandmother a few months ago, about a lady whose kid was stolen from her arms in Mexico, so she devoted her life to searching for missing kids / people. It’s all very predictable, in that you know basically what will happen and who the heartbroken lady will end up with within the first 30 pages. The rest is an exercise in drama!, with doses of mildly effective misdirection and a few helpings of romance novel porn to keep the attention. The story isn’t too bad, but unfortunately changes focus completely right at the end, wrapping up the mystery as neatly as a bow with too much haste and getting on to the emotional consequences.

The one thing I really don’t understand is the title, Cry No More, which seems to have no dramatic or particularly thematic connection with the rest of the story. (Well, okay, it might have a thematic connection with the last 30 pages or so, but since that part has no connection with what came before it, it’s hard for me to count that.)

So, it sat on my reading shelf for a while, as I plowed through a doorstop and a Pratchett and a I’d-verify-what-else-but-I’m-typing-this-in-notepad-due-to-no-real-internet-from-here. I’d planned to snag it after the first Pratchett, but I got in a hurry packing to get out of town early a few weekends ago, what with said grandmother being in the hospital, so I forgot it and ended up reading more Pratchett, as that was what was in the trunk. Which sucked, because she asked me if I had yet, and I had to sound like I was making up some lame excuse to placate her.

It’s funny, the things we feel guilty about. For not knowing she had died until the nurses came, even though I was holding her hand. Whether I read a book at request, or at least finished it in time to talk to her about it. And I genuinely wish I could, too, not just for the rose-tinted, shiny vision of some earnest conversation that would have made her happy. I really am curious what she wanted me to get out of it. I’m sure it wasn’t the porn, but I’m sure of little else. (I’m seriously here. There was a substantial amount of explicit hardening and penetrating going on. Very strange, even from a lady who thought Grand Theft Auto 3 was the funniest game she’d ever seen.) Now I won’t really ever know for sure, and that sucks.

I guess it’s strange that my symbol of loss for my grandmother, the one thing that I know I won’t ever know now, but I could have known if I’d tried harder, is about a book we both read. I’m glad that’s what it is, though, too, because it will remind me that we were closer in very fundamental ways than I would usually describe us as being. And that’s comforting to me.

Big Fish

mv5bodgyoteynjg0nv5bml5banbnxkftztcwmzy0ndcymq-_v1_I expected to digest this and figure something out in the morning. Only, it all came together in the last ten minutes, and I’m instead compelled to get it out now, before it loses the immediacy. Appreciate that, because I could be listening to the last 15 minutes of Loveline instead, which was my original plan.

A synopsis will have you believe that Big Fish is about tall tales. In the last lines of the film, the scriptwriter (or it could be the author, but I haven’t read the book to know) will have you believe it’s about how stories provide immortality. Neither of these is correct. (Well, of course they are correct, but I get to say what goes here, and in this case, it’s all about me.)

Plotwise, the issue is that William Bloom is estranged from his father, Edward. After a few years of this, his father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and William returns home to see him again and to try to know him better than he ever did as a kid or young adult. The rest of the movie combines his attempts with the stories his father has always told about his life, that William is trying to get through in search of the real truth. And that’s pretty much it. It’s better than that, of course, because the stories are both fun and beautifully filmed.

The movie is actually about that estrangement, though, and the attempts to heal it. Now, sure, I’m biased. I nearly lost my mother to cancer a year ago. I don’t know how near it was, but it felt very near at the time, and she’ll never be free of the monthly checkups to see if it has come back. And that’s what it took for me to work out in my head the differences I’ve had with my parents since I was a teenager.

The lesson Will learns is to get past all the stupid shit that has kept them apart and accept his father for who he is, who he always said he was, because all of the stories are true, even the lies. It’s a metaphor to all the estranged kids and parents out there. The stuff Will had to get past was all outrageously silly, but that’s the point. This is a caricature, but the truth is, it’s all stupid shit, and none of it’s worth giving up that part of your life. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

So, here endeth the preaching. If you like the way Tim Burton films things, he did it again here. And it meshes very with stylistically with the tall tales, which makes sense; pretty much every movie he’s made has been along this theme. It was just never so explicit. If you like tall tales, then you should also see it, or better yet, read the book. Those kinds of things always work better told than filmed, even if Burton is good at it. If you’re avoiding your parents, then rent it and watch it now, if not sooner. Sure, most people have really good reasons why they’re staying away, and sometimes it’s valid and necessary, rather than the stupid shit I sweepingly generalized just now.

Watch it anyway, just in case.