Jaws (1975) Dir. Steven Spielberg On Amity Island, a young woman dies in a shark attack during a midnight skinny dip. The Sheriff believes it to be a shark attack, until he is overruled by the Mayor, who is worried what a shark scare might do to the local businesses who rely heavily on their Summer resort status. This inaction lasts until a second victim is made in a dramatic fashion, upon which the mayor allows more drastic action, though not yet the closing of the beaches. Eventually the situation gets bad enough that a local shark hunter is commissioned to kill the killer fish. I'm not sure why I've felt like revisiting some classics I hadn't seen in a long while recently as I usually prefer to watch movies I've yet to see. There isn't much original I can say about this, as I assume everyone will have seen it countless times and know every single story beat and plot detail. It's still incredibly well done, especially the decision to hold off on properly showing the shark until the third act. The Indianapolis monologue still slaps as much as it did when I first saw it (can't believe it's now 45 years old!). Shaw is terrific and his on-screen back-and-forth with Dreyfuss is sneakily one of the very best things about the film. One thing I hadn't noticed before: is there a Francis Ford Coppola cameo in there or was that just a random bearded dude who looks a bit like him? It's at the beginning of the scene where the fisherman initially go out to capture the shark.
Stakeout (1987) Dir. John Badham After blowing an arrest, police detectives Chris and Bill get a shit detail: a stakeout watching a house belonging to the former girlfriend of an escaped criminal. The Federal agent who passes on the job to the local PD doesn't deem it likely that the man will show up there, which is why the task is left to the police instead. Their initial reluctance changes when they discover that their mark is an attractive young woman. Chris especially becomes enamored with her, so much so that he repeatedly is at the risk of breaking cover. All the while this is going on, the criminal himself is getting ever closer to his destination whilst on a cross-country trek. Another trip down memory lane. For some reason this movie was on all the time on cable back in the early 1990s. Thus I must have seen it like a dozen times as a kid. It's an enjoyable action-comedy that is perhaps a bit more dated than the other old favorites I've been re-watching. Mostly in how it deals with Madeleine's Stowe's character (more of an object than a subject). That doesn't change the fact that it still retains much of its charm, as well as the appeal of Estevez' & Dreyfuss strong on-screen chemistry. One little thing I either never noticed before - or perhaps merely forgot about - is the very obvious Jaws reference near the start of the film. For Stowe this movie was a breakthrough which resulted in an A-list career that lasted until the mid 1990s. A shame she has more or less disappeared completely in the 2000s.
I'd forgotten. Average height for women (now) in the US is 5'4", so standard deviation numbers would suggest that around 40% are taller than Dreyfuss. Stowe's BMI was probably around 20. Here's a stock foto of Stowe and Dreyfuss. He's the one in heels.
It's amazing how many movies and TV shows one can watch when there's no soccer and no NCAA basketball this time of year. We've watched "The Untouchables," "John Wick 3," and "Young Frankenstein" so far this weekend plus episodes of several shows (it was sub-freezing and snowy yesterday so we were also largely inside).
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) Dir. J.J. Abrams Following the events of "The Last Jedi", Kylo Ren travels to an uncharted world to track down a message which belongs to Palpatine. Meanwhile, the rebellion is regrouping, though they too discover that Palpatine might be alive and a spy informs them of the existence of a huge fleet, which might soon come under Kylo Ren's command. Traveling to the Sith home world requires an artifact, which our heroes have to retrieve during a planet-hoping mission. All the while, Ben and Rey's psychic bond means that they are circling each other and trying to bring the other to their side. Well this was pretty bad. In totality, the new trilogy is a letdown, but this is by far the worst of the three films. Abrams remixed bits of New Hope and Empire for The Force Awakens, which made it a very safe but utterly unoriginal entry. Rian Johnson at least took wilder swings at it, though I didn't care for all of his choices (do we really need space cows in our Star Wars Films?). This movie however, is shocking in its lack of new ideas. It seems that after Rian Johnson got rid of Snoke, it so hampered Abrams' creativity that the only thing he could think of was to bring back the old villain, even though it makes zero sense. We even get the eternal climax: "The Enermy has a planet-destroying weapon and we need to make a last-ditch, low-odds attack to save the galaxy!" Somehow I think it must be possible to make a decent SW film that doesn't play it quite this safe. There are other rather baffling choices, none more so than Abrams decision to more or less write the Rose Tico character out of the third film. Essentially capitulating to the racist/sexist online hate brigade that hounded Kelly Marie Tran off social media for the crime of being in a movie. None of the new characters really add much. It's a waste to have Keri Russell in a movie and then hamper her performance by having her in a mask almost all of the time. It's probably a good thing that these movies will go in hibernation for a while. When they return (it's definitely not an if), they should avoid an Abrams-like figure. I think the ideal combination for Disney is to have experienced craftsman helm the films, whilst taking a tiny bit more risks with the writing. So combine a young, new screenwriter who has been afforded a bit of leeway with say Ron Howard in the directors chair (he did a good job in taking over Solo).
Yeah, I found John Wick 3 a punishing slog. There's a line between stylized hyper-violence and unnecessary gore. This one crossed that line early and just kept going and going. Each fight scene lasted 5 minutes too long. The kinetic energy of the first one was completely lost, and it just turned into some guy's idea of a cool ways to kill people ten minutes at a time. The dog battle was so dumb. I can appreciate that choreographing with the dogs took a lot of effort, but as it dragged into minute six or so of random guy running with knife/gun into line of fire or dog, it just felt ridiculously staged.
PSA: If you want to still have movie night with friends without risking COVID-19 spread, Chrome has an extension called Netflix Party that allows you to simultaneously stream Netflix with friends. It has a chat window & play/pauses for everyone in the group so you stay synced.— Christine Woods (@stendahlknows) March 16, 2020
Watched Change in the Air, the Netflix movie, starring Rachel Brosnahan, Aidan Quinn, Mary Beth Hurt, Olympia Dukakis and featuring M. Emmet Walsh with the worst sideburns in history of ever. It's kind of cuckoo, but endearing in a gentle way. In the end, it's almost an anti-movie. Like the Seinfeld creation, it's about "Nothing", but not really. If you have 90 minutes on your hands, you could do worse.
Agreed on John Wick 3. It stayed on the DVR for several months, and only made it off on a cold, sports-less weekend like last one. We subsequently watched "Yesterday" Fantasy is an interesting genre in that you don't need to alter much about the world to have the term apply, even though normally a Fantasy film has elves or heroes questing or wizards or the like. In this case, the protagonist wakes up in an alternate reality where only he (and later, two other people) remember the Beatles, and he proceeds to record their songs and release them to a hugely appreciative audience. Just like that, you have a Fantasy film where everything else is completely normal. This was enjoyable, and I bought him feeling guilty/having impostor syndrome even as he enjoyed being a star.
Yeah...quite enjoyable. I can't recall whether there was some far-fetched explanation why just a couple of people, world-wide, were able to recall J, P, G, and R's musical legacy, but they did a good job with the fantasy.
No explanation at all, which I think was the right way to go. Alternate timeline or something is sort of how it was played.
In a Lonely Place (1950) Dir. Nicolas Ray Dixon Steele is a Hollywood screenwriter who hasn't had a hit movie since before the war. His agent gets him a gig adapting a hit novel, only he has little interest in actually reading the book in question. The hat check girl at the club he's attending has just finished the novel in question, so he suggests she accompany him back home and give him a detailed summary of the book, instead of having to read it himself. The young woman leaves his apartment shortly after midnight, only to be found brutally murdered the very next morning. Dixon becomes the police's prime suspect, until he is cleared by a neighbor in his apartment complex who testifies that she saw the girl leave Dixon's apartment alive. Over the course of the next few weeks, Dixon and Laurel, his neighbor, become romantically involved. Whilst Laurel is crazy about Dixon, she is also afraid of his violent mood swings and she figures out that she isn't the only person who seriously considers the possibility that he is in fact guilty of the murder after all... I had never seen this Nicolas Ray-Humphrey Bogart classic, something that I finally rectified. Brilliant little film that truly gets going with the dinner scene around the half hour mark. Very good performances by both Bogart and Grahame. Parts of Nicolas Ray's direction (most specifically the night-time driving scene) reminded me of "Kiss Me Deadly", for some reason. The screenplay keeps you guessing until the very final scene. Very deserving of its excellent reputation. For Trek fans: the Peabody award winning TNG episode, "The Big Goodbye", borrows heavily from this movie for Picard & co's Holodeck adventures.
Alita: Battle Angel (2019) Dr. Ito is searching for useful cyborg parts in the massive garbage dump constantly being added to by the floating city of Zalem when he finds the functional core (human brain and artificial organs) of a cyborg girl. Thinking he might create a replacement for his dead daughter, he provides her with not only with her daughter's cyborg body, but her name as well. Ito tried to protect Alita from the dangers of Iron City, but that isn't really possible in that rough-and-tumble long-past-apocalypse metropolis. No problem - it turns out Alita is an expert in the long-lost cyborg martial art Panzer Kunst. Now it's her turn to be protector as Ito and friend boy Hugo get roiled in Iron City politics. I have been an Alita fan for a long time, owning all the (translated to English) manga since they first started being released in the 90's. I was never really worried about this movie - you all know how gentile I am towards modern Hollywood remakes of my favorite cultural touchstones. And it turns out I was right. Battle Angel is pretty much spot on to what I imagined it should be. The story is true to the manga, the casting is spot on, and the city and tech all had the right flavor. Most importantly, the action scenes have that same feeling created by the original art, with the same kind of flow and fighting styles. I really enjoyed it. I hope there are sequels.
Do you know why they chose to use German to name that specific martial art? Panzer Kunst translates to "armor art", "panzer", of course, meaning "tank" in one context.
The Invisible Man (2020) Dir. Leigh Whannell Cecilia is trapped in an abusive relationship with a brilliant scientist of some renown and wealth. After successfully escaping his domineering grasp on her, she is relieved to hear shortly thereafter that her ex has died in an apparent suicide. Her happiness is short-lived when she increasingly becomes convinced that someone is watching her, until weird occurrences suggest to her that her ex might not be dead after all and is stalking her using some means of invisibility. The people in her life believe she is going through a serious bout of psychosis brought on by the trauma of the abuse she endured. But what is really going on? All of the good things I have heard about this are true. There is something quietly brilliant to use the device of an invisible man as a means to an allegory on the effects of domestic violence and gas-lighting. That does not mean that all this movie has going for it is the quality of its subtext. I was already sold on it due the nerve-wrecking quality of that opening scene. I previously enjoyed Leigh Whannell's Upgrade, but this is another step above that. Definitely one of the more interesting horror movie directors out there. The fact that the lead in this is required to act on her own much of the time means that this required a talented actress to pull off and Elizabeth Moss more than delivers. My one minor quibble: the climax does not live up to the subtlety of what came before, which is a shame. I read someone suggest that Universal should just give all of its horror/monster movie properties to Blumhouse on the strength of this film and it's rather hard to argue against that.
The Japanese use German words in their science fiction because it sounds cool to them. A great example is the theme song to the first season of Attack on Titan which had the lyric "I'm not the prey, I'm the hunter" but instead of whatever Japanese is for "hunter" they used the word "jager" (and it sounds really cool in concert when the entire crowd yells "jager" together). They actually use even more English. It's probably related to how much of their future science fiction has such a world cosmopolitan feel - it's very unlike their day-to-day experience. And it's probably related to WWII as well.
The Hunt (2020) Dir. Craig Zobel A dozen confused and gagged individuals wake up near a field. After they open a wooden crate that turns out to contain an arsenal of weapons, they are attacked by unseen assailants who quickly wipe out several of them. It turns out they are all human prey to a a small group of super-wealthy, super-privileged individuals who self-identify as liberals and thus loathe the so-called Deplorables who made Trump president. Hunting a small group of right-wingers who have publicly espoused problematic views online is their twisted revenge. Unfortunately for them, one of the Deplorables turns out to be better at fighting back than they had imagined. This was fun, a lot funnier than I had imagined it would be. It is also absurd in hindsight that an angry mob of Trump supporters got this movie's original theatrical release canceled. Since the hero of this story is one of the Deplorables. And it pokes more fun at a certain type of white liberal than it does at Trump supporters or Deep State/conspiracy nuts. Betty Gilpin really shines here, her talent no surprise to anyone who is a fan of GLOW. Ninety minutes that just fly by.
Apologies to you film buffs... Just watched the OG The Karate Kid for the 5th or 6th time. "Sweep the leg..."
Thanks, BG. What the coronavirus will precipitate in the elderly. Yearnings for a simpler time when Elizabeth Shue was in full bloom.
LOL The germans do this with english all the time - using english words with air quotes for no apparent reason Personally I do it when i can't remember the german word and get away with it