Mini Reviews: 6/23/13

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Escape From Alcatraz:  1979 thriller directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood, Fred Ward, Patrick McGoohan and Larry Hankin.  The movie is based on a true story:  Frank Morris is sent to Alcatraz after successfully escaping from several other prisons.  After a few months of witnessing the vindictive cruelty of the warden, he decides to pull another daring escape attempt with the help of a few friends. 

It’s like Shawshank without all the sentiment and fine voice-over work.  Eastwood is a total badass, and Larry Hankin is great as the perhaps cowardly but well-meaning Charlie Butts.  McGoohan overdoes it a bit as the warden – I mean, you half expect him to start twirling a fake mustache in sinister glee – but it doesn’t distract too much from the rest of the movie.  It’s a solid thriller and a great example of Eastwood’s mid-career non-Western work.

Tremors:  1990 sci-fi horror comedy directed by Ron Underwood and starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross and Reba McEntire.  Handymen Val and Earl have had their fill of Perfection, a small former mining town in Nevada.  They hit the road to seek their fortunes elsewhere, and happen upon a few dead bodies.  What they first believe is a mass murderer run amok turns out to be a giant burrowing worm creature.  With the help of a local seismology grad student, they must figure out how to save the surviving residents of Perfection from total extinction.

            It’s a cute, funny monster movie.  Everyone is hilarious, particularly Gross and McEntire as the survivalist couple – turns out it’s super handy to be buddies with the well-armed in situations like these.  I was skeptical at first but it’s worth seeing when you’re in the mood for something light and a little twisted.

The Thing:  1982 sci fi horror film directed by John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, Keith David, and Donald Moffat.  After a strange and violent run-in with members of a Norwegian research team, an American contingent on Antarctica goes to investigate the neighboring outpost.  There they discover a frozen husk where the outpost used to be and the corpse of a vaguely human-looking creature with two faces.  One of the biologists determines that a dog the Norwegians had been trying to kill is actually an alien life form capable of perfectly imitating whatever host it takes over – and suddenly it’s impossible to tell who is really themselves, and who is an alien in disguise.

It’s a really amazing scary movie and I’m annoyed with myself for not seeing it sooner.  It’s tense and it keeps you guessing.  Plus Kurt Russell couldn’t be more bearded and manly if he tried – though seeing Wilford Brimley without a giant mustache is weird and wrong.  Definitely see it.

Bernie:  2011 dark comedy mockumentary based on a real Texas murder case, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey.  Bernie Tiede is a cherished citizen of Carthage, a small town in Texas:  he’s the local assistant mortician, active in the church, friends with pretty much everyone – including the much-maligned widow Marjorie Nugent.  After her husband’s death, she and Bernie quickly become inseparable.  They travel together, lunch together, do EVERYTHING together; to the point that Nugent’s near-abusive need for attention consumes Bernie’s life.  One day Bernie snaps and kills Nugent, and once he’s found out it’s up to the local district attorney to see that he’s convicted.  Problem is, nearly everyone in town either believes Bernie is innocent or thinks Nugent deserved what she got.  Will sweet, lovable Bernie be punished for his heinous crime?

I liked the faux documentary approach a lot, I thought it worked really well.  There was perhaps a little too much exposition, but that’s the only flaw I found.  McLaine, Black and McConaughey are all spectacular.  Definitely worth a try.  Also, can I just say officially how pleased I am with the evolution of McConaughey’s career?  I haven’t seen everything he’s been in since 2008, but what I have seen I’ve been super impressed by.  If you get the chance, check out his interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air, it’s pretty adorable.

The Perfect Husband: The Laci Peterson Story:  2004 TV movie based on the disapperance of Laci Peterson, starring Dean Cain, Sarah Brown, Tracy Middendorf and Tom O’Brien.  Just shut up, OK?  Yes, it is a made-for-TV movie that aired on the USA Network.  Yes, it stars Dean Caine.  Look, it was on Netflix Instant and I wanted to watch something salacious and stupid and that’s exactly what I got so don’t judge me.

Kuffs:  1992 action comedy directed by Bruce A. Evans and starring Christian Slater, Tony Goldwyn, Milla Jovovich and Leon Rippy.  George Kuffs has just left his pregnant girlfriend and hit his brother Brad up for a loan so he can mine for gold in South America or some nonsense, when Brad is killed.  In a freak display of responsibility he decides to take over his brother’s Patrol Special police franchise, a civilian auxiliary police force in San Francisco – I had no idea this was a real thing.  Anyway, George must keep his brother’s business afloat, find his brother’s killer, play nice with the actual police, and redeem himself to his ex-girlfriend.  Slater is charming as ever and Goldwyn is pretty great as the Straight Man, but the plot is ludicrous, there are all these weird sound effects and the constant breaking of the Fourth Wall is kind of overdone.  I’d skip it, unless you happen to catch it on TBS or something. 

Why is there a dog?  Why is he addressing the audience about the dog?  What the hell is this movie?

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol:  2011 action film directed by Brad Bird and starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton.  Ethan Hunt (Cruise) is a top agent for the IMF, a CIA-like agency working for the U.S. government.  His superiors send him and his new team to the Kremlin to get info on a bad guy, codenamed “Cobalt.”  When the Kremlin explodes during their mission, the President activates a “Ghost Protocol,” which disavows the IMF but secretly allows them to escape custody so they can hunt down Cobalt, who was responsible for the attack.  Now they’re totally alone in the world with very few allies, and they’re being pursued by multiple government agencies and Cobalt’s associates, all while trying to bring him down before he starts a nuclear war.

            As far as action movies go, it’s fairly solid.  It’s perhaps a bit too long, and there are definitely references to the earlier films in the franchise so it may help if you’ve seen them, but I haven’t and didn’t find it difficult to keep up.  Cruise and Patton are just kind of there, but Renner and Pegg are fantastic and more than make up for the uneven acting of their costars.  Though, Renner’s character arc is a little predictable because why would you put him in an action movie and have him play a pencil pusher?  Whatever, he’s great.  And I’d like to give a little nod to Lea Seydoux, who played the assassin Moreau brilliantly. 

So, these magic suction gloves are totally gonna work, right?

Mini Reviews: 6/16/13

Scarface:  1932 gangster movie directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson and starring Paul Muni, George Raft, Osgood Perkins, Boris Karloff and Ann Dvorak.  If you’ve seen the 1983 remake with Al Pacino then you’re already familiar with the plot:  Tony is the muscle for Johnny Lovo’s gang in Prohibition-era Chicago, and he decides to expand his boss’s territory and then take it over in a gutsy power play.  Good news is he has his best friend Guino to help with the dirty work; bad news is Guino has his eye on Tony’s wild younger sister.

So you know that inevitable retribution montage that takes place in most gangster movies?  This is like a whole movie of that: shoot some guys, take over their bootlegging business, get hassled but ultimately released by the cops, repeat until dead.  Despite its predictability it’s an excellent movie, and a must-see if you like any of the classic gangster movies that followed it.  Dvorak could’ve taken it down a notch, but other than her incessant shrieking the acting is decent all around.  I love George Raft in this.

People don’t menacingly flip coins anymore, have you noticed? 

Savages:  2012 crime thriller directed by Oliver Stone and starring Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek and John Travolta.  Chon & Ben are pot-growing prodigies living in Laguna Beach with their lithe young mutual girlfriend, O.  When they refuse a buyout offer from Mexican cartel leader Elena, O is kidnapped and they go to crazy, dangerous lengths to get her back.  It’s an interesting, if not entirely successful take on your typical drug movie.  John Travolta is semi-compelling as the corrupt DEA agent, and del Toro is terrifying as the cartel hatchet man.  It had promise, but it’s too long and really started to drag at times.  And the ending is straight-up annoying.  It’s just okay.

Witness for the Prosecution:  1957 English courtroom drama directed by Billy Wilder and starring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton.  Barrister Wilfrid Robarts delays his retirement when he’s offered an intriguing defense case:  Leonard Vole is accused of murdering a rich elderly woman, and when Leonard’s cold, calculating wife is called as a witness for the prosecution (get it?) the physically ailing Robarts must use his considerable wit to prove that his client is innocent.

Um, it’s amazing.  If you like courtroom dramas or even Law & Order, I encourage you to watch it.  Pretty much anything by Wilder is a good bet.  The acting is spectacular, I absolutely loved the back and forth between Dietrich and Laughton, and Elsa Lanchester is adorable in her small role as Robarts’s nurse – you may also recognize her from a bit part in Mary Poppins as a pissed-off nanny or as the Bride of Frankenstein.  The only underwhelming performance is that of Power, who comes across as weak and melodramatic, but it makes him more realistic as a totally unwitting pawn, I guess?  Talentless or talentless like a fox?  TWIST.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:  1962 American Western directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, James Stewart, Vera Miles and Lee Marvin.  U.S. Senator Ranse Stoddard and his wife Hallie have returned to a small town in the Wild West called Shinbone to attend a funeral.  Stoddard proved his mettle and rose to the political top after beating a local bully named Liberty Valance decades ago, and when he shows up to pay his last respects to an apparent nobody the local journalists get curious.  Stoddard is cajoled into recounting how he knew this roustabout, and why he was so important to the Senator and Hallie.  It’s a classic American Western film, so if you like that sort of thing you should watch it.  Personally I thought it was a little over the top and the only reason I made it all the way through is my unconditional love for Stewart.

Django Unchained:  2012 American Western written and directed by Quentin Taratino and starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, and Kerry Washington.  A bounty hunter scouring the Antebellum South for his prey frees and partners up with Django, a slave who can identify the men he’s looking for.  They quickly become friends and go into business together, and after much travel and training they set out to find and free Django’s wife, who is owned by a particularly cruel plantation owner.  It’s entertaining but I have the same problems with it that I have with all Tarantino movies:  it’s an hour too long, just over the line of acceptable goriness, and prone to long philosophical rants.  But I appreciate that I always have to think about his movies; they’re not the kind of fare you can watch, immediately process and forget.  There are lots of great cameos and clever, brilliant use of music – of course.  And he’s on this interesting trend of very neatly defined Good Guy v. Bad Guy, as opposed to his earlier work where there’s a bit more ambiguity.

                  To sum up:  if you like Tarantino, then see it.  If you don’t, then don’t.

War Games:  1983 Cold War sci-fi thriller directed by John Badham and starring Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman, and John Wood.  Young teen hacker David is scrolling through phone numbers in California in an attempt to get access to a new computer game when he comes upon a computer that won’t identify itself.  On it he finds a list of games like chess and checkers and GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR, and when he hacks in he unwittingly sets off a series of War Games.  With the help of his feisty girlfriend he must track down the computer’s creator and break in to NORAD to convince the military that this is all a big misunderstanding before they retaliate against the U.S.S.R. for real.

It’s a really great, fun ‘80s movie.  Despite the tension and running around and close calls it’s still a fairly light thriller.  I have no idea if any of the tech stuff he did is possible but it’s still cool.  And this is Sheedy and Broderick at the peak of their awesome.  Definitely see it or watch it again.

Zero Dark Thirty:  2012 thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow and starring an excellent ensemble cast including Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle and Kyle Chandler.  Maya is a young, driven, and hyper-focused CIA officer involved in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.  Over the course of nearly 10 years she tracks down leads, visits black-ops sites that use torture to obtain information from prisoners, makes enemies and allies and frenemies, has no social life whatsoever, works and works and works to find her quarry.  Along the way colleagues are killed, she’s beset with bureaucratic roadblocks and political maneuvering that she lacks the savvy to counteract – an administration haunted by the WMD kerfuffle that led to the Iraq War is going to need more solid proof than one woman’s instincts.  And then a raid is authorized, and she gets to witness the death of the man she’s been tirelessly hunting.

Look, it’s riddled with inaccuracies both minor and really fucking major.  It’s been described as advocating or even fetishizing torture as an acceptable method of interrogation, which I think is true.  And the film’s claim that it is “based on firsthand accounts of actual events” is such a gross exaggeration that it’s laughable.  All that being said:  it’s an amazing political thriller.  It’s really outstanding.  The acting is brilliant all around, but Chastain really just nails it.  It’s tense, with the occasional twinge of humor to lighten the tension, it’s interesting, and the pace is perfect.  I LOVE this movie, mostly because to me the theme at the end seemed to be this:  Now What?  Mya, as a metaphor for the entire intelligence community, has dedicated all of her efforts to finding ONE GUY.  And now he’s dead.  So now what?  Al Qaeda is still around.  Terrorist attacks still occur.  As one faction weakens, another gains strength – AQAP, anyone?  So where do we go from here?

           I totally get the uproar over Bigelow’s interpretation of events.  But if you still think that fictional movies supposedly based on true events are accurate, or even that documentaries are telling you the whole story, then you’re not an informed movie-goer.  And I guess perhaps most of us are not, and won’t take five minutes to look into the facts before forming their opinions, and that’s why Zero Dark Thirty should take some heat.  But whether you end up loving it or hating it, it’s definitely worth watching.