Well, I’m going back to reviewing books and movies, so here goes:
This movie was just on Spike TV the last couple days. As a standard issue action/adventure film, it is basically OK, no worse than most of the others out there. But as an Indiana Jo
nes movie, it, well, sucks.
A big part of the problem is the original trilogy ended, quite literally, on a perfect note. We were introduced to Jones’ father, played by the great Sean Connery. There is naturally a fair amount of father-son tension. The younger Jones felt neglected as a kid, but his father points out that he always treated his son as an adult. But the perfection was really in the ending. Not only does Indiana have to find the Holy Grail, it turns out he has to figure out which one is the true Grail out of a number of false ones. The Nazi sympathizing guy picks the wrong one, thinking it must be a jewel encrusted gold cup, and of course pays for his foolishness. Indy picks the right one, realizing that Christ, being a simple man who never possessed much money, would naturally drink from a simple cup. So Indy saves his Dad, and then, as the movie ends, we find out what Indy’s real name is, why Connery keeps calling him “Junior”, and why he much prefers to be called “Indiana” along with the explanation for how he got his nickname.
Anyway, my point in focusing on the third movie is mainly to explain why they never should have made a fourth. Did they make a sequel to “Casablanca”? No. And for good reason. Indeed, the only “Logic” behing making Indiana Jones IV is that it would make a ton of money, which, of course, it did. It certainly was not because this movie would live up to the standard set by the first three.
To be fair, you really can’t blame the actors here, who, for the most part, do a decent job. Harrison Ford, despite being in his 60′s, looks quite lean and fit, and so it is not entirely unbelievable to have him swapping punches with the bad guys. No, it’s the story itself which sucks. For one, we now have aliens brought into the picture. Which sets up a major problem. What made the first three films work (especially the first and third) was that they were going after actual, historical artifacts. The Ark of the Covenant was the most important artifact in Jewish history and the Grail the most important one in Christian history. It was easy, therefore, to create a mythology around these artifacts, to assign to them supernatural powers, which would explain why both good guys and bad would pursue them. But here we have the pursuit of some bizarre looking crystal skulls, hence the title of the movie.
The movie starts when a Soviet KGB agent with a Pulp Fiction-like pageboy haircut kidnaps Indy and demands that he find a crate containing a dead alien found a few years earlier at
Roswell. Well, I guess that sort of plot device works for a movie like “Independence Day”, but I think we are entitled to a bit more originality in an Indiana Jones film. Indy, of course, escapes, takes a ride on a rocket sled and then gets blown up by an atom bomb, but he survives by hiding in a lead lined fridge. I guess we can suspend some disbelief here, although the fridge scene really does stretch that awfully far. But enough of that.
Indy then meets up with a young punk and the two of them are off to South America to find the crystal skull. Well, as soon as they do, the Russians show up and take the skull away. Turns out the Soviet bitch (played well by Cate Blanchett) wants the skull as part of some Stalin era mind control project. This is probably the last time the plot makes any sense at all. There are fights and chase scenes through the jungle (turns out the KGB babe is pretty handy with a sword), man eating ants, flying monkeys, and spectacular trips over not one, not two, but three massive waterfalls where no one on board the car/boat seems to suffer even a scratch. Anyway, they all end up at the secret city, which was either built by the
aliens or else by Indians who were taught by the aliens (the movie never really makes this clear), Jones is betrayed for at least the second or third time by his supposed buddy, Mac, the KBG lady finds the crystal bodies of 13 aliens, and when she puts the missing crystal skull on the 13th alien’s body, the whole place comes alive and the plot becomes too ridiculous to describe further, other that Jones and Co escape. Jones even tries to save Mac, though God only knows why he would try to save this multiple times proven traitor, but Mac’s greed gets the best of him, blah, blah, blah, roll the credits, the end.
Anyway, the only further comments I would add are that, when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas team up to make a movie, you’d dammned well expect something a lot better than this. Even Lucas’s Star Wars prequels were better, although the second one wasn’t better by much. Like I said, the only purpose for this movie that I can think of was to make money. Which, I guess, it succeeded at.
Judged on terms as a generic action/adventure movie: 6/10
Judges relative to the other Indiana Jones films: 3/10
Well, I’m going back to reviewing books and movies,
And why should anyone pay attention to your judgement – have you sold your book to Hollywood for a million dollars yet as you claimed you would?
And why should anyone pay attention to anything you say about American politics/history? You thought Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution, for cripe’s sake.
Eric: Possibly the biggest suspension of disbelief in movies is that hiding in the fridge to survive the atomic explosion. LOL!!
I agree the movie was a stinker, It was such a disappointment I quit watching it during the jeep sword fight in the jungle. And, I was interested in crystal skulls at the time, Author C Clark was living in Los Osos, CA and I knew an accomplished gem cutter there. We often discussed the faceting of gems and the cutting, carving, and polishing of gem stones.
On the issue of a sequel to Casablanca, I was watching To Have and to Have Not on TV this week and it occured to me that it well might fit the bill.
And why should anyone pay attention to anything you say about American politics/history? You thought Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution, for cripe’s sake.
Mmm-hmm. And when it was pointed out I was wrong, I checked up, acknowledged this and moved on.
You might wanna contrast this with Hitchcock and his insistence that mobile WMD labs were captured in Iraq. But, of course, you won’t – because wingnuts can’t face reality.
By the way, Hube – why exactly are you so silent about this sort of idiocy being spouted on this blog, hmm?
What, I wonder, is the point of slamming the author of a movie review personally? If you found anything wrong with the review, you chose not to mention it.
What, I wonder, is the point of slamming the author of a movie review personally?
Well, it could be that I’m trying to help him be a better person by acknowledging his flaws. Or it could be that someone so proud of being ignorant annoys me.
And I can’t comment on the review because I excised the memory of the movie from my brain with the help of copious amounts of alcohol consumed directly after viewing the thing.
The Editor asks: “What, I wonder, is the point of slamming the author of a movie review personally?”
Beats the hell out of me. Seemed like another knucklehead bullying job something like a two year old would do.
The post was a review of Crystal Skull it was not about Eric’s book, WMD labs or birth certificates. It took Pho four comments to even mention the movie. You may as well ask: “Why must Pho attack everybody at every chance?”. Like the proverbial scorpion, it’s his nature.
Anyhow, I agree with Eric and Pho, the movie blew. Luckily I saw it on TV so about a half hour in I just switched. And I’m not a tough movie critic. I figure they’re just movies so I start out not expecting reality, just entertainment. OTOH, if a movie is supposed to be realistic and I see a guy fireing 8 shots from a six shooter, or a digital watch on a Viking, then I do get a tad pissed. My favorite was watching the rubber bayonettes bouncing and bending at Gettysburg. Gimme a break.
One other thing. If you’re gonna be the resident movie critic Eric, you’re gonna have to do one a week. You could also critique an occasional TV show. Example would be your take on Justified or even something silly like The Big Bang Theory.
The Phoenician wrote:
So, you had no comment on the movie or the review because you drank yourself insensate after watching it; one wonders if that is the only time you have done so.
Thus, having no informed comment on the movie itself, you decided to engage in a simple personal attack, for a stated purpose which makes no sense: Eric is not inclined to take advice from you on how he might better himself in your eyes, and if he simply annoys you by his presence, the notion that you would seek out his presence online is ridiculous. Most people, when they dislike someone, don’t keep visiting that person’s house; most people, when they know people who like them and people who dislike them, tend to visit the people who like them and simply stay away from those who don’t.
Perhaps you keep visiting people who annoy you and who dislike you because there really isn’t anyone who is willing to spend time with you?
Hoagie says:
Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 08:33
Beats the hell out of me. Seemed like another knucklehead bullying job something like a two year old would do.
First, does that commenting person exist?
As for the movie itself, I’ve never seen it. I liked Raiders of the Lost Ark, and thought that the second one was a step downhill. Then again, I’m not a big movie fan, period.
Let’s point something else out. The Phoenician wasn’t just wrong about some random historical fact. The troll had climbed up on the pinnacle of its error in order to tauntingly imply that someone else was stupid for not knowing the non “fact”. Just before that is, Hube came along, noticed, and gave Phoenician’s claim a little kick. Whereupon the Phoenician found itself impaled on its own needling error while Hube laughed, and Perry raged at the laughter.
Moved on … to other equally egregious and redounding stupidities. But facts are not the real issue with trolls. Securing acknowledgement of their existence by others is. The mental imbalance and emotional neediness of trolls, like Phoenician in a time of Romans, is such that they are incapable of shame. No matter what the cost in dignity, they must make the purchase.
” Or it could be that someone so proud of being ignorant annoys me.”
Indeed. Yet he fails to see how someone who is so proud of being arrogant, narcisstic, condecending, egotistical, immature and at times vulgar could annoy anyone else. Or even how “poking Eric with a sharp stick” (Pho’s words) or calling even our Editor a weasel could ever annoy the rest of us. But I get it. If it’s annoying to someone else it dosen’t matter, only what annoys Pho matters.
I thought Eric’s critique of Crystal Skull was spot on and his book, other writing or a movie deal has nothing to do with it. And to constantly hastle Eric because his time table isn’t on your schedule is silly.
For the most part I’ve never been able to enjoy a number of the genre that have proved so popular in the last number of years … now it’s decades I guess: G.I Joe type action adventure, pseudo-medieval fantasy, and space grunge or space fantasy movies.
I remember when I was still a relative youth, having adults with families proclaim that they had seen the Star Wars film and found it outstanding. My own kid brother … the one with the Estes rockets, sky gazing optics and subscription to Sky and Telescope seemed to enjoy it too. Although he complained of the idea that it was somehow legitimate to accompany explosions in space with sound effects.
The first Indiana Jones film was proclaimed as a take-off on the Saturday matinee theater serials our parents and grandparents were supposed to have enjoyed as kids. The clever atmospherics of the original probably had as much to do with its general popularity as the action and plot itself: The biplane, the snap brim fedora, the worn field engineer’s leather jacket. But a small dose of that, goes a long way.
Hollywood movies in general are made for two purposes: either to indulge the political conceits of a self-regarding class of lefties; or, to sell to not particularly well educated teenaged boys. The former are left-wing morality plays or sermons; latter film versions of a roller-coaster ride.
Occasionally, one or the other might actually be worth watching if you can bracket either the propaganda or the disbelief for the sake of a little diversion. I’ll admit I enjoyed Blade Runner, and the first Alien, and even the original Terminator. Who had ever seen anything like them before?
In the case of the Indiana Jones series, I was somewhat able to “park the brain” for the first. Everything else in the series became unwatchable – at least for me – as the technique and the strings and background motives became ever more obvious. I recall being particularly upset with the unloveliness of the leading lady. It seemed a deliberate insult to viewers. Or at least young male viewers.
I mean, when Heston took on the empire of the ants at least he had a good looking woman along for the ride. Even a kid watching on TV could see as much.
Speaking of which, Heston and Indy ….
Re, my comment in moderation: I guess, according to trivia experts, that Indy jacket was supposed to be a flight jacket, not surveyor’s or civil engineer’s gear. As for the plane, now that I think about it, all I recall is that it had a prop. LOL
When was the supposed setting date of the first movie anyway?
Well, as stated in my review, I think you would really like the third one, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This is the one where he and his father (Sean Connery) go after the Holy Grail. It is easily as good as the first one, maybe even better, and there is a gorgeous blonde German love interest as well.
As stated, what I liked about the first and third movies is they went after what are arguably the two most important artifacts in Judeo-Christian history, the Ark and the Grail. But going after alien crystal skulls just seemed silly, like they needed an excuse to send Indy off on another adventure and this was the best they could come up with.
The movie was the introduction for the new Indiana Jones replacement. Usual actions and reactions. They walked their way through the 2 hours. The most exciting part was the warehouse scenes.
Mid-late 1930s, was it not?
Well, I might do a review of The Green Mile, which was on AMC yesterday. Truly an outstanding movie, even better than The Shawshank Redemption, which also had a similar theme (innocent men locked up for murder).
One show I can highly recommend is American Dad. This is without doubt the best cartoon on TV, much better than The Simpsons or Family Guy. For one, it’s basically patriotic. Oh, sure, it does mock the excesses of patriotism at times (sort of like Team America: World Police) but Stan, the hero of the show, who works for the CIA, is genuinely a good guy.
One of the best eposides showed the Apocalypse. Unlike other more “Left wing” leaning shows, at no point do they ever mock religious belief, indeed, while funny as hell (literally!) they stay true to Christian beliefs about the End Times. It starts when all the good Christians are Raptured and ascend en masse up to Heaven (at which point one character points out “Someone needs to apologize to Mel Gibson”) while the not-so-good Christians, meaning Stan and his wife, are stuck here on Earth to fight the Antichrist. They even get in a shot at the Episcopal Church. Their minister is also left behind, and admits that he really doesn’t know a thing about Scripture.
Another episode that was really good featured the whole gang in Saudi Arabia. The women are about to be stoned to death when George W Bush comes in to save the day as he flies in in his helicopter, distributing free Bibles, beer, and blue jeans. How many other TV shows, animated or not, would dare be so politically incorrect?
Ya got me there Eric. I am no fan of cartoon shows. Any of them. And if you’re doing TV heck, there’s Person of Interest, Elementary, The Mentalist, Castle, Hawaii Five-O, and a whole bunch of Picker’s and Pawner’s. As movies go I was actually hoping you’d review something a little more….up to date? If one hasn’t seen The Green Mile by now they’re hopeless.
Eric wrote:
I second Hoagie’s suggestion!
When it comes to movies, I really don’t watch many, but I have some definite favorites. In no particular order:
Flash Gordon (1980 version, with Sam Jones)
Casablanca
In Harm’s Way
The Ten Commandments
Ben-Hur
Dr No
From Russia With Love
For Your Eyes Only
Amadeus
Jurassic Park
Star Wars Chapter 4 and 6
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Rustlers’ Rhapsody
There are a couple of chick flicks I’ll sort-of watch, just to watch Nicole Kidman (Practical Magic) and Romancing the Stone (Kathleen Turner).
Indeed. Yet he fails to see how someone who is so proud of being arrogant, narcisstic, condecending, egotistical, immature and at times vulgar could annoy anyone else.
Pardon me, but why should I be at all concerned about annoying people who (to take just one example) call for the mass murder of millions of people based on their religion?
I’m desperately hoping that there’s some piece here soon about the trillion-dollar coin idea, because the level of derp displayed already on this blog regarding what money actually is will make such a piece goddamned hilarious.
Editor says:
Well, obviously you are inviting comment and critique, right? LOL
Don’t remember it. Oh wait .. wasn’t there some kind of sex-pot princess in it with a brass brassiere and a skirt slit above waist high?
I’ve recently come to the opinion that the Maltese Falcon is a more clever and interesting movie. The problem with it [the Falcon] is, or so I am convinced, that it is almost impossible to understand how the story line details all fit together on one or even two viewings.
Haven’t seen it in years and only on TV. When I was the age my father was while he was while serving on a DE, the actors all seemed a little too long in the tooth. Thought the tone of the movie was a bit anachronistic. Too sixties.
Most interesting early on before the special effects are deployed.
Pretty much agree.
Worth watching for the originality and freshness of it.
Top notch fight scene in the train compartment. I had forgotten how good it was for that era until seeing the film again recently.
No comment.
The guy sure can laugh.
Well, uh …
Well, uh …
Never saw the whole thing.
I have a cousin who once said he thought it was funny.
Re Turner: Body Heat was an unconventional movie for it’s time, and Turner’s cool blond looks worked to her advantage. She was very striking in profile before she became matronly looking.
Dr. Zhivago and Larry the Arab
Agree with York on Dr Zhivago! I haven’t seen Lawrence of Arabia all the way through. Oh, and add The Lion in Winter to my list.
DNW: the 1980 version of Flash Gordon had these multicolored space backgrounds and was just totally campy.
I guess I should have just written, “when I was 17 or 18 …”
Editor says:
W
Yeah he was a football player or something. Same movie.
Pho’s sole role here seems to be that of a pest, an annoyance, a nuisance. He’s the buzzing mosquito in the tent, the housefly you can’t quite manage to swat.
Watching films is an oddly subjective experience. There’s a great deal of viewing context involved in most appreciation I think. It reminds us of this, it provokes feelings of that, and the viewing itself may function as a kind of act of either social solidarity or subversion. Cite the solemn crowds that first trooped into Apocalypse Now to watch with an almost sacramental reverence. Which it didn’t really deserve.
Movies that once seemed overwhelmingly powerful or satisfying, dwindle in our estimation. Others, which struck us as only passable when we first saw them, reveal themselves later to be extremely clever and engaging.
Sometimes it’s a matter of just seeing a clear print for the first time. Years ago I saw a restored version of Rear Window screened in a full sized theater. It was if I had never seen it before. Everything about it was amazing: the use of light, the scene framing, the soundtrack. Mostly stuff you cannot possibly appreciate on a 19″ CRT.
I look forward to seeing the restored version of Metropolis when it becomes available.
A fair point. Truth is, however, I just haven’t seen that many recent movies. The last one I saw was the 2nd Atlas Shrugged film, which was decent enough but hampered by an extremely low budget, meaning a bunch of no-name, if reasonably talented, actors. Before that it was 2016, the Obama documentary and before that The Hunger Games, one of the better movies of 2012, albeit a very dark and violent one.
Movies tend to go in cycles. The 1990′s were very good years for movies, ranging from Goodfellas to Pulp Fiction, American Beauty and The Matrix. The 2000′s? Well, not so much.
Mostly, the 2000′s seemed to be the decade of the cartoon book superhero movie. We’ve had 4 Spiderman movies, 3 or 4 X-Men movies, at least one Superman movie, three new Batman movies, and some lesser comic book lights such as Daredevil and The Punisher. As either Hoagie or DNW pointed out, these films seem to be geared mainly toward teenage boys. What is the point of these movies, I ask? Are we so bereft of real heroes that we have to rely on heroes with “Super Powers” who come out of comic books? Take the new Batman movies (please!). Just how seriously are we supposed to take a man who goes out and fights crime while dressed up as a bat? To me, the best rendition of the Batman concept appeared in the old 60′s era TV show. That’s because they didn’t take the Batman concept seriously at all. And the villians were just as gloriously goofy as the heroes.
I suppose, when talking about 2000 era movies, some mention must go to the Lord of the Rings series. The first one I thought was delightful, the other two merely OK. At some point, watching our heroes, barricaded behind CGI generated castles and forts, slaying endless number of brain dead Orcs, just gets to be repetitious, and thus boring. The last movie was especially such, and when our heroes are reduced to fighting against giant elephants, well, pretty much all shreds of believability have gone out the window. In truth, I much preferred the Star Wars series. There you had actual, real villians with readily identifiable motives as opposaed to this big, glowing eye up at the top of a tower.
Anyway, to get back to Hoagie’s point, if there are any new, or at least recent, movies out there, I will try to review them. It’s just that there’s much out there I have any desire to see. There’s a new Hobbit movie, with apparently two more to follow. I’m thinking that’s about 5 Hobbit movies too many. I’m sick of Hobbits. Can’t we just stuff the lot of them in a big barrel and blow them up with a bunch of dynamite?
Argo is reputed to be a good movie, although I’m not sure just how interested I am in an event that happened 30 years ago. Les Miserables might be interesting except it’s a musical and I don’t generally like musicals. There’s Lincoln, but I just got done reading Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly, so I don’t need another Lincoln biography right now, thank you very much. And that’s just about it.
Hoagie requests I review newer movies, and here you go and list a bunch of old (and in some cases, VERY old) movies!
PS Dana, are you saying you preferred Return of the Jedi over The Empire Strikes Back? That would put you on the same ground as Randal from the movie Clerks, but would also put you at odds with the vast majority of Star Wars fans who rank Empire at the top of the heap.
You Definitely need to see LofA in its entirety, never mind it is four hours long. I have it on DVD, bought it at Best Buy for ten bucks.
First, it is great history about a great character. Lawrence himself was truly one of the unique figures of recent history. Second, it is a sweeping visual saga taking place in a land (Arabia) that Hollywood mostly ignores. And, third, it was a great technical accomplishment. It was filmed on 70mm film (standard movie film is 35mm) so it required much larger cameras and film canisters. And all this in a desert with blazing heat and sand and dust getting everywhere. Indeed, it’s a miracle this thing got filmed at all!
One thing you DON”T want to do is to see the new, or so-called Director’s Cut”, version of this movie. That’s because it sucks dog turds. All he did was add about 40 minutes of extra scenes that add absolutely nothing of value to the story and which completely breaks up the continuity of the movie as originally filmed.
If you want to see this movie, the only acceptable way is to watch the original version which, I believe, is still available on DVD. Avoid the “New & Improved” version like the plague!
Well, the Star Wars movies do require a certain suspension of disbelief. Why, for example, do the rebel fighters have wings when airfoils would be completely useless in the vacuum of space? Or how is it that, near the end of the movie, the Death Star can travel halfway across the Galaxy in a couple of hours but needs thirty minutes to finish orbiting the planet it is hidden behind in order to get into position to blow up the planet with the rebel base?
Eric asked:
Yes, actually, I thought that Return was the better movie.
Oh, I’m just telling you which ones are my favorites.
Eric wrote:
Translating the books to the movies was a really difficult task, and wasn’t really all that well done. The problem is a basic one: the books were storytelling, where the movies had to be action/adventure genre, and they really didn’t translate all that well. The whole section with Tom Bombadil was excluded from the movies, but it was an important part to the whole story: the only reason Eowyn could kill the Chief of the Nazgul was because Merry had stabbed him in the back of the knee with a blade from the barrow, made for the wars against Angmar.
What, you actually liked the one with the teddy bears?
Or, as Dante put it from the movie Clerks – All Jedi had was a bunch of muppets.
This is where they probably got the idea for the Crystal skull.
http://io9.com/5969345/deformed-skulls-discovered-in-1000+year+old-mexican-cemetery
You forgot Smokey and the Bandit.
As I recall, that was one of your favorites, if not your all-time favorite!
Eric says:
Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 18:57
Agree with York on Dr Zhivago! I haven’t seen Lawrence of Arabia all the way through. Oh, and add The Lion in Winter to my list.
What is good about “Lawrence of Arabia” it happened during WW One. Then you had the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Balfour Agreement slicing the Muddled East into unnatural borders not taking into account the various factions of Islam like in Iraq with Sunni, Shiite and Kurds. It really brings into perspective where the problems of today started.
You’re right: I did forget about Smokey! And yes, I have it on DVD.
I may be the only person in the country who bought copies of both Smokey and the Bandit and Fiddler on the Roof.
Well, I bought Lawrence of Arabia and Death Wish 3 both on the same day, for ten bucks each at Best Buy. The latter, I have argued, is basically the Citizen Kane of bad movies. Here’s a review I wrote on IMDb.com:
A Perfect Zero !!!
Author: ericjg623 from Twin Cities
Another reviewer nailed it – this is the worst mainstream movie ever made. It makes “Commando” look deep and “Cobra” look like an candidate for Best Picture. It takes the concept of “mindless violence” to the perfect limit of stupidity. The characters aren’t one dimensional, they’re zero dimensional. We care about them (good and bad alike) about as much as the aliens on the old “Space Invaders” video game. The Good Guys/innocent victims serve mainly to be picked on by a gang of total scumbags, that is, until Bronson shows up. Then the aforementioned scumbags get to serve as targets as Charlie (helped out by some of the “victims”) mows them down with machine guns, automatic .44 Magnums, rocket launchers, booby traps, and anything else that happens to be handy. The scumbags have no motive or purpose at all, they just go around killing, raping, mugging and looting for the fun of it, and as Charlie exterminates them by the dozens, like roaches, new scumbags just keep popping up to be hosed down in turn. There’s no plot, no acting, no moral of ANY kind (unlike the 1st one), Bronson’s not avenging a wife or daughter or anyone else, he’s just on a one man extermination mission against a bunch of utter and complete human waste products. There’s no romantic involvement (a la DW2), no complexity, no distractions of any kind. It’s just an hour and a half of pure and utter senseless death and mayhem. In short, this movie scores a perfect bullseye in the stupidity dept.
If you guys are going to talk older movies and Arabic stuff, try The Wind and The Lion starring Sean Connery. Fantastic though not historically accurate. Or how about The Four feathers (Beau Bridges) or Breaker Maurrant (not sure of the spelling) with Robert Woodward. And who among us could forget Zulu with Michael Caine? All, I think, were better than Lawrence but as Eric stated, it’s subjective.
My personal favorite is Goodfellas but that’s cause I grew up in South Philly with a bunch of friggin’ gangsters so I can identify. But a newer movie about theft was The Score with Edward Norton, Marlon Brando and Robert DiNero. I think The Score may have been Brando’s last flick. How about Ronan? That’s a good one with DiNero!
I guess what I’m saying is that there are some really good movies out thereb that make you think. Think about good and evil (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or The Perfect Murder ) or think about how something may look one way but actually it’s another like The Usual Suspects or Wall Street and The Firm. There are also those movies that portray the better part of a man and his beliefs like The Patriot, Braveheart, Sparticus or Gladiator.
Then there’s just fun like Ferris Beuller’s Day Off.
I assume this stupidity was directed at me: “Pardon me, but why should I be at all concerned about annoying people who (to take just one example) call for the mass murder of millions of people based on their religion?”
Although you seem to believe I called for “the mass Murder” of people , it was not my intention. I was calling for people to realize when a group declares war on you then you must realize they mean your death. They mean yours too, ass hole. So you can stand up and fight back (which a weak-kneed liberal like yourself wouldn’t do) or you die. Or you can join them…which you did. And I didn’t call for mass murder based on someones religion…it’s based on their declared intent…which is to kill us. So if fighting back constitutes mass murder then I guess I’m guilty. But somehow I figure if you could “mass murder” people you would start with Americans. You hate us, hate what we stand for and want to see us gone, don’t you? You really seem a petty, child-like little prick.
“I’m desperately hoping that there’s some piece here soon about the trillion-dollar coin idea, because the level of derp displayed already on this blog regarding what money actually is will make such a piece goddamned hilarious.”
So as a person with no money, you’re an expert? You, and only You know what money is? Or can you Google another ass-hole who agrees with you? Let’s get this straight. I’m an economist, a businessman and have quite a few million and you are a librarian. You can argue and Google till your dick drops off and you’ll still be a librarian and poor. Cause that’s all you’ll ever be. You have reached your limit. Funny thing is, a persons limit is what he sets for himself. Forward!
And if you really want to carry this crap on do it on another thread. This one’s about movies. So talk movies or shut the fuck up.
84 Charing Cross Road
Love Story
Chicago (with Renee Zellweger)
Save the Last Dance
Dance With Me
Shall We Dance (both the Japanese and the American versions)
John Carter
Fireproof (with Kirk Cameron)
Dirty Dancing
The Freedom Writers
Guess Who
Burlesque
The Help
Paper Man
Chalet Girl
The Other Bolyne Girl
Searching for Bobby Fischer
Girlfight
The Last Song
Review those (and watch what you say).
Perry and the New Zealand Socialist are both diseases on the body politick. Perry will soon be permanently banished, as he has already been permanently banished on multiple other sites. The New Zealand Socialist should also be permanently banished, as he has already been permanently banished on multiple other sites. Neither of them have any redeeming value whatsoever.
“Or don’t you know a little yeast leavens the whole loaf?”
Common’ Mr. Hitchcock, what man could even watch those let alone review them. Poor Eric will be clawing his eyes out.
You forgot Brokeback Mountain>
A few of my faves are:
Alien
Aliens
Star Wars
Casino Royale (2006)
Goodfellas
First Blood
X-Men 2
North Dallas Forty
Hoosiers
Used Cars
Animal House
Scarface (1983)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Saturday Night Fever
Hoagie, those are movies that I, myself, enjoy. And enjoy very much.
North Dallas Forty? That takes me back. Good movie. And since I love, love, love disco music (and the Bee Gees), SNF is a real hit.
and Sodom In Stetsons I’ll never watch, so no, I didn’t forget it.
LOL … actually, though, if you can make it through the, ahem, “amorous” scenes, Heath Ledger’s acting performance is first rate.
Besides, if we’re gonna try and get Eric to review gendras then how about comedies? Try Used Cars, History of the World Part I, Blazing Saddles, Robinhood: Men in Tights, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The Flim-Flam Man.
Really Hitch? You enjoy them very much? I mean I can go along with Goodfellas, and most of your second list, but the first list was ….chick-flicks. But in the spirit of fair play, here’s my faves:
Goodfellas
We Were Soldiers
The Patriot
The Usual Suspects
Swordfish
The Wind and The Lion
Goldfinger
Wall Street
Saving Private Ryan
Shindler’s List
Cocktail
The Thomas Crown Affair
After The Sunset (that’s a sleeper but very good)
The Score
Van Ryans Express
The Guns of Naverone
The Longest Day
Patton
You know Hitch and Hube, after reading these lists a head-shrinker could have a field day.
I’m gonna pop over to Colossus and see if we can’t do a movie list there.
BTW Hube, Heath Ledger wasn’t acting. “Acting” would be Heath Ledger playing Jason Borne.
That “first list” was mine while the “second list” was Hube’s. And yes, I do enjoy chick flicks. It just means I’m well-rounded and a man of good heart and soul whose masculinity isn’t threatened by good story lines and true love.
I thought To Have and To Have Not might be the sequel to Casablanca and mentioned it up-thread. Now, I’ve had a look at the Wikipedia entry and it’s confirmed.
Here’s an excerpt:
Hoagie: Ledger wasn’t gay. He was married to the woman he married (in the sham “marriage”) in Brokeback. (Her name escapes me now.)
And I reiterate: His performance in the film was sensational!
Hitch: I ain’t a big chick flick fan; however, I did enjoy Burlesque mainly b/c my GF made me watch it w/her … and I actually liked it. (Seeing a bunch of scantily clad women dancing around, including a then-thin Christina Aguilera, certainly helped.)
I think my fave tear-jerker chick flick is Somewhere in Time with Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve (from 1980).
From Hoagie’s last list:
The one’s I highlighted are some of my faves, as well. Good calls, they.
And I italicized ones I liked.
Hoagie says:
Agree
Agree, for it’s time. Caine’s subdued performance as a smug and supercilious yet conscientious officer is a classic. However the film suffers from an intrusive and distracting problem for anyone who has actually used a high powered rifle. It’s annoyingly obvious that the actors are shooting caps, and not even blanks. Grant that a Martin-Henry was a heavy arm and that black-powder generally recoils less … but geez … it looks like they are dry snapping.
Compare [couldn't find the famous rock shooting scene which shocked audiences with an enhanced sound.]
All worth watching, especially the last one. De Niro’s good in my book. You can add Heat and True Confessions ( a very good but unpopular movie to the list. Mann directed at least two: Ronan and Heat. Cop Land isn’t a bad film of that general type.
Yeah, it’s difficult to sort out favorites for this reason or that, against truly outstanding or groundbreaking pieces of film making.
And some films are just problematical. The Ninth Gate for instance. Outstanding piece of craft work, by a man (Polanski) with serious and unforgivable personal issues. You could say the same for the Woody Allen corpus as well … though in fact his films don’t seem to hold up as well.
A few Hollywood movies that have impressed me with their construction and execution would be
Chinatown
Paths of Glory
The Duelists
Shane
The Westerner
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Wicker Man
A Clockwork Orange
The Searchers
Alfie
I guess I’m a sucker for cinematography and an atmosphere, period, or a milieu well conveyed. Take “The Westerner” for example. It appears to be a stock cowboy film. But there are natural-light setups in that movie that only a really good director would even attempt. It’s “pone” but very well built.
Lost an “i” from Martini somehow
Hube, I didn’t mean Ledger was gay, I was just being a smart-ass. And Mr. Hitchcock, I knew the first list was yours, but it’s still chick-flicks! That said Somewhere In Time was a chick-flick that I actually enjoyed. I thought The Bird Cage was a chick-flick too but I liked that.
There are several “classics” that I like to see once in a while, like Sparticus, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hurr, Exodice and The Graduate. But all in all I watch movies just for entertainment. Frankly, I don’t believe much of what I see in movies. The most realistic movies from my perspective were We Were Soldiers and Saving Private Ryan. I could smell the cordite and taste the blood. They were, perhaps, too realistic. I’m no crybaby but when Mel Gibson’s boots leave the battlefield at the end I do get teary. It brings back a lot of memories and emotions of war. How it sounded, how it tasted, how it smelled. Perhaps too realistic.
Hoagie, what I meant was that while you were right that first list was mine, you were wrong in that the second list wasn’t mine. And, yes, I like chick flicks. They tend to be the most well-rounded movies. They have actual themes and plots. Shoot-em-ups tend to have neither, which leaves them extraordinarily wanting as a whole. White-washed sepulchres, full of dead men’s bones.
Even oddball movies can have interesting moments. Watch this set-up or location scene from Prince of Foxes with Orson Welles and Tyrone Power. 9 minutes seven seconds prox to to 9:57.
So what is this? Some goofy tenor voice singing in Italian and … and then you look at the bay and think what they had to do to get that scenery and that space and that time of day. And this is from 1949.
I thought Gladiator was much better than Spartacus. The fights were definitely much better (where else can you see a man simultaneously take on an ex-champion gladiator brought in especially to kill him AND four tigers all at the same time?) Also, I didn’t much like the ending of Spartacus even though I can’t remember exactly how it ended.
But the thing I really liked about Gladiator (well, outside of the acting, the directing, the effects, the dialog, and the script) has the sense of history. The movie really gives you a feel for the Roman Empire when it was at the peak of its power, and you see it from all aspects as well. You see a successful general waging war against the barbarians, a good and wise Emperor, a weak, cruel, and corrupt Emperor, the Senate, and also the lives of those at the very bottom, the slaves, the gladiators, and the sort of men who profited from their deaths for the entertainment of the mob.
All the acting performances were outstanding, but special mention goes to Joachim Phoenix (who was clearly robbed for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar) as Emperor Commodus. Rarely in the movies do we get a true three dimensional villian, and better yet, a self-aware villian. Commodus is rotten, and furthermore he knows he is rotten. One of the best pieces of dialog has him speaking to his father, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, saying “Father, you once wrote to me listing the four chief virtues. As I read your list, I realized that I had none of them”. Now, THAT’s writing! And then there’s Proximo’s speech to his gladiators right after he has just bought them and right before they have to fight for the first time. Pure genius!
Well, I could go on, but let me merely say I think Gladiator was one of the very few truly great movies of the 2000′s.
Well, obviously I goofed up in using the Italics feature. Oh well.
Most of my favorite comedies come from the time frame of the late 70′s thru the early 80′s. These would include such hits as these:
Animal House
Airplane!
Caddyshack (probably my all-time favorite comedy)
Ghostbusters
A couple of the Cheech & Chong movies, most notably Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie.
Indeed, if there is anything funnier than the last listed movie, it was the attempts by TV network editors to edit out all references to illegal drugs in that film.
Finally, although the Airplane! crew made a number of related spoofs (Top Secret, the Naked Gun movies) two of my favorites were:
Hot Shots!
Hot Shots Part Deux
The first is an excellent spoof on Top Gun, the second on the Rambo movies. Great stuff!
There is a scene in The Ten Commandments where the queen is trying to seduce Moses and in the background you have what appears to be a very wide river with a full moon close to the horizon, reflected in the water. The timing for that scene was literally quite perfect. Did they film that in Egypt using the actual Nile in the background? Today, of course, the river and the moon would just be CGI if they needed them for the scene, meaning the whole thing could have taken place inside a studio.
I’ll follow the lead of Hoagie, Hitchcock, and Hube and list some of my favorite movies. Note: they are merely my personal favorites, I’m not saying all of these are great or in some cases even all that good.
Apocalypse Now (as noted – the original version ONLY)
Gladiator
Star Wars 1,4,5, and 6.
Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring
Caddyshack
Hot Shots and Hot Shots 2
Scarface
The Terminator
Goodfellas
The Matrix
American Pie
Death Race 2000
Rock and Roll High School (features The Ramones)
The Towering Inferno (arguably the first, and best, disaster flick)
Casablanca
Gone With The Wing
Alice in Wonderland (the Disney animated version)
Alladin
Charlie’s Angels (Pure fluff, but great eye candy. Basically a Bond flick with 3 chicks)
Goldfinger
From Russia With Love (probably the only “Serious” James Bond movie ever made)
Moonraker (Roger Moore at his most gloriously over-the-top best)
Clerks (Kevin Smith classic that perfectly defined the “Slacker” era. Great soundtrack, too)
Independence Day
Men In Black
The Gumball Rally (Pure porno for car nuts!)
Rambo: First Blood Part Two (Rambo – “Do we get to win this time?)
Red Dawn (Great Reagan era Cold War flick)
American Psycho (Pokes fun at Wall Street yuppies)
Top Gun (Got me to join the Navy)
That’s about it for now, even though there’s tons more I just can’t think of right now.
Eric says,
Granting that the technical effects are more evolved in Gladiator and the attention to historical and material detail more satisfying, they are two different kinds of movies.
The audience that saw Spartacus may have been accustomed to seeing Biblical spectacle movies, but nothing, or very little, like the relentlessly secular Spartacus. There’s no happy ending in Spartacus, and only a tenuous promise for the future in the form of an ongoing class solidarity and struggle. It had been an explicitly political novel.1
1.
[eventually]
Howard Fast
Thanks for the update. I knew there was something fishy about that movie, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what. But you have nailed it.
PS: Wasn’t the script written, at least in part, by one of the blacklisted Commies, i.e., one of the so-called “Hollywood Ten” or someone of similar ilk?
Might have been. The book obviously was. The question is: on what basis do these dogs of the left make interpersonal claims and demands for more than strictly formal concessions and due process?
Since I mentioned the movie The Shawshank Redemption in an earlier post, I thought I would show a post I made on the Internet Movie DataBase (IMDb.com) under the heading of “Goofs” for that film:
How did Andy know that: 1) There would be a sewer pipe conveniently located close to where his tunnel ended, 2) That it would be big enough to crawl through easily, and 3) That it would be long enough (500 yards, according to Red) to allow him to escape well beyond the prison grounds, unnoticed by the guards?
Anyone who has seen this movie can feel free to comment on whether my post on that movie was valid or not.