Halle Berry – People Talking

Classic Movie Quinella – ‘RussellMania’: The Kurt Russell Marathon – Land of the Free

Another Super Bowl Saturday, another actor marathon at Alamo Drafthouse Yonkers: Caged, Stallone Zone, Van Dammage, Burt Day, ‘HEY, ARNOLD!‘, and now, RussellMania 2018.

I had sky high hopes for this one, but for the first time in attending these events, I actually left fairly disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kurt Russell, I love my new hat, and I got to see four movies I had never seen before (which I do place a certain value on), but overall it just wasn’t quite the same enjoyable ride I’ve become accustomed to over the past five years.

The man himself needs no introduction though, so let’s get into these movies.

Movie #1: Tango & Cash (1989)

Right off the bat, I was wrong.

Seeing as how this film lead off Stallone Zone (click the link to read the Tango & Cash review), I figured there was no way we’d see it again here, but, as I said, I was wrong.

I will say, it was interesting watching it again as a Kurt Russell movie rather than a Stallone movie, but I don’t really have anything more to say now than I did in 2014.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Movie #2: Breakdown (1997)

I remember my cousin putting this on once at my aunt and uncle’s house, probably around the time it first hit DVD (which was technology beyond my imagination at the time), only I don’t think I watched past the first half hour or so, so I never realized until seeing it on the big screen that Breakdown turns into an action movie by the end (spoilers?).

Before that though, the movie feels extremely Hitchcockian, so much so that you could believe it’s a remake of something Hitch actually made (though to my knowledge it is not and I’ll happily give full credit to writer/director Jonathan Mostow). The story’s simple enough (I’d actually make a gentle comparison to The Belko Experiment, just in terms of imagining yourself in the same situation), and it doesn’t fall into the trap of becoming too twisty, which I appreciated.

Ultimately, it comes down to personal taste as to whether or not the third act works for you. I’m okay with it, but I understand others feeling somewhat betrayed by it.

Either way though, I’d still say it’s solid.

Rating: ★★★½

Movie #3: Used Cars (1980)

Before Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale made one of the greatest movies of all time (review here), they had a string of less successful endeavors (I Wanna Hold Your Hand, 1941), culminating with 1980’s Used Cars (although they did write one of my favorite episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker).

Used Cars isn’t great, and its definitely a touch bloated, but it’s not without its charms. For one thing, it’s Kurt’s first R-rated performance, which is interesting to see at odds with his still-lingering Disney good guy persona, and it’s got Jack Warden doing some classic one-actor-playing-twin-brothers schtick, and a good amount of the satirical humor still holds up today.

It also hearkens back to a time when comedy wasn’t strictly a bargain basement genre and studios weren’t afraid to throw in a little more production value when necessary, even for an non-family friendly comedy.

Not everybody will fully enjoy Used Cars because it’s such a product of its time, but for me, that’s why I found it interesting and why I’d give it another watch someday.

Rating: ★★★½

Movie #4: Executive Decision (1996)

Speaking of the kinds of movies that don’t get made anymore, let’s talk Executive Decision (which is one I was hoping for, for better or worse).

Stuff like this just has a certain je ne sais quoi that feels missing from Hollywood of the present (the fact that it was made pre-9/11 definitely has something to do with that). It’s not like we have a dearth of action movies these days, but Executive Decision takes itself seriously in both story and tone where a movie today would have a wink and a nod (it’s no surprise that the last similar example I can think of, Behind Enemy Lines, was also a story by Jim and John Thomas).

I think it’s fair to say that Kurt plays against type here, at least relative to the “action man” roles he was known for at the time, but, even in a lame tuxedo and nerdy spectacles, he’s still cooler than we could ever dream of being.

“All-star cast” may be a stretch (it’s no Airport ’77), but, at the time, Executive Decision certainly had a mix of experienced pros and hot up-and-comers (most notably Halle Berry). Given that it’s a 90s action movie, I’ll say everyone does a fine job.

That said, let’s call it what it is, “Die Hard on a plane.”

Still worth a watch though, just get comfortable.

Rating: ★★★½

Movie #5: Escape from L.A. (1996)

This is not how I wanted the day to end.

I don’t want to merely compare this movie to Escape from New York, but I don’t think it leaves you with much of a choice.

Honestly, Escape from L.A. is depressingly bad in comparison to its predecessor. New York was a low-budget underdog that managed to find an audience and punch a bit above its weight class. It stands on its reputation more so than its actual quality, but at the same time it was a fairly progressive movie in terms of film-making, what with the use of the Panaglide (an early “cousin” of the Steadicam) and new techniques that allowed Dean Cundey to shoot many city blocks deep using only streetlamps for lighting; not to mention how the film allowed Kurt Russell to truly pivot away from his Disney comedy roots.

On the other hand, L.A. is essentially The Asylum version of New York, with a copy-and-paste script, horrendous CGI effects, and terribly cheesy performances. In fact, the only element you can point to as being better than the original is the fact that they shot a scene at the real L.A. Coliseum, but the movie is still so terrible that it doesn’t even matter.

Escape from L.A. is awful, it was rightfully a box office bomb, and if you truly love Escape from New York, you should never ever watch it.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

So, there you have it. Not the best day, but definitely not all bad. Just kind of middling, and therefore not what I expected given Kurt’s body of work.

I guess they can’t all be winners.

This hat though, this hat is a winner.

Movie Review – ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle’ – Bigger and Bigger

Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Written by Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn, based on the comic book The Secret Service created by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons
Cast: Taron Egerton, Julianne Moore, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry, Channing Tatum, Pedro Pascal, Mark Strong, Sophie Cookson, Colin Firth, Elton John, Hanna Alström, Edward Holcroft, Michael Gambon, Bruce Greenwood, Emily Watson, Mark Arnold, Tobi Bakare, Samantha Womack
Soundtrack: Henry Jackman & Matthew Margeson

Right, then; break’s over.

I suppose it’s fitting that, after a month’s hiatus, I’m doing something I’ve never done before, which is reviewing a sequel to a film that I reviewed at the time of its actual release.

Kingsman: The Secret Service was definitively my favorite spy movie in a year that was chock full of good ones (not that there weren’t disappointments). It embraced the more outlandish and fun elements of the James Bond franchise (particularly attributable to the era of the now late, great Roger Moore) while putting its own harder-edged spin on things, and I expected nothing less from its sequel (if not…Moore?).

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is definitely bigger, but is it better?

I say no. I think it’s a bit overstuffed and a bit long for what it is, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t recommend it theatrically (especially if you’re a fan of the first one). It is absolutely worth your movie dollars, so much so that there’s extremely little I’m willing to give away, so this’ll be a short review.

First of all, as in the original, you’ve got a great top-to-bottom cast (though very few get all that much to do), and everyone is clearly having fun with what they’re doing; which is to say this movie is like Octopussy-on-steroids in terms of the camp factor, though I will say there were at least a couple of moments that actually made me emotional, which was a genuine surprise.

Speaking of genuine surprises, I couldn’t believe how many story elements I legitimately didn’t see coming. Sure, the main plot is just a bit predictable, but don’t tell me you were able to guess everything from the marketing.

As for the action, Golden Circle is very much in the same style as Secret Service. No single scene offers a one-to-one comparison to the famous church sequence from the original, but it’s all executed, shot, and edited very similarly, if not actually better.

All-in-all, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is pretty much exactly what I thought it would be: a fun romp that goes too far in a few places. It’s bonkers and it knows it, it’s got fun nods (both with and without twists) to the first movie (and what I think is a super deep cut Bond reference), and it’s got a great, young, charismatic actor in the lead.

If you’re a fan of the first one, you’ll probably really enjoy this one, as I did. If not, I doubt there’s anything here that’ll win you over.

Not much else I can say without spoiling anything, but I recommend it heartily.

Rating: ★★★★☆

P.S.
There’s no stinger of any kind, probably because this movie is long and they respect that people need to relieve themselves, so, once the credits roll, you’re…Golden?

P.P.S.
Naturally, and as usual, thanks to Alamo Drafthouse for going all-out with the delicious specials and incredible glassware.

Twofer Movie Review: ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ and ‘Godzilla’ (2014) – Why So Boring?

I never anticipated that I’d be formally reviewing these two movies, as I’m trying to stick to ground less traveled here, but I had the…experience…of seeing both this past week, and they coaxed almost the exact same reaction out of me: disappointment.

X-Men: Days of Future Past and the new Godzilla are the latest members of a growing and increasingly wearisome club of “big” summer movies whose trailers make them look fantastic, but the movies themselves leave much to be desired (perhaps the most notable example of this from 2013 is Man of Steel, though at least the first half is worth watching). I understand movies are a business, but at this point I’m just tired of all the lies.

So, here I am, reviewing these films that many, many people have seen already, but I want to warn others while they’re still at risk of wasting their time and money.

Directed by Bryan Singer
Written by Simon Kinberg (Screenplay and Story), Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (Story)
Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Shawn Ashmore, Omar Sy, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Lucas Till, Daniel Cudmore, Booboo Stewart, Michael Lerner
Soundtrack: John Ottman

I had such high hopes…

Before I get too ahead of myself here, I will point out two scenes in this movie that are quite well done, without spoiling too much (not that it really matters):
1. An action scene that takes place in a famous government building where our heroes have to break someone out. It is the best scene in the film (though not worth the price of admission), and makes great use of Quicksilver (Marvel’s version of The Flash, if you don’t know).
2. A more poignant scene where the two Xaviers (past and future) are talking to one another. It’s the only scene that really connects on an emotional level to any significant degree.

That’s about it. Two scenes.

The basic premise of this movie (we need to fix the past in order to save the future) is interesting enough to keep you going for the lengthy running time; I was never so bored that I just wanted to go to sleep, but there’s a substantial gap between being passively interested and actively invested, and this movie consistently fails to fill it. If I was so inclined, I could complain about lots of things like plot holes, anachronisms, and various other X-Men problems that I know nothing about, but even before all of that, this movie constantly fails to be compelling. I was expecting Days of Future Past to be big and emotional; it is neither of those.

Whatever needs to happen to advance the story happens in short order, leaving very little room for dramatic tension. We need to find the professor? We find the professor. We need to find Eric? We find Eric. We need them to reconcile? They reconcile in two minutes (even though “they’ve never been further apart”). And so on and so forth. Not only that, but they couldn’t seem to figure out an interesting way of delivering mass exposition, which leads to more tedium as a viewer.

Now, again, I know very little about X-Men, and I’ve certainly never read the Days of Future Past storyline in the comics, so I can’t tell you how good of an adaptation the movie is, but, you know what? I know very little about Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D., and I really enjoyed The Winter Soldier. I know very little about Iron Man, and all three of those movies are fantastic (Iron Man 2 is actually my favorite of the trilogy). All four of the movies I just mentioned work as movies first and worry about the other comic book stuff later, therefore I recommend all of them, but I cannot recommend this new X-Men film (outside of a Netflix/Redbox sort of viewing if you’re that curious). X-Men: First Class had its problems, and I did not recommend seeing it in a theater when it came out, but there are at least some compelling storylines and interesting cinematic goings-on to get you moderately invested; it’s not a total flop. I can’t say the same for Days of Future Past. Ordinarily I’d offer up some sort of suggestion on how to improve the film, but I honestly don’t know about this one outside of having a completely different creative team leading the charge.

Frankly, and this will sound harsh, I think Bryan Singer himself might be the biggest problem here. Now, he did write and direct the first two X-Men films, and they’re solid, I guess (it’s been a while since I’ve watched them), but on the whole I think his career path is much closer to M. Night Shyamalan than his hero, Richard Donner. I suppose based on his original X-Men work he was able to wrangle a lot of creative control for Superman Returns, and that movie suffers many of the same problems as Days of Future Past. Granted, I really enjoyed it when I first saw it in theaters, but I was a younger man, and highly nostalgic for Superman I and II; watching it again though, that movie’s a mess (Lex Luthor wants real estate again, really?), and a good chunk of the running time simply isn’t compelling. I can understand the studio’s desire to return to the guy that put X-Men on the cinematic map, but, at this point, it seems that Bryan Singer is damaged goods, at least for superhero movies.

★★☆☆☆

Directed by Gareth Edwards
Written by Max Borenstein (Screenplay), Dave Callaham (Story)
Cast: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, CJ Adams, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Richard T. Jones, Victor Rasuk, Jared Keeso
Soundtrack: Alexandre Desplat

The most common comment (and I uttered it myself many a time) I heard in anticipation of Godzilla was, “Bryan Cranston’s in it,” and that is a true statement; Bryan Cranston is in the new Godzilla, and he’s really good in it when he’s in it, but he’s not in it nearly enough to save it.

This movie started off with a lot of promise. In the first 15 minutes or so, we see that Bryan Cranston plays an engineer at a nuclear power plant in Japan who’s concerned about a repeating pattern of seismic tremors (whose origins we as the audience already know something about) that might cause his plant some trouble. Sure enough, he’s right, and the plant suffers a terrible accident as a result of a mysterious earthquake, and, of course, this comes at a great personal cost to our beloved engineer.

BOOM. That’s a great intro, and a great way to get your audience invested into your movie. BUT, they then proceed to almost immediately scrap that for a shift in perspective to a different character. Bryan Cranston’s engineer comes back for a little bit, and you find out what he’s been doing for the past 15 years and it leads to the next plot point, but after that he’s done. See ya never.

This is my first big problem with this film. They get you emotionally invested, but then throw it away and give you characters that you just don’t care about; you can’t care about them, at least not in the same way. The engineer’s character’s arc coulda/shoulda/woulda made up the whole movie, or at least the first half of it. But jettisoning it so quickly into the run time (no matter who was playing him, really) was a huge mistake in the writing; and replacing him with such boring other characters compounds the problem further. Let him hang around a lot longer, and you’ve instantly got a better movie; hands down.

My second big issue is creature design; not so much for Godzilla, he looks alright, I guess, but the other creatures (this is not a spoiler; they’re in the trailer if you look close). They just look so generic, like they got focus-grouped to death or something. I don’t know, they just don’t look interesting or very creative. This is where maybe a little more liaising with Toho would have reaped huge benefits. I mean I know this is a ‘murican Godzilla movie, and I appreciate that they moved the story along more so than a standard reboot, but when your film features giant monsters, those monsters need to be engaging, and they almost completely failed in that respect.

My third and final problematic issue with Godzilla is too much tease and not enough payoff. Say what you want about Pacific Rim (I’m not that high on it myself, but it’s okay), but you can’t deny that they went all out when it came to showing you the monsters. Now I’m not saying Godzilla has to be that explicit, but the title of the movie is GODZILLA. A Godzilla movie should have the payoff of seeing Godzilla doing Godzilla things, and he does, eventually, but even when it’s an all-out brawl, they still cut away and tease you in the midst of it. It doesn’t come as a fully-satisfying payoff; it’s just more frustration at the end of an already frustrating movie.

What’s also frustrating is that they gave this movie to a promising young director, Gareth Edwards (not to be confused with Gareth Evans, who’s making the fantastic Raid series), whose first feature was also a monster movie called Monsters that appears to be much more worthwhile than Godzilla.

Now, is Godzilla a better movie than X-Men: Days of Future Past? Yes. It at least gives you an initial emotional connection, and though you’re largely waiting for something to happen, it does draw you back in a couple of times with legitimate suspense (something X-Men particularly fails to do); not to mention the visuals are much better on the whole. But it’s not good enough to warrant a better rating, unfortunately.

★★☆☆☆