All posts by Beau

Movies

John McTiernan

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Focusing mainly on action flicks, John McTiernan had a fairly successful run of average to above-average movies that were generally well-received by fans and critics. It’s been ten years since he’s directed, and while I don’t know all the details, I imagine an ongoing trial related to lying to the FBI limited his ability to work in this capacity. He began serving his one-year sentence in April of this year.

It’s hard to say McTiernan gets the most of his actors, as pretty much everyone below I’ve seen do better elsewhere (with the possible exception of Alan Rickman). But he’s obviously skilled at directing stunts and special effects and it’s rare to be bored while watching one of his films.

Predator: Great sets, special effects and camerawork, along with the occasional good one-liner, help this action movie that really lacks in the acting department. The cinematic shining moment for my state’s former governor, for whatever that’s worth.

Grade: C

Die Hard: With A Vengeance: I saw this when it came out in 1995 having not seen any other in the movie in the series. I was underwhelmed. I felt the action scenes didn’t slow down long enough for me to enjoy them. I’d be willing to give it a second shot now that I’ve seen the first two.

Grade: C

The Hunt For Red October: The first of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels, The Hunt for Red October is a fairly gripping Cold War submarine story. Shortly, Sean Connery is a Soviet submarine captain who is heading directly for America, but to attack or defect? Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) is desperately trying to find out in time. Rough around the edges, but well-acted and suspenseful.

Grade: B

Die Hard: An evil group of baddies led by Alan Rickman take hostages in a skyscraper, including Bruce Willis’s wife. Willis spends the whole movie trying to save everyone and himself. The action is good, and unlike the third movie, there is room to breathe. Obviously some implausible moments, and the chief of police (among others in authority) is pointlessly obnoxious to make Willis and his sidekick look good, but it’s all made better by Alan Rickman, who plays a deliciously evil antagonist. One of my favorite action flicks. Yippy-ky-yay!

Grade: B+

Other John McTiernan Movies You May Have Seen

Medicine Man (I fell asleep halfway through and had no desire to finish it)
Last Action Hero
The 13th Warrior
The Thomas Crown Affair
Rollerball
Basic
Nomads

 

Movies

Martin Scorsese

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Scorsese is hailed as one of the best directors of all-time, and sadly I’ve only seen a handful of his movies. From what I’ve read, he likes to focus a lot on male characters (especially Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio) coping with their own inadequacies, mirroring his own struggles and fantasies. Regardless, his directing abilities are as hailed from what I’ve seen. The camera always seems to be in the right place, and he gets exceptional performances out of most of his actors. I haven’t been a huge fan of the stories he chooses, so I’m a bit hesitant to just plow through his lengthy filmography. Of course, I’ll take recommendations from my lovely readers.

The Departed: While I like this film, I’m definitely in the minority for not thinking it’s one of the best of all-time. Currently, it is ranked #49 at the IMDb. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, though he did seem to give every movie four stars in the last several years of his life. The Departed is a remake of a Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs, where one boy recruited by the mob (Matt Damon)  infiltrates the Boston police department, while one boy recruited by the Boston police department (Leonard DiCaprio) infiltrates the mob. It’s a fun, tangled web, and DiCaprio is superb, but I just never really got into the movie. I felt Jack Nicholson gave an uninspired performance as the mob boss. The police psychologist’s motivations felt completely unbelievable to me. And I felt little attachment to any of the characters, leaving me not all that interested in how it ended. Ebert says the movie is a lot about Catholic guilt, something Scorsese is intimately familiar with. Perhaps if I understood that I would have enjoyed it more.

Grade: B-

Hugo: A charming fantasy about an orphan boy in 1930’s Paris who lives inside the walls of a train station and has to solve a mystery surrounding one of his father’s automatons. Asa Butterfield, who plays the boy, is excellent, ultimately believable. The always delightful Chloe Moretz is great as well, making Hugo possibly the best assembly of pre-pubescent acting I’ve seen. Ben Kinglsey, not quite pre-pubescent, is also solid. Unfortunately, the plot itself lost my interest about half-way through. The excellent acting, directing, and cinematography kept me going through the end.

Grade: B-

The Color of Money: I haven’t seen this movie in a long time, and my memory has faded. What I do remember is that I loved Paul Newman’s performance as the old-school pool hustler. The story has its ups and down, and there’s no payoff to the mentor/pupil cliches, but it’s enjoyable to watch. What I need to do is watch The Hustler with Newman and Gleason. Someday..

Grade; B-

Goodfellas: For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Ray Liotta narrates the first line of this epic gangster movie that rivals The Godfather in many ways. Liotta dreams of having the freedom he believes he’ll have if he can get into the mafia. He works his way in, generally happy as he’s working his way up the hierarchy, but then the shit gets really real and he wonders whether this is really the life for him. Based on the life of Henry Hill who worked with Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci while the film was being made. The acting is tremendous all around, with special props to Pesci, who is so good you can easily forget his comedic characters while watching. If you liked The Godfather, there’s a good chance you’ll like this as well.

Grade: A

Other Martin Scorsese Films You May Have Seen

Taxi Driver
Raging Bull
Casino
The Last Waltz
Shutter Island
The King of Comedy
After Hours
The Last Temptation of Christ
Gangs of New York
The Aviator
Cape Fear

Movies

Rob Reiner

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Up through 1992, one might predict Meathead would become one of the most hailed directors of all-time. Six of his first seven movies were monster hits (and deservedly so) and won or were nominated for many awards. But then he directed North, considered by Siskel & Ebert one of the worst big-budget films of all-time. Since then, you’d be hard pressed to find a memorable film by him. To be fair, I haven’t seen anything he’s done after 1995, but based on reviews and recommendations, I haven’t exactly been dying to either.

The American President: Aaron Sorkin loves writing his fantasies about society into his scripts. The West Wing fantasizes about democracy working, Newsroom fantasizes about a responsible journalism, A Few Good Men fantasizes about justice against corrupt military officials, and this movie fantasizes about a fair and honest president who sticks to his convictions even in tough times. In fact, Martin Sheen must have impressed Sorkin in this movie as he brought him on to play the president in West Wing. Anyway, The American President is a harmless, charming fantasy. Michael Douglas does what he does, Bening is good as usual, and Michael J. Fox has a mildly funny role.

Grade: B-

The Princess Bride: One of the best quote-dropping movies ever, which one normally wouldn’t associate with a movie based on a book. But then you realize WIlliam Goldman, a prolific screenwriter, wrote the book, and it makes sense.  The narrative flow is intentionally choppy, which normally would bother me, but it works here because every scene is beyond ridiculous, kind of like a Monty Python movie. Reiner gets most of these actors’ best career performances. Don’t know I’ve ever seen Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, or Wallace Shawn better (except perhaps as Rex in the Toy Story series), and who figured Andre the Giant would make a movie better? It’s also one of Fred Savage’s first appearances and it’s easy to see why he got cast for The Wonder Years a year later. Reiner favorites Christopher Guest and Billy Crystal also have solid performances.

Grade: A-

Misery: William Goldman also wrote the script to Misery and Reiner got exceptional performances out of James Caan and Kathy Bates. Many of Stephen King’s novels, especially up to 1990, had been butchered on screen. Goldman and Reiner possibly make it better. A true horror film about a writer who crashes his car and then gets kidnapped by his biggest fan who nurses him back to health. Non-stop tension from beginning to end with at least one horrific visual moment that should make just about everyone curl up into the fetal position.

Grade: A

This is Spinal Tap: The whole idea of a mockumentary, especially about a genre of music (hair metal) I have zero interest in, never appealed to me. But my wife made me watch this a few years ago and I’m forever grateful. Reiner’s first movie is one of his best, with pitch perfect satire and top-notch performances, especially from Christopher Guest. I belly-laughed at least seven or eight times while watching, which is about six more times than most comedies I like.

Grade: A

A Few Good Men: While I love this movie more than most, it may be the best proof of Reiner’s superb direct capabilities. Aaron Sorkin’s stage play and movie script is flawed in his usual way in that he wants to spell out the conflict, tell everyone how the characters are going to solve it, show them doing it, then recapping what they just did. It also had a mild romantic subplot that has mostly been taken out for the movie. There’s definitely problems left, but it’s largely improved from the original script. Reiner also takes two middling actors in Tom Cruise and Demi Moore and gets two of the best performances of their careers. I’ve seen Moore’s character, Commander Jo Galloway, played on stage and it was dreadful. It’s a tough role, and Moore gets it. Meanwhile, Cruise is cast perfectly, as the role calls for a young hot-shot who likes to fling his hands in the air and yell a lot. Kevin Bacon is solid as the government’s attorney, J.T. Walsh is his usual loose cannon, and Kiefer Sutherland always plays a good prick.

Of course, Jack Nicholson is the star. He’s larger than life, thanks in part to his performance, and part Reiner’s camerawork. I think I read somewhere that Nicholson has one of the shortest appearances in a film while getting nominated for best supporting actor. He definitely deserved the nomination.

While I’m gushing, I may as well mention that Marc Shaiman’s score is amazing, chilling in all the right places. I’ve seen the movie at least forty times and can annoyingly recite nearly all of it from beginning to end.

Grade: A+

Other Films By Rob Reiner

Stand By Me
When Harry Met Sally
Ghosts of Mississippi
The Story Of Us
Alex & Emma
Rumor Has It…
The Bucket List
Flipped
The Magic of Belle Isle

Movies

Barry Levinson

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I have seen very little of Levinson’s catalog, and I may have seen his best three movies. Other than using Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman, he seems to like larger-than-life characters and really exploring how they respond to adversity and triumph. I suppose that could be applied to nearly every story, but these movies really make sure you know that the heroes are fallible and not everything has a storybook ending, while also making you feel good about the heroes when it’s over. It could also just be a common theme among these three movies and he could be a hack otherwise for all I know. If you’ve seen anything else he’s done, please illuminate me.

The Natural: An epic feel-good baseball movie starring the always charming Redford, The Natural basks in its button-pushing ways. Die-hard baseball fans will cringe on occasion (the walk-off homer in the top of the ninth comes to mind), but the excellent acting allows me to forgive those errors and the occasional schmaltz.

Grade: B+

Good Morning, Vietnam: I don’t quite feel all that comfortable about the movie as a whole, but I like so many individual aspects of it that I still enjoy it today. Robin Williams plays a real-life human in Adrian Kronauer, but sadly he just plays Robin Williams. Some of his ad-libbed jokes are still funny, many are dated and obnoxious. And after a while he just comes off as a insubordinate, whiny jackass. But the dramatic moments in the movie are very powerful, and Williams’ character is knocked down a couple of pegs by the end, leaving us with a realistic and bittersweet finale. The soundtrack is amazing and the supporting cast is also good, though Kronauer’s superiors are a little too cartoonish in their dickishness.

Grade: A-

Rain Man: I’ll get out of the way that Dustin Hoffman winning best actor really annoys me. While his portrayal of an autistic savant is pitch perfect, it had to be one of the easiest performances of his career. He literally had to show no emotion, most of the time. Tom Cruise had a significantly more complicated role, playing the brother who has to process his own emotions of dealing with an autistic brother (and one he didn’t know he had). That’s not to say Cruise is a better actor, but I’m more intrigued by his performance, one of the best of his career. It’s not perfect; Cruise is not a master at subtlety, but Levinson gets the most of him and I still believed his anguish.

It’s an occasionally funny story that does a little bit to bring to light the lack of public awareness and available resources for those with autism. Granted, autistic savants are extremely rare, but the late Kim Peek (the person Raymond Babbitt is based on) still suffered from many of the same social and daily living problems that those who are not savants suffer from. The movie treats the problem fairly honestly, and the ending is poignant and subdued.

Grade: A

A Partial List of Other Barry Levinson Movies You May Have Seen

Sleepers
Diner
Wag the Dog
Avalon
Bugsy
Man of the Year
Disclosure
Sphere
Toys

Movies

Tom Shadyac

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Tom Shadyac has made fewer than ten movies and I’ve been tricked into seeing more than half of them. It is painfully obvious he isn’t very good at his job, but despite the fact he’s directed so few movies, the ones he has been greenlighted for have been almost exclusively big budget films with big name actors. One could argue he put Jim Carrey on the map, but I would argue that Jim Carrey put Jim Carrey on the map and then helped out Shadyac in a couple other movies as well.

Shadyac does comedies almost exclusively and his movies seem to advertise that a joke is only done well if it’s exaggerated to the breaking point. I don’t know if Shadyac purposefully directs actors who love physical comedy and fast-talking jokes (Murphy, Carrey, Williams) or if he just doesn’t know how to rein an actor in for the more subtle nuances of comedy. Maybe both. What I do know is that he tries to plug dramatic, tear-jerker moments into many of his comedies, and without exception every one of these moments is awful.

Stay away, and read below if you want the evidence.

Evan Almighty: I haven’t seen the whole movie from start to finish, but I’ve seen the beginning and the last forty-five minutes or so. Carell really looks like he doesn’t give a shit. I haven’t seen Bruce Almighty, which I’m sure is better, but I’ll do my best not to.

Grade: F

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective: This was my first introduction to Jim Carrey and I carried a special loathing for him for way too long because of it. It took me a while to realize I hated the character and not the actor, but I was so angry that other people loved this movie that I couldn’t get over it. The only part I enjoyed was Dan Marino, not because of any skills he has in front of the camera, but the jokes at his expense. For a while after this movie, whenever the Dolphins would get knocked out of the playoffs, I’d yell for him to get gonorrhea and rot in hell.

Grade: F

Patch Adams: Roger Ebert had a special, angry place in his heart for this movie, which I didn’t understand when I was 17. In fact, I laughed a lot when I first saw it. Now I can barely stomach it. The whole premise, a wannabe doctor who truly believes laughter is the best medicine, is irredeemable and insulting, and that’s before Patch begins tearing down the evil straw men presented to him. The romantic subplot is beyond manipulative, and the final courtroom scene is so laughably out of place one wondered if the writers forgot what script they had in front of them. Robin Williams has become a comedic hack, but nobody could have saved this script with this direction.

Grade: D-

The Nutty Professor: A pretty decent cast, and Eddie Murphy does a remarkably pointless job of playing several different fat characters, but everything’s just a bit too obvious.

Grade: D+

Liar Liar: Easily Shadyac’s best movie.  I don’t like it quite as much as I did at the time. It has the same problems most of Shadyac’s movies have, false sentimentality and dishonest character motivations. However, Carrey is at his absolute best, playing a lawyer who suddenly cannot lie, even with something as banal as the color of a pen (rrrrrrooooyal blue!). Beyond his antics and the easy but fun jokes the premise delivers, there’s not much there.

Grade: B-

Other Tom Shadyac Movies You May Want To Avoid

Bruce Almighty
Dragonfly

Movies

Tony Scott

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For the most part, Tony Scott (brother of Ridley Scott) stuck with the action/suspense/thriller genres. Dialogue often seems to just be filler in between action shots, at least for his earlier films. Looking at his career, he seemed to get better as he got older, the movies improving in quality regardless of the scripts he was using. Getting away from using Tom Cruise couldn’t have hurt, either. Scott passed away last year at the age of 68

Beverly Hills Cop 2: I honestly remember virtually nothing about this movie, other than I didn’t laugh much and whenever I flip by it on TV I don’t find myself laughing.

Grade: D-

The Last Boy Scout: The opening scene to this movie is awesome. A star football player finds out in the locker room that he’s S.O.L. with the wrong man. Back in the game, he catches a pass, makes a few good moves, then pulls out a freaking gun and shoots a bunch of defensive players, including one in the face; he scores a touchdown, kneels, then kills himself. Holeee shit. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get better after that. Bruce Willis plays buddy cop with Damon Wayans, delivers some corny one-liners amidst some awful clichés and decent action scenes. It’s fine, but it’s not Die Hard.

Grade: C-

Top Gun: All homo-erotica jokes aside (or perhaps because of them!), Top Gun is a decent time-waster when you want a testosterone laced dogfight. The dialogue is an extra helping of ham, and Tom Cruise’s character would be given a dishonorable discharge in reality–if not a fast trip to Fort Leavenworth–for the stunts he pulls. It’s a largely offensive movie with a terrible romantic subplot and a terrible romantic song, but the actors have a lot of fun with it and the action shots are top-notch. It’s not as fun or as dumb as Iron Eagle, but it’s a close second.

Grade: C

Crimson Tide: We move from battles in the sky to battles under the water. Hackman and Denzel are really fun to watch (“I’m the commander of this ship!”), and there’s a good sense of claustrophobia on the submarine. The military protocol broken is laughable, and the movie’s denouement is ridiculous, but it’s entertaining if you can look past those things.

Grade: B

Enemy of the State: Scott utilizes Hackman again for good results; this time his partner is another young black actor, Will Smith. Smith is just a normal dude who accidentally gets his hand on evidence of a political crime, putting his life and his family’s life in danger. Hackman, who knows a lot of inside info, begrudgingly helps Smith avoid being taken. Sometimes funny, sometimes suspenseful, but never quite as engaging as it could be. Still, it has a fun ending and the performances are solid.

Grade: B+

Other Tony Scott Moves You May Have Seen

Man On Fire
Deja Vu
True Romance
Unstoppable
Days of Thunder
The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3
Spy Game
The Fan

Movies

David Mamet

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Mamet is primarily a prolific screenwriter who has written for many movies he didn’t direct, such as The Edge, Glengarry Glen Ross (which won a Pulitzer), The Untouchables, and Wag the Dog. As a director, his movies are less well-known. I think it’s fair to say his directing ability is limited, but it seems like he does what he knows the best he can. Many of his movies, unfortunately, start to feel the same. He uses many of the same cast repeatedly (Joe Montegna, William H. Macy, his two wives, his half-brother) and his movies often feel like stage-plays on screen when he’s directing them. No doubt part of that reason is that his scripts are dialogue-heavy and there is significant focus on the lines and the actor’s faces. That’s not to say that other directors always improve upon his scripts, but I get the feeling Mamet is not very comfortable with music and spectacle, at least from a cinematic standpoint.

That said his dialogue is always fun. Mamet-Speak involves characters using well-enunciated and emphasized dialogue to manipulate one another, while frequently interrupting. I imagine it’s a blast for actors.

Spartan: The plot of Spartan reads like a Robert Ludlum novel. A U.S. secret agent (Val Kilmer) is assigned to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a government official, but lo and behold, not everyone wants him to succeed in his task. The least memorable of the Mamet movies I’ve seen. Kilmer doesn’t help things much, but the script left me cold. A suspense thriller isn’t as thrilling when one doesn’t care about the characters, and there was no one to root for (or against) here.

Grade: C

Homicide: A policeman is assigned to a murder case not even the FBI can crack but is redirected to another murder case of a Jewish lady. Not surprisingly a Jewish hate group is behind both murders. The plot is not memorable, but the performance of Joe Mantegna most certainly is. The sets are also chilling and the movie is well shot. I probably don’t see myself watching it again, but if you like Mantegna, it’s worth a once-over.

Grade: B-

House of Games: A psychiatrist (with not even the lightest grasp of professional boundaries) agrees to help a patient get out of gambling debt. She succeeds by excelling at a poker game with the people who want to destroy her patient. She then gets recruited for assignments where she utilizes her “skill” to earn more money for the boss, as well as his love, she hopes. The plot is ridiculous, but it’s cleverly written and has some classic Mamet speeches. Mantegna is superb here as well, and Mamet gets a decent performance out of his wife, Lindsay Crouse, who has done made-for-TV movies almost exclusively.

Grade: B-

State and Main: The only comedy on this list, David Mamet ventures into black humor and screwball hijinx with this romp about a big-budget movie crew out of a place in a small New England town. The director (William H. Macy) is a smooth talker who can get his actors to agree to anything, the screenwriter breaks his moral code to get things done, and the actors are pretty much all high maintenance. While the movie is a bit meandering, it has some true laugh-out-loud moments and a lot of grin-worthy ones, with some solid bit parts by Alec Baldwin, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Matt Malloy. My favorite part is Macy constantly placating his disgruntled crew by offering them executive producer credits!

Grade: B

The Spanish Prisoner: The plot is mostly irrelevant here. All you need to know is this movie is one elaborate, twisting, confidence game with so many plot twists it’ll make your head spin. Mamet does an excellent job at making it all believable. Even better, he gets an exceptional performance out of Steve Martin, making me wish he’d stop doing comedies forever. Ben Gazzara and Campbell Scott are also good. His wife is just kind of there, but she doesn’t ruin any scenes she’s in.

Grade: A-

Other David Mamet Movies You May Have Seen

Things Change
Oleanna
The Winslow Boy
Heist

Movies

Movies: Director Series

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I use the amazing site Criticker to rank the movies I’ve seen. While the site doesn’t contain near the gluttony of information that IMDb does, it has a fantastic algorithm predicting what movies I’ll like and it’s almost always right. Anyway, I was looking for some patterns among my scores based on who was involved with the films. I quickly noticed that actors has virtually no predictive power. Take Meryl Streep, for example. She’s superb in nearly everything she’s in, but she’s been in several great and several awful movies. Nearly every actor you could find the same thing. This makes sense on a basic level as well. If Baby Geniuses 6 (yes, there’s five of those freaking movies, and Jon Voight is set to be in the fifth)  starred Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, and the ghost of Alec Guinness, it would still tank unless it had the best marketing campaign ever. And even then it would still be awful.

I thought perhaps the screenwriter would have fairly predictive power, but looking through my list that doesn’t appear to be the case either. For example, Luc Besson wrote the screenplay to Taken, a compact, smart action movie with some excellent lines. But he also wrote the script to Taken 2, which has eye-gouging dialogue and a meandering plot. Did he get lazy? Was his script butchered? I don’t know. But I do know that the sequel had a different director.

And when I sorted my rankings by director, I noticed more parallels than with any other category. Of course, some good directors have some bizarre flops and some mediocre directors have a shining star in their catalogue, but for the most part the rankings were consistent.

Now, I’m barely more qualified to critique directors than I am music (I’ve seen fewer than 1,000 movies), but I so enjoyed this exercise that I decided to do daily reviews of the movies of various directors where I’ve seen at least three of their movies. I won’t use my Criticker ratings, as those have more meaning to me than anyone else. So I’ll use a simple A-F grading system, going from worst to best movie.

I hope you enjoy this exercise as well, and I invite anyone to recommend additional movies by (or tell me to run away from) the upcoming directors. This week’s schedule:

Monday: David Mamet
Tuesday: Tony Scott
Wednesday: Tom Shadyac
Thursday: Barry Levinson
Friday: Rob Reiner

Writing

Snared Condor

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Anyone who knows me probably knows what this is about. I was in a pretty dark place.

When I look into your eyes I see;
Me.

You look away.

Dammit. I’m lost. Where are you?
You’re saying something. I nod. Doesn’t matter.
You’re not looking, anyway.

This table. This chasm.
Who? What destroyed this bridge?
What bridge?
This table is brick.

You glance. You drug. More bricks.
Bricks don’t move.
And you sure as hell won’t climb over.

My fingers. Sweet condor.
Your face looks perfect.
These talons. Dig. Dig. Dig.
Your face still looks perfect. Dammit.

Why are you staring at me?
Dammit.

“I love you,” I respond.

“I love you, too.”

I hate myself.

When I look into your eyes I see;
Who am I kidding?

I can’t see a goddamn thing.