Introduction
Today,
I'm going to offer some random impressions of movies I've seen over the last
year or so. My comments aren't meant to be comprehensive.
American Sniper
Fury, a WWII film starring Brad Pitt as a tank commander, was a
far superior movie, hands down. I saw it three times while suffering through AS
only once. Too bad Fury didn't get nominated for any of the Academy Awards,
though the acting alone (by Pitt and his tank mates) was amazing. Bradley
Cooper did a competent job in the lead role in AS, but couldn't hold a candle
to how the "furious" managed to engage its audience. While all
5 actors of the tank crew were impressive, I was especially moved by Logan Lerman's
performance.
Of course, the movie's "American Sniper" had a
counterpart among the Iraqi insurgents, whom he manages to kill. I have to
admit, though, that I felt a certain degree of respect for the Iraqi, who was
trying to protect his land from the outside invading force.
As usual, I am bothered by any use of the word
"American" to mean "United States of America." There is no
such country as "America," though I have suggested that we enact
legislation to change that. A better title might have been "SEAL
Sniper," though I remember a media outlet down South that had passed a
memo to its news team saying, Don't call our guys "snipers"
since that's a pejorative word best used against the enemy's solo marksmen -
call our guys "sharpshooters" instead.
Taken 3
I hope Liam Neeson gives up the action hero schtick - and the
sooner the better. As his character uses his martial arts skills, aided for our
benefit by fast-motion stutter camerawork, there are parts in the fight scenes
where we can see how hard it is for Neeson to even walk without stiffness. He
definitely showed his age in his footwork.
Then there's the scene in which Neeson, in a commandeered police
car, is being chased by the police on a busy expressway. There were numerous
crashes in which, easily, a dozen innocent motorists were killed - though (of
course) we didn't see the mangled bodies. I thought, "Why didn't the cops
break off the chase or Neeson surrender when this mayhem started?" Maybe
Hollywood, by means of this scene and its callous disregard for innocents, is
trying to sell us the oft-enforced theme of "the ends justify the
means" or, put another way, "we should ignore collateral
damage."
The scene in which Neeson gets the drop on the Russian mobster,
but misses while using an automatic weapon, is unbelievable. Especially since
he's supposed to be this highly trained CIA badass.
Dracula Untold (2014)
The story line of this movie doesn't follow the life of Vlad
Dracula as depicted in this marvelous book:
Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times by
Florescu and McNally (1989).
This book, since it was written by two scholars, I had feared
would be too dry (which it wasn't) to sustain my interest. And my
first reading was also a challenge since the book contained a lot of necessary
historical background, as convoluted as genealogies can sometimes
get. But I was so impressed with this book overall that I read it two more
times.
My conclusion? Dracula, Prince... should
be the source material for a truly gripping movie about the historical figure
of Vlad Dracula, since his real life story is far more astounding than as
depicted in Dracula Untold. Furthermore, the lead actor in
an updated version shouldn't be some hunk - though Luke Evans did a commendable
job in this 2014 film. The lead should be someone who looks as close as
possible to the portrait shown on the book's cover. Check out that cover - one
hard look at that is worth more than any thousand of my words.
I truly hope someone makes a movie based on this gripping
scholarly work. In fact, I'm amazed that no one has done so yet. My prediction?
If done well and if faithfully following the book, any resulting movie would
easily stand as a towering giant of this or any previous age.
Birdman
The acting by the entire cast was uniformly awesome, though I
especially enjoyed Emma Stone's turn as Michael Keaton's daughter. But I had a
problem with a supernatural element at the end of the movie, which showed Stone
looking out of a window. Her father, while she was briefly out of his hospital
room where he was recuperating, had jumped out of a window. When she saw the
empty room, she went to the window and looked down. Seeing nothing, she looked
up and smiled - at her father presumably flying though the audience didn't
actually see this.
The set-up for supernatural expectations came at the very
beginning of the film where we see Keaton in his underwear levitated a few feet
above the floor in a lotus position. So far, so interesting. But about midway
through the movie. There's a scene in which Keaton, fully dressed and in broad
daylight, leaps off the roof of a building and does some gliding before he
lands gracefully on the busy sidewalk below. Yet...none of the pedestrians
react to this. This inconsistency bothered me and ruined an otherwise fine
film.
Unbroken
Directed by Angelina Jolie, I saw only the trailer which was
enough dissuade me from seeing the whole film. There's a scene in a WWII
Japanese-run POW camp in which the hero is forced to take a punch to the face
from his fellow prisoners. The trailer leads us to believe that all these men,
maybe about 50, were to take turns delivering a blow under the watchful eye of
the prison commandant. Totally unbelievable - no man could live through that
ordeal, especially after having been starving on a life raft for 47 days.
Finding Vivian Maier
A brilliant documentary about a brilliant street photographer
who had died unrecognized for her vast body of work covering decades. Vivian is
such an endearing though unassuming character, I wondered how her genius
managed to shine though she had been poor her entire adult life.
Nightcrawler
Jake Gyllenhaal gives us a master's performance as the sociopath
in this tense drama in which he portrays a kind of "ambulance chaser"
who uses a police scanner to learn where accidents have occurred. Racing to the
scenes, he then videotapes the carnage and sells the footage to a local TV news
program. This film was well-written and beautifully shot and edited. I'd say,
one of the best films of the year.
Riz Ahmed does a notable turn as Gyllenhaal's
assistant.
Point and
Shoot
This is
basically a story about a pampered young American who takes a road trip by
himself, traveling mostly in the Middle East on a motorcycle. He eventually
ends up joining the rebels in Libya, to fight against Gaddafi. Or at least
that's what we're supposed to believe. Here's a brief blurb from Rotten
Tomatoes:
QUOTE [See Footnote 1]:
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 Tribeca Film
Festival, Point and Shoot chronicles the journey of Matthew VanDyke, a timid
27-year-old who leaves his home in Baltimore and sets off on a self-described
"crash course in manhood" through the Middle East. The film begins in
2007, when VanDyke, armed with a video camera, embarks on a 35,000-mile
motorcycle trip through Northern Africa and the Middle East. While traveling,
he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a Libyan hippie, and
when revolution breaks out in Libya, Matt joins his friend in the fight
against dictator Muammar Gaddafi. With a gun in one hand and a camera in the
other, Matt fights in - and films - the war until he is captured by Gaddafi
forces and held in solitary confinement for six months.
:UNQUOTE.
When viewing this movie, I smelled a rat. I asked the theater
manager, "Why are you showing what is obviously a CIA set piece?" The
audience is expected to believe VanDyke traveled - alone - through some very
dangerous territory. And yet he wasn't robbed or assaulted - "Hmmm...nice
motorcycle you've got there. Hand it over or we'll kick your ass."
In the footage, shot by VanDyke or by whomever he could
convince to hold his camera for him, we see him in a crisp, freshly-starched
military uniform - always, never a wrinkle. Even though he was
"fighting" in Libya (more likely, he was simply posturing for the
camera), his clothing wasn't stained with sweat - which one might expect in a
desert country like Libya. After a while, I got tired of seeing him mug before
the camera while preening himself. He's got to be the most narcissistic person
I've ever seen.
Then there was a highly suspect scene in which he's supposed to
shoot an enemy. He aimed his weapon and carefully squeezed off one shot at his
target, who was standing at a window in a nearby building. He missed - but I
was baffled as to why he didn't fire with his weapon on automatic.
Too much in this movie seemed contrived - or composed - for the
benefit of Americans who want to believe that some of their fellow citizens
were willing to be the boots on the ground that President Obama wouldn't
provide.
The
Signal (2008)
One of
the worst movies I've ever seen. And one of only two that I walked out on well
before it ended. It pretended to be a zombie flick, but it violated certain
rules. One of which: If you shoot a zombie in the head, that permanently stops
him in his tracks. However, in this movie, a shot to the head didn't stop these
zombies.
In its
defense, I'll say this movie sustained a nice tension and had a good
"look." But I couldn't tolerate more than 30 minutes of this gore
fest. The other 5 people in the audience walked out before I did, so I was the
last man standing so to speak. I only mention this movie as a prelude an even
worse movie - "Goodbye to Language" by Jean-Luc Godard.
Goodbye
to Language
This was
only 70 minutes long, but I walked out after seeing only 20 minutes or so. I
know, Godard is highly regarded as a long-established genius, per this quote:
QUOTE
[see Footnote 2]:
Recently turned 84, Jean-Luc Godard is the seminal figure of
modernist cinema, holding a position in film history roughly equivalent to that
of James Joyce in literature, Paul Cézanne in painting, and Charlie Parker in
jazz. As the early Godard champion and chronicler Richard Roud wrote, “There is
the cinema before Godard and the cinema after Godard.”
:UNQUOTE.
Genius or not, this movie was a steaming pile of horse manure
foisted on us by a filmmaker bent on taking a dump on his audience - and then
laughing at his coup. I'm not sure what Godard was thinking when he titled this
movie as he did. One might assume he was saying "Goodbye to written
language." But this movie seemed to be his way of saying "Goodbye to
the language of film itself." It was shot in 3D, but not to especially
notable effect. It had minimal dialogue, which included a stupid question:
"What's the difference between an idea and a metaphor?"
It also included a bit of gratuitous nudity and the occasional
use of blaring audio.
Maybe I was wrong to walk out - nobody else in the packed
theater did. But, as I had wanted to tell the theater manager (though I didn't
bother), "I'm like that little kid in the story about the Emperor's New
Clothes - I'm not afraid to yell out 'The emperor is naked.'"
Calvary
The believability of Calvary's story line was severely
compromised when the good-priest killer spoke of how he'd been molested as a
child, frequently and over a period of years. My question to this killer would
have been: "And your mother, who did your laundry, didn't notice your
bloody underwear or wonder why you acted so strangely after being raped by
this (now deceased) dead-priest?"
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Steven
Searle, just another member of
the
Virtual Samgha of the Lotus and
former
Candidate for USA President (in 2008 & 2012)
Contact me at bpa_cinc@yahoo.com
FOOT NOTES:
1) Per Martin Rubin at http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/godard
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