The Incredibles - Brad Bird (2004, in theatre)
This is an astoundingly good movie. Story good enough for live-action. Some of Pixar's most impressive graphics yet - unbelievable rendering of hair, cloth, skin, and water (though they miss the mark with some of the fire effects). More high energy nonstop action than any three James Bond flicks. Hundreds of standard (and not-so-standard) comic-book and action hero tropes incorporated, half of them somehow made fresh. Dozens of moments from other action movies stolen yet made new and better. This immediately leaps over Spider-Man and X-Men to become my favorite superhero movie, and it's contending for a slot in my top three movies of all time. Catch it on the big screen - I'm likely going to see it again myself.
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (1219) | link me | November 2004

The Sum of All Fears - Phil Alden Robinson (2002, DVD)
When I saw, not long after 9/11, that this was being filmed, I feared the worst. I was half avoiding seeing it. I thought the book was pretty good apart from the end, and was sure that the movie was going to carry a very heavy-handed war-on-terrorism, America-rules message. The filmmakers in some ways took the high road, choosing to replace the Middle Eastern terrorists with European terrorists, for example. A side effect is that the endgame is a confrontation between the US and Russia, substantially more exciting and higher-stakes than the book version, and actually making better use of the Jack Ryan character (who has gone from being played by a 32-going-on-40-year-old Alec Baldwin in the cold-war era Hunt For Red October, to a 30-going-on-25-year-old Ben Affleck in a post-Clinton setting; Harrison Ford, older than either of the other two, played Ryan in the other two movies, one of which is I believe a prequel to Red October). The strategic decisions for the story restructuring actually make really good sense, but the implementation is hurried and cartoonish, and the pacing is awkward. Finally, the handling of the massively-lethal terrorist attack is problematic; admittedly there's no good way to treat such a thing that doesn't either exploit 9/11 or ignore it, but in avoiding tasteless exploitation, the filmmakers wind up avoiding most of the emotional impact of what should be a hugely powerful scene. Military geek notes: Casting Russia as the opponent allows an opportunity to steal part of a battle scene from Clancy's Red Storm Rising, but it's packed into about 30 seconds and glosses over most of the details (which is all that RSR consists of, really), so it's somewhat disappointing. They got the aircraft and missiles right, though.
| Comments (5) | TrackBack (463) | link me | February 2003

Die Hard - John McTiernan (1988, DVD)
Just a really solid action movie. Bruce Willis is extremely likeable in his breakthrough role as NYPD cop John McClane in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the action starts, Willis shows us some fear and uncertainty, giving way to pain and exhaustion later; it's hard to see how a typical Schwarzenegger/Eastwood/Stallone character would fit into it (apparently the script started out as a sequel to Schwarzenegger's Commando!). I haven't seen the two sequels....
| Comments (9) | TrackBack (60) | link me | October 2002

Queen of the Damned - Michael Rymer (2002, DVD)
Wow, this one is stinky. What meriko claims is actually a pretty good book is stripped to a core that gives us no sense of character motivation at all; at that point, many movies can get by with great special effects and action sequences, but the special effects here are pretty marginal, and the action not that interesting. Blech.
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (145) | link me | September 2002

Yojimbo - Akira Kurosawa (aka Yojimbo: The Bodyguard) (1961, DVD)
I've been wanting to watch the classic Kurosawa movies for a while and we finally managed to do it. The movie is both inspired by and gave inspiration in turn to the classic Westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, which I haven't yet seen, is a direct remake). Strange cultural notes abound: from the opening theme music which blends traditional Japanese koto and early-60s jazz to the half-deserted town with its wide dirt street, lacking only a hitching post, a horse trough, and some new building façades to pass for Tombstone, Arizona. It was very odd to see the set pieces of a Western transformed one-for-one into Japanese parallels, with the katana filling in for the six-shooter and sake for whiskey. Toshiro Mifune's Man With No Name is a treat to watch, blending tough guy and crafty trickster in equal measure.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (107) | link me | September 2002

In The Line Of Fire - Wolfgang Petersen (1993, DVD)
I'm not the world's biggest Clint Eastwood fan. So-so story with Eastwood as an aging secret service agent trying to protect the president from John Malkovich as a delightfully obsessive assassin. Does it seem at all likely to you that a female secret service agent would find an old misogynist prick attractive? Me either.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (110) | link me | May 2002

(La Femme) Nikita - Luc Besson (1990, DVD)
Ah, what can you say about Nikita. Besides watching our shiny new DVD of it, we've seen it almost twice more recently at The Foreign Cinema, a local fancyish restaurant that shows foreign films in a little courtyard.

Nikita may be the perfect date movie: violent and romantic by turns, sometimes even within a single scene. The characters are written with more depth than you normally find in an action movie: Anne Parillaud's Nikita is a complex woman, almost schizoid in her fragility and savagery. Tchéky Karyo as her intelligence-agency mentor is truly a manipulative bastard, yet he holds a reserve of warmth and a soft spot for Nikita. Jean-Hugues Anglade plays Nikita's boyfriend, apparently a charming clown, but deeper and more perceptive than he first appears.

The subtitling on the DVD is different from that on the VHS copies I've seen; slight changes of verbage that subtly change meanings, mostly ("he says he has the same problem" vs. "he says he should have such problems"), but also some just-plain-wrong numerical translations ("aisle huit" becomes "row 8" on the VHS subtitles, but "row 7" on the DVD — what's up with that?). Since part of the justification for buying the DVD was for language practice, I'm a little disturbed by this, but maybe part of the challenge will be in eventually surpassing the subtitler's grasp of the language.
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (197) | link me | February 2002

Collateral Damage - Andrew Davis (2002, in theatre)
meriko can tell you all about this one; I didn't see it.
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (139) | link me | February 2002

Near Dark - Kathryn Bigelow (1987, DVD)
A sort of cheesy 80s Romeo-and-Juliet vampire flick. Painful to watch. Notable for reuniting actors Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, and Bill Paxton a year after the far better Aliens.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (204) | link me | November 2001

Tomb Raider - Simon West (2001, DVD)
Fortunately, we weren't expecting much more than a dumb action flick. Low expectations make a lot of movies more palatable. Save it for a sick day.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (85) | link me | November 2001

The Castle of Cagliostro - Hayao Miyazaki (Lupin Sansei: Cagliostro no Shiro) (1979, DVD)
I'd seen most of this old classic anime in fourth-generation VHS, in Japanese with no subtitles, and I'd forgotten how good this is. While the Lupin III manga by Monkey Punch tend to be pretty racy, almost to the point of obscenity (even by my standards), Miyazaki's screenplay is more charming and romantic, as well as being really funny. Usually I'm the one to laugh aloud when we're watching movies, and I compulsively check on meriko to see if she's fallen asleep or thinks the movie is incredibly stupid when I don't hear from her, but this time she was giggling at the sight gags, so I knew she was enjoying the flick. The last act relies a little too heavily on machine-gun fire in lieu of plot, as does Miyazaki's Nausicaa, but other than that it's really good, and surprisingly sophisticated for an animated film that's old enough to buy booze.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (29) | link me | June 2001

Goldfinger - Guy Hamilton (1964, DVD)
It's Bond, what is there to say?
| Comments (1) | TrackBack (91) | link me | June 2001

Never Say Never Again - Irvin Kershner (1983, DVD)
It's Bond, what is there to say?
| Comments (2) | TrackBack (254) | link me | June 2001

The Siege - Edward Zwick (1998, DVD)
Reviewing this over a year after having watched it, it seems prescient: terrorist attacks in New York lead to declaration of martial law and detainment of people of Arabic descent. (Excuse my frothing liberalism: In the real world, of course, our civil liberties are more slowly being curtailed so we don't put up such a fuss, and merely arresting a general won't put a stop to it.) Some good performances, particularly Tony Shalhoub, but it just gets a little too ridiculous towards the end.
| Comments (14) | TrackBack (73) | link me | June 2001

Charlie's Angels - McG (aka Joseph McGinty Nichol) (2000, DVD)
We went into this one hoping for little more than cute chicks jumping around. We did indeed get cute chicks jumping around, but actually it was quite a bit better than we expected. Good mindless entertainment, and actually pretty clever in spots. Some of the fight scenes (particularly the first fight against "thin creepy guy" Crispin Glover) were right up there with anything in Crouching Tiger.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (251) | link me | March 2001

Gone In Sixty Seconds - Dominic Sena (2000, DVD)
I woke up on Monday 2/26 with an awful flu. First thing I did when I woke up was run to the bathroom to throw up, and I basically didn't want to be more than 45 seconds from a toilet all day. meriko's a smart cookie; she knows that what the sickie needs is bland food, fluids, and a STUPID STUPID MOVIE to keep my mind off the aching and queasiness. This was the stupid stupid movie, and it was absolutely perfect for a miserable flu. It wasn't even bad — just so straightforward and predictable that it took about three brain cells to follow and if you dozed off, you wouldn't miss anything important. Here, let me show you how predictable the movie is: the basic idea is that Nick Cage's gang has to steal fifty cars in 72 hours, right? So five minutes before the deadline, how many of the fifty cars have they managed to steal? Yup, forty-nine cars. Anyway, if you need a no-brainer movie to kill a couple of painful hours, I highly recommend renting it.
| Comments (4) | TrackBack (81) | link me | March 2001

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Ang Lee (Wo Hu Cang Long) (2000, in theatre)
We kicked off an accidental weekend full of Chinese-themed action movies with Crouching Tiger. Very good flick. My expectations were pretty high from a few word-of-mouth recommendations, but it just about lived up to them; it might be a tiny bit overrated but that doesn't mean it's not well worth seeing. Beautiful action sequences, particularly the first fight between Michelle Yeoh and the thief.
| Comments (5) | TrackBack (201) | link me | January 2001

The Art of War - Christian Duguay (2000, DVD)
Cliché ridden action flick. I give it some points for style, but otherwise I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a big Wesley Snipes fan. It probably was pretty racist regarding China (the Evil Empire of the New Millenium) but, frankly, I wasn't paying enough attention to the plot to really care.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (243) | link me | January 2001

Spawn - Mark A. Z. Dippé (1997, DVD)
This was the live-action one. I have to give it thumbs down overall. Particularly lame story that seemed like it had suffered too many rewrites: One cute kid to give the antihero an excuse to show his compassionate side isn't enough; better make it two kids and a scrappy little dog! And no science fiction movie of the 1990s is really complete without a genetically engineered supervirus! I thought the visual effects were cool, especially Spawn's suit, but meriko correctly points out that there were bad matte jobs and other poor integrations between the special effects and the live action. If you need to watch a live action adaptation of a successful comic book, try X-Men, which failed to suck.
| Comments (0) | TrackBack (199) | link me | January 2001

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai - Jim Jarmusch (1999, DVD)
Forest Whitaker as a mafia hit man who tries to follow Bushido, the code of the Samurai. Didn't really come together for me — it felt clunky rather than poetic.
| Comments (25) | TrackBack (83) | link me | December 2000

The Cell - Tarsem Singh (2000, DVD)
We were warned. What could actually have been a workable premise (Silence of the Lambs crossed with Dreamscape) completely fails on all fronts except those involving visual style. There's some amazing set and costume design (though the rapid cuts in the dream sequences make it hard to take in the details), and I personally found the "Visible Horse" scene to be worth the rental all by itself, but other than that, well, bleah. Maybe you could watch it for the visuals with the sound off and the fast-forward and freeze-frame handy?
| Comments (2) | TrackBack (99) | link me | December 2000