Archive for the ‘Romance’ Category

Titanic

Monday, December 14th, 2009

tn_titanicHey, any of you guys ever seen TITANIC? It’s one of the later movies from the guy who did TERMINATOR. Bill Paxton stars as Brock Lovett, a deep sea explorer using THE ABYSS-style equipment to search the wreckage of the Titanic for a lost diamond. Along the way he meets Rose (Gloria Stuart), a 101 year old survivor of the famous shipwreck who teaches him valuable life lessons and what not. Also there are some flashbacks featuring Kate Winslet (HEAVENLY CREATURES ) as the younger Rose and Leonardo Dicaprio (THE QUICK AND THE DEAD), but don’t worry, he’s not supposed to be young Bill Paxton, he’s a different character.

Really, I’m surprised you guys haven’t heard of this. It was a pretty big deal at the time from what I remember. (more…)

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Posted in Reviews, Romance | 66 Comments »

Birth

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

Imagine you’re Nicole Kidman (well, a character played by Nicole Kidman) and your husband died ten years ago. (Not Tom Cruise or the country singer guy she’s with or whoever, I am talking about a fictional character played by Nicole Kidman). You’re still sort of getting over this but your boyfriend (the head vampire from 30 DAYS OF NIGHT [but not a vampire, just the same actor]) has proposed to you and you think you’re finally ready and you’re gonna make this work.

And then a 10 year old boy (the kid from X-Men 3 [playing a different character {I think I will stop mentioning what other movies they've been in}]) shows up at your apartment and tells you that he’s your dead husband Sean. Hopefully this hasn’t happened to most of you, so just try to imagine what it would be like.

At first you might laugh it off and not want to embarrass the poor kid, he may be emotionally fragile or something. But he keeps showing up and seems to know things. So you go to his parents to tell them to do something about it. And they yell at him but he refuses to say he’ll leave you (Nicole) alone. And then he faints.

So then you feel sorry for him again and invite him over so your family can quiz him and sort of prove to him that he’s not who he says he is. But he keeps passing all the tests.
I mean what the fuck are you gonna do? Is this an uncomfortable situation or what? Aren’t you gonna get creeped out? Not that you are gonna believe this kid is your dead husband reincarnated, but what would possess a kid to pull some shit like this? And how could he do such a good job? I mean jesus. The rational explanation is actually scarier than the supernatural one.

Shit, even if he thought he was your LIVING husband that would be creepy. Or if he thought he was your cousin Jeffrey. Or your former co-worker from when you drove a delivery truck. I don’t care who he thinks he is, a little boy following you around making spurious claims is fucked up. I’m against it. (more…)

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Rio Bravo

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

Recently a reader named David Lambert sent me a very accurate email:

“…I’ve loved your site for almost a decade now, but my one complaint is the almost complete lack of reviews for Westerns.

The Western is the most bad-ass genre out there and it’s a huge hole in your ‘reviewography.’

How can a guy calling himself ‘Outlaw’ Vern not represent the genre that the term ‘outlaw’ comes from?”

You got me, David. I knew he was right so I pledged to “at least review RIO BRAVO or something,” and he gave me a variety of other suggestions that could come in handy if I am to strive for this particular type of excellence.

You guys probaly all saw it already but just in case: RIO BRAVO is Howard Hawks’s 1959, 2 hour and 40 minute “last great western.” The opening 5 minutes or so is done with no dialogue, but with musical cues any time somebody gets punched or shot, so it kind of seems like a musical pantomime or something. It’s goofy but it’s a great opening because it establishes the basics about the three main characters. First you got Dean Martin as Dude, a pathetic unshaven drunk trying to get a drink at the saloon. Then you have Claude Akins as Joe Burdette, the asshole who throws a coin into the spittoon so that poor Dude will have to reach into a pound of spit if he wants his drink. And then John Wayne as Sheriff John T. Chance, who kicks over the spittoon before Dude reaches in, to save him some dignity.

The first shot of John Wayne is looking up at him from the ground, so even though this is a traditional western and not as gritty as the revisionist ones I prefer, you are definitely gonna get some badass in here. The spittoon incident turns into a fight. Chance gets in Burdette’s face, Dude hits Chance over the head with a board, Burdette is gonna shoot Dude, but some dude tries to calm him down so he shoots that guy instead. Then he goes to another bar. (more…)

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The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

The original THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR is not one of my favorite Steve McQueen pictures. It’s stylish and well-made, I can see the appeal of it. But first of all, as much fun as he may have had doing it, McQueen was not meant to play that kind of upper crust character. And secondly, as cool as you want him to be because he’s played by Steve McQueen, Thomas Crown is not a very cool character. He’s The Man. A rich guy who has other people do his work and then takes credit for it. Just because he picks up the money out of the garbage can after all the real work is done he gets to call it his Affair? There’s no justice in that movie.

John McTiernan’s loose remake takes care of those problems, while introducing other ones. While I’m much more fond of Steve McQueen, Pierce Brosnan is a way better choice to play this character. He’s smooth, he’s handsome, he looks kind of like Fred MacMurray but more girly, he has an accent. And there’s no way to imagine him working with his hands or having dirt on him or his hair unkempt. He IS Thomas Crown.

And in this version Crown is more than just the mastermind, he also does the stealing himself. In this one he’s an art thief, and the art he steals is his own, almost. He owns a museum, but his company has been forced into a merger. On the very day he signs the contract a team of European mercenaries busts in to steal Crown’s favorite Monet from the gallery. But we soon realize that the mercenaries have been anonymously hired by Crown himself. He doublecrosses them, gets the painting himself and leaves them to take the blame.

And then the story itself is like the original: Renee Russo is an insurance investigator who quickly figures out that Crown did it and tries to prove it. Meanwhile they are courting each other, toying with each other, possibly in love and not sure where their or each other’s loyalties lie. A cat and mouse game, if the cat and mouse were fucking each other in about ten different positions and pouring liquor on each other and shit. (more…)

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True Lies

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

In James Cameron’s idea of a romantic comedy Schwarzenegger plays Harry Tasker, an agent for the “Omega Sector” secret spy agency who protect America from terrorism and are led by Charlton Heston with an eyepatch. He has one eye on the enemy, the other eye on infinity. Or something. The opening shows that Harry is willing to blow shit up but is more of a suave James Bond type than the usual Schwarzenegger character. He gets his way through trickery, wears a tux and even does a tango with Tia Carrera. (Remember when she was supposed to be a big deal?) He just happens to be a muscleman under that tux but nobody seems to notice in the movie, it’s not really relevant to the character.

Harry spends alot of his time being followed in a van by his woman-hating loyal manservant Tom Arnold (before he sidekicked for Jet Li or Steven Seagal) and his GGWATBOADSINR (good guy who appears to be of Arab descent so it’s not racist) Academy Award nominee for GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK Grant Heslov. But when he’s not trying to stop terrorists from getting nuclear weapons he faces the much bigger problem of relating to his wife Helen (Jamie Lee “I cut off Michael Meyers’s head” Curtis) who thinks he’s a boring computer salesman.

That’s the comedic part of the movie is that it’s more about the wacky home life than the spy shit. Harry always blows it and gets home late for work when an extended action sequence comes up, so his wife and kid (Eliza Dushku) think he’s a dirtbag. But we know he’s really a charmer because of the way he always apologizes to everybody as he rides a horse through a crowded hotel chasing a dude on a motorcycle. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Romance, Thriller | 2 Comments »

Piranha Part Two: The Spawning

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

After watching the TERMINATOR movies for the first time in years I was so excited about James Cameron I decided I should go back and re-watch the Cameron movies I didn’t like, see if maybe my perspective has changed. Maybe there was some magic there I just wasn’t picking up on.

So of course I had to go back to the beginning, the smash debut, the one that started it all for director James Cameron. Orson Welles started out with CITIZEN KANE, James Cameron started out with PIRANHA PART TWO THE SPAWNING. What can you say, man, it was a different era.

It’s always mildly amusing to remind everybody that an oscar winning director started out making a b-movie sequel about flying killer fish, but honestly I’m just being a smartass, I actually think that’s cool. It’s something to be proud of, especially if you can later look back and see how that movie connects to their later ones, which is the case here. I saw this one a long time ago and I don’t remember thinking it was very interesting, but I changed my mind this time. In my opinion it’s actually kind of good. Seriously. No joke. The original PIRANHA is a little better because the premise lends itself better to the kind of dry humor that Joe Dante and John Sayles were going for than for actual drama. Early on there’s some painfully broad comedy and cheesy ’80s moments. There’s a stereotypical Jewish lady picking up a POLICE ACADEMY style nerd, there’s a “cool” ’80s girl rocking out on headphones, the precursor to Sarah Connor’s roommate in THE TERMINATOR. But it quickly settles in to a more serious James Camerony type of movie. Except with no money and it’s about flying super-piranhas.

Of course to guys like me James Cameron is important because of ALIENS and the TERMINATOR movies. And then it seemed like we lost him forever when he directed TITANIC and spent the next ten years pissing away his talents analyzing submarines and shipwrecks. But then I go back and watch this again and finally make the connection that he’s been obsessed with that deep sea shit since the first scene of his first movie. The best way to explain the marriage between James Cameron and PIRANHA is to say that P2 starts out with scuba divers going into a shipwreck to screw. Any director could figure out a way for a couple to screw in the woods or in a car or an evil hotel or an abandoned building or some haunted bushes, but only an elite few director/scuba divers would have an underwater sex/death scene. And James Cameron is the king of that world. (more…)

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The Science of Sleep

Monday, June 19th, 2006

Hey fellas,

I saw THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP which is the new Michel Gondry picture that comes out in September. It was the closing movie at the Seattle International Film Festival here. Michel Gondry was there to briefly introduce the movie, but didn’t do a question and answer session. Which is good because the first question probaly would’ve been, “what was that all about?”

Here’s the “where I’m coming from” paragraph, I’ll keep it brief. If you’re not into Michel Gondry then throw a grain of salt on this one, because I like every movie the guy has made. Yes, including HUMAN NATURE. I was the guy in the theater who was embarrassed because he couldn’t stop laughing and nobody else could start. To this day I think people didn’t give it a fair shake because they only had BEING JOHN MALKOVICH to compare it to. I honestly believe there will soon be a mass re-evaluation around the world where people decide they like HUMAN NATURE after all, now that they like Michel Gondry. If this does indeed happen then everybody has to buy me a Pepsi or something.

DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY is probaly my favorite movie so far this year so it’s impressive that Gondry has another one already done. And sure enough, it’s a good one.

SCIENCE OF SLEEP is sort of a surreal romantic comedy about Stphane (Gael Garca Bernal), a Gondry type who falls for his neighbor and tries to start a relationship with her. They have alot in common because they’re both very creative and goofy, but it’s awkward because he’s more of a weirdo than she is. Although he passes as a normal adult human with a boring job, he has some Pee Wee Herman in him. He keeps bringing her inventions such as a time machine that can go only one second into the future or past, or glasses that make reality 3-D, even though it already is. The movie depicts these devices as if they actually work so it’s sort of up to the audience whether to take it literally or not. (more…)

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Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews, Romance | 1 Comment »

Groundhog Day

Saturday, April 15th, 2006

Last week I reviewed this movie THE ICE HARVEST which I thought was only okay. And I think I blamed director Harold Ramis, who I accused of mediocrity. Then the other day, through coincidence or karma or something, I ended up watching GROUNDHOG DAY, which is the Bill Murray movie Ramis directed back in 1993.

I’d seen this movie before but I actually forgot how good it was, so I gotta give Mr. Ramis credit. I give credit where credit is due, and credit is due right here. Harold, here is your credit. Take it.

I’m sure you’ve seen this one before but if not here’s the deal. Bill Murray is a bitter, cynical weather man who has to go to Punxatawney to cover the Groundhog Day ceremony where they pull the groundhog out of a tree stump and pretend to ask him if he saw his shadow or not. Bill clearly hates this shit so he gets it over with and tries to get the hell out, but a blizzard (which he had predicted would not happen) strands him at a bed and breakfast.

The next morning he wakes up at 6 am hearing the same broadcast he heard the morning before, and thinks the radio station fucked up and played the wrong tape. But he looks out the window and there’s no snow, and people on the streets are headed for the Groundhog Day ceremony again. And he goes downstairs and starts to have the same encounters with various locals that he already had the day before.

And the rest of the movie is about the increasing frustration, mischief and eventual enlightenment caused by his having to live the same Punxatawney Groundhog Day over and over again (we don’t know how long it lasts but it’s definitely a long time – according to the DVD extras the writer originally envisioned it as thousands of years). (more…)

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The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Saturday, February 25th, 2006

This movie stars Steve McQueen as a bank robber, which automatically makes it worth seeing. And this is a good movie. But to be honest it doesn’t live up to its reputation or its potential. I know that Steve McQueen, like me, was someone who often could be spotted out and about striving for excellence. So I don’t think he would have a problem with me holding him to a high standard of achievement.

The first thing you’ll notice about the movie is that it’s very stylish. The opening and various other scenes use split-screen up the wazoo, splitting the screen into something like six different little boxes to show the different people intersecting for a heist. The cinematographer is Haskell Wexler (see TELL THEM WHO YOU ARE above for more on him) so despite all the showoffery in the editing alot of the footage is very handheld, documentary looking, like you’re there. Alot of the scenes are just dialogue-free footage of Steve McQueen as Thomas Crown fucking around. For example he flies in a glider or drives around really fast in a dune buggy. The dune buggy footage is pretty spectular, it seems like he’s about to flip over at any moment and you can’t help but notice he’s got no roll bars above his head.

After the opening heist, the rest of the movie is about a hot insurance investigator (Faye Dunaway) tracking down the mastermind Thomas Crown and seducing him, toying with him, falling in love with him and finally realizing maybe she doesn’t want to bust him. It reminded me a little bit of OUT OF SIGHT and the whole romance between bank robber and federal marshall. (more…)

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Match Point

Wednesday, January 25th, 2006

MATCH POINT is the new Woody Allen picture. The title refers to tennis but to me it sounds like just some generic name of a place title like GOSFORD PARK or PACIFIC HEIGHTS or LAND OF THE DEAD. If it was up to me it would be called KEEP YOUR DICK IN YOUR PANTS. You know, like, “This winter, director Woody Allen invites you to… Keep Your Dick In Your Pants.”

This is the first Woody Allen movie in a long time that doesn’t seem exactly like every other Woody Allen movie. It takes place in London with a mostly british cast. Jonathan Rhys somebody (a guy from TITUS) plays a guy named Chris. He’s a former pro tennis player who’s kind of a cheapskate, always trying to bum shit off of people. So one day he’s taking advantage of a rich tennis student’s generosity when he falls for the guy’s sister (Emily Mortimer). And then as soon as that’s rolling he falls even harder for the guy’s fiancee (Scarlett Johansen [hubba hubba]). He wants Scarlett bad and tries to make a pass at her but it doesn’t work out. So what the hell, he marries Emily. He gets a good job out of it and her parents pay for him to have a nice apartment and shit. And she wants some babies, now.

So then he’s playing tennis with the brother-in-law and the brother-in-law lets it slip that he decided to break up with Scarlett. Ah, shit. Next thing you know Chris tracks her down and starts having an affair with her. The movie is kind of like FATAL ATTRACTION in reverse. The married guy is pretty much stalking her at first. She’s not crazy, except in the sense that she’s screwin this chump. She does have to spend alot of the movie yelling and upset, but you can’t blame her. She’s the victim in this not some psychotic bitch like you’d expect in one of these affair movies.

I got a special inside tip from my man Laremy, he told me a while back that this one was terrible. I usually agree with Laremy but not on this one. It took me a little bit to warm up to it because the lead character is such an unlikable prick. And it’s not AMERICAN PSYCHO or nothing, you’re not sure, maybe you really are supposed to identify with this guy. But there’s literally no reason to like him, and every reason to hate him. Jesus, even down to him playing tennis. Who the fuck plays tennis? Anyway he’s not an anti-hero. He’s not a maniac. He’s just a fuckin scumbag. (more…)

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