I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve watched the whole TOP GUN since the ’80s. But I wasn’t too surprised to watch it and see the primordial matter that eventually crawled out and grew into the works of Michael Bay. It’s a mix of gorgeous sunsets, heat trails, fetishized military hardware, bosses played by grizzled character actors (Michael Ironside, Tom Skerritt, the principal guy from BACK TO THE FUTURE), sweaty foreheads, sunglasses, electric guitars, crisp uniforms, the glorification of glistening bodies (in this case mostly male, and good at volleyball), and profoundly unprofessional hot shot yahoos who are supposed to represent the best of the American best.
One difference: less spectacle. This is an impressively small story. For all its bluster this isn’t RED DAWN positing a communist invasion of America. This is about a guy involved in two small international incidents, basically just encounters between jets from opposing armies (nationality unspecified, but you fuckin know it’s Ivan Drago under that helmet). And though it has a reputation as a Navy recruiting film, since it famously worked as one, it’s not politically propagandistic. There’s nothing to make these “Bogies” evil. They’re just part of a system, people doing their job. They see American fighters where they’re not supposed to be, so they try to scare them off. The reverse of what happened in the opening. (read the rest of this shit…)
After their disagreement over DOMINO, my eyeballs and Tony Scott’s movies weren’t speaking to each other for years. But UNSTOPPABLE was okay and then the poor guy died and my eyeballs started to feel kinda bad and got nostalgic for all the good times of TRUE ROMANCE and CRIMSON TIDE and all that, and they finally saw REVENGE and they liked that quite a bit. You know, maybe if they had known what was coming they could’ve patched things up like N.W.A. did when Eazy E was dying. But that just wasn’t the way it worked out. It’s too bad.
Anyway I got caught in the middle of that beef and that’s why I skipped PELHAM 123 until now. Plus I really like the original and thought (well, knew) it could only suffer from updating. (read the rest of this shit…)
What more high pressure situation could there be than two men in a submarine arguing over whether or not to launch a nuclear missile? I guess the only thing that would make it more tense would be if they also had to get home in time for a kid’s birthday party. Luckily the birthday party happened at the beginning of the movie, right before they were deployed to take part in “the worst standoff since the Cuban Missile Crisis.” (read the rest of this shit…)
In Seattle we have this big music and arts festival every Labor Day weekend called Bumbershoot. This year I was waiting in line for one of the bands that was gonna play when a guy near me was looking at his phone, he says, “Eddie Murphy died!” I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like he was talking to somebody that was with him, then I realized he was by himself, just sharing this shocking news with the crowd. It used to be you go to an all day event like this and you’re off in a separate world, you don’t know until you get home that something blew up or somebody got killed or something. Now everybody knows, word spreads. (read the rest of this shit…)
REVENGE is a 1990 film directed by the late Tony Scott. REVENGE is called REVENGE because it’s based on a novella called Revenge (by Jim Harrison) and because both are partly about revenge. But don’t let the stripped down title lead you to expect a pure revenge tale. Or at least not one that’s in a hurry to get to the revenge part. (read the rest of this shit…)
TRUE ROMANCE is an entertaining, uniquely textured crime movie, a celebration of youthful love, kitsch, Asian exploitation cinema, and great character actors. At the time it seemed like a new feel, especially coming from Tony Scott. Now it’s more notable as a record of young, undisciplined Quentin Tarantino manning the word processor. (Roger Avary was hired to restructure the original non-linear story and write an ending where the hero doesn’t die – yeah, that sounds like young QT all right.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Well, I’m sure we’ve all heard the shitty news by now. (I heard it here first, from Fred.) Director Tony Scott took his own life today.
I’m afraid I’ve written some not-nice things about Mr. Scott’s movies during my time here. DOMINO was one of my most hot-headed reviews ever, and after that I sort of used him as a symbol of directors who get carried away with the show-offy editing and lose all sense of filmatism. I don’t fool myself that Mr. Scott ever read that review or knew who I was, so I got nothing to feel guilty about there. But I just want to say that I certainly never meant anything against the man personally and I’m sorry that whatever he was going through pushed him to do what he did. Obviously a talented man who we all thought would be around longer and get more chances to win us back.
After the one-two Avid fart punch of MAN ON FIRE and DOMINO, I swore off Tony Scott for life. Or, it turns out, for five years. Those two movies sounded up my alley but they were brutally murdered by Scott’s reckless disregard for visual storytelling. I just couldn’t trust him anymore, even if the movie sounded good, which his last couple have not, even if everybody said he calmed down a little.
Now, through the combined magic of blu-ray technology, boredom and Christian forgiveness, I have given Tony Scott another shot with the Denzel Washington-Chris Pine-speeding train motion picture UNSTOPPABLE. The bad news: I didn’t like the movie enough to justify ending my boycott. The good news: at least he’s curbed his instincts to mark his territory by stylistically peeing all over every frame of film. (read the rest of this shit…)
I probaly never woulda known this if there wasn’t a movie, but it turns out Laurence Harvey, who is a guy in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (but not Frank Sinatra), had a daughter named Domino. But wait, there’s more. This daughter supposedly tried to follow in the footsteps of her super model mother, but then got bored and became a bounty hunter. Rich girl model becomes bounty hunter – sounds like a good story, and apparently director Tony Scott was friends with Domino and spent 12 years trying to bring “her story” to the screen. Tragically, she died of a drug overdose last summer having only seen parts of the unfinished movie. I just watched the whole god damn thing so believe me, I can relate. (read the rest of this shit…)
So let’s say instead of being John McClane or somebody, Bruce was Joe Hallenbeck, a washed up, slightly overweight, cigarette loving, booze-sucking, wife-and-daughter-arguing, disgraced secret service agent turned low-life asshole private detective. Also, for the sake of argument, let’s say that Damon Wayans is Hallenbeck’s one-time favorite football player but his career was ruined in a gambling scandal and now he’s a drug addict dating a stripper (Academy Award winner Halle Berry, in a step up from her role as a crack ho in JUNGLE FEVER) who Hallenbeck was hired to protect by his former friend who he just found out was screwing his wife then saw get blown up by a car bomb and now Halle Berry has been murdered because she knew too much about a football team owner trying to blackmail a senator that Hallenbeck used to protect but punched out because he was torturing women and now they’re trying to legalize gambling. Also I forgot to mention that Hallenbeck once saved the president’s life, and some dudes are gonna set off a bomb at the football game, and there was this fucked up part at the beginning where an NFL player pulled out a gun on the field and started shooting everybody then said “Ain’t life a bitch?” (to be or not to be, that is the question) and blew his brains out. (read the rest of this shit…)
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
Skani on Barton Fink: “That’s a great drawing, A.L.F.!” Sep 18, 18:15
A.L.F. on Barton Fink: “Also, I almost got through an entire post without a single HTML error. There was supposed to be a parenthetical…” Sep 18, 16:17
A.L.F. on Barton Fink: “Though overposting sux, I would like to thank you all for allowing me the grace of cultural criticism, in that…” Sep 18, 16:15
Muh on Malignant: “Going to watch this tonight, finally got some time to sit and watch a flick. This one looks pretty good,…” Sep 18, 15:44
VERN on Malignant: “Some of the same people saying that of MIDSOMMAR would say that of HALLOWEEN and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE,…” Sep 18, 14:06
Mr. Majestyk on Malignant: “See, this is why I hate fucking “elevated horror.” Because it has made people think that’s all horror is: 70…” Sep 18, 11:45
KayKay on Malignant: “Not the biggest fan of the Horror Genre, with even it’s most vaunted entries to me amounting to 70 minutes…” Sep 18, 08:18
Stuart Little on Malignant: “Bill Reed- Yeah, Gabriel should be called to testify in that trial.” Sep 17, 18:48
Stuart Little on Malignant: “Loved It, Loved It, Loved It. SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER If they do a sequel, maybe explore the hospital more, because…” Sep 17, 18:47
VERN on The Card Counter: “jojo – SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER I guess I felt bad for Tiffany Haddish (or her hand double) when I realized…” Sep 17, 16:43
A.L.F. on Barton Fink: “When I was fifteen, this was my favorite movie of all time. My tastes have changed greatly, but I still…” Sep 17, 14:58
jojo on The Card Counter: “Oh, two other things: I’m finding it crazy that Paul Schrader is hip again at 80-years-old. The 25-year-old hip kids…” Sep 17, 13:58
jojo on The Card Counter: “Couple things: I don’t really give a shit if some of it is wrong (as I read some claim) If…” Sep 17, 13:47
Broddie on The Card Counter: “Tye Sheridan finally impressed me with his work in this movie. For the longest time I thought he was some…” Sep 17, 11:14
Mr. Majestyk on The Card Counter: “Any game where you can get banned for playing it too well isn’t a game: it’s a scam. They’re not…” Sep 17, 08:57
VERN’S “I RECOMMEND THE SHIT OUT OF THIS PRODUCT” CORNER:
I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve watched the whole TOP GUN since the ’80s. But I wasn’t too surprised to watch it and see the primordial matter that eventually crawled out and grew into the works of Michael Bay. It’s a mix of gorgeous sunsets, heat trails, fetishized military hardware, bosses played by grizzled character actors (Michael Ironside, Tom Skerritt, the principal guy from BACK TO THE FUTURE), sweaty foreheads, sunglasses, electric guitars, crisp uniforms, the glorification of glistening bodies (in this case mostly male, and good at volleyball), and profoundly unprofessional hot shot yahoos who are supposed to represent the best of the American best.
After the one-two Avid fart punch of 
I probaly never woulda known this if there wasn’t a movie, but it turns out Laurence Harvey, who is a guy in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (but not Frank Sinatra), had a daughter named Domino. But wait, there’s more. This daughter supposedly tried to follow in the footsteps of her super model mother, but then got bored and became a bounty hunter. Rich girl model becomes bounty hunter – sounds like a good story, and apparently director Tony Scott was friends with Domino and spent 12 years trying to bring “her story” to the screen. Tragically, she died of a drug overdose last summer having only seen parts of the unfinished movie. I just watched the whole god damn thing so believe me, I can relate. 
starring Bruce Willis 
