Ten Statements About....POINT BREAK (1991)

"I know what you're thinking...in about a decade, some guy
named Diesel and another guy named Walker will have
the same confrontation back in LA."

"It’s not tragic if you die doing what you love."

1) Why do people get the idea that Keanu Reeves should play former quarterbacks?  The man’s Canadian; he played hockey, not football.  There are other sports he can be retired from.  Stop it.

2) You can easily see why Kathryn Bigelow was attracted to this script.  The movie is chock-a-block with surfing, skydiving and other activities that freely allows her to indulge in her perchance for painterly images.  Which is fortunate....

3) ...because seen without the sheen of early 90‘s nostalgia, this script by Rick King and W. Peter Iliff is rock stupid.  Shorn of its visual style, the story hits every cliche, the dialogue is exposition-tastic and the characterization struggles to be two-dimensional.  It’s always one step away from being a laughably bad movie.

4) If you want to see how handheld cameras can be used effectively for an exciting, clearly shot action scene, take a look at Bigelow’s shooting of the footchase between Patrick Swayze’s Reagan-masked Bodhi and Reeves’ Johnny Utah.  This is how you do it, Paul Greengrass.

"So, umm, in a second I should shoot away from my
suspect...right?  RIGHT?"

5) I do find it intriguing how the film sets up Bodhi and Gary Busey’s Angelo as two extremes of father figures for Johnny--and yet the expected roles of who Good Dad and Bad Dad is are inverted.  It does help that Reeves exhibits chemistry with both Swayze and Busey.

6) I am not surprised that Lori Petty is cast as romantic lead Taylor; she certainly has the same angular looks as previous Bigelow female leads as Jenny Wright and Jamie Lee Curtis.  She still provides a rather interesting contrast to Reeves as far as her acting style.  Her rather brassy presentation (which ironically makes her come off more ‘city boy’ than the laid back Reeves) stands out against all the characters around her.

7) Boy, has John C. McGinley’s Harp stepped straight out of Cliche Casting.  The script doesn’t even bother giving Harp a second emotion; he’s just Antagonistic Superior Guy whose purpose is to yell at and belittle Johnny.  Even in the first act where McGinley acts as Exposition Drop Machine, he seems ready to start spraying spittle at a moment’s notice.

"huh...that don't look like a hockey helmet."

8) I defy anyone to explain what the sky diving scene at the beginning of Act Three is doing where it is.  The one narrative beat that’s essential to the plot is handled at the end of the sequence that could be presented sans several minutes of elevated atmosphere porn.

9)  Boy, does The Fast and The Furious need to send this movie a present every Father’s Day....right down to the bad guy being allowed to do the thing he loves by our hero instead of being dragged in cuffs back to face the music.

10) You know, Anthony Kiedis may not have much to do in this film, but as an actor he makes....well, a pretty decent musician,  Maybe he should ask Flea for some acting advice.

Overall...a cliched, stupid action movie elevated (highly elevated) by the keen visual style of Bigelow.  If you can turn off your brain and ignore all the narrative silliness, you can enjoy this immensely.

Ten Statements About....BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)

"What the?  He got a cool jacket!  Why
can't I have a cool jacket?"

"Mr. Taylor, Mr. Brent, we are a peaceful people. We don't kill our enemies. We get our enemies to kill each other."

1) sigh...Another example of a sequel that was made without understanding why the original kicked so much ass. This film takes a similar tack the original does, but without the subtlety, grace or wit of that original...resulting in a mess.

2) One of the major reasons why this simply doesn't work is because James Franciscus' Brent has no personality, no character arc, no purpose in the film other than to stumble from one set-piece to another with Nova in tow until he finds Taylor. Once Brent finds Taylor, Heston takes over by dint of charisma only long enough to get his ass shot.

3) Wow...there's a character in this movie actually called Negro, and called so unironically. It's still a shock when you realize how far perceptions have come.

4) I do appreciate how Maurice Evans continues to keep Dr. Zaius true to his conception in the original film. His motivations are still thoroughly understandable if not exactly virtuous, and there are moments where he is honestly in the right. It's a rare moment of grace from the previous film....

I find it amusing that The Forbidden Zone...is my hometown..

5) That is drowned in acid by the one-sided villainy of General Ursus, who is the engine that so hamfistedly drives the film's Vietnam metaphor. Granted, James Gregory is wonderfully vigorous in playing the General, but the character is so unbalancing it's not even funny.

6) It also doesn't help that the mutants, well, are dicks. I know that Paul Dehn's screenplay must've been in love with the idea of them being the sort of 'Military Industrial Complex' side of Ape World, but they're just so loathsome in the way they'd rather torture Brent than learn about his culture.

7) You know, for all the awfulness of this movie, that one sequence with Brent and Nova walking their way around the Matte Paintings Of New York is really cool. The fact that these sequences are done with the alternating blasts of total silence and noise make them a fascinating tableau.

"I want you to go in there...and OVERACT as if your SAG
Card depended on it!"

8) That 'ping' noise we get before the mutants deign to talk normally reaaaaally gets on my nerves.

9) So, ummmm, apparently the mutants are masters of vulcanizing rubber...I mean, what was the whole point of hiding their multi-colored veiny-faces when they usually don't see anyone besides other vieny-faces? And they're not as scary as I remembered them being back in the days.

10) I wonder if the film would have been affected at all if the script just forewent that lil' sidetrip to visit Zira and Cornelius entirely. It's not like anything gets advanced save for a couple of laugh lines..

Overall...this is one of the first films I saw as a child--my parents took me to see it at the old Sunrise Drive-In during its first run--and man, does this suffer. This film's heavy-handedness and clumsy script writing obliterates the entertainment factor of what is, at its core, two groups of pricks taking aim at our astronauts (oh, and Nova The Dopey-Faced Tribal Gal)

Ten Statements About....FROM PARIS WITH LOVE (2010)

"That's right...I got a wacky goatee...I got a big gun...life is good."

"If you wanna be a secret agent man, you have to roll like a secret agent man. It's code"

"Code?"

"Yeah. Code. Wax is on, he's gonna take you off. Gives them something to think about, throws them off balance. Got it?"

　1) Even more so than Unknown (see this previous post), this movie is designed to take advantage of the success of Taken. The film's structure is frighteningly similar, right down to one set piece involving the sudden shooting of a woman during dinner. However...

2) Even though the aping of Taken includes the fifteen minutes or so of us getting familiar with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' Reese, you never get the impression these characters exist in anywhere other than movie world. The only moments that indicate that these characters have a life outside of the ninety minutes of the film are those designed to set up a sequel.

3) Boy, give John Travolta a distinctive hairstyle and he'll eat up not only all the scenery in the movie, but part of your home....

"Oh, Sweet Caroleen...Caroline...oh, whatever."

4) This script is so shoddy that I did not realize that Caroline (which the characters in the film keep calling 'Caroleen') was a) a fashion designer or b) Pakistani until late in the third act. Both of these points are extremely important to the film's plot, and should be established far, far earlier...although it does make the nonsensical scene where she shows off a dress made out of their bedroom curtains a little less silly.

5) There's something risible about Reese's character arc--so the only way he can become a hero is to be an overacting, loudmouthed, over-ammo'd jerk like Travolta's Charlie Wax?

6) All the points in the script meant to give a little life to Charlie Wax just don't work. The shoutback to Pulp Fiction is particularly winge-worthy, given how the film pretty much stops dead so the jokey lines can play out. But the gags about The Karate Kid and the propensity for action films to use heavy metal also fall flat.

7) Even though there is supposed to be a face to the villains here, they're totally one dimensional, just straw men for Wax to shoot down, blow up and otherwise mutilate. Even when one of the villains mumbles stuff about having a purpose and a destiny, there's no emotional resonance because there's no weight to the character as established.

8) So you Chinese restaurant guys hide cocaine in the ceiling of your restaurant why, exactly?

Theirs is a proper love...

9) I kept thinking throughout this that if someone decided to do a reboot of the Matt Helm films, but tried to make them spoofy like the original movies...well, the modern Matt Helm wouldn't be too far afield from Charlie.

10) Considering that so much of this film resolves conflict by having Charlie shoot a procession of larger and larger guns--leading up to the third act set piece of Travolta chasing a faceless terrorist with a rocket launcher--there's no reason to spend so much time establishing Reese's intelligence or cunning.

In short--a shabby let down of a follow-up to Taken, too in love with its explosions and in-jokes to realize that the reason Taken worked was because you believed in the characters.

Ten Statements About....FAST FIVE (2011)

"Hey!  The audience is getting bored--let's jump out of this car!"

"This just went from Mission: Impossible to Mission: In-freaking-sanity"

1) Even though this is undisputably a Fast and Furious film, it's nice to see that the caper flick has survived beyond last year's glut. Hell, there's a decided whiff of The Italian Job at points. That being said....

2) Chris Morgan's script tries so hard to make sure every one of the film's massive cast of characters a story arc that the movie ends up at times with a sense of diffuseness. In particular, the second act feels like so much running around trying to convince us meaningful things are going on.

"Okay..here's the plan...I act all bad-ass...and
you, you distract Diesel with your tiny ta-tas."

3) Elsa Pataky's Elena is arguably the most ill-served by this desire to give everyone something uniquely theirs to do. The script sets up an interesting back story for her, gives her some motivations...and then she does nothing much save give Diesel's Dom someone to look at meaningfully. The resulting romance just doesn't have the right feel to it..

4) I don't buy where Dwayne Johnson's Hobbs ends up in his story arc. Considering how much time is spent convincing us that he is truly hardcore ("Real Old Testament," if I recall Paul Walker's Brian saying)...then has him stepping back and pretty much letting our heroes get away because they helped him avenge his team.

5) Jordana Brewster's Mia's main story arc effectively takes away the one thing that makes her uniquely suited for this franchise--namely, that she is overpoweringly sexy when driving a fast car. Sitting at a computer screen and giving instructions over a headset...not so much at all.

6) You gotta give this movie credit for playing thoroughly fair with the big twist of its climatic heist. They lay out the clues, but manage to misdirect us with key lines of dialogue.

7) You know, given how easily Brian and Dominic escape from Joaquim de Almieda's Reyes in the first act, and how they manage to elude him and overcome the obstacles he puts in front of him with inpunity...well, he's a pretty crap bad guy. And no amount of him telling stories about how the Portuguese conquered Brazil will convince us he has more than one dimension.

"What...you can't judge me...you did The Tooth Fairy, damnit!"

8) But then...these movies aren't about vivid bad guys. They're about big-ass stunts, and the film manages to give us something exploding, flipping over or flying into the river every ten minutes or so. And on that level, it is a success.

9) I sincerely doubt the physics that allows our heroes to use precision driving moves to manipulate a ten-ton safe as if it was a mace...and the damage to property, vehicles and--yes--life reaches Bad Boys level of ludicrousness. But it did look cool.

10) I am so happy that this film doesn't forget anyone who was anyone who appeared in the series to date--as the final stinger after the cast credits attest.

Overall...taken for what it is, it works. As a movie, it's a little too convoluted in its desire to make sure everyone gets a chapter in this film's book.

Since I was treating my mom for Mother's Day, we headed out to MovieWorld in Douglaston, to my knowledge one of the very, very, very few independent movie theaters left in NYC--this place still practices a $6.50 matinee on Sunday before 5p.m. Yeah, the place still has a cheesy 'trapped in the 80's' feel to it, but the sheer friendliness of the staff makes up for it. The trailers included The Hangover II, which seems to want to make me not want to see this movie every time I see it; Transformers III: Dark of The Moon, that made my eyes glass over with boredom...and ones for X-Men: First Class, which emphasizes the relationship between Xavier and Magneto and makes the film look even better (and Hell, as a Banshee fan, I marked out seeing him flying across The Bay of Pigs) and Cowboys And Aliens, which reveals more of the plot and is getting me all the more jazzed for this.

Ten Statements About....THE EXPENDABLES (2010)

This version of The Village People may need work...

1) Make no bones about it--this is a very stupid, aggressively loud movie with a strong melodramatic vein running right through it. But Stallone doesn't pretend to have higher pretensions, and while he never goes so far as to wink at the camera, he never makes apologies for it. It tells you what it does, does it, and then thanks you for allowing it to do it.

2) That being said....there's a strange resonance between this film and his last Rambo picture. Once again, Stallone's character thinks himself past his prime but goes into battle to rescue a woman who impressed him with her actions.

3) Eric Roberts gives a clinic on how to play a rogue CIA agent--his James Monroe is what Jason Patric's Max dreams of being in The Losers.

My new hero....

4) I wish I had named a character Hale Ceasar before that sobriquet was placed on Terry Crews' character.

5) The script knows damn well what we're here for, and makes sure that every one of the action stars in the film (save for Mickey Rourke, who's here mainly to be a tattooing Yoda, Bruce Willis and the thoroughly gratutious Arnold Schwarzeneggar, who's there only so Stallone can make a joke about him wanting to be President) gets at least one fight scene to shine in. Even villainous characters like Steve Austen gets a scene where he dominates over one of the other main characters.

 6) There's a definite sense of passing the torch between Stallone and Jason Statham, who no one should ever, ever, ever mess with.

And you're in this movie why, exactly?

7) About Statham--he has a sub-plot involving a girlfriend (played by a barely-there Charisma Carpenter) that really adds nothing. He's pretty much the only character where we get a glimpse into his private life, but what we get is certainly a let down.

8) The CGI blood and fire just doesn't work. It looks fake, and draws attention to the fakeness of the choreography. The sameness to the splatter patterns is very, very noticeable. Hell--it totally blunts the denouement of the fight scene between Randy Couture and Steve Austin....and speaking of which....

9) I do like how Stallone knows there are certain match-ups we just have to see, like Couture vs. Austin, and gives them to us gleefully.

10) Jet Li may secretly be harboring a talent for being a comedian...because his justification for why he needs a larger cut of the take is hilarious. Plus, he thoroughly kicks Dolph Lungren's ass in what is a highlight of the film.

In short--it does what it says on the tin, and does so well. The trailers were a mish-mosh of action stuff, with the oddest being the ones for Buried, which does in a few seconds what The Last Exorcist trailer fails to do in several minutes, and The Green Hornet, which fails precisely because Seth Rogan is incapable of delivering a line without sounding like he's in a comedy. I know he's honestly excited to be in this movie, but every time in the trailer he opens his mouth the mood the trailer is trying to convey dies.