I thought this movie was going to be something like "Injured former high school football star gets depressed with his unglamorous adulthood, finds fulfillment in assistant coaching high school football kids." Like the story of Jason Street in Friday Night Lights. But instead the quarterback goes back in time to high school! It's like Peggy Sue Got Married!!
Ah, reliving high school from an adult's perspective: there's nothing better. If only I could go back knowing what I know today...
Sadly, there is no Nicholas Cage in this one. But the main guy does okay and the girl is much cuter than Kathleen Turner. The starring actor looks no where near high school age, he looks like a 30 year old Rob Lowe. The other football players all look pretty old as well. (I mean for high schoolers.) Kurt Russell also looks a bit weird when he's supposed to be elderly.
The music is a little amateur-sounding, like a TV movie, but the dialogue is well done. Actually a lot of this is like a tv movie, I bet it's rated G or PG. No, no Varsity Blues strippers. Though it's a nice change to not need to empathize with Kathleen Turner having sex with every hipster smoker she sees.
Anyway, this movie is 20 times more fun than I was expecting. 9/10.
One last thing. 16 years ago, in high school, I was pushed by a kid playing football, fell on my hand, and I broke my pinky finger. If I time-warped back to that day I would definitely not break my finger again. Even if somehow the broken finger hooked me up with the girl I wanted to date (which it did not), my first instinct would be to try to find a way to get the girl without breaking any fingers. Surely voluntarily injuring myself is not required. (I'd figure something out, if I had the inside info. I can be sneaky.) The Star Trek episode "Tapestry" is much better in justifying why Picard voluntarily repeats history. With this movie, it seemed like the main character repeats history just because he's a little bit stupid.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Monday, April 29, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
Film: Disney's Robin Hood
I think I gave this movie to my sister for my nieces to see. But now I'm not sure if that was a good idea. This movie is so much more bleak that I remember. It's really kinda bipolar. First it's merry and care-free, then a zanny archery contest and battle, and then it gets depressingly bleak. Everyone is starving and poor, and it's raining, and then poor Friar Tuck gets arrested!
Friar Tuck is a badger. I think. I wonder if he ever gets told "Quit badgering me!" I'd have said that all the time if I was a kid in that church. At least he's a sincere priest and not sneaky or evil. Those are pretty rare in film.
This movie isn't the masterpiece I remember. The atmosphere is great in some scenes but the wackyness of other scenes ruined it a bit. Still okay. How often do you see a chained mouse beg for a crumb of bread, and then shared his crumb with the rest of his chained up family? This should be PG-13.
Alan-A-Dale: Oh, incidentally, I'm Alan-A-Dale, a minstrel. That's an old time folk singer. My job is to tell it like it is, or was, or whatever.
Friar Tuck is a badger. I think. I wonder if he ever gets told "Quit badgering me!" I'd have said that all the time if I was a kid in that church. At least he's a sincere priest and not sneaky or evil. Those are pretty rare in film.
This movie isn't the masterpiece I remember. The atmosphere is great in some scenes but the wackyness of other scenes ruined it a bit. Still okay. How often do you see a chained mouse beg for a crumb of bread, and then shared his crumb with the rest of his chained up family? This should be PG-13.
Alan-A-Dale: Oh, incidentally, I'm Alan-A-Dale, a minstrel. That's an old time folk singer. My job is to tell it like it is, or was, or whatever.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Film: Grosse Pointe Blank
I didn't much like this movie when it came out, but I think it's growing on me now. I tend to not like movies where the characters run through dangerous situations while ignoring the danger. John Cusack shoots people while arguing on the phone with his assistant, and then again exhanges gunfire while talking about his romatic feelings for a girl. I'm going to acknowledge that this annoys me, and then set that aside and continue the review. We'll be adults here.
Alan Arkin plays a charming troubled therapist. I wish he had more screen time. His lines are like a Woody Allen movie.
The music is very, very 90s. It's quite noticable also, almost like they were trying to establish a particular time period with the music, as they do in the Wedding Singer or Hot Tub Time Machine. But actually I think it came out in 90s and they just picked all the pop hits of the day to put on the sound track. No other aspect of the movie requires the 90s. It's just an odd choice. The girls radio station didn't have to be the top singles of 1996, it could have been oldies or anything else.
Again, the girl and her radio station... I don't like Mini (or is it Minnie) Driver. I'm not sure I've ever liked her in a role. Her radio show sounds overly-personal. If she's going to vent over the air about your relationship with her, does the relationship really have any hope? He calls later: "That didn't go as I planned." Minnie: "Oh, it went just as I planned." She's not nice. She's not very pretty. There's really not much going for her except that she's the one who got away. She's got history on her side. But isn't part of going to a 10 year reunion, finding girls you used to like and realizing you aren't attracted to them now? People change. What was once a cute, carefree teenage is now a near-30 year old with kids, an ex-husband, and a job she hates. Or she's a soured radio DJ who obsesses about her prom and treats the radio like her personal blog.
There's some nice 80s music at the actual reunion. I appreciate the change.
How good a friend is Jeremy Priven? Hasn't seen his buddy for 10 years, comes to the reunion and helps him dispose of a body with hardly a question. No real sense of right and wrong in his head, just endless loyalty. Who has friends like that? All my friends can think for themselves, and I honestly hope they'd have a "call the cops" instinct if they caught me killing someone.
I'd forgotten that Minnie Driver breaks up with Martin Blanke after finding out that he's a hit man. Someone rational in this movie! He changes her mind by saving her dad. (Spoiler! Sorry.) I guess he's saved enough money to retire? Is that what he was saying during the gun fight? I can't remember now. But never mind the two dead CIA operatives, nobody will miss them.
Hitting someone over the head with an old television would burst the vacuum tube inside. Instead of there being electrical zapping noises you'd hear a quick sucking sound when the vacuum tube implodes.
Still not a very good movie. But watchable. I'd give it 6/10.
No good quotes here.
Alan Arkin plays a charming troubled therapist. I wish he had more screen time. His lines are like a Woody Allen movie.
The music is very, very 90s. It's quite noticable also, almost like they were trying to establish a particular time period with the music, as they do in the Wedding Singer or Hot Tub Time Machine. But actually I think it came out in 90s and they just picked all the pop hits of the day to put on the sound track. No other aspect of the movie requires the 90s. It's just an odd choice. The girls radio station didn't have to be the top singles of 1996, it could have been oldies or anything else.
Again, the girl and her radio station... I don't like Mini (or is it Minnie) Driver. I'm not sure I've ever liked her in a role. Her radio show sounds overly-personal. If she's going to vent over the air about your relationship with her, does the relationship really have any hope? He calls later: "That didn't go as I planned." Minnie: "Oh, it went just as I planned." She's not nice. She's not very pretty. There's really not much going for her except that she's the one who got away. She's got history on her side. But isn't part of going to a 10 year reunion, finding girls you used to like and realizing you aren't attracted to them now? People change. What was once a cute, carefree teenage is now a near-30 year old with kids, an ex-husband, and a job she hates. Or she's a soured radio DJ who obsesses about her prom and treats the radio like her personal blog.
There's some nice 80s music at the actual reunion. I appreciate the change.
How good a friend is Jeremy Priven? Hasn't seen his buddy for 10 years, comes to the reunion and helps him dispose of a body with hardly a question. No real sense of right and wrong in his head, just endless loyalty. Who has friends like that? All my friends can think for themselves, and I honestly hope they'd have a "call the cops" instinct if they caught me killing someone.
I'd forgotten that Minnie Driver breaks up with Martin Blanke after finding out that he's a hit man. Someone rational in this movie! He changes her mind by saving her dad. (Spoiler! Sorry.) I guess he's saved enough money to retire? Is that what he was saying during the gun fight? I can't remember now. But never mind the two dead CIA operatives, nobody will miss them.
Hitting someone over the head with an old television would burst the vacuum tube inside. Instead of there being electrical zapping noises you'd hear a quick sucking sound when the vacuum tube implodes.
Still not a very good movie. But watchable. I'd give it 6/10.
No good quotes here.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Film: Hook
I saw this movie in the theater for my friend's birthday. I remember it was either this or My Girl that we were gonna see and he took a vote. I've seen Hook quite a few times but still have never seen My Girl. At this point in my life it just doesn't sound worthwhile. Anyway, I'm going to be watching this and I'll write about things I notice when I look up from the work I'm doing.
What kind of creepy kid draws a picture of a crashing airplane while they're on the airplane. That's about as tasteful as plane crash jokes and bomb jokes. If I was sitting next to a 13 year old kid drawing a picture of the plane crashing I might get concerned. Maybe he's up to no good like the kid in the Omen? And then the "sweet" second child wants to rub the acrophobic dad's nose in the fact that he isn't depicted with a parachute. Coincidentally, I've never heard of any one parachuting from a crashing jet airplane, though I've often thought that was a good idea. (We'd all need ejection seats as well, and if someone ejected accidentally it would ruin the flight for the rest of us.) Also, that drawing looks like it was done by a preschooler and Jack is like 13 years old. I guess he isn't an artist. Maybe my older sister would have something knowledgeable to say about how the crude use of crayon and inaccurate depictions of everything in the drawing indicate that the child is very angry. Probably abused. Maybe he was so angry that he drew it while holding the crayon in his fist. I guess that makes more sense.
Okay, so Dad is on an important business call and the kids run into the room and climb on his back and start yelling. Wife is right there but doesn't really discourage them. Finally, dad, stressing about work problems, starts yelling at the kids to be quiet, which freaks everyone else out. The kids run out and his wife throws his cellphone out the window. (Maybe it's a satellite phone.) This doesn't add up. Is this the first phone call he's gotten at home? I guess so, considering that the kids don't know to be quiet or to at least not climb on daddy while he's talking business. And Jack gets genuinely frightened when Peter starts yelling. But if it's his first business call at home, his first time yelling at the kids, maybe throwing a cellphone out the window isn't justified. If he takes office calls at home all the time, and his wife is just fed up with him always putting work before family, why were the kids allowed to climb on him anyway? Why do both kids know his silly "my word is my bond" catchphrase if they're half-expecting him to schedule meetings over their baseball games and whatnot? This could have all been more clear.
Why did Tinker Bell deposit the sleeping Peter at the pirates' cove? Maybe that'll become clear later. Nope. Maybe so he could get the kids right away but then she's shushing him to try to keep him unseen. I guess maybe she had a plan to sneak the kids out.
The scene where Tinker Bell becomes human-sized is very odd. How did it happen? She explains it with "This is the only wish I've ever wished for myself." And then she just turns small again at the end of the scene. Are there no other fairies? Not in this movie for some reason.
The scheme to make Jack love Captain Hook is like something out of a cartoon television episode. Maybe something out of Duck Tales. Would that really work? How fast does Stockholm Syndrome kick in? Jack can forget that you were about to drown and within three days will be defending you? It's true that we primarily remember the best times of every bad relationship. This could be a traumatic experience for poor Jack.
It's curious that Peter eventually remembers being Peter Pan, but then has some kind of identity crisis where he devolves into a child and forgets that he has kids at all. "Peter Pan has kids?!?" Like Peter Pan and Peter Banning cannot co-exist in his personality. How long was he in Neverland as Peter Pan originally? Those could be a lot of memories to suddenly fit your head around. Somehow it all works out by the end of the movie and he pretty much adjusts, besides not remembering what a cellphone is, but I'm not sure how it happened.
Why is Smee a street cleaner at the end? They imply that maybe it was all a dream, like the Wizard of Oz, but then Uncle Toodles takes off flying in front of everyone.
This movie is a combination of wonderful evocative writing, taken almost directly from the book, and terrible, terrible writing to either make it more palatable to kids or show how hip the new lost boys have become. I guess they were trying to provide a more updated story but it's those very updated aspects that are clearly inferior. At least Captain Hook's writing is generally good. I enjoyed all his scenes.
Captain Hook: Who didn't believe I could do it? Who doubted me? Who amongst us does not belong? Someone here does not belong; a stranger amongst loyal, I'll weed you out!
Captain Hook: Prepare to die, Peter Pan! Peter: To die would be a grand adventure!
Captain Hook: Death is the only adventure you have left!
Captain Hook: Peter! Where are you going? Come back here and fight me! Or I'll find you wherever you are, you hear me? Bad form, Peter, come back!
Maggie: You need a mother very, very badly!
Rufio: Rufio! Rufio!
Peter: Oh, Rufio, why don't you just go suck on a dead dog's nose.
Captain Hook: You know you're not really Peter Pan, don't you? This is only a dream. When you wake up, you'll just be Peter Banning - a cold, selfish man who drinks too much, is obsessed with success, and runs and hides from his wife and children!
(I was thinking this at exactly the same time. This was a good bit of writing.)
What kind of creepy kid draws a picture of a crashing airplane while they're on the airplane. That's about as tasteful as plane crash jokes and bomb jokes. If I was sitting next to a 13 year old kid drawing a picture of the plane crashing I might get concerned. Maybe he's up to no good like the kid in the Omen? And then the "sweet" second child wants to rub the acrophobic dad's nose in the fact that he isn't depicted with a parachute. Coincidentally, I've never heard of any one parachuting from a crashing jet airplane, though I've often thought that was a good idea. (We'd all need ejection seats as well, and if someone ejected accidentally it would ruin the flight for the rest of us.) Also, that drawing looks like it was done by a preschooler and Jack is like 13 years old. I guess he isn't an artist. Maybe my older sister would have something knowledgeable to say about how the crude use of crayon and inaccurate depictions of everything in the drawing indicate that the child is very angry. Probably abused. Maybe he was so angry that he drew it while holding the crayon in his fist. I guess that makes more sense.
Okay, so Dad is on an important business call and the kids run into the room and climb on his back and start yelling. Wife is right there but doesn't really discourage them. Finally, dad, stressing about work problems, starts yelling at the kids to be quiet, which freaks everyone else out. The kids run out and his wife throws his cellphone out the window. (Maybe it's a satellite phone.) This doesn't add up. Is this the first phone call he's gotten at home? I guess so, considering that the kids don't know to be quiet or to at least not climb on daddy while he's talking business. And Jack gets genuinely frightened when Peter starts yelling. But if it's his first business call at home, his first time yelling at the kids, maybe throwing a cellphone out the window isn't justified. If he takes office calls at home all the time, and his wife is just fed up with him always putting work before family, why were the kids allowed to climb on him anyway? Why do both kids know his silly "my word is my bond" catchphrase if they're half-expecting him to schedule meetings over their baseball games and whatnot? This could have all been more clear.
Why did Tinker Bell deposit the sleeping Peter at the pirates' cove? Maybe that'll become clear later. Nope. Maybe so he could get the kids right away but then she's shushing him to try to keep him unseen. I guess maybe she had a plan to sneak the kids out.
The scene where Tinker Bell becomes human-sized is very odd. How did it happen? She explains it with "This is the only wish I've ever wished for myself." And then she just turns small again at the end of the scene. Are there no other fairies? Not in this movie for some reason.
The scheme to make Jack love Captain Hook is like something out of a cartoon television episode. Maybe something out of Duck Tales. Would that really work? How fast does Stockholm Syndrome kick in? Jack can forget that you were about to drown and within three days will be defending you? It's true that we primarily remember the best times of every bad relationship. This could be a traumatic experience for poor Jack.
It's curious that Peter eventually remembers being Peter Pan, but then has some kind of identity crisis where he devolves into a child and forgets that he has kids at all. "Peter Pan has kids?!?" Like Peter Pan and Peter Banning cannot co-exist in his personality. How long was he in Neverland as Peter Pan originally? Those could be a lot of memories to suddenly fit your head around. Somehow it all works out by the end of the movie and he pretty much adjusts, besides not remembering what a cellphone is, but I'm not sure how it happened.
Why is Smee a street cleaner at the end? They imply that maybe it was all a dream, like the Wizard of Oz, but then Uncle Toodles takes off flying in front of everyone.
This movie is a combination of wonderful evocative writing, taken almost directly from the book, and terrible, terrible writing to either make it more palatable to kids or show how hip the new lost boys have become. I guess they were trying to provide a more updated story but it's those very updated aspects that are clearly inferior. At least Captain Hook's writing is generally good. I enjoyed all his scenes.
Captain Hook: Who didn't believe I could do it? Who doubted me? Who amongst us does not belong? Someone here does not belong; a stranger amongst loyal, I'll weed you out!
Captain Hook: Prepare to die, Peter Pan! Peter: To die would be a grand adventure!
Captain Hook: Death is the only adventure you have left!
Captain Hook: Peter! Where are you going? Come back here and fight me! Or I'll find you wherever you are, you hear me? Bad form, Peter, come back!
Maggie: You need a mother very, very badly!
Rufio: Rufio! Rufio!
Peter: Oh, Rufio, why don't you just go suck on a dead dog's nose.
Captain Hook: You know you're not really Peter Pan, don't you? This is only a dream. When you wake up, you'll just be Peter Banning - a cold, selfish man who drinks too much, is obsessed with success, and runs and hides from his wife and children!
(I was thinking this at exactly the same time. This was a good bit of writing.)
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Film: Something's Gotta Give
I think I saw it when it first came out but I don't remember much of it. This was back in the good old days of AOL instant messenger. I think this movie and You've Got Mail are the two movies where the characters instant message each other to move the plot.
It's a romance movie so the predictability runs at like 110%. Somehow that genre gets away with it.
Unexpected elements: It's a romance between seniorish citizens, and so we get a bunch of senior citizen nudity and a senior citizen sex scene that's a little cringey. Dianne Keaton spends a good 10 minutes wailing hysterically in front of her computer. Is it supposed to be funny? It has that Seinfeld-esqe element where the character is in distress but the audience isn't set up to empathize. Maybe there's Charlie Chaplin music playing to keep the mood light. And I wonder if it's a little bit sexist to show that the woman goes crazy while the man is more carefree about their odd relationship.
The movie has a lot of witty dialogue, which you don't expect from a romance movie for some reason. Dianne Keaton plays an ultra successful broadway playwrite with a super nice beach house, but she just steals dialogue from her personal life! Shakespeare did the same thing in Shakespeare in Love. Maybe that's the secret to writing good dialogue: steal it. I'll have to think about that. I do have some clever friends I could leech off.
I did like how Keanu Reeve's plays the "other guy" who gets rejected (whoops, that was a spoiler! Sorry.) and ends up presumably unhappy, while being shown as a perfectly nice guy. Most ex-boyfriends in movies are jerks who cheat on their girlfriends or bully other people, just so that you don't feel bad for them when the girl is stolen away. But in this movie you do feel a little bad for Keanu Reeves. On the other hand he's a male doctor, and I think they tend to get a lot of women. I'm sure he'll be fine.
Doctor: Do you realize that a severe anxiety attack can masquerade as a heart attack?
Harry: So I'm nuts! Perfect. The one thing I'm not taking pills for.
(Having had my own anxiety attack recently, this is totally true.)
It's a romance movie so the predictability runs at like 110%. Somehow that genre gets away with it.
Unexpected elements: It's a romance between seniorish citizens, and so we get a bunch of senior citizen nudity and a senior citizen sex scene that's a little cringey. Dianne Keaton spends a good 10 minutes wailing hysterically in front of her computer. Is it supposed to be funny? It has that Seinfeld-esqe element where the character is in distress but the audience isn't set up to empathize. Maybe there's Charlie Chaplin music playing to keep the mood light. And I wonder if it's a little bit sexist to show that the woman goes crazy while the man is more carefree about their odd relationship.
The movie has a lot of witty dialogue, which you don't expect from a romance movie for some reason. Dianne Keaton plays an ultra successful broadway playwrite with a super nice beach house, but she just steals dialogue from her personal life! Shakespeare did the same thing in Shakespeare in Love. Maybe that's the secret to writing good dialogue: steal it. I'll have to think about that. I do have some clever friends I could leech off.
I did like how Keanu Reeve's plays the "other guy" who gets rejected (whoops, that was a spoiler! Sorry.) and ends up presumably unhappy, while being shown as a perfectly nice guy. Most ex-boyfriends in movies are jerks who cheat on their girlfriends or bully other people, just so that you don't feel bad for them when the girl is stolen away. But in this movie you do feel a little bad for Keanu Reeves. On the other hand he's a male doctor, and I think they tend to get a lot of women. I'm sure he'll be fine.
Doctor: Do you realize that a severe anxiety attack can masquerade as a heart attack?
Harry: So I'm nuts! Perfect. The one thing I'm not taking pills for.
(Having had my own anxiety attack recently, this is totally true.)
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