Movie to See #1: Hopscotch
Filmed in the 80's during the cold war, this film is
certainly becoming more and more dated as time goes
by. That being said, however, this is a very light-hearted cat and
mouse style movie. Not surprisingly, the big bad beaurocrat
is the butt of all the jokes, and the one man he is trying to force into
retirement from the CIA is somehow smarter than
evryone else in the film and is able to sidestep every attempt to
capture him with alarming ease. This is not the Jason Bourne CIA; this
is the Keystone Cops with suits and revolvers... yea, revolvers. You
won't see any satellite imagery, highly trained assassins,
high speed car chases through inexplicably populated European cities
that don't have any cops, or techno-gadgetry that would
make James Bond petition M for a new Q. It's just Walter Matthau, a
typewriter, a few well placed phone calls, and a bag of
secret identities that the CIA can't seem to track until the trail has
gone ice cold. Frankly, in this movie's version of the
CIA, the United States should have been overthrown by a covert movement
lead by six monkeys, three hippie minders,
and a magic 8-ball. Given the current state of our government
and the constant bumblings of the 'brightest' minds in politics who are
unable to even fathom the concept of compromise...
maybe the magic 8-ball is already in charge.
But I digress... This is a fun movie. Dated, but worth your time if you like Matthau and can suspend disbelief
for 90 minutes.
Let's sum up this movie: "Hooray, we're vampires and we've taken over the world! Now what?" I think of this movie
as starting at the point where Blade (or a similar themed vampire
hunter movie) leaves off if the hero loses. After all, what do
you do once you've drained all of the resources necessary to keep you
alive, right? This is a very good 'night after' type of movie
where the evil overlord (or car manufacturer, or oil company, or insert
whatever poisonous vipers you can think of that care less about
humanity than an incoming 'planet killer' meteor) gets to face the
reality of his success and try to figure out how to deal with the
fallout from having won at all costs.
While there are certainly some silly elements to the movie (Dafoe's character had
to have been dreamed up
as the result of a whiskey and/or drug induced stupor), ultimately it is
fairly thought provoking. The message about 'consequences'
goes beyond the blood suckers if you bother to look for it, and it feels
timely and relatively honest. I like that in a movie. How this
was ever classified as a horror movie is beyond me, however. This is an
action/drama(?) with a little more gore than most, but still
far less overall gore and violence than Rambo (2008).
Movie to Skip #1: Night Train
What do Leelee Sobieski, Steve Zahn and Danny Glover
have in common? That's right, the same thing that a med student,
salesman and train conductor have in common: they are all featured in
this bizarre little movie -- and that's about it. While the set
up is surprisingly decent in this movie (you'll just have to trust me on
that one), the movie just doesn't deliver. The characters
(and the actors) just don't gel very well, and the plot gets more open
ended and nonsensical as time goes by. The movie looks
good, but the story is not well written and it's really hard to get into
the characters. Steve Zahn in particular proves that he can't
play anyone other than Steve Zahn pretending (poorly) to be
someone else; and neither Steve Zahn, nor the person he is pretending
to be, have any good reason for being on the stupid train in the first
place. Glover does a good job, as does Sobieski, but only
Glover's character's reactions to the oddities surrounding this story
have any apparent depth or sense of genuineness. Sobieski is apparently
supposed to be there to be a catalyst for some kind of action by
the three main characters... and to strip down to her underwear at
the end of the movie... but we never know enough about her character to
see her as anything more than a simple plot device. That's
disappointing.
But what's even worse than the poor character
development is that the plot is pretty hard to follow. At no time do we
really know what's actually going on in the story. You can see
'surprises' coming from a mile away, but the reason those surprises
occur
is just completely unexplained. Think of it this way, if you were
watching Aliens, and in addition to a scared little girl,
Ripley also discovered a "woman" who was clearly a man in drag,
and three quarters of the way through the movie the "woman"
reveals herself to be a man (which inexplicably takes everyone by
surprise), but then gets eaten by an alien before any explanation
is given as to why this guy was hiding out in drag... well, then I think
you probably get the level of confusion that the 'surprises'
of this film have to offer. The plot twists don't really offer anything
more than another reason to furrow your brow.
This is kind of a dumb movie. I wanted it to be a 'fast paced thriller', but it was really more of a medium-paced
head soaking. You're probably better off skipping this one altogether.
Movie to Skip #2: A Dirty Shame
If you read the Netflix reviews, a LOT of folks blame
the poor quality of this film on the heavily censored 'network' version
of the film available for streaming. And while, generally, I think
'family friendly' censorship can take a lot of wind out of the sails
from otherwise decent films on the risque side, censorship is still a
pretty lame excuse for what is really just a
stupid movie. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I've always found that there is
truly no amount of foul language (however funny and inappropriate)
that can rescue a stupid plot any more than inserting copious amounts of
tits and ass can save a stupid movie (see Showgirls for
proof of that one). A lame movie is going to be a lame movie no matter
how much the director wants to shock me. I realize that the "shock"
is the point of this film, and that removing that element is kind of
like taking the xenomorphs out of Aliens. But I don't think
I would have bought into it even if the shock was still there.
I suppose my biggest reason for panning this film is
probably because I've never been a fan of Tracey Ullman. I don't
"get" her any more than I "get" the alleged comic genius of Andy
Kaufman. They both annoy me, albeit in different ways, which makes it
difficult for me to find redeeming qualities in their work. If you
don't feel similarly about Ullman, then maybe you'll feel differently
about this film. But trust me, if you feel the same way about her as I
do, then you will most definitely dislike this movie.
