We all know that most action movies are pretty
ridiculous when it comes to the 'reality' of the hero's actions. The
hero is either insanely lucky, or else has limitless abilities and/or
knowledge that carry him through every impossible obstacle. Frantic
is not that kind of action movie. In this movie, Harrison Ford (who is
typically either insanely lucky or impossibly skilled) has lost
his wife in Paris and he can't find anyone to help him find her. The
police and the American Embassy are completely useless, and so this
doctor sets out, blindly, to try and locate her captors (all of which is
spurned by a mix-up with baggage at the airport). As an
English-only-speaking American in a foreign land, that's pretty tough.
He stumbles and fumbles about throughout the
film, and ultimately has to rely on people with far more experience and
local knowledge to help him through to the end. (Unlike a lot of
action movies, his bumbling only makes things worse for himself rather
than helping him find a lucky break.) It's an
interesting take on the typical action hero, and honestly a refreshing
change from Ford's typical roles.
The key to this movie really is Harrison Ford. His character is very vulnerable and human, despite the bravery of his actions,
and he makes the same kinds of mistakes that anyone would be
making if stuck in such a horrible situation. He's left with many MANY
difficult choices along the way: when to trust authorities, when to take
things into his own hands; when to push, when to give; and of course
the palpable sexual tension between Ford's character and his sexy French
guide through most of the movie, Emmanuelle Seigner. His character
feels very genuine, despite the madness of the world around him, and you
can't help but feel his frustration and vertigo along the way. A
solid thriller.
Movie to See #2: Red Doors
This is an interesting little independent drama. While
billed as a newly retired man's coping with the exposure to the manic lives of his three daughters (having spent very little time with
them growing up as a busy doctor), I frankly found 'dad' to be a fairly
minor character in the whole thing. Dad is an emotionally drained,
depressed, quiet, suicidal man who is struggling to find his center
now that the quiet life that he has lead is essentially over. While the
small snapshots of his life that we get are surprisingly amusing,
despite their incredibly dark nature, we actually spend very little time
with him on his journey -- although we do see that a journey is
actually taking place.
Truthfully, this is more about the lives of three very
different Chinese-American women as they try to overcome a difficult
(and unique) hurdle in each of their personal lives. This is,
essentially, a trio of love stories told in fragmented, but generally
interlocking,
vignettes. It's a touching movie, sometimes heartbreaking, but gives
great insight into the human experience.
I have to get this one off my chest from the very beginning: while I know that I was watching Ralph Finnes in this
movie, all I could SEE was Bradley Cooper. Maybe it was the hair? Maybe it's because I had just seen the A-Team. I don't know,
but it kind of tripped me out...which was kind of appropriate given the subject matter of the movie, I suppose.
This movie, which came out about the same time as Johnny Mnemonic, feels to me like Kathryn Bigelow's own (and better)
cyberpunk nod to William Gibson's Neuromancer. I guess when we're talking about the 2010 Best Director for The Hurt Locker, a
brilliant film, I shouldn't be surprised.
Despite technology running amok, there is still a very visceral feel to the movie that keeps things on a deeply
human level... something that Johnny Mnemonic can't claim. The
idea that people would pay for other people's memories and experiences
is just very... telling about our society. After all, isn't that
exactly what we're up to when we go to the movies? Borrowing other
peoples' imaginations and experiences for a short while? While Strange Days
takes that idea to its extreme, it is an interesting
commentary... although that commentary is certainly buried in the crime
thriller action (but perhaps in a very shallow grave). An
interesting movie that is well worth a watch.
I wanted to like this movie, but I just couldn't get
into it. This is a cold war "thriller" where an editor from the West
(Connery) is trying to make contact with a Russian who is ready and
willing to spill the beans about the Soviet Union's actual nuclear
capabilities (Pfeiffer). While this could have been an intense
spy thriller, it just seemed kind of flat. I didn't feel any real
tension, despite the ominous threat of the KGB swooping in to capture
Pfeiffer at any minute, and I didn't care about the May-September
"relationship" blossoming on the screen. The movie just moved too
slowly, and frankly, not enough really happened to keep my interest.
I thought Dracula 2000, while a typical slasher-style vampire movie, had an interesting take on the vampire mythology.
While it wasn't necessarily the first vampire story to have Judas
play the role of bloodsucker, the imagery and story telling tied in
very well to the biblical story, which was kind of interesting. Not a
great movie, but there was enough there to keep me thinking and
entertained.
Dracula II is the sequel... despite the fact that
none of the original actors return... and Dracula has already
been killed. So, this direct-to-video movie first has to give us a
whole new cast of actors, and then resurrect our vampire so that the
movie can begin in earnest. It's pretty tough to get into a movie that
spends half of the film trying to make the case for the second film's
existence. Throw in the fact that the morons decided to knock off the
eye candy (centerfold Brande Roderick) before things even get started,
and you really have to question what the geniuses who put this film
together were thinking. (Don't get me wrong, Diane Neal - best known as
A.D.A. Casey Novak from Law & Order: SVU - is no slouch, but why limit yourself to just one
scream queen for the bulk of the
movie when you could have had two insanely beautiful women running
around in sweat and blood soaked t-shirts? Am I right?!) I mean, duh,
they were thinking they could rely on Neal and Rutger Hauer to carry
this little bridge piece into a more interesting third movie in
Dracula III... but I mean, really? And that's not even mentioning that while I've always like Rutger Hauer - Bladerunner
is
one of my all-time favorite movies - he doesn't quite pull off the same
kind of menacing and internally troubled Dracula that Gerard Butler
does in the first movie.
In short, Wes Craven got a little greedy with this little franchise, and it all resulted in a pretty lame movie. While not the
worst vampire film I've ever sat through, no amount of money that they could throw at this one could make it anything more than a
mere transition flick. It just wasn't very good.
