Jay V. Reviews

The Whole Nine Yards (2000)

spoof of film noir that's good noir at the same time...

[10/10 · 23 July 2002]

I'm a big fan of "hard boiled" crime movies like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, etc. (If Bogie's in it, it's going to be at least OK in my book. :) The Whole Nine Yards is a spoof of the genre. It's got mobsters involved in a convoluted plot to kill each other to walk away with a fortune, star-crossed lovers who really just want to be together and make it out of a bad situation alive. But everything is twisted around as if the script made a trip to the Twilight Zone first. The thing is... TW9Y is actually a pretty good, faithful to the genre film noir.

The main character (Matthew Perry) is a hapless *dentist* who's evil wife wants him dead. The fact that he's a dentist ends up making a difference, getting him out of an otherwise intractable situation. The femme fatale (Natasha Hentsridge) really isn't, though she looks that way. Jill (Amanda Peet) is a perky receptionist, who happens to have a "thing" for, of all things, contract killers. Bruce Willis is, as usual, excellent. Kevin Pollack's role as gang boss Janni Gogalac is just priceless. You can almost see him busting up in the scene when he gives his monologue to Perry's character with the nearly incomprehensible accent. "Wermin" indeed. I hope the cast really had a good time making this movie (since they didn't really make any money :).

Setting the movie in Montreal was brilliant, lending an interesting, a little bit exotic tinge to the whole thing that enhances the "slightly off" nature of the movie. Canada's close to the USA but as anyone who's been there can tell you, it's NOT the USA. On the DVD, the director notes that this was done for reasons of economy (Montreal is MUCH cheaper than Miami, which was the first choice) but ended up really affecting the entire film.

The Noise: Live in Fréjus (1982 Video)

great video of a great live band

[10/10 · 16 December 2001]

Crim is meant to be seen live. I really mean that. The music that in the studio sometimes sounds sterile *really* comes to life on the stage. Robert Fripp, who often looks stiff in pictures, actually has a hell of a lot of fun playing some of the most impossible guitar parts in the world. Bruford, Levin, and Belew are just great, too. If you're a Crim fan, it's a must see.

Pork Chop Hill (1959)

Gregory Peck, glorious black and white, and intense action--what more do you want?

[10/10 · 12 December 2001]

I think when movies like Saving Private Ryan or Platoon came out people thought that these represented "new" insights on the war movie. Unfortunately, I guess they'd never seen a number of classic old films, such as Hell Is For Heroes (Steve McQueen), Sahara (Humphrey Bogart), or, indeed, Pork Chop Hill, starring Gregory Peck.

I've seen Pork Chop Hill three or four times. It is, from what I understand, a historically accurate account of one of the last fifty years' most famous battles, based on the book by famous military historian Gen. S. L. A. "Slam" Marshall. The scene is at the end of the Korean War. Negotiations between the combatants have stalemated. LT1 Joe Clemons (played by Gregory Peck) is ordered to take Pork Chop Hill, a basically worthless piece of territory to demonstrate to the Chinese and North Koreans that resolve had not flagged. So a night attack is ordered. Fog of war messes the whole thing up repeatedly and Clemons is left holding the bag, with his company of men stuck in the assault without the backup they expected to happen. The story is very human, particularly the interaction between Clemons and his second in command, Ohashi. You see men determined to win even though they know they might die (and for what?), men on the verge of breaking only to be rallied or not, the utter confusion of battle. The movie's got a lot of then-unknowns, but later stars, e.g., George Peppard, Rip Torn, etc.

Pork Chop Hill (1959)

intense movie

[10/10 · 29 April 2001]

I love Gregory Peck and have seen many of his movies. He can't save a bad movie but he always adds a star in my book. Fortunately he does not need to save this one. I am also a fan of classic war movies (lately that's about all I've been watching as I slowly work my way through the local video store's collection). So I really liked this one.

The B&W filming was really gritty and captured the whole pointlessness of the battle that was Pork Chop Hill, right before the 1953 Armistice. We take it, the Chinese take it, we decide to take it back.... You really get a sense of the tactics employed by the troops on both sides and the tough job that is the infantryman's assaulting a hill, amid confusion, snafus, and the ever-present risk of death.

Too Late the Hero (1970)

A nice movie but needed some help in the tactics department

[9 April 2001]

I liked this movie, to a point. Michael Caine is an *excellent* actor of course, and the rest of the cast were good too. But the British are portrayed as utterly stupid, making mistakes nobody would ever do. In two of the battle scenes, the bulk of the men line up unarmed in a big row and stand around while the Japanese shoot at some men running across open terrain from the cover of bushes. A few men in weapon pits fire back with machineguns and mortars but by and large the rest of the men just stand there doing nothing while the two guys running in get blasted. Say nothing of the fact that they were lined up for the Japanese to drop some mortar fire back on them, they certainly could have done something to save the men from the Japanese outside.

Mission: Impossible II (2000)

fun but I won't see it twice

[7/10 · 25 May 2000]

This movie was a lot of fun and had some very spectacular visuals. The characters were decent (for an action movie of course). The plot was OK and reasonably believable, though a bit old now. I think I rather liked the original better. The "Matrix"-ing of Ethan Hunt was a bit much.

Gor (1987)

vile abuse

[17 January 1999]

I've read some of the Gor books and enjoyed them. (Norman's later writing became far too sexist for me to stomach, but the first several are pretty good stories if you like the genre.)

But this movie *totally* sucked and about the only thing one could do with it is to have MST3000 do their thing (good luck). I turned it off after about 15 minutes and was seriously tempted to burn the video store's copy to spare anyone else the pain of seeing the thing.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The single best movie I've ever seen.

[10/10 · 10 August 1998]

Before I saw this movie someone asked me what my favorite movie was and I didn't know. Now I have an answer. I--and no one else who wasn't there- -can never really understand what the men who fought World War II experienced and what the sacrifices they made for us were, but this movie does as well as any can to tell a bit of their story. Normally when a movie is over people walk out chatting and laughing but there was nothing to say.