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Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Badass and Boring
The plot's basic idea is a good one -- basically "Groundhog Day" for the martial set. The special effects are good as well -- top-notch, as was most of the acting. But it played as extremely boring for me, and some of the tropes just ticked me off, especially The Badass Chick meme. The Badass Chick is tough, man. She's the least female creature around, able to kick any and all butt, never emotionally expressing anything other than, "Check me out; I'm A Badass Chick! I'm cynical and tough! Been hurt, but won't talk about it; instead, I'll just kick yer ass and defy gravity!" I loathe characters who are supposed to be human, but have no human characteristics. And I guess I'm not into movies filled what that sort of thing. If watching someone playing a shoot-'em-up video game is your thing, you might dig this flick. Not my cuppa.
Columbo (1971)
Pure Bliss
To my mind, there is no other character on television that has the pure, unadulterated charm of Lt. Columbo, the lead character of the Columbo TV series. He is a gentleman, benevolent always, a true innocent in spite of being a homicide detective, a man with nothing but good will for everyone.
What makes him extra-special, though, is that his character is ironic in the classic sense of the word; he's as sharp as a tack, but hides his brilliance underneath an "aw, gee" attitude and a wrinkled raincoat. He is ego-less, being OK-fine with "playing the fool," knowing that he isn't a fool at all (of course, by the end of each episode, the murderer figures that out as well!). But it's that humility, that lack of a compulsion to impress others and show off -- or even to just do what he can to let others to know that he's not a complete idiot -- that makes him a role model in a big way. He doesn't cave into the typical human desire to protect one's ego even when confronted with serious blowhards. Watch the episode "Fade Into Murder" (one of my favorites!) with the great William Shatner to see what I mean. The Shatner character -- so fun to watch! -- treats Columbo as his know-nothing underling, and Columbo lets him do it.
He always sees the good in others, even those who commit murder. Watch the scene in "Try and Catch Me," popularly known as "the one with Ruth Gordon" (another of my favorites!), in which he addresses Gordon's character's fan club to see that attitude very clearly expressed.
I love the little "touches" that allow the character to show his nature, especially his relationship with Dog, the good-for-nothing-but-love basset hound that Columbo often brings along with him and spoils with ice cream cones.
As an Italian-American, I also love that his people hail from the Old Country. We Italian-Americans are typically portrayed as gangsters, and it gets a little old. Actually, it gets a LOT old, especially given that the percentage of Italian Americans involved in organized crime was very tiny (and Italians were victims of such crime big time!). I love the Godfather movies very much and consider them absolutely brilliant, but -- come on, Hollywood, is that all ya got for us, about us? Anyway, the "Murder Under Glass" episode is one in which his "Italianness" shines through the most. Even better, he's not just a fellow Italian, but one who's held on to the Catholic Faith, a fact that isn't hidden away or treated as a joke the way Christianity, esp. Catholicism, is nowadays in the media. Things such as the fact that Mrs. Columbo belongs to the Holy Name Society at church are mentioned with no eye-rolling. Refreshing! And speaking of which, there was a scene in "Agenda for Murder" that had me smiling from ear to ear as a Catholic. In that scene, the murderer gave a bogus recounting of what he claims the victim said to him on the phone just before he allegedly committed suicide. He told Columbo that the victim said to him, "What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? Jesus!"
Columbo responds like this: "So he says, 'What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?' -- and then he says that word?"
Columbo refused to take what Christians consider the Holy Name in vain, which would be a great sin. It's the "little things" like that (which aren't "little" at all to Christians, especially Catholics) that give his character a level of integrity and realism you just don't see on TV much, at least not these days (how far we've fallen!). It's good character writing, evidence of writers who know how a sincere Italian Catholic would handle such dialogue.
There are only a very few Columbo episodes/specials that I've seen that don't measure up to their usual greatness. "Murder in Malibu" was one of them, alas. But I'd watch even that one again just because Columbo was in it, and he's -- well, he's Columbo, a one of a kind kinda guy. I love this character so much I even have an 8X10 of him, right next to Rocky Marciano, in my dining room, just because seeing it makes me smile.
Mr. Falk did a brilliant job bringing Lt. Columbo to life, and I love him for it. May he rest in peace!
Love Actually (2003)
Bad, and Not in the Michael Jackson Sense
What a cast, and what a waste of their talents and our time. Every single relationship in this movie -- but for one -- was not only shallow and outright inappropriate, but didn't ring true at all.
A man who just lost the love of his life, his very wife, just days ago, suddenly falls in love with someone else. And his 7-year old son -- who, of course, acts like a world-weary 30 year old -- doesn't grieve the loss of his mother because he's too hung up on some chick he's never spoken to. The father and son's little recreation of the bowsprit scene from "Titanic" is so bad, so stupid and contrived, that I actually laughed out loud. "How'd that bit come about?", I asked myself. "Now, son, you stand in front of me and hold out your arms. I'll stand behind you and hold out my arms. When Winslett and di Caprio do the same in the movie we're watching, we'll feel like we're flying!" Chyeah. Pure goofery -- as was the father's saying to the kid, upon hearing that the boy is in love, "Who is she? Or he?" Shouldn't he have covered *all* the angles? It's almost 2017, man! What if the kid is a pedophile, zoophile, cougar-chaser, furry, or necrophile? And what about that oh-so-bigoted use of classical pronouns? Pops should've asked his boy, "So, who is she, or he, or zhe, or zhim, or the mature woman, or the critter -- alive or stuffed -- or the corpse, or whatever is the object of your affections? Tell me all about zhem, son (you mind if I call you son? Is there another word you'd prefer?)!" Our world is Brave and New, and the statistically rare must be treated as the norm these days or someone might feel left out and start carrying a sign! They might even cry!
Eh, if they do a remake, they'll likely handle that already ridiculous scene that way. And the critics will thumbs-up it all, as they did with this piece of crap.
The little kid's affair results in the standard "chase her down at the airport before she boards that plane" trope, too, with the kid flying by security and setting himself up for a serious smack-down by whatever TSA types are called in England. His Dad smiles. What a good Dad.
Anyway, then there's the guy falling in love with a woman he was completely unable to speak a single word to because they don't share a common language. He didn't just develop a crush; he proposed to her -- without having exchanged a single sentence! That's some good thinking right there! Now, I'm very far from the type to throw the word "misogyny" around, but sometimes the word fits, and this movie is full of it. Women are nothing but bodies in this flick -- and a perfectly lovely woman is treated like some obese freak of nature just because she isn't a size 2. She's probably a size 8, but even that is just too much flesh for a woman to carry around and get away with. The same name-calling happens to another female character as well.
Then there are social and power differentials in this flick's relationships that make them legally questionable and morally iffy. Bosses going after their secretaries, men going after their maids, etc., and worst of all, marital status means absolutely nothing -- not even when it comes to a woman who's been married less than a month! Seriously, this movie is nasty. All the men ended up happy and better off in the end, but any women who'd already celebrated her 30th birthday is S.O.L. One was strangely written off romantically because she has a brother who needs psychiatric care. Another was written off because her husband fell in love with someone younger, and it was his adulterous union that got the script's "awwww, ain't that sweeeeet?"treatment. Never mind the forsaken wife. She'll manage, I guess. Lesson Learned: "Cheating pays! (if you have testicles)."
The only relationship that wasn't nauseating was the one involving the rock star and his manager, and, thank God, it wasn't a romantic one. Love Actually Part II would likely change that.
For realz, if you have a sense of decency and a low tolerance for totally unrealistic schmaltz, skip this load o' tripe unless you're in the mood to hate-watch something. And even then, please don't pay to see it. Don't support stuff like this and maybe they'll start making better movies someday.
Instinct (1999)
Not even close to great
I'm getting a little ticked seeing some user reviews with lines like, "People who don't like this movie just don't get it, are too dumb to get it. You have to be smart and emotionally sensitive to enjoy this!" Well, a big Italian flick of the chin to all that. I'm smart enough, emotionally sensitive, and think this movie is dreck.
It's a Rousseauist fantasy about the evils of civilization as contrasted with the wondrousness of gorilla life (if you think the great apes aren't violent, you're wrong. Cf, especially, chimpanzees). This morality tale is told through the character of a man who loves gorillas but can't love his own daughter. Still, he's the hero somehow.
Anyway, the hero is played off of by a shrink who ends up giving us some serious schmaltz. The "Great Tearing-Up Of the Playing Cards Scene," with the swelling music was supposed to move us to tears and, for those who'd make such a gesture, perhaps fist-pumps, but ends up feeling crazily contrived. Same with the "you taught me how to live!" stuff, which simply didn't have the chemistry between the two characters or the plot build-up to make it remotely believable. And same, too, with the almost-final shot of said shrink standing in the rain with outstretched arms, face toward the Heavens in some sort of exaltation.
I don't know about you, but I'm really tired of hearing the messages that man is bad, we all suck, civilization's made us insane, society forces us to live lives that are "fake" (most folks outgrow the Holden Caulfield stage of life after they turn 16 or so), and that if we lived like animals, everything would be great (go talk to some lions and gazelles about that. If you can get them into a room together, I mean.) What's funny about that line of thought is that it's typically expressed by folks who think of man as nothing but an animal anyway, just another great ape and nothing more, so they're not logically consistent on that, but whatever. The thing is, though, that even if I were to agree with the message, which I most assuredly don't, I would think this movie fails to send it effectively because of pacing, lack of chemistry, a bad script, etc. I think it could've been a good movie if it hadn't been trying to send that big message and had treated it as the story of one man with moral failures who, because of those failures and his own weaknesses, can only live happily with gorillas. That could've been interesting. But as it is, it's a 7-cheese pizza without the crust, if you know what I mean.
The actors were fine, though. Anthony Hopkins is usually cool to watch, and I thought Cuba did a decent enough job with what he had.
The Family (2013)
Not Goodenov For Me, Man
I love DeNiro. Love Pfeiffer. Love Jones. But I hate this movie. It was one of those flicks that had me wishing it'd end soon so I could get on with my life, and if I weren't rather "OCD-ish" about finishing what I've started, I'd have turned it off after 20 minutes. It really was *that* bad -- so bad that, in the middle of it, I turned to my husband and wondered aloud if DeNiro actually read the script before he signed on.
The main characters -- the family members -- were surpassingly unlikable, their only redeeming quality being the love they had for each other. If that affection didn't exist, they could rightly be considered complete psychopaths. They blew things up, killed people, beat people, committed arson, stole -- and all for ridiculous reasons. It's sad that we're apparently expected to relate to and root for such people.
Their being despicable is one thing, but their being inconsistent is another. Even if some viewer somewhere actually were to like these people, it's hard to imagine anyone buying into characters that just don't make logical sense. The daughter, for ex., is a seriously tough chick, a butt-whupper par excellence who's down with her brother's scheming to become a veritable "mob boss" at their school. She's also, though, a wide-eyed virgin who fell in love with and threw herself at some hot, French tutor, and then almost killed herself when he didn't treat her seduction of him as anything more than an "experience."
Another problem with "The Family" amounts to a sort of "deus ex machina" type of thing. To move the plot along, some crazily dreamed-up coincidences occurred, my favorite being a school newspaper from Normandy, France ending up in the hands of "the bad guys" -- in a prison in New York City. Chyeah.
Further, the movie couldn't make up its mind as to genre. It was supposed to be a dark comedy, but wasn't remotely funny enough to fit the bill. Some reviews here pretty much accuse folks who talk about this flick's violence of not "getting" the concept of a dark comedy, so I'll set the record straight: I do get it. For ex., "Motel Hell" and "Pulp Fiction" are violent. And they're pretty hilarious in parts. "The Room" ends in a suicide, but had me laughing all the way through it. See? I *get* it. But *this* movie isn't funny at all. And it fails as a drama because of the characters' utter nastiness and "unrelatability," and those inane coincidences.
Worst of all, though, the movie was simply b-o-r-i-n-g. It's not even "so bad, it's good." Skip it.
Coma (2012)
They Just Had To Jab at Catholics
--SPOILERS! -- I loved the original "Coma" with Bujold and Douglas, and I liked this version, too. Or would have liked it. It was a bit slow-paced, and could have done without the bizarrerie associated with the obviously mental guy who was chasing Susan around, but other than that, it was well-acted and great fun to watch -- that is, until the character of the evil head of the Jefferson Institute was shown praying the Rosary. I mean, really?! Any Catholic who's Catholic enough to pray the Rosary would know that Church teaching prohibits doing evil so that good can come from it, would know that murder is a sin, would understand very well that one doesn't put people into comas in order to conduct medical experiments on them, and so forth, so why, WHY, did the powers-that-be just have to make that character a "Catholic"? Haven't we had enough of this sort of nonsense? Why does Hollywood have to constantly poke at Christians -- Catholics in particular? Would the director have gone out of his way to depict that character wearing a Star of David or as an obvious practitioner of Islam? Why is it not OK to do that to folks of religions other than Christianity? Why is Christianity singled out for this sort of treatment?
I am sick of this sort of thing. It really is disgusting. And it's too bad, too, with regard to this particular movie because, as I said, it was otherwise enjoyable. Sigh.
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
What a Shame
I have a great fondness for Tarantino. "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," "Jackie Brown" (his best, in my opinion), "Django Unchained" -- all good stuff, especially the first three. I even enjoyed the "Kill Bill" movies. But this -- it's almost unadulterated rot. I say *almost* unadulterated because Waltz was great. He is, though, pretty much the only thing in this movie worth watching aside from the opening chapter. Though the latter went on a tad too long, it was nicely suspenseful and well-filmed.
But that great opening and Waltz's performance don't make up for the rest of the film. My biggest issue is that the morality of the movie is way, way off. It's pathological. I'm speaking as a fan of "Reservoir Dogs" here, so it's not violence per se that's problematic for me. I mean, it's one thing to see bad guys blow each other up, or to see good guys deal with the bad guys while having some heart about it; it's another thing to see what are supposed to be the "good guys" engaging in torture and mayhem, with our being asked to identify with it and cheer them on. I found it pretty disgusting, quite frankly. Scalping? Carving swastikas into people's foreheads? (so much for recognizing the possibility of redemption) Bottom line: the Nazis were shown as having a lot more integrity, honor, and soul than the Jewish "heroes" here, and I doubt that that's what Tarantino meant to convey.
Tarantino's movies are almost always, at least, interesting both visually and in terms of dialogue, but in this movie, there's no evidence of that. Conversations go on and on. And on. And in four different languages. Sheesh! Subtitles work for movies like "Dances with Wolves" or "The Passion of the Christ," but in a Tarantino-style, darkly comedic revenge flick, what he put out there is far too much. The dialogue itself was bad enough, but our being forced to read most of it in sub-titles made the pacing of this movie really tedious.
I am willing to suspend disbelief some for the sake of a good flick, but here, too many questions are just too big (for ex., how *did* that milk maid from the countryside end up owning a cinema in Paris? Why *did* some of those "inglourious basterds" blow themselves up rather than just set some explosives and bolt?) It saddens me to have to dislike this movie and give it a bad review 'cause, like I said, I like Tarantino (I think I'd really enjoy his company. He's so passionate and fiery! I'd even let him play with my feet if I could hang out with him for a day!). But I just gotta. Sorry, Quentin.