Tag Archives: movie reviews

Blue Steel

Posted on by

0

Part of a movie review

Jamie Lee Curtis is a cop; Ron Silver is the bad guy.

I saw the last 30 minutes of this movie. Jamie, fit and fulsome, is after Ron, bearded and mysterious. She has many shots at him. I believed the film was set in Los Angeles. There’s a park where Ron is looking for buried goods. Jamie comes across him, bullets fly and Ron is hit, somewhat. The marksmanship in this movie is atrocious! Buildings look like parts of business neighborhoods south of the LA Civic Center. They appear the sort that Superman can step over rather than leap at a single bound.

I can’t remember all the contorted coincidences which ended in shoot-outs. Ron is wounded a few times but they are scratches, no matter how much blood flows onto his clothes. Jamie, herself, is wounded but at last escapes a hospital to hunt Ron down for the final shoot-out.  I hate it when bad guys are predictable, and always show up when the police are present.

Toward the end is the big shootout. Having shot ten times Jamie is forced to reload her revolver holding six. Ron gets more shots without reloading his revolver. Nobody has a Nine. The producers did not want members of the audience getting shot.

Jamie wounds Ron who tried to hijack a car. He somehow leaves and runs. Nobody in the City of Angeles runs. Jamie get in the car and runs Ron over. He’s all right and is fighting fit, but remains too close. Point blank Jamie puts three in his center mass.

As the end credits rolled, I thought it might be good that the National Guard and Marines are now in Los Angeles. They can give lessons in marksmanship and sharpshooter awards to police going through tougher shooting programs. Farther into the credits I read that Blue Steel was set in New York City where no bad guy dies until the fat woman sings.

LOSER MOVIES

Posted on by

2

A friend said, perhaps prematurely, “Let’s go to the movies.” I agreed but refuse to patronize the Marvel stuff, the cartoon stuff, the comic book stuff or the animation stuff. I got her to agree to the new James Bond Movie. It is out! The August release was bumped to October – the producers are looking for giant box office in the early Holiday season It will have to be another movie.

Don’t say Scarlett Johansson is a fine actress. She has obvious attributes but appearing in cartoon movies will do nothing for her career. In the past younger actresses have taken that career path and gone nowhere.

A suitable movie will not be the Disney release, The Jungle Ride, starring Emily Blunt and The Rock. I know the story will bring back fond memories of my friend’s Orange County childhood with a weak story, poorly acted while emitting lousy jokes.

I further object to movie companies making mediocre theme park rides the underlying concept for a movie. Disney ought to know better with those loser Pirates of the Caribbean movies, bad stories acted poorly. Don’t you think The Rock is an improvement over Johnny? Note the rides, The Pirates and the Jungle Cruise no longer require E-Tickets. I’ve never see a movie where the only charge for the ride is a B ticket – put me on a horse drawn tram on Main Street. So The Jungle Ride is out.

DISGUSTING FUTURES

Posted on by

0

I’ve seen two movies, both set in New York City. In each there is no character worth liking; there is no one to root for. Keanu Reeves is in Exposed; Adam Rodriquez is in A Kiss of Chaos.

The stories like the setting, the underside of New York City, are grimy, tough, rude, vulgar and bleak. In A Kiss a character says to another: “The cops are coming.” RESPONSE: “The cops don’t come here.” Without knowing anything else viewers agree. The dialogue reflects elementary educations, perhaps to sixth grade after most kids know the swear words, cliches and conventional comments which are meaningless. Someone offered to teach a woman class; he spoke quietly, like he had an eighth grade education.

In Exposed Reeves investigates his partner’s murder. He learns along the way, that his partner has been committing felonies. A Kiss is about a cocaine deal that goes wrong – the buyer ends up with drugs and the cash. How do they get it back?

These low, miserable, youthful tales have identifiable characters, none that a family would want delivered to a family member who is in the state prison. Each movie has a premise which is resolved; each is filled with sociological terrors. The human imagination runs wide and strong, but I have no reason to doubt that these films and stories reflect large doses of reality. They are existing facts and circumstances which will arrive in the future.

Finally, I must commend Mr. Reeves and Mr. Rodriquez for acting and being in these stories. They are not fantasy; they are not concocted love; they are not super-hero stuff; they are not monster versus mankind, or the earth; there are no car races or car chases. These movies seem real, although the movies suggest the true facts should never be put into a police report.

LOCKE

Posted on by

0

Tom Hardy 2014

Since MAD MAX: The Fury Road, I’ve liked Tom Hardy. So I eagerly looked forward to LOCKE, a pre-Mad Max flick.

I got ten minutes into the movie. Through those minutes Hardy drives a car on city streets and on the Motorway, and he talks on the phone. Perhaps in Britain those activities are sophisticated and advance civilization. In California the CHP will give you a ticket.

One set of phone calls is to delay or change meetings and deliveries at a construction site. The accents were so pronounced in this film (“Not genteel,” as Eliza Doolittle might say), it is impossible to determine the reasonable of Tom Hardy’s complaints. I did not know Hardy was talking to a message machine until he left a message.

The second set of telephone calls are to home. Hardy will not arrive in time to see or watch something. If it is a fool football game, Hardy will be better off missing it. Statistics show that viewers who watch football games, with or without helmets, lose IQ points.

The final set of telephone calls return to the cement delivery problems at the construction site (the subject of the messages of the first set of calls). I don’t believe there was a problem because it is not that sort of movie. When cement is poured, the real question is how many bodies are tossed in, let alone the few workers who take a dive for a swim in the mix. Despite the accents I could tell no one was murdered. What sort of cement/construction movie was this?

I next wondered why I was watching a movie about a guy driving a car on the Motorway. I see that morning, noon and night on every freeway in California. I mentioned this “movie action” to a friend, who asked, “What’s there new about that?” And there is a final point: The dialogue was no good – mundane at best.

 

SERENDIPITY, GET THE GRINGO

Posted on by

0

Movie Review, SERENDIPITY, John Cusack, Kate Beckindale. I like both actors. And this movie. I watched 90 seconds before turning the movie off.

Black pair of gloves. John and Kate each reach for the last pair. Idle chit-chat amounting to dull, flimsy dialogue getting worse. After a minute of it, an old man (actor I don’t like who should always be the bad-evil pervert) intervenes and claims the gloves. On his second line I turned it off.

PROBLEM: Kate and John are supposed to fall in love, at-first-sight. There’s no chemistry, no electricity, no other atoms or molecules and no bison measurements flowing between them. John has to move his mouth, and he has to sound intelligent and interesting. He sounds lame. Kate waits.

Dialogue should not be the gracious, meaningless offer from each, “You take them.” Share, share, we learned how to be kind to one another. Let’s be three years old again (when nobody was buying gloves). Remedy: In a busy world Kate says, “All right,” and takes the gloves. John has to convince her while making her interested in him, to let give him the gloves.

That didn’t happen.

Movie Review, GET THE GRINGO, Mel Gibson. A decent action movie about an American stuck in a Mexican prison. In America he has stolen $4,000,000, some of which the Mexican police have. Nobody can identify the Gringo; he doesn’t tell what he did, until the information is useful to save his life and help him leave the prison. Hence, the audience as do the characters in the movie learn about the entire sum late.

Mel Gibson is the thief. How he navigates in the Mexican prison (“Worst mall in the world…”), how he gets out and how he survives provide action in realistic settings.