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Mates,Time for my yearly general movie rant of themes, characters, directors that I never want to see again. Not in any particular order.
Detectives: So many detectives reluctantly brought out of retirement because of special skills or relationship to the criminal. they always had a bad experience that we see in flashback.
Detectives who are "rebels" that are always on suspension, yet so effective they are given wide berth. The captain always has to hand their badge and gun.
Thieves: People reluctantly brought out of retirement because of special skills or relationship to the criminal or to pay an old debt. Sick to death of all these mythological 'reluctant' criminals. But, to be fair, I did like "Sexy Beast" recently, but this genre has been done to death.
Glamourous thieves: Criminals as "Heroes" RE: "Ocean's Eleven", "The Italian Job". Good looking, well-dressed people that only steal from less sympathetic characters are a disgusting presence. A thief is a thief, whether it's a loaf of bread or Enron's pension. We are even made to want the thieves to succeed. The message is that success money and in America, pursuit of money is respectable no matter what the means. Remeber the outcry when "Bonny and Clyde" were thought to be shown too sympathetically- yet in the end they recieve a couple hundred bullets each- that was sympathetic in 1967! In "The Italian Job" one guy gets an Aston Martin, the other the girl, another a Naim! stereo, another a villa in Spain for their crimes.
"Enemy Quotient" I really hate movies that use the flavour of the month for the enemy. Remember all the Russian Cold War supidities, then it was China, Libya, Colombian drug cartels, renegade ex-USSR officers. Just because Clancy decides who the movie goers should be hating does not make interesting movies.
Big Bad Business Men: I'm really tired of just every CEO, buyer, lawyer, PR person being conspiratorial, stealing inventions, and casually murderous. Although there are plenty of nasties in the business world, I think there could be occasionally be a positive role for business types!
Changing bodies and Identities: Aren't there enough damn movies where a person is switched into another body or dresses as the opposite sex to get on a team or hide, or get the girl, or learn an important lesson on what the other person goes through? "Switch" "Freaky Friday" (there are three versions- 77,95,03- of this one!), "Sorority Boys", "Jawanna Mann", "The Hot Chick", etc.
Amnesia: I wish I could completely forget amnesia. Amnesia is actually supposed to be extremely rare but form Hollywood, you's think there were thousands of people that are serarching for their first name and why they own so many automatic weapons. I also don't believe that people are completely coherent and functional except they don't remember they are indestructible, highly trained secret agents. "The Bourne Identity" was as stupid as could be. To be fair, "memnto" was fresh, intelligent, and inventive but that one was unique.
James Bond: This guy deserves a permanent rest from all that intense adolescent innuendo and product placement.
Comic book heroes: All been done and it's very fatiguing if you didn't grow up with all the varieties of mutuants. And can't someone come up with a better scenario than exposure to radioactivity to make superheroes/monsters? This was old stuff in 1955!
TV series: There is a reason for series and making a movie that tries to encaspulate the series is really dull typically: "Mission Impossible", "Beverly Hillbillies:, "Addams Family" was way above average, but keep that of the little screen on the little screen- scale matters!
Anything directed by Chris Columbus, the most annoying commercial "director" ever.
Overexposed: There are so many people that we can't escape from. These are three or four year cycles- remember Ryder, Ricci, Hopkins a few years ago, now it's Witherspoon, Crowe, and Jolie. These are not necessarily bad actors or boring movies, but it's tiring to see the same person doing just everything.Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise. Enough said!
Space epics with a parasite theme: The original Scott "Alien" was just fine- all others merely repeats.
Remakes/sequels: Remakes and sequels seem to take whatever was remembered in the original and this gets expanded. I liked very much "The Day of the Jackal" and althought "The Jackal" with Bruce Willis was quite well done, knowing the original meant I could follow th ecreenwriters making a bigger scene out of something that people remember. In "Day" Fox kills the talkative, won;t return the originals passport forger with a quick chop and he gets stuffed in t a trunk. In "Jackal" Willis kills the fellow that makes the weapon platform- but first blows his arm off with a 20mm depleted uramium shell and the passport forger (young London woman) gets rewarded In "Day of" Fox kills the forger and praises the weapon maker. These are different but the scenes in "Jackal" were completely derivative and consciously reversed. The story of the detective was extended to make a personal vendetta between Gerre and Willis central. In the real world IRA terrorist Gere would never have been let loose with guns directing the FBI around. Especially hated the remake of "Diabolique" which was such a refined original- French Hitchcock (sorry Patrick!).
Harry Potter: Smug middle class English children aspiring to the upper class elite featuring point and click magic powers and a new kind of racism against "mixed blood" or "muggles" as "inferior" classes. All the magic is perfunctory and expected- and all the problems happen in-house- no suprises, just nice middle classs people tha we know will triumph without more than a scratch. I find this series impossible to take, I hope the books are not so arrogant and stupidly done. Children used to have stronger BS detectors.
Star Wars: Maybe the final James Bond epsiode could be Star Wars episode 3! "Miss Moneypenny, did you have your tenacles polished?" The last one of the puppets standing around in rooms discussing politics then a few CG battle scenes has about 1% of the fun and energy of the first one (E4)- cardboard sets notwithstanding.
There is hope, but mainstream Hollywood should be taking far more time off to look for interesting new stories than popping out the same safe, dull box office proven bunkum again and again.
Oh well, I feel a little better. Thanks mates!
Cheers,
Bambi B
Follow Ups:
x
I mean, you've listed just about everything Hollywood bothers to produce!
Mmm,That's a good question. In my old age**, just about everything that appears in the mainstream movie world produces a queasiness of dull repetition. I would forgive the excitement of deja vu, but just the same formulaic structures and themes has gotten me a bit depressed. Thats' when I look for some of my old favourites and a good Bunuel, Truffaut, Hitchcock, Wyler, Capra, Fleming helps.
** I'm so poor in maths I can't tell any longer if was born in 1965 or am 65 years old.
There have been movies in the recent past that break the mold in a refreshing way and even with their faults, the Coens "Hudsucker Proxy" and "Brother, where art thou" , Kaufman's "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation", and quirky things like "Lumiere et Co" are bright spots that help counteract the aesthetically delibilitating effects of "Matrix Reloaded".
When I get crochtety I begin to fantasize these action movies begin using live ammunition. All that violence without death is contrary to nature and the presentation is contrary to art.
On the other hand, the typical "Fluffy Bunnies in the Village of the Happy Idiots" is not a solution and I find my reactionary self putting too much trust in John Waters..
Hey Mish, what are you watching these days that stirs your spoon?
Cheers,
Bambi B
I've been exploring whatever foreign films happen into my local library, or perhaps a forgotten classic or two. I rarely go to the cinema anymore, mainly because I have two small kids---most of the viewing is on DVD/video...Let's see... The past couple of months I've watched
"La Strada"
"The Third Man"
"Battleship Potemkin"
"Bicycle Thief"
"A Day At The Races"And the only recent films:
"Once Upon A Time In Mexico", which I hated.
"Gangs Of New York", which was OK.
"Whale Rider" was pretty good.The last one I saw at the theater was "I, Robot" and it was awful. It was a highly sterile version of "Blade Runner" with no soul.
Mmm,Your local library has above average taste and you chose several favourites of mine too. For years I regarded "The Third Man" as one of the best movies ever made, one of those magic collisions of all the right elements. Likewise "LaStrada". "Battlehip Potenkim" is also I think an astounding one, like "Third Man" amazing photography. Besides Murnau's "Nosferatu", and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" "Potemkin" just amazes me in visual acuity, every little detail contributes to the overall effect.
I saw "Gangs" recently on the television machine. This one was a challenge for me as Dicaprio has the presence of a mud pie and his character is supposed to be having a Hamletian scale of inner conflicts. But Danial Day Lewis' character was simply charming. "The Butcher" was so intensely eccentric and yet rang true. Really violent movies bother me when the blood and guts is incidental, but in "Gangs" it is so extreme and relentless, the violence became abstract and a kind of game. The strange artificiality of the sets heightens this.
Some good ones!
Cheers,
Bambi B
So what do you like? These days, my Netflix list is getting down to things I'm not too excited about, so I'd appreciate any good titles you think I may have missed.
"HO, HO, HO!" - Santa Claus
TA,I wish I were more enthusiastic, but in the dark days of Autumn, I realize that my list of favourites is mostly between 1922 and 1976. When it gets dark so early and with rising interest rates, I like to watch the great comedies of the 30-60s "The Third Man", "It Happened One Night" Chaplin, Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, "Destry Rides Again", "The Philadelphia Story", "Some Like It Hot" and so on.
Some adventures are great too and I can watch "The Train" with Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield once every couple of years.
Probably you know all these. Im sure to think of a dozen more after I press "submit follow up"!
Cheers,Bambi B
Well, post your titles whenever you think of them. From your posts, it sounds like you do see plenty of recent films (though your heart goes out to the films of yesterday). I'm sure at least a few recent films excited you, else you'd stop going to see new films all together. Same here.
"HO, HO, HO!" - Santa Claus
Mates,I forgot another annoying over-used genre that I've come to really dislike intensely.
Ghosts and Angels: I have to say I can not stand to see another movie- even a summary of it- in which ghosts and angels come around to help a live person. This has just become stupid and too common. Ghosts and Angels have better things to do than help out Little League teams and kids defeat bullies and realize their dreams of bullying others. This often becomes over-sentimental.
As always there are exceptions: "Here comes Mr. Jordan" and "Truly, Madly, Deeply" were interesting and well done, but today there's a damn ghost or angel around every corner.
Is this genre part of paranoia that yearns for easy, supernatural ways out of problems? It seems Hollywood has two methods to solve every problem- either violence or magic. Someday, reality must creep in, but reality must be too subtle for box office today.
Cheers,
Bambi B
If all angel movies were as well done as "Wings of Desire", I might reconsider. But then again, Hollywood did a poor remake of that one, see my previous post - ARrrgh!
In Vino Veritas
That's first one that came to mind for me with the angels and ghosts. Good call.
These are great. How about dumb and gratuitous over the top car chases, particularly ones that have the hero traveling the wrong way on a highway, ones involving hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, and (my favorite and that of anyone involved in even a slight automotive accident) those where the hero walks away with barely a scratch after colliding his (usually stolen) vehicle multiple times.
rico,It's quite amazing how car chases are so fascinating that there are constant programmes of police cruiser camera shots of pursuits.
I was amused a few years ago by an early scene in "The Rock" (ex-military terrorists take Alcatraz hostages with chemical weapons) in which Cage in an "appropriated Ferrari and Connery in an equally stolen Hummer chase through San Francisco with the goal of making the "Bullet" chase look like child's play. In the first place, Connery would never be let out of prison- the same fallacy as Gere's IRA character in "The Jackal", but after the destruction of the cars, a cable car! and property damage that would have been sseven figures plus liability, both Cage and Connery would never see the light of day again. Cage jumping the Ferrari through the shop window onto the street alone would've brought on an "early retirement"
The car chase offers some quick filler between the scenes with guns and should be used sparingly. You're very knowledgable about movies. Do you know of a car chase scene which is really integral to the story- that advances the plot or characters? Ther must be something..
Cheers,
Bambi B
nt
After seeing "Bullitt" the director of "...Connection" insisted on a car chase.
Frenchīs car chase is the more perfect and more accomplished, donīt you find?
is over the top, yet it works for due to the deadpan reactions of Belushi and Ackroyd, yet it is technically excellent.The French Connection too is superb due to the realism it displays and the reactions of Gene Hackman. This chase is the most emotionally involving one due to Hackman and his mannerisms (and the manic driving). The audience is completely on the edge of their seats throughout the sequence. Director William Friedkin wanted realism and he succeeded brilliantly.
Bullitt is differnet entirely because of the coolness that personified Steve McQueen. The sequence here builds slowly until it's a full blown race. It's the most stylized car sequence for certain.
It's just which style you prefer. I'm a McQueen freak and I love the style in which Bullitt presents it's chase.
I agree. The "Bullitt" chase slowly builds, features the two rival muscle cars of the era, and has those fantastic San Francisco venues. (There's that green Volkswagon again!).
Myself, I've never seen a car lose five hubcaps before. That never gets old for me. :-)
Yes, the car chase in "The Rock" struck me as being WAY over the top.
And I didn't like the film except for the part where the Cage character get a Beatles LP f0r $400.I think the chase in Buster Keaton's "Sherlock, Jr." is extremely well done and filled with wonders. And one might argue that the chases in "Bullitt" and "The French Connection" (the latter inspired by the former) advance our understanding of the "driven-ness" (no pun intended) of each pursuer.
the car chase scenes that take place on a dirt road or in a field of some sort. Ever notice when the driver slams on the brakes or makes a sharp turn, you get tire squeeling? Never figured this one out. Kinda like loud explosions in space where there is nothing but vacuum.
...you see additional sets of tire skid marks where the stunt drivers practiced or extra takes were done. I see this in the majority of chases and for me it is as bad as seeing a microphone in the top of the frame.
There's a bright side: skid marks mean they were real cars and real roads, not CGI. Give them ten more years, you won't see any 'goofs' ever.
Yes, I have often noticed that.
I mean, let's give some original ideas a chance! I know they're out there, they surface usually in low-budget, independent or foreign films.And I'm afraid it's inevitable that in the potlitical climate of Hollywood, that businessmen would be portrayed as evil, and criminals revered - but this isn't Outside, so I'll refain from further comment.
In Vino Veritas
You feels better and we...Tired...Hehe...But all in all your analyse of mainstream movies are correct in my understanding, the only difference is I do not see more intelligent films at the horizon...
Letīsīhope!
...until you got to Harry Potter.I'm not ashamed to say I enjoyed the books. And while I loathed the first two movies (which represent, nonetheless, the highpoint of CC's cinematic achievement), I thought Mexican director Alphonso Cuarson's take on The Prisoner of Azkaban was one of the most spirited, artful commercial movies of the year.
I don't think HP is about middle class consumerism, I think it's about identity and family and growing up.
Also...The Incredibles is the best James Bond film I've seen in years.
Harmonia,I'm not against Harry Potter per se as I'm told the books have a much more balanced and deeper set of characters, but I really objected to the movies philosophically and aesthetically smug English know-alls children are just intolerable. In my former life I saw thousands and know just how the little phlegm bags can be!
The consumerism quality of them is that here are children who expect to command powers over materials objects and people by waving their arms and without any price- that is change and effect have no cost in the cosmic sense. This is a fantasy of power and material gain without work- an assumption of right to this kind of control. Non-magic folk or "muggles" aee assumed inferior and can never achieve these powers becuase they are not of "pure blood". The second movie with this pure blood theme has a kind of creepy junior fascism to it. The first movie had the famous alchemist Nicolas Flamel as a kind of backroom unseen character. But alchemists were appalled at the so-called black arts as they did not address the need for balance of energies. They would consider there would be an eventual price for this and it would not be pretty. The "Philospher's Stone:" was renamed the "Sorcerer's Stone" and this is a severe cheapening/deadening of a very elegant idea*** that children would probably find more interesting than the more or less literal eternal life idea.
***The "Philospher's Stone" is a metaphor for a long psychic process whereby the alchemist observes in miniature by an experiment called the "Magnum Opus" the evolution of the Universe. The resulting contemplations imply the nature of the mind of God no less. Eternal life was the result of bonding with the spirit of God- a side benefit to the knowledge of Creation.
I should read the books to get perspectives on the movies to really comment, but I already have this prejudice against this kind of idealized English children- really the movies show something from the 1930's public school world. I still feel the movies at least portray a middle class fantasy of gaining elite powers.
Cheers,
Bambi B
What you say about both, while not far from the deep truth, is not quite right.You say "***The "Philospher's Stone" is a metaphor for a long psychic process whereby the alchemist observes in miniature by an experiment called the "Magnum Opus" the evolution of the Universe. The resulting contemplations imply the nature of the mind of God no less. Eternal life was the result of bonding with the spirit of God- a side benefit to the knowledge of Creation."
The Philosopherīs Stone was referred to as a stone able to transmute cheap, innoble materials such as Iron, Lead, et al, into the most noble one, Gold; and anybody who touched it would be cured of any illness: that was the "official version for consumers", while the truth is that the alchemistsīs true search was for the transmutation of manīs instinctive and emotional nature into the highest spiritual one, thus getting them closer to the contemplation of God: Jesus Christ Himself was a perfect example of the Stone, as He not only healed the ill ones, and changed water into wine, but He became the way to the highest spiritual transformation, too...
The whole matter of Alchemy was that, and the search for the Stone would take the alchemistīs whole life, in a neverending process of transformation and spiritualization, disguised to profanes under the cloak of their physical experiments with matter, from which Chemistry (Al-kimia was the Arab word, from an ancient Egypt term, Khmi, meaning "Black Earth", as opposed to the golden desert sand, as the Black Earth was the fertile soil coming from Nileīs periodical floods..., thus evoking growth and transformation) was born.
The whole process, requiring a whole life, was then properly named by Medieval alchemists as the "Magnum Opus", Latin for "The Great Work". And today that term is still being used to name a manīs lifeīs greatest achievement, be it an artistic work, a scientific discovery, or whatever else. Itīs not just an experiment... while it certainly leads to facing, and transforming, manīs innermost nature, and to meeting with God Himself, what makes you, in the long run, right.
Other than these small precisions, I fully concur with you in dispising most of todayīs Hollywood-based films, while I still must say that, in what makes reference to thieves and cops, black sheep have always been much more interesting than the average member of the flock...
Best regards
BF
who always walks alone into the dark room/alley/closet when she (or he for that matter) know that there is a dangerous monster around. And that damn cat that always jumps out and shrieks when there really is no danger.
cjfrbw,A good one!
Yes, where danger lurks, the lighting is always the worst and the frailest people have the most courage to poke around!
I'd like to see a scene where the little girl seeks out the giant mutant molluskman in the dark basement, drags it out and beats it with an andiron for slinking around trying to scare people. "You've been very naughty you molluskman! And don't get that slime on Mummy's Christmas decorations- here's another slap".
Something different..
Cheers,
Bambi B
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