8/23/07: RUNNING MAN, CLIFFHANGER, CAPRICORN ONE
THE RUNNING MAN is a surprisingly good movie. Sure its kinda campy, but it tries real hard to please. As kitschy as some of the costumes are, nobody treats it like a joke unless the scene calls for it, and the supporting cast really gives it everything they got. Especially Richard Dawson and Yaphet Kotto. Maria Conchita-Alonso, not so much ... She's a little shrill here, always rattling off inane Spanglish asides even though nobody else in the movie understands Spanish. Who is she talking to? God?
CLIFFHANGER continues my revisitation of Stallone. Fucking awesome adventure movie that still holds up real well. Probably Renny Harlin's best movie which also kinda makes it his only good movie. Wait, he directed THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT. That one was good so he's got 2 decent ones. Which almost acquits him for CUTTHROAT ISLAND. But not quite. That one was kinda like shitting yourself in public on a reality show, nobody forgets that shame. Anyway, Cliffhanger is just dandy, if a bit telling of the "early 90s vibe" with the attention paid to "totally extreme" snowboarding culture. At least the 2 XTREME guys get shot up halfway through. Which is nice. Michael Rooker is a great character here, he's a bit of an antogonist for Stallone, but the movie wisely has him suffer a bit at the hands of the baddies, and we soon start to root for him. Janine Turner ... CUTIE PIE. The whole thing is a fabulous 90s blockbuster, R-rated as it should be, very bloody, filled with profanity ... Great stuff. And probably the most amazing trailer I have ever seen!
CAPRICORN ONE again last night. Saw this with my Grandmother as a 10-year-old, and have abiding positive feelings of it as a result. I still think the climactic helicopter-cropduster chase is one of the most thrilling sequences ever filmed, even if it kinda strains credulity that an exhausted, starved, and dehydrated James Brolin could hang onto the wing of a plane as it does barrel-rolls and loops and canyon dives. But whatever. If its credulity you seek, avoid this one. Being a bit more critical-minded last night, I found a lot of it very hard to swallow, especially Elliot Gould's friend who gets "disappeared" after stumbling onto the conspiracy. This entire subplot just doesn't really work at all, and implies a conspiracy so far-reaching that to hold water it must involve, among others, NASA, several magazines the friend has subscriptions to, the friend's apartment leasing office, the post office, the utilities company, and just about anyone who ever saw him or spoke to him. Why is Gould the only one to notice his absense? What about the guy's co-workers or friends outside work? What about his parents? His credit card company? His neighbors? And is the woman now inhabiting his apartment "for the last year" in on the conspiracy? (She'd have to be; but Gould can't quite grasp this.) Gould even says "I've been here a hundred times" to her, yet asks he to confirm her address and apartment number. Why bother if he's really been there so often? That lady has to be a stone-cold expert pokerfaced LIAR to be able to look him in the face and tell him UP is DOWN and have him pause even a moment to consider it. Yet, the movie has him look for "proof." So yeah the movie's logic isn't very bulletproof, but like RUNNING MAN, its heart is what it relies upon to get the job done. It is SO post-Watergate, it isn't even funny. Its the paranoid thriller at its apex or nadir, whatever you prefer, but when the good guys finally blow the lid off the whole thing, you can't help but cheer. Great stuff.
CLIFFHANGER continues my revisitation of Stallone. Fucking awesome adventure movie that still holds up real well. Probably Renny Harlin's best movie which also kinda makes it his only good movie. Wait, he directed THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT. That one was good so he's got 2 decent ones. Which almost acquits him for CUTTHROAT ISLAND. But not quite. That one was kinda like shitting yourself in public on a reality show, nobody forgets that shame. Anyway, Cliffhanger is just dandy, if a bit telling of the "early 90s vibe" with the attention paid to "totally extreme" snowboarding culture. At least the 2 XTREME guys get shot up halfway through. Which is nice. Michael Rooker is a great character here, he's a bit of an antogonist for Stallone, but the movie wisely has him suffer a bit at the hands of the baddies, and we soon start to root for him. Janine Turner ... CUTIE PIE. The whole thing is a fabulous 90s blockbuster, R-rated as it should be, very bloody, filled with profanity ... Great stuff. And probably the most amazing trailer I have ever seen!
CAPRICORN ONE again last night. Saw this with my Grandmother as a 10-year-old, and have abiding positive feelings of it as a result. I still think the climactic helicopter-cropduster chase is one of the most thrilling sequences ever filmed, even if it kinda strains credulity that an exhausted, starved, and dehydrated James Brolin could hang onto the wing of a plane as it does barrel-rolls and loops and canyon dives. But whatever. If its credulity you seek, avoid this one. Being a bit more critical-minded last night, I found a lot of it very hard to swallow, especially Elliot Gould's friend who gets "disappeared" after stumbling onto the conspiracy. This entire subplot just doesn't really work at all, and implies a conspiracy so far-reaching that to hold water it must involve, among others, NASA, several magazines the friend has subscriptions to, the friend's apartment leasing office, the post office, the utilities company, and just about anyone who ever saw him or spoke to him. Why is Gould the only one to notice his absense? What about the guy's co-workers or friends outside work? What about his parents? His credit card company? His neighbors? And is the woman now inhabiting his apartment "for the last year" in on the conspiracy? (She'd have to be; but Gould can't quite grasp this.) Gould even says "I've been here a hundred times" to her, yet asks he to confirm her address and apartment number. Why bother if he's really been there so often? That lady has to be a stone-cold expert pokerfaced LIAR to be able to look him in the face and tell him UP is DOWN and have him pause even a moment to consider it. Yet, the movie has him look for "proof." So yeah the movie's logic isn't very bulletproof, but like RUNNING MAN, its heart is what it relies upon to get the job done. It is SO post-Watergate, it isn't even funny. Its the paranoid thriller at its apex or nadir, whatever you prefer, but when the good guys finally blow the lid off the whole thing, you can't help but cheer. Great stuff.
posted by figurebuilder at 1:18 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home