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Stoicorum88
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Raising Arizona (1987)
I'll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash ya got.
Cool film. Very stylish and different, especially for what was being done in comedy in 1987, for example this has very little relation to comedies of the year like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Spaceballs or Harry and the Hendersons. Also, is it just me or is My Name is Earl heavily inspired by Raising Arizona? The general small-town, quaint, do-gooder-can't-do-no-good vibe? The tone? The narration? Hmm, maybe it's just me but I wouldn't be surprised.
Anyway, if you're expecting to laugh your bollocks off watching this, you're going in with the wrong mentality and that might sabotage your feelings about this film. It's not unfunny but it's hardly deserving of the comedy genre accolades that have been heaped upon it by the cinema industry.
Go in expecting a very interesting story about morals, ethics and how they intersect with desperation. This is a black, situational comedy that makes you say "that's funny" rather than actually laugh, if you get what I mean.
Bullets, Blood & a Fistful of Ca$h (2006)
I've only ever been good at two things; killing people's one of 'em... I forget the other.
This one was a complete surprise and a blind-buy from a thrift store.
Firstly let me get the negatives out of the way: there's a scene where the main character is hit by a car which was some of the worst CGI I've seen in probably a decade, there's some filming mistakes like a scene where a guy has a knife stabbed through his hand pinning it to a shelf but in the next scene you can see his hand (which is out of shot) slip down into the shot revealing no knife through it, and a few other flubs you might expect from a low budget independent film.
That stuff aside, this movie is a rollercoaster ride of brutality, practical effects, blood, gore, raining ammunition, 80's style tough guy one-liners, ruthless facial expressions and general bad assery. Bullets, Blood & a Fistful of Ca$h is basically The Punisher in all but name and I think Tom Doty (the titular character) would have definitely made a fantastic Frank Castle if he had been offered the role in the early-to-mid 2000's.
Tom Doty embodies the one-man army trope perfectly, like a combination of The Punisher and John Matrix with one of the most psychopathic faces in all of cinema history. Honestly it's shocking to me that this film isn't on more radars, especially the radars of those who crave trail-of-bodies revenge/action films.
It really sucks to see that Tom Doty hasn't done much since this movie and hasn't done another lead role at all since it in particular. This was the best $2 I've spent in years, highly recommended for anybody who just wants to sit back on the couch and watch a bullet-riddled bloodbath.
Deserves extra praise for the insane and creative ending.
Death Sentence (2007)
You're using my son's death like some kind of card trick.
Horrendous, out of place soundtrack. Cheesy dialogue. Multi-ethnic gang in a film attempting to achieve realism. Perhaps worst of all: cheap CGI violence in a film where violence is the whole damn point.
Seriously, the one murder scene in the first ten minutes which has the film's entire emotional subtext riding on it looked like something out of a comedy because the CGI was so awful (think Shaolin Soccer without any of the irony or self-awareness of how goofy the CGI is).
Kevin Bacon got robbed of his own Death Wish or Taxi Driver because James Wan is a talentless hack. Kevin Bacon gave a good performance though, I guess.
Men at Work (1990)
The commie b*stard gets no food!
Their utterly dismal, lazy, minimalist existence is the perfect setting for the high-stress drama that falls into their laps, and the addition of Keith David as a veteran having flashbacks as he terrorizes the two main characters in an attempt to help them is pure comedy gold. This is the working week answer to Weekend at Bernie's.
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Not personal? That is my work! My sweat! My time away from my kids! If that's not personal, I don't know what is.
If you had told me that, years after I last watched Erin Brockovich (directed by Steven Soderbergh) with my mother on VHS, that I would like it more than Soderbergh's Traffic I probably wouldn't have believed you. It's quite impressive that he released both films in 2000 which I didn't know until now.
Directly after the release of 2017's Wonder Woman (directed by Patty Jenkins) there was a general sentiment that women finally had a true female superhero movie, summed up for me by a friend of a friend's post on social media talking about what she saw as the key difference between male and female superheroes; that the former often "saves the world" because it's the right thing to do whereas the latter tends to "save the world" as a byproduct of maternalistic instincts. For her it implied an ethical inferiority that female superheroes needed an endangered child to fuel their heroism.
At the time I thought it was an over-exaggerated reading of the roles, since it's not exactly uncommon that male superheroes do what they do because of romantic forces driving their heroism. In hindsight I admit that this friend of a friend had a point.
Erin Brockovich isn't the story of a superhero but it's perhaps the best example of a female hero doing what's right for its own sake and it goes even further than that because Erin Brockovich does the right thing at the direct expense of her maternalistic instincts. She doesn't fight for an entire community's justice because one of her kids also got sick or anything like that and due to her workload and efforts she risks alienating her children and even destroys a relationship with a man in the process of this story. I don't know of any other film like it, in that respect.
By contrast, Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman had no husband or children and so the fact that she "saves the world" for its own sake is made redundant because she has no maternal instinct to ignore and act in spite of.
While Erin Brockovich on its surface is a quintessential 'feminist film' it also turns the 'workaholic husband and alienated wife' trope in on itself, by placing a woman in the role of workaholic and a man in the role of unloved and alienated, which makes for some very interesting material. The film has us so engaged with Erin Brockovich's mission that we're not prepared for when her love interest doesn't understand the importance of her long work hours and why he feels hurt and alienated to the point of wanting to leave her.
This is something very few films try to convey, possibly because most films with this trope are geared towards a male audience and so we're just expected to side with the overworked husband. However, in this film Erin takes George (her love interest) with her to inform one of the sick townspeople that all their work has paid off and they will be receiving a payout of $5 million and before she does so, she tells him that this is what he helped her achieve by staying home and taking care of the kids all those lonely nights.
I wonder how many destroyed relationships would have remained intact if only the workoholic husband had shown his wife what she had helped to achieve by doing what needed to be done to allow him to work so much? People are much more content with sacrifice when they know it was for something, but why would anybody stick around if they think they suffered through alienation just so their husband could help their employers make more money?
As an aside, I really love the tone of this film. It captures a kind of blue-collar desperation and while the feminist overtones are very obvious, what truly resides at Erin Brockovich's core is a tale about classism and overcoming the forces of polite society, summed up perfectly for me when Erin Brockovich is told to wear longer skirts by the women in the office.
Jacob's Ladder (1990)
Jake, New York is filled with creatures.
A post-Vietnam psychological horror film that wants to be Lynchian on purpose and unintentionally plays out like Hollywood's answer to Combat Shock. This film would be instantly improved if the horror elements weren't used for jumpscares that flash on the screen for a second and then vanish but rather went with the true Lynchian approach wherein the horror puts itself in front of your eyes and waits there while you try to process what you're seeing. That's a true nightmare, something that's still there after you blink.
That said, the more mundane slice-of-life scenes in this film really breathe and make you wish they dropped the blatant horror elements altogether. The way director Adrian Lyne captures the grief, PTSD and generally dirty and dilapidated existence of Jacob is the strength of the film, as well as Tim Robbins who acted his off here. I think Jacob's Ladder is a prime example of what a "flawed masterpiece" is.
Wounds (2019)
You should get an exterminator...
Pretty good example of the 'sophomore slump' here. After the excellent Under the Shadow, rich with its cultural identity, historical context and social commentary, Babak Anvari hits us with a fairly generic (though nicely cast) supernatural horror film. At times it had potential, it could have truly dived deep into a kind of gory lunacy but just when it seemed like it was about to take the plunge, we got a lame jumpscare, or some CGI insects.
In my opinion it should have tried to do more from the 'body horror' angle, and less from the whole occult thing. Feels played out, hopefully his third project (whatever/whenever that may be) gets back to what he achieved with his debut, not necessarily that I think he should return to folk horror, just that he should try to touch on something more personal and original again.
This could have been directed by literally anybody else and it'd be the same product.
Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Mediocrity buttressed by nostalgia.
Recently I came to the realization that my biggest problem with this film, which increases every time I rewatch it, is that without its connections to Star Wars as a franchise this film would be just another forgettable family-friendly action/adventure popcorn film that very few people would care about after the first 24 hours of leaving the cinema. It offers nothing more than loud sounds, flashy graphics, easily consumable characters, a plot that reeks of laziness and the Disney stamp of approval beside a film tag that might as well say "Hey! Remember Star Wars? Us too!"
Hell, even Maz Kanata looks like a Pixar character. This film ages like bread, not wine.