Point Break.

Review #2520: Point Break.

Cast: 

Keanu Reeves (FBI Agent Johnny Utah), Patrick Swayze (Bodhi), Gary Busey (FBI Agent Angelo Pappas), Lori Petty (Tyler Ann Endicott), John C. McGinley (FBI Director Ben Harp), James LeGros (Roach), John Philbin (Nathaniel), Bojesse Christopher (Grommet), Lee Tergesen (Rosie), Vincent Klyn (Lupton 'Warchild' Pittman), Chris Pedersen ('Bunker' Weiss), Dave Olson (Archbold), Anthony Kiedis (Tone), and Galyn Gorg (Margarita) Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (#1258 - K-19: The Widowmaker, #1548 - The Hurt Locker, #1820 - The Loveless, #2188 - Near Dark, #2361 - Blue Steel, #2494 - Strange Days)

Review: 

“Thrill-seeking adrenaline addicts have always fascinated me. The idea seems to be that it’s not until you risk your humanness that you feel most human. Not until you risk all awareness do you gain awareness.”

Sure, it feels right. The original idea of the film came from Rick King, who wondered about surfers who robbed banks. King had directed Prayer of the Rollerboys (1990), which was written by W. Peter Iliff, who once was waiting tables in his late twenties before becoming a screenwriter. Iliff's original screenplay (under the working title Johnny Utah) actually had bounced around for much of the late 1980s (Ridley Scott was at one point tapped before pre-production didn't go anywhere) before eventually falling into the hands of Lawrence Gordon and his company that went with Kathryn Bigelow to direct. Bigelow, alongside her then-husband James Cameron did re-writes for a production draft (one particular moment that Cameron came up with was the main character jumping out of a plane without a parachute); in short, it wasn't a movie crafted by one person but through a variety of influences (Cameron, for whatever reason, recently expressed a bit of bitterness over not getting a writer's credit). Made on a budget of $24 million, the movie was a decent enough with audiences at the time of release and it attracted enough of a following that someone made a "reality-play" parody (which premiered in Seattle in 2003) of the film that has a new unrehearsed actor play the lead role and read lines from cue-cards (various people have attended performances such as Busey, Petty, and even Bigelow). A remake was released in 2015, which was shot/directed by Ericson Core with Édgar Ramírez and Luke Bracey playing the lead roles, and a TV adaptation has been floating around for a few months.

Well, you either live for the ride, or the waves will just splash you away. The whole "initiation into a group by a cop" thing wasn't completely mined out by this point (as evidenced by say, The Fast and the Furious [2001] a decade later), but the best thing about the movie is that it just coasts on the amount of casual energy it has with its cast and action. The folks here play the whole thing as straight as you can play it even with folks being named "Johnny Utah" going from former football players to FBI agents (in fairness, Charles Tillman actually did go from former NFL player to federal agent, so there's that) to go along with people who are all in their own varying levels of inner balance*. Reeves was the one that Bigelow defended despite studio doubts, and, yeah, he makes for a good pairing with Swayze in that type of bond that basically goes past the usual cat-and-mouse game that comes with these types of movies. You've got vulnerability and the yearning to actually do something on one side with Reeves and the eclectic confidence that comes from someone who aims to be the master of their own domain (spiritually, literally, whatever). All will drift onto the other side, so why not try to aim for the ultimate thrill when doing so? The rest of the cast* are fairly charming in their aims for a film that takes things casually, whether that means a few chuckles at the strait-laced McGinley or the odd duck straight man nature of Busey (see, he doesn't always play louts or the heavy). Call it whatever you want (one label that has been floated around is "wet Western"), call it a movie about finding a soul within riding the waves of the frontier that is the sea, the important part is that it is a pretty neat thriller at the end of the day. It packs enough heat within its 122-minute runtime that coasts in the air with skydiving, on the ground with one particular chase scene and in the water for, well, various moments to try and capture the feeling of surfing (I myself can't say stuff about water besides trips to the waterpark). It even has an ending like a Western with the culmination of one perhaps finding a soul within the waves. For a movie as stimulating in its curiosity for high-octane interest as this one is, you will probably have a good time with a film that has managed to get to 35 years with relative ease.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*There are apparently people who find a homoerotic subtext to the film in the same sense that people try to do that for Top Gun. Truth be told, I wish people had half as much time to use on Strange Days, which is the far more interesting Bigelow movie of the 1990s. Seriously, go see it.

*My balance is trying to hide my desire to be wrapped up on an island with a lady just like Lori Petty's character. What a character, especially with that hair.

Safe (1995).

Review #2340: Safe.

Cast: 

Julianne Moore (Carol White), Peter Friedman (Peter Dunning), Xander Berkeley (Greg White), James LeGros (Chris), Martha Velez (Fulvia), Susan Norman (Linda), Kate McGregor-Stewart (Claire), Mary Carver (Nell), Steven Gilborn (Dr. Hubbard), and Peter Crombie (Dr. Reynolds) Written and Directed by Todd Haynes.

Review: 

"There’s a history of inexplicable illnesses, that established medicine can’t confirm as absolutely physiological, that have affected women. I think they are diseases of identity that force you to see that identity is a fragile and basically an imaginary construct that we pretend to carry around. The more unexamined it is, the more vulnerable you are."

Admittedly, it took a few years to get to a director who actually started his career with a movie involving Barbie dolls. Born in Los Angeles, Todd Haynes studied art and semiotics at Brown University and yet had been influenced by his high school teacher, who taught him a lesson about reality "can't be a criterion of judging the success or failure of a film or its effect on you". Haynes made his first short film in 1978 but it was his work on a short in 1987 while studying at Bard College that garnered considerable attention in more ways than one: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) was a chronicle (43 minutes) of the life of the pop singer but with Barbie dolls as actors (with, well, one being chipped away gradually to reflect anorexia) to make for an "experimental film" to go along with archive and stop motion footage that had music from The Carpenters...which generated controversy from Richard Carpenter because the music was not licensed for the film. The result is that one can only see the film in bootleg form. Haynes' feature debut with the sci-fi drama horror movie Poison (1991) had its own brand of scrutiny, because its partial funding by the National Endowment of the Arts stoked controversy because of certain moments in the film ("explicit porno" is an actual phrase used by the babies who complained at the time). Haynes wrote the script for Safe fairly quickly after Poison but it took time to raise money ($1 million) for the film, which among other inspirations, found interest in "environmental illness". In over three decades, Haynes has directed eleven films (and one TV miniseries), which has included such movies as Far from Heaven (2002), Carol (2015), and his most recent movie, May December (2023).

It is interesting to hear "The Yellow Wallpaper" mentioned. As one might know from say, high school reading, that short story was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. That's the short story where a husband imposes a "rest cure" to his wife because she is afflicted with something after giving birth (okay, the disease in that story is basically what people know now as postpartum depression but stay with me), with Gilman being influenced by her own experiences of having been in a "rest cure" Think how that woman is gradually revealed to, well, have various descriptions of the wallpaper of the room that basically imprisons her. Now think about a movie that took inspiration from Louise Hay's self-help books that once had a quote saying that "almost anything can be healed" if one is willing to do the mental work for a narrative (set in 1987, at the height of a certain disease that obviously led to plenty of questions about therapy and recovery treatments, gay person or not) that involves a married woman with a family that finds something has afflicted her. The film starts in a place where one really sees the bare minimum of nature and manages to burrow further in that basically serves as facsimile of the conventional movie. It strikes to the core with a lead character that Haynes once described as having "the most vulnerable part of identity, the most uncertain and fragile part of myself." Time has seemingly made the movie seem even more prescient when it comes to that weird thing that arises in modern society when it comes to what "safe" really is in a land of hollow people that repress themselves (this especially leans politically, where I am reminded of how many people seem to believe things were just better in the old pictures/movies they seem to revere as gospel). Whether it involves psychotherapy, or New-Age mumbo jumbo, people just use something to strike at being "alone". Moore pretty much plays the role with a weightless type of quality in voice and approach that basically dominates the movie in a way that is beautifully horrific, as if she was a ripped wallpaper trying to get back to some sort of wall. Her vulnerability at the uncertain grasp that comes with identity and community is one that leaves you at a curious distance that has us examine ourselves for what we think about when it comes to the cycle of illness and what we think about in "recovery" through the lens of burden or strength. We see the sick, but do we actually hear them? Whether by circumstances of their own control or through the cruel nature of the unknown, the world we live in makes for a very strange process to see people and communities. It's interesting to see the contrast between her interactions with Berkeley (totally staid for the hollow-men, as one sees from the sex scene from above) as compared to Friedman and his ideal persona of feel-goodness. It is a slow burn of unsettling strangeness that leaves one at the very least unsettled at what has been sprung on them for its climax in terms of defining love in the eyes of oneself. In the end, we all yearn to be "safe" from something, where we wrap ourselves in a bubble and just believe in that decision in the face of all things. Whether taken as melodrama or horror, what we have here is a well-done film in the art of isolation and the delusions that come with misplaced beliefs and burdens that all come to roost at some point in our very lives.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Sunday night: be ready and Go Bills.