Any Given Sunday.

Review #1523: Any Given Sunday.

Cast: 
Al Pacino (Tony D'Amato), Cameron Diaz (Christina Pagniacci), Dennis Quaid (Jack 'Cap' Rooney), James Woods (Dr. Harvey Mandrake), Jamie Foxx (Willie Beamen), LL Cool J (Julian Washington), Matthew Modine (Dr. Ollie Powers), Jim Brown (Montezuma Monroe), Lawrence Taylor (Luther 'Shark' Lavay), Bill Bellamy (Jimmy Sanderson), Andrew Bryniarski (Patrick 'Madman' Kelly), Lela Rochon (Vanessa Struthers), Lauren Holly (Cindy Rooney), Ann-Margret (Margaret Pagniacci), Aaron Eckhart (Nick Crozier) Directed by Oliver Stone (#095 - Wall Street, #1090 - Platoon, and #1265 - Natural Born Killers)

Review: 
"I love intelligent films that come at you fast. I don't have attention deficit disorder, my mind moves fast. There's a lot to deal with in my films. We had so many facts to go through, so the governing style was flash, cut, flash, repeat."

One needs to see a bit of distinct vision every now and then from a director, and Oliver Stone closed out his 20th century with another distinct focus in football. He had been a student at Yale University before doing service in Vietnam first through teaching students English in Saigon to wiping Merchant Marine ships to dropping out of Yale and enlisting in the United States Army. He went into New York University after that and graduated with a film degree in 1971. He made his first film as a director with the cheapie Seizure (1974) before getting the chance to write Midnight Express (1978), which resulted in an Academy Award for his script despite inaccuracies of the depiction of the real-life prison story. The Hand (1981) followed for Stone as a director, but the five years between this and his next was crucial, since he wrote Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Scarface (1983) in that time. He rocketed to further prominence with Platoon (1986) that kept him busy over the prevailing years, with this being his 15th as director/writer. He has touched subjects such as war with Salvador (1986), biopics with The Doors (1991), to crime with Natural Born Killers (1994), all seeming distinct in their provocative nature by Stone.

I wonder if Stone wanted to make the ultimate football film. What we have here is truly a hodgepodge of clichés and assumptions you can have in a sports film, right from an upstart rookie becoming a star and then needing to not become consumed in arrogance, a wearied wise coach (perhaps like Tom Landry?), action montages, and even having actual athletes as stars (of which there are several notable ones of the past like Lawrence Taylor or Johnny Unitas). Stone had first expressed an interest in a football project with an early 1980s script about an old linebacker he wrote in mind for Charles Bronson. Years later, he met journalist Richard Weiner. He had developed a script with former player Jamie Williams about a black quarterback. This would be combined with scripts done by John Logan and Daniel Pyne alongside inspiration from You're Okay, It's Just a Bruise by Robert Huzienga Jr (former team physician of the Los Angeles Raiders detailing player injuries); Stone and Logan would get screenplay credit while Pyne and Logan got story and Weiner and Williams were consultants. This frenzy also applies to editing, since there are four listed as part of the film. Stone clearly was under the mindset that football was somehow like war, particularly with how it marched on as a team together as opposed to individual only, while also seeing the other sides of football life (like the pain and egos). On a basic level, I would say that this is a decent movie, wrapped with making an involving film packing an ensemble worthy of carrying most of its weight that Stone wants to put on them on and off the field that can be fairly entertaining. Of course it also is considerably lengthy at 162 minutes (157 for the director's cut, in which twelve minutes were cut for pacing while adding six minutes of other scenes) with a self-importance like no other in its presentation of football players as the modern gladiator (complete with a brief flash of Ben-Hur to drive home the point) with all of the excesses that come from Stone's view on the matter. It is firmly a film of the 1990s in all the right and weird ways, one that I chuck a smile at when it stops doing flashes of editing and focuses on just the basics.

Pacino does quite well with the material required in garnering a leader one could rally around in all of the moods required, whether that involves weary loneliness or stubborn dominance that seems fairly convincing in rally curiosity. Diaz matches him in cleverness that never seems like a doorstep to forget about, a figure of new-school arrogance that does seem quite amusing. Quaid does fine with a man on his last leg of fame (and perhaps health) - respectable without being drowned in pity. Woods doesn't have too much to really do, but he is quite a conniving figure behind the lines that has one really good scene to munch on involving him being caught in a lie about the health of the players. Foxx (picked after Sean Combs lost the role apparently because he couldn't throw a football) captures the bravado of a rising star and all that comes with it in good detail, whether that involves brimming confidence or sparring words with anyone. Others such as Cool J and Taylor make the best of their time on screen in charm and coarse acting that resonate the siding of the football action in its business and excess. It can't quite keep every thread going without being a bit lost, but at least its numerous showing of games do look fairly convincing (hits and all) within a fictionalized football league (in the year 2001 no less). It still has a punch when it comes to the TV-infected sensationalism and other various topics, and it definitely seems willing enough to want to inspire a thought without bashing your head with it. On the whole, it lumbers to points about football gladiators and its exploitation a bit too much, but it does work itself enough to win out in the end.

Next Time: We venture into the 21st century.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Rollerball (2002).

Review #1270: Rollerball (2002).

Cast: 
Chris Klein (Jonathan Cross), Jean Reno (Alexi Petrovich), LL Cool J (Marcus Ridley), Rebecca Romijn (Aurora), Naveen Andrews (Sanjay), Mike Dopud (Michael), Kata Dobó (Katya Dobolakova), Lucia Rijker (Lucia Ryjker), Oleg Taktarov (Oleg Denekin), Paul Heyman (Sports Announcer), and Janet Wright (Coach Olga) Directed by John McTiernan (#014 - Die Hard, #018 - Die Hard with a Vengeance, #080 - The Hunt for Red October, #325 - Predator, and #576 - Last Action Hero)

Review: 
1000 word score!

It should only figure that someone made a remake of Rollerball (1975). After all, one can only take so many things from the 1960s or 1980s to shamelessly make again without doing anything new or different (unless you decide to make a nostalgia cashgrab sequel, of course) before thinking about something as ridiculous yet memorable like that particular film and think you can do better. The original film, written by William Harrison from his short story with direction by Norman Jewison, was a film about one man fighting against a corporation's decision to force him out of the senseless (yet capably watchable) sport in the not too distant future. A sport that looked like a mix of hockey, football and roller derby looked pretty violent, but at least you could get the idea that the film had some sort of interest in actually saying something meaningful besides being a sci-fi sports flick. The remake, directed by McTiernan with a script from Larry Ferguson and John Pogue that was modified to emphasize the action and nothing else. Is this a joke? Did someone with such a distinguished career as McTiernan (at least until he got into legal trouble, which occurred due to hiring someone to wiretap one of the other producers of this film and then lying about it) really make a film with so many mind-boggling bad decisions? When the best presence in the film is professional wrestling advocate Paul Heyman, you really messed things up. Watching a hour of wrestling entertainment (take your pick) would likely be more convincing, since at least you can mostly tell what is going on, as opposed to slovenly films like this. You could just write a long screed of things wrong with this film and probably do it in less time than this 98 minute jumble, complete with one less editor than this film had (two, Robert K. Lambert and John Wright) and with less money and effort ($70 million, for which this made less than half back).

This is the kind of film where its friends are Gymkata and Stealth, where one laughs at it hard until they just can't do it anymore. It's the only way to try and make sense of a film that has jumbled action sequences and characters that don't even merit one sentence descriptions on the Internet. It isn't like the original was really great or anything, but at least one could actually say something nice about the lead played by James Caan and not have to immediately roll onto the ground laughing like with this film. Seriously, how could you not laugh at how ridiculous this film is with its main lead? Supposedly, MGM wanted Keanu Reeves to be the star, which is completely believable and also completely hilarious in hindsight with Klein, who looks completely out of his depth here. He isn't the individual fighting against the system here, he just happens to be the latest action figure (namebrand hockey player) being played with in a massive toybox, where things are being thrown around in an attempt at a story like a kid making the rules up as he goes, playing to a crowd of one that is in danger of losing its own audience. Reno seems completely vacant, which one could also say for Andrews, with neither inspiring any sort of adversarial presence that this desperately needs. LL Cool J (who apparently admitted to this film's suckage) is equally not spared from such lameness, and Romijn (with accent and scar in tow) is just as silly to be around. These characters really have as much energy and personality as play figures, where one can look at them and see some sort of expression try to come out. For the toymaster here, all that we can see is a mess that will have to be cleaned up later.

To point all of the severe flaws of this film may be an exercise in verbal spewage, but it is fairly appropriate for a film as sloppy as this one. How does one make a sport as ridiculous as this one (which we see played in Kazakhstan) struggle to get a cable deal in North America? If other sillier (but fairly competent) sports like soccer, e-sports, and cornhole have at least some sort of deal, how does this one fail? Maybe its in the rules, since it's barely comprehensible as a sport at all. The "Instant Global Rating" (one of the "neat" creations of this film's future of 2005, where nothing is different at all, the perfect hipster future) is just as silly, as if one really needs to tell us that "more violence = more curious viewers". Perhaps this sport thinks its biggest competitor is professional wrestling. The icing on the cake is the night vision sequence. It actually was a re-shot scene that was too dark the first time around. Imagine delaying a movie for months (from summer to February) because you couldn't do a chase sequence in the dark properly, then having it be in the film in night-vision for no apparent reason. Geez, the street sequence in the beginning looked more convincing than this. This is just a horrendous experience, through and through, where the unrewarding climax is just the cherry on top on the punch to the face that this movie gives you. This even was at one point slated to be an R-rated film, but bad test screenings led to the digital removal of blood (for sweat) and a romance sequence. I shudder to wonder how worse it was before cuts were made. You would think a film could be made that had some sort of commentary about an audience and their curiosity for violence that didn't turn into an excessive joke on the viewer. It may not be the worst experience one could have with a film, but it surely ranks up there as an insultingly stupid movie that deservedly languishes at pawn shops on the film stack, for good reason.

Overall, I give it 1 out of 10 stars.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later.

Review #1148: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later.

Cast: 
Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode / Keri Tate), Chris Durand (Michael Myers), Michelle Williams (Molly Cartwell), Josh Hartnett (John Tate), Adam Arkin (Will Brennan), Jodi Lyn O'Keefe (Sarah Wainthrope), LL Cool J (Ronald "Ronny" Jones), Adam Hann-Byrd (Charlie Deveraux), Janet Leigh (Norma Watson), Nancy Stephens (Marion Chambers-Whittington), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Jimmy Howell) Directed by Steve Miner (#761 - Friday the 13th Part 2)

Review: 
Hmm, a Halloween film review? Must be that time of season again - or perhaps there is a new Halloween film out, complete with ignoring continuity of the previous few films and having it star Jamie Lee Curtis being stalked by Michael Myers yet again. Obviously I wanted to be a bit thorough with this review and some of its background, so I hope you enjoy the final result.

There is something to be said about doing another Halloween film, as this is the seventh film of this franchise that reached its highest point of suspense and terror with its original installment in 1978. Although I do find some enjoyment from some of the sequels that followed (whether for a few cheap scares or laughs), it is weird to see an attempt to try and capture the magic in the bottle once again after seeing how the franchise had progressed in the previous three installments, which reached the bottom of the barrel in scares. The fact that this film washes away the continuity of those films should mean that there is some hope for a good horror film that doesn't delve into a cheap shadow of what had made the original (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the sequel) so effective. Having Curtis back also pulls a point in that hopeful direction, since she had expressed in bringing back people from the original, such as John Carpenter. However, he expressed a demand for a starting fee of $10 million that was rejected, which led to him not directing. The film was based on a story by Kevin Williamson (writer of Scream who is credited as one of the executive producers for the film) that would develop into a screenplay written by Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg, although Williamson would do un-credited re-writes for certain parts such as character dialogue, and it was his idea to come up with the story-line involving the paramedics that would be followed up in the sequel that was filmed after shooting had ended. The working title for the film was "Halloween 7: The Revenge of Laurie Strode", and there was a version of the script in which the events of 4-6 were actually acknowledged at one point, but somewhere along the way it was decided to go with a title that is actually more ridiculous to say out loud than reading it on a screen. But I suppose the idea for titles in this series were running low, owing to the films that followed - alongside the idea to release it in August, clearly the month one thinks of for horror films.

With all of this, how does the actual product pan out? On the one hand, it doesn't go as low as Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers in terms of execution, but there isn't anything here besides the climax that is particularly interesting, and it doesn't approach the levels of either the original, Halloween II, or even the fourth one, which was really more of a cheap thrill made ten years after the original. Ten years after that, and they still can't make a Halloween installment that actually has some sort of real scares or interesting side characters. Oddly enough, the easiest sticking point I have with this film involves Myers. For the second film (which the film doesn't ignore), he had burnt to a cinder, while having his eyes shot out. With this one, you see too much of him and his eyes (particularly when trying to fake out the audience), which only cheapens his presence for actual moments to try and spook the audience. This is made especially weird by the fact that there is a scene involving Myers in a CGI mask meant to cover up the original mask used for the scene. It's just weird in general that there were numerous masks used for the film in general, as if it was really hard to pick one and just stick with it. By the time the fourth or fifth jump scare happens, the film seems to glue itself into mediocrity. I suppose the best trick this movie has up its sleeve is to try and have jump scares and comic relief bits (such as LL Cool J talking to his off-screen wife about some ambitions to write romance novels) as if they will make up for the already stacked cliches that seem to date this film more than the original. Perhaps they wanted to out-do the original in cheesy dialogue. I can understand what they were trying to do with the focus on Laurie and her trauma and how it affects her after twenty years, especially with her son. However, the writing doesn't make this go anywhere besides cursory moments. However, the climax makes it nearly worth it in a ridiculous yet weirdly satisfying way, a venting out of frustration by Curtis' character that leads to an action that would have perfectly encapsulated the end of this franchise...but of course, that is not quite the case. At least its somewhat tolerable at 86 minutes.

Curtis, in her third go at the role, is the best part of the film. You can see her effort to try and give this role some sort of growth in the time elapsed since the original two films that make her someone worth following. It's easy to see why she wanted to be back for another one of these films (later expressing her love of the film despite calling it a payday movie), and she is easily the best part of the final showdown, taking control of how this film uses its one effective trick. The other actors aren't terrible, but most of them are fairly wooden, with the teenagers not being at all interesting to be with, especially with Hartnett. I suppose they thought it would be really clever to have Leigh (mother of Curtis) be in the film for a few scenes - complete with the same car used by her in Psycho (1960). At least we get to see Stephens (present in the first two films) in the opening sequence, the first in a few ways to invoke memories from the past - for better or worse. By the time Myers starts terrorizing this group, you don't really care who survives or not, and the deaths seem pretty hollow this time around. Maybe its the fact that there is no character in the vein of Dr. Loomis (played by Donald Pleasence until his death in 1995) besides a reference in the opening scene that makes this film feel hollow with its pursuits. Ultimately, this is a Halloween product that only serves as a pale shadow of the original two films that should have served as the end for this series.

But of course, that's not the case, is it...?

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.