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.

Tank Girl.

Review #2516: Tank Girl.

Cast: 

Lori Petty (Tank Girl), Ice-T (T-Saint), Naomi Watts (Jet Girl), Malcolm McDowell (Kesslee), Don Harvey (Sgt. Small), Jeff Kober (Booga), Reg E. Cathey (Deetee), Scott Coffey (Donner), Stacy Linn Ramsower (Sam), Ann Cusack (Sub Girl), Brian Wimmer (Richard), Iggy Pop (Rat Face), Ann Magnuson (The Madam), Dawn Robinson (Model), Billy L. Sullivan (Max), James Hong (Che'tsai), Charles Lucia (Capt. Derouche), with Harlan Clark (Additional Ripper), Doug Jones (Ripper), Ata Scanlan (Additional Ripper), Alvarez Wortham (Additional Ripper), and Roz Witt (Dr. Nikita) Directed by Rachel Talalay (#1144 - Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare)

Review: 

"It’s such an iconic image. I think all strong women react in the same way to this outspoken crazed female icon. I was such a punk warrior. When I went in to pitch it – I mean, all you had to do was show the image. And when we sent the script out, the cover page was a comic book page. Even now when I talk to people who design for video games they say that there’s never a pitch for a female character that doesn’t include an image from Tank Girl. She’s the tough, punk warrior woman. She’s the icon of that. And every tough, interesting woman I know wants to be her."

I will admit that I had vaguely heard of this movie for years but was just lazy to see it (I first heard of this movie from the Nostalgia Critic* many years ago). Apparently, Rachel Talalay was given a Tank Girl comic to read by her stepdaughter when shooting her first film with Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). Tank Girl first appeared in print in 1988 in Deadline (a British comic magazine) that was developed by Alan Martin and artist Jamie Hewlett; you might be interested to know that Hewlett, whose drawings were extracted for use in the title sequence of the film, later moved into a place with Blur's Damon Albarn that led to them being involved with the virtual band Gorillaz in 1998*. Talalay (the unpaid production assistant-turned-accountant-turned-producer-turned-director) got interested in doing a movie and found the Deadline publisher was already trying to find a studio. Eventually, MGM/United Artists became involved with doing the film (Talalay apparently rejected an offer from Disney, believing that they would not allow the amount of violence/sexual references required). Talalay then picked Catherine Hardwicke to be the production designer, while Tedi Sarafian wrote the screenplay. Made on a budget of $25 million in New Mexico and Arizona (mostly in an abandoned open-pit mine), there were considerable edits made by the studio that ranged from a "naked Ripper suit", edits to the torture scene, edits to one role in particular, and, naturally, the original ending where Tank Girl burps as it starts to rain. The animated sequences (as done by Mike Smith) were put in because they didn't have the money to do the action sequences (apparently the tank wasn't particularly fast). Martin and Hewlett did not like the finished product, believing in a subsequent interview that nobody could really make a successful movie of the character (as for Tank Girl, it went through a hiatus before returning for an on-and-off basis since 2007). Talalay and Petty were proud enough of the film that they did a live viewing party of the film in 2020.

Imagine: it's the year 2033 and all the water is gone. It's a freewheeling, bratty, odd little movie...and I can't help but like it. It's strange too, because a good chunk of the critiques of the film could just as easily be spun around for people (like me, only I probably won't go into detail about feminism, because, well, good luck with that*) that praise the film as a zany and free-spirited mess. There is a certain type of charm that appeals to me for most of its 104-minute runtime in its energy that is infectious. Apparently, the production team did not expect to get the services of Stan Winston but go figure, they were so enthusiastic that they cut their usual rates in half to meet the budget for the Rippers you see on screen: articulated ears and tails activated remotely and, well, no puppetry. Suffice to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but hey, half man/kangaroo, I can roll with it for a movie that likes to lurk in a offbeat wasteland (your milage may vary over how it would've gone if the film had not been edited down to, uh, take out the prosthetic penis). Petty (cast after consideration to go with Emily Lloyd) is delightfully loony enough to make for an entertaining antihero, one who has their own kinks and interests that could turn anything to make a crack at. Far be it from a movie that asks about power or the circumstances of what a wasteland looks like, you just get an unruly movie that has time to have a music interlude of "Let's Do It". Evidently, McDowell had a few decent memories making the movie, and, yes, this seems right up his alley to play a villain that loves water so much that he stabs people with a device that sucks the water right out of their body. How could one not enjoy him here? The rest of the cast roll along with causal engagement with a movie that moves to its own beat, for better or worse. As a whole, Tank Girl is the kind of movie that clicked enough for me to have fun with, although I can understand where it didn't exactly rock the world back in 1995. Offbeat and anarchic in ways that can be off-putting to those with less patience

 

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*For a time, the Critic was my jam alongside Cinemassacre. And The Cinema Snob, eventually. 

*I used to know someone in college who dug them. The friendship didn't last at all, but at least Gorillaz is pretty decent.

*There was a discussion in a book, once, about talking about what cult films were "feminist" that called this film a "real feminist cult film" while labeling films by Kathryn Bigelow and Catherine Hardwicke as "too masculine", which honestly sounds like sour grapes more than anything.

Evidently, there was a mockumentary for the film, if you love it that much: Tank Girl Documentary 1995

A League of their Own.

Review #1500: A League of their Own.

Cast: 
Tom Hanks (Jimmy Dugan), Geena Davis (Dorothy "Dottie" Hinson), Lori Petty (Kit Keller), Madonna (Mae Mordabito), Rosie O'Donnell (Doris Murphy), Jon Lovitz (Ernie Capadino), David Strathairn (Ira Lowenstein), Garry Marshall (Walter Harvey), Bill Pullman (Bob Hinson), Anne Ramsay (Helen Haley), Megan Cavanagh (Marla Hooch), Freddie Simpson (Ellen Sue Gotlander), Tracy Reiner (Betty "Spaghetti" Horn), Bitty Schram (Evelyn Gardner), Renée Coleman (Alice "Skeeter" Gaspers), and Ann Cusack (Shirley Baker) Directed by Penny Marshall.

Review:
"I hadn't worked with so many women before. I thought it was something I should do. But I wasn't doing it just to do a women's picture. The problems as they're presented in the movie apply to both men and women. It's about, "Don't be ashamed of your talents." It's a universal thing."

It should figure that at least one good comedy is featured here involving the Marshall family. Older brother Garry rose from joke writer to television that morphed into developing television programs, with such shows as The Odd Couple, Happy Days, and Laverne & Shirley before going into film direction. As for Penny, she had grown from a childhood of tap dancing to small parts on film and television before being given substantial work with Garry's teleivision series, with the most prominent being her starring role on Laverne & Shirley that ran from 1976 to 1983. Encouragement from her brother led to an interest in directing (starting with an episode of Working Stiffs along with a few episodes of her own show). Her first feature Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986) was a mixed hit, but Big (1988) proved a major critical and audience hit. Marshall was inspired by a 1987 documentary she had seen about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which she had not heard of before. She sought out the creators of the work - Kim Wilson and Kelly Candaele (whose mother Helen Callaghan played for five years in the league) in developing the story while Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz (responsible for scripts such as Splash and City Slickers) developed the screenplay.

Technically speaking, this is not a straight historical film about the AAGPBL, which went by various names that started with referring to it as softball (since the league was trying to draw on the popularity of women's softball, since both used underhand pitching) before adding and then removing professional from the title for a league that ultimately lasted from 1943 to 1954, which really did have the players play in short outfits along with tight restrictions on what they could do socially (imagine giving an athlete ettiquite classes today), with the famed Wrigley Field indeed serving as the initial tryout location in real life. True, there would be a sale by its head to an entrepenur who felt he could do just as well in operating the league as he did with advertising Philip K. Wrigley's products along with the league - Arthur Meyerhoff. Obviously the winner of the championship did not result from something as silly as a plate collision  - in fact, Racine won the title the first year over Kenosha in a sweep. The "induction" scene at the end involving the Baseball Hall of Fame is tricky - it wasn't so much an induction but just a permanent exhibit featuring players. Of course we aren't here to talk about history, the reason I had interest in the film is simple - my love of baseball, the definitive American sport for everyone, featuring actors that had to have at least some talent in baseball to participate in the film (injuries still happened from mishaps on the field, as one could expect). Where the film clicks best is in getting some laughs within its baseball trappings, which shine gradually over a film that while admittedly lengthy at just a bit over two hours is still a crowdpleaser. Hanks grabs the attention once the baseball action slides into the first quarter, and he does a pretty good job in lending tempered amusement with his natural treating of the dialogue (the crying in baseball one is the easiest to cite becuase of how catchy it is). Anyone who can lend a decent hand in acting and playing a decent game of baseball gets a nod in my book, so it figures Davis does the best job in that regard, confident and entertaining whether on the diamond or away from it that makes for spiriting/sparring moments with others like Petty or Hanks. As for Petty, she does well with the material, resoundant and interesting to see among others with brimming rivalry that she handles fine. Others in the cast prove fine with their moments, like a quirky Madonna and her pal O'Donnell or a solid bit from Lovitzl or resourcefulness from Strathairn and Marshall. It generally works best when dealing with building its baseball action with quirky lines about trying to play and live with these folks along with the rules that go with it, with the interpersonal stuff proving fine - we are talking about a fictionalized story with a real league, after all. As long as it generates interest in the true AAGPBL, it can do what it pleases. On the whole, it isn't a surprise that this proved a hit nearly three decades ago, as it proves diverting with humor and heart to generate a fine mix of fact and fiction that serves any audience well in good entertainment.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.