Sudden Death.

Review #2510: Sudden Death.

Cast:

Jean-Claude Van Damme (Darren McCord), Powers Boothe (Joshua Foss), Raymond J. Barry (U.S. Vice President Daniel Bender), Dorian Harewood (Matthew Hallmark), Whittni Wright (Emily McCord), Ross Malinger (Tyler McCord), Michael Gaston (Hickey), Faith Minton (Carla), Paul Mochnick (Andrew Ferrara), Audra Lindley (Angeline Ferrara), and Jack Erdie (Scratch) Directed by Peter Hyams (#233 - 2010: The Year We Make Contact, #326 - Timecop, #2477 - A Sound of Thunder)

Review: 

"I was not a hockey fan. I had not been to a hockey game before. I started to do research, and then I started to watch the Penguins play. I began to realize the unbelievable athleticism involved, and the violence involved and the speed of that puck. Hockey is better in the arena than it is on television. It’s a phenomenal sport."

What better day to do a movie about hockey than a few days after the United States of America managed to beat the odds and win the gold medal in hockey (and in true gender equality: the men and women each won*)? What better time to see a movie that could basically be thought of as an ad for a hockey team? The original story came from Karen Baldwin, an aspiring actress who became part of a producing firm with her husband Howard, which basically came on the side of sports ownership, as the Baldwins were among the owners of the Pittsburgh Penguins (as was the case from 1992-1998*). At the time, the team played in the Civic Arena, and the unique roof of the venue that could open up apparently led to Karen thinking about the possibility of doing "something like Die Hard in a hockey arena", which also matched with a story the Baldwins had tried to do about a Soviet goaltender trying to defect because they were wearing a mask; Gene Quintano then wrote the screenplay. When Peter Hyams (not exactly a hockey fan at the time) was approached, he was astounded to see the Baldwins willing to do a movie with so much action in their own venue (he proceeded to suggest a fight scene with a killer dressed up as the team mascot). Of course, the 1994-95 league lockout hindered them in getting the proper filming for crowds, and a good variety of the hockey action ended up being the work of local hockey players (while Mike Lange and Paul Steigerwald provided commentary). As the second collaboration between Hyams and Jean-Claude Van Damme (after Timecop), the movie was a mild success at the time while becoming a rental favorite. 

It does kind of boggle the mind to have your hockey team be part of a movie that has the following: the team mascot getting into a fight with the lead hero (before getting brutally killed), team security basically being humiliated at all costs (mayhem after every period ends no less), and, to top it all, the lead villain wearing Penguins gear right before he dies in "death by helicopter stalling". Of course, the funniest thing is the movie just...ends, because I could only wonder how a hockey game continues after all that. For a movie that freely cribs from Die Hard, except with trying to disarm bombs, it is quite fascinating to see it all play out (right down to a henchman playing Doom), unless one doesn't like violence in their action movie - the body count on this film of people who die is actually considerable, jeez.. This was a movie that had both of its hero and villain cast because other people rejected it (Sylvester Stallone and James Woods, for example) and yet each manage to have a ball with the roles presented here, mostly in the case of Boothe, who has tremendous alacrity to engage with the mayhem without just having it mosey on by. Van Damme may never have really been a great action star in terms of variety, but he at least was still committed enough in physicality to at least make it worthwhile to see him kick the hell out of someone dressed up as a mascot. As much as it would be nice to have some presence from the hostages besides cursory interest from Barry, the movie doesn't hesitate in just going with the mayhem. The maneuvering of the plot does not exactly gel completely with reality (bomb detonations are to be delayed by the onset of overtime because, well, I guess even terrorists wanted to make sure they didn't miss the finale before blowing it up?), but the movie manages to move its machinery for 110 minutes without treating the audience as if they were entitled to be liked for the sake of being liked. You either buy what it is selling (complete with rooftop action for the climax) or you just wash it away quickly. As a whole, Hyams shot and directed a decent little film that basically maneuvers itself the way you would hope for a wind-up action movie in an era where cribbing from others was fine as long as you had some craftsmanship behind it. It's not a great movie, but being good enough is fine anyway.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night presents: Song of the day

*It should be noted that Howard Baldwin was behind the change of the iconic Penguins logo for, well, a loser logo that never won anything when it was around because...merchandising. Also he called the old logo a "pigeon". Just goes to show that rich people really do sometimes have no taste at all.

*I mean this with only a lit bit of venom towards the sore losers towards how the men's/women's hockey games went: Suck it Canada! 

MacGruber.

Review #1680: MacGruber.

Cast: 

Will Forte (MacGruber), Kristen Wiig (Vicki Gloria St. Elmo), Ryan Phillippe (Lieutenant Dixon Piper), Val Kilmer (Dieter Von Cunth), Maya Rudolph (Casey Janine Fitzpatrick), Powers Boothe (Colonel Jim Faith), Timothy V. Murphy (Constantine Bach), Chris Jericho (Frank Korver), and Montel Vontavious Porter (Vernon Freedom) Directed by Jorma Taccone.

Review: 

"What you see with this movie is exactly what we wanted to do. It's the three of us having a bunch of fun writing it, then having fun making it with a bunch of our friends—old friends and new friends. I think that fun comes across when you watch it. It's rare that you get that kind of creative freedom."

I suppose there really should be a line that prefaces any review of a movie based on a sketch from Saturday Night Live, because really there is one easy statement to make: the level of humor to expect from a film like this depends on just what era of the show you grew up watching (so if you stop watching and come back to it like five or ten years later, you get to say that it wasn't as funny as the era you grew up with). Technically this is a bit unfair, because I did like The Blues Brothers (1980) and the Wayne's World (1992-93) movies. But one probably wouldn't be surprised to see that this was the first one of these SNL films to be released in theaters since The Ladies Man (2000) and it is currently the last one, although it is only now that the idea to develop MacGruber into television is happening. But you probably need some detail before we get into the quality of the movie, so what is exactly MacGruber? Well, believe it or not, I do remember this series of sketches, because even ten year old kids like me need something to do on Saturday nights. The series of sketches ran on-and-off for three years as a parody of the television series MacGyver (1985-1992), where the parody character (after a song extolling the talents of said character that can get stuck in your head) would try to escape a dangerous situation with little time remaining in a control room with some sort of random material while he is plagued by some sort of internal issue (such as say...growing bald or his grandmother) before the bomb explodes. The star of the actual show (Richard Dean Anderson) even made an appearance, for which child-me would have been pretty surprised by (insert reference to Stargate SG1 here). For what its worth, the only other recurring short I remember from the time was something involving cats with lasers, so one wonders where the time has gone. At any rate, the idea for MacGruber came from Jorma Taccone, who had joined SNL in 2005 that was known for his work in the comedy troupe The Lonely Island, which would create numerous digital shorts for the series until 2014 (the next film that Taccone would direct featured the troupe with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping in 2016). He pitched the original idea to Forte and John Solomon for a month before finally convincing them to conceive a series of brief films (as opposed to one sketch). SNL creator Lorne Michaels eventually suggested that they should develop a script for a film (if one can do a commercial with Pepsi and make it stick, truly a movie isn't too far off). Taccone, Solomon, and Forte would set out to make a movie that looked like an action movie (in the vein of stuff like Die Hard and First Blood) while honing to a cheap budget ($10 million, with less than 1/50th of it being used for special effects) while shooting it in the course of a month.

So yes, one can credit the filmmakers for having the freedom to do what they wanted with a comic relief lead that has to balance the line between insanely flawed and likeable enough to see all the way through for 91 minutes. The film was a flop, but it has certainly developed a small cult following in the decade since its release (one notable fan: Christopher Nolan). Take this anyway you wish: It might be the Freddy Got Fingered of its decade, where it just isn't my kind of thing, but I can at least understand the appeal for it despite finding it below quality. In other words, you can misunderstand all you want, but it can't hide the fact that it isn't even as clever in trying to have fun with the action genre as Last Action Hero (1993). Honestly, there isn't anything here that is remotely interesting when it comes to its supposed unpredictability or its attempts at balancing strait-laced folks like Kilmer and Boothe (the highlights of the movie) with the wackos in Forte and Wiig that seems more useful in less does on television. I think it is the brief time one spent with the sketches that made them more effective than what happens when you try to extend something that should have stayed at a minute. But hey, someone might think of it as akin to those parody movies like Airplane! (1980), or maybe an offshoot of other attempts at making fun of action movies like Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993, which I should probably re-watch at some point), or maybe even Big Trouble in Little China (1986), although I should mention that each actually have a real third act. Or maybe it will touch those who are familiar with an insecure lead in action with Archer, although that is funny for its own reasons. For me, the main joke doesn't stick at any point long enough to keep my interest, one that drags itself in the guise of edge with the depth of a shallow pool. One knows Forte can be funny, because one doesn't stay on a series for a decade without having some staying power, but here it just seems like a fun time for Forte and little else for those who think the character needs to take a trip to the trimmers. One can only tolerate insecurity for so long before a stick of celery gets involved, so this little game of buildup and humiliation rides on the viewer's patience for it. Wiig is used for a bit of singing and doing disguises that has the energy of a hit-or-miss gag, which is up to your preferences (meh is the only word I can find). Phillippe plays the straight man to this trio, one that has to put some sort of gravitas to the stuff around him, which hits with the power of a defective broomstick. It is Kilmer that actually shines over these folks, mostly because his dry delivery seems more prescient for what one could see in an overblown action movie in actually seeming funny for what is needed that might have deserved even more time on screen. Boothe plays it as one might see in a cheap 80s movie, which is collected but worth your time. There is a group of wrestlers used for a cameo that goes exactly the way you might see coming a minute before it happens in the gag, which is rather disappointing. Look, if you find it to be a funny movie, all power to you. But it begs for a polish in its lead presence, racked with gags that are very hit or miss that makes it quite niche and cliché at the same time. The only thing that offends me more is something unbearably bland, one that is only for a particular audience that probably likes some of the stuff I prefer when it comes to jokes that land that clearly could have been said in less than a thousand words that could have been said in seven: It just isn't my kind of comedy.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

Men of Honor.

Review #1645: Men of Honor.

Cast: 

Robert De Niro (Master Chief Leslie 'Billy' Sunday), Cuba Gooding Jr (Boatswain's Mate Second Class Carl Brashear), Charlize Theron (Gwen Sunday), Aunjanue Ellis (Jo Brashear), Hal Holbrook (Mr. Pappy), Michael Rapaport (Gunners Mate Snowhill), Powers Boothe (Captain Pullman), David Keith (Captain Hartigan), Holt McCallany (Machinist's Mate First Class Dylan Rourke), and David Conrad (Captain Hanks) Directed by George Tillman Jr.

Review: 

"I realized that some of these aspects related to my path as a filmmaker. And I believe audiences will find a part of themselves in Carl - the best part of themselves - perhaps the part they haven't used lately."

George Tillman Jr wanted to make movies from a young age. The Milwaukee native was shooting things he saw with a 8mm camera he borrowed from his father as a child, but it was the viewing of films such as Five on the Black Hand Side (1973), Claudine (1974), and Cooley High (1975) that inspired him to enter the world of filmmaking. He studied film and video at Columbia College in Chicago before moving into a partnership with a fellow classmate with Robert Teitel in Menagerie Films, a directing and producing partnership. Through years of rising from production assistant to writing/directing his own script, Soul Food (1997) became a hit. Tillman has so far directed seven theatrical films while also serving as a producer on a variety of films, and this is his second overall film, for which he was attracted to the story of Carl Brashear. The son of a sharecropper that did not graduate high school, he was the first African-American graduate of the United States Navy Diving & Salvage School, having done so in 1954 after enlisting in the Navy six years prior. Sixteen years later, having overcome an accident that lost him a leg to be recertified as a diver, he became a U.S. Navy master diver. The path to making a film of Brashear started in 1980 (right after retiring from service) that bounced around from contract deals to a script in 1994 for Paramount Pictures that stalled until it went into the hands of Teitel and Tillman Jr. Budget haggling was a step to overcome alongside getting actors to appear, so here we are with a $32 million film with two Academy Award winners for stars.

There is likely a good reason that this film stood on my shelf for over a decade, because I do know my dad favored certain films that involved the military in some way or just had a good story to tell. Somewhere, in that mindset of 129 minutes spent with this film, is a struggle for something better than average when it comes to a biopic that has an interesting juggling act between its stars. On the one hand, it does manage to accomplish one basic fact: It tells the story of a man who persisted onto his goal no matter what challenge came his way (whether prejudice or one good leg), and it does so with just enough interest to hear more about the story that will likely be enough to overcome its shortcomings for those who are interested in what it wants to say. The sticking point one might have is the very fact that it is a modestly average affair all the way around when it comes to being a conventional biopic, one that just manages to not diffuse itself in tension only because the main two actors do fine enough with the material while the action in the water is at least somewhat interesting to sit through. It is as if someone wanted to make a 50s style drama biopic, one with challenges to overcome while other folks dote on them. In that sense, De Niro does just fine with what he is given, trying to toe the line between hard-driving mentor and maniac without playing to the angle of biopic scene-chewing camp. Granted, it is an angle that can only go so far in middling depth, but De Niro at least seems game for doing it straight rather than playing it off for an unintentional laugh. Gooding Jr (who found himself playing quite a few historical figures in the next few years) does well enough in his own distinct path in playing off courage and interest in the main subject without becoming just a man in a suit, one that has to deal with underwater action with patience alongside other moments that he is fairly up to task for. Theron and Ellis compliment the two in the moments away from the water with adequate results. Honestly, one wonders if there was more of the eccentric Holbrook left on the cutting floor, one who has exactly one scene of focus involving his eccentricities (alongside racism). Rapaport is there for basically three scenes as a counterpart for Gooding Jr that comes and goes.

Of course there are a few embellishments from history to fiction, and at least the film had the participation of the Navy. One particular name comes up with Alberto José do Nascimento, a Brazilian diver who was the only one to support Brashear, complete with being the only one to bunk with him (as opposed to the stutterer played by Rapaport). Of course, De Niro is playing a composite character of people that Brashear dealt with, and the whole episode involving a bar dispute settled with submerging one's head in water apparently didn't happen either. As for the amputation...well it wasn't because he wanted to go right back to the Navy but with a prosthetic - he was plagued by necrosis and infection (with a possibility of keeping the leg, but with a brace, not a cane). At any rate, it is a film of process for diving rather than big moments, building to its rise and fight again type of mantra with reasonable finish. Is it great? Not by any means, but it gets the job done in portraying a useful moment in history with a reasoned cast and director to reach the levels it wants without sinking, and that should be more than enough in the end.

Next Time: Closing time hits soon, but it's time for Selma.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Tombstone.

Review #1177: Tombstone.

Cast: 
Kurt Russell (Wyatt Earp), Val Kilmer (Doc Holliday), Sam Elliott (Virgil Earp), Bill Paxton (Morgan Earp), Powers Boothe ("Curly Bill" Brocius), Michael Biehn (Johnny Ringo), Charlton Heston (Henry Hooker), Jason Priestley (Billy Breakenridge), Jon Tenney (Sheriff Johnny Behan), Stephen Lang (Ike Clanton), Thomas Haden Church (Billy Clanton), Dana Delany (Josephine Marcus), and Paula Malcomson (Allie Earp), with narration by Robert Mitchum. Directed by George P. Cosmatos (#818 - Rambo: First Blood Part II)

Review: 
On October 26, 1881, a shooutout occurred between lawmen and outlaws near the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, resulting in three deaths. It later became known as one of the most famous shooutouts of the Wild West, in part due to Stuart Lake's biography Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, written in 1931 that told the tale of one of the participants. Although it is now known as largely fictional by researchers, it served the basis for films such as My Darling Clementine (1946) while helping to elevate Earp into a mythic icon. In any case, Kevin Jarre was slated to write and direct this film to tell the tale of the gunfight alongside the people involved in the shootout. However, a month into production he was fired from the directing chair due to falling behind in the shooting schedule. Cosmatos was hired to replace him, while scriptdoctor John Fasano helped in trimming the story to focus more on the Wyatt-Doc dynamic. It may interest you to know that six months after the release of the film came Wyatt Earp (1994), which starred Kevin Costner that wasn't as successful. The best thing that can be said about this movie is that it has plenty of entertainment value for a Western, having a good balance of action and story to make a solid experience. The ensemble cast is up to the task of making these characters come alive without feeling generic or getting lost in the shuffle. The music from Bruce Broughton (composer of a film previously covered in Silverado) also stands to the task of swift adventure. Russell shines fairly well, being quite capable at giving his role a fair sense of depth that makes him feel more than just a lawman, particularly when conversing with his on-screen brothers (Elliot and Paxton, who are efficient) or with Kilmer. I particularly like the sequence when he deals with an unruly gambler (played by Billy Bob Thornton) without even having to shoot a gun. Kilmer (complete with a Southern drawl) is quite excellent as well, being quite watchable with plenty of charm to go around. Boothe shines well as one of the adversaries the movie presents, but it is Biehn who also proves efficient in making a worthy opponent for the final showdown. The supporting cast is fine, although the movie's key strength relies more on Earp in action than when he is sharing time with either of the women in his life. The film works well before and after the Corral gunfight, keeping interest through its 130 minute runtime with minimal moments of tedium. The film seems to have plenty of craftsmanship and effort done to make something that doesn't feel like a manufactured tale made for a cheap thrill, having a finely told story with plenty of interesting things to go around. It isn't a great Western classic, but it is a well made and well done movie that can work for anyone looking for an old legend put to film.

Happy New Year folks. Hoping 2019 is just as productive as 2018 was.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.