Recently Seen Movies - With Comments, But No Spoilers

Feel free to disagree with my opinions - I can take it.

1. SAVIOR. This is excellent, but BE WARNED: it contains some of the most shocking scenes of violence I've ever seen in a movie, including realistic scenes of cold-blooded murder. It stars Dennis Quaid as a mercenary fighting for the Serbs in 'the former Yugoslavia'. The basic plot is that a very bad thing happens to a basically good man who then becomes a cold-blooded killer/mercenary until he witnesses even worse cold-blooded cruelty and has a change of heart, risking his life to save a woman and her new-born baby. Well worth seeing if you can stomach the violence.

2. THE RED VIOLIN. This is one of those movies about an inanimate object, the violin of the title, following its path through history and the hands of various owners. The five stories are framed by a sixth, which involves a mystery and a 'heist'. There's also a supernatural thread running through the plot, but don't let that put you off it. I found it fairly engrossing, and there's some amazing fiddlin' too. The only 'big name' cast member is Samuel L.Jackson, in a very unusual role for him.

3. ARLINGTON ROAD. This is one of those stories that lets you think you know what's going on, but it turns out you don't. Big surprise ending. [No, this isn't really a spoiler. I guarantee you'll be surprised by the ending, even if you know it's coming.] And good performances by Tim Robbins, Joan Cusak, and Jeff Bridges.

4. STAR WARS - THE PHANTOM MENACE. First, please note that the Star Wars series are ***children's movies***. So only children can say whether they are entertaining the audience they are meant for. Having said that, here's my adult opinion - for what it's worth. Awesome special effects, but they swamp the story and the human actors. Acting performances look 'mailed in' as they say. Ja Ja Binks - or whatever the hell its name is - comes dangerously close to being a racist caricature. The three-way light sabre duel (triel?) at the end is spoiled by Obi Wan's magic leap, which looks like something out of a Hong Kong martial arts fantasy. One thing made me laugh, though: in the street scene at the outlaw city a creature lopes past that looks just like one of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park - had to be an fx in-joke.

5. MEMPHIS BELLE. Yes, I know this has been out a while, but my brother was silly enough to buy a copy, so I grabbed the chance of a free viewing. Anyone who has seen a few of the similar movies made during the 40s and 50s (prime example: TWELVE-O'CLOCK HIGH) will recognize that there is nothing new here - it's a collection of WW2-bomber-movie cliches. Not even the 'better' special effects make this worthwhile (unless you've never seen a WW2-bomber-movie before).

6. THE SIXTH SENSE. So why the fuss? It really wasn't too hard to guess what was going on. I was much more surprised by ARLINGTON ROAD. The version I saw on video shows, after the ending-as-released, several deleted scenes introduced by the writer/director, and you sort of get the impression he was leaned on by the money men to shorten the movie and give it a happier ending - one of the deleted scenes is an alternate, not so happy ending. (Bruce Willis should stick to action roles. The little boy's performance shows BW up.)

7. THE LOST WORLD - JURASSIC PARK. Second viewing. This sequel isn't as bad as it seemed on first viewing. It has more humor and more remarkable special effects than JURASSIC PARK. And it has Pete Postlethwaite, who dominates every scene he's in. I urge those who have seen it and were disappointed to give it a second chance.

8. OCTOBER SKY. True story: Boy is inspired by idealistic teacher to look beyond - way beyond - the coal company owned town he was born into. With three friends, including the school geek, he starts building and test-launching rockets. Major stumbling block: his father is a devoted company man and wants boy to go down the mine. And that's about as much as I can say without spoiling. Needless to say, since this is the biography of a NASA engineer, boy triumphs after much adversity.
The only thing I didn't like about this movie is that it is strongly prejudiced against unionism. Boy's dad was a company man - despite his slow death by blacklung disease - and so is boy.

9. MICKEY BLUE EYES. Very funny. As funny a movie as I've seen this year. But the ending doesn't quite work. It's one of those "Let's make fun of the Mafia" movies, and they make the mistake, at the end, of losing the comedy. It's also a "Let's make fun of the British upper-class" movie, and this aspect works very well. Hugh Grant and James Caan are both excellent. There's also some hilarious art (yes, art) in it. You'll see what I mean.

10. MEET JOE BLACK. Pros and cons:

Pros: Excellent acting, production, direction.

Cons: Pace is way too leisurely, running time way too long. About 20 minutes in, there is a very shocking and upsetting incident (on the other hand, this might be a pro, considering the movie's subjects: death and love). Death has been called the Great Leveller, but you don't get that message from this story; we see death play favorites with these privileged characters, to the extent of falling in love with one of them.

11. PI. Philosophically speaking, this is a very interesting movie. I won't give away the ending, but its about a mathematician who discovers one of the universe's magic numbers - so to speak, which allows him to predict the behavior of the stock market (his goal isn't money, he's using the market results to verify the success or failure of his computer-based experiments). As he nears success, he is approached by two groups who have very different vested interests in his results. One group wants to use his number to get rich off the stock market. The other group are religious scholars who claim that his number will enable them to learn the True Name of God.

What's philosophically interesting about this is that the three aspects involved: science/math, the market, and religion, represent three main sorts of philosophical outlook. Math is concerned with basic structures and relations, and has a timeless but evolving subject-matter. It can be, but need not be, applied to the world. The market is concerned with getting an all-encompassing grip on the world, and has as its subject-matter the prediction of the near-future, ever-changing, behavior of the world. Religion is most concerned with ultimate stability or stasis: the absence of change. It finds this in faith (unquestioning belief) and in the memory of unique experiences that it interprets as experience of a Reality or God that is not merely eternal but outside of time and change.

12. THE WEDDING SINGER. See this one, if you haven't already - and even if you have you could do worse than see it again. By far the best thing Adam Sandler has yet done, and one of the best romantic comedies around.

13. GEORGE WALLACE. A biography of the politician who was Governor of Alabama during the Kennedy presidency and who ran for president himself but was shot and left a paraplegic. As governor he opposed Kennedy's integration policy and went so far as to force Kennedy to call out the National Guard to escort two black would-be university students when they went to enroll. As a paraplegic he had a change of heart and went so far as to make a public apology to the black people whose suffering he had increased.

The movie boasts strong performances from Gary Sinise as Wallace, Mare Winningham as his wife, and Joe Don Baker as the former governor. It includes several very powerful scenes, e.g., a scene in the kitchen of the governor's mansion when Wallace is telling his black manservant how he's not really a racist and the manservant, standing behind him, seriously considers murdering him; another scene in the mansion when the former governor comes to meekly plead for an increase in his pension and suddenly explodes into a scathing critique of Wallace's policies; and the final 'apology' scene which takes place in a church. One of several excellent recent movies about U.S. politics (another was PRIMARY COLORS). Recommended.

14. THE CROSSING. A modest, well made little movie about one of the formative moments of American history: the crossing of the Delaware River by George Washington and his army, and the ensuing Battle of Trenton (on Christmas Day, 1776), in which the Americans surprised and defeated a numerically superior force of German mercenaries and gave a much needed boost to the Revolution. Jeff Daniels portrays Washington, and does it very well.

15. END OF DAYS. End of Big Arnie's career, if he appears in many more turkeys like this one. A very silly movie. The only spark of interest was in seeing Rod Steiger again.

16. THE THIN RED LINE. I respect this movie for its philosophical voice-overs, its avoidance of 'star turns' despite the presence of several stars, its excellent cinematography, and its homage to the beauty of the natural world (in stark contrast to the hideousness of humanity at war).

17. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. This was hyped as being the best Bond for some time. It's not. It's okay, but most of the dozen latest Bonds have been better. This one's pretty cheap (no globe-trotting locations) and pretty dumb (the action sequences are among the least credible of the series). In fact, quality-wise, this one almost takes us back to the bad old days of Roger Moore's Bondship.

18. THE BONE COLLECTOR. A good example of the 'catching a serial-killer' genre, but not in the same class as THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and SE7EN. Doesn't have as strong an ending as these.

19. SLEEPY HOLLOW. An amazing looking film. One of the best production designs I've ever seen. Surely deserves an Oscar for production design. There are one or two unfortunate lapses of judgment in Tim Burton's directing, however (e.g., the transformation of the spirit-medium is a cartoonish and jarring anomaly). And, to all viewers and readers, be informed that this story bears only a slight resemblance to Washington Irving's original.

20. NEVER BEEN KISSED. As I watched this I kept wondering what made it such a weird movie. I still haven't worked it out, the weirdness. Everyone involved seems to be trying very hard, but Drew Barrymore's performance goes beyond trying hard and is really something to see. In some scenes I suspected chemical assistance. The story trots out most of the cliches of the High School genre, yet manages to be funny most of the time - again, in a weird sort of way. Absurd ending. The character played by DB sets herself up for a huge humiliation, but why? - other than to provide a pseudo-dramatic "love triumphant" conclusion. But, to get back to the weirdness: it's as though the director has said to the cast, "This is basically a bunch of crappy cliches, so, to make it interesting, let's weird-up our performances, okay?"

21. WILD THINGS. A hot movie, especially if you're a fan of Denise Richards - you see a lot of her in this one. Engrossing story, with a triple-whammy surprise ending (hard to believe, though, that anyone could be so skillful at manipulating people and have their nefarious plans come out so well). Another good thing about this one is that Bill Murray is in it. I'm decidedly a Murray fan - he improves any movie he's in. Oh, and don't press 'eject' when the end credits start rolling or you'll miss some interesting scenes.

22. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. A while ago, on the homepage here, someone linked to a version of the The Listology which consisted of the word "Malkovich" repeated over and over. Now I get the joke. This movie is a fantasy-comedy. It's something like a performer's wish-fulfilment dream that turns into a nightmare. In some ways, it reminded me a bit of Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL (the scene with the queue of people, bent over, waiting their turn to be John Malkovich, was very Brazilesque) though it isn't as great a fantasy as that one. Very amusing to see JM and Charlie Sheen playing 'themselves'. At the risk of putting readers off the movie, I have to say that there is some amazing puppetry in this one. But the puppeteer should have known better than to get off at the 7 1/2th floor.

23. FALCONE [a.k.a. EXCELLENT CADAVERS]. The title under which I saw this (FALCONE) is the name of a Sicilian judge who tried to break the power of the Mafia in the mid 1980s. The a.k.a. title refers to what the Mafia called the judges and other government officials it murdered who attempted what Falcone did. Chazz Palmintari gives a very dignified performance as Judge Falcone, and F.Murray Abraham, as a Mafia renegade, is also good, but I wouldn't recommend this movie unless you happen to be interested in the true story it tells.

24. FIGHT CLUB. First up: this is a well-made, well-acted, stimulating movie, full of quotable dialogue. Second up: it pulls its punch; by which I mean its subversiveness is itself subverted by the psychiatric revelations of its last 20 minutes. The movie's message is: anyone who takes the fight club philosophy to heart is either [insert your favorite euphemism for 'mentally ill' here] or should acquire a Nazi-style black shirt now if not already wearing one. If you love this movie for the fight club philosophy, this movie is insulting you. Having said that, let me opine that the best way to take it is as a black comedy: there are many laugh out loud moments, if you have that sort of sense of humor.