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Movie Thoughts
Jul. 17th, 2013 11:46 amI mentioned that I would have more cogent thoughts on this past weekend's pay-per-viewing, and so here they are:
Flight
In this film, Denzel Washington stars as "Whip" Whittington, an alcoholic airline pilot who manages to more-or-less land a crippled jetliner. The titular flight happens in the first 30 minutes, and the remainder of the movie is watching Whip mostly failing to deal with his drinking problem. Entertaining, but it certainly seemed like a bit of Academy Award bait.
Spring Breakers
The best capsule review of this film is "surreal." Four coeds played by comely young actresses decide that they need to go to spring break. Three of them fund the effort by an armed robbery, and the four of them go south, where they drink, screw and do drugs while wearing bikinis or less. The girls are at a party that gets busted for drugs, and after a night in jail (in bikinis) the girls (in bikinis) are told by the judge to pay a fine or spend another two nights in lockup.
James Franco then bails them out. Yours Truly thought his character's goal was to pimp them out. This did not happen, and three (Selena Gomez, playing the good girl, went home) end up staging more armed robberies for/with Franco. Mostly, the girls are dressed in bikinis, even during the climatic robbery / assassination. Surreal, weird, and lacking in a certain verisimilitude.
Red Dawn (2012 remake)
I'd seen reviews that said the movie sucked, so I was pleasantly surprised when it didn't. This is not to say that the movie is good - it's merely an okay action flick. The hand-waving required to make the North Koreans a credible enemy was distracting. I was also frankly irritated to note that the Koreans invade by parachuting in (via a fleet of Antonov transports CGI-ed in) and capturing then re-purposing US gear.
The movie was in many ways a pale shadow of the original. Frankly, too many of the kids live, there's no explanation for why the Americans collaborate, nor do we see much of anything of the North Koreans other than cardboard targets. In what really hurt the emotional impact of the movie, the kids' final raid is on the Spokane police HQ, not as in the original just another raid, and the raid is launched for what is supposedly a war-ending briefcase communications unit. Like I said - decent action movie, but nowhere near the original.
Flight
In this film, Denzel Washington stars as "Whip" Whittington, an alcoholic airline pilot who manages to more-or-less land a crippled jetliner. The titular flight happens in the first 30 minutes, and the remainder of the movie is watching Whip mostly failing to deal with his drinking problem. Entertaining, but it certainly seemed like a bit of Academy Award bait.
Spring Breakers
The best capsule review of this film is "surreal." Four coeds played by comely young actresses decide that they need to go to spring break. Three of them fund the effort by an armed robbery, and the four of them go south, where they drink, screw and do drugs while wearing bikinis or less. The girls are at a party that gets busted for drugs, and after a night in jail (in bikinis) the girls (in bikinis) are told by the judge to pay a fine or spend another two nights in lockup.
James Franco then bails them out. Yours Truly thought his character's goal was to pimp them out. This did not happen, and three (Selena Gomez, playing the good girl, went home) end up staging more armed robberies for/with Franco. Mostly, the girls are dressed in bikinis, even during the climatic robbery / assassination. Surreal, weird, and lacking in a certain verisimilitude.
Red Dawn (2012 remake)
I'd seen reviews that said the movie sucked, so I was pleasantly surprised when it didn't. This is not to say that the movie is good - it's merely an okay action flick. The hand-waving required to make the North Koreans a credible enemy was distracting. I was also frankly irritated to note that the Koreans invade by parachuting in (via a fleet of Antonov transports CGI-ed in) and capturing then re-purposing US gear.
The movie was in many ways a pale shadow of the original. Frankly, too many of the kids live, there's no explanation for why the Americans collaborate, nor do we see much of anything of the North Koreans other than cardboard targets. In what really hurt the emotional impact of the movie, the kids' final raid is on the Spokane police HQ, not as in the original just another raid, and the raid is launched for what is supposedly a war-ending briefcase communications unit. Like I said - decent action movie, but nowhere near the original.
