CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

When I come across Midnight Run while channel surfing, I always stop and stick (if it’s the uncut version)…instant velcro. It starts with a bang and doesn’t slow down — the script, acting and directing are impeccable. There’s even a scene that gets me choked up. And the movie is funny from beginning to end. Laugh-out-loud funny.

When I was introduced to this movie I hesitated. Robert DeNiro and….Charles Grodin? DeNiro, the Method Actor and Grodin the limp dishrag?? In a BUDDY COMEDY??!? Yecch.

Boy, was I wrong. Every major character is perfectly cast and gives a nearly perfect performance, and I am not exaggerating. DeNiro and Grodin are the perfect foils, and do not slip into the trite ruts laid by a thousand other buddy movies. Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton, Dennis Farina and Joe Pantoliano all take what would normally be two-dimensional, stereotypical supporting parts and imbue them with life, personality and realism.

About the uncut version…don’t watch the broadcast (edited) version. It’s awful. Some of the characters are hard-bitten and street-wise, and the profanity is used as a natural spice, but not gratuitously. If you are easily offended by profanity, even in context, then skip this movie altogether. Watching the edited version of this movie would be like viewing a classic Rubens painting with crude pasties and fig leafs awkwardly drawn over the naughty bits. Watch the premium cable version, or better yet rent (or buy!) the video.

If you’re looking for a comedy with depth, bite, wit and excitement, then catch Midnight Run.

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Chris Rock’s Bring the Pain may be the funniest stand-up comedy I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The barbs are excrutiatingly accurate, raunchy, and hilarious, and are (no kidding) extraordinarily thought-provoking.

Just so you know where my commentary is coming from, I am a 40 year old, white, middle-class male from Houston, Texas. I have seen Rock’s talk show on HBO, and haven’t really cared for it. I thought he was reasonably entertaining on Saturday Night Live, but nothing spectacular. When it comes to stand-up comedy, I’m a big fan of circa 1978 Steve Martin stand-up (Wild and Crazy Guy) and I love Seinfeld’s ‘I’m Telling You for the Last Time’.

Do yourself a favor, rent/buy ‘Bring the Pain’ and prepare yourself for some mind-blowing, prejudice-shattering, side-splitting hilarity.

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I walked in to Sum of All Fears expecting some standard Hollywood least-common-denominator ‘entertainment’. I mean, I love Morgan Freeman, but have a low Ben Affleck tolerance and have grown ever more tired of the string of movies based on Clancy novels. However, SOAF was a very gripping film, Affleck did an excellent job as Jack Ryan, Morgan Freeman was even more perfect than usual, the story was complex and interesting, the writing was significantly above-average, the supporting cast was recruited from the Character Actors Hall of Fame, and each gave a stellar performance.

All in all, this is one of the best big-studio movies I have seen in quite a while. Do yourself a favor and forget the paradox of a newly young Jack Ryan and go see this movie.

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I had many people, whose movie opinions I respect, tell me that ‘Fight Club’ was an excellent movie…a black commentary on the new twentygoingonthirtysomething angst/disaffection/rage. I see that it is in the mid-30’s on the IMDB Top 250, so many must agree.

I watched it recently, and have to say that it did not engage me to any degree. I have no objection to violence, surrealism, plot twists, or dark themes…all of which ‘Fight Club’ has in abundance. For example, I enjoy movies like ‘Full Metal Jacket’, ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘Seven’, ‘Goodfellas’, and ‘Memento’. All have violence and/or surrealism and/or plot twists and/or dark themes…in spades. So I had no predisposition to dislike this movie.

But I did. The individual elements are there, but it didn’t work for me. As the movie progressed, I found myself anxiously waiting for it to end. Not to see the end, but for it to just be over. To give you a frame of reference, this movie very much fits into the ‘Usual Suspects/L.A. Confidential’ category for me. I did not like either of those movies, either, even though all evidence/buzz/previews/reviews indicated that I should love them, and disliking them put me in a very small minority.

Nonetheless, both Pitt and Norton do some excellent acting, and the direction sets the mood for which it shoots. It was also refreshing to watch something different from the endless stream of crud being excreted by Hollywood in the last few years. But, in my opinion, the story browbeats you with its point, rather than letting it be discovered.

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Perfect from beginning to end…not one false note or mis-step. I am not a fan of fairy tales, period pieces or romantic comedies. This is all three but is still one of my all time favorite films. Watch it with someone you love (spouse, children, family, good friends).

“Life is pain, anyone who says differently is selling something.”

“Stop that rhyming now, I MEAN it!” “Anybody want a peanut?”

“Inconceivable!”

Read these again after you’ve seen it and you’ll laugh out loud.

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I love MPatHG. It is the pinnacle of silliness, satire and comedy…all the things that make Monty Python great. Personally, I use people’s reaction to this film as an indicator of their potential as an enjoyable friend or acquaintance. One has to be intelligent and free of pretensions to be able to laugh at the enormous stupidity and pretentiousness in this film, and in life.

If you get it, then you’re probably all right in my book. If you don’t get it, then lighten up, relax, free your mind and try it again until you do.

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That’s right, that’s one half of one star. We watched about 90 minutes of this 2 hour mini-series debut episode, and that was all I could stand. I have enormous respect for Steven Spielberg, although that does not translate into liking everything he does. And the first 90 minutes of the debut episode of “Taken” combined the worst Spielbergian traits, in my opinion. The beginning of the show contains a voice-over by what sounds like an 8 year old boy, talking in an inexplicably erudite manner, but with a child’s voice. Think of Harrison Ford’s voice-over in “Blade Runner”, without the cursing, done by an adolescent boy, and you’ll get the idea. Now, picture that what he’s narrating is set in a treacly, plasticized, idealized vision of the 1940’s. Here’s a list of hackneyed clichés from just the first 90 minutes:

1. Blond, square-jawed, blue-eyed Marine who appears to be a good guy, but also seems to have a darker side.
2. The plain-Jane daughter of the colonel, with whom BEM (blue-eyed Marine) flirts, apparently to curry favor with the colonel
3. The bad-girl in the convertible, with whom the BEM flirts a bit more aggressively, and whom the BEM snubs in order to culture favor with plain-Jane, even though he’s *really* attracted to bad-convertible-girl
4. Nazi’s in a dream/flashback/nightmare
5. Gruff-but-lovable dad hiking with his two Boy Scout sons, coming across something otherworldly, then taking BEM there to look at it
6. Brave, efficient American WWII pilots being shot down in a vroomy dogfight
7. Strange lights (like the small ones in Close Encounters) swooping in to “save” the shot down plane
8. Typical 1940’s diner waitress at the end of her shift, being told by the gruff-but-lovable cook/owner to go home, and that her husband isn’t good enough for her
9. Waitress’ good-for-nothing husband leaving on a sudden three week business trip saying, “If you need me, call the home office. They know where I’ll be.”
10. Bad-convertible-girl almost getting decapitated by the crashing saucer in Roswell, NM, then wandering through the crash site and picking up a strange piece of metal
11. Bad-convertible-girl showing up at BEM’s office with metal in a paper sack, telling him she needs to talk to him, *not* telling him what it’s about, he assumes it’s relationship-related, so has an underling send her packing
12. Brave, efficient, shot-down, alien-probed pilot returning home to a world where everything he knows is wrong (and his life is not his own)
13. Lights in the sky making car engines die out
14. UFOs being explained as weather balloons
15. Dead alien bodies laid out in the desert, looking just like the aliens from Close Encounters
16. Crashed alien ship, four dead alien bodies, but the ship had…dramatic music…*five* seats…duh duh duhhhhhhhh (it couldn’t possibly be that there was one empty seat)
17. Mysterious, ailing visitor showing up in the barn (replete with door flapping and banging in the wind), and being taken in by 1940’s waitress (who’s husband happens to have just left on a “business trip”)
18. And on, and on, and on, and on…

I am not even doing justice to the awful triteness of this episode. I understand that the premise of the series is that all the standard UFO conspiracy theories are true, so they have to be trotted out here, but they are portrayed in the most unexciting, uninvolving way possible. Why, oh why, can’t directors who are trying to capture the essence of 1940’s America go back and watch movies that were made in the 1940’s, rather than watch movies that were made *about* the 40’s, and copy their feel? It appears that the director of this episode did the latter, as he/she seems to have presented a hazy vision of somebody else’s dimly realized vision of the 40’s. Blech.

There was not one single scary, surprising, tense, emotional, funny, or thought-provoking event in the what I saw of this episode. I didn’t care about any of the characters. The acting was unremarkable. The special effects were unremarkable.

I was very excited about this series, and sat down with great anticipation expecting, at the very least, to be entertained. I wasn’t, in the least. On the skepticism scale, I lean a little towards the maybe-we-don’t-really-know-everything side of the curve, meaning that I would not be surprised to find out that we (humans) were not alone in the universe, but I also don’t *believe* that aliens have already visited Earth, and the proof is being hidden from us. I believe that it is *possible* they have visited, but not that it is *probable*. So, I am probably right square in the middle of the target market for this series. But it did nothing for me. Less than nothing, in that I resented it for a) giving me expectations that I would enjoy it, and b) not only not meeting those expectations, but actually subjecting me to 90 minutes of discomfort and unpleasantness, instead.

The whole series may turn out to be enjoyable, but I will not be around to find out. If you end up watching it, and it ends up getting better (a *lot* better), please let me know (by posting a response here), because I really want to like this show, and would watch it in reruns if it somehow got interesting.

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I’m astonished at the number of negative responses I’ve heard from people regarding this film. “Slow”, “Unemotional”, “Bad effects”, “Doesn’t make sense”, “Nothing happens”, etc. For those who “don’t get it”, a primer:

Slow: Movement in space takes a very long time. Astrophysics demands slow, controlled movement, which Kubrick deftly depicts. The pod return scene takes a long time; thoughtful viewers realize the astronaut is dying, and feel tension.

Unemotional: The primary characters are astronauts, who necessarily have steely nerves. Watch Dave control his anguish over his dying friend in the pod return scene. Notice the same thing when he discovers the rest of the crew have been killed by HAL while in stasis. Notice the cold-blooded, murderous efficiency with which Dave decommissions HAL, and notice the heartbreaking decay of HAL and his impassioned (for a computer) pleas to spare his ‘life’.

Effects: These effects still surpass those being done today. Flashier? Louder? No. Technically, visually, scientifically perfect? Yes. Check out the vehicle that transports Dr. Floyd to the Moon…it’s basically a prototype for the Space Shuttle which appeared over a decade later.

Doesn’t make sense: When the ape-man uses the bone as a tool, then tosses it in the air, we flash forward to a spacecraft. The genius of this is that it indicates that once ape-man learned to use tools, it was a straightforward progression to developing a space station. The meaning, purpose, and nature of the monolith are *supposed* to be unknown (and probably unknowable), to illustrate the feebleness of man’s quest to understand the true nature of existence.

Nothing happens: Um, only the evolution of man to the next level of existence (which during the final scenes, is as incomprehensible to us as our world would be to a prehistoric ape-man).

You were expecting what? Car crashes? Sound traveling through (airless) space? Histrionic astronauts? Klingon cloaking devices? Aliens gestating in stomachs? Cute, engaging robot sidekicks? Cliff’s Notes?

Slow and deep does not equal boring and ponderous. In the early stages of the film we see primitive ape-men living a precarious life, barely subsisting and in danger of losing their watering hole to a neighboring tribe/clan/group. The monolith appears and the members of our group touch the monolith in a very inscrutable scene. What’s happening? Why is it happening? What does it mean? The mystery is partially solved when we see one member of the clan idly playing with a bone. As he plays with it, it dawns on him that he could use the bone to hunt the wild pigs that live in the area. The next thing we see is our group of ape-men, looking a little fatter, and the bones of a few more pigs littering the ground.

So, apparently, the monolith has provided this group of ape-men with a heightened sense of logic and reason, through mechanisms unknown. That is, in and of itself, deep commentary on the nature of man and god. But what happens next is even more disturbing. After getting fatter and stronger by using his newfound technique, our protagonist-ape then faces off with his rivals at the watering hole. And uses his newfound learnings to kill the leader of the rival tribe and claim the watering hole. This speaks even more deeply to the nature of man, in that when ape-man acquires knowledge, he first uses it for good (survival) and then for evil (to kill).

There are some who say that they get all these deeper meanings, but still don’t care for the film. For them, I offer my condolences that this film does not bring as much awe and wonder into their lives at it does to mine. There are others (many others, in my experience) who have given up on this film halfway through, and never experienced the entire arc of the story. I would encourage these people to try it again with an open mind and no pressing distractions.

And then there are those who will someday see this film for the first time. I envy you that experience. See it on the big screen, if at all possible. If not, watch it in widescreen with no commercials. Pan and scan will obscure the glorious cinematography, and commercials will jar you out of the funky, contemplative state this movie induces. Enjoy.

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The River Oaks Theatre here in Houston showed Dr. Strangelove on the big screen at a midnight showing last night. There was a surprisingly large crowd of very appreciative filmgoers. Although I’ve seen Dr. Strangelove many, many times on TV, VHS, and DVD, it was an exhilarating experience for me to see this film on the big screen for the first time while in the company of other fans. The print was slightly scratchy and the sound was slightly fuzzy in parts, but the River Oaks showed the film in the cavernous main theatre with its faded-but-still-impressive old movie palace ambiance, so the overall experience was quite satisfying.

The film itself is not only still a masterpiece, but it just keeps getting better and better with age. Not only am I getting older and understanding more of the darkly comedic, political, military, and sociological themes, but the world continues to blindly stumble down the unwise and destructive paths that are the grist for Kubrick’s mill.

********** SPOILERS AHEAD **********

For those unfamiliar with the story, the premise is that some time in the late 1950’s an American Air Force base commander has…well…gone a little crazy…and has ordered his wing of B-52 bombers to attack their targets within Russia. Attack as in drop nuclear bombs upon. The base commander has become convinced that there is a massive Communist plot currently causing harm to all Americans (I won’t reveal the hilarious details). In the film, there is a loophole in the chain of military command that gives Ripper the ability to unilaterally send his wing in for the attack, and to prevent the bombers from being recalled by anyone other than himself. His plan is that once the President and Joint Chiefs figure out that there’s no way to stop his initial surprise attack, they will have no choice but to commit the entire US nuclear capability in support of his bomber wing. If they don’t, the Russians will retain enough retaliatory capability to destroy the United States.

The film focuses on three locations. The first is the War Room, where the President (Peter Sellers), the Joint Chiefs, and various military and political advisers are gathered, including General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) and the eponymous science adviser Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers again). The second is Burpleson Air Force Base, where commander Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) and his executive officer Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers yet again) are stationed. The third is the interior of one of the B-52s of the bomb wing, piloted by Major (King) Kong (Slim Pickens) and his crew (including the debut of a young James Earl Jones).

********** END SPOILERS **********

The film moves between these three locations, deftly showing the dawning realization, the hard decisions, and the inherent hypocrisy and insanity of military organizations in action supporting their motto of “Peace is Our Profession”, while possibly hastening the end of life on earth. It’s shot in black-and-white, even though it was filmed well into the color age, but black-and-white sets the perfect mood for the story. The film also contains some of the darkest and blackest humor ever put on the screen. Dr. Strangelove was nominated for Oscars in the Best Actor (Sellers), Best Director (Kubrick), Best Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay categories, but did not win any of them. George C. Scott should have been nominated for his performance, one of the best of his illustrious career, and certainly the funniest.

I have found that most people either love or hate Kubrick films, with very little middle ground. I’ve never really understood this reaction. I, myself, love almost all of his films, with the glaring exception of Eyes Wide Shut, but I don’t love them because they are “Kubrick films”, I love them because of what they are, which are some of the most well-made, entertaining, and thought-provoking films I have ever seen. If you’ve seen one or two Kubrick films and been unimpressed (2001 is very austere, Clockwork Orange is hyper-violent, etc), do yourself a favor and check out Dr. Strangelove. It is, like all Kubrick films, different from all other Kubrick films, and it is a darkly funny satirical masterpiece.

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This is a deliberate and challenging movie. If you were sending this movie a Christmas card, the mailing address would be 2001 Mulholland Drive, and I mean that in the ‘homage’ sense, not the ‘blatant ripoff’ sense. The movie, although set in space, is character-driven and uses the futuristic setting merely as a backdrop for larger issues regarding humanity, the meaning of life, the definition of death, and the nature of god (almost).

George Clooney continues to stay out of the Hollywood icon rut, and is selecting projects that allow him to flex his not inconsiderable acting muscle. The movie has a high GCBF (Gratuitous Clooney Butt Factor), but that may hold some appeal for a certain market demographic. The rest of the (surprisingly small) cast does excellent work, as well.

If all you know about this movie is that it stars George Clooney and is set in space, I urge you to go see it before you learn any more, but with one caveat: there are no laser battles, distressed princesses, wise-cracking sidekicks, tractor beams, transporters or holodecks in this movie. If you are looking for mindless, escapist, holiday fare, this ain’t it. Not that there’s anything wrong with escapist fare, mind you, but the marketing of this movie has left its nature pretty unclear, and if you wander in expecting Star Trek Meets Star Wars, you may be disappointed (you also might be pleasantly surprised).

But, this movie is deliberately paced, and you’re almost a third of the way through it before the plot even becomes clear. The movie borders on being an art film, and if it didn’t have Clooney as the star and Soderbergh as the director, it’d probably be playing on one screen of your local art house rather than two screens at each of your local multiplexes. I’m very glad that it has a wide release, however, and I hope it does well at the box office, because that is the only way Hollywood will make more films like this (not films with the same plot, but films that push the envelope like this one). I’m also hopeful that this movie will reach people who might not have seen it otherwise, and that they enjoy it, rather than feel misled by the hype.

I’m deliberately not mentioning any more details of the plot, because this movie really should be experienced with few preconceptions, IMHO. I struggled between giving this movie 3 or 3.5 stars, and I settled on 3 only after much deliberation. I may come back later and adjust it upwards, but I need to think about the movie some more. And that, in my opinion, says it all.

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