After AMERICAN PIE found great success, dozens of clones came out. Most of them sucked, but a couple were okay. The best of the bunch was ROAD TRIP. I know that isn’t a hugely ringing endorsement, but it’s also not meant to knock the film down too far either.
Finally got around to seeing WATCHMEN today. It was not a disappointing experience by any means. On the drive home I was trying to think about how I could discuss this film without spoilers. I don’t think I can. So if you haven’t read the comic, and haven’t seen the film, by all means stop reading! SPOILERS BELOW
In 1982 John Caprenter directed Kurt Russell in THE THING, and the result was one of my favorite scifi/survival flicks of all time. The year before that they teamed up on ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. I had not seen this until yesterday, and my expectations were tempered somewhat by the fact that it is a post-apocalyptic story set in the 90s but made in the 80s. Usually this leads to a lot of unintentional comedy. I was right.
Continue reading ‘johnlink ranks ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981)’
Got a chance to catch up on one of my favorite sequels. Watching it for the first time in a few years proved to be the same as always. Fun!
Continue reading ‘johnlink ranks DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER (1990)’
It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to sit down and watch a movie. Two weekends of shows and a wedding to plan… who has the time? Anyway, I got home late and saw that my old trusty pal FEAR NET on demand had a movie I’ve been wanting to see in HD. So I turned on THE DESCENT. I was mostly satisfied. One moment almost ruined the film for me, but I walked away with a mostly positive impression.
SNAKES ON A PLANE was something I was always interested in seeing, but never got around to. I think I may have even tried to watch it once after a night out, but fell asleep before it really got going. For whatever reason, I finally got to it now. Sadly, I have to put it on my list of movies which weren’t as good as I hoped.
For me, watching CHARLIE BARTLETT was an experience akin to the first time I watched RAVENOUS, DARK CITY, or GROSSE POINTE BLANK. I knew that I wasn’t seeing a popular movie, that it didn’t enjoy a lot of commercial success, but damn, did I love it! I felt like I was finding that proverbial diamond in the cliched rough.
Generations from now we will look back on these first several Pixar films the way we do the original Disney features. SNOW WHITE and PINOCCHIO and movies of that era have a timelessness and an untainted legacy which Disney has struggled to reproduce ever since. Usually, it was too much intervention which watered down the studio’s films. They had another golden era from LITTLE MERMAID to LION KING (and I don’t just say this because I grew up with those films, they really did have several in a row which were great) and have been in a lull ever since. Pixar is separate from Disney in that they had their own creative minds which the normal Disney animation studios had to keep their hands off of. In fact, when the Disney/Pixar contract ended, the folks who ran Pixar basically negotiated to come in and run Disney. If Disney weren’t such a brand name, you could basically say that Pixar now runs Disney.
Watching MILK helped me realize why I liked FROST/NIXON slightly less than I thought I would. Looking back, I think that FROST/NIXON felt like a movie about the 70s made in the 21st century. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t glaringly obvious (accentuated by the point that I’m just realizing it now), it just wasn’t quite what it could be. But MILK, on the other hand, gets it right. MILK feels like a 70s movie infused with the higher quality film techniques of today. There is nothing about MILK which feels inauthentic or forced.
DIED HARD is a movie from my childhood. Used to watch it all the time growing up. It was interesting to watch it again, with a little more critical eye, and see that it holds up better than most action flicks of its era. The most ’80s things about it are the limo, the giant German bad guy, and the principal from THE BREAKFAST CLUB. Most everything inside the Nakatomi tower has a timelessness to it which helps elevate this movie to classic status.
johnlinkmovies 