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2002 Summer Video Roundup

6/13/02

Many of you ask what I do in my spare time...well, this is it.  This, and pimpin’ hoes, dancing and playing bocce on weekends.

"Hollywood Shuffle"

I had never seen this film.  Some of you seem shocked by this, but I ask you:  have you seen all three of the Oscar-caliber “Substitute” dramas, starring Tom Berenger and Treat Williams?  I didn’t THINK so!!  Anyway, Robert Townsend’s signature piece about breaking into Hollywood as a black actor is absolutely hilarious early on...but, it drags a bit in its final act, which is tough for many reasons but can be summed up one way.  In an ironic twist (at least, if you see the film now, as opposed to when it was released 15 years ago), Townsend found lots of real-life success early on, with this film and the popular “The Mighty Quinn.”  But, his career has torpedoed badly in recent years; after making “The Meteor Man” (stop laughing), he showed up in some TV shows and bit parts in movies but has never really put it back together.  His character in “Hollywood Shuffle” worries about being a one-hit wonder; one watches this film now and wonders if Townsend saw this coming.  In another ironic twist, Keenan Ivory Wayans co-stars in this film, and before the success of his “Scary Movie” franchise, he was heading down the same path after making the Funniest Movie of All Time, “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.”  (If you haven’t seen this film, and consider yourself a movie fan, shut the hell up and watch this movie.)

Rating:  Matinee

"American Buffalo" 

After seeing David Mamet’s atrocious 1996 stage play-turned-indie flick, I thought I would theorize what a bar of dialogue would sound like from his next film, titled “The Spanish Buffalo Heist of Glengarry State Games.”  It stars all of Mamet’s regulars.  Here, a sample:

Ricky Jay:  What’s the next thing gonna be?
Alec Baldwin:  How the fuck do I know?
Joe Montegna:  Cause you need to get me a glass of Kiss My Ass!, that’s why!!
Al Pacino:  Don’t drift from the thing, Joe.  Who’s got the stuff we need?
Jay:  The stuff?  For the thing?  But how are we gonna get it, if we ain’t got the money?
Danny DeVito:  That’s why they call it money, you stupid piece of shit!
Dustin Hoffman:  Shitfucking cocksucker, give me the fucking thing before I rip your fucking head off you double-sided, triple-crossing bitch-ass-punk!!!
Rebecca Pidgeon [monotone]:  It feels so good in here with my shirt off.

Rating:  Rental

"Zelig"

This guy here in San Francisco was running a film festival...in two rooms at his apartment!  Pretty cool idea, I thought...so, in the “main screening room” (a tiny living room with a couch and 25” TV), I watched this Woody Allen film from 1983.  It stars Allen as the title character, a tiny man with multiple personalities that had a hand in a staggering number of world events in this fictional documentary.  Much like the later Tom Hanks film “Forrest Gump”, it is funny to see just where Zelig will turn up next as he stumbles through act after act with a psychologist (Mia Farrow) that is strangely attracted to the chameleon-like figure that Zelig becomes.  Usually, Allen annoys me as an actor, but he is perfect for this role because he is such a strange-looking guy!!

Rating:  $9.50 Show

"Mo’ Better Blues"

The mo’ Spike Lee, the better!  This one is from 1990 and, once again, Denzel Washington leads a great cast with a performance that once again proves he may be the coolest Great Actor in Hollywood.  Who else shows up in this jazz-fused love story?  Pretty much everyone that has appeared in at least two of Lee’s films, so that covers:  Wesley Snipes, Bill Nunn, Samuel L. Jackson, Joie Lee, Giancarlo Esposito, and of course, John Turturro.  And, once again, Lee has an incredibly well-shot film by Ernest Dickerson, a Lee regular.  The love story is great here, as Denzel’s character Bleek plays two different hotties (Lee, and at-the-time newcomer Cynda Williams) against each other while leading one of Brooklyn’s finest blues quintets.  The music is great—Washington IS playing the trumpet for most of his scenes—and the comic relief by Robin Harris (who died shortly after filming completed) is hilarious.  Too bad the ending, kind of like the ending to “Bamboozled”, veers off the path...otherwise, I liked this one a lot.

Rating:  $9.50 Show

"Seven Samurai"

This was the first Akira Kurasawa film that I have seen start-to-finish unedited...and, at a whopping 200 minutes, it takes a while to sit through.  But, this classic tale of seven ronin that help a poor village defend itself against a pack of forty bandits is great mostly because of the camaraderie between the seven assassins and the way it flows...honor is a big part of the backstory behind these men, despite the fact that they exist only to make money off of their employers.  The movie is almost 50 years old now, but it still comes off as a smooth production, even if there are some major sound issues with the print now in the 2-double-oh-2.  Now, if this guy could only use an editor...

Rating:  $9.50 Show

"The French Connection II"

Gene Hackman and director John Frankenheimer return in this sequel to the crime drama that won Hackman a Best Actor Oscar in 1972; the plot for this one really is a continuation to the first film, when drug dealer Charnier (Fernando Rey) escaped the clutches of Popeye Doyle (Hackman) and the NYPD.  In the sequel, Doyle is sent to Marseilles to catch Charnier, so much of the film revolves around Doyle’s efforts to work alongside an incompetent Marseilles police department.  The film is not nearly what the original was, but it is still pretty interesting and lets Frankenheimer show us the streets of Marseilles in a beautifully-shot cinematography reel.  Although I was about to give the film a Matinee rating, the ending is absolutely perfect for its brevity and lack of an epilogue.

Rating:  $9.50 Show

"Singin’ in the Rain"

Turner Classic Movies showed this classic recently as part of a celebration of the movie musical; now 50 years old, Gene Kelly’s signature piece holds up well against that bastard of bastards, Father Time.  I normally despise the musical, and after musicals received a slap in the face last year in the form of “Moulin Rouge” (I shudder just thinking about it), “Singin’ in the Rain” is all the better.  Kelly is just amazing; whoever said white guys can’t dance never saw this guy work, cause he is breakin’ cats down in this flick!  What I found amazing about this film—more so than Debbie Reynolds’ first major film performance, or the songs, or the cinematography—is that the film’s best dance piece is NOT the money shot of Kelly dancing in the rain to the titular song; it’s the “Make ‘Em Laugh” sequence starring Donald O’Connor as music director Cosmo Brown.  Wow...this is why people like Jackie Chan movies so much, or why they are intrigued to see actors like Keanu Reeves doing his own stunts.  It’s fun to watch the actor do all of the song-and-dance numbers without any help from cameras or special effects.  “Singin’ in the Rain” is made better by actually having a story to go behind the dance numbers; I liked watching a film that dealt with the transition from silent film to “talkie” and this gave me a little perspective on what it must be like to work in the film industry in the late 20s.  Strong stuff.

Rating:  Opening Weekend

"Boys Don’t Cry"

Obviously, Hilary Swank’s performance as crisis-stricken teenager Brandon Teena/Teena Brandon is at least pretty good, since she won the Oscar...so, what about the movie around it?  I must say, pretty damned good.  Swank, who is in nearly every scene and is riveting in the late stages as the tortured lead character, has just the right look to make you believe that girls would think Brandon is pretty attractive.  And, this lends an eerie sense to the sex scenes with love interest Chloe Sevigny...as opposed to previous films with lesbian sex scenes, I was starting to cover my eyes whenever these two went to kiss.  Don’t know, can’t explain it.  But, I can explain that this drama needs to be seen.

Rating:  $9.50 Show

"Wes Craven Presents: Dracula 2000"

Hey, it was on, and I like a good horror movie every so often...why not?  A load of B-movie stars, like Jonny Lee Miller, Omar Epps, Jennifer Esposito and Jeri Ryan, bring their “talents” to a script about that vampire-dude Dracula (Gerard Butler) and his attempts to mate with some girl named Mary, who is the daughter of a vampire hunter (Christopher Plummer).  Whatever.  It’s bloody, has a couple of gratuitous love scenes and has a really bad New Orleans-during-Mardi Gras soundstage where women show us what all of those beads are being handed out for.  You could do worse.

Rating:  Matinee

"A Farewell to Arms"

Hey, for whatever reason, I thought this movie was barely average.  Maybe it was the fact that it’s tough to get me to like romances.  Maybe it was the British nurse love interest (played with Overacting 101 panache by Jennifer Jones) that is so bad that her performance brought the film’s final hour down all by itself.  Maybe it was my anger towards lover-not-a-fighter American lieutenant Henry (Rock Hudson) for happily wanting to desert the armed forces before almost being killed by a fanatical war group.  Wait, maybe those are the reasons.

Rating:  Matinee

"In Like Flint"

NOW I know where Mike Myers got about half of his jokes for his “Austin Powers” series of films (the other half coming from those early Bond films).  James Coburn, as superspy-pimp Derek Flint, has a ball as the titular character as he makes his way from Washington to Moscow to the Virgin Islands to take down a group of women that are bent on world domination.  The in-jokes, the horrifically-bad fight scenes, and that hilarious dolphin scene in Flint’s backyard pool make for some seriously-watchable entertainment.  Hopefully, “Austin Powers in Goldmember” will live up to the promise that this and other 60’s spy films created.

Rating:  Opening Weekend

 

Comments?  Drop me a line at justin@bellviewmovies.com.

 

Bellview Rating System:

"Opening Weekend":  This is the highest rating a movie can receive.  Reserved for movies that exhibit the highest level of acting, plot, character development, setting...or Salma Hayek.  Not necessarily in that order. 

"$X.XX Show":  This price changes each year due to the inflation of movie prices; currently, it is the $9.50 Show.  While not technically perfect, this is a movie that will still entertain you at a very high level.  "Undercover Brother" falls into this category; it's no "Casablanca", but you'll have a great time watching.  The $9.50 Show won't win any Oscars, but you'll be quoting lines from the thing for ages (see "Office Space"). 

"Matinee":  An average movie that merits no more than a $6.50 viewing at your local theater.  Seeing it for less than $9.50 will make you feel a lot better about yourself.  A movie like "Blue Crush" fits this category; you leave the theater saying "That wasn't too bad...man, did you see that Lakers game last night?" 

"Rental":  This rating indicates a movie that you see in the previews and say to your friend, "I'll be sure to miss that one."  Mostly forgettable, you couldn't lose too much by going to Hollywood Video and paying $3 to watch it with your sig other, but you would only do that if the video store was out of copies of "Ronin."  If you can, see this movie for free.  This is what your TV Guide would give "one and a half stars." 

"Hard Vice":  This rating is the bottom of the barrel.  A movie that only six other human beings have witnessed, this is the worst movie I have ever seen.  A Shannon Tweed "thriller," it is so bad as to be funny during almost every one of its 84 minutes, and includes the worst ending ever put into a movie.  Marginally worse than "Cabin Boy", "The Avengers" or "Leonard, Part 6", this rating means that you should avoid this movie at all costs, or no costs, EVEN IF YOU CAN SEE IT FOR FREE!  (Warning:  strong profanity will be used in all reviews of "Hard Vice"-rated movies.)