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2009 Summer Video Roundup, Vol. I

6/23/09

"Lonesome Dove"

The 1989 TV classic was re-broadcast on AMC recently as a restored widescreen edition; I never watched this as a kid, so now, I had the chance to watch the four-part miniseries in all of its glory.  The cast seems legendary, even stronger than it was when it first aired--Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, Robert Urich, Danny Glover, Diane Lane, Anjelica Huston, Chris Cooper, Steve Buscemi, Little Ricky Schroeder...wow.  The tale of former Texas Rangers making their way from Lonesome Dove, Texas to Montana in search of cattle rancher fortune is barren in terms of interesting minute-to-minute events...no, the beauty of "Lonesome Dove" is watching Duvall and Jones literally chew on movie fat for about eight hours.  It takes at least the first two hours to understand everything the two men are saying...this is worse than watching British films for the first ten minutes, it's so funny watching Jones spout his signature staccato delivery in a modern-day Western.  Not enough shootouts for me (a common problem with the modern-day Western), but otherwise, just the right mix of Injuns, whores, saddles, six-shooters, and down-home Western soundtracks.

Rating:  $9.50 Show

"The Guns of Navarone"

The 1961 World War II classic has the familiar ingredients for war movies from the 60s and 70s...a team of highly-trained multi-national soldiers has a JOB TO DO, this time blowing up Nazi cannons trained on Allied boats trying to move between the Greek island of Navarone.  You've got the stoic one (Gregory Peck, stiff as a board), the funny one who's good with explosives (David Niven), the Greek patriot (Anthony Quinn), two professional killers and a British captain who hopes to lead the outfit past the German forces.  Naturally, things don't go as planned, and like some other older war movies I have seen, "The Guns of Navarone" doesn't appear to be employing an editor...this is especially painful during a four-minute sequence where the British captain can't seem to get the water out of his eyes while trying to steer a boat during a storm.  Yes, I get that he can't see already!!  (Maybe that's why the movie is 160 minutes long but only details a five-day adventure in Greece.)  Biggest sign of the times?  This won the Oscar for Best Special Effects in '62...and, when you watch it now in HD, you really get to see how far movies have come.  Good, but not great...one of the rare times I would greenlight a remake, just to smooth out the trouble spots.

Rating: $9.50 Show

"Attack Force"

Continuing my assault on Steven Seagal straight-to-DVD movies, "Attack Force" is bad, but imagine this--as overweight and completely useless as Seagal has gotten in his older years, would you think he would need to have 75% of his dialogue DUBBED in an English-language film?  I didn't either, so for the first 15 minutes of this atrocious action film, I couldn't tell why two different people were speaking for Seagal when he was onscreen.  Fucking terrible...and, the action on screen is unbelievably shitastic.  Seagal's fight scenes have become an embarrassment, but even scenes featuring people doing normal things--like, say, Seagal's Marshall Lawson character getting a drink at a bar, or getting into a car--are shitty as well.  Really, people should watch more of these movies to see how bad movies can be...you almost can't believe it!!

Rating:  Hard Vice

"Shane"

Yes, THAT "Shane."  The 1953 classic stars Alan Ladd as a pretty-boy drifter who gets caught in the age-old argument--who really owns the open range back in the late 1800s and early 1900s?  Featuring shots of men chopping wood, men riding horses, men drinking at saloons and men shooting pistols, "Shane" has almost all of the stock Western film homages...but, the dialogue is a tad better and Jack Palance, in an Oscar-nominated role, shows up as a bad boy with an itchy trigger finger.  The film's mysterious ending and its solid score make it good by today's standards, but not great.

Rating:  $9.50 Show

"Gunga Din"

Cary Grant leads the cast in this 1939 adventure, which was actually fairly entertaining during its first half-hour and last half-hour, but the silly middle portion left me with a slight blah feeling overall.  The story, featuring three British soldiers leading war efforts in India in the late 1800s, is not that engaging, and the film's lynchpin--an Indian peasant named Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe) who helps save the three leads from disaster--was probably considered offensively stereotypical back in the day, if Indians had a union or an association and stood up for themselves in British and American films.  (The role is not quite blackface, but if you've seen this film, you know what I mean.)  The action scenes are fairly well done, and there were a couple of laughs.  But, again, by today's standards, so-so.

Rating:  Matinee

"The Outsider"

This documentary follows James Toback and the 2004 filming of his Neve Campbell drama "When Will I Be Loved."  Toback, a screenwriter on "Bugsy" and the director of indie films like "Black and White" and "Fingers" with Harvey Keitel, is quite the character, and the 90-minute doc gets interviews with not only Toback, Campbell, and other cast members on that film but also a host of others, like Brett Ratner, Harvey Keitel, Norman Mailer, Robert Towne, and Robert Downey Jr., who has appeared in a few of Toback's films.  The film is as good as the character, and Toback is a rich one...as an example, Toback (a 60-year-old overweight white guy) played a Jewish professor of Afro-American studies in "When Will I Be Loved" named Professor Hassan Al-Ibrahim Ben Rabinowitz.  Need I say more?

Rating:  Opening Weekend

"Second in Command"

Jean-Claude Van Damme.  Time has not been kind to the former B-list action star, but in this 2006 action film, he plays a former Navy SEAL who arrives at a US embassy in a vaguely Middle Eastern country just in time for it to be attacked by extremists bent on taking down the embassy to procure the country's existing president.  And, as bad as this film deserves to be, its action scenes are not too bad, the acting of those around JCVD is not too bad, the terrorists do some slightly-above-average thinking to try and break out their target...you know, just coming off of seeing some bad Steven Seagal action flicks, "Second in Command" damn near wins the Oscar.  But, the film ends up being just okay, which is shocking given the star and the story.  Shockingly not bad!

Rating:  Matinee

"Cadence"

Okay, full disclosure--Charles "Chuck" Longer, in a moment of what had to be drug-fused bliss, told Meg and I before the latest "Transformers" film that we just HAD to watch this 1991 drama about an Army man (Charlie Sheen) who gets thrown into the stockade in 1960s Germany while on base with five black guys doing time.  Now, I like Chuck, so I don't know what happened here...but, I do know that "Cadence" is fucking terrible.  Literally no backstory--we get scenes in the first ten minutes of the Sheen character going home to Montana, attending his dad's funeral, being "sorry" for something, then getting back to Germany, getting bombed, getting 8-ball tatoos on the back of his hands, then getting thrown into the stockade for 90 days for attempting to punch an MP while at a bar.  Then, it's about a white boy's assimilation (sorta) to the black way of life.  Directed by Martin Sheen, his bad direction is compounded by one of Martin's worst performances as a racist stockade sergeant who somehow goes totally batshit by the time the movie is over.  Chuck, what happened?

Rating:  Hard Vice

"Compulsion"

The highlights here are many--Dean Stockwell as a genius guilty of child murder; Orson Welles as The Greatest Trial Lawyer in the country; lots of 1950s classic movie moments featuring over-the-top acting.  "Compulsion" is interesting in its own way, but it is schlocky as well...just the way the opening credits open made me laugh out loud.  But, I liked the way the film's court case plays out...even after two kids admit to killing a child, do they deserve life in prison or the death penalty???

Rating:  $9.50 Show

"Belly of the Beast"

All Seagal, all the time baby!  At least with his 2003 thriller "Belly of the Beast", Seagal appears to be doing about a third of his stunts (about a third more than normal); the movie looks like it was shot as a movie to be shown in theaters; the acting by the non-Seagal characters is not terrible; the action scenes--while ridiculous and often comical--are competently shot and fantastically violent.  Even though Seagal is playing a CIA agent who tears apart Thailand looking for his kidnapped daughter (oh, and mourning his dead wife by...banging a dance club waitress), this movie doesn't leave the man completely embarrassed.  It IS way better than "Half Past Dead."

Rating:  Matinee

"Black Dawn"

More Seagal!!  Now, here's something interesting about this 2005 straight-to-DVD package--it features a lot of people you will recognize from other movies as bit players.  Four or five of the co-stars in "Black Dawn" have like 30 screen credits between TV and movies as named, minor characters (a step above, say, "Man on Elevator" or "Overweight Tourist").  So, somehow, the casting agents of "Black Dawn" scored some legitimate actors to stroll through the background, but the result is mostly the same because Seagal is so terrible when he's not firing a gun.  This time, Seagal plays "tough-as-nails" CIA agent Jonathan Cold, who has to break up a nuclear threat from Chechen terrorists.  Why are these Chechens trying to get all the way to Los Angeles to detonate their device in a CIA office building near the Pacific?  You'll have to rent the DVD to find out the thrilling, shocking answer!!!

Rating:  Rental

"A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints"

Here's how terrible I thought this star-studded indie was--after an hour, I just threw it into the Netflix envelope and mailed it back.  Every time we get another movie revolving around New York City tough guys, the New Yawk-style machine-gun chatter, the familiar mix of white kid racists, Puerto Rican kid racists, black kid racists, etc. and mafioso stylings, I want to fall asleep.  Haven't we made this movie enough?  So what if the movie here is based on a true story...the biggest problem with movies based on New York City kids in the 1980s is that EVERYONE HAS ALREADY MADE THAT MOVIE BEFORE!!  So what if Shia Labeouf and Channing Tatum are the kids this time around?  Yawn.  In the hour that I was watching, Robert Downey Jr. was essentially wasted in the role of the modern-day narrator talking about his childhood.  Ugh.

Rating:  Hard Vice

 

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.)