Tagged: movie reviews
My Eulogy for Apollo Creed
Ask my mom and she’ll tell you. She’ll tell you how frustrated I get by the little blurbs that people write about their loved ones when they die. I am always sending her screen shots of the ridiculously bad sentiments that accompany death. I think it all started when that University of Utah female student was murdered by her boyfriend—a 37 yr old bouncer she had no business associating with—and her parents, two professors, wrote about her recent GPA and athletic accomplishments. Give me a break. Like any of that has to do with who that young woman was.
Making the matter worse, I have also been dreading the oncoming harvest of all the Hollywood stars that I have loved for the last thirty years. Even as I sit here and type near my beloved Steinway, I look up and see my poster (purchased and framed some twenty years ago in college when I didn’t have any budget for such things) of Neil and Vincent, from Heat. “A Tale of Crime and Obsession.”
But it was Rocky III and Top Gun that defined my childhood. Family legend goes that I broke our family’s VHS tape that had Rocky III recorded on it by rewinding it so much. That is the film that had Apollo as Rocky’s trainer, not nemesis. I probably should credit Rocky III with my ability to go where whites otherwise do not go—among blacks. And I have Apollo to thank for that.
The scene when they go to Apollo’s gym and see all the scary, serious looking black boxers surely scared me when I was young boy. But as I watched, I learned from Apollo that they just had the “eye of the tiger” and then I saw them crack up and loosen up when Apollo let them know he was there because of them, not to fight them. Lesson learned: when it’s time to get serious about boxing—go to the dirtiest, meanest gym possible.
An odd tribute is in many comments about Carl Weather’s death. “There is no tomorrow!” the famous and perfectly delivered line from the very same Rocky film is all over the web. Why? It’s a Freudian Slip, surely. Or it must be, to my mind. It’s inconceivable that anyone could think it applies to death. I am not motivated to try hard or train hard now that Apollo has died. Mr. Weathers’ death does not inspire, it saddens and depresses.
That stated, here is my official eulogy.
****
Apollo Creed had the most perfect physique of any fighters in the Rocky Saga. He did not have the most perfect physique ever formed, and other men still hold the crown within their particular group (MJ is the most perfectly formed basketball player, for example). But when it came to casting a character to oppose Rocky, and then train Rocky, the casting was perfect.
When I watched the new Creed films, I kept thinking, “Are humans just smaller these days?” And, “Why is Michael B. Jordan being cast as if he is strong like Rocky and Apollo were?” Even the new Russian didn’t hold water compared to Apollo Creed, let alone Ivan Drago.
I have since watched Rocky III while trying to imagine that Mr. Weathers wasn’t Apollo Creed in an effort to determine what his size was in reality—you know, using background props and other actors and actresses he appeared next to to more accurately assess his size—but I have so far been unable to downsize him. Those shoulders, those traps, those arms, his chest, his six pack, and his back. His legs, and his hair and mustache—all simply iconic. Man, those shoulders!
How many pushups have I done while he trained me? How many situations have I not shy’d away from while he encouraged me? How many friendly faces, inside and outside of gyms, have I encountered because of Apollo Creed? The number, like his size, is immeasurable.
Apollo, you were always more, more than I thought possible in more ways than you would ever guess. You aren’t in my heart—you formed my heart. Thank you.
Effort vs. Execution, A Joint Review of Equalizer 2 & Equalizer 3, by Antoine Fuqua
My wife mentioned that she wanted to watch the new Equalizer, but I couldn’t recall ever taking time for Equalizer 2. So we started with 2, and then moved to 3. “Decent and in order.”
Oh, and we have this new TV which does that thing where even Hollywood films appear like they are home videos. Know what I am talking about? Probably not. I have not found many who can see what I see, but having taken about 12 years off TV, I can tell that the image is far, far different than it used to be.
I bring up this image quality thing because it is part of the problem with Equalizer 2, but not 3. On these new TV’s, the CGI, if any corners were cut, looks terrible. Like it used to look before it got good and seamless, really, with the Avengers film. So 3 must have had a bigger budget—itself no surprise as they were probably caught off guard by how many went to see the sequel to a standard action film. Apparently, they were not monitoring Mr. Wick’s success. If they make a 4, I’d rush to see it because they will surely be in full stride (and direct competition) with John.
The story in 2 was also less than compelling. The start was great, but the moment we hear the “bad guy” stop pretending he is innocent, the movie, for all intents and purposes, ends. And this happened near the half-way point. And the CGI wasn’t even introduced until the end. So we went from worse to “worser”, to play off David Ayers’ Street Kings opening.
But again, we were only watching 2 to get to feel right about watching 3. And 3 delivered.
These two films (I can barely recall the first one) are incredibly violent. Shockingly so. So don’t think you should bend the rules with your kid and show them their first R-rated feature with one of these. You’ll regret it. But they do the right thing of making the bad guys really bad, and Denzel, well, he’s Denzel. And in 3 we got to see a CGI free Denzel film. Or one that had the budget to make it look like CGI wasn’t used.
You know what makes Denzel great? He’s almost a one trick pony. But the trick is the equivalent of harnessing the power of the Sun. He is so great because of how he, in almost every movie, can give a particular look which makes you sympathize whole-heartedly with his character. Of course his speaking and speeches are excellent. And who doesn’t want to move like he moves? And think like he thinks. But the silent look he gives is something that I want to never be able to produce. I don’t want that pain, that history, that store of feeling. I don’t want that library of unspoken, but not forgotten, words. But I do sympathize.
Final note: his other recent film, “The Little Things” is decent. Don’t skip it if you are at all intrigued.
Forest, Forrest Gump, A Joint Review of The Overstory by Richard Powers and Forrest Gump by Robert Zemeckis
The film Forrest Gump is simply a classic. I know it. You know it. And that’s all I have to say about it.
The Overstory, by Richard Powers, while provocative, was written with enough smugness to need this direct accusation of thematic plagiarism to ground it. Here is my accusation in full: In the end, Richard Powers’ The Overstory offers its readers little more than they already experienced in the film Forrest Gump—that is, a nostalgia-filled game of “memory”, though this new version is chemically-boosted by a fun combination of fabulist storytelling and apparently un-simpleton plants (or more accurately plantae or vegetation) as lens.
With that out of the way, let’s get to some detailed analysis. First up, I feel that I owe you, dear reader, an explanation of how I ended up reading this book. I owe this to you, faithful follower, because you know that I have stated many, many times that I have nearly vowed to never read anything newer than 100 years old, because the classics are the classics for a reason—they are better! Why waste time?
Life threw a curveball, however. I recently moved back to Colorado (mental note: never ever leave again) and this event saw me box up my nice library of classic books that I am diligently working through. As a reader and planner, I kept a couple books out, of course. But not enough, it turned out.
On one trip between Minnesota and Heaven, I stayed with my rich brother and his wife and planned to borrow the first of what I recall was a trilogy of fantasy books I had randomly given them at Christmas a few years back. I was jones’n for easy-to-read, escapist fiction. Unfortunately, and tellingly, they couldn’t recall the location of that box set.
None taken.
Genuinely wanting to rectify the situation, my brother looked over a tiny bookshelf—so small—and, like Belle in the bookstore, chose, The Overstory.
“Here. You might like this one. It’s about-”
“-No need, S-,” I cut in. “As long as it’s fiction, I’ll figure it out.
“Oh. And thanks.”
I set off on the second half of my drive and later that week began to read.
It was miserable. Pulitzer Prize? I thought. This is garbage. I think it’s woke, too. Something is off about it. It feels a little too Greta and not enough William.
A few more pages in, and I couldn’t take it any longer. I had to read some of the critical acclaim and the previously forgone description from the back. I had to get some sort of context.
Eco-fiction? I knew it. This is garbage. It’s not even a novel. It’s propaganda. I feel like a card-carrying Nazi.
However, if there’s anything I hate more than eco-fiction antifa propoganda, it’s quitting on a book.
“S-. Did you actually read this? I’m finding it very hard to read.”
“Na. I only made it about 50 pages, if that.”
“Oh. Oh, oh, oh. I see. I’ll relax then. I was getting worried that you thought I needed to read it. Gotcha. Might still be propaganda, but at least it isn’t brother-on-brother crime.”
So I kept reading. Slowly it grew on me. Like most books tend to do.
Then something miraculous happened.
“But one day she’s reading Abbott’s Flatland…” Powers writes.
“No way!” I said to myself.
You see, on a previous work trip for the new job, I encountered the same problem of no easy fiction. So I found a sweet used bookstore in Denton, TX, of all places, and boldly asked the college dude behind the counter for recommendations in fantasy/sci-fi short stories. After he brought me to the appropriate section of the shelves, he lit up as he pulled down Flatland.
“This is a must read!” he explained.
I fully agree.
But how in the world can you explain my having just read Flatland after a random recommendation from a random bookstore I had no business stopping in, and then stumbling onto a second non-classic book which refers back to the previous one as if everyone would obviously have been aware of the merely cult favorite? It defies explanation. But it was all I needed to keep reading Powers.
And I am glad I did.
The Overstory is not poetry in the sense that Shelley meant. It is far too technical and, as mentioned, smug. Too naive. Too progressive. Too dry, at times. But the story is compelling, and buyer beware, if true, the stuff about vegetation’s intelligence and ability (not to mention old, old age) and the detailed accounts of eco-terrorists and their deluded—yet unshakable—belief that we’re all missing something feels authentic.
Onto the terrible. One example of the smug faults of the book must be offered. And it relates back to that used bookstore in Denton. Besides Flatland, the kid also handed me Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman, accompanied by his opinion that Gaiman is the “greatest living writer”. Wow.
Juxtaposed against the author’s of the “classics”, I quickly noticed how this Gaiman would attempt to show-off his mental powers by summarizing enormous works of classic literature in a word, or worse, one emotion. Smug.
And Powers does the same. A sign of the times, I guess.
But what I am talking about, the one drop of oil that ruins the entire ships water supply, has to do with more than fancy-pants pith. My children are old enough to pick up The Overstory offy shelf. They would not know the references to literary greats. No harm, no foul. But what about this line,
She has told him about the Judean date palm seed, two thousand years old, found in Herod the Great’s palace on Masada—a date pit from a tree-
…wait for it…
–that Jesus himself might have sampled-
…not yet…
–the kind of tree that Muhammad said was made of the same stuff as Adam.
BOOM!
Are you kidding me?
Do you seriously want me to believe that you believe this?
Only a moron in the 21st century would equate Muhammad and Jesus—themselves separated by six centuries of time, not to mention the plane between heaven and hell. And more to the point, illiterate Muhammad most certainly did not offer any commentary—nor could he have—on some particular species of tree that most certainly was not distinguishable from any other tree to this ignorant man who couldn’t distinguish the biblical Trinity—Father, Son, Spirit—from whatever bastardized version he heard about and further twisted in his undiscerning, savage head into “father, son, Mary”. Give me a fucking break, Dick. You go too far.
Excuse me. Something comes out of me when it comes to the name of our Lord and Savior.
Want me to consider your point about deforestation? Okay.
Want me to overlook your hubristic take on religion while doing so? No can do.
But not every book can be a classic. So it’s forgivable. I forgive you, Mr. Powers. Both for the Muhammad thing and for the Forrest Gump thing.
Maybe next time.
As for me, back to the classics.
My Review of Oppenheimer, by Christopher Nolan
I’ve always heard that the newspaper USA Today was written at a third grade reading level. A reading level is an interesting concept. Try this sentence from USA Today’s The Weather Book by Jack Williams, “A fusion reaction fuses atoms together, creating other kinds of atoms and giving off energy.”
No third grader on earth could understand whatever that means. A few savants may sound smart trying, but keep in mind that they would never actually be explaining that sentence to us.
I also remember that in the 1950s children encyclopedia, so-called The Book of Knowledge, the author of the chapter on “atoms” began by having a child imagine cutting up a candle into smaller parts. And then smaller parts. And then smaller parts. Even then, you could still reform the candle parts back into shape. But, the author went on, there are even smaller parts, which when the candle is cut down to these teeny sizes, it wouldn’t matter what happened, they could not reassemble to build a candle.
Can anyone explain that concept? I feel like I get it. But it’s basically saying that there is something besides the obvious ingredients comprising the obvious objects. And that fact is something I can repeat, but I do not understand it.
The problem, so far as I can tell, is essentially one of “barrier to entry”. Atoms and Fusion Reactions require knowledge of such things as very few of us will ever think it worthwhile to learn and master.
Therefore, allow me to state the obvious: if you leave the theater believing that you now know something about atom bombs, you’re fooling yourself.
Mr. Nolan doesn’t abstain from attempting a layman’s explanation, but he also doesn’t belabor the point. Perhaps he doesn’t get it either.
The reason I open the review with this lengthy aside is because I, as I suspect you, had nursed the idea that maybe Nolan could succeed where others failed when I first heard he was making this movie. But he didn’t really even try. And I was a fool for thinking he might. The film is called, “Oppenheimer,” not, “Atom Bomb.”
Moving to my next hope for the movie.
Does Mr. Nolan satisfy my curiosity about the man Oppenheimer, which is bracketed by the following two questions:
1. What exactly was his role in the “invention”?
2. How would some nerdy academic handle being responsible for such death then and forevermore?
Yes. And no.
The way he accomplishes this paradox is by sticking to purely emotional storytelling where paradox is not forbidden. While there are many moments which caused me to wonder, “Did that really happen?,” there were many more which unexpectedly evoked near tears and kept me deep in contemplation about implications of what Nolan seemed to be trying to say rather than poised to fact check every seeming “they must have a record of this” moment.
On the whole, everything about the movie works. The chosen vessel for storytelling works. The casting works. The psycho-sapio sex scene works. The conveyance of palpable stress works. And, most importantly, the a-bomb test works.
Long Live X-Men!
I started Logan again the other day. I immediately felt abashed for ever suggesting it was normalizing violence against children. The first time I watched it, I apparently didn’t pay attention to the words/story.
Before I had a chance to finish Logan, I had an opportunity to watch X-Men Apocalypse and found it extremely entertaining. More so than the first viewing for sure.
Last night I finally had time to finish Logan and it did not disappoint.
Biographical note: I grew up on the cartoon and would fight my mom tooth and nail on Saturday mornings when it always happened to be time to clean right when the episode started. Did she really not know? The cartoon began at the same time every week. Just let a boy finish that one cartoon and he’ll clean his room just fine! But no, it was always as the opening of the show came on, “Peter! Time to clean your room. Enough tv for one Saturday!”
Batman will always be my favorite comic book character. But the X-Men are a close second, Wolverine leading the way.
Logan’s best scene, insofar as it relates to character development, is when the little girl mutant holds his hand in an effort to comfort him when Professor X dies and Logan rips his hand away in disgust. Rage right up to the end. That kind of consistency makes for compelling storytelling. Way to go, folks. Keep it up.
Black “Sleepers”, A Review of Creed 3 by Michael B. Jordan
In “Sleepers” a few men who had been abused as boys in a group home years earlier get revenge in a skillful, tactful, and above board way.
In “Creed 3” two men who had been beat on as boys in a group home years earlier box each other, one of the men being Apollo Creed’s son.
“Creed 3” is not a Rocky movie.
As if that assertion isn’t damning enough, I will go one step further to make my point.
“Creed 3” is heartless. It is a body without soul. It fails Mark Twain’s marvelous rule for Romantic Literature that essentially requires, “that a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.” “Creed 3” accomplishes nothing and goes nowhere.
It should be clear now that I have essentially worshipped Rocky Balboa as a second-order deity since first viewing Rocky 3 as an impressionable, skinny boy who was good at pushups. More recently, my devotion manifest itself in the following remark I made to a new friend on the topic. I said that if I ever got a tattoo, I would get the sound of Clubber Lang’s grunts.
I’m not desiring to be a hater here. There are many powerful moments and good decisions in Michael B. Jordan’s film. To name two, the inclusion of Mexican boxing is notable and probably financially sound. And the presentation of fantasy black life is almost realistic.
But Mr. Jordan hijacked the Rocky franchise with his directorial debut.
And that’s disappointing. I really did like the first two spinoffs.
“First Robot”, or “Explore Space to Deal With Death”, A Review of First Man, by Damien Chazelle
Movie-wise, I’ve still been on a TGM kick, especially at work, and so it was only natural that my boss (also a pilot) was shocked that I hadn’t seen First Man.
“When I heard they didn’t show him planting the flag, I just lost interest,” I explained.
Well, he told me it was just great and must-see viewing for a pilot. “I can’t believe a pilot wouldn’t want to watch that movie.”
So I watched it.
And like all “inspired by real events” movies, they couldn’t just leave well enough alone.
To be clear, there is no record—at any level, to include hearsay—that Neil Armstrong throws his dead daughter’s bracelet into a moon crater.
In the film, we watch, not a man, but a machine train and train and train and then launch for the moon. Maybe the director saw the problem here.
“How can we have a movie called ‘First Man’ and then show that it was a cold, calculating psychopath that NASA launched to the moon?” we can almost hear him asking.
But the answer to this problem is to fix the portrait (or title), not insert a definitively make-believe event.
In short: Tell the Truth!!
From my perspective, I wanted to know—and I thought the movie was wanting to tell me—why Neil Armstrong was the first man to land and walk on the moon. Specifically, why Neil Armstrong was chosen and why Neil Armstrong had what it takes to know that he should be first.
I know I’m better than most of mankind at achieving goals and completing tasks correctly etc. But I also have been around other dudes that I couldn’t hold a candle to. Neil Armstrong seems to have never experienced the latter. He only knew that he was the man. Absolute confidence. Unbridled certainty.
It’s remarkable.
It’s worth a million dollar film being commissioned.
But it’s also worth getting right.
Our culture seems to struggle with the idea that adults still want things. That adults still can have desires. A movie like this bears this out. It doesn’t know what story to tell. The story is not about “look how he couldn’t be both a good dad and a good man.”
Neil Armstrong wasn’t a good dad! Oh em gee! Damn him to hell!
Does anyone else still believe that a good adult can be precisely what a child (and a nation) needs?
Broadening, does anyone else still believe that an achieving adult is precisely what a family and a nation needs?
We’ve become bedazzled by the idea of sacrificing individual achievement in order to help some version of the helpless masses.
Sorry, but my achievements do help them. We don’t need to scrap NASA in order to feed people.
Your desire to stop my achievement is called “envy” and is sin straight from the pit of hell. JS Mill showed me this. You should learn to see it too.
In any case, between First Man and Ad Astra, I’m not persuaded. Men don’t need the death of fathers and daughters to propel them to greatness. They just need…
And that’s it. The heart of the matter. What do men need to propel them to greatness? Do you know?
Stunted?, A Review of Elvis by Baz Luhrmann
Mr. Luhrmann’s biopic finally made it to streaming and, therefore, ahem, “undocumented” streaming, which means, finally made it to my laptop. I’d been waiting for months—so long in fact that I nearly watched a cam version. In short, I’m glad I waited. There was nothing that I missed by not being part of the initial watch party, and there was plenty that I’m glad I saw in decent quality, both picture and sound.
Skipping to the end, though, unlike Elvis’ at least momentary ability to gain satisfaction on the “love” front, I was left unsatisfied.
The chosen vehicle to deliver Elvis to us is the “unparalleled talent held back by abusing manager”. Despite this choice, the movie and the man seem to cry out that there must’ve been more to Elvis Aaron Presley. He couldn’t have just been “Elvis” because he constantly broke his manager’s barriers. And we all know, or those of us who read lyrics all know, that every artist views themselves as restricted, even in their most untamed seeming creations.
I call your attention to Exhibit A: Tool has a song in which he describes how a fan calls him a “sell out” and then he, MJK, responds, “All you know about me’s what I sold ya, dumbf*^%/I sold out long before you ever even heard my name…” among other fairly harsh truths on topic.
Over here is Exhibit B: Metallica released a collaboration with Lou Reed that was widely and thoroughly panned by critics. I think it’s the last CD I bought at Best Buy. Or second to last. When someone told the drummer that it was very hard to listen to, he replied, “You should try performing it!”
The nicest review I found at the time was written by, if memory serves, someone from Mastodon. He essentially argued, “Good for Metallica.” He said that Metallica is so big that they actually had a chance to release something that they wanted to release, no input from anyone. Sure, he went on, it’s no good. But none of us have achieved or probably will achieve the ability to make truly pure art like they did. (My paraphrase.)
In short, Mr. Luhrmann’s Elvis comes across as merely trope (rare adjectival use) and yet, after what I just saw, Elvis Aaron Presley couldn’t have been so one-sided. The most important thing about him couldn’t have been that his manager held him back if it’s common knowledge to a mid-western kid like me that no musicians are free from stunting managerial oversight (excepting all-mighty ‘tallica, of course).
In the end, it was a decent film, had stirring sequences and the ending was unavoidably emotional. But it didn’t quite do justice to the wiggly flesh exterior, the blood-pumping heart that lay beneath, or the invisible soul that would not be told who to be that I have to believe filled Elvis Aaron Presley—the man I’d want to have met.
On that front, Mr. Luhrmann succeeded. I’d never had that thought before the film. I’d always pictured a Vegas has-been. While I still think there was a sharper image to be portrayed by a film, I definitely had my perception changed. And that is rare these days. So while it’s true that Elvis has left the building, I say, long live the king.
[SPOILER] A Pilot Weeping, A Review of Top Gun: Maverick
As the Memorial Day themed church service began this morning, I just knew I was going to be in the right mood to cry during the movie in the afternoon. Some days ya’ just know.
The opening sequence confirmed what I suspected—but the dam held.
Oceans, forests, hills, deserts, mountains, jungles, and, oh yes, skies are the appropriate natural descriptors for how much emotional size was packed into each and every scene. Skies and skies of feeling, packed onto a smaller and smaller IMAX screen.
Still, squinted eyes were able to hold back the waters.
Somewhere in the training sequences I consciously decided that I was going to just let it happen, no matter who might look over and see.
When Phoenix has the birdstrike, her quick identification of the malfunction and even quicker reaction to save the aircraft struck a chord and finally a few tears came out. It felt amazing.
Then when Maverick surprisingly appears to run the course in 2:15, there was no holding back. No sobbing, mind you. But definitely communication from my soul in the form of slow building tear bombs dropping down my cheeks.
I wanted Maverick to succeed. He’d been talking like a boss the whole movie, and finally he was going to show the world that he could back up his words with action.
****
My life looks very, very different than it did leading up to and during my time in US Air Force pilot training. It’s astonishing to me to even consider who I was then and who I am today. But more astonishing is how this movie affected me. It brought to the surface something long buried deep within.
That something is the following fact: Pilot training was the last time in my life where I wasn’t embarrassed to do my best.
We all did our best.
Not anymore. That’s not allowed.
I’m up to fifty pushups five times during the walks with my toddler, these days. Right out in public. Fifty. Cars driving by. Same spots. Neighbors able to see. Fifty. All the way down and up. Fifty. I’m forty years old and struggle to do fifty pushups, but I also know that not one person who may happen to see the struggle can do more than me.
That’s the closest event (maybe these blogs when I’m in the mood) I can consider as one in which I give my best anymore. Even my best friend from college doesn’t want to play when I really put effort in.
But my pilot training class of ‘05? We did our best.
What’s changed? Now that’s a weeping good question.
Review of the Hype Surrounding “Top Gun: Maverick“
The hype is real. The hype is palpable. The hype is fantastic.
It’s the kind of hype that inspires. It’s of a sort which begs the question, “Is it possible he actually made the perfect movie?”
I’ll say this: the just released official music video for Lady Gaga’s “Hold My Hand” is the perfect music video for a film soundtrack’s main song.
I’m officially applying for pilot training.
Captain’s Log 