The career of William Friedkin is a reminder of how hard it is to make a good film.
He hit two films out of the fuckin park with The French Connection and The Exorcist then kinda floundered from there (he did have a few notable films afterwards, namely Sorcerer and To Live and Die in LA, the latter of which I haven’t seen).
Sure Friedkin won his accolades here and there, but he is truly the maestro of one specific thing: directing car chases.
Everyone remembers Gene Hackman just plowing through cars and walls while Friedkin neglected to obtain permits to film such a thing in the French Connection (and apparently there’s a good chase sequence in To Live and Die in LA), but Friedkin’s crowning achievement, in my view, is in Jade.
Before David Caruso was spitting out one liners while rocking a pair of sunglasses in CSI: Miami, he tried his hand at being a film star. Jade was the absolute highlight of this period.
In the film, after Angie Everhart gets totally destroyed by a Ford Thunderbird, Caruso pursuits the vehicle in his POS Ford during a delightful chase where vehicles fly through the air down the streets of San Francisco (and Caruso does his best Gene Hackman impersonation).
The best part is when the chase goes through some parade and pedestrians attack the vehicles using martial arts. I guess that would make sense if you learn about other cultures while binging on cocaine.
I’m glad that the films of Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan are still considered events. Auteurism is dying in Hollywood but there are still remnants.
I’m not a fan of their films, but it’s still nice.
I know it’s heresy for film buffs to dislike Tarantino, but like Alabama in college football, his movies get evaluated by a different standard for better or worse. Even when it’s obvious that he didn’t put his best foot forward, like every movie he’s made in the last 15 years, Tarantino’s films get praised as if the film industry is about to go under. If you remove his name from most of his movies, you’d probably be wondering what the fuck you just watched.
Mind you, Pulp Fiction will stand the test of time. Jackie Brown should be better appreciated. Kill Bill Vol. I and II are what they are. But go back and watch Reservoir Dogs. It didn’t age well. Could this be the fate for all his retrospective reviews once when Tarantino retires from the biz (after he allegedly makes his “10th film”)?
Probably not, but I can hope.
I admit, Tarantino just isn’t my flavor. A perfect film, for me, transcends the medium. It’s gotta stick with me…reveal something about myself, about the universe, that I never realized. Tarantino the man, as reflected in his films, lacks that insight. He’s a film geek. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s all that he’s capable of being.
I expect more out of films, not constantly getting nudged throughout a viewing, being reminded of some shitty Italian film from 40 years ago. Now I love schlock as much as the next guy, but art and schlock do not…cannot…mix.
Tarantino however wants to have it both ways. And that is a pipe dream.
He made a cool film once 30 years ago, most directors will never achieve that. But that doesn’t mean everything he’s made since has been a home run.
Really the same thing is true for Nolan. I personally think his success rate is greater than Tarantino’s. But Nolan probably thinks of himself as the Stanley Kubrick of mainstream blockbusters. That also screams trying to have it both ways.
But whatever dude, at least Insomnia, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight…the only superhero film I’ve ever liked…were damn good.
On the Mount Rushmore of cokeheads, Paul Schrader is between Dennis Hopper and Phil Specter (along with Stevie Nicks of course). Which is why I was excited to see Light Sleeper available to watch on Amazon Prime.
It’s definitely not a perfect film. Willem Dafoe plays an aging drug delivery boy employed by Susan Sarandon who runs into an ex flame which leads him to shoot up a hotel room (we’ve all been there). It’s a movie that should have been fleshed out more. The climax (the shooting up of a hotel room) didn’t quite pay off, and the sudden romantic interest between Sarandon and Dafoe in the end was odd, but there’s a lot of other things going for the film.
The sanitation strike, which played in the background and was often juxtaposed against the high class NYC lifestyle, was a nice touch. But the desperation of Dafoe’s character is absolutely heartbreaking.
I get what that’s about.
Dafoe is aimless. He wanted to be an actor, model, musician, and writer. His best years were spent strung out on drugs. Now he’s 40 and lacks focus.
Subtlety, Sarandon is in a similar position. She plays the boss but she knows the gravy train is about to leave the station. She thinks she’s some NYC hotshot, but by looking at her shitty apartment, she’s probably on the outside looking in.
Now that I type that out, suddenly Dafoe and Sarandon’s abrupt romantic interest becomes apparent: they’re both losers and now they have to settle for each other.
The soundtrack is incredible, for both good and bad reasons. The music itself is great. Where it goes off the rails is the damn singing. The visuals are powerful enough that you don’t need to be told how Dafoe’s character is feeling. Anybody could have written those lyrics. For example (in the style mimicking Bruce Springsteen):
I am walking down the street at night
I run into my ex girlfriend
We get into a little fight
I feel so sad that I just might
Stalk her at her mom’s funeral
Then she gets sad as well
Then we reconnect and start to kiss
She complementsmy erection
Then she tells me that she’s sopping wet
So we fuck all night then tells me to leave
Then I find out she’s back on drugs
Then she jumps out a window to her death
So I buy a gun from Puerto Rican man
Then I ride in limo with Susan Sarandon
Then I shoot up a hotel room
(Lyrics by Michael Been)
Despite all of that, this is a nice forgotten gem from the mind of Paul Schrader.
I once knew a psychopath that loved saying “why do tomorrow what can be done today?”
Nah.
More like “why do today what can be done tomorrow?”
As my father always said: “if you want something done right, get someone else to do it.”
Allegedly William James said “act as if what you do makes a difference.” But the truth is you should “act as if what you do makes absolutely NO difference.” Because it doesn’t.
You’re only here for a small blip in humanity’s history. And humans will only be around for a very short time in comparison to the immensity of the universe. So don’t worry about it, nothing we do here matters 😎
Even the history books will return to dust.
“Falling down is an accident. Staying down is a choice.”
We should all be thankful that we still have Clint Eastwood. The man’s been working for close to 70 years. He’s an absolute legend.
The Hollywood GOAT?
Seriously, think about that. He’s an accomplished actor AND director. It’s a career that will never be topped. Ever.
Many have tried, notably Sylvester Stallone, but it’s just not possible. (To be fair to Stallone though, Eastwood was in much more competent hands earlier in his career between Sergio Leone and Don Siegel).
This being said, Eastwood isn’t the most innovative director. In fact, when he does make a great film, it’s as though he accidentally did so. His two universally acclaimed films, Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, are mostly great because of their scripts (same with The Outlaw Josey Wales). Gran Torino appears to be a film with a lasting cultural impact, and while I wouldn’t say it had an outstanding script or direction, the movie works because of Eastwood’s personality, not because of anything he did behind the camera. But I’d say that Eastwood is to filmmaking what Steve Kerr is to the NBA…he’s extraordinarily competent.
Of course, when you go through a stretch where you’re making a movie ever 20 minutes, it’s hard to maintain quality.
Sudden Impact is one of the million Eastwood movies that gets lost in the shuffle. With a story from pioneering independent filmmaker and Arkansas legend Chuck B Pierce, this Dirty Harry sequel has our favorite 44 Magnum carrying San Francisco investigator being more dirty than usual. Eastwood’s then-wife Sandra Locke costars as woman exacting revenge against men who raped her 10 years earlier. I’d say that this is the best Dirty Harry sequel. Nay, this sequel is better than Dirty Harry, a film that defined raw 70s cop dramas.
What makes Sudden Impact so memorable is not the plot, I don’t remember if there was one, or character development or any of that bullshit. No, what makes this film great is watching Eastwood stumble from one scene to the next just absolutely beating the shit out of and shooting everyone. EVERYONE. To top it off, he runs around with a farting bulldog. He also kills a guy by just giving him a heart attack for fucks sake. Eastwood is just a straight up asshole, more so than usual for Dirty Harry. It’s probably that greatest Cannon film not produced by Cannon.
The film feels as though Eastwood didn’t want to return to the role and the only way they could convince him is if they allowed him to direct. And it payed off. Some of the best films made from this period were done when no one gave a shit. But Eastwood’s direction gave this entry an added edge, which is probably why Sudden Impact feels so different from the other Dirty Harry films.
While we still have him, I wish Eastwood would do ONE MORE Dirty Harry film. It’s what we need now more than ever: a 90 year old bastard just blasting the fuck out of bad guys with a 44 Magnum.
The Last Temptation of Christ unsurprisingly stuck with me. Usually when I complete a novel, I think “hmm, that was nice” and I move on to the next thing. But Kazantzakis’s interpretation of “the Greatest Story Ever Told” is rewarding and leaves a lot to think about, especially if you’re obsessed with early Christian history.
I mean, obviously it’s not historically accurate. That’s not the point. The point is that the book brings these familiar characters to life. Jesus begins the book as a sickly carpenter before transforming into the messianic figure we’ve come to know and love. However, his humanity is emphasized. At times, Jesus comes across as a jerk with megalomaniac fantasies. This helps contextualize Jesus the man and the era he lived in.
This is best demonstrated by his relationship with Judas Iscariot. Judas is a true revolutionary with a hatred for the Romans and is often frustrated by Jesus and his message of love. Jesus feels that Judas’s revolutionary ideals don’t go far enough: the concerns for the body are temporary, Jesus wants to bring salvation to the world…Jew and gentile alike.
The various characters are often puzzled by this. This universalism is too lofty, too radical to ever be realized.
And this sort of remains true today. I’ve expressed my admiration for John Dominic Crossan views: Jesus was responding to the imperial authority of the Romans. Jesus and his followers might not thought of it in that way, but that was effectively what he was doing. I don’t think enough scholars, both Christian and secular, stop to appreciate this. Not even Bart Ehrman.
I think this is best demonstrated by the cross as the official symbol of Christianity. Jesus unquestionably died by crucifixion, perhaps the most ruthless form of punishment by the Romans. And none of the early Christian apologists deny that it happened. Stop and think about that: their very leader got “owned” by the Romans. In fact, it HAD to have happened so that he could be resurrected. So Christians took this event and chalked it up as a win for their beliefs, and a loss for the ruthless rule of the Romans.
Scholars often wonder how Paul was able to convince so many pagans to convert to Christianity (or, to be more historically accurate, his form of Christian Judaism, as Paul still thought of himself as a Jew), well maybe here’s an answer: Roman rule under the Pax Romana pissed off enough people that when they heard of a man who was resurrected after a crucifixion, conversion was a way to subtly stick it to the Romans. This could be why Paul put so much emphasis on death and resurrection in his theology.
Yes, I know there are plenty of problems with this theory, chief among these is how little the Romans are criticized in the New Testament. In fact, the Gospels explicitly blame the Jews for Jesus’s death and not the Romans, even though the Romans certainly DID execute Jesus. My response to this is that you don’t have to spend more than two minutes following populist/leftist politics before realizing that they hate each other more than they hate their opposition. It is my opinion (maybe more on that at another time) that this is fundamentally rooted in these kinds of movements. Even though the Romans were THE existential threat to life in the Mediterranean world, it would have been mainstream Judaism that were the primary theological/ideological opponents of early Christianity…even if the Jews were as much under the thumb of Roman rule as they were. This is heresy in the world of radical movements, what leftists might call “class traitors” today, and it wouldn’t take much for Christian writers to switch out Romans for the Jews in regards to who was guilty for Jesus’s death.
It is this narcissism of small differences that plague radical movements, religious and political alike, and I doubt early Christianity was any different. (See Monty Python’s Life of Brian)
It is difficult to tell if the real Jesus actually preached this message of universalism, or a peaceful coexistence of all people under one God. Crossan might, but it’s more likely this was extracted by later thinkers and is now considered the ethical message of Christianity IF people could move past their short-sightedness (maybe not under “one god”, but you get the idea).
Anyways, I’ve spent too much time on this post, forgot where I was going. The end.
For whatever reasons, I’ve recently went through a David Fincher binge. And it occurred to me: I’m not a fan of his work.
That being said, The Game and Panic Room are his two best movies. Alien 3 is probably better than you remember. Se7en is alright.
Everything else is overrated. This includes Fight Club.
But The Game surprised me. It reminded me of one of my other favorite films: Roman Polanski’s Frantic. It’s hard to pull off these kinds of movies…watching a character descend into madness while information about what’s actually going on slowly leaks out.
Honestly, The Game doesn’t completely pull it off. Fincher’s visual style and Michael Douglas’s performance carry the film. But to completely enjoy it, one must ignore large plot holes and read more into subtext than what was probably intended (I assume).
I thought that Douglas’ character was suffering from the same madness that his father had and the ending indicated that “the game” was still being played. But I have the suspicion that this open ended interpretation bails out the script. In other words, Fincher’s direction saves the day.
As for everything else on Fincher’s resume, he seems to suffer from the same problem that Ridley Scott has: all style and the substance is overstated.
xXx is a film that came out 10 years too late. Bruce Willis would have fucking CRUSHED the role of Xander Cage.
Think about it: what if it xXx was directed by Renny Harlin or John McTiernan. Now those guys understand what action schlock is all about.
I don’t know why xXx sucks so much. Is it the script? The direction? Is it it’s leading actor?
Vin Diesel is proof that just because you look the part, doesn’t mean that you can play the part. Honestly, he is quietly one of the worst action stars I’ve ever seen. And it’s difficult to pinpoint why that is.
Is it because he’s not traditionally “good looking”? There are plenty of action stars that aren’t considered “good looking.”
Is it because he can’t act? To be a Hollywood leading man, having the ability to “act” is surprisingly low on the must-have list.
Is it because he doesn’t have a sense of humor? I think there’s something to this. I mean, Vin Diesel does have a sense of humor, but the joke is always on someone else and never on the absurdity of his character or the situation he’s in.
Being the butt of a joke is for other characters. Not for him.
Some action stars can get away with this. Steven Seagal for example. But the thing is that Seagal lacks the awareness to understand that he is the joke. Diesel is too smart for that.
So in xXx, Diesel comes across as a fucking asshole that I’m constantly rooting against.
The Internet Ruined Everything 