Viewed: DVD

Rick Deckard, a Bladerunner, investigates and kills replicants (androids) gone rogue. This movie stands up well as a vision of a dark future, but the creators seemed to expect a little more advancement of technology — the setting is 2019 and there are flying cars and life-like robots. The visuals of the future city are great, but does the sun never shine in this world — I mean, it’s supposed to be Los Angeles.

The standard method to identify a replicant trying to pose as a real human is for the bladrunner to ask a long series of personal questions which apparently causes a replicant to wig out to a minor or major degree. The minor telling response can be simply subtle eye twitches or something, and the major sign is a deadly attack.

Harrison Ford seems to have a draw to characters in movies that get their asses kicked. He, of course, wins in the end, but he’s like Bruce Willis in that he looks good with cuts and bruises.

This movie has good action, though really not as much as you might think for its genre. It’s mostly a dark (in feel and visuals) and brooding cop drama. I liked it when I saw it way back in the early 80s, and I’m happy to say I still like it now, although it’s not a movie I would watch more than once in a decade.

There’s an interesting scene (interesting in a cultural since) where Deckard . . . hmmm, how to describe this? In today’s culture, he essentially rapes a woman by intimidation. In the early 80s culture, he was just being . . . strong. The scene is not graphic: he closes the door to prevent the woman from leaving his apartment, and then he tells her what to say to him, and she says it. This shows a subtle change our culture has made in 25 years.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Viewed: Theater

Wow. I really didn’t expect to not like it. I didn’t dislike it; I just didn’t like it. How can I not like an Indiana Jones movie? But I can explain my disappointment with one word: “unbelievable.” The action was unbelievable. I’m not saying, “unrealistic,” here. None of the IJ movies have been strongly realistic.

I noted immediately how this movie didn’t start out like the previous three movies. The previous movies started out with a sequence showing Indy, himself, in some kind of adventure, situation, predicament unrelated to the main story to come. This one starts out showing people who are not Indy. And then when Indy is brought into it, the situation isn’t unrelated to the primary story — it’s the beginning of the primary story. Now this was not a problem for me, but I did notice the departure from the standard formula.

Where the movie lost me was when he ran into the town in the desert. (It’s hard to talk about this without giving things away, but I’m trying to not spoil it.) I started loosing my suspension of disbelief the more I saw of the town, and then I completely just dropped it when Indy saved himself from the “event.” At that point, it was obvious that this movie was not even trying to nod at realism. And when the story and events go so far from realism, believability is the casualty.

This early in the movie I came to realize this is not a pulp-style movie — it’s a pure fantasy. Raiders of the Lost Ark felt more down to earth, realistic, believable, with a real human hero in the real world. There was some little magic in the story, but it wasn’t the story. Temple of Doom also showed Indy as a real human hero in a realistic world. The magic was a little more obvious, but still small compared to the overall story. The Last Crusade had Indy evolve a little out of real human hero and into fantastic hero, and the magic was more part of the story. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull shows Indy, right from the start, as a fantastic hero in a fantastic world, with the magic playing a very prominent role in the story. Unrealistic, unbelievable.

I mentioned, in a recent post, my fear that the Indiana Jones movie would have over-the-top stunts and effects that didn’t fit the style of the 1980’s versions. Well, it does. The stunts and effects were not believable. They were too fantastic, too super.

I don’t hate this movie. I just don’t have any feelings for it. Once I was taken out of my suspension of disbelief, I didn’t feel like I was watching an Indiana Jones movie. It did have a few really good action sequences and humor moments, but a “cool” or a chuckle here and there doesn’t overcome the overall “meh” I felt watching it. The unbelievability left me with apathy for the whole thing.

I don’t know if there’s anything after the credits because I wasn’t interested enough to hang around and see.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I’ve been cautiously excited about the coming, new Indiana Jones movie. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is in my list of top 3 movies of all time. The second and third movies in the Indiana Jones series were good, and I enjoyed them, but they fall considerably further down the list.

Movie making has changed a great deal since RotLA, and I don’t think the change fits the mood and style of Indiana Jones. I’ve seen the trailer for the new movie, and what I see has a subtly different look and feel. For one thing, an Indiana Jones movie shouldn’t have computer generated special effects. I can see the CG in the trailer.

Cowgrit and I just watched RotLA last night. It holds up well as a story, and Indiana Jones is just damn awesome as a character. George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, and Harrison Ford formed a holy trinity with this movie. They made this tale an epic worthy of Homer, and they did it without over-the-top, in-your-face special effects.

A similar feat was accomplished with Die Hard in 1988. When I saw the trailer for the most recent movie in the Die Hard series, I was not drawn to see it at all. I haven’t seen it, and I don’t expect that I will. The stunts and special effects just look so over the top as to be unrealistic enough to keep me from suspending disbelief. I fear this is going to be the result of the new Indiana Jones flick.

I’m not at all against high-spectacle, computer generated special effects. They’re needed and appropriate for some movies — Transformers and Iron Man being two recent examples. But Indiana Jones, (and John McClane), is a down-to-earth, mortal hero whose actions and stunts shouldn’t look superheroic. Too much effects looks out of place. And computer graphics spoils the feel and style, mainly because it allows directors to make the stunts more and bigger to the point of breaking out of the Indiana Jones “world.”

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Raiders of the Lost Ark again. I wonder, though, if it would be as impressive to the teenagers today, who are used to the big-blast stunts and effects of today’s movies?

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I just tried watching what I thought would be a fun action movie: House of Flying Daggers. Unfortunately, I found it so just bad that I turned it off after 30 minutes. I know some people like or love that movie, and I rented it based on some reviews from them, but it just wasn’t good to me. There have been a few other movies I found so bad that I turned them off before the end, for instance: Death Proof.

I’ve had someone (not a friend) say that stopping a movie before the end is immature. Movies don’t always give you the good stuff all right up front, and they have to lay groundwork to support the better stuff coming after.

I don’t expect a movie to give me all the best stuff right from the beginning. I understand some things need to build up over the course of a story. But I do expect a movie to be interesting and logical (within its world) from the beginning. I don’t want to watch an hour of watching the grass grow to get to the part where the lawnmower comes through to make it exciting.

I want to be at least entertained while waiting for the great stuff. I want the build up to be interesting. My free time is too rare to sit through an un-entertaining movie. I don’t think it’s immature to give up on a movie before the end if the first part isn’t good. I see it as just good sense not to throw a good hour after a bad hour watching a crappy movie. After all, there’s no guarantee that the second hour of a movie will be any better than the first hour. I figure if the writers and director can’t make the first part entertaining, they probably can’t make the second part good.

I can be immature in many other ways without wasting time.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com