Tag: Movies

  • Personal Review: Road House; Both of Them (1989, 2024)

    (It’s my way, or the highway.)

    So, I’m a huge MST3k fan, and as such, I join in that show’s admiration of the Patrick Swayze epic that is Road House from 1989. It is a movie that was made specifically for pre-teen and teenage boys, and I happened to be that in the late 80’s. I watched it many times over at a friend’s house, as his parents didn’t care what we did, and my mom would have grounded me for years if she knew her twelve year old angel was illicitly watching an R rated movie. It is not a good movie, but it is a good-bad movie.

    I can’t say the same thing for the new Road House, staring Jake Gyllenhaal, which I watched over the weekend. To put it bluntly, it’s a movie that wants very badly to be included in the joke – as if it could laugh along with us at how bad all of this is. What that creates is an uneven affair. At times, this is a movie that attempts to take these characters seriously. Then, at snap of the neck speed, the film turns around and wants us guffaw at how silly and over the top they are. I mean, the main villain, played by Billy Magnussen, was only missing a moustache to twirl in his overly melodramatic performance. As for Conner McGregor’s Knox, who must have drawn inspiration from Wile E. Coyote, his character survives accident after accident, and just keeps popping back up. I felt the worst for Gyllenhaal, who had nothing to work with other than the stock “trauma” trope, which is revealed half way through the movie, per usual for movies like this. This Dalton has no bouncer skills, no knowledge about the world of bars which would make him an expert. No, this Dalton is just a guy who is good at fighting. If you took the fighting away, there’s nothing interesting or unique about him. This a movie is just a vehicle for some fights.  

    This gets me back to the original Road House – and again, not a good movie, but a good-bad movie – which I watched last night. Swayze has an earnestness in the role of Dalton, which at times can be charming, and also very cheesy. But Swayze sticks with it, and never breaks or hints that he knows that a story about the world’s greatest bouncer, is just silly. The tai chi on the riverbank, the monster truck, Sam Elliot being Sam Elliot, Ben Gazzara chewing the hell out of the scenery, the flat characters; it’s all over the top, but it never spins out of control. I think Roger Ebert said it best in his review of the film, “Road House exists right on the edge between the ‘good-bad movie’ and the merely bad. I hesitate to recommend it, because so much depends on the ironic vision of the viewer. This is not a good movie. But viewed in the right frame of mind, it is not a boring one, either.”

  • So, That Was the Oscars

    I’m a sucker for the Oscars. Not award shows, just the Oscars. As a theatre guys, I don’t much care for the Tony’s. But if it’s the Oscars, I will be there for all their hokieness, and over the top showmanship, and fake glamor. Because at the end of the day, the Oscars are nothing more than a room full of very successful and rich people giving each other gold trophies and saying, “You did very good last year!”

    For about five or six years in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, I was seeing every movie that was nominated for all the major categories. It was when I was living my poorest life, but I always found a way to scrape the money together and get to the movies. Living outside of Dallas also afforded me a couple of arthouse movie theatres, so I was able to take in international movies, independent stuff, as well as midnight and cult films. I was also lucky enough to have a solid group of friends that was committed to seeing these movies. We debated endlessly about what were the best films of each year, and we were a very film literate group, most of us worked in video stores, so we did know what we were talking about.

    But when you constantly see good and great movies, you start to understand that the Oscars truly don’t award the best movies of the year. It’s a popularity contest. Sometimes it’s a fun popularity contest, but it always is, and forever shall be, about who is the most popular.

    It’s probably been 12 years since the last time I saw all the movies that were nominated for best picture, and that was due to my wife gifting me tickets to a two-day marathon at a theatre in Manhattan that showed all the nominated movies. (And that was the best experience, because it was nothing but great movies. But don’t forget your tissues.) But I still get a welcome level of enjoyment from the Oscars. Movies are wonderful make-believe and brilliant storytelling when in the right hands. It does feel that good movies are on the rise against, and the ‘splosion fests are on the wane. I’ll catch most of the best pictures streaming on this or that platform, which is fine. Though, to be in a movie theatre with an audience enthralled by a movie is a bit like a religious experience; one that I do miss.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Goodbye VICE, WONKA Disaster Documentary, and Disc Golf

    (Locks clipped nightly)

    I never trusted VICE. I remember watching an interview of Shane Smith, the co-founder, on Charlie Rose of all places. The two things I took away from his word salad answers was that HE was the only person who could save media, and HE was the coolest person on the earth. (You know, “He’s hip! He’s cool! He’s 45!”) Turns out VICE was never profitable, though it was valued in the billions, and all Smith was good at was convincing VC’s to give him millions over and over again. As for the media, they did what everyone else does; the C-Suite got paid millions while the staff was paid virtually nothing, and they put out tons of content- quality be damned – to drive up traffic. I do feel for all the people who lost their jobs, just like everyone over at BUZZFEED, and all the other writers at all the media companies. In the end, Shane Smith got what he really wanted; he’s rich.

    I’m not here to dog pile on that Scottish “WONKA Experience.” There are tons of great takes out there, so I won’t embarrass myself in trying. But I have started to wonder; How long until someone produces a WONKA Disaster documentary? I think it took two years for the Fyre Fest to get the treatment, so my guess is that in nine months we’re gun’na hear from the Oompa-Loompa bartender lady about what really happened. (UPDATE: The Fyre-ing of this has started)

    For me, it’s almost disc golf season. I have no idea if there is an official disc golf season, my guess is there is, but I view March as the start. I’m looking to make par this year, as I have never done that, it seems like a reasonable goal.

  • A Visual Language

    Last night, my daughter told me how she has started learning about mime in her school theatre class. Just so happens that I have had some mime training, and done a respectable bit of mime work on stage in Texas and NYC. We had a fun bit playing “being trapped in a box” and “throwing a ball” to each other. Then she asked me is it was possible to do a whole show just in mime? I told her it was, which she found hard to believe.

    So, I started looking for an example to give her, and the first idea I had was to show her a silent movie; Harold Lloyd’s “Safety Last” or Buster Keaton’s “The General” or “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” Not exactly mime, but physical enough to move a story along.

    Instead, what I showed her was Jacques Tati’s “Mr. Hulot’s Holiday” which is just a sweet, sincere gem of a movie. Though made in 1953, this French film plays like a silent movie, with Tati playing the character of Mr. Hulot. Tati was a trained mime who transitioned to the French film business, and this movie was the best example to show my daughter how mime can be used to tell a story. Though it is French, there is very little dialogue in it, and what there is are just easy to read subtitles. For the best explanation of this movie, I suggest reading Roger Ebert’s review in his Great Movie series.

    And the kid got it. I mean, it did take her a minute to understand that no one was going to talk, and that though it was a comedy, this wasn’t a belly laugh, slapstick comedy. But she saw how jokes were set up, how you could read what someone was thinking about their facial expression, or how they put their hands on their hips and what that might mean when the front door is left open. And how you knew Hulot was a good guy because he was patient with a dog sleep in the road, and a gentleman towards the young woman staying in the hotel. She learned quickly, or maybe she already knew it, to pick up no what each person was doing, and how those actions help explained they type of character they were.

  • Award Shows Aren’t Relevant

    I watched the Oscars last night, and I had a good time. I tried to Live Tweet about it, but half way through the show, I had to get the kid ready for bed, and I never got back to making snarky comments. (But I did get in on Huge Grant being a total dick while being interviewed at the pre-show.) Yet, having watched the whole show, I have to admit that the Oscars is a dull watch.

    I only tune in for nostalgia reasons. There was a time in my life, 90’s and midway through the 2000’s, where I went to the movies nearly every week. I used to work at a video store which allowed me to catch up on older films, and make friends with other cinephiles that lead inevitably to conversations/debates about movies. By the end of the year, I would have seen every movie nominated for Best Picture. It was a period of time that I was consuming great movies with some of my best friends. So, when Oscar time rolled around my friends and I were well informed with our picks, which we happily argued over endlessly.

    When I watch the Oscar’s, I want that feeling to return. It never does, but I hope. It would help if I got back into the habit of watching movies religiously. Maybe when the kid heads off to college, I’ll get some free time again.

    Even as I was watching last night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this whole production wasn’t relevant anymore. The point of an award show is to get people interested in the consuming what is being awarded, and to see a bunch of celebrities in one room. But doesn’t social media, the demonic god that it is, do that now? I think the dropping tv ratings confirm that most people aren’t interested anymore. If it weren’t for my Quixotic quest for nostalgia, I don’t think I’d watch either. Just check out the highlights on Twitter.

    Now if the Oscars wanted to clean up the show, just cut to the parts that people are there to see; wildly successful celebrities failing to get something they want, and humble-brag acceptance speeches. Sure, leave the song performances, but cut the rest. I could get it down to two hours.