A relatively straightforward film, but when Lawrence Kasdan writes, you pay attention. Only semi-serious role in Belushi’s too-short career.
What’s more:
What an incredible talent writer Lawrence Kasdan is. This may be the least ambitious premise for a movie: journalist sent for fish-out-of-water assignment falls in love with naturalist. That’s it. If it sounds familiar it’s because the same basic story has been filmed a dozen times. There should even be a genre: fish out of water. But Kasdan’s dialogue makes it something more. Not a lot more, to be honest, because it really isn’t very substantial, but there are flashes of the genius who before this wrote The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Body Heat.
It helps that the movie was made at the dawn of the 1980’s; that great time when they stopped using the boring drawn-out long shots and grittiness of the 1970’s, but before they abandoned that era’s quiet moments and love of dialogue.
They were going for a Tracy/Hepburn thing with Blair Brown and John Belushi, which was never going to work with Belushi’s extracurricular activities. That’s a shame because Brown is very engaging in this. Not sure why she didn’t become a more significant star.
Finally, Belushi. What can you say? With 1981’s other film Neighbors, this is his last film. While far from one of his signature roles, in Continental Divide he shows some of the emotional vulnerability and depth that was hinted at in his other work but never allowed to surface. Would he have been a dramatic talent and developed another dimension like his colleague Bill Murray? Hard to say. He certainly had the ability, and reportedly seemed interested in the prospect of becoming a more traditional leading man. What an incredible waste.
Not as good as you’d hoped, not as bad as you’ve been told. Not Ratner-bashing, but really would’ve been interesting to see Singer’s take…
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Whatever your opinion of Superman Returns, it is unquestionable that it really hobbled X-Men: The Last Stand. Coming off of the critically and commercially successful X2, the third X-Men movie was poised to be a solid follow-up, with the same cast & crew. Then Bryan Singer got a better offer – reboot Superman. Sinking feeling begins…
Look, blaming Singer is plain unfair; you should never begrudge someone the chance to accept a promotion, and I don’t care what you say, X-Men is not on the same level as Superman. Yeah, I said it…He wanted to move on to what appeared to be a great opportunity. Sadly, it didn’t really work out for either franchise.
Still, this should have been a slam dunk. While Singer hadn’t planned out the storyline for the third film, the ending of X2 all but ensured we were headed into Dark Phoenix territory, so the story should have written itself. So they have the raw materials: a Claremont Classic (mixed in with a Whedon story arc), the same cast, and pots of money.
Search for a new director; directors who turned down the job included Darren Aronofsky, Joss Whedon, Alex Proyas & Zack Snyder. They hired director Matthew Vaughn, but he left the film. Sinking feeling intensifies. They replaced him with Brett Ratner. And we’re sunk. I know that is unfair to Ratner. I don’t really know why he is so reviled. He seems like a perfectly average director – nothing to write home about, sure, but not incompetent. I suppose it has more to do with the feeling that an A-list director was replaced with a utility infielder.
A further problem is that Fox was developing the Wolverine “solo” film at the same time as this movie. You can’t serve two masters successfully, and this was no exception. They didn’t want to use certain characters in this movie and not have them for Wolverine’s movie. Danger…
So, after that long introduction, how is X-Men 3? Not bad, really. At times it’s excellent.
Here’s everything good about it:
Angel – great effects lead to some great visuals
Casting Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy/Beast. Hold your hand up if you thought this was a good idea. That makes one. This seemed a horrible idea that I am only too happy to eat crow on and applaud. Frasier has got game…
The storyline(s): both the Dark Phoenix and the Cure arcs are great stuff and welcome.
Appearance of film version of Dr. Moira MacTaggert, making my daughter Moira smile…
Here’s everything that isn’t:
Digital de-aging, also known as “digital skin-grafting”; this technique needs to go sit in the corner until it’s ready to play with the other modern visual effects. It’s time-consuming, expensive, looks like crap, and has convinced older actors that they can continue to monopolize roles that should go to newer actors. The “success” of this technique led Brian Cox to insist that he could play Stryker in the Wolverine spin-off. C’mon, son…
Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel is an artist – he left after X2 (Singer brought him over to Superman Returns; seeing a trend here?) He is replaced by Dante Spinotti, who is certainly talented, but I think he was given confusing direction here. It doesn’t help that he himself is a replacement for Philippe Rousselot, who left during shooting. Spinotti then had to leave the project before the end of photography, so J. Michael Muro completed it. See what I mean about the confusing look of the film?
Where the hell did Rogue go? Was Anna Paquin double-parked or something? She was in this movie for seemingly seconds. Considering how much these movies obsess over “Best Actress” Berry, you’d think they’d recall that Paquin actually earned her Oscar and utilize her as much as humanly possible.
As a love interest she is replaced with Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat. That’s the third Kitty actress in three movies. Page is really not bad, I’m just including her here because the character is simply not as interesting as Rogue.
Singer took James Marsden with him, so Cyclops is relegated to a small role, barely more than a cameo. Guess they shouldn’t have cut all his scenes in X2, huh?
Rebecca Romijn had to accept a reduced role because of scheduling conflicts caused by the film being rushed into production. This happens WAY too much. Studios are so focused on certain release dates that they push the creative process past breaking. The breakneck pace likely had impact on the movie’s one-dimensional tone than any mismanagement by Ratner. I suspect he did the best he could; Vaughn admitted that one of the reasons he left the project is that there would not be time to complete the film properly. Really drives home the insight of Ben Burtt; “Films aren’t released, they escape.”
Berry managed to bully her way into nearly every scene, but thankfully was still not allowed to drive on camera – they wanted to keep casualties to a minimum…
Um, every single new mutant. Juggernaut is a dumb character, so I guess we can’t fault the fun Vinnie Jones for that. But what pop band did they raid for the rest of these people? When I see characters/actors this bad in a movie I usually assume they are rappers, even if they aren’t. Callisto, Psylocke, Arclight & Kid Omega (I had to look these up; they deservedly don’t even get named in the film) look like a multi-gendered, multi-cultural boy band; you know, during the “edgy” part of their career.
With so many decades of comic characters to choose from there are there no better choices? Maybe my opinion that Marvel has crap villains is actually true. Scary…
Also, it’s just sad that they always have to struggle with the problem of how to let Wolverine slash his way through lots of people without actually killing anyone important. In the previous movies they could always pull in nameless, faceless soldiers. But here in the forest, there’s nothing but mutants. Yet they seemingly have no powers unless looking non-descript and getting gutted without putting up a fight is some new mutation. They only gave him one guy with powers to actually fight (Spike). Why couldn’t he have killed some of the hair gel squad?
When a cure is found to treat mutations, lines are drawn amongst the X-Men, led by Professor Charles Xavier, and the Brotherhood, a band of powerful mutants organized under Xavier’s former ally, Magneto.
EXACTLY as good as you remember it being. Probably more affecting if like me, you were close to the characters’ age when you first saw it…
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A mostly faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s novella “The Body”, Stand By Me was a sleeper hit when it came out in 1986. They were fortunate to even get the movie made, as it had financing trouble. No one expected it to be a success. What were people not seeing in this picture? A coming of age movie based on a story by the most popular author alive? How could this NOT have been a hit?
Well, hindsight and all that. The fact is that Rob Reiner hadn’t yet become a bankable director and while all of these child actors were full of promise, many careers don’t pan out. In truth, the casting of Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell was inspired and is almost entirely the reason the film became an instant classic.
The movie is set in 1959, but it would be engaging set at just about any time. The nostalgia is great and the setting certainly makes the story work very well, but the core issues of friendship, growing up, finding your place, grief, loss – these are what make this film so engaging and keep it fresh to people of any age or background.
Enough cannot be said about the dialogue. King is a great writer in large part because he creates believable dialogue for real people, and screenwriters Raynold Gideon & Bruce A. Evans wisely import entire exchanges from the book even as they add their own touches in the same spirit. The banter between the boys on this trip will be instantly familiar to most people, enough so that it seems as if the writers were listening in on your conversations as you wandered around town with your friends.
Occasionally the exchanges can seem a bit adult, the insights from characters Chris Chambers and Gordie Lachance rather sophisticated. But the acting by River Phoenix & Wil Wheaton, respectively, sells it. Some kids are wise beyond their years, and some actors possess talents surpassing their experience. Feldman and O’Connell (in his first role) are really very good, as well, but it is no slander to say that they are bit players next to Phoenix & Wheaton.
Interesting choice to move the story (and filming) from Castle Rock, Maine to Oregon. The scenery is great and the photography is very good, if a bit too soft for me. It’s so intentionally made to seem nostalgic and timeless that it’s a little over-the-top, but certainly achieves the look they were going for.
Reiner really did a marvelous job; this is a tremendous film.
The only thing surprising about this movie is it hasn’t been made before now. It’s such an amazing & inspirational story that tells itself.
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The thing about inspirational sports movies is that if they are made well it doesn’t matter that you know the outcome, doesn’t matter that they are full of clichés. Miracle is such a case.
It hits all the marks, does everything you expect, yet is still good stuff because, hey, the story is fantastic.
Quick thoughts:
Kurt Russell has a really good Minnesotan accent. Or at least what I think of as Minnesotan…
Good young actors and the hockey action is perfection. So well executed.
Interesting choice to retain the original commentary by Al Michaels & Ken Dryden. It works quite well, as the Michaels is a good play by play man and does well in the historic moment.
The ending voiceover by Russell is totally unneccesary and pushes the schmaltz meter into the red, where it surprisingly really hasn’t been for most of the movie. The story is enough, you don’t need to tell us why it was important – we know.
The end credits have a nice dedication to Herb Brooks, who died before the film was completed, and in a nice touch list what the players are doing now.
Miracle tells the true story of Herb Brooks (Russell), the player-turned-coach who led the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team to victory over the seemingly invincible Russian squad.
Poster
Runtime
135
Tagline
What America needed was a miracle. What it got was a hockey game.
Less a movie than a film school exercise as Steve Martin remixes old noir films with even older one-liners. Still works more often than not.
What’s more:
On paper this really shouldn’t work; inserting yourself into a bunch of old movies and making smart ass remarks. It would be sort of like having a bunch of guys sitting in the audience and heckling a movie and just showing the backs of their heads…wait a second…
But it does work, because the year is 1982 and Steve Martin is about the funniest person on the planet. Some of the jokes work very well, my favorite being a running gag scolding Bogart for not wearing a tie. Many others are just rote smarmy responses that simply advance the story. Actually, it’s probably true to say that while this exercise in remixing old films works, it isn’t funny so much as irreverent.
The concept of mashing up old films into a new film is intriguing, though. I’m sure someone will make (and probably already has) a truly unique project this way, though it will probably never see the light of day for rights reasons…
