For all of us who rocked the mullets & banged our heads, “Stand Up And Shout”. Vanilla but tons of fun from the director of Bill & Ted…\m/
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Broadly based on the experience of Tim “Ripper” Owens, lead singer of a Judas Priest tribute band who was hired by Priest as their new singer to replace Rob Halford. It’s a fantastic story that really tells itself. There are also plenty of Spinal Tap moments, thankfully.
The execution is nothing spectacular, but it’s pretty solid. Stephen Herek directed Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, so he pretty much gets a free pass for the rest of his life from me.
The music is solid; if you like hair metal, of course. But who doesn’t, right? Steel Dragon is made up of real-life rockers Jeff Pilson, Zakk Wylde, and Jason Bonham. Watch for a quick part from Myles Kennedy. Marky Mark’s singing voice is overdubbed by Steelheart frontman Miljenko Matijevic.
Underrated comedy with heart. Frears is very heavy-handed in presenting Peoples’ excellent screenplay, but it mostly works. Ripe for remake.
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Having a very clear inspiration as your guiding star is a dangerous road for a filmmaker. While nothing is truly original, you have to walk a fine line when your vision is too specific. This is the problem faced by director Stephen Frears with Hero. An obvious attempt to make a Frank Capra fairy tale like Meet John Doe, this movie succeeds at it quite well. Possibly too well, as it wears this inspiration on its sleeve and occasionally in your face.
Dustin Hoffman relishes the opportunity to play a really bad guy, although this characterization is itself one-sided. A flawed man, he hustles and small-times his way through life, but of course the film shows his bruised but not broken humanity and decency when most needed.
Andy Garcia and particularly Geena Davis round out the main players very well. Amazing how Garcia once seemed a lock for greatness; still don’t know what went sideways. Davis lacks subtlety here, but really provides a ton of energy and clearly gets the tone right.
The tone, however, is erratic. There are great quiet moments, but too few of them. Everyone seems to do a lot of shouting and yelling. The whole 1940’s nostalgia thing plays with mixed results; the snappy newsroom dialogue won’t replace His Girl Friday, but it plays. The patriotic music and fascinated crowd shots don’t. It’s all just a bit much.
I’d love to see this re-edited. Although I don’t think that’s possible – the physical source material may not be salvageable. I don’t know if it’s the vision of Frears or his frequent DP Oliver Stapleton, but the movie just kind of looks crappy. It may of course be the home video transfers, but I sort of doubt it; there’s a very dark, bluish tone to the whole thing that makes it very cold. I think you’d need to reshoot.
And remaking it would be an effort that I’d highly support, because I absolutely love this movie. I really do. The message is a nice mix of optimism and cynicism, I like the dialogue, the actors, the story. It’s a flawed gem, but one I unhesitatingly recommend.
I don’t get the whole zombie thing, but this movie is so damn funny that it overcame all that. Single-handedly justifies Harrelson’s career.
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The obsession with zombies completely eludes me. I can’t think of a monster movie concept that I have less interest in. I grew up on local channel 38’s Creature Double Feature on weekends. I like my monster movies plenty, although I’m admittedly old school; I prefer that Lugosi or Lon Chaney be in most of them. But I can go in for vampires if done well, and I love the Alien series. Dinosaurs? Love dinosaurs. Frankenstein monsters of any type. I’ll even stop for a giant octopus or two-headed shark if I’m just after fun.
But my science teacher father, who loves all of these, raised me right and taught me to look for the underlying logic behind the admittedly ridiculous and fantastic. These things didn’t have to be brilliant, but there had to be some sense behind the fantastic. And zombies are bad science. There is so circumstance in which the logical outcome of an infection would lead to eating brains. I can’t get past it.
But the opening sequence of Zombieland is a grabber. Instantly sets the pitch-perfect dark comedic tone for the movie. I caught the first minute while flipping one night and never looked back. This is a star-making role for Eisenberg, and his quirky character and his rules give the movie a great, funny start. Once you get to Harrelson’s Tallahassee you’ve got enough fun to run all night, but don’t forget how important those opening minutes are.
Because the movie is so funny it gets a lot more leeway in the blood and gore department than I usually have stomach for. Don’t be misled: this is a gory, brutal, violent movie. It just doesn’t feel like one. Just stick it out, faint-hearted, time to “nut up or shut up”.
A shy student trying to reach his family in Ohio, and a gun-toting tough guy trying to find the Last Twinkie and a pair of sisters trying to get to an amusement park join forces to travel across a zombie-filled America.
Slow, deliberate pace works; until it doesn’t. Redefines overlong. Pitt great when they let some menace show. Could’ve been something more.
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Before you start getting fresh, remember – this is Martin Brest; he directed Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run & Scent of a Woman. Then he did this; then he did Gigli. Hmm. I forget my point…
Oh, right. The thing is that there’s a really good movie in here. Two movies, actually (and that’s not a crack about the insufferable run-time). Originally an Italian play, it was first made as the film “Death Takes A Holiday” in 1934. I tried it once and it didn’t grab me – I’ll give it another shot at some point.
You see, I simply love the concept; Death takes an interest in people. You can’t get more high-concept than that. You can run with it for days. There is almost limited potential for humor and perspective. My favorite author is Terry Pratchett, and Death is one of the most fascinating recurring characters in his Discworld series.
In this telling, Death shows up for an extended stay in the world in the body of Brad Pitt. And Pitt does a good job of it; he’s got a nice quirky humor that he isn’t frequently called on to display. And he has a few moments where he displays some of the genuine threat underlying that mortal coil. But there’s not enough of it. This Death is weary and looking for meaning and connection. But he’s toothless, and that just feels off. Yes, go for the laughs, go for the romance, but burying an ultimate power in a borrowed body, no matter how hunky, is not going to hide that supreme force and I think there was a missed opportunity to show Death as more prideful and menacing.
The real killer, though, is the length of this movie. Three hour movies should be the exclusive province of war pictures and the occasional biopic, and even then you better earn it. What’s amazing is when you think back on where exactly those 3 hours went, it’s hard to recall. I can name maybe a dozen distinct scenes in maybe 10 locations. Mostly there are just very slow, very long dialogue-heavy scenes of two varieties – plain speak and “no one talks like this”.
Now I understand where they went wrong with this movie. In the most innocent way possible; they just started with a simple plan (“let’s really let this story breathe, let the scenes find their pace”) and never looked back. And I can see the appeal; the scenes do breathe; there is a nice feel to things as they are introducing the principals. It’s not a race, it’s like a nice walk – let’s enjoy this. You’re feeling good. And then you look up and realize that it’s getting dark and you’re not only nowhere near home – you’ve barely started.
And it really is too bad. Because there are some great moments and acting, the music is beautiful, it looks good. It’s just too damn long. And slow, did I say slow? It’s slow.
A media mogul acts as a guide to Death, who takes the form of a young man to learn about life on Earth and in the process, fall in love with his guide’s daughter.
Very good-looking animated film. Somewhat overstocked in the celebrity voice department, but not to ruin. Good if not overly original story.
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There’s a sort of embarrassment of riches in the animated movie world, and that makes it hard to stand out. Even when the movies are well-made, even if they’re based on great source material, there tends to be a remarkable sameness to many of them.
Take Desperaux; comes with a built-in audience of readers of author Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery Medal winning book, not to mention people who like cute mice. Toss in a dozen or more celebrity voices and what do you get? Sorta the same movie you’ve seen a few times by now.
Is this a bad thing? Maybe not. There will always be more children so there should always be more children’s movies. They can’t all be groundbreaking.
The worst thing is that I enjoyed watching this. I felt good after watching it. But the more I reflected on it, the less that stayed with me. Even while watching it the feelings of familiarity were creeping in, but the movie is well-made and I let it pass.
Maybe I’m being harder on it in the light of day than I was immediately after watching it. I’ve just sort of had it with the same old animation and the same celebrity voice-overs. Even as this film shows some unique and lovely design features, they manage to make the characters look like those in virtually every other film. Look at the cook; he could have walked out of 10 other movies this year.
The tale of three unlikely heroes – a misfit mouse who prefers reading books to eating them, an unhappy rat who schemes to leave the darkness of the dungeon, and a bumbling servant girl with cauliflower ears – whose fates are intertwined with that of the castle’s princess.
