Reviews

I just had the opportunity to revisit Goodfellas after a couple years. I was captivated from beginning to end, but I need to take a somewhat controversial stand on the movie. I thinks it's good, far better than most of what Hollywood churns out, but a classic for the ages? I don't think you should go that far.

Here's my main problem: This movie does not contain a single likable character. All the performances are top notch, but that's not my point. I couldn't identify with Ray Liotta. I can understand how his character was seduced my the mob lifestyle, but as an adult he's no better than anyone else around him. In the Godfather, within the encapsulated mob-world with its own set of peculiar rules, the Corleones were actually good people. They respected their wives, they only killed when necessary for business, and their loyalty never wavered. It was easy for me, the audience member, to become entranced and actually cheer them on. In Goodfellas, on the other hand, all the men are essentially a--holes. De Niro is crazy and paranoid, Pesci is insecure and sadistic, and Ray Liotta may have charm, but he has no ethical compulsions (even by mob standards) and will try to get away with whatever he can.

I bring all this up because I need to have a character I can care about. The tragic fall of Henry is only tragic if I cared about him to begin with.

Secondly, I would have liked a more tangable plot. I don't mean a cookie cutter Hollywood plot, but at least give me something in the first act that gets resolved in the third. The movie plays like a series of unconnected vignettes about mob life. Yes, it's a fascinating glimpse inside the mob, but by 1990 or 91, (whenever this came out) we've already had plenty of fascinating glimpses inside the mob. When Ray Liotta gives us some talk-over narrative like "Back then we did what we wanted and we didn't care." I'm thinking, "Yes Ray, we know. This isn't our first gangster movie."

If this is your favorite movie, fine, I have no problem with that. Better Goodfellas than this guy back at school who once told me that Mel Gibson's "Man Without a Face" was his favorite movie. But give Godfather 1 or 2 another watch, and tell me if you see what I'm saying about the likability issue.

Best Picture?? Best.... Picture?? One more time: BEST PICTURE???

If this thing wins best picture, I'm going to strip to the tunic and loincloth and protest outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and trust me, nobody wants that.

I mean, have the nominators actually seen the movie? Since when does cheesey, intelligence insulting popcorn fodder like this disappointing movie win anything better than an award given out at the separate ceremony for technical achievement? The acadmeny has let me down before, no doubt about it. But at least the academy has always rewarded "good" movies, even when you felt a better movie was robbed. Forrest Gump shouldn't have beaten Pulp Fiction, but at least Forrest Gump was good. Same with Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan, or Ordinary People beating Raging Bull. But if Gladiator wins, I think it will be the first time ever that a "bad" movie wins the top honor. I can't even recall a "bad" movie even getting nominated before.

Let's not kid ourselves. Gladiator is a bad movie. I know the special effects were great, and you paid 8 bucks to see it... I know Gladiator does the whole action/violence/sword-swinging-epic thing better than a lot of its competition. And I know you've been saying it was a good movie all this time, so to make the admission that it was bad now would be to quietly admit that you've been watching a lot of bad movies and wasting a lot of money and time. But for God's sake DO IT. Admit it. You'll feel better.

Normally I'd let this go. People watch it, they like it, what's the harm? A little mindless afternoon entertainment for a small fee. But when the industry leaders prepare to give this thing the top honors for the year, then we've got to take a stand. You need to find your nearest Academy voter, look him right in the inebriated bloodshot eye, and tell him that if he votes for this stupid movie, he deserves to be tied up and beaten with bamboo.

I won't bother defending why I think it's stupid. All the reasons should be utterly apparent to anyone who's seen it.

Students of the long-lived Police Academy series will probably note that this film marks the point where the series took a turn for the worse. The story wasn't quite ready for the prostate exam scene of part 2, it hadn't quite achieved the comic desperation of the Proctor-in-the-portapotty scene of part 4, and it wasn't at all ready for the soul crushing, life-rejecting abandonment of decency that was the slapstick romp through Moscow's Red Square in part 7, but a observant viewer of the first film might notice that underneath the tasteless racism, offensive caricatures, and tired repetitive humor, the groundwork was being laid for these later atrocities.

At the epicenter of all this is Mr. Steve Guttenberg, who may have been destined for a James Belushiesque kind of stardom if his career hadn't been scuttled in these early movies. He provides a cunning foil to G.W. Bailey, star of Mannequin and countless numbers of my own nightmares, who plays Captain Harris, the no-nonsense but kind of stupid drill instructor. Along for the ride is funny noisemaker Michael Winslow, the poignant and misunderstood Bubba Smith, who provides some necessary pathos with his "Mahoney, can you teach me how to drive?" speech, George Gaynes as Lassard, Dave Graf as Tackleberry, Leslie Easterbrook as the well endowed Callahan, and a bunch of other guys who were smart enough not to sign on for the sequel.

In a movie that really cries out for the additional talent of Bobcat Goldthwait, this team still somehow manages to pull it together. And thanks to the R rating, they were able to pull off a brand of tasteless foul humor that would be inaccessible in later Academy adventures. Like Harris's head in the horse's patoot, or the anguished screams of the bad-guy recruits when they stumble into the gay bar.

To be fair, this movie really isn't any worse than any number of mindless T&A slapstick films that came around in the 80's. It compares favorably with similar movies like "Hamburger" and "Ski School" and "My Tutor", but the problem is that while "Young Doctors in Love" didn't spawn 6 sequels and both a live action and cartoon TV series, Police Academy did. The result is that we can dismiss movies like "Teachers" as amusing, forgettable failures and move on with our lives, but we must view Police Academy as something far more sinister: a conspiracy to dull the American mind, a reflection of our troubled times, perhaps even the "Final Omen" predicted by Nostradamus or the Seventh Sign spoken of in Revelations.

If you ignore my advice and see this anyway, keep your eye out for the scene where Harris screams the n-word at Private Hooks and Bubba Smith flips the car over with his bare hands. It just goes to show that years before Spike Lee would try to capture the complexity of the black experience in America through his own films, Police Academy had already thoroughly explored that territory, leaving a profound mark on the national dialogue.

You know, I'm willing to suspend a lot of disbelief for a fantasy movie. I'm willing to believe, for example, that the Batmobile can drive up a building. I'm willing to believe that the Riddler can control our minds through our TVs. I can even believe that Robin would have an anatomically correct bat-suit, complete with protruding rubber nipples.

But what I can't believe is that two face, played with bonhomie and brio by Tommy Lee Jones, could possibly have an army of loyal henchman who agree to dress up like him and do his bidding. I mean, who's joining Two-Face's posse? What do those meetings look like? The man has no charm or charisma, he doesn't have some agenda that local punks could get behind and support. So why does he have this loyal posse of devoted followers who have surprisingly well made, accessorized, two-face-themed outfits and masks?

As far as I can tell, Two Face's only special power, (like Darkman I suppose) is that he is crazy and has a burned face. That's it. Did I miss anything else? In my experience, someone who is crazy and has a burned face will just end up abandoned and on the street, not the leader of a well armed, well trained militia.

I say it's time that we took a stand against bad action movies where the bad guys have endless hordes of mercenaries willing to die for their leader, with no explanation. Give us a reason, a motive. Two-face doesn't seem like he could ever attract any loyal henchmen. Maybe he rates a hunchback sidekick.

As long as I'm reviewing this movie I should mention that it's excrutiatingly bad in every way, and that Val Kilmer's performance is so awkward and wooden he makes Michael Keaton look like he was born to play the part.

If he's lost in New York, then how exactly is he home alone? Well never mind that. I'm bothered that the filmmakers were so in love with their first Alone movie, that they decided to carbon copy it for the sequel. It's the same film in every respect, only now it features New York. What concerns me is the danger of having Home Alone become a formula, where people start pitching ideas to studios like "Home Alone... on a bus"

Actually, forget all that. All that concern fades away instantly when one considers the real problem here, which is that it seems that Hell is actually exporting feature length films for American release. How this deal was negotiated I can never know, but the unavoidable fact is that we now have a horrifying window into the land of the forsaken.

I always wondered what endless torture would look like. How, for example, could one be violently beaten and killed and then instantly resurrected for another session? Look no further than the scene where Joe Pesci and the other guy fall through three stories of a building and then get up for more. They proceed to get beaten, clubbed, smacked, skinned, burned, and walloped in a manner that would make Moe, Larry and Curly beg for humanity's forgiveness.

Or take for instance the scene outside the building, where Culkin, looking just as sweet and angelic as he did in the last scene of Jacobs Ladder, proceeds to lob brick after brick off the roof, where they plummet five stories and hit the burglar in the face, again and again, and again. Now I've become fairly desensitized to violence over years of TV and movie watching, but having to watch this lesson in cruelty, being so diabolically presented as banana-peel slapstick and a bad guy getting what's coming to him, just made my skin crawl.

Is there any worse fate than a cherub faced boy throwing brick after brick down at you, and no matter what you do, each one will hit you full force in the face? If you've ever wanted to see what this might actually look like, it's all in Home Alone 2.

The final scare here is that the other people here who have reviewed the movie have generally liked it but warned everyone to stay away from Home Alone 3, which apparently is very bad.

Everything that needs to be said about this movie has basically been said. I would just like to throw some light on perhaps the final overlooked flaw.

What's the deal with that fat bearded jackass who pilots the submersible in the "present day" scenes in the movie? You know what I'm talking about? You've got this incredibly complex expensive salvage operation in the middle of the Atlantic, you've got what's probably a multi-million dollar deep sea submersible craft that can send a robot camera into the Titanic wreckage, and who do we have piloting this delicate operation? Who's making the clutch decisions here? A scrappy, loud fat bearded jackass who the filmmakers have presented as some kind of, I don't know, Titanic junkie? Extreme deep-sea salvage enthusiast? He looks and acts like he's about to pull a large, drippy chili dog from an on-ship microwave and stuff it in his face while screaming "Wooooo! It's the freaking Titanic man, Woooo!"

I think they may have imported this character from Twister, where you may also recall that one of the scientists on the research team was also a fat bearded jackass who was presented as some kind of die hard extreme tornado enthusiast. Aren't these characters really annoying? What purpose do they serve? I guess the point is that if you are REALLY into your hobby, in an extreme, WOOOOOO! kind of way, you will probably forget to shave and eat sensibly.

It's been a while since I've seen this one, (It was called "Spaceship" when I rented it) I had discovered Leslie Nielson in Airplane and the Naked Gun and I was looking for other hidden treasures in his moviemaking past.

This movie was very very bad. But a new kind of bad. I previously had two categories I used for bad comedies. The first was simply unfunny, i.e. the comedy didn't work on its own terms. The second was "so bad it's funny", where the comedy was so stupid it actually makes you laugh. But Spaceship forced me to invent a third category. I call it: "So bad it's no longer funny" I tried to like Spaceship for its awfulness, but just couldn't do it. It presented me with a new kind of pain I had never encountered before.

Watch this movie only if you are prepared for pain. If you are sufficiently zoned out on painkillers or Robitussin, you may actually feel a slight buzz.

Highlights from the film include Leslie's bizarre death and the delightful song and dance number with the alien.

A lot of people have already commented intelligently here on the general suckitude of this movie. I would just add a few thoughts.

It's true that the recent Bond films are choking on the formula. But it's not the idea of a formulaic Bond film that's at fault here. Indeed, the Bond formula is the most established, specific, franchised formula in film history, complete with obligatory plot twists, locale changes and even obligatory dialogue in mandatory scenes. But that's not the problem. The problem is that the inbred idiots in the Broccoli family who own the Bond franchise and who have final script and creative authority, choose (I think deliberately) to give us Bond films of the lowest common denominator, trying to maximize bottom line profit by making the films as dumb and over the top as possible. They choose to remain faithful only to those aspects of the formula that would seem to guarantee commercial success. Those formula points are:

1) Action set pieces that are determined to one-up all previous Bond action set pieces in terms of craziness, speed, and death-defying stunts, but to the point where they lose all credibility.

For example, Pierce's speedboat chase in TWINE, or his motorcycle leap off the cliff into the plane cockpit in Goldeneye are so ridiculous that you have to laugh at them. I just shook my head in disbelief when I saw that speedboat chase, which was way over-the-top to begin with, morph into a hot air balloon stunt, I could almost hear the Broccoli family having a round table discussion, saying "Hey, then we could move the action into a balloon! Huh? Isn't that nuts! Who wouldn't love to see Bond in a hot-air balloon!" By contrast, just about any car or boat chase from the Connery era is much simpler, more plausible, and ultimately more fun to watch on repeat viewings because it won't dissolve into farce.

2. A beautiful woman with a funny name.

Hey, I love Bond girls as much as anyone else. And the funny names are great. But didn't they use to act better? And have more to do? And be sophisticated? Denise Richards seems to be best suited for a poster. She's a respected nuclear physicist like I'm an Olympic figure skater.

3. Updating the Bond "look" to reflect whatever is currently on top of the charts.

The mangled version of the Bond theme was disgusting. Giving him a German car because BMWs are cool is stupid. He's a Brit for Gods sake. Bond is cool because he's COOL. He has actual Mojo. It's not the brand of Vodka he swills, or who designed his suit. Leave well enough alone.

Basically, this franchise is headed down the toilet. It's circling the bowl as we speak. They'll always make money, but the experience is changing. These days, going to a Bond film is like going to a Circus. You're going so you can Ooh and Aah at something, not to watch a coherent movie with things like characters and plot.

Remember when these films were spy movies first, action movies later? Remember the whole train sequence in From Russia With Love, where Bond plays a game of wits with the evil spy? Remember the great chemistry with Connery and Honor Blackman in Goldfinger? Remember how Connery or Moore could make a line classic just with great delivery, instead of having "great" one-liners scripted in advance?

In short, remember when these movies were good?

I have this love/hate relationship with Jackie Chan.

On the one hand, he is by far the most talented, fun to watch martial artist working in film today. From old classics like Drunken Master and Fearless Hyena up through modern shlock like this turkey, I'm mesmerized by his grace and artistry. But we all know how totally amazing his skills are, there's no need to dwell on it.

On the other hand, just about any Chan movie released in America (including the overrated Rush Hour) will have the plot coherence, character development and script quality of a Thundercats episode. These movies, like Rumble in the Bronx, have plots that defy all believability, and are not even internally consistent or logical.

Chan loyalists will say that Jackie's stunts alone are worth the price of admission, but is that what we've come to? Sure, I enjoyed the scene where he beats up the whole Rumble gang in their own hideout, but by the time he's shaming the gang about their behavior with "Maybe someday we will drink tea together." and the gang leader looks genuinely touched and whispers to his friend "Did he mean that?", or when he's chasing the drug dealers down a city street in a hovercraft, I'm wondering if maybe I should have rented that Steven Seagal movie where he fights the evil oil company in Alaska.

Is it so wrong for me to ask that someone put Jackie in a GOOD movie? Surely someone can write a screenplay that is exciting, free from cliche, free from dumb dialogue, with believable characters, and still have a few scenes where Jackie is attacked by 30 angry guys and has to defend himself with a mop and a bucket.

How about Jackie playing the bad guy? Or maybe put him in a Bond film or something.

This was an all right movie, but can I make just one little observation? If the movie is trying to make a social statement about big book chains with no personality (like Hank's Fox Books) greedily driving the little stores with charm (like Ryan's Shop around the Corner) out of business, how is it that the filmmakers chose to put every other scene in a Starbucks? Starbucks has undoubtedly forced more little shops out of business that any big book chain has.

This doesn't mean that it's not an enjoyabe movie. But it takes something away from Meg's righteous indignation when she woefully closes the bookstore and then goes to suck down a Mochacino.

I think I'm cursed. On every bus trip where they show a movie, it's always a child-bonds-with-dog movie like Balto or Iron Will. And on every plane trip it's always something from the god-awful canon of saccharine, maudlin, oh-please-when-will-it-end Robin Williams ham-fests. Just when I thought I had seen every last one of these stinkers, along comes Jack.

Stay away from Jack! Stay away! Why is this man so determined to make us laugh and make us cry? He hasn't successfully done the former since Good Morning Vietnam, or the latter since Dead Poets Society. It's schmaltzy, it's stupid, it's worthless. And Frances Ford Coppola! For shame! Godfather parts 1 and 2 are my favorite movies ever, and twenty years later you're making Jack? You should be officially reprimanded and demoted in front of a jury of your peers, like Captain Kirk after he saved the whales.

My recommendation: only see this film if you are a) a masochist, or b) curious to see the result of the collaboration of the two people in showbusiness with the most body hair.