Picture a “Bigfoot” warning people of impending disasters. That’s the “Mothman”. Now you may try to write this all off, but it’s based on true events you know. Back in 1966, a number of people in a town called Point Pleasant, West Virginia reported seeing and hearing from this eight foot tall creature which looked like a man and a moth combined. Some time later, a bridge in town collapsed and killed a few dozen people. The people that saw “Mothman” swear he foretold that catastrophe.
Now here’s what Hollywood has done with the story. Richard Gere plays a Washington Post reporter who is drawn to the town following the death of his wife. The opening of this movie is mostly a snoozer as we are introduced to the happy couple and she hears voices and sees “Mothman” and it’s all done so neatly and quickly it’s clear it didn’t really happen this way. But things pick up when Gere finds himself in Point Pleasant on the doorstep of guy named Gordon, played by Will Patton.
This is where I got drawn in. Gere doesn’t know why he’s here and Gordon has seen him at his door three nights in a row. He’s ready to shoot him. Enter Laura Linney as the local sheriff. Her character’s name is Connie Parker. She believes Gordon and she believes Gere because other people in town have been reporting some pretty strange stuff lately. And West Virginia, well, what can I say? It seems like a creepy place to begin with. I like this, I like this a lot. Usually in these kind of movies, only one person sees the weird things. But in Point Pleasant, a collection of otherwise normal people is spooked by the “Mothman”. This is good, very good and was probably true.
The movie focuses on Gere and Gordon and their encounters with the creature. Gordon seems to see the thing a lot, while Gere seems to get the phone calls from the “Mothman”. Okay, sure. I was following along and still very interested but Hollywood interfered too much. It isn’t just the bridge collapse that “Mothman” foretells, but also plane crashes and earthquakes. I’m sure it happened that way! I guess it has to be that way or else you’ll be bored, right? Which brings me to the ending, which I won’t give away but let’s just say I know it didn’t happen that way.
This was the first time in quite a while I can remember being able to figure out exactly what did happen in real life and what was made up by the script writers. And I did not read the book. You will be able to as well if you just use some logic and good sense. That pulled the “Mothman” down a couple of notches for me. I give it a “6.0”. If you’re going to give me “based on true events”, don’t insult me with over-the-top fictional events.
Friday, January 18th, 2002
It’s rare when I review a foreign film, but this time I had to make an exception. Besides, very little is being released this time of year, so why not?
Last week, I took a look at “Black Hawk Down”, a bloody guy’s movie. This time I’ll tell you about a pretty good date movie. “Amelie” is a French girl who, like most of us, grew up in a dysfunctional home. No, her parents didn’t beat her or even yell at her. They were just weird. Her Dad is a doctor. He’s very busy and spends little time around Amelie. Because of this, when he gives her a physical every now and then, her heart speeds up and he thinks she’s got coronary problems. In truth, Amelie is just excited to be around him. Mom is a teacher but is also kind of out of touch. She ends up home schooling Amelie, and then treats her too much like a student and not a daughter. Amelie then retreats into a world based on her own imagination.
So does she end up in a mental institution? If this was an American made movie, she probably would. But instead she devotes her life to making others happy. It starts one day when she finds a boy’s play things he had hidden away in a secret hiding place forty years ago. Does she just find him and hand the things over? Nah – that would be too easy. Remember, Amelie is a little weird too. The fun of this movie is watching all the creative ways she comes up with to give these people their happy moments without revealing herself to them.
That all gets really complicated when Amelie comes upon a guy who is as strange as she is. She finds him obsessing over torn up pictures left outside one of those little photo booths you see at bus and train stations and shopping malls. The attraction is instant, but both are shy and weird, so this is going to take some time.
I’m a people watcher because I often find that amusing, but this movie takes it all to a new level. Amelie likes to sit in the front row of movie theatres and watch people’s faces glowing in the dark. She picks up on many of the little things we all ignore. There is a lot of narrative in this movie, but one part I did enjoy was the list of some of the movie’s characters likes and dislikes. This is a movie you smile along with. You don’t fall over laughing because it comes at you slowly.
The whole thing is a fairy tale, from her strange behavior to her strange neighbors to the incredible stunts she pulls off to make people happy. But for a cynical guy like me to fall for it, it has to be something special. I can even forgive the “Ally McBeal”’ moments. A few times they pull off an imaginary on-screen moment that plays like a cartoon. Such as when Amelie literally melts away when her dream boy leaves her presence. Must be a new trick in France. Been there, done that.
But overall, and I hate to put it this way, “Amelie” is a “heart warming, magical reaffirmation of life!”. A “charming tour-de-force!”. How about a “lyrical, mystical, merry-go-round of fun”. Sorry, but I think of those things, you know. I just would rather spare you the misery. “Amelie” is very creative and very different. I liked it very much. Boy, that sounds like a bland review line. I give it an “8.0”
Friday, January 11th, 2002
You want war movies, you’re going to get them. The release of this one was moved up and while waiting for it to start, I saw previews for two more starring Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson. “Black Hawk Down”, thankfully, has no major stars. When you see it, and you should, you’ll understand.
By way of back round, the story is based on true events. Back in 1992-93, we got involved in a civil war in Somalia. Over 300,000 Somalis had starved to death, and the major villain was a warlord who was cutting off the outside food supply. After the U.S. and U.N. forces stabilized the situation, he waited until most outsiders left the country and started doing the whole thing over again. It was at this point that we decided to take the warlord out. But, since this was during the Clinton years, we decided it had to be done quickly and on a small scale.
Intelligence information (and I use that terminology loosely) led to a mission deep inside hostile territory in the city of Mogadishu to round up some of the warlord’s top cronies. That mission was manned by a team of Army Rangers and Delta Forces. It did not go well.
There will be few movies that you will ever see in your lifetime that will capture the nasty side of a small scale battle like this one will. Before long, the mission is simply to stay alive and get the hell out. The problem for our soldiers is that most of the citizens of that city take up arms and go on the attack. Once they start shooting down the black hawk helicopters, it gets real difficult. Yes, the famous scene with the Somalis parading around the streets with the corpse of one of our guys is in here. But that scene spares you most of the gruesome stuff. Try some of the other moments, such as the guy with nothing left below the waist, yet he’s still alive. Or the shots of a thumb blown off or a hand on the ground.
The movie builds slowly just as I’m sure the fateful mission did. And it is, I hate to say it, very “surreal”. Unlike the guys heading on to the beach at Normandy, these guys expected to “get in and get out” with little trouble. You can imagine their horror as the casualties commence. The same thing happened to me. Even though I knew this was not going to be pretty, I had to keep telling myself “it’s only a movie”.
The range of response from the soldiers is portrayed incredibly well. There are scared guys, guys who debate the morality of all this, and, of course, guys who don’t care and just fight their butts off. You even have to laugh for a moment as one of the guys consistently walks through sniper fire as if nothings going on. Is that heroism or stupidity? And the movie even gets most of the other details right such as the fact that most bullets do miss hitting people and more often than not, battles do break down into chaos. The only small objection I had is that there are so many soldiers involved here, I had trouble following them all. But that was only because I really started to care about them and I wanted to see how it all turned out for each one.
In “Black Hawk Down” you do really feel right in the middle of that horrible bit of U.S. military history and you grimace each time one of our guys is hit. It was a tiny Vietnam we should have avoided but we don’t always fight our battles militarily, we sometimes have to fight them politically too. We lost nineteen guys that day. The Somali casualties were over a thousand. Maybe that will make you feel better. But remember, we may be going back there over this Al-Qaeda thing. Sad, isn’t it? If you can stomach it, there is no better way to get a sense of things like this than to see “Black Hawk Down”. I give it a “10”.
Friday, January 4th, 2002
It was one of those years in which I saw some pretty good movies but none that I would call all-time favorites. That is, no “10’s”, but a few I would go back and see again. So here is the list, beginning with the 10 best:
10. The Others – this surprising little “Sixth Sense” rip-off lasted for months in theatres and proves you can go back to the “I see dead people” well at least one more time.
9. Bubble Boy – I have to have one pick that confounds most people. This movie provided me with more hoots that any other this year and you’ve got to love a movie that people protest.
8. Artificial Intelligence – probably another “head scratching” pick by me. Unlike so many movies this year, I thought the ending was rather well thought out.
7.Life As A House – sob, sob, weep, weep. Kevin Kline plays yet another guy facing death with a dysfunctional family that hates him, but you’ll be crying too before it’s over.
6.A Beautiful Mind – As a former accountant, I have to love a movie about a numbers guy, mathematician John Nash, who fights mental illness with sheer logic and willpower.
5.Spy Game – just when I thought I had had enough of snaky-faced Robert Redford, there he goes making a really good movie about something as simple as saving a colleagues life. Even if that guy is Brad Pitt.
4.Ghost World – so, you never heard of this one? It redefines that tired formula involving the new high school graduate heading out into the world. This time, a nasty cynical girl gets a lesson in how the things really work.
3.Moulin Rouge – what, did I actually put two movies starring that pasty-faced Nicole Kidman on my Top 10 list? Hey, who needs Tom Cruise? This was the most unusual, most creative movie of the year. I hate musicals, and the funny thing is, so does this movie, which is a spoof within a spoof.
2.Memento – this pick is not for everyone. I did end up seeing it twice because this is the movie that takes place “backwards”. That is, each scene is actually preceded by the scene which comes next. Confused? Well, you better pass then. But if you can handle it, it is an untidy little murder mystery that demands you think all the time.
1.Training Day – yeah, my top pick is an ugly movie about a bad cop trying to corrupt the mind of a rookie cop. Denzel Washington deserves an award for this mesmerizing over-the-top performance as the bad guy. The stuff he spews out in what seems to be an ad-lib performance is remarkable. There is nothing “likeable” about the character he plays but you sort of root for the guy anyway.
Now, for the fun part, the five bad movies of 2001:
5.Head Over Heels- the basic rule these days is to avoid any movie starring Freddie Prinze (this one and another, “Summer Catch”). This one co-starred a bunch of really unfunny models with one of them out to steal Freddie’s heart.
4.Down 2 Earth – it seems nobody in Hollywood can find the right movie role for Chris Rock. He is the next Eddie Murphy, isn’t he? This turkey about a Chris taking over an old wealthy guy’s body completely misses, especially since we always see Rock’s body and not the old guy’s, so the running gag about the young black guy playing the part of the rich old white guy is completely lost.
3.Evolution – hyped as one of the summer’s big movies, this stinker about an invasion of fast evolving alien creatures particularly annoyed me because I was excited by the preview trailers and did expect something half-way funny.
2.Crocodile Dundee in L.A. – a sequel that was something like ten years after the last Dundee movie. Not a good sign. The signs were right. This is one of those movies I had to believe they knew they were making a bomb less that halfway through filming it, but they couldn’t turn back.
1.Joe Dirt – David Spade is a funny guy, but he should never, I repeat, never, be cast as the dumb guy. He is not the next Jim Carrey or the next Adam Sandler . He is David Spade, the short, snotty, witty sneaky, smart guy. Go watch “Just Shoot Me”. That is the role David Spade was meant to play and that’s all there is to it.
