Mary Shelley (2017)

Director: Haifaa al-Mansour

Cast: Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, Maisie Williams, Stephen Dillane

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Until stumbling upon it at the Library, I hadn’t even known the film existed.

Did I Like It: The biopic will often leave me feeling wanting. While following the tropes of the genre, I feel like I will get more out of reading a biography about the subject. The only exception I can readily reach for is Man on the Moon (1999) and Walk the Line (2006), but both of those had something else going for them. 

In this case, everything is done correctly. The production value is high, and I buy the nineteenth century setting. I feel like it might very well pass the bar where—if viewed in years to come—it will not be immediately apparent when the film was made, although I also grant that timeless quality can’t really be passed until some actual time has passed. Fanning plays the role with assuredness that makes it clear she isn’t the problem with the film.

But there isn’t anything additional to the film to recommend it. There is a bland sameness to the proceedings, and even the passion Shelley must have felt in the creation of her most famous work comes across as tepid. There are plenty of great films about the act of writing that stick with you long after they stop. This isn’t one of them, sadly. It’s not hard to imagine why the film didn’t come across hardly anyones radar.

It does introduce an odd desire in me that I’ve never experienced with a biopic before. I did go out and but a written biography of her, sure. But I also had the strongest urge to re-watch Bride of Frankenstein (1935). I’ve never had a biopic push me in the direction of an even sillier version of the story, but I suppose there’s a first time or everything.

Company Business (1991)

Director: Nicholas Meyer

Cast: Gene Hackman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kurtwood Smith, Terry O’Quinn

Have I Seen it Before: Never. It’s been like one of those desert mirages in the world of cinema. It appears on a streaming service every once in a while, and then disappears just as quickly. Only I after I practically tripped over it being included in a double feature DVD with No Way Out (1987) was I able to find it on some kind of physical media.

Did I Like It: I’m tempted to say no, as the great master Meyer himself is certainly down on the film. Hackman agreed to the film, and then turned up on location not wanting anything to do with the proceedings, but facing a lawsuit if he backed out at such a late phase of the proceedings.

But Hackman doesn’t feel like the problem. He seems present enough throughout the film, not one of his all-time-best film performances, but I wasn’t struck by him being completely out to lunch. Baryshnikov isn’t at his core a movie actor, and his character breezes through the film with a perpetually confused expression. 

But the story—and it pains me rather greatly to admit it—may be the problem. It never really comes together. Maybe this is a byproduct of an editing process that had to work through a belligerent leading man’s performance to find some sequence of usable takes. Ultimately, though, I think Meyer still hadn’t worked out what he wanted to say about the end of the Cold War. For that, we’d have to wait—less than a year, incidentally—for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) to see his thoughts become more concrete. 

I’m sure a studio executive in 1990 would have blanched at the notion that that the spy movie starring Popeye Doyle would be the less successful movie about the fall of the Berlin Wall than a fifth sequel starring a cast of TV actors nearly ready to start collecting Social Security, but here we are.

Batman vs. Two-Face (2017)

Director: Rick Morales

Cast: Adam West, Burt Ward, William Shatner, Julie Newmar

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I was right on top of getting this when it came out on disc.

Did I Like It: The one missing element of 1966 Batman TV series was its treatment of that singular villain in the Rogue’s Gallery, Two-Face. Harlan Ellison wrote a treatment for an eventual episode to feature the great bifurcated one*, and the name bandied about for the role was none other than a famous-but-not-quite-that-famous Clint Eastwood. Had NBC picked up the show, we might very well have seen that come to pass.

But forget all that. Eastwood’s not the man to play the role against West and Ward. If nothing else, putting James T. Kirk in his prime against the Caped Crusader was the best possible casting move in any direct-to-DVD animated film I could ever imagine.

…as I type that, it feels like damning the film with faint praise, but I assure you, it isn’t.

This film extends everything that worked (and a few of the things that didn’t work out so hot; sorry, Burt Ward) about Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016). It also manages to make more extensive use of Jeff Bergman’s narrator, doing his best impression of the late producer William Dozier. The manic humor may be diminished ever so slightly as the regular rogue’s gallery becoming supporting characters and the story desperately tries to give Harvey (Shatner) some pathos to play.

But these are extraordinarily minor complaints for a film which easily clears its modest goals. There was no reason to expect any more time spent with Adam West as Batman, to say nothing of seeing that version of the character venturing into previously untouched material. Were Mr. West still with us, I would have been up for a new bright, campy adventure with those two every year or so.

*It was produced as a comic book, that I had to spend a minute search for and plan on re-reading as soon as possible. It’s pretty unrelated to the story presented in this film, otherwise Ellison. just might have sued the production into oblivion.

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016)

Director: Rick Morales

Cast: Adam West, Burt Ward, Julie Newmar, Steven Weber

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, man. I was there with bells on when the movie had a limited run with Fathom. I was 100% the audience for this film.

Did I Like It: And it mostly meets expectations. The animation style is by and large fine, but I do think there was some unnecessary liberties taken with some of the locations. It would have been far more enjoyable to have the backgrounds look exactly like Bruce Wayne’s den, the Batcave, and Commissioner Gordon’s office, than the slightly more expansive environments we’re treated to here. I also didn’t need even an oblique exploration of just what occurs to get Bruce Wayne (West) and Dick Grayson (Ward) into costume as they slide down the bat-poles.

I’d hate to get entirely nitpicky about the whole affair, but the voicework is occasionally great, an occasionally not-so-great. West certainly sounds much older than he did in the 60s, but as I am currently older now than Bruce Wayne is traditionally depicted, there was a certain simple pleasure in being able to look upon the Dark Knight as a grown-up again. Julie Newmar doesn’t sound as if she’s aged a day since she last meow-ed her way through an episode of the TV show, which is worth the price of viewing the film itself. Burt Ward is… well, he’s playing a 16-year-old boy, and there’s never a moment where I wasn’t aware he was a man in his 70s. To have a man in his 70s play a 16-year-old boy is probably an unfair expectation for someone. Then again, it wasn’t like we bought him as a teenager in the 60s, either…

Filling in for deceased cast members, things get a bit brighter. Jeff Bergman channels both Cesar Romero’s Joker and narrator William Dozier nearly perfectly, although the narrator is tragically underused. Steven Weber and Lynne Marie Stewart are so perfect as Alfred and Aunt Harriet that it’s downright spooky. Wally Wingert intermittently imitates Frank Gorshin quite well, but unfortunately only illuminates just what a simmering explosion of crazy Gorshin was.

But why no Batgirl? Yes, Yvonne Craig had passed away, but everybody else is here? Why does Barbara Gordon always get the short shrift in DC movies? I just don’t get it.

The plot is epic enough to justify the runtime, but isn’t quite the comic scenario they cooked up for Batman (1966).

I might have some minor quibbles with the film, but any time spent with the Bright Knight is time well spent, especially because we aren’t going to get any more.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Ian McKellan, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Luke Evans

Have I Seen it Before: No. This one Lora and I are sure of. After shrugging our way through The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), there may have been some desire to catch the final Middle-Earth feature film (especially from Lora, the actual Tolkien fan in the house), but somehow not a lot of followthrough.

Did I Like It: Almost. The run-time is the shortest of any movie Jackson has done since The Frighteners (1996)*. That helps a lot.

However.

Smaug is dispatched in the first reel of this movie. Doesn’t that mean that the story of The Hobbit is done. Sure, Jackson could fill the return to the Shire and the consternation over the fate of the gold under the mountain for forty-five minutes, but shouldn’t we be heading out of the theater before sundown at this point?

I truly have underestimated the man’s ability—nay, pathological need—to pad things out. 

And by the end, things are dispatched with such ruthless speed, I can’t help but wonder if the slightly diminishing returns mandated some changes in the Jackson working style. Evangeline Lilly (little known fact: not played by Liv Tyler) and her love affair with a dwarf is ended with none of the pathos from the LOTR trilogy it was so thoroughly trying to ape.

It’s difficult for me to forgive a fueling sense of nostalgia for a film series I didn’t love to begins with.

Also, which five armies are we talking about here. One, dwarves. Two, men. Three, orcs. Four, elves.

Five… Five? Anyone? Gandalf (McKellan) and a handful of other LOTR characters, who spend the majority of the movie inevitably failing in their goals to forestall something we already know will happen? Bilbo alone (Freeman)? Legolas (Orlando Bloom), who still somehow appears in the film? Are we the viewers—and perhaps, more appropriately, the fans—the fifth army? I can’t readily come up with a more befuddling title for a film, mainly because I’m distracting myself with still shaking my head over this one.

*I’ve now gone two-for-three on referring to The Frighteners in my review of Hobbit films. Maybe it’s time to re-watch The Frighteners…

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch

Have I Seen it Before: …yes? This is an ongoing debate in my house. We definitely remember going to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) in the theater, but I couldn’t honestly say whether my wife and I have ever seen this one.

Did I Like It: Which should tell you something.

Second movies are tricky, especially where the trilogy has any degree of planning. Star Wars - Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) can stand on its own for the most part, but as the years go by, I’m extremely convinced Lucas had no plan as he proceeded, especially for the original trilogy. I might like Back to the Future - Part II (1989) just fine, but plenty of people view it as only part of a movie, and that’s a reasonable criticism to levy.

But when the middle part of the film is only supposed to comprise the middle portion of an entire novel? How can such a film not feel almost entirely of a second act, with the proceedings being nothing more than a cavalcade of incident rushing forth in anticipation of a catharsis that—at least theatrically—wouldn’t come for another year?

For a true analysis of how Jackson attempts to accomplish that, you might just have to wait for my review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). There’s some fast dealing here. Fan service pads out the runtime*, forcing Legolas (Orlando Bloom, looking ten years older, despite being sixty years younger, but don’t tell anyone) into a story he didn’t exist in before. We are stuck with a cliffhanger for cliffhangers sake, made all the more strange by…

No. You know what? You will have to wait for my review of The Battle of the Five Armies. How does it feel, Peter Jackson? How does it feel?

*Jackson actually exhibits some restraint with the runtime in this series, as each film clocks in at under three hours, but what happened, man? The Frighteners (1996) was under 2 hours. You have the ability to do this!

Batman: The Long Halloween (Part 1) (2021)

Director: Chris Palmer

Cast: Jensen Ackles, Josh Duhamel, Naya Rivera, Billy Burke

Have I Seen it Before: Na… It’s new. I’ve read the book probably half a dozen times over the last twenty years.

Did I Like It: I’ve always been a little down on the DC animated movies. Their attempts to condense the great comic arcs into a movie less than an hour and a half always left me just wanting to read the books themselves. The Dark Knight Returns Part One and Two (2012, 2013) had something to it, Hush (2019) underwhelmed, and Death in the Family (2020) struck me as quite possibly the most frustrating bat-film ever produced.

So where does this one land in that spectrum? Somewhere in the middle. Giving the story two parts lets it breath a bit, especially when the source material is a limited run, and not a year-long (or multi-year) storyline. I have some vague ambition to track down part two now, so my interest in the adaptation hasn’t abated from my morbid curiosity about this first installment. The performances are on average, pretty average. Anyone other than Kevin Conroy playing Batman/Bruce Wayne in an animated production always feels like a misstep, and Ackles does the thankless job of not drawing attention to himself. Troy Baker, on the other hand, so desperately apes the timbre, cadence, and cackle of Mark Hamill that the homage only made me long for the original more. Jack Quaid brings all of his squirrely energy to Alberto Falcone. You may think mentioning a side character isn’t worth the word count in this review, but… Well, you just need to take in the story for yourself.

Just how you might end up taking in that story brings me to the big point.I still end up falling just shy of a complete recommendation of the film. When I first read the graphic novel all those years ago, I made the remark that it would make a great Batman movie. And it did. With some shift in focus, it was called The Dark Knight (2008). Go watch that movie, or go read the graphic novel. They’re far more worthy of your time.

Enemy Mine (1985)

Director: Wolfgang Petersen

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Louis Gossett, Jr., Bumper Robinson, Brion James

Have I Seen it Before: Never. No, I know. I don’t know what I had been doing this whole time, either.

Did I Like It: The film was largely forgotten in its time, but cannot be denied as the years progressed. It has proven plenty influential to filmed Sci-Fi that was to come. Pretty much every TV Sci Fi show from the 80s forward did some kind of riff on the theme. To my memory, Star Trek: The Next Generation did it twice, once with the not even hidden homage “The Enemy” and later, with one of it’s greatest episodes, “Darmok.” A quick look at Wikipedia indicates that Stargate SG-1 dropped all pretense with their episode, helpfully titled “Enemy Mine.”

And that’s all because the story is pretty great in its simplicity. Yes, it’s Hell in the Pacific (1968), except the Toshirō Mifune is now a space alien and played by Louis Gossett, Jr. One might argue that the story runs out of track after it—out of necessity—is no longer about Jeriba and Davidge (Dennis Quaid), and the story is artificially extended beyond the point where other humans arrive on the planet, but even films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) drag in the middle if you’re not in the right mood for it. Any Sci-Fi movie can feel like its treading water under the right circumstances.

Performance-wise, Gossett is flawless as one of the leads, never once betraying the fact that he is a human wearing a prosthesis. Quaid is good as the supposed hero, but at various moments throughout the film I got the overwhelming feel that not only was he trying to ape Harrison Ford (and doing it relatively well), but that the entire film had been created around the idea of him playing Davidge, but when he passed, they went with the next best thing. It’s so eerie at various points that if you had told me that Ford played the role for part of production, left the film, and Quaid filmed the remainder, I just might believe you.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Margot Robbie, Idris Elba, John Cena, Joel Kinnaman

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. The drips and drabs of COVID-era new movies keeps coming. Didn’t make it out into the theater for this one. Don’t know when I’ll make it out to the theater for a new movie again the rate things are going. Oddly enough, the last new movie I caught at the theater was likely Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020).

Did I Like It: About a day after screening the film, I was struck by the perfect encapsulation of my positive feelings for the film:

I enjoyed it so much, and wanted the good feelings to continue, that I was halfway tempted to watch the original Suicide Squad (2016). 

And I never thought it would even kind of occur to me that I might want to watch that movie again. But this one moves at such a lean and economical pace—despite its army of charaters all begging for a moment in the sun—that everything Jared Leto-related is forgiven.

Seriously, if you had told me as I was walking out of that movie that Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Quinn will be the most consistently enjoyable part of DC’s attempts to make a connected cinematic universe, I would have told you you were crazy.

Bringing all of the sensibilities from his work on Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and its sequel, along with its sequel, but also blending in the raucous influences of his work with Troma impresario Lloyd Kaufman, this film cuts to the quick and never quite lets the viewer get comfortable, much to this particular viewer’s delight. I laughed throughout, and yet, somehow the film isn’t a spoof of the genre. There’s a fine line between taking potshots at a genre and engaging it both fully and irreverently, and I can’t immediately think of a filmmaker working in blockbuster entertainments who is straddling that line better than Gunn.

It’s not just the best DC movie in recent memory; it is the most purely enjoyable superhero movie since Thor: Ragnarok (2017), easily the most relentlessly fun DC film ever made (and I am far from someone who is down on the DC films as a whole), and easily in the upper echelons of the superhero genre.

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

Director: Richard Donner

Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Joss Ackland

Have I Seen it Before: Again, sure.

Did I Like It: I almost want to take back my retroactive ambivalence about <Lethal Weapon (1987)>. There were instances—indeed, long stretches—where I was less distracted by how awful Mel Gibson has proven himself to be.

My immediate instinct is to to say that there’s so much Three Stooges shtick jammed into the film that I can’t help but be annoyed at the movie for an entirely different set of Gibson’s predilections… But that doesn’t cover it: I actually found myself liking the film.

Part of that is that this feels like a more personal story for Riggs, if not necessarily Murtaugh (Glover). The previously unseen unravelling of his life now fuels part of the plot. While the whole “I’m the villain and the cause of all your problems” has been done to death here (and, indeed, is a reprise in the great summer of 1989 after Batman (1989) pulled the same trick), it does give some narrative fuel to Riggs’ Riggsiness, whereas in the last film it just felt like a randomly selected character trait to serve his mismatched pairing with Murtaugh.

Also, the conceit behind the film is somewhat ingenious in its simplicity. What is an Action Movie Cop (tm) to do when the evil crime lords also have diplomatic immunity. Granted, it could have easily been a plot in a Robocop film, would have been right at home creating issues for John McClane in a Die Hard sequel, or even any number of Schwarzenegger or Stallone characters. But Riggs and Murtaugh got there first, so they get the points… If points were something we were keeping track of in 1980s action films.

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Director: Richard Donner

Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Mitchell Ryan, Gary Busey

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Let’s reckon with a strange question before I get into any qualities of the movie. Why is there so much sturm und drang as to whether or not Die Hard (1988) is a Christmas movie (it, is by the way, but that’s a discussion for another review), when this movie gets hardly a peep?

I wonder if it is mostly that by the time that these silly movie debates held on the internet became a thing, Mel Gibson as one of the all-time leading men had firmly become a thing of the past.

And that’s the thing I’m most struck by here. We’re supposed to like Mel Gibson. Feel sorry for him. Even with this being the ur of the modern buddy action movie, it’s hard to separate Mel Gibson the man from Martin Riggs the character. All of that manic energy will soon be harnessed into something pretty ugly. Makes it difficult to have a good time, and isn’t that the point of a movie like Lethal Weapon?

I was struck recently by reading that Richard Donner’s first choice for Riggs was his Superman (1978) discovery, Christopher Reeve. I have a hard time imagining that, as even when Reeve played slightly unhinged and despicable, he had a gentleness that couldn’t fully be erased. That he went ahead and made Superman IV - The Quest for Peace (1987) was probably the wrong move for him, but I probably would have been able to more fully dwell on the action, the chemistry between Riggs and Murtaugh, and Donner’s direction.

Now, it all feels a bit too weird for words. No one knows the fate of the long-threatened Lethal Finale now that Donner has passed on, but I can’t help but imagine that one being really weird.

Holmes & Watson (2018)

Director: Etan Cohen

Cast: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Rebecca Hall, Ralph Fiennes

Have I Seen it Before: No. It feels like a weird time. I live in an age when it takes something to get me out to the theater (indeed, I have only been once since I was vaccinated in April). In the before times, I’d go see anything, and I didn’t even need a Moviepass to convince me. Despite enjoying Ferrell and Reilly, and being—if a bit of neophyte—a Holmesian at heart, this one missed me.

The word of mouth was truly that toxic. 

Did I Like It: The notion of a comedy Sherlock Holmes film is not a bad one. Without a Clue (1988) performed that beyond a doubt. Even this film, on spec, wasn’t a terrible idea for the many, many years it languished in development hell. Originally, it would have had Ferrell as Watson and Sacha Baron Cohen as Holmes. That’s actually pretty great casting. That film could have turned out fine, if the anarchic spirit of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) would have brought to its full potential.

That is not the cast we got. Nor is it the film we got.

Reilly can cut the right sort of Nigel Bruce-esque buffoon that is the instinct of many who approach Baker Street, but Ferrell, on spec, isn’t in the slightest bit Holmes. His whole comedic personae is based on the screaming, overconfident idiot. Holmes can be an idiot, but he needs to always look like he’s trying to figure things out. Baron Cohen could have done that in his sleep.

It might feel reductive to judge what is clearly meant to be a comedy by “how many times I laughed,” but when I know it was no more than twice, with one of them being in the title card, that’s not a great jumping off point for discussing the film.

Also, that Billy Zane cameo was such a drag, and stuck out like such a sore thumb, I couldn’t even recommend the film as the kind of thing you could benignly play in the background and ignore.

It is a failure. Go watch Without a Clue, which I might very well do now that I’ve thought about it far more than the film in question here.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

Director: Kevin Reynolds

Cast: Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Alan Rickman

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Flashback to 1991 for just a moment, and I even had a full range of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves toys (even if they were just a pretty feeble repackaging of Kenner’s Return of the Jedi toys from 1983. Seriously. They just slightly repainted an Ewok’s face to make Friar Tuck. Look it up.

Did I Like It: There is plenty to like about the film. It’s core identity as a film is that of a competent 90s actioner. There are explosions, and jumps, and fights, and a thumping orchestral score (which, for reasons passing my immediate understanding became the music behind the Walt Disney Studios vanity card after a while).

Morgan Freeman is quite good in a thankless, undercooked, and probably ill-considered, but he’s been the best thing in plenty of bad things. Some great actors just like to work. Alan Rickman is a cartoon confection of a villain, but understands the job ahead of him perfectly and you marvel at the fact that, in what amounted to his three most memorable roles, he plays the villain, or at the very least an anti-hero. In the Harry Potter films, he milks every moment out of the pathos available to him. In Die Hard (1988) he is a coiled snake of ruthless intelligence. In this film, he’s Sindely Whiplash. And all are equally valid.

The problem is, that there’s something rotten at the core of the movie, and it is its star. Much was made in the years immediately after the films release about Costner not playing the hero of Sherwood Forrest with an English accent, but you forget how wobbly the whole enterprise is if you haven’t seen it in a while. Costner feebly attempts a more formal tone of speaking, as if that will serve, but even that is inconsistent. It’s only somewhat his fault, as the very idea of casting him in the role is a bad one. At his core, he’s too all-American. The corpse in The Big Chill (1983)? Sure. Pa Kent? Absolutely. He’s not an Englishman. But, sadly, he was a bit too big after Dances with Wolves (1990) and no one could say no.

Ultimately, it kind of makes it akin to Star Wars — Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) in that way, a fine piece of blockbuster entertainment with a single unbelievable performance at it that brings the whole affair down. 

I didn’t think as I was starting to write this review that I was going to offer quite so many Star Wars comparisons in this review, but here we are. 

Twister (1996)

Director: Jan de Bont

Cast: Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cary Elwes

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. When your family gets HBO for the first time in late 1996, you almost had to watch it. It was the law. I’m sort of sad that I didn’t catch it in the theater, as my memory includes a screening of the film at the Admiral Twin Drive in here in town had to be cut short due to—you guessed it—marital discord between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.

That’s what the movie is about, right?

Did I Like It: This has got to be one of the flimsiest, silliest blockbuster films to exist, and somehow, almost kind of work at the same time. The marriage subplot is so thin that both viewers and the movie itself decide to pretty much forget about it before the third act.

The movie makes a mad scramble for an antagonist. One would think the tornadoes would be enough bad guy for a movie… about tornadoes. There’s even a moment, right at the film’s climax where I think we are supposed to believe the probes contained within Dorothy actually killed the final tornado? Was this the same tornado that killed Jo’s (Hunt) father? But it isn’t enough, there has to be a cadre of black hats, or rather SUVs. 

One might point to the special effects as worth a view, but I think the one-two punch of seeing it on television, combined with the fact that it has been 25 years since the film was released, even those moments have grown tame.

What more is there? There aren’t that many movies that take place in the place I came from, to say nothing of action movies. There’s also a certain dopey charm in the storm chasers. Sure, if you forced me to come up with the names other than Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, and that one guy who I’m fairly sure disappears before Paxton’s fiancée excuses herself from the proceedings. They’re a fun bunch and I have a vague recollection of there being development of a sequel in the years since. What would that have even looked like? Maybe they go after hurricanes? Or snow flurries. Yep. I can see the poster now. Twister 2: Snow Flurries. Released in 1999. Bill Paxton returns; Helen Hunt couldn’t be bothered. In that universe, the Twister saga displaces The Fast and The Furious. 

One shudders. I just won’t growl. That should be left to the tornadoes.

Speed (1994)

Director: Jan de Bont

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Jeff Daniels

Have I Seen it Before: Certainly. Several times. Hell, the title of one of my upcoming books is a reference to the film.

Did I Like It: We could fill the entire bandwidth of the various streaming services several times over with the clones of Die Hard (1988) that were produced in the ten-fifteen years after that film’s release. Many of them are truly bad. More than a few of them beg an investigation as to why they even exist in the first place.

Then there’s Speed.

Every piece of Speed fits together. That is not to say any moment of it is believable, but I have a hard time picking a moment from the film that feels incongruous with any of the other parts. One might say that the film really ends when the passengers get off the bus, and the movie definitely runs out of narrative when Howard Payne (Hopper—oh, sweet, sweet, Hopper*) loses his head. But these are nitpicks from a film that ages far better than some of the contemporary films, like The Rock (1996) or Bad Boys (1995), or really any of Michael Bay’s films, now that I’ve had a minute to think about it.

I will say that this film rests squarely in the least-engaging (although not entirely un-engaging) period in the screen career of Keanu Reeves. He has tried to shed the early exuberance of a Ted “Theodore” Logan, and is content to be merely earnest as all get-out. He’ll work through this period and become the shy near-Buddha we all know and love today, but is any character in an action movie from this era anything more than a prop designed to move plot forward? Just ask Jason Patric.

*Come to think of it, both of my upcoming books have some pretty direct lines into this movie. Maybe in the far flung future, people will refer to this as my “Dennis Hopper period” and be supremely disappointed when they realize what that really means.

In the Heights (2021)

Director: Jon M. Chu

Cast: Anthony Ramos, Corey Hawkins, Leslie Grace, Melissa Barerra

Have I Seen it Before: Never. Barely caught it before it left HBO Max as well.

Did I Like It: It is unfair—and fundamentally unavoidable—to compare this to Hamilton (2020), Lin-Manuel Miranda’s other magnum opus*.

So let’s get started with that comparison immediately.

The rhythms that are so integral to Miranda’s voice are just as present here, but given the setting appear less mannered than when the occur among the founding fathers. That the whole affair is somehow more natural—even in a scene where two of the characters start ignoring the laws of physics is certainly fascinating.

That natural quality stems from the feeling behind every word. Hamilton—by its very nature—is an act of imagination. It is pure speculation to inhabit the birth of the country with soul and feeling, especially for writers and performers who were largely subjugated by the subjects**. Here, it is not just a display of feelings; it is real feeling. More people will remember Hamilton, I imagine, but I can’t help but wonder if this story is nearer and dearer to Miranda’s heart.

I don’t want to think it is the novelty alone that raises In the Heights above its more famous younger sibling. The songs aren’t as catchy here. I enjoyed myself, to be sure, but it wasn’t like I was walking around the house humming various refrains and belting out any number of choruses. Maybe we are witnessing an evolution of the next great American artist here. Maybe the next, great, big thing from Lin-Manuel Miranda will render Hamilton as just a strange proto-step to his true genius.

*Which, if you’re reading this review, you’ve probably heard of.

**I really shouldn’t be allowed to do stuff like that to the English language, but here we are.

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)

Director: Chris McKay

Cast: Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Rosario Dawson, Michael Cera

Have I Seen it Before: There was very little chance that a film like this was going to fly under my radar, right?

Did I Like It: The version of me that is five-years old—that same version of myself which steadfastly refuses to see any flaws in Batman (1989)—would probably label this movie asa my favorite movie of all time.

The version of me that had been refreshing LEGO.com every fifteen minutes over the past few days to make sure my order of the LEGO 1989 Batmobile has shipped* can also find plenty about the film to enjoy, too. It is steeped heavily in the lore (perplexing and sort of stupid though it sometimes is) of The Dark Knight. References abound, and as Warner Bros./DC keeps doing grave disservice to Barbara Gordon, Rosario Dawson’s portrayal of the character may just be the best for which we can hope for a little while. Will Arnett—extending his work from the superlative The LEGO Movie (2014)—perfectly captures every bad thing about the character I’ve spent the vast majority of my life** apologizing for. The rest of the characters get their due, which is hard to do when there are dozens of them, and double hard when more than a few live-action Batman films have fallen apart when they try to service half a dozen main characters***.

And still, there is some part of me that is unsatisfied. The LEGO Movie was such a perfect exercise in anarchy, that I can’t help but wish there was something a little more subversive at the core of this one, too. “You’re my best friend, and friends are family” is… nice, I guess? I want something darker and more serious. Kind of like Batman.

That may say more about me than it does the film.

*Update: It has.

**Side note: I don’t at all remember the first time I had heard of Batman. The summer of 1989 happened, and it was like I had always been aware of him? I even added a scene in Orson Welles of Mars where several characters realize that it is next to impossible to explain the character without a common frame of reference, aside from calling him “The Shadow, but minus guns and add pointy ears.”

***You may be thinking that I’m talking about Batman & Robin (1997), and well… I am. But I’m also throwing in any live-action bat-production since The Dark Knight (2008).

Finding Forrester (2000)

Director: Gus Van Sant

Cast: Sean Connery, F. Murray Abraham, Rob Brown, Anna Paquin

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. Hell, I once gave a presentation to a writer’s group where I showed the famous “You’re the Man Now, Dog” scene as a segue to the virtues of using a typewriter.

Which really should have been the takeaway from that scene, not the decade-plus of memes we got as a result.

Did I Like It: It would be easy to dismiss the film for the parts that some might call derivative. The film is built on a foundation of the white savior complex, which one can only hope will age even more poorly as the years progress. It has enough of Van Sant’s early triumph with Good Will Hunting (1997) looming over it to ever get to be its own movie. And there’s more than a little bit of Scent of a Woman (1992) to make the whole thing feel familiar to the point of being a pat.

The thing is, I can never truly dismiss the film any time I see it. For one thing, it gets the feeling of writing correct*. Punching the keys; sometimes its the rhythm. Reading for dinner and dessert. Write with your heart; re-write with your head. 

And then there’s the case of Sean Connery. His storied film career went out with whimper in films like The Avengers (1998) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), and we forget that he had one great film performance left to him. His Forrester takes the broad brush strokes of J.D. Salinger and made him a triumph of both sadness and triumph. There are plenty of leading men built on an image of machismo who couldn’t reach for that level of vulnerability, much less in his second-to-last role.

*For other entries in this hallowed pantheon, see Shakespeare in Love (1998), Wonder Boys (2000) (of which I am shocked to learn that, as of this writing, I have not written a review), and Adaptation (2002)… I’m sure I’m missing others which might have been made prior to the Clinton administration, but they are escaping me… Let’s just go with the introduction scene of Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and call it good.

The Rock (1996)

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, Ed Harris, Michael Biehn

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. It’s never been a very important movie in my pantheon.

Did I Like It: There’s always a hard, impenetrable crust of Michael Bayness to any Michael Bay film which make it hard to truly love. He—being the pinnacle of those music video crafters that ended up getting handed the keys to a feature film—can’t quite help himself. Every movie since Bad Boys (1995) always simmers at the wrong end of too-much, and the less said about his later Transformers sequels, the better off we all are.

But it isn’t like the film is unenjoyable, though. I’m struck here by the fact that, for all his failings, Bay has a willingness to cast good people. From John Spencer through Raymond Cruz, not fifteen minutes of the film goes by where I was not pleasantly surprised by a performer’s appearance which I had apparently forgotten since the last time I watched the film.

If you embrace the notion—I dare not say turn off your brain—that it is too much and ride the wave safely to shore, there are worse ways to spend a few hours, especially in those days before he became an action figure salesman*. He set out to make a big, dumb action movie, and that’s what we got…

But, if you take the film on the notion that one James Bond, 007 of MI6 is a codename which several individuals had filled over the years**, and that one of those men were named John Patrick Mason, then this film can transcend it’s dumb roots and become something quite special, indeed.

It does take some mental gymnastics to get there. Best you don’t turn your brain off for the movie.

*To be fair, plenty of very fine filmmakers ended up as action figure salesman. I’m looking in your direction, Mr. Lucas.

**A conclusion which that film series can somewhat support, if you ignore the fact that Lazenby, Moore, and Dalton’s version of the character all apparently were married to a woman named Teresa, now dead. It’s only really difficult to get over during the opening scene of For Your Eyes Only (1981). Ignore it and the Bond universe can become far richer, indeed.

The Lego Movie (2014)

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Cast: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, certainly. The theatrical release coincided with my most recent dip into the wild world of LEGO. I’ve taken another dip recently, partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and also because they have finally relented to the wishes I never even knew I had and are releasing a LEGO typewriter quite soon.

Did I Like It: It’s a pretty dumb idea for a movie, and one that has become all-too-prevalent in the movies over the last few decades. Take anything. Any property which people will automatically recognize and already has the potential for endless tie-in products. Doesn’t matter is if it has no narrative that one can find. Dust off some rudimentary Joseph Campbell. And you’ve got yourself a movie. After Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)—to say nothing of its sequels—and Batman (1989) it irretrievably became a governing principle of Hollywood production.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I like—hell, border on psychotically love—both of those films. Those films had narratives to tap into or create. The problems started when the experiment got out of the lab and anything was worthy of a feature film. You can get upset with this assessment if you like, but aside from Madeline Khan, Clue (1985) isn’t as good as you remember it. This doesn’t even cover the journeys into the inexplicable that were Ouija (2014) and Battleship (2012). Even the Pirates of the Caribbean films started off strong, but almost immediately descended into the basest forms of corporate synergy that one would have assumed they would always be.

And so, too, it could have been with The Lego Movie. But it wasn’t. Lord and Miller take their unique skills that actually made 21 Jump Street (2012) a watchable film and make a movie meant to market toys—delightful and engaging though they may be—and make it a revolutionary notion in simultaneous support of embracing the inner spark of creative anarchy and holding in high esteem the virtue of collective action.

It’s a children’s movie that should never have gotten the green light from a major studio, to say nothing of the board of directors of a toy company with shareholders to consider. Every once in a while film can harness something that surpasses the commercial necessities of producing pieces of art at such a high level.

That this worked so brilliantly—and not a little bit hilariously—almost makes the fact that they tried to make a movie out of Super Mario Bros. (1993) worth all the trouble.