I'm still in the honeymoon period for Netflix instant movies. I'm simply fascinated by the seamless delivery over the Internet and my wireless home network.
But, the result of watching more movies is that you encounter a surprising amount of crap. It's like reading lots of books. There are only so many classics and new works which will become classics.
When I was young the movie was a weekly event. As a schoolboy, that meant Saturday afternoon watching Johnny Mack Brown oaters or Abbot & Costello farces at the theater down the street. A dime to get in, a dime for popcorn and maybe another nickel or dime for a candy bar during the second feature. Along the way, I saw On The Waterfront, Man With the Golden Arm, Spartacus and some great stuff as well.
As a teen-ager with a driver's license it meant Friday or Saturday night at the drive-in and it really didn't matter what the movie was. Occasionally you might even forget to take the speaker off the post and hang it on the window. Working on those "night moves" not movies.
The mega-multi-plexes seem to tell me that the pattern still goes on. Every new movie that comes out seems to rake in millions and then go to disk. Some are truly great. Some are truly memorable. Some names at the Academy Awards are unfamiliar when uttered and then never heard again.
Two weeks ago I watched "Avatar" at home. Blu-ray, big screen, unimpressed. It was nothing more than an exercise in what CGI can do with color and shapes. The story was a hodge-podge of liberal morality play and over-used cliches from other movies. How many times must we see the villain in the big robot killing suit eventually fall over on his side like the walkers in Star Wars or the bad guy in Iron Man?
Two nights ago it was "Men Who Stare at Goats". This was clearly a case of three reputable movie stars having lost a Super Bowl bet. There is no other reason why Clooney, Bridges and Spacey would have done it. It was fraternity hazing for millionaires. Look stupid for the public and see if they will rave about you. Dreck!
Last night it was "Crazy Heart". Sorry, but it was a fifteen minute idea stretched into two hours plus. There is simply no way the woman would jump into bed with the drunken old country singer. None. And, the climax was a non-event. How many times every day does grandpa at the mall lose track of the four-year-old? Ten thousand? A hundred and fifty thousand? Not exactly grand tragedy. Insipid.
I'm sick of remakes, comic books, car chases with flip-ramps and end-over-ends, mechanical villains, four-letter language, blatant plot stealing, and weak characters who aren't in the slightest bit remarkable.
Anybody seen a really good movie lately? Seriously.
8 comments:
I've seen plenty, but I keep coming back to The Baader-Meinhof Complex, which I got via the Netflix mail service. It's fascinating. A dramatic look back at the Red Army Faction, an outfit that waged a bombing, kidnapping, terror campaign in West Germany late 60s, early 70s. Leaves much unexplained, but still good.
Also liked Pickup on South Street, with Richard Widmark as a petty thief who pickpockets a wallet containing some microfilm headed to a Communist spy ring. Directed by Sam Fuller in his rough and ready style. It's political noir, with a lot of great crook banter.
Ed you are exhibiting the symptoms of Old Age...youv'e seen most of the innovative stuff and now can recognize the derivative drivel when you see it :)
Altho I do have to say the writing talent in this country is really taking a nose dive with the dumbing down of education.
I think the last truely Awesome movie I saw was the Special Extended Edition of the Lord of the Ring books....of course it was all based on the books so... I hear they are releasign the extended edition of that trilogy on Blu-Ray next year....I might fork over for another copy in that format.
Raz,
When you were in Thailand flying F-105s I was still in high school. I remember how you could go out on a Saturday night date with $10 and have enough for movie tickets and popcorn, followed by a stop at a nearby ice cream place and still have money left over. Gas was just 35 cents/gal, and $2 would last me for over a week. An introductory flying lesson was just $5, and you could rent a Cessna 150 for just $11/hour. You probably paid a similar amount for your Piper Colt. How things have changed.
As for movies, you have probably seen favorites such as Chinatown, The Blue Max, plus the many Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson and Humphrey Bogart classics. Some other Netflix favorites of mine are The Train, The Lives of Others, The Boat, Pirate Radio, Catch 22 and The House on 92nd Street. Fyi, a Netflix rep recently told me that you can now stream 23% of their movies, and that percentage will be steadily increasing. And if you get tired of movies, you might enjoy some of the great 1950s-60s music from iTunes.
The last good movie I saw was "Taken". Glad I went to see it in the theater.
It seems Pixar is the only studio turning out anything resembling fresh ideas/good movies. Sad, isn't it?
I have to disagree on avatar. It was a great movie, who's anti-illegal immigration message was regrettably so subtle that most people didn't get it. You have a group of peaceful people, living in their own country, minding their own business. Then you have these strangers from another country who come in and set up shop without so much as a by-your-leave. At first the native citizens of this country, who are good and tolerant people, try to get along, and even help the strangers as they can. But more and more of the strangers keep coming, always taking more and more, until one day, they just decide to kick the native citizens out of their own house. At which point the natives finally realize that there could be no accommodating these people, and so the had forceably load them up and send them all home, with the exception of the few who chose to learn the language, obey the laws, and assimilate.
And the men who stare at goats was good if you realize that it was in no way a parody of anything. It was a spot on illustration of exactly how the average leftist thinks.
Oh, Yeah, if you haven't seen Taken, that's a must watch.
Liam Neeson plays an ex-CIA operator who is a tad goofy and awkward as he attempts to get closer to his young daughter by taking an early retirement. His ex-wife is remarried to a wealthy businessman, and she has contempt for Neeson's character.
Then the daughter goes off on a little trip to Paris for some "seeing the world," and she gets taken by a white slavery ring.
Neeson, as he says, has a "particular set of skills" and he goes into action with them.
Of course he breaks all sorts of laws and defies all sorts of orders to stop, but it's a good ride watching his pursuit of the bad guys.
It has become one of those movies that I stop and watch every time I run across it while channel surfing.
The Pixar comment was right on. Last year's best film was Up. The sequence chronicling the old man's life with this wife was as brilliant a 10 minutes as anything I've ever seen, and Toy Story 3 was a worth addition to the franchise. The under rated Rattatouie proposed that even rats shouldn't live off the efforts of others.
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