Minority Report (2002)

Southland View is becoming the Six Degrees of Colin Farrell.  No matter what movie I review, it comes back to him like Kevin Bacon.  And to think I didn't like him much before.

Tom Cruise works for the Pre-Crime Unit in 2054, which relies on information gathered from their PreCogs (who appear not of this world) to find out information about crimes before they occur.  The Pre-Crime Unit can then swoop in and stop the crime before it occurs.  John Anderton has a special interest in it since he lost a son under mysterious circumstances.

Pre-Crime is set in Washington DC and is not above politics.  Colin Farrell is sent in by the Justice Department to sniff around and Tom Cruise begins to suspect a rat.  He seek to liberate the PreCog to solve the mystery of what appears to be an unsolved murder.  This PreCog, Agatha, had a differert vision/version of the unsolved murder, thereby the vision was outnumbered by the other two and was called the minority report.

The vision of the future is remarkable accurate even just 10 years later:  touchscreen computing, automated spider robots, retinal scans.  There are many Speilberg touches here:  the broken family, the space oddities, the washout lighting.  Also homages to other films:  particularly Clockwork Orange and of course Total Recall.

* * *

Fight Club (1999)

The seamy underside of an otherwise respectable world is the wheelhouse of director David Fincher.  Having liked his recent work in The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I turned to an earlier work.

Edward Norton plays a drone worker who seeks out support groups to help him combat insomnia due to the boredom of this life.  The excitement helps.  He goes to so many of these groups that he begins to notice Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) who plays a thin, goth woman who is a threat/help to him as he seeks to make sense of his predicament.    Notice any similarity to the other Fincher movies mentioned?

Edward (we're not sure if he is Cornelius or Rupert or Jack at this point) meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) who invites him to Fight Club, an underground roving fighting organization  modern day dueling to establish manhood and throw off the shackles of the world).  As Fight Club grows in size, so does the leadership of Tyler, much to the envy/dismay of Cornelius/Rupert/Jack.  To make matters worse, Tyler and Marla are getting way to close for comfort.

Fight Club is the way that the men rebel against their surroundings in life.  The rebel violence spills over into the real world.  Can it be stopped?  Should it be stopped?

The duality of the Office Space repression v. Clockwork Orange rebellion is supposed to be the bigger point but it gets lost in the forest through the trees.

SECOND REVIEW - Sept 10, 2015

Upon a second viewing, this Pre 9/11 film has a lot of themes that might be disturbing to modern sensibilities, and not just the fighting.  The passive/aggressive aspect, the Up-In-The-Air, corporate stiffness, and the final "we're like terrorists" aspect complete with crumbling buildings makes this worth a second watch.  Director David Fincher plays this one a little heavy, but it works.

* * * * of 5

Lincoln

Let's be honest:  What red-blooded American wouldn't like a Lincoln/ Speilberg combo?  Even if one half starts to drag, the other half can pick up the ball and run with it.

Based (?) on Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, the short period of January to April 1865 is the setting for this historical story.  The political struggle to pass the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery is mixed with the desire/other political struggle to end the Civil War. The amendment has passed in the Senate but must pass the House.  Every vote counts.

Watching this history lesson with the soliloquies and speeches and story worthy of Shakespeare and Daniel Day-Lewis, it become hard to separate fact from fiction.  Did these people really exist?:   James Spader as the sleazy operative, Tommy Lee Jones as the noble lawman, Sally Field as the long-suffering wife, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the son forced to grow up and Tim Blake Nelson as the goofy sidekick.  As the old saying goes, if they didn't, we'd have to invent them.

The answer is that it doesn't matter.  The Speilberg magic keeps the movie moving along.  For that, I'm glad because it makes a gripping story out of something that we all already know how it ends.  We are Americans after all.

Twilight Marathon

My special guest post is from one of my favorite website, Grantland.com.

Robert Mays did the honors of attending the marathon showing of all five Twilight films.

Here is his review.

Best line:  I am now as familiar with all five movies as anyone can be in a day.

Total Recall (1990)

I said I would see this after seeing the 2012 remake.  As Arnold might say, I'll be back!

Arnold plays Quaid, who is awakened by a nightmare, with his wife Sharon Stone beside him.  You know what that means!  He wants to travel to Mars, but his wife trashes the idea.  So instead, he goes to Rekall who will implant the memory of the trip for him.  He requests a secret agent theme.  Of course the transaction goes all wrong, and he starts on the run, discovering that he (and she) is not what it seemed.

To uncover the mystery, "Get your a-- to Mars!".  The imagined future of 1990 is nearly true today: the Mars/space travel, the video conference phones, the automated taxis.

Surprisingly, the movie(s) this reminded me of the most was....  Star Wars.  Yes, the storm troopers, the Darth Vader/Darth Maul, the mutants, the Luke/Leia dynamic, the colonization of Mars, the resistance.

This movie's time was fortuitous, being on the cusp of the 80s and 90s.  As such it incorporates the best touches of both:  from the 80s, the kitschy action scenes and good v. evil.  From the 90s, the suspenseful interpersonal drama (Basic Instinct, Disclosure).

* * *

Speilberg Rankings

In honor of the new Lincoln film by Steven Speilberg, Vulture.com asked to send it your Speilberg ranking.

My list was:

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Catch Me If You Can
The Terminal

The first two set the standard that seems to be copied regularly.  The latter two were great character studies that really took you into their world.

Of course there are many other fine movies that the staggering box office number would suggest that are great in their own way.  Hard to think of a movie he's done that's not been very successful.  Like his cohort George Lucas, he has a way of finding a broad common denominator that is appealing to many people.  That's a real gift.

Here's Vulture's full list.  What yours?

In Bruges (2008)

Since I liked Seven Psychopaths, I decided to have a look at In Bruges, Martin McDonagh's first.

"In Bruges" is sort of the tagline of this movie, which is kind of like a European version of Fargo, but instead of "in Brainard" we are "In Bruges"  Like the snowy Northern Plains, the beautiful, medieval city of Bruges is really the biggest star of the show.

Colin Farrell is Ray and Brendan Gleeson is Ken, 2 hitmen who are send to Bruges to lay low after a botched job.  The buddy movie starts as they are assigned one room in a quaint B&B.  One wants to see the sights, the other wants to get back to London ASAP.  But the London-bound meets a beautiful local girl and comes into contact with all sorts of wacky characters you might run across in a small town in Europe.  All screeches to a halt when the hitman's boss, Ralph Fiennes decided to come to Bruges.

The moves dives into 80s excess of hookers and drugs but is grounded in good dialogue and the honor among thieves.  Watch closely for the movie-within-a-movie cues that will reappear in Seven Psychopaths.  And the dreaminess.  In Fucking Bruges.

Seven Psychopaths

The Colin Farrell film fest continues with an old stereotype of the writer's blocked writer (The Shining, Adaptation) struggling to put words on a yellow pad in this case.  He reaches out to his friend played by Sam Rockwell who is only too happy to help:  he not only gives a title but starts to tell stories that should be in the movie, complete with how they should relate.  It prompts Colin Farrell to dictate the ending.

I won't give away the ending but suffice it to say the movie-within-a-movie concept (Argo) comes together well particularly with the story as an adaptable draft.  Let's try this... no, change it to that... etc.)

The plot line revolves around two lovable losers of Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken who make their living stealing dogs and holding the dogs for reward.

     "Why don't you give him back?

      "But keeping him is the whole point of kidnapping!"

But when they dognap the big mobster's fluffy dog, bad craziness ensues, as Hunter S. Thompson might say.  In fact, Duke himself might haved like this movie.

Ultimately, the movie is much more about how to weave a story together involving.... you guessed it, Seven Psychopaths, while not knowing the ending.  In that way, it was similar to Cloud Atlas, where the audience is involved in trying to figure things out, while the movie acts like it is trying to figure it out at the same time.

Directed by Martin McDonagh.  * * * 1/2

I have rented In Bruges and will review next