rate the last movie you saw

[Monterey Jack]

At least King Kong '76 had some very nice cinematography, John Barry's lush score and Jessica Lange wearing not very much. Plus, it had The Dude.

[Paul MacLean]

I never saw King Kong Lives in the theater, but had recorded it when it was on TNT. When I got around to sitting down to actually watch the movie, the tape ran-out about 2/3 into the film...and I was surprised to discover I didn't really care.

The soundtrack album had a weird history. It was announced as an upcoming Varese Sarabande release (in fact the S.T.A.R. catalog listed the Varese LP for pre-order). Then when it appeared on the shelves, it was an MCA release. However the album credited Tom Null and Richard Kraft as executive producers.

Weirder still, on the actual disc itself, the hand-etched serial number near the center of the disc read "STV 81302-A" -- "STV" being the prefix used by Varese on all their LPs -- which indicates MCA used Varese's disc master.

I didn't like the film (at least what I saw of it!) but it was a fairly big assignment for John Scott, and I'm sorry for him it didn't perform better. After spending much of the 70s of working on mediocre movies and writing library music, John Scott was finally making serious inroads in Hollywood by the 80s. He may-well have even cracked the A-list, but unfortunately he had to return to England to take care of his mother (who was terminally ill at the time) and he fell out of the loop.

A shame, as he's a remarkable composer, and performer too...

[Eric Paddon]

I too have a soft spot for Kong 76 because it was really my first "event" film as a kid where I remember the merchandising tie-ins (the trading cards and stickers; the Ideal game) even before Star Wars. Plus, growing up in suburban NJ where the towers of the WTC were the only part of NY you could see from our town, there was also the feeling of connecting with the film just based on localism (my brother in fact was amongst the crowds of New Yorkers who converged on the giant Kong model placed in the WTC plaza). I had not seen the original 33 film at the time and in fact it would be several years before I saw it (and even then I saw it after I'd read a late 60s comics adaptation that is based more on the novelization). So this was my 'first' exposure to the material.

Today, while I know the '33 film is an untouchable masterpiece, I think the '76 film stands alone just fine because it tries to be its own film and doesn't let the shadow of '33 hang over it self-consciously the way it does with Jackson. The bottom line is that Jackson's so-called "homage" is his way of trying to top the same thing done earlier and it doesn't work. I prefer a Kong remake that stands on its own terms and overall, I think it works. The cinematography is beautiful for both Hawaii and also New York (capturing the NY I remember as a kid from the perspective of one who saw NY through the lens of field trips and not the seedy decay that inhabited most of its corners) and Lange is quite sexy in the native costume. IMO the weak link is Bridges with his even at that point in time out-of-style hippie hair.

[Jedbu]

FLIGHT 7/10

Nice seeing Zemeckis making a movie where he actually has to rely on his live actors and the script, rather than visual pyrotechnics, although he does stage a great plane crash. Towering performance by Washington as an airline pilot whose personal demons, that he evidently has been successful in keeping somewhat private, are exposed after he heroically crash lands a jet and is called a hero, which he cannot handle. The supporting cast was solid all the way down the line, with a special shout-out to Kelly Reilly as a drug addict who realizes that she is both too weak and too strong to be close with Washington and James Badge Dale as a cancer patient who has one light-hearted yet poignant scene with both Washington and Reilly in a hospital stairway. John Goodman is Washington's drug dealer in a performance that brings some humor but in many ways seems out of place in this film. Speaking of Goodman's character, was it REALLY necessary to use the Rolling Stone's "Sympathy for the Devil" to underscore his scenes? If so, it had the subtlety of a hand grenade in a barrel of offal, as did the Cowboy Junkie's version of "Sweet Jane" playing while a character is shooting up. Either Zemeckis did not feel that any underscore Sylvestri could come up with would make the same point or possibly Sylvestri decided songs would make the point much better than he could-either way, the songs took me out of the movie, and it made me anticipate other songs at the beginnings of other scenes (I fully expected "Bad to the Bone" to be used as Washington was on his way to the hearing at the end of the film.), which drives me crazy.

I did like the fact that Washington's character did have to make a tough moral choice at the film's climax, and his decision and the consequences do not fit the formula that one would expect with a film like this today. The final scene seemed a little bit forced to me, as if the filmmakers needed to send the audience out with a "feel-good" moment that I think would have been better left to us to decide if it would happen.

All this does not take away from Washington's brilliant performance-he is one of the few actors who can play a character with a bad side who can give that character humanity while still making that bad aspect center stage and never letting you forget that.

[AndyDursin]

THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924)
10

Wow...I'm not a huge silent movie aficionado but this Douglas Fairbanks classic is deemed a masterpiece for a reason. Now fully restored on Blu-Ray with Carl Davis' magnificent orchestral score adding to the grandeur of William Cameron Menzies' sets. Spectacular, and it only improves as it goes along, with a spellbinding final hour.

[Jedbu]

I have been waiting for the Thames Silents version of THIEF OF BAGDAD to come out on DVD/Blu-Ray for so long. I love the way Davis weaves Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" through the score, with the orchestra just blasting it out at the finale-gorgeous! Already on pre-order from Amazon.

[jkholm]

Oscar Nominees for Best Animated Short 2012
8/10

Adam and Dog
Beautifully animated story about what happened when the very first man met the very first dog. There is no dialogue and much of the action is shown in long shots. Director Minkyu Lee captures the qualities that have always made dogs man’s best friend. It’s now available for free on YouTube and is the most likely winner of the Oscar.

Fresh Guacamole
Very short (2 minutes) story which shows someone making guacamole only substituting unusual objects for the ingredients. For example, hand grenades instead of avocados and a Christmas tree bulb instead of garlic. Weird but clever.

Head Over Heels
Stop-motion fantasy in which a long married couple find themselves living in the same house but quite literally apart from each other. Upside-down to be specific. We see the husband at the “normal” level of the house and the wife walking upside-down. Events soon transpire to test their love for each other. A very clever short with much emotional impact. Also stands a good chance of winning.

Paperman
This is the one most people have probably seen since it was shown before Wreck-it-Ralph last year. It’s an excellent short about an office worker who meets a woman on a train platform. When he realizes she works in the building across from his he uses hundreds of paper airplanes to get her attention. The black an white animation is outstanding as is the musical score.

Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare
Amusing “Simpsons” short finds baby Maggie ocne again sent to the Ayn Rand School for Tots. This time she tries to keep a bully from killing a butterfly. It was nice but I recall an episode set in the same day care in which she led her classmates to freedom in a parody of The Great Escape that was better.

The theatrical program is always rounded out by some of the films that didn’t make the final list of nominees. These included “Abiogenesis,” a New Zealand short with robots creating life on a lifeless planet; “Dripped” a bizarre French short about an art thief who eats paintings and turns into the art; and “The Gruffalo’s Child,” a lengthy (27 minutes) adaptation of a children’s book featuring the voices of Helena Bonham-Carter, Tom Wilkinson and John Hurt. It’s about a young monster-like creature who leaves the comfort of her cave to search for the Big Bad Mouse. The film looked quite nice but went on way too long.

[Monterey Jack]

Yippee-kie-yay, Mr. Falcon...

-Die Hard (1988): 10/10

-Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990): 10/10

-Die Hard Sucks With A Vengeance (1995): 5/10

-Live Free Or Die Hard (2007): 7.5/10

People who think that the second Die Hard is the "bad" one (at least until the PG-13 rating on Live Free automatically made that the "worst" of the series ) are out of their minds...it's a phenomenally good sequel, the equal of the first in most every respect. Maybe I just have a weakness for snowbound action sequences (and appropriate considering the current New England weather woes). WAV is easilly the worst of the bunch, with ridiculously poor visual effects (it honestly looks like a film made over 15 years earlier...the greenscreen on the film is laughably unconvincing), absurd coincidences and a shameless overuse of shakey-cam.

[AndyDursin]

100% agree on that summation MJ!

[Monterey Jack]

There's a LOT of critical revisionism regarding Die Harder these days...back when it was first released, it was a huge box office success and got mostly positive reviews (Gene Siskel even putting it on his top-ten list for 1990), but now, it's the "bad" Die Hard movie, probably because Renny Harlin has made mostly crap ever since (Cliffhanger excepted). And I cannot understand why people love WAV so much...maybe it's the Last Crusade fallacy of thinking just because it's funnier and the hero has a sidekick played by a critically-respected actor and it connects more directly to the first film, that automatically makes it "better", despite all of the catastrophically-inept action sequences, ludicrously poor use of greenscreen (seriously, it looks like a movie made in 1975, not two decades later), and the terrible special effects (the boat explosion at the climax in particular...that looked as anemic as the helicopter "explosions" in Diamonds Are Forever...24 years earlier ). And people bagged relentlessly on the fourth movie because of the "pu$$y" PG-13 rating and because of petty crap like having the Mac Guy as the sidekick and the admittedly-lame cameo by Kevin Smith, but as far as action sequences go, it's FAR better than the third movie, and the visual effects (mostly captured in-camera or with convincing model work) are top-notch. Yeah, I'll admit I was one of those sneering when I heard about the PG-13, but I gave the film a shot, and I still think it's a lot of fun. If the new movie is as good as Live Free, I'll be completely satisfied.

[jkholm]

100% agree on that summation MJ!

Same here. I might even rank Part 2 as the best but that's only because I saw it first. I only watched Part 3 once in the theater and hardly remember anything about it.

[AndyDursin]

I don't get the "revisionism" over 2 either. The film was a bigger hit than the original, got glowing reviews and was basically universally well-received -- yet you see message board people think 3 is better, and I agree, it's because Jackson is in it/McTiernan directed it and they think it has a "better rep" for that reason alone. I actually couldn't believe someone say that 2 "didn't feel like a Die Hard movie," when it feels the most like the original because it had so many people back in front of and behind the camera from the original!

I've said this before, but I watched 3 at a preview screening the week before it came out. People were literally falling asleep during it, and these were fans stoked to see it because they won tickets from a radio screening. That scene where they unload Irons' gold (to the strains of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home") or whatever it was took FOREVER. Some guy behind me yawned and said outloud "when is this going to end?" The action scenes were poorly handled and edited -- and the ending a total, complete embarrassment. Obviously a last-minute reshoot, and it was hideous. I don't understand why but that film was a co-production between Fox and Andrew Vajna's Cinergi Entertainment too, and seemed to lack the production values of the prior two movies in a very big way. The supporting cast (nobody returning except for Willis) was a bizarre group also (Colleen Camp?).

I find most of the revisionism on 2 coming from younger message board people, especially over at Blu-ray.com where the average poster seems to be between 18-25. They have very little knowledge of anything pre-1990 (how many threads do you see for new announcements, and there are three or four obligatory "is this worth a blind buy? I've never seen it" comments, no matter what the film is). They also seem to generate opinions based on not so much what they've seen, but by the reputation of the film or person who made it. Renny Harlin (a good action director -- not a great filmmaker, but a decent action filmmaker) did a fine job with 2, and a much better job than McTiernan did with 3. For all these people who seem to think McTiernan is this great director, you can point to loads of bombs (LAST ACTION HERO, MEDICINE MAN, BASIC, NOMADS, ROLLERBALL) and indifferently directed films (like SUCKS WITH A VENGEANCE and THOMAS CROWN) in his filmography...but these "kids" don't seem to acknowledge those, probably because they've never seen or heard of them. (I can't give him tons of credit for 13TH WARRIOR since a lot of what I liked about it, namely Goldsmith's score, was Chricton's doing -- it's also possible his re-edit is better than the film McTiernan originally turned in, though sadly we'll never know I guess).

Fact is that DIE HARD had a terrific script and great people all over the place behind the lens -- the production personnel on that film and the casting was exceptionally strong. Not saying McTiernan didn't deliver, but let's face it, it's a collaborative business and the rest of his filmography (outside of PREDATOR and HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, though the latter isn't a movie people really talk about anymore) doesn't indicate that he alone was responsible for its success, or was even the primary thing pushing the film forward. There are times when you read scripts and the movie is already "there" -- I have to think DIE HARD was one of those cases, and Joel Silver (to give credit where he actually deserved it) put all the right people in the right places (whether it was McTiernan, Jan DeBont, Bruce Willis, etc.) to make it happen.

So with DIE HARD 3, these younger folks think because McTiernan directed it and Jackson starred, that it was a more significant or better film...when in reality, the movie didn't do as well as the earlier two and wasn't nearly as well received either. There's a reason it took years to make another one.

Beyond that, I think it's just abundantly clear which film is better. 2, to me, is a tighter variation on the first movie's formula -- it's like a well oiled machine that hits the same beats but does so effectively all the way through with some effective variation (the wintry setting as opposed to L.A., etc.). 3 is just a lousy movie. There's no real chemistry between Jackson and Willis, the two characters are poorly written (I didn't find their banter funny either), and the whole editing/execution lacks severely. When they managed to waste Irons' presence -- which at the time was a big deal since he was still an in-demand guy a few years removed from his Oscar -- that says all you need to know about what a disappointment it was.

[Jedbu]

I remember all the press surrounding DH2-how it was one of the least snowy winters in years and they were literally chasing snow around the upper midwest and into Canada for weeks, to the point where they had to "cheat" the very last shot and use a matte painting to show a whole bunch of planes in a tight grouping after all of them had to land quickly. Also, the paint on a number of the planes began to run when it got the snow on it-they were under the gun to finish to make the release date, so the paint was not drying in time to shoot some scenes-you can see it with Holly's plane on the top. Add to that one of the biggest bloopers of that year-Willis is in the DC airport yet he uses a payphone with the Pacific Bell logo in plain sight-that got a huge laugh at the showing I went to opening day.

I remember that Harlin got the gig because the Fox suits were pleased with his work on the Dice film FORD FAIRLANE-he brought it in under budget and shaved some time off the schedule so they put him on this. Aside from DH2, CLIFFHANGER and some parts of LONG KISS GOODNIGHT I have always thought he pretty much directed with his crotch, although he has done some good work on the series BURN NOTICE.

DHWAV is pretty bad, and the ending was redone-originally Willis' character was to catch up to Irons' character in Paris with a big face-off at the Eiffel Tower, but it evidently did not go over well with test screenings so the finale we now have was cobbled together rather quickly to make the release date. McTiernan is another director like Harlin, although he did a pretty good job later in his career with THOMAS CROWN, which I would be willing to bet he got due to getting along well with Pierce Brosnan on NOMADS, and I think he directs more with his brain than Harlin, as well. But talk about two directors who flamed out pretty quickly....

[AndyDursin]

Trevor Willsmer (who used to post here until he blew up over the Virginia Tech shooting thread and to this day will never speak to me again) once told me years ago the DH3 ending was re-shot because it was supposed to be a lead-in for a 4th film with Irons' villain getting away. When it became clear the film didn't turn out well and/or was running out of money, they hastily scrapped together the ending they used (or that's what he told me).

There is an alternate ending on the DH3 disc but it's an even more low key "talky" confrontation between Willis and Irons. That Eiffel Tower sequence was ever shot...certainly can't imagine it would've scored lower in test screenings than what they used!

As far as Harlin goes, yeah, he's a hack -- a good one occasionally, but that's what he is. In addition to CLIFFHANGER and DH2, I liked DEEP BLUE SEA and his NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET was one of the better sequels visually. Also realize I'm in the minority but I felt he did a good job with EXORCIST THE BEGINNING under the circumstances, and made a far better movie than the abandoned film Schrader produced. (Still problematic but it had some redeeming elements in it than a lot of people who never saw it dump on, much like HOWARD THE DUCK).

[Monterey Jack]

Now, we must agree to disagree on Thomas Crown Affair, Andy...to me, that was McTiernan's "comeback" feature after too many stinkers like Sucks With A Vengeance, Medicine Man (Lorraine Bracco...ugh) and Last Action Hero. I think the film is charming, beautifully directed/edited and the chemistry between Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo was far more potent than the ersatz-"chemistry" he had with any of his Bond Girls during his tenure as 007 (and how refreshing it was at the time -- when so many aging actors well into their fifties and sixties were routinely cast opposite actresses in their twenties and early thirties -- to see a middle-aged leading man cast opposite an actress the same age). In fact, as far as "heist" movies go, this is the film that SWAV should have been. I always watch that film every other year or so and remain delighted by it. Sadly, other than that and to a lesser extent The 13th Warrior (I'd love to see the original cut of that, although Goldsmith's score for the Michael Crichton re-edit is one of his best late-period efforts), McT's post-Red October filmography has been pretty dire. He came on like gangbusters in the late 80's as a particularly intelligent and stylish action/suspense filmmaker, but now he's basically been forgotten, aside from his chronic legal problems. And yet people still want him to direct another Die Hard, because he's the only "real" filmmaker to make one!