Death Wish

1974 gritty urban Western

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Jeff Goldblum and some other dangerous weirdos murder the wife of a guy with a mustache. Both the guy and the mustache decide to get revenge, take the law into his own hands, and become a vigilante killing machine.

It's ludicrous how many times this guy is the target of these thugs in this movie. Out of all the people (heck, out of all the architects) in New York City, they attempt over and over to mug this one architect who's carrying around a gun for purposes of shooting people just like them. What are the chances? I mean, what makes Bronson look like such an easy target? I never really bought him as an action hero when I was a kid. I maybe could have seen him playing Mario in a game based on the video game. Still, I don't see Charles Bronson and think, "There's a guy who'll be easy to mug. Let's get him, boys!" And it probably would be the mustache that would keep me away. When you're out there mugging with your posse, a mustache is usually a sign to steer clear, right? Am I wrong here? I think, by the way, that this movie is the reason why I always assumed New York City was the most dangerous place on earth when I was a kid. You've got people like Jeff Goldblum running around painting swastikas on people's walls and guys being attacked on the streets and subways every single night. I used to have nightmares about New York when I was a kid.

After some weird opening credits with a lengthy returning-home-from-vacation montage and a shot of Bronson's wife picking her ear backed by some Herbie Hancock noodling (I loved Bronson's "What's wrong with right here on the beach?" line and tried to fit similar lines into the rest of the movie--"What's wrong with right here in the taxi?" "What's wrong with right here in the bread aisle?" I've tried it in my personal life, too. "Jennifer, what's wrong with right here at the soccer game?" She doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about though.) Things really pick up once Jeff Goldblum shows up. He's so awesome and completely believable as a thug, just this raw physicality. He and his freaks--they're Freak 1, Freak 2, etc. in the credits--are such immature criminals. Of course, I'd probably wag my tongue at grocery store shoppers and throw turkeys around if I were a 1970's thug, too. And if attacking women (hypothetically, of course), I'd probably spend the majority of my time painting them instead of the traditional hooligan activities like raping and stealing stuff. I really like all the bad guys in this. Like a lot of 70's movies, they're all just so sleazy and obvious, the type of people who would likely be arrested just for looking the way they do. And only some of them are black! They're just all so jittery and cocky, throwing out mo-fos and spontaneously rhyming ("Throw us the money, honey!" The lesson I learned is that thuggery might not be the worst career choice if this teaching thing doesn't work out. No, maybe the lesson learned is that I could easily get over my wife's murder by shooting thugs, repainting my living room to cover up swastikas, and blasting game show music. No, hold up. The lesson is obviously that America needs to loosen up its gun laws because it's our second amendment right to have any kind of gun we want to and liberals have made it far too difficult for guys with mustaches to purchase firearms. Yeah, that's it. The pro-gun propaganda here did make my teeth hurt a little bit, but the random little person, the guy with an artist dog at the precinct, and a bum's hat error made up for it. This is an entertaining enough bit of 70's stink with about the right mix of grit and goof, but I never had any desire to see any of the numerous sequels and still don't. I imagine I'm missing more of the same but with a lot less Goldblum. Doesn't somebody kill his daughter in the second one? Maybe I did see that. What happens in the third one? Does somebody run over his dog or something?

Jurassic Park

1993 dinosaur movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An old guy uses science to make some real walking and breathing dinosaurs, just like Walt Disney did with Abraham Lincoln and a bunch of other presidents for his Hall of Presidents. And like Disney, the old guy's got plans to make billions of dollars by opening up an amusement park where guests can feed llamas to a T-Rex or ride on a Bronchiosaurus. And no, I'm not even sure if there is such dinosaur as a Bronchiosaurus, but it looks right. Somebody told me that T-Rexes aren't even real dinosaurs anymore, but I think paleontologists are just looking for something to do and rearranging bones.

First, I like that poster. It's simple yet iconic. Second, let me tell you a little story that you won't really care about. It's important though because aside from giving this a bonus point for wacky Jeff Goldblum, I'm giving this a bonus point for what occurred in this story I'm going to tell you. My lovely wife and I saw this in a theater in Knoxville, I think, and we both liked it. When we were back home again in Indiana for a break, it was playing at the lovely, bat-infested theater. Admission was two bucks, the experience was grand on the big screen, and we decided we would go see it again. I asked my brother to tag along, and he refused, presumably because the movie cost too much money to make. We said, "Come on, Mark. It's giant dinosaurs eating lawyers and chasing annoying children!" but he still refused. It was an opportunity to see a flick in the Indiana and maybe have a wild animal bite at you while you get to spend some time with family, but still, he just wasn't interested. I'm not sure if he's seen the movie since then. Big budgets and the needs for blockbusters are difficult things to overcome some times, but this has enough story, some scenes with just exquisite suspense, and a few solid performances to make it a very good movie. And this breaks the world's record for the most Richard Attenboroughs on the screen at the same time which is something. I really like the dinosaurs, the best thing about them being that I can't tell which ones are giant animatronic things ("Are these characters auto-erotica?") and which ones are made with computers. The brachiosaur look a bit rubbery, but all the dinosaurs beat those silly-looking apes in the new Planet of the Apes movie. And that T-Rex looks so good when we finally get to see him, although it is in dark and rainy circumstances. That scene has so much gradually-building dramatic tension that it keeps you on the edge of your seat even after you've already seen this. And then you see the T-Rex in the daylight, and he doesn't look bad at all. Of course, some big bad movie music has to pop up during that T-Rex scene, and that made me roll my eyes. Things were so perfect when it was just dinosaur grumbling and squelchy steps in the mud. I don't need big movie music to feel something. But at least Spielberg does something interesting with all the money he uses to make movies. Speaking of that, I'm pretty sure Jeff Goldblum is animatronic at times here, too. He's got an almost deplorable excess of personality, but as always, he's fun to watch. My favorite moment in the entire movie is when he sees a dinosaur and grabs his own nipple. I wonder if that, and all his stammered uh's, is scripted or if he's just improvising. Wayne Knight (Hello, Newman) is too wacky to be in this movie. His curly hair is too distracting, but his demise is another perfectly suspenseful moment. Neither Sam Neill or Laura Dern get in the way, even they turn into action heroes. A scene where Neill imitates a brachiosaur confused me though. I saw a guy at the zoo doing that with a lion once, but you'd think a scientist would know better. The weakest links are the children. I have a theory that Spielberg has a facility, probably in the basement of his mansion, where he stores the same types of children to use in his movies. I'm sure Drew Barrymore will write about it in a memoir one day. I did like when one said, "That dinosaur doesn't look very scary. He looks like a six-foot turkey," and is handled well by Neill's character who references his intestines being spilled. I wish Spielberg would have had the balls to kill them both. Actually, in my version of this movie, all the human characters would have died, a penultimate scene would have featured two dinosaurs jumping up and giving each other a reptilian high five, and a meteor would have hit the island killing all the creatures. That's a twist that would make M. Night Shamalamadingdong shit his pants.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

2004 action-comedy

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 18/20)

Plot: The titular pop oceanographer barely raises enough money to venture out and make a sequel to the documentary in which his friend and long-time collaborator was eaten by a shark that may or may not exist. Zissou deals with his fading popularity, his possible son who tags along for the adventure, a cute and pregnant magazine writer, and a variety of obstacles that threaten to derail production.

Bill Murray fans--here's your chance to see Bill without a shirt. Murray's the sun for the solar system of this movie. A lot of the humor with his character is the writing, but any future comedy mega-superstars need to look here for a course on comic timing and deadpan perfection. Check the scene where he answers the question about the purpose for killing the shark or the little pause and lean-back before he engages in fisticuffs with a heckler or his "OK, man" answer to Ned's introduction of himself. In Will Ferrell's hands, this character would be lost, drifting through an insipid ocean of slapstick and pointless screaming. In Murray's hands, the character is still lost, but he's lost in this existential funk, in his malaise, in his truths and consequences, and in the chore of being human. And yes, I realize how pretentious that might sound, but if you're going to write about why you like a Wes Anderson movie, you better be prepared to go full hipster or not go at all, right? I've watched this little character study more than any other Wes Anderson movie, I think, probably because I think it's his funniest. Still, I've not been able to put my finger on what it's about exactly. There's a lot of playing around with reality vs. this manufactured reality. You get the documentary footage, all scratchily authentic, and it's so obviously staged that you start to pick out scenes with Steve and his maybe-son Ned that also have to be staged. And then you wonder how much of the action sequences that go unapologetically over-the-top are actually real. And you wonder if all those sea creatures Henry Selick animated are real or imagined or both. I fooled myself into believing that the scenes that are showing Zissou's real emotions and the scenes where he's hamming it up for an audience--call it the real Steve and the documentary Steve--are actually filmed differently, framed in unnaturally stiff and more naturally free ways respectively. Of course, I could just be making that up. Either way, I do know that the big payoff, the scene with all the characters humorously crammed into that tiny yellow submarine, is definitely real, and Bill Murray's "I wonder if it remembers me" really touches me and just might be his finest acting moment. No, wait. Let me take that back immediately after I typed it. Murray's finest acting moment is after he explains how their helmets played music to Cate Blanchett's character and then demonstrated with a little dance. If Murray's the sun, all that orbits around him is about perfect in this. Anderson's usual attention to detail gives us Steve Zissou and crew action figures (which, I believe, I hadn't noticed before), plenty of beautiful sea life including a Crayon Ponyfish and this lovely scene that mixes the pink of fish with the blue of the water--two colors that probably should never ever be seen together like that, all those wonderful Bowie songs performed in Portugeuse by Seu Jorge, a three-legged dog, an acrobatic whale. And speaking of acrobatic, how about the way the camera maneuvers during the scene that gives a tour of the Zissou boat and then later during the scene where they steal from Goldblum's sea lab? Those are both so perfectly orchestrated that it makes my nipples hard just thinking about them. The periphery characters and the actors who portray them are so perfect, too. Willem Dafoe wouldn't necessarily be my first choice to play a needy German, but he's hilarious here. Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Michael Gambon, Jeff Goldblum--all perfectly cast. And I had to give this a bonus point for Bud Cort, and his little smile after they do that little hands-in-the-middle teamwork thing in an elevator has got to be one of my favorite movie smiles ever. But then I had to take the bonus point away because Kumar Pallana isn't in this movie. One more thing--I've always wondered if the beginning scenes at the screening of Part One of the latest Zissou documentary with the ornate theater and the terrific Mark Mothersbaugh music and the giant painting and the way the shots are framed was a nod to Peter Greenaway. It makes me laugh to think about all that formality leading to a guy in overalls coming to grab the microphone from the stage.


Note: I just checked the rulebook, and I am not allowed to take away a bonus point just because Kumar Pallana isn't in a movie.

Vibes

1988 romantic adventure comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A pair of psychics, one aided by a friend from the other side and a psychometrist who can know the history of objects by touching them, are recruited to travel to Ecuador in search of a guy's missing son. They find out that that guy, Harry Buscafusco, isn't being completely honest with them. Then, it's adventure time!

Wow, that might win a shane-movies award for worst movie poster. And believe it or not, there was another that was worse. That one had separate pictures of Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper holding a hand up with the brilliant tagline "Put your hands on our hands and feel the. ..VIBES." Now I know what you're thinking, dear readers--a movie with Jeff Goldblum Goldbluming it up combined with the acting talents of one Cyndi Lauper? And wait just a second! Peter Falk is in this, too? How the hell can this miss? And don't get me wrong--this might not be a great movie, but it is kind of a fun movie. It's a Babaloo Mandel/Lowell Ganz screenplay, and yes, I'm only pointing that out because I wanted to type the name Babaloo. I also noticed during the opening credits that Googy Gress has a part in this. And getting tiny amounts of screentime are Steve Buscemi and Van Dyke Parks, but their names aren't nearly as funny as Babaloo and Googy. Boy, is that Cyndi Lauper a presence. Of course, I would find it difficult to act naturally next to Goldblum, and besides, she probably just took this part because she wanna have fun anyway. Falk's as awesome as he always is, and there are a few good lines even if the story gets int the way of the fun too often. There's just enough wackiness for enough people to latch on and throw his into the cult classic category. Goldblum's got a cult following anyway, doesn't he? Goldblum makes a variety of weird faces which makes me wonder, as much as I like the guy, how he ever had a serious career in Hollywood. There's also a moment in this that made me really uncomfortable where Goldblum touched Cyndi Lauper's rump. He only did it once though, not time after time. Oh, and there's a baseball-playing monkey if that's your thing. He out-acts Cyndi Lauper actually.

The Favour, the Watch, and the Very Big Fish

1991 comedy movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Louis takes photographs depicting Biblical scenes, and his boss is on him because he has yet to find a suitable Jesus. Meanwhile, he does a favor (sorry, favour) for an actor pal--orgasm voice work for a pornographic movie--and meets Sybil who he is smitten by. Her story leads him to meeting a piano player who looks a whole lot like Jesus. But this is just the beginning of Louis's problems.

Jeff Goldblum as Jesus? I'm in! This one's understated, very dry, and a little black, probably just like I like 'em. Goldblum is as funny as I've seen him, both as a piano player who doesn't look like Jesus at all (the faces he makes as he plays when his character is introduced are almost as entertaining as watching Chico play) and as the guy who not only looks like Jesus but starts wondering if he actually is Jesus. "My God! I'm so hungry!" got a nice laugh from me as did the "Don't touch me. Don't poke me" scene. And Goldblum's attack of a violinist was hilarious, a scene containing the second fork stabbing I've seen in a week. Hoskins is a bit of a straight man here, but he's a good one. The story is unpredictable and possibly a little too bizarre for most people with some scenes (I'm looking at you, healing-with-a-a-golf-ball scene) and a punchline that I don't think I liked very much. But the goat humping, the statue of a monkey strangling a woman (seriously, what is that?), and the beggar's sign ("IMA BLIDN") made up for the stuff in this that didn't work. This will have to hit the right people at the right time, but I'm really glad I watched it.