Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #18: World Trade Center

2006 movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Lee Harvey Oswald vacations in New York City and after a wild night on the town, knocks two skyscrapers down. Some policemen get themselves trapped in the rubble and aren't rescued for several days, after somebody watches the Zapruder film and finds out they weren't on the grassy knoll at all and uses the process of elimination to determine that they were being heroes.

Perhaps Oliver Stone should have waited a little more than five years to make a comedy about 9/11. Too soon!
I didn't like this movie much. What I did like was that Oliver Stone avoids recreating any of the more familiar scenes from the "worst tragedy on American soil" (unless you count what white people did to the Native Americans, of course) and gives the point of view of characters who didn't even know what was going on. The collapse scenes were intense and realistic. The rest of the movie where you can barely see the characters trapped in the darkness and chunks of building? Not so much. It seemed endless, possibly the effect that Stone wanted to have, and too often dove into overly-sentimental waters. Nicolas Cage and his mustache were unnecessary; I didn't need any star power to help this story along. And it's impossible to be Nicolas Cage when you're trapped under a bunch of rubble. But anyway, that character didn't need to be played by Nicolas Cage, and it might have been better if he wasn't. This didn't need to be directed by Oliver Stone either. I half-expected to get a scene where Dick Cheney is flying one of the planes or something. World Trade Center is completely unnecessary. It adds nothing new to the day's folklore and says nothing that couldn't have been covered in an editorial that would have taken me five minutes to read.

Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman

2005 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Efficiently proficient and prolific, Albert Pierrepoint followed in his father's bootsteps and hanged people for a living. When he's not delivering groceries, that is. And probably only people who had it coming. He didn't seem like the type to hang random people. Pierrepoint executed just over six hundred during his twenty-two years, and that was just when he was supposed to be delivering groceries! Eventually, the so-called "Babe Ruth of Hangmen" reconsiders his stance on capital punishment.

The director certainly takes a languid approach with this one, not only showing seemingly every meticulous detail in claustrophobic settings but showing these meticulous details over and over and over again. It delivers the point home and comes as close as I imagine it can come to helping a guy watching a television screen understand some of the feelings of the increasingly-troubled titular hangman, and Timothy Spall, without any of the pomp or tricks that people usually see in great acting performances, has a quiet magnetism. His performance is half the picture, and he gives Pierrepoint's story a realism and poignancy in a very natural way. Plus, I dig his cheeks and wonder if implants were involved. Still, this visually sucks you into a gloom, and after a while, the movie starts to seem much longer than it actually is. Its interesting subject matter and gripping internal conflict make this worth checking out.

Escape from Alcatraz

1979 prison escape movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Only three people escaped from the notorious Alcatraz prison. It was all at the same time, and apparently one of them was Clint Eastwood. This is their story.

Good flick. Clint is Clint, with that familiar mysterious aura and squinting. His presence is almost distracting in this movie, and as much as I like Clint Eastwood, this could have possibly been a better movie with an unknown. I did think the casting of Patrick McGoohan (ironically, the Prisoner) was perfect. There are few moments in this that are cliches or that will become cliches during the next decade (as well as some Shawshankian touches), but there are more moments that are off and keep things irregular and interesting. The first scene in the cafeteria could almost be classified as Lynchian. Noodle-slurping thugs, match stunts, a guy called Litmus because his face turns red/blue when he's hot/cold, a dude talking to his pet mouse. It manages to remain thickly suspenseful even though you know from the beginning whether or not they make it. And it's also just slow enough to appeal to the thinking man, those who want the escape plot to unfold gradually and not miss a single meticulous detail. Good music, too. As always, more shower scenes would have been great. I'm not sure I saw enough ass.

Anybody know any good female prison escape movies?