by ·Comments Off on The Big Chill (1983, Lawrence Kasdan)

Great opening titles, introducing all the characters as a music montage cut with the body of their dead friend being dressed, closing on shot of his stitched-up wrists. It’s a hangout film after that, former classmate/friends who now all have good jobs and drug habits. Some light resentments and conflicts, some secrets and such, one delightful ending.

JoBeth Williams had just starred in Poltergeist, her outsider husband is an object of fun. Meg “sister of Jennifer” Tilly (Body Snatchers), also an outsider, had been Dead Alex’s girlfriend so they all feel responsible towards her. Mary Kay Place (between New York, New York and Pecker) is a lawyer with bad hair who wants to get pregnant but has no man, so is sizing up her friends (and gets the movie’s best insult-comic line). Kevin Kline is the nice-guy husband of Glenn Close (between Garp and The Natural) who’d had an affair with Dead Alex. William Hurt, messed up on pills, had already starred in Altered States and Body Heat. Mustachioed Tom Berenger is a TV celebrity (actually on his way to Major League immortality after an oscar-nominated stop in Platoon). And reporter Jeff Goldblum would reunite with Kline and their dead friend Kevin Costner in Silverado. Lost the same writing oscar as Fanny & Alexander, Kasdan went on to make the terrifically bad Dreamcatcher. Wiki says the last ten minutes were meant to be a 1960s flashback with Costner-as-Alex, and it was cut… and I see the blu-ray has ten minutes of deleted scenes… but they’re completely different scenes, no fair. At least Criterion had the good sense to commission an essay by Lena Dunham.

by ·Comments Off on The Untouchables (1987, Brian De Palma)

Ness/Costner, a true believer, says “let’s do some good” before busting up a joint he falsely heard is importing liquor, then the others make fun of him for the action-movie quip. He puts a team together in honest cop Sean Connery, sharpshooter Andy Garcia, and accountant Charles Stone (future director of Air Bud) to go after Al “De Niro” Capone for tax evasion since they can’t get him for anything else, and do-gooder Ness learns that he can’t stay clean when everyone else plays dirty.

Towards the end of this movie I wrote that it’s “THE 1987 movie” – not the best or most popular, but it’s the movie, and I wondered if I could find the movie for every other year – but the next morning I wasn’t sure what I meant by that.

It is hilarious that Connery won a supporting oscar for his Highlander II-ass performance instead of… I dunno, John Goodman in Raising Arizona, or The Cowboy in Innerspace, or Alice Cooper in Prince of Darkness, or That 70’s Dad in RoboCop.

De Palma makes a theme of child endangerment leading up to his stairway setpiece:

by ·Comments Off on The Last Ten Minutes vol. 3: A Quick One

Here are three that’ve been hanging about for the last couple months because I haven’t felt like watching any more awful movies lately.

Seven Pounds (2008, Gabriele Muccino)
After flashing-back to the time he killed his wife and six other people because he wouldn’t stop looking at his cellphone, Will Smith lowers himself into a bathtub full of ice and jellyfish. I think he died and donated his heart to Rosario Dawson, because she wakes up seeming all sad then goes and hugs Woody Harrelson in the park. Seeing all these people cry makes me wanna cry. The director made The Pursuit of Happyness which would probably also make me wanna cry, and the writer once did an episode of Sabrina The Teenage Witch.

Blindness (2008, Fernando Meirelles)
I wasn’t expecting this jaunty Thomas Newman-sounding music (it’s not by him), nor this confused, fuzzy montage-looking filmmaking – hmmm, it’s from the guy who made City of God, so maybe I should’ve. This movie would seem to call for more straightforward direction, like Seven Pounds, which looked totally reasonable, but maybe Meirelles doesn’t know how to be straightforward. Anyway, Julianne Moore leads everyone to her house, Danny Glover has an eyepatch and tells some girl he loves her, and then Yusuke Iseya (who ruled as the white clan leader in Sukiyaki Western Django) can see again and everyone is glad. Just like the book, but blurrier.

Swing Vote (2008, Josh Stern)
Montage: two cute girls (Costner’s girlfriend[?] Paula Patton of Mirrors, and daughter Madeline Carroll of Resident Evil: Extinction) are reading mail to scruffy Kevin Costner in front of a whiteboard while media types are gathered outside his trailer. Arianna Huffington has some awkward dialogue, then there’s a Texas debate between Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper staged just for Costner, but then why is Costner doing all the talking? Why, it’s a big patriotic speech to America, in which he declares himself an enemy of America for being a crappy citizen all his life. Hopper didn’t get to say a single word, and we don’t see who Costner votes for – booo! Director Stern previously wrote an Amityville sequel and directed an absolutely star-studded fantasy movie I’ve never heard of called Neverwas.