Behind Enemy Lines

Year 3, Day 143 - 5/23/11 - Movie #870

BEFORE: This time Gene Hackman carries over - and the action moves from a naval vessel attacking Chechnya to a naval vessel attacking Bosnia. This is the film I thought I was getting when I watched "Black Hawk Down", so I atone for my error tonight.

THE PLOT: A Navy navigator is shot down over enemy territory and is ruthlessly pursued by a secret police enforcer and the opposing troops. Meanwhile his commanding officer goes against orders in an attempt to rescue him.

AFTER: Another quite decent war film, and one with a fair amount of action. Last night's film was (mostly) talkie-talkie by comparison, plus we were cooped up on that submarine most of the time. Here Owen Wilson (last seen in "Shanghai Knights") gets a chance to run across the Eastern European landscape, and also prove he can do something besides light comedies.

Of course it's the jovial, subversive pilot has to overcome his personal self-doubt and prove to his commander (and himself) that he's a true soldier. And of course the hard-edged by-the-book commander has to defy orders and rescue him - so in that sense it's a little dramatically far-fetched, but it was still a good thrill-ride.

Also starring David Keith (last seen in "Firestarter"), Gabriel Macht (last seen in "Bad Company"), Joaquim de Almeida (last seen in "Clear and Present Danger")

RATING: 7 out of 10 walkie-talkies

Crimson Tide

Year 3, Day 142 - 5/22/11 - Movie #869

BEFORE: Denzel carries over again, as I get to the real war/soldier pictures - a naval nuke-ular submarine in this case.

THE PLOT: On a US nuclear missile sub, a young first officer stages a mutiny to prevent his trigger-happy captain from launching his missiles before confirming his orders to do so.

AFTER: Either I'm slowly getting back onto a regular sleeping schedule, or the movie was more exciting - because I stayed awake for the whole thing. Ah, getting up on time for work is overrated, right? I wish I could have taken the whole week off and stayed with my parents, because I know my dad enjoys a good war film. But we did watch "Spider-Man 3" with my parents (on TV, with commercials, which seemed to take forever...)

There's an interesting conundrum at the heart of this one, since the sub does receive orders to launch missiles at some rogue Russian rebels who are in charge of some Soviet nukes - but then the sub receives a partial transmission, which might be an abort command, just as the radio gives out. Since the final message is just a fragment, it contains no confirmation codes, so the protocol would be to disregard it as a message (could be a fake from the Russians, I suppose...). But before following the launch order, which could lead to a "Hole-O-Caust" (Denzel's pronounciation, not mine), the executive officer demands that the captain re-establish communication and confirm.

It's a conundrum because (as stated at the end of the film) both the captain and executive officer are right, and in a way they're both wrong. And the X.O. had earlier stated that he believed that the true enemy was not the Russians, but war itself, as is the case in a post-nuclear world. So one's ready to start a war, and the other is trying to avoid one. There is an argument for nuclear war being its own deterrent - but the captain's a bit too old-school for that.

What interested me was the subtle difference between the two - the captain wasn't portrayed as completely hawkish and power-mad, and the X.O. wasn't a glorified peace-nik or a bleeding heart liberal. The same navy produced both men, so the difference between them should be a matter of just a few degrees. But those degrees end up splitting the sub's crew into factions.

Also starring Gene Hackman (last seen in "Class Action"), Viggo Mortensen (last seen in "Young Guns II"), James Gandolfini (last seen in "The Juror"), George Dzundza (last seen in "The Deer Hunter"), with cameos from Jason Robards (last seen in "Tora! Tora! Tora!"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "The Great Buck Howard"), Rick Schroder, Danny Nucci, Lillo Brancato (last seen in "Enemy of the State"), and Daniel Von Bargen (last seen in "Before and After") as the crazy Russian.

RATING: 7 out of 10 torpedoes

For Queen & Country

Year 3, Day 141 - 5/21/11 - Movie #868

BEFORE: Denzel Washington carries over, as I celebrate Armed Forces Day. Some of those nutjob preachers were predicting the Rapture/End of Times for today - it's good to know I could have switched over to "end of the world" movies like "The Book of Eli", also starring Denzel, if needed, and ended my project. But I'm guessing that the world won't end today, so I'll start up a chain of war films that will carry me through to Memorial Day.

THE PLOT: A retired British soldier struggles to adjust to everyday life, with increasing difficulty.

AFTER: My sleep schedule's still not back to (what passes for) normal, and I've got a cold, and we took the Amtrak up to Massachusetts today to go to my father's birthday dinner - so basically, I'm exhausted. I made it about 1/2 hour into this film before falling asleep in a comfortable chair, then I woke up, switched to my parent's couch, and watched another 1/2 before falling asleep again. The fact that the movie was hard to follow didn't help - but the rules of the project dictate that I must give a film every opportunity to make sense. So, I watched the last hour on Sunday afternoon after returning home.

I still found the film hard to follow, incoherent for the most part, so I'm not taking the full blame. It seems to be devoid of any rational plotline or logical sequence of events, and the thick British accents (including Denzel's phony one) don't help. So, when this happens, I'll just read the plot summary on IMDB or Wikipedia, and move on.

If you can take a film with Denzel Washington as an ex-paratrooper who fought in the Falkland Islands war, and then gets involved in disputes between the cops and gangs in East End of London, more power to you. I failed to see the point of it all.

EDIT: Rapture Update - the date for the Ascension of the Chosen has now been re-scheduled for October 21. Funny thing, that works out perfectly for my planned post-apocalyptic movie chain. So maybe it's for reals this time. Or not. Isn't the point of the Rapture that you're not supposed to see it coming? Isn't there a Bible verse that says you won't know the day or the hour of judgment?

RATING: 2 out of 10 sniper rifles

John Q

Year 3, Day 140 - 5/20/11 - Movie #867

BEFORE: No movie yesterday - I was dealing with the failing health of our oldest cat, Merlin, whose health problems I've mentioned before. I stayed up all night watching him, and since he was too weak to walk we had to take him to the vet for the last time. So it's been a pretty sad day, but we took comfort in the fact that he was twenty years old, which is older than most cats get. And I was lucky to spend so much time with the best cat in the world. I know, everyone thinks their cat is the best, but let's face it, we can't all be correct, now, can we?

This film came into my collection a few months after my Denzel Washington police/action chain, so I'll kick off a follow-up mini Denzel chain tonight. Linking from "Baby Mama", Steve Martin was in "Grand Canyon" with Kevin Kline, who was in "Cry Freedom" with Denzel Washington (last seen in "Inside Man").

THE PLOT: A down-on-his luck father, whose insurance won't cover his son's heart transplant, takes the hospital's emergency room hostage until the doctors agree to perform the operation.

AFTER: I'd normally be against an action film that also tries to serve as a commentary on the U.S. health/insurance system (pre-Obamacare, that is), AND an endorsement for organ-donor programs, but they got lucky with this one and it all sort of works together. John Q is willing to go to extremes to get attention for his son's plight - most people would host a fund-raiser or solicit charitable contributions, but I guess taking hostages is quicker.

I could nitpick about how relatively calm things remain within the emergency room (despite dealing with the you, know, medical emergencies) - most of the hostages sympathize with the man's plight, so they end up being very helpful and willing to cooperate. Is this some variation on Stockholm syndrome, or just the Hollywood-ization of a crime scene? Can the main character commit a crime, admittedly for a good reason, but still remain a hero? Seems like maybe you can't have it both ways, unless you walk a really thin line.

NITPICK POINT: Another character, the head bean-counter at the hospital, is against the son's heart transplant due to the cost, and she acts like a royal bitch when she demands cash up front before putting the boy on the transplant list. But in order for the plot to progress, she must have put him on the list at some point. When did the change in her attitude take place, and what caused it? You can't just show a character being pensive in place of actual action.

I swear that I had this film scheduled for today well in advance - I didn't know I'd be spending part of my day in a hospital, dealing with some of the same questions about what lengths to take to preserve life, and when to let go. Turns out they don't do heart transplants for kitties, so it wouldn't have done me any good to demand one. I do sort of wish I'd fought harder for my cat, but I'd been arguing his case with the doctors for months - and though we took all the actions we could to prolong his life, it was the quality of his life that was really starting to suffer. We did what we could to make him comfortable at home, with the knowledge that he might only have a short time left. It's a sucky system that's beyond my power to change.

Also starring James Woods (last seen in "Be Cool"), Robert Duvall (last seen in "Crazy Heart"), Anne Heche (last seen in "The Juror"), Ray Liotta (last seen in "Date Night"), David Thornton (last seen in "A Civil Action"), Ethan Suplee (last seen in "Fanboys"), Kevin Connolly, Eddie Griffin

RATING: 7 out of 10 ambulances

Baby Mama

Year 3, Day 138 - 5/18/11 - Movie #866

BEFORE: Not really a fan of pulpy detective stories, and there are none on my list anyway - and I'm still not ready for the snore-fest that is "Casablanca", so instead I'll send Birthday SHOUT-out #41 to Tina Fey, born 5/18/1970, and last seen in "Date Night". I could have (and perhaps should have) watched this one along with "Juno", "Knocked Up", "Baby Boom" and "The Brothers Solomon" - could have been a nice little chain.

THE PLOT: A successful, single businesswoman who dreams of having a baby discovers she is infertile and hires a working class woman to be her unlikely surrogate.

AFTER: I won't deny that there are funny bits here, but why does Hollywood insist on portraying women who can't get pregnant as broken or imperfect, and women who choose not to get pregnant as self-centered bitches? Where are the female characters who just don't like kids, without that being a character flaw? Or ones who are infertile, and they're fine with that because they don't think they could be good mothers, anyway? I guess you don't really have much of a story arc with those characters...

It seems like in the movies, it's the women who are least fertile that WANT babies the most - or am I off-base here? At least Tina Fey's character here is career-oriented without being cut-throat (this is what passes for progress?). The best bits seem to come at the expense of the hippie-crunchy health food/vegan/yoga lifestyle, as exhibited by the CEO of a Whole-Foods like company (Steve Martin, last seen in "The Lonely Guy")

In the end, some funny material. Humor often comes from the juxtaposition of elements - a neat guy living with a messy guy, for example. Here you take a pregnant white trash girl and make her live with a non-pregnant executive type, and watch the humor flow in true "Odd Couple" style. Or take a hippie mystic type and put him in a corporate executive position. Or take a lawyer and have him open up a fruit-smoothie business. It's all a little by-the-numbers, but it works.

Also starring Amy Poehler (last heard in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel"), Greg Kinnear (last seen in "Dear God"), Dax Shepard, Maura Tierney (last seen in "Liar Liar"), Sigourney Weaver (last heard in "The Tale of Despereaux"), with cameos from James Rebhorn (last seen in "Silkwood"), Will Forte (last seen in "Fanboys"), Fred Armisen (last seen in "The Promotion"), John Hodgman (last seen in "The Invention of Lying"), and Siobhan Fallon (as a birthing coach with an unfortunate Elmer Fudd-like accent)

RATING: 6 out of 10 ultrasounds

The Big Sleep

Year 3, Day 137 - 5/17/11 - Movie #865

BEFORE: Last night was a noir(ish) thriller, so another one of those is in order. I inadvertently set up a chain of films based on novels from noted authors - Booth Tarkington wrote "The Magnificent Ambersons", Graham Greene wrote "The Third Man", and tonight's film is based on a novel from Raymond Chandler (and William Faulkner worked on the screenplay!). Backtracking a bit with the linking - Joseph Cotten from "The Third Man" was in "Airport '77" with Jimmy Stewart, who was in "The Shootist" with Lauren Bacall (last seen in "Misery").

THE PLOT: Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love.

AFTER: The second film that Bogart and Bacall made together (first was "To Have and Have Not"), it's a real twisty mystery story - maybe too twisty. I should note that I was feeling the first effects of a spring cold, and that Bogart's monotone has proven in the past to have a soporific effect on me. Those two things didn't help, in fact they made the film's title very appropriate.

But, at the end of a film that's as confusing as this one, I'm hard pressed to determine whether the fault is mine, or the film's. If I have to look up the plot summary on IMDB or Wikipedia after, then a failure has occured - now I just need to assign blame.

From posted comments, I find I'm not alone - there are simply too many characters in this film, too many shady suspects, and we never really find out for sure who killed whom, or who in fact is behind it all. That's also a result of this 1940's "shoot first, and sort it out later" mentality. Dead men can't offer up a defense, so isn't it a little too easy to say which crimes they were responsible for? What happened to fingerprints, DNA evidence, and gunshot residue? Or were they all invented later?

So we've got blackmail, gambling debts, a missing husband, pornography dealers, and other seedy bits from the original novel that were edited out of the film due to the Hays Code. (Couldn't have references to gay men, and what Carmen was doing in the blackmail photos had to be left to the imagination) And a long conversation between Marlowe and the D.A., laying out the facts in the case, was apparently also chopped. So it's not just me, the film is by its very nature confusing and abstract.

I put forth the notion that maybe Lauren Bacall's character was the criminal mastermind behind everything, though there is no direct evidence to support that (but wouldn't a criminal mastermind eliminate all direct evidence?). Her husband disappeared (and don't the police always suspect the spouse first?) and she hangs out with a lot of shady men, plus she always turns up in this film as the dirty deals are going down. And I'm not all moony-eyed over her like Marlowe is - so I think she's in it up to her sultry eyeballs. Am I crazy?

Also starring Martha Vickers, John Ridgely, with cameos from Charles Waldron and Elisha Cook, Jr.

RATING: 4 out of 10 promissory notes

The Third Man

Year 3, Day 136 - 5/16/11 - Movie #864

BEFORE: Joseph Cotten carries over from "The Magnificent Ambersons", as does Orson Welles (as an actor here, not as a director).

THE PLOT: Arriving in Vienna, Holly Martins learns that his friend Harry Lime, who has invited him, recently died in a car accident.

AFTER: Cotten plays a pulp-novel writer here, who gets caught up in foreign intrigue like something out of one of his own stories. He tries to uncover the truth about what his old friend might have been involved with (shades of the reporter digging into the past of Charles Foster Kane?), which might involve black-market trading and thinning down medicine for profit. Tsk tsk.

The end credits say the film was shot at Shepperton Studios in London, but that really does the film a disservice. The exteriors shot in post-war Vienna are just breathtaking, with amazing depth and grays for a black and white film. Even the bombed-out buildings and the underground sewer system look amazing!

I'd go so far to say that Vienna is like the star of the film, both for its beauty and for its importance to the plot. Where else (besides Berlin) would you find a city divided into French, German, English and Russian zones, with an international police force?

I went into it knowing nothing, but appreciating a good, intriguing plot. And you know with a character named Harry Lime, there's going to be a twist, right? Twist of lime? Oh, never mind.

Also starring Trevor Howard, Alida Valli, and Bernard Lee, with a cameo from Wilfrid Hyde-White.

RATING: 6 out of 10 plane tickets