Category: 2016 Movie Challenge Page 19 of 21

Challenge Week 7: The Good Fairy

On February 18, 2016

In 2016 Movie Challenge

When I started this challenge, I had a few things in mind that I hoped for – I hoped people would give me stuff I needed to see but hadn’t gotten around to, stuff that I wouldn’t have sought out on my own, stuff I thought I would dislike and end up loving, and stuff I’d never heard of, with a particular hope that I’d get some classic-era stuff I hadn’t heard of, which can be a difficult feat. Well, this week did it, and I’m very glad it did.

Despite having a stellar pedigree – directed by William Wyler, written by Preston Sturges, starring a luminous Margaret Sullavan and a great supporting cast – this film seems to have gone under the radar quite a bit. Sullavan is Luisa Ginglebusher (a Sturges last name if ever I heard one), a girl who’s grown up in an orphanage her whole life, but leaves to take a job as an usherette at a theatre…but all that’s by the by. Once she’s out in the world, it doesn’t take long for her to be surrounded by men. She keeps the advice of orphanage director Beulah Bondi to be careful in her “dealings with the male gender,” but is also led by her admonition to do a good deed every day.

Challenge Week 6: Team America: World Police

By Jandy

On February 13, 2016

In 2016 Movie Challenge

I mentioned in my post about Tommy Boy that I would’ve enjoyed it more if it had gone fully absurd more often – THIS is what I’m talking about! I’ve been intrigued by Team America for some time, if only for the marionette animation style, but while I often like South Park in small doses, I found South Park: Bigger & Longer uneven to say the least, and I was afraid Team America would strike me as being too crude. And it definitely has more than a few moments of vulgarity, but it is SO over the top that they largely work (the voluminous vomit scene comes to mind).

The film is a satire largely on America’s tendency to become involved in international peace-keeping, but it has plenty of barbs for the politicos of Hollywood, too, plus Middle Eastern terrorism, and totalitarianism in the form of North Korea. I’m not a particularly political person, so maybe it would be more offensive to someone who cared more about this stuff (especially from a conservative bent), but really, the absurdity level is so high and the satire so broad, it’s hard to take any of it seriously in anything more than most obvious of ways.

Challenge Week 6: Tommy Boy

By Jandy

On February 12, 2016

In 2016 Movie Challenge

I predicted that this week I might have the first film of the challenge to drop below the halfway mark on my chart, and while I was right about that, I want to stress that I did enjoy Tommy Boy more than I actually expected to. 1990s buddy comedies have a tough row to hoe with me.

Tommy Callahan (Chris Farley) has a tough row to hoe himself – he’s the none-too-bright son of a midwestern manufacturer whose big house and new money doesn’t help him get through college in less than seven years (he graduates after gleefully passing a history test with a D+). But that doesn’t get him down; he returns home celebrating and excited to join his father’s business. Not as excited is Richard Hadyen (David Spade), an old high school classmate who works for Big Tom Callahan and is bitter that Tommy gets all the praise without having any of the smarts. When Big Tom dies, Tommy and Richard are forced to go on the road together to get enough sales to keep the business afloat.

Challenge Week 5: Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

By Jandy

On February 6, 2016

In 2016 Movie Challenge

I’ve been meaning to see Grosse Pointe Blanke for like fifteen years, and never gotten around to it, so I’m very glad Ben suggested it for this challenge. I knew there was a crime-type element to it and that it was a black comedy, but that was about it – that’s enough to catch my interest, frankly.

John Cusack is Martin Blank, a hitman who goes back to his 10-year high school reunion – he wants to catch up with an old girlfriend plus there happens to be a job there. Meanwhile, he’s being hounded by his competitor Grocer (Dan Ackroyd), who wants him to join the new hitman union, and another hired assassin seeking retribution for a job Martin recently botched.

The dialogue here is really the winning element, as you can see by the sheer number of “favorite lines” I chose below. It’s very clever and delivered with a deadpan earnestness that’s right up my alley. Martin forthrightly tells everyone who asks what he’s doing these days that he kills people for money, and they all take it as a joke – but they WAY they respond is also very even-keeled, so at first I thought they just didn’t care! That kind of quick wit is something I love in movies and in real life.

Challenge Week 5: Lone Star

By Jandy

On February 4, 2016

In 2016 Movie Challenge

I’m writing this a couple of days after watching the film, and I’m glad I let it settle a little bit before attempting to sum it up. I thought this was my first John Sayles film, but when I ranked it I discovered that I’ve actually seen one other one – The Secret of Roan Inish. Anyway, that one didn’t make a huge impression on me (and I don’t know that it’s really considered that much among his films, though someone could easily prove me wrong with my near total lack of John Sayles knowledge). My only knowledge of him at all really comes from his inclusion in one episode of Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film, from which I got the accurate, I think, impression that he’s a filmmaker who cares about the in-between bits of real life that most films skip. From that I guessed that Lone Star wouldn’t be a straightforward western, as the cover made it look like, nor a straight-forward crime thriller, as the tagline tried to indicate.

We do start with a probable crime – a long-dead skeleton unearthed in the desert near a Texas border town who happens to be wearing a sheriff’s badge. The current sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) figures it’s Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson in flashbacks), the predecessor of his own predecessor, who was his father Buddy Deeds (a super-young Matthew McConaughey). Wade had a reputation as a terrible sheriff and a terrible man – guilty of all kinds of graft and corruption, especially against the town’s Mexican and black populations, and unpredictable to boot. Not only would he take your money, he might well shoot you in the back if he felt like it. In comparison, Buddy Deeds was a legend and a hero to the marginalized.