The Monuments Men - Movie or Party?

Sometimes movies are made for art; sometimes movie are made for a chance at making a lot of money; and sometimes a movie is made so a bunch of guys can party and have a good time. George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman..... I'm betting on the latter for The Monuments Men and something of a transformed Oceans 11 even though the story is based on a true event.

Monuments Men is a George Clooney project with a release date of February 7, 2014. Definitely the first must see movie of 2014 for me anyway.

It Really Was A Fantastic Voyage

I saw Fantastic Voyage in the theater as a kid. Some years later, a science teacher showed the movie in a junior high science class (this was pre-video days so I'm assuming 20th Century Fox made the movie available as a teaching aid). Here is the premise. A government scientist goes into a coma after an assassination attempt. The only chance to bring him back to life is perform laser surgery to remove a clot to his brain. In 1966, this kind of laser surgery can only be done from inside the body so the government has a miniaturization program to shrink humans to a microscopic size and inject them into the body using a kind of miniature submarine to get from point A to point B, the point where the surgery must be performed. This is science fiction at its best,

But its the medical aspects of the story and actors interracting inside the human body that brings out the best of Fantastic Voyage. This isn't an A class list of actors. The dialog can be kind of hokey at times. But the movie itself is quite compelling and well worth watching. Or maybe Raquel Welch in a wet suit is compelling enough. The movie also has Donald Pleasence as the bad guy and I don't if there was ever a creepier actor in the movies. 

Anyway, the movie was just released on Blu-Ray and I couldn't get it fast enough to watch it and plan to watch it again soon. It is that good of a movie.

Anchorman - Still Funny But Slipping

When I first saw Will Ferrell's Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy in the theaters back in 2004 when the film was first released, I thought it was one of the funniest movies ever. I put it up there in the Animal House pantheon. There are scenes (and lines) in the movie that are hysterically funny. "I'm kind of a big deal".

I watched the film again last night in preparation for the sequel Anchorman 2 set to come out before the end of the year. And while Anchorman still is fun to watch, I have to admit it has slipped over the years in my subsequent viewings. Uneven is probably a good word for it. While Ferrell and Christina Applegate really stand out in their roles, the supporting cast is pretty much hit or miss. Some of the gags work, some don't. 

I can still recommend Anchorman to someone looking for a funny movie to watch. I just don't have the enthusiasm for the movie I once did.

The Star Trek 2009 Reboot

Maybe I've been watching too many movies that are over 50 years old lately, movies that were actually filmed on a sound stage with things like scenes and dialog. The original Star Trek television series was like that since computer graphics and advanced special effects didn't exist yet. And while there were special effects in place for the 6 movie Star Trek series that began in 1979, varied drastically when it came to quality.

The 2009 Star Trek reboot with an all new cast (except the return of Leonard Nimoy) is a different kind of Star Trek altogether. It is a special effects geek fest, digitally charged, rapidly cut and edited, and meant to inflect new life into a deteriorating franchise heading to towards being irrelevant for a modern audience. I saw the 2013 Star Trek: Into Darkness when it came out earlier this summer. When that movie came to video, some bright guy thought of bundling Into Darkness with its predecessor in a single package for one low price (about 25 bucks). I actually thought I had seen the 09 Star Trek film but apparently not when I plopped in the blu-ray player today to watch with my father-in-law earlier today. The confusing time bending story that more blasted on the screen rather than play had him bailing out about an hour into the film to take a nap. I stuck it out to the end and generally thought that it was good film that told the origins of Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the major Star Trek characters but could have done a few of the plot points much better than what came out in the finished product.

But director J.J. Abrams gave the franchise what it needed and brought it up to date to what the current movie viewer wants from a space movie - special effects, special effects, and more special effects that tell an interesting story without being laughably silly. If you like that kind of thing, Star Trek 09 fits the bill - wish it was about 20 minutes shorter though.

A Look At The Dark Side - Rear Window

What did people do around the house before there was television to watch at night? Perhaps sit in an apartment by a window that overlooked a courtyard filled with other apartment windows and each window had its own story to tell. What if one of the stories going on through one of those windows is murder? Rear Window about voyeurism pure and simple. both the entertaining side and its most unseemly side. Due to a fractured leg and confined to a wheel chair, Jimmy Stewart gets up close and personal with his neighbors but the stories are from a distance, enhanced through binoculars and a huge telephoto camera lense. Whatever he doesn't know about the lives of his neighbors he just fills in the blanks. Lives out of context. But when one of the neighbors acts suspiciously like he murdered his invalid nagging wife, the voyeurism steps into the direction of a murder mystery.

Stewart gets Grace Kelley and Thelma Ritter as his girlfriend and nurse to do his leg work. He calls on the services of a police chum to serve as the go-between with the cops as the mystery unfolds. Rear Window is a film by Alfred Hitchcock. A film about voyearism would most likely be looked at as an underbelly unsettling type of film. In the hands of Hitchcock, Rear Window is a masterpiece for taking the unseemly topic and adding black comedy, drama, sadness, tragedy, suspense, and in the end, a mystery. Every life is a story. Hitchcock allows glimpses of everyone's story whether real or imagined.

I'm not a fan of Alfred Hitchcock. The films he is most noted for - Psycho or The Birds, I find too disturbing to enjoy. But I have enjoyed Rear Window several times through the years. Sometimes unsettling paintings on museum walls are works of art as well. Rear Window is a work of art by a master craftsman.

Blue Ray Release Dates

These are some blu-ray release dates of note (to me anyway) from now to the end of the year. For more blu-ray movie release dates go to http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/releasedates.php.

September 17:  World War Z

September 23  Iron Man 3



October 1:  The Little Mermaid, Stuck on You

October 8:  Airplane II, Fantastic Voyage, Momma Mia, Tomb Raider, Star Wars IV-VI (new packaging)

October 15:  High Plains Drifter, Slap Shot

October 29:  Monsters University



November 5:  The Right Stuff

November 12:  Man of Steel, JFK

You Must Remember This... Casablanca Is a Movie Icon

Unlike The African Queen which I saw for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I've seen Casablanca a number of times through the years. It's a movie that is infinitely watchable - scene by scene, line by line. It all adds up to a classic film experience in the truest and finest sense of the word. Casablanca is an icon, with a cast of who's who of Hollywood legends - Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Paul Heinreid.... it goes on and on. Bogart won his Academy Award for The African Queen. Was he better in that movie than Casablanca? Nope, not even close. Bogart's Rick is one of the great characters ever written or portrayed on film. 

Is there a more lovely looking woman ever shown in the glow of black and white film than Ingrid Bergman? Again, no. Her soft flawless skin bathed in light and shadow highlights the best of what non-colorized films can offer to a viewer. Casablanca is the ultimate story of love and sacrifice, a movie that was considered a classic of its time and has only become more firmly entrenched now almost 75 years after it was released. If someone wants to call it the best movie ever, be my guest. It's somewhere in the top 5.