Displaying Review 6 - 10 of 20 in total

• Rebel navy pilot done good in 80s flick. — for Top Gun
  Written by random12345 on 15.08.2023

  Set during the cold war, a rebellious navy pilot and his partner are chosen to attend the "Top Gun" naval flight training class to train pilots on dogfighting skills.

  This movie is at its best during the action scenes. Director Tony Scott managed to turn shots of fast moving jets, pilots turning their heads around a lot, with some special effects and sound throw in for good measure into the best part of the movie.

  The love story between McGillis and Cruise is mostly hacked together trash. Cheeseball lines make the love affair not terribly believable, and holds little value in the plot or in the character development.

  Still, the movie is held together by the visuals of fighter jets, the navy background, and eventual combat with an un-named enemy. Top Gun is still fun, despite all the faults and cliches.

  Don't take it all too seriously though. It's just for fun. This is a movie that doesn't pretend to be real. There's an un-named enemy that gets into a small shooting battle for unknown reasons,, the military seems to allow pilots to make dangerous stunts without punishment, much of the dialogue sounds like it was written by C average college freshmen, and most of the plot is wholly un-believable. If you can ignore all that, it's still fun after all these years.

• Charlie can't surf, but Keanu and Swayze can? — for Point Break
  Written by random12345 on 24.08.2023

  This has to be one of of the most ridiculous movies ever made. Surfers rob banks in US Presidents masks so they can pursue an endless summer of surfing across the world. And Keanu Reaves is the only man that can stop them!

  Still, despite Keanu's famous "acting" there's something that's still highly fun about this movie. There's a chemistry in the characters that pulls the story together. Patrick Swayze as the Zen Master surfer, who just also happens to rob banks. Keanu Reaves as the dopey FBI agent, former football star, who just happens to fall in love with surfing, as well as a very hot Lori Petty.

  Director Kathryn Bigelow is somehow able to pull magic out this silly movie that might otherwise have been forgotten. Part action movie, part character building, part fish out of water, this movie is worth watch, or another if you saw it 30 years ago.

• Mini Coopers go where cars shouldn't go. — for The Italian Job
  Written by random12345 on 03.09.2023

  "Everyone in the world is bent".

  That should be the theme of this movie.

  One of the classic movies of Michael Caine's early career. Caine plays a fresh out of prison Charlie Croker. Croker orchestrates a theft of gold in Italy, planned down to the last details. The only problem is getting the British organized crime ring to agree, and the Italian Mafia to not stop them.

  Features a strong British feel to the film, with incredible shots of Mini Coopers speeding through Turin through drainage culverts, rivers, roofs, and just about everywhere else where you'd never expect a car to be.

• Visually stunning, but something critical is missing. — for The Love Witch
  Written by random12345 on 03.09.2023

  Whomever create the visual feel of this movie did an incredible job. The colors, the shots, and the feel of each frame is stunning. It's then interspersed with nudity of topless (and often bottomless) women to tone up the sexuality in the movie. Even with all this sexuality sex, there's still a very sterile sense to this movie. An interesting contrast.

  But this alone isn't enough to pull the movie together. The acting is at times amateurish, with line delivery that often feels dead an false. I regularly got bored and UN-interested in the characters to the point where I'd stop the film and start it days later.

  The plot is a bit of a trope. The femme fatale (literally) seduces men to their deaths. While that alone doesn't kill this movie, the lack of anything else to hold it together does. The visuals and cinematography, while excellent, isn't enough to pull this out of the dumpster.

• Before Rambo, there was Rolling Thunder — for Rolling Thunder
  Written by random12345 on 04.09.2023

  An Air Force pilot Major Charles Rane (William Devane) returns home to a heroes welcome to his Texas town after 7 years of captivity and torture. He's given a new car, $2000 in silver dollars, and a parade and great honors by his hometown.

  Just underneath this facade is a darker reality. In a theme that's similar to Rambo, we see a man damaged by the war, only to come back to a home that's even more damaged than himself. His wife is has found another man and is divorcing him, an he's soon attacked in his own home by a group of bandits.

  Devane underplays Rane in a way that greatly shapes the film. Much tension is built up throughout the film, only to be released in the climax. He seems almost at home in the violence of the film, as if it all comes naturally. He's "The strong silent type", as one character observes.

  There's a certain compelling aspect to this film that's hard to describe. It does follow what's become a formula, but it doesn't have the feel of an action film where the heroes are invincible. Reportedly one of Quentin Tarantinos favorite films, he even named a short lived cult film distributor after the movie.