Posts tagged Great Britain
“Total Recall” Is Total Overkill
Aug 13th
“Total Overkill”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Total Recall is the 2012 version of the 1990 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and if you have seen the first film, you will keep asking yourself whether you remember it or whether it is a false memory.
One thing is sure, however: Colin Farrell is a better actor than Ah-nold.
Spoiler Alert! The story begins with a dream. Or maybe not.
Doug Quaid has been having a recurring nightmare, and he wakes up in bed with his wife, Lori, played by Kate Beckinsale.
Doug lies to her about the dream–or maybe not–and when she leaves for work, Doug says, “Sleep scares me.”
The time is the future, and there are only two places on Earth left inhabitable: the United Federation of Britain, which is where Great Britain is now, and the Colony, which is where Australia is now.
Doug lives in the Colony, but he works in Britain as an assembly worker, making the commute to and from work in “the Fall,” a super elevator between the two through the center of the earth.
Well, Doug is bored with his life, and after work he goes to a Rekall Lounge where he can have exciting memories implanted in his brain.
However, something goes wrong–or maybe it doesn’t–and the next thing he knows, robotic policemen called “Synthetics” are trying to kill him. So, maybe his choice of memory implant for “secret agent” worked, or maybe it didn’t because he was a secret agent all along with lost memories.
Anyway, a woman named Melina, played by Jessica Biel, shows up to save him, and she is a resistance fighter who claims that he is one, too. Or is he?
Could he be a double agent for the Establishment pretending to be working for the Resistance, could he be pretending to be working for the Establishment but really working for the Resistance, or could everything that is happening to him just be the memory implant from the Rekall Lounge?
What should you believe and what should you disbelieve? When does it stop being interesting and just a screen filled with a confusing story and lots of explosions and special effects, which for this movie are called “visual effects”?
When does the suspension of disbelief become the suspension of belief?
Total Recall is nothing more than total overkill.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The Iron Lady” Is Slapped Together
Jan 28th
“Slapped Together”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Iron Lady is yet another acting triumph for Meryl Streep as she plays Margaret Thatcher, the longest-seated prime minister of Great Britain in the 20th century from 1979 to 1990, the first woman prime minister, and at various times in her political career the most hated woman in Great Britain.
In fact, she was loved and hated in office as much as her contemporary President Ronald Reagan was in the U.S. and for the same reasons: They both had conservative values and free-market ideology that helped transform their respective countries into industrially depleted and increasingly unequal societies.
In addition, they both danced–sometimes together–while the countries they led were suffering.
The film opens in the present day with Margaret as an old woman out shopping, and when she returns to her flat, her daughter, Carol, tells her that she shouldn’t go out on her own, to which Margaret replies, “If I can’t go out to buy a pint of milk, what is the world coming to?”
Then we see flashbacks to when Margaret was a young woman whose name was Margaret Roberts, played by a different actress, Alexandra Roach, and she is not portrayed as a very likable woman.
And, yes, the film shifts back and forth in time so much in the style that filmmakers seem to prefer these days that you might ask yourself is the whole movie going to be like this?
And the answer is, yes, it is.
We also see Margaret’s husband, Denis Thatcher, played as an old man by Jim Broadbent, and once again the filmmakers try to trick the audience into believing that a scene of fantasy and Margaret’s delusional dotage is reality.
In fact, Broadbent might spend more screen time dead than he does alive.
Major events during Thatcher’s career as prime minister are covered, such as the 1982 Falklands War, the 1984 miners’ strike, the 1984 IRA bombing of a hotel hosting a conference of the Conservative Party, and her replacement as prime minister after a rebellion by her colleagues.
We even see some scenes in which she is advised about her clothes and the way she speaks in public.
The Iron Lady is so slapped together that when it ends, you don’t even realize that this is the scene in which the movie is ending.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“One Day” Contrived Love Story
Aug 27th
“Contrived Love Story”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
One Day is a gimmicky love story starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess as two British friends who eventually become lovers.
The gimmick is in the construction of the story, which begins on July 15, 2006, and then suddenly flashes back to July 15, 1988, and then shows us what these two people are doing on that day every year from then until now.
The reason that date is significant is that it is known as St. Smithin’s day in Great Britain, and British folklore says that whatever the weather is on that day will continue for the next 40 days.
And the reason that the first date in 1988 is significant is that that is the date that Emma and Dexter became involved after graduation from college and a night out of celebration with mutual friends and fellow graduates.
At the end of the evening, Dexter walks Emma home, and although Dexter thinks they have never met before, Emma says that they have met several times.
One thing leads to another, but then they change their minds about sleeping together and they exchange “Sorry, I’m not good at this” and “That’s fine, maybe we can just be friends.”
And so the story skips to each year on that date of July 15 to show us what they are doing, how their lives have changed, and how their relationship with each other is developing.
Emma wants to be a poet and take London by storm, but London swallows her up, and she ends up working in a Mexican restaurant.
Dexter goes to India and becomes a teacher, but they exchange long letters with each other while he is away.
In 1992 they go on holiday together, but Emma establishes some rules for them, which include separate bedrooms, no flirting, no skinny-dipping, and no playing Scrabble. Some of those rules are broken, and with comic results.
Dexter becomes famous with a television show that he hosts, but audiences love to hate him, which isn’t satisfying.
Both of them get involved with someone else, but they stay in touch and even see each other when Emma moves to Paris, which, of course, is the City of Romance.
One Day is a contrived love story, and maybe you will guess the ending and maybe you won’t, but you will be surprised.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”