Posts tagged confusing
“Premium Rush” Is Breakneck Fun
Sep 24th
“Breakneck Fun”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Premium Rush is the ultimate chase movie through the streets of New York City centered around a story about Manhattan bicycle messengers.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Wilee, an obvious reference to Wile E. Coyote of the Road Runner cartoons, but a more appropriate nickname would have been Road Runner itself, or maybe Double R, or possibly even Runner, but that would have been confusing, because he spends most of his time on a bicycle riding and not running.
However, throughout the movie Wilee is not the chaser, but the chasee. Because of an envelope he is delivering for his service, at one time or another Wilee is chased by a mysterious man in an automobile, by a policeman on a bicycle, and even by a plainclothes policeman in his automobile.
Yes, it is a dangerous job being one of the 1,500 bicycle messengers in New York City, and Wilee even says in a voice-over, “One time or another, we all get hit.”
In fact, the movie starts with Wilee having an accident at 6:33 p.m., and then we get a flashback to 5 p.m. when Wilee picked up the envelope, which was a premium-rush delivery that has to be delivered by 7 p.m.
Once he is outside after picking up the envelope, Wilee is stopped by a man who asks for the envelope with a logical story for why Wilee should turn it over.
However, Wilee is suspicious, because a bike messenger’s rules are after a delivery is put in his bag, it is given only to a person at the address where the package is to be delivered, and so Wilee takes off running–I mean, riding.
Then the man chases after Wilee in his car, and they both tear through the streets, avoiding traffic and pedestrians and even running red lights until we are back at the point of Wilee’s accident at the beginning of the movie.
Wilee is different from other messengers in that his bicycle has no brakes and no gears, and he prefers it that way.
Eventually we get more flashbacks for background explanation as to why the envelope is so important to so many people, and the premium rush of the title becomes a premium rush for the audience, as well.
Premium Rush is breakneck fun for everyone.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“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 Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” Surprises All the Way to the End
Nov 4th
“Surprises All the Way to the End”
THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST is the third Swedish film in the Millennium Trilogy that includes THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, it is just as good as the first one, and it leaves you wanting more.
We know that there will be more, because Hollywood is working on its own version of the first film, and there are rumors that the manuscript for a fourth novel was found on the computer belonging to Stieg Larsson, the Swedish author who died tragically at 50 before the novels were even published.
This film begins, naturally enough, where the second one ended, and Lisbeth Salander, the 27-year-old title character, lies in the hospital in pretty bad shape, having had a bullet removed from her brain.
Mikael Blomkvist is the investigative journalist who has been helping Lisbeth in the first two films, and his sister Annika is a lawyer who agrees to defend Lisbeth against the charges of three murders that the audience already knows she didn’t commit.
Lisbeth tells Annika, “I don’t need a lawyer.”
However, of course she does, and she also needs luck and help in her hospital room, because other people are trying to kill her.
Now, it might be confusing to try to understand who all the old people in the story are and to keep them straight after you have seen them, and it will definitely be confusing if you haven’t seen the first two films. So, the place to start is with the excellent first film, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.
You might also think that a movie that spends most of its time in a hospital and then later in a courtroom is not going to be very exciting, especially considering all the action in the first two films, but there is action aplenty in this one, as well.
It is also a kick to see Lisbeth get her punk look back when she walks into the courtroom. She is definitely her own woman, and there is already talk about an Academy Award in 2011 for the Swedish actress who plays her, Noomi Repace.
THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST is as excellent as the first film, it contains surprises all the way to the end, and I want a fourth one.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”