Posts tagged film
“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.”
“Your Sister’s Sister” with The Lady or the Tiger? Ending
Jul 23rd
“The Lady or the Tiger? Ending”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Your Sister’s Sister is a pleasant little independent film with a simple story, only three main characters, but a gimmicky ending reminiscent of the ending to a famous 1882 short story known as “The Lady or the Tiger?”
Of course, these days what does an ending matter when so many movies come out on DVD with alternate endings after a movie has a theatrical run with only one ending to it?
Now, the short story was written by Frank R. Stockton, and it was the most famous story that CENTURY MAGAZINE ever published. In it, a young man falls in love with the king’s daughter, and he is condemned by the king and forced to choose between two doors in a giant arena.
Behind one door is a beautiful maiden who would be given to him in marriage, and behind the other door is a ravenous tiger. The princess learns the secret of the doors and signals the young man to open the door on the right, but the story ends by asking Who comes out, the lady or the tiger?
I will explain how this non-ending is reminiscent of the ending to this movie at the end of the review.
The movie begins at a party and eulogy for Tom a year after Tom’s death. Jack, played by Mark Duplass, was Tom’s brother, and he says some nasty things about Tom.
Iris, played by Emily Blunt, had dated Tom, but she left him before Tom died. She also happens to be Jack’s best friend, but there is nothing romantic between them.
Iris goes up to Jack after his speech about Tom, and she says, “You just need some head space, okay?”
Iris offers to let Jack use her family’s vacation cabin on a nearby island for a week and says that he will have the greatest time doing nothing.
So, Jack bicycles to the ferry that takes him to the island, and he manages to find the cabin late at night.
However, a woman named Hannah, played by Rosemarie DeWitt, is staying in the cabin. She is Iris’s sister, and she is trying to get over her recent breakup with another woman after a seven-year relationship.
And then the next day Iris herself shows up unexpectedly and surprises them both.
Your Sister’s Sister ends after more story.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“Savages” Bloody and Ironic
Jul 15th
“Bloody and Ironic”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Savages is the latest film directed by Oliver Stone, and it was also written by him along with Don Winslow, whose 2010 novel was the basis for the film.
The best-known members of the cast, but not necessarily the stars, are Blake Lively, Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta, and Salma Hayek, and the story is about a Mexican drug cartel trying to move in on the successful marijuana business run by two best buddies in Southern California.
Lively plays Ophelia, a spoiled young rich girl who goes just by “O” and who is the girlfriend of both Chon and Ben, the successful marijuana growers and distributors who have been best friends since high school and whose pot is considered the best in all of California, if not the world.
O also narrates the story, and more than once she says, “Just because I’m telling you this story doesn’t mean I’m alive at the end.”
If she is alive at the end, that would be ironic, wouldn’t it?
On the other hand, if she is not alive at the end, that would also be ironic.
One day Chon and Ben receive an e-mail video from the Baja Cartel in Mexico that shows a bunch of bodies with decapitated heads and blood all over everything.
Then they receive an e-mail from the cartel wanting to meet the next day. Ben is afraid of the Mexicans, but Chon says he is not afraid of them. Of course, Chon is a former Navy SEAL who smuggled the marijuana seeds back to the U.S. from Afghanistan that got them started in the business.
Chon and Ben check in with Dennis, a DEA agent who is less than pristine in his duties, and Dennis advises them to take whatever deal they are offered rather than decapitation.
However, when Chon and Ben meet with the representatives of the Baja Cartel, they don’t like the deal they are offered and tell the representatives that they will think about it and meet again in 24 hours.
Ben wants to get out of the business altogether, but before they can do anything, the cartel kidnaps O and holds her prisoner, which forces their hand, because they will do anything to get O back safely.
And the rest of the movie is just about anything.
Savages is bloody and ironic.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
