Ghost Rider - 2007

"Ghost Rider" - 2007
Dir. by Mark Steven Johnson - 1 hr. 50 min.

Official Trailer (Espanol)

by Clayton Hollifield

2007 was a simpler time. Superhero movies hadn't yet steamrolled everything in sight. Also, you could still shop at a Toys 'R Us. And, you know, do other stuff too, like shaking people's hands or coughing in public. Nicolas Cage was known for making batty movies with even battier acting choices yet, but that was still pre-meme supremacy era. The odds that any given superhero movie was going to be worthwhile was an uneven bet. Hollywood didn't know what to do with this material, outside of individuals who got it right. But studios seemed more willing to take a shot at these kinds of movies.

Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) is a second-generation circus motorcycle stunt rider, part of his father's act. Burton Blaze (Brett Cullen) is his father, a stern man with a dangling cigarette and rockin' sideburns. After another night of getting his ass chewed out (not a euphemism - people didn't eat ass in 2007, at least not as a point of public pride), Johnny discovers some concerning news about his father. In classic fashion, a very fancy man, Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) shows up and offers young Mr. Blaze a deal; his father's health for Johnny's soul. Johnny takes Meph up on the offer, and it turns out to be not exactly what he expected it to be. So Johnny bails super-hard, leaving his life (and girlfriend) behind.

Life ain't nothing but bikes and jelly beans

There's a lot to say about this movie, which seems weird, because there's not a lot to this movie. So let's go with the good first. The cast for Ghost Rider is pretty good. Nic Cage is bonkers, and I had no confidence anyone would get this right as a movie, so it at least has his stash of insane line readings to fall back on. But past that there's Donal Logue as Johnny Blaze's buddy, Eva Mendes as the female-shaped object, Sam Elliott doing Undertaker-style promos in a graveyard, Rebel Wilson making the most of her one minute on screen, and Peter Fonda cashing in some motorcycle-movie credit here. Everything interesting in this film comes from actors hamming things up. One problem for me is that the villain, Blackheart (Wes Bentley) was eye-rollingly bad throughout the film, in pretty much every way. If you sat down and thought about what's the worst version of the villain from Hell trope, please believe that Wes Bentley topped that and took home a trophy for how bad his character was. I don't know if it was him, the writing, or an unholy combination of the two, but when the villain just comes off like a try-hard dork, then the hero vs. villain aspect that's supposed to drive the film is going to fail.

The biggest problems with this film is that you can see the Hollywood fingerprints all over it. Part of that is that they had not yet figured out how to consistently nail superhero stories. In the Avengers arc, yes there were romantic elements present, but that's not the thrust of any of the stories. They're oddly asexual in that manner (aside maybe from the first Thor and Natalie Portman's delightful agogness); they're more about rising to the occasion, heroism, duty, honor, and all that stuff. In Ghost Rider, one of the main plot points is Johnny Blaze continually bailing on Roxanne (Eva Mendes), and that part of the story is given more attention than the whole save-the-world-from-Mephistopheles thing. Superhero stories are about looking good enough to get laid, but not about the actual laying. This one falls back on having the basic romance being the thrust, instead of just having Ghost Rider looking badass and scaring the crap out of hoods. There is also the fact that there's not another memorable female character present, which isn't make or break, but is part of the problem here. Roxanne exists not out of her own agency, but basically as something for Blaze to win over.  

But the biggest issue is a problem that we film-viewers are going to have to increasingly deal with: old digital effects look cheesy. I'm not going to hammer on that point, but watching a 13 year old movie that relies on effects is going to have to compete with all the advances that digital effects have made in that time span. I will give some credit; I've been re-reading the 90's Ghost Rider comics lately, and this movie does a good job of replicating the look and feel of those comics. Unfortunately, the people who would be stoked about that would also be annoyed that the main character of the movie is Johnny Blaze, since it was Danny Ketch who was the star of that particular comic series. Comic fans are funny like that.

Chug!  Chug!  Chug!

So look, Ghost Rider was a bad movie even when it came out. I think the main reason this one exists is because Cage was a Ghost Rider fan, and he got to get paid to cosplay, and why would you turn that down? But it's not like there are any great Ghost Rider comics to have drawn upon for inspiration, it's just a character that looks awesome, but no one has really managed to do much with that. Time hasn't done this movie any favors, but the cast is absolutely to my taste. So it wasn't painful to rewatch. It's also pretty unlikely I'll be rewatching it again soon; literally everyone I liked in this movie has other movies that are way better.

1.5/5 - Streaming (HD)

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - 2007

"Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" - 2007
Dir. by Jake Kasdan - 1 hr. 36 min.

Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's a lot of good material in "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," but boy did it feel fresher on the heels of "Walk the Line."  That's pretty fitting, because "Walk Hard" borrows a lot (and I mean a LOT) of plot points from Johnny Cash's life (and the rest from Ray Charles' life, which was the big music movie that preceded "Walk the Line"), and he was kind of a big deal.  But it's also a very silly, very fun romp through all the rock 'n' roll cliches that we're all familiar with.  It's just that the childhood trauma that haunts Dewey is that he accidentally halved his brother while play-fighting with machetes.

Whoops.

Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) is Johnny Cash a rock singer who came to prominence in the 1950s, with his hit "Walk Hard."  Through his career, he hits every imaginable speed bump from "Behind the Music," from bigamy to drug abuse to losing his sense of smell.  He meets his first wife, Edith (Kristen Wiig) when he's 14 and she's 12, and they leave home to chase Dewey's dream.  And then there's a second wife, Darlene (Jenna Fischer), and she's a little more permanent.  And basically, we work through the decades of Dewey's life until a late-career resurgence brings him back into the spotlight.

Any discussion of the positives of "Walk Hard" have to begin with the cast.  John C. Reilly is funny.  Make that really funny.  He's such a goof that you kind of look forward to things falling apart over and over again so that his character will take his frustrations out on a sink somewhere.  Both of Dewey's wives have found deserved success in the near-decade since this movie came out.  The ghost of Dewey's brother is played by Jonah Hill.  His band is comprised of Matt Besser (Upright Citizen's Brigade), Chris Parnell, and Tim Meadows.  Even a one-off joke has Elvis Presley played by a hyper-active, karate-enthused, mumble-mouthed Jack White.  The Beatles are played by Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman. The cameo characters are played by people like Jane Lynch, Harold Ramis, and Craig Robinson.  So the main thing to know is that if you've enjoyed pretty much any comedy movie in the last decade, you're going to recognize a lot of faces.

Secondly, the movie zips along.  Part of the appeal of "Walk Hard" is that it's a comedy trip through rock 'n' roll, and since we're all pretty familiar with the tropes, there's not much need to establish jokes.  We're on the same page before they even start talking, so the jokes come quickly, and the scenes don't overstay their welcome.  The running gags are good, too, like Dewey's aforementioned targeting of sinks whenever things go awry, and Tim Meadows' "you don't want any of this shit" refrains.

Smoking reefers

On the whole, I enjoyed "Walk Hard."  I enjoyed it when I watched it when it came out, and I enjoyed it this time, too.  I don't have any real complaints about it; this movie is fun and quickly-paced.  It doesn't aim very high, which probably keeps it from being great, but it's still really funny (particularly if you're versed in rock lore), and you'll see a ton of people you'll likely recognize.  So go ahead, give it a whirl when you're bored and want some laughs.

3 / 5 - Blu-Ray

Hot Fuzz - 2007

"Hot Fuzz" - 2007
Dir. by Edgar Wright - 2 hrs. 1 min.

Official Trailer #1

by Clayton Hollifield

When you're going to do a comedy version of a genre film, there is a wide chasm waiting for potential filmmakers to stumble into.  And that chasm exists between overt amateurism and professional polish.  Anything that falls in between those two goalposts is going to pull viewers out of the film.  Good gags and scenarios will get you pretty far, but when it comes down to the action-filled climax, the goods must be delivered.  That, or it needs to be so absurdly, recklessly, irresponsibly stupid that all you can do is sit there and laugh that the filmmakers tried to get away with whatever they're trying to get away with (like the mansion fire near the end of "Orgazmo," or the bus-leap in "Spice World").  Yes, "Hot Fuzz" works as a comedy, but the action is passable, too.

Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is an overachieving, driven London Police Officer who's enthusiasm and skill at his job is making everyone else look bad.  He's given a "promotion," a better title in a rural village in the countryside, much to his co-workers' delight.  Nicholas arrives in Sandford to find a cozy model community, where things like teens in hoodies and gold-painted mimes are the scourge of the town.  Nicholas is paired with PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), the sort of slow, yet enthusiastic son of the police chief.  A series of mysterious deaths in Sandford convince Nicholas that a murderer is on the loose, but finding proof proves difficult.

The first hour of "Hot Fuzz" is flat-out hilarious.  Once Nicholas' stern, by-the-books character is established (and it takes all of about a minute to do that, with one of director Edgar Wright's signature near-montage sequences), literally everyone and everything starts hammering away at him.  It's an interesting approach, to show how an over-zealous approach (which is somewhat necessary to excel at anything) works in a real world where everyone is not even zealous, but complacent.  At least his partner is ambitious (or envious, maybe both), but without skill, that ambition isn't worth a lot.  The Angel character is an interesting flip from Pegg's character in "Shaun of the Dead"; instead of having to be roused to action, Nicholas is all tension and fury waiting to be unleashed, and must be forced into inaction.  Nick Frost's character is also not the same thing as in their previous work; Danny is eager to please, whereas Ed was antagonistic and a drag on whomever was around him.  It's very easy for comedians to slip into the same role and dynamic over and over again until every drop has been milked from it, but Frost and Pegg have avoided that completely here.

The second hour of the film when it turns direction into Nicholas vs. the baddies, and that's also when the action starts to take over a bit.  Now, I'm not going to tell you that "Hot Fuzz" would be a standout film if it had to rely on its dramatic chops, but it's close enough that if you caught it on cable, you wouldn't think it stood out as being incompetent either.  That's something that sometimes sabotages comedies; the people involved in making something think that just seeing Adam Sandler run in slow-motion (to make up an example) is going to be funny enough to overshadow the lack of professional rigor that a dramatic film would require of the scene.  Yes, it's pretty fun to see Simon Pegg atop a horse, armed to the teeth.  Yes, it's awesome watching Nick Frost jump through the air whilst shooting two guns.  But it's even better when the scenes make sense, work visually, and ALSO have Nick Frost jumping through the air whilst shooting two guns.

The result is that "Hot Fuzz" is a really good movie.  The humor's great, the action stuff works, there's some visual flair in the direction and action, and it's paced very well, without lulls.  I like "Hot Fuzz" better than "Shaun of the Dead," and that might just be because I like cop movies better than zombie movies.  Your mileage might just vary.  But if you like one, I'm pretty sure you'll like the other.  So I'll just shut up so you can get to watching "Hot Fuzz" and laughing along.

4 / 5 - Streaming

The Darjeeling Limited - 2007

"The Darjeeling Limited" - 2007
Dir. by Wes Anderson - 1 hr. 31 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I can understand some of the criticism of this movie, that suggested that it's just another Wes Anderson movie on the subject of father issues, but no one seems to hold against filmmakers who beat the romance-trouble story to death, so I'm not going to hold that against Anderson.  And more to the point, his films up to this point have been different enough from each other, and also represent a steady refining of the subject matter and approach to the subject matter.  I get it if you jumped off-board before "The Darjeeling Limited," but I also think that it's the true gem of Anderson's movies to date.

"The Darjeeling Limited" is preceded by a short film entitled "Hotel Chevalier," about a post-breakup meeting in a Paris hotel room between Jack (Jason Schwartzman) and the unnamed girlfriend that Jack has fled from (Natalie Portman).  It would be possible to stick just to the main movie, but "Hotel Chevalier" does settle the issue of whether or not Jack is a fiction writer (sort of a running gag throughout "Darjeeling").  And, it does offer a stunning view of Natalie Portman, which is worth mentioning.  "The Darjeeling Limited" starts off with a title card saying "Part 2," so you probably should just include "Chevalier" in your viewing experience.

"The Darjeeling Limited" starts off with a cameo by Bill Murray, playing a businessman of some sort who is running late for his train in India.  He tries to run it down, and not only fails, but is also outrun by Peter (Adrien Brody), who manages to outrun Murray and successfully catch the titular train.  Peter is one of the three Whitman brothers, whom he is joining on the train for some sort of spiritual journey organized by Francis (Owen Wilson).  The brothers pop and trade prescription pills, and smoke and drink constantly, although they never seem to lose their composure.  Francis' face is swathed in bandages and walks with a cane, due to a motorcycle accident that leads him to wonder why he and his brothers aren't close (the impetus behind the trip).  There's real tension between the brothers, they take turns telling each other secrets to the people they're supposed to be keeping secrets from almost as revenge on each other.

As is standard with Anderson's films, the key word here is "melancholy."  The characters are uniformly unhappy, although they have their own distinct reasons (and reactions) to their circumstances.  There's a bit of dialogue between Francis and his assistant Brendan, when the train gets lost (yes, really) that Francis sells like it's the big point of the journey.  Brendan tells him, "We haven't located us yet."  While true, the line that gets more to the heart of the matter comes from Jack, after he and his brothers being kicked off the train for persistent misbehavior, is asked by Rita (Amara Karan) what's the matter with him.  Jack thinks for a second, and replies, "Let me think about that.  I'll tell you the next time I see you."  This is the entire point of the movie: the three brothers have shut down following the death of their father, and seem incapable of moving forward.  In a fantastic visual metaphor, the three brothers travel everywhere using their father's luggage (or baggage, if you prefer).  It's a pretty extensive set, and the idea of travelling that heavily is ludicrous, but that point seems lost on them.  They have all reached a point in their lives where nothing is working, not even their relationships with each other, and they've got to sort out their past in order to escape it.  There's a strong parallel to Bill Murray's character in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," but instead of facing down a lifetime of mistakes closer to the end of their lives than the beginning, they're adults with a lot of years left in front of them.

The characters' narcotic-assisted self-indulgent navel-gazing yields problematic results, and it's not until only partially-averting a tragedy do the brothers have a chance to put their own behavior into perspective.  This renews their resolve to see through the actual reason for their trip: to track down their long-disappeared mother.  There are a number of really heart-breaking scenes in this film, and two biggest are the tragedy in an Indian village (which finally forces the brothers into action of any kind), and their interaction with their mother (Anjelica Huston).  They aren't particularly welcome; she asked them not to come, and reluctantly takes them into the convent that she's teaching at.  When she's finally pressed on why she abandoned them, she replies with a detour - a suggestion that they can communicate better without words.  It's an admission than there's no answer that's going to be sufficient, and that she's not particularly interested in hearing about the results of her actions, either.  So when she's gone without a word or explanation in the morning, it's not a surprise, but it's a confirmation that they've already gotten everything from her that they are going to get.

For such a heavy movie, the visuals are another issue entirely.  Instead of mirroring the darkness of the tone of the story, "The Darjeeling Limited" is alive with color.  Every time I've watched this film, I've found myself at some point just marveling at the colors.  They're not garish, either.  There is simply always one overwhelming color choice made, and then there's the minuscule details that one has come to expect from a Wes Anderson movie.  It simply appears to be a truly different world, which is the case.  On a similar note, the soundtrack choices are in the usual Anderson wheelhouse (a trio of vintage The Kinks tracks and a similar vintage The Rolling Stones song are present, along with a lot of Indian film songs), but they're not obvious choices, and add a considerable amount of atmosphere to the movie.  As for the acting, it's so closely tied to the story, and that seems like a victory.  As I mentioned before, the brothers all act out under the pressure of the weight they're all struggling under.  Jack finds solace in women, Peter is a sort of kleptomaniac, and Francis reverts to his attempts to control everyone (and we find out where he gets it from, too).  Despite the stylized dialogue, the characters feel real, as do the tensions between them.

"The Darjeeling Limited" is my favorite film by Wes Anderson so far.  I've enjoyed all of his work, but in this case I don't want to play along with the "I liked your first album best" instinct.  This movie feels like a distillation of and improvement on what the previous films have been dancing around, and with a fantastic backdrop to boot.

4.5 / 5 - DVD

A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory - 2007

"A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory" - 2007
Dir. by Esther Robinson - 1 hr. 15 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Lately, I've been getting more and more into the Velvet Underground (and Nico, as well), and based on that, Netflix recommended this documentary (and a couple other movies) to me.  It's about Danny Williams, a film editor and lighting technician that worked in Andy Warhol's Factory (several interviewees suggest that Williams was also one of Warhol's lovers, as well).  Visiting his family, he disappeared into the ocean at age 27 with no clues as to what happened.

The filmmaker, Esther Robinson, is a relative of Williams', and ends up painting a somewhat confusing portrait of him.  A few people flat out didn't remember him, some diminish his importance, more than a few thought that Warhol had not done right by Williams.  The film ends on a rather philosophical note by John Cale, who upon being asked what he thought had happened, deflects the question by saying that what is really being asked is how each individual would have disappeared themselves.

In the end, no conclusions are really drawn.  Williams disappeared at a young age, before he was really able to gain any traction with his own film-making.  There are many examples of his experimental films shown, and they're interesting (yet not really groundbreaking).  I enjoyed the film, at the same time it didn't seem to accomplish that much.  It's a hazy photograph of the departed, and I suppose that the attempt to render Williams' work into something to be remembered is an accomplishment of sorts.

3 / 5 - NF Streaming