Gone in Sixty Seconds - 2000

"Gone in Sixty Seconds" - 2000
Dir. by Dominic Sena - 1 hr. 58 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I'm not going to represent "Gone in Sixty Seconds" as any kind of good movie.  Having said that, I've probably watched it half a dozen times, and I've been wanting to watch it again for a few months now.  Considering all of the actors involved here, this film underachieves.  But then again, there's sometimes comfort in a paint-by-numbers story, like the comfort in repeating rituals.  Plus, goofball Nicolas Cage.

Memphis Raines (Nicolas Cage) runs a go-kart park in the middle of nowhere, but is pulled back into his previous life of crime through his younger brother's errors.  Raymond Calitri (Christopher Eccleston), a British woodworker/criminal boss, hired Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) to steal some cars, and he didn't deliver.  Since obviously the price for failure is death, only Memphis can save Kip, by finishing the job.  The job?  Stealing fifty cars in three days.  That means Memphis is going to need a crew.  And then they steal some cars, with the clock ticking.

"Gone in Sixty Seconds" is like the gearhead version of "Ocean's Eleven."  Not in quality, of course.  There are no elegantly-planned heists, this isn't a crew of fashionably-dressed rogues.  It's Nic Cage and a team of neuroses leading a bunch of stereotype-filling weirdos on a mission of brute force: steal everything, and drive fast while doing it.  For Kip.  And I have absolutely no problem with any of that.  I'm not sure that one could make the case that having better dialogue, or more well-rounded characters, or really anything other than what's already on the screen would have improved the end result.  I mean, I wouldn't have dressed the one woman in the movie, Angelina Jolie, in a series of potato sacks, and I wouldn't have given her pseudo-bleached blonde dreadlocks, either.  I might have made the enemies of the Raines brothers (that would be the police on his trail, played by Delroy Lindo and Timothy Olyphant, and the aforementioned evil British woodworker) a little more formidable, but it's not that kind of movie.

For a car movie, there's an awful lot of oohing and aahing over the vehicles, and there are some pretty sweet whips here, but director Dominic Sena never seems to take any visual delight in the machines that all of these gearheads are driving around.  There are no loving shots of classic cars, no emphasis on them at all.  The chase scenes are all rapid-cut monstrosities, with no real attention paid to what's involved.  If you're showing a lion chasing a zebra in the jungle, at least give us the opportunity to appreciate what a lion and a zebra are.  And again, this doesn't really matter much to the end product.  "Gone in Sixty Seconds" delivers exactly what it promises - Nic Cage being a little weird while trying to get one over on the man.  But it's also morally defensible, because he's doing it for his kid brother.  And also, screw that British guy and his silly benches.

Even with all of these things being provable facts, "Gone in Sixty Seconds" is still pretty fun.  This kind of story gets told over and over again, and it doesn't seem to get old.  There's a kind of comfort in watching the reluctant hero having to reassemble his army of misfits.  Then we get to watch this army accomplish what seems impossible, until something goes wrong near the end.  And usually, then success.  And all of this while we have to endure the quirks of the man himself.

That story works.  You can plug in any batch of actors, and as long as the goal is action-oriented, you've pretty much got a functional movie.  Sometimes you can add in bits and twists, but that's not that important.  "Gone in Sixty Seconds" is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch.  And the same way that I'll more than likely eat another PB&J, I'll probably end up watching this silly movie again, too.

2 / 5 - TV (HD)

Thor: The Dark World - 2013

"Thor: The Dark World" - 2013
Dir. by Alan Taylor - 1 hr. 52 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

It's not that I didn't enjoy watching "Thor: The Dark World," it's more of an issue that I'm becoming super-aware of the Marvel Comics movie formula; introduce where the characters are at, big battle number one, hero suffers, then big battle two.  Also, don't forget the post-credits scene.  By all means, don't fix what ain't broke, but after three Iron Mans, a Captain America, an Avengers, and now two Thors (and the very recent "The Wolverine"), what's on-screen had better be transcendent, or there's going to be a whiff of formula dragging things down.  If "T2" (as I'll be referring to this film for the duration of this review) had come out ten years ago, it would have been a game-changer.  As things stand, it's a good film.  Maybe not quite as good as the first "Thor," which I enjoyed far more than I figured I would, and better than almost all of the non-Avengers-related Marvel movies.  But if there's going to be another Thor, it damned well better have Beta-Ray Bill in it.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, a bad guy named Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) tries to end existence, using a red goo of a weapon called the aether, but is deterred, and the aether is hidden, too powerful to be in anyone's hands.  In modern day, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is in Asgard, being held responsible for his actions in "The Avengers."  Odin (Anthony Hopkins) dictates that he's to spend the rest of his life in a dungeon, without any contact with anyone else, until he dies, which is quite a long time indeed.  Thor (Chris Hemsworth), is out and about, quashing rebellions around the nine realms, which has left he and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) separated and without communication for two years.  Jane, and her intern Darcy (Kat Dennings), and her intern, Ian (Jonathan Howard) stumble across some weirdness in an abandoned warehouse in London, which draws the attention of Malekith.  And fights.

If you're dealing with superhero movies, the two big questions are whether the action is up to snuff (it is), and whether or not the visuals are top-notch (and they are).  You could also hammer on casting, but seeing as how this is a sequel, you're either on board or not by this point (although I really like the cast of Thor, in general).  The "Thor" films both have a spectacular cosmic look, and Asgard is still an incredible visual.  Beyond that, the pair of battles with Malekith are engaging, and hold up.  While these are definitely strong points in "T2," they kind of have to be.  Like I said before, ten years ago, this kind of movie would have dropped jaws.  At this point in time, you can't really give too much credit for spectacular fights and visuals, because they're expected, and to fail to deliver them would be a complete dereliction of duty on the part of the filmmakers.

So then you get to whether or not the story holds up.  A huge part of the charm of the first one was watching Natalie Portman get flustered by a Norse God, and their dynamic shifts a little this time around (although not in a bad way, and it's not as if her character is unrecognizable).  One of the things that the Avengers line of movies have done well is provide a sense of continuity; Loki's situation is because of his actions in previous installments, and whatever has developed between various characters isn't just thrown away out of convenience.  At the core of this story is Thor being torn between duty and love, but the main impetus that drives the story is the usual bad guy getting ahold of a big-time weapon plot.  There are a couple of twists (to be expected when one of the main characters' superpower is the ability to cast illusions), but the plot isn't particularly clever on this front.  It is visually appealing, and works in a way that involves many characters, but since it's reasonable to expect that Thor isn't going to eat it before an "Avengers" sequel gets made, the stakes are necessarily not that high (despite what the story tries to convince you of).

In the absence of a compelling story with high stakes, the question becomes whether or not "T2" is a fun ride or not.  And it is.  The various characters have a fun dynamic, and the Asgardians provide the drama.  It's paced well, and the action is fun enough to watch, and the things that need to look really cool look really cool.  It is a fun ride, but it's not an indispensable chapter in the Avengers saga.  The first film was, as introducing the character and his role in the Marvel universe probably wouldn't have been satisfactorily explored had it been a subplot in "The Avengers."  This time around, "T2" is product.  Yes, it's well-crafted product, but by the end of these two hours, the larger Avengers story hasn't been advanced meaningfully.  To me, this is the first film in the Avengers cycle that you could skip without really affecting your enjoyment of the larger story.  You'd miss a fun movie that has some pretty good moments (at least a couple of which are because of Kat Dennings) and some great visuals, but when you go to "The Avengers 2," you're not going to have to ask whomever you're seeing it with why something involving Thor is happening.


3 / 5 - Theatre (3D)