Rambo Review

Rambo
Release Date: January 25th, 2007
Directed, Written, and Starring: Sylvester Stallone

I love action movies. I watch and enjoy a lot of action movies I have no right to enjoy. I was not born a child of the 80s where action movies reigned supreme, so nostalgia is not a factor. I am not a person who always lets action movies pass with a high score just because of the action. I think the main reason I enjoy action movies is simply because I like seeing the "good guy" beat up the "bad guy". Simple as that. In the past year I have found that two of my favorite action series were getting sequels. In the summer of 2007 we got Live Free or Die Hard but there was a big problem. A sequel to Die Hard, one of the most violent and foul mouthed series in the action genre, was slapped with a (studio demanded of course) PG-13 rating. Something had gone horribly wrong. Die Hard couldn't be PG-13, it just couldn't. So we all held our breath in July when it was released. To my surprise, it was actually good. Despite the rating Live Free or Die Hard still managed to keep that Die Hard spirit of John McClane beating up the bad guys and talking smack. If anything the PG-13 rating is forgiven with the unrated version which adds in many of the f-words that fans wanted. Around the time right before the release of Live Free or Die Hard, it was known that Sylvester Stallone was making yet another Rambo film. A clip leaked onto the internet, it was brutally violent, in particular Rambo performing a decapitation and making a person explode all in one fell swoop. Rambo was not abandoning it's R-rated roots, if anything it was upping the ante on the level of violence seen in the series, little did we know...

The Rambo series isn't exactly the most respected series in the world, so far it has taken advantage of three serious situations (Vietnam veterans post traumatic stress, POW camps, and Soviets attacking Afghanistan) and used them to give an excuse for Rambo killing people. This time around Rambo is living on the Burmese border in Thailand, apparently catching snakes for an odd job. For those that don't know Burma(Myanmar is it's current name) Since 1948 there has been a civil war going on between Karen rebels and the Burmese military, but as the film states the war is more like a genocide. The story begins with a large platoon of Burmese soldiers working their way through villages, doing various horrible crimes against the Karen villagers. Right before we are treated to fictional horrors, we are subjected to seeing real life news footage of Burma. We see dead bodies rotting in the street, people being shot, and children being beaten in the streets. Wow, aren't Rambo movies supposed to be fun to watch? So immediately after this news footage, we get to see our "villian" and his soldiers play a game of "bet on which villager can cross the mine field without blowing up." The reason I put quotations on villian is because he is barely existent in this movie. He never speaks, never emotes, it seems his only job is to stand around and smoke a cigar while his soldiers do horrible things. So we finally get to Rambo, who is catching snakes for a living. Apparently Rambo lives in a hut of some sort with no bed, and some random work tools lying around. Our time with Rambo's introduction is short lived, because of course we have to get back to the killing of innocent villagers. So after another scene showing the horrors of war, such as children being thrown into fires, we finally get to find out what the story is about.

Rambo is approached by a group of christian missionaries from Colarado, they want him to take them into Burma, to "help" the Karen villagers. Help is a strong word though, it is almost as if the missionaries did zero research before coming all the way to Thailand. Even Rambo thinks they are stupid. "Are you bringing any weapons?" he says like the answer isn't obvious "Of course not" the balding white missionary with the familiar face says. "Then you aren't changing anything" This is a rare occasion, Rambo sharing dialouge with a person. This has to be the only movie I have seen where the main character has so few bits of dialouge. It gets worse when the action really picks up, and Rambo doesn't speak a single word for the last 15 or so minutes of the movie. Nonetheless, Rambo has never been about the dialouge, which what little this movie has, is already pretty bad, so if anythimg I am almost relieved that there is so little of it. After some convincing from a pretty blonde missionary, Rambo decides to take them into Burma anyway. Along the way he kills some pirates that attack their boat and when the missionaries question him he hiliariously and indecipherably shouts "WHO ARE YOU!? WHO ARE ANY OF YOU!?" The crowd burst into laughter at this point.

So of course the missionaries get to the Karen village, and of course the village is attacked by the military. This is the first time we really see the movies violence in full force, while the villagers seem to die less violently than others (with a few exceptions) the missionaries seem to be filled with kerosene and hamburger meat and provide some hilarious explosions. So now, Rambo has to save the day, by way of a preacher from the church in Colorado, he teams up with a group of foul-mouthed mercenaries who provide the weakest dialouge of the movie, and also the worst acting. The missionaries have been captured and taken to the military base, so Rambo and the mercenaries have to make their way to the base, killing all along the way, get the missionaries out, THEN head all the way back to Rambo's boat. I thought the violence for the deaths of the missionaries were funny, but all of the really gory explosions and deaths are saved for the evil soldiers. We see heads explode, land mines go off, arrow impalements, and a claymore explosion that could probably kill an entire forest. There are some distinctly disturbing moments, such as a scene that implies rape of several village women at once, but instead of saving them Rambo goes after the one white blonde missionary. Some characters die, Rambo never emotes, and neither do we. The film essentially builds up to a big 10 minute finale inwhich Rambo takes charge of a mounted turret and proceeds to kill the entire platoon of soldiers. He saves the last kill for the villian, but I am not sure how he even knows who the villian is.

The ending is a nice homage to the very beginning of First Blood but it attempts to portray a big emotional character choice, that essentially comes from nothing except one line of dialouge from that blonde missionary that convinced Rambo to go to Burma and caused the whole mess in the first place. I am not sure where Rambo gets off showing us real footage of Burma, when it really has no message to convey except that if Rambo was a real person, he would kill a lot of soldiers, and not really solve the conflict at all. So it is here that I realize what really makes an action movie, it is not soley the action, it is the purposes of the action and how the main character reacts to things around him. In the Die Hard series John McClane is a wisecracking bugs bunny type, Rambo barely says anything and when he does it is a cynical statement about how messed up the world is. This is not an action movie, its more like a very violent politcal powerpoint.

5.8/10

Cloverfield Review

Cloverfield
Release Date: 1/18/08
Directed: Matt Reeves
Produced: JJ Abrams

Cloverfield is the most recent film to gain massive internet hype and probably will disappoint those who have long drawn out theories of the monster and where it came from. Me, on the other hand, know too much about how J.J. Abram's Lost can hype people up and inspire horribly complicated theories, when really the explanation of what is going on is always much simpler. The monster really never gets explained, so ultimately the fanatics will be crushed that their theory isn't even explored. Cloverfield as it turns out is less about the monster and more about the characters and their reactions to the attacks. While Cloverfield delivers on the action to a pretty satisfying extent, the characters are much more interesting. We have Rob, Hud, Marlena, and Lily who get developed as much as they can in the short 80 minute running time. We care about Rob's mission to save his girlfriend and even when it gets to a pretty ridiculous extent of them entering a building thats tipping over on its side, we still hope they make it.

What I did not expect is that Cloverfield would have some clever commentary on the information age. Most notably in the now famous "Statue of Liberty" scene that we see in all the trailers, the immediate reaction of most of the bystanders isn't to run as fast as possible but to take pictures of the severed head with their camera phones. The film also cuts between the tape of the attack and some taped over footage of Rob and his girlfriend Beth going to Coney Island, this is very effective and provides the film with more emotional spark than just being a simple monster movie.

So if you go into Cloverfield super hyped up to see a big clear shot of the monster taking out buildings, you will be disappointed. There is plenty of suspense and violence to please the majority of action fans but I can already tell the viral marketing got some people way too hyped for a movie that if anything is more of a clever statement about human behavior and technology in the midst of a disaster. But if you are like me and crave a fresh new take on the monster genre, Cloverfield fills that void completely.

8/10

One Sentence Reviews of the Last Week

The Nines starring Ryan Reynolds: The metaphor the film tries to convey loses it's importance because it is so thickly disguised by stories that are more interesting separately than as a whole. 7/10

Reno 911 Season Premiere: It is funny that the season opens with a joke about jumping the shark, because as far as I can tell this first episode is darker and funnier than last season and the feature film version of the show put together. 9/10

iHome: Good sound quality and much easier to set up than all the parts it come with suggest. 9/10




Eagle vs Shark: It is essentially Napoleon Dynamite with a very real and almost sad explanation for the characters weird behavior. 8.5/10

Magnolia Review + One Sentence Reviews of the Week

Magnolia
Release Date: January 7, 2000 (USA)
Written and Directed: Paul Thomas Anderson (Oscar Nominated)
Original Songs by: Aimee Mann (Oscar Nominated)

I am a fan of great movies that I have not yet seen. There is nothing I love more than watching a highly praised movie that has been out for a long time, but I have somehow missed out on. Magnolia was suggested to me by a friend after discussing how excited I was about Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood. I knew nothing about Magnolia going in besides that it has multiple story threads and that Tom Cruise got nominated for an Oscar for his role in it. I was surprised by how little I had heard of this movie, a movie of this caliber not being nominated for best picture seems criminal, but just look at Children of Men. I am not going to lay out the plot of Magnolia if only because it would take much more time than I am willing to give, but also because watching the plot unfold is the most interesting part of the film.

We have 7 main stories with 8 main characters. A police officer(John C. Reilly); a game show host (Philip Baker Hall); a sexual seminar host(Tom Cruise); a hopeful and brilliant game show contestant(Jeremy Blackman); a depressed drug addict(Melora Waters); a washed up game show contestant(William H. Macy); an old dying producer(Jason Robards); the producers male nurse(Philip Seymour Hoffman); and the producers young and depressed wife(Julianne Moore). Most movies with multiple story threads all build up to an event that connects every story together into one point. Paul Thomas Anderson knows we are expecting this and almost kind of taunts us throughout the movie, keeps us guessing on who is related to who. I will warn you now that the end event that puts every character through the same experience is nothing like anything I have ever seen in a serious movie. I mean its hard to compare the end event of Magnolia to the more conventional attempts at this type of movie like Babel or the best picture winning Crash.

Just about every performance is top notch, with Tom Cruise doing the best, essentially switching emotion on a cue. It is nice to see actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman before they became superstars, he shows his ability in this movie very well. John C. Reilly is essentially the straight man of the film and is the character we tend to feel the most sorry for and connect to. His story seems the most important to the audience even though it is rather inconsequential. The music by Aimee Mann is great, songs like the Oscar nominated "Save Me" to close out the film or "Wise Up" performed by the cast in what essentially serves as an intermission; either way both are great songs that now have a resting place on my iPod play-list. Magnolia has had a surprising amount of influence on films that are today considered best picture caliber, Magnolia not only beats these films in quality, it also manages to be the most epic and important of all of them. There is no underlying message about race or politics, it is just a movie about people, things that happen everyday. It is wonderful.

10/10

One Sentence Reviews of things I experienced this week:

Juno (2nd time)
Even Better. - 9.8/10

Eating at Five Guys
I could get grease anywhere, this was better than McDonald's but I wouldn't go out of my way for it. - 7/10

Watching the Zelda4in48 webcast all weekend
What started as an attempt to play all 4 3D Zelda games in 48 hours(they failed) turned into a hugely popular webcast that went on to earn over $1000 for the gamer charity Child's Play. 10/10

Jerry Maguire Review

Jerry Maguire
Release Date: December 13th, 1996
Written and Directed: Cameron Crowe

"Show me the money!" one of the most recognizable movie quotes of all time. The term has been parodied in just about every comedy show and used to sell just about every product(the player's Cuba imitation is painfully racist). Then you have "You had me at hello" the second most famous quote from Jerry Maguire, parodied on many a comedy show as well and probably used in at least one ad. Oh but thats not all, next you have "You complete me" the third most famous quote, this was found in most of the thousands of parodies of this movie that exist in some form usually accompanying "You had me at hello" My point is, Jerry Maguire is responsible for at the very least 50% of the lame sketch comedy parodies of the late 90s. So I go into the film aware of all these pop culture icons, what I didn't realize is how much deeper the film goes beyond these famous quotes.

The story is of Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) a sleazy sports agent who after a confrontation with the young son of a hockey player, becomes depressed and writes a mission statement entitled "The Things We Say But Do Not Do" a desperate plea for sports agents to care more about their clients and less about the money. He sends this out to everyone at his office, and when he arrives the next day he is rewarded with thunderous applause! Only to soon be fired by a former apprentice of his Bob Sugar (Jay Mohr) just like that all of his clients are being stolen in front of his eyes. In a desperate plea to keep his career Jerry calls all his clients but one client, an overly charismatic and egotistical football player Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr) keeps him on the line for so long that Jerry loses all his other clients. As Jerry leaves the office he makes a request for anyone that wants to, to join him in creating a new talent agency based on the principles in his mission statement. Only one person does, a lonely single mother accountant who Jerry has only met once named Dorothy Boyd (Rene Zellwegger) So as Jerry and Dorothy try to get Rod famous, we get to see their rises and falls and ultimately blossom into a relationship reserved only for the sweetest of movies.

When watching Jerry Maguire it was hard not to cringe when hearing a lot of the famous quotes, just because I am so used to them in parodies its almost hard to take it seriously now. A lot of the scenes, specifically the "You had me at hello" scenes are so sugary sweet it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. But most of the movie is so good that it is easy to forget about the bittersweet taste of Rene crying all the time about her overly cute little son played by Jonathan Lipnicki. While those two particular performances are nothing above what you would find in your average romantic comedy; Tom Cruise and Cuba on the other hand, hit out of the park. Cruise portrays loneliness very well, and you honestly feel bad at how many times he gets screwed over by his own kind in this movie, as he slowly realizes that he used be just like them. Cuba Gooding Jr. is perfect for this role and deserved his Oscar. He is so full of charisma, in yet also so full of honesty and emotion that you can't help but love him. It is depressing watching this film knowing Cuba would go on to be in Norbit and Daddy Day Camp. Cameron Crowe is a great writer, he is a rare breed, I can easily imagine Jerry Maguires screenplay, usually this would be a fault with a movie to feel like you are reading a screenplay as you watch, but somehow Cameron Crowe makes that enjoyable and uses it to his advantage for great dialog. It does become a problem during the more emotional scenes as it is hard to really take them too seriously, but again this could be at fault for me being familiar with their parodies before I saw the actual film. The only problem I had with the writing is that we don't see enough of Jerry being a real sleazeball, maybe the studio was afraid people wouldn't find Tom Cruise to be a great person for more than 6 seconds, man would that come back to bite them.

Cameron Crowe also knows how to direct his actors, especially Cuba, you become excited when he comes on screen with all the energy in the air. Cameron Crowe should cast him in another movie, maybe save his career. If you want to look at Jerry Maguire in a simple manner, it is a mix of a guy's sports movie and a girl's romantic comedy that pleases both audiences. But at it's core the film is a story about a man making a realization in his life of how to treat other human beings, making him a better, happier person for it.

9.3/10