Sometimes movies are like a crystal ball. They take a deep, dark look at our future and end up nailing it right to the wall. It always seems to be films about the media that do this. Films from thirty years ago that at the time seem totally ridiculous are now standard fodder for T.V. Guide (which in itself is a parody anymore). Network is the first to come to mind with its over the top obsession with getting ratings at the expense of the people on the tube. Another is the almost unknown sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show called Shock Treatment in which a town is actually a television audience and real people play out the broadcast days entertainment. Those two films sandwich in what should have been Peter Seller's farewell performance (we'll pretend it is) in Being There, a film that is partly about media perception and partly about people hearing what they want to hear.
Peter Sellers plays Chance, the gardener in a Washington, D.C. home of an old man. Chance has spent his entire life at this house, which leads to the first question: Is he the old man's son? The thing about Chance is that he's rather slow in the head and his entire life revolves around two things: gardening and television. His life can't function without the tube as it plays non stop throughout his day. When the old man dies Chance is unceremoniously thrown out of the home and forced into the streets of Washington for a day that ends into him falling into an accident with the wife of a prominent billionaire (Shirley MacLaine) who brings him home to recuperate. Unintentionally re dubbed as Chauncey Gardner, Chance's simple statements about gardening and non-responses are interpreted by many as financial and political gospel and he begins to ascend a ladder of success by chance (pun intended, of course).
I think a ton of today's politicians and media people have taken a course from Chance. He says nothing that sounds like something. He has two interests and neither one of them will bring you money or power. Even sex has no business in his world. The film is basically people hearing what they want to hear. We don't want to hear things are bad, we want the good even if it's a bunch of bullshit. Chance is just there for the walk and the ride that he doesn't even know he's on. It doesn't interest him. He even flips the channel on himself because he isn't interested. Maybe he IS the perfect human being since he's not self absorbed and has no ambitions except where to find the next television set.
The is the cap to Peter Seller's career. Seller's plays Chance in a way that you fear that he's going to fail after finally walk into the world, but he always comes out smelling like a rose. What's striking about Seller's performance is that he doesn't play Chance as a character with something overly wrong. When we first meet him we don't know that he's a bit slow between the ears. We figure it out the longer we get to know him. Seller's performance is rather striking when compared to the two Oscar winning performances that can be compared to Chance during the following fifteen years, Dustin Hoffman for Rainman and Tom Hanks for Forrest Gump. Those guys play it up. Sellers is more subdued and it works. Sadly, he was nominated but did not win an Oscar in 1979 (ironically losing to Dustin Hoffman for the craptastic Kramer vs. Kramer).
Being There is kind of a lost gem of Sellers' career. You know about Clouseau and Strangelove, but this one just about tops both of those (well, I can't put it over Strangelove). It's a quirky satire that has become standard in the thirty years since its release. The cast is great and it has some fine direction from Hal Ashby, who gives us a little message at the end of the film. It's funny and thought provoking, proving that you can do both at the same time. It's great.
Fatal Attraction is about a lawyer (Michael Douglas) who seems to have the perfect, nuclear wife, child, almost home in the country who suddenly decides to have an affair with a woman he meets in conjunction with his business dealings named Alex (Glenn Close). It's supposed to mean nothing, but Alex goes bat shit, attempts suicide, and decides to make Dan's (Douglas) life a living hell.
I have one question about this film. How in the hell does it get the credit of starting a generation of "love turns them psycho" films that we got pelted with in the late '80's and the '90's. Fatal Attraction is obviously a remake of Clint Eastwood's Play Misty For Me from 1971. It's been updated for the yuppie generation with Eastwood's hippish California DJ who uses his radio prowess to bed ladies into Douglas' lawyer who is living in New York City because hippies were replaced by yuppies because we all wanted to be big shots in New York and the man whore DJ becomes the family man because AIDS was scaring the hell out of us in 1987. How no one got sued over this I have no idea.
Close is every man's nightmare- a woman who won't go away. I know that Michael Douglas is supposed to be the victim here, but you can see her point. Right? She delivers a performance that makes us feel sorry for her one minute, then we're scared to death she's going to do "something", then we just hate her to the point of wanting her dead. You've heard of the bad penny? She's a truckload of them.
Other than Close, this is your typical '80's film with stylish crap and a country house to get away from it all. It's entertaining, though if you've seen Misty you know what the hell is going to happen.
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is another in a long line of Mathew McConaughey films that bank on the fact that he's in it, he probably takes his shirt off, and she ends up defiling another Hollywood actress who when then lose some respect for, this time being Jennifer Garner.
This is going to be the shortest plot description ever: This film is A Christmas Carol meets crap. There, I said it.
I'm not going to waste the time discussing how McConaughey sucks and how the entire cast looks so uncomfortable that you would think this film is nothing but a mass colonsocopy, particularly in Robert Forster. I will say that when Michale Douglas is on screen as the Jacob Marley-ish character the film is 10 times better than the clop that the other 90 minutes entails. That's why it's one full star. So when this hits DVD or Blu-Ray (God knows why someone would buy this on Blu Ray) fast forward to Michael Douglas and ditch the rest.
But this film wasn't made to get Oscars and praise. It was made for the following reason. I saw this at a 9:15 showing on a Saturday night with my wife. I thought that the theater would be a ghost town, but lo and behold it filled up with at least twenty other viewers- all women between 18 and 30. This is their kind of movie. And as long as they still like seeing McConaughey taking his shirt off then he'll still have something that can be called a career.
Twelve years after the destruction of Cyberdine and the end of Judgment Day John Connor is attacked yet again in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, a lackluster sequel to the two great films by James Cameron. In this third installment John Connor (Nick Stahl) is living of the grid, keeping no profile just in case there's another attack on his life, which ends up occurring. A new killing machine called the Terminatrix (Kristanna Loken) is sent back to the past to eliminate Connor's lieutenants, all of whom are in the late teens and early twenties. One of them is Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) who just happens to have John Connor locked away after catching him stealing medicine from the vet clinic where she works. The film basically turns into the pair being protected by another version of the original Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) as they are pursued by the Terminatrix. Judgement Day was not eliminated, just postponed.T3 is a decent action film, but it fails as a follow-up to the original two films. The only reason that can be pinpointed is the lack of James Cameron's involvement in the film with him stating that the story was told in the first two films. Whereas the original two films made it seem as the future is not set, this film makes it seem as though the future can only be delayed- what is destined to happen will happen which destroys much of what the first two films were about. The story is ok, with the basic premise being updated for today's technology. The acting is also ok. That's about all I can say. This is your standard action picture that tries to one up the previous installments but fails to have much of a heart in the end. I've seen worse action films, but I've also seen better, too.
Years after the original Terminator was crushed in a hydraulic press and Sara Connor was forced to wait for the end of the world, two more futuristic warriors are sent back with conflicting missions in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. James Cameron returns to his calling card with a film that is one of the most action packed films ever made. Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as the almost unstoppable Terminator, but this time he's here to protect the life of future resistance leader John Connor (Edward Furlong) from a new, high tech Terminator (Robert Patrick) that can morph into anyone it wants to be. What starts out as a simply film about protecting the child turns into an attempt to re-write history and do to the Skynet program what Skynet had planned to do to John Connor- elimination in the past.Terminator 2 is actually a look at what the first film would have been with a limitless budget. This is a pure action film that delivers from start to finish some of the most explosive and amazing sequences ever filmed and has never really been surpassed in that regard. The T-1000 may be CGI, but those explosions and the building being blown to hell is good old, natural pyrotechnics. The film is pushing 20 years old now but it still is an edge of your seat film that surpasses expectations to the extreme.Arnold returns to his iconic role like an old pair of shoes. This is his signature role and Cameron is able to allow him to show a little humor without being too campy. He's a little lighter, but it isn't hokey as hell. Linda Hamilton also returns as Sarah Connor, but this isn't the same Sarah Connor that drove off into the Mexican desert in 1984. She is a hard built soldier of fortune who has learned the trade of survival so that she can pass her learnings to her son. Hamilton plays Connor as this maniac, yet when you look into her eyes you still see that poor girl that was thrown into this mess years before. Edward Furlong makes his first appearance in this film and runs with it, sadly peaking in his career so far, but the real standout is Robert Patrick, who plays the role of the T-1000 as a mechanical cougar, always on the prowl, sleek, and fast as hell. He is state of the art and he knows it.The amazing thing about Terminator 2 is that James Cameron is able to create a story and film that is filled with action and stars a robot to also be an emotional film that really pulls at the heartstrings. This is Cameron's kind of film: big budget, action packed, with a nice story thrown in. As I said before, this is the holy grail of action films because it is so over the top, but it doesn't feel that way. All the explosions feel perfectly natural. This is the peak of action film making and everything that has followed it has been a disciple of this film, especially when we talk about CGI. This is the ultimate action film.
