I loved this film. It's really, really bad, but easily one of the funniest films I've seen recently. For some strange reason it's set a mere seven years into the future from 1990, 1997, during a heat wave and gang war in LA. The fact that it's in the future doesn't add much to the story, but I guess the cars look a little different. And the guns. Danny Glover is wound up in the most ridiculous way and for no justifiable reason. One minute he climbs out of a gangster's limo in a cloud of smoke and tells them to lay of the ganj as he goes to see a mystic informant, and the next he's rushing around mad and wound up for no reason like a raging paranoiac with a fear of heights and no time to masturbate who curses birds. Bill Paxton is also ridiulous as his short-lived up and coming partner. The funniest scene in the film has him try to get in the hotboxed limo that takes Glover to the informant, before running after it and shouting "f--k!" as it drives off. I don't know, I guess he really wanted to get stoned.
It's a weird film, and does not make much sense. Danny Glover's character has an intense fear of heights that means the finale of the film is a little longer than usual. I guess it serves to give him a disadvantage to the predator but they don't use it. Instead he climbs out down a ledge and curses about how he doesn't need birds, then finds himself in a spaceship. The characters are all ridiculous, especially Glover's character, who shouts at everything and runs around talking to himself. In one scene he rushes after Gary Busey's equally frustrated agent and grabs him by the collar, but while other films would have him approach casually like a bad ass, or meet him in a corridor, this film has him run out of his office and run down stairs, barging past people, despite the fact that Busey is walking slowly away. It just looks silly and I'm sure it's intentional, because there are many other things that make no sense. In one scene Paxton and Glover are both wearing suits and trilbies, despite having never worn them before, and they never wear them again. It's just slightly bewildering, and kudos to the film makers if it was intentional, because it works without being obvious or self conscious.
I don't know, I'll definitely be watching this again, but although unique it's not as good an action film as the first Predator.
I have a thing for westerns. I think it appeals to my inner child more than any other genre except maybe sci-fi because it's set on the "frontier," or what was the frontier of the American west, which means unexplored terrain, wide open spaces, sun and adventure. Of course it's not a realistic depiction of the wild west by any means, but there's a cosy innocence to that ideal that is appealing, and a youthfulness and sense of adventure.
This is my favourite of the Anthony Mann westerns so far for a number of reasons. Like Red River it is about a journey to a new place, in this case a place for a bunch of settlers to call home. The film opens with the hero, played by James Stewart, and his roguish friend played by Arthur Kennedy defending the settlers from a group of Indians. They find themselves at Portland, a small harbour town, and then head up river to find a new land beyond the mountains. So far so corny, but beyond the beautiful cinematography, what I liked about this film is the conflict between the two leads, one of mercenary nature who likes the town life, and James Stewart's character, who's no longer cares for monetary gain and wants to live a quiet life in the new settlement. This divide is not only between the main characters but between the settlers and the greedy bandits of the local gold mine. Fate has them discover gold at just the right time so that the two are separated by their motivations, one turns to the evil of materialism and quick gains and the other follows his heart. In the end of course it's obvious how it turns out, but I liked the idea and the look of the film as much as anything, and it's one of the most entertaining.
MIA has to be one of the best TV episodes I've ever seen, and a great end to season 2. It's a pretty hard-hitting episode that deals with regret, loss and yearning, as experienced by Al when Sam finds himself in San Diego at the time that Al's wife re-marries while his younger self is rotting in a Vietcong prison camp. Al, desperate to change his life so that his wife doesn't remarry, violates his own code of conduct and tries to stop Beth Calivicci from marrying a lawyer, lying about Sam's real mission, which is actually to save a Vietnam vet and top detective from being killed in an ambush in which he freezes up due to similarities to an ambush he experienced in Vietnam. It's a great episode that's not too heavy on nostalgia, although there are hippies and drugs and Marvin Gaye's Heard it Through The Grapevine. It's an enjoyable episode, but the final scene is the best in the series so far, in which Al, invisible and unable to communicate with his ex sees her one last time, pleading with her. It's a great episode and Dean Stockwell is great in it.
So far a great series, I hope it continues to be that way, despite warnings of an infamous white rap from Dean Stockwell.
Yeah so I really like this series, and it's a great series, but Sam Beckett might as well be Jesus. He's so inherently good, so full of virtue, so boyishly innocent and without corruption that it's at times hilarious. In one episode, the second episode to deal with racism in the the deep south in the 50s might I add, Sam leaps into a lawyer defending a young black woman named Lyla accused of murdering the son of some...wealthy southern gentleman who apparently owns a a whole town. Without any prior knowledge of who he's leaped into, he pleads not guilty on her behalf, causing an uproar in the racist town. When he hears the dreaded n-bomb he takes it personally in the funniest way, shuddering, seizing up and lifting his finger and telling Captain Cod to never ever use that word again in his presence. As if Sam has any reason to take it so personally, unless I'm missing something and Sam spent some of his childhood in the ghetto. So far Sam's only weakness has been towards his old piano teacher, whom he finds himself drawn to while performing a play in another episode.
The show has plenty of lame moments, and plenty of great moments. Some episodes are very bland, some are great fun. So far the highlights have been the ghost episode, in which he leaps into a parapsychologist who has to help a grieving woman find out if her husband is haunting her. This episode has a few hysterical moments involving Al. So far my favourite episode is Good Morning, Peoria, which has Sam play a radio DJ fighting to keep rock n roll on the air against the local stuffed shirts who think it's contaminating the youth. It's helped by the great music and setting. Another highlight is a pretty daring episode in which he leaps into the body of Jimmy, a young man with down's syndrome who has to be accepted by co-workers at a new job and by his brother's wife. To himself and Al, Sam (Jimmy) is coherent and understands all that is asked of him, and yet he still makes mistakes anyway and finds himself bullied and berated by his co-workers. It's as if Jimmy is like Sam, a normal, smart person trapped within a system, and it's a thought-provoking episode.
As I said the show isn't meant to be taken seriously but there are some episodes in which Sam and Al should be causing more harm than good to the timelines of others. Throwing aside the fact that even getting in somebody's way in the street could drastically alter the lives of random people, one little girl who for some stupid reason, something about being "pure of heart" can see both Al and Sam, and the memory of a strange man impersonating her mother and claiming to be an angel who has come to help them might well confuse her mind with unanswerable questions for a long time for better or worse. But of course the writers have an excuse, because apparently the only explanation for Sam leaping into specific people and only being able to leap out when he's solved a problem is some kind of higher intelligence; basically god I guess. I guess it conveniently fills in all the plot holes, not that it matters anyway, since it's not serious and the pseudo-scientific time travel plot basically serves to have Sam and Al leap into various situations and nostalgic times in the 20th century.
