2 July - "I'm the thief you tried to cheat"

The Saint (1997)

dir. Phillip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger, 1994)

CAST
Val Kilmer (Batman Forever, 1995)
Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas, 1995)
Rade Serbedzija (X-Men: First Class, 2011)
Henry Goodman (Notting Hill, 1999)
Alun Armstrong (Braveheart, 1995)
Evgeniy Lazarev (Iron Man 2, 2010)
Tommy Flanagan (Braveheart, 1995)
Pat Laffan (War Horse, 2011)
Malcolm Tierney (Braveheart, 1995)
Tony Armatrading (Eragon (voice), 2006)
David Schneider (28 Days Later..., 2002)
Emily Mortimer (Transiberian, 2008)
Velibor Topic (Robin Hood, 2010)
Barbara Jefford (The Ninth Gate, 1999)
Julian Rhind-Tutt (Stardust, 2007)
William Hope (Sherlock Holmes, 2009)
Roger Moore (voice) (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977)
Richard Cubison (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007)
Michael Byrne (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, 2010)

If you like terrible action movies, as I do, The Saint is not one to miss. Notable mainly for Val Kilmer infinitely amusing disguises and accents. The romance is ridiculous, although Elizabeth Shue's character is charming, in her own way. If you discovered that the poetic South African who seduced you was actually an international thief, would you be delighted to see him again? And if the  woman you seduced and then thieved surprised you at the airport, would you exclaim with a smile, "You found me!"?

I think it's the earnestness of the lead actors that makes one bad action movie delightful and another just boring. If I feel like the actors aren't having fun, aren't even trying, then I don't see any point in trying to get into the story either. The Saint is a ridiculous mess, but it's is a sincere mess.

30 June - "There are no second chances here. This is the last chance house"

Double Jeopardy (1999)

dir. Bruce Beresford (Black Robe, 1991)

CAST

Tommy Lee Jones (Small Soldiers, 1998)
Ashley Judd (Flypaper, 2011)
Jay Brazeau (Watchmen, 2009)
Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek into Darkness, 2013)
John Maclaren (The Day After Tomorrow, 2004)
Annabeth Gish (Beautiful Girls, 1996)
Michael Gaston (Hackers, 1995)
Gillian Barber (Jumanji, 1995)
Daniel Lapaine (The 10th Kingdom (TV mini-series), 2000)
Roger R. Cross (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2008)
Keegan Connor Tracy (White Noise, 2005)
Dave Hager (Lincoln, 2012)
Spencer Treat Clark (Gladiator, 2000)

Although the essential premise, that having been framed and convicted for the murder of her husband Ashley Judd as Elizabeth Parsons can now hunt down and execute her two-timing, death-faking husband without fear of legal repercussion, is inherently flawed (they could still charge her with a multitude of other offenses), the idea is still a fun one to explore. Double Jeopardy may be near the top of the list as far as my favorite movies go. Of course, that it is basically a female-driven version The Fugitive doesn't hurt, replete with Tommy Lee Jones' Travis Layman being essentially the same as his Lt. Samuel Gerard.

Ashley Judd lends her own flair, however, and adds herself to the delightful group of leading ladies who can reasonably pull of the character of a mom-who-kicks-ass. Tommy Lee Jones, in turn, complements but doesn't overshadow, and is totally comfortable in his familiar space of a crotchety official who gradually begins to believe in the mission of his adversary.

Also, when Parsons surprises her incognito husband at a bachelor auction: delightful!

29 June - "The bat's stubborn refusal to expire is driving us insane"

Batman Forever (1995)

dir. Joel Schumacher (Twelve, 2010)

CAST
Val Kilmer (Heat, 1995)
Tommy Lee Jones (Double Jeopardy, 1999)
Jim Carrey (Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986)
Nicole Kidman (The Golden Compass, 2007)
Drew Barrymore (Poison Ivy, 1992)
Chris O'Donnell (The Three Musketeers, 1993)
Rene Auberjonois (The Patriot, 2000)
Joe Grifasi (13 Going on 30, 2004)
Pat Hingle (Hang 'em High, 1968)
Kimberly Scott (Love and Other Drugs, 2010)
Debi Mazar (Collateral, 2004)
Michael Gough (Sleepy Hollow, 1999)
Jon Favreau (Iron Man 2, 2010)


Some will say that there's little to be gained in watching the '90s Batman franchise films, especially once Michael Keaton cut out of the picture, and while Batman Forever lacks the Tim Burtonyness of the earlier two films, it's still a delightful colorscape which balances the gloom and dourness of the perpetually distopian Gotham City with the neon light show of its villains, Tommy Lee Jones as Harvey Two-Face and Jim Carrey as The Riddler (also known as every Jim Carrey character from the '90s).

12 June - "Philosophy failed. Religion failed. Now it's up to the physical sciences."

Flatliners (1990)

dir. Joel Schumacher (Batman Forever, 1995)

CAST
Kiefer Sutherland (Twelve, 2010)
William Baldwin (The Squid and the Whale, 2005)
Oliver Platt (X-Men: First Class, 2011)
Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly, 1996)
Kevin Bacon (X-Men: First Class, 2011)
Beth Grant (Rango, 2011)
Benjamin Mouton (Basic Instinct, 1992)
Kimberly Scott (Batman Forever, 1995)
Julie Warner (Tommy Boy, 1995)
Patricia Belcher ((500) Days of Summer, 2009)
Jim Ortlieb (Home Alone, 1990)
Angela Paton (Joe Dirt, 2001)
Ingrid Oliu (Stand and Deliver, 1988)

I'm not sure what genre to categorize this as. It may just be a tame horror movie, but you may just want to generically slot it under suspense or drama. When in doubt, do as my friends at Vision Video do, and put on the drama shelf. The premise is that a group of medical students--and I would love to know where they filmed the creepy, converted-seminary hospital scenes--kill and then resuscitate each other into order to explore the phenomenon of near-death experience. They discover that experimenting with brain-death gives them quite a scare, and each character (except for Oliver Platt) is forced to face the wrongs they have committed in the past.

As I said, this movie has remarkably lovely (in a spooky way) sets which feel as if they are heavy with symbolism but probably aren't (just like a Wes Anderson movie). The character development is subtle but effective, you feel as if you know enough about each person by knowing very little. It's the kind of conservative scriptwriting that I find most appealing in movies. I think this is a greatly underrated movie, especially for it's now-they're-super-famous cast and delicate subject matter. The tone remains clinical even as the symptoms begin to defy a clinical explanation.

24 May - "He'd let you die."

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

dir. J.J. Abrams  (Super 8, 2011)

CAST
Chris Pine (Carriers, 2009)
Zachary Quinto (Star Trek, 2009)
Zoe Saldana (Burning Palms, 2010)
Karl Urban (Priest, 2011)
Benedict Cumberbatch (War Horse, 2011)
Anton Yelchin (The Beaver, 2011)
Bruce Greenwood (Double Jeopardy, 1999)
Simon Pegg (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 2010)
John Cho (Total Recall, 2012)
Joseph Gatt (Thor, 2011)
Tony Guma (Mission: Impossible III, 2006)

I saw Star Trek 2 on a rainy day in Rome, New York, with my friends from the the 2013 Tuscarora Migration Project as we took a hiatus from kayaking due to inclement weather conditions on Oneida Lake. It was probably the perfect movie to see under such conditions.

Since Star Trek already established our characters back in 2009, now we have the luxury of jumping straight into plot and conflict. Just to be safe, however, the movie opens at a breakneck pace with Kirk and Spock racing like devils through a white-red-yellow alien landscape, being chased by mud-daubed alien primitives. It was a great homage to something that might have happened in so many original series episodes. It also served the purpose of re-establishing our characters, Spock is logical to a fault, Kirk flies by the seat of his pants, and everyone else is just tagging along for the ride.

Unfortunately, we also had to sit through the "development" of Spock and Uhura's romantic relationship, which used Spock's self-sacrifice in the first scene to spin off a whole sub-plot of Uhura and Spock passive-aggressive infighting. This was tedious and otherwise irrelevant to the plot.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Khan, a genetically-modified superhuman based on the DNA of Ghengis Khan, historical badass. They don't mention that in the movie but they say so in the TV series when the Khan character is first introduced. Our heroes also have to deal with the war-mongering head of Starfleet Command, and in all other ways to save the day.

Problems:

I'm hoping that when Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy's reprisal of future-Spock) referred to Spock defeating Khan only at "a great price," he was alluding to the next sequel, because all in all, it was not very difficult to defeat Khan.

Uh-oh, Dr. McCoy used Khan's blood to cure Kirk's severe radiation poisoning. This means the laws of death no longer apply and it's going to create a slew of plot holes in the future.

26 Nov - Life of Pi

Life of Pi (2012)

dir. Ang Lee - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

CAST
Suraj Sharma
Irrfan Khan Slumdog Millionaire (2000)
Gérard Depardieu The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

I went to see Life of Pi in 3D at the for-real movie theater with a fella. We watch a lot of movies together but at $10 a pop (even with a student discount) going to the cinema still seems like a big deal. We saw another movie together...it was Taken 2. Which I think would have been better named, Taken, Too. But no one asks what I think. He didn't even read the book, Life of Pi, I mean, by Yann Martel. I know I read it when it first came out because I still have the hardback copy at home somewhere. Sometimes I'm really disappointed when I choose a book based on the bright colors (plus a tiger) on it's cover, but in this case I was right to choose as I did. I think I read it twice.

The movie preserved the key elements of the book, but I think lost a little in the streamlining of the plot. While I'm never thrilled about a movie that's more than 2 hours long, I wish some of the parts where Pi's just sitting around were preserved. These are the scenes where we get to feel the thrill of his smallest accomplishments, learning to fish, using the solar still, when he catches a turtle. Without these trials, Pi's survival is punctuated only by fortuitous interventions, the school of flying fish, the carnivorous island, etc.

1 Aug - "The supermodels, Willy? That's all they are. Bottled promise."

Beautiful Girls (1996)

dir. Ted Demme (The Ref, 1994)

CAST
Matt Dillon (There's Something About Mary, 1998)
Noah Emmerich (The Truman Show, 1998)
Annabeth Gish (Mystic Pizza, 1988)
Lauren Holly (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, 1993)
Timothy Hutton (Serious Moonlight, 2009)
Rosie O'Donnell (A League of Their Own, 1992)
Max Perlich (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1986)
Martha Plimpton (The Goonies, 1985)
Natalie Portman (The Professional, 1994)
Michael Rapaport (True Romance, 1993)
Mira Sorvino (Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, 1997)
Uma Thurman (Les Miserables, 1998)
Pruitt Taylor Vince (JFK, 1991)
Sam Robards (American Beauty, 1999)
David Arquette (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1992)
Adam LeFevre (Jungle 2 Jungle, 1997)
John Carroll Lynch (Fargo, 1996)

Beautiful Girls is one of those movies about High School friends being unable to cope with the reality of adulthood. You can put it on the shelf next to The Big Chill and St. Elmo's Fire. Uniting the friends is an inability to manage their romantic relationships. There are two rational, self-aware characters in this movie, one is Vera, the bartender's cousin from Chicago, played by Uma Thurman. The other is the sassy friend, played by Rosie O'Donnell. The men seem to excuse their own inability to commit to their respective womenfolk by the fact they haven't yet found "the perfect woman" the sassy friend scolds them for chasing a fantasy, and says that they would get bored of their imaginary supermodels even if they ever managed to find them. That's true enough, their girls may dress like New Englanders in the '90s, but they're all played by very attractive actresses. Uma Thurman's characters I guess is supposed to represent the perfect woman made real. but she's unattainable because she has a boyfriend back in Chicago that is mentioned all of twice. She's cool, does he own thing, and her friendly gestures are always misinterpreted as permission for a romantic advancement. She turns all the guys down.

So what's the point? It would seem that based on this movie, men are children and women are adults that must put up with their ridiculous behavior. That's a silly idea.