Tag Archives: 3/5

#264-Beverly Hills Cop

Quick Recap: Eddie Murphy plays Axel Foley, a Detroit cop looking for answers to his friend’s murder in upscale Beverly Hills. Are there hijinks? Buddy, you won’t BELIEVE the amount of hijinks this movie has.

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Fun (?) fact: Sylvester Stallone was originally chosen as Axel Foley but dropped out when he couldn’t successfully negotiate what kind of orange juice would be kept in his trailer (according to legend).

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Where there’s Balki, there are hijinks

My thoughts: Is it possible that Beverly Hills Cop is the most 1980s movie ever made? Let’s check the facts:

  • various people casually dressed up as Michael Jackson
  • music is heavily played on a synthesizer
  • a black man puts a banana in a tailpipe and his only consequence is a look of sadness from the two white officers
  • Eddie Murphy

I think if you were to throw in some neon, a few catch phrases and Kenny Loggins this would win.

With 100%  certainty, Eddie Murphy is the reason this movie is so memorable. The plot about a guy looking to find his best friend’s killer is dark but also just general enough to allow Murphy to do his thing. Many of the scenes felt more like I was watching a stand up special than a movie. ( When white people go to a hotel they act like this, but when black people go to a hotel, they do this!) It’s not a bad thing, but it did make the movie seem a little disjointed at times. I also never really bought that Murphy’s character really cared about his friend. They were only together for a few minutes onscreen so I was never really invested in him. Everything just felt like a set up to another joke, which, although they were usually funny and I’ll never turn down a chance to see Judge Reinhold humiliated, the whole schtick gets old.

Nevertheless, it’s a breezy movie and if it was on basic cable on a Saturday afternoon, I would probably sit down to watch it again, if only because of Balki.

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Final review: 3/5

Up next: The Big Lebowski

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#262-Touch of evil

Quick recap: Charlton Heston plays a Mexican officer who gets caught up in a whole bunch of stuff: kidnapping, murder, theft, corruption and lots of jaywalking.

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Also starring Orson Welles, who has a little more than a ‘touch’ of evil going on

Fun (?) fact: Oscar winner Mercedes McCambridge is only in the film because she was having dinner with Welles. He gave her a leather jacket, cut her hair himself and gave her the line, ‘I wanna watch’.

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My thoughts: I think I might be suffering from Film-Noir Fatigue. Not that I’ve seen a bunch yet (there’s a LONG list), but in my mind most of them have formed a gelatinous blob of murder, mayhem and sexy dames. I really wanted to like this film, mainly because of Orson Welles, but at the end of the day, it just seemed like one more movie that fits the theme- no more, no less.

I’m going to back up a bit because it seems like I hated the movie and I really didn’t. Orson Welles in a fat suit doing an impression of Trump? Charlton Heston playing a Mexican official despite not looking hispanic at all? Marijuana benders? There’s actually a lot of camp in this movie, now that I think about it. But also some seriously good scenes, like the beginning where the camera tracks a car as it heads through the US Mexico border and then blows up. That was neat. And I also enjoyed all of the scenes with Janet Leigh because even I can’t resist a sexy dame in trouble.

But there was a lot that just didn’t work for me. The weird, creepy night manager was such an odd choice to add to the film. I guess the point was the he was scared of his drug lord boss but his odd mannerisms overshadowed everything. And the Grandi boys on a weed bender also struck me as more funny than tragic. The real beef I had with the film, however, was the plot. It was hard to follow and I’m still not sure how everything adds up. I got that Hank Quinlan was a super horrible guy who put a lot of innocent people in prison, but that seems like the sort of thing people would find out about soon enough. Add in the drug lord stuff and the car exploding and it just seems more like a cautionary tale for Charlton Heston’s character about too much on his plate.

Final review: 3/5

Up next: Trainspotting

 

 

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#259- Paris, Texas

Quick recap: Travis Henderson (played by Harry Dean Stanton) is a man who has lost everything. With help from his brother, Travis slowly acclimates back into society and hatches a plan to reunite with his son and wife.

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Fun (?) fact: A Scottish band named ‘Texas’ took their name from this movie and a Scottish band named ‘Travis’ took their name from the main character.

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My thoughts: Oh my god, I want to go to West Texas. I say that a lot, but this time I’m super serious, you guys. Watching Paris, Texas brought about this wanderlust that I haven’t felt in a long time- like, since a week ago. Will it actually make me load the car and set out on an adventure? Probably not, until the next time I watch something beautiful and then I’ll start the process all over again.

So, yeah, this film is perfect to just stare at. In the least pretentious way I can put this, every scene is a masterpiece. Every conversation, every person staring off into the distance, every lingering hug felt Important and Meaningful, even when maybe it wasn’t. This is one of those movies I could see myself putting on when I’ve had a bad day and just want something pretty to take my mind off of things. According to the IMDb trivia section, Kurt Cobain and Elliot Smith considered this movie to be their favorite and I can totally see why.

That’s not to say I was enamored with the plot, though. My biggest issue is the treatment with the 8 year old, Hunter. I get that Travis wanted his family back and it’s great that at the end he realized that this wasn’t the way to go about it, but who the hell leaves their kid by himself in the middle of Houston?? Now, I live in Houston and I think it’s a wonderful place, but that’s just crazy. No amount of well intentioned hipster self-discovery is going to change that. The director wanted me to identify with the protagonist but Realistic Me just couldn’t see past what Travis was doing to that little boy. And believe me, I teared up when Hunter reunited with his mom but what if she didn’t want to see him? It’s like, ‘ I know you left your kid 4 years ago because you couldn’t handle parenting and now you work in a strip club in Houston, but surprise! Here’s your kid again and I’m going to disappear for you to figure it out all over again!’ What an ending.

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Final review: 3/5

Up next: Rashomon

 

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#256- Blow-Up

Quick recap: A photographer believes he has witnessed a murder as evidenced by close ups of photos he recently shot.

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Watching Blow-Up gave me a newfound appreciation for Austin Powers

Fun (?) fact: Blow-Up features a performance by the Yardbirds, back when both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck were still in the band.

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The movie also basically brought about the end of the Production Code. The rating system was installed a couple of years later.

My thoughts: As noted above, Blow-Up was a huge influence on the Austin Powers movies, which I always thought just parodied James Bond. And Coppola’s The Conversation, one of my favorites,also plays homage to this film. On paper, Blow-Up has everything I could ever want in a movie, yet I just didn’t care for it very much.

Although it wasn’t my cup of tea, Blow-Up is a beautiful, complicated film and one that I think people should try out. Each scene felt like its own set of photographs pieced together, from the antique shop to the analysis of the pictures to the party. Everything was woven together beautifully and it added to the mystery of whether or not Thomas witnessed a murder. Thomas himself I didn’t care for, but I don’t think I was meant to. It makes more sense for him to be a pretentious artist whose work is so important that it solves murders. I won’t give away what I think about the reality of the body, but one of my favorite quotes from the film says it all:

‘They don’t mean anything when I do them…just a mess. afterwards I find something to hang on to…like that leg. Then it sorts itself out and adds up. It’s like finding a clue in a detective story.’

I can’t put a finger on why the film didn’t do much for me, which is frustrating. It might be because it is slow moving or maybe because there is no resolution, sort of like Two-Lane Blacktop. Or it could just be because I hate mimes. At any rate, if I watched it again with an audience, maybe in a theater, I might have a different opinion.

Final review: 3/5, although it really is an essential film to watch

Up next: She’s Gotta Have It

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