14 - Dune (less) & Chasing Rabbits (more)

I took a break from blogging a month or so ago, and the motivation from my last entry is still valid. However... I never left a year from the "origins" of this without an anniversary entry, so I told myself I could force a short one. The problem is that I don't have a movie subject for year 14.

Normally, for this kind of entry, I would've looked for some production that I could recommend with all my heart (not that I could find that every year until now). So, it crossed my mind to write about "Dune" - Villeneuve version 2021, but I'm not in the right mood for that, and I can't really recommend it with all my heart. One phrase is enough: as visual experience (ignoring the 3D) and audio one too is superb and it really deserves watching it, and fortunately that covers well the less positive trends you can sense in Hollywood lately, although these might still be visible to somebody who's not at the first experience with the "Dune" universe, but I'm really not in the mood to talk about that. Done, subject checked. What about the rabbits...

Since my first year of blogging (the Romanian version) I've had a series of entries tagged as "chasing rabbits", where I allowed myself some off-topic writing once per year. And, as a series, I usually had a connection between the current entry and the previous. There's been a while since I wrote one, and I almost forgot about these. But not completely. So, I did something that really dislike, to read my old blog posts, just to see where I left my "chase". In the last one from 2017 (didn't have the patience to move even more back than that) I was rambling about my time machine obsession. Surprisingly, even though I was more naive back than, my thoughts about this didn't fundamentally change. Maybe just that the random stuff in life is not always so random. The idea to fix the issue by moving back still stands, but because we don't have yet a more concrete solution for time travel maybe we can use the "classic" simulation = reset the context now and restart. In other words sometimes you can try to be the rabbit, if you want to catch the rabbit. Eh, cheap philosophy :)...

Blog break

Because there are times when a movie's not enough to replace reality...

The Morning After (1986)

As it seems, I'm back to old movies not having a better subject. "The Morning After" is not the best of the '80s, but it has some certain charm (+ obviously I've watched it more recently than the '80s so I can still remember what I've seen).

An alcoholic actress, beyond her prime, wakes up one morning, somewhere in a penthouse, near a dead body with a knife in his chest. Completely amnesic and with no recollection of meeting the late fellow, she decides to run away. Where running = flying out of town, but the whole thing happens to coincide with Thanksgiving so the plan fails due to lack of room in scheduled flights. So, having also her car picked up by the police, the only escape she finds seems to be a guy who struggles to start his wreck's engine in the airport parking lot and who's nice enough to offer her a ride back to the city. Leaving out the details, "the plot thickens" the second morning after another drinking night, when the dead body gets mysteriously teleported in the shower of her own house. Fortunately, the guy she met earlier, who we find out to be a former cop, offers to help the apparent murderer to find out how dead men can walk.

Probably half the movie's charm is given by the acting of Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges in the lead roles, and the totally atypical romance story. For the rest, you can feel the direction of Sidney Lumet building up the suspense, even though it's not really among his best. Also, we don't actually have a perfect crime novel resolution, the last part becoming predictable enough about the solution of the mystery. Even so, the script with the comic nuances it has it's nice, and makes a watchable movie despite the age it shows sometimes.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Les misérables (1995)

I don't remember writing any blog entry that could be labeled as "paying tributes", and I doubt the current one would fit something like this. But my subject for this week was not that good anyway, so I thought it might be a better call to shortly point out at least one movie starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, IMHO the most versatile actor France had in the last 100 years. And I think "Les miserables", the '95 version, is eloquent of this versatility. There are many years since I've last seen the movie, so I won't try any detailed summary because my memory won't help me. It's not a classic adaptation of the novel. The story is set during WW2, instead of the French Revolution. It's actually a parallel over time that probably could be extended more. So, even my last viewing of this is far from fresh, I think I've seen the movie like three times or so, enough to stick in my reference book as the best adaptation of Hugo's novel, although it's not an adaption of Hugo's novel. The credit for this is shared by both Belmondo in the lead role - a character built as a replica of Jean Valjean, as well as by Claude Lelouch as director and writer. And that's pretty much all I had to say.

Wrath of Man (2021)

I had a theory that Guy Ritchie makes one-two good movies followed by a bad one, and the most recent, "The Gentlement" was one I liked. So, I had my second thoughts about "Wrath of Man". After I finally watched, I'm wondering if I got too picky, or if it wouldn't have been better to merge it in the same entry I wrote last month with "Pig" and "Nobody"...

Yet another revenge movie. It's actually a remake of a French film from 2004. It starts with an intro where an armored van is robbed, the guards are killed during the incident, as well as a kid in the area, a collateral victim. Fast-forward to the moment when a mysterious fellow is hired as a guard by the same security firm. It becomes obvious fast enough that the guy has his own agenda. After that, we're slowly getting more details, leading to the motivation, revenge for his son, the collateral victim above. There are other background elements of the man in the title that we're given one by one as the action evolves, but as usual I won't spoil the most engaging part of the story.

The problem with "Wrath of Man" is probably in the script, which.. I don't know... it's a bit too "theatrical". I can't find a better term now. The density of lines that are surpass the realistic level in the dialogue seemed too high for me, some exchanges being close too stupid. Maybe there's some intention for that, as a relief for the darkness we have in the rest, but it still feels exaggerated. Especially since the dark feeling is probably the plus side of the movie; both visually and mostly the audio support very well the tension we get from the story development. It's like having one of David Ayer's movies ("Harsh Times", "Street Kings", "End of Watch", etc.), which are usually very harsh, over which you're getting the the typical English humor of Guy Ritchie. The result is fine, but there's still something that doesn't fit well there.

Rating: 3 out of 5