L.A. Confidential (1997)

Off the Record, On the QT, and Very Hush-Hush

My roommate and I did two movies back to back, but thankfully the second one originally came out well within our lifetime.  It was one I knew about, but never really found myself that interested in watching.  But he got the movie, so I figured we might as well watch the thing.  While watching it, I found myself completely unable to stop thinking about a certain video game that I really enjoyed last year, but I’ll be mentioning that later.  For now, let’s get into my review of L.A. Confidential, based on a book by James Ellroy, written by Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson, directed by Curtis Hanson, and starring Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, Kevin Spacey, David Strathairn, Danny DeVito, Ron Rifkin, Graham Beckel, and Simon Baker.

Detective Wendell “Bud” White (Russell Crowe) and his partner, Dick Stensland (Graham Beckel), are delivering alcohol to a policeman party, while periodically stopping so Bud can whoop on some guys abusing their ladies, something he has a big problem with.  At the police station, narcotics detective Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) shows up along with a group of Mexican guys rumored to have recently attacked and beaten some police officers, and they get turned over to the night’s watch commander, Sergeant Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce).  Alcohol and rumor make their way quickly around the office, inciting the police officers to go down to the cells and attack the Mexicans.  Reporters get some pictures of it and call it “Bloody Christmas”, which makes the LA Times and tarnishes the reputation of the LAPD.  District Attorney Ellis Loew (Ron Rifkin) and Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) interview officers to figure out who will testify and who will have this pinned on them.  White won’t testify, Exley is totally on board, and even suggests using the TV show that he works on to gain leverage on Vincennes and get his support.  This whole plan gets a couple of officers, including White’s partner Stensland, is expelled.  Exley gets promoted.  Shortly after, Exley is called to the Nite Owl coffee shop and finds a large group of people murdered in the bathroom.  One of these people is Stensland.  For the rest of the movie, we follow Exley, White, and Vincennes as they try to find out what truly happened that night in the Nite Owl, but what they find may go much deeper than they expected.

I really liked LA Noire … I mean Confidential.  This was a really good movie, but all I kept thinking about the entire time is how similar this movie is to LA Noire, which gained respect for this movie, but lost a little for LA Noire.  The movie had a really interesting story, but it was perhaps a bit predictable, and it was elevated by some really good performances and some really good action.  The story of the movie is fairly classic noire movie fare, with corruption and betrayal happening with the police that’s being battled by a few good cops, and there’s a little mob action going on to boot.  You can probably figure out who the bad guy is before the movie tells you, but it’s much harder to figure out why and how.  Either way, having guessed the culprit didn’t really affect my enjoyment of the movie.  A lot of the movie was just back to back intense scenes of puzzle solving.  It could not go without saying that the movie reminds me of LA Noire.  Not just the noire style and the LA setting, but there were some scenes of collecting clues, some pretty intense interrogation scenes, and even some entire plot points that were shared with the game.  They worked really well in both.  The movie is not one that I would call “action packed”, per se, but there’s a couple of scenes with good, solid action.  One in particular that stands out is the one that ends the movie in a giant shootout that was pretty awesome.

The performances are another great part about this movie, and I can scarcely think of one that did not hold up their end of the bargain.  Crowe was the bomb in this movie.  He was a total badass, but also put in some serious acting in parts.  His part of the final shootout in the movie was particularly badass, and a later scene with Basinger was particularly well acted, but he’s pretty great throughout.  Guy Pearce is a good contrast to Crowe in this movie.  As the movie moves along, we find that they’re both good cops, but in different ways.  Pearce is all by the book and Crowe is all about seeing justice served.  Pearce is Superman, Crowe is Batman.  Unfortunately for Pearce, him being the by the books cop made me dislike him until near the end of the movie.  I’m more of a Batman kind of guy.  Spacey is still a good guy, but he’s barely a cop until the end of the movie.  He’s more of a celebrity who does police work on the side.  Kim Basinger puts on a great performance as well, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing this chick looks and she was in her 40’s in this movie.  She’s almost 60 now, and I haven’t seen her in a bit, but I’d wager I would still smash.  James Cromwell did a great job as well, being very charming and likeable for the greater majority of the movie.

LA Confidential is a movie I’m happy that I finally watched.  If you’re not into games, but you heard good things about LA Noire, you can basically just watch this and get the gist of the game because they borrowed so heavily from it.  Good story, great performances, and some intense scenes and action make this a good watch.  I watched my roommate’s copy of the movie, but I would totally buy it myself as well, so it’s at least worth a rental for you.  LA Confidential gets “You look better than Veronica Lake” out of “Lookie here, the great jerkoff case of 1953.”

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!

Red Planet (2000)

Fuck This Planet!

The worst thing I could do now is come out of the October Horror-thon with a bad movie. That being the case, I offer to you my review of Red Planet. … DAMNIT! Oh well, I can make this work. I have no idea what compelled me to purchase this movie on BluRay beyond the fact that it was $5, but I done it and now you can read about it. Red Planet was directed by Antony Hoffman (which you should not read as Anthony Hopkins like I did), and stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Val Kilmer, Benjamin Bratt, Tom Sizemore, Simon Baker, and Terence Stamp.

The year is 2056, Earth is in the middle of a crisis because of pollution and overpopulation. The opening narration goes on and on about these things, but I’ve broken it down for you so you can skip into the movie about 5 minutes. A crew is being sent to check on the terraforming of Mars that they initiated 20 years earlier by throwing a frat boy’s fridge up there and letting algae grow, which should create oxygen and give us a new planet to fuck up. This team is comprised of potential lesbian commander Kate Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss), space janitor Robby Gallagher (Val Kilmer), cocky pilot Ted Santen (Benjamin Bratt), teammate killer Chip Pettengill (Simon Baker), douchey know-it-all Quinn Burchenal (Tom Sizemore), and rambling old man Bud Chantillas (Terence Stamp). A solar flare messes up their systems on their ship, causing the team to have to leave without their commander. Once they land, they start slowly dying off in various ways until only Val Kilmer escapes. The end.

I am comfortable confessing that, it turns out, I only bought this movie because I thought it was Mission to Mars. I was wrong. Not that either of them are good movies, but it was the corniness I wanted as opposed to the corniness I didn’t want at the moment. If I remember Mission to Mars correctly, I’m pretty sure there’s some nonsense they end up finding about aliens having been there before and leaving something in the face on Mars. THAT’S the corny Mars movie I wanted to watch. Instead I watched the corny one about little bugs that eat the algae and convert it to oxygen, making Mars habitable except for the fact that those little bugs also eat people … and their robot tries to kill them. Oh well, I guess we’ll talk about this movie instead.

The story of this movie is serviceable. The part about Earth being overcrowded is nothing new but not entirely overdone. The obvious followup to the overpopulation is moving to a new planet which involves terraforming, so that the obvious next step in the process. Something needs to go wrong, so no surprises there. It’s a story you could probably figure out from just watching the trailer, but it’s not all bad. There’s some fun to be had in this movie. Some of the dialogue is drawn out too long, but some of it is charming. Some might say it’s very progressive of this movie to make the only female on board the commander, but then others may argue that the fact that she was the one left alone on the ship while the men did all the hard labor and all she could do is sit around, watch what was happening, and take care of the dishes and laundry was less progressive. The production on the movie is pretty solid too. I liked the little bouncy contraption they landed on Mars in. Granted it killed the old guy, but I think it looked wicked fun. The robot that they brought with them that then tries to kill them seemingly for no reason was well done graphically, but possibly not well thought out. I think it was some EMP thing that scrambled it’s robo-brain and made it decide to kill them. Probably should’ve put Asimov’s rules of robotics in that mamma jamma.

The performances were fine, but also nothing special. Carrie-Anne Moss got to take it easy on the movie, having no real physical labor to speak of here. All she really had to do was be concerned about the people on Mars, which she pulled off acceptably. I’ve found Val Kilmer compelling ever since he was Doc Holliday in Tombstone, so he can’t really do wrong by me. But he was fairly charming in this movie. Tom Sizemore was also pretty entertaining as basically the comic relief on the team. Simon Baker had to put out the most acting chops because he inadvertently killed Benjamin Bratt and then had to hide it from the rest of the team. There wasn’t much else going on here.

Not much to say about this movie. I wish it had been the other corny action movie set on Mars that I intended to watch, but this one would probably be of the same quality anyways. This movie was thoroughly mediocre. Not bad, not good, not particularly memorable, not particularly anything. You will live a comfortable life if you skip the movie, but you also probably won’t kill yourself if you have to sit through it. Those are your choices. Pick one! Or don’t. I don’t imagine anyone is going to be forcing you to watch a mediocre and forgettable movie from 11 years ago anyway. I’ll give this movie “We just disappointed 10 billion people” out of “We’re taking the first piss on Mars.”

Hey, peeps. Why not rate and comment on this as a favor to good ole Robert, eh? And tell your friends! Let’s make me famous!

The Ring Two (2005)

I’m Not Your Fucking Mommy

“Alright people, we have a good concept and a good idea, let’s throw lots of money at it.”  “But what about the story?”  “WHO CARES?!  You’re fired!”  The next movie in my October Horror-thon started like this.  Well that’s probably not true, but it’s what I imagine.  This movie is the sequel to the Ring, called cleverly the Ring Two, starring Naomi Watts, David Dorfman, Daveigh Chase, and Simon Baker, with small appearances by Gary Cole, Sissy Spacek, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.  Let’s dive into this well!

Right here I spoil the end of The Ring.  At the end of that, we find that Samara’s (Daveigh Chase’s) adopted mother suffocated her and pushed her into a well where she stayed for 7 days before dying and becoming an evil, hateful spirit.  And a VHS tape.  To try to save the life of her and her son, Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) opens the well to free Samara, only to have her son Aidan (David Dorfman) tell her that doing so freed her of her prison and she was now able to kill more freely.  Rachel figures out that she lived because she made a copy of the tape and showed it to someone else, so they do that with reckless disregard for the poor fuck they show their tape to.  6 months after the first movie, a very special episode of Dawson’s Creek starts in Seattle and we spend about 10 minutes watching 2 teens flirt.  But, with an ulterior motive beyond getting some vagina.  This boy is trying to save his life and talk a girl into watching a tape, even though she seems ready to go (if you know what I’m saying).  Turns out he’s watched the cursed tape and needs to show it to someone else to save his life.  Unfortunately, the girl doesn’t watch and he gets killed.  Coincidentally, Rachel and Aidan have moved to Seattle and Rachel is now working for Max Rourke (Simon Baker) at a local newspaper.  She hears about this death and investigates, catching a vision of Samara saying “I found you.”  So now Rachel must REinvestigate Samara to find out how to stop her from taking over the body of her son.  To do so, she finds Samara’s birth mother, Evelyn (Mary Elizabeth Winstead when in flashback, Sissy Spacek now).  Evelyn tells Rachel that the only way to stop Samara is to kill Aidan, which I’m cool with ’cause that boy is creepy.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.  The Ring Two takes all the suspense and creepiness out of the original and turns it into a very typical ghost movie, complete with possessions, poltergeist activity, and full body apparitions.  They completely forget about the tape that made the movie famous in the first 20 minutes of the movie, and then they jump back into a rehashed treasure finding movie and bad ghost movie.  The first movie seemed as if it went to good writing and suspense because they had a low budget, but when it made bank, they threw a lot of money at the sequel and boosted the special effects at the expense of the suspense.  They lost the blue tint to the first movie and replaced it with water raising out of a bathtub and turning into Samara.  Instead of Gore Verbinski, they went with a fan service by attaching director of Ring (the Japanese basis for The Ring), Hideo Nakata.  But the movie loses a quality of visuals that is either because of him or the director of photography.  The movie looks grainy in parts like an early episode of Scrubs, and others just have odd camera angles.  This could also just be a bad DVD transfer, I suppose, but I like blaming people.  And the ending, where Rachel ties up the problem in a nice little bow by closing the top of the well, they actually have the nerve to give her a classic action/slasher line to yell at the monster.  Samara had been inhabiting Aidan and calling Rachel mommy (even though Aidan calls her Rachel) and Samara was climbing up the side of the well to stop Rachel from closing it and she called out to Rachel with “Mommy!”  And Rachel comes back with “I’m not your fucking mommy!”  Fer reals?  That’s just the nail in the coffin for me.  I liken that line to lines like “Smile you son of a bitch” from Jaws or “Get the Hell off my plane” from Air Force One.  They work in those movies, and would work in a typical cliche ghost movie, but we go in there expecting suspense like the first and get this.

Not all is bad here.  Naomi Watts still turns on the acting.  I have a lot of respect for her as an actress, but it’s nice to see that she tries hard at every roll and not just the good ones.  One of the big performance problems of this movie was that Aidan got a lot more screen time in this one and didn’t really seem up to the task.  He was still creepy for most of it, but it was just overexposure.  And when Samara took over, he got REALLY creepy, no longer the morose kid that sees things but now a creepy, overly loving kid that smiles all the time.  You ain’t cute, you’re creepy.  Stick with what works for you.  The creepy, corpse walking thing that Samara does in this one is pretty damn creepy though, so kudos to that person.  I also felt myself wishing that Sissy Spacek had been the adopted mother and got to be in the good Ring movie, and then you could put the person I’ve never seen in a movie again in the crappy one.

So that’s that.  They ruined a good horror movie by taking all the art and suspense out of it.  Hopefully they won’t do it again.  I give this movie a “Cy…onara!” out of “I’ll be back!”  …No seriously, they are actually bringing it back.  And it’s gonna be The Ring 3D.  I hate it already.

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.