MY MOVIE SHELF: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 22 Days to go: 18

Movie #418:  Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

I used to own Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves on DVD, which would’ve sufficed, except one day my husband opened the case and the disc was gone. So I bought the replacement on blu-ray, online, where I can’t inspect the packaging, and wound up with some ridiculous extended version containing twelve previously unreleased minutes. For crying out loud. The reason these particular twelve minutes were unreleased is that they are superfluous and unnecessary and more often than not disrupt and corrupt the flow and story of the movie. Stop foisting them on the unsuspecting public.

My friend and I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves an inordinate number of times back in high school. We talked about it constantly, too, months after the fact, when we were no doubt supposed to be paying attention in AP American History. We even developed all sorts of nonsensical conspiracy theories about it. Like how Azeem (Morgan Freeman) calls Robin Hood (Kevin Costner) “Christian,” while Robin Hood’s rival-slash-secret-brother Will Scarlett is played by CHRISTIAN Slater. Or how Azeem makes this big speech about being FREE MEN, when the actor is Morgan FREEMAN. Most of our theories centered around Azeem. None of them made any sense. However, we do both agree that the first time we saw the movie there was a scene AFTER Robin and Azeem catapulted themselves over the castle wall that Will tried to do the same stunt, only solo, and crashed into the wall. This made perfect sense to us, since Will not weighing as much by himself as Robin and Azeem weighed together would mean he wouldn’t get as much force and distance off the catapult. Only, that scene was never in any other version of the film — and for all the pointless extra twelve minutes on this disc, it’s not here either — and we never saw it again. But we’re CERTAIN we didn’t imagine it.

I don’t know that I can properly convey just how corny this movie is, especially since I still voluntarily own it, but it’s pretty ridiculous. Alan Rickman is gloriously overacting all over the place, even slobbering spit at times because he’s going all out as the Sheriff of Nottingham. And there’s even some crazy witch lady (Geraldine McEwan) declaring that Marion (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) is fertile and Nottingham should plant his seed to ensure a son with royal blood. There’s talk of cutting hearts out with spoons, and there’s Robin rubbing horse shit all over himself as a disguise, and there’s Friar Tuck (Michael McShane) being a belligerent but funny drunk, and there’s the world’s maybe second-ever c-section (my friend pointed out to me that Caesar was obviously born by the first), and there’s Kevin Costner’s bare white ass swimming by a waterfall. And that’s not even half of it. It’s kind of batshit crazy, but I still will watch it any time.

I really honestly used to think this movie was phenomenal, and that all the performances were great, the story was fantastic, the characters and the dialogue were sensational and clever, and the cinematography, especially, was award-worthy.  I even used to think the Sean Connery as Richard the Lionhearted was the best cameo of all time. And if that doesn’t prove just how bad teenagers are at discerning quality, then I don’t know what to tell you.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Bodyguard

 

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 90 Days to go: 60

Movie #350:  The Bodyguard

Whitney Houston, may she rest in peace, never really understood “I Will Always Love You.” Even her character in The Bodyguard, Rachel Marron, complains about the lyrics being depressing without ever really considering the message. The fact of the matter is, “I Will Always Love You” is a song about loss, about sacrifice, about separation. It’s not supposed to be uplifting. It’s supposed to be sad. But the way Houston sings it, it’s clear she didn’t get that.

Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” is bombastic and ostentatious. It’s all about the power of Houston’s voice and nothing else matters. There is no consideration for the tone or intention of the lyrics. She’s just full speed ahead, pedal to the metal, and to hell with singing a song with any meaning. I hate it so much. All you have to do is listen to the way Dolly Parton sings it to know how it’s meant to be sung.

Parton, of course, is all class, so she only ever expressed eternal gratitude for Houston doing a version that brought worldwide acclaim to the song. And it truly is an incredibly display of Houston’s vocal skill. But she sings it wrong.

The rest of the songs in The Bodyguard are pretty stellar, I must say, and I owned the soundtrack just like everyone else on the planet. I just wish something like “I Have Nothing,” (which is perfection) or “Run To You” had gotten more appreciation. They deserved it.

Aside from the music, though, The Bodyguard falls incredibly flat, both in story and performance. Houston and Kevin Costner (as the titular bodyguard, Frank Farmer) have zero chemistry, but unlike a lot of other movies where that’s the case, I don’t really think it’s a problem of bad casting. On the contrary, I think it’s a problem of too good casting. All I can go on are rumors, of course, but from everything I’ve heard, Costner is absolutely the straight-laced orange juice-drinking conservative Frank Farmer is, and Houston was every bit the diva Rachel Marron is, and never the twain shall meet. There is nothing about the two of them, either in real life or in the universe of this film, that is at all compatible. There is no spark, there is no allure. If Rachel got it in her head to toy with Frank by flirting with him, she did it as a joke, or as a power move. Not because she was really interested in him. And he would never be swayed by someone as flighty and ridiculous as she is. It just doesn’t work.

Beyond that, the death threat story is kind of muddled by the anonymous obsessive they insert as a red herring, and the complete incomprehensibility of this stupid harebrained assassin who can’t seem to kill Rachel despite the millions of opportunities she’s just kind of out in the open, blowing off Frank. (Also, Whitney Houston was never a great actress, so the whole fantasy of Houston-as-Marron winning an Oscar is funny and dumb.) And as far as being shot at, almost having your son exploded, and having your sister murdered, Rachel is surprisingly unfazed. The show must go on, I guess. And full volume, at that.

Thanks, but I’ll pass.

 

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: JFK

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 221  Days to go: 220

Movie #156:  JFK

It’s important to remember two things about JFK. First, screenplay co-writer and director Oliver Stone has a long and storied (perhaps justified, perhaps overblown, perhaps both) bias against the Vietnam War. Second, JFK, like any biopic, is a feature film, not a documentary or even a historically accurate reenactment, and therefore embellishes and exaggerates certain material while altering or cutting out altogether other material all in the name of artistic license.  That being said, however, there is no way I believe the long-held stance of the federal government that John F. Kennedy was killed by a single gunman, and therefore I have a lot of interest in the story of the man who sought to prove otherwise.

Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) was District Attorney in New Orleans when President Kennedy was shot. Based on some reports and tips that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) had ties to New Orleans the previous summer, he questions a few people in the days following Kennedy’s death but ultimately leaves the initial investigation to the federally appointed Warren Commission. Upon the Commission’s findings, however, Garrison concludes that the investigation into Kennedy’s assassination was one of the sloppiest, most hurried and most railroaded investigation he’d ever known. And so in 1966 — three years after that fateful day in Dallas — he opens his own investigation, and ultimately proves to be the only person ever to bring anyone to trial for the Kennedy assassination.

The movie sets about building an elaborate structure of people and facts, actions and timelines that all seem to refute every possibility of Oswald acting alone — or even, possibly, acting at all. But whether you believe Oswald was an assassin or part of a conspiracy to assassinate or simply a convenient fall guy, Oliver Stone’s film is a thrilling and impressive mystery. There are so many people involved, so many facets to the conspiracy theory that the film suggests, it could all easily get bogged down in its own sprawling logic, and yet Stone layers the film so expertly that it never once feels out of control. It’s a long film, to be sure, and it probably could’ve been streamlined a bit in that area, but it doesn’t drag. It’s well-paced and captivating, accompanied by a rolling, thumping, insistent score that quickens the pulse and urges the film along.

JFK also boasts an impressive roster of actors — it being one of those linchpin movies that makes Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon so easy to play (or hard, if you’re trying to find people with more than two or three degrees of separation, tops) — from Joe Pesci as a peculiar little man named David Ferrie who was a possible co-conspirator, to Tommy Lee Jones as the man, Clay Shaw, whom Garrison brought to trial, to Sissy Spacek (as Garrison’s wife) to Ed Asner (as Guy Bannister) to Jack Lemmon (as informant Jack Martin) to Walter Matthau (as Senator Long) to Laurie Metcalf (as Susie Cox with ever-enlarging hair) to Wayne Knight (as Numa Bertel) to John Candy (as Dean Andrews). And of course, Kevin Bacon as male prostitute Willie O’Keefe. My favorite supporting performance, however, comes from Donald Sutherland as a former CIA operative who only refers to himself as X and who goes a long way in building a case for a government conspiracy to tie the assassination to the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and, as President Eisenhower warns in the footage that opens the film, “the military industrial complex.” Sutherland’s character is both secretive and authoritative, shown as having a wide knowledge of confidential procedures, protocol and information, and he’s largely responsible for connecting Garrison’s somewhat small-time collection of information to a much larger motive.

And actually, the mere act of establishing motive for the killing goes a long way into making the film feel as credible as it does. For all the hard-line declarations of Oswald as the lone gunman that have been offered as fact in our country’s history, no one has ever really established, or even attempted to establish, anything remotely like a strong enough motive — for JFK’s death or for the death of his brother Robert or for the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., which the film tangentially attempts to connect to this military industrial complex conspiracy, albeit rather unsuccessfully. This historical lack of any strong and clear motive on Oswald’s part certainly leaves the door open for people to create one, and that’s where Stone pounces, though he finds his greatest leverage more in the physical science of the case than in his elaborate suppositions. The most effective, logical point the film makes is when Garrison stresses the action taking place in the Zapruder film and details the supposed path of the infamous (and absurd) theory of the Magic Bullet. That’s his most compelling argument, by far, and it underscores why the jury was left believing there was a conspiracy at work, but couldn’t find any kind of proof that Clay Shaw was involved, thereby acquitting him of all charges.

I’m a person who likes answers. I like certainties. I like knowing what’s ahead of me and I like knowing the reasons for what’s come before. It can be a pretty frustrating way to be in real life, actually, but I’ve come to terms with it. When I’m stressed about money, I run all sorts of mathematical scenarios in order to calm myself. When I need a break, I plan vacations, even if I can’t take them. When I have writers’ block, I come up with character names for every letter of the alphabet and try to decide who each one is. These activities soothe me. I don’t like not knowing things, and I used to daydream that when I die, all the unanswered questions I’ve held onto in my life will be clarified. I’ll know why this relationship really ended and what happened to that thing I lost out of nowhere and who stole the money out of my purse that one time during gym class and, yes, who really killed President Kennedy. It’s a fantasy, I realize, but like I said, it soothes me. So in its way, JFK soothes me as well. It provides answers and options that weren’t there before, that hadn’t been provided before with anything other than illogical nonsense. It likely doesn’t get to the truth, but I feel like it gets closer than the currently accepted theory does. And more than that, it promotes Jim Garrison’s actions as necessary and patriotic — though he was often accused of the opposite — precisely because he doesn’t accept a government answer that doesn’t make sense. I admire that, I really do. And I hope someday, some more reliable answers will come to light.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Bull Durham

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #42: Bull Durham

One of the reasons I love sports movies so much is they’re often such good metaphors for life, and Bull Durham is a perfect example. It is a movie about baseball, and it is a movie about relationships, and it is a movie about believing in yourself, and it is a movie about knowing yourself, and it is a movie about knowing your limits, and it is a movie about finding your place. It is a movie about successes and failures and not getting too worked up in your head about any one thing. It’s a movie about expanding the mind and stretching yourself. In short, it is a movie about living a better life.

Susan Sarandon, as Annie Savoy, opens the film with a voice over about her belief in the Church of Baseball. She finds more happiness, more catharsis, and more spiritual enlightenment in the sport than she ever has in any other religion she has ever tried (basically all of them, real and imagined). I turned 13 in 1988, the year Bull Durham was released, and it was at this same time that I both found, and subsequently lost, religion. Having been unhappy most of my formative years, I was desperately looking for somewhere I fit in, somewhere I felt accepted. I sought solace in the Bible — and embraced it for a time, trying to make it fit — but ultimately found none. I had to build my own solace from within, and I did. I found my own enlightenment; I brought about my own catharsis. I related to Annie, and I felt that she had a lot of wisdom, because while some people can find that spiritual connection in various religions, others find it in themselves, or in a sport, or in a novel.

Bull Durham is full of wisdom, both practical and philosophical. Sage catcher for the Durham Bulls, Crash Davis (Kevin Costner), is sent to expand the mind and teach the world to rookie pitcher Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh (Tim Robbins). He tells him not to think, not to sing the wrong words to songs, never to mess with a winning streak, and not to punch with his pitching hand when he gets into a fight with a drunk.  He helps him master his interview clichés and he lets him know that, when wearing garters, the rose goes in the front. And in these silly lessons are the more sincere ones to trust your talents, don’t advertise (but work to improve) your weaknesses, use your common sense and to, so to speak, dress for the job you want. Nuke goes from an immature minor leaguer to someone who looks at ease in the majors. It’s like his coming of age.

Hopeless romantic that I am, I have a tendency to ship characters who have crackling chemistry, and there aren’t too many couples in the entire history of film whose chemistry crackles more than Crash and Annie’s. Even though Crash initially rejects Annie, because he’s too self-possessed to be her “project” for the season, and even though Annie starts up a thing with Nuke and always remains monogamous within the frame of the baseball season, both of them want the other desperately. The entire movie is tantalizing foreplay, tempting and teasing the promise of Crash and Annie’s inevitable passion. I longed for that kind of relationship myself. I wanted to be as knowledgeable and sexually free and sure of myself as Annie, and I wanted a man as confident and intelligent and loving as Crash. It actually bummed me out at first that it was Robbins who Sarandon paired up with in real life, though of course I didn’t understand then that Sarandon has always been too quirky, too wild, and too witty to fall for Costner, a legendarily straight-laced conservative guy. That feels like a life lesson too, both the movie story and the real one: be with someone who understands you, who shares common interests with you, who excites and challenges you. Don’t sell yourself short, don’t settle for someone unfulfilling.

Life, like baseball, is “a simple game. You throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball.” There may be lots of complexities and minutiae, but don’t get too bogged down in them. Follow your instincts. Trust your talents. Expand your mind.

There’s a spirituality in those words that is hard to deny, and easy to see the wisdom of.