MY MOVIE SHELF: Lethal Weapon

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: 95 Days to go: 64

Movie #345:  Lethal Weapon

God, remember the days before Mel Gibson was a disgusting anti-Semite? When Lethal Weapon came out and he was the sexy wild card? Those were good times.

Lethal Weapon is the quintessential buddy cop movie. You’ve got the straight-laced old-timer Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) partnered with the aforementioned wild card Martin Riggs (Gibson) and the sparks fly as their very different personalities and police styles come up against each other in the course of working their cases. Lots of different films have employed the formula before and since, but Lethal Weapon — with its combination of ’80s flash and grit, plus its highly memorable lines — is probably one of the best. It’s definitely one of my favorites.

The movie opens with what would turn out to be a typical move in crime dramas as a beautiful, nearly naked woman gets up from bed, does some drugs, and winds up dead (this one by attempting to fly out her window). The case leads them back to Roger’s old Vietnam buddy and to a heroin ring with a heavy named Joshua (Gary Busey, who maybe went method for the role and never came back from it). There are lots of shootouts, lots of witty repartee, a wet and shirtless martial arts battle on Murtaugh’s front lawn, freakin’ Darlene Love rocking my world as a strong black wife and mother at least as good as Claire Huxtable, and several opportunities for Murtaugh to say, “I’m too old for this shit.” It’s pretty great.

Both Glover and Gibson play older than their actual ages in the roles of Murtaugh and Riggs, both characters having fought in Vietnam and Murtaugh opening the movie celebrating his fiftieth birthday. I find it interesting because usually it’s women playing much older than their actual age (usually playing the mom of someone maybe eight years their junior). I suppose, though, that back in the Eighties it would’ve been harder to find actual ~37 and 50 year-olds in such great shape.

The film is definitely more flash than substance, focusing a lot of its energy at the question of whether or not Riggs is actually insane, and giving him a lot of opportunities to act like a maniac — distracting guys with a Three Stooges bit, for instance, or jumping off a building handcuffed to a suicidal man. He also withstands electro-shock water torture to straight up murder his assailant with his thighs. The actual plot of the movie — their primary case — is secondary. However — and this is brilliant — to address the fact that the writers have barely formulated a coherent case for these detectives to solve, Murtaugh and Riggs repeatedly joke about how “thin” their suppositions are. It’s like, “We know this movie doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but just go with it because we’re having a lot of fun.”

And it is a lot of fun. Lethal Weapon is just about everything one might want in a summer popcorn flick (forget that it was released in March). It’s silly and funny and also hard-hitting and tough. It even has a whole spiel about how men of the ’80s are sensitive instead of tough. It’s like fun for the whole family! (As long as the whole family can watch a rated R film.)

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Signs

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: 189  Days to go: 133

Movie #249:  Signs

I’ll talk about The Sixth Sense a few posts from now, but I think it’s safe to say the expectations people had for M. Night Shyamalan after that success were unreasonable at best and impossible, in practice, to meet. I don’t deny that the man’s work definitely went off the rails after a bit, but his Unbreakable was a decent concept executed poorly (and before, apparently, the public was ready for a dark comic book story), and Signs is actually an interesting treatise on faith wrapped up in standard sci-fi tropes. And, really, if you look at The Sixth Sense as a sci-fi story about a kid with paranormal abilities rather than a ghost story which a shocking twist — which is a hindsight evaluation in and of itself — then basic sci-fi is all M. Night Shyamalan has ever done, so it’s kind of unfair for the public to bitch at him about it when they remember how much they look down on run-of-the-mill sci-fi for not being high art or whatever.

Signs takes the very commonly discussed phenomenon of crop circles and simply postulates that they are, in fact, caused by aliens. What if aliens have come to Earth, and what if they are not friendly. Really basic B-movie sci-fi stuff, right there. What Shyamalan does that’s interesting, though, is instead of making this your standard War of the Worlds global alien invasion story, he sets his tale on a small Pennsylvanian farm, in the house of former reverend and recent widower Graham (Mel Gibson), his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), his little boy Morgan (Rory Culkin) and his very young daughter Bo (Abigail Breslin). And they learn of the worldwide alien invasion the way most of us would — by watching television — even as they come face to face with their own unwelcome visitor.

That’s the long and the short of it, really, as far as the sci-fi goes. It’s not groundbreaking; it’s not even all that original. The aliens have a very silly and almost obvious weakness by which they are defeated, and they retreat post-haste. And most people seem to get caught up in this aspect of it, how the alien is stupid looking and the threat is both nonsensical and too easily resolved, but it’s sort of completely beside the point.

The point of Signs is that the death of Graham’s wife has left him with a crisis of faith, and the alien invasion, through various events and the last words of his wife that still haunt him, restores that faith. That’s all. There’s a reason for Morgan’s asthma, there’s a reason for Bo’s water obsession, and there’s a reason Merrill always felt right swinging his baseball bat. Shyamalan is saying that there’s a reason for everything, that there’s a greater purpose, that there’s some force out there looking out for us. Or looking out for this family, at least. It’s a movie about the existence of miracles instead of luck. It just happens to be wrapped up in some low-caliber sci-fi.

Mel Gibson was supposed to be the big name of this piece, but literally every other featured player is more interesting, including Cherry Jones as Officer Paski and Merritt Weaver in a tiny little role as the pharmacist. But it’s Graham’s family that really draws focus. Even little Abigail Breslin, as a tiny girl of six, exhibits an enormous amount of that talent and star quality she would come to be known for a few years later. And this is probably one of the last things Phoenix did before he really started getting weird. It has its merits.

I don’t really think Signs is a great movie, but it is an interesting movie in its way. For M. Night Shyamalan, at this point, that’s got to feel like a win. Right?

MY MOVIE SHELF: Chicken Run

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order, by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 317 (for now, I keep buying more)    Days to go: 309

Movie #53: Chicken Run

In the dark days of 1999’s final months, all the citizens of the world were united in fear. No one knew whether we’d all be living Beyond Thunderdome once January 1, 2000 rolled around. Would there be banking? Would all our electricity stop? Would water somehow fail to flow through our pipes now that computers needed to be reprogrammed to recognize a four-digit year instead of a two-digit one? My own brilliant mother was terrified her beloved convection microwave from 1988 would up and quit once the clock turned to 00:00 01/01/00 — presumably from shock over not having been invented yet — at which point its only possible use would be as a really large coffee table and storage ottoman (the thing was a tank). Our grandparents may have fought in WWII, but we survived Y2K.

During this terrifying time, the entertainment industry embraced two quirky old world characters that reminded us of a simpler time. Their names were Wallace and Gromit, and their stories were told in claymation. At last! A way to preserve our renowned history of dramatic arts once computers became obsolete and things had to be animated by hand again. At once, the Americas took to learning this new old technology and a Hollywood studio — the aptly named “Dreamworks” — started developing a film produced in the Wallace and Gromit style. Naturally, they would’ve abandoned the project entirely once the year 2000 came without a single cooling fan ceasing to whir, but we all rejoiced so much over the perseverance of our pagers that they went and released their movie anyway. The movie was called Chicken Run, and it came out on June 21, 2000, and we were all still so heady with relief and a yet-to-be-squashed naive affinity for Mel Gibson, that we embraced the ridiculous thing. That’s the only possible explanation I have for owning it.

Chicken Run is a movie about a bunch of hens who want to escape their coop. There are many failed attempts, because the evil farmers who sell the chickens’ eggs have vicious guard dogs — as any sane farmer with chickens who wear accessories would. Then one day a rooster named Rocky (Gibson) shows up and asks to be hidden from the circus he just escaped. The hens agree to help him, if he will teach them to fly. You see, Rocky is a flying rooster, or so they believe. He flew into their coop, after all. What they don’t realize is that Rocky escaped from a circus so terrible it shoots roosters out of cannons powerful enough to send them into neighboring (I mean, I assume) farms. So Rocky is a slick, unconscionable liar (this should’ve tipped us off about Gibson, really) who takes advantage of the hens’ hospitality and sets to run off in the night once his broken wing is fixed. Alas, he develops feelings for the resistance leader chicken and when the two discover their farmers are foregoing egg sales in favor of making chicken pies, something something something they build a bird they can operate via peddling hens. The evil farmers make chase but are vanquished and the chickens escape to a bird sanctuary which they apparently can’t share with other birds because they have the Chik-fil-A cows rename it the “Chikin” Sanctuary. And Rocky is for sure sleeping around, because there are LOTS of baby chicks pecking around and you know that dotty old grandpa rooster ain’t got that kind of wiggle in his wattle anymore.

Also, there are rats who consider stealing an egg so they can raise their own chicken and have all the eggs they want. But they need a chicken to get the egg. But they’ll of course need an egg to get a chicken. Ha ha ha!

Now tell me: Would you own a movie like that if you hadn’t survived a terrible threat to your entire way of life? No, you would not.