REVIEW - some (more) movies i saw, and how i feel about them

so i went on another movie rampage the other night, and i figured it was only fitting to follow this up with another mega-post about my impressions of them.

prepare to be inundated by meaningless words!

1) rocky - i have never seen any of the rocky movies, so this past week i decided it was my duty as a human being to watch them. so i started with the first one. i've got to admit, i wasn't terribly impressed. even taking into account that the movie is over 30 years old at this point, i'm not sure i understand the appeal. unless the underdog-sports story and the training montage trope were so underdone at the time that "rocky" came out that it really was a revolutionary movie, i don't really understand why it could have possibly been as popular as it apparently was. i mean, the story itself is pretty inspiring, and the last 10 minutes or so of the movie are fantastic, but otherwise:
- apollo creed is a completely one-dimensional character
- rocky seems like he might have some degenerative mental disease (and this is taking into account that he is obviously playing up the "italian hobo" angle)
- adrian DEFINITELY has some sort of degenerative mental disease
- it's not clear to me at all what rocky sees in adrian, other than she's the only woman in the movie who isn't a hooker
- it's not clear to me at all what adrian sees in rocky, especially because he's a huge meathead and refuses to get freaky with her once he starts his training
- the amount of progress rocky makes in his five-week training period is absolutely unrealistic
- the method by which he is chosen to fight creed seems extremely arbitrary and would NEVER HAPPEN in reality

i could go on. and you could of course argue that it's a movie from 1976 and it was going for the one-trick-pony, everyman, cheaply-produced movie approach. but still. i was really bored for the entire movie, and the only thing that kept me watching despite the fact that i literally threw my hands up and yelled at the TV in sheer frustration at least 20 times was that i wanted to see the fight. and it was good, but not good enough to make me want to watch rocky 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.

overall: the movie equivalent of rocky's brain by the time his fight with apollo is over.

2) shoot 'em up - i had already watched 2 movies on the night that i started this one, and was actually not very attached to the idea of seeing it. i queued it up and was actually about to hit "stop" after the first minute or so, but then clive owen's eye-roll after watching the crazy gunman chase a screaming pregnant woman down a dark alley was so absolutely perfect that i decide to dedicate the next few hours of my life to watching the rest of the movie.

first of all, clive owen is such a pleasure to watch in just about everything that he's in that seeing him play the protagonist in this over-the-top shooter film so fun by itself, there probably didn't even need to be a plot. i mean, in a way there really wasn't. at one point it was explained why the guys who wanted to kill the baby wanted to kill it, and what all the tissue samples were for and everything else, but i really didn't get it, and clive explained it like he didn't really get it either, and the guy who later gave the "we caught you so we'll explain our evil plan speech" also seemed like he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.

but anyway, the point of the story isn't the story, it's the shooting. and in this, the movie is hilariously excellent. i was on board for the first 2/3rds of the movie, despite the absurdity of watching things like clive owen cutting an umbilical cord with a precise bullet shot, because it the sheer madness of all of it was engaging. you definitely have to leave your brain at the door when this movie starts, but all the brash attitude and insane gunplay (at one point owen kills something like 50 guys singlehandedly in a gun battle, then falls three stories with a baby under his arm and both he and the baby live...everyone else, of course, does not.

the point where the movie lost me was towards the end. it almost seems unfair to take a movie that i mostly enjoyed for wearing its absurdity on its sleeve and slam it for the same thing, but the skydiving shootout was ridiculous, too over-the-top, and the effects shots during it were pretty freaking atrocious. i understand the up-the-ante mentality that went into this, but when the very premise is unrealistic, the least you can do is film it in a realistic-looking way.

overall: if you like serious sam or clive owen, good for a few laughs, but don't think (or look) too hard.

3) lord of war - i don't like schizophrenic movies. what i mean is, i don't like movies that can't decide what sort of movie they are. one moment it's funny and everyone's one big happy family, and the next they go all dramatic and then ten minutes after watching the protagonist light his farts on fire you're supposed to buy the idea that he's really just repressing the sadness he feels by being abandoned by his parents at age 4 and that he's never learned to trust again even though he really wants to. if you're trying to sell me 4 different types of movie in 120 minutes, odds are i'm not biting. but if you're trying to sell me a movie that expresses itself in 4 different ways over 120 minutes because it has an overall point to prove about the abundance and variance of the human experience over time...well that's something else entirely.

if you haven't figured it out yet, "lord of war" falls into the second category. coming out around the same time as "matchstick men" and "the weather man", two other generally unmentioned nicholas cage movies, "lord of war" was a film (along with the other two films) that i thought looked extremely interesting despite the mixed reactions but never quite got to see before it left theatres.

it turns out to be a really brilliant and multi-faceted look into the international gun trade of the last 30 years or so. i realize that nic cage is a very polarizing sort of actor; you hate him or you love him. i love him because he's very good at doing a lot of different things in one movie. he's not a one-trick pony, and while he might never be The Best dramatic actor or The Best dry humorist, he effortlessly transitions between about three types of character in this story and does it in a way that convinces you that he's actually playing the part of (gasp!) a human being.

he's an asshole and a hero by turns and portrays the complications really well. one other note, though: if you're already not a fan of cage, the fact that 1/4th or so of this movie is him giving snarky voiceovers to the action onscreen probably won't convert you.

i really liked this movie for its informational portrayal of the complicated issue that is the international illegal arms trade and for cage's brilliant performance as the man trying to personally deal with those complications.

overall: even cooler than the gold-plated kalashnikov toted my baptiste's son in the film.