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achrya
Reviews
Moonlighting (1985)
Caveman meets fluffball
This is strictly a review of the pilot episode as it appears on DVD.
Television moved out of my life in 1981, so I never followed the series or any part of it - which means that I'm immune to the nostalgic charm that Moonlighting appears to have for most reviewers.
(Possible spoiler warning)
The pilot of Moonlighting is your basic "caveman meets fluffball" yarn, where a "charming" red-blooded he-man manipulates a misguided woman into realizing what she really wants and needs. The premises that the script's "wit" is based on must have already felt stale around 1950. It also contains some frankly bad writing, as in the scene where Maddie demolishes the furnishings instead of shooting the villain, strictly in order to prove herself the inept female in need of masculine assistance.
I often feel that Susan Faludi overreacts in seeing male chauvinist conspiracy in simple entertainment, but in this particular case I'm all with her - Moonlighting has BACKLASH stamped all over it.
In one sense, however, this DVD is a must for all serious Bruce Willis fans: in addition to the pilot episode, it contains the screen test that landed Willis the job. Both features show to what amazing extent Willis' acting ability developed between 1985 and 1988/89 (Die Hard 1, In Country). Impressive!
Rating (and I _am_ a Bruce Willis fan): 2 out of 10
Armageddon (1998)
Watch Space Cowboys instead!
A lot of people on this site have said it before: this is a bad movie.
Not just a bad _film_ - I wasn't expecting "Wild Strawberries" - but a bad _flick_, in that it's tedious and yawn-inducing when not nerve-grating.
There is a bunch of characters with a comical potential, whose development gets tossed on the dung heap in favor of shrieking hysteria. The so-called suspense boils down to a couple of "dramatic" countdowns and last-minute saves that might have been picked up from any action cutting-room floor. And romance??? Gimme a break! When all the women in evidence are either twerps or bitches? Surprise, we aren't in 1940 anymore. And, incidentally, we aren't in 1960 either. Round about then I was a kid somewhere in East Europe, and the flag-waving in Armageddon brings back all sorts of creepy memories. So it's the Stars and Stripes instead of hammer and sickle - same difference when you get it jammed down your throat.
Interestingly, I happened to watch Armageddon within two days of Space Cowboys. The similarities are striking, and Space Cowboys actually achieve a lot of what Armageddon attempts and flops at. Space Cowboys genuinely integrate comedy, drama and romance throughout the entire film in a way that Armageddon achieves only in the sales pitch. Yes, it's another entertaining Hollywood movie and as such basically predictable, but it does keep one's interest up as to _how_ the unlikely crew will manage to save the world. The characters - men and women - do rise off the cardboard and inspire genuine feelings of sympathy, identification, suspicion, or hate, as the case may be. And, just as a sample, contrast Space Cowboys' truly touching final trip to the Moon with the tacky, soppy, unintentionally comical finale of Armageddon!
So, for a bit of honest space action entertainment, skip Armageddon and put your video rental money on Space Cowboys.
Návrat idiota (1999)
James Cole's kid cousin at the Firemen's Ball
A person arrives from an institution into the "normal" world and sees our everyday reality with fresh eyes. What is normal? What is sane? Where does reality end and dreams begin? Can a pure, vulnerable person cause his segment of the world to clean itself from a contagion that threatens to wipe it out?
These questions and characteristics are equally relevant to the Czech movie "The Idiot Returns" and to Terry Gilliam's "12 monkeys". The basic difference is one of scale: in "12 monkeys", James Cole is expected to save the entire human race from a deadly virus, while Frantisek in "The Idiot Returns" blunders into a maze of tainted personal relationships within the circle of a family. James is physically and mentally strong in order to have a chance to withstand the strain of time travel, while the most challenging journey Frantisek makes is the train trip from his mental institution to the small town that his relatives live in. The two protagonists are strikingly similar in that it is their openness and vulnerability that enables them to become the catalysts of a hopeful development. James perceives objects of wonder in a spider, corny music on the radio, even the open air itself. Frantisek sees something good in everyone, holds no grudges, can find a positive interpretation for every seemingly nasty utterance or reaction.
Nonetheless, "The Idiot Returns" is a thoroughly Czech movie. We find none of the usual trappings of mainstream American film: there are no firearms in evidence, the physical violence is as restricted as it is significant, quarrels happen mostly between the lines of dialogue instead of outright in Ricki Lake-ish shrieks. In particular the dance hall scenes, the trivial fun and games while people's individual universes are falling apart, bring us right back into Forman's "The Firemen's Ball", together with his particular variety of Feliniesque parades of bizarre-looking characters.
Those of us with a Central European background get jolted right back into a familiar claustrophobia of meticulously tidy Christmas sitting-rooms and the keeping up of appearances, where people over coffee and cookies participate in carefully subdued mental dog fights that would make any sane person renounce family life forever. ("We have to show Frantisek what it's like to be a family!" Yeah. Right.)
And yet James Cole and Frantisek are at least cousins, each of them adapted to their own corner of the woods. If "12 monkeys" is a big concerto, "Návrat idiota" is a string quartet, or rather a clarinet quintet (a foursome and one divergent voice) - over the same theme.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Talent's Labour's Lost
"Sixth sense" is in many ways an extremely beautiful movie and contains some utterly brilliant acting - for example, the initial scene at the Crowes' house made my acting appreciation organ, whichever one that is, turn somersaults. But...
Every fictional story depends to some extent on the suspension of our disbelief in impossible things. A film's ambition at seriousness signals that the suspension required will be relatively small, i.e. that the script attempts to be plausible. "Sixth sense" obviously aspires at being a serious psychological drama, so one would expect a rather high level of plausibility.
Whether or not you can accept the basic premise, that souls have individual existence independent of the body ("ghosts") and that they can influence some living people, depends on your own religious standpoint and fundamental view of the universe, so let us leave that aside. But one unconditional premise in a story that aspires at any kind of plausibility is that all individuals of a certain species are subject to the same basic constraints: e.g. people can't fly, fish can't talk, ghosts can't handle material objects... and if the script writer decides to let an individual go beyond these constraints, the audience is entitled to an explanation.
WARNING - SPOILER AHEAD!
Now, in Sixth sense we find one ghost who can look perfectly ordinary (and even change clothes) while others only show themselves in the state they were in when they died; the same ghost can enter a church, a place where no other ghosts ever show up; he can throw rocks, play audio recordings and take notes, while it's crucial to the story that a "regular" ghost can't by herself move a video tape to where it will be found... All this simply because we aren't supposed to know that he's dead!!! And we get no hint of an explanation why this particular individual is Mr. Superghost!
Another serious hole in the fabric of the story is the gimmick of people "not knowing that they are dead". These people walk about and perceive their surroundings, but they don't notice that there's been a funeral, that their bank account is gone, that they can't get service in a store, that they themselves have stopped eating etc. etc. etc.???
Bruce Willis is normally a committed, thorough actor who does his homework and delivers the goods. Even his superheroes and inhabitants of the future are primarily people, who we know can get bored, have a headache or need to go to the bathroom. That's what makes them so easy to identify with and their stories so compelling. - Now, in "Sixth sense" individual scenes are beautifully acted, with a gripping psychological reality, but the plot holes indicated above effectively prevent the film from making sense as a whole. Simply speaking, Mr Shyamalan and Mr Willis are too involved in visual and psychological artistry to care whether Crowe goes to the bathroom, and if not, why. And, what's worse, they expect us viewers not to notice. To quote a more traditional Willis hero, "What do you think I am, stupid?!"
Obviously, on an artistic level, Shyamalan and Willis work extremely well together. But, for it to become beautiful music, we must hope for a better score.