Joie' De Vivre On Celluloid: Red Dragon

I'm sure once the B.O. receipts from Hannibal poured into the offices of Dino De Laurentiis and his wife, they decided to "Milk the cow" as Linda Hamilton has said before. I didn't like this as much as I did Hannibal and I'm gonna get that out of the way.

There is very little production history on this film, though I am curious as to how it could be farted out in such a timely manner and still be quite good. (Is this really a Ratner film?) Maybe because of the source material is already at the disposal of them.

I will say this: too bad about the critical and commercial bomb, After Sunset (his follow up to this). Because this one here got Ratner a lot of the right attention. And then he ruined all the good rapport with the audience and critics alike. "Feign surprise!" as Liz Lemon would comment. Easily his best film to date in front of the original Rush Hour.  Hell, even my damn mom thinks Rush Hour is raw son.


But wait! There's more!

Joie' De Vivre On Celluloid: Hannibal

He is dressed in a tuxedo, after an eloquent performance of Italian opera. The sky is black, the lights are like fireflies, the air is crisp and the atmosphere is beautiful. Or maybe that's because he elevates anything to a higher level of class instantly just by simply being around. Or at least he certainly seems to.

This is Dr. Hannibal Lectar. He watches as a couple passes by. The young woman says to her beau, "Let's get something to eat."

Hannibal replies, "Why not?"

This is my most satisfied review of Ridley Scott's Hannibal.

Joie' De Vivre On Celluloid: The Tailor Of Panama

We open at night, with MI6 agent Andy Osnard standing broodingly at a large window, looking out onto a city bridge in London and pondering. He is getting the "Siberia" of assignments, for a mishap we do not yet have all the details for. Andy get orders for Panama, he's taken a back, we then seem to understand his plight, a company screw-up in deed Andy...

Then we meet the tailor of Panama (Rush). He is giving his finest display of his renowned excellent service to a customer. The kind of service you'd pay to get from an Englishman tailor with a respected, high end boutique shop in Panama. Then we watch him, uh... tailoring? Sizing and cutting, there we go. Sped up a few more frames per second for us as Geoffrey Rush applies the smooth technique of making clothing, and making it very well. He looks every bit a tailor at work, and yet, holds a confidence about himself, that says something else to us as well. I liked how this film started off, not to mention the sultry Spanish orchestral jam, singing in our ear music the whole time.
I didn't mind it at all.

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Joie' De Vivre On Celluloid: Live Free Or Die Hard

Bruce Willis isn't exactly old, and Justin Long isn't exactly a kid either, but they both have different experiences between themselves that define age in the best way. That's why they crack inapplicable jokes on each other involving age. And it's a well played game between them. It elevates the movie into Character A and Character B territory. That is--in the sense of actual portrayals from gifted actors--to each his own. Bravo. Which is exactly the kind of creativity you need to inject into your summer blockbusters to make them stronger then most. Then you have a real movie, and not just some popcorn selling marketing and advertising machine.

(Silly announcer voice) But wait! There's more!

Joie' De Vivre On Celluloid: Crank

You have to give the guys (writer/directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor) credit. They understand their script, and with that understanding, they saw the approach couln't be one that takes the film too seriously. Trying to present the film as some kind of thrill-a-minute, actioner, would have been fatal without it's humor, very dark humor in deed, but very good stuff none-the-less.

But Wait! there's More!

Joie' De Vivre On Celluloid: The Phantom

 

When I was a child and this film came out, all I needed to want to go was the thirty second advertisement on TV. I wasted no time in dragging my mother, my friend, his brother and their mom to the movies and we all went to see The Phantom. I came. I saw. I fell in love. And now, revisiting it again, after 15 years (short of a few sparse VHS rentals from my long gone childhood), it's as good as ever.

Joie' De Vivre On Celluloid: Hitman

Tim Olyphant stars as Hitman or, the bar-coded Agent 47 in this more refined take in recent years on a video game. With all of them rolling out all the time, every now and then, they gotta get one right. Right? Yezir...

Joie' De Vivre On Celliloid: District 9

Sharlto Copley plays the South African with no real street smarts and a smokin' wife, Wikus van der Merwe. He gives us a real character with thoughts, feelings, functions, and a working brain. A brain that reasons and eventually steers him away from earlier, poorer, and less kind and understanding thoughts and default answers to his situations. Or maybe it's because he has no choice but to pair up with an alien buddy and take the control back in his life?

Here is my review on the Sci-Fi/drama/black comedy/action/thriller/political/morality-tale film, District 9.

Joie' De Vivre On Celluloid: M:I 2

This is one of the movies that are cool, just fr the sake of simply being cool, and nothing else (save grabbing a boat load of B.O.) There's not much else you can find in this movie, besides the ever-used adjective "cool", and that being simply used for coolness sake. Which that was the real "mission" of Mission Impossible 2. And it worked. Turning the 125 million dollar budget into a 546 million dollar box office juggernaut in 2000. It was easily was the highest grossing film of the year. 

Things go boom in this movie. Things get kissed hard and spoken to sometimes softly, sometimes harshly over the sound of bullets. Or even as Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is going one punch at a time against a guard in an armed fortress (a borrowed 007 staple), only breaking his punches to speak into his ear piece to Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames). That one, punch-speak-punch scene was enough to tell me, in itself, this movie was a fuckin' silly as it was action heavy-tech-supplied therefore good. I mean, when someone jumps out of a hole blown in a building, falls, then executes a back flip before opening their parachute, you sorta have to wonder, "What am I really watching?" Or, "Is this the director, or the only-my-third-time-producing producer (Cruise)?" Let's find out.