Movies

Top Gun redux

Posted on by Patrick
F-18 fighter jet in a steep climb. Photo by Darren Nunis.

I watched Top Gun: Toppest Gun[1]OK, fine, Top Gun: Mav­er­ick. last night. The movie, once it got going[2]It was 25 min­utes late start­ing; at least three dif­fer­ent peo­ple, myself includ­ed, went to ask when they planned to start the movie., was—

Well, it was a Top Gun movie, that’s for sure.

(For con­text, I was in Air Cadets as a youth in the 1980s, and so I was legal­ly oblig­at­ed to see Top Gun approx­i­mate­ly 6.02×10²³ times.)

There was Tom Cruise fly­ing planes worth qua­jil­lions of dol­lars. There was Tom Cruise charm­ing a lady. There was Tom Cruise rid­ing a motor­bike with no hel­met because that’s what heroes do. There was Tom Cruise, being brash and break­ing all the rules. There was Tom Cruise grin­ning boy­ish­ly, end­less­ly. (“This is my only look,” indeed.)

Aside from Tom Cruise, there were oth­er items in this movie. There was Val Kilmer in the Admi­ral­ty now. There was a shirt­less game with balls (more oval this time). There was a smirk­ing jerk pilot and an elite fight­er pilot who need­ed glass­es (wait what)[3]If they explained why his call­sign was “Bob”, I missed it.. There was a very very tight time­line that they still inter­rupt­ed for an impor­tant funer­al. There was dog­fight train­ing and a bar­room sin­ga­long and some very very hand­waved geopol­i­tics. There was a trench run with a tar­get not much larg­er than a womp rat[4]Wait, that might be a dif­fer­ent fran­chise with a sequel 30+ years in the mak­ing.. There was dogfighting—good thing they trained for it.

There were jet planes. Oh my word, there were jet planes. Some of them were fifth-gen­er­a­tion, what­ev­er that means; bet­ter than F‑18s in every way, appar­ent­ly, though (spoil­er alert) it sure did­n’t end up seem­ing like it. There was a sin­gle, incred­i­bly con­ve­nient F‑14.

There were tail­hooks and cat­a­pults and mis­siles and chaff and “out of mis­siles, switch­ing to guns”. There was a yel­low-tinged mon­tage of fight­er jets depart­ing a car­ri­er to the dul­cet tones of Ken­ny Log­gins’ “Dan­ger Zone”.

I went into this movie with a bad atti­tude, I’ll admit it. Most of the mol of times I watched the first movie weren’t my choice; at Cadet camp, the first per­son to get to the staff lounge got to pick the movie for the night, and most every­one else want­ed to watch Top Gun again[5]And again and again and again..

The movie deliv­ered in a lot of ways. I can see where peo­ple and crit­ics like it. The actors are all very very good, the bit of nec­es­sary expo­si­tion when we’re intro­duced to The New Crop of Top Guns is han­dled about as well as it could be[6]Expo­si­tion is always a tightrope between eye-rolling “as you know, Bob” dia­logue vs. the audi­ence lat­er say­ing “OK, now who’s this per­son?”, and the stunts are breath­tak­ing. I admit I laughed a few times (the “What were you think­ing?” “You told me not to think!” “…Touché.” exchange was well-played, I thought).

I got what I expect­ed. I got a Top Gun movie. I still don’t know if that’s what I wanted.

Cov­er pho­to by Dar­ren Nunis on Unsplash. This is not one of the F‑18s in Top Gun.

Foot­notes

Foot­notes
↑1 OK, fine, Top Gun: Mav­er­ick.
↑2 It was 25 min­utes late start­ing; at least three dif­fer­ent peo­ple, myself includ­ed, went to ask when they planned to start the movie.
↑3 If they explained why his call­sign was “Bob”, I missed it.
↑4 Wait, that might be a dif­fer­ent fran­chise with a sequel 30+ years in the making.
↑5 And again and again and again.
↑6 Expo­si­tion is always a tightrope between eye-rolling “as you know, Bob” dia­logue vs. the audi­ence lat­er say­ing “OK, now who’s this person?”

Bad Times at the El Royale

Posted on by Patrick
Still from Bad Times at the El Royale

Final­ly, last night, I watched Bad Times at the El Royale. Back when I first saw the trail­er, I thought it was an Evans movie for sure, but it end­ed up play­ing at the mul­ti­plex down the street instead, for all of two weeks. I man­aged to miss it. Now I regret not see­ing it on the big screen.

El Royale takes place at a hotel in Lake Tahoe, on the bor­der between Neva­da and Cal­i­for­nia. The bor­der lit­er­al­ly bisects the hotel. Rooms on the Cal­i­for­nia side are $1 more per night.

The movie opens with a priest, a singer, and a vac­u­um-clean­er sales­man try­ing to check in, one love­ly after­noon in 1969, but the clerk is nowhere to be found. Once they do track him down, a fourth guest appears, and she’s got some bag­gage. Well, they all have bag­gage, but the fourth woman appears to have kid­napped someone.

Of course, this is a noir-ish thriller, and no one—not even the venue—is who they seem to be.

I quite enjoyed El Royale. It felt a lot like a Quentin Taran­ti­no movie, but it was writ­ten and direct­ed by Drew God­dard. God­dard man­aged to take all the good things about a QT movie—colours, music, sud­den vio­lent twists—and dis­card the end­less solil­o­quies. It real­ly makes for a tight, nasty thriller, and it’s just the thing I was look­ing for.

If you like vio­lence, secrets, thun­der­storms, ’60s music, and vio­lence, it might be just what you’re look­ing for too.

Head­er image from The Movie DB.

Christmas movies

Posted on by Patrick
still from A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Is Die Hard the best Christ­mas movie? I dun­no, I’ve always leaned toward The Night­mare Before Christ­mas*, myself.

But this arti­cle makes a com­pelling point for oth­ers, too. I just re-watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in the sum­mer­time, dur­ing my writ­ing retreat. (How is that five months ago already? Man, time flies.)

[M]ost of his films [have a] fairy-tale like sheen, sim­i­lar to what makes Die Hard so suc­cess­ful. And mak­ing it Christ­mas in L.A. (which the major­i­ty of his films do), offers a dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ty to the use of the hol­i­day on film.

—Emi­ly Ash­er-Per­rin, Die Hard is Great, but Shane Black is the King of Christ­mas Explosions

* Oh who am I kid­ding? Night­mare is sec­ond; A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas is first, even if it’s only about half an hour long.

The Old Man and the Gun

Posted on by Patrick
Still from The Old Man and the Gun

Last week­end I watched The Old Man and the Gun at the Evans The­atre. I loved it.



For­rest Tuck­er (played by Robert Red­ford) robs banks. We meet him as he’s rob­bing the lat­est one. He’s polite, he’s charm­ing, he’s got a gun that he shows the man­ag­er (but that we don’t actu­al­ly see till much lat­er). He makes his get­away, and after he’s switched cars he spies a truck bro­ken down on the side of the road. It’s dri­ven by Jew­el (Sis­sy Spacek), whom he offers a ride home (after the cop cars go scream­ing by, hunt­ing a get­away car he’s no longer driving).

For­rest is in a gang with Ted­dy (Dan­ny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits). The media dubs them the Over-the-Hill Gang. They don’t seem to need to rob banks, not for the mon­ey, at least; they seem to enjoy it.

(Aside: Ted­dy’s tragi­com­ic Christ­mas sto­ry was my favourite scene in the movie. It’s got noth­ing to do with the sto­ry, but it says some­thing about his character.)

Round­ing out the sto­ry is the police offi­cer John Hunt (Casey Affleck), who is deter­mined he’s going to be the one to nail the Over-the-Hill Gang. Will he suc­ceed? Will our plucky anti-heroes get away with their next heist? Will For­rest and Jew­el’s meet-cute turn into some­thing deep­er? Watch the movie to find out. It’s worth it.

Few things in this movie are stat­ed out­right. What appears at first glance to be an old-timey hear­ing aid is more like­ly a police-radio scan­ner, and this rev­e­la­tion makes it eas­i­er to under­stand how Tuck­er man­ages his get­away in the open­ing scenes. As men­tioned, we don’t actu­al­ly see his gun for quite some time, and it’s unclear by the end of the film if he’s ever even loaded it, much less fired it. One of the cen­tre­piece heists isn’t even shown on-screen; we see a bit of the plan­ning, a lot of hand-wring­ing by the Over-the-Hillers (“Can we even do it? Is it worth try­ing? I can’t run near as fast as I used to”, etc), and then a news report about the crime as Tuck­er puts the loot into its hid­ing place.

It’s a fun movie, a fun­ny movie, and a sneaky, sly movie. I loved it.

I read recent­ly that Robert Red­ford decid­ed to retire after mak­ing The Old Man and the Gun because he want­ed to go out on a fun movie. I think he did a fine job.

Tomorrowland

Posted on by Patrick
Still from Tomorrowland

On the week­end I final­ly watched Dis­ney’s Tomor­row­land. I sort-of remem­bered its the­atre run, which was under­whelm­ing (appar­ent­ly it lost over $100 mil­lion dol­lars, based on its pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing costs vs. its box-office take).

The sto­ry in a nut­shell: As a boy, Frank Walk­er goes to live in a retro-future par­adise, till he’s boot­ed out for some crime that remains unspec­i­fied until near­ly the end of the movie. He grows up into a bit­ter, bit­ter man (played by George Clooney). Mean­while, Casey (Britt Robert­son) might be the key to Frank’s return to Tomor­row­land, and also the key to, you know, staving off the seem­ing­ly inevitable end of the world. Fac­ing off against them is Nix (Hugh Lau­rie) and his army of skin­jobs Audio-Ani­ma­tron­ic robots.

I thought it was a decent movie, worth a watch, even if it was unsub­tle. The scene in the Texas col­lectibles store (Blast From the Past), where Casey squares off against evil AA ’bots Hugo* and Ursu­la, was chock­ablock with reminders that Dis­ney bought Star Wars. Some of the AAs were pret­ty creepy, espe­cial­ly the man­i­cal­ly-grin­ning leader of the Men-in-Black–styled “Secret Ser­vice” squad.

In a world that seems to pre­fer its enter­tain­ment on the grim & grit­ty side, opti­mistic SF is a hard sell. It has a ten­den­cy to come off preachy or heavy-hand­ed, and this movie did­n’t man­age to evade those pit­falls. I’m still glad I watched it, though.

It’s an inter­est­ing com­pan­ion to Elan Mas­tai’s All Our Wrong Todays, which I read a few months ago, in that both explore the idea of alter­nate futures, espe­cial­ly the sorts of futures we seemed to expect in the 1950s (fly­ing cars! shin­ing tow­ers! per­son­al jetpacks!).

* Hugo Gerns­back, because of course.