My favorite Michael Mann Mode (MMM) is crime movie mode. Or guy chasing another guy mode. Moody guy looking out a window talking to another guy across the city mode. The mode you can feel coming in the air tonight, oh lord.
FERRARI is obviously not that mode. It’s biopic mode, I’ve got a 496-page biography to recommend to you mode, I’ve been obsessed with this guy for years and hopefully I can articulate some of the reasons why plus some side info about car engines and racing teams mode, Ferrari started manufacturing in 1947 and the events depicted here take place in 1957 but we’ll have some text at the end explaining what happened to everybody later mode. Not my favorite MMM, no, but the nice thing about his modes is that he’s good at all of them. (read the rest of this shit…)
These days it’s pretty common for people to say that SPEED RACER is an overlooked gem – or even a masterpiece – that was misunderstood at the time. So give credit to your old Uncle Vern for praising it from day 1. I didn’t misunderstand that shit! I understood the hell out of it. I am a real good understander in my opinion. Not to brag.
But this is the second time I’ve watched it and actually I liked it alot more this time. I didn’t have as many reservations about the aggressively shiny and video gamey pixelscapes it takes place in. It’s still not my favorite look, but my brain has adjusted. I don’t know, maybe the rainbow colored kaleidoscope spinning around the studio logos at the beginning hypnotizes you when you see it on Blu-Ray. It starts to look amazing.
What really impressed me is the next level filmatism within that artifical world. The camera (or “camera”) soars through, over and around these space age racers as they zoom, drift, bounce and fly through loopty-loops, giant pinball machines and monster-faced ice caves, and despite all the speed and freneticism I think this mayhem is really easy to follow. (Judging from my original review maybe the smaller screen helps.) Characters’ heads constantly float away, wiping into the next scene, a more evolved version of Ang Lee’s best moves in HULK and, now that I think about it, one of a long list of ways that this movie must’ve influenced the shit out of SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD. There are fight scenes, Speed and Racer X vs. practicioners of nonjitsu, and you get a glimpse of the MATRIX era Wachowskis. Then it bounces into a more candy colored, silly-anime type of style with abstract backgrounds and even more exaggerated physics. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wow, I never would’ve predicted this: THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS has aged well. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready for it back when I first saw it. Skimming over my intentionally pretentious and off-topic original review I can see that I saw it as an attempt to exploit a fad. This is supported by all the old dvd extras (now on blu-ray) which make a huge deal about it being based on a Vibe article about street racing, and how they went to watch races and ran from the cops and all the cars and extras in the car show scenes are real racers who responded to a web posting. They wanted us to know this “street racing” was a real thing happening somewhere at night, and director Rob Cohen and friends are on the front lines ready to show us what’s going down. (read the rest of this shit…)
DRIVEN is a weird footnote in the overlapping filmographies of Sylvester Stallone and Renny Harlin. It’s no CLIFFHANGER, and it’s not trying to be. If anything maybe it wants to be the ROCKY V of Formula 1 race car driving. Or whatever type of race cars they’re driving in this one. They’re not NASCAR I can tell.
Okay, stop the presses, I just looked it up (it turns out I’m on the internet right now). I guess Formula 1 is very secretive like the Masons so Stallone couldn’t get enough info on them and switched the movie to be about “ChampCar” racing. I guess that’s why they didn’t make a big deal of what type of racing it was in the movie, ’cause nobody was gonna get excited about something called “ChampCar.” (read the rest of this shit…)
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Dreadguacamole on Longlegs: “Most of those satan-y movies are very occult-tinged, though, except ROSEMARY’S BABY. NINTH GATE is an initiatic tale (kind of…” Jul 24, 12:41
Glaive Robber on The Client: “One of my favorites of this genre was probably “A Civil Action”, where Travolta has to prosecute some companies for…” Jul 24, 10:31
CJ Holden on True Lies (30th anniversary revisit): “Let’s be honest, that the American action cinema of the 80s and 90s is pretty conservative and often downright faschist…” Jul 24, 10:15
Handsome Dan on Falling Down: “I’m just popping in here a few years late to brag that I used to work for the guy who…” Jul 24, 09:42
Universal★Rundle on True Lies (30th anniversary revisit): “I haven’t seen any of the comments ask what it means that this is a straight-up conservative-coded movie. I’m on…” Jul 24, 09:40
RBatty024 on The Client: “Not too long ago, I watched The Burial with Tommy Lee Jones and Jamie Foxx, and it got me thinking…” Jul 24, 09:24
Kyle on The Client: “Skani- agree w/ ya on The RainMaker. Underrated. One of the better ones. Side thought-I wonder if Gene Hackman was…” Jul 24, 09:21
Skani on Longlegs: “Sorry, misspellings abound, and I meant “punt on the whole,” not “put on the whole”” Jul 24, 09:16
Skani on Longlegs: “MILD SPOILERS FOR TALK TO ME Birch, I had the same reaction. Then again, it’s really only exorcism-oriented movies that…” Jul 24, 09:13
Kyle on The Client: “Saw this too long ago to remember much about it but preferred Cruise/The Firm over Grisham’s other adaptations. Vern, hoping…” Jul 24, 09:11
Birch on Longlegs: “Everyone is making good points and have mostly said what I would want to say. All I really have to…” Jul 24, 08:43
Skani on The Client: “I was just talking to someone the other week about lawyer is that interesting kind of job that has both…” Jul 24, 07:34