Brian's Thoughts on Movies

 There is a new Naked Gun film coming directed by Akiva Schaffer and starring Liam Neeson.  I am both interested and apprehensive about seeing it.  Neeson is a first rate dramatic actor who is also very effective in action roles (though I think he has not been selective enough about his material lately) but I have rarely seen in him a comedy and never as a lead.  But hopefully they come up with something memorable.   Recently I showed my kids the original Police Squad TV series and the trilogy of films which I think are the gold standard of the format the ZAZ (the Zucker brother and Jim Abrahams) perfected.  Their films and shows present plots but as a clotheslines for comedic gags and puns that break all narrative convention.  Their characters are presented as mostly straightforward (but also more than a little foolish) who let the craziness around them define them as opposed to chasing laughs with big acting moments. Spoilers below Police Squad (1982) Police Squad, which debuted in 1

Director Joel Schumacher had an interesting career in the 1990s.  Schumacher released nine films that decade and for me his most interesting film is Falling Down, a thriller starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall.  The title could either refer to Douglas' character, a recently laid off defense worker who decides on his daughter's birthday that he has had enough of people telling him no and begins a  dangerous 20-mile journey on foot across Los Angeles to go see her and his ex-wife, despite a court order to stay away from them.  Falling Down may refer to society itself, which is represented through various characters all of whom are struggling in one way or another. Spoilers below: Douglas was originally approached to play Prendergast, the part that went to Robert Duvall, but he wisely noted that the fellow who snapped was a more interesting character.  Although it was a risky role for a star of his caliber once Douglas took the part some of the more extreme acts were toned

The Torretto "Family" is back in a film that Vin Diesel claims is the second or third last of the series, depending on when you ask him.  Fast X had some cleanup to do since F9 made a lot of money but many fans of the series had the same middling reaction to it that I did.  After watching the last several Fast films in the cinema we decided to wait to see the new one on Redbox.  The question I had going into this one was could the series rediscover the balance of providing fun without going too far into implausibility?   Spoilers below The nicest thing I can say about Fast X is that it is better than F9.  Justin Lin, who has directed three good Fast films and two bad ones, left the film about a week after production began over story issues and Louis Letterier (who directed The Incredible Hulk and the Transporter films) took over.  Fast X is a mild improvement over F9 because it is has a more memorable villain in Jason Momoa and none of the characters go to space.  But otherwi

  The Fugitive, sixty years after it first debuted, has strong name recognition which is commendable for a property that is not based on a comic book or classic novel.  I was born in 1972 so my first point of reference was the 1993 film.  My parents might think first of the 1960 series created by Roy Huggins.  If the attempt to revive the TV series either in 2000 or in 2020 had caught on with the general public, younger generations might go first to one of those versions.   When something is successful it breeds a lot of imitators.  The format of the 1960s show was similar to the movie Shane.  A stranger comes into a small town, solves the problems of the people he encounters, and then moves on, usually because he either has to run from the police who have discovered his presence, or because he might be closer to solving his own major problem.  The Incredible Hulk and the A-Team followed a similar template. In the case of  The Fugitive the protagonist is Dr. Richard Kimble, a pediatric

Spoilers below  There is a common thought that U.S. Marshals is a disappointing sequel to The Fugitive, which I feel is misplaced.  Glass Onion is not really a sequel to Knives Out nor is Death on the Nile really a sequel to Murder on the Orient Express.  One major character carries over but the protagonists of these films are different so I think it is more fitting to say these second installments are set in the same universe. Warner Brothers realized that The Fugitive, which I will review soon, did not lend itself to a sequel but since Tommy Lee Jones created such a memorable character in Sam Gerard (based on Barry Norse's Phillip Gerard from the original series who in turn was inspired by the obsessed detective Javert in Les Miserable) that the studio recognized the potential for further adventures for him.  As Richard Kimble had been a solo and thus quieter character in The Fugitive the filmmakers gave Gerard (who also usually worked alone in the series) a team that he could bo

Indiana Jones is coming back to town.  In the 1980s and 1990s Harrison Ford became, due in large part to his work in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series, one of the biggest movie stars of all time, though after 2000 his profile and star power dropped a little as his audiences grew up.  When Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released at the end of 2015 Ford's moving performance as Han Solo let audiences get excited about him again (and was a much more fitting farewell to the part than Return of the Jedi had been).  Within months Lucasfilm announced a new Indiana Jones film.  In the past few years then Ford has also worked on the Yellowstone show 1923, a Blade Runner sequel, a comedy series and gave an excellent performance as the grizzled John Thornton in The Call of the Wild.  Ford's weathered face mixed with his still strong physique and sometimes flat voice gives off the impression of a man who has been affected by his experiences but still has plenty to offer.  Like Sylves