Brian's Thoughts on Movies

"Tell her that you love her.  You've got nothing to lose and you'll always regret it if you don't"  Daniel (Liam Neeson) to Sam  Starting last year with Atonement , I opted to start a tradition of posting romantic movies on Valentine’s Day.   So here is one about Love Actually.    Beware, spoilers are below. There is a surprise performance of the Beatles “All You Need Is Love” during a wedding in writer/director Richard Curtis’ ensemble romance, Love Actually, which could be the theme of the film.     Love Actually is, like most of Curtis’ films, a romantic film with a lot of music.   Curtis, the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, and writer director of Notting Hill and About Time, favors romantic stories and here has gleefully compiled ten different stories.   Each story has some minor overlap with at least one of the others, but they all stand on their own.   Some of the stories are brief glimpses into the lives of their sub...

"Trust quality of what you know, not quantity"  Myagi  With the arrival of the Cobra Kai series on Netflix I opted to show my kids the original films as a lead up to watching the new show.   Spoilers for all follow.                                      The Karate Kid (1984) John G. Avidsen (who directed the first three films) and composer Bill Conti, two of the people who made Rocky such a success, brought Robert Mark Kamen’s screenplay to life with a similar underdog story.   Daniel LaRusso has an accent similar to Rocky and also spends the second half of the film building to a tournament he seems to have little chance of winning.   I had doubts about seeing this again as it had been years since the last time I saw it.   I wondered if Myagi would seem like a caricature and if it would be uncomfortable watching an overmatched kid be bullied so muc...

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling"  Eames from Inception. Inception, released during the summer of 2010, is director Christopher Nolan’s first mega-budgeted non Batman film, funded by a presumably ecstatic Warner Brothers after the overwhelming success of The Dark Knight which came out two years earlier.   Nolan’s second Caped Crusader film grossed so more than expected that Warner Brother delayed the planned November 2008 release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to July 2009.   Harry Potter fans were angered though as an only casual watcher of the Harry Potter series I was indifferent.   Spoilers for Inception below: From both a visual and structural standpoint Inception seems influenced by The Matrix.   I always felt the latter film’s attempts to be cool worked against the confusing plot dynamics.   Nolan and his editor, Lee Smith are much more successful in telling their stories using multiple and sometimes narratives, ...

 "That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six".  James Bond in Dr No. With the upcoming release of the film No Time to Die there is a lot of speculation that it may connect to the first James Bond film Dr No.  There is a clear link with the title and part of the new film is set in Jamaica, where most of Dr No is set.  Images from the trailers show similar sets and one of the taglines is “The 25 th Bond film will change everything.”  I decided it would be a good idea to revisit Dr No for the first time in many years. so that perhaps when I see No Time to Die I will be able to spot some of the references.  I watched it with my kids who like the more recent Bond films to see if it held their attention. Some people believe that Rami Malek’s villainous character is called Dr No.   I feel if the character is compelling it does not really matter who he is.   It is risky to rework a classic villain as it can open filmmakers up to criticism but i...

 “The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.”  Elliot Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies Be warned, spoilers of the film are discussed. These stark words, uttered by Tomorrow Never Dies’ villain, media mogul Elliot Carver could be a philosophy of any successful person who might operate outside social norm.   I’ll withhold a Trump comment just this once but the words invite a deeper examination.   Carver owns a newspaper called “Tomorrow” and he so determined to come in ahead of his rivals (who seem to think little of him) that he actually wants to create the news.   Carver’s plot in the film is start a war between Great Britain and China which will both boost his own ratings since he will have a front door look at it, in much the way the Gulf War helped establish CNN, and give him an opportunity to set up a new Chinese Prime Minister which will give him broadcasting rights in that big market.   The quote indicates that once a perso...