It's time for another round of Ridley's Lightning Blurbs!
Lord of War: Vacation time began in earnest when I watched this while waiting for my brother to unpack and figure out what we were doing on Thursday night. I had seen this a couple of times before in the past, so I knew what to expect. It's a touch more unsubtle than I remembered it being (never use the song Cocaine when people are doing cocaine; NEVER), but Andrew Niccol definitely knows how to stage some impressive scenes (I've always loved the history lesson on the AK-47, as well as time lapse dismantling of the cargo plane), and the whole film carries a nice sheen to it that doesn't look like a whole lot else out there. Nic Cage gives a nicely understated performance as the lead, and I always appreciate it when a film about dark subject matter actually follows through with it in the conclusion.
Derailed: Certainly not primo Van Damme, and way too low-budget for its own good, but it's a compelling-enough watch, thanks to its rapid pacing and throwing enough twists into the story to keep things agreeably chaotic. The dedicated family man angle was a refreshing change for a Van Damme character, and certainly much more interesting than Tomas Arana's villain, who is basically doing a weak riff on John Lithgow's performance from Cliffhanger.
Ruthless People: Who knew that Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker had it in them for a comedy that wasn't a straight spoof? The film has the makings of being a much blacker comedy than it actually is, but I won't fault it too much for not making the big leap when it's still a good time. Danny DeVito is his wonderfully oily self, Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater make for a charming pair of crooks that are just too pure of heart to be real criminals (Reinhold's encounter with a spider was especially terrific), and Bill Pullman makes for one damn good mimbo. Bette Midler is pretty much Bette Midler, but I can't imagine her role calling for much more than that.
Hercules in New York: I celebrated my birthday with a movie I attempted to watch over 10 years ago, but forgot the reasons why I didn't go through with all of it. After an endless 92 minutes of zero momentum, charmless characters (Arnold was a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way away from the persona we've come to love and treasure him for), god awful lighting, and a grating score that will have you tearing out your ears, I found out why. I feel like a redo of my birthday is in order now.
Deadfall: After years of being amused endlessly by clips of Nic Cage's deranged performance, I finally saw the whole thing and appeared to find out that they were the highlights of an otherwise dull attempt at making a neo noir with a filmmaker whose sensibilities are more in sync with a slightly ambitious AV club student. The reliance on dark shadows suggests a noir-type feel, but it's really to hide the fact that everything takes place on a really bad-looking set, and the lead actors aren't given any help, leading to Michael Biehn becoming the world's most disinterested con man (both in his interactions with the other actors and his theatrical cut of Blade Runner-bad voice over), Sarah Trigger as a femme fatale that is constantly on the verge of bawling her eyes out, and James Coburn flashing a shit-eating grin as he assuredly recoiled in horror over where the script goes for his characters, as well as everyone else, since the whole thing is so goddamned pointless by the end. Thankfully, reliable old Angus Scrimm shows up and puts on a hell of a Sydney Greenstreet impression as the final mark (OR IS HE?!?) while wearing a prop that gives him a robotic scissor-hand because why not. The totality of the insanity of Nic Cage's performance helps keep it interesting enough in the face of straight-up bad filmmaking, but until Angus Scrimm shows up, there is a hell of a lull to endure when Cage's character makes his memorable exit. Truly, Cage was doing his brother a favor.
King Kong (1976): Surprisingly not nearly as bad as I was led to believe. If the biggest problem with Peter Jackson's take on the story is that he was too much of a fanboy to see how much his excesses was hurting the same story that the 1933 original had, this one was hurt by not diverting enough from the source material, as the film is surprisingly going for a more cynical criticism of society at the time of its making in its third act. Since it is a Dino De Laurentiis blockbuster, such lofty goals get waylaid in the pursuit of showing just how much money he spent on it, but to his credit, he certainly got some bang for his buck from the early, striking scenery shots of the island of our title character. Jeff Bridges plays Jeff Bridges, but that actually works pretty well, Charles Grodin proves to be decidedly uncomfortable when hamming it up, looking like one of those weird Russian-animated Tom & Jerry cartoons than the genuine article, and a rather fetching Jessica Lange seems to be really excited to be working on a big movie, smiling at every opportunity she gets when the camera is looking at her face and not one of her many wardrobe changes, which isn't nearly as irritating as you might think. I liked the expressiveness of the Kong mask that Rick Baker had to wear, but I don't think the effects crew really found a good way to ever make him look like anything other than a guy in a gorilla costume, which leads unintentionally humorous moments, like the over-reliance of rear projection effects while Jessica Lange is being fondled by a large prop right hand of Kong (he's kinda super horny in this version). As I mentioned, the film seems to want to get away from telling the same story, which can make for some jarring transitions when it does try to stick to it, such as the unannounced presence of equally oversized animals (well, just one) that isn't hinted at. And while it isn't nearly as long as Jackson's version, Kong gets captured in this film in roughly the same amount of time that the original was already heading into its conclusion, so pacing is an issue, if not quite as pronounced. Still, I have to commend it for trying to flip the script a bit and attempting a bit more of a downer ending that removes the romantic tragedy and replaces it a whole lot more acerbic sentiments, but the final title card before the credits start in earnest is a paragraph-long special thanks to the guys that worked on the special effects. That's a pretty good way to describe the film: just when you think it's going to embark on something a lot more daring and interesting, Dino De Laurentiis throws more money at problems that didn't need solving.
