Pat Coston Movie Reviews

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Blade Runner: The Director's Cut

The main difference I noticed is that the Harrison Ford narrative is missing. I actually missed it. I think his commentary is actually quite informative and adds to the movie.

The FX in this movie were cutting edge but now look a bit dated. The sets are still quite impressive. The movie is supposed to occur in the year 2019. That is only 12 years from now. Once again, SciFi is a little too ambitious in it's prediction of the future. In this future envisioned by Philip K. Dick in the novel this is based on named "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", most of humanity has moved off-world and not just populated the moon and Mars but have moved outside this solar system and have spread to other stars.

The dystopia vision of Los Angeles is way off for 2019 but the sets are still quite amazing. Los Angeles is caught in a perma-smog making it seem like night 24 hours per day. It is also almost always raining. The design of Deckard's apartment is highly influenced by the art in Heavy Metal instead of basing it on any realistic type prediction of the future.

Still, the concept that we will create machines that are as human as us but that posses great strength, is an interesting one. We limit their life-spans to 4 years to prevent them from leading any kind of revolution or war upon humanity. This of course makes them very angry so it's no wonder they try their very best to "meet their maker" to extend their lives.

I seem to remember more graphic and violent scenes showing them killing the people they visit but in this version we are left wondering what happened. When the maker is killed, we are not shown the horrible things that happens to him. This leaves it up to our imagination which I liked better.

So in some ways the Director's Cut was an improvement and in other ways I liked the original better.

Apocalypse Now Redux

Apocalypse Now is one of my all time favorite movies. So I thought this version with 53 more minutes would be more of the same scenes but in reality the bulk of the new material added is one scene in which they are half-way to Col. Kurtz when they encounter a British post in Cambodia. They decide to stop and have dinner and we are treated to very long conversations that nearly bored me. The additional scene seemed out of place. They had found a paradise in the middle of hell. I did not appreciate that. Once they are in hell, I didn't want this break. I ended up fast forwarding past half of the additional scene.

It was nice to see this movie again but it seems so simple on plot now. Capt. Willard gets assigned to kill Col. Kurtz "with extreme prejudice" and has a long journey down the river and has various adventures along the way as he tries to local Kurtz. Harrison Ford actually has a small part before he was famous.

I'm not a big fan of Dennis Hopper but I love him in this. He totally steals the scenes he is in as the reporter who is documenting what is happening with Kurtz. I believe Francis Ford Coppola actually has a cameo in his own film as a reporter filming the action telling the soldiers not to look at the camera as they pass. It felt rather awkward knowing that it was actually Coppola filming the movie.

The most interesting character transformation is the surfer dude, Lance, who finds becomes extremely spiritual after dropping some acid. It seems he never comes down from his trip and easily integrates into the tribe they happen upon.

There is an alternate ending where the air strike is called and the entire tribe is napalmed including women and children. That ending was not included and you are left wondering what happened. I think that is a better ending.

So the original version is still the one I prefer although I did enjoy the extra scene where the men got to hang out with the playboy bunnies who seemed to be tripping on acid as well.

Kelly's Heroes

This movie was the first movie I added to my NetFlix queue. I chose it based on a recommend from a friend. But before it could be mailed, I had re-arranged my queue so that it was no longer in the top 3. Instead it got pushed back to position 10 or 20 and floated there for many years. I used it as a kind of high water mark to determine how many movies I "really" wanted to see. Finally I got tired of seeing this movie in my queue so I forced myself to move it to the front and when it arrived, I forced myself to watch it.

The first thing I realized is that the movie Three Kings was a remake of this movie. So it was cool to see the original. Another cool thing is that this movie is packed with stars when they were young. This came out in 1970 and as tons of big stars like Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, Donald Sutherland, Carroll O'Conner and many more.

On the downside, here is a movie about people with very little morals. They are greedy and are willing to kill for money. To be fair, the way the movie justifies their actions is that they get 3 days of rest and relaxation and then it is back to the front lines in World War II. These soldiers believe they will probably be killed on the front lines so they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Maybe I'm missing the point but I was upset at the beginning when they ignored the rules of war and mistreated their German prisoner to get info about where the gold is located then they left him to die. It seems rather cruel which tainted my opinion of every greedy person we encountered along the way. They killed dozens of German soldiers for greed. Despicable is the word that comes to mind when describing these people.

Rotten Tomatoes says it is 80% Fresh and I read many user comments on imdb.com so I am sure that I am missing the point. For example this comments on imdb.com by Dances_with_Weasels says you have to take this movie in the context it was made. "This movie was made in America during the Vietnam conflict. There was such war-weariness in the country at the time that only comedic, anti-war war movies were successful, like The Dirty Dozen and this movie. Both of those movies had several elements in common: they had (at the time) great ensemble casts, they were irreverent, even ridiculing, the American army, and thirdly, they portrayed the Germans as professional, competent soldiers."

So I obviously took this movie too seriously and ended up hating it even though some think it is the greatest war movie ever or even the greatest movie ever.