FlamingText

Reviewing the Hits

  So, our household decided maybe six months ago to go in on a Netflix subscription, with the account in Mr. Galt's name, and ordering of movies done by him ostensibly taking into consideration all of our suggestions. This process has broken down somewhat, resulting in Mr. Galt being the only person who regularly places orders for movies. Apparently the criteria he has currently adopted is "only rent movies that could be found in the VHS rentals section of any locally-owned convenience store."

  You know what I'm talking about. Those corner stores that sell beer, cigarettes and lotto tickets? How they have a video rentals section right across from the magazine rack that's always stocked with a completely incongruous collection of movies you've either never heard of or forgotten ever existed? Like Highlander 2 or Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead? Yeah, well apparently Mr. Galt has decided that the transfer to DVD has brought new quality to those kinds of movies, because he's really been hitting the action-adventure shelf pretty hard lately.

  With somewhat mixed results. While the option of hearing a commentary track done by a professional wrestler does sometimes add a dimension of entertainment value to a movie (I think this feature could benefit some movies that don't even have one in the cast, but that's just one man's opinion,) the most remarkable thing so far has been the stunning regularity with which these movies meet my low expectations. There have been exceptions where the movies were actually worse than I imagined; The most prominent of these being Governor Schwarzenegger's 1985 release Commando (Tagline: "Somewhere... somehow... someone's going to pay! ") which actually broke through the bad barrier into the rarefied air of the so-bad-it's-good zone.

  I've always been skeptical of the claim about a room full of chimps on typewriters eventually generating Shakespeare's works, but I will allow that, working from the "action/adventure" templates of Final Draft Pro, they could turn out a script like Commando's in an afternoon and still have time for naps and feces-flinging sessions. I was in such awe of Commando's by-the-numbers ticking down the list of necessary genre tropes that I actually had to go back and skim through it again to marvel at its efficiency. Yup, there's the petting-the-dog scene (in this case a petting-the-deer scene) to establish the character's likability and devotion to his daughter. This movie knows that the audience is in a hurry to get to the shootin' so the petting-the-deer scene takes place under the credits. The motive-for-revenge-and-merciless-bloodletting scene is already taken care of ten minutes into the movie, and the unrelenting carnage of Herr Governor's one-man army pretty much proceeds from there, complete with clever quips, uttered in a thick Austrian accent, to punctuate the messy deaths of his foes.

  Unfortunately, not all of Mr. Galt's selections have been as entertaining as Commando. Here is a brief summary of some of the recent highlights:

  the Day After Tomorrow: Brought to you by the team that brought you Independence Day, and continuing that movie's fine tradition of showing alarming shots of recognizable, iconic buildings being blown to smithereens, Day After Tomorrow replaces the menacing,evil aliens of Independence Day with the menacing, evil troposphere. In an attempt to make global warming scary enough for jaded moviegoers, the creators of this film decided to put it on fast-forward, so the ice age comes on in, like, a day. None of those slow, creeping glaciers for this movie. These are glaciers on steroids! The evil troposphere just flash-freezes the entire northern hemisphere. This creates a perfect environment for the deadly, marauding packs of CGI wolves! Grrr!

  To be honest, I fast-forwarded through most of the standard disaster-film character development and family drama, only pausing for one subplot about a ten-year-old blind cancer patient boy and the doctor who refuses to leave him behind because Mr. K and I both thought this subplot was hysterically funny. I learned the fast-forwarding trick from my other roommate, Jakk, and it's now my preferred method for watching movies like this one. I mean, come on, it's obvious where the filmmakers spent all the money. I could see all this crappy melodrama on any movie of the week; Take me to the CGI tidal waves and tornadoes! If you're gonna make a movie just so you can have five minutes of cool shots to put in the trailer, that's the way I'm going to watch it. I'm a busy man.

  Daredevil: All I'll say about this movie is that our copy of it was badly damaged, rendering entire scenes of it unwatchable, including the motive-for-revenge scene and the climactic battle scene, and still I couldn't bring myself to get upset. Even without seeing these key scenes, I felt like I got the idea.

  Tonight's selection: Walking Tall. The remake. Starring the Rock. I'll let you know.

Posted by flamingbanjo at November 12, 2004 09:53 AM