The Crow (1994)

I have no idea how many times I've seen this film.  As a teenager, I pretty much watched it every weekend.  I listened to the soundtrack constantly.  I had something of an obsession with Brandon Lee.  I would wake up early on Saturday, sneak downstairs, plug headphones in to the VCR, and press play.  I don't even think I owned it - I think I hired it from my local video store.  Every week.  I should have just bought it, but I guess it must have been hard for me to find.

It's been a little while since I've seen it.  As soon as I pressed play, everything was so familiar.  At first glance, it's not exactly a film you would call comforting, but it comforts me.  Surprisingly for me, there were moments in this film that I hadn't noticed before.  Or I haven't watched it in that long that I'd forgotten about them.  Small moments, glances, gestures. And I realised that the characters I dislike, I dislike with such passion it's as though they've hurt me personally.

This film was something of a phenomenon when I was a teenager, to the point of saturation and over-hype.  There's a reason for it though.  It's a beautiful, melancholic film.  Lee is amazing in this movie.  Subtle, furious and burning.  It shows that he was truly something special as a performer.  And T-Bird's dying monologue, the sparks falling in to the water, the soprano vocal and the burning crow is a stunningly gorgeous piece of cinema.  Great acting moment for David Patrick Kelly.

Big call, but I might possibly call this my favourite film.

Final Thought:  In looking up trivia about this movie, I just discovered that they're planning to film a remake.  I love this film so much that I can't help but take that as a personal affront.  How dare they.

Up Next:  The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Crazy Stupid Love (2011)

It took three attempts for me to watch this film and properly pay attention to it for this project.  But I enjoy this film, so it's odd that I got so distracted.  Poorly chosen viewing times I guess. 

The plot ties up in a nice little Hollywood bow, which can be infuriating, but I forgive it in this instance, thanks to some subtle surprises in the connections between characters.  And child actors who aren't aggressively precocious also help.

It doesn't leave me with much to say about it though.  It's a film I enjoy, but not one that I form an emotional resonance with.

Final Thought:  Can Ryan Gosling do some more comedies please?

Up Next:  The Crow (1994)

Cradle 2 The Grave (2003)

This is not a very good movie.  At all.  But I didn't expect it to be when I got it.  This is in my library purely for the combination of Jet Li and Mark Dacascos.  I had grand hopes for what this might be. 

Every time I watch this film, I am newly disappointed by the sidelining of Li and Dacascos.  Seems this film was made as a vehicle for DMX, which sure was a gamble that didn't pay off, based on his current acting career.  The guy barely has enough charisma on film to fill a thimble.  Is he more engaging as a rapper?  Is that why this happened? 

On my first viewing, as I watched it, I comforted myself that, ok, they may not be giving Li and Dascascos as much attention as I'd like, but that's ok,  because surely they'll make up for it with the final showdown fight between the two that is bound to happen.  And happen it did.  ...Intercut with footage of two other lacklustre fight scenes.  I felt robbed.  Each time I watch it again, I think that maybe it wasn't that bad, I got to see more of the fighting than I thought.  But no.  What a waste.

Martial arts films are like musicals - you don't always watch them for the plot.  You watch them for the fight scenes.  That's not to say there aren't some wonderfully written martial arts films out there, there certainly are.  But I will forgive a lot of lackings in the plot if they are compensated for with great set pieces.  That didn't happen in this instance.  

Final Thought:  I mean, they used "2" instead of "To" in the title.  I should have known I'd be disappointed before I started watching it, based on that alone.

Up Next: Crazy Stupid Love (2011)

Coraline (2009)

As I set this up to watch it, I realised that I can't remember why I bought this film.  There must have been something about it when I saw it for the first time that prompted me to buy it.

I watched this one on my own on a rainy Saturday afternoon, which felt appropriate.  And I'm left thinking that my main reasoning for buying it was my love of stop motion animation.  The story doesn't hold my attention the entire way through.

There's many people in this world who love Neil Gaiman's writing.  I want to love it, and I've read a few of his books, but there seems to be something about it that I don't quite connect to.  I'm yet to pinpoint what it is I'm missing.  And I think that carries through to this film for me.  Much like with his novels, there are moments that grab me and there are moments that I just drift through.

Final Thought:  This is one of the few films that I watch and think "That moment would have been pretty cool in 3D..."

Up Next:  Cradle 2 The Grave (2003)

Cool Runnings (1993)

Repeated television screenings of this film through my childhood are responsible for me seeing this movie perhaps a dozen times.  There's so many classic lines in this one I feel it needs to come back to regular TV rotation so that today's viewers can use them in everyday conversation..
I can't even remember the first time I saw this film.  It just appeared on TV once a month or so, gradually worming its way in to my brain.  "Hey Sanka... You dead?" is a line I quote regularly to this day.  

It's a fun film, but it's not one that leaves me with a great deal to say about it.  Despite it being a fair while since I last watched it, I'm so familiar with this film that I spent this viewing pottering between the living room and the kitchen, attempting to satisfy a craving for mac and cheese.  Ill timed microwaving of pasta almost caused me to miss the emotional conclusion of this film.  My distraction during this viewing in no lessened my heart swelling as Junior's dad finally showed he was proud of his son.  Sniff.

Final Thought:  The mac and cheese was very tasty.

Up Next: Coraline (2009)

Con Air (1997)

I first saw this film on a bus to a school camp in the country.  I think it might have been the only film the bus driver had, and we might have watched it more than once.  Bizarrely, the entire group on the bus enjoyed watching this.  I say this is bizarre because it was a bus full of teenage girls who didn't generally seek out this sort of film.  Or perhaps I just really enjoyed it and projected my enjoyment on to everyone else.

It's not the best film.  I realise this.  It's barely even a good film.  I was blinded by my discovery of John Cusack (whose entire film catalogue I subsequently made it my mission to see, and some further evidence of this will come up in later entries).  But I really enjoyed this film when I saw it the first time.  And the second time.  And the twentieth time.  I went out and bought it on VHS and watched it repeatedly.  I thought Nicholas Cage was a bit lame, but who cares when John Cusack, John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi are around to make up for it?

By the time I reached this in my current movie library viewing crusade, it had definitely been more than 5 years since I'd seen it.  Unlike Clueless before it, this one hasn't aged as well for me (though John Cusack is still as wonderful as ever).  I like my crappy action movies, don't get me wrong.  More of them will pop up as this project continues.  But sometimes it can be difficult get past the fact that they're not great.  I wonder what I would think of this film if the nostalgia factor were removed...

Final Thought:  It seems as though they thought that "Put the bunny back in the box" somehow carried the same ominous feeling as "I'll be back."

Up Next:  Cool Runnings (1993)

Clueless (1995)

It's proven time and time again that successful teen movies don't talk down to teenagers.  Don't treat them as though they're not intelligent, curious and empathetic.  I know that media has changed since the 90s, but none of the movies I loved as a teenager were condescending. 

Would you really label this film as being aimed at teenagers though?  Perhaps it’s more a film that features teenagers.  It certainly resonates if you watch it as a teenager, especially if you happened to be one in the 1990s.  But while it’s embedded in the decade in which it was made, it manages to be enduring.  Watching it today, I enjoy it just as much.  Granted though, my enjoyment of this film has evolved as the years have gone by.

I eventually attempted to read "Emma", to get a broader sense of the story on which this film is based, but I ended up gradually wandering away from that book until I stopped reading it all together.  It didn't quite grab me.  I was probably not in the right frame of mind to be reading it at the time.

Going back and watching this film decades after seeing it for the first time, it doesn't suffer from seeming dated.  That's not to say that it hasn't dated, but the story is strong enough and timeless enough that it doesn't matter.  If anything, it hams up its 90s-ness so much that the more dated it is, the more I enjoy it.

Final Thought: Let's not talk about the TV series.

Up Next:  Con Air (1997)