2001 - BLACK HAWK DOWN, spinning victory from the jaws of defeat

 If there is one thing they are good at in the movie business, it's taking a true story and twisting it around.  In this case it's the Clinton Administration's plan to send the Delta Force and the Rangers into the midst of the Somali Civil War to capture the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.  The mission was basically a disaster, 18 American soldiers died and several Black Hawk helicopters were lost.  

However leave it to Hollywood to somehow spin this into a quasi victory.  The director Ridley Scott stages a lot of for lack of a better term excellent and intense battle scenes.  It's amazing the Delta Force mission failed since in the film it looks like they wiped out most of Aidid's army.

 

What can you say about this film?  If you like war movies Black Hawk Down gets the job done I guess.  The film doesn't shy away from the blood and guts of a modern war but the whole film seems to just a little to "gung ho, rah rah"  for my taste.  It's the kind of movie John Wayne would have been proud to be a part of. 

 

The film was written by Ken Nolan and the running time on the Blu Ray disc is 144 minutes.

1985 - LEGEND, disappointing fantasy film

It's Tom Cruise in the silliest character role in his career,  a guy called Jack o' the Green. This is a very expensive and beautiful looking film from Ridley Scott a director who is always good for creating pretty pictures in his films at the very least.

Scott apparently had the desire to create an original fantasy film.  To that end the story was filmed on studio sets, in this case the giant 007 soundstage at Pinewood studios in England where he could completly control the atmosphere.  The story has something to do with unicorns keeping the balance between darkness and light or good and evil as it were. Into the forest comes the actor Mia Sara playing a character called Princess Lili, she manages to get one of the unicorns killed and is kidnapped by a demon called the Lord of Darkness.  To the rescue comes Jack o' the Green along with a ragtag band of elfish helpers.  The elfish helpers speak in ridiculously anachronistic dialog and Cruise just looks downright silly jumping and running around in his silly woodsman costume.

 The film has stunning cinematography from Alex Thompson, makeup effects from Rob (The Thing) Bottin and again some very impressive sets.  

 

Universal, the studio that financed the film must have realized they had a real turkey on their hands. They took the film away from Scott and reduced his 114 minute cut to 89 minutes.  In order to make the film feel more contemporary they replaced the Jerry Goldsmith score with one from Tangerine Dream.  All this tinkering was a waste of time, the film was a critical and commercial failure.

I viewed the 114 minute Ridley Scott cut of Legend.  The original film screenplay and story was by William Hjortsberg.

2012 - PROMETHEUS, a reworking of the original Alien

The director Ridley Scott and the writer Damon Lindelof got a lot of crap for this film.  The science fiction film nerds were expecting some sort of epic prequel to Alien.  The end result was a reworking of the various scenes and situations from Alien in what was for the most part just another monster on the loose in the spaceship film.

 However it seems to me that Scott and Lindelof succeeded in exactly what they wanted to achieve,  a slick horror film with science fiction elements to it.  Almost every part of  Prometheus has a corresponding scene lifted from Alien.  The robot who gets his head torn off, the Alien face hugging monster, the creepy exploring of the Engineer's spaceship and even the actor Noomi Rapace running around the spaceship in her underwear in a clear tribute to Sigourney Weaver although Rapace is a very tiny woman compared to the Amazonian Weaver.

,

Prometheus is what it is,  an entertaining rehash of a classic film from a director looking for a popular hit with the audience.  The technical credits and special effects are of a very high caliber and Ridley Scott always knows how to make a film look very good.  The film is very easy to watch.  

This is slick mainstream commercial film making at it's best.  Something that Hollywood is very good at when they get it right.

124 minutes.

1979 - ALIEN, classic monster's gonna get you film still holds up.

A monster is loose on a spaceship and it's gonna kill each of the crew one at a time for the next couple of hours.

Alien was showing at a second run theater in the neighborhood as part of a summer movies series.  The print was less than satisfactory, showing lots of wear and tear and color fade.  In spite of all this, the film played very well and kept the audience interest even at the late starting hour of 12:00 AM.

The outstanding feature of the film is the impressive production design.  The spaceships, planet and the alien still look very cool.  The film is photographed very well and at the time Alien was released the monster set a new standard for slimy stuff oozing out of it and a particularly nasty set of double dentures to chew up the cast.

Wrapping up this post, one has to gratuitously conclude with a picture of Sigourney Weaver running around in her underwear towards the end of the film with the monster chasing her.

Women in their underwear being chased by monsters has been a film convention in Hollywood for years.

119 minutes. 

2010 - ROBIN HOOD, next time keep it simple stupid

The very complicated story for Robin Hood  brings the film to a complete halt for what almost seems like half of the film.  Apparently the director Ridley Scott and his writer Brian Helgeland didn't get the message that with Robin Hood films, keep the story simple and the action constant and throw in some occasional humor.

Other problems with this slow moving film is the constant cribbing or is it stealing from other films?
After sitting through lots and lots of exposition, things finally start to pick up towards the end with a battle scene that is way to reminiscent of The Longest Day or the Saving Private Ryan D-Day invasion. Throw in some Lord of the Rings girl dressed up as a knight stuff  and this further shows a large degree of desperation in the lack of originality. 

I can understand the desire for Russell Crowe to have an actress playing his love interest who is closer to his age.  However the very skinny and unhealthy looking Cate Blanchett seems like an odd match for him.  Her tough on the outside sensitive on the inside act has been a movie character cliche for some time. What Blanchett really needs besides a real man is some food.  Its kind of gross watching this ishy thin woman as the object of lust for several of the cast.

Max Von Sydow also shows up in this film playing an old knight which makes a further joke of the whole film. Von Sydow played a knight for Ingmar Bergman in The Seventh Seal when he was in his 20's and certainly with a lot more authority than most of this cast.

Robin Hood is well photographed and edited, it has the luxury of a big budget so each individual scene looks good.  But that's the least I would expect in a film that cost a 100 million or zillion dollars.

Unfortunately no one had the guts to step back and ask the question at script stage.  Does this film do what it's supposed to do, entertain the audience for a couple of hours?

The running time is 140 minutes.