1998 - SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, as usual 'War Is Hell'

You can't fault the technical aspects of this film.  Steven Spielberg is at the height of his film making skill.  His cinematographer Janusz Kamiński brilliantly photographed this film draining the color and  making it look at times like a black and white World War II film.  The decision to shoot the film with a hand held camera added a stunning immediacy to the fighting.  Spielberg's long time editor Michael Kahn cut the film together for maximum impact.  Considering this was a large scale and expense film with complicated battle scenes Spielberg was such an experienced director he brought the film in under schedule, an impressive achievement.

Saving Private Ryan was clearly inspired by the real life tragedy of the five Sullivan brothers.  They were sailors serving on the same ship which was torpedoed by the Japanese killing all five of them.  This incident so traumatized the country the United States Navy changed their policy of letting family members serve together.

I haven't viewed this film since it was originally released and while the battle scenes were still as intense as I remember I had some reservations about the actual story.  In many ways this is just a hyped up 1940's World War II film with a lot more graphic violence.  One of the messages of Saving Private Ryan is the emotionally draining effect that war has on soldiers.  The problem I always have with these anti-war films it that they tend to exploit the very thing they are trying to condemn the fighting.  Saving Private Ryan definitely has a "this is a cool combat scene" vibe. I would probably call it violence porn.  The audience is being manipulated to enjoy how impressive the fighting scenes are at the expense of the anti-war message.

As far as the cast goes it's the usual group of soldier boy character exaggerations.  Tom Hanks is the Captain in charge of the mission to find Private Ryan.  He's a resourceful leader of men but underneath a sensitive soul who in a previous life was a teacher.  Tom Sizemore is the battle hardened sergeant who has a philosophical side to him.  Jeremy Davis is the private who has never been in battle before.  Barry Pepper is a Bible quoting sniper.  A young Matt Damon is Private Ryan the soldier Hanks has been looking for to bring home.  However he won't leave his platoon because he has bonded with them in this "profession of arms."  One of the oddest casting choices is Ted "Sam the Bartender" Danson as an army captain.  I half expected to see Cliff and Norm from Cheers to pop up at any moment.

Saving Private Ryan is almost three hours long and towards the end it kind of drags as we wait for the final big battle scene which in many ways is like one of those big musical production numbers.  In this case it's Hank's platoon vs some German tanks and what seems like a whole regiment of German soldiers.  Fighting these Germans against overwhelming odds is about as big a fantasy as anything found in any other war film.  If you are looking for a good film about the effect of war on the foot soldier I would probably go with A Walk in the Sun or The Big Red One.

The film was written by Robert Rodat, with uncredited contributions from Frank Darabont and Scott Frank.  The running time is 170 minutes.  

1998 - AUTUMN TALE, Rohmer's take on middle age love

A film so light as a feather it could blow away if it were not made by one filmmaker, Eric Rohmer.  The last of Rohmer's group of films called  the "Tales of the Four Seasons, " an Autumn Tale is a serene love story.  Many of Rohmer's films are about young people falling in and out of love.  The spin in this film is that it focuses on a group of middle aged people. 

Rosine and Isabelle are the friends of a winemaker named Maxine.  Maxine is lonely so her two friends decide to play matchmakers and set her up with someone she can start a relationship with.  Rosine through the want ads finds a man named Gerald who she thinks would be good boyfriend material.  Isabelle also zeros in on one of her old college professors Etienne who as it turns out is only interested in relationships with younger women.  With all Rohmer films complications arise as everyone sorts out what is going on and who is interested in who.

 

By this point in his career Rohmer was an old pro at telling this type of story.  His storytelling style was never flashy and he tended to get his plot points across with his actors and his dialog instead of lots of fancy photography and editing.

 

Autumn Tale is set in the Rhone Valley near the Swiss Alps I believe.  The scenery in the small towns and vineyards in this area is gorgeous. This is a smoothly made and very enjoyable film from the master storyteller.

 As usual Rohmer wrote the film.  The running time is 112 minutes. 

1998 - OUT OF SIGHT entertaining sexy crime thriller

Cast a couple of very hot stars, put them in a crime thriller, hire a top screenwriter and get a stylish director to blend it all together and you have the very entertaining Out Of Sight.

George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez are on the opposite sides of the law, he's a bank robber and she's a Federal Marshal.  After getting arrested for a failed robbery Clooney breaks out of prison and ends up being pursued by Lopez. One thing leads to another and Clooney and Lopez end up getting locked in the trunk of a stolen car.  Sure enough sparks fly between this hot couple and after her escape from the car Lopez is on the trail of fugitive Clooney who is planning a big heist in Detroit.

Out Of Sight was adopted from an Elmore Leonard story and it has the usual twists and turns he brings to his crime novels.  Leonard's stories always seem to have a bunch of odd ball characters who are usually cops and crooks and this story is no different.

Soderbergh is a clever director and he excels at these kinds of crime films  He knows how to show off his stars and he gets some great chemistry going betweenClooney and Lopez, like they needed any help.

 

A lot of credit should also be given to the screenwriter Scott Frank who has always been a talented reliable guy particularly in the crime thriller genre.  it's actually entertaining to see a group of talented people come together and create a smart and fun thriller for a change.

The running time is 123 minutes

1998 - MERCURY RISING, pretty bad

Ludicrous doesn't even even begin to describe this typical Bruce Willis action thriller.  If seems the NSA has developed a code that is so powerful no enemy agents can break it. For some reason a couple of NSA nerd clerks stick the solution to the code in a puzzle book.  The parents of an autistic savant kid buy him a copy of the puzzle book who of course solves the code and this in turn leads to the murder of his parents by evil NSA agents.   To the rescue is FBI agent Bruce Willis who has to protect the boy and track down the bad guys.

If the plan was to attempt something a little different plot wise in what eventually ends up being a typical Bruce Willis shoot em up,  the writers and director certainly succeeded.  The story is so ridiculous that every plot twist makes this narrative even more stupid.  Frankly the whole kid with autism plot line seems in really poor taste.

 

Needless to say Mercury Rising did not exactly get good reviews by the critics, Bruce Willis won one of those dumb "Golden Raspberry Awards."  The whole comes down to another "what were they thinking?" movie.

The screenplay was by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, the running time is 111 minutes.

1998 - CELEBRITY, interesting Woody Allen film

Woody Allen had a great idea, a film about the prevailing fixation the public has with the celebrity culture.  Unfortunately he didn't really develop the story and screenplay very well.  The film follows a divorced couple who find themselves interacting with the famous and near famous in New York City.  The film is very disjointed with good scenes interlaced with some very indifferent and frankly unfunny moments.  The film also spends a lot of time on the love life of a celebrity profiler played by Kenneth Branagh which frankly is not very interesting.  One critic called Celebrity Woody's version of Fellini's La Dolce Vita.  But this film is a far cry from that one.

Also, chief among the problems  with this film are Kenneth Branagh and Judy Davis as the divorced couple.  Branagh probably with Woody Allen's encouragement apes Woody's mannerisms and speech patterns, it's a very strange and frankly kind of an annoying performance.  What I didn't realize until I spent a little time revisiting some past reviews, is that Judy Davis is also mimicking Woody Allen as well.  It's like the viewer is watching a Ying and Yang version of Woody Allen.

 

The film was photographed in black and white by Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman's go to cinematographer.  Nykvist apparently wasn't comfortable working with Woody Allen and this was their final film together. Nykvist was also starting to show the effects of the disease progressive aphasia.

 

The supporting cast that was assembled by Allen certainly contributed to his film, Melanie Griffith, Winona Ryder, Leonard DiCapro (supposedly playing a fictionalized version of Johnny Depp), Charlize Theron and Donald Trump, they all knew a thing or two about constantly being in the spotlight.  It's surprising that Woody Allen didn't appear in Celebrity, he's certainly been a target for the gossip columns with his rather messy personal life.  In spite of it's flaws,  Celebrity is worth a look

Written by Woody Allen, the running time is 113 minutes.

1998 - RONIN, good action thriller

Probably a return to the glory days for director John Frankenheimer.  This is essentially an action thriller with decent dialog from uncredited writer David Mamet and lots of double and triple crosses that would make Alistair MacLean proud.

The film was well cast with Robert DeNIro and Jean Reno leading a team of for hire mercenaries who are after a mysterious suitcase which the IRA wants to get their hands on.  Frankenheimer had filmed Grand Prix the very long auto racing saga with a lot of skill during the racing scenes.  Ronin contains two very good car chases which Frankenheimer staged, he clearly knew a thing or two about filming speeding cars crashing into each other.

 

John Frankenheimer was one of the 1960's top directors but personal problems had derailed his career.  Ronin was a film that saw him more engaged than usual towards the end of his career after a string of fairly bad to mediocre films.

 The film was written by J.D. Zeik and David Mamet writing under the pseudo name of Richard Weisz.  Ronin runs 121 minutes.

1998: THE WARLORD BATTLE FOR THE GALAXY aka THE OSIRIS CHRONICLES

A bad science fiction film that Joe Dante directed.  This was a pilot for a science fiction series about a crew of rebels flying around space attempting to reestablish a galactic republic.  

With the exception of Rod Taylor the acting is extremely poor.  The cast doesn't seem to be able to put over the plot with a spec of enthusiasm.  The extremely poor and very derivative script doesn't help since it is a mismash of elements from Star Trek and in particular Star Wars.  The film was obviously trying for a wide appeal with the appearance of busty women and teenagers in primary parts.  Our so called hero is a very poor man's Han Solo.

The production is extremely cheesy looking the cardboard looking sets look like they are about to topple down around the actors throughout the film.  The special effects aren't particularly well done with the usual computer image assistance of spaceships flying around shooting laser beams at each other.  

Clearly Joe Dante brought no passion to this project the film doesn't even contain any of his typical movie references or in-jokes.  A very depressing film.

97 minutes, written by Caleb Carr (huh).

1998 - SMALL SOLDIERS, attempt at another Gremlins type of film

The  director Joe Dante loves the cheezy horror and science fiction films of the 1950's and 1960's.  He also loves satirizing the white suburban middle class culture.  He loads his films with actors from Roger Corman's old movies and throws in lots of in jokes from his favorite films.   The problem for Joe Dante is that not everyone shares his vision. 

For a director like Joe Dante to survive in the film business he needs to combine his interests with a way to appeal to a general audience and not just a bunch of film nerds.  He pulled this off only once with the commercially successful but very mean Gremlins.  That film was his take on ET.   Small Soldiers was produced by Steven Spielberg's company that had also produced Gremlins.  Dante probably seemed like the go to guy for Spielberg when they went to make this film which is basically Gremlins as crazy little GI Joe dolls come to life.  

Small Soldiers is clever but pretty slow moving at times for the kid crowd.  The film starts with a very long prologue about 2 inventors who install high tech computer chips into their new product line of action figures without realizing that the toys will come to life and go on a militaristic rampage.  After this long opening the film finally gets going with the toy soldiers parodying scenes from other movies like Apocalypse Now and Patton.

Joe Dante has a classic old fashioned film making style but I think he struggled with trying to keep the elaborate effects from taking over the film, always a problem when you have a special effects heavy film like this.  Dante also probably needed to make the film shorter, an extended sequence with Barbie dolls coming to life like The Bride of Frankenstein could probably have been cut.

Dante's pretty good working with the actors in his film.  Kirsten Dunst gets top billing playing the traditional part of the girlfriend.  Dunst is actually kind of likable but this film was early in her career so it was before she turned into Kirsten Dunst.  The real star is this kid Gregory Smith who goes on another one of those boring young male personal journeys of self discovery that the movies like to do so much.

Small Soldiers has some funny but pretty mild satire about the  Leave It To Beaver type of neighborhood that the toys attack.  Using some of the original cast from The Dirty Dozen as the action figure voices was a clever idea but since that film came out in 1967 no kid was going to know who they were.

Small Soldiers is funny and entertaining but it doesn't look like it turned out the way Joe Dante or Steven Spielberg intended.

 Written by Gavin Scott, Adam Rifkin, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio.  The running time is 108 minutes.

1998 - DIRTY WORK, I suppose if I was 14 again I would think this was pretty cool

 Norm McDonald, wisecracks his way through this comedy about 2 guys who have a revenge for hire business. The movie has a lot of comedians in it, Chevy Chase, Don Rickles, Artie Lange, Chris Farley and Jack Warden. The movie was a flop when it came out but supposedly now it has a cult following, whatever that means. 

  

 It also has gay jokes, lots of gay jokes lots and lots and lots of gay jokes. Gay dogs screwing other dogs,a gay skunk screwing a little dog, Norm getting it in the rear in jail, a theater full of people watching a gay version of Men In Black and on and on and on, the humor just never ends. It does have some humorous stuff in it. Don Rickles has a few minutes insulting Artie Lange, which apparently he totally improvised. Chevy Chase who I can't remember being funny anymore is actually pretty good.

 

The final scene involves ruining a performance of Don Giovanni at an opera house. It's a direct steal from the Marx Brother's, A Night At The Opera. But apparently they didn't watch that movie close enough because they didn't steal any of the funny stuff, that scene fell completely flat. 

The movie was 80 minutes long, it probably had 45 minutes worth of good shtick, but you can see most of that 45 minutes on You Tube which is probably the best way to watch it.

80 minutes, written by Frank Sebastiano, Norm Macdonald, Fred Wolf.