Cinematic Throwbacks: March 2003/2013

2003:

The Core was a pretty big box office flop. I don't think it has had much of a second life over the years either. But I really like it. It's a big budget throwback to the kind of high concept sci-fi adventures that were made a lot in the 50s and 60s. 

The premise is crazy in a fun way. The earth's core has stopped spinning, causing all sorts of disasters and eventually meaning all life on the planet is doomed. Unless, of course, America can come up with a plan. And hey they do! The plan is to travel down to the core, aboard a special ship, and set off a bunch of nukes to restart the core. Cause it's gotta be nukes. 

There is of course a team rassled up to undertake the mission, a collection of scientists and a couple astronauts. The Core was wise to be cast extremely well. Aaron Eckardt never really took off as a leading man, but he's really engaging here. Hilary Swank, sporting a brutal hairdo, is also really good. Delroy Lindo, Stanley Tucci, Bruce Greenwood and Tcheky Karyo (the bad guy from Bad Boys) make up the rest of the team. All are good. And back up on the surface we are also well cast, with Alfre Woodard, Richard Jenkins, and a master hacker played by DJ Qualls. Nothing timestamps a movie more as being early 2000s than DJ Qualls. 

The Core didn't have quite the budget of something like Armageddon, so some of the fx work is a little shaky, but the handful of disaster sequences we get are creative, well staged and even a little scary.

Inside the earth, that part of the adventure is pretty cool too. The environments are neat, and the movie at least tries to stick to some semblance of realism as to what being down there might look like. 

2013:

The first great film of 2013, Spring Breakers is both an artifact of its time and also unfortunately pretty predictive of the world we have going right now. 

Going in I was no doubt intrigued by the casting of squeaky clean young actresses as debauched wild childs. In particular, Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't interested due to the director. I knew who Harmony Korine was, but only as the director of a bunch of unappealing indie curiosities.

But Spring Breakers broke through. It is an immersive vibe of a movie. Yes it gives you hot girls to look at, but it is also an ugly movie, with purposely loathesome characters that you would never want to be near.

I loved the idea that this movie would be drawing in a lot of the very kind of people it is condemning as horrible. The film is an indictment of that late millenial/early gen z group who are so often just empty and awful. The 4 girls in this movie (slightly excluding good-ish girl Gomez) are vile, shallow mean girls to the extreme.

The film also exposes trashy men, here in the form of James Franco as an absurd creation named Alien. Alien is a local rapper and gangsta, with zero substance to him. Franco's performance is equal parts parody and threatening. He has one scene with Gomez that is squirm-inducing, but also the legendary "look at my shit" monologue that is top comedy. Then there's also the scene where he fellates a gun.

The film kind of put studio A24 on the map. It is a dazzling visual experience, all candy colored, and the music is pretty great too. 

And obviously this movie has the Britney Spears connection. There was a theory that the overall film was an allegory for Britney's life (I guess Franco would be Kevin). Whether that all fits or not, Britney has a role here. In one scene the 4 girls all sing Baby One More Time, but the truly iconic scene is a robbery montage set to Everytime. I remember when I first saw this how stunning this was, and that they did the whole song! 

Director Derek Cianfrance and star Ryan Gosling re-teamed following Blue Valentine for this bigger, more ambitious film that didn't get nearly as much acclaim. I think it is arguably better though. 

The film tells 3 largely separate stories. The first has Gosling as a motorcycle stunt man turned bank robber. The second with Bradley Cooper as a cop. The third taking place about 15 years in the future, with the sons of both characters (one played by Dane Dehaan, who was really looking to be a budding star at the time). 

Watching it a decade later the film is a hell of a casting coup. Gosling and Cooper were known, but then you have Ben Mendelsohn and Mahershala Ali both well before they became pretty big deals. You've also got Eva Mendes in pretty much the last big role she has had. She and Gosling got together and had kids off this movie.

The film is really good. Maybe it gets a little heavy-handed at points but it's never over the top. Everybody is really good in it. I figured Cianfrance was going to be one of the next really big directors but he only has 1 film since and has done just TV mostly. 

Shortly after we were saddled with that very bad 5th Die Hard movie, we got a good Die Hard movie.

Olympus Has Fallen is fucking great! The first, and best, of 2013's two "terrorists attack the White House" movies, this is just a badass action flick. 

Gerard Butler, who rarely hits but soars when he does, is an ex-secret service agent who winds up the only hope when he is the only ally left inside the White House when those pesky North Koreans launch an attack on the building. The president (Aaron Eckardt outside the core) is being held hostage in the bunker. 

Morgan Freeman is the speaker of the house and acting president. 

The vastly overqualified supporting cast also has Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, and Melissa Leo. But you cast well you're halfway there. Antoine Fuqua directed this and keeps things moving. He knows that in movies like this, you pretty much just want to see the protagonist fuck shit up. And so Butler just rips through the terrorists with little trouble. 

Movie is a little cheap looking in places, but it delivers the action. Fuqua didn't do either of the sequels, which are not nearly as good. I think a 4th movie might be coming too. 

Other non-deep dive flicks...

1983:

-Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life: I believe I saw this one. Sure it was funny. 

-The Outsiders: An early Tom Cruise movie. 

1993:

-Point Of No Return: This remake of La Femme Nikita starred Bridget Fonda, who was kind of a big deal in the early 90s. 

-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: This threequel was a big, boring dud. 

-CB4: A pretty funny rap comedy with Chris Rock. 

-Amos and Andrew: A somewhat infamously bad comedy with Nicolas Cage and Samuel L. Jackson. 

-Mad Dog and Glory: Mob comedy with Bill Murray, Robert Deniro, and Uma Thurman at peak hotness. 

2003:

-Basic: Of all things to re-unite John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson, it had to be this terrible flop of an action thriller? 

-Head Of State: Chris Rock running for president. Actually one of Rock's more decent starrers. 

-Dreamcatcher: A Stephen King adaptation that I had a lot of hope for. I don't recall full on hating this but I believe it got the rep quickly of a major flop. 

-Bend It Like Beckham: The soccer comedy that more or less launched Keira Knightley. 

-The Hunted: Lame thriller with Tommy Lee Jones chasing Benicio Del Toro. Or was it the other way around? 

-Bringing Down The House: Oh my god. I fucking DESPISED this Steve Martin-Queen Latifah "comedy", one of the most ill-conceived movies I have ever seen. And stunningly racist. 

-Tears Of The Sun: Forgettable Bruce Willis action movie. 

2013:

-The Call: The first 2/3 of this thriller with Halle Berry as a 911 operator is quite excellent. But boy does it have a shitty finale. 

-The Host: A dreadful YA movie, with early Saoirse Ronan. 

-Temptation: I will always have fond memories of how utterly loopy this Tyler Perry movie was. And Jurnee Smollett looked incredible in it. 

-G.I. Joe: Retaliation: The 2nd movie in the series weirdly killed off star Channing Tatum and gave the reins to The Rock. 

-Trance: Danny Boyle movie with James McAvoy and Rosario Dawson. 

-Admission: A bland comedy with Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. 

-The Incredible Burt Wonderstone: A pretty bad comedy with Steve Carell and Jim Carrey. 

-Oz: The Great and Powerful: Sam Raimi's prequel movie. I think this was okay, and c'mon, it had the triumvirate of Michelle Williams, Rachel Weisz and Mila Kunis. 

-Jack The Giant Slayer: Hollywood really wanted those fantasy hits back then. This was a big miss.

Coming in April...

Some very good tenth anniversaries (42, Mud, Oblivion), a pretty good 20th anniversary (Phone Booth) and not a whole lot else. But summer beckons!