David Vining's Blog, page 187
May 18, 2020
Basic
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#10 in my Ranking of John McTiernan films.
I was with this movie for maybe two-thirds of it. I wasnt quite loving it, but I was going along with the twisting narrative and contradictory stories well enough. It was a lesser version of Kurosawas Rashomon, but it worked. And then it took the twists into overdrive and I just lost it. James Vanderbilt, the screenwriter, has said that he wanted to make a movie where no one would guess the killer in the first ten minutes. Well, he succeeded because...
May 15, 2020
John McTiernan: The Definitive Ranking
And yet another listicle. May the listicle gods be appeased and grant me bounty.
At least its a top eleven, not a top ten. Top tens are stupid.
John McTiernan hasnt worked since the early 2000s. After some trouble with the feds, he hasnt been able to get a new project off the ground since. I doubt the movie listed on his IMDB page, Tau Ceti Four, ever gets made. This is probably it for the man, and he did not end well with three subpar films.
Oh well, for the man who made Die Hard, Predator,...
Rollerball (2002)
Im not sure Ive ever seen a talented director faceplant as hard as John McTiernan does here. This goes beyond bad story choices, performances, and unfortunate effects. Theres an amateurishness pervasive through this film that makes it feel like the first film of a film student given too much money rather than the tenth film in a career that includes The Hunt for Red October. This is an embarrassment. McTiernan should have removed his name from the movie and attributed it to Alan Smithee.
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May 14, 2020
The 13th Warrior
You can separate your main character and you protagonist, but its hard to do well. The 13th Warrior attempts it, but I dont think its really all that successful. Theres a technical polish to the film, especially in isolated sequences, and obvious talent behind the camera, but the story is surprisingly disengaging.
The problems are obvious from the beginning with an introduction that hops and skips from Baghdad through a long land journey northwards to Viking territory, an attack on the road,...
May 13, 2020
The Thomas Crown Affair
This movie is at its most entertaining when people are stealing things, art in particular. Its the story of a rich man whos always in search of thrills and decides to steal one of the most valuable pieces of art on display at the Met. Hes fabulously wealthy and doesnt need the money, but we could believe that he wants to keep it hidden behind a print of The Son of Man by Rene Magritte just as a private joke. The only problem with the film is when it asks us to emotionally involve ourselves...
May 12, 2020
Last Action Hero
In order for deconstruction to really work, the one doing the deconstruction has to love the thing to begin with. They have to love it and know it inside and out so that they can invert everything within it and make the work essentially regard itself in the mirror. That means the deconstruction needs to be honest but well intentioned. Its not a reaffirmation, but a reexamination. And you know what? Last Action Hero is just that about the action movie genre and Arnold Schwarzeneggers on...
May 11, 2020
Medicine Man
John McTiernan had just completed The Hunt for Red October, which gained plenty of accolades and quickly embraced as one of the finest submarine movies ever made. He seems to have been eager to move beyond simple action filmmaking and become serious, a trap many genre filmmakers fall into. So, he picked up a heavily sought after script filled with topical things, brought Sean Connery back (who obviously really wanted to do the film since he has an executive producer credit), and even got...
Terry Gilliam
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I love Terry Gilliam as a filmmaker. Hes talented enough technically, adept enough narratively, and singular enough visually to really stand out amongst his peers, despite only having thirteen feature films to his name (one of which is a co-directors credit).
Starting in animation, moving to television comedy with Monty Python, and then using that to start a film directing career, Gilliam approached film like an animator. The stories of the making of Monty Python and the Holy Grail are full...
May 8, 2020
Die Hard with a Vengeance
Well, thats significantly better. Where Die Hard 2 felt like the laziest kind of sequel, Die Hard with a Vengeance feels really fresh in comparison. Its still following a lot of the basic formula from the first film in particular (an antagonist with outwardly terroristic ends but privately greedy ones, McClane operating alone, and English actors pretending to be Germans pretending to be Americans), but theres more to the motions than simply repeating what came before. Its actually a really...
May 7, 2020
Die Hard 2: Die Harder
This is a movie that is driven purely by plot needs with no room for anything else other than action scenes. No one feels like they have a life outside of the basic plot actions that they need to fulfill. The whole exercise then feels like a mechanical product with no life or soul to it. It feels dead because there doesnt feel like theres a single living person involved.
Its pretty obvious that this movie was originally a script that had nothing to do with John McClane because McClane feels...
