David Vining's Blog, page 222
March 28, 2019
The Raid: Redemption
I’ve heard about this movie since it was released, especially in relation to its shockingly similar plot to Dredd. All I had heard about it was the awesome action.
And that’s what I got: a simple plot and awesome action.
The story is of a group of police officers tasked with taking a high rise from a drug lord, and they have to fight their way up and then back down. Their plan to sneak up gets shot, and action takes over. Bullets quickly run out, and everyone rips out their martial arts skil...
March 27, 2019
Au Revoir Les Enfants
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Louis Malle is an interesting director. He never gained a huge following, and his best known movie is probably My Dinner with Andre (which I actually have never seen), but everything he made is eminently watchable. The most recent movie of his that I was exposed to was Vanya on 42nd Street, a performance of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya presented as a rehearsal in a dilapidated theater. That film did more to enhance my opinion about the importance of actors than any other movie I’ve ever seen.
Childh...
March 26, 2019
Mission: Impossible Fallout
This movie’s only real flaw is that it over-relies on the previous movie, Rogue Nation, for some plot and character beats. The rest? An absolute blast at the movies.
The action is top notch. The acting is more than serviceable. The plot is twisty-turny, treats its audience intelligently, and fun. What more could you want from a blockbuster?
The perennially youthful Tom Cruise has found the perfect role in Ethan Hunt. It requires little more from him than running and looking serious. The rest...
March 25, 2019
Mad Max: Fury Road
The success of an action movie really depends on the execution of the action itself. This is generally why it’s a bad idea to make a no-budget action movie unless you know how to produce good action without any money. A lot of money makes a lot of moviemaking easier, but, in particular, it helps with action scenes.
Mad Max Fury Road was an expensive movie, and it shows gloriously. The story is super simple, and reminds me of Dredd. There’s no complex plot to tangle with, just the personaliti...
March 22, 2019
Repo Men
What an interesting time the nadir of the financial crisis was in movies. Rage at a nebulous financial system was hot in many parts of the country, and Hollywood wanted to try to take advantage of that with movies that reflected the mood. Repo Men is an unsuccessful movie, in large part, but it’s more interesting as a time capsule and for its twist (which, while unoriginal, actually makes some of the stuff preceding it a bit more interesting and amusing).
The first twenty minutes or so are t...
March 21, 2019
Scenes from a Marriage
In a godless world, all we have is each other.
Jonah and Marianne seem to have a very good marriage. They have two daughters, careers (him as an academic and her as a family lawyer), and a nice apartment, but as we watch the two interview for a women’s magazine we can see the cracks hidden underneath that will doom the arrangement. They seem happy, and generally are, but there’s something for each of them that they dare not talk about directly that’s eating away at their vision of the other....
Amadeus
Re-Introductions and Introductions
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When I first discovered Amadeus, I loved it, and I showed it to my father. We watched it together (one very nice thing about him was that he’s willing to watch almost whatever I try to put in front of him), and his reaction was much more tempered than mine. He said, “You’ll like it less as you get older.” Not that he didn’t like the film, but he just didn’t love it like I did.
I didn’t watch this movie for at least seven years until this week when I finally...
March 20, 2019
Sisters
Early Brian de Palma is trashy Brian de Palma, but also talented Brian de Palma.
So much of what he’s made through his career is suffused with his love of Alfred Hitchcock to the point that while he not only uses Bernard Hermann, it sounds like de Palma told him to write musical scores that would fit snuggly into a Hitchcock movie.
The movie hinges on two major things. The first is its plot and the ultimate twist, which I guessed way too early, and the second is the pair of performances from...
March 19, 2019
Rome Open City
Ah, post war Italian cinema in its infancy. Filmed immediately after the end of the war and using German POWs as extras, the movie shows the scars Italy bore at the time. Filmed on the streets around Rome and with a partially amateur cast, the movie has a strong sense of reality that defined Italian movies for several years. It’s so easy to see the poverty that was present in Italy before the rise of fascism, the broken promises of fascism’s rise, and the destruction of the war that fascism...
March 18, 2019
Draft 4 – Done
About 10 years ago, I started a fantasy novel that I eventually titled Crystal Embers.
I shopped it around for a while, but ultimately gave up on finding representation. I set it aside and just decided that I would write until the day I died because I enjoy it. I then wrote The Battle of Lake Erie, another fantasy novel set in the same world as Crystal Embers called Corstae, and a book set in 1874 Missouri called The Sharp Kid.
After having released The Battle of Lake Erie, I was eager to fin...
