Weekend Movie Viewing

Well, some of my weekends seem to be dedicated to romance -- like those days when all those holiday christmas romances flooded the tube with ne'er a Jesus movie in site. Or when Scifi Channel has some good flicks. But they seem to be stuck in reptile mood because I'm pretty sure it was not more than five weeks ago that they had another reptile week. And here were were again!

So I kinda ended up watching some crime flicks. Through whatever fate I ended up watching crime flicks. Saw Heat again with DeNiro, Kilmer, and Pacino. Had totally forgotten the plot. Found myself, yet again -- as i do in all crime flicks-- on the side of the bad guys and hoping they would all get away. Was delightfully surprised when Kilmer's character did. Nowadays if the bad theives don't kill anyone, then they tend to get away. Stealing isn't so bad. IT was okay and it had "gravitas." I heard a casting director talking about gravitas once and about how for certain shows actors needed said gravitas. I kinda got an idea of what this gravitas thing was when I saw Tokyo Drift a second time..last week sometime. The story felt like it needed to be heavier; the pain of the main characters needed to be heavier. They talked about their pain, the film was kinda darkly lit at sometimes. There was all this angsty stuff..and yet it just was not Rebel without a cause. No gravitas.

Then there was Family. Found this on Lifetime or Lifetime Movie Channel. A cop with serious psycho problems and his son pick up a woman hitch-hiker-criminal. She wants to protect the boy from his father. You could see from the beginning that this was once a small movie. It had that feel to it. None of the formulas. I liked it. Definitely try to see it. Nicely written, nicely directed, nicely acted. But there was that shoot-out moment when cop had his near meltdown and spoke his heart. Why, oh why, do they go on like that? As if we don't already know their "i need a perfect family and why don't you trust me and why did my wife leave me when i was good and why did she take my child?" issues. But a good flick.

Then saw Miami Heat. Liked this one too. First time I saw it. Not particularly about Miami. There was the ubiquitous cold hearted inscrutable Asian girl whom everyone loves and who is finally saved by the love of a good white man so I kinda had to deal with that. A couple of moments, however, did make me want to scream. For instance, when the big shoot down goes down, she gets upset when she realizes bad guy is possibly a cop. So what does she do in the MIDDLE of the shoot-out? (This is a woman, mind you, who has been calm and collected all along. But I guess they wanted to say taht when she gets mad she loses it because he was the only one she had allowed yadda yadda) anyway, she gets up in the middle of the shootout -- the MIDDLE!!!!-- and starts bitch-alapping him for betraying her. Okay, AK47's are shooting at them! Cop Snipers and bad guy snipers and guys with semi-automatics are all around shooting at each other and at Colin Farrell's character...and yeah, she's having a hissy fit! She also has another one in the car when they're escaping and starts hitting him while he's driving at a mega-pace. Then after that, when they're at peace and waiting for the florida cops to take her away to her home in havana (yeah, i know...they did a whole lot to give the role to a chinese actress.) she gets all sad and wistful, having presumably got all that hidden temptress rage all expelled. Yes, she got away too because she didn't kill anyone. She was just a female too... We know how that goes.

Then I saw Crank. Kinda like DOA on crack...and reminded me of Torque. Wonder if the same screenwriter/director did both flicks. Jonathan Statham --who truly is not my type but has a kind of violent sexuality cause he's so dang competent. (Is competence a new kind of sexuality?) -- plays a guy who wakes to find he's been injecfed with an evil Beijing cocktail that will kill him in an hour. Well, you know the plot already: how to get revenge etc? Just like Torque it is a total ride. And very witty and silly at parts as he has to crank himself up to live longer...and ah the stuff he does to crank himself up. There's something odd with me ...someone dies and I immediately wonder if they go to God or to hell. So if I found out I had an hour to live, I'd be kneeling and praying to God to forgive me for my sins, especially if I was a hitman. But again this guy is kinda safe. I always look at what they do at the end of a bad guy's life to make his salvation sure. In A prayer for the dying, Mickey Rourke's character lippened (clung for dear life) to the cross of Jesus. In Angel with dirty faces, Cagney's character turned rat and died to self to save the souls of future might-have-been juvies. A bad guy needs repentance. So this guy was on the road to repentance -- as usual, love had saved his soul-- and hadn't killed the guy he was supposed to kill. In the end he dies though. After a big shoot-out and from falling from the sky. And we're shown his body, like a car that can no longer be cranked. So am not sure if his soul was saved. Please, Lord, let there be no crank2.

Ooh, reminds me...saw the end of another flick... Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan in a shoot-out...cowboys in the desert. Forgot the name. Just saw the end. Must've been my weekend to catch shoot-outs.