DailyView: Day 344, Movie 491

Earlier this week, I was watching the latest Top Ten Show with John Rocha and Matt Knost. This week’s topic was “Top 10 films that break the fourth wall.” It was an interesting and original topic, and I had known most of the films that were mentioned, but then Matt mentioned a film called JCVD. I was not sure what he had said, but John reacted in anger since he had forgotten to include the film, which he said he loved.

I tried to figure out what the film was and I finally figured it out. Jean-Claude van Damme’s initials.

I searched up the movie and found it on Amazon Prime.

In JCVD, van Damme played a fictional version of himself, who had lost most of his money, was involved in a terrible custody dispute over his daughter, kept losing film roles to Steven Segal and returned home to Brussels, where he was still considered a hero.

Desperate for a money, van Damme went to a local bank for a wire transfer from his agent. Unfortunately for Jean-Claude, he stumbled into the middle of a bank robbery in progress. Jean-Claude’s luck was only going to get worse.

When an accidental gunshot goes off, the police arrive at the bank, setting up a hostage situation. They spy Jean-Claude inside the bank and they mistakenly think that he was one of the bank robbers.

I am not a fan of Jean-Claude van Damme and his film catalog, but I thought he was fantastic here. It was the best performance I have seen from him. The character is very self-deprecating, making van Damme the butt of most of the jokes. It is ironic that his best character ever was a version of himself.

The film is extremely funny, but is based in the troubles of the characters. And not only the character of van Damme, but the bank robbers, the police and the other hostages.

The story is told in a disjointed narrative as we start out in the bank with a situation that was confusing. The film flashed back several times to show what had happened and how we arrived at where we were. The writing is very clever and well constructed.

It does feature a six minute monologue with Jean-Claude speaking directly to the camera and breaking the fourth wall in an emotional diatribe. It has to be some of the best acting of his career.

This is unlike any Jean-Claude van Damme film I have ever seen and I found it to be completely charming and wonderfully entertaining. It was mostly in French (though there are some moments where English is used), but I was not opposed to the subtitles (avoid the voice overs always!). I am very grateful to Matt Knost for including it on his list.

DailyView: Day 343, Movie 490

Back in the late sixties, a sub-genre of horror was invented. A sub-genre that exploded in popularity over the years, Zombies, although that word is never mentioned in the film.

There was little to nothing with zombies in movies prior to George C. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead came out and became a cult classic. This documentary looked at the filming, distribution and response of The Night of the Living Dead.

To be honest, the story of the movie was fun to hear, but there was nothing deep and surprising in the tale told. Some of the most fascinating part of the doc was the interview of Romero himself. Most of the interviews with the “talking heads” in the film added to the doc very well.

You really get the idea that this film was a leader in the field of horror and an inspiration to filmmakers over the decades that followed.

The investigation of how the lead character of the movie was black, but there was absolutely zero racial issues made in the film was quite revolutionary for the 1960s and was intriguing.

It is an easy watch that does not require much of the viewer. It has an interesting story to tell and flies by quickly.

DailyView: Day 342, Movie 489

This past weekend, I saw the most recent vampire flick, Morbius, in the theaters and I was suitably unimpressed. During discussion about Morbius online, I had heard a film referenced that had been directed by Oscar Award winner Kathryn Bigelow in her solo directorial debut. It was called Near Dark so when I spotted it as a new film on Shudder today, it was an easy choice for today’s DailyView.

According to IMDB: “A mid-western farm boy reluctantly becomes a member of the undead when a girl he meets turns out to be part of a band of southern vampires who roam the highways in stolen cars. Part of his initiation includes a bloody assault on a hick bar“

The lead protagonist in the film was Adrian Pasdar, who played Caleb, the “reluctant farm boy” as IMDB stated. Pasdar was a familiar face from the TV show Heroes. He does a decent job of struggling against the inner demons that were tugging at him to embrace fully the darkness of the vampire life. Pasdar does an admirable job of showing that struggle and maintaining the humanity despite everything around him telling him to join the crowd.

The crowd included a top level, over-the-top performance from Bill Paxton as Severin, who was everything that Caleb was not. Also, Lance Hendriksen is great as the fatherly figure among the vampire horde, Jesse Hooker. Both of these fine actors bring different layers to their characters and both are intimidating to watch. Pasdar does well to stay with these impressive actors.

There are some violent scenes, especially at a biker bar the group stops at. It is shot extremely well and provides some real gory moments while blending in some funny bits as well.

The story is fairly straightforward, which I appreciated in this film. There is a section in the third act involving a blood transfusion which is new to the lore of vampires, but it worked for this type of film.

There are some explosions that I am not sure about. Why the objects burst into flames, and such. However, these are minor gripes of an entertaining vampire film, a film that never once used the word, vampire.

DailyView: Day 341, Movie 488

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was an animated, sci-fi romance/coming of age Anime from Japan directed by Mamoru Hosoda. As you can probably gleam from the movie title, this deals with time travel.

Time travel is always a challenge because of all of the different manners in which it has been executed in movies over the years. In this case, the time travel has been called “team leap” and it allowed the time traveler to go to a location in the past and relive everything again and make adjustments to the time line.

Once the form of time travel is established and the rules are stated, it is important to remain consistent with them, otherwise you can mess up your story.

According to IMDB: “A high-school girl named Makoto acquires the power to travel back in time, and decides to use it for her own personal benefits. Little does she know that she is affecting the lives of others just as much as she is her own.”

Makoto, Chiaki and Kōsuke and their relationships are the key to the film. Everything that Makoto does using her time travel powers was wasteful and she was slowly learning what was important.

The animation is beautiful and the story is creative and wonderful. The three characters could be whiny at times, but that was pretty typical for the style.

I did enjoy the film and it was an enjoyable animated time travel flick.

DailyView: Day 340, Movie 487

Another live action short, in fact an Oscar winner in 2016, Stutterer is written and directed by Benjamin Cleary.

Greenwood (Matthew Needham) has a terrible stutter that affects his life every day. He can’t make a phone call to check on his bills because he can’t get the words out in a proper time. He goes through the day watching people around him and making judgments about the people, running through silently in his head what he believes they are thinking about.

It should be of no surprise that Greenwood feels more comfortable talking by using text messaging. For six months, Greenwood had been exchanging messages with his online girlfriend Ellie (Chloe Pirrie). Ellie surprised him with the fact that she was coming to his city, London, and she wanted to meet him.

Greenwood was nervous about meeting her and having her judge him because of his speech impediment. He finally went to meet her and discovered a big surprise.

The short was well done and shined a light on a problem that many people suffer with. The character of Greenwood personified the fears and worries of stutterers everywhere. It was a well done short.

DailyView: Day 340, Movie 486

Since I watched the film, My Breakfast with Blassie, this morning, and it is a parody of a film that had been on the watch list for the DailyView for many months now, I figured it was a good time to go ahead and watch My Dinner with Andre.

Featuring actors Wallace Shawn and André Gregory playing fictionalized versions of themselves in a film that sees the two creative people meeting for dinner and conversation at Café des Artistes in Manhattan. Their conversations included the bizarre life led by Gregory, the world of theater, and the way of life.

Wallace Shawn will always be Vizzini to me, from the Princess Bride no matter what he is in. He is one of the most intriguing actors around with his distinctive voice and original appearance. I am unaware of André Gregory. The film was directed by Louis Malle, French director.

The philosophical dialogue and conversation being carried out by “Wally” and Andre was, at both, fascinating and challenging. It ranged all over the place. I found it most interesting when the pair of them were going back and forth. André Gregory had much more dialogue written for his character and he delivered it well, but there are a lot of concepts and ideas in the script that can be hard to follow.

This is a film that absolutely requires focus to understand what is happening. It is amazing that this film is so dominated with the language between two friends.

There is a really interesting shot in the film when Wally is speaking and the camera focuses on his, we can see Andre’s reflection in the mirror behind him and his reflection is looking directly at Wally’s head. It is a totally original way to look at POV. It is interesting as well that when the camera is on Andre, all we see is the back of Wally’s head. Maybe I am looking into it too much, but it is just something I noticed.

My Dinner with Andre has some great dialogue, but it does tend to be a little dull, especially if you have lost track of the conversation. It is extremely well written and deep, but it requires a perfect time to watch it.

DailyView: Day 340, Movie 485

Wrestlemania 38 night one was tremendous and the DailyView is continuing on with another wrestling film that I had not heard of before that featured former professional wrestler/manager “Classy” Freddie Blassie and comedian Andy Kaufman at a restaurant, meeting and eating breakfast while offending customers everywhere.

This was also found on YouTube, much like yesterday’s Kayfabe film.

This took place at Sambo’s restaurant around the time when Andy Kaufman was involved in Memphis wrestling and Jerry “The King” Lawler. The film is a parody of “My Dinner with Andre” as Kaufman and Blassie had a discussion over breakfast.

Reportedly, this was mostly an improvisational film with the two men interacting with each other and the other customers, mostly of whom are real people. There are a few exceptions such as Kaufman’s friend and “co-conspirator” Bob Zmuda.

Fred Blassie is quite a character, and, while Kaufman was playing, I am not sure if what we saw was anything but exactly what Blassie was like. He was outspoken and some of his opinions were certainly not 2022 opinions.

It was funny and totally like one of Kaufman’s performance art pieces. It is a weird experience featuring two of the biggest characters of the 1970/80s.

DailyView: Day 339, Movie 484

This is the start of Wrestlemania weekend in the WWE and I looked through some of the other films that feature the world of professional wrestling. I discovered a film that was shot as a mockumentary called Kayfabe: A Fake Real Movie About a Fake Real Sport.

Kayfabe is a pro wrestling term for treating everything as real, the characters, the rivalries, the injuries. For decades, wrestlers protected kayfabe above all else. If you were feuding with someone, you could not hang out with them after work.

This mockumentary looked at the world of the independent wrestling company, TCICWF (Tri-Cities International Championship Wrestling Federation). The mockumentary took you backstage and showed what the world of pro wrestling was like at the level of wrestling in the churches and bingo halls with a promotion that was on its final legs before folding.

“The Rocket” Randy Tyler (Pete Smith) was the promotion’s top heel (bad guy) who helped the legendary former wrestler Al Thompson (Travis Watters) book the TCICWF matches and storylines. “The Rocket” is the champion after defeating top babyface (good guy) Steve Justice (Michael Roselli). However, Thompson delivered Randy bad news. The promotion was going out of business after the final two shows that had been scheduled.

The film focused on the bizarre characters, not only inside, but outside the ring. You had the hardcore wrestler who always bladed and bled in every match, the suspected gay wrestler who walked around the locker room completely naked, the rookie who was having sex with Thompson’s daughter, play by play broadcaster with a fetish for midgets, among others.

If you are a professional wrestling fan, this is a mockumentary for you. They use plenty of insider terms (many of which are defined for you in the first scene of the film) and they show many of the tricks of the trade.

There are fascinating and eccentric characters to follow and the way that the matches are set up are fun to watch. You can tell that there are plenty of types of real wrestlers being used as inspiration of the weird, behind-the-scene world we are introduced to.

The whole film is found on YouTube and is certainly a film any wrestling fan should watch. I do think there is enough humor and intelligence in the script and the execution that non-wrestling fans could find enjoyable aspects of it as well.

DailyView: Day 338, Movie 483

With tonight being the start of Wrestlemania weekend and another episode of Friday Night Titans, I decided to finish Oscar week with another Academy winning short, this time a Live Action short from 2012 called Curfew.

This one kicked off in a massively powerful way, with our main character Richie (Shawn Christensen) in the bath tub, in the midst of killing himself when the phone rings. It is his estranged sister (Kim Allen) calling in desperation. She needs someone to watch her daughter Sophia (Fátima Ptacek). The request was a surprise to Richie who seemingly cannot say no to his sister, Maggie.

Sophia is distant from Richie at first, but as the evening continued, she begins to warm to her unfamiliar uncle and we learn some truths about them both.

Wow. This one was really good. It immediately gripped me with the bathtub scene and it dove deep into characters with very little screen time. Performances were vital and the three main actors involved here do a fabulous job.

The dance scene at the bowling alley is phenomenal and just came out of nowhere. The fact that Richie was seeing things happen that were not there speaks to the isolation of the character and led directly to Sophia discovering the cut marks on his wrist.

This was a fantastic live short and it used its time brilliantly to tell its story.

DailyView: Day 337, Movie 482

With Morbius scheduled for tonight, I needed to do the early morning DailyView today, which meant I needed to pull from the short category. Since I have been doing Oscar winners this week, I decided to look into the list of Oscar winners for Best Short and I found a film that was intriguing in the Best Animated Short category. It had the title The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

In the short, a hurricane levels a city leaving Morris Lessmore alone and confused. He saw a flying woman, supported by several books and this led him to a library with a portrait of the woman on the wall.

Morris becomes the proprietor of the library, taking care of the magical books and giving out books to those members of the community still suffering from the storm.

Morris begins to rewrite his memoir, completing it years later. Satisfied with his life’s work, the books swirl around him again and he becomes young once more, flying off much like the woman he saw originally. When a new young girl arrived at the library, Morris’s portrait has joined the wall.

There are lots of connections in this animated short to past films. There is a definite Wizard of Oz flare here, including a use of black and white/color scheme. Jules Verne’s book, From the Earth tot he Moon is referenced during the film as was the children’s rhyme Humpty Dumpty. Morris himself was modeled after Buster Keaton’s character in Steamboat Bill, Jr.

The animation is beautiful, as one could expect in an Oscar winner, and, according to IMDB, it used several techniques in its animation (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation).

The importance of books and stories in a person’s life cannot be overstated in this film, clearly a major theme. There are plenty of ideas swirling around the film and it is worth a watch.