DailyView: Day 67, Movie 113

Happy Fourth of July!

The DailyView is on the path for a star-spangled day today. I am looking at those all-American movies dealing with our country’s history or pride. First up is the Nic Cage action film, National Treasure.

Ben Gates (Nic Cage) is a historian whose family has been searching for a treasure that is at the heart of a conspiracy theory passed down throughout his family for generations. The legend included stories involving the Founding Fathers and secret societies. It has consumed much of Gates’s life searching for the treasure. When he found a certain clue, it led him to the belief that the secret of finding the treasure was to be found in invisible ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence.

National Treasure asks a lot of the viewing audience. It wants you be accept some really unrealistic situations and set ups. You have to be able to accept the irrational and improbable or else this entire movie falls apart under the weigh of the premise.

However, if you are able to look past the impossible, National Treasure provides a ton of fun and excitement. Yes, it may be a poor man’s Indiana Jones, but imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery.

Of course, one of the biggest absurdities is what the Declaration of Independence goes through during the movie. To think that a document that old would be sturdy enough to take the beating that it does is difficult to look past.

As I said, National Treasure asks for its audience to look past the flaws in the plot and to focus in on the rollicking good time that it provides. And it is a good time. It may be a touch long, but it shows how important intelligence is in the world. It is not just about dumb action set pieces. It is about history and how important it is to know about the history of our country.

Nicolas Cage is great with this kind of role. He is willing to play over-the-top characters and he is very believable as a modern day treasure hunter. His sidekick, Riley (Justin Bartha) is given all of the best lines and knocks them out of the park. Jon Voight plays Ben’s father, whose life led him to disbelieve in the existence of the treasure. Sean Bean is here playing the “Belloq” (the character in opposition to Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark) role and he does a decent job, although I do not ever really feel as if he is a match for our heroes, even when it appears that he is in control.

You can’t nitpick this film because you will be doing it all day. If you want to have a good time, shut off your brain and let the action in.

This is the smartest dumb movie you’ll ever see.

DailyView: Day 66, Movie 112

The Fourth of July is almost upon us and I will be doing some “All-American” films for the DailyView, starting tonight with the parody/spoof Team America, from the minds of the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

The movie features an animation using puppets/marionettes for the characters. It is one of the most original looking movies I have eve seen. The strings to the puppets are visible the whole time and they move in the oddest ways. It was a fascinating visual to watch.

However, I am not sure this is my form of humor. In fact, a great deal of what was done here leaned toward humor that may not be appropriate for the current world. It seems that it could even be considered racist. Again, perhaps the fact that they are parodying the terrorists, the North Koreans, the liberal actors makes this okay, but there did not seem to be much more humor than that.

Team America fights terrorists across the globe and they do so no matter what. The opening scene found Team America confronting Muslim terrorists in Paris and this led to the destruction of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre as Team America is ignorant of their surroundings.

This story features the recruitment of an actor named Gary (Trey Parker) to pull off an undercover job among the terrorist to discover who is behind the WMD attack discovered by I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E., their computer.

The film is really savage, but, to be honest, it is savage to everyone. Nobody looks good and they all fit in with the monologue given by Gary at the end of the movie.

I realized something tonight, too. I have always hated puke scenes, and now I know it does not matter if it is a real actor puking or a puppet doing it… I don’t like it.

There were funny moments, full cringe moments, stupid moments, crude moments. It is very much like an action movie with South Park characters.

DailyView: Day 66, Movie 111

Today’s DailyView is the sequel to one of the beloved 1980s classic films from Joe Dante, Gremlins. I will admit that I was not a big fan of Gremlins, so I have never seen Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

What I was aware of was that Gremlins 2: The New Batch takes a distinctly different tone from the original. Where as the original was more of a horror film with a touch of humor, The New Batch is a full out comedy.

Not just a comedy, but a bat shit crazy comedy. It would border more on a parody or spoof of Gremlins than a sequel. In fact, if you think about the movie as a spoof movie, it might be more acceptable. Otherwise, this is downright ridiculous and silly.

I mean… the film was interrupted by gremlins, literally, and they had wrestler Hulk Hogan, in a movie theater, chastising the gremlins for breaking the film. They do break the fourth wall several times in the movie, but none like this one. Hulk was in the theater dressed in his wrestling attire with his title belt around his waste.

It is amazing that, if playing the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, there is only one step from Hulk Hogan to Christopher Lee (who is also in this movie).

Our little hero, Gizmo, found himself in New York after being taken from Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) who was guarding him. Coincidentally, he turned up in the offices of Billy (Zach Galligan) who had dealt with the gremlins in the previous film. Of course, one thing leads to another and the building is overrun with the crazed and chaotic gremlins, leading to all sort of mischief.

It is totally, utterly bizarre. They certainly threw everything that they could muster at the screen for this. There are so many weird moments that it is impossible to detail them all. I will say, some of them did work. There are some funny bits as well (especially if you look at this as a spoof movie). There are so many insane things happen though that it feels a little desperate to surpass the original.

The cast included several familiar faces including Smallville’s Lionel Luthor himself, John Glover, Phoebe Cates, Robert Prosky (who must have taken this opportunity to become the TV station owner, so he was ready for Mrs. Doubtfire), Gedde Watanabe (as Japanese stereotype #1), Dick Miller, Robert Picardo, Haviland Morris, Kathleen Freeman and Dan and Don Stanton.

It was a wild ride. A complete farce of a film. Nothing like the original. Still had some insanity that was funny.

DailyView: Day 65, Movie 110

Here is another movie that I had never heard about. I saw a recommendation on Twitter for this movie from film critic William Bibbiani, who made mention that this movie would be leaving Netflix on July 7th. The film sounded fascinating and so it moved to the front of the list for the DailyView.

This one was intense.

Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his new girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) accepted an invitation for a dinner party from his ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard). Their marriage had ended in tragedy and had caused both of them terrible pain and anguish, so returning to the house was going to be potentially triggering for Will.

Many of his old friends are in attendance at the dinner party too, trying to make the awkward situation a little more comfortable. Eden’s new husband David (Michiel Huisman) is there as well, trying to be welcoming. The entire evening is weird as Will struggled with the ghosts of the past.

Eden and David’s new friends joined the party. Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch) and Sadie (Lindsay Burdge) both had a strange presence about them and when Pruitt revealed that he had killed his wife and spent time in prison, things only became more bizarre.

After awhile, Will began to suspect that Eden and David had an ulterior motive for bringing everybody together and that it might be a sinister plan.

I found this to be really engaging and thoroughly engrossing as the film slowly built the tension with its gradual development of the story and the interactions between the different characters. We discovered bits of information as the film progressed, each nugget creating another layer of anxiety. All the while, the film continued to keep you doubting whether Will was a reliable source or was the trauma of his past causing him to be delusional.

John Carroll Lynch is wonderfully eerie in roles like this. He was brilliant in David Fincher’s Zodiac and he picks up that same type of tone here.

The pace is intentionally slow, but once it “hits the fan” it goes crazy. The final shot of the movie was creepy and spoke to the scope of what felt like a small and intimate moment in time.

I enjoyed The Invitation a lot. It was tense and nerve wracking without being terribly over-the-top. The characters were handled well considering the number of them and Will and Eden’s horrible past makes perfect sense for what was to happen.

DailyView: Day 64, Movie 109

This was another one of the seminal films that inspired the creation of the DailyView. Spike Lee’s classic Do the Right Thing is considered his masterpiece of race relations and, sadly, it is every bit as relevant in 2021 as it was at the end of the 1980s.

The narrative structure of the movie is uncommon. To be honest, it is more of a character piece than it is a story. The film is about race and the people living in this area of New York. It bounces around to the different characters and we see about their daily lives on this day of a terrible heat wave in Brooklyn.

The plot point that leads to the third act riot was that Sal’s Pizzeria, run by Italian-American Sal (Danny Aiello), was a spot in the neighborhood that everyone went to. One particular patron, Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) took offense to the Wall of Fame, a location in the pizzeria where there were pictures of famous people were displayed, bit there were no black people. Buggin’ Out believed that, since black people were the main customers of the store, there should be representation of famous black people on the wall as well.

This confrontation happened early in the movie but does not really carry through the whole film. It happens early and then is revisited at the end in one of the most powerful and painfully realistic scenes in movie history.

Spike Lee plays Mookie, a young man working as a delivery persona at Sal’s. If there was a main protagonist here, Mookie would be it. We get more from his point of view through the film than other characters. He is also important in the end riot scene. However, there are a ton of amazing actors involved. Sal’s son Pino is played by John Turturro, and Pino is filled with anger and racism. You can feel that Pino is on the edge the whole film. Ossie Davis is Da Mayor, an old man who wanders about the street, injecting himself into the drama, and trying to win favor of Ruby Dee’s Mother Sister. Samuel L. Jackson was the radio DJ Mister Senor Love Daddy, the voice of the goings-on. Bill Nunn is Radio Raheem, who plays a major role in the third act. Paul Benjamin, Robin Harris and Frankie Faison are the three men sitting on the street, talking about whatever random ideas that are going through their lives. We also see such notable actors as Rosie Perez, John Savage, Roger Guenveur Smith, Martin Lawrence, Rick Aiello, Joie Lee, Richard Edson, and Steve Park.

The end of the film is truly powerful and can be looked at in a variety of ways. Everyone seems to have a part in what happens, but the perception of fault can be depended on who is watching.

This is a film that is must viewing for everybody. It is an electric film.

DailyView: Day 63, Movie 108

It is going to be a full day today, so I am returning to Charlie Chaplin for today’s DailyView to watch the 1918 silent movie classic, A Dog’s Life.

In A Dog’s Life, Charlie Chaplin is in his Tramp character again and he is hungry. So he is stealing food using his slight of hand and his slapstick style. He then rescues a stray dog, named Scraps, from a pack of other dogs and the two of them become fast friends. Charlie then gets into a story involving a pair of thieves who steal a wallet that they bury to avoid the police. Scraps finds the wallet and digs it up, and Charlie gets the money, the end result being a wild chase with the thieves.

Charlie Chaplin’s physical comedy is fully on display here, a master of the pratfall and slapstick. Being able to create such a fun and engaging story with a limited number of words written on the screen is an amazing talent. Chaplin is a genius in the simplistic storytelling that gets the message across.

Chaplin wrote and directed A Dog’s Life, which was a financial success and a huge hit, being the first film to make $1 million dollars.

Edna Purviance appears here as she does in many of Chaplin’s films, playing a love interest for the Tramp.

I am thankful that HBO Max has this list of Charlie Chaplin films available on its streaming service which has allowed me to see some historically classic films, and to have films that fit into those days where life is busy.

DailyView: Day 62, Movie 107

Gee, I wonder what inspired this movie?

To be fair, a Google search indicated that Netflix’s The Silence, today’s film for the DailyView, was based on a book that came out before A Quiet Place and that there was a script in place prior to the production of John Krasinski’s movie. However, I think it is a safe bet that this was put on the fast track for filming after the success of A Quiet Place, a “go Picture,” if you will.

A mysterious group of monsters, called the Vesps, suddenly show up, attracted to sound, causing panic and chaos in the country. One family tries to survive together. The father Hugh (Stanley Tucci) and his best friend Glenn (John Corbett) hope to lead the rest of Hugh’s family, including his deaf daughter Ally (Kiernan Shipka), to safety.

A poor man’s A Quiet Place.

Sadly, this movie is just a huge step down from A Quiet Place. You cannot release a film like this without expecting the comparisons, considering how many plot points they have in common. A Quiet Place had more of an intelligence behind it and featured a much more frightening tone. This one just does not reach that same level of tension, probably because we saw it before.

There are some plot points that pop up and feel as if they were just jammed into the film to attempt to build more suspense, but none of them worked well. The mother (Miranda Otto) is bitten by the creatures and need medication in order to survive. One trip to a store, setting up the natural conflict with the Vesps, led to Hugh and Ally getting what they needed and from that scene on, the mother seemed perfectly fine. There was a conflict in the third act of the film where a small cult approached the family wanting Ally. That was a problem in the third act that was shoehorned into the story and felt completely foreign. It was that old Walking Dead trope that in the post apocalyptic world, the real dangers are the other humans.

There is a silly scene with a rattlesnake. There is a moment where a family member sacrifices themselves with a scream.

Perhaps this is not a direct rip off of A Quiet Place, but since it came out afterwards, there should have been some adjustments to it because there is no comparisons that will favor The Silence.

There was a great scene with a wood chipper though.

DailyView: Day 61, Movie 106

I have not seen Borat until today with the DailyView. I have seen the sequel: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, which came out on Amazon last year. Borat was another one of those movies that I did not think I would enjoy, so I avoided it. I thought there were some really funny moments in the sequel so I planned on watching Borat at some point. Today turned out to be the day.

Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) was from the country of Kazakhstan and was a journalist. He was sent to America to learn about the culture there and to bring back what he could. Once in America, Borat saw Baywatch on TV and fell in love with Pamela Anderson. He dedicated himself to travel across the country to take Pamela for his sexy time.

I will tell you that there are some parts of this movie that are absolutely hilarious. Filmed in a mockumentary style, there are a ton of vignettes that feature Borat interacting with real people in America who are unaware of what is going on. The reactions of these people to the insanity of Baron Cohen is some of the funniest parts of the movie although it is difficult to believe sometimes that they are not at least suspicious that something was going on.

There were a ton of crass and offensive jokes used in the film under the guise of Borat being from another country and the Americans not sure if he understands what he is saying. There are moments where the film steps over the line and goes too far. Several moments make the audience cringe as much as they laugh.

Early on, some of the anti-sematic jokes were out of line, but when I discovered that Sasha Baron Cohen himself was Jewish, it showed how he was using these jokes to shine a light on some of the other people’s prejudices.

I am torn about the movie because there were a lot of times where I thought it crossed a line and made fun of things that should not be made fun of. However, I did laugh at most of it. It was a funny, inappropriate film that took some real chances. There are a couple of times when it was amazing that Borat was able to get out of the situation with his life.

If you offend easily, this one is probably not for you.