I consider myself a fan of Kevin Smith.  However, I have never been a huge fan of many of his movies (outside of Dogma which I love).  Most of the movies that he makes, I find okay at best.  I really love listening to Kevin Smith tell stories.  I am a fan of his podcast and his verbal skills.  He also seems to be a truly fine person.

Red State feels like a totally different film than most, if not all, of Smith’s oeuvre, and I enjoyed the switch up.

Three horny teenage boys head out in their community after finding an older woman on the internet that was willing to have sex with them.  Turns out, the woman was a member of the Five Points Trinity, the local cult lead by fundamentalist preacher, Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) and she drugged the boys and took them to the Cooper compound to be used in their religious ceremony.

ATF Agent Joseph Keenan (John Goodman) was also on the trail of Cooper, but for different reasons.  When all of the forces came together, all hell broke loose.

This movie kept me off guard the entire time because you never knew what was going to happen.  Every time it felt as if we were following a certain main character, that character winds up dying.  Nobody involved in the story felt like our hero.  They all felt like rotten people, whether conflicted or not.

John Goodman is the closest we have to a heroic presence in the film but he seemed to be concerned more with self issues than doing the right thing.  Admittedly, he was the most conflicted in the cast and Goodman gave a stellar performance.

Michael Parks is great as the charismatic cult leader.  It gives you a real idea of how these kinds of men are able to get, apparently, normal people to follow and commit atrocities in their name.  I feel that this character is all the more relevant in the world today as I can see pieces of certain leaders in his role.

The film is very violent and filled with gun play.  The seemingly randomness of the deaths during the shoot out speaks to the chaotic nature of guns and how they can be damaging depending on who are using them.  However, the government forces are not shown as the hero here either as their overall goal in the situation is anything but moral.

The ending is controversial, but I found it very funny and ironic.  The ending is absolutely an example of a deus ex machina, a literary technique where “an unexpected power or event saves a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device.”  Many times this technique can be seen as a negative, but, when used properly, it can be a wondrous event.  This ending may feel to some anticlimactic, but I found it to be a perfect end to this film.  It turned out to be as random as the rest of the film had been.

Red State does not follow your expectations of how this type of movie should be and that is part of its charm.  The film has solid performances and keeps the audience confused and uncertain about how this is to be resolved.

Checked off another box this afternoon.

For the first time, I watched what is undoubtedly a masterpiece from the classic director Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai.

This movie has inspired multitude of films over the years from The Magnificent Seven to the Avengers.  You could literally see the development of what would eventually become tropes in action movies worldwide begin in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

A village of farmers in 16th century Japan are being threatened by a group of bandits, who are preparing to pillage the village.  To protect themselves, the village decided to hire a group of samurais to protect them.  The samurai warriors were assembled and fought the bandits.

Toshirô Mifune played the rapscallion rogue Kikuchiyo.  Takashi Shimura played Kambei Shimada, the older and respected leader of the samurai.  Isao Kimura played the young and untested son of a wealthy family, Katsushirō Okamoto, who talks Shimada into taking him on as an apprentice.  

All of the samurais received a certain spotlight in the movie, and not just one from the action.  Each character had important pieces to their story that really brought each man to life.  You did care for each one, so when they were in jeopardy, you felt it.

There were other characters among the farmers that received character bits as well.  Keiko Tsushima played Shino, a daughter of one of the farmers who wants her to be a son.  She has a relationship with Katsushiro that leads into struggles for both characters.

This is a spiraling epic of a movie, lasting over 3 and a half hours (including an intermission breaking the film into parts).

The battle scenes in this are absolutely beautifully shot and masterfully planned out.  Each moment is important to, not only, the story, but to each character’s development as well.

There is no doubt this is one of the great movies of all time.

“Who are these guys?”

That was asked several times during the classic Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as the titular characters.

Iconic outlaws Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and The Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) were leaders of the infamous Hole-in-the-Wall Gang in the Old West.  After a series of train robberies, a seemingly unstoppable posse, hired by the railroad president, comes after Butch and Sundance, chasing the outlaws across the land.  This leads them to flee to Bolivia with Sundance’s girlfriend Etta Place (Katharine Ross).

I really enjoyed this movie.  I am not sure I had seen it before, though I have seen some of the scenes involved here, in particular the iconic cliff jumping scene.  The relationship and banter between Paul Newman and Robert Redford was utterly fantastic and easily the best part of the movie.  They were so quick-witted and engaging that you fall immediately in love with them despite the fact that they were criminals.

The script was written by William Goldman, who would write the book and movie The Princess Bride, and you can see the similarities between the sharp dialogue and the connections between characters.  I laughed out loud several times as Butch and Sundance snipped at each other showing perfect comedic timing in a film that did not make me think would be funny.  Goldman earned an Academy Award for his writing on this project.

The music here is amazing as well.  The happy and bouncy “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” works so well in a beautiful scene with Butch taking Etta around on a new-fangled bicycle.

Robert Redford and Paul Newman showed amazing chemistry with each other and totally make this movie work.  Everything depends on these two actors delivering the characters and their dialogue and they are just great.  I had a lot of fun with this movie, as it becomes one of my favorite Westerns around.

Reach the stars, fly a fantasy
Dream a dream, and what you see will be-eh, yeah, yeah, yeah-eh
Rhymes that keep their secrets, will unfold behind the clouds
And there upon the rainbow is the answer to a Neverending story-eeh

The Neverending Story is a classic tale of fantasy and adventure, a beautiful family film that provides thrills, humor, deep themes and magic.

A young boy Bastian (Barret Oliver), who has recently lost his mother, is getting bullied by a group of kids.  One day on the way to school, Bastian ducks inside an old bookstore to avoid the bullies chasing him.  Inside, he meets an old man who shows him a book that is meant to be more than what it was.  Bastian sneaked away with the book and found a deserted building to read it.

In the story, he discovers a land called Fantasia that is slowly being taken over by the Nothing and the leaders of Fantasia has recruited a mighty warrior by the name of Atreyu (Noah Hathaway), who turns out to be a kid, and they send Atreyu on an adventure to save the Princess, who was dying from the Nothing.

This adventure becomes majorly meta for Bastian as he learns the importance of imagination and daydreams, something he has been told to stop doing.

The movie is truly wonderful.  Yes, visually, it looks like a 1980’s movie, but actually the practical effects involved here are part of the film’s charm.  The creatures and the sets are masterfully imagined and designed.  There is a realness to most of the movie that is sometimes missing in the big green screen epics of CGI today.

Barret Oliver does a really solid job as Bastian.  Some of his reactions as he reads through the book are well done.  Some may be over the top as well, but he is solid enough to keep the narrative going.

Noah Hathaway is a good looking young boy for the role of Atreyu.  He does get a little whiny at times with his voice. but I am guessing that he is directed to do so.  However, there is no denying… this kid had some magical hair.  One scene he turned from the camera and his hair flowed like the mane of a lion.  It was epic.

Then the film pulled out the tissues for us early on as Atreyu was trying to get his way through the Swamp of Sadness with his horse Artax.  You have to have a heart of stone to not be affected by this scene.  It came out of nowhere but it does a great job of setting up the difficulties that Atreyu would be facing while being a metaphor for depression and how dangerous it can be for individuals.

The Neverending Story was a beautiful story with all kinds of emotional beats in it.  The young actors do a decent job and deliver when they need to.  The tale is remarkably meta, although the ending when Bastian uses Falkor the Luck Dragon to get revenge on the bullies who had dumped him in the dumpster may not have been the most evolved message to give.

I was scrolling through Netflix to try and find a movie for tonight and I found something new on the streaming service from 2014 that featured Dan Stevens.  It was a movie called The Guest.  However, that had not sold me on watching the film as of that point.  Then I saw that the list of actors included Brendan Meyer, and I was in.

Brendan Meyer is an actor who also participates in the Movie Trivia Schmoedown as Brendan “The Kid” Meyer.  I liked the Kid a great deal and getting a chance to see him work in a movie was a great opportunity.

David (Dan Stevens) arrives at the house of the Petersons.  He tells Laura (Shelia Kelley) that he was a friend of her deceased son during their time in the military and that the last thing he had promised to her son was to look out for his family.

Laura’s other son Luke (Brendan Meyer) and her 20-year old daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) started to bond with David as he showed that he was capable and helpful.

However, David has a dark secret that threatens to put the entire family in jeopardy.

Dan Stevens does a very solid job as the machine-like soldier who never seemed to be out of control.  You could understand why, just by the way he carried himself, this family took him in so quickly.  He was clearly a skilled manipulator, finding specific way to endure himself to each member of the family.  Plus, he seemed to be going out of his way to make their lives better.

Little did they know there was a darkness inside him and that he could snap and turn on them all at any moment.  The film does a great job of playing that tone of uncertainty, always suspecting but never being totally sure what was going on.  In fact, there were chances that the story might flip on us and that what we were being led to think was not that way at all.

When the tables turned, it went violent very quickly, putting our protagonists in desperate situations.  There some moments of brutality that was tough to watch.

Now, David’s motivations did feel muddy.  I was not sure I understood in the end why he wound up in this place and what his true motivations were.  I understand why things happened the way they did, but I am not sure what brought him here in the first place.

The film moves briskly and gives you some good thrills and some exciting moments.  The performances are decent and there was an appearance by Abaddon from LOST (Lance Reddick) too as Major Carver.

This is a fine watch on a Saturday night if you’ve got nothing else to do.

Maybe the news networks should take a closer look at this film.

Network was the story of an aging anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) whose ratings had slipped and was going to be fired until he flipped out live on television.  The ratings for his diatribe soared and he became a network standby.

This is still completely relevant in today’s world, especially in the world of 24-hour news networks as we have now.  The ratings are the most important factor.  The networks spend more time with the darkness than in the light.  They try to get viewers to believe/do certain things, mainly to keep tuning in.

Network is full of amazing performances including Oscar winner Finch (who became the first winner to receive an Oscar posthumously).  Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight also won Academy Awards for their performances.  William Holden and Ned Beatty were nominated for Oscars.

Directed by the iconic Sidney Lumet, Network won for writing as well.  Everything was brought together in the perfect package at the right time.  The United States had just gone through Watergate and the desire of the public was ripe to respond to such work.

The movie was a satire on the media and the influence of ratings.  It provided some ridiculous situations to show how responses could be just a bad.

News networks such as FOX News, MSNBC etc can easily be seen and recognized in the fictional UBS network in Network.  It makes one wonder why we have not come fartehr.

Here is the next classic 1980’s hit movie that was missing on my list.  I had never seen The Lost Boys before, although I knew that it featured Kiefer Sutherland and involved vampires.  I had added it to my list to watch this summer and I was looking forward to it.

Then, I watched it.  I have to say, I was pretty disappointed with what I saw.

I never expected to dislike this movie, so I am shocked at the result.  The Lost Boys, directed by Joel Schumacher (which should have given me a hint) and produced by Richard Donner had a cast of several of the 80’s teen idols.  Not only Kiefer but also Corey Feldman (who I enjoyed in The Goonies and Stand By Me), Corey Haim, Bill (of Bill & Ted) himself Alex Winter, Jami Gertz and Jason Patric.  It had roles as well for Dianne Wiest, Edward Herrmann and Bernard Hughes.

So the cast was solid.  What was the problem?

The film was a mixture of horror and comedy.  Those kind of films work well, if done properly.  Our main heroes are young kids fighting against the monstrous odds, which I historically enjoy (Monster Squad).

Even our main protagonist, Sam (Corey Haim), went into a comic book shop and knew his material.  Another point that should have made it special for me.

So what happened?

I just did not feel as if the two tones worked together in this movie.  The two Coreys felt out of place in the movie and, perhaps, miscast.  I found nothing original here.  It was a bare bones story.  The ending came out of nowhere, and yet was painfully apparent.  Our heroes felt very incompetent, yet they handled themselves really well.  And Michael (Jason Patric) was just endlessly irritating.  Haim was just screaming all the time and there were so many tropes of the genre.

I was very disappointed with this movie.  If there were ever one that was set up for me to love, this was the one.  I did not find it funny.  The scary parts were underwhelming and it felt as if actors were cast in the wrong roles.

Blah Blah.

I started the day with the teaser trailer for Bill & Ted Face the Music.  I followed that with Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  That meant that we had to finish off the day with Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.

The sequel to Excellent Adventure took the franchise in a different path despite keeping much of what made the original film so fun.

The evil De Nomolos (Joss Ackland), a futuristic tyrant, created a robot pair of Bill & Ted to go back into the past and try to kill the real Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) and prevent the future from worshiping their music.

Of course, the evil robot Bill & Ted were able to outwit the witless real Bill and Ted and killed them, sending them into the afterlife.

And that is the start of the movie.

I liked this movie quite a bit too.  I may have liked this a little bit more than the first one.  It would be close.  This one has the same kind of silly story with ridiculous situations as the first one did.  There may have actually been more things tossed into the second film, most of which worked.

I think the first movie may have been a little funnier, but the biggest thing the sequel has that the original movie did not have was The Grim Reaper (William Sadler).  The personification of Death was a total epic character, stealing every scene that he appeared in.  William Sadler was clearly having a great time with the role and he really elevated the rest of the movie to a level above the first.

I also loved the song God Gave Rock N Roll to You, performed by Kiss.  This song had a major place in the story/plot.

Reeves and Winter continue to be great as the constantly lost Bill & Ted.  Honestly, I think they were a little less idiotic in this movie, perhaps showing some character growth…(nah).

I think most people seem to think this sequel is not up to the original, but honestly I believe I enjoyed it more.  Watching these two movies today has increased my enthusiasm to see the third film later this year (I hope).

This morning, the teaser trailer for Bill & Ted Face the Music (the third in the series) debuted online and it inspired me to go ahead and watch the first of the series.  I have actually never seen Bill & Ted, never thinking that it was the type of film I would enjoy, but since I will most likely be seeing Bill & Ted 3, this felt like the right thing to do.

Surprisingly, I found this to be quite funny, clever and engaging.  Sure, there were stupid parts, but most of the stupidity was actually quite charming.

Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) were on the verge of flunking their history class which would result in Ted being sent to military school and the pair split up.  However, a man from the future named Rufus (George Carlin) arrived with a time machine and a plan to help Bill and Ted pass their history report by collecting some of the great figures in recorded history.

Yes, the story is silly and makes little sense, but you have got to expect that.  There was nothing that made me just hate watching it and the use of these historical figures is funny.  Yes, the idea of Napoleon (Terry Camilleri) at a water park and Genghis Khan (Al Leong) at a sporting goods shop in the mall are ridiculous and doesn’t work if you think too much about it.  So don’t think too much about it.  If you just let yourself embrace the idiocy, there is a lot of fun to be had here.

Both Bill and Ted are charming and lovable for the goofballs that they are.  If you accept them as characters, you cannot help but enjoy their adventure.

If you are looking for a specifically detailed and well-thought out plot with well reasoned scenes and an in-depth and well thought out use of time travel…well, this one won’t be for you.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is light-hearted, goofy, and a ton of fun.  Is it dumb?  Absolutely.  Is it good dumb?  Yes, it is.  I did not expect to like this as much as I did.