Jackie Brown (1997)
Starring Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda, and Robert De Niro.
Directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Kilgore rates it: 5 (out of 10)

I loved Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. I hated Kill Bill. But, being an optimistic and magnanimous guy, I figured Kill Bill : Quentin Tarantino :: Dogma : Kevin Smith, and put Jackie Brown on my Netflix list. Come on, Quentin, I thought as I slid the DVD into the player. Time to push your record to 3-1.

Quentin now stands at 2-2 on my scorecard (well, maybe 2-1-1, since I'm being magnanimous). Jackie Brown is an entirely unremarkable con job flick. I can't say much to applaud or condemn this movie, except it drags on at least an hour too long. Skip this one unless you have 151 minutes to spend watching characters you don't care about plod their way through a tepid plot (adapted from a novel by bad author Elmore Leonard) with few surprises and an unsatisfying resolution.

CHAOTIC NOT RANDOM MOVIE QUIZ! How annoying is Samuel L. Jackson, anyway?

Wings of Desire (1987)
Starring Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander, and Solveig Dommartin.
Directed by Wim Wenders.
Kilgore rates it: ? (out of 10)

Wings of Desire tells the story of an angel who leaves his life of ministering to people in pain to become human and pursue the love of a beautiful trapeze artist. If you think that sounds like the shitty 1998 movie City of Angels, starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, then you get a gold star -- City of Angels is an American remake of Wings of Desire, a German film. But the two movies have little in common. City of Angels is a Big-Budget Romance, and Wings of Desire is a Very Serious Euro-Arty Film. The action consists mostly of the angels eavesdropping on people's thoughts, which sound like poetry. Do your thoughts sound like poetry? Neither do mine. Fully 70% of my thoughts are either "I'm hungry," or "Boy, I'd like to fuck her."

Anyway, I didn't get it. Wings of Desire includes little straightforward dialogue, so I spent more than two hours reading subtitled poetry and listening to the whooshing sound of Very Serious Art flying over my head. This movie was recommended to me by DrReverend, who probably reads Ulysses on the toilet and listens to Rachmaninoff on his way to work.

The Wicker Man (1973)
Starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee.
Directed by Robin Hardy.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)

A decent mystery with a nifty twist at the end that I didn't see coming. Big ups for ridiculing Christianity... hell, I don't know what else to say about this movie, except it was pretty terrifying when they burned the wicker man.


Mystic River (2003)
Starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, and Marcia Gay Harden.
Directed by Clint Eastwood.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)

WARNING! SPOILERS! WARNING! SPOILERS!

WARNING! SPOILERS! WARNING! SPOILERS!

WARNING! SPOILERS! WARNING! SPOILERS!

Was I supposed to believe that Dave (Tim Robbins) killed Katie? What would have been his motive? I didn't buy that his kidnapping and molestation as a young boy would have caused him to start offing young women 35 years later. And how convenient to the plot was it that Dave happened to kill a pedophile on the same night that Katie got murdered? How did he know that guy was a pedophile, anyway? I don't think pedophiles are dumb enough to have sex with kids in their cars on public streets. The only reason to have Dave kill the pedophile was to set him up as Katie's murderer so the filmmakers could pull the switcheroo later. But the switcheroo doesn't work if I don't believe the initial suspect actually did it.

So they pull the switcheroo. Am I now supposed to believe that the mute kid and his friend shot Katie and then beat her to death with a hockey stick? What was their motive? Because the mute kid thought Katie wasn't good enough for his brother? You have got to be kidding me. Katie was hot. If my brother had been bringing home a hot chick like that, I would have been thrilled for him. Mystic River should have won an Oscar for Least Believable Switcheroo. (For good switcheroos, see Wild Things or The Sixth Sense.)

Was I supposed to believe that Sean (Kevin Bacon) let Jimmy (Sean Penn) get away with killing the wrong guy? Sean struck me as a by-the-book cop, and I didn't believe he would let that go. And what was that crap at the end, with Sean making playful gestures at Jimmy during the parade, as if the MURDER OF AN INNOCENT MAN was some kind of private joke?

Bad script, then. And the slow, ponderous direction that worked well for Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven proved less effective here. The acting was fantastic, though, with exceptional performances by Penn, Bacon, and Fishburne. Too bad great acting can't make a great film all by itself.

+posted by Lawrence @ 3/24/2004 10:05:00 AM