Movie review - "Mortal Thoughts" (1991) **

 The basis of a decent thriller - two female friends (Demi Moore and Glenn Headley), one married to an abusive man (Bruce Willis) who winds up murdered. But the relationships are undercooked - most crucially the two female friends. We never get a sense of what makes them tick or anything. Why they're mates. (They probably should've been sisters.) Moore's marriage to John Pankow isn't really interesting. There's a lot of Willis being snarly.

I know Rudolph came on after the director had been fired and the acting is fine if New Jersey accent-y (with terrible hairdos to match). It's just hard to tell.

It's like at heart a thriller but it's been given indie treatment and had all the fun sucked out of it. Needed to give Moore a sexy guy, have a few double crosses. There's lots of Harvey Keitel interrogating. Not a lot of surprises. 

Movie review - "Breakfast of Champions" (1999) *

 Bruce Willis took a lot of risks at his peak, one of the reasons he became so successful - for every Pulp Fiction and Sixth Sense there would be something like this. I haven't read the novel. It's untypica of the output of Alan Rudolph - more fast paced.

I couldn't follow what was going on. I didn't care. People like this movie. I found it confusing. Couldn't care about its take on American society.

Amazing cast - Albert Finney, Omar Epps, Barbara Hershey, Lukas Haas, Shawnee Smith, Will Patton, etc. 

Bruce Willis Top Ten Films

No TV so no Moonlighting.

 1) Die Hard (1988) - I'll get this over with

2) Pulp Fiction (1994)

3) Look Who's Talking (1989) - his voice did help

4) The Last Boy Scout (1991) - can't believe it wasn't a bigger hit

5) Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) - the best of the sequels

6) Armageddon (1998) - craptacular fun

7) Sin City (2005) - kind of forgotten now but fun in its day

8) Looper (2012) - he would take these risks and they would pay off 

9) 12 Monkeys (1995)

10) Planet Terror (2005

I can't think of any other top Hollywood star who took as many risks.

Another one for fun, top ten Bruce fiascos

1) North

2) The Story of Us

3) The Bonfire of the Vanities

4) Hudson Hawk

5) Blly Bathgate

6) Color of Night

7) Four Rooms

8) Perfect Stranger

9)  Cop Out 

10) Breakfast of Champions

Even those are interesting. "Fiascos" is probably mean. They are, mostly, big swings - what an interesting star he was.

Book review - "The Last Action Heroes: The Triumphs, Flops, and Feuds of Hollywood’s Kings of Carnage" by Nick de Semlyen

 This was fine. Easy read. Very surface. Very kind on Chuck Norris who I gather is more terrible. Seagal is lively as he always is. I was hoping for more of a deep dive. These Hollywood stars are so addicted to log cabin personal narratives - I mean, Stallone went to finishing school, for crying out loud.

Book review - "Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood" by Edward Zwick

 Entertaining book. Some good goss - Matthew Broderick being a pain on Glory (his mother whinged about the script), developing Legends of the Fall, Julia Roberts being a pain in Shakespeare in Love, advising Sydney Pollack against Julia Ormond on Sabrina.

Skips past his 21st century career very quickly - I would've liked more on say Pawn Sacrifice. His relationship with Pollack is particularly interesting. Like a lot of genuine liberals he can't seem to spot his own blind spots (eg unable to understand why Muslims might be upset with The Siege - it's because there are no heroic Muslims, Ed). Also while he like many in Hollywood is keen to push his own log cabin narrative, shortly after arriving he was besties with major players and at 27 was story editor on Family.

Look, I'm being mean, he's obviously talented and has had a terrific career and made lots of interesting films and TV.

Book review - "Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing" by Matthew Perry

 The extracts made play of the juicy stuff - making out with Gwyneth Paltrow, dating Julia Roberts, losing virginity to Tricia Fisher. Lizzy Kaplan is not named but referred to. There's some stuff on Friends. Mostly he goes on about his addictions. Perry is a lot like Chandler only without network notes to make him likable. The lack of commitment, the snark (there are two separate cracks about Keanu), the never being happy.

He says it's all his fault but always mentions factors to blame - his parents divorced, dad moved, mum was  busy, he felt different from his sisters. He likes to whine - never got the good movies, never got the Emmies, never became a proper movie star. He prays for Bruce Willis every day - does he actually visit him.

Perry doesn't seem to like anything - acting, fame, writing. He's got no passion. He's clearly got a brain and is smart. Interesting he was discovered in a way like Lana Turner, at Cafe 101 talking to girls - a passing Bill Richert saw him, wrote a note which led to Jimmie Reardon. It's a fascinating book. He doesn't mind portraying himself as a dipshit. It reads like he's going to star using again too.

All the things Perry could've done with his fame and money. He's not really doing anything with them.

Movie review - "The Island of Dr Moreau" (1996) **1/2

 A film whose fame has lingered when other better, more popular movies are forgotten.  But then there was only one Marlon Brando, one John Frankenheimer and one Val Kilmer. The head is David Thewlis who, er, lacks a little charisma... he took over from Rob Morrow, who I'm not sure would've saved things. I actually think the casting of Thewlis played  a big part in this not being a hit - he's just this skinny everyman.

Brando is interesting - big, hammy, Brando-y, loads of fun. Kilmer is entertaining too as his weird sidekick, which his actually a showier role than the lead. Kilmer's weirdness is appropriate as is Brando's - I like how Kilmer imitated Brando. And I liked Fairuza Balk too.

The film's main problem for me was the script didn't seem to make sense in the last third (didn't Thewlis want to escape?) and Thewlis isn't very compelling. The film loses life when Brando dies (only one hour in) and then Kilmer not long after. And it's a downer Balk was killed. They should've kept these characters alive at least until the very end.

But it looks gorgeous, the basic story still holds, there's atmosphere and weirdness, Brando, Kilmer and Balk are spot on.

Movie review - "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990) **

 I was inspired to watch this again after listening to the podcast on the movie by TCM. The main feature of that was Julie Salomon's recordings of interviews at the time. But actually production of the film wasn't too tough - Bruce Willis was a bit egotistical, Melanie Griffith was insecure, the budget went over but... it was reasonably professional. Pages are dedicated to some guy getting a shot of a concorde, as if it mattered.

The film isn't very good. But then I wasn't wild about the novel. Not an easy novel to adapt - it's all about multiple characters and atmosphere. Maybe Robert Altman could've done it.  Sidney Lumet. 

 It had to be about someone we enjoyed seeing suffer. It's not fun to watch Tom Hanks suffer. He seems too nice.

It's mean about the black people. Shows the kid who is in a coma has his CV artificially pumped up as an honours student, shows the black preacher as a cartoonish figure, makes a cheap joke about his mother wanting $10 million to buy clothes.

It has no feel for New York. The sense of the divide between classes. It's too stylish.

The film is about nice Tom Hanks not really doing anything bad except root Melanie Griffith and even that's not too bad in the world of this movie because Kim Cattrall plays the wife as a caricature. And in this story every one is mean - Melanie lies on the stand, his wife leaves him, Bruce Willis writes nasty articles, protestors yell at him, his firm fires him, his co op kicks him out of the building. But then Bruce Willis has a change of heart and comes to the rescue. And white dad Donald Moffatt says he loves him.  And judge Morgan Freeman asks everyone to be decent when Hanks triumphs (well, escapes prosecution) by lying that he made a tape with dad's approval. Go the patriarchy!

Bruce Willis feels off as a drunken journalist. Michael Caine or some old boozy Brit would've been better. Melanie Griffith is actually the best cast.

The miscasting was bad but they distorted the novel into a stock Hollywood hero's journey but still tried to be faithful which means the film just comes off as really racist. That's why people got upset about it.

Movie review - "The Expendables" (2010) ***

 Loud, fun, expert. Expert ish. Just so much fun seeing all these hams together. Stallon gives a lot of time and space to Jason Staham. Jet Li's role isn't much but he has a fun character. Dolph Lundgren has the best part. I forgot Terry Crews was in the movie. Eric Roberts is ideal.

I had a good time watching it.

Movie review - "The Lego Movie Part 2" (2019) ****

A delight. I haven't seen any others in the series but this was warm, funny, clever, packed with gags. The script is so smart, working on different levels - watching it a second time you note all the set ups. It's so clever, and funny and fast. There's cute songs. I'm surprised it didn't do well at the box office it's  a really good movie.

Book review - "Inside Out" by Demi Moore (2019)

I remember seeing a clip of Demi Moore on General Hospital and she already had X factor - the beauty of course, with that long flowing hair and deep dark eyes, and the acting but most of all the husky voice. That was her secret weapon. That's why when she was coming through she always seemed as though she was going to Make It-  she seemed like a star. It didn't hurt she had a high profile love life (Emilio Estevez, Bruce Willis) but she had genuine charisma - more so than say Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy - and after being "promising" for most of the 80s she became a genuine box office draw in the early 90s.

Her decline as a star was surprisingly quick - she had two big noisy vehicles that underperformed, Striptease and GI Jane... both unfairly, I feel. She makes it sound like she basically decided not to act for a bit which is kind of true but not til after she'd made The Juror and The Scarlet Letter.

There is plenty here about Moore's family life which is fascinating. She was a character out of a soap opera - both parents charming rogues, her father was fond of getting in fights and charming and turned out to be not her biological father and killed himself, her mother was a charismatic beauty hopeless with men and money who constantly let down her daughter. Moore lost her virginity early, was raped as a teenager, very sexually precocious - she lived with a guy in his late twenties when she was sixteen, left him for his friend who she then married, slept with a different guy the night before her wedding. She was a California girl of the seventies I guess.

The book has lots of juicy stuff like
* doing heaps of coke making Blame It on Rio
* she got into acting because she became fascinated by her 70s neighbour Natassa Kinski (and dined with Roman Polanski who didn't try anything)
* she took Jon Cryer's virginity making No Small Affair
* only remembers a one night stand with Rob Lowe making St Elmo's Fire
* was forced to go to rehab before St Elmo's Fire
* got constantly criticised for her body by Adrian Lyne but doesn't hold it against him because him yelling out during the sex scenes was so comic and she turned out looking so good at the end
* she had to audition for most of her roles
* had threesomes with Ashton Kutcher.

Kutcher and Bruce Willis actually come out of the book very well - hard working, caring, dilligent, good father figures. Kutcher is a cheater who gets cold at the end but he's no monster and she says lots of nice things about him.

The one area of this I thought was skimpy on was making of various movies. The big ones are there like Ghost and Indecent Proposal and Charlie's Angels but nothing on The Scarlet Letter and The Juror and odd films like Mortal Thoughts, Now and Then, Wisdom, Nothing But Trouble, Deconstructing Harry. There's not even that much on Disclosure.

Still she's a fascinating character and it's extremely well written. I read this in one session.

Script review - "Bonfire of the Vanities" by Michael Cristofer - third draft 2 April 1990

A famous flop, mostly because someone wrote a book about it - a good book, which I've read, and remember a lot about (Tom Hanks playing basketball with the crew, Melanie Griffith not having any friends among the crew, Bruce Willis being shoe horned into the film, Hanks being cast because he was likeable, Morgan Freeman being the recipient of affirmative action casting, Brian De Palma complaining about people always going on about his Hitchcock rip offs then ripping off a scene from Foreign Correspondent...).

I read the novel too and have to admit being underwhelmed. Maybe I read it at the wrong time of life or something - but it wasn't a very exciting story (not particularly nice but not evil white man goes on to suffer at the hands of politics) and it didn't seem to have any of the stunning insights of Wolfe's Right Stuff. I do remember phrases like "Master of the Universe".

And I found the film version to be very much "what's the point"? Reading the script reminded me of that - what's the point of it? It doesn't really encapsulate an era or a time. It's not a great story. The characters aren't particularly memorable - Sherman is over paid, cheats on his wife, is a bit of a whimp, probably doesn't deserve to suffer. His mistress is a one-note sex bomb femme fetale. Peter is just drunk. We know very very little about the kid who is hit or his family. The black leader and Jewish prosecutor are caricatures. The whole thing is a downer. I'm not sure what emotion the filmmakers were hoping to invoke in an audience other than "gee I saw the film of a best seller".

Cristofer has said the three hour script version was fantastic. I haven't read that, to be fair. This isn't fantastic.

Movie review - "Look Who's Talking" (1989) ***

I still remember the trailer for this movie in the cinema - every gag greeted with massive laughter. It helped propel a low budget comedy to massive success. It does have one of the great basic ideas of all time - a baby who talks, helped by the baby's voice being wise cracking Bruce Willis. It's so brilliantly universal - who hasn't been around a baby and wondered what they are really thinking?

Rewatching it I was surprised how little time baby comments take up - far more is on John Travolta's romance with Kirstie Alley, which is really well done. How thin they both were! And genuinely warm, likeable comic actors. There's also lots of time involving Alley's relationship with baby's father George Segal and the running time is further padded with dance montages and fantasy sequences. There are some very funny lines.

Movie review - "Die Hard" (1988) ****1/2

This holds up incredibly well. Not completely: it's glamourisation of smoking, the subplot about the fat cop who rediscovers his ability to kill and the wife who learns to reclaim her married name.... but it is wonderful. Well staged action, Bruce Willis was so much more likeable in many ways with hair (and he's perfect in the role), a terrific plot from the bad guys who have a chance of pulling off the heist all the way until the end (one of the best ever baddy plots up there with Goldfinger), Alan Rickman's stunningly good bad guy (despite unprofessional henchmen), Bonnie Bedelia's likeable wife (why didn't they use a daughter/wife under threat again in films three onwards... as in all the way though not in bits), some terrific complicating "non-helpers" in the form of the FBI, media and the police (all too believable). A genuine classic.

Movie review - "Looper" (2012) ****1/2

Very clever, entertaining science fiction thriller that would have been even better with excellent actors - like say Ryan Gosling, de Niro or Sean Penn. Okay maybe that's harsh - Joseph Gordon Levitt and Brue Willis are strong actors it's just these roles are so great (hit men who are tormented by love, angst, drugs, the past, revenge, etc) I feel they aren't really given justice, even with Levitt's make up work.

Emily Blunt shines in a part that is better than the typical girl role (that part is taken by the admittedly sexy Piper Perabo who is a stripper single mother); the kid who plays Blunt's kid is brilliantly creepy; top turns by Royal Dano but not Jeff Daniels who keeps popping up in parts that require real strength. I know Daniels is a good actor but sometimes that's not enough. There are two coincidences which jarred for me - the involvement of Piper and an appearance at the end by a semi villain.

That's all the gripes out of the way. Now for praise: superbly done, combining emotion with imagination, good action sequences, a very believable depiction of the future (grimy, class riddled, drug affected, in thrall to China). Really excellent movie.

Script review- “The Last Boy Scout” by Shane Black

If it worked before why not again – so here is another buddy action film with two guys who hate each other but become friends, one is older, one is more of a killer, one is a family man; there are baddies – an evil overlord and his brilliant henchman, many quips. 

 The second half changed a lot when filmed – here there is a big boat chase scene, the senator is actually killed, there is no football game scene, the big baddy is revealed to be the senator’s son who was the reason why Hallenbeck was kicked out of the secret service (I liked this), rescuing his wife at the end from being killed in a snuff film (this was silly). From memory I preferred the film version.

Movie review – “Die Hard 2” (1990) ***

Big, dumb and stupid but sometimes you’re in the mood for that, and the fact it’s set during a snow storm makes it visually different. The performances of the bit part actors is shocking (those British Airways passengers and staff, that hostess to talks to Bonnie Bedelia) and the one liners woefully unfunny, but it’s clever to get out of the plane by an ejector seat, the twist of the soldiers being bad too is good, the villains are imposing and different (military men as opposed to Europeans). Some irritating stuff: why is it so bad journalist William Atherton wants to report that terrorists have taken over an airport? Isn’t that something people should know?

Script review – “Last Man Standing” by Walter Hill (1995 draft)

It was a boring movie and it’s a boring script – Hill with the balls cut off. Written in regulation style so all we’ve got this is a dull story about a tough guy who goes into town. He’s a terrific gunman so he hangs around and plays each side off against each other to make money – but because this is Hollywood he gives the money away to help some prostitutes with hearts of gold, and a kindly little old man.

Kurosawa remake or not, it’s not interesting. I couldn’t help contrast this with Hill's script for Hard Times, which was a bit repetitive too but was also tough, tight and lean – yet still had some interesting characters (the drug addicted cut man, the smart-talking promoter, the main fighter). This one is flabby; the only really intriguing character is the sheriff who you think is completely corrupt and appalling but is only partly. Characters talk for too long - check out the monologue from the Texas Ranger - the action is repetitive (knock off one gangster, change sides then knock off another, change sides then another). The hero, Smith, is particularly dull - if he's such a super hero (there's never any threat to him in the action scenes) why doesn't he move to the city and make real money? There's no mystery or enigma. You also feel trapped stuck in that town for the length of the film.

Movie review – “Pulp Fiction” (1994) ****1/2

This still holds up very well, even once you know the twists: the dialogue, photography, set design, editing, acting, etc, etc. It has a great underworld-LA-feel: motels where you can hear the traffic zoom by, the importance of cars, dingy motels with long corridors, radios blaring in the background, bright sun, low income earners (even the crims are struggling to make a buck). 

 

Things I felt were faults at the time still come across that way: I didn’t buy that anyone in the Quentin Tarantino universe wouldn’t own a television as John Travolta claims he doesn’t (he still knows the difference between Mamie Van Doren and Jayne Mansfield); some scenes go on for too long, even with the outbursts of violence; the Harvey Keitel sequence is a bit anti-climatic (“wipe the blood off and let’s dump the car” – couldn’t he have come up with something more hard core or clever than that?); the word “n*gger” is used far too often by characters who don’t need to.

 

Pretty much all the acting is superb. Bruce Willis was great, John Travolta deserved his comeback – and Samuel L Jackson seemed to burst out of nowhere. Loved Ving Rhames – at first a source of terror, then all too humanised. The girls were good, too – whatever happened to the girl who plays the cab driver? 

 

Also the film depends on John Travolta needing to go to the toilet not once but twice. If he doesn't then Bruce Willis (presumably) dies, so no gimp section, and Tim Roth gets it.

Movie review - "Cop Out" (2010) **

A bad movie, and no amount of wishing is going to make it otherwise. It's incredibly frustrating, because you can see so clearly what Kevin Smith wanted to do - make a homage to 80s buddy cop films. But it fails for two main reasons, neither of them Smith's.

Firstly, the script is wrong - the buddy films worked because they were firstly dramatic/action stories, with comedy added (eg Lethal Weapon, Running Scared, 48 Hours) - this is just a silly story with a bit of action. It lacks a decent villain, climax, ideas, etc (although I did enjoy Sean William Scott's thief).

 Secondly, Bruce Willis looks bored and disinterested through the whole film - he has zero chemistry with Tracy Morgan (who doesn't quite get his character right either, but at least seems to be trying). He also plays an unlikeable character - he clearly was a dud dad, why should we care if he pays for the wedding or not?

Watching this, I kept wishing the budget had been ten times smaller with a Smith script and Smith leads (supporting actors Sean William Scott, Adam Brody and Jason Lee all would have been better) - or twice as larger so at least that way there would have been some decent stunts.