Lionheart 1990 Jean-Claude Van Damme, Harrison Page, Deborah Rennard
Page’s fast talking, street hustler character made this film watchable.
Rennard was just ending her ten-year run on Dallas. She played a uncaring and exploitive uh, character quite well. Actually too well. I hated her guts by the end of the movie.
Jean-Claude gives his standard stone-faced and emotional-less flair to his kick boxing character.
Lionheart is one of Jean-Claude better films. There’s actually a interesting story in this one.
Vertical Limit on NFLX. An embarrassingly bad movie about mountain climbers and a rescue. I don’t know where to begin, really. I’ve never climbed a mountain, but I’ve read enough real-life books about those ascents to know when something is just complete nonsense. Bad acting by actors I’ve never heard of only added to the generally poor effort at portraying life at high altitude. Don’t bother.
I wanted to see this after finding out it was written by Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, of Airplane fame. Also co-written by David Zucker, and all three appear in various roles in the different skits.
It’s as wild and wacky as the totally meaningless title, but this is no Airplane. Many of the jokes are just silliness rather than funny, or try to get their humour from overt sexuality. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it. Still, it has its moments if you have nothing better to do …
From an interview with great French adventurer and explorer Claude Lamont (featuring an outrageous French accent):
Interviewer: It’s such a pleasure to have someone with us who’s lived such great adventures
Lamont: Yes, well, I live the unknown, I love the unknown, I am the unknown.
Interviewer: Claude, where are you living now?
Lamont: That is unknown. I don’t know.
I saw Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die today, directed by Gore Verbinski (who directed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, among others). It’s a bit bonkers but I enjoyed it.
Top Secret is a better alternative to Airplane! It’s nothing but a long series of jokes, mostly jokes about making movies. It’s not funnier than Airplane!, but it is very humorous.
I saw it a long time ago and vaguely remember it and quite enjoyed it, but Airplane! in my view is Abrahams and the Zuckers at their best. As comedy, it’s genius. FWIW, IMDb agrees – Airplane! gets 7.7 to Top Secret’s 7.2 – both excellent ratings, but 7.7 is getting into the “truly exceptional” range.
Of any joke in either movie, my favorite is probably in Top Secret when they are parachuting and kissing and they pan over and a little fireplace is also parachuting.
Murder by Decree (1979). Holmes and Watson (Christopher Plummer, James Mason) dragged into investigating the Ripper murders. Imagine my surprise to learn that the murderers were a cabal of Masons in government, including the PM (John Gielgud), striving to hide the occurrence of an illegitimate heir. Did not see that coming.
That does it – tonight I’m re-watching Top Secret and Airplane!. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the latter but it’s such genius that I never get tired of it!
I love Leslie Nielsen’s deadpan style of comedy! But if I watched Naked Gun, I’d also have to watch Naked Gun 2½ and Naked Gun 33⅓. There are only so many hours in a night!
Just got back from a sold out big screen double feature of Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove.
I haven’t seen Fail Safe in 40 years but despite the low production values, it still holds up. My wife had never seen it and was visibly shocked by the ending. The matador metaphor still escapes me.
It’s perhaps my tenth viewing of Dr. Strangelove (I performed the President Merkin phone monologue in college). Each viewing leads me to ranking even more performances above Peter Sellers’ three. George C. Scott deserved top billing and Sterling Hayden is so convincingly deranged he must be tapping into some personal mania. Slim Pickens and Keenan Wynn are funnier than Sellers by a mile in this film. Maybe, because he was playing off Hayden’s energy, I find Sellers’ RAF officer to be his strongest performance. The title character landed flat for me this evening.
I’m in agreement with you about Harold and Maude — which gets a lot of praise (including in the current Bud Cort memorial thread). The faux suicides were pre-fab quirkiness. And the central May-December romance was pre-fab spiritual independence that the squares just couldn’t handle, dude!
It’s always bothered me that the film didn’t include mild sexual affection between the titular characters. If the film is going to portray their love as a beautiful blow against conventionality it should have had the courage of its convictions — I didn’t need bedroom action, but a kiss or two would have given the movie a facade of integrity.
(This commentary is based on memories that are 50 yrs old, so I probably got details wrong.)
Add me to that list, while Airplane is a classic, I laugh more at Top Secret. The Eastern European Secret Police allowed so many nazi jokes, and there were a few which made me laugh for minutes. The train bit at the start is a classic bunch of jokes which perhaps landed better for me because I’d not flown that much, but I really think it’s more than that.
But it’s like arguing which is the better of the two best Metallica album’s. And the answer to that is Master of Puppets.
Sugarland Express, directed by a young Steven Spielberg and staring Goldie Hawn and William Atherton. It’s an enjoyable movie and I liked seeing Richmond and Sugar Land from the 70s. I found it very amusing that the film makers made Richmond and Sugar Land, which is about 10 miles apart seem like Richmond and Big Bend which is over 500 miles apart.
My opinion., probably contrary to the filmmakers, and Sellers, is that Sellers isn’t the comedy center of the film. His characters are the straight men that the comedy comes from. Especially Mandrake.
The funniest is Scott, with his arms spread like he’s a B52, gleefully describing how “his boys” will get through, only to realize, oh yeah, that’s not a good thing!
I think the only real failing of Fail Safe is it is clearly an Important Message Film. The movie exists in order for everyone to speechify importantly. I think its insistence upon itself is a large weight to carry
Oh, and that is it clearly written and filmed as a play. What, three sets, and a lot of phone calls. It’s a very claustrophobic film. Did anyone see the remake? Was it different?
