The Usual Suspects (Reviewed by Ben)

What a surprise that The Usual Suspects is a great movie!

After all, it only stars Kevin Spacey in one of the most convincing performances ever, has a complex storyline worthy of Quentin Tarantino, gives a ruthless inside look on the life of gangs, and has one of the greatest plot-twist ending ever.  In fact, the shocking scene that pulls the whole film together is just the biggest surprise in a story packed with surprises.

The film begins near the end of the story (after most of the characters have been killed in a boat shootout), at which point the out-of-order storyline returns to the beginning when a group of men from different places in life are hauled into a police station for questioning regarding a truck hijacking. This misfit group of known mobsters includes Keaton, a retiree from “the business” who keeps on being dragged back in, the nutjob McManess, the slippery cliche gang man Hockney, the well-dressed oddity Fenster, and the quiet, low man on the totem pole: “Verbal” Kint (played by Spacey).

Kint is only guilty of wanting to be known in the world of gangs and the police believe he is the best person for questioning about the boat shootout, given that he was always watching, but never really getting in on the action (which may explain why he’s the only survivor to question).

He  tells a story of the team (McManess, Fenster, Keaton, Hockney and Kint) setting up a drug heist on a boat. As this job becomes more and more problematic, it is revealed that a “head of all gangs,” named Kaiser Soyzee, was behind it all, and that the boat shootout which killed off most of the cast was a plot of his.

As Kint tells Detective Kujan his story, he makes it clear that Kayzer Soyzee is almost mythical in the mob world, even if Verbal had never even heard of him before the heist. As the story unravels, we don’t know if we should believe he might have been mistaken about his friend Keaton (who might really be Soyzee) or if there was even a Soyzee at all. At the end of the film, we have heard a crazy story of gangs and heartlessness, and a blameless Verbal Kint (who might actually be one step ahead of all of us the entire time).

The script is organized so cleverly that we are being lead one way until we wonder if everything in the film is just director Bryan Singer’s “trick of the light.” The story is such a mystery that we can barely be sure if any of the story is real

Gabriel Byrne, playing Keaton, gave an impressive performance as a good man being dragged into a life of crime. Chazz Palminteri blew me away with his extreme confidence and acting ability. Stephen Baldwin is convincingly insane, however it is Kevin Spacey in such a convincing performance as a total loser that makes Spacey one of the all time greats. He is impressive throughout the film, and the casting such a good actor in the role might be a clue that Kint is the best actor of the bunch.

I consider The Usual Suspects to be one of the best films ever made. Even if we don’t know what’s real or not, we get an inside view on the gang world that is frighteningly realistic. With these ingredients, who can be surprised that The Usual Suspects is anything but an amazing film.

Dad Replies: Long-time readers of this blog have probably realized that the kids have outgrown Flipper and The Great Mouse Detective.  Usual Suspects is definitely not a “kid flick,” but as Ben noted it is one of the greats.  And given the amount of cartoon violence that takes place in multiplex fodder with unimaginative plots and thinly-drawn characters, Usual Suspects shows how tight and careful plotting anchored with well-drawn characters turns rough language and action into background noise in a film that grips you, pulls you this way and that, and gets you talking about it for years to come.  

Unbreakable (Reviewed by Dad)

I’ve been enjoying watching Ben and his brother getting into the films that made M. Night Shyamalan a star director at the turn of the Millennium.  While Shyamalan’s 1999 surprise blockbuster Sixth Sense still packs a dramatic punch, the film Shyamalan made right after that hit - Unbreakable - has better withstood the test of time.

Like Sixth Sense, Unbreakable builds off a sad-sack Bruce Willis at the film’s center.  This time, Willis plays David Dunn, a security guard at Philadelphia sports stadium whose life is clearly troubled.  Difficulties with his marriage are hinted at as he makes a half-hearted attempt to pick up a fellow passenger on a train.  And then, the lights go out.

For everyone but Dunn, that is.  For the train he rides suffers a hideous derailment, one in which the girl he was hitting on and every other man, woman and child are killed - all except Dunn who survives the accident not just uninjured, but unscratched.

Relief over his survival turns to mystery once David hears from a mysterious stranger, Elija Price (played by Samuel L. Jackson), a collector of comic books and comic book art who proposes an explanation for why Dunn alone survived the train wreck: he’s actually a superhero.

After kicking off with some anthropological gobbledygook, Price gets to the meat of his argument.  For the obsessive comic collector and fan is afflicted with a hideous bone disorder that makes him fragile and thus vulnerable to injury from the slightest jolt.  And if someone as weak and breakable as he exists on one end of a spectrum, might there not be someone powerful and invulnerable on the other?

It takes some time for Dunn to determine whether Elija is nuts and his theory bunk, or if there might be something to this whole superhero thing.  In the process, he manages to drag his son into a search for the truth which (like any activity involving dragging your kids into something) has unexpected consequences.

One of those consequences - where Dunn uses the morning newspaper to show his son the truth (while hiding the news from Mrs. Dunn) - leads to the most powerful dramatic moment in the picture, cementing my opinion that the greatest talent both M. Night Shyamalan and Bruce Willis possess is creating incomparable scenes involving the action star interacting with children.

After Sixth Sense, Shyamalan got stuck having to create pictures with endings that caught the audience by surprise, so expect the unexpected in the final scenes of Unbreakable.  But the things that make the film both enjoyable and memorable are less about the shock ending than the human drama that takes place before then which tries to answer difficult questions regarding what it might mean for an ordinary man to realize that he's an extraordinary superman.

The film’s PG-13 rating probably derives from one brutal scene involving a kidnapping that might scare the 12-and-under crowd. But for 13-and-overs who have been weaned on fully-formed superheroes complete with costumes, armor and back stories, Unbreakable tries to answer a fundamental question never raised in either the Marvel and DC universes, namely, why is it axiomatic that someone with superior abilities must use them to fight for those less powerful than themselves?

Ben Replies: : I agree that Unbreakable had a good story and some good acting on the part of Bruce Willis and others. I get that it was a new take on a superhero movie, but the format and style seemed dull and kind of forced. The idea of turning a superhero movie into a subtle psychological piece of Oscar bait shouldn’t work, so I applaud that the filmmakers tried, and succeeded to an extent. But with such a good cast, it’s a shame that Shymalan felt the need to be so experimental. The dialogue between Jackson and Willis could have been more intense, but instead we are stuck will very average dialogue by two actors who could have acted their characters out of the park. This film could have been brilliant, but M. Night was trying too many things at once, so I finished the film feeling like the whole effort was mediocre.

Hunger Games Mockingjay: Part II (Reviewed by Ben)

On most occasions, any book-to-movie adaptation is not as good as the original book. Often, it’s a letdown for fans. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part Two, is a rare exception to this rule. Fans of the books were already miffed about the earlier films in the series, which were at best mediocre.  The fact that the final movie had been split into two parts was also a tactic unappreciated by fans of Twilight: Breaking Dawn and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Despite all that Mockingjay: Part Two is not at all a bad movie.

This is the conclusion to the dystopian story that puts kids in an arena as they fight to the death, and follows Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), both talented with a bow and one of the few good people left in the country. She becomes a celebrity and a tool for both the twisted government and the rebellion rising to fight them. Her seemingly simple world becomes over-complicated as she gets involved in a crazy love triangle, the twists and turns of being a celebrity, and countless near death encounters.

The movie picks up as Katniss has accepted her role as the “Mockingjay,” the symbol of the rebellion, after her romantic interest Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is hijacked by the government and unconsciously attempts to kill her. She and her friends are forced before the camera as an all-out war begins between the Capitol and the rebellion is underway. Her morals are put at jeopardy, and she is faced with difficult decisions that change who she is as a person.

The first three installments of the Hungers Games movie franchise were a bit of a letdown for the people who loved the books. The movies seem sadly misguided and spend way too much time on action which left less time for the deeper storyline. For whatever reason, the producers of this final film got their footing, and put together a moving, truthful story where several young adults come to terms with their beliefs despite living in a very brutal world. The film seemed to do this in an even more intriguing way than the book. The Hunger Games, Mockingjay: Part Two is an impressive movie, not just in comparison to it’s predecessors.

The movie is full of great performances, another factor that made it shine over the other films in the franchise. Jennifer Lawrence has become a convincing Katniss. Donald Sutherland brought character to the role of the creepy, sociopathic President of Panem. Even pretty-boy Josh Hutcherson pulled himself together and convinced the audience of a struggling Peeta, coming to terms with his own fate. This brave picture is full of incredible chemistry between actors, well thought out characters and, of course, countless deaths designed to pull at our heartstrings.

Unfortunately, Mockingjay: Part Two was recognized in an undeserved category: teen films, so the expectations of viewers for the last one were fairly low. I was  impressed, however, how this film finally lived up to the potential of the series.   It is a shame that the clever writing as well as great acting did not show up in the first movies, but I was glad it did in the finale.

Dad Replies: I think Ben pretty much hit it on the head.  I read the books after the kids did, and saw all four films, but Mockingjay Part II was the first time I felt like I was either reading or watching something with a heart.  The books (and thus the movies, which were pretty faithful to the original material) never seemed to get going until the heroes found themselves playing the sadistic games of the arena (either real ones in the first two stories, or the Capital turned arena in the third).  Which is why Mockingjay: Part II felt like the first time character-driven drama found a home within the franchise.

And we’re back…

A fair number of years back, we took a crack at blogging about the movies the family watched together on a weekly basis.

Originally, the idea was that writing responsibility would switch between family members but, like many things kid related, family attention moved onto other things.  So while the older boy traveled through 4H, Boy Scouts, Frisbee, clarinet and – now college visits, the younger one has become a serious film buff and pretty terrific writer, ready to share his opinions with fellow film lovers.  And so, Movie Night Review is back in action with weekly (fingers crossed) reviews of films old and new.

The format will involve one of us (kid or Dad) kicking off a review with the other (Dad or kid) responding.   We’re all a bit older now, so movies we’ll talk about will not just stop at PG but will include anything we’ve watched worth talking about. 

And with that as a lead-in, welcome to the all-new Movie Night Review!

High School Musical

OK, our family was a little late to the whole HSM phenom, but we decided it was better to watch the original before deciding if we wanted to see the show on ice.

As we’ve noted before, musicals are generally a big hit for Movie Night, especially with our five year old who has been working on (or at least talking about) his own musical version of Romeo and Juliet (one which features a dragon) for the last six months. And despite parental preference for Singing in the Rain era pictures, it’s good to know that some folks with money in their pockets (i.e., Disney) are still committed to the musical genre.

So the big question was whether High School Musical was more Disney than Disney Channel. The distinction is not a small one. Disney the film studio, especially in its relationship with companies such as Pixar, has generally been committed to pushing limits and creating feature films that would stand the test of time (if you don’t count The Boatniks).

Disney Channel, on the other hand, is committed to ephemera highly targeted to specific demographics, notably pre-teen girls (which are in short supply in our household). Whether it’s broadcasting teen-queen dramadies like Hanna Montana or straight sitcom formula pap like That’s So Raven, Disney Channel is a network that might as well be transmitting its business plan over cable 24 hours a day.

So where does High School Musical fall in this continuum? First off: credit where credit is due. The show features some very imaginative production numbers that take advantage of the high school setting (the school cafeteria, the gym) and Disney certainly found a charmer in Vanessa Anne Hudgens who plays Gabriella Montez, the cute-as-a-button, girl genius who also happens to sing wonderful duets with Troy Bolton (played by Zac Efron) the basketball-star romantic male lead. The drama of the film centers on whether or not these two crazy kids from different high school tribes will overcome their caste status as jock and brain to find love and beat out the villainous brother-and-sister song-and-dance team of Sharpay and Ryan Evans to take the lead in the high school play. If this fish-from-different-streams-finding-each-other storyline sounds familiar, keep in mind that the working title for the film until its release was Grease 3.

Beyond these few nuggets of enjoyment, however, there’s not much magic in the film (whatever its millions of fans might tell you). We knew this was Disney, and didn’t expect anything other than a “Yes – We can all get along” happy ending. But even Toy Story (a film starring Mr. Potatohead) had more character development and real dramatic tension than anything experienced by the cast of High School Musical.

One big problem with the world the film creates is that there doesn’t seem to be much teaching that goes on within the New Mexico school setting. In fact, beyond basketball practice, musical auditions and lunch, the school seems bereft of anything as mundane as teachers and staff (other than the b-ball coach – Troy’s father – and a homeroom teacher who also runs the drama club). Given that a major plot point hinges on the two lovers not having enough time to win the big game (Troy), win the big think-off (Gabriella) and audition for the show (Troy and Gabriella), one is left to wonder why something wasn’t scheduled during the school day when, apparently, the kids at American Idol High School have nothing but free time.

The show also posits a world where jocks, brains, stoner/skateboarders, thespian wannabees and other cliques are still separated into warring clans, a distinction I remember was on the way out even when we were in high school many, many moons ago. Given that every ambitious parent’s desire is now to create well-rounded candidates for Rhodes Scholarships, it’s a question whether the central conflict of the film still aligns with the reality of 21st century high school life.

Obviously, the sale of millions of DVDs attest to the fact that the film is resonating with someone. Just not so much with the demographic splinter group of parents of two boys and a Web site.