Chinatown

The plots of the film noirs have been too complicated. Chinatown is the same way. It is hard to follow or summarize the plot of Chinatown. I can summarize the plot of Lord of the Rings easily in one sentence: (The evil dude made an evil ring that can only be destroyed in a volcano, and Frodo found the ring and needs to get to the volcano to destroy it.) Is it possible to summarize Chinatown in one sentence? Jake Gittes private detective who investigates a man to uncover any adultery, and Jake finds out that the woman who hired him is not the man’s wife after the guy turns up dead. I could go on, but that would be a run-on sentence. The spark note version of the spark-notes on this movie is more than a full complete sentence, which tells you something about how the plot is too complex for a simple movie-going audience to follow and enjoy. Watching movies is how I turn my brain off. I do not like movies that make me turn that horrible thing back on.
Speaking from the standpoint of one of those nuts that likes that type of movie, now. I thought the plot was very cleaver and interesting. The twist in the plot made you think back on earlier events in the movie and say to yourself, “Oh yeah that makes sense.” The title of the film made it even more intriguing because only the ending of the movie takes place in Chinatown. It is hard to give specifics because I do not want to give away the ending. One of the new revisionist aspects of the movie that I noticed was the surprise versus suspense. Kiss Me Deadly had suspense in it. Specifically, the popcorn attack. Mike Hammer is being stalked by a guy for a little bit before the stalker attacks the Hammer. He throws popcorn in the stalker’s face, causing him to be incapacitated, then the Hammer nails (I know it’s a bad pun!) the stalker with his fist of furry (who here did not realize that I misspelled fury until this parenthetical?). Be honest. Gittes is often surprised not suspended. Gittes goes to a place and as he is on his merry way he gets shot at from out of nowhere. The movie did not even show the shooters aiming (how did they miss?) before the shots were fired; it was a total surprise.

Kiss Me Deadly

It is good that we got to see a B-movie in art of film. I know reading bad books in literature class was not as fun, but I enjoyed the things that made this movie medeocre. It was not boring just poorly done in some places as well as cheesy. The detective's name is a good start. "Mike Hammer" is almost as cheesey as that world poker tour guy who goes by Chris Moneymaker. In the scene that takes place at the gym, the Hammer and some other guy are looking at a boxer, but am I the only one who noticed that the eyes of the two people did not go to the same place? How hard would it have been for the director to say, "you two are both going to be looking at the boxer in this shot, so both of you should look at that object." The characters were over the top like Mr. Vavavoom. I think his name was Nick. None of these things in the movie made it boring which is the most important thing in a movie. The second most important thing in a movie is to make it not be annoying to the audience. That SNL sketch with that girl screaming "RICK!! RICK!!" every damn second fails the most abysmaly at this goal. Kiss Me Deadly was successful until the very end when this loud shreaking sound started to dominate the scene. By this point though there was not much left in the movie and the audience was on the edge of their seats plugging their ears.

A Blast "Out of the Past"

Yes, I know I used a stupid pun to title this post, but it would have happened eventually. The movie Out of the Past, was interesting. I can see some parts of the wild western cowboy in the hero, Jeff. Jeff was a private detective who works outside the law, like an outlaw bandit. Jeff also fled from his pursuers beyond the nation’s frontier, like a Wild West cowboy. (Look at a census map; you can see that we still have a frontier that stops at about Fargo’s Longitude). The hero carries that bad boy image that is big in pop culture. As part of that image, Jeff is extremely tough. He shows how he is not just “army strong” when he gets slapped; he is “Spartan army strong.” The coolest martial arts move that I have ever seen in a movie was, when Jeff simply punched a guy out and answered a phone. Jackie Chan could not do that, mostly because now he is a geezer. (Please let me keep my closed minded notion that all fifty year olds are on life-support.) The only other person who could pull of something that cool is Andrew Jackson. Speaking of people who slit their wrists. (If you do not get how that connects to Jackson then you should have paid more attention in history class.).
I did not like how Jeff was all emo. His voice tone never changed during the movie. I am sure Jeff would have worn a black trench coat if it would not have made it harder for him to see against the backgrounds, and he can not see the positive side of things. If I were in his spot, I would have fled overseas (but to an American colony, so I could still practice my jingoism).

Eternally Frodo

Eternal Sunshine was mediocre movie that was held down even further by the actors in it. Jim Carry has lately been doing more serious movies like The Number 23, but I will always think of him as Ace Ventura: pet detective. He is a good actor and was not too tied to that role as Ace Ventura for most people. Aaalrighty then, there is the not so good actor. Frodo is so connected to that role as Frodo in Lord of the Rings, that I do not even know his real name. In Eternal Sunshine, Frodo portrayed a type of stalker that was even creepier than Gollum. The other problem that hurt Frodo was the fact that he is not a good actor. He only has one facial expression. It worked in Lord of the Rings because the character was scared s#!t less all the time. Frodo looked the same way in every shot in Eternal Sunshine, and that made no sense. Why should he be afraid enough to use that dumb facial expression when the best pet detective in the world is on the clock? This movie lumped a bunch of actors together that are linked to their popular characters and made them part of the same story. It was like all of these characters that should not be in the same movie were in the same movie. I felt like I was watching a lost segment of the internet cartoon, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. This is what I saw when I watched Eternal Sunshine: Frodo, Spiderman’s girlfriend and two guys (who were probably extras in Men in Black) want to erase Ace Ventura’s memory. The movie would have been better if they used no name actors, like the Men in Black guys, instead of Frodo.