That Movie Book – Week Ten

 

Man, we’re up to week ten already? Doing this regularly sure is hammering home how quickly time passes. It definitely doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing this for ten weeks, that’s for sure.

Ok, This week’s theme was “Teachers Who Can (And Will) Kick Your Arse”. Honestly, it felt like a bit of a nothing theme. I wasn’t excited for the films, but I also didn’t have a negative enough reaction to them that I wanted to skip it. There were a few suggestions that I hadn’t seen, but that was about it. Anyway, we chose two of the five and set ourselves up for a lazy weekend.

On Friday Ben had to help a friend move house, so it wasn’t until Saturday that we sat down and watched The Untouchables. It’s the 1930s in Chicago, prohibition is in full swing and Al Capone is living large. Elliot Ness, a treasury officer, is put in charge of trying to stamp out the rumrunners. After a bumpy start he finds a clever Irishman (Sean Connery) who teaches him how to be a cold hard killer.

Now, it might have been because I was pretty exhausted when I watched this, but it didn’t really grab me. The acting was ok I guess, but I didn’t really know much about the era and it didn’t really make me want to try and find out more. De Niro was good as Capone, I will say that much. It was interesting to see him from 1987, compared to him in 1997 in Wag The Dog. I think that little bit of interest was more than any interest I had for Kevin Costner (though I only just realised that was who was playing Elliot Ness) or Sean Connery. Sean Connery has looked the same for most of his life; I mean, I guess he’s doing alright for 82 these days, but he always looks old and grizzled in all his roles. I guess he was in his 50s when he was in this movie, but my point still stands. Plus through the whole film I was trying to work out who it was playing George Stone, which was Andy Garcia, who looked so young there! It’s weird how differently people age.

Ben looked up Elliot Ness after we’d finished the movie to see how close it was to the truth. Apparently not really that close at all. I think my favourite variation was either the fact that they found out where these people were going to be through wire taps and so forth, rather than some Magical Irish Old Man who somehow got the information. All in all Ben and I agreed that movie Ness came accross as pretty naiive and a bit of a jerk. I probably would have liked it more if there was more about Al Capone and less about Mr Jerky Jerk here. I was a bit disappointed with this film, because I was hoping I would really like it and proceed to want to watch gangster movies, but the reality of it was that it was a pretty forgettable film. More’s the pity.

 

On Sunday we chucked The Karate Kid on to watch while we did other things. That’s the original Karate Kid movie by the way, not that awful remake where mini Will Smith learns Kung Fu. No, this was about poor Daniel Larusso, who is made to move to California where he proceeds to get bullied by some delinquent teenagers. You can tell they’re delinquents because they ride dirtbikes. Also because they actually call themselves that. Anyway, Daniel get regularly beaten up by these kids, until the maintainance man for his apartment building, Mr Miyagi, helps him out and teaches him karate. Mr Miyagi also enters him into a karate tournament where he proves his worth and blah blah happy ending for all.

I had never watched Karate Kid in its entirety, so I was actually interested to see the whole story, rather than various scenes I have caught when it’s been playing on the TV. We both figured it would be good to just have on in the background, because it’s not a very concentration-intesive film, but I ended up stopping what I was doing to watch it properly. It was pretty predictable, and so very 80s; it was good for a laugh. There were a few parts that made me stop and think for a moment. First up when Daniel meets the love interest, Alli, for the first time. He just stands there and stares at her; I was getting uncomfortable and I wasn’t even the person being stared at! Also it seemed a bit farfetched that these guys hate him and beat him up but when he wins the tournament all is forgiven and here have a trophy you deserved it, man. But then again I guess the whole premise of the movie is pretty far fetched when you think about it.

Ben and I both decided that the movie would have been better if Mr Miyagi was like Monkey Magic, all levitating into the air and calling up a cloud. Mr Miyagi yelling at Daniel and beating him over the head with a stick. Mr Miyagi yelling a lot in general. That would have definitely made it better. Ben and I also found out that Ralph Macchio was in his 20s when he did this movie. 23! I feel sorry for him if he looked and sounded that young when he was in his 20s. Even photos of him now where he’s in his 50s he still looks in his 30s. He is like the anti-Connery; Connery has looked old his whole life, and Macchio looks young his whole life. I wonder what would happen if we got them to fight?

 

Alright then. The movies we didn’t watch were X-Men (we’d seen it before and time is limited) and Kill Bill, both 1 and 2. I wasn’t really in the mood to watch either of the Kill Bills, so we just stuck with what we watched. I think it was a good decision. We’re thinking of maybe downloading all five this week and putting them on in the background throughout the week; we’ll see if that eventuates, but it’s about Genetic Engineering, so it might not be the best theme to do this with. Either way, come back next week to see me get scared of dinosaurs.