Rocket Surgery

Last night I took one for the team and took the boys to see Speed Racer so my wife wouldn’t have to.

Ouch.

This is the second worst movie I can remember seeing — the first being “Baby Geniuses 2: Superbabies”.  It looked like a big box of crayons threw up on the screen.  Or maybe it was like being in a cement mixer with 800 tons of fireworks.  It was horrifyingly colorful, frenetic, loud, hyper, and just plain dumb.  The movie isn’t so much presented as inflicted.  Hard to believe that John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, and Christina Ricci, all fine actors, would stoop to this.  I certainly hope they were paid well.

I watched Gone Baby Gone over the weekend. Boy am I glad my wife didn’t watch it with me.

See, my wife really only likes light romantic comedies (think Meg Ryan).  This movie is anything but light.  A Boston white trash mother ’s 4 year old daughter is abducted, and Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan, a shacking-up couple of private detectives, are hired by the mother’s sister-in-law (and brother) to find her.

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Frequently when I read a book that has not been made into a movie, I mentally pick actors and actresses for the characters. I have recently been reading Atlas Shrugged (again) and here are my casting choices:

Dagny Taggart - Hilary Swank
To be honest, this was not the first person that came to mind. Mary-Louise Parker actually came to mind first, but she’s getting too long in the tooth for the role. But Hilary Swank is the right age, has the right look, is tough, and can really, really act. And most importantly, she could carry the movie. I understand that Angelina Jolie has been cast in the real project that is underway, but she just doesn’t seem right to me. She seems overly sexual, so much so I don’t think she could pull off the effective executive part right. Nobody was supposed to notice her beauty except the brilliant men in her life, etc., and for people not to see Angelina Jolie in a non-sexual manner just seems preposterous.

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I watched Apocalypse Now again last night - well, actually, Apocalypse Now Redux. What a great movie! There are a couple of scenes that always have me shaking my head thinking, “Man, that’s great!” For example, the scene where the Air Cav and Col. Kilgore attack the beach village — the low-flying helicopters, the utter chaos. There’s also the scene at the bridge - it’s so surreal and dreamlike. The scenes in Kurtz’s camp are amazing. The caribou sacrifice is disturbing. The biggest weakness, in my opinion, of the movie is the musical score. The cheezy synthesizer stuff kinda works, but you also constantly notice it, and it does not age well. Sounds like the soundtrack to another one of my favorites, A Clockwork Orange.

And speaking of Kubrick, last week I re-watched Full Metal Jacket, also one of my favorites. A great movie, but different. A bit uneven, but what a ride! The boot camp scene is my favorite — R. Lee Ermey and Vincent D’Onofrio are fantastic. The interviews in country don’t really belong, in my opinion, but I can understand why they’re there - to give a bit of relief before going into the sniper sequence.