Point Break. Kathryn Bigelow. 1991. ⚄

I’m usually liveblogging these things, but I couldn’t this time. I was just too into the movie to do more than take a pee break.

I don’t think there’s many movies that are more… just what they aim to be… than this movie. It’s totally on point: Envision a coked-up distillation of all undercover cop movies ever, but with surfing, and this is it. It’s got everything: The mismatched pair of cops; the angry sergeant or… whatever he was… giving them a hard time; the love story entangled with the villains; the show-downs; the…

It’s all those clichés: But perfectly made. In addition, there’s a bunch of skydiving and surfing scenes. There’s not really any plot to get in the way of the sheer rush of watching pure, unadulterated idiocy: It’s the perfect movie that sums up Reagan’s 80s better than anything else.

It’s so stupid! I love it!

And I haven’t even mentioned the sick action cinematography and editing: That chase scene (on foot, even!) has to be the best one ever. It’s all so perfect: The pacing, the stupid dialogue, the casting, the line delivery. It’s all flabbergasting: You can only sit there and take it in in slack-jawed wonder.

Now, despite all that, it’s not totally perfect. It sags a bit in the last… third? Last quarter? I mean, it’s fun all the way through, but the moronic grin I had on my face for the first 90 minutes kinda wilted for a bit and I started thinking a bit about fixing Emacs bugs again, but only for short stretches.

And… I’m guessing Swayze did all his own stunts and Keanu… didn’t?

The Howling. Joe Dante. 1981. ⚁

[fifteen minutes pass]

I’m not quite sure why I bought this move? Because I’ve been watching a lot of werewolf movies lately? It might just be associative thinking.

But this is definitely not a movie I saw as a teenager… and I can see why. It’s a very 70s movie — not a slick 80s American horror movie at all. There was a phase change at some point, where they learned to powder the actors’ faces so they didn’t look shiny any more, and they told the actors “pretend you’re not in a Robert Altman movie”, and then suddenly! the 80s had arrived.

But this is a solidly 70s movie, with shiny faces and all.

And it’s a low-budget little movie and all.

[forty-five minutes pass]

OK, I was kinda onboard with watching a low budget horror movie… but this is incredibly tedious. I think I now remember why I bought it — I watched a DVD extra where one of the special effects guys said that this was the best werewolf movie. And, yes, the werewolves (and prosthetics) are pretty nice (for a movie of this budget), but the rest of the movie is…

I mean, there’s sort of a plot, and sort of a drama in here, but it’s just really hard to care.

Perhaps the nudity is why this movie has got a 6.6 on imdb. It’s a kinda repulsive movie?

[ten minutes pass]

That’s a really good werewolf! Really good!

[the end]

The featured review on imdb makes a case for this movie being all subversive and referential and stuff:

I think they’re reading too much into it. It’s a plotless werewolf movie that has a bunch of references to other (were)wolves in it, but that doesn’t really make it clever or interesting: It just makes it a plotless werewolf movie with a lot of references to ther (were)wolves. That’s easy and simple to do, and they did it. Obviously their focus was on making the werewolf transformations fun to watch, and they are.

OK, it’s a bit meta. But it’s not a good movie.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Jacques Demy. 1964. ⚄

It seems like at least half of the good movies have this bit in the pre-credits:

Oh! They still exist:

Janus Films is an American film distribution company. The distributor is credited with introducing numerous films, now considered masterpieces of world cinema, to American audiences

So it’s an American distributor of European art movies. No wonder that logo pops up in so many DVDs…

[five minutes pass]

OH MY GOD. This musical is durchkomponiert? I mean, it’s not a normal movie and then sometimes they break into songs, but it’s songs all the way through?

Golly. I can’t remember the last time I saw that… If ever…

[the end]

I loved watching this.

Just some er notes: There are very few actual songs in this movie. It’s mostly people singing in the upper registry of their voices in a kind of… tune-ful but aimless way. Imagine: If you were going to sing “I’m going to buy some bread”? That’s what they’re singing: Those exact same automatic notes that everybody would sing if challenged to sing something without having a tune.

But it’s fine! I don’t understand why they didn’t write more melodies, though.

The colours, set design and cinematography is exceptional. I mean, are. But I’m subtracting one ⚀ because there’s no actual music here: It’s just automatic tune lines. The background jazz is kinda nice, but… why didn’t they write any tunes for these people to sing? WHYYYYY