Red

2010 geriatric action film

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Frank is retired and extremely dangerous. RED! He lives a boring little domestic life, the highlight being when he gets to flirt with Sarah over the phone when he makes calls to the government pension people about his checks. Life's boring until one A.M. when some people show up to kill him. He picks up Sarah in Kansas City and then rounds up some old old friends to help him figure out who is behind the attempt on his life.

How do you make yourselves a serious stack of dough in Hollywood? Do what the makers of Red did and just hire a bunch of big-name actors--action superstar Bruce Willis, Mr. Cool (and black) Morgan Freeman, the always-fascinating John Malkovich, the currently hotter-than-hot Helen Mirren--add a pile of explosions and gunfights, throw in a little romance with cute-as-a-button Mary-Louise Parker, and watch the magic happen. I guess the hook is that they're a bunch of old farts, and watching a bunch of old farts kick ass is a hoot. The characters have such a lack of depth, and their story seems derivative and tired. Improbable gun battles, some lazy dialogue, and a plot constructed from cut-and-pasted cliches. Throwing in any amount of Morgan Freeman acting like a badass doesn't wash all that away. Some of the action sequences are beyond stupid. As with a lot of these dumb action movies, none of the bad guys can shoot very well at all. There's a scene with Malkovich's character shooting a bullet at a missile thing that doesn't make any sense, and another slow-mo step from a spinning crashed car that I think made my wife ultimately decide to give up on this one. I did almost like Malkovich's character. He plays psychotic and paranoid very well, but his Marvin becomes less interesting as the movie goes on. Don't tell my wife, but I have the hots for Mary-Louise Parker. And don't you worry. I can type that here because she only skims this crap. Parker's "straight man" character here is nothing more than an annoying distraction though. It's my wife who skims this crap, by the way. As far as I know, Mary-Louise Parker has never visited this blog. That's about as likely as. . .oh, I don't know. Bruce Willis's character surviving this movie?

Ivan's Childhood

1962 war movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Poor Ivan. Germans killed his parents. He attempts to avenge their deaths during World War II by acting as a Russian spy, taking advantage of his tiny frame to sneak around undetected and bring back important intelligence.

I told Jen that she had to watch this with me because I watched (survived) the painful Meet Me in St. Louis. She agreed, but she didn't last five minutes. Too bad because this is one terrific movie! I've got plans to watch all of Andrei Tarkovsky's movies this year and decided to start with this, his first. Although this maybe isn't as avant-garde as the other movies of his I've seen, there's still a lot of stunning stuff going on here, especially for a directorial debut. What you notice first is the cinematography. The black and white gives this a dreamy quality, and the locations (swamps with streaks of dark trees cutting across gray skies, dilapidated buildings devoured by war) are filmed so beautifully. Ivan's Childhood is also the type of movie that makes you think about lighting. Three or four dream sequences, including a startling bit with a truck full of apples that represents the most experimental part of the movie, give Ivan some backstory as well as bringing his character, in his current state, closer to you. The kid (Nikolay Burlyaev) is really good, a child performance that rivals Jake Lloyd's in The Phantom Menace. The ending is a real downer but just about perfect. It, along with a few other scenes, are so good that you almost have to pause the movie to pick your jaw off the floor. A real soul rocker!

Next Tarkovsky movie: The Mirror. If anybody's interested in simul-watching, let me know.