Where the Brave May Live Forever... while Dining in Hell
No ten-scale, no letter grades, no star ratings--in fact, no ratings of any kind, just to lay down a single ground rule about this. I'll also do two movies at a time, save for when there's a trilogy. So without further ado...
The 13th Warrior
A lot of the movies I own are ones that I've seen in the theater--I clearly remember seeing The 13th Warrior solely because the book it was based on, Eaters of the Dead (itself a unique retelling of Beowulf), was so damned good that it would be very hard to fuck up, especially with John McTiernan at the helm. The only real question in my mind was "who would play Ahmed ibn Fadlan," since I couldn't think of any prominent Middle Eastern actors at the time besides the aging Omar Sharif, who happened to have a brief appearance in the movie as the translator Melchisedek. The question was most definitely answered, though:
ANTONIO BANDERAS would be Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, the titular 13th Warrior and out-of-place Arab stuck with a bunch of hilariously hardcore Northmen/Vikings. Right.
Antonio Banderas...
...as an Arab. Y'know, there's a point in the movie where Banderas' character says to Herger the Joyous (Dennis Storhoi) "I am not a warrior."
Honestly, Antonio, after seeing you murder half of Mexico's male population, bang Salma Hayek, and then murder the other half in Desperado, I'm more likely to believe your ass is a warrior over you being an Arab.
If this were being made today, we'd probably cast Lost's Naveen Andrews as Ahmed.
Despite this silliness, Banderas handles the role perfectly, and delivers a convincing performance, never once breaking character despite being an Arab with a strangely Spanish accent.
The real star of this movie, though, is Vladimir Kulich, a man born to play THOR THE NORSE GOD OF THUNDER among other roles, who leads the merry gang as Buliwyf (pronounced BULL-vye, not BULLY-whiff) to save the kingdom from the nameless horror that terrorizes it under cover of the mist. What ensues is two hours of very well-written rock 'em sock 'em Vikings, which makes sense as author Michael Crichton produced this film and probably made sure it didn't stray too far from the book. Again, it's John McTiernan directing, so the action at least is bound to be spectacular--this is the man who gave us Predator and Die Hard, for Christ's sake--and the action most definitely is. It has style without being over the top, and is brutal without being ridiculous.
There's a reason why this movie gets put in the DVD player so many times--it's good.
300
SPARTANS, TONIGHT, WE SHALL WATCH A MOVIE WHERE YOUR KING YELLS A LOT AND WE ALL KICK COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF ASS WHILE TALKING IN ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME! FOR GLORY!
What can I say about this movie that hasn't been said? 300 is fun, a vicious, non-stop visual assault that's a (more or less) frame-for-frame adaptation of Frank Miller's widescreen comic, adding in a few bits of dialogue and intrigue here and there to give you time to catch your breath between insane Spartan vs. Persian battles.
Whereas the last movie I'd watched, The 13th Warrior, sparingly used slow-motion to convey particularly intense moments of battle, 300 pours on the slow-mo like a John Woo flick, speeding up the action only to get to the next moment of slow-mo. It's that same "music video" style of shooting that really rose to popularity in the late '90s, only this time it actually looks cool and it doesn't look like a ripoff of The Matrix's then-unique action scenes. The action directors said they wanted to really focus on the cooperative aspect of Spartan combat, how the entire army fights as a single unit, and they succeeded in this aspect. A scene where Stelios (Michael Fassbender) and Astinos (Tom Wisdom) tag-team a small army of Persians shows how one Spartan defends while the other attacks, or two attack in opposing directions simultaneously while guarding their partner's flank at the same--FUCKING A does this sound homoerotic.
Yes, the movie is about a bunch of shirtless men in little fur briefs and long, flowing red capes but I'll be goddamned if at the time this wasn't the Crowning Fucking Achievement of everything that is MAN, and I'm talking the beer-chugging, football-watching, hooting ape of a man that every young boy aspires to be at some point in their life and some of us actually turn out to be for a portion of our life.
Funny story about this movie: so I'm at MPC's Student Center and I hear two girls talking about the movie.
Girl B: "So you two saw 300 last night?"
Girl A: "Yeah, I liked it, I didn't think I would. It made me kinda sad, though..."
Girl B: "What do you mean by that?"
Girl A: "Well, when I look at the screen and see muscular pecs and toned abs and lots of muscles, and then I look over and see the guy I'm dating..."
Girl B: "...oh."
So thanks to this movie, women can stop bitching about feeling all self-conscious whenever the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition comes out.
Coming next: 1408 and Air Force One.
The 13th Warrior
A lot of the movies I own are ones that I've seen in the theater--I clearly remember seeing The 13th Warrior solely because the book it was based on, Eaters of the Dead (itself a unique retelling of Beowulf), was so damned good that it would be very hard to fuck up, especially with John McTiernan at the helm. The only real question in my mind was "who would play Ahmed ibn Fadlan," since I couldn't think of any prominent Middle Eastern actors at the time besides the aging Omar Sharif, who happened to have a brief appearance in the movie as the translator Melchisedek. The question was most definitely answered, though:
ANTONIO BANDERAS would be Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, the titular 13th Warrior and out-of-place Arab stuck with a bunch of hilariously hardcore Northmen/Vikings. Right.
Antonio Banderas...
...as an Arab. Y'know, there's a point in the movie where Banderas' character says to Herger the Joyous (Dennis Storhoi) "I am not a warrior."
Honestly, Antonio, after seeing you murder half of Mexico's male population, bang Salma Hayek, and then murder the other half in Desperado, I'm more likely to believe your ass is a warrior over you being an Arab.
If this were being made today, we'd probably cast Lost's Naveen Andrews as Ahmed.
Despite this silliness, Banderas handles the role perfectly, and delivers a convincing performance, never once breaking character despite being an Arab with a strangely Spanish accent.
The real star of this movie, though, is Vladimir Kulich, a man born to play THOR THE NORSE GOD OF THUNDER among other roles, who leads the merry gang as Buliwyf (pronounced BULL-vye, not BULLY-whiff) to save the kingdom from the nameless horror that terrorizes it under cover of the mist. What ensues is two hours of very well-written rock 'em sock 'em Vikings, which makes sense as author Michael Crichton produced this film and probably made sure it didn't stray too far from the book. Again, it's John McTiernan directing, so the action at least is bound to be spectacular--this is the man who gave us Predator and Die Hard, for Christ's sake--and the action most definitely is. It has style without being over the top, and is brutal without being ridiculous.
There's a reason why this movie gets put in the DVD player so many times--it's good.
300
SPARTANS, TONIGHT, WE SHALL WATCH A MOVIE WHERE YOUR KING YELLS A LOT AND WE ALL KICK COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF ASS WHILE TALKING IN ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME! FOR GLORY!
What can I say about this movie that hasn't been said? 300 is fun, a vicious, non-stop visual assault that's a (more or less) frame-for-frame adaptation of Frank Miller's widescreen comic, adding in a few bits of dialogue and intrigue here and there to give you time to catch your breath between insane Spartan vs. Persian battles.
Whereas the last movie I'd watched, The 13th Warrior, sparingly used slow-motion to convey particularly intense moments of battle, 300 pours on the slow-mo like a John Woo flick, speeding up the action only to get to the next moment of slow-mo. It's that same "music video" style of shooting that really rose to popularity in the late '90s, only this time it actually looks cool and it doesn't look like a ripoff of The Matrix's then-unique action scenes. The action directors said they wanted to really focus on the cooperative aspect of Spartan combat, how the entire army fights as a single unit, and they succeeded in this aspect. A scene where Stelios (Michael Fassbender) and Astinos (Tom Wisdom) tag-team a small army of Persians shows how one Spartan defends while the other attacks, or two attack in opposing directions simultaneously while guarding their partner's flank at the same--FUCKING A does this sound homoerotic.
Yes, the movie is about a bunch of shirtless men in little fur briefs and long, flowing red capes but I'll be goddamned if at the time this wasn't the Crowning Fucking Achievement of everything that is MAN, and I'm talking the beer-chugging, football-watching, hooting ape of a man that every young boy aspires to be at some point in their life and some of us actually turn out to be for a portion of our life.
Funny story about this movie: so I'm at MPC's Student Center and I hear two girls talking about the movie.
Girl B: "So you two saw 300 last night?"
Girl A: "Yeah, I liked it, I didn't think I would. It made me kinda sad, though..."
Girl B: "What do you mean by that?"
Girl A: "Well, when I look at the screen and see muscular pecs and toned abs and lots of muscles, and then I look over and see the guy I'm dating..."
Girl B: "...oh."
So thanks to this movie, women can stop bitching about feeling all self-conscious whenever the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition comes out.
Coming next: 1408 and Air Force One.