236. The Fury (1978)
What a culture can't assimilate, it destroys.
Title: The Fury
Date Watched: 8/30/2013 - 8/31/2013
Original Ranking Out of 10: N/A
Revised Ranking Out of 10: 4
Synopsis: A man searches for his abducted child while a teenage girl learns to develop her psychic powers.
The Good: Amy Irving is supercute. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but I can't remember seeing any movie with a better final shot.
The Bad: Nonsensical and tedious story that not even Brian DePalma can save, especially since he already covered the most interesting elements in Carrie. Maybe one of John Williams' worst scores.
Why Do I Own This Movie?: Twilight Time purchase. It's now sold out.
Should I Still Own This Movie?: Probably not. We'll see how much I can get for it on eBay at some point in the future, maybe.
What Did I Notice That I Didn't Notice Before?: If you pause it at one point, you can very easily see a reflection of the camera. They covered it with a blanket, which makes it look even more obvious once you notice it.
Other Impressions: The Fury feels like a meal at Subway. Yeah, you're eating it and there's a lot of worse options out there, but there's no real enjoyment. You watch the movie to pass the time and it doesn't require too much thought. When it's over, two hours has passed. Mission accomplished.
The strangest thing, for me, is that I have no idea why it doesn't work. This isn't an incompetently made movie -- it's just a completely non-involving one. It's as if I went to a culture completely unfamiliar with the motion picture medium and described what a movie was: it's a series of moving pictures put to sound projected on a wall -- this is kind of what they'd expect. It's a movie in the absolute, most reductionist sense of the word.
The story involves a secret government agency of some sort, though as far as I could tell, there's not really much purpose to it. I guess maybe they fight Middle Eastern terrorists, maybe, somehow? Then blah blah blah conspiracy, Amy Irving (because why not?), and one whopper of a final shot that almost (but not nearly) makes up for the previous 2 hours or so.
I bought the blu-ray and watched it because I like to think I'm a fan of Brian DePalma's work, but that's also why I'm really disappointed in how dull it is. If there's anything we can expect from a DePalma movie, it's that it won't be dull. Stupid? Probably. Sexist? Almost definitely. But dull? No way.
But, like I said, it killed two hours, so who am I to complain?
The List
Title: The Fury
Date Watched: 8/30/2013 - 8/31/2013
Original Ranking Out of 10: N/A
Revised Ranking Out of 10: 4
Synopsis: A man searches for his abducted child while a teenage girl learns to develop her psychic powers.
The Good: Amy Irving is supercute. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but I can't remember seeing any movie with a better final shot.
The Bad: Nonsensical and tedious story that not even Brian DePalma can save, especially since he already covered the most interesting elements in Carrie. Maybe one of John Williams' worst scores.
Why Do I Own This Movie?: Twilight Time purchase. It's now sold out.
Should I Still Own This Movie?: Probably not. We'll see how much I can get for it on eBay at some point in the future, maybe.
What Did I Notice That I Didn't Notice Before?: If you pause it at one point, you can very easily see a reflection of the camera. They covered it with a blanket, which makes it look even more obvious once you notice it.
Other Impressions: The Fury feels like a meal at Subway. Yeah, you're eating it and there's a lot of worse options out there, but there's no real enjoyment. You watch the movie to pass the time and it doesn't require too much thought. When it's over, two hours has passed. Mission accomplished.
The strangest thing, for me, is that I have no idea why it doesn't work. This isn't an incompetently made movie -- it's just a completely non-involving one. It's as if I went to a culture completely unfamiliar with the motion picture medium and described what a movie was: it's a series of moving pictures put to sound projected on a wall -- this is kind of what they'd expect. It's a movie in the absolute, most reductionist sense of the word.
The story involves a secret government agency of some sort, though as far as I could tell, there's not really much purpose to it. I guess maybe they fight Middle Eastern terrorists, maybe, somehow? Then blah blah blah conspiracy, Amy Irving (because why not?), and one whopper of a final shot that almost (but not nearly) makes up for the previous 2 hours or so.
I bought the blu-ray and watched it because I like to think I'm a fan of Brian DePalma's work, but that's also why I'm really disappointed in how dull it is. If there's anything we can expect from a DePalma movie, it's that it won't be dull. Stupid? Probably. Sexist? Almost definitely. But dull? No way.
But, like I said, it killed two hours, so who am I to complain?
The List