Brokedance 6: Based on Real Life
It's odd how Netflix sometimes categorizes movies. I have 250+ DVDs on my queue and I figured I'd have a bunch of items that Netflix would label "Based On real life." Amazingly, several I would certainly consider based on real life (hello? "The Queen"?) weren't labelled as such. Going by the rules that it had to be something labelled as such I had to go down a bit more on my queue to find one actually labelled "based on real life."
So my pick was "The Assassination of Richard Nixon." Like last week, I was unsure whether I really wanted to see this movie. For one, I don't like Sean Penn. I think he's highly over-rated and, aesthetically speaking, he's ugly. :) The reviews and average rating for this movie didn't help its cause. I decided to get it just to see what the hype was about when it first came out. So the synopsis says:
Based on real-life events, this arresting psychological drama is set in 1974 and centers on Samuel Bicke (Sean Penn), an antisocial, unstable salesman with delusions of grandeur. As his life begins to disintegrate, Bicke decides to take extreme measures to achieve his warped version of the American Dream: assassinating President Richard Nixon. The supporting cast includes Don Cheadle, Naomi Watts and Mykelti Williamson.
Rule number one about a movie: your audience should give a shit about your main character. Love him or hate him, they should care what happens to him be it saving the day or getting thrown under the bus. This guy? Sam Bicke? I couldn't give a rat's ass about him. He was a loser. All he did was complain and bumble from one stupid thing to the next. I kept wondering if he was retarded. Then maybe I could've had some sort of sympathy towards him. But no. He was just...stupid. In the end, crazy. But mostly loserish and stupid.
His wife can't stand the sight of him and he sucks at being a furniture salesman. When he loses his job, gets served divorced papers, and is turned down for a small-business loan, he flips out and for some reason decides that the world must pay for keeping the Little Man (him) down, most splashily by taking out Richard Nixon. Well. This guy is such a loser, that he blows his wad before he even boards a plane to do the deed and he gets taken out by airport security (or someone) while attempting to hijack a plane. Oh well. Like brain_o_shaner said in his review, thank god. Now the movie is over and we can stop seeing this jackass.
Maybe the DVD would've been saved by including extras on the real guy, some pictures, maybe the real recordings which for some reason he made about his Master PlanTM for, of all people, Leonard Bernstein. Nope. Nothing. Without that and not caring for Samuel Bicke, I gave this movie:
2 coup d’états
We must've been thinking on the same wavelength when we picked movies, because brain_o_shaner's choice was "Bobby." All I have to say is, thank goodness I insisted on putting in my movie first. I had suspected I wouldn't like it and wanted to make sure we didn't end the evening on a sour note. "Bobby" was definitely not that. Taking place on the day of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, this movie centered, rather than on the Senator, instead on the lives of several people whose lives were tied to the assassination by being involved with his campaign or merely being in the Ambassador hotel on the day and night of Kennedy's assassination.
I don't know how much of the various stories was actually true, but they all drew me in and I actually cared about these characters. The cast was all-star too: Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, William H. Macy, Emilio Estévez, Demi Moore, Laurence Fishburne, Freddy Rodriguez, Jacob Vargas, Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Sharon Stone, Heather Graham, Elijah Wood, Shia LaBeouf, Ashton Kutcher, Christian Slater... I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Everyone and their mother seemed to be in this movie. Hell, they even let on Lindsay Lohan. O.o
The only person not in the movie was someone playing Kennedy. The movie was all about the day-in-the-life of all these other characters. The movie does culminate on the assassination of Kennedy, but that's almost a sidenote to what happens to some of the characters who were actually on hand when Kennedy was glad-handing and he got shot. I never really knew a whole lot about the event, so although this is spoilerish I suppose (unless you know history)... some other people also got shot and some of them were those main characters. Since I didn't know that was happening I was actually surprised and somewhat shocked when that happened. I'd figured that they were just going to be present and there would be reaction shots of them as witnesses to the assassination.
So yes, I was so involved with these people that I did gasp aloud once or twice at the end. Really well-done and I think the actors were really well chosen. I really recommend the movie.
4 coup d’états
Next up: buddy films
.
So my pick was "The Assassination of Richard Nixon." Like last week, I was unsure whether I really wanted to see this movie. For one, I don't like Sean Penn. I think he's highly over-rated and, aesthetically speaking, he's ugly. :) The reviews and average rating for this movie didn't help its cause. I decided to get it just to see what the hype was about when it first came out. So the synopsis says:
Based on real-life events, this arresting psychological drama is set in 1974 and centers on Samuel Bicke (Sean Penn), an antisocial, unstable salesman with delusions of grandeur. As his life begins to disintegrate, Bicke decides to take extreme measures to achieve his warped version of the American Dream: assassinating President Richard Nixon. The supporting cast includes Don Cheadle, Naomi Watts and Mykelti Williamson.
Rule number one about a movie: your audience should give a shit about your main character. Love him or hate him, they should care what happens to him be it saving the day or getting thrown under the bus. This guy? Sam Bicke? I couldn't give a rat's ass about him. He was a loser. All he did was complain and bumble from one stupid thing to the next. I kept wondering if he was retarded. Then maybe I could've had some sort of sympathy towards him. But no. He was just...stupid. In the end, crazy. But mostly loserish and stupid.
His wife can't stand the sight of him and he sucks at being a furniture salesman. When he loses his job, gets served divorced papers, and is turned down for a small-business loan, he flips out and for some reason decides that the world must pay for keeping the Little Man (him) down, most splashily by taking out Richard Nixon. Well. This guy is such a loser, that he blows his wad before he even boards a plane to do the deed and he gets taken out by airport security (or someone) while attempting to hijack a plane. Oh well. Like brain_o_shaner said in his review, thank god. Now the movie is over and we can stop seeing this jackass.
Maybe the DVD would've been saved by including extras on the real guy, some pictures, maybe the real recordings which for some reason he made about his Master PlanTM for, of all people, Leonard Bernstein. Nope. Nothing. Without that and not caring for Samuel Bicke, I gave this movie:
2 coup d’états
We must've been thinking on the same wavelength when we picked movies, because brain_o_shaner's choice was "Bobby." All I have to say is, thank goodness I insisted on putting in my movie first. I had suspected I wouldn't like it and wanted to make sure we didn't end the evening on a sour note. "Bobby" was definitely not that. Taking place on the day of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, this movie centered, rather than on the Senator, instead on the lives of several people whose lives were tied to the assassination by being involved with his campaign or merely being in the Ambassador hotel on the day and night of Kennedy's assassination.
I don't know how much of the various stories was actually true, but they all drew me in and I actually cared about these characters. The cast was all-star too: Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, William H. Macy, Emilio Estévez, Demi Moore, Laurence Fishburne, Freddy Rodriguez, Jacob Vargas, Martin Sheen, Helen Hunt, Sharon Stone, Heather Graham, Elijah Wood, Shia LaBeouf, Ashton Kutcher, Christian Slater... I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Everyone and their mother seemed to be in this movie. Hell, they even let on Lindsay Lohan. O.o
The only person not in the movie was someone playing Kennedy. The movie was all about the day-in-the-life of all these other characters. The movie does culminate on the assassination of Kennedy, but that's almost a sidenote to what happens to some of the characters who were actually on hand when Kennedy was glad-handing and he got shot. I never really knew a whole lot about the event, so although this is spoilerish I suppose (unless you know history)... some other people also got shot and some of them were those main characters. Since I didn't know that was happening I was actually surprised and somewhat shocked when that happened. I'd figured that they were just going to be present and there would be reaction shots of them as witnesses to the assassination.
So yes, I was so involved with these people that I did gasp aloud once or twice at the end. Really well-done and I think the actors were really well chosen. I really recommend the movie.
4 coup d’états
Next up: buddy films
.