As you know we here at JPFmovies are pretty tough on re-makes. So when I heard there was a re-make of the 1991 film Point Break—a classic despite Mr. K Reeves—we sent Dr. H into the field to assess the damage. Here are his thoughts.
The best analogy is that he was approached by a smooth car salesman selling him a huge truck that he doesn’t need; it had a fine interior but gets horrible mileage and after the initial infatuation wore off he realized just how bad a deal it was. When it is all said and done, the V-8 is too much and you’ll never use that much trunk space.
Coming back to Point Break Redux, the stunts are nonsensical even if you allow the customary suspension of disbelief. Like crashing through glass windows on motorcycles with parachutes to ride away into the sunset. Only going to further prove that we believe Hollywood has been reduced to making a number of action scenes and merely stringing them together with some insipid dialogue.
Now to the original 1991 classic. The direction was so good that Mr. Reeves could not do too much damage with his expressionless face and robotic voice. The word on the street is that when they were teaching actors how to use tone and pitch to augment a delivery line he was in the bathroom. That said, excellent performances by Patrick Swaze and Gary Busey and the great portrayal of the beaches and natural lighting give the film an excellent look and feel. Moreover, the actions scenes appear plausible when compared to the motorcycles flying through the glass windows parachuting to the earth making their getaway.
That brings us to an interesting question. Why are they trying to milk these great old films like Grease, Point Break and National Lampoons Vacation (previously reviewed)? Because the writers have run out of ideas. The studios need to invest too heavily in the stars and special effects that there is nothing left for the most important part: the story. That is why we here at JPFmovies believe that all the good stories are coming out of Asia and Europe—they have not fallen into the seductive trap of taking the easy way out by making a few action scenes and then trying to fill in the space with whatever dialogue they can come up with at a bargain basement price.
Don’t piss off Cajuns—that is the moral of this movie. The movie was always somewhere rolling around in my head and then my friend TV brought it up (I believe he was trying to stump me with no luck for him). Of course I remembered the film because of some very gritty scenes one or two of which will appear in the vaunted JPFmovie clips.
Southern Comfort is a movie about a Louisiana National Guard unit (or weekend warriors) out on some mock combat exercise. Part of the mock combat is that all they have are blanks which proves to be the beginning of the end for most of the unit. As the soldiers begin the 40 something kilometer march, they come to a river that is not marked on their map. They realize that the recent rains probably have shifted the swamp water causing a pretty formidable river crossing. Oh did I forget to mention that 90% of this film is the unit making their way through the bayou swamp land? Well anyways as these soldiers are trying to figure out a way to cross the river, they stumble upon an empty camp of Cajun men where they find several canoes as well as some skinned animals.
Instead of leaving the boats there, as dictated by military law, they decide to use them to cross the river and leave them a note presumably explaining the situation. While crossing the river, the Cajuns return and are looking at these guys stealing their boats. One of the idiot soldiers decides (as a joke) to open fire on these men with his machine gun using blanks. Naturally the Cajuns dive for cover since they have no clue that these are only blanks and this is all just a bad joke. Once the machine gun stops firing, the Cajuns fire on the soldiers using live ammunition killing the units’ ranking officer.
The rest of the film involves the soldiers trying to make it back to civilization without getting killed by these Cajuns who know the terrain and area like the back of their hands. In the end, only Booth and Carradine make it to a form of civilization—a Cajun cookout/party. They remain on their guard as they (correctly) suspect that their hunters will show up and finish them off. Well when their enemies arrive one shoots Booth but the wound is not fatal. As the two survivors flee from the Cajun camp, an Army truck and helicopter arrive to save them from these vengeful Cajun men.
If I did not find this film interesting, I certainly would not have remembered it. Cajuns chasing you throughout the Louisiana bayou swap is actually kind of frightening—not like Jaws scary but scary enough. They do come across some very dangerous traps and there are a lot of skinned animals. So I would recommend it, I mean why not—it’s not the greatest film ever made but it sure as hell is not the worst movie in the world. Also film has some great Cajun music in it that, according to my research, is played by a famous Cajun musician Dewey Balfa.
Seven Samurai (七人の侍 Shichinin no Samurai?) is a 1954 Japanese Jidaigeki adventure film co-written, edited, and directed by “The Emperor” Akira Kurosawa. This is also one of the most copied films in cinema history. Films like The Magnificent Seven, Zhong yi qun ying (the seven warriors) and Samurai 7 (the anime television series) are all based on this movie. Clearly this movie has had a major impact on movie makers since it release. Perhaps Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress is the only film remade more than the Seven Samurai.
The story takes place in 1586 during the Warring States Period of Japan. It follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven ronin (masterless samurai) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops. These ronin work only for food, though at the end of the movie, the “miserly” farmers do offer their protectors jewelry and other valuable items before the final conflict.
Marauding bandits approach a rural mountain village, but their chief decides to spare it until after the harvest because they had raided it before. The plan is overheard by a farmer who tells the rest of village. Lamenting their fate, three farmers ask Gisaku, the village elder and miller, for advice. He declares they should hire samurai to defend the village. Since they have no money to offer, Gisaku tells them to find hungry samurai saying in one of my favorite quotes “even a bear will come down from the mountain if it’s hungry enough.”
After little success in finding any recruits, the group witness Kambei, an aging but experienced rōnin, rescue a young boy who had been taken hostage by a thief. A young inexperienced samurai named Katsushirō also approaches Kambei to become his disciple. The villagers then ask for his help, and after initial reluctance, Kambei agrees. In turn the aged rōnin recruits some old friends as well as three other samurai: the friendly and strategic Gorobei; the good-willed Heihachi; and Kyūzō, a taciturn master swordsman whom Katsushirō regards with awe (and is apparently based on the legendary Miyamoto Musashi). Although inexperienced, Katsushirō is taken as a sixth recruit because time is short. Kikuchiyo (Torisho Mifune), a man who carries a family scroll that he claims makes him a samurai, follows the group to the village despite attempts to drive him away.
On arrival the samurai find the villagers cowering in their homes refusing to greet them. Feeling insulted by such a cold reception, Kikuchiyo rings the village alarm bell prompting the frightened villagers to come out of hiding. However the six samurai are angered when Kikuchiyo brings samurai armor and weapons; equipment that the villagers had most likely acquired from killing other injured or dying samurai. But Kikuchiyo explodes and points out that samurai are responsible for battles, raids, taxation and forced labor that devastate the lives of villagers thereby revealing his origins as a farmer.
When the bandits attack the village they are confounded by village’s new fortifications, including a moat and wooden fence. During a torrential downpour, the villagers are ordered to let in all remaining bandits where they are killed but not before taking some villagers and samurai with them. With the fighting over, Kambei and Shichirōji observe that they have survived once again. In a moving epilogue, the three surviving samurai watch as the joyful villagers sing while planting their crops. Kambei—standing beneath the funeral mounds of his four dead comrades—reflects that it’s another pyrrhic victory for the samurai. While they gained nothing for their sacrifice, the farmers’ reward is their lands.
Some interesting facts about the film include Kurosawa refusing to shoot the peasant village at Toho Studios, instead having a complete set constructed at Tagata on the Izu Peninsula, Shizuoka. Acts like this eventually lead to Kurosawa’s nick-name “the Emperor.” Although the studio protested the increased production costs, Kurosawa was adamant that “the quality of the set influences the quality of the actors’ performances… …For this reason, I have the sets made exactly like the real thing. It restricts the shooting but encourages that feeling of authenticity.”
Boy he was right. Anyone who thinks of themselves as any sort of film buff Seven Samurai is a must see. And if you just like movies, watch it anyways, it’s long but worth every minute of it.
I was getting a lot of static about the number of Japanese films I’ve been watching lately so I decided to relent. But I still wanted to enjoy the Japanese tales of the samurai then it occurred to me: Shogun the miniseries. I was still a child when I remember when my parents watched it and I liked it back then. So I obtained all 12 hours of the series and watched it without complaint from other because the main language was English though there was lots of Japanese spoken in it. One of the neat film devices used in the episodes what the lack of subtitles whenever Japanese was spoken as it was from the main characters point of view (Richard Chamberlin as an English ship pilot). I also decided to get the book and the author (legendary James Clavel) also provided no translation from the Japanese “spoken” in the novel.
During the original airing, the network ran the episodes five days in a row. The first and last episodes (each three hours) and the three in the middle (each 2 hours) garnered about 24-25 million viewers—an average of about 32-33 nielson rating. Talk about a marathon, I don’t think the networks would have the guts to run a series like that again. By that I mean they would probably do one episode a week and break it up into one hour segments. If that were to happen I believe it would totally take away from the flavor of the series. The book (about 1200 pages) is even better than the series though both in my opinion are legendary works especially for their time.
The cast: Richard Chamberlin, who needs no introduction, went on to make the Thorn Birds after this epic, Torisho Mifune, Japans legendary film star for probably 40 years prior to Shogun and anyone who watched Star Trek Voyager knows John Rhys-Davies (cast as Da Vinci in Voyager an often seen guest in Capt. Janeway’s hologram fantasies) playing the flamboyant Portuguese ship pilot Vasco Rodrigues. There are more of course but these three are the best known.
After his Dutch trading ship Erasmus and its surviving crew is blown ashore by a violent storm at Injiro on the east coast of Japan, Pilot-Major John Blackthorne, the ship’s English navigator, is taken prisoner by samurai warriors. When he is later temporarily released, he must juggle his self-identity as an Englishman associated with other Europeans in Japan, namely Portuguese traders and Jesuit priests, with the alien Japanese culture into which he has been thrust and now must adapt to in order to survive. Being an Englishman, Blackthorne is at both religious and political odds with his enemy, the Portuguese, and the Catholic Church’s Jesuit order. The Catholic foothold in Japan puts Blackthorne, a Protestant and therefore a heretic, at a political disadvantage. But this same situation also brings him to the attention of the influential Lord Toranaga, who mistrusts this foreign religion now spreading in Japan. He is competing with other samurai warlords of similar high-born rank, among them Catholic converts, for the very powerful position of Shōgun, the military governor of Japan.
Through an interpreter, Blackthorne later reveals certain surprising details about the Portuguese traders and their Jesuit overlords which forces Toranaga to trust him; they forge a tenuous alliance, much to the chagrin of the Jesuits. To help the Englishman learn their language and to assimilate to Japanese culture, Toranaga assigns a teacher and interpreter to him, the beautiful Lady Mariko, a Catholic convert, and one of Toranaga’s most trusted retainers. Blackthorne soon becomes infatuated with her, but Mariko is already married, and their budding romance is ultimately doomed by future circumstances.
Blackthorne saves Toranaga’s life by audaciously helping him escape from Osaka Castle and the clutches of his longtime enemy, Lord Ishido. To reward the Englishman for saving his life, and to forever bind him to the warlord, Toranaga makes Blackthorne hatamoto, a personal retainer, and gifts him with a European flintlock pistol. Later, Blackthorne again saves Toranaga’s life during an Earthquake by pulling him from a fissure that opened and swallowed the warlord, nearly killing him. Having proved his worth and loyalty to the warlord, during a night ceremony held before a host of his assembled vassals and samurai, Lord Toranaga makes Blackthorne a samurai; he awards him the two swords, 20 kimonos, 200 of his own samurai, and an income-producing fief, the fishing village Anjiro where Blackthorne was first blown ashore with his ship and crew. Blackthorne’s repaired ship Erasmus, under guard by Toranaga’s samurai and anchored near Kyoto, is lost to fire, which quickly spread when the ships’ night lamps were knocked over by a storm tidal surge. During a later attack on Osaka Castle by the secretive Amida Tong (Ninja assassins), secretly paid for by Lord Ishido, Mariko is killed while saving Blackthorne’s life, who’s temporarily blinded by the black powder explosion that kills his lover.
As Shōgun concludes, Blackthorne is supervising the construction of a new ship, The Lady; it is being built with funds Mariko left to him in her will for this very purpose. Blackthorne is observed at a distance by Lord Toranaga; a voice over reveals the warlord’s inner thoughts: It was he who ordered the Erasmus destroyed by fire, not from a tidal surge, in order to keep Blackthorne safe from his Portuguese enemies who feared his actions with the ship; Blackthorne still has much to teach Toranaga. And, if need be, the warlord will destroy the ship Blackthorne is currently building. He also discloses Mariko’s secret but vital role in the grand deception of his enemies, and, as a result, how she was destined to die gloriously in Osaka Castle and live forever, helping to assure his coming final victory. The warlord knows that Blackthorne’s karma brought him to Japan and that the Englishman, now his trusted retainer and samurai, is destined never to leave. Toranaga also knows it is his karma to become Shōgun.
In the miniseries epilogue it is revealed that Toranaga and his army are triumphant at the Battle of Sekigahara; he captures and then disgraces his old rival, Lord Ishido, and takes 40,000 enemy heads, after which he then fulfills his destiny by becoming Shōgun.
The story has most of the elements of the warring states period and the rise of Tokugawa Ieyasu to Shogun. He was one of the lords who pledged to take care of the Taiko, he also won the Battle of Sekigahara so anyone who is even slightly versed in this area of history can see the parallels. It is a great series, take the time to watch it you won’t regret it.
I just watched a documentary about Back to the Future and boy did that bring back some memories. I was all of 13 years old when I saw this film in the theater (grossing 390,000,000) and of course there was the Delorean with all of its glory and gull-wing doors. The stainless steel body, rear engine car with all of its gadgets and tubes has become a cultural icon. Michael Fox stars with Christopher Lloyd as the lead roles and Huey Lewis and the News composing the theme song “The Power of Love” and Lewis having a cameo in the film as a judge in the battle of the bands dismissing Fox’s band (the Pinheads) from the high-school contest.
I showed this film to my step daughter a couple of years ago they were ages 13 and 7 both were literally on the edge of their seats throughout the movie—illustrating the timeless qualities of the film. Another great feature of BTF was the non-computer generated special effects that were all done manually so to speak right down to the 1950’s store fronts, cars and costumes. It is said that when Fox’s “mother” appeared as the depressed overweight boozer at the start of the movie it took three hours for her make-up to be done. The film still retains its popularity as on the 21st of October of this year there was a one day viewing in the theaters. Only Star Wars boasts that kind of longevity and staying power.
The writers, producers (Spielberg) and director (Robert Zmeckis) had the film in the making for almost 7 years shopping to every movie studio including Disney who turned it down because they didn’t want the Disney banner associated an incestuous theme.
The story, a mad scientist makes a time machine out of a Deloran motor car, but is hunted by Libyan terrorists that he sole plutonium from. Fox escapes by jumping into the car and hitting 88 mph which triggers the “flux capacitor” to control time travel. The time machine preset for 30 years in the past takes Fox back to the 1950’s when his parents were in high school. The question is can the son get along with his parents while they were kids? Having to set up his parents to date so he can be born Fox discovers that his mother was actually quite the player despite her prostrations to the contrary in 1985, The picture of the parents as straight arrow nerds is dispelled throughout the middle and end of the film. Eventually Fox coaxed his father into punching a bully giving him the self-confidence needed to become a success in the future so when Fox returns to the future of 1985 he finds his life changed, his parents are successful and his friend Doc the inventor of the time machine escaping death by wearing a bullet proof vest heeding the warning of Fox that he would be shot on the night when the time machine was successfully tested.
Normally I don’t like these kind of films, but this one from my childhood as wildly successful as it is (was) has passed every test it could have encountered. Just a fresh as it was in 1985, anyone can watch this movie at any time and enjoy it like some of us did in the theater, and my proof was watching my step daughters appreciate it as much as I did when I was their age.
Note in the first clip the reference to the CRM 114—the radio device in Dr. Strangelove talked about by Slim Pickens.
Based on the mystery novel “Kagi no Kakatta Heya” by Yusuke Kishi (published by Kadokawa Shoten, July 26, 2012) here is another great example of an Asian mini-series (11 episodes) with an original theme a bit of a surprise ending and knowing when to quit.
Enomoto Kei is a security “otaku” (Japanese slang loosely translated as geek or nerd but more pejorative than in the West) working for a firm who devoted to improving security systems on a daily basis. He is not an easy person to deal with, stoic, unapproachable, a maniac in Physics, Science, Architecture and profound in other basic theoretical sciences. Enomoto is convinced and proud of the fact that there is no key which he cannot unlock.
Enomoto’s abilities are initially put to the test when a young idealistic legal associate, Junko Aoto (Erika Toda), locks her boss, Serizawa Gou, in a bank vault on a Friday afternoon and because of the vaults timer can’t be opened until Monday morning. Within 17 minutes he opens this a seeming impenetrable vault door while explaining to the young associate that there are more than 100,000,000 combinations. That day, Enomoto is asked to help reveal a mystery behind a “locked room” murderer. While he lacks any interest in solving the mystery, he is inevitably intrigued by the term, “Locked Room” and decides to take on the case. Enomoto works side by side with Aoto Junko and Serizawa Gou, who are lawyers working at a major law firm. Because of Enomoto’s abilities to solve the “locked room” crimes, Senzawa is given all of the credit and becomes known as a locked room experts-though the real brains behind the mysteries is Enomoto.
I really enjoyed the series because of its unique premises and surprise ending (the good guy goes bad). It is well cast and the number of episodes is right for a movie binge. I may even read the novel assuming it has been translated into English.
SEJ and EJ of course have their own interesting take:
Both have a lot to say about this series starting with the opening credits which they describe as both “clever” and “weird.” EJ in particular enjoys the suspense filled music and the graphics used to open the show.
SEJ specifically says “this series is overly dramatic and at times even corny but has a clever starting sequence and great music. The characters are mostly likable and pause for too long but overall it is a great film.” As for the ending of the series “. . . HE CAN’T!” But he did.
The clips should give you the flavor of the music and Enomoto’s demeanor sorry about the cut off subtitles they were difficult to hard-code.
J.P.'s I'm Outta Here Movie Thoughts 