“Paint Your Wagon” has an undeservedly bad reputation, due in large part to the popular misconception that it came out a time when musicals lost favor with the public and later reinforced by a wicked parody of its concept on “The Simpsons.”
Continue reading
I was debating which movie to review this week. Normally, I always have a few titles floating merrily in the back of my mind. However, more often than not, I don’t write anything about them because they just don’t speak to me. They don’t stand out. A movie really needs to go that extra mile, and either be a lot better or a lot worse than I expected, in order to elicit a passionate need to discuss it in me. So I was in a bit of a pickle. I just couldn’t think of anything really worthwhile to review. Then, last week, my friend brought Clint Eastwood’s 1977 Cop Thriller THE GAUNTLET to Bad Movie Monday and I knew as soon as the end credits started rolling that this was the movie I was going to write about. Good God Almighty.
I saw a ton of movies in 2018, and thankfully I didn’t see too many awful films in the theaters. 2018 was a pretty great year for film, and while I didn’t have enough time to see everything, the share of films I checked out were mostly passable. Even the really alleged awful films people complained about were just disposable junk, and not worth complaining about, or even reviewing. That said I did find ten particularly bad films in 2018, and these had the dishonor of making the list.
After the sheer duds that were “Jersey Boys,” and “Sully,” I was definitely ready for “The 15:17 to Paris” to be a riveting and emotional tale of true heroism in a dark world. The story of the Sacramento Hometown heroes is one of the great modern stories of heroism and courage in the face of sheer danger. And I could have thought of at least a dozen ways I would have loved to learn about this tale rather than a glorified television movie that’s pretty much a huge misstep in every direction. “The 15:17 to Paris” teeters back and forth between pure saccharine nonsense and baffling choices in filmmaking that kept me rolling my eyes and groaning throughout its run time.
In 2009, New Yorkers were submitted to watching what media branded “The Miracle on the Hudson,” and seven years later, director Clint Eastwood tries harder than ever to transform the very unique event in to something of a hero’s journey. Eastwood takes Sully Sullenberger’s story and transforms it in to an unremarkable and tedious drama that would be so much more appropriate as a Sunday night movie on basic cable, if Sully were played by Neil McDonough or Tom Selleck. Tom Hanks can play a role like this in his sleep, and in “Sully,” he evokes the exact same tones and character elements we saw him master in “Captain Phillips.” In Eastwoods ho hum drama, Hanks is the poor man’s Captain Phillips, sensationalized to look distressed and making very hard decisions in a very tough situation.
Director Clint Eastwood has to work with one of the most popular stage musicals in a long time and really has no vision for bringing it to the big screen. I love Frank Valli and his music, and on film his work is still stunning. But “Jersey Boys” is only a mediocre adaptation of the stage musical. Eastwood doesn’t seem to want to give the movie a wider scale at any point, and then in the closing credits just tacks on a final number that recreates the musical. For all intents and purposes, “Jersey Boys” gives Frankie Valli a much deserved nod to his fans and legendary music, but director Clint Eastwood simply has no idea how to work it in to a dynamic biographical drama with its own unique flavor.
For a film directed by someone as beloved and accomplished as Clint Eastwood, it’s hard to fathom that such a film would come off so amateur and tedious to sit through. Leonardo DiCaprio goes whole hog for Oscar territory delivering one of the worst performances of 2011 mimicking the drawl of J. Edgar Hoover but often times sounding like a man overplaying his role in a local community theater production in New Hampshire or something. “J. Edgar” has no style to it, nor does it possess an iota of compelling tidbits about Hoover’s life and career. Mostly it places gaudy cinematography above all else and aims to merely gloss over much of what J. Edgar had accomplished or fumbled in to.