Director's Triple Review and more...

So I watched three good movies over Christmas that I think everyone here would like.

Dog Day Afternoon by Sidney Lumet -- What starts out as a simple bank robbery by Al Pacino and Fredo from The Godfather turns into a tense standoff with the cops, TV crews, and crowds of people. Al Pacino is great in this. Inside the bank he befriends the tellers he's taken hostage, he's a nice guy. But outside he yells at the cops, gets the sympathy of the crowds, and hams it up for the cameras, all while threatening to have Fredo kill hostages if he gets hurt. Sidney Lumet shoots this almost like a documentary at times, and apparently a lot of the dialogue and actions were improvised, and in fact it's based on a true story. All around great film, and I especially like the police chief and the huge 70s ghostbuster TV cameras and backpacks (you'll know what I mean if you see this film).

Murder on the Orient Express (sorry Corey) also by Sidney Lumet -- This is a completely different kind of film, and you wouldn't guess that it's the same director. It's an Agatha Christie murder mystery with a cast of great actors from when the film was made. You have Albert Finney as Poirot, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud, Anthony Perkins (aka Norman Bates), and more. The story revolves around a murder on the Orient Express (duh) while it's stuck in snow in the middle of nowhere. The thing that sets this apart is that Agatha Christie took her normal mystery formula and twisted it all around. Turns out the victim was a pretty bad guy, and no-one is really sorry to see him die. I won't give the rest away because there are more twists to the genre that kept me guessing. Now, I can't really decide if this is a good movie or not. Sure you have great performances, great characters, and an interesting mystery to solve, but the fact is that it doesn't quite work as a film because it lacks a character arc. You have about a 1/2 hour leading up to the murder and introducing all the characters. Then there's about an hour of Poirot interviewing each of the 12 suspects. Then a 1/2 hour of him figuring out case and explaining how it all went down in flashbacks. The problem is that there isn't a character arc or any sort of emotional through-line for Poirot. Even though he makes a pretty hard choice in the end, there isn't anything about him leading up to that choice to make it very significant for him as a character. And that's my biggest beef.

Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle (of 28 Days Later fame) -- This came out recently but was only playing in a couple theaters around here. It got really good reviews so I had to see it and I'm glad I did. It starts out with a poor Indian kid, Jamal, getting interrogated by the police because he got up to the last question on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. As they rewatch each question the film cuts to a flashback explaining how Jamal knew the answer. What's interesting is that there are two stories going on. You have the host of the show making fun of Jamal at first because he's nervous and shy, getting laughs from the audience, but once Jamal starts to get more right the tables are turned and the host gets nervous and feels threatened. The second story is told in the flashbacks about how Jamal survives as an orphan in the slums with his brother and a girl (who becomes the love interest later). It does a really good job of balancing these stories and interweaving them. The one thing that's cool about the film is how it runs through all these different parts of Mumbai and shows this completely different kind of world. Overall a solid film.

If you made it this far I have a some Christmas presents. The first is a quote from Esquire and the reason why Clint Eastwood is still a badass at 78: "We live in more of a pussy generation now, where everybody's become used to saying 'Well, how do we handle it psychologically?' In those days, you just punched the bully back and duked it out. Even if the guy was older and could push you around, at least you were respected for fighting back, and you'd be left alone from then on." Next is a clip of the GI Joe intro video and a parody of it from Venture Brothers.