Twitter Thoughts—July week 1

Featuring the films:

All the Right Moves (1983) ***

Andrei Rublev (1966) ****

Ghostbusters (1984) ****

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) ***½

The Shallows (2016) **½

Heaven’s Gate (1980) ***½

Ricki and the Flash (2015) **½

The Bourne Identity (2002) ***

The Bourne Supremacy (2004) ***½

Mannequin: On the Move (1991) ½*

I had a pretty good ten-day run of movies to start off July. I needed a football fix when I realized the Giants would face the Cowboys in a mere ten weeks, so I threw in a Tom Cruise high school classic, “All theRight Moves”. It’s actually pretty amazing that they gave Craig T. Nelson a sitcom where he plays a football coach after the ass he plays in this movie. I mean, yeah, he makes a pretty good football coach, but this ain’t the coach of his television show.

“Andrei Rublev” is one of the more unique biopics I’ve ever seen. At times it veers of into seemingly surreal settings and fantasy, yet it never loses track of its subject. It’s filled with those unique images that Werner Herzog says are lacking in modern cinema. Although it isn’t modern, it isn’t as old as it looks and feels in its execution. It’s a strange but wonderful treatment for an important Russian historical figure.

The first weekend of the month brought us the death of important American filmmaker Michael Cimino. Winning Oscars for his expose on the post-traumatic stress of Vietnam veterans in “The Deer Hunter”, many felt that Cimino never lived up the greatness of his first and second films again. The debacle of his third film “Heaven’s Gate” marred the rest of his career, which is a shame since, although he did run vastly over schedule and budget, it was the studio’s bungling of its release that left such a black mark on it as a terrible movie and one of Hollywood’s biggest flops. I watched his first and third movies, “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” and the aforementioned “Heaven’s Gate”, both underrated near masterpieces.

In theaters, I saw “The Shallows”, a bold horror movie inspired heavily by “Jaws”, involving a female surfer who is stranded in the shallows of secluded lagoon after a shark attack. On the terms I just laid out, the movie delivers a satisfying story of survival. The filmmaking and writing are riddled with holes, however, that if closed could’ve tightened the movie up and delivered a truly frightening experience. “Ricki and the Flash” provided another low end studio flick that could’ve been better than it was had the screenplay been scrutinized just a little more before filming. But neither of those were groan inducing, like the latest How Did This Get Made movie, the inexplicable sequel “Mannequin 2: On the Move”. The HDTGM team claims to have very much enjoyed this film, which is probably why their podcast is so much more enjoyable to listen to than the very similar “We Hate Movies” podcast. They truly love these terrible movies, but that certainly doesn’t make them any less terrible. This one is one of the worst I’ve seen through them.

I also watched three movies in preparation for two franchises with big releases this summer. The original “Ghostbusters” is such a well-made film, I can understand some of the backlash against the new all-female reboot, but just barely. C’mon people. Why must we find things to hate in this world, even before we’ve seen them? There should be enough love to go around for a cherished franchise to shake thing up a little with a gender swap. Jason Bourne returns at the end of the month in the 5^th film of the Bourne series. We watched the first two in our house, and will watch the next two before the end of the month. We have a French exchange student staying with us for the summer and it was interesting to get his perspective on how Hollywood sees Europe in a big budget action flick. Apparently, not everything is accurately portrayed. Hmph! Imagine that.

Here are the tweets.

7/1

Tom Cruise v Craig T. Nelson in All the Right Moves, the ultimate 80s "you're holding me down" HS flick. ‪#DLMChallenge No. 155

7/2

Tarkovsky's biopic Andrei Rublev is a strange and trippy historical drama about the iconic 15th century artist. ‪#DLMChallenge No. 156

You can't beat the original Ghostbusters for a genuine 80s film experience at it's best. ‪#DLMChallenge No. 157

7/3

I'm not sure what Cimino is saying about male relationships in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, but it's a damn good movie. ‪#DLMChallenge No. 158

@ShallowsMovie may not have everything Jaws had, but it’ll still make you want to stay out of the water. #DLMChallenge No. 159

7/6

Second Camino tribute for me this weekend. The director approved cut of Heaven's Gate (1980). ‪#DLMChallenge No. 160

Streep continues her run as the hardest working actor in Hollywood in ‪#RickiandtheFlash. ‪#DLMChallenge No. 161

7/9

Frenchman's impression of the 1st Paris scene in ‪#TheBorneIdentity "Where are the people? You can't park there." ‪#DLMChallenge No. 162

7/10

The aptly titled ‪#TheBourneSupremecy is harder to poke holes in than it's predecessor. ‪#DLMChallenge No. 163

7/11

Damn you ‪@HDTGM for getting me to waste precious life minutes on movies like Mannequin: On the Move (1991). ‪#DLMChallenge No. 164