Movie I Liked # 39: # STARGATE

1994

We have now arrived at that point in our blogger/reader relationship where I reveal my first love of movies, that being science fiction.

When speaking of Stargate, I refer to the movie, the series SG-1 and the series Stargate Atlantis. In another blogging season, I will write of shows. For now, here’s the movie.

Plot

An archeologist in the 20’s discovers an odd artifact( the gate), a large stone ring. Fast forward to the nineties when we discover that said ring creates a wormhole that allows for instantaneous interstellar travel. (I know pretty cool eh?) Military team plus linguist travels to a planet called Abbydos where they encounter the friendly slaves made slaves by pretty boy tyrant who is actually host to a parasite life form with a big ego and bent on destroying Earth. And there’s some romance and fighting and posttraumatic stress too.

Characters

Colonel Jack O’neil, puts up a cynical sarcastic caustic front to cover up a tender side and his grief over his recently died son. Dr. Daniel Jackson, the archeologist who speaks 27 different languages and can make friends with anyone. Ra, the parasite tyrant who once impersonated the Egyptian sun god. Skaara and Sha’uri, the local brother and sister who befriend our heroes. Characters are fun and loveable, if not a bit predictable.

Acting

Kurt Russell is not my very favorite, but his creation of a hostile but secretly gentle colonel was great. James Spader makes a perfect nerdy awkward but deep down courageous character. Jaye Davidson is appropriately creepy. Alexis Cruz was fun both in the movie and in the series. Mili Avital made a great heroine damsel. And Djimon Hounsou makes a thoroughly underappreciated appearance as one of Ra’s Jaffa guards who doesn’t speak and then gets shot.

Scenery

Story takes place in a desert with big sand dunes. I love sand dunes.

Music

Lots of trumpets and fanfare. I have to be careful listening to this one though because after 15 seasons of the main theme, it gets stuck in my head a bit too easily. Good thing I like it.

Memories

So one time I was talking with my cousin about movies we liked and I mentioned Stargate and he was like, “Stargate? What’s that?” And I’m thinking, how have you never heard of this? So I tell him. Then he’s like, “Oh cool!” I tell him to start with the movie before the series and then he asks, “When did the movie come out?” I check, see the year 1994 and then have the staggering realization that this movie I love is older than he is!!! No wonder he hadn’t heard of it.

Which made me feel a little old. But that’s ok.

Then there was the other time my partner and I were stuck in Seattle for a week on account of rain and, being bored in the hotel room, what else were we to do but watch the Stargate Atlantis marathon?

Good times.

Movie I Liked #49: The Avengers

2012

I like superpowers. They’re fun! They’re flashy. They’re something different then what is.

Finding a good superpower/super hero/super villain movie is really difficult because either the power is too much, the hero is too good or the villain is too ridiculous. The tendency is to get lost in the special effects or corny humor or bad costumes and have a deficiency of character development.

But this is where Joss Whedon’s Avengers succeeds. This super-hero ensemble piece is about as non-cheesy as you can get without being Christopher Nolan.

The film features Ironman, Thor, Captain America, the Hulk, the Black Widow and the Hawk, a demi-god with a grudge from ancient Nordic mythology and yet another appearance by Samuel L. Jackson. Their task is a simple one, yet one that never gets old…save the planet from the angry bad guy’s big monsters. Obstacles are the bad guy, forces of nature, and, my favorite, interpersonal conflicts.

I like stories where the characters start out hating each other and have to come together. Get two or three or four big egos in a room together, coupled with really good acting and you can’t take your eyes away. I suppose something about that is true to real life. Egos getting together and getting on each other’s nerves.

I felt like the story was well balanced. Every character had something to overcome and to contribute. The villain was crazy but not stupid and thankfully didn’t talk too much or too little. Costumes were, well…I suppose we’ll never get away from spandex, however more people should wear capes! Good action, good humor.

As a kid, I didn’t have television or comics so didn’t know much about superheroes until I was much older. In many ways, the Marvel movies leading up to Avengers was my introduction to each other them. Being new to the characters, I found them quickly likeable and ultimately understandable, all within one movie. Kudos to the writers, movie makers and did I mention this is by Joss Whedon, one of my other favorites? Oi! This flick just gets better and better!

I took a friend to see this for his bachelor party, so there will always be fun memories attached to it for me.

Movie I Liked #54: The Last Airbender

2010

This is the full length movie based on the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

My experience was that I knew of the show, but never got to follow the story. So when I saw the movie, I was meeting the characters for the first time. That said, I commend the movie makers, M. Night Shyamalan and friends, for creating a story world that a first timer like me could easily understand and quickly come to like.

Admittedly, it’s a kid’s movie, made for a younger audience, so when watching, you have to look past some good old fashioned over-acting. And the action, though entertaining, could be stepped up to be more interesting. Ang,(Noah Ringer), the young air bender tasked with saving the world, Katara(Nicola Peltz), a student water-bender charged with protecting her people, her brother Sokka(Jackson Rathbone who looks great as not-a-vampire) the non-bender normal human trying to keep everyone close to him safe. Best character for me is Zuko(Dev Patel), the exiled prince of the fire nation who deep down is a good guy with awful parents and he just wants to go home.

Music is fun, action is fun, fantasy creatures are fun, the mythology of a made-up world is fun…not the most riveting, profound or life changing movie you’ll ever see but still. There’s no part of this little flick that isn’t fun.

Movie I Liked #61: #Hero

2002

You’ve heard that there’s two sides to every story.

Wrong.

There’s more than two sides. A story can be told and retold as many ways as there are color tones.

Hero is sort of a whodunit mystery tale, but elegant. With Jet Li on the set, the movie can’t help but be a beautiful martial arts movie also. Featuring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang, Daoming Chen and Donnie Yen a most peculiar story is woven, unraveled, and re-woven. Half hovering above the surface of the water, half along side the face of a cliff.

Seems there was an emperor. And an assassin. Only the assassin met some others along the way to meet the emperor. Drama happened, fights were had, there were allies, enemies and love. Somewhere along the way, the assassin had a change of heart.

Every version of the story is told with a different color theme and there’s a color for every person’s point of view. Kind of like life I suppose.

The soundtrack is another one that I adored long before I saw the movie. Tan Dun, the master cellist and composer created the life-force of the movie world with his melodies. I like the soundtrack in the movie but also because it’s a beautiful masterpiece on its own. You can listen to the music without the movie and still be moved.

 

Movie I Liked #66: The Karate Kid II

1986

When we were little, my brother and I did martial arts with our dad for many years.

You don’t grow up in a martial arts family without a proper reverence for the one and only Mister Miyagi.

Wax on, wax off.

Crane Technique.

Best way win fight, no be there.

Catching the fly with the chopstick.

Eighties hair and stonewashed jeans.

All four movies were great. Good fun adventure for young boys learning the martial arts. Good memories of watching movies with Dad.

I like this one the best because they go to Okinawa. We meet Mister Miyagi’s family and see his culture. Daniel learns the drum technique and falls in love with a dancer. The people and buildings are different, but the conflicts are pretty much the same. Honor. Loyalty. Devotion to family. Being true to one’s own inner goodness. Only difference is the last fight is a fight to the death. OMG!!

Homage to Pat Morita, whose obituary picture adorns a wall in Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, Oregon.

 

 

Movie I Liked #68: Crash. #crashmovie

2004

This was one of the first films like this I ever saw where the story is not about one person but rather the interconnections between many people. Big stars show up, dynamic characters are made, but really the story is made up of many stories. Those many stories creating a single idea.

In this case, the idea is that we want to be safe. We want to be loved. We want to be touched so much we’re willing to crash into people to make it happen.

What better venue to address racism?

I really loved how all the characters interconnect. I got really excited about watching each individual story affect the others. This is not only excellent writing, but a vital principle of life that cannot be overemphasized.

Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraiser, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe, Don Cheadle, Terrance Howard, Michael Pena, Shaun Toub and many others make up the colorful cast. All of them splendid. Convincing. To portray a character that is lovable and hateable is a necessity as an actor. To do so in a way that lets the audience see themselves perfectly reflected is sheer genius. Kudos to the cast.

And the writers.

And the editors.

And whoever created the trailer! Not many trailers get me on the verge of tears, but this one did.

 

Movie I Liked #72: Pearl Harbor. #pearlharbor

2001

I like period films. I like epics. I like drama and counter drama. I like seeing things blown up. I like seeing interesting characters put into extraordinary situations and seeing what they do. I like a good soundtrack and beautiful people.

Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsdale and the incomparable Mako as Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto create a tribute to, “A day that will live in infamy.” None of us young pups that watch the movie were actually there and I don’t think we can fully appreciate what it was like. Nor should we ever take it for granted that people live and die painful deaths so others can live free. A film like this, for me, is a potent glimpse at what it might have been like. A way of making the historical event more than a paragraph in a text book, but actually real people with faces and stories and dreams.

As a movie, I like it. Story is interesting and well written. Characters are compelling if not a bit predictable. The soundtrack is simple and uncluttered and still able to move you deeply. Special effects were great in the attack scene. And there’s a bunch of moments that could potentially make you cry.

One of my favorite, most moving moments was the part during the attack where Beckinsdale’s character is standing in the middle of the hospital. One of the other nurses says, “I don’t know what to do!” and there’s this circle pan shot around Beckinsdale showing all the wounded filling every corner of the room, all in a blur. Her face is smeared in blood and her expression perfectly captures “overwhelmed and helpless.”

War is never a good thing and probably never done from pure motives. But let us who have never been in war remember to be gracious to those who have.

Movie I Liked #78: Fight Club

1999

On an infinite timeline, everyone’s life expectancy drops to zero.

Such is the wisdom of Tyler Durden, the mischievous hero.

This is the tale of a man who is bored with a meaningless consumerist life and how he copes. This is the story of revolution and personal growth and unrealized potential. This is a story about manhood and brother hood and the noble savage and unbridled brutality. This is about facing your worst fears by facing yourself. This is the best and worst of being a homosapien. Hating the drudgery of politics and financial empires and finding the magic in a tender lye kiss.

Or this is all an insomniacs bad dream. Or a conspiracy. Or the dissociative episode from hell.

This is not a love story. This is not a happy story. This is the story that made me scorn cubicles. This is humanity at is rawest most absurd rock bottom and it is glorious.

Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter have terrific chemistry together. On their own, they make the most absurd characters completely believable.

Read the novel. Absolutely, read the novel. Marvel that someone thought of all this. Kudos to Chuck Palahniuk.