Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Like 300, I saw this film in the theater, but this time it has no controversy because I know I saw it with my beautiful new bride. My goodness, we went to a lot of movies in those early years BC (before children). Now that we’re getting to the AC years, I’m less interested in the offerings at the cinema and like a sad old man like to watch the films I have already seen at home because I think they’re better than what’s getting made now adays. And I’m probably correct, but I’ll leave it to Christian Toto, John Nolte, or the Critical Drinker to argue why.

At any rate, the movie starts with college sweethears Nicolas Cage and Téa Leoni at the airport. He’s going to London for a one-year-long internship with Barclays which should set him on his career path, and he vows to return to her. The story picks up thirteen years later–he did not, in fact, return to her, and has instead become a wealthy finance guy on Wall Street, and he’s keeping his team in the office over Christmas to work on a big multi-billion dollar merger. He decides to walk home on Christmas Eve and stops by a convenience store for some egg nog when he has to step in and defuse a tense situation. The street thug, played by Don Cheadle, is actually some sort of angel who, in speaking with Cage (the character’s name is Jack Campbell, but the character is the understated Cage), does not believe the businessman when Campbell (I will try to get better about using the character name instead of the actor in these movie reports) says he is not lacking anything in his life.

So Campbell wakes up on Christmas morning in a strange place: A house in New Jersey where he is married to Kate (Leoni) and they have two kids. He tries to return home, but the doorman and resident at his apartment do not know him, nor does the security man at the firm where he worked. So he tries to navigate his new environment, and he learns that in this reality, he returned from London the next day and ended up working for–and saving–his father-in-law’s tire store when the father-in-law had a heart attack. And Campbell learns the value and love in this life that he was missing.

It ends a bit abruptly and unsatisfyingly when he’s returned to his old life and contacts Kate, only to find that she is moving to Paris. But he meets her at her airport gate in a scene clearly designed to mirror the opening scene, and the ending is but perhaps an opening.

Still, it occurred to me as I watched this that this would have been the last new movie I saw in theaters with the World Trade Center in the New York skyline and where you could go to an airports gates without standing in line and presenting a ticket. World events made the movie an anachronism in less than a year.

Also, I wondered what my perspective would have been watching the film then. I was a newlywed, and I did not sacrifice anything when I married–if anything, it was during my courtship of my wife that I moved from being a printer to being a professional in IT. The film takes place thirteen years after the initial parting of the protagonists. I’ve been at Nogglestead longer than that, and in rewatching the film after having children (not in the plans in 2000) who are almost grown up now. And I look back to see if I made sacrifices. Did I? Would I have been so different had I not married my wife now? I know a couple of people who have not married and climbed various ladders. Would I want to trade places with them? No.

So I guess that’s a nice reminder.

With re-watching this film, I have rather covered a lot of Téa Leoni’s oeuvre in the last year or two (see also Bad Boys, Spanglish, Fun with Dick and Jane). Combined with Deep Impact and A League of Their Own which I saw in the theaters, that’s her major movies.

I’ve also seen most of Lisa Thornhill’s major movies as well. Which is a tacit admission that I have not yet seen Time Cop. Continue reading “Movie Report: The Family Man (2000)” →

You know, I saw this film in the theater. I want to say it was at Crestwood Plaza, and my initial assessment was that it was with El Guapo, but given the timing of the film–it was four years past working with El Guapo, and but we were working across the street from each other downtown at the time. Perhaps I saw it with Gimlet, as I would have just finished working with his wife at the time. It’s only sixteen years ago, and already the memory is fuzzy.

At any rate, this is a retelling of the story of the Spartans fighting the Persians at Thermopylae. Jeez, do I have to explain what that was? The Persians were looking to invade Greece, and a small contingent of soldiers from Sparta hold off the invasion at a narrow pass. The Spartans are all killed, though, but the Persian victory cost them–it was a Pyrrhic victory before Pyrrhic victories were named after Pyrrhus. Gerard Butler plays the Spartan king Leonidas, and he plays it with an Australian accent.

I mean, it’s based on a comic book, and they managed to capture a comic book feel to the film with its colors, some stylized slow-motion and different shots. It has a subplot about Leonidas’ wife trying to raise a Spartan army to bolster the 300–who are not an army per se as paid-off oracles prohibited gathering an army for battle–which kind of serves to pad the story a bit, but I’m sure the film cut a bunch from the comic books. They’re different media, of course, and the film is pretty good for what it is.

A strange bit–I found I had two copies of the DVD from various film-buying frenzies, which came in handy. I had some trouble with two DVDs I tried to watch one night–The Return of the One-Armed Swordsman didn’t play, and then I put in a copy of 300 which was balky before the title menu and then froze about half way through. So I paused my viewing for the evening, and I popped in the second copy of 300 the next night. Not only did it play flawlessly–alleviating my fear that the DVD player was getting wonky and I would have to deploy one of my several backups already, but the second copy played immediately from the same spot. Because, for the DVD player, it was the same disc.

The film also fits in with my reading, as I am into the second volume of The Story of Civilization, The Life of Greece. And like Reservoir Dogs, this book makes me want to rewatch another film. Or, rather, this film and what I’m reading. That film: The Warriors, a retelling of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand. Coming soon to a movie report near you? Time will tell! (But probably not as I have so many other films to watch, so rewatching DVDs and videocassettes is unlikely–unlike rewatching things I’ve seen in the past before buying them, sometimes again, on media.)

I got this film in February, and I popped it in because my oldest, who now has a job, income, and–from his perspective–everything one needs to be an adult so he can’t wait to move out and not have to clean his room–has gotten himself a Netflix subscription and is catching up on all the R-rated movies I’ve missed. Like this one.

I have to admit that I’m not much of a Tarentino fan. I mean, I’ve seen Pulp Fiction, and I’ve seen From Dusk til Dawn. The only movie that I’ve enjoyed enough to rewatch is Jackie Brown. Come to think of it, this means I’ve seen his first four films (this was his first) and nothing after. I rented Kill Bill Volume 1 back when I had a video store membership, but I didn’t make it past the opening titles, or maybe the pre-title narration in the dark. I thought, “I don’t have to watch this brutality,” and I ejected the DVD and returned it unwatched (at $.50 a rental, I did that a couple of times with other films). But some years later, and having watched this film, I wonder how inured I have become to brutality in film–I remember thinking the most recent Conan revival wasn’t that bad. So maybe I will take a flyer on Kill Bill some other time.

But that’s a long digression.

The critic hearken this film back to noir thrillers from the olden days, and I can see it, albeit it’s in color and the actual cinematography doesn’t capture that. Instead, it reminds me a little more of the old black-and-white films which were quite clearly adopted from a play. After all, the film takes place in a single location, a “warehouse” that looks more like it would have been a garage, with only some other locations appearing through flashback.

At any rate, for those of you not familiar with the plot, a local crime figure has gathered a number of crime specialists to do a diamond heist. The first bit of the film takes place in a diner before the job. But then we switch to the warehouse after the job has gone bad–the police were apparently waiting for them. One of the bad guys has been gutshot and is brought in by a strongarm man who has befriended or befathered him in spite of the rules. Steve Buscemi’s Mr. Pink arrives and says that someone was a fink. That’s the basics. We get flashbacks from some of the main characters telling both how the robbery went wrong and how they prepared for it, and we find out fairly early who the undercover policeman is but have to wonder what will become of him.

There’s a brief torture scene–my beautiful wife said I’d never hear Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You” the same way, but watching this film must have been her first and formative experience with the song and not mine, so it won’t affect my appreciation of Gerry Rafferty–and there’s a Mexican standoff and some amibuity in the end.

So it was not as brutal as I thought (although that might be me watching the film 30 years later–maybe it was indeed brutal for its time). An okay movie, but not necessarily something I’ll rewatch a bunch. It does make me want to rewatch Jackie Brown, though. For the Pam Grier, certainly, but also because it introduced me to Bobby Womack, whose CDs and records I’ve since acquired when I can.