"Man on Fire" (2004) - why do I like a roman à clef

I have watched “Man on Fire” (2004) many times. If it is on or I see it available, I will watch it. I think I got some free movies on Vudu once and bought a copy (although I no longer have any idea how to get to that account). I really like this movie.

Denzel Washington is a large part of my enjoyment. In my opinion, he may be our greatest actor*. His portrayal of the tortured warrior, whose heart is broken by a child, and set on a path for vengeance is fantastic. I cry everytime they are reunited at the end. As for the rest of the cast - Dakota Fanning, Chris Walken, and Giancarlo Giannini are superb. The rest of them carry their parts well enough. Mexico City plays a very nice role. When you lay on Tony Scott’s directing + Paul Cameron cinematography + Christian Wagner editing + the sound design, you get a VERY tense and violent thriller. The music cues are really great.

While John Creasy (Denzel’s part) is a trope of story writing, in terms of a roman à clef, the Sanchez brothers (the kidnappers) are based on real people. I am struck that Hollywood can not write a character worse than human beings can produce. These two spent 2 years kidnapping at least 18 people in Mexico City, cutting off their ears, and collecting $40M USD in ransom. They have spent 25 years of their 40 year sentence in prison so far. I think Creasy’s behavior is a reasonable stand in for the approach that the Mexican Federal Police used to apprehend them. As a result, they may be resentenced soon due to the methods used.

*I wish he and Meryl Streep would do more work together.

Their performance in “The Manchurian Candidate” from the same year is the only one I can find. It is blah - and I blame Demme & the screenwriter for that. Like “Man on Fire”, they had an excellent cast, a book and an excellent original film to base it on. And with that, they produced a film which is decidedly lackluster. It is cool that Roger Corman did some acting in it though.

"Cocaine Shark" (2023) - Not since "Suburban Sasquatch" ...

Mark Polonia has made almost 80 films since 1985. That is 2+ per year. There was a 3 year pause in his proliferation after his twin brother & production partner John died in 2008. If you consider that he (they) didn’t really start cranking out this entertainment until 2000 - it is more like 3 per year. If he keeps at it as long as they did, he will pass Richard Thorpe and William Beaudine (credited as directing ~180 each). Wowzers.

His particular craft is low-low budget. Lower than Roger Corman or Lloyd Kaufman even. Polonia’s production values are limited. You get 2 or 3 sets with plenty of establishing shots to fill the transition. You get special effects and creatures which look like they were assembled by a junior high art class. You will see the same actor playing multiple parts, married couples acting together, and a lot of the same names showing up in multiple different releases. You will see the same people + sets in 2 or 4 of these movies in a room; I assume many of them are shot contemporaneously.

What you also get is an earnest piece of entertainment. Polonia (or Corman / Kaufman for that matter) is not trying to impress you with a visual spectacle or award worthy performances. They are making a living and providing work for people telling a story that entertains. And they do that over and over again.

“Cocaine Shark” is marketed as a sci-fi horror film but is more like a double episode of “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer”. At 70 minutes, it is mostly a tale about an undercover cop infiltrating and trying to disrupt a new drug ring taking over the US from Atlantic City, NJ. A ton of self-referential voice over narration by the ¿main? Character. I think most of the movie is being told as a flashback; it doesn’t really matter. I fast-forwarded through the dramatic scene between ‘Mike Hammer’ and the femme fatale, but the dialog was just what you might think it was if you were to write a scene after reading the Wikipedia article on the character.

There is of course a cocaine shark. Actually, there are three different hybrid, blood crazed creatures who were formed because of their exposure to the designer drug in the movie. None of them look much like the cover art. None of them are really consequential to the story.

One of the things I like to do when I watch these films is to make up famous(ish) actor names for the actors that are there. The first guy you meet is a hybrid of Jon Lovitz+Michael Peña. The ¿main? character is a garage-sale Oscar Issacs. You can play along at home.

"Trollhunter" (2010) - The Swedish Chef meets The Blair Witch

I am sorry to Ragnar for my title tagline - I have friends and acquaintances from Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, but I can not place a single person I know who was born in Norway. I only know one Swedish Chef and that is mostly by reputation - but that was good enough for the bit. Jokes are way better when you have to spend 70 words explaining them.

‘In Poland, we don't ask, we do. Why problem make when you no problem have you don't want to make?’ - Piotr, the Polsk bjørnejeger. That should have informed the student film crew when they took off investigating the eponymous Trollhunter. The line where one of them compares themselves to Michael Moore made me laugh. I saw them as more Geraldo Rivera.They were similarly charming and unfortunately got into more trouble than he did interviewing those skinheads.

This movie is fun. The dialogue is dry and funny. The acting is great. Even the cinematography is good for such a low budget, shaky cam,‘found-footage’ piece of work. The action is exciting. The special effects are pretty good. The intent is for it to be dark and frightening, but there are enough bright, colorful scenes to appreciate that contrast. It is ‘scary’, but more in the vein of “Where the Wild Things Are” (2009) than perhaps 20 minutes alone with your thoughts after watching “Make Way for Tomorrow” (1937). It earns the high praise of my pausing the show to refill my water glass and get pretzels.

I think there is only one scientific inaccuracy that I caught. One of the characters gets infected by rabies. I think the progression of the virus typically comes with 30~90 days of an asymptomatic incubation period. This dude was showing signs of infection within a couple of hours. I called bologna on that.

If I could make one edit, I would have trimmed a few minutes off riding in cars looking out the windows. It was not so bad that it took me out of the mood. I was grateful that James Nguyen hadn’t made this. It would have been 30 minutes longer and we would have watched the entire ferry ride in real time.

"No Way Out" (1987) - brilliant if it had been 104 minutes long

Neo-noir or noir-revival. Crime drama or psychological thriller. Whatever. If what it takes to fit these labels is characters making nihilistic moral choices as a result of desperate circumstances - then “No Way Out” (1987) fits right in the zone. It even says so in the title.

We get a gorgeous 32-yo Kevin Costner playing beside 28-yo Sean Young and against Gene Hackman. It is brilliantly performed and super intense. You can see how Costner became a star. This is 2 years after “Fandango” and “Silverado”. It came out at the same time as “The Untouchables” and right before “Bull Durham”. His star-ness was definitely anchored here. Sean Young’s character is more complex than you might want to credit at first - and they were easy to believe.

The only characterization I couldn’t get behind was Will Patton. He was played to be a deviant / sociopath. He did that great. Unfortunately in 1987, they had to out him as homosexual just so we would know how truly awful he was. For the 2023 viewer, this needless bash stood out. There was nothing about his character which appear “gay” and his homosexuality was not relevant to anything - except to tell the audience [now this explains some things]. It made me a little sad.

I read there is an uncredited Brad Pitt as a party guest, but I missed him. Mostly because I was too caught up in the show to watch for people crossing in the background. The cinematography is a tourist reel for Washington DC. Director and Writer earned every penny. It is based on a 1940's book (‘The Big Clock’) which I can’t find, and there were two other movies based on this book that I also can’t find.

If I could do one thing, I would chop out the first and last 5 minutes. Those 10 minutes are a confounding twist that are a distraction from the rest of the story. You don’t need them. You don’t want them. They are meant to be a MacGuffin, but they are whatever you call a MacGuffin that is unnecessary - a MacWHY? That is what I said to the screen during the final scene anyway.

It was a fun ride all the way through - a pre-90’s thriller, when there was still some thrill to the show.

"The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964) - a lush opera

Classified as a musical romantic drama, I would call it an opera. There is NO spoken dialog. The way the characters flow and move, I wondered if the music was diegetic to the scenes. They are certainly singing (even if their sound is voice-overed after the fact) - but it looks to me like they are listening to the same soundtrack as the audience.

It stars Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel, and Ellen Farner. I almost watched it about 100 times simply for Ms. Deneuve - but now that I have seen it, I would watch it 99 more. I want to go find more projects with Anne Vernon in them. She was my favorite.

This is set in France during the Algerian War. That is the catalyst that tears these lovers apart. In spite of everything being sung-through and the score doing some of the lifting for the character’s moods or feelings, I found the acting to be compelling and naturalistic. Teen lovers act like teen lovers. The unrequited beauty acts like a jilted young adult. The windowed mother acts like a parent with a breadth of concern for herself and the well being of her daughter. Even the attractive interloper is easy to understand. The timing of their relationships is contrived, but it doesn’t feel rushed or weird. That is unusual for cinematic drama (although maybe not for mid-60’s French cinema).

In addition to all that, especially when you think of 1960's film, the sets, lighting, and cinematography is GORGEOUS. It is a work of visual art from top to bottom. A friend of mine described it as lush. I think he misspelled it: LUSH!!