I really should be working on the backlog of prestige pictures I need to watch, but I recently spent a lot of time stuck on international flights with nothing to do except watch movies, so I ended up watching an awful lot of movies that I wouldn't have watched in other circumstances. A few of them turned out to be very good, titles that had fallen into my cinematic blind spots. So, I wanted to talk about some of these - both the movies and the blind spots.
First, there were the bad movies that I knew were going to be bad: "A Bad Moms Christmas" (2017), "Bicentennial Man" (1999), and "Rambo: Last Blood" (2019). The first two were exactly what I thought they would be, but I liked the actors involved so I sat through the crass comedy and the schmaltzy sci-fi with terrible writing for them. I didn't know that "Rambo: Last Blood" existed, figuring that the series had ended with the 2008 entry, so I gave it a shot. I appreciate the first half for being a more realistic take on "Taken," where the lone vigilante gets beaten up, and doesn't accomplish anything he set out to do. The second half is just a standard orgy of violence against an endless stream of faceless Mexican baddies.
Then there was "Hope Gap" (2019) is a small, personal British drama that I completely overlooked. Even when I was browsing the movie selections on my flight, I repeatedly passed this over, confusing it with the similarly named romantic drama "Hope Floats." It's the only film directed by noted screenwriter William Nicholson, and it was not very well received at the time of release. There was zero awards attention, despite some very strong performances. "Hope Gap" is a family melodrama with a very strong sense of place, and worth seeing if you like any of the three lead actors: Bill Nighy, Josh O'Conner, and especially Annette Bening as the difficult mother. It reminded me a lot of "45 Years," but messier.
However, the three films I really want to focus on are "Step Up" (2006), "Legends of the Fall" (1994), and Hearts in Atlantis (2001). These are all films that I knew about for years, but were never a priority for me. All three were much better than I expected - not great, but certainly deserving of my attention. The original "Step Up," directed by Anne Fletcher, and starring Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan, came out during a period when I wasn't paying attention to movies, and I had largely outgrown teen fare, so it was never on my radar. I knew who Channing Tatum was eventually, and the "Step Up" sequels got some good press, but the franchise was always talked about in terms of spectacle instead of its dramatic bona fides. The first "Step Up" isn't reinventing the wheel, and Tatum is still very rough as an actor, but it's a solid young adult romance that makes some of the old tropes feel new again. There are parts of the film that are undeniably weak, but I still had a great time with it.
"Legends of the Fall" was a movie that I had meant to watch at a few different points over the years, because it has one of Brad Pitt's most famous thirst trap roles and it garnered enough of a reputation to keep it in the pretentious film nerd conversations. It won a Best Cinematography Oscar. However, it is very long and usually classified as a western. I'm still not great with westerns. However, I'm always on the lookout for good adult dramas and epic romances, which have gotten much rarer over the years. So it was a nice surprise to find out that "Legends of the Fall" was earnestly an epic romance from start to finish. There's some anti-war messaging and a silly shootout at the end, but for the most part, it's full of simmering family melodrama and improbably hot people angsting all over the place. And sometimes that's exactly what I'm in the mood for. There are a couple of other movies in this category like "A River Runs Through It" that I should probably get to. Also, I haven't watched "Yellowstone," which is apparently heavily influenced by "Legends of the Fall," and I don't intend to.
Finally, "Hearts in Atlantis" is an adaptation of a Stephen King short story, and had absolutely no traction with critics or audiences. It wasn't a bomb, and it certainly has its defenders, but it tends to get passed over and forgotten, even by King fans. I understand why, because "Hearts in Atlantis" is an outlier from King's work, more of a childhood memoir than a genre piece, and its exploration of the supernatural is much subtler and quieter than King's usual horror stories. The movie, directed by Scott Hicks, is small in size and scope, about an eleven year-old boy and the few people in his life. However, it is incredibly poignant in retrospect, because the boy is played by Anton Yelchin in his screen debut, and he's fantastic. So is Hope Davis as his mother and Anthony Hopkins as the mysterious lodger who comes into their lives. There are a couple of structural similarities to "Mr. Harrigan's Phone," but "Hearts in Atlantis" is a much more well developed piece of work, and I was delighted with it.
Until next time.
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