Jack Attack Tuesday

Some Crappy Things About Great Movies

There was such an overwhelmingly positive response to last week’s post that I wanted to follow it up with something equally divisive.  How so, you ask?  By explaining a bunch of pieces of total bullshit in otherwise awesome movies.  Now I know some of you are gonna think this is nitpicking, but in the same way modern-day sports gods need to be humbled, there are some classic movies that really fuck things up now and again that get a free pass.  I say that’s crap, brothers.  Now before I get into it, I do want to note that all of these films are favorites of mine that I have seen more times than I can count, which is why I feel I can give them their share of shit, so before anyone wants to jump down my throat and accuse me of not understanding the “style” or “aesthetic”, I’m putting that shit to bed right now.  Here they are…

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Yes, that’s right.  The Spielberg classic that encouraged young children to start using more whips, Raiders is a great movie on all fronts.  It has a classic character, great set-pieces, some solid dialogue and the fucking Nazis are the bad guys.  It’s just a shame no one actually thought through the plot before making the film.  You see, Raiders follows a really solid action film plot structure with the exception of one key element.  In Raiders, quite literally everything Indiana Jones does means NOTHING to the outcome of the story.  We see him try to stop the Nazis from uncovering the Ark, but when they do they’re too stupid to not look at the damn thing.  Had Jones never even tried to stop the Germans, I have a feeling the exact same thing would have happened.  It’s actually an incredibly glaring and stupid error in what is otherwise a bonafide classic, but it’s one of those things I can never unsee.  Pity.  It’s also a shame they do the exact same thing in the third film, but that’s none of my business…

Django Unchained

Django has a different problem altogether, and it stops this film from edging past Pulp Fiction in my Tarantino film-rankings.  I direct your attention to the end of the film, where we have Django and Schultz in a shootout with Candie’s men at Candyland.  This here is the ultimate climax of the film and needs no additional falling action.  In this scene, had it been written a little tighter, could have wrapped everything up, with only Django and Broomhilda left standing to ride off into the sunset.  Instead, when the movie FEELS like it should end, we get another twenty minutes of exposition where, coincidentally enough, Tarantino shows up for his cameo.  I’m not saying this sequence kills the film, but every time I watch it it’s the one piece of the movie that takes me out of it.  Kinda bullshit, maybe it worked better on paper.

The Prestige

For a long time I couldn’t watch this movie because of how it ends.  Nowadays I enjoy it purely as a smarter-than-average popcorn flick, but that doesn’t change how horribly botched the ending is.  I am about to spoil the FUCK out of this movie, so don’t read ahead if you haven’t seen it/don’t want to know.  Basically, by the end of the film, you get a scene where Bale murders Jackman in cold blood because of some transgressions in the past.  My issue here is one of unequal and biased writing.  By the end of the film, and throughout the runtime, we are led to believe that, though taken to extremes, these two magicians want to one-up each other.  Furthermore, in my mind, Bale is the true evil here, being that his “trick” is the reason why Jackman’s wife/assistant was murdered at the start of the film.  So, to me, it seems like either poor writing or an oversight that Bale gets the happy ending and is reunited with his daughter.  They paint a really negative picture of Jackman’s character and I have never thought that was fair or right.  I know this seems like a lot of stock in a made up story, but ESPECIALLY for someone like Nolan this feels like the compromise of a rushed script.

Back to the Future Part II

This is a really complicated issue but I’ll do my best to explain it.  We have to go to the scene midway through the film where Doc and Marty park the DeLorean in Marty and Jennifer’s future neighborhood.  When they do this, Old Biff steals the DeLorean and, we learn later on, brings the Sports Almanac to 1950’s Biff, thereby altering the timeline.  However, by some miracle, Old Biff is able to return to a future that FOR HIM should not exist.  If he went back and altered things in the 50’s, he should be traveling to a future version of the hellish Biff-run Hill Valley that Marty later ends up in.  Instead, Old Biff travels back to the future where Marty and Jennifer have a family, where Old Biff then stumbles out of the car.  From there, Marty and Doc travel to the Biff hell-Hill Valley and the movie goes from there.  If I explained myself correctly, you should understand that even with the conceit that we’re buying into the grandfather time-travel theory, this whole sequence doesn’t even play by those rules.  This is some bullshit, but this movie might have the greatest ending to any movie ever so I can’t stay mad.

The Godfather

So The Godfather is in contention to be the greatest film ever made, and it should be.  Anyone who doubts its greatness is doing so out of spite.  The Godfather is a masterwork of unparalleled greatness all around, from the acting to the direction and the unique cinematography.  But, like the other films on this list, there is something here that I cannot abide by.  It’s maybe the most obvious, glaring mistake in ANY movie and somehow no one really seems to mind.  I’m talking, of course, about the Carlo/Sonny fight in the middle of the street.  This is without equal as far as fake fighting goes.  I simply haven’t seen a poorer excuse for action blocking and scene composition.  It’s like the cinematographer doesn’t even try to find another angle to shoot it at, but instead just lets things play out.  I understand Jimmy Caan was somewhat of a loose cannon but this scene is god-awful.  Again, it’s not knocking this off my top films list, but it needs to be said, this scene is bullshit.

So another week, another list.  What will we have next week?  Not sure yet but I can guarantee it will be interesting.  Happy Halloween to everyone, tune in for our FINAL Boardwalk commentary this week, some more Walking Dead and the daily blogs, and as always Binge On!