My Sweet Sixteen

Sixteen Candles

Director: John Hughes

Cast: Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Michael Schoeffling, John Cusack

Released: May 4, 1984

I mentioned in my review of Not Another Teen Movie that I really haven't seen many teen '80s movies, so when I saw this was available on Netflix, I decided to check it out. Let's just say I was cringing the entire time. This movie did not age well at all. It is homophobic, it is racist, it is misogynistic, it is just all around pretty terrible. Maybe you had to be a teen in the '80s to "get it". This was John Hughes first movie that he wrote and directed and I believe it was Molly Ringwald's first major movie. She and Anthony Michael Hall are probably only a handful of students at their high school who are actually teenagers and not, like in their twenties or thirties. There are students at that school who were played by people who were easily almost a decade older than those two who were both fifteen when they filmed this. That is a huge difference, especially at that age!

The movie starts off with Samantha (or, Sam, as her friends call her) Baker (played by Ringwald) standing in front of her mirror, saying, "Chronologically, you're sixteen today, but physically, your'e still fifteen." Oh my God. We're not even two minutes into the movie yet and already my eyes have rolled way back into my head. Did she think she would wake up that morning and be physically transformed? Doesn't she know there is absolutely no difference between a fifteen or a sixteen-year-old? I mean, I can't tell them apart, can you? There will be lots of these moments in the movie where Sam (or another character) is speaking aloud with nobody around. This is really the only scene where it works because she's speaking to herself in front of the mirror. Every other scene that has her speaking aloud without anyone around, she's doing it for the benefit of the audience, but she's not breaking the fourth wall. However, in a scene much later on in the movie, Anthony Michael Hall will speak directly to the audience. If they're going to break the fourth wall with his character, why not just do it with Sam? It's like this was before they realized that voiceover was a device they could use.

Right after she talks to her reflection in the mirror, she picks up the phone WHICH HASN'T EVEN RUNG and starts talking to someone, but who is she talking to? We don't even see or hear the other side of the conversation. Obviously, it's a friend, but it's just very odd how it was shot.

It's Sam's birthday, but it's also the day before her older sister's (who I'm pretty sure was played by a 30 year old) wedding and there's lots of commotion in the house over that as they're expecting both sets of grandparents to show up and her entire family forgets about her birthday. ("I can't believe this. They f***ing forget my birthday.") Oh, and I love how this movie is rated PG but they say the F word AND show a naked girl in a shower within the first ten minutes of the movie. I guess the '80s truly were a different time!

Sam tells her friend (the one she apparently was talking to on the phone) her family forgot her birthday and her friend (who has a terrible '80s mullet thing going on) tells her, "What did you expect? A big birthday breakfast?" Bitch, please! Sam indignantly replies that they could have at least wished her a Happy Birthday and she's absoluetly correct. They just plain forget her birthday which makes her family pretty awful. I mean, who forgets their own child's birthday? I know her parents have three other kids, but that's still no excuse! Her younger brother is played by Justin Henry and when I saw his name in the credits I was thinking, I didn't know the kid from E.T. was in this. Obviously I had him mixed up with Henry Thomas. This is the kid who was in Kramer vs. Kramer. Oh my God, he is the most f**king annoying kid and he is terrible to all his sisters and if I were Sam, I would have smacked the ever-living sh*t out of him. Funnily enough, the youngest sister (who's barely in this) is the one who calls him on his crap.

While in study hall, Sam is filling out a sex survey that is labeled "Confidential" and asks questions such as "Have you ever touched it?" and "Have you ever done it?" Now, these should be yes or no questions, right? Do you know what she writes for an answer for the latter question? "I don't think so." Huh?? How do you not know? That's a little concerning! Has she been to a lot of parties where she ends up passing out and has no idea what happened the next day? The next question is even more concerning because it asks, "If you answered "I don't think so", would you do it if you could?" Uh.....what the f**k? How many girls did the author of this confidential survey think would answer "I don't think so" to if they've ever had sex or not? How many girls at this school have no idea if they've ever had sex or not? Yikes. But...as we'll later learn on, this movie turns very date rapey, so it's not entirely impossible that a lot of girls at this school truly have no idea if they've had sex or not. In fact, we'll meet a character later on who has no idea if she had sex with this guy or not...how charming. The survey asks her to name who she would like to do it with and she picks attractive senior (senior in college, more likely!) Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling) who also happens to be sitting behind her in that very class. She folds up the note and nonchalantly drops it behind her for her friend to read or fill out (I don't know exactly how it worked), but she is asleep and Jake ends up reaching for the note and now knows that she wants to boink him.

We see a shot of the teacher sitting at his desk, keeping an eye on the kids and behind him on the chalkboard, somebody had written "Total Idiot" with an arrow pointing towards him. Did he not even notice that he came into class? I doubt somebody wrote that DURING class because then he would have noticed. Yeah, I know it's supposed to be a joke, but it doesn't make any sense in the context of the scene..unless this teacher truly is a total idiot.

Jake asks his meathead friend (who looks like he graduated high school about thirty years ago) what he thinks of Samantha Baker and his friend goes, "She's too young to party serious." What does that even mean? And, ewww. Jake informs him that she's "not ugly", which is high praise any girl would want to hear. :::rolls eyes:::: We also learn that Jake has a girlfriend, Caroline, who, as his meathead friend points out, is "a WO-MAN." Which, technically, is true being that she IS at least twenty-five!

Okay, so let me get this straight...Jake already has a girlfriend, who as we will later find out, is one of the most popular and beautiful girls at the school and is Prom Queen and she will put out for him, but he wants to ditch her for a sophomore who isn't ugly because she wrote that she wanted to have sex with him. I don't care how good-looking this guy is; he's a total loser.

Meanwhile, we have both sets of grandparents visiting and one of them, for some reason, brings a foreign exchange student from China named Long Duk Dong. So I was aware there was a Chinese character that had a name that was just a stupid penis joke, but I had NO idea that there would be a gong sound every time he's in a scene. The first time I heard it, I was like, Oof, that's not good. But I thought maybe that would be the only time it happened...nope. We hear this sound effect every time the character shows up in a scene. Yikes. It's really bad and cringe-y. We also get a lot of stupid jokes about this Chinese character being in America, stuff like how he doesn't know how to eat American food and he is so much shorter than this girl (also pushing thirty like the other students at this rape-positive school) he meets at a dance. You could take out this character and not lose anything about the movie. Of course, you could also erase this movie from the universe's existence and nobody would even care.

And then you have Anthony Michael Hall who, as Ted, is credited as "the Geek". But he's more of a creeper than a geek. He hangs out with his two friends, one of who includes a young John Cusack. He does not know the meaning of personal space as he sits very close to Sam (and SNIFFS her...ewwww!) on the bus when they (and a young Joan Cusack) are the only ones left and is asking her if he wants to go out with him and keeps pestering her when it's pretty obvious she doesn't want anything to do with him.

At the dance, Ted tells his two friends that he and Sam are pretty much in a relationship and he plans to have sex with her and they want him to prove it by showing them her underwear. In yet another scene, we have him trying to move in on Sam and she has to scream at him to stop. Does this kid not know when a girl isn't interested in him? Do we need to get him a copy of She's Just Not That Into You? (If it existed!) But once Sam admits to him that she likes Jake Ryan, he seems way too happy to put in a good word for her since he knows Jake (since they had one interaction prior to this scene). He tells her that Jake had asked about her (since Jake saw Ted interacting with her). You think this would be a huge clue to Sam that Jake saw the note in study hall. ESPECIALLY SINCE HE SITS BEHIND AND PROBABLY SAW HER TOSS THE NOTE BEHIND HER!

Sam is inspired by this news and decides she's going to go up to Jake and talk to him. She sees him in the coat check room and he smiles at her and says hi, and she just runs off like a doofus. Awkward!

Jake, who is super rich, has a party at his house because his parents are out of town and his house gets trashed. A bar bell crashes through the floor to the basement and knocks over a couple of shelves holding bottles of wine and champagne, a pizza has landed on the record player, a cassette has all of its tape pulled out (how very '80s....cassettes were the WORST!!!), there are bubbles coming out of a vent (??),  and there's just so much crap everywhere. He doesn't even seem to be that concerned about it. Pretty much everybody from school except Sam is at the party and he calls her own private phone line, but keeps getting her grandparents because they're sleeping in her room. I must have missed how he got her phone number. The grandparents tell him to stop calling and to leave Sam alone. Pretty much what any teen girl wants their grandparents to tell the boy they're crushing on. Okay, if I were a teen girl in the '80s and I had my own private phone line and my grandparents were staying in my room, you can bet your bottom dollar I would be unplugging that thing! I don't want my grandparents answering my phone! Hells no! Not a smart move, Sam.

After everyone has left the party, Ted and Caroline are the only ones left. Caroline is sleeping off her hangover (she gets drunk an awful lot in this movie) while Jake and Ted are having a conversation in the kitchen about Sam. Jake thinks Ted is lying to him about Sam liking him. Um, hello! Did you not see the note where she wrote your name that she wanted to have sex with you? The proof is right there. This guy is in idiot...no wonder he had to repeat the 12th grade at least seven times. If only Sam could have been in the room to hear this conversation because then she could have seen what a charming prince her crush is. (Yes, that was major sarcasm.) He tells Ted, "I can get a piece of ass anytime I want. I got Caroline in the bedroom passed out cold. I could violate her ten different ways if I wanted to." Yeah, a real great guy you like there, Sam. What a f**king jerk!  I guess this is to tell us that he wants more of a "real" relationship with Sam and wants a "serious girlfriend". Gimme me a break! He only wants to have sex with her because he knows she wants to too. Oh, yeah, and while they're having this conversation, in the background you can hear Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York", you know, because every teen from the '80s just loves the Sinatra.

Since Jake isn't "interested" in Caroline anymore, he lends Ted (who doesn't have a license, mind you) his father's Rolls Royce (don't these damn rich people have a practical car?) to drive Caroline home. What kind of a f**king moron is he? Why would you let some 15-year-old kid with no license drive one of the world's most expensive cars that belong to your father? I really hope his dad beat some sense into him when he got back from his business trip or wherever he is during all of this. He even tells Ted to "have fun". Great guy, this Jake Ryan. (Once again, that was sarcasm). Ted drives himself and a drunk Caroline to one of his friend's house so they can take a photo of him sitting with Caroline in the back seat of the car so he has proof that he was with a hot girl. Even though it's really gross that he did that, I did laugh that they show the photo and it's only the upper part of his face that his friend got. Haha, serves that little creeper right.

The next morning Ted and Caroline wake up in the car in some parking lot. I didn't think Ted had been drinking, but apparently he had because he asks her "What happened?" and she replies, "I don't know." He asks if they did it and she replies, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure." I rolled my eyes so hard when he asked her if she "enjoyed it", and she replies, "You know, I have this weird feeling I did." Ugh. I'm so glad you enjoyed having non-consensual sex while you were drunk with some guy you just met that your boyfriend pretty much gave permission to rape you. F**k this movie. Also, on a shallow side note, why do they dress this twenty-five year old woman who they're trying to pass as a senior in high school in the most maternal and blah dress ever? She looks like she's about to attend church or something. And her hair style makes her look much older than she's supposed to be.

So let's get back to our main character, Sam. Like I said, she didn't attend Jake's party and went home where she has this weird conversation with her dad. It does start off nice with him apologizing for forgetting her birthday, but then he can tell that something's bothering her and when he asks if it's about a "certain guy", he thinks she's upset that her sister is marrying a jerk, but then she gets upset because she's really upset about Jake. Let me clarify that she's upset because she doesn't think she'll ever be with him, not because he's a terrible person and a potential rapist.

The movie ends with the sister's wedding (which has its own stupid hi-jinxes) and Sam sees Jake waiting for her by his car after the ceremony. She blows off the reception to go with him and her dad sees this and is smiling, all like, "That's my girl!" He even gives her the thumbs-up sign! Uh, I do not think he would be doing that if he knew the REAL Jake Ryan! The last scene is both of them sitting on a glass table in his house with a cake between them and he tells her to make a wish and she replies, "It already came true." BARF. Let me tell you: I give them one week, two tops. Once they have sex (consensual, if she's lucky), he's going to dump her ass. You know it's true. This movie is just terrible. 

Prime of Their Youth

Stand By Me

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, Richard Dreyfuss, John Cusack

Released: August 22, 1986

Oscar nominations:

Best Adapted Screenplay - Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans (lost to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala for A Room With a View)

I was six going on seven the first time I saw an R rated movie. Haha, see what I did there? Yes, Stand By Me was the first R rated movie that I ever saw. I know for a fact that I must have been six or seven when I first saw this because I remember seeing it on video in the basement of the first house I lived in. We didn't move into the second house I lived in until just before my eighth birthday and the movie had to be released on video when I was six. The only thing I remember from my first viewing was that the body of the dead kid really freaked me out, especially since his eyes were open. I think I was around 10 or 11 when I actually remember seeing this movie in its entirety and appreciated it more. I was kind of raised to love this movie because my mom loooooves it (her favorite scene is the "Train!" scene). It's set in 1959 and the characters would have been only a couple years older than her at that time. I'm sure other people of her generation love it too as it encapsulates a certain time period with the setting and music. This movie had to be marketed to the Baby Boomer generation, right? Preteen kids, as much as I'm sure they wanted to see this, wouldn't be allowed (I've never seen four young boys curse so much until South Park came along!)

This movie is based on a short story by Stephen King called "The Body" which I read about 15 years ago. I've only read it once and I don't remember much about it...I know they made a few changes to the movie. Obviously, the novella is set in Maine, as all King stories are, but they changed it to Oregon in the movie. I believe both still have the same small town name of Castle Rock. And I don't remember this, but I guess Chris was the main character of the novella. Being that I've seen the movie at least 30 times, you can probably guess which one I like better. I also think the movie has the better title. I would like to revisit the short story...I just need to locate the book! 

Stand By Me is the quintessential coming-of-age movie and one of the most beloved. It is in my top five favorite movies of all time and I have recommended it in the past to people who had never seen it and they watched it and loved it, naturally! If, for some reason, you have never seen this (blasphemy!!), I highly recommend it. Plus, you should see it before you read this because there will be spoilers. It is about four twelve-year-old boys who embark on a journey the weekend before they start junior high to find the dead body of a kid who was hit by a train named Ray Brower who was their age. ("You guys wanna see a dead body?") They follow the train tracks that will lead them to the area where the body is and along the way they encounter a "vicious" dog named Chopper and his even more vile owner, tell stories around a campfire, have the ultimate train dodge, fall into a lake with leeches (ugh!!!), and philosophize things such as what kind of animal Goofy is suppose to be. It is these four twelve-year-olds going on the ultimate adventure one last time before they drift apart as friends and it is their journey of self-discovering and realizing who they are.

Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton), is the main character who is narrating the story to the audience in the "present day" as a forty-year-old (Richard Dreyfus). He loves telling stories and wants to be a writer (as we see he does become later on). His older brother, Denny (John Cusack) died in a car accident four months earlier and his parents are overcome with grief and barely acknowledge Gordie's presence anymore. Gordie and Denny had a very close relationship even though you would think Gordie might resent him with Denny being the Golden Boy son what with him being a star football player. In a flashback, when Denny tells his parents they should read Gordie's new story, his mother seems interested for a second, but then his father turns the subject back to Denny and his football. Gordie has a brutal dream where he's at Denny's funeral and his dad tells him, "It should have been you." He has lots of doubts if his parents, especially his father, really loves him.

Out of the three other boys, Gordie's closest friend is Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) who is the heart of the movie and the unofficial leader of their little gang. Chris is the one to encourage Gordie to continue on with his writing when Gordie thinks it's a waste of time and tells Gordie he can't be held back by him and the other guys who aren't as smart as he is. Narrator Gordie informs the audience that Chris came from a "bad family", but all we know about that is his father drinks and can get on a "mean streak" and he has an older brother who hangs out with a bad crowd. Gordie's dad doesn't like Chris and calls him a thief because he stole the milk money at school, but Chris confesses to Gordie that even though he did steal the money, he did feel bad and gave it back, only to find that he was still accused of stealing it and the very next day the teacher he gave the money back to had a new skirt. It's a very heartbreaking scene when he's telling this to Gordie and starts to break down and can't understand how a teacher could do something like that to him. Because of his reputation, he tells Gordie, "I just wish I could go someplace where nobody knows me." I can totally see why the preteen and teen girls of the '80s loved River Phoenix. He was very swoon-worthy! This was his only movie I saw of his when he was alive, but I saw quite a few of them about eight years after his death and I think this one by far is is best and most iconic.

Teddy DuChamp (Corey Feldman) is a bit of a psychopath (just a bit!) and is predicted by Chris to not live past 20 (though when adult Gordie is telling the audience what became of his friends, he is still alive). Even though he has a father who beats him and once held his head against a stove and burned his ear, he still loves him. When they come across the vile man who owns a junk yard they trespass into and calls Teddy's father a looney, this angers Teddy immensely and he defends his father, saying he isn't a looney and that he stormed the beach at Normandy. It's no wonder Chris thinks he won't live very long because Teddy seems to have a death wish. He tried to dodge a train ("Train dodge. Dig it.") and we hear about a story where Teddy almost fell out of a tree, but Chris caught him in time. Teddy has the strangest laugh and loves to speak in military lingo. He has one of my favorite lines in the movie when he tells Vern, "Is it me, or are you the world's biggest p***y?"

The junk yard scene also involves a dog named Chopper who is the "most feared and least scene dog in Castle Rock". When I wrote my review for The Sandlot, I mentioned how that movie reminded me of Stand By Me and they had to have inspiration for the "mean and vicious" dog who lives in a junkyard from this film, right?? And just like in The Sandlot where the dog isn't as mean as they had perceived, Chopper is just a golden retriever who isn't as menacing as he is made out to be.


My favorite character is Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell). I. FREAKING. LOVE. VERN!!! I love all the characters and think they're all great, don't get me wrong, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be Vern. Vern is HILARIOUS! I laugh every time he's on screen. He's the chubby naive kid of the group who gets picked on by the other kids, especially Teddy. Poor Vern! But without Vern, they would never have their adventure because he's the one who tells them about the dead kid. He's under the porch searching for his jar of pennies (his mom threw away the map he made to locate them...you think he would remember the general vicinity where he buried them, but this IS Vern we're talking about!) when he hears his older brother and his brother's friend talking about how they saw this missing kid, dead in the woods. His brother thinks they should tell the police, but the friend says they'll get in trouble since they "boosted" a car and they'll want to know how they got all the way out there. The kids decide they're going to follow the train tracks that will lead them out there to find the body themselves. They are excited about the prospect of getting their pictures in the paper and maybe being on TV if they find the kid's body.

Haha, here is one of my (many!) favorite scenes with Vern:

Vern is so obsessed with that comb! Later, when they're well into their journey, he asks if anyone brought any food and when nobody remembered to, he says, "What are you looking at me for!? I brought the comb!" And then when they all give their money to Gordie to buy provisions, he only has seven cents! Oh, Vern! ("Sorry Vern, a more experienced shopper could have gotten more from your seven cents.") And when they're crossing the bridge and Vern is crawling on his knees (so funny!) and the comb falls out of his shirt pocket and into the water below and he just looks so dejected and tells Gordie, who's behind him, "I lost the comb."("Forget it, Vern.") In that clip at the end you see Teddy punching his arm and giving him "two for flinching". This will happen again to Vern, but he finally gets to be the one to make Teddy flinch and he is so elated and is gloating that he was finally the one to make Teddy flinch, that in his excitement, Teddy punches him and Vern says, "But....you flinched!" and Teddy just smiles at him and says, "I know...two for flinching!" Oh, Vern, you adorable idiot!

Another one of my favorite Vern scenes happens when they've set up camp for the night and Gordie is about to tell them his story about the sabotaged pie eating contest (that always grossed me out so much when I was a younger, but I can handle it a little bit better now!) and tells them the main character is a kid named Davey Hogan and Vern interrupts and says, "Like Charlie Hogan's brother! If he had one." Then he interrupts Gordie once again after he says the main character of his story, nicknamed Lardass, is a really fat kid because of his glands and Vern says his cousin has something like that and is about to tell a story of his own until Chris tells him to shut up. Then once Gordie has finished the story, Vern says, "I like the story! But there's just one thing I don't understand...did Lardass have to pay to get into the contest?" The looks on the other boys' faces just cracks me up and Gordie tells him, "No, Vern, they just let him in" and Vern is like, "Ohhhh! Great story!"

While the boys are following the train tracks, the film cuts back from time to time to the older high school boys, which include Chris's brother, Eyeball; Vern's brother, Billy; and Billy's friend Charlie (that must be the Charlie Hogan who doesn't have a brother named Davey!) among others. The leader of their gang is Ace (Kiefer Sutherland). Both Billy and Charlie, who said they were not going to tell anybody about the dead kid, blab to Eyeball and Ace about him and Ace decides they're all going to drive out to find the kid and hopefully get a cash reward for discovering the body. Ace and his gang like to do things like play "mailbox baseball", get tattoos with razors, and torment the younger kids. Ace steals Gordie's hat at the beginning of the movie, the one that Denny gave to him before he died and threatens to burn Chris's eye with a lit cigarette. He's a real a**hole, that Ace! They reach the dead kid just minutes after the four younger boys have found him. It makes me laugh when Ace mocks Chris after Chris tells them, "We found him first! We got dibs!" and Ace turns to Chris's brother and says, "We better start running, Eyeball. They got dibs!"

The four twelve-year-olds stand their ground until Ace takes out his knife and threatens to kill Chris and Vern and Teddy scamper away. Right when Ace makes his move for Chris's throat, Gordie shoots off a gun. This gun was introduced at the beginning of the journey. Chris swiped it from his dad's drawer and shows Gordie it. We next see it when they're camping out and each kid is standing guard with it after they hear coyotes howling. (And Vern keeps pointing it at every little thing that makes a sound...I was a little scared he might let it go off accidentally!) And then it makes its next and final appearance at this moment. Ace and the others back off, but Ace threatens that this isn't over and he won't forget this. Except that this is the last we hear of the older kids in the movie. I'm sure in the book the younger boys got the s*** beaten out of them! In the end, neither group take credit for finding Ray Brower and they make an anonymous phone call.

There's a very melancholy atmosphere when the four kids return to Castle Rock and say their good-byes and that they'll see each other in junior high. It's like they know that this will be the last adventure they have together before they transition into young adults. Narrator Gordie even tells the audience that he and Chris saw less and less of Vern and Teddy as time went on. The scene where Chris vanishes from the screen after we learn that he had been killed a week ago in the "present day" is more poignant now because of what happened to River Phoenix. Gordie as an adult finishes his memoir by writing, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

They tried to make the girl version of this movie about a decade later. It's called Now and Then and by all rights I should love that movie because I'm a girl and I would have been the right age to see it when it came out, but I remember disliking it immensely! I honestly don't remember anything about it, just that I hated it, so I should revisit it someday and see if I still hate it or if I was being too hard on it.

Stand By Me celebrated its 30th anniversary a month ago. I found this clip from five years ago when it celebrated its 25th anniversary. If you're a fan of the movie and have never seen this, you'll enjoy it, I promise.

Jailbird

Con Air

Director: Simon West

Cast: Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich, John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Dave Chappelle, Monica Potter

Released: June 6, 1997

Oscar nominations:
Best Sound (lost to Titanic)
Best Original Song - "How Do I Live" by Diane Warren (lost to "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic by James Horner and Will Jennings)

I already reviewed one of Nicolas Cage's R-rated action movies from 1997, so I thought I would review his OTHER R-rated action movie that came out just a couple weeks before Face/Off, and that would be Con Air. This was another movie that was reviewed on How Did This Get Made?, hence why I wanted to see it again...it had been a VERY long time since I last saw this. This is one of those so bad, it's good movies. Although if you had asked me who directed this, I would have said Michael Bay, though I would have been wrong!

I remembered that song, "How Do I Live" is in this movie, but I forgot it was written for the movie! I guess I just thought they wanted to use a sappy country love song for the literally ten minute romance of the film. (Eh...maybe it was fifteen?) Don't get me wrong, I love the song, but it's just so weird that kind of song is in a movie about murders, serial killers, rapists, and drug lords overtaking a plane. The two just don't mesh very well. Like most people, I am very familiar with the LeAnne Rimes version of this song, but did you know they don't even play that version in the movie? It's sung by Trisha Yearwood. The LeAnne Rimes version is a trillion times better (even though it sounds like she's singing, "How do I leave without you")...the Trisha Yearwood one sounds like a watered-down version and it's not the power ballad that LeAnne makes it. I guess they (the producers, I assume) said she was too young which is ridiculous because there are two young girls in the movie and they are much younger than the 14/15 years LeAnne was when she recorded that song.

How do I "leave" without you?

The movie starts with our hero, Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) coming home to Alabama from being in the army for however long (well at least long enough to get his wife pregnant). He goes to a bar where his wife works. She is played by Monica Potter which is so crazy because I literally just binged watched five seasons of Parenthood (I'm on the last season now) in about three weeks. I feel like there's a word for that. They are being harassed by these two rednecks. They threaten to rape the wife, then start beating up Poe for really no reason and he kills one of them in self defense. We next see him in court where he is sentenced to eight years of prison just because he killed somebody in SELF DEFENSE when that guy was attempting to RAPE his WIFE and beat him up! WTF? That seems a little extreme, but the judge says with his years of experience in the army, he's a danger to society. It makes no sense at all! But we need to find a way to get our hero in prison, I guess...without him being a bad guy.

We next see the next eight years fly by in three minutes, I am not kidding you. This movie really wants to get to the point and I salute it for doing that. Let's get to the good stuff which we all know will happen on the plane. In the montage we see Poe writing letters to his wife, then daughter, Casey, when she gets old enough to write back. He is narrating this for us and I must say Cage's Southern accent is just flawless...except not. 

I was wondering why Casey has never visited her dad and we get this answer by Poe saying he doesn't want her to see her father this way, in jail. But then why hasn't his wife ever visited him? Unless she did and I just misunderstood. IDK...I guess it doesn't really matter. The last eight years really don't matter! It's time for Poe to go home! He gets to go on a plane with other prisoners that are being transported. I was so confused because I didn't know where they were. Why was he not in a prison in Alabama? I think they were somewhere in California, but I don't know why he would be serving time there. I guess it's so he would be on the prison plane, aptly named the Jailbird. I don't think the logistics really matter. We just need some bad guys on this plane! And bad guys we will get!

There's Cyrus aka Cyrus the Virus (John Malkovich) who is 39 years old and has spent the last 25 years in prison which means he would have been 14 when he was sent to prison! Good Lord, what the hell did he do at age 14 to get that sentence? I feel like somebody did their math wrong and the screenplay wasn't checked! They did say he killed other men in prison so in fairness, he probably got more time tacked on for that. There's gangster and Black Guerilla member Diamond Dog (Ving Rhames). There's Danny Trejo playing a rapist, there's a very young Dave Chappelle playing PinBall. I think he was in there for drugs. The only other "good" prisoner besides Poe is his cellmate and friend. I forget his name, but we'll call him Bubba because the actor played Bubba in Forrest Gump. I forget why he was in there. All the prisoners are seated in chairs and are handcuffed and leg cuffed. The really bad guys (the Cyrus the Viruses and Diamond Dogs) are locked in steel cages.

U.S. Marshall Vince Larkin (John Cusack) is overseeing the flight. He has a strict no guns allowed policy on the plane. (They only have one locked in a box and a few in storage). A DEA agent, Malloy, wants one of his men (disguised as a prisoner) to carry a gun. He is on the plane to get information....it's really not important because the decoy prisoner ends up dying...spoiler alert! Malloy sneaks a gun on him but it ends up working against him. Malloy is a real piece of work. He drives a fast, shiny convertible and when he shows Larkin, he tells him it's beautiful and Malloy replies with, "Babies are beautiful, sunsets are beautiful; this, this is effing spectacular!" The vanity plate reads "AZZ KIKR" (as in "ass kicker") He's a real douche bag!

Once the plane takes off, we see Dave Chappelle start taking a piece of string out of his mouth. Attached to this string is some lighter fluid and a match that he swallowed. (This isn't even plausible, is it?) Everyone is watching him...everyone, apparently, EXCEPT the guards. And there are at least four that I remember. Plus two pilots. What the hell are they doing? Playing rummy in the cargo area? They only have one job and that is to WATCH the DANGEROUS prisoners. Chappelle lights the guy next to him on fire (I would be so pissed if I were that guy!) and this starts a riot. The guards are trying to get fire extinguishers and in the chaos, Chappelle steals the keys and unlocks the cages. The pilots hear the commotion in the cockpit and the co-pilot takes the gun out of the lockbox and goes to inspect, but Cyrus (the Virus!) immediately takes the gun from him and shoots him. He also shoots a few of the (non-important) prisoners in the mayhem. He goes to the cockpit and tells the pilot to tell ground control that everything is under control.

They make a pitstop in Carson City to pick up some more prisoners. (They have everyone fooled because they're wearing the guards uniforms). Here we meet Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi) a man who "makes the Manson family look like the Partridge family." He killed 30 people in the East Coast. When we are first introduced to him, he has a mask on his face ala Hannibal Lecter and has to be led by poles attached to his armored suit. You think a guy they're treating like that would have the physique like The Rock, (excuse me, Dwayne Johnson), but no, it's scrawny little Steve Buscemi which makes it the most brilliant casting ever! Although probably the worst wrap-sheet of all the prisoners on the plane, he doesn't even engage in any of the chaos (besides Poe and Bubba). He kind of goes off and does his own thing or chats about his creepy stories. One of the hosts on How Did That Get Made? thought maybe he was wrongly accused which was hilarious because he tells this really gruesome story about what he did with one corpse after he killed her. So, no, he was NOT wrongly accused of murdering 30 people!

Pinball has died because they forgot him when the plane took off and he's running, trying to catch it and gets caught in the wheels...IDK, but when Poe and one of the bad guys (I forget who) go down there to inspect, Poe uses the corpse to write a message on Pinball's shirt before they release him. We next cut to a scene where an old couple are stopped at a red light in their car and a bird poops on the windshield and the old man complains about it. We all know what's going to happen next. We see Pinball's body falling from the sky, getting closer and closer to that intersection. The body thumps on the car, leaving a big dent. Now, I don't think you would just get a nice little thump if a body had just fallen thousands and thousands of feet from the sky. There is no way that message would be readable; that body would be obliterated! But because this is a Hollywood film, Larkin gets the message and knows what he needs to do. He steals the DEA douche's fast car and attempts to race the airplane to the next stop...which somehow he manages to do. That is one damn fast car!

So he gets there and meets up with Poe who is keeping up his cover to be part of the bad guy's crew so they don't suspect anything. Garland Greene does his own thing and sits down with a little girl who is playing pretend tea party at a nearby abandoned pool. He joins her and sings a song with her and it's so creepy because you're wondering if he's going to kill her...but he doesn't. Perhaps he's a changed man? The police come, but are not able to thwart the plane from taking off and Poe has hooked the nice sporty car to it and at this time the douchey DEA agent has come and he sees his car being flown in the air and then it crashes into thousands of pieces right in front of him and Larkin is like, "Sorry about your car." Haha!

Oh! I forgot to mention an "important" scene. Okay, so I should say it's Poe's daughter's birthday and he has somehow managed to get her a pink stuffed rabbit from the prison gift shop, I guess. One of the bad guys finds out he's actually a good guy and discovers the bunny when they're in the cargo area together and Poe tells him to "put the bunny down". Okay, I could have SWORN there was a weapon in the bunny like a knife or something. I thought the bunny's head gets ripped off and a knife is discovered by Poe and he kills the bad guy. That never happens. The bunny is never damaged (well, except it's filthy and soaking wet when it does get to the little girl, but it was never torn apart). Poe does kill the guy but not with help from the bunny.

Okay, so they finally land the plane in Las Vegas right in the middle of the Strip and they crash into a hotel and it hits a casino machine and lots of money comes out in the street. Diamond Dog and Cyrus the Virus escape but both are killed in their attempt. All the bad guys are either killed or caught. Poe is reunited with his wife and daughter and it is hilarious that he didn't want to his daughter to see him in jail, but now he's dirty with sweat and blood from all the killing he's done (of all bad guys, but still!) The last scene shows Garland Greene at a casino.

Now I love a good airplane action movie and I have reviewed a few. As far as how I would rank it against the others, I would put it higher than Passenger 57, but lower than Air Force One and Executive Decision. This movie is completely ridiculous and makes no sense, but it's a fun, dumb movie.

Ridiculous Coincidences

Serendipity
Director: Peter Chelsom
Cast: John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, Jeremy Piven, Molly Shannon, John Corbett, Bridget Moynahan, Eugene Levy
Released: October 5, 2001

I didn't see this movie when it was out in theaters, but I did see it on a theater screen on February 13, 2002 when my school screened it for free in the auditorium. My dorm was right next to the building with the auditorium so it was very convenient for me! Other movies I saw there (all free...who doesn't love a free movie?) include Vanilla Sky, Pearl Harbor, Not Another Teen Movie, Training Day, The Mummy Returns, and Legally Blonde. Pretty much any movie that was released in 2001!

It doesn't surprise me that they chose the week of Valentine's Day to screen this movie because it is a romantic comedy, but not as vapid and stupid as most romantic comedies can tend to be. You do need to suspend your belief at times with this film, otherwise you might be rolling your eyes and muttering, "What the...." or "Wait a minute...how is that even possible?" If you just sit back and enjoy the movie, it's very easy to do.

Sara (Beckinsale) and Jonathan (Cusack) bump into each other at Bloomingdales while Christmas shopping and both grab for the last pair of black gloves they both want. Even though they both have significant others, they shamelessly flirt with each other (and Jonathan even confesses his attraction to her...but who can blame him, Kate Beckinsale is a very attractive woman and she has a very adorable British accent) and share an ice cream sundae at a place called Serendipity where Sara explains to him why she loves the name of this ice cream parlor and what serendipity means. This all happens within in the first five minutes of the movie so they established the title of the movie pretty quickly!

They continue their quasi-date by going ice skating at Rockerfeller Center. Sara falls and cuts her arm and they make it seem like blood is gushing out of her arm, but in the next scene when Jonathan is putting a band-aid on her arm, there is no scratch on her at all! They are still flirting with each other and it's obvious they like each other and it's like just break up with your other significant others already! Sara, being into things happening for a reason, wants to be sure they are meant to be together and makes him do things only a beautiful woman with an adorable accent could get away with and still have the guy want to pursue her. She does this because when Jonathan was handing her number to her, a gust of wind swept it away and she thought it was a sign they weren't suppose to have any more contact. Instead she comes up with the idea of writing her name and number in a copy of "Love in the Time of Cholera" and tells him she's going to sell it to a random used bookstore tomorrow and if he ever finds it, then it will be a sign. She tells Jonathan to write his name on a five dollar bill and goes to a newsstand to buy something with it and if that bill makes back to her, then it's a sign.

Okay. Let's think about this rationally. I can buy the book being found even though there has to be hundreds of used book stores in New York. Obviously it's a well-known book and there are lots of copies (as we do see in the movie because he checks every copy of it to see if it's the one she had). But how many five dollar bills are in existence and this particular one could easily travel out of the city. Would it be a spoiler to say that both items come back into the movie?

Before they part ways, Sara has one more crazy experiment she wants to try. They go to the Waldorf Astoria where she tells him they will take separate elevators and if they both push the same button and end up on the same floor, then it's a sign they should be together. Why they just don't give each other their numbers and tell them they'll call the other if it doesn't work out with their current relationships, I don't know. So of course we see they both push the same button in their separate elevators (23) even though there are 47 floors. So that would never happen. Let's be real here. That would be really crazy odds for that to ever happen. Except that a father and his kid (dressed in a devil costume even though it's not Halloween....I guess they wanted to symbolize he was a terror?) gets on Jonathan's elevator and the kid pushes all the buttons thus making it take forever for Jonathan to reach his destined floor. He does cheat by checking every floor to see if Sara is there. She waits for him for awhile, but eventually, dejectedly leaves.

A year passes and to show time we have a montage of seasons passing, shadows, sun dials, and clocks. Why they just couldn't have a simple "One year later" on a black screen, I don't know. We see Jonathan at a big gathering where he is being toasted for his current engagement. We never see the woman he is next to, just her hand on his shoulder and we are all waiting with bated breath to see if it is Sara...but as the camera slowly pans over, we see it is not. It is Holly (Moynahan) who has nothing to do except to look pretty and tell Jonathan he's been acting distant lately. Jeremy Piven plays his best friend and gives the toast. Even though Jonathan's set to marry Holly in just a few days, he's still thinking about Sara.

Meanwhile, Sara is in San Francisco. Her best friend is played by Molly Shannon and her boyfriend, Lars (Corbett) is some goofy exotic flute player who has posters of himself with open shirts and does cheesy music videos. She is still thinking about Jonathan and decides to go to New York to "see what happens". I should mention that Lars asked her to marry her and she said yes.

Meanwhile, Jonathan finds a receipt inside the black glove he kept (Sara has the other) and sees an account number and sees if he can get Sara's information this way. Eugene Levy plays the salesman who works at the store that can help him, but he blackmails him by making him buy $700 worth of stuff so he can get his commission. He starts getting clues on how to contact Sara, but always ends up one step short in which he has to find another way around to get to the next step. But it's all a moot point anyway because....

....the book and the five dollar bill show up! But I already spoiled that for you! Oh and I should also add that there are several scenes where Jonathan and his friend are going somewhere that Sara and her friend are just leaving. Uh-huh. And then there's a scene where Jonathan gets tangled up in a dog's leash and just a few seconds later, the guy and the dog are going around the block...and then Sara gets tangled up in the leash! Oh, movie! So like I said, Jonathan has been checking all the copies of "Love in the Time of Cholera" whenever he walks past a used book store. Holly has noticed this and what is her wedding present to him but that novel! And of course it is THE novel. Awkward! He finally has Sara's full name and her phone number.

Meanwhile, Sara has decided that coming to New York was a mistake and is on the plane to fly back to San Francisco. Molly Shannon has stayed behind to attend a wedding (oh, I forgot to mention that she and Holly are friends....of course they are! They all see each other at the hotel when Jonathan is conveniently out). While waiting for takeoff, Sara buys a pair of headphones and realizes she has Molly's wallet because their looks similar. In an earlier scene, when the two friends are at Serendipity's (because of course), Molly puts the change in her wallet and we see the red ink with Jonathan's name and number on a five dollar bill! Oooh! Sara sees the familiar bill and snatches it from the flight attendant and runs off the plane. She goes to stop the wedding only to find out that it has been called off.

She and Jonathan find each other at the ice skating rink, kiss, get married, and live happily ever after. (Or at least we see they are still together one year later!)

Like I said, you just need to go with the movie to enjoy it because there are too many things that are way too coincidental and would never happen in the real life. But it is a feel-good movie and came out at a time when that's what people wanted most.

Will the real Anastasia please stand up?

Anastasia (1956)
Director: Anatole Litvak
Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, Helen Hayes
Released: 12/13/56

Oscar nominations:
Best Actress - Ingrid Bergman (won)
Best Score - Alfred Newman (lost to Victor Young for Around the World in 80 Days)

Anastasia (1997)
Directors: Don Bluth and Gary Goldman
Voice Talent: Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Angela Lansbury, Kelsey Grammar, Christopher Lloyd
Released: 11/21/97

Oscar nominations:
Best Original Musical or Comedy Score (lost to The Full Monty) Do they even still have this category?
Best Song - "Journey to the Past" (lost to "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic)

I have to admit, even though I did see the animated Anastasia film in the theaters, I was not very familiar with the story of the Romanovs until I recently listened to a Podcast about them, found their story quite fascinating and put these two movies in my Netflix queue.

If you're not familiar with Anastasia's story, here is a quick overview of it with help from the Podcast, Wikipedia, and notes I scribbled down while watching her Biography. She was born in 1901, the youngest daughter of Nicholas II, the Russian Tsar.  Her official title was  Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. Being born into a royal family, she resided in a palace with over a thousand rooms. (Dang, can you imagine if you had to be the interior designer for that place??)  In 1914 her father declared war on Germany and Austria and during his reign, Imperial Russia went from being a great world power to an economic and miliatry failure - 80% of his subjects were in poverty. The country became corrupt and Nicholas was blamed for everything wrong with Russia.  Let's just say he wasn't one of the best world rulers from history. The Romanovs fell completely out of power and Nicholas abdicated the throne in 1917 and his family and their loyal servants (eleven people in all) were placed under house arrest at the Alexadner Palace during the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks were now in power of Russia and they had to choose between murdering or exiling the family and wanting to take no chances of the Romanovs ever becoming in power again, they choose the former and murder the entire family in a small room in the palace in 1918.

However, it's leaked in the papers that not everyone died that fateful night and many people believe that there may be some survivors, especially that of Anastasia. In 1920 a woman who is about to commit suicide by throwing herself in a river in Berlin in rescued. She is mentally unstable and doesn't speak for weeks and has no identity. Coincidentally she has the same eye color, identical ears, and foot disorder the real Anastasia had and recognized people in photos that only Anastasia would know. However, despite all that, she failed to prove she really was the Grand Duchess by the German courts. The woman went by the name Anna Anderson and her claim to be Anastasia became known around the world and there was still speculation about was she or wasn't she? Turns out she was just a mentally disturbed woman who spent most of her life in asylums. Her DNA did not match that of the real Anastasia and in 1991 Nicholas and his three oldest daughters were exhumed from where they were believed to be burned and buried. In 2007 the body of Anastasia and her little brother were found quickly putting any claims that Anna Anderson really was Anastasia to rest.

Okay, I guess that wasn't that quick!

So while the real Anastasia perished along with her family and did not escape and live her life under the alias Anna Anderson, Hollywood still found her story fascinating and thought it made a great movie, which it does. Imagine not knowing where you came from and learn someday that you are from royal descent! Both movies follow the same plotline, beginning with Anastasia not knowing who she is or where she came from and wanting to have a sense of belonging. Both versions meet a man (who she'll eventually fall in love with...spoiler alert! ) who is trying to find someone they can teach to learn everything about Anastasia because her grandmother is offering anyone who finds her granddaughter a hefty cash prize. He is pleased when he finds this woman who could physically pass for the real Grand Duchess and teachers her everything she needs to know...while she begins to remember things on her own, because she really IS Anastasia and everything is coming back to her. She proves herself to her grandmother and a tearful reunion ensues and both movies end on a happy note. The animated film has musical numbers (I have the soundtrack and I LOVE "At the Beginning" and "Journey to the Past") and a villain with a campy sidetrick who is trying to kill Anastasia because he thought he had murdered all of the Romanovs. I loved the set decoration of the '56 version with all the antique European-style furniture.

The movies may have been based on something that happened in Russian history, but have been deemed fictitious, but nevertheless still a good story to tell even though it was only a fairy tale.