Monsters, Inc.
Directors: Pete Docter, Lee Unrich, and David Silverman
Voice Talent: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly
Released: November 2, 2001
Viewed in theaters: November 3, 2001
Oscar nominations:
Best Animated Feature (lost to Shrek)
Best Original Song - "If I Didn't Have You" by Randy Newman (won)
Best Score - Randy Newman (lost to Howard Shore for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)
Best Sound Editing (lost to Pearl Harbor)
Monsters, Inc. is the reason I see all Pixar (or any other animated) movies at nine in the evening (or, at the very least on a weekday during the school year). Why, you ask? Well, because I did not have a good viewing experience seeing this and it has haunted me to this day that this was only the second time I've seen the movie. When this movie came out I was living in a small town that only had one theater (and not a very comfortable or big one at that). It was literally only one theater where only one movie played. (Some other films I saw at this theater include The Fellowship of the Ring (that was a big gamble for me as I knew it was a long-ass movie and I went in knowing nothing about Tolkien, so if I didn't like it, it was going to be a long and painful experience for me, but luckily I ended up really getting into the movie and was ready for the next installment when it ended!), A Beautiful Mind, I Am Sam, and Panic Room.
So when this movie came out I saw it because, even though Pixar was quite young at this time (Monsters, Inc. is their fourth movie), I was a fan of the first two Toy Story movies. (I have never seen A Bug's Life). I honestly don't remember how crowded the theater was, but like I said, it was pretty small so even if the whole theater wasn't packed, that still makes a huge difference. I just remember there was some young kid (maybe two) who were talking/crying/ kicking my seat (they were seated behind me)/just basically annoying the sh*t out of me during the movie, hence making it hard to enjoy the movie so I've always associated this movie with negative thoughts and that's why I never revisited it until recently. I vowed to myself that I would never see another animated movie during the weekend or weekday when kids are out of school. Fast forward to two years later when I see Finding Nemo in a huge theater PACKED with screaming kids. Yeah, I'm an idiot who didn't follow my own advice. However, I saw Wall-E at nine in the evening; I saw Up at nine in the evening; I saw Toy Story 3 at nine in the evening; I saw How To Train Your Dragon and its sequel at nine in the evening; I saw Inside Out at nine in the evening; you get the picture.
Anyway, I'm glad I finally gave Monsters, Inc. a second chance because I really enjoyed it and it's a really cute movie. However, if you really stop to think about it, the basic premise is a little messed up. It's about a society of monsters who get their energy source from the screams of children, so every night they sneak into their rooms via their bedroom closet to scare the young children all over the world, then capture the screams of terrified children, bottling them up into a air-tight container (the screams, not the children!) Yeah, just a little messed up. However, this being a Pixar/Disney movie, it's a very cute and kid-friendly movie. Obviously.
The movie focuses on two monsters named Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) and James P. Sullivan, or, as his friends call him, Sully (voiced by John Goodman) who work at the energy-producing factory, Monsters, Inc. in the town of Monstropolis. The company's motto is "We Scare Because We Care." They work on the scare floor, a huge room that has access to every bedroom closet door of all the children in the world, so, as you can imagine, there are millions upon millions of doors. There is a chart to keep track of where and when they've been and every child has their own "monster" so they always get scared by the same monster because they (the monsters) knows what each child is afraid of. I'm not really sure how they keep track of all the doors and who's been scared, but somehow they manage to keep it all organized. I don't know which is more convoluted: the scare floor in Monsters, Inc. or Riley's head in Inside Out!
Their job is to obtain the screams of children so that Monstropolis is able to function and be the bright and vibrant city that it is. Sully, a large purple and blue fuzzy monster with horns and a long tail is a scarer which means he goes into the bedrooms to scare the children while Mike, his assistant (basically a large green talking eyeball with arms and legs), gives him the stats and numbers he needs. Each scarer has their own assistant and there is a bit of a rivalry between the two top scarers, Sully and a sleazy chameleon-like monster who can blend in with his surroundings, Randall (voiced by Steve Buscemi).
Even though the monsters who are scarers are big and imposing and have sharp teeth/claws/horns, the most amusing part of the movie is that children are considered toxic to the monster world so if something that belongs to them comes back to the monsters' world (or, God forbid, an actual living child being), they treat it as a risk and take it very seriously. When they enter a room, they will hop around, making sure not to touch or come into contact with any toys or clothes laying on the floor and they never physically touch the children, just scare them, capture the screams, and get out of there. We see what happens when one monster has a child's sock stuck to his back after coming back from a job and the CDA (Child Detection Agency) is called and they put everybody into lock down. The monsters who work for the CDA are all wearing haz-mat suits and helmets and carefully dispose of the sock (by blowing it up), then they shave the poor monster who accidentally brought back the sock and scrub him ten times over. They went through all this trouble for a single sock, just imagine what would happen if an actual child made their way into Monstropolis!
And that is exactly what will happen. When Sully goes to deliver some important paperwork for Mike (he can't because he has a date with his girlfriend, Cecelia (Jennifer Tilly) a Medusa-inspired monster with snakes for her hair; I did love the scene where she tells Mike she's thinking of getting a haircut and all the snakes are very concerned about that), he sees a closet door is out and open. What he doesn't know is that Randall is the one who left the door activated because he is up to no good. He also leaves the door unattended so he doesn't know that Sully has gone through the door to check what's going on. This is where he meets "Boo" (because she likes yelling "Boo!"), a two-year-old child who takes a quick liking to Sully, calling him, "Kitty!" (Though I don't think Sully looks like a cat...) When she grabs hold of Sully's tail, he quickly untangles herself from him and puts her back in her room and gets tangled in a bunch of her toys as he stumbles out of her room. He quickly disposes of all the objects (which includes a stuffed Nemo toy) by flushing them down a toilet. There is a great reveal when he turns away and the audience sees Boo is on his back.
Sully knows he has to send her back to her world, but Randall has already put away her door and I guess it would raise an alarm if Sully were to re-activate it because he doesn't want anyone (especially the CDA) to know that a toxic child is among them. He gets Mike involved and he starts freaking out and when Boo sneezes in his direction he sprays disinfect on his eye which turns it red and makes him dance around in agony. I admit, I laughed hard at that. It doesn't take long for Sully to realize that children (at least not this one) aren't toxic and they even realize that her laughter is quite strong and that all along they should have been capturing children's laughter instead of their screams.
Sully and Mike are determined to get Boo safely back to her home, which they do, but not without a few obstacles in their way. They have to go through this maze of thousands of doors which is a fun scene. It's very bittersweet when Sully finally has to say goodbye to Boo; they have to destroy her door once she's back in her house because she now knows about the Monster World and they can't have her making any contact with them. Even though we know Randall is the bad guy, there's also another twist of someone conspiring with him, but of course everything works out in the end and Sully even gets to visit Boo one last time after Mike fixed her door.
You think that would be the idea for the sequel; Sully visiting Boo every now and then and maybe getting into some shenanigans in the human world, but they went for a prequel for the second movie. I added Monsters' University to my Netflix queue after I saw the first movie and I think I enjoyed it more than I was expecting. Most people have this at the lower end of their Netflix rankings and while it wouldn't be near the top of mine, I thought it was quite delightful and I had fun watching it. Also, my monster would be the dean of the university, Dean Hardscrabble who was voiced by Hellen Mirren. The design of that monster was nightmare fuel with her dragon wings and centipede legs...eesh!
Cast: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Billy Bob Thornton, Steve Buscemi, Jason Isaacs, Michael Clarke Duncan, Owen Wilson
Released: July 1, 1998
Oscar nominations:
Best Sound (lost to Saving Private Ryan)
Best Sound Effects Editing (lost to Saving Private Ryan)
Best Visual Effects (lost to What Dreams May Come)
Best Song - Dianne Warren for "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" (lost to Stephen Schwartz for "When You Believe" from The Prince of Egypt)
Deep Impact
Director: Mimi Leder
Cast: Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Elijah Wood, Leelee Sobieski, Vanessa Redgrave, James Cromwell, Maximilian Schell
Released: May 8, 1998
Spoilers, obviously!
Remember in 1998 when two movies about asteroids hurtling towards Earth to destroy all mankind were released within months of each other? Those movies were Armageddon and Deep Impact and I'm going to review them both because it just makes sense to do them at the same time! I'm not going to make you wait with bated breath and I'll just come out and say it now: I don't really care for either one. If I had to recommend one, I'd probably say Deep Impact, but ONLY because it's half an hour shorter (but still long....Armageddon is TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG (but yet feels longer!)) and at least I didn't get sick watching Deep Impact as the cuts in Armageddon only last about a second. In fact, I read the IMDb trivia for that movie and they said the average cut lasted about 1.5 seconds! It was like, Cut to Bruce Willis! Now to Ben Affleck! Now to Liv Tyler! Now back to Willis! Oh, we need to see Tyler again! Oh, wait, don't forget Affleck! This was pretty much the entire movie (with the other actors throw in, too of course). I felt like this movie was made by someone with ADD! However, I would recommend this one over Deep Impact if someone was looking for something to watch with friends and just get drunk and made fun of something because this movie is absolutely ridiculous (another piece of trivia I learned via IMDb is that (and I hope this is true!) NASA shows this movie as part of their management training program and asks new managers to spot as many mistakes as they can and the most number spotted has been 168!) and has more funnier moments than Deep Impact (mostly unintentionally!), which is the more serious film. While I immensely disliked Armageddon, I don't think it's Michael Bay's worst movie, which is saying something! That's when you know I really hate other movies of his!
The premise of Armageddon is that an asteroid, the size of Texas, is hurtling towards Earth and there is only eighteen days to stop it. (There's even an ominous countdown clock!) If it hits, all life on Earth, as we know it, will be wiped out. There's only one man for the job and his name is Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis). Is Harry the best NASA has ever seen? No, because his field of expertise isn't even in astronomy. He's an oil driller. Yep. You heard me. But he's just not any oil driller, he's the BEST deep-sea oil driller in the world! Six billion people on the planet and he was the one they called. NASA scientist Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) wants to split the asteroid in two (so then we'll have two asteroids the size of Colorado?) and divert them away from Earth.
"Mr. Wizard". Heh!
Truman introduces Stamper to his team of eight astronauts who have been learning to drill for the past eight months in preparation for the mission. Stamper is not impressed with them or the "piss poor" production of his rig they put together. Jason Isaacs plays another NASA scientist who helped put the rig together and Stamper calls him "Mr. Wizard". Um, hello! He is a wizard! He's purebred wizard, Lucius Malfoy! That made me LOL when he said that. Stamper claims he's the best driller in the world (just because you say it over and over doesn't mean it's true!) because he WORKS with the best and he wants his own men up there with him. Haha, I read on the IMDb trivia that Ben Affleck told Michael Bay, "Wouldn't it be easier for NASA to train astronauts to drill rather than training drillers to be astronauts?" and Bay told him to shut up. But he's right! It makes so much more sense that way! If this is true (and I'm sure it is), I bet Bay put in that line where Stamper asks Truman, "All they gotta do is drill? No spacewalking? No crazy astronaut stuff?" after he had that conversation with Affleck just so the audience wouldn't be thinking the same thing he did cuz he knew they would!
So Stamper rounds up his rag tag team of oil drillers. Even though they're the best team of oil drillers a man could have, they're all pretty much a bunch of imbeciles and dopes. I honestly don't remember any of the characters' name and even when I looked them up online, they still didn't register with me, so I'll just call them by their actors' names. Steve Buscemi plays a horny guy; Michael Clark Duncan's character is a big, burly guy who looks intimidating, but deep down, he's really sensitive and just a big teddy bear; Owen Wilson plays a dim-witted rancher who's also a geologist. Will Patton plays a gambler who lost his wife (or girlfriend?) because of that and never got to have a relationship with his son. (Spoiler alert: he will at the end of the movie). And there's other characters played by not as famous people.
Also on Harry's team is AJ (Ben Affleck) who happens to be dating Harry's daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler) and this does not please Harry. Harry raised his daughter her whole life and she grew up on the oil rig with him and the other men that work for him. She calls her father by his first name and it's so blatant how they shove it down your throat because, literally, in every line Grace speaks to her father, she ends it with his name. Such as, "I've been seeing AJ for five months, HARRY." Or "What about having a life, HARRY." Or "Who is the hypocrite here, HARRY?" Or "You listen to me, HARRY!" It's like, we get it, Michael Bay, she doesn't call her father "Dad" and they don't have a close relationship. Her mother left when she was really young and she was raised by a bunch of "roughnecks". A couple of the guys even tell Harry, THEIR BOSS, about what a "hottie" and a "babe" Grace has grown into. Really, what kind of moron would you have to be to speak that way about your boss's daughter? So stupid. And what makes it even grosser is that the comment is made that they all helped raise her, so they're all, in a way, father figures to Grace. So, eww. (To be fair, it was only Buscemi, Wilson, and the fat guy commenting on how hot she is, but still...)
This movie has probably what is the worst scene ever in the history of cinema. It is so bad and cringe- worthy. If you've seen this movie, you know what I'm talking about, don't you. I just have two words for you: Animal. Crackers. OMG, that scene is SOOOOOOOO bad! SO, SO, SO BAD! As if that scene isn't bad enough, Grace then asks AJ, "Do you think it's possible somebody else is doing the same exact thing somewhere else right now?" No, Liv Tyler, I really doubt nobody else is playing with animal crackers on their significant other's body right now! Aurgh, that scene is so stupid!!
The men agree to destroy the asteroid because they can't say no to their boss who tells them they can't refuse the U.S. Government in asking for their help to save the planet. There is an amusing scene where Stamper reads a list of requests from his employees to Truman about what they want if they complete and accomplish their mission. This includes having speeding tickets wiped from their record, being able to stay at the White House, and never having to paying taxes again. I mean, who can blame them? If you were tasked with having to save the world, you would want something out of it too! I would certainly be expected to be owed big time!
They have about fifteen days to train to go into space. William Fichtner plays one of the people who is in charge of training them and when we get a shot of the crew walking in slow motion, he exclaims, "Talk about the wrong stuff!" which made me groan. This includes getting physical exams, getting psych evaluations, flying in fighter jets to get used to traveling at fast speeds, training to know what it's like to be in space. They keep the fact that a huge asteroid is about to strike Earth a secret because they don't want mass hysteria and panic to ensue, which I understand. But about six days before the mission, a chunk of the asteroid hits East Asia and kills 50,000 people in Shanghai with a huge tidal wave. Then Paris gets hits soon after and now the entire world knows what's going on and about the mission. There is an unsettling scene at the beginning of the movie when New York is hit and you see one of the World Trade Center buildings with a gaping hole through it...a little too real to life.
The men go up in space and there's lots of action and quick jump cuts. A few of them die. But then we get to the point where one of them has to sacrifice themselves and AJ draws the short end of the stick for that (literally). However, Harry tricks him and takes his place, telling him to take care of his daughter. By this time he has approved of Grace and AJ being together. This makes AJ upset. I can understand he doesn't want Harry sacrificing his life because he is his fiancee's father (oh, did I mention AJ asked Grace to marry him and she said yes?), but did he really want to sacrifice his own life when he had a fiancee waiting for him? Dumbass. And let's be honest, Grace would much rather have him come back than her father. Okay, maybe that's a little cold-hearted to say. There was a scene that got me a little teary-eyed when Harry is saying goodbye to his daughter who can see and talk to him via a screen at NASA headquarters.
Harry sacrifices himself to save humanity, so he really should have a planet named after him. In fact, they should have just renamed Earth "Stamper". I mean, the dude scarified himself to save not only the entire human race, but the entire ecosystem on earth. If anyone should not have to pay taxes for the rest of their lives, it's Grace...and AJ since he is getting married to her. The movie ends with their wedding. Cue the Aerosmith song...you know the one!
Armageddon was the bigger success at the box office between the two movies which isn't a surprise because it did have the bigger stars and had more of a budget so it was more glossier. The first hour of Deep Impact is really boring, but the second hour gets more interesting with its premise, although I don't think they executed it as well as they could have. I think Deep Impact would have been better as a mini series than a two hour movie. With this movie, you're getting four different perspectives from four different characters. The character we get the most focus on is an MSNBC journalist Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni - yes, I know there's an accent over the "e" and her name is "Tay-a" and not "tea", but I don't know how to add on the accent!) This is a woman in her mid-30s who is acting like a petulant child because her parents (Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell) are divorced. To make matters worse, her father is getting married to a woman only two years older than Jenny herself. Jenny is investigating what she thinks is an affair the Secretary of Treasury (James Cromwell) is having with a woman when he suddenly resigns. But after doing some research, she realizes she mistook what she heard as a woman's name, "Ellie" for "E.L.E." which stands for "Extinction Level Event." Morgan Freeman plays the President and he is way more presidential than the President in Armageddon. After Jenny finds out there's an asteroid (and this one is only the size of NYC, so it has nothing on the Armageddon asteroid! Cuz Bay does it bigger and better!), the President tells the American public that it is projected to hit the earth within a year and that he has assembled a team of astronauts (this time the are fully prepared astronauts and not just oil drillers!) to stop the comet. Even though it is significantly smaller than the asteroid in Armageddon, it is still big enough to cause extinction. For the past eight months, the United States and Russia have been building the largest spaceship ever constructed. It's called the Messiah and is being built in orbit around the Earth. Robert Duvall plays the veteran astronaut in charge of the crew, Captain Tanner. His crew also includes Jon Favreau and Blair Underwood. This movie has a lot of "Hey, it's that guy!" moments. (Or, "Hey, it's that woman!") Other people of note in this movie are Kurtwood Smith (the dad from That '70s Show), Laura Innes (Dr. Weaver from ER), Dougray Scott, Mike O'Malley (Kurt's dad from Glee), and Richard Schiff (Toby Ziegler from The West Wing).
Also in this movie are Elijah Wood and Leelee Sobieski who play a high school couple named Leo and Sarah. Their story never links with any of the other characters in this movie which is really weird because you would think all the stories would link together. I know Jenny and the President meet and Captain Tanner and the President meet, but I can't remember if Jenny and Tanner are ever in a scene together. But the high schoolers and their families are never in any scenes with the other main characters of the movie. So their role is that they discovered the asteroid. This happens two years before it actually hits. They're with their astronomy professor and he is looking up something on his computer and discovers the asteroid, but as he's going to tell someone, he gets hit by a truck and his car explodes in a fiery ball. We then get text on the screen that reads "One year later". I guess even though he died, the U.S. government knew about it since they were already preparing for the mission to divert the comet. Since Leo and his teacher discovered it, they name the asteroid after them. Like would you really want a killing machine named after you? While watching this, I couldn't help noticing that Elijah Wood will play the exact same character again later in the same year in The Faculty. He discovers the asteroid (well, with help) in this movie and he's the one to discover the aliens in that movie and both are from outer space and he gets on the cover of a news magazine in both films. The only difference is he's the main character in that movie and he's more ancillary in this.
Okay, let's get to the part when it starts to get interesting. The first hour is just setting everything up and meeting the characters, and, like I said, it's boring. But I started to pay more attention again when President Morgan Freeman came on TV and announced that while they were able to detonate the asteroid with the Messiah, it did not succeed in destroying it and instead it has broken into two pieces: one is six miles wide, and the other about a mile and both are still heading towards Earth. He tells the American audience that while they've been "hoping and working for the best", they've also been "preparing for the worst." Working with the Russians, they have another plan to divert the two large comets away from Earth. However, their plan can only happen when they are only hours from striking the planet. But in case that fails too and the asteroids do hit, he tells his audience that they have been preparing in case they need to repopulate the Earth again and that an underground bunker has been being built in the limestone caves of Missouri. There is a network of caves that will allow one million people to live there for two years (the time it will take for the sky to clear of dust). Not only will there be people, but also seeds, plants and animals, "enough to start over". A computer will randomly select 800,000 Americans to join the 200,000 scientists, doctors, engineers, teachers, soldiers, artists that have already been selected. (I guess they already had their ow lottery - but, wait! What if you were a doctor and weren't one of the 200,000 selected, but would you be able to go if you were one of the 800,000 "normal" people selected? Do the non-selected scientists, doctors, engineers, teachers, soldiers, and artists get a second chance when they draw for the general public or was that their only chance? I'm so confused!) Basically what President Morgan Freeman is telling the American audience is, "Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'!" I guess if you were getting this bad news delivered to you, you'd want it to be from the soothing voice of Morgan Freeman.
Jenny delivers the details of the lottery on the news. The biggest kicker is that nobody over the age of 50 will be selected (the exception being if they are one of the 200,000 pre-selected who have knowledge in a certain field). While she says this, they show her mother watching the news and I felt so bad for her. (She later kills herself, good job stupid lottery people who make these stupid rules). I can understand if they wouldn't allow anyone over 80, even over 70, but I still feel like people in their 50s and 60s are not THAT old. And if there's going to be an age limit, why stop at 50? You only have 800,000 spots for the entire country which was what back in '98? 250 million people? Why have anyone over the age of 30? Why don't they just have the age range be 12-30? That way you don't have to worry about baby-sitting annoying little kids and people are still young enough they can repopulate the world. Seriously, if they're not going to let people over 50, they might as well do it that way! Maybe I'm over thinking this way too much. I think this whole concept is a great social experiment, but they don't really delve into it that much. Like I said, this movie would have been better served as a mini series.
A few special snowflakes have been pre-selected. This includes Jenny because she's an MSNBC reporter? And Leo and his family because he discovered the comet that's going to kill everyone. Sarah's family, however, is not selected (awkward!) So even though they're only 17, Leo decides he's going to marry her and basically green card her so she can get in the shelter. (They missed a golden opportunity not casting a Hispanic actress!) Sarah agrees to do it if it also means her parents and baby brother get space in the caves too. They seem to get the ok, however on the day when they are picked up by the military who is driving them to the caves, Sarah's parents and brother are denied access and she refuses to leave them, which I don't blame her. They're from Richmond, Virginia, and when Leo and his family get to the bunker caves in Missouri, Leo decides he needs to go all the way back to Richmond to get Sarah. Virginia and Missouri are not that close! Why didn't he think of this sooner? His parents (his dad is played by Schiff) are reluctant about him going back, for, like, half a second, then they're like, "Yeah, you better go and get her."
Oh, yeah, they're also letting two of each animal into the bunkers ala Noah's Ark and we see people with their young children who didn't get in, protesting. I love animals, but it is ridiculous they're giving up space that could have been used to save PEOPLE'S LIVES for baby elephants and giraffes (no matter how cute they are).
So the asteroid is getting closer and closer. Jenny gives her spot of safety up to Dr. Weaver and her young daughter. She goes to make amends with her father because they had a huge fight and they embrace as a huge tidal wave comes for them. The crew on the space shuttle sacrifice themselves to destroy the other comet. Leo gets Sarah and her parents tell her to go with him and take the baby. I don't understand how all these people outran a tsunami...., but they just climb up a mountain and they're fine.
President Morgan Freeman is also alive and tells everyone that pretty much the entire U.S. from the East Coast to Ohio and Tennessee has been wiped out, but that they will prevail as a nation. I remember watching this movie when it first came out and thinking, "Oh, good I would have survived because that terrifying 1,000 foot wave wouldn't have reached me!"
Okay, that's it for now. I'm a gettin' the hell outta here!
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.
Fargo
Directors: Joel and Ethan Cohen
Cast: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stomare
Released: April 5, 1996
Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to The English Patient)
Best Director - Joel Cohen (lost to Anthony Mingella for The English Patient)
Best Actress - Frances McDormand (won)
Best Supporting Actor - William H. Macy (lost to Cuba Gooding Jr. for Jerry Maguire)
Best Original Screenplay - Joel and Ethan Cohen (won)
Best Film Editing (lost to The English Patient)
Best Cinematography (lost to The English Patient)
I have never seen The English Patient, so I can't knock it, but I'm willing to bet that if I did see it, I would like Fargo better. Fargo was my first introduction to the Cohen brothers and probably my favorite movie of theirs (although I really liked No Country For Old Men).
Even though the film is called Fargo, it mostly takes place in Minnesota. I have been to Minnesota several times and they really do talk with that accent like they do in the movie. I remember one particular time I was at the Mall of America in 2000 and when I was in the dressing room of Wet Seal or The Limited or one of those clothing stores and I heard a saleswoman say, "You betcha!" to somebody. I almost started laughing out loud right there because all I could think of was this movie and how true they captured the accents and language of the northern Mid-west.
The film takes place in 1987 Minneapolis and used car salesman Jerry Lundergaard (William H. Macy) needs a way to get money fast due to his financial problems. Instead of asking his rich father-in-law for a loan, he hires two criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stomare) from Fargo to kidnap his wife, Jean, and ask for a ransom from his wife's father. Carl (Buscemi) is a small, mouthy guy described as an "odd fellow" by witnesses and Gaear (Stomare) is a tall, silent guy who doesn't much care for Carl and his excessive chattering. The plan is for Carl and Gaear to ask for $80,000 from Jean's dad and in exchange they will get a new car and half the money although Jerry plans to tell his father-in-law that the ransom is a million so he will get more money.
The kidnapping scene is played for laughs at first. Jean is at home watching TV and it's broad daylight outside when she sees the two men with crowbars approach the back door and are obviously trying to break in. They're not even trying to be discreet about it. Once they do get it, the scene turns more scary when you realize she really is in trouble when they chase her around the house and she nearly breaks her neck when she's wrapped around the shower curtain (from hiding in the shower) and trips and falls down the stairs. The two men keep her wrapped up in the backseat of their new car and while driving though Brainerd (home of Paul Bunyon!), they are stopped by a highway patrol man because their new car does not have plates. Carl says he will get rid of him but when Jean starts whimpering in the backseat, Gaear kills the patrol man. While Carl is trying to move his body from the road, one lone car passes them and obviously sees the dead man being dragged by Carl. Gaear goes after them and runs the driver and his passenger off the road.
All three bodies are discovered the next day and the very pregnant local police chief, Marg Gunderson (Frances MacDormand) is on the case. I felt for her having to get up early and go out in that cold snow! I have never lived in Minnesota or anywhere up north, but I know how brutal the winters can get!
One thing leads to another and things only get worse for Jerry. His plan may have seemed simple on paper, but after the three people were killed, things changed, and more people end up being murdered from this whole ordeal. This includes Carl, who after being killed by his partner who can't take him anymore, throws his body in a wood chipper, which is probably one of the most iconic moments of the movie. It's certainly the one I remember the most!
It's a dark movie, but with lots of laughs (more "Oh my God, did they really do that?" type laughs, not belly laughs) and highly recommended
The movie focuses on two monsters named Mike Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) and James P. Sullivan, or, as his friends call him, Sully (voiced by John Goodman) who work at the energy-producing factory, Monsters, Inc. in the town of Monstropolis. The company's motto is "We Scare Because We Care." They work on the scare floor, a huge room that has access to every bedroom closet door of all the children in the world, so, as you can imagine, there are millions upon millions of doors. There is a chart to keep track of where and when they've been and every child has their own "monster" so they always get scared by the same monster because they (the monsters) knows what each child is afraid of. I'm not really sure how they keep track of all the doors and who's been scared, but somehow they manage to keep it all organized. I don't know which is more convoluted: the scare floor in Monsters, Inc. or Riley's head in Inside Out!
Their job is to obtain the screams of children so that Monstropolis is able to function and be the bright and vibrant city that it is. Sully, a large purple and blue fuzzy monster with horns and a long tail is a scarer which means he goes into the bedrooms to scare the children while Mike, his assistant (basically a large green talking eyeball with arms and legs), gives him the stats and numbers he needs. Each scarer has their own assistant and there is a bit of a rivalry between the two top scarers, Sully and a sleazy chameleon-like monster who can blend in with his surroundings, Randall (voiced by Steve Buscemi).
Sully and Mike are determined to get Boo safely back to her home, which they do, but not without a few obstacles in their way. They have to go through this maze of thousands of doors which is a fun scene. It's very bittersweet when Sully finally has to say goodbye to Boo; they have to destroy her door once she's back in her house because she now knows about the Monster World and they can't have her making any contact with them. Even though we know Randall is the bad guy, there's also another twist of someone conspiring with him, but of course everything works out in the end and Sully even gets to visit Boo one last time after Mike fixed her door.
