Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis (1991)

Director: Robert Iscove

Writer: Alan Sharp

Composer: Craig Safan

Starring: Stacy Keach, Richard Thomas, Steve Landesberg, Don Harvey, Robert Cicchini, David Caruso, Bob Gunton, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Jeffrey Nordling, Carrie Snodgress, Dale Dye, Gordon Clapp, Andrew Pine

More info: IMDb


Plot: True story of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, its crew's struggle to survive the sharks and exposure, and the captain's scape-goat court-martial.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I can only begin to imagine what it must be like to be stranded in the ocean with no one knowing you're there until many days later, and even then I'm only speculating the horror these men must have felt.  The story entered into the popular culture with Robert Shaw's incredible monologue in JAWS (1975).  He tells a chilling story that is based on true events.  This TV film does a pretty good job of recounting the events but they are, unfortunately, bound to the budget and limitations of the medium at the time.  It feels like a TV movie but the actual events still resound with horror.  Craig Safan's somber score is nice and it has hints of his excellent score for SON OF THE MORNING STAR from that same year.  Listen to the main theme from that picture; it's fantastic!  I'm really surprised that this story hasn't been told on the big screen.  Given the right talent, it could be one powerhouse of an emotional, exciting and horrific picture.  So far, the best filmed account of this story was told by Quint.  It's 40 years old this year and it never ceases to send chills through my body.

Prince Avalanche (2013)

Director: David Gordon Green

Writers: Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurosson, David Gordon Green, Sveinn Olafur Gunnarsson

Composers: Explosions in the Sky, David Wingo

Starring: Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsch, Lance LeGault, Joyce Payne, Gina Grande, Lynn Shelton, Larry Kretschmar, Enoch Moon, David L. Osborne Jr., Danni Wolcott, Morgan Calderoni, Savanna Porter, Juniper Smith

More info: IMDb

Plot: Two highway road workers spend the summer of 1988 away from their city lives. The isolated landscape becomes a place of misadventure as the men find themselves at odds with each other and the women they left behind.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No,

Here's another picture I missed at Sundance 2013.   It's Rudd & Hirsch's show all the way.  These two make a nice pair.  It's nice seeing Rudd stretching a bit, stepping away from comedy.  I like the guy.  The relationship between Alvin (Rudd) and Lance (Hirsch) does grow (Lance is the little brother of the woman Alvin is dating) into a friendship even if it's just a temporary one until they finish their lonely job.  The dialogue and situations feel pretty genuine.  That's a big plus for the picture as well as the performances.  The score is fine and it works for the film but I couldn't help but be reminded of dozens of scores just like it that you get with other films of this type and the kind of score you see all over the abundance of films at the Sundance Film Festival.  Really.  They're all over the place.  It's one of those low key, feel good stoundtracks that has the equivalent of a warm cup of cocoa.  I don't dislike it but it's the kind of score that's become all too common to the point you don't want to watch too many movies with them too close together or it'll turn you off of hot chocolate for a while.  As a film, it feels much like the score.  It's good but I didn't walk away from it feeling anything more than, "well, that was kind of nice and relaxing."

Wrong Cops (2013)

Director: Quentin Dupieux

Writer: Quentin Dupieux

Composer: Quentin Dupieux

Starring:  Mark Burnham, Eric Judor, Steve Little, Marilyn Manson, Grace Zabriskie, Arden Myrin, Eric Roberts, Eric Wareheim, Daniel Quinn, Izzy Palmieri, Hillary Tuck, Jennifer Blanc, Tim Trobec, Ray Wise

More info: IMDb

Plot: With the crime rate in Los Angeles at record-low levels, bored cops have nothing better to do than act like common criminals.

My rating:  7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

2013 was the first year I went to the Sundance Film Festival and I saw A LOT of movies that year. This was not one of them but I wish it had been.  It's pretty damn funny.  It's in the vein of SUPER TROOPERS (2001) but funnier.  The soundtrack is a lot of fun and plays a role on its own.  The cast is hilarious.  There are lots of little plot threads that all resolve in the final twenty minutes to the detriment of some of the characters.  It was a great how the threads wrapped up.  Marilyn Manson has an extended cameo. I didn't recognize him in the least.  Geez.  Oh, the camera zoom ins and outs had me giggling.  Whoever had that idea needs a hearty handshake.  They were brilliantly added at just the right moments.  I can't say enough about the cast.  Mark Burnham and Arden Myrin were tops for my money. 

The White Buffalo (1977)

Director: J. Lee Thompson

Writer: Richard Sale

Composer: John Barry

Starring: Charles Bronson, Jack Warden, Will Sampson, Kim Novak, Clint Walker, Stuart Whitman, Slim Pickens, John Carradine, Cara Williams, Shay Duffin, Clifford A. Pellow, Douglas Fowley, Ed Lauter, Martin Kove

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Two legendary enemies unite to fight the charging white beast!!

Plot:  Wild Bill Hickok hunts a white buffalo he has seen in a dream. Hickok moves through a variety of uniquely authentic western locations - dim, filthy, makeshift taverns; freezing, slaughterhouse-like frontier towns and beautifully desolate high country - before improbably teaming up with a young Indian named Crazy Horse to pursue the creature.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes but reluctantly.

#66 on Project: Badass Charles Bronson

BRONSON'S AGE: 55
LEVEL OF BADASSICITY (10 being the highest): 7.  He's so badass that he frightens the titular buffalo to be killed in a most gruesome fashion...and LIKE it!!!  Such sacrifices are sometimes required when in the presence of Bronson.

Bronson = Badass! He doesn't say much...he doesn't have to.

This is one weird as fuck western.  The story is odd, filming most of it in a sound stage is bizarre and it doesn't play out like you'd think.  It's filled with some great character actors that get their one scene to shine and get out.  The last half of the picture has only Bronson, Warden and Sampson in the snowy wilderness.  I can totally understand how the indoor shooting (for the exterior) would turn viewers off with a bellyful of laughter.  It's pretty bad and I'm very forgiving when it comes to stuff like that.  That's one of the reasons that I'm going to give this picture another chance somewhere down the road and I bet that perhaps it was done like that to project the dreamlike quality of it all.  John Barry's score is very different from what he usually did and that's pretty neat-o in my book. It's good and does a nice job of carrying the mystery of the film.   The effect of the stampeding white buffalo gets an extraordinary amount of mileage.  It looks like that second or two of footage gets at least six minutes throughout the picture.  In a weird way I kind of liked the awkwardness of the whole production.  I'm really curious as to how and why some of the production decisions were made.  I caught this on Netflix.  The DVD looks like it's an MGM burn-on-demand disc so it's probably bupkiss for extras.  If you're looking for something different in this genre then look no further. 

I Know That Voice (2013)

Director: Lawrence Shapiro

Writer: Brandon Sonnier

Composer: ???

Starring:  TONS of great talent, John DiMaggio, Kevin Conroy, Jim Cummings, Jason Marsden, Phil LaMarr, Maurice LaMarche, Laraine Newman, Rob Paulsen, Stephen Root, Jim Ward, Billy West, Nancy Cartwright, Hank Azaria, Edward Asner, Clancy Brown, June Foray, Stan Freberg, Seth Green, Matt Groening, Mark Hamill, Gary Owens, Dana Snyder

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A documentary that puts a face to a face to all the voices that we know and love.

Plot: Seldom seen and often heard, the voice actors behind "Futurama," "SpongeBob SquarePants" and many other animated shows discuss their amusing craft

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Sure.

Here's an underrated group of folks who don't get nearly the amount of credit they deserve.  When a big Hollywood animated film gets cast they usually fill it with movie stars regardless of their ability to act ONLY with their voice.  So often you get bland performances from voices you recognize because you've seen them act in live action films.  The REAL talent belongs to those folks whose main gig is voice acting.  They're the ones who put the bomp sha bomp sha bomp behind the animated visuals to the cartoons and films we grew up with.  That list of participants in this film is a fraction of the fine folks we get to see (and hear) in this documentary.  It's a gas to put a face to the voice.  I've been a huge fan of Maurice LaMarche, for example, for more than twenty years and I finally got to see what he looks like.  Granted, there wasn't a Goddamned thing stopping me from looking on the internet in all that time but there he was talking about his craft...and it's just that, a craft. That's one thing you'll glean from this by the time you're watching the end credits.  Like everything, there is an art to voicing animation and it's not just being able to do a funny voice like you do when you're hamming it up with your friends.  If you think it's that easy then you're wrong, or you're in that exclusive minuscule percentile that has a natural talent for it and you should be working in a studio instead of reading this silly blog.  It's currently on Netflix streaming.

The Recruit (2003)

Director: Roger Donaldson

Writers: Roger Towne, Kurt Wimmer, Mitch Glazer

Composer: Klaus Badelt

Starring: Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynahan, Gabriel Macht, Kenneth Mitchell, Mike Realba, Ron Lea, Karl Pruner

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Trust. Betrayal. Deception. In the C.I.A. nothing is what it seems.

Plot: A brilliant young CIA trainee is asked by his mentor to help find a mole in the Agency.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Try not to think about this one and you'll be better for it except an hour in it'll probably hit you without too much effort.  Pacino is fun and Farrell does a fine job.  I like how the story plays with convention and cliches but what I don't like is how it gave up on those in the third act and decides to roll with a few.  That was shit.   Really.  It's one little twist after another and in the final half hour it goes typical Hollywood and rides that train 'till it gets to the station.  What a crock of shit.  Because of that, it boils down to no longer caring about the characters (except the wild Pacino man doin' his thing) or their fates.  What a missed opportunity.  How would I have liked it to have gone?  Beats me.  That would require me to spend time with this and that's not gonna happen.  The Touchstone DVD has some extras that I'm not going to watch like a 16 minute featurette Spy School: Inside the CIA Training Program...you know, like they're REALLY going to tell you a single truth about how they train (ugh), 4 deleted scenes with optional commentary from Donaldson and Farrell, and an audio commentary with the pair.  It's neat that Farrell participated at that level with the commentaries.  It's a real shame the ending went conventional after spending so much time (at least seemingly) trying to do something different in building up to it. 

V/H/S/2 (2013)

Directors: Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sanchez, Timo Tjahjanto, Adam Wingard

Writers: Simon Barrett, jamie Nash, Timo Tjahjanto, Gareth Evans, Jason Elsener, John Davies, Brad Miska

Composers: James Guymon, Steve Moore, Aria Prayogi, Fajar Yuskemal

Starring: Too many people to list.  Sorry, cast.

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Who's tracking you?

Plot: Searching for a missing student, two private investigators break into his house and find collection of VHS tapes. Viewing the horrific contents of each cassette, they realize there may be dark motives behind the student's disappearance.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I REALLY liked V/H/S (2012).  It was different and, what's more, the stories were well crafted and damn entertaining.  The wraparound story was weak but I'm not watching a horror anthology for the wraparound business.  The wraparound on this first sequel isn't as weak as the first film but it's got issues.  Again, I'm not watching this for that.  The best story was "A Ride in the Park" and it was the best by a good stretch.  I liked where it kept going, hitting one interesting beat after another.  The other stories were OK but there's little stuff with each one that bothered me enough to stop caring before it was over.  Some of these issues were present in the first film but the stories were told so well that I could overlook them.  Now these things are back in the sequel and they're totally unnecessary and bothersome. I'll watch the third one, hoping they try and stick to some semblance of realism (I'm getting sick and damn tired of seeing the images tweaking out like micro power outages or surges - it's getting fucking old and annoying as fuck).  I realize it's a difficult thing to pull off, using this found footage gimmick with the horror anthology. At least there was one story that was worth watching it for.  There's usually at least one.