A Perfect Murder
I’ve always enjoyed this 1998 remake of Dial M for Murder. Michael
Douglas (The Jewel of the Nile) is
superb as always, Gwyneth Paltrow (Malice)
is well cast as the ditsy but mostly innocent wife and Viggo Mortensen (G.I. Jane) may be monotone here but has
good presence and you can tell there’s a nice healthy layer of scumbag just
under the surface. Dial M is the better film but A
Perfect Murder is kinda more entertaining and so for me falls into the
category of movies that aren’t better than the original (or first installment,
if a sequel) but would rather see over the original most times.
Anyway, what I really wanted to bring up is how Gwyneth in
this picture is the most unlucky woman in the world. She not only married a total piece of shit
(Douglas) who can’t manage his finances and wants to murder his wife, but she
also falls in love with some asshole that’s playing her for her money. Ok, yes, she fooled around on her husband
which she probably shouldn’t have done but the fact remains that the two main
men in her life want to kill her and steal her dough. That’s a pretty shitty situation to be in.
Even if you take out the cheating aspect Michael Douglas was
probably gonna try to have her offed anyway.
He was on the brink of financial ruin so he was gonna find a way to get
to his wife’s money. And murder is his
only option if he wants it all.
It’s a solid thriller.
Not anything great but I’d still recommend it.
Weekend at Bernie’s Music
Andy Summers, guitarist from The Police, wrote a song called
“Hot & Cold” (performed by Jermaine Stewart) which featured in Weekend at Bernie’s. I couldn’t find out if it was written
specifically for the film or not but this single inclusion landed a “Music By”
credit for Andy Summers in the movie.
I guess I’m bringing this up because it’s not just a weird
credit for anyone of any stature to have (although I would gladly have my name
presented for any credit on Bernie’s I
or II) but it’s also not very accurate. The soundtrack is made up of a collection of
pop tunes and not original songs written for the picture by Andy Summers or
anyone else. I wonder if Andy ever got
shit for that movie’s gross exaggeration.
Die Hard 2
Dies Hard 2 is a
helluva lot of fun. It’s definitely
dumber than its predecessor and successor (for the most part anyway) but still
offers a great time all around. And
watching the movie this time made me really appreciate the little touches that
are sprinkled throughout. Here are a few
I’d like to comment on:
McClane gets hit on by the rental
car chick. Why did the filmmakers feel
the need to throw that in the picture?
It’s never established that McClane cheats on his wife or even thought
about cheating on his wife so there isn’t some character struggle that he has
to overcome on top of the terrorist plot.
It seems they just wanted to acknowledge Willis as a sex symbol within
the movie for some odd reason. I dunno.
The introduction of Colonel Stuart
(William Sadler (Rush)) doing naked martial
arts alone in his hotel room right before he does some terrorizing. I don’t think I need to elaborate on that.
It may not seem obvious at first
but a lot of innocent people die in this movie.
I think that’s because there are only two scenes where this occurs and
they’re spaced out pretty far apart. The
first is that old proprietor of the church that Colonel Stuart and his men take
over for their base of operations. The
second is an entire fucking plane completely full of people. We’re talking about a minimum of two hundred
people who get murdered here, probably more like three to four hundred. Shit man.
There’s that moment after McClane
takes out a slew of terrorists at the Annex Skywalk and the villainous Colonel
Stuart calls the control tower, including Fred Thompson (In the Line of Fire), to discipline them. During this dialogue Thompson has the line,
saying quietly to himself, “try me face to face and we’ll see”. I guess either the filmmakers or Thompson
felt the character needed to appear a little tougher and threw in that
line? I like it because even though the
bad guys don’t hear his jab that little extra toughness lets you know that all
of the good guys, and not just McClane, are riled up and want to fight back.
Have you ever noticed the ad for Lethal Weapon 2 on the back of a
magazine the old lady is reading on the plane next to Holly?
Temple of Doom &
Young Sherlock Holmes
In my review of YoungSherlock Holmes that I did ages ago I omitted a part where I talked about a
scene that’s almost identical to one in IndyJones and the Temple of Doom. All
these years I’ve always wanted to mention it so I figured this is as good a
time as any.
The scene I’m referring to in Holmes is when Sherlock and co. discover a secret cult carrying out
a human sacrifice. In Temple Indy and co. also witness a human
sacrifice, right? Well the similarities
are astounding actually. Both parties
hide in an area higher up towards the back so they can get a whole lay of the
land and watch the ceremony unobstructed, each group contains three people of
two guys and one gal (Indy, Short Round, Willie; Sherlock, Watson, Elizabeth), the
sacrifices are done in a grandiose production with sets and costumes and
chanting, both sacrificial humans are burned alive (one by fire, the other by
acid), both protagonists sneak down to the main floor to steal something, both
scenes occur about an hour into each film (in terms of running time for Indy it’s halfway, for Holmes it’s a little more than halfway) and
both movies end up coming back to this sacrifice room to kick off the finale
but eventually move on to other locations.
Since Temple came
out a year earlier Holmes appears to
be the imitator here. However, Spielberg
produced Holmes which makes more
sense why we have this duplicate scene. I
just wonder if it was at his insistence or if writer Chris Columbus (yes, that Chris Columbus) liked the Temple scene so much that he wanted to
include it in his script. Or a third
possibility is the screenwriters for Temple
(Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz) were brought in to do uncredited rewrites and
put this scene in.
Whatever the reason, it’s an interesting connection. And by the way this movie’s still great, you
should definitely try to get to it at some point.
Uncle Buck “Dildo”
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