To whom it may concern:
Without getting into specifics, I don't have as much time as I usually had to post lengthy reviews with trailers and pictures and all that good stuff. So as of today, I am putting Next Up Movies on hiatus. Will I ever post here again? I can't say for certain, but I hope to someday. If you are interested in my reviews without all the glitz and glamour, head on over to Letterboxd and there are a whole bunch of them. Up to very recently. It's more convenient and I find it easier to gather my thoughts. So for now, adieu. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Zack Parks
(https://letterboxd.com/Zack1991/)
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Sunday, February 10, 2019
WARGAMES: The Only Winning Movie
RETRO REVIEW
NOTE: Wouldn’t you prefer a good game of SPOILERS?
One of the reasons I think the ‘80s was such a seminal decade for moviemaking was that, rather unlike today, original ideas were given precedence. More importantly, these ideas could have a streak of fun to them. These ideas were often termed as “high concept”; a premise that could be summed up in one sentence to get a picture of what the movie could be. Back to the Future is probably the most famous high concept film ever created (“What if you went to high school with your parents?”). Slightly less famous, but arguably just as fun, was a film that was released two years prior: WarGames.
Originally the film was to be directed by Martin Brest as a serious-minded thriller but when the studio preferred the original lighter tone of the script, he begrudgingly left the project a few weeks into filming. Brest would soon move onto the Eddie Murphy blockbuster, Beverly Hills Cop. Needing a director very quickly, the producers hired John Badham, who had experience in replacing previously-hired directors with Saturday Night Fever (in that case, it was Rocky director John G. Avildsen). Badham responded very positively to keeping the film delightful as opposed to dark and WarGames turned into a lighthearted adventure.
The only thing David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) takes seriously in life is video games. He impresses his friend Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) by hacking into their school computer system and improving their grades. He happens upon an advertisement for a computer company’s new line of video games that he wants to track down and play before anyone else. Improvising a system that dials random numbers, David and Jennifer come across an artificial intelligence known as Joshua that seems eager to play games with them. The most interesting game to David is the last one listed: “Global Thermonuclear War”. Little does David know is that Joshua is actually the WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) simulation machine designed for NORAD. When the game actually shows up on the massive screens in the military’s sealed-away bunker, the generals and technicians are convinced World War III is imminent. Now convinced their harmless actions might set off the end of the world, David and Jennifer go on the run to locate the presumed dead creator of the WOPR computer and find a way to stop the countdown to nuclear annihilation.
Matthew Broderick plays David Lightman, a character probably closer to Marty McFly than Ferris Bueller in that while the character is charming and smart, he also is allowed to make mistakes. His fellow John Hughes alumni Ally Sheedy is attractive, bubbly and caring in the way a lot more girl characters in the ‘80s were not being played. John Wood brings a great warmth and intelligence to his character that was originally written for John Lennon before his tragic assassination (Wood would later reunite with Matthew Broderick in the cult fantasy film Ladyhawke). Dabney Coleman and Barry Corbin round out the cast as a bickering team of systems engineer and “good ol’ boy” general, respectively. Robert Zemeckis alumni Eddie Deezen (I Wanna Hold Your Hand) and James Tolkan (Back to the Future) also make brief appearances.
There’s a quote by 2001: A Space Odyssey author Arthur C. Clarke that says, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. In the 1980s, computer technology might as well have been magic. Films like TRON and Superman III portrayed computers as almost cartoonishly omnipotent. WarGames stands apart as a more realistic depiction of what computers were and are capable of. Granted, I do not think anybody could outsmart a computer programmed for nuclear holocaust by forcing it to play infinite games of tic-tac-toe but it is entertaining to watch nonetheless.
WarGames is a ‘80s film often forgotten to time when compared to its bigger-budgeted competitors but it deserves better. It garnered three Academy Award nominations including Best Cinematography and Best Original Screenplay (remarkable considering few genre films today would ever be considered). More importantly, it is a positive depiction of two different generations working together for the greater good. Peace is the primary goal we all should strive for and if a quirky little movie can help out in that respect, why not? Especially in this horrible day and age.
NOTE: Wouldn’t you prefer a good game of SPOILERS?
“Hey, I don’t believe that any system is totally secure.”
- David Lightman (Matthew Broderick), WarGames
Originally the film was to be directed by Martin Brest as a serious-minded thriller but when the studio preferred the original lighter tone of the script, he begrudgingly left the project a few weeks into filming. Brest would soon move onto the Eddie Murphy blockbuster, Beverly Hills Cop. Needing a director very quickly, the producers hired John Badham, who had experience in replacing previously-hired directors with Saturday Night Fever (in that case, it was Rocky director John G. Avildsen). Badham responded very positively to keeping the film delightful as opposed to dark and WarGames turned into a lighthearted adventure.
The only thing David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) takes seriously in life is video games. He impresses his friend Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) by hacking into their school computer system and improving their grades. He happens upon an advertisement for a computer company’s new line of video games that he wants to track down and play before anyone else. Improvising a system that dials random numbers, David and Jennifer come across an artificial intelligence known as Joshua that seems eager to play games with them. The most interesting game to David is the last one listed: “Global Thermonuclear War”. Little does David know is that Joshua is actually the WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) simulation machine designed for NORAD. When the game actually shows up on the massive screens in the military’s sealed-away bunker, the generals and technicians are convinced World War III is imminent. Now convinced their harmless actions might set off the end of the world, David and Jennifer go on the run to locate the presumed dead creator of the WOPR computer and find a way to stop the countdown to nuclear annihilation.
Matthew Broderick plays David Lightman, a character probably closer to Marty McFly than Ferris Bueller in that while the character is charming and smart, he also is allowed to make mistakes. His fellow John Hughes alumni Ally Sheedy is attractive, bubbly and caring in the way a lot more girl characters in the ‘80s were not being played. John Wood brings a great warmth and intelligence to his character that was originally written for John Lennon before his tragic assassination (Wood would later reunite with Matthew Broderick in the cult fantasy film Ladyhawke). Dabney Coleman and Barry Corbin round out the cast as a bickering team of systems engineer and “good ol’ boy” general, respectively. Robert Zemeckis alumni Eddie Deezen (I Wanna Hold Your Hand) and James Tolkan (Back to the Future) also make brief appearances.
There’s a quote by 2001: A Space Odyssey author Arthur C. Clarke that says, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. In the 1980s, computer technology might as well have been magic. Films like TRON and Superman III portrayed computers as almost cartoonishly omnipotent. WarGames stands apart as a more realistic depiction of what computers were and are capable of. Granted, I do not think anybody could outsmart a computer programmed for nuclear holocaust by forcing it to play infinite games of tic-tac-toe but it is entertaining to watch nonetheless.
WarGames is a ‘80s film often forgotten to time when compared to its bigger-budgeted competitors but it deserves better. It garnered three Academy Award nominations including Best Cinematography and Best Original Screenplay (remarkable considering few genre films today would ever be considered). More importantly, it is a positive depiction of two different generations working together for the greater good. Peace is the primary goal we all should strive for and if a quirky little movie can help out in that respect, why not? Especially in this horrible day and age.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
SPACE JAM: Technical Foul
RETRO REVIEW
A long time ago... in the ‘90s... there was one athlete who could do no wrong. That gentleman was Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan. The man took basketball to new heights of glory with his amazing skill and physicality. Naturally, everybody wants a piece of him and he became the most-promoted athlete of all time. He had endorsements for just about everything under the sun: men’s underwear, soft drinks, fast food hamburgers, hot dogs and, most famously, Air Jordan shoes.
One of these endorsements resulted in a popular Super Bowl commercial in which Jordan teams up in a basketball game with “Looney Tunes” star Bugs Bunny against Marvin the Martian. The spot was referred to as “Hare Jordan”. Jordan’s agent, David Falk, went to Warner Bros. Pictures (the corporate owners of the “Looney Tunes”) to convince them of the massively popular groundswell that this particular commercial generated. Desperate to generate their own Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the studio hired Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman to produce the world’s first feature film inspired by a commercial.
The first thing Reitman did was hire the man behind the Super Bowl commercial, Joe Pytka. Pytka, a veteran of music videos and commercials, had directed only one other film prior: the Richard Dreyfuss gambling comedy Let It Ride. Reitman also contracted the animators it would take to bring this spectacle to life; rather than working at Warner Bros., the team found themselves at Universal where they had to endure the monotonous Jaws-themed tram tour stop right outside their door. As Roger Rabbit was the high watermark this new project was aiming for, Reitman called director Robert Zemeckis to ask his advice. Zemeckis replied, “Don’t do it. It nearly killed me.” Undeterred with the Academy Award-winner’s warning, Reitman hired the same visual effects supervisor of Roger Rabbit, Ed Jones, to do the same job for the film soon to be titled Space Jam.
The live-action portions of the film were shot first, bringing in real-life NBA stars and noted Chicago Bulls fan/Reitman alumni Bill Murray. The Looney Tune Land sequences where filmed with Jordan on a massive green screen stage working with actors in head-to-toe green onesies, playing the various Looney Tunes characters. In his contract, Jordan requested the studio build him his own basketball court near the soundstages, not only so he could practice for the film but also keep in shape for the upcoming NBA season. Of course, this drew a lot of attention at Warner Bros. and quite a few stars wanted to play against Jordan, most notably George Clooney.
This film was a huge gamble for Warner Bros., who were banking on both the likability of the world’s most famous athlete and the recognizability of their famed cartoon characters. An equation that included a relatively unknown director, a powerhouse producer, four (count ‘em, four) writers, Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes. What could possibly go wrong?
In the underground world of “Looney Tune Land”, the most famous cartoon characters have a close encounter with the “Nerd” kind: the weak-willed and diminutive aliens Nerdlucks, who come to issue an ultimatum - come work for their boss Swackhammer (voice of Danny De Vito) at his outer-space theme park or else. While the Tunes take their threat seriously, they don’t take the aliens themselves seriously; taking off on their stature, Bugs and company challenge them to a basketball game. The Nerdlucks have never heard of basketball, let alone play it, so they go to Earth to secretly steal the talents of the NBA’s top players; inadvertently causing a national crisis. They return to the Tunes as oversized basketball-playing behemoths dubbed the Monstars. Deciding that the odds need to be made even, the Tunes literally rope in the greatest basketball player alive, Michael Jordan (naturally as himself). There’s just one problem: Jordan retired himself from the game and now spends his days as a middling minor-league baseball player. But ultimately, Michael becomes embedded in their cause and the battle to save the Looney Tunes takes to the court.
Because this movie came out in the mid-‘90s (not to be confused with the Jonah Hill film of the same name), more than a few people of my generation love this movie more than life itself. And I must admit as a kid, I too was taken with it to the point where I had a makeshift Tune Squad shirt. But as I grew older and immersed myself in the classic Looney Tunes cartoons of Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson, I came to a conclusion: this movie is bad. It is so remarkably cheesy and cynical; made purely to merchandise and capitalize. The unrelenting rabid fanbase cannot see past their own nostalgia and understand that this is not how these characters should be depicted. Even Chuck Jones himself said that his Porky Pig would never admit to public urination.
The weakest part of the whole film for me is the main voice cast. Understandably, the shoes of Mel Blanc are impossible to fill. Ever since his death, there has been a revolving door of actors to play the main Looney Tunes characters. The one actor who comes the closest is Mel’s own son, Noel, who assisted his father in his later years with voiceover sessions and ended up developing a fairly accurate mimicry of his father’s characters. Noel was asked to play the majority of his father’s characters in Space Jam, but ultimately was replaced due to contract negotiations stalling out. Billy West and Dee Bradley Baker were cast in the roles of Bugs and Daffy, respectively. These two guys are among the cream of the crop of modern-day voice actors and have done and continue to do great work. However, they are wildly miscast here. Their voices just do not fit these two particular characters and they are the two main leads of the Looney Tunes, so they get the lion’s share of screen time.
One negative element about the film that I would actually like to defend is the performance of Michael Jordan. When critics pick apart this movie, they often cite Jordan as a terrible actor. That is quite unfair as, obviously, Jordan is not an actor by trade. Not only that but the man is playing himself! Sir Lawrence Olivier could not play Michael Jordan if he tried. Having said that, one of Jordan’s co-stars might have been better suited for the lead: the legendary Bill Murray as himself. Putting one of the world’s funniest actors around the world’s funniest cartoon characters should be a no-brained but the movie only brings Murray to Looney Tune Land at the end. He is easily the best part of the whole film and even has the funniest line, explaining how he got to the game (“Producer’s a friend of mine...”).
Space Jam is less a movie and more of a time capsule of what the ‘90s were. It emodied the crass commercialism that had invaded pop culture. Its story is ludicrous, its characters wildly misrepresented and it relies way too heavily on close-ups. Famed director Joe Dante, a dyed in the wool Looney Tunes fanatic, was given the opportunity to bring the characters back to the silver screen with his 2003 film Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Unfortunately, that film was built on the back of previously developed Space Jam sequels (i.e. Race Jam with NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon and Spy Jam with Jackie Chan). Due to Warners prioritizing the Matrix sequels over Back in Action, the film was a dismal failure at the box office and Dante has not directed a studio film since. In more recent years, Warner Bros. has developing a direct sequel to Space Jam, this time with modern NBA superstar LeBron James. Black Panther director Ryan Coogler will be stepping into the producing role that Ivan Reitman had for the original film. All I can say regarding this sequel sight unseen is Coogler is a smart and talented filmmaker and he certainly cannot possibly make the movie worse than the original.
UPDATE:
“We gotta get new agents. We’re getting screwed.”
- Daffy Duck (voice of Dee Bradley Baker), Space Jam
One of these endorsements resulted in a popular Super Bowl commercial in which Jordan teams up in a basketball game with “Looney Tunes” star Bugs Bunny against Marvin the Martian. The spot was referred to as “Hare Jordan”. Jordan’s agent, David Falk, went to Warner Bros. Pictures (the corporate owners of the “Looney Tunes”) to convince them of the massively popular groundswell that this particular commercial generated. Desperate to generate their own Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the studio hired Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman to produce the world’s first feature film inspired by a commercial.
The first thing Reitman did was hire the man behind the Super Bowl commercial, Joe Pytka. Pytka, a veteran of music videos and commercials, had directed only one other film prior: the Richard Dreyfuss gambling comedy Let It Ride. Reitman also contracted the animators it would take to bring this spectacle to life; rather than working at Warner Bros., the team found themselves at Universal where they had to endure the monotonous Jaws-themed tram tour stop right outside their door. As Roger Rabbit was the high watermark this new project was aiming for, Reitman called director Robert Zemeckis to ask his advice. Zemeckis replied, “Don’t do it. It nearly killed me.” Undeterred with the Academy Award-winner’s warning, Reitman hired the same visual effects supervisor of Roger Rabbit, Ed Jones, to do the same job for the film soon to be titled Space Jam.
The live-action portions of the film were shot first, bringing in real-life NBA stars and noted Chicago Bulls fan/Reitman alumni Bill Murray. The Looney Tune Land sequences where filmed with Jordan on a massive green screen stage working with actors in head-to-toe green onesies, playing the various Looney Tunes characters. In his contract, Jordan requested the studio build him his own basketball court near the soundstages, not only so he could practice for the film but also keep in shape for the upcoming NBA season. Of course, this drew a lot of attention at Warner Bros. and quite a few stars wanted to play against Jordan, most notably George Clooney.
This film was a huge gamble for Warner Bros., who were banking on both the likability of the world’s most famous athlete and the recognizability of their famed cartoon characters. An equation that included a relatively unknown director, a powerhouse producer, four (count ‘em, four) writers, Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes. What could possibly go wrong?
In the underground world of “Looney Tune Land”, the most famous cartoon characters have a close encounter with the “Nerd” kind: the weak-willed and diminutive aliens Nerdlucks, who come to issue an ultimatum - come work for their boss Swackhammer (voice of Danny De Vito) at his outer-space theme park or else. While the Tunes take their threat seriously, they don’t take the aliens themselves seriously; taking off on their stature, Bugs and company challenge them to a basketball game. The Nerdlucks have never heard of basketball, let alone play it, so they go to Earth to secretly steal the talents of the NBA’s top players; inadvertently causing a national crisis. They return to the Tunes as oversized basketball-playing behemoths dubbed the Monstars. Deciding that the odds need to be made even, the Tunes literally rope in the greatest basketball player alive, Michael Jordan (naturally as himself). There’s just one problem: Jordan retired himself from the game and now spends his days as a middling minor-league baseball player. But ultimately, Michael becomes embedded in their cause and the battle to save the Looney Tunes takes to the court.
Because this movie came out in the mid-‘90s (not to be confused with the Jonah Hill film of the same name), more than a few people of my generation love this movie more than life itself. And I must admit as a kid, I too was taken with it to the point where I had a makeshift Tune Squad shirt. But as I grew older and immersed myself in the classic Looney Tunes cartoons of Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson, I came to a conclusion: this movie is bad. It is so remarkably cheesy and cynical; made purely to merchandise and capitalize. The unrelenting rabid fanbase cannot see past their own nostalgia and understand that this is not how these characters should be depicted. Even Chuck Jones himself said that his Porky Pig would never admit to public urination.
The weakest part of the whole film for me is the main voice cast. Understandably, the shoes of Mel Blanc are impossible to fill. Ever since his death, there has been a revolving door of actors to play the main Looney Tunes characters. The one actor who comes the closest is Mel’s own son, Noel, who assisted his father in his later years with voiceover sessions and ended up developing a fairly accurate mimicry of his father’s characters. Noel was asked to play the majority of his father’s characters in Space Jam, but ultimately was replaced due to contract negotiations stalling out. Billy West and Dee Bradley Baker were cast in the roles of Bugs and Daffy, respectively. These two guys are among the cream of the crop of modern-day voice actors and have done and continue to do great work. However, they are wildly miscast here. Their voices just do not fit these two particular characters and they are the two main leads of the Looney Tunes, so they get the lion’s share of screen time.
One negative element about the film that I would actually like to defend is the performance of Michael Jordan. When critics pick apart this movie, they often cite Jordan as a terrible actor. That is quite unfair as, obviously, Jordan is not an actor by trade. Not only that but the man is playing himself! Sir Lawrence Olivier could not play Michael Jordan if he tried. Having said that, one of Jordan’s co-stars might have been better suited for the lead: the legendary Bill Murray as himself. Putting one of the world’s funniest actors around the world’s funniest cartoon characters should be a no-brained but the movie only brings Murray to Looney Tune Land at the end. He is easily the best part of the whole film and even has the funniest line, explaining how he got to the game (“Producer’s a friend of mine...”).
Space Jam is less a movie and more of a time capsule of what the ‘90s were. It emodied the crass commercialism that had invaded pop culture. Its story is ludicrous, its characters wildly misrepresented and it relies way too heavily on close-ups. Famed director Joe Dante, a dyed in the wool Looney Tunes fanatic, was given the opportunity to bring the characters back to the silver screen with his 2003 film Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Unfortunately, that film was built on the back of previously developed Space Jam sequels (i.e. Race Jam with NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon and Spy Jam with Jackie Chan). Due to Warners prioritizing the Matrix sequels over Back in Action, the film was a dismal failure at the box office and Dante has not directed a studio film since. In more recent years, Warner Bros. has developing a direct sequel to Space Jam, this time with modern NBA superstar LeBron James. Black Panther director Ryan Coogler will be stepping into the producing role that Ivan Reitman had for the original film. All I can say regarding this sequel sight unseen is Coogler is a smart and talented filmmaker and he certainly cannot possibly make the movie worse than the original.
UPDATE:
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