achrya
Joined Apr 2000
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Reviews4
achrya's rating
A lot of people on this site have said it before: this is a bad movie.
Not just a bad _film_ - I wasn't expecting "Wild Strawberries" - but a bad _flick_, in that it's tedious and yawn-inducing when not nerve-grating.
There is a bunch of characters with a comical potential, whose development gets tossed on the dung heap in favor of shrieking hysteria. The so-called suspense boils down to a couple of "dramatic" countdowns and last-minute saves that might have been picked up from any action cutting-room floor. And romance??? Gimme a break! When all the women in evidence are either twerps or bitches? Surprise, we aren't in 1940 anymore. And, incidentally, we aren't in 1960 either. Round about then I was a kid somewhere in East Europe, and the flag-waving in Armageddon brings back all sorts of creepy memories. So it's the Stars and Stripes instead of hammer and sickle - same difference when you get it jammed down your throat.
Interestingly, I happened to watch Armageddon within two days of Space Cowboys. The similarities are striking, and Space Cowboys actually achieve a lot of what Armageddon attempts and flops at. Space Cowboys genuinely integrate comedy, drama and romance throughout the entire film in a way that Armageddon achieves only in the sales pitch. Yes, it's another entertaining Hollywood movie and as such basically predictable, but it does keep one's interest up as to _how_ the unlikely crew will manage to save the world. The characters - men and women - do rise off the cardboard and inspire genuine feelings of sympathy, identification, suspicion, or hate, as the case may be. And, just as a sample, contrast Space Cowboys' truly touching final trip to the Moon with the tacky, soppy, unintentionally comical finale of Armageddon!
So, for a bit of honest space action entertainment, skip Armageddon and put your video rental money on Space Cowboys.
Not just a bad _film_ - I wasn't expecting "Wild Strawberries" - but a bad _flick_, in that it's tedious and yawn-inducing when not nerve-grating.
There is a bunch of characters with a comical potential, whose development gets tossed on the dung heap in favor of shrieking hysteria. The so-called suspense boils down to a couple of "dramatic" countdowns and last-minute saves that might have been picked up from any action cutting-room floor. And romance??? Gimme a break! When all the women in evidence are either twerps or bitches? Surprise, we aren't in 1940 anymore. And, incidentally, we aren't in 1960 either. Round about then I was a kid somewhere in East Europe, and the flag-waving in Armageddon brings back all sorts of creepy memories. So it's the Stars and Stripes instead of hammer and sickle - same difference when you get it jammed down your throat.
Interestingly, I happened to watch Armageddon within two days of Space Cowboys. The similarities are striking, and Space Cowboys actually achieve a lot of what Armageddon attempts and flops at. Space Cowboys genuinely integrate comedy, drama and romance throughout the entire film in a way that Armageddon achieves only in the sales pitch. Yes, it's another entertaining Hollywood movie and as such basically predictable, but it does keep one's interest up as to _how_ the unlikely crew will manage to save the world. The characters - men and women - do rise off the cardboard and inspire genuine feelings of sympathy, identification, suspicion, or hate, as the case may be. And, just as a sample, contrast Space Cowboys' truly touching final trip to the Moon with the tacky, soppy, unintentionally comical finale of Armageddon!
So, for a bit of honest space action entertainment, skip Armageddon and put your video rental money on Space Cowboys.
A person arrives from an institution into the "normal" world and sees our everyday reality with fresh eyes. What is normal? What is sane? Where does reality end and dreams begin? Can a pure, vulnerable person cause his segment of the world to clean itself from a contagion that threatens to wipe it out?
These questions and characteristics are equally relevant to the Czech movie "The Idiot Returns" and to Terry Gilliam's "12 monkeys". The basic difference is one of scale: in "12 monkeys", James Cole is expected to save the entire human race from a deadly virus, while Frantisek in "The Idiot Returns" blunders into a maze of tainted personal relationships within the circle of a family. James is physically and mentally strong in order to have a chance to withstand the strain of time travel, while the most challenging journey Frantisek makes is the train trip from his mental institution to the small town that his relatives live in. The two protagonists are strikingly similar in that it is their openness and vulnerability that enables them to become the catalysts of a hopeful development. James perceives objects of wonder in a spider, corny music on the radio, even the open air itself. Frantisek sees something good in everyone, holds no grudges, can find a positive interpretation for every seemingly nasty utterance or reaction.
Nonetheless, "The Idiot Returns" is a thoroughly Czech movie. We find none of the usual trappings of mainstream American film: there are no firearms in evidence, the physical violence is as restricted as it is significant, quarrels happen mostly between the lines of dialogue instead of outright in Ricki Lake-ish shrieks. In particular the dance hall scenes, the trivial fun and games while people's individual universes are falling apart, bring us right back into Forman's "The Firemen's Ball", together with his particular variety of Feliniesque parades of bizarre-looking characters.
Those of us with a Central European background get jolted right back into a familiar claustrophobia of meticulously tidy Christmas sitting-rooms and the keeping up of appearances, where people over coffee and cookies participate in carefully subdued mental dog fights that would make any sane person renounce family life forever. ("We have to show Frantisek what it's like to be a family!" Yeah. Right.)
And yet James Cole and Frantisek are at least cousins, each of them adapted to their own corner of the woods. If "12 monkeys" is a big concerto, "Návrat idiota" is a string quartet, or rather a clarinet quintet (a foursome and one divergent voice) - over the same theme.
These questions and characteristics are equally relevant to the Czech movie "The Idiot Returns" and to Terry Gilliam's "12 monkeys". The basic difference is one of scale: in "12 monkeys", James Cole is expected to save the entire human race from a deadly virus, while Frantisek in "The Idiot Returns" blunders into a maze of tainted personal relationships within the circle of a family. James is physically and mentally strong in order to have a chance to withstand the strain of time travel, while the most challenging journey Frantisek makes is the train trip from his mental institution to the small town that his relatives live in. The two protagonists are strikingly similar in that it is their openness and vulnerability that enables them to become the catalysts of a hopeful development. James perceives objects of wonder in a spider, corny music on the radio, even the open air itself. Frantisek sees something good in everyone, holds no grudges, can find a positive interpretation for every seemingly nasty utterance or reaction.
Nonetheless, "The Idiot Returns" is a thoroughly Czech movie. We find none of the usual trappings of mainstream American film: there are no firearms in evidence, the physical violence is as restricted as it is significant, quarrels happen mostly between the lines of dialogue instead of outright in Ricki Lake-ish shrieks. In particular the dance hall scenes, the trivial fun and games while people's individual universes are falling apart, bring us right back into Forman's "The Firemen's Ball", together with his particular variety of Feliniesque parades of bizarre-looking characters.
Those of us with a Central European background get jolted right back into a familiar claustrophobia of meticulously tidy Christmas sitting-rooms and the keeping up of appearances, where people over coffee and cookies participate in carefully subdued mental dog fights that would make any sane person renounce family life forever. ("We have to show Frantisek what it's like to be a family!" Yeah. Right.)
And yet James Cole and Frantisek are at least cousins, each of them adapted to their own corner of the woods. If "12 monkeys" is a big concerto, "Návrat idiota" is a string quartet, or rather a clarinet quintet (a foursome and one divergent voice) - over the same theme.