Seven Directors: The Post's Sequel

I decided to get a silly here. This post itself is a sequel, a sequel to the post I wrote about Seven Directors and Superhero Influence. This, though, itself isn't about sequels.

One of the criteria for the directors I chose for that post were that they had to have directed multiple superhero movies, and the chain of influence from Richard Donner and 1978's Superman had to be mostly noticeable. 

For this post, I went with the same directors in the same order, but here I choose to look at some of their other films and how they affected movies, or myself, or both.

Starting with Richard Donner again, I've got the poster for Lethal Weapon:

Richard Donner brought the buddy-flick back from the metaphorical scrap-heap. Not really as far as I'm concerned. Buddy films--movies featuring two main stars--really were born with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Paul Newman and Robert Redford. A buddy flick is only as good as the chemistry of the stars, and the fact that Danny Glover and Mel Gibson (pre-batshit crazy-in-public Mel) get along pretty well has seemed to given credit to Richard Donner for resurrecting the genre. Uhh...okay, good for him?

I saw Lethal Weapon 2 at the drive-in with mom in your brand-new at the time Ford Probe, dad. The opening for Lethal Weapon 4 was filmed about three blocks from our place in Long Beach. They built an entire fake gas station just to blow it up.

The next director moving down the chain was Tim Burton, and here I've highlighted Beetlejuice:

Nobody makes movies like this anymore, not even Tim Burton. Maybe, if anyone makes personal stories that have other things to say about the surrounding world and that turn out to be original, the case could be made for Christopher Nolan, with Memento and Inception, two widely original stories.

But I digress. Tim Burton making the immediate afterlife a huge bureaucracy, spoofing the effects of creepy New York artsy types on New England towns, and making the titular character a "bio-exorcist" who makes his first appearance in the second act are all strokes of oddball genius that would never get funded today. Maybe it's uneven, but I still like it a lot.

I was having a birthday party that was headed to the movies. I really wanted us to go see Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach. It seemed like the perfect birthday party movie. I was ramped up to see it when mom came back and told us we were seeing this other movie, some fucking thing I'd never heard of. Dammit, I remember thinking, because in my memory I got angry at that kind of thing--being forced to see movies that later turn out to be fantastic (see: The Princess Bride).

Of course our crew went to see Beetlejuice, and all of our lives are far better off because of it. Thanks mom. You know, Dan, mom and dad exposed us to some good stuff. Like Beetlejuice and Princess Bride, and I don't think I'd heard too much about Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure before dad took me to see it.

Off the tracks there, I guess.

Next director up was Bryan Singer, and this is his breakthrough film, the one, fortunately or not, against which all of his other films will be judged, The Usual Suspects:

I'd heard about this movie, a lot, before finally seeing it. It's good. I like it. I seem to remember being, well, disappointed isn't the right word, but it's a case of high expectations being mostly met, only because they were unrealistically high. It's a good crime thriller, and showcases Kevin Spacey's awesomeness. Also, try and listen to Benicio del Toro's dialogue throughout the movie. He was doing a bit, or a character voice, and barely anyone on set could understand anything he was saying.

Before Sam Raimi was teaming up with Tobey over stories about everybody's favorite web-slinger, he was teamed up with his longtime friend Bruce Campbell for a few movies, one of which is the capper of a trilogy (or maybe "trilogy" is more accurate), Army of Darkness:

I've heard Evil Dead II is better, and I believe it, but I've never seen it. Is that blasphemous? I've seen the first, Evil Dead, and it's obviously a well done college project movie made over the years and edited together. It's well done, knowing what it really it is. Evil Dead II starts with a remake of the first, but only spends the first few minutes of the movie doing that (I hear). Then we get all the cool hand-fighting-self scenes, culminating in the chainsawing off of one's own hand, only to be replaced by said chainsaw. At the end of the movie, Ash (Bruce Campbell) gets thrown back in time.

That's how the third movie starts, Ash being sent back in time. The third movie got a name change to appeal to a wider audience, mostly unsuccessfully. Well, as far as a "hit" is concerned, it wasn't so much, but a core audience loves it. I saw it for the first time, I'm pretty sure, while living in Brooklyn, having borrowed it from a co-worker and watching it one night.

The "English countryside" they filmed is obviously something like the Carrizo Plain, a blur of varying shades of beige and sand and rock between I-5 and Hwy 101. The snappy one-liners cracked me up (mostly).

Bruce Campbell, for me, for better or for worse, will always be Briscoe County, Jr instead of Ash. So there's that.

Something about my methodology I'd like to say at this point: I chose only to use movies I'd seen from the directors. I have a feeling, from anecdotal history that Evil Dead II is better than Army of Darkness, but I haven't seen the former. Also, it has been many years since I've seen Darkman, which would have fit pretty well into this Sam Raimi spot in my list.

Is that arbitrary enough?

Next is Christopher Nolan, and I went back and forth between discussing Memento and Inception, but eventually went with the latter:

I went with Inception because...is the short-term memory loss experienced by Guy Pearce at the heart of that film just a gimmick? No, right? But just in case...

Something dad said to me when I was ranting one time on the phone about The Matrix eleven years before Inception came out was that it (the story behind The Matrix) was a pretty cool idea for an action movie. I remember thinking that The Matrix obviously didn't have the same effect on him that it had on me (I think I've written about this exact topic on my other blog back in 2010). I also remember thinking, in 2010, that the idea behind Inception was a pretty cool idea for an action movie, and that it probably effected some of the young stoners seeing it in a way that mirrored what The Matrix had done to guys like me and Norm.

I really liked it. It was original, for one, and that goes a long way for me. You know, I think a post about Burton and Nolan and Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice and Memento and Inception and originality as a reflection of the era should be coming soon.

So...I feel like I'm done with Inception for the time being.

Next we had the slowly expanding Jon Favreau, and one of his earlier directorial entries, the Will Ferrell vehicle Elf:

I had a friend and coworker that was tall and had a mildly doofy personality thing happening, and he resembled Will Ferrell a bit, and once during the holiday season in San Luis he dressed up just like Buster the Elf, and we all got drunk and mobbed downtown and had some laughs.

This was one of the few Ferrell vehicles that works well for me. First time I saw a thing called "Will Ferrell" was on late night television, on Conan O'Brien, wearing a full body Lycra suit with only his face showing. He proceeded to do an impression of a cat that was the funniest single bit I've ever seen on a talk show. I liked him in Old School, but Ricky Bobby, The Anchorman, Blades of Glory and Step Brothers have their moments, but Ferrell seems to be doing a bit, like he's doing an impression of himself in a funny movie.

I hear Stranger than Fiction is good, and Everything Must Go is one of the saddest things ever filmed, but not really bad in any sense.

So, how did Favreau do? I don't know...it's a serviceable Will Ferrell vehicle, maybe one of the best editions, so, eh, pretty good?

At the end of the first Seven Directors post I tossed in a quick blurb about Joel Schumacher, director of the famously bad Batman and Robin. I caught a few minutes of the opening scene from that movie the other day on commercial television, where Batman and Robin storm an icy lair of Mr. Freeze(inator), and Robin is playing hockey with a huge diamond, and Bat-nipples and awful one-liners abound with a nauseating frequency.

I was tempted to throw in a quick discussion of Joel's early '80s classic DC Cab, starring Mr. T and Gary Busey and with a main star being the guy that played Jayne in "Firefly"; it wasn't as bad as you might think. It's also probably not as good as you may think.

In an odd turn of events, Joel Schumacher directed two Batman movies, and two John Grisham southern-lawyer movies, with The Client and A Time to Kill, the latter of which I've highlighted:

I think I liked both The Client and A Time to Kill when I saw them originally, but then again I also like The Firm the first time I saw it. I probably prefer The Client, but only because I like Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones verbal battles. Now, I'm not so sure...I guess Twin Peak's Jacques playing Romey helps...

 I picked A Time to Kill because of the major controversy that it sparked. Major controversy, you might say? Yup, only in Europe.

To be admitted to the European Union, a country must have abolished the death penalty. In America, killing a couple of guys who've raped and murdered your daughter is almost morally expected, which shows some of the fundamental differences between the development of whatever you may consider a uniquely American characteristic and the original European state of being.

This movie, to Europeans, seemed to be making a case that capital punishment is necessary to retributive properties, and that the slowness or relative unjust-ness of the system may make it acceptable to mete out that capital punishment on your own, outside of that slow system.

Look at the name of the movie itself, A Time to Kill. It itself makes the case that murder could be acceptable. That itself is an Americanism, relative to Europe (mainly France?) anyway. Other cultures are all about retribution killings as well, but those cases are generally from cultures less respectful of women's rights, which makes comparisons beyond revenge killings harder.

As much as I consider myself an outlier in American society, some parts of me are inseparable from that darker Americanism side.

It's kinda weird how urges can be pointed to as fundamental characteristics, right? I didn't really envision this as the final thought of this post when I went looking for movie posters...