So this is one of those teen movies where a bunch of kids fight the alien invasion by killing people and doing drugs. Basically, it’s high school.
Btw, this movie has a crazy number of famous actors in it — Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Shawn Hatosy, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Christopher McDonald, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Usher, and Jon Stewart.
I would just like to state for the record that the best thing about the movie “Con-Air” was Steve Buscemi.
There was just something so enthralling about his creepy serial killer cannibal guy character (he did eat people, didn’t he? He totally seemed like he did on the creep meter). I just couldn’t look away whenever he appeared onscreen.
So there’s like Nicolas Cage running around trying to help John Cusack’s cop-guy character and John Malkovich is the bad ass guy they’re trying to stop. There’s all of these convicts running around on a hijacked prison plane, then stuff about taking over an airport – it’s been a long time for me – and there’s lots of explosions and car chases and some people end up dead.
“Con-Air” is just an action popcorn flick of no real importance to the world at large. All I can remember is that it was fun to watch and Nic Cage had longish hair and I think Monica Potter was in it as the pretty young wife.
But Steve Buscemi totally stuck out. And that’s something he’s always done for me.
“Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “Charlotte’s Web,” “The Sopranos,” “Big Daddy,” “The Adventures of Pete and Pete,” “Monsters Inc,” the list goes on and on. And in every single one of the movies or television shows Steve Buscemi has appeared in, he has always done a most excellent job.
He is a real icon.
Which is why, whenever I think of “Con-Air,” it’s not John Cusack or Nicolas Cage I think of. It’s Steve Buscemi in that white jump suit sitting down with that little girl at the end, a scene more than a tad reminiscent of Frankenstein’s monster.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWY69mTr5gM
The first time I saw a trailer for this back in 2008, I thought it was going to be another one of those stupid “Killer guy has a website and everyone that visits it *mysteriously* dies” type of movies, but I was pleasantly surprised.
I bought the DVD on sale and wasn’t really expecting too much when I watched it. Sure, there’s lots of stupid stuff going on and you can totally be like “Why the hell would she get back in the car?” But come on, it’s a movie, it’s for entertainment, and I honestly really enjoyed it.
You have a guy killing people on his website, building crafty machines that use the hit counter to decide how long someone is going to live. So of course everyone in America was going to check out the site, they got told not to!
It’s kind of a grim commentary about the kind of people we are. We might not go out and kill someone personally, but we have no problem taking a peek at a dead body. Wasn’t that the whole premise of that coming of age story “Stand By Me” where someone asks “Do you wanna see a dead body?” and everyone unanimously replied, “Hell yeah!”
If you suspend some of your belief in the FBI and the police being able to track some guy down, this is actually a pretty good popcorn movie. There’s just enough ick–guy gets killed by sunlamp, guy gets melted by sulfuric acid–that you root for the good guys, and there’s some fairly clever death machines displayed without going completely over the top ala the Saw franchise.
Plus you’ve got a strong female lead in Diane Lane, who I personally adore. I also really like her haircut in this movie and was admiring it throughout 🙂
I can maybe understand why this movie didn’t do so great in the box office, but I still really enjoyed it and I think more people would if they gave it half a chance.
Once again this is a movie that was the victim of bad marketing. Instead of being some teeny-bopper slasher flick with some crazy guy killing people through the computer, you have a disturbed man trying to get some kind of vindication for his father’s death and the way it was publicized on the internet.
I think part of the reason why some people didn’t like this movie was that it struck a nerve because it could really happen. We have become so detached from reality that we no longer associate the things we see online with real people. We’re just in it for the lulz.
My rating: 4 for entertainment value and Diane Lane kicking ass while tied up.
Title: Portrait of a Beauty
Directed by Jeon Yoon-soo
Screenplay by Han Soon-ryeon
Alternative title : “Beauty Island”
Synopsis borrowed from HanCinema: Born to a family of established court painters, seven-year-old Yun-jeong is a young girl gifted at painting. However, the pressure is on her brother to carry on the proud family tradition, as women aren’t allowed to become professional painters. While her brother trains to take his place in the court, Yun-jeong helps him out by secretly painting for him. The little girl’s life is turned upside down when her brother kills himself. In order to preserve the family honor, she is forced to take her brother’s name and lives as a man. Yun-bok’s genius and talent captures the heart of another great master of the time, Kim Hong-do. But her daring depictions of women are condemned by the royal institute as obscene. Yun-bok meets Kang-mu and falls deeply in love. For the first time, she feels the strong desire to abandon everything she has built and simply be a woman in front of the man she loves. Kang-mu sacrifices all for his love as well. Kim Hong-do, who loved the genius of his best student, ends up loving everything about her, and Seol-hwa, a Gisaeng at the courtesan house, possesses a love for Hong-do that turns into fatal jealousy. The secret behind Shin Yun-bok’s masterpiece, Portrait of a Beauty, is finally revealed after 250 years of silence.