Note On "The Karate Kid (1984, J. Avildsen)"

I was flipping through channels recently and stopped on The Karate Kid. I haven't seen it in a while and it was near the end. Daniel was making up with Elizabeth Shue (my first crush!) and he was getting ready for the tournament. I kept watching so I could hear the "You're The Best (Around)" song. But upon watching the film to end, I picked up on a solid emotional beat that I believe helped make this story so inspirational and successful.

After LaRusso gets his leg swept during a tournament fight, he is laying in pain asking for Mr. Miyagi for help. Daniel wants to make it to the last fight. Miyagi doesn't understand. but LaRusso pleads that having the girl, the car ("status"), and the Karate knowledge is not enough; he wants to go all the way. He wants to prove that those guys can't pick on him anymore. This is a genuinely effective scene and just the kind of character journey endpoint that Daniel (and Miyagi) needs to reach.

This is a very Rocky-ish theme, which should come as no surprise considering KK's director Avildsen. But credit should also go to screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen and Ralph Macchio/Daniel LaRusso, for being able to sell this beat without (too much) schmaltz.

Sure, Miyagi's mystery "hand rub" saves LaRusso's leg and he wins the big fight, but it is earned. Most films would delight with the success being LaRusso's tournament victory, but this film is the richer for having him realize that his true victory is to "go all the way!"

Where Eagles Dare (1968, B. Hutton)

All Movie Guide:

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson

An expensive but enormously profitable war picture, Where Eagles Dare centers upon a daring rescue and even more daring escape. Disguised as Nazi officers, commandoes Maj. John Smith (Richard Burton), Lt. Morris Schaffer Clint Eastwood and six other courageous souls parachute behind enemy lines. Their mission: to rescue an American general, held captive in a supposedly impenetrable Alpine castle. Aiding and abetting the commandoes are Allied undercover agents Mary (Mary Ure) and Heidi (Ingrid Pitt). Also on hand is a British officer (Patrick Wymark), who masterminded the mission. Somewhere, somehow, someone amongst the Allies is going to turn out to be a traitor. There's also a neat plot twist in store when the commandoes manage to reach the American general -- which leads to yet another twist. The vertigo-inducing climax has made Where Eagles Dare one of the most sought-after of "early" Eastwood starring features. The film was written directly for the screen by espionage novelist Alistair MacLean.

This Men On A Mission film is one of the more profitable of the genre, but, except for two sequences, not one of the most exciting. I had read about this film whenever reading about WWII movies and their subgenre of Men On A Mission movies. Films like The Dirty Dozen and The Guns Of Navarone make up this sub-genre. Quentin Tarantino plans on making his own contribution to the genre with his upcoming Inglorious Bastards.


The film takes its time getting going, introducing the characters, the side characters, outlining the mission, gearing up to go, and parachuting out of the plane. For the first hour or so, we are making our way towards the castle. Not a lot is exposed about our characters which only lessens the film and our care for the characters.

There are two nice sequences:
1. Where a German watchman is listening to the radio and switching the stations as Eastwood is trying to sneak up behind him. He turns the music off, on, scratchy static, off, on scratchy static, then he turns off the music... Nice Sequence.

2. When the soldiers try to make their escape via the Air Trolleys you can see in the top poster, there is a lot of in/out/in/out while escaping. It is a well paced suspense and action sequence.

All in all, this wasn't as exciting as others in the genre but was worth watching on a lazy Saturday afternoon. I leave you with a crazy foreign poster for the film I found online:

Sneakers (1992, P. A. Robinson)

From All Movie Guide:

Plot Synopsis by Matthew Tobey
In this tech-thriller from director Phil Alden Robinson, a group of five renegade computer hackers, led by Martin Bishop (Robert Redford), are hired by the government to steal a black box, containing a code-breaking machine, from the mathematician who invented the device. The government is able to persuade Martin to take the job by convincing him that they will drop a decades-old federal warrant for his involvement in computer fraud. Martin agrees and he takes his team on the mission, eventually taking the box. Shortly after the hackers have stolen the device, the mathematician turns up dead. Before long, the quintet realize that they've gotten themselves into more than they'd originally bargained for, as Bishop's old rival Cosmo (Ben Kingsley) enters into the fold. The eclectic ensemble also includes River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, and James Earl Jones.

This is an enjoyable entertainment. Pure and simple. It is a caper film with a good sense of fun and wit with a great cast who all get to have fun. Tobolosky is awesome. Aykroyd gets to play the conspiracy guy, Strathairn a blind guy, Phoenix the young goof, Poitier the old wise ex-CIA, and Redford as the old-school leader. Almost every scene managed to balance drama/suspense/spy stuff with well placed touches of humor. This kind of entertainment, not unlike North By Northwest, is rare these days. Worth a queue position on your Netflix.



One Surprising Sidney Poitier Line: "Motherfuckers mess with me, I'll split your head!"

Lars And The Real Girl (2007, C. Gillespie)

All Movie Guide:

Plot Synopsis by Derek Armstrong
Lars (Ryan Gosling) and Gus (Paul Schneider) are the grown children of a father who died recently and a mother who died giving birth to Lars. But as brothers, they couldn't be more different. While Gus lives in the family home and has a loving wife (Emily Mortimer) and a child on the way, Lars leads a more reclusive existence in the family's garage, hiding in plain sight of his small, wintry hometown. Painfully shy and eccentric, Lars fails to recognize that his co-worker Margo (Kelli Garner) has a major crush on him, and he picks up on a casual reference made by his cubicle mate, who mentions a website where you can order life-sized, anatomically correct sex dolls. But instead of seeing a sex object, Lars sees in this doll a potential life partner and the only kind of social "peer" he can relate to. So Lars orders a doll, whom he names Bianca, and begins treating her with utmost gentlemanly respect -- and as though she's his real-life, flesh-and-blood girlfriend. As he begins bringing Bianca with him everywhere he goes, the townspeople have to find just the right balance between supporting Lars' unusual romance and trying to introduce him to a more conventional partner. Lars and the Real Girl was written by Six Feet Under scribe Nancy Oliver and directed by Mr. Woodcock's Craig Gillespie.

Lars And The Real Girl is a film with many attributes (good cast, pacing, location) that are squandered by certain things in the film's writing that are impossible to go along with. I am surprised that this film was nominated for a Screenwriting Oscar.

First of all, we've got a crazy guy as our lead character and Gosling milks it with back-and-forth pacing, eye twitches and all. This guy has serious issues with his family, being physically touched, and whatever you call it when you fall in love with an inanimate object (Objectophilia?). I don't understand what we are supposed to see in him in order to care for his character. Creative Screenwriting Magazine's Jeff Goldsmith asked screenwriter Nancy Oliver this question during his podcast interview: "What is the character Margo supposed to see in Lars, because (...) he has some serious issues?" And Oliver actually says, "Well, he's really cute." (!?!?!)

While this statement is astonishing, coming from the screenwriter, it makes complete sense after watching the film. This is why Lars is played by someone like Gosling and not by Dan Fogler or Jonah Hill (uh... no offense, guys?). His stuttering and crazy talk is supposed to be "cute" and his social proclivities are completely okay because he hasn't exhibited violent tendencies. Okay...

From the above synopsis:

As he begins bringing Bianca with him everywhere he goes, the townspeople have to find just the right balance between supporting Lars' unusual romance and trying to introduce him to a more conventional partner.

That isn't exactly correct. The townspeople do nothing to introduce him to a more conventional partner after he starts bringing Bianca around. It is the exact opposite of this which brings about the more unbelievable aspects of this picture. The writer wants us to believe that the townspeople are coming to love Bianca (and in turn Lars) because they want her to "help out" at various places; like at the church, the hospital, a school, as a shop window model, etc. Later, we learn in a tossed off line that Bianca was elected to the School Board (!?!) The filmmakers want us to believe that this is the townspeople's way of showing Lars love, but if comes off first as the townspeople using Bianca, and then later as something that could not logically happen.

Where is the media while all this is happening? When a sex doll is elected to the School Board? This would be one of those AP Stories Of The Year. This film wants to play this off as a tossed-off joke but it undermines the credibility the film needs when actually dealing with Lars' illness, which the film doesn't wholly do. We understand he's the way he is because his parents died, he has had an estranged relationship with his brother, he lives in the garage, etc.; but this is all undermined by the silly Bianca nonsense. We don't ever really get to see the inside of that garage or Lars living in it. What does he do in there? Why is living in the garage so demeaning?

This movie would be a lot more interesting if it was about the brother and not about Lars. The brother character and his conflict with Lars and his own wife is much richer than Lars' pop-psychology brainfuck. Paul Schneider is very good in this role and reminds you that he should be in more movies.

The filmmakers did not pull off their intended balance of whimsy and pop-psychology drama but it was nice to see a movie set in a small town (though not as small as the filmmaker would like you to believe) that really doesn't get to be a setting in a mainstream movie anymore. This isn't the worst movie in the world, just highly disappointing considering the amount of people who've drunk the Kool-Aid, and the talent involved.