The Great Outdoors (1988)

The third, and final, collaboration, between writer John Hughes and director Howard Deutch, this is also their weakest. It's good fun, with two leads doing excellent work, but it's just a bit strangely divided between the storyline for the adults and a storyline following a smitten teen.

John Candy is Chet Ripley, the husband/father keen to give his family a proper holiday experience in a lakeside cabin. The Ripley family is unexpectedly joined by Roman Craig (Dan Aykroyd), Kate Craig (Annette Bening), and their twin daughters. Kate is the sister of Chet's wife, Connie (Stephanie Faracy), and it is very clear from the earliest scenes that the Craigs have a very different outlook on life than the Ripleys. 

The Great Outdoors works as well as it does for two reasons. First, the interplay between Aykroyd and Candy. Written as very opposite characters, Aykroyd revels in being obnoxious and having no class while Hughes very quickly becomes tired of his nonsense. Second, there are some very entertaining set-pieces spread throughout the runtime. There's the tale of an angry bear that was made bald, a restaurant that has a challenging steak on the menu, some thrilling time spent water-skiing, and a group of cute raccoons that just want to enjoy picking through the trash.

Although Aykroyd and Candy are both doing top work here, they're nicely complemented by Faracy and Bening, playing two sisters who have gone on very different paths in life. This was the theatrical movie debut for Bening, and it's arguably one of her simplest roles, but she's a natural onscreen presence. Faracy does well to avoid just being stuck as "the boring, nice one", and both women feel well-suited alongside their partners. Chris Young is the older of the Ripley sons, and he does just fine in his own storyline that sees him falling for the charms of a local girl, Cammie (Lucy Deakins), but both of these youngsters suffer from the teen movie dialogue jarring against the rest of the movie, which enjoys building and building the friction between the adults. You also get a fun small turn from Robert Prosky, and the other child actors do everything asked of them.

Deutch directs as competently as he usually does, and he once again stays nicely in line with the tone that Hughes provides. Although predictable from start to finish, the set-pieces work really well, and are given just the right of time to let the laughter build without overstaying their welcome. Lessons are due to be learned, different views clash with one another, and some of the one-liners are hilarious, helped by the performers delivering them.

Despite the better qualities, I'd still end up placing The Great Outdoors somewhere around the halfway mark if ranking the movies written by John Hughes. It's a lot of fun, yet nowhere near his best.

6/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Noir November: Thief (1981)

It's the classic premise. The career criminal about to step away from his life of crime as he's about to reach his main goal, yet he's held back from doing so by someone who knows just how good he is at his job. In this instance, James Caan is the titular thief, Robert Prosky is the awkward guy who wants Caan to keep realising his potential (for the sake of them both), and Michael Mann is the director making a great impression with his usual blend of cool style and attention to detail.

From the opening scenes, this is a film interested in showing you the lifestyle of a thief as a proper career. It's not just a film that gives you a main character and just enough of a sketch to believe in how he lives his life, it IS his life.

Whether he's on the job, confronting someone who owes him money, delivering some choice moments from his personal history to a woman he wants to develop a relationship with, Caan is never less than perfect in the role, one that remains his best ever. And the finale of the film, the last ten minutes alone . . . . . . . . . . . well, I won't spoil anything for those still to experience the movie, but they're absolutely in line with the character, making everything equally brilliant and heartbreaking. Prosky is an avuncular figure, until revealing his true colours, and he's fantastic in portraying the full range of the character, with those hooded eyes making even his more charming moments hold a certain sinister undercurrent. Tuesday Weld is the woman who Caan wants in his life, and she's very much his equal in terms of how up and down the journey through life has been. James Belushi puts in a sweet performance, as the young assistant who helps Caan get results. He may not be onscreen for very long, but he does well. And then there's Willie Nelson, popping up for mere minutes to show how loyal Caan is with the few that he decides to love and protect.

Based on a book by Frank Hohimer ("The Home Invaders"), Mann has taken the lifestyle, the tools of the trade, the focus needed by the main character, and created a screenplay that distils everything into a near-perfect, tense experience. The fact that he also supplies Caan with one of the greatest cinematic speeches since Shaw told two fellas about his time on the USS Indianapolis is nothing to be sniffed at either. I can only assume it's often forgotten by film fans collating greatest movie moments because it happens to take place in a diner, and Mann eventually gave people THAT diner scene from Heat, meaning that his own success has cast a large shadow over his back-catalogue.

As he has shown throughout most of his career, Mann knows how to do a crime film. The fact that it's great will be no surprise to anyone who has ever enjoyed his work. The fact that it's SO great, as his first feature, is the surprising part, making you realise that all of his more recent, and celebrated, outings have just been trying to maintain that high standard that he set himself straight out of the blocks.

A film to watch, own, and watch again. I'm sure I will get even more out of it when I have time to give it a rewatch.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/Thief-Criterion-Collection-Blu-ray-DVD/dp/B00GBT62PQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1413745811&sr=1-1&keywords=thief

Last Action Hero (1993)

Not really a big success on initial release, Last Action Hero is one of those movies that I am glad to see get a bit of a second wind on shiny disc form. It always had fans, but I think that fanbase has grown steadily over the last decade and the film deserves it.

The film is, essentially, a cross between The Purple Rose Of Cairo and, well, any blockbuster action movie of the '80s and '90s. A young boy named Danny (Austin O'Brien) is given a magic ticket by his projectionist pal (Robert Prosky) that was apparently passed down years ago by one Harry Houdini. Danny spends as much time as possible in the cinema watching his movie idol, Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and this night is very special because his projectionist pal is allowing him to see a sneak preview screening of Jack Slater IV, hence the passing on of the magic ticket. Although not expecting the cinema ticket to do anything that's REALLY magical, Danny finds that he should never rule out the impossible when he finds himself transported to the world inside the movie. He has a lot of fun trying to explain to Jack Slater what is really going on (and Slater doesn't appreciate being told that he's a fictional character being played by a man with a name that he can't pronounce) while checking off all of the action genre cliches and also providing the police with some vital information thanks to the scenes he saw at the beginning of the movie. This annoys Benedict, a dangerous hitman played by Charles Dance, no end . . . . . . . . . . until Benedict starts to piece together the implausible scenario, and then gets the ticket for himself. The real world isn't ready for a collection of cinematic villains, but Benedict doesn't care. He plans to use the ticket to free the likes of Dracula, some zombies and even King Kong. First of all, however, he helps Ripper (Tom Noonan) escape. Ripper was the villain who caused the most pain for Jack Slater, and now he's encouraged to get his revenge by killing Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is this making sense?

Superb entertainment from start to finish, Last Action Hero is also consistently clever and so meta that it often looks like a serpentine creation in danger of eating its own tail. It was deemed by many back in 1993 as a smug, overblown action comedy that was trying to have its cake and eat it while those involved shouldn't have dared to bite the hand that had fed them over the years. Admittedly, it is a bit overblown in places, and overlong at just over two hours, but I can't think of a better time for this movie to have been made than when Arnie was at the height of his A-list action star status and director John McTiernan was known best as the man behind Die Hard and Predator (as opposed to the man who also gave us the Rollerball remake). Shane Black, who co-wrote the screenplay with David Arnott, would actually refine things slightly with his directorial debut, the superior Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but this particular movie is a mix of big names, studio excess, a multitude of pop culture references and a foundation of real intelligence.

After a standard action movie opener, with tongue firmly in cheek, the film is one of two halves. In the first half, Danny enters the movie world and can spot the genre conventions, stereotypes and general Hollywood illusions, using it all to his advantage and not ever feeling TOO worried as he helps out Jack. In the second half, the movie characters enter the real world, OUR world, and this provides a bit more danger while also keeping the comedy running strong as unwitting characters take their time to find out that the movie rules no longer apply.

The main cast members all have a great time. Austin O'Brien is stuck playing a character who is a bit too cocky at times, but Arnie is getting to do what Arnie does best (on top of that, he also plays himself in a few scenes alongside his real wife of the time, Maria Shriver) while Charles Dance and Tom Noonan bring their effortless brilliance along to portray two very different types of villains. Robert Prosky is as wonderful as always in the role of the kindly projectionist, Mercedes Ruehl is good as Danny's worried mother and Bridgette Wilson shines in the relatively small role of Jack Slater's daughter. Elsewhere, Frank McRae is very funny as the constantly shouting Lieutenant Dekker, Anthony Quinn is a mobster, F. Murray Abraham is a policeman and Ian McKellen is Death. Yes, Death . . . . . . . from The Seventh Seal. Throw in cameos, however brief, from the likes of Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Chevy Chase, Jean Claude Van Damme, Joan Plowright, Tina Turner, Bobbie Brown, Angie Everhart, James Belushi and many more and you have the action genre movie equivalent of The Player. Which is no bad thing.

Working on two levels, because let us not forget that McTiernan IS a master action movie director and Schwarzenegger IS an action movie STAR, Last Action Hero does get to have its cake and eat it. Fans of standard action movies will find enough here to keep them amused, if they somehow don't get or appreciate the humour, while fans of the satirical premise will have a field day keeping up with the cliches and references. You can find subtlety and grace elsewhere, this is the only place to see Arnie giving a unique interpretation of Hamlet. Need I say more?

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share