Dirty Dancing (1987)

Oh God. What the hell, people? Why is this movie so famous and so popular? This is not a good movie, everyone. I watched this in a theater full of people who had all seen it before, and who thought it was the best thing ever, and boy was that frustrating. Luckily I didn't have to pay for it, since I'm a Brattle Member.


So apparently the premise of Dirty Dancing is that a family goes on a three week long (!) vacation to some resort where the main activities are eating breakfast and seeing Patrick Swayze dance with some woman nobody cares about. The hero (some girl) finances a lousy abortion, which means she also volunteers to dance on stage with Patrick Swayze at a different resort (the movie takes place in the Resort Valley found somewhere along the east coast). Despite having no formal training and only like 3 days to prepare for the performance she still manages to somehow become a professional dancer and fall in love with the Swayz. Too bad that’s a problem or something, because then her dad is mad at her (or whatever). And oh by the way this resort is maybe traveling at the speed of light, because despite this whole ordeal of a plot taking place over the course of 3 weeks standard time, it still manages to feel like forever, and all the characters act as though the events taking place in this little vacation-universe are the Most Significant Ever Ever of Their Lives (HINT: they’re not, except for the abortion lady - that’s usually a Thing).

I knew this movie wouldn’t be my thing going into it, and I appreciate that these sorts of movies (where a lady and a dude want to get together but stupid reasons act as obstacles to their stupid love until the end of the movie when everything works out SPOILER ALERT) are some people’s thing, but this was just stupid. I also resent it for tearing me away from my main activity of the past 24 hours. Also sorry I didn’t blog for a bunch of days, I was too busy watching Better Movies than this one.

2 out of 10.

Rambo III (1988)

Brief Primer:

There is a movie after Rambo: First Blood Part II. Rambo's only friend/father figure/CO Trautman (Richard Crenna, reprising his role from the previous 2 films) is captured (for some reason?) by Soviets in Afghanistan. Rambo has to go rescue him, with the help of some Mujahideen.


Alright, let's talk about the franchise first: Some people are under the misguided impression that the first Rambo movie (First Blood) is anything less than fantastic. Others are on the right track, and like it like people should. The follow up (part II) is not as good, and I don't want to talk about it. Rambo III falls somewhere in between. Part of what made the first Rambo so awesome was its simplicity: a sad guy shows up in town, gets messed with, flips out, and burns everything to the ground. You don't have to have PTSD to relate to that - everyone wants to revenge on stuff. The second movie got caught up in some bullshit about the U.S. Government not wanting to rescue POW's still in Vietnam or something, paired Rambo up with some woman who falls in love with him before getting blown away (spoiler alert, whatever, don't see Rambo 2), and was an all-around disappointment.

Conversely, Rambo 3 is awesome in the exact way that LBJ wasn't: it 1) doesn't spend much time in Vietnam, 2) gets Rambo out of Vietnam, and 3) shuts the hell up about Vietnam immediately afterwards. Instead, we're treated to Rambo dropping into sunny and jungle-less Afghanistan to help out the freedom-fighting, Soviet-disliking Afghan people we as a country would, 13 years after the movie's release, spend a lot of time Rambo-ing. Rambo 3 is not as tense and emotional as the first, and it's not as lame and awful as the second one. It is, however, way more violent than either of the preceding movies (if memory serves, and maybe it doesn't). There are some Awesome Kills (key elements: glow sticks, exploding arrows, grenades-on-ropes), a great scene of self-cauterization-by-gunpowder (something that a Scarier Man perfected years before), and a climax that pits a tank against a helicopter in order to answer civilization's age-old question: "what would happen if a tank and a helicopter got into a fight? Like, I mean, really threw down." I don't know what else to tell you. I've told you everything you need to know.

6 out of 10.

What I Watched this Weekend

In Theaters:

Does exactly what anyone who is familiar with the movie's trailers or commercials expects from it. Woody Harrelson gives the people what they want: Woody Harrelson in a cowboy hat hamming it up while killing zombies. Less like the main other zombie comedy anybody cares about in that at no point does Zombieland attempt to make the viewer really worry about anything, its primary objective is to have fun. A little too voiceover heavy, though. 7 out of 10



Premise: Humanity always tells the truth until a guy starts lying. With anyone besides Ricky Gervais it would have been a complete waste. Gervais salvages it into only a semi-waste, since the guy can make anything funny. The movie feels more like something he might have written as part of his standup act, and then decided would work better as a wholly mediocre movie than as a brief series of jokes. Oh well, it's so relentlessly full of cameos it's almost worth recommending. 5 out of 10.


A Home:

Road House (1989)

Everyone's already seen this movie except for me, and there's a reason why: it's awesome. As a guy with basically no expectations and no strong feelings towards Swayze one way or the other (I thought Point Break and Red Dawn were both just ok), it was a very pleasant surprise to finally find out why so many people loved the guy. He's just so cool, you know? Also, watching a younger Sam Elliott destroy people with his hands is a rare treat. 8 out of 10.


Mad Max (1979)

Another one of those movies I feel like a lot of people my age's dad made them watch, but that I never got around to. Its car crashes and chases are awesome, and the fact that it was made for basically no money by a group of people who mostly didn't know what they were doing endears it to me, since usually movies like that are terrible. It's got pacing problems and dialogue problems, but expectations for such things in an Australian movie about people who chase each other around in crazy-awesome cars are low. 6 out of 10.

TRON (1982)

Dissing Tron is like committing nerd sacrilege, and thankfully I don't have to. While its computer-animated segments haven't aged well, they're still neat on a "wow, they did that in 1982" level. The rotoscoped scenes that take place inside the computer world, however, remain impressive, especially since backlit animation-type stuff doesn't happen that often, near as I can tell. The movie's plot isn't particularly compelling, but at least it's mercifully light on the computer/technology puns, despite there obviously being a dangerous potential. Even if it's not your thing, learning about its production is pretty interesting. 7 out of 10.