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This mutant, bastard stepchild of Easy Rider
Wild Hogs
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Films featuring
William H. Macy
William H. Macy
Bobby
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Perhaps a better title for this movie would The Martyrdom of Saint Robert. This movie spends most of its two hours genuflecting before the memory of JFK’s little brother. While it’s not hard to believe that Bobby Kennedy was the most interesting person at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the California primary, this movie would have you believe that the Senator was the only interesting person present that night.
Thank You For Smoking
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This movie wants to be the Dr. Strangelove of the tobacco wars and I’ll be darned if doesn’t almost do it. Some might say that cigarettes are an even more audacious subject for a comedy than nuclear war, since tobacco takes out more people in a given year then the A-bomb has in the history of the human race. Thank You For Smoking certainly aims for big targets, but they are also easy targets. The film’s position, namely that tobacco companies have behaved with the all the moral fiber of Jeffrey Dahmer’s ne’er-do-well brother, is hardly original nor particularly newsworthy. This acid-etched satire, directed by Ivan Reitman’s son, Jason, scores its points with sharply drawn characters.
Air Force One
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Air Force One probably would have seemed like a retread even if it hadn’t followed Executive Decision by a year, but the existence of other film sure doesn’t help.
Sahara
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I started reading Clive Cussler‘s Dirk Pitt novels starting with Raise the Titanic back in high school. I realize now that, despite copious amounts of not-quite graphic sex and a splash of R-rated language, I was in the ideal age group at the time to appreciate Cussler’s writing. I grew up and the Dirk Pitt novels didn’t. To be fair, some of the earlier works to follow on the heals of his breakthrough hit, Raise the Titanic, such as Vixen 03 and Night Probe showed a real maturing of his style. By the mid-80’s, however, Cussler seemed to fall into the trap of trying to top himself with every novel and his stories became increasingly outlandish and began to smack of “Bond-lite”.
The novel Sahara fits into this later period of Cussler’s writing. I had stopped reading his books before this one was published, so I cannot directly comment on how closely the plot details stick to the novel. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d have to say, “not close at all.”