I’ve been putting this review off for about a month now. When I first watched A Beautiful Mind, I liked it a lot. The story was engaging and moving, and I appreciate the way Ron Howard didn’t go too far into Sappyland. The big reveal (I won’t spoil it) took me by surprise, and that was good. The effects were … well, effective and generally low-key, which I appreciate. The story’s resolution was a reasonable one.

The problem, I suppose, is that the further I got from watching it, the less I liked it.

Let’s get the biggest problem out of the way first. When I’m watching a film that’s been advertised as biographical but not a documentary, I don’t expect it to be 100% true. It wasn’t made to be a historical document, so I try not to judge it by that standard. At the same time, I do expect more than a passing similarity between the movie and its subject. And that’s what we got in A Beautiful Mind, a passing similarity.

I’m hardly a John Nash scholar, but I knew enough about him (and had heard enough grumblings about the movie) that I did a very little bit of looking on the internet. Screenplay writer Akiva Goldsman took out whole truckloads of real life drama (Nash’s first son, his homosexuality in the 1950s, the divorce from his wife) and put in new stuff (intense competition amongst his peers, Wheeler Labs, that pen ceremony) to make it look better. I also thought it odd that they never gave his son’s name in the movie. Even when he was an adult, the son has no name. (Someone correct me if I missed it.)

Moving past that, though, there were other problems. There’s a calculated feel to the whole affair. The golden glow through which the entire film is viewed, the overly-lush musical score, the sheer earnestness of the film. It’s all designed to win Oscars, and I cannot understate how much I hate that. I wish directors would just tell the story the best they can, and forget about the important awards that, in the end, mean right next to nothing.

All right, enough complaining. There were, after all, some things I liked quite a lot. I loved that the we joined the story with John making friends (and enemies) at Princeton and then after he moves on, they slowly fade into his past. This would have been easy to get wrong, either by having the friends disappear abruptly or stick around too long.

While the music was a bit weepy at times, I appreciated the choice to accompany the big chase scene in Parcher’s car with a smoother non-action scene score. That was one of my first tip offs that something was not what it seemed, and I appreciate the innovation.

My only complaint about the principal cast is that Jennifer Connelly (right, with Russell Crowe) didn’t have enough to do. Loathe as I am to mention the Oscars, she absolutely deserved recognition for her work in A Beautiful Mind. The middle of the night scene in the bathroom was wonderfully done, and Howard made a smart move by filming it in profile instead of head on. That could very well have ruined the scene.

In the end, A Beautiful Mind is an okay film, but it could have been great. I guess that’s my biggest issue with it.

Season 15, My Mother the Carjacker

(It’ll be a few years before the season’s released and I can get a screencap, but Homer sees codes in the newspaper like John Nash did.)

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Cunard! Cunard! He’s our shill! If he won’t lend it, no one will!

The Thin Man was a bit of a surprise for me. Made in 1934, the film came only a few years after talkies picked up steam, so it was fun watching director W.S. Van Dyke play with new methods. It was also interesting to watch actors who clearly came from different schools (and diction coaches) come together for a movie that was exactly what it needed to be.

Our story is a basic murder mystery. Clyde Wynant, inventor, jerk, and father, disappears from a months-long trip after his girlfriend/secretary (acting the hell out of the scene at left) is killed, and there are fingers pointing everywhere. Who killed her? Where is Wynant? What does his family, including money-grubbing ex-wife Mimi know about it? Why is Wynant’s son Gilbert (below right, with sister Dorothy) always carrying around a big prop book? Does he think it makes him look smarter? And if so, how stupid is he, really?

Enter Nick Charles, master alcoholic and former detective for Mr. Wynant, and his wife Nora Charles. Even though he keeps saying he isn’t on the case, Nick keeps getting dragged in until he starts working with the police to solve an ever-increasing number of murders.

About ¾ of the way into The Thin Man, I realized why it seemed so familiar. I’ve seen the structure of the story before in TV shows like Murder She Wrote, Matlock, and to a lesser extent, Law and Order. It helps to remember that the place of theater in culture was different in 1934 than it is today. In the midst of the Great Depression, theater became a momentary distraction before televisions came to the home.

In fact, The Thin Man is perfect escapism. In the days when nobody had money, the main characters are all filthy rich, they have beautiful apartments, liquor flows freely from the taps, and they have wonderful clothes. Yet their lives are unhappy for one reason or another. It’s exactly what the doctor ordered when you can’t afford flour or new underwear.

Co-stars William Powell and Myrna Loy (left) made this film work on another level, though. There’s a comedic bent that Powell and Loy deliver impeccably. I was surprised at the relaxed style of the duo, especially Powell. In a film where everyone else speaks with a distinct theater accent and has a somewhat static delivery, Powell’s and Loy’s ease in front of the camera brought the film an air of realism that surely pulled it above competitors.

I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say that the murderer is found out, and they all lived (well, most of them) happily ever after. Apparently, so did writer Dashiell Hammett and the cast and crew of The Thin Man, because several sequels were made. I’m looking forward to watching them.

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I’ve never been one to get excited about action movies. I’m not sure why, but they never did anything for me. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t like Raiders.) So when Speed was released, I was one of the few who wasn’t in a rush to get to the theater. Having now watched Speed, that was clearly my one allotted mistake for 1994.

Speed is pretty darn good. It starts pretty quickly as bomber Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) threatens an elevator full of passengers. Cops Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) and Harry Temple (Jeff Daniels) rescue the passengers, stop the bomber, and make an enemy. Some indeterminate time later, Payne puts a bomb on a city bus as a way to get back at the officers. If the bus goes below 50mph, it’ll explode, taking with it all the passengers including, of course, Sandra Bullock.

There. With the plot recap out of the way, let’s get down to what’s good and what’s not so good about this movie.

The filmmakers did a good job of starting with a tense situation and upping the tension every time a new obstacle made an appearance. The bus driver’s shot, the bus needs to do a ridiculously sharp turn, they have to drive down city streets, and on and on. As I was watching, I was reminded of the TV show 24. It has the same kind of keep-topping-ourselves feel to it. That works well here.

Sandra Bullock has long been one of my favorites, and it’s fun to watch her before she “made it.” She has the same everyman style that many people identify with Jimmy Stewart. There’s something in her style that allows people to identify with her, and that’s an important asset. In Speed, Bullock’s unexperienced character acts as the voice of the passengers, working closely with the cop to find a way out of the mess.

Keanu Reeves, then best known as Ted Logan of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, was a big risk for this action film, but overall it was a good choice. There are issues, like his monotone delivery, and his odd accent, but he is convincing as a cop in a bad situation.

The pulse-pounding pace continues for most of the film, and is generally successful. On the audio commentary that came with the DVD, the writer said that he wished that they had stopped before they got to the subway portion, and I agree. It was almost as if the producers didn’t trust the movie to hold people’s attention for the whole bus section, and they tacked an extra fifteen minutes on just in case. I think it was a mistake, and really dragged the movie out.

One big problem I have with the movie is the baby carriage full of cans. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. That was totally unnecessary, and more importantly, it was manipulative to let the audience believe that there was a baby being killed. I really, really hated that.

And I could have done without the naive tourist. Played well by Alan Ruck, his “gosh darn” attitude is grating. The fact that his lines are overdubbed twice to remove swears surely adds to my disdain of him. It just made his character unbelievable to me.

Maybe my trouble with action flicks is that they tend to be a little less believable than more character-driven movies. For me at least, once the believability breaks down, the rest of the movie falls apart. There were oddities in the script for Speed that you could drive a bus through (har har), but I honestly didn’t notice them until mid-way through the second viewing. (Someone cut a hole through the pavement in downtown LA and nobody noticed?) As far as I’m concerned, that makes the movie makers successful.

Speed is by no means a perfect movie, but it’s a good one. Well paced and well directed, it deserves its spot as one of the blockbusters of 1994, and it holds up to viewing 13 years later.

Season 8, The Springfield Files

“I saw this movie about a bus that had to SPEED around a city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, it would explode! I think it was called The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down.”

Season 8, Simpson-cali-fragi-listic-expiala-D’OH-cious

(to Sherry Bobbins) “Pop quiz, hotshot. I’m supposed to be doing my homework, but you find me upstairs reading a Playdude. What do you do? What DO you do?”

Also:

Season 6, The Springfield Connection

Season 8, In Marge We Trust

Season 12, Bye Bye Nerdie

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