The strangest thing about the poster for Mel Gibson’s upcoming action film “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” is that seems completely oblivious to the actor’s current standing within the Hollywood community and with the public in general. And you know what? That’s probably what’s so great about it.

The poster shows Gibson holding a gun like the action star he is. The film poster comes complete with a ’90s tag line – “Plan Your Getaway” – and is promoted as being from the producers of two great action pictures (“Apocalypto” and “Braveheart”). If this poster doesn’t get you excited for a cool prison escape shoot ‘em up then nothing will.

Well, actually if it doesn’t get you excited that’s probably because you’re looking forward to the next Michael Moore propaganda piece or Roman Polanski feature.

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The Nominees:

“Braveheart” – Mel Gibson’s stirring epic would take home a slew of Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, perhaps deservedly. I know I’ll get crushed, but I don’t love it. Just my $.02; these types of historical epic action dramas aren’t my thing. I appreciate the movie more than I enjoy it. I never got the whole controversy, which painted the movie and Mel Gibson as homophobic. The supposed outrage felt completely inorganic, manufactured, and just plain phony.

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“Sense & Sensibility” – Never seen it. Look, there are people who don’t go see “Fast Five” one time, much less three times, and there are people like me who do. The people in the latter camp typically don’t watch movies like “Sense & Sensibility.”

“Apollo 13″ – Good movie that spawned the lamest catchphrase of the decade and made “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” a wee bit less challenging.

“Il Postino: The Postman” – I seem to recall it was the dark horse favorite to win Best Picture and the odds on favorite to make me throw up in my mouth. It didn’t win. And, whoa, I kinda liked it.

“Babe” – Seriously. No, really, seriously? A talking pig movie?

What should have been nominated: (more…)

Clichés have to come from somewhere.  Believe it or not, there was a time when the by-the-book cop’s partner was not on the edge, where hordes of interchangeable henchmen packing high tech automatic weapons did not roam our cities, when the hero was neither on the verge of retirement or too old for this . . .  stuff.  Then, long ago, everything changed.

For the movie anthropologist, Lethal Weapon (1987) is the missing link.  It is the Big Bang of movies with big bangs.  It is the well-spring of a hundred lame imitations, a few good ones, and a lot of parodies.  It is where the most hackneyed of buddy-cop movie clichés were born.  At the time, they were awesome.

It is a movie about many things beyond the slam-bam action and witty banter, including about getting older and looking back, which is particularly apt here.  Looking back at the 1980’s, which I spent in high school, at UC San Diego (go whatever the hell your mascot is – I was too busy partying to care) and the Army, what is striking is how many definitive movies came along and how they led to Hollywood’s present – for better or for worse.  Lethal Weapon remains an archetypal specimen of the kind of movie only Hollywood can make well (despite how often it does it badly) – slick popcorn adventure/comedies with memorable action set-pieces paired with laugh-out-loud hilarity and featuring big stars and top shelf production values. (more…)

National Review’s 25 Best Conservative Movies of the Last 25 Years did what all good lists do, ignite debate and discussion. Last week, NRO’s own Kathryn Jean Lopez jumped in to make a solid case in favor of “Rocky Balboa,” yesterday Maura Flynn stirred things up with a little disagreement and smart choices of her own, and on Monday Ben Shapiro weighed in with a line by line argument for and against the NRO picks and a few excellent additions, including “Tombstone,” and “L.A. Confidential.” Thus far, it’s been a fascinating conversation, and while I normally don’t argue “taste,” Ben’s opinion on “Braveheart” requires a response:

It’s an action epic with some romance thrown in.  Liberals could easily caricature Braveheart’s Longshanks as a redneck, particularly after he defenestrates the prince’s gay lover. 

Ben’s correct about what “Braveheart” is and what liberals could do with it, but you also have to look at what “Braveheart” is about. The film’s essence is about fighting and dying for liberty, a value the Left conceded thirty-plus years ago on the Killing Fields of Southeast Asia straight through to their call last year to strip 25 million innocent Iraqis of their liberty (and security) in the hopes of embarrassing George W. Bush. Like patriotism-when-the-guy-you-didn’t-vote-for-is-in-office, what was once a universal value has become through default, a conservative value. (more…)