This is a repost of a review I originally wrote back in 2005.
To call Kiss Kiss Bang Bang “brilliant” would be an understatement. To put it simply enough, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is one of the finest movies to be released in quite some time and one of the funniest as well.
In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, bumbling crook Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) is shot running from a toy store burglary, leaving his partner behind worse for wear in an ally. Harry only escapes police pursuit by ducking into a random door, which happens to be hosting a movie audition. Harry aces the audition, about a crook that leaves his wounded partner behind, by really getting into character, crying and screaming. The producers think he’s using “Method Acting” to get into character but in fact he’s simply reacting to that night’s events.
Harry finds himself out in L.A. to audition for studio executives and meets “Gay” Perry (Val Kilmer), a private detective hired to coach Harry on his upcoming audition who, as his name/nick-name so quaintly says, happens to be gay.
Harry accompanies Perry on a case observing a cabin in the woods where the two stumble across the murder of a woman locked in a trunk of a car driven into a lake. It quickly becomes apparent that the whole thing’s a set-up meant to pin the body on Harry and Perry. And when the sister of a woman Harry met at a party whom Harry knew as a child in Indiana turns up dead via suicide, everything starts to make sense. Or does it?
In Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, character Harry narrates the movie at times literally stopping the action in its tracks, skipping around in time and scene spouting lines like, “How ’bout it, filmgoer? Have you solved the case of the – the dead people in L.A.?” At other times, Harry breaks the fourth wall commenting on the movie as it plays out on the screen. Harry remarks that he hates tacked on Hollywood endings where people who should be dead from their wounds turn up alive at the end of the movie, and that why doesn’t everyone who died in the movie come back? With that, the door of Harry’s room opens and every character killed during the preceding two hours walks in as if they were at a family reunion. Then, to cap it all off, an actor wearing a very bad Abe Lincoln costume walks through the door, then Elvis…
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang feels as if the movie Lethal Weapon were written by someone who had worked on the television series Arrested Development – it has that sort of irrelevance for the genre as well as letting the audience in on the joke. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang isn’t a send-up of the genre like a Naked Gun or Airplane; it’s simply a take on it.
In fact, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was written and directed by Shane Black, writer and creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise. In the movie, Black takes the characters and concepts he first introduced nearly twenty years, dissects and twists them into something new, funny, unique and brilliant. (10/10)
In the 1980s, people who were into the series were derided as “Trekkies” and were considered to be nerds and losers because of their devotion to a series that had, at that time, been off the air for decades. And when new episodes of Star Trek returned to TV in 1987 with Star Trek: The Next Generation the series wasn’t considered good enough to air on a network and instead was shown in syndication. Which meant that the series was airing at different times and on different channels depending on where you lived. I remember TNG aired on a local non-affiliate station at the inviting hour of 9AM Sunday mornings which meant the series was basically filler since I can’t imagine Sunday morning makes for “appointment TV.”
But it wasn’t too long before Star Trek would once again be relegated to the back of mind for most people as the quality of the feature films began to slip with the film series ending in 2002 and two more Star Trek series Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise that never caught on with the general public or a majority of sci-fi fans.
But that movie actually did quite well and another Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Into Darkness was released in 2013. Was that movie any good? I don’t know, you’ll have to tell me — I didn’t bother seeing it after the my disappointment of the first.
Every so often a series comes along that’s so good and unexpected that’s like a bolt of lighting to the head — and this year that series is Stranger Things on Netflix.
The second season of the TBS series Angie Tribeca finished this week. I enjoy this goofy series that’s in the vein of an Airplane or Naked Gun but I think I enjoyed the first season a bit more. The second season of the Angie Tribeca told a season long throughout all the episodes which felt a little forced to me. The series is essentially a comedy where goofy fun takes precedence over plot but having a season long story means that plot becomes important.
The last year has seen a slew of darker series that all takes place in California. Always before California series used to focus on the sun, beaches and fun of the state but lately a lot of series have been taking place in a much different version of California. These bleaker series focus on a dirty, and dangerous place that’s as likely to give you a staph infection from swimming in the polluted waves as send you home in a body bag when you’re caught in the middle of a drug/guns/whatever deal gone wrong.
In 1986 Transformers: The Movie made something like $5.8 million at the box office, and about $3 of that came from me.
Here, the Suicide Squad is composed of a group of villains like marksman Deadshot (Will Smith), Joker protege Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and living monster Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) to name a few. In the past all these characters were caught and thrown into prison for their crimes and now are made an offer “they can’t refuse.” Join up with this super-villain squad to try and stop a greater evil and have their sentences reduced or rot in prison forever.
Man of Steel was greeted with a lot of questions like, “what’s next?” and “why was that so dark?” While, at best, Batman v Superman was greeted with a collective “meh” and at worst downright derision.