Maple Ridge Rental Roundup

Yes, folks, once again, the staff here at Alienated in Vancouver has resorted to that old-fashioned, inefficient, nostalgia-in-your-pocket method of acquiring film experiences: I rented four DVDs today, at the downtown Maple Ridge Little Shop of Movies. These were A Good Day to Die Hard; Promised Land; The Impossible; and Alex Cross.

A Good Day to Die Hard wastes a phenomenal amount of money and spectacle on a strikingly boring Die-Hard-by-numbers walk through. There are, of course, astonishing stunts, many explosions, car crashes like you haven't seen car crashes, and ample opportunity for Bruce Willis to mug and smirk and be a smartass, and it's all slickly made, but there's almost no believable human drama, little wit, and the plot is so threadbare that they don't even bother letting you know what it really is until the last half hour; plus you have to sit through what feels like half an hour, at the start of the film, of what surely must rank as one of the most expensive car-crash/ chase sequences in cinema history without knowing who exactly is chasing who or why - because who cares about story when we can flip and roll trucks? I am stunned to find - given my obviously low expectations - that the film managed to slip beneath them; several times I asked Mom if she wanted me to just turn it off, but we slogged it out, which is not how watching an action movie should feel... they really need to stop milking this bloody franchise...

Though ultimately I enjoyed and respected it, Promised Land was a film I had reservations about when I first became aware of it during its theatrical run. While I care about the environmental issue at stake (fracking) and admire the work of at least one of the cast members (a strangely puffy Hal Holbrook), I have, as would any sane cinemagoer, mixed feelings about the work of its director, Gus Van Sant. I only ever really enjoyed two of his movies - his first, made in 1986 and 1989, which is a long time ago... A few of his films since (including Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, and Paranoid Park) have been or become cringe-fests; others (My Own Private Idaho, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, To Die For, Psycho) have no lasting appeal or seem best forgotten; and while he does occasionally attempt interesting and ambitious things (Last Days, Gerry, Elephant) none are actually films that one wants to see more than once... Plus there was the question of the material, since I presumed that Promised Land would offer a cliched, predictable story: a fundamentally decent man, caught up, with the best intentions, in a despicable business, comes to a small town where the wholesome values of the people there transform him so that, at the climax of the film, he changes teams. Why bother seeing it, when I knew exactly what it was going to do at the outset? To Promised Land's great credit, though, it tells its story so well, with solid performances from Matt Damon and Frances McDormand and John Krasinski, and enough believable psychological detail, that it wasn't until the climax of the film - the big team-change moment - that I realized, in fact, that the film *had* followed the predicted template almost to the letter. So in the end, it seems a well-told story about an important, socially relevant issue, which manages to do its thing without resorting too overtly to cliche; this puts Promised Land on a scale with the other admittedly pretty good Gus Van Sant movie I have not previously mentioned, Milk. Gasland is still the better film to watch if you want to learn about fracking, but Promised Land is certainly worth looking at...

I have not gotten to the other two films rented as of yet; they'll have to wait til Ma gets back from the casino tomorrow. I'll keep you posted if they're anything special...