Memorial Day Movie Marathon - Part V

Yeah, I'm still backlogged from the weekend, but this is it. I swear.

Dazed & Confused
The eerie bass line from Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" opens to a black screen with fading white titles. It draws out for a little while, working up to the opening shot timed perfectly to the snare drum's entrance. A bright orange car rolls around the corner of a parking lot as Steven Tyler begins to do what he does so well. A more perfect opening to a movie will never be made.

And thus begins one of the best movies I have ever seen.

No, it's not a war epic, a disaster story, a love story, an underdog story... in fact, it's barely even a story. It's about a bunch of entering high school seniors and freshmen on the last day of school in 1976, and that's all you need to know.

The cast in this movie is unbelievable: one of the London twins, Matthew McConaughey, Joey Lauren Adams, Milla Jovovich, Ben Affleck (who was beyond perfect for the role of O'Bannion), Parker Posey, Nicky Katt (as male monkey Clint), and Adam Goldberg, all before they were really famous (this was in 1993). Cole Hauser, who played a red-headed tough guy named Billy in Good Will Hunting, plays a red-headed tough guy named Benny. Nice choice. Rory Cochrane (Slater) played the thief from Empire Records two years later before falling off planet Earth. Michelle Burke (Jodi) had played Connie Conehead the year before this movie came out... and her career was promptly hit by a bus after it. The rest of the ensemble cast didn't do much with the rest of their acting shelf-lives.

The movie doesn't lose any steam with repeated viewings either. In fact, it only gets better. You start picking up the hidden nuances you missed the first 12 or 13 times. And you can always find things you've missed before, especially in the actions of the characters in the background. There are even distinct drinking games to play while watching it.
- Take a drink every time somebody drinks a beer or puffs a joint
- Take a drink every time Mitch touches his nose outside the emporium (better yet, just finish a beer at this point)
- Take a drink every time somebody says "man." (Note: Not recommended if you're looking to avoid alcohol poisoning)

You can watch it drunk. You can watch it stoned (even very stoned). Any way you look at it, it's always good. So now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go light some incense and put on a Foghat record.
Final score: 9.5 out of 10.

Batman
Long before the batsuit had nipples, there was Michael Keaton. He played a darker, more mysterious Bruce Wayne in the days when George Clooney in OR scrubs wasn't even a thought.

The movie was good when it came out, but became better with each successive Batman movie. Robin, Batgirl, the Riddler... give me a break. If you want to look at it another way, take a look at the casts. Jack Nicholson plays The Joker, and him and Keaton carry the entire movie. Kim Basinger added a much needed aesthetic presence, but it could have been played by any actress, it wasn't that important of a role. In the next movie, you need Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer to make up for Nicholson's loss. After that, it just gets silly. The third picture needed Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Nicole Kidman, and Chris O'Donnell (before he died) to support Val Kilmer as the Dark Knight (I like Kilmer, but he's no Batman). By the fourth, enter Schwarzenegger, Clooney, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone (before she died) and Vivica A Fox. It's a complicated equation but a simple one to answer: to match the chemistry between Keaton and Nicholson, the Batman folks tried a total of 12 new stars between 3 movies and they still couldn't match the original. Not even close.

And there you have it-- long before the Batman franchise became a special effects parade of crappy actors, there were two good ones making a darn good movie. Oh yeah, and in the original Batman, Billy Dee Williams has a small role, although his character's name wasn't Lando, so I was just confused.
Final score: 7 out of 10.

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