Daily Archives: June 22, 2023

Film Review: Plane (dir by Jean-François Richet)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) is a pilot for Trailblazers Airlines.  When he arrives for his flight from Singapore to Honolulu, he is not thrilled to discover that one of his passengers is going to be the recently captured fugitive, Louis Gaspare (Mike Colter).  However, that soon turns out to be the least of his problems as his plane ends up flying straight into a storm.  With the plane damaged, Brodie is forced to land on an island.  Unsure of how long it’s going to take the airline to find the plane, Brodie heads into the jungle to find help.  Accompanying him is Louis, who turns out to be the not that bad of a guy at all.

Unfortunately, there are some actual bad guys on the island.  In fact, it turns out that the island is controlled by Datu Junmar (Evan Dale Taylor), a vicious terrorist who is implied to be connected to ISIS.  Junmar and his men plan to take the passengers and crew hostage.  In New York, a mysterious man named Scarsdale (Tony Goldwyn) has arranged for a group of mercenaries to travel to the island and rescue the crew and the passengers.  However, it’s not clear whether the mercenaries are going to make it to the island in time.  Can Brodie defeat the terrorists and help everyone escape from the island?

Fortunately, Brodie Torrance may just be a pilot who works for an admittedly third tier airline but he’s also Gerard Butler.  From the minutes we first see Brodie, we know that there’s probably more to him than just flying commercial planes.  And indeed, it does turn out that Brodie knows how to throw a punch.  He also knows how to fire a weapon and how to run someone over on a landing strip.  Again, he’s Gerard Butler.  Gerard Butler really doesn’t get enough credit for being an actor who is believable as both an action hero and a normal human being.  Someone like Dwayne Johnson is always credible when he’s fighting someone or shooting a weapon or delivering a one liner but it’s always difficult to picture him as someone who goes to the mall or gets his oil changed every year or who does anything else that feels remotely like everyday life.  Gerard Butler, on the other hand, is credible whether he’s punching out a villain or shopping at a grocery store.  He’s the everyday action hero and Plane makes good use of his talents.

Plane is a simple and admirably straight-forward film.  Brodie lands on an island that’s full of terrorists.  Brodie has to defeat the terrorists and escape from the island.  There aren’t a lot of unnecessary complications or attempts to fool the audience into thinking that Plane is something more than it is.  Instead, Plane embraces its status as an action movie and it tells its story in a brisk 107 minutes.  It’s entertaining and it’s undemanding and, even though it was released way back in January, it’s a good film for the summer months.  In the past, straight-forward, well-made action films were so common that we took them for granted.  Today, in this age of bloated, CGI-heavy cinematic universes, messy continuities, and movies that often run closer to three hours than 90 minutes, a film like Plane is a cause for celebration.

Retro Television Reviews: City Guys 5.7 “Just For The Record” and 5.8 “Skips, Lies, and Radiotapes”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing City Guys, which ran on NBC from 1997 to 2001.  Almost the entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Al and L-Train get a job and Jamal and Chris screw over yet another charity.

Episode 5.7 “Just For The Record”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on October 6th, 2001)

Upset that the Manny High courtyard is so loud that she can’t even study for her midterms, Dawn tells Ms. Noble that she needs to do a better job as principal.  Dawn actually has a point.  Ms. Noble really is the worst and she proves that by deciding to teach Dawn (and, for some reason, Cassidy) a lesson by appointing them assistant principals.  I’m not really sure how that would work, especially in New York where the schools are notoriously unionized and promotions are rarely given to people who haven’t even graduated from high school.  Do Dawn and Cassidy get paid to work as principals?  Is Ms. Noble still getting paid despite the fact that she’s not doing anything?

Before Ms. Noble steps down as principal, she informs Al and L-Train that they need find an internship before they graduate.  (Do high school students usually get internships?)  Al and L-Train end up working at a record company.  L-Train works hard.  Al doesn’t.  L-Train gets a lot of responsibility and praise.  Al gets fired.  Al says that he’ll never forgive L-Train for not warning him that he was about to lose his job.  L-Train points out that he couldn’t tell Al because Al was never at work.

Anyway, it all works out in the end.  Because no one wants to spend any time with them now that they’re principals, Dawn and Cassidy suggest to Ms. Noble that students with bad grades should be publicly humiliated in the school courtyard.  Ms. Noble fires Dawn and Cassidy.  Meanwhile, Al miraculously realizes that he made a mistake and apologizes to L-Train.  What led to Al’s change of heart?  Probably the fact that the episode was nearly over and the conflict had to be resolved before the Peter Engel title card could flash on the screen.  As the episode ended, a really boring girl group performs while the audience goes crazy.

Eh.  Who cares?  This whole episode was dumb.  Let’s move on.

Episode 5.8 “Skips, Lies, and Radiotapes”

(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on October 6th, 2001)

It’s Senior Ditch Day!  Al, L-Train, and Cassidy are going bungee jumping but Ms. Noble has decided that Chris and Jamal will not be joining them.  She has decided that Chris and Jamal will spend Cut Day doing a radio fundraiser for charity.  Chris and Jamal decide to try to fool Ms. Noble by placing plastic dummies in the radio booth and playing pre-taped recordings of their show.  It doesn’t work, of course.

Yep, this is yet another episode of City Guys where Chris and Jamal prove themselves to be the worst people in New York.  But you know what?  At this point, Ms. Noble deserves most of the blame.  How many times has Ms. Noble ordered Chris and Jamal to help out with a charity?  And, every single time, what’s happened?  Chris and Jamal have come up with a stupid plan to get out of it.  At this point, why does Ms. Noble waste her time with them?  And why do they still have a radio program, despite all of the trouble that it’s caused at Manny High over the years?  How incompetent is Ms. Noble?

The only two students to not skip school are Dawn and her rival, Kitty Collins.  Dawn and Kitty are competing to be valedictorian, which at this school apparently has less to do with maintaining good grades and more to do with kissing up to Ms. Noble.  Ms. Noble orders Dawn and Kitty to work on a presentation together and they learn an important lesson about team work and not trying to sabotage each other.  At the end of the presentation, Dawn says that Kitty should be valedictorian.  Kitty replies that Dawn deserves it.  “Okay,” Dawn say, “see ya.”  Again, it would seem like whoever has the top GPA should be valedictorian but I’ve noticed that’s rarely the case in these Peter Engel-produced high school shows.  Everyone is always turning down the honor or stepping aside to allow someone else to give the speech at graduation.  This just doesn’t seem like something that would happen in real life.

Anyway, Chris and Jamal hold a carnival on the roof of Manny High and raise money for the charity.  Ms. Noble hits them both in the face with a pie.  The whole thing just feels lazy.

Again, this was a dumb episode.  If Ms. Noble really cared about all of these charities, she wouldn’t continually be putting Chris and Jamal in a position where they could easily screw everything up.  Seriously, Ms. Noble’s the worst.

Next week, we’ll be one step closer to the final episode of this show.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Billy Wilder Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.

117 years ago today, Billy Wilder was born in what was-then Austria-Hungary and what is today Poland.  Having started his film career as a screenwriter in Germany, Wilder fled to the United States after the rise of Hitler.  (Many members of Wilder’s family would subsequently die in the Holocaust.)  He went on to establish himself as one of the great studio directors, a filmmaker who could seemingly master any genre and whose films were often distinguished by an irreverent wit and a welcome skepticism when it came to accepting any sort of conventional wisdom.  He made the type of films that could only be made by someone who had seen humanity at its worst but who also understood what people were capable of at their best.  Wilder made dramas that could make you laugh and comedies that could make you cry.  He was a master filmmaker, one whose work continues to influence directors to this day.

Today, in honor of Billy Wilder’s legacy, the Shattered Lens presents….

4 Shots From 4 Billy Wilder Films

Double Indemnity (1944, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: John Seitz)

Sunset Boulevard (1950, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: John F. Seitz)

The Apartment (1960, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: Ernest Laszlo)

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970, dir by Billy Wilder, DP: Christopher Challis)

Scenes That I Love: Ash Replaces His Hand In Evil Dead II

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wish a happy birthday to the one and only Bruce Campbell!  And what better way to celebrate and to get the day started than with an iconic scene from 1987’s Evil Dead II?

Music Video of the Day: Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden (1992, directed by Samuel Bayer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Fear of the Dark, a song about a man who is scared of the dark, was based on the a very real fear that is held by Iron Maiden founder/bassist/songwriter Steve Harris.  The song served as the title track for Iron Maiden’s ninth studio album and it’s gone on to become one of the band’s best known songs.

The video was directed by Samuel Bayer, who was another one of those music video directors who worked with everyone and who made a huge cultural impact even if most of the people who enjoyed his work never learned his name.  Among the other videos that Bayer directed: Garbage’s Only Happy When It Rains, Melissa Etheridge’s Come To My Window, LL Cool J’s Father, and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Enjoy!