#bobsfilmblog

IMDB Top 250: N/A

AFI Top 100: N/A

Empire Top 500: 190

TSPDT Top 1000: N/A

Big is a charming and delightful comedy featuring Tom Hanks in a childhood wish fulfillment fantasy. The film is light, easy to watch, and endearing.

The story is straightforward, getting right to the wish and its unintended consequences very quickly. In a dark turn for such a light film, Josh (David Moscow when young, Tom Hanks when “Big”) allows his family to believe he is kidnapped while he stays in the city, waiting on the forms to find out where the Zoltar machine is.

The comedy is derived from misunderstandings and Josh’s childish innocence which seems to allow him to cruise past any and all obstacles. There are few real conflicts in his adult life, doors open for him at every turn. One almost wonders why, with things going so well for him, he should bother returning to his childhood at all.

There are some memorable moments: the wish on the iconic Zoltar machine, dancing on the giant piano, and the line when Susan (Elizabeth Perkins) is talking about staying the night with Josh, which he interprets as “sleeping over,” to which he responds “Okay, but I get to be on top.”

Tom Hanks is very consistent in the role, authentic throughout as a child trapped in an adult’s body. The rest of the cast performs well, but no one else really stands out.

Notably, this film is rated PG, which must indicate that the MPAA had looser regulations in the 80’s. There is some profanity in the film, but the inclusion of a gratuitous “F”-word would certainly, if released today, have made this a PG-13 movie (in fact, PG-13 movies today are only allowed one non-sexual f-word per script). Additionally, there is some innuendo and material I was surprised to see in a PG film.

The film’s ending is smart, even though it doesn't follow the rule it establishes earlier in the film with the wish coming true the morning after the wish was made. This decision would normally bother me, but here it works, because it allows the film to come to a more natural conclusion.

Mad Max was not the film I anticipated, which, in actuality, was probably Mad Max 2. This isn’t the Mad Max where everyone is covered in bondage armor scouring the desert fighting over petrol. But, in order to allow myself to see Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, I vowed to first endure Mad Max. It was unfortunately underwhelming.

In the film’s defense, the biggest problem I had viewing it was simply understanding the dialogue. I was watching the film on a television, in not the best quality, but the low budget sound quality of the movie itself and the Australian accents and slang made it difficult to discern what was going on. I would have liked to have watched the film with subtitles, but apart from going out and buying the DVD, I don’t know how else I might find the subtitled film. This definitely detracted from my enjoyment in terms of watching the film and comprehending the narrative.

The plot’s rather thin, beginning with the chase and death of the Night Rider and building up to the gang’s retaliation against Goose and then Max’s wife and son. I might add that I had no idea that the gang had sabotaged Goose’s bike and when the bike threw him I was confused as to what had happened and why. Once Max finally decides to get revenge, the film picks up significantly. Indeed, the most, and possibly only memorable scene of the film is the last one, where Max handcuffs Johnny to the car with the leaking fuel line and throws him a hacksaw, telling him it’ll take 10 minutes to saw through the handcuffs and 5 to saw through his ankle (certainly the inspiration for the Saw franchise).

The film plays out like an origin story that takes an entire film to tell. There’s very little to indicate that this is a future dystopian society; this merely seems like one area plagued by a particularly violent motorcycle gang.

IMDB Top 250: N/A

AFI Top 100: N/A

Empire Top 500: N/A

TSPDT Top 1000: 451

Barton Fink is perhaps, of the Coen brothers’ films I’ve seen so far, their most intellectually challenging film. By the end, it becomes quite surreal, with several symbolic elements and very little resolution.

The film defies any attempt at genre classification. Being referred to as a film noir, a horror film, a buddy film, and a Künstlerroman (German for “artist’s film” – a film about an artist’s growth to maturity), I would also add drama and mystery to the list.

The film starts off normally, but grows increasingly more surreal as the film drives toward its conclusion. The beginning of this trend is when Barton is looking at the Gideon’s Bible in his room, and sees his own script in the book of Genesis. The film’s final scene is quite surreal, in that a woman on the beach takes the exact pose as the woman in the picture from Barton’s hotel room. Additionally, the scenes with studio head Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner) going from kissing Barton’s foot to standing before him as a colonel and demeaning him are in such opposition that they come off as surreal. Of course, the most surreal moment of the film is when Charlie Meadow/Maniac Mundt comes charging down the flaming hallway with a shotgun screaming “Look upon me! I’ll show you the life of the mind!” before killing the two cops, then having a relatively peaceful conversation with Barton. All these scenes, especially their placement toward the conclusion of the film, make the ending confusing and ambiguous. Everything appears too strange to really be happening, and it seems that it must have some symbolic meaning.

Barton’s proclaimed interest in the common man is, as we see, purely an intellectual fixation, as when he continually interrupts his neighbor Charlie as he keeps trying to interject “I could tell you some stories”. As Charlie reveals later, the reason he killed Audrey (Judy Davis) as she slept in Barton’s bed was because “You don’t listen!”

The film’s ending is quite abrupt, and doesn’t seem to resolve the story completely. We are left wondering, if nothing else, what is in the box that Charlie gave Barton to hold for him, as Barton never opens it (though it would make sense that it would be Audrey’s head). But other questions remain. Did Charlie kill Barton’s parents and uncle? Will the police catch Charlie and Barton? Did Charlie somehow not burn to death in the hotel when the hallway was on fire? These questions go unanswered and the film simply ends.