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Ridley Scott

Before you prepare your e-mails, let me qualify my unpopular opinion about Ridley Scott. For Alien and Blade Runner, he deserves medals. After that, I’m not so sure he’s made a wholly good movie, an entertaining, thrilling, thoughtful movie. I’m not against him not making movies equal to the grandeur and complexity of Blade Runner, but I find myself left cold at his films more often than not. The only two movies of his since 1982 that I tolerate, but am still mostly unexcited by, are Thelma and Louise and Matchstick Men. Gladiator, a wildly popular Oscar winner, is one of my least favorite award-winning movies, a murky, dull, and rote sword-and-sandals epic that featured a Russell Crowe performance that paved the way to making Gerard Butler popular; tell me that his lead in 300 isn’t influenced by Maximus in Gladiator, and I’ve got some land to sell you.

Scott is not a bad director, but his notable motifs are mostly in the nitty-gritty of production design, which can be eye-popping and colorful, but not lately. Body of Lies and American Gangster continued the trend Scott has of using the darkest, drabbest palette available, dark blues and browns all the way. He often attracts solid actors (Body of Lies is a weakly plotted film, but Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe do their very best to make things worthwhile), but the scripts he works with are uninvolving to me and rarely rise above cliché. Maybe it’s that Scott started out with two of the biggest studio films ever, movies that resonate now in ways that weren’t even thought of. For Alien and Blade Runner, I’ll always give him a pass, but Ridley Scott has done nothing of note since then.

Rocky

No, I don’t hate Rocky. I don’t get Rocky. Better yet, I don’t get Sylvester Stallone. There’s only a few weeks until The Expendables, his latest action movie, and what interests me about the film (and it’s only mild interest) are the actors surrounding Stallone. Schwarzenegger, Willis, Statham, Li…the cast is amazing, even if it’s still a bit cheesy. But Sylvester Stallone is a movie star whose stardom has constantly baffled me. Rocky is arguably the best movie he’s been in, but for me, that’s still faint praise. It’s not that the story of Rocky - and do I really need to recap it for you? - is predictable. I’m a fan of sports movies, and most of them traffic in predictable storylines. This isn’t a bad thing: we want the home team to win. We want the underdogs to triumph. That Rocky doesn’t triumph in the superficial fashion isn’t disappointing to me. I just don’t know why it’s so beloved.

It won Best Picture, I know. That Rocky won Best Picture in a year when it faced off with movies like Network, All The President’s Men, and Taxi Driver is potentially one of the biggest shocks of Oscar history. Look at those other movies. Network. Taxi Driver! How does a movie like Taxi Driver not win Best Picture? If you tell me it’s because Network beats it, I nod and accept the facts. I wouldn’t immediately compare those two films with, say, the face-off in 2007 of No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, but those two movies could have easily canceled each other out at the Oscars, and it wouldn’t have been surprising. Rocky won, and it’s still looked on fondly by many, but the dead-eyed performances from Stallone and Talia Shire, among other things, confuse me. I hate to say so usually, but I don’t understand this movie’s appeal.

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