Cinema de Gym: 'Outbreak'

Kurt here with your weekly movie exercise. This week at the gym I saw Outbreak, the 1995 disaster drama that cashed in on the Ebola virus fears that tore through the U.S. in the late '80s and early '90s. The virus in Outbreak is known as Motaba, which also has African origins and is spread via a monkey host (the film is loosely based on The Hot Zone, a nonfiction book about Ebola by New Yorker reporter Richard Preston). For me, there is no scarier film villain than the global pandemic. You can always outrun Ghostface, or jab Michael Myers in the eye with a wire hanger. Even an apocalyptic meteor is somehow less terrifying, perhaps because it arrives in a flash, its devastation unseen until that moment of impact. The indiscriminate horror of an unstoppable disease creeps in around you like darkness, randomly affecting others until it catches you, and there's nothing you can do about it. I've never been good with sickness, so the concept of the ultimate sickness always hits a nerve (you can bet I had irrational fears during the whole Swine Flu scare).

Which, of course, is why I've always responded strongly to pandemic films. Though many have surely been done well, global-killer thrillers involving zombies can't elicit the same reaction. The mad upending of all that makes logical sense in the world remains intact, but there's always the comfort of fantasy. Truly scary are things like Stephen King's The Stand, which – before it, too, becomes highly fantastical – offers a chilling vision of a wiped-out population. Released just a year later, Outbreak ditches the fantasy, save your typical Hollywood plot contrivances. Its solace (and script convenience) is that the fatal bug is basically confined to a tiny town (the fictional Cedar Creek, Calif.), and poses only the threat of worldwide infection. But hell if that made a whole lot of difference to yours truly.

I remember being very into this movie in the '90s; however, I don't think I ever knew it was directed by Wolfgang Peterson, he of Das Boot, The Perfect Storm and Poseidon fame. If pandemics are one rung up from earthbound meteors, then Petersen is a few rungs up from his oft-confused German counterpart, Roland Emmerich, who's far more gruesome, bombastic and frequent in his attempts to kill mass amounts of people. Petersen also knows how to assemble a classy cast, as Outbreak stars Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Rene Russo (please get back to work!), Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr. and a blink-and-miss McDreamey as the first Motaba victim. 

The culpritThe segment I caught consisted mainly of Hoffman's Col. Sam Daniels and Gooding Jr.'s Major Salt tracking down that monkey, first on a ship, then finally in the backyard of a suburban home, where a young girl's been feeding it like a pet. Source of both virus and antivirus, the monkey is the cure, and Col. Daniels is especially motivated, seeing as things have grown personal (ex-wife Russo's got Motaba) and bloodthirsty bureaucrats are on his tail (Sutherland, whom we just saw in Fool's Gold, plays one Gen. McClintock, the sort of military man with bio-weapons on the brain). At the end of my session, McClintock and Daniels were embroiled in a helicopter chase, which kicks off with one of those only-in-the-movies exchanges that beckons for applause. “With all due respect, Col. Daniels, I will blow you out of the sky,” McClintock snarls. “With all due respect,” Daniels retorts, “f**k you. Sir.”

Conclusions?

1. In addition to showing off the enviable physiques of Matthew McConaughey and Will Smith, my gym is now urging me to keep healthy with the threat of disease.
2. Don't let your nieces and nephews and sons and daughters play with monkeys, as fleas could be the least that they're carrying.
3. Donald Sutherland, whom I also just saw in Horrible Bosses, is officially stalking me.
4. Disease > Meteor. Wolfgang > Roland.

What scares the bejesus out of you at the movies?

Cinema de Gym: 'I Am Legend'

Hey all. Kurt here with round five of Cinema de Gym. When I walked into my gym's screening of I Am Legend, otherwise known as one of the greatest movies ever made, it was just in time for sole survivor Will Smith's morning workout regimen. Y'know – the one that shows off his especially cut physique, which had a beaming Jada gushing her wifely approval to the press (or was that for Ali?). In any case, it was a good motivator with which to start, my elliptical-bound self facing the day with Will and his treadmilling dog. I do love these morning-routine sequences, which, if done well, can dole out oodles of narrative and character development with nary a spoken word. (My mind goes right to a particular season premiere of Lost, wherein we woke up with a character, partook in his a.m. ritual, then flew up, up, up a laddered pipe only to gasp, “He's in the hatch!”)

After tending to some ill-tempered rats in his basement lab (he's testing cures for that apocalyptic zombie rage virus, you'll remember), Will grabs some rifles from a locked cabinet, whistles for his pooch (Sam) and leaves the house. Outside, it's revealed that he lives within spitting distance of the Washington Square Arch, and in this moment it hits me that I walked by this very address just a couple weeks ago. Honestly, I don't know how you New York film lovers don't just completely lose your s**t on a daily basis. Maybe you do. It's crazy. You live inside the movies. Anyway...

Last man's best friend

Will and Sam take the SUV to the video store, presumably a regular errand that offers a sliver of normalcy and some much-needed sweet escape (so long as they don't rent Life After People). This, I believe, is the first scene that truly introduces us to the film's keen ability to apply considerable weight to inanimate and/or nonhuman things, be them Sam or the mannequins Will regards as everyday people. In the video store, he calls the cashier mannequin by name, and all but blushes while pretending the nearby female mannequin is giving him the eye. The film finds both comic relief and an oft-profound sense of loneliness in such scenes, and Will knows just how to play them: straight, but with bubbling pain. It's a similar pain to that of Tom Hanks's Wilson-loving cast away, and it's the same pain that hurts so good (dramatically, I mean) when – SPOILER ALERT – Sam goes viral and has to be put down.

But I'm getting way ahead of myself here, as things were nowhere near that dire moment during the little slice I watched. Not long after the video store, Will is golfing on a pier, broadcasting that call for survivors that was ubiquitous during the film's marketing campaign (“You are not alone...”). Broadcast finished, Will and Sam spot a deer amidst an ocean of abandoned cars and begin the hunt. Rounding a corner, Sam gets ahead of Will and follows his prey into the movie's no-no place of shadow, which I suppose we can now consider a bit of foreshadowing...

Conclusions?

1. Watching scenes of people working out while working out actually makes you want to work out!
2. I'm really looking forward to moving to New York, so I can live in the movies, too.
3. Will could've really used a little Kim Cattrall in that big lonely city.

And the question we all want answered: What movies would you rent if you were the last person alive?

Cinema de Gym: 'Fool's Gold'

Kurt here with another round of Movies and Muscle. Flicks and Flexing. Celluloid and Deltoids. (I'm stopping, I'm stopping.) Today we have Fool's Gold, a frothy, summery dish and the unofficial sequel to How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Released in 2008, this treasure-hunting rom com was to be the Runaway Bride or You've Got Mail for the beloved, if overestimated, duo of Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, whom, for brevity purposes, we'll refer to herein as Hudsoghey. Sadly, this well-meaning-lark-with-an-asking-for-it-title wound up even less successful than those other films, basically just serving as further proof of the lightning-only-strikes-once rule.

From what I gathered, Hudsoghey play husband-and-wife golddiggers who dive for sunken relics in what is either The Bahamas or an especially tropical-looking part of Florida (I swear I heard “Florida” in there somewhere). When I entered, wife was in the process of divorcing (a characteristically absent) hubbie, complaining about his incessant immaturity, but making a point to repeatedly emphasize his incredible sexual prowess. The visions she inspires seem to be the key fantasy this movie is trying to sell, and since no part of my snippet featured the requisite shirtless McConaughey, her words were doubly effective. (Not that they were ever in short supply, but McConaughey fantasies do seem to abound lately, what with that whole Justin Bartha “McConaughnuts” thing.)

Not part of what I saw

I couldn't pinpoint where I was in terms of the film's running time, but the sense of the divorce's impermanence was practically immediate, with Hudson second-guessing the Hudsoghey split. Enter Ray Winstone, Kevin Hart and President Snow himself, Donald Sutherland, who, if memory serves, play a fellow treasure man, a gangster and a rich tycoon, respectively. All are in search of a precious batch of Spanish artifacts, which Hudson seems to know the most about given her secret scholarly interests. When I stepped off my machine and headed for the door, she looked primed to literally dive back in, if not for love, then for love of ancient baubles.

Hudson as closet bookwormI liked the on-vacation vibrancy of the movie's visuals, which is pretty well-conveyed in that artificial-bronzer poster. I also like that I'm starting to get a beat on my gym's screening trends. They like McConaughey, especially when he's gallivanting around atmospheric locales with pretty ladies whose passions don't quite jive with their bombshell looks. Previously shown was Sahara, which features Penelope Cruz as some sort of a scientist.

But that's another post...

Conclusions?

1. Even if the movie's a dud (and even if her character's implausible), Hudson's pretty reliable when it comes to exuding that sunshine she inherited.
2. Hudsoghey likely won't be having a third go at it.
3. Sunny surroundings can give a major boost to films that are doomed to sink.
4. Fictional supercouples like Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling would probably be wise to learn from the Fool's Golds of the world: best to keep that (note)book closed.

Is there an onscreen flame you'd like to see rekindled?

Cinema de Gym: 'There's Something About Mary'

Kurt here with the third installment of Cinema de Gym, the new series in which I mix film with fitness by chiming in on the movies that play at my local health club. The cinematic portions of my gym visits come near the end of the hour, when lifting segues into cardio. Since the day's movie plays on a continuous loop, I never know what, exactly, I'm in for, but I seem to have knack for being just in time for the “money scenes,” if you will.

On the day that Swimfan was playing, I slipped in just as Jesse Bradford was being tricked into having chlorinated psycho sex with Erika Christensen, and recently, when the movie du jour was There's Something About Mary, you know I climbed up onto that elliptical just as Ben Stiller's zippered balls were ready for their close-up.

Even after 13 years, I'm baffled by There's Something About Mary, a movie that, for me, is the '90s equivalent of The Hangover – a massively popular, jump-on-the-laugh-wagon comedy success that's only minimally funny. I can vividly remember allowing myself to be convinced of the film's hilarity, when in fact I only truly laughed at scenes with Magda, the randy, sun-burnt neighbor. Isn't that funny? The communal mentality of giving mediocre comedy a pass just because so many other people have inexplicably decided it's hysterical? I know better now than to fall for such things, but so many other people don't, including the chorus of sweaty men surrounding me in the gym's dark theater room, all of them laughing and looking at each other with validation-seeking eyes like, “Don't we just love this franks-and-beans bit?!”

Stiller zips up

Whereas The Hangover appeals to the layman's thrill of drinking to forget and then straining to remember, Mary, of course, thrives on sheer shock value. Many would probably call it a pioneer of the censor-pushing sight gag. But without WTF moments like Stiller's we-got-a-bleeder wardrobe malfunction or Cameron Diaz's spunky hair gel incident, what are we left with? A creepy, predominantly mean-spirited affair that essentially endorses stalking? An inane comedy for rude, sweaty gym rats that dares to call itself a love story? That delightful “Build Me Up, Buttercup” coda notwithstanding, there's something about all of it that just doesn't add up, and one last belly laugh from a dude tickled by Mary's “retarded” brother was all I needed to cut off my cardio session early.

Conclusions?

1. Scan the room thoroughly before entering a screening of There's Something About Mary.
2. Diaz, if you think about it, was launched to superstardom while being made a lust object, punch line and sperm receptacle all at once.
3. The “shocking” moments of Mary haven't aged any better than neighbor Magda's weathered, leathered skin.
4. My gym has got to get some new programmers!

What say you, TFE readers? Smitten with Mary? Looking forward to Bad Teacher?

Cinema de Gym: 'Daredevil'

Kurt here. For those of you just tuning in, Cinema de Gym is an experimental series in which I give my two cents on movies that play in an in-house theater at my local gym, where I'm attempting to shed "writer's pounds." Instead of seats, this screening room has treadmills and such, and plays a daily film on a loop. For the first installment, we chatted about Barry Levinson's Bandits. Today, inspired by Nathaniel's "Mutant Week," the subject is Daredevil, the 2003 handicapped-hero flick and the third big comic book movie of the Aughts (following, of course, X-Men and Spider-Man).

This is an easy movie to belittle for a whole mess of reasons. Box office clout be damned, Ben Affleck makes for an unwieldy superhero, especially since he was nowhere near his lean Town physique when this film was shot (directing just literally takes it outta ya, I suppose). That he looked a lot older than 30 at the time certainly didn't help matters, and both age and unwieldiness compounded the secondhand discomfort of that red leather suit, which, frankly, wasn't worth the poor cows' hides.

Then there was the silliness of Colin Farrell's Bullseye who, however well cast, would be one of the first of many counterproductively-comical superbaddies, saddled with meta lines like, "I want a bloody costume."

Farrell as Bullseye, Garner as Elektra

But I hardly count this among the worst of our last decade of superhero cinema, as the subsequent years would give us beauts like Jonah Hex, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and, oh yes, Elektra. Before the spinoff, I thought Jennifer Garner excelled as Daredevil's sai-wielding vigilantess, balancing sex appeal with girl-next-doorness and fitting much more nicely into her S&M gear than future hubby Ben. She certainly has this movie, not Alias, to thank for her big-screen career.

Moving on, I'm with Roger Ebert in regard to the film's visual f/x, which the uncannily prolific critic championed heartily upon the film's release. In a movie of fickle success, writer/director Mark Steven Johnson – whose own professional fickleness we'll get to in a sec – finds some handsome ways to envision the tricky nature of hero Matt Murdock's powers, which are akin to Sonar in that the blind crime fighter can "see" sound vibrations. Specifically, a scene in which Elektra stands in the rain so Matt can see her face via droplet sound waves is quite purdy, if overtly digital.

Matt Murdock. No relation to Scott Summers.The thing with Cinema de Gym is, I only see 15- to 30-minute snippets of the film in question (depending on the day's endurance level), so I ought to discuss the segment. What I saw of Daredevil was in fact a lot of down time – the slower bits in which Matt chats with his co-worker and Hollywood-prescribed best bud, played by future Iron Man helmer Jon Favreau. Matt, a lawyer, has a built-in taste for justice, but that's not all that interesting. What I liked were curious details about his handicap, like how he folds bills of different denominations in different ways, so as to feel the correct amount. I remembered that part from first viewing, and saw it again in my gym segment.

About Mark Steven Johnson, the guy's got a really odd filmography, penning a grab bag of screenplays and directing a few of them to all-over-the-map results. In the '90s, he wrote the Grumpy Old Men movies, Simon Birch and Jack Frost (the Michael Keaton weepie, not the straight-to-video slasher), then did Daredevil before writing and directing...Ghost Rider and When In Rome.

[Pause] ...whoa.

At a recent party, someone told me he felt Daredevil was the movie that shaped the superhero film as we now know it. I'm not sure about that, but it certainly seems to have been a tipping point for its director.

Conclusions?

1. Ben Affleck is wise to have not returned to comic book cinema (assuming it would have had him back).
2. If nothing else, mediocre superhero movies can lead to loving, lasting Hollywood marriages.
3. Supporting parts in superhero flicks can give actors the comic book director's bug. (Might the long-awaited Wonder Woman be helmed by Thor's Kat Dennings?)
4. I'm suddenly dying to see what Mark Steven Johnson does next, and I imagine he's open to suggestions. The floor is yours, TFE readers.