OVP: Poseidon (2006)

Film: Poseidon (2006)
Stars: Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Emmy Rossum, Jacinda Barrett, Mike Vogel, Kevin Dillon, Stacy Ferguson, Andre Braugher
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I see a lot of movies, but I don't see a particularly large number of "bad" movies.  I'm not talking about a film like Vice or Bohemian Rhapsody where some people love it and I hated it, I'm talking about the sorts of movies that everyone generally agrees are truly awful, films like the ones that Nic Cage has made for the past twenty years.  Films, essentially, like Poseidon (a film that you could say stars Nic Cage and I don't think I would even bat an eye, even though I saw it yesterday).  The 2006 action film at seas is a truly terrible movie, but a movie so bad you almost could watch it ironically, appreciating the bizarre nature of such a massive film that features actors that were very much "of that year."

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a remake of the 1972 mammoth disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure (which you might remember I liked way back when we discussed it in 2012).  The film centers on a luxury liner, here already halfway out to sea (I'll give Petersen this-he doesn't skimp on the action with ancillary plot details that really detract from the whole reason you're seeing a film like Poseidon) and celebrating New Year's Eve with deadly consequences.  Among the passengers are former New York City mayor Robert Ramsey (Russell), his daughter Jennifer (Rossum), her boyfriend Christian (Vogel), a gay businessman Richard Nelson (Dreyfuss, and you know he's gay because he said "he" on the phone & wears an earring...because it's 2006 and that's all you needed then) and a professional gambler named Dylan (Lucas).  There are other characters, but they're mostly there to be corpses along the way, and so you don't really need their names.  In perhaps the best nod to the time period, Fergie (aka Stacy Ferguson) makes a brief appearance at the singer on the luxury lot, who is weirdly close to the ship's idiotic captain (Braugher) as for some reason they die in each other's arms.

The film's best, and only worthwhile, sequence is the gigantic crash.  If you hadn't already put it together, the reason I saw this movie in the first place was that it is part of the OVP, as it was nominated for Best Visual Effects in 2006.  The VFX are hard to gage, because it actually in some ways improves upon Titanic (the detail in some of the larger shots is incredible, considering the number of people and objects that are littered throughout the CGI), but it's also not differentiating itself enough in my opinion to be considered a landmark achievement like Titanic.  My brother noted that when you're grading Oscar's VFX choices in the new century, you're really just talking about a pre and post-Avatar world, and that's clear here-this movie wouldn't even get shortlisted today, but considering some of the contenders that year and the precision with which it used its VFX, it's a laudable nomination.

The film, though, is stupid.  The dialogue is painful, and frequently we see violent shifts in the personalities of the characters just to make it fit a specific scene; it's as if Ryan Murphy is the true captain of this boat.  All of the actors were very much "of the 00's" save for Russell & Dreyfuss, who are there to split the Shelley Winters role in half (heaven forbid we give that part to a woman in her 60's).  Rossum Vogel, Dillon, Lucas-they've all enjoyed some modicum of success since then but none ever took off as a film star, and it shows here when no one can rise through the mediocrity to become a standout.  The casting department didn't help Rossum in particular, as they literally cast two other women that look just like her in build and hair color to serve as token, damsels-in-distress (the women in this film are treated as nothing more than trophies or random people to be saved-literally none of them gets a moment of heroism-a twenty-year-old Rossum gets a piggyback ride from Russell at one point).  The film is terrible, but terrible in a way that's easy to mock.  I'm against hate viewing films (too many people put their heart-and-soul into a film to watch it ironically), but if that's your jam, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better movie to indulge your criticisms with.

Book Club (2018)

Film: Book Club (2018)
Stars: Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Richard Dreyfuss, Andy Garcia, Don Johnson
Director: Bill Holderman
Oscar History: It's not that kind of movie.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

4 Oscars, 6 Emmys, and 12 Golden Globes.  If we go to the nominations, it's 13, 16, and 39, respectively.  The women of Book Club have created so many film and television memories through the years, honestly, they could have filmed their actual book club and I would have shown up to watch it.  This seems to be the attitude of most of the people I follow on Twitter, who were thrilled to be attending Book Club even if it didn't actually look any good.  The fact that it got made at all is interesting, and proof, perhaps, of Hollywood having missed the boat a bit when it comes to counter-programming.  Book Club is a genuine hit at this point, and proves that you don't have to have an English accent to storm the box office against blockbuster giants (these four women's British contemporaries like Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, and Maggie Smith regularly get to lead their own summer comedies).  That said, this is a film review, and it's important for me not to just ask "is this fun?" but also "is this good?"

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around four lifelong friends: Diane (Keaton), Vivian (Fonda), Sharon (Bergen), and Carol (Steenburgen) who get together every single month to read a book, and because Hollywood demands we have to have a hook in order for four beautiful older women to talk about sex & relationships, the book club pick is Fifty Shades of Grey.  Thankfully this isn't a huge part of the film itself (only Steenburgen seems to indulge a bit in EL James erotica, and that's less central to her subplot than the trailers would suggest), as it would feel a bit ageist to have a bunch of worldly women focus entirely on being shocked by S&M, but it is indicative of the pretty uninspired thinking that screenwriters Bill Holderman and Erin Simms bring to this movie.  For it has to be said-Book Club, for all of the promise of its legendary stars, is not very good.

The film's central problem lies in it being too predictable, and feeling a bit too much like an original movie you'd catch on cable (in many ways it reminded me of Wild Oats from a few years back, which premiered on Lifetime).  There's nothing unique or special happening here.  Candice Bergen is the only person doing something original here, and the only character whose story I wanted to learn more about as the film progressed.  Bergen breathes life into her character, a stately judge who is trying to start dating again, and finds at least some under-explored facets of aging; watching her ex-husband introduce "the love of his life" is a cruel scene, particularly when you consider that he's not meeting some harlot, but instead a genuinely nice younger woman.  There's also the frayed dynamic between her son, who is clearly more like his dad than his mother, and herself, and the way that Bergen tips her hand that she needed to be a more absent mother in order to have her successful career, and the resentment that builds from such a decision.  That's great stuff, and while heavy for a comedy, Bergen makes it work.  The rest of the cast, though, doesn't have that luxury and doesn't expand their characters beyond two dimensions.

Fonda, for example, is phoning in her role as a sexy nymph who let a man get away-she could do this in her sleep.  Keaton's performance as a mother rediscovering love is the same role she's been playing for twenty years.  It would have been genuinely interesting if they had messed around with these parts, for example, and not had them play their own public persona (imagine Fonda as the neurotic mother or Keaton as the lusty single gal), but that's not really what people are buying tickets for; like the Dench/Smith films, they want to see the star they know-and-love, and they don't want them to stretch too much.  As a result, this is a film that feels instantly disposable, which is a damned shame as these actors are too talented to discard.