DVD Movie Reviews

By Dan

Now, I know that the Internet likes to complain about things – hell, it’s pretty much the power source for the entire thing, but I’d like to suggest that movies are actually pretty good right now. The underrated for so long Ryan Gosling is getting some good roles (and the recognition he deserves); most of the recent comic book films have been good (in some cases excellent), Meryl Streep continues to show why she’s the best actress alive, and Michael Bay seems happy to destroy only one of my treasured childhood memories.

But things aren’t perfect. Something’s missing. Well, actually, 5 things. You may have already gathered that from the headline above.

Let’s go to the list!

Westerns

The disembodied head of Clint Eastwood compels you to make more Westerns.

For some reason, Westerns fell out of favour in Hollywood a few decades ago, and have never really regained their popularity. Actually, I should clarify that – they’ve never regained their popularity with studio executives; the audiences still love ‘em. What’s even stranger about it, is that the few Westerns that have been made in the last 20 or so year have mostly been great – Unforgiven, True Grit, The Assassination of Jesse James By Oh My Lord This Is Such A Long Movie Title. It’s time for Hollywood to get back on the horse, and let Clint Eastwood make one last great western (in front or behind the camera, I don’t care). Yee-haa!

Spaceships

The one thing that all spaceships need - a cool paint job!

Back when I was a kid, it seemed that every second movie had spaceships flying about the screen. And not just spaceships, but iconic spaceships – the Millennium Falcon, the USS Enterprise, the X-Wing, the D7-class battlecruiser. But now, aside from the late, lamented Serenity (Firefly - come back!), where are all the cool spaceships? (OK, TV’s Battlestar Galactica has a few.) The time is right to develop a new space-set franchise, which MUST include cool spaceships with even cooler names. Like the Planet-Eater, or the Star-Sword, or Gladys, the Most Polite Spaceship in the Galaxy.

Buddy Cop Movies

Er... no.

Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte. Eddie Murphy and Judge Reinhold. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell. There are some great buddy cop duos right there, but how long has it been since the last great buddy cop movie? (I’m not including the totally awesome Hot Fuzz, as it was a parody of the genre.) Why can’t we see The Rock and Ryan Reynolds team up to kick some bad-guy arse? Yeah, there have been some comedy movies that enter into the genre (The Other Guys, we’re looking at you), but I want a big-budget, non-stop action fest with fist-fights, gun-fights, chase scenes and more explosions than a badly secured Chinese fireworks factory. Make it happen, movie men.

Big Soundtracks

We would never forget about you, Simple Minds.

Maybe it’s because of the recent death of Whitney Houston, but I’ve been wondering where the big movie soundtrack songs have gone. You know the ones – I Will Always Love You, Take My Breath Away, My Heart Will Go On, Up Where We Belong. Those soaring ballads that make a female eye weep, and programmers for certain radio stations wet their pants with glee. You can’t tell me that Beyonce, Taylor Swift or an off the interchange bench Celine Dion couldn’t belt out an emotion stirring hit for an upcoming movie or two. Yes, they’re the musical equivalent to a Mills & Boon novel, but there’s still a place for them.

Traditional Animation

This might sum up everything that's good about traditional animation.

I love Pixar. Seriously, I have all of their movies (on Blu-ray, no less), and even their lesser movies (Cars and (especially) Cars 2) still entertain me (when you have a young Cars-obsessed son, you’d wanna hope they entertain you). (So many parentheses!) But the rise of CGI animation has sadly seen the demise of traditional 2D animation. It’s just not hip these days. While TV still knocks out some traditional animation, most of it isn’t even close to the quality of those classic Disney movies, or the anarchic Warner Bros. cartoons. I’d love to see a studio take a risk, and give us all a taste of the old school once again.

Special TV Bonus Entry - Decent Sketch Comedy

The reason why I was happy to spend so many Saturday nights in during my early twenties.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Australia actually had some decent sketch comedy shows – Fast Forward, The Comedy Company and (best of all) The Late Show. But these days, er, not so much. In fact, there’s not a lot happening internationally either (save for the evergreen – and usually patchy – Saturday Night Live). So where will the next generation of TV comedians come from? The occasional guest spot on The Project or Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation? YouTube? Actually, yeah, it’ll probably be YouTube. But still, we need a new TV sketch comedy show, if only to get new faces out there (and new writing talent behind the scenes too). Otherwise in 20 years time all we’ll have is an infinitely annoying and smug Chris Lilley.