Post by penguinslovedw on Mar 3, 2009 11:17:25 GMT -5
Summary: A ragtag group of rogue meteorologists race to discover the truth behind evil tornadoes, patch up the torn marriage of their leaders, and beat out a group of other meteorologists who've sold out and gone corporate.
This movie is destined to be featured in a "Before they won their Oscars" retrospective of Philip Seymour Hoffman, which is unfortunate because it's pretty darn entertaining. I loved this movie as a kid, and watching it again on a plane back from London I remember why. (Why they show a movie about deadly storms on an airplane, I shudder to speculate). The fact is, it scared the crap out of me and still does.
The creepy soundtrack is worthy of any horror classic, with cellos and violins menacing every scene like "The Wizard of Oz" on bad acid. They play a message which clearly says "I'm sure that storm outside is nothing, those black clouds are just rain, and did you know that tornadoes are strong enough to hurl a piece of straw through a phone-pole? I know, I've seen pictures."
This merrie olde band of weather-persons is lead by Jo (Helen Hunt) and Bill (Bill Paxton), a couple going through a divorce. Jo is haunted by tornadoes (who don't help matters by sneaking up behind her a going "Boo!") ever since one done killed her pa. Bill is trying to settle into a new cushy job as a TV weatherman (a much maligned occupation, apparently) but can't forget his God-given tornado instincts. He can tell what the storm is thinking, the film reverantly says. Actually, he can pick up a handful of dirt and drop it to see which way the wind is blowing. But I'm sure that to us, without said instincts, this would mean nothing.
As for acting in general; if you're watching this just for the acting and nothing else, you've probably grabbed this movie by mistake. You should've grabbed "Terms of Endearment", which is just above it on the rental-store shelf. That being said, for a movie with weather as the bad-guy, the acting's not too bad. What saves it are two things:
A) The actors play it straight. They don't try to find some underlying, id/ego/superego/"what's my motivation", psycobabble nonsense, nor do they try to play it tongue-in-cheek. They just take the lines as they are and play them as sincerely as they can.
B) Michael Crichton (God bless him) co-wrote the screenplay. The man made a career of taking concepts and ideas which were inherently ridiculous (bringing dinosaurs to life, cowboy-robots killing people, talking apes finding lost cities) and somehow making them totally real and believable. His touch is obvious throughout the whole movie.
Anyone living outside the Midwest might find "Twister" just doesn't quite strike a chord with them. Those of us who grew up practicing tornado drills at school, or watching the TV with the that little map of our state in the corner and all the counties in imminent danger colored in red, will probably find that certain scenes hit the right fear center in our brain.
"Twister" is part of a depressingly small genre of movies. These are movies, which you can just enjoy and don't have to think about too much, but also (and here's the key point) don't make you feel like you are losing IQ points just by watching. "Jackass" is not in this category, at least not mine, but then neither is "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". "The Rocketeer" is in this category (thank you wdm0744 once more), as are "Princess Bride" and most Star Trek movies. Some of you are perking up and saying "Oh yeah, like that one movie [insert name here]! I love that flick!", I hope.
All in all, I'm going to give "Twister" 4 handfuls of Raisinets out of 5, for having weather as villain but also for great entertainment value.
So how did I do? Except for the comma/parentheses abuse and run-on sentences, that is. I mean, was it at least partially comprehensible? ALL criticism is appreciated as long is it doesn't begin with "You stupidhead..."
This movie is destined to be featured in a "Before they won their Oscars" retrospective of Philip Seymour Hoffman, which is unfortunate because it's pretty darn entertaining. I loved this movie as a kid, and watching it again on a plane back from London I remember why. (Why they show a movie about deadly storms on an airplane, I shudder to speculate). The fact is, it scared the crap out of me and still does.
The creepy soundtrack is worthy of any horror classic, with cellos and violins menacing every scene like "The Wizard of Oz" on bad acid. They play a message which clearly says "I'm sure that storm outside is nothing, those black clouds are just rain, and did you know that tornadoes are strong enough to hurl a piece of straw through a phone-pole? I know, I've seen pictures."
This merrie olde band of weather-persons is lead by Jo (Helen Hunt) and Bill (Bill Paxton), a couple going through a divorce. Jo is haunted by tornadoes (who don't help matters by sneaking up behind her a going "Boo!") ever since one done killed her pa. Bill is trying to settle into a new cushy job as a TV weatherman (a much maligned occupation, apparently) but can't forget his God-given tornado instincts. He can tell what the storm is thinking, the film reverantly says. Actually, he can pick up a handful of dirt and drop it to see which way the wind is blowing. But I'm sure that to us, without said instincts, this would mean nothing.
As for acting in general; if you're watching this just for the acting and nothing else, you've probably grabbed this movie by mistake. You should've grabbed "Terms of Endearment", which is just above it on the rental-store shelf. That being said, for a movie with weather as the bad-guy, the acting's not too bad. What saves it are two things:
A) The actors play it straight. They don't try to find some underlying, id/ego/superego/"what's my motivation", psycobabble nonsense, nor do they try to play it tongue-in-cheek. They just take the lines as they are and play them as sincerely as they can.
B) Michael Crichton (God bless him) co-wrote the screenplay. The man made a career of taking concepts and ideas which were inherently ridiculous (bringing dinosaurs to life, cowboy-robots killing people, talking apes finding lost cities) and somehow making them totally real and believable. His touch is obvious throughout the whole movie.
Anyone living outside the Midwest might find "Twister" just doesn't quite strike a chord with them. Those of us who grew up practicing tornado drills at school, or watching the TV with the that little map of our state in the corner and all the counties in imminent danger colored in red, will probably find that certain scenes hit the right fear center in our brain.
"Twister" is part of a depressingly small genre of movies. These are movies, which you can just enjoy and don't have to think about too much, but also (and here's the key point) don't make you feel like you are losing IQ points just by watching. "Jackass" is not in this category, at least not mine, but then neither is "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". "The Rocketeer" is in this category (thank you wdm0744 once more), as are "Princess Bride" and most Star Trek movies. Some of you are perking up and saying "Oh yeah, like that one movie [insert name here]! I love that flick!", I hope.
All in all, I'm going to give "Twister" 4 handfuls of Raisinets out of 5, for having weather as villain but also for great entertainment value.
So how did I do? Except for the comma/parentheses abuse and run-on sentences, that is. I mean, was it at least partially comprehensible? ALL criticism is appreciated as long is it doesn't begin with "You stupidhead..."
(To be fair, I hardly get regional specifics; I thought it was general bumpkin mockery.)