Classic Movie Review Untamed Heart

Untamed Heart (1993) 

Directed by Tony Bill 

Written by Tom Sierchio 

Starring Marisa Tomei, Christian Slater, Rosie Perez 

Release Date February 12th, 1993 

Published February 12th, 2023 

So... let's see if I understand this correctly. We are going to work this out together, you and me, dear reader. Christian Slater is a grown adult who still believes that when he was a child living in the jungle that his father stole magical rubies from a Baboon King to try and save Slater's characters life. When the Baboon King, who was trying to murder Slater's father, finds out that the rubies are for trying to save the child, the Baboon King tears out his own heart and puts it into the child Christian Slater's chest. He believes this story still, as an adult working at diner, that he tells this to the women he's been stalking/falling in love with. 

That's something that a human being wrote down and then made into a movie. Untamed Heart is a wild damn disaster of a romantic drama. It's a bizarre movie that appears to think it's perfectly normal for a grown man to rarely speak and believe that he has a baboon heart so thoroughly that he doesn't want to get a heart transplant that might prolong his life. And he's the romantic lead in this movie. No, he's not the little brother who suffered a head injury as a child that the actual romantic lead in the movie takes care of because their parents are gone, he's the actual lead in the movie. 

Okay, yeah, that's completely insane. Marisa Tomei is the actual star of Untamed Heart as a diner waitress named Caroline. While walking home late one night, Caroline is accosted by a pair of mashers, played by Kyle Secor and Willie Garson. Secor attempts to sexually assault Caroline but is thwarted by Adam (Christian Slater). He scoops up an unconscious Caroline and takes her home where he places her on a porch swing and spends hours watching her sleep. Yeah! 

By this point, it's been established that though Caroline and Adam have worked together for some time, he doesn't speak to her or really anyone if he doesn't absolutely have to. So, if they don't know each other, how does Adam know where she lives? Well, he's been stalking Caroline for weeks, perhaps months at a time. He says he just follows her home to make sure she gets there safe but later we will learn that he was also breaking into her house and watching her sleep. 

For her part, Caroline finds all of this incredibly romantic. The 90s were a goddamned mess. If you don't believe that women have spent most of their lives being gaslighted into thinking insane things are actually romantic, you haven't seen this nutzo movie that posits a stranger breaking into a woman's home to watch her sleep for weeks or months on end, as romantic devotion worthy of them spending the rest of their lives together. 

The scene were we find out that Adam has been following Grace comes when he breaks into her house and puts up a Christmas tree in her room, fully decorated. He did this while she and her entire family were sleeping. Her reaction to this is somehow not complete horror. Instead, she responds by saying thank you and 'I can't believe you remembered.' Remembered what? Christmas? Honestly, I wonder if they had Marisa Tomei's character act dumber just so she might seem like she would buy into Slater's Adam as a legit romantic partner. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Magic Mike's Last Dance

Magic Mike's Last Dance (2023) 

Directed by Steven Soderbergh 

Written by Reid Carolin 

Starring Channing Tatum, Salma Hayek

Release Date February 10th, 2023 

Published February 14th, 2023 

Can I recommend a movie solely on the strength of the sexual chemistry between the two leads? It seems like a thin premise for recommending a movie. But, Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek are so incredible together, so insanely sexy together, I kind of want to recommend Magic Mike's Last Dance. Even as the plot seems like nonsense and the story feels cobbled together on the fly, the smoldering sexual chemistry of Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek is so fiery, it's kind of worth suffering the nonsense for. 

Magic Mike's Last Dance returns Channing Tatum, and his washboard abs, to the role of Mike Lane, stripper turned furniture maker, turned bartender as we join this story. Mike's dream of making handmade furniture failed amid the pandemic and he has sustained himself as a bartender for hire at parties ever since. That's how Mike meets Maxandra (Salma Hayek). She's a bored, rich, soon to be divorced cougar who has hired Mike on the recommendation of one of her employees. 

According to said employee, Mike can give Maxandra the kind of experience she's been craving, the kind of male attention she's desired since deciding to leave her husband. Indeed, Mike reluctantly agrees to her terms and provides such an experience. Showing off his insanely sexual lap dance skills, Mike sweeps Maxandra up in a lusty tornado of writhing flesh and she's hooked immediately. Though Mike doesn't want to be a kept man, he can't resist when Maxandra asks him to follow her to London, her primary home. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Batman Begins (2012)

Batman Begins (2005) 

Directed by Christopher Nolan 

Written by Christopher Nolan 

Starring Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes 

Release Date 

Published 2012 

Henri Ducard: Are you ready to begin?

Bruce Wayne: I-I can barely stand...

Henri Ducard: [kicks him] Death does not wait for you to be ready! Death is not considerate, or fair! And make no mistake: here, you face Death.

And that is how Bruce Wayne began his journey some seven years ago in writer-director Christopher Nolan’s first Bat-masterpiece, “Batman Begins.” It’s appropriate that Bruce Wayne, the man who would be Batman, would be trained as a ninja; the nerd culture that deified the caped crusader are of the same ilk who’ve turned the Asian legend of the ninja warrior into an outsized caricature.

It’s that knowing of what the audience wanted combined with his own particular, peculiar interests that have made Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy both crowd-pleasing and deeply personal. We will see in “The Dark Knight Rises,” Nolan’s Batman thesis statement, just how well the director combines his ability to dazzle the masses with his deep seeded philosophical aims.

“Batman Begins” is certainly a remarkable opening statement. In retrospect it’s much easier to see in the film how Nolan wanted to use this iconic character not merely to entertain but to critique and enlighten. From the opening moments when Bruce Wayne loses his parents to crime informed by poverty to the attempt by Ra’s Al Ghul to raze Gotham City by rotting it from within the philosophical aims of Nolan and his co-writer and brother Jonathan Nolan are vague but emerging.

We will get to the philosophy in a moment; let’s dig in to the surface story first. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) lost his parents to a horrendous murder in a back alley. With years of guilt and anger boiling within Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City from a failed stint in college with the intention of purging himself by killing his parents killer. When the man is murdered by a Mob Boss, Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson), Bruce needs a new path and winds up somewhere in Asia.

In Asia Bruce meets and becomes a student of a man calling himself Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson). He’s allegedly a minion of a man known as Ra’s Al Ghul but we will come to know that Ducard is Ra’s and he has plans for his new pupil that involve the destruction of Gotham City. Ra’s Al Ghul is the head of a secret society that has for years restored the balance of the world by laying waste to areas of the world that have grown decadent and out of control and Gotham City is set to join Rome, Sodom & Gomorrah and others on the ash heap of history.

When Bruce leans of Ra’s Al Ghul’s plans the compassion instilled in him by his late father compels him to hope for Gotham City and soon defend it. Bruce’s decision sets the stage for what will be a clash of will and philosophy that will carry audiences through “The Dark Knight Rises;” Ra’s Al Ghul’s cynical belief in the cleansing fire and Batman’s scarred optimism that good can somehow triumph over even the worst evil.

Is it really as simple as a glass half empty versus a glass half full? Of course not, though Ra’s Al Ghul’s nefarious plot to poison and weaponize Gotham’s water supply has a certain ironic quality in my thesis. The deeper meaning of “Batman Begins” and what carried forward through “The Dark Knight” and comes to fruition, allegedly, in “The Dark Knight Rises” is a belief in hope against great odds; the belief that a once great city or country can be great again but only after a great struggle.

Surely, Christopher Nolan’s vision of America in Gotham City is one on the road to complete ruin. It’s a vision that is littered with the bodies of the brave and beleaguered, the good and the evil, but is still a vision of hope. Is not America’s past stained with the same blood? Are we not hopeful that from the horrors of the past greatness can be recovered?

Hope, dear reader, is at the heart of Batman and “Batman Begins” is a far more hopeful movie than many are willing to give it credit for. Just check that hopeful happy ending as Bruce Wayne and his best friend Alfred ponder a future where the ruins of Wayne Manor are restored to an even greater and more effective glory.

Not having seen “The Dark Knight Rises” my theory of hope among the darkness of the Batman series may be completely disproved but I don’t think so. Christopher Nolan may have dark visions of a rotting society but he’s far too savvy to give into the cynicism that is the true enemy of his vision. Batman/Bruce Wayne himself may not be so lucky, but Gotham City will survive and a new hope will be born from the ruins with Batman, man or legend, as its symbol of hope.