Escape from New York

There were things about this movie that were much better than I expected. The cinematography, especially was really pretty, with lots of lens flares and stuff done very well--it seems more than in most movies.

Particularly, the whole opening sequence, with its long tracking establishing shots, with Carpenter's characteristic music. And then Kurt Russell shows up with his eye patch and kind of tears a hole in that whole thing. So it was all very pretty to look at, for pretty much the whole movie, but I can't help but think they totally fucked Russell's costume in this. Maybe it's because I just watched Death Proof so recently, but I know Russell is capable of seeming way more rugged and cool than he ever does in this movie, and it starts with how shitty is costume is. The eye patch just looks silly, and then, what, is he wearing that Under Armour stuff? And his nicely combed hair... Obviously, someone on the set knew how to do costuming, because Romero is fucking awesome--really creepy and cool looking, and he manages to do the creepy laugh thing right, so it actually is kind of creepy. Other than Romero, though, most of the costume stuff that is supposed to be awesome is pretty much not awesome.

What especially doesn't work is the script, which is so bad you'd almost think it must have been created just as a challenge for the actors--and a challenge that none of them are particularly up for, save Harry Dean Stanton. Even he obviously struggle to put something into the words, but at least a few times he manages to deliver effectively. Oh, yeah, and also Romero. Was someone else just in charge of everything involving Romero, or something?

I can't forget, either, the part when Russell (or Snake... oooohhh!! Snake!) floats into NY on his glider, the music playing is a Carpenterized La Cathédrale Engloutie! It was really pretty perfect actually. Which is exactly the embodiment of what is so weird about this movie. There are some things about it that are done so well, especially the cinematography, and basically all the scenes except for the fight scene when nobody's talking... But as soon as it comes to directing the actors or the action sets, it's just all so flat. Which is especially weird, because wasn't Carpenter supposed to be like an action director? Has the action in action movies really gotten so much better since 1981?

Actually, the establishing shots and all the longer takes and everything made me think, once again, that film vocabulary, as far as how you film a scene and set up the players and everything, was significantly better in the late seventies and into the very early eighties than it is now. Not that I want to be one of those people who's always complaining about all the quick cuts in movies now or anything, but they are a technique that is overused, for sure. It's so much more compelling when things are captured in one shot, generally, than a bunch of cuts. Specifically, here, when Snake and Brain and the Prez and Maggie (?) all come out of the room where the President was being held, after killing Romero, they run across a fairly wide shot, and as the camera pans to follow them, the shot is interrupted by a guy in the foreground shadows, who watches them run off. I think in most contemporary movies that would've been accomplished with a cut, but there's something so much more interesting about doing it the way they did it here, I think.