I can’t say I fully understand the zeal of “The Boondock Saints'” (1999) cult following, but I had fun with it — I’d give it an 8 out of 10 for being unusual and unexpectedly diverting.
I don’t really see it as a crime thriller — it’s more like an absurdly violent situation-comedy. It borrows its tone and style from 1994’s “Pulp Fiction,” not to mention its own shock-comedy throwaway scene involving an accidentally discharged sidearm.
Like its superior inspiration, its formula is creating quirky, likable characters with some funny dialogue, and then raising the tension by placing them in the midst of graphic violence. It mostly succeeds — Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus’ characters are endearing, cool and easy to root for. I laughed out loud a few times, and I can see how their telegenic antiheroes would attract a devoted fandom.
The directing seemed choppy and even amateurish. I noticed this right from the opening credits, which are awkwardly spliced with the onscreen introduction of the main characters.
The screenwriting is a little spotty, too — we’re never told, for example, how its two protagonists come to be such proficient assassins. (Are they former military? Is there a joke here I’m missing about them being “blessed,” consistent with the “saints” motif and all the references to Catholicism?) Nor do we get much meaningful information about their motivations. (Their bloody crusade begins only when they kill several gangsters in self-defense, then they seem to pursue a life of vigilantism as an afterthought.) Finally, our antiheroes seem refreshingly real and identifiable, while other characters (Willem Dafoe’s detective and Billy Connolly’s mafia hitman) seem cartoonish enough to populate a farce like “The Naked Gun” series).
Credit for the name of the mountain where we live goes to my girlfriend; I named the house — “Winterfell.” I’m naming a lot of things after “Game of Thrones” this winter. (Because it is “Coming.”) Remember I shared a picture of the vestigial remains of shack, in which only a strewn roof was still intact? That I dubbed “Craster’s Keep.” And I am starting to think of Lynchburg as “King’s Landing.”
This was only the initial powdering last Friday — of course the snow became much heavier that night.
I just finished watching Disney’s “Fantasia” (1940) this snowy afternoon with my girlfriend — she gave me the boxed set with “Fantasia 2000” (1999) this Christmas. This is the first time I’ve seen the entire film in … 26 years? If memory serves, I last saw it at Mary Washington College’s Dodd Auditorium when I was a freshman in 1990.
I loved it just now even more than I loved it then. My favorite segment will always be the final one — Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” with a coda of Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” (The accompanying animation is Gothic horror; I’ve posted about it here at the blog before.)
I felt for sure that my second favorite would be Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” Pictures of those animated dinosaurs startled and thrilled me as a tot after Christopher Finch’s “The Art of Walt Disney” (1975) somehow appeared magically among my baby books in Queens, New York. As an adult, however, I liked the segment mostly because of its cool depiction of lower life-forms. The dinosaurs were stylized and interesting to see, but I don’t think the quality of the animation has held up very well — especially considering what we know about the dinosaurs has changed so much in 80 years or so.
Instead, my second favorite was Ludwig von Beethoven’s “The Pastoral Symphony,” and its whimsical, beautiful depiction of centaurs, gods, and other figures from Greek mythology.
My girlfriend’s favorite segment was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite,” with its dancing fairies. “Fantasia” was actually a favorite movie of hers growing up; she’s seen it several dozen times in her childhood.
There is some bizarre trivia about “Fantasia” from Wikipedia, which has a lengthy entry for the movie: “In the late 1960s, four shots from The Pastoral Symphony were removed that depicted two characters in a racially stereotyped manner. A black centaurette called Sunflower was depicted polishing the hooves of a white centaurette, and a second named Otika appeared briefly during the procession scenes with Bacchus and his followers.” That’s so nuts.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 