#904: Total Recall (1990): Why Total Recall Might Be Better Than Inception

If you would have told me in 2010, before I had seen Inception that I would like it less than Total Recall I would have been skeptical. I love Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Caine. This was even before I watched The Prestige, which has become one of my favorite movies. On the other hand, Total Recall has...Arnold Schwarzenegger and it's directed by Paul Verhoeven. Sure, it's based on a Phillip K. Dick story and both Arnie and Paul have done good things, but it seems like no contest. Especially because I'm a pretentious dick.

But as I watched Total Recall I was surprised by the similarities. Both were movies about memories being implanted, both had ambiguous realities and both were action movies with a heady concept. Then, I was surprised by how much more I was enjoying Total Recall.

Here's why:

Honesty: One of the things that bothered me about Inception was that it was an action movie. I was not expecting that, I didn't get that vibe from anything I'd heard about the movie. Now, I like action movies, but it seemed like Christopher Nolan was kind of ashamed about it being an action movie. It's fine when a movie wants to blend genres and do more than one thing, but Inception doesn't seem to want to be an action-thriller. It just wants to be an action movie with a great, interesting concept, which would be awesome. The problem is the action is so muted and uninteresting. Faceless dream people chasing kind of samey heroes isn't very exciting. Especially in a movie about dreams. Maybe Nolan didn't want the action to over-power the gimmick, but it makes for an uneven movie.

Total Recall is an action movie with an interesting concept and it's fine with that. It's super violent, its gory and it tells a heady story that twists and is ambiguous. It's honest about what it wants to be and is more effective because of that. And maybe it's not a plus, but it's possible to go through the movie without ever thinking about the concept. It's there if you want, but if you don't you can enjoy watching people get shot in the head. Inception doesn't really let you just soak in the action elements, so why make an action movie?

Characters: I pay attention to movies, especially when I'm seeing them in the theater. That said, I couldn't tell the characters in Inception apart. I knew who Cobb was, I knew he was the leader. I knew who Ariadne was, because she was an attractive woman. I knew that Ken Watanabe was an older Asian gentleman who was hiring them. And I knew that one of the team was Indian. And that's it. I couldn't tell the rest apart, I didn't know their roles, I didn't care about any of them and I wasn't invested in what they were doing. I like a good anti-hero, a lot of movies are good at making us root for, relate to or just be interested in criminals. Inception didn't do that. They felt as faceless and as empty as the dream people who were chasing them.

I don't really care about the characters in Total Recall. I was never emotionally attached to Quaid or Melina. I was sad when Kuato died, but other than that there's nothing. The movie does differentiate every one of them though. We know a little something about who every one is, they're all given something to do, as shallow as it may be. And I wanted to see how everything turned out and how Quaid would react as he got more information about who he was. Honestly, I probably will soon forget that Quaid's wife was named Lori, but I'll remember what she did and who she was.

Total Recall also goes to the effort of putting some stakes into the plot. If Quaid doesn't succeed the Martian Red Light district will be suffocated. And a corrupt, tyrannical government will continue to rule, but I was mostly hoping that poor little person prostitute stayed alive.

Creativity: Inception is a movie about dreams. So, why do we see a lot of city streets, a hotel and other fairly mundane things? Now, we do see some interesting things, Ariadne's initiation to the dream world, the rotating hallway and the fortress, but that's not enough. It's not that dreams are always off-the-wall bonkers, but they're never as plain as they're presented in Inception. I saw Inception not long after I started to get into movies like Eraserhead and Videodrome. Those are dream-like movies where you don't really know what's going on and they have very strong imagery.

When I kept hearing people talk about what a mindfuck Inception was I thought I was going to see some incredible dream imagery. I also thought the plot would be less straightforward. Inception movies in a perfect line. The only reason people didn't understand what was going on in Inception is because they don't pay attention during movies. The rules are clearly laid out, everything's explained and from there the movie more or less goes according to plan. There are no surprises. As soon as we heard about Limbo, it was obvious we would see it.Every thing is explained. Inception is a pretty plain movie. It's almost like Nolan thought that the movie had a kind of strange concept, so he didn't want to alienate the audience with a lot of surreal imagery.

Total Recall is a movie where a mutant prostitute has three breasts.We see horribly mutated people, strange robotic cabs, exploding heads, tracking devices planted in the brain being removed through the nose and Kuato. It's full of strange sights and even though Mars is colonized by humans it feels like an alien world. It has a kind of ridiculous, over-the-top quality that makes it kind of feel like if what we're seeing isn't reality, it's definitely the kind of thing a company would put together to entertain customers. Quaid literally calls out that the movie is a mindfuck and as on-the-nose as it was, I liked that the movie reveled in its own weirdness.

The technologies at the heart of both movies are very similar. Machines that allow people to go into someone's mind and implant ideas. Nolan makes it a little more complicated with various levels of dreaming and a time disparity between those levels. It's not a common idea, it's not something you see in a lot of movies. But Total Recall, which feels like it should be a less ambitious movie, just goes for broke. It throws so much strangeness at the viewer and doesn't care. Inception doesn't care if the audience isn't following either, but despite the heady concept, it felt like a movie I've seen before. My mind wasn't blown in the way it should have been.

The Ending: Really, the only ambiguity in Inception comes at the very end when Cobb spins his top and we don't get to see if it falls or not. People argue about whether Cobb was stuck in limbo or not, but it doesn't matter because the movie is over. The story's done, the idea they needed to implant was implanted, everyone else is back in reality, what does it matter if Cobb is stuck? He doesn't get to see his children again, which is sad, but, frankly, I don't care enough about the character to be bothered by it. And you know what? Maybe they're better off without their criminal father. This ending surprise doesn't add anything to the movie. It just throws in a little shallow speculation. And this argument could literally be made about every single movie. What gives any ending impact if you just focus on the fact that the movie is over. The difference is that when most movies do an open ending, they leave it a little more open or they do it with a character we care about or they leave us with something greater than a "Yes" or "No" question to think about or they don't wrap everything else in the movie up so neatly. There's a lot of options to make an ending that means something other than that the film is over.

The end of Total Recall is very similar. Earlier in the movie, we hear a Rekall technician mutter something about "blue skies on Mars" as being part of the memory implant. And before that, we hear the salesman pitch the basic plot of the story: go to mars, save the world, get the girl. Exactly what happens. It's pretty likely that Quaid is trapped in his own mind and he's about to be lobotmized, but that's never the focus of the movie and in a way that makes it more interesting. The speculation is put on us to the point where at the end, when Mars gets its blue skies, Quaid wonders aloud if he's in a dream and Melina's response is basically, "Who cares, let's make out." Total Recall's ending is more effective because it adds new perspective to the entire movie. It also realizes that at the ending, it doesn't really matter any more if Quaid is trapped. It's interesting through out the whole movie, but now it's done. You can decide whether the ending is upbeat and hopeful or whether it's dark and a prelude to death. Or you can do neither. And in a way, Total Recall is a deeper movie because it's given you more to think about than just 30 seconds at the end.


I want to make it clear that I don't hate Inception. I was disappointed by it, but it's still a really interesting movie and despite its flaws it's pretty good. I just wanted more from it.

#903: The Man With The Iron Fists (2012)

How do you measure whether a movie is good? Is a film's quality the sum of its parts or does it just come down to whether the watcher enjoyed it? It's a question I have trouble with all the time, because there are movies that I think are bad, but they love. How can they be wrong in that situation, but still think I'm right about The Man with the Iron Fists.

The Man with the Iron Fists is definitely not a good movie, but I enjoyed it. It's not surprising that RZA's movie about people trying to protect a gold shipment from a gang is kind of a mess. The first cut was four hours long and the first time director was forced to cut it down to about an hour and a half. This means all the back story gets told to us in quick, ineffective voice overs. It means we don't really see any nuance in the characters. RZA plays the main character of the Blacksmith and he might be one of the blandest characters ever. Everything's just too rushed too have much of an impact.

A fast-paced kung-fu movie must be tough for a first time director. It's one thing to direct people being people, it's another to direct flying kicks and swords. The action isn't bad, the fights are the strongest part of the movie. However, the editing makes them seem a little muddled and confused. In a kung-fu movie, the kung-fu is kind of the most important part. Even if it's not good, it should be lovingly shot.

So, The Man with the Iron Fists isn't a good movie, but I enjoyed it. It's hard to tell if the ridiculousness was intentional. There's a lot of rap swagger in the movie. Russell Crowe is only ever killing people or having sex. Did RZA think that was cool or was he winking at the audience? Was that guy who seemed to be made entirely of metal serious or was RZA thinking, "This is crazy, I have to put it in." The question of tone isn't that important, but it makes it go down a little easier if RZA was aiming for camp.

And really, it's the craziness that saves it. The over-the-top violence and gore, the extremes of Russell Crowe's character and the ridiculous weapons. It's a very ambitious movie, the kind that can only be made by a first-time director and it also reeks of the hubris of a first-time director. Still, I enjoyed it. I don't know how many others would, but I did.

Also, there were no tits in it. 3/4ths of this movie takes place in a brothel and there's no nudity. I found that kind of odd.

#901: Traxx (1988)

Let me describe the first two minutes of Traxx: It's early 1984 and somewhere in Texas (Traxx is very good at giving us details without getting too specific) two men are holed up in a pet store with a monkey as a hostage. These are desperate criminals, they've already killed an old lady and a puppy. Outside the store, the police are preparing for a long stand-off. That's not okay with one officer, the titular Traxx (played by national treasure Shadoe Stevens). He grabs a nearby convenience skateboard, skitches behind a cop car, stop in front of the store, jumps through the storefront window, shoots one man, throws a gun to the other man who is trying to surrender and then shoots him. Afterwards, Traxx is getting chewed out by his boss. He's told that criminals have the same rights as victims and Traxx rejoins, "I'd like to hear that from the puppy's family." Cue Traxx's theme song.

What I'm getting at is Traxx is an amazing movie.

Further proof.

After he quits law enforcement, Traxx buys a bandana, grows a crazy, fluffy mullet and becomes a mercenary fighting in hotspots around the world. This last maybe three minutes before Traxx tells his ethnic companion that he's going to move back to Texas and bake cookies. Understandably, Traxx is mocked for this, but against all reason he moves to Hadleyville, Texas, a town that seems to be 95% crime. Traxx is a terrible baker (he is unable to crack an egg, so he just punches it) and he hires himself out as a "town tamer." Traxx is never actually given permission to do this by the local sheriff, but that doesn't stop him from hitting the streets and threatening people with the terms of: "Be good, be gone or be dead." A lot of people end up going with "be dead," Traxx gets a black sidekick (who doesn't do anything and I didn't know his name until the last ten minutes), he runs afoul of a mob boss, there's a montage where Traxx dances, he takes on three psychos and rids the town of all crime.

Unfortunately that includes THE GREATEST STOREFRONT EVER.

I love good bad movies. On the scale of terrible action-comedies, Traxx isn't as good as Samurai Cop, but it's better than Tango & Cash. And Traxx is actually funny in a few parts. There's a great moment early on where Traxx stops in the middle of a war zone to admire his own reflection and give himself a little point. The real strength of the movie is just how ridiculous it is. Most movies would be about renegade cops or jungle mercenaries or vigilantes cleaning up small towns. Traxx zigs and zags through all of those in about 5 minutes and has a weird cookie baking undercurrent (that culminates in a cameo by the Famous Amos).The violence is excessive and over-the-top. At 10 minutes in, I counted a total of five people who had been thrown through windows. The jokes are mostly predictable groaners, but there's also a lot that are insane and nonsensical such as when Traxx and the Hadleyville mayor (Priscilla Barnes, the psychic with three nipples from Mallrats) have sex filing cabinets open and start spewing paper into the air. Or how in the transition from GTAtown, USA and 1980s Utopia, Traxx turns Hadleyville into a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

Thanks, Traxx!

Traxx is a weird good-bad movie because it's aware of how sublimely ridiculous it is. It's an intentional comedy and I think we're supposed to find the action more zany than thrilling. If it were more self-aware, if the humor were sharper, if the acting was a little better then Traxx wouldn't be a good-bad movie, it'd just be a good, silly movie, kind of like Army of Darkness or Big Trouble in Little China by way of MacGruber. Something doesn't click though and while it's trying to be funny it's rarely funny in the way it wants to be. Still, it's wonderful in how it just piles things on. No suggestions was thrown out in the writing of this movie, no matter how silly, stupid or irrelevant it might be.

How is this character only in one scene?

Traxx does win points for mostly trying to avoid pathos. There is one moment when Traxx and his sidekick Deeter are out in the woods at their hide-out/open air cookie studio and Traxx confides that he never finished high school (which I think by 1988 was a requirement for most cops). Deeter then confides that his father murdered the rest of his family and Traxx has no reaction. But that's it. Come to think of it, there's no real emotion in the movie. There's two instances in the movie where a person is killed in front of groups of children. The first time they react with delight as Traxx warns them that they too will be killed if they misbehave and the other time they're mostly just curious about their dead coach. I guess Priscilla Barnes shows some emotion when she first meets Traxx. She seems like she's about to explode into a million dictionary definitions of "orgasm" and "over-acting." Then, she asks Traxx if he wants payment in "cash or trash." I guess trash refers to her vagina? Which is weird. Have some self-respect Mayor Barnes.

Oh, that first group of kids? They're found in a whorehouse that Traxx is busting up. This has horrifying implications, but Traxx mostly just seems amused by it.

I highly recommend Traxx. It's one of those movies that I don't understand how it's not a bigger cult hit. It has everything you could want from a stupid movie.

#900: Argo (2012)

If there's one thing Hollywood loves it's Hollywood.

And Hollywood is the hero of the movie Argo. Starring and directed by Ben Affleck, and featuring a very strong supporting cast, Argo is about a real life mission to rescue six Americans who in 1979 escaped from the American embassy in Iran before it was seized by militants. These six are hiding in the Canadian embassy and their safety is wearing thin. Affleck plays a CIA agent specializing in extraction who comes up with the plan to rescue them: tell Iranian officials they're part of a Canadian film crew and sneak them out. It would be impossible to pull off the plan with they just words. So, Affleck's character Tony Mendez recruits a Hollywood make-up artist (John Goodman) and a producer (Alan Arkin) to fully create the artifice of the fake movie Argo, a shameless Star Wars rip-off.

The story is the main character of Argo and that's understandable, not only because it's based on a true story but because that story is so crazy. There's not a lot of character in the move otherwise. Affleck is the most rounded, he's smart, he drinks, he has a family and he cares. Other than that, we have the hostages, Hollywood and CIA brass. This doesn't hurt anything. Even though we don't know a lot about the hostages, the fact that they're in danger is enough to pull you in. It takes a little time though.

There's a stretch where Argo becomes a show biz comedy. Affleck is trying to set the whole thing up and there's several moments where he provides a set-up and Goodman or Arkin provide a punchline which usually boils down to, "Womp, womp, Hollywood!" It's usually funny, but eventually starts to fall into a predictable rhythm. Still, for their limited screen time we're endeared to Goodman and Arkin. The same goes for all the supporting players. Even though the hostages are more or less flags to be captured, they still feel like people. They have lives and relationships shown in moments rather than long minutes of tortured drama. Even Bryan Cranston, whose role doesn't really match up with his billing, becomes real in his moments.

Argo shines in its second half and really lives or dies by 20 minutes in particular. That's when it becomes an incredibly effective thriller. It's almost surprising how tense it becomes after its loose start. It is history, so if you're aware of the story it might not be as gripping, but it's undeniable that it's well done.

There's seems to be a general dislike for Ben Affleck and I've never really understood why. My first real impression of the man came from the audio commentary for Kevin Smith's Mallrats. On there, Affleck was loose, funny and self-deprecating. That's how I've thought of him ever since. His track record isn't perfect by any means, but he's moved on to a new stage in his career. He's become  a skilled director and that's given me all the more reason to like him.

 My guess is that Argo is going to win Best Picture at the next Academy Awards. Argo is a good movie, but what will really power its victory is the twin engines of America! and its portrayal of the power of Hollywood.

My Road to 1,000

At this time I've seen 898 movies. My 899th will most likely be Chopping Mall. From there, I don't know.

I've created this blog to keep track of what I watch from movie #900 to #1000. I hope to hit some of my movie watching blind-spots, both classic (I've never seen Casablanca, most Hitchcock  and I've never gotten all the way through a silent movie) and contemporary (I've never seen any Nightmare on Elm Street movies or The Untouchables or American Beauty (you know what? probably not going to watch American beauty). Hopefully, I'll have something to say about each movie.

I don't see 1,000 movies as an achievement really. It's a very passive landmark. It's almost like seeing 1 million billboards. As I get closer, I'm becoming ever more conscious of just how much time I've spent sitting and watching. But I love movies. I can't stop loving movies, so as much as 1,000 doesn't mean anything, it carries a personal currency. And maybe this isn't just about documenting what I'm watching as I close in on this mile marker, but it's a way to try and figure out what the sum of my experience has been so far.

In truth, I've probably already seen 1,000 movies. Between stuff I've forgotten and countless hours of Mystery Science Theater 3,000, 1,000 is most likely far behind me. Still, I'm playing this straight. If I happen to remember something I haven't added to my list, I'm not counting it at the moment (unless it's something big, but not something like that Sublime documentary I can't remember the name of). I have to see all of the movie otherwise it doesn't count. Except in the case of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I'm pretty sure I saw enough of that movie to figure it out (apparently, there's a fucking Scotland in space and it sent a magic robot to be part of the Autobot Consortium).

With that said, it's time to watch Chopping Mall, a movie where robots do what they're supposed to do. Murder humans to remind us that robots mean us nothing but harm and speak in non-regional accents.

Here's to 1,000.