Liam Neeson always comes with a cold beverage/Gotta love Michael Pare

We have watched 2 really good movies recently. Well, one was really good and the other was so awesomely bad that it might have made it into my list of best bad movies of the 80's. The really good movie was Taken starring Liam Neeson & directed by Pierre Morel. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0936501/

Tom and I had already seen this movie and we both loved it the first time around. This time we still liked the movie, but we watched it on FX and it was full of obnoxious commercials that all seemed to be placed in the middle of a suspenseful scene. It totally ruined the rhythm and effect of the movie and I did not have the same reaction to it this time. Don’t get me wrong, I still think it is a great movie and would recommend it highly, but please don’t watch it on TV. Rent it, buy it, borrow it, definitely see it, but don’t watch it on TV until you have seen it straight through once.

While we sort of watched Taken (between commercials and impatiently flipping around the channels) Tom and I did keep coming back to the same conversation/debate. The girl who played the daughter, Kim, she looks exactly like the actress who played Shannon on Lost only a lot younger so we couldn’t figure it out. (We are huge Lost fans, if you didn’t already know, and we never watched a single episode until it was off the air. In true McWatters fashion, we never watch even the biggest shows when then air, ya know, because of the no TV thing.) We debated throughout most of the movie weather it was the same actress or maybe her sister. Come to find out (thanks to IMDB, it is a wonderful thing for movie buffs like us) it really is the same girl, Maggie Grace, that plays both roles. I am really surprised because Lost started a few years before Taken and she looks so much older on Lost. But anyway, that doesn’t really matter; it was just the debate that Tom and I got into during the many, seemingly never ending commercials.

So anyway, this is an extreamly brief yet ramblely break down of our experience with watching Taken on TV. Definitely watch it, just commercial free. It is so good that even my friend Lauren (who has never even heard of most of the movies I like, let alone seen them) has even seen it. You should really check it out. And while you are watching, look out for a scene when Liam Neeson gets in a car with a drugged up prostitute and pulls a beverage from somewhere. It was at this point in the movie where Tom turned to me and said “Liam Neeson always comes with a cold beverage” and I laughed my ass off.

The second movie that we watched recently (that was worth writing about at least) was Streets of Fire starring one of my all time favorite B movie actors, Michael Pare and directed by the great Walter Hill.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088194/

This 1984 gem features a very young all-star cast for this typically over the top Walter Hill movie. As you may or may not know, Walter Hill is a favorite in the McWatters home. His movies are always action packed/over the top/bloody with bodies flying off of spring boards when they get shot; so needless to say, they are always a lot of fun to watch. This movie is over the top in true Walter Hill style, but it is PG-13 so it is isn’t very bloody (a nice little change for Mr. Hill).

Streets of Fire stars, as I said before, a favorite of mine, Michael Pare (of Eddie and the Cruisers fame) as Tom Cody, the badass gun fighter who swoops in to save the damsel in distress/Rock N Roll superstar Ellen Aim, played by the red spandex clad Diane Lane who must have used an entire can of Aqua Net each day of shooting to get her hair to stay so awesomely 80’s. Now, even though Diane Lane was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Razzie for this role (thank you IMDB for this fun little piece of trivia!), she was still good enough to break the heart of our tough guy hero.  Maybe her Razzie nomination was due to her lip syncing skills, or lack thereof. (A little side note while we are thinking about Michael Pare movies featuring lip syncing, I have to mention his amazing lip sync performance  in Eddie and the Cruisers.  It also stars Tom Berenger, who pretends to play the piano and chew gum at the same time. It is a film sensation and if you haven’t seen it please do. Maybe we should watch it again soon and give you a proper review of this masterpiece.) While Diane Lane is lip syncing and pretending to rock out (it is laugh out loud funny) she is being watched over by her wimpy yet wealthy new boyfriend who is also her manager and booking agent. This weaselly little jerk is played by Rick Moranis and was responsible for catapulting our little rocker into spandex superstardom and, I almost forgot, he is also bankrolling Michael Pare’s rescue mission. (with all this talk about spandex, aqua net and lip syncing, I  bet you forgot that this was a damsel in distress story, huh?) Before we get to the bad ass bad guy with the super cool 80’s action movie name, there is 1 other character that is worth mentioning. Bill Paxton has a small but great roll as the dorky, but pretends to be a real tough guy bartender, Clyde. (Left turn Clyde… wait… wrong movie)As always, Mr. Paxton plays the weird/quirky character really well. I mean, come, Weird Science anyone? He plays weirdoes so well, I love his small roles.

Now my favorite character in the movie, even though I have a soft spot for Michael Pare, has got to be the over the top bad guy Raven Shaddock, (I told you the name was great. It’s not from the Stallone book of villain names, but awesome none the less.) played by a very young Willem Defoe. Raven (Emmy Lou F-ing Harris, to all of my musician friends) is the leader of a leather clad biker gang that abruptly and randomly kidnaps Diane Lane during a concert. They tie her up in a biker bar in a bad part of town that Michael Pare has to sneakily break into to get her back. I really don’t know why the gang wants to kidnap the girl so badly, she is an awful fake singer, but anyway, it is the driving force behind the entire plot. Oh, and did I mention that Willem Defoe wears leather overalls and has slicked back greaser hair a la Travolta in Grease (only way cooler because it is Willem Defoe, not John Travolta, and  he doesn’t sing and dance)?

So to sum up without ruining the movie for you, Streets of Fire is chuck full of good and bad acting, leather, spandex and Aqua Net, lip syncing, fist fighting, gun fighting, bodies flying, and Michael Pare. It really doesn’t get much better that this.  

Both movies from today’s post, Taken and Streets of Fire, have to be rated big tens, but both for very different reasons. Either way, you must see them both.