Movies Seen Recently: Hiding Out, Silverado, Parasyte: Part 2

Hiding Out (1987) – It’s always gratifying when a movie I haven’t seen for thirty years still entertains.  Jon Cryer (pre-Two and a Half Men) stars as a stockbroker who needs to stay alive to testify in a federal case; when his FBI handlers get killed by a hitman, he shaves his beard, bleaches his hair, and hides out in the last place they’d look: High school.

It helps that, while Cryer’s character is supposed to be somewhere in his late twenties, Cryer himself was only 21 when this movie was made, which keeps him from looking too much like a Hollywood “teenager” (although my teenage daughter still thought he looked too old).

Silverado (1985) – Take what I said above about movies I haven’t seen in thirty years, and double it. I remember having seen Silverado before and I remember liking it, but I didn’t remember anything else except one image of Kevin Costner twirling his guns and being told to quiet down.  Being much more informed about western cinema these days than I was back then, I didn’t know what to expect from a revisit, so I’m glad to say that it was better than I remembered.  (In other words, it was always this good, I just didn’t know it then.)

Brian Dennehy is one of those actors like the late Rutger Hauer: Scary even when he’s a good guy, and awfully imposing as a bad guy.  And between the two of them, I’d rather take a gut-punch from Hauer.

Parasyte: Part 2 (2015) – Again, I can’t comment on how faithful to the original manga and anime this is, but it’s definitely a good movie.  That’s especially noteworthy because often tales that are divided in two become “Part 1: All of the discovery and worldbuilding” and “Part 2: Standard storytelling format to the inevitable conclusion.”  This second half avoids that; it adds a nifty subplot about the only human able to tell a normal human from a parasite being a sociopathic serial killer.  And there’s some good exploration, as more and more parasites become good at hiding among humans, as to what it means to be human in the first place… and who is more fragile: the host organism, or the parasite that has to depend on it?

Abandoned movies:

Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001) – I try to avoid political historical movies when I don’t know the history terribly well, so this Bollywood movie about the Hindi natives chafing under Victorian British control was really outside my comfort zone.

Fugitive at 17 (2012) – Oh look, a 26-year-old actress playing a 17-year-old. Oh look, 44-year-old Casper Van Dien date-raping high school students. Pass.

Fungus the Bogeyman (2004) – I love love love the Raymond Briggs book that this is based on, but HOLY COW THE CGI IS SO HORRENDOUS I JUST CAN’T.