Hacker Cinema
Con Air
1997 · Film · 116 min
Directed by Simon West
Newly-paroled former US Army ranger Cameron Poe is headed back to his wife, but must fly home aboard a prison transport flight dubbed "Jailbird" taking the “worst of the worst” prisoners, a group described as “pure predators”, to a new super-prison. Poe faces impossible odds when the transport plane is skyjacked mid-flight by the most vicious criminals in the country led by the mastermind — genius serial killer Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom, and backed by black militant Diamond Dog and psychopath Billy Bedlam.
5 positive1 negative8 neutralfrom 14 commenters
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15 comments on Hacker News
1997 was an absolutely phenomenal year for movies. Life Is Beautiful, Boogie Nights, Jackie Brown, Titanic, Donnie Brasco, The Fifth Element, Good Will Hunting, As Good as It Gets, Austin Powers International Man of Mystery, Gattaca, LA Confidential, Men in Black, Liar Liar, Amistad, The Game, Con Air, Contact.
There was a lot to do in 1997, just not as much to do without leaving home. We went to movies because they were affordable and great movies were being released.
Also, that was the era where new multiplex theaters were being built with great sound systems, so it was worth going to a theater for the high-quality experience. While quality consumer electronics are more readily available today than ever before, I feel like the vast majority today only watch media with headphones, TV speakers, or maybe a 2.1 stereo+sub setup.
Ask Russian-speakers to recommend a fun iconic movie to watch, and Ivan Vasilievich comes up all the time. I don’t see why, but it does.
Diamond Hand too.
It would be ridiculous if the same were true about Hollywood.
A Russian asks an American what movies to watch, and 8 out of 10 people go back to 1969 to recommend the same one? Impossible.
You’d get everything from Citizen Kane to Hitchcock to Rocky, etc. But you’d also get about 150 great picks from the 80s and 90s, and another dozen from after 2000.
And forget the greats. You’d get Zoolander, Demolition Man, Total Recall, Gremlins, Scream, John Wick, Legally Blonde even… there’s such a wide pool of fun iconic popcorn movies for any person.
Not to mention your Star Wars/Trek/Gate.
These movies aren’t “good” in the sense of being art. They’re good in the sense of people wanting to watch them.
Every n years I rewatch Commando, Con-Air, The Last Starfighter, etc just for kicks. It’s not pure nostalgia- they’re fun movies.
With int’l movies from any given country the list of recommendations is extremely shallow. It’s always one or two iconic revelations from a given decade. Or a couple auteur directors who won all the awards for their think-pieces about the human condition.
I like the still from Con Air (sporting Cyrus 'The Virus'), but do people actually use a phone to shoot 'serious' movies? Even amateur, super low-budget ones? When so many cameras that can be bought used for dirt cheap, shoot D-Log, and many have interchangeable lenses, and an actual shutter button, and removable SD cards, etc.
Taking pictures with a phone is unpleasant enough, but shooting movies is another world of pain.
Up until Con Air, neither Nicholas Cage nor John Cusack had made a bad movie (well, -maybe- one each).
Stop this shade throwing at a great work of cinema or the bunny gets it. Con Air is a timeless classic and he was totally right.
It's almost completely gone in the US on Netflix also. I've had better luck watching older movies on Youtube 'Free with Ads' service, especially 80s and 90s movies, than I've had on Netflix. And there's no ads if you get Youtube's premium service (I currently don't, but don't mind the ads).
Currently on there is Wrongfully Accused (funny Leslie Nielsen movie), Glengarry Glen Ross, Robocop (1987), Ghost in the Shell, The Mask, License to Drive, The Neverending Story, Tombstone, Leon The Professonal, The Amityville Horror, Over the Top (some Stallone movie), Miracle on 34th Street, Con Air, Edward Scissorhands, Gone Fishin', Look Who's Talking, While You Were Sleeping, The Craft, Red Dawn, So I Married an Axe Murderer, Secret of Nimh, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Revenge of the Pink Panther, Mad Max, Das Boot, Little Shop of Horrors, Hackers, .... okay, I'm just going to stop now, but t keeps going, I'm only a third of the way though the list.
I have no problem to defend Drive against Fugitive, Fugitive aged really bad and it feels like cheap TV movie, Drive is obviously much newer, has great cinematography, great score, atmosphere, nice action and aged really good despite being 11 years already (but I am not really some big fan of Drive, just saying it's better than Fugitive). Btw. just because something is "stupid action flick" it doesn't mean it can't be good at it, you can have good stupid action flicks and you can have bad stupid action flicks. I don't usually watch stupid action flicks (I'm more (social) drama guy), but when I do I want to watch the good ones.
I'm recently rewatching movies starting from 90s and while The Rock was still enjoyable even in 2022 (8mm or Absolute power were meh, same as already back then), I remember Fugitive being pretty bad already many years ago. Movies like Die Hard, Speed, Con Air, Mission impossible, Enemy of the state, were all better than Harrison action movies, which always felt like cheap TV movies with low production value. Meanwhile we have 2 year newer Heat, which is still for sure in top 5 best action/crime movies ever and aged amazingly and could easily beat any day any new action/crime movie. The production value and director skills are on completely different level than Harrison action movies. I just checked the most famous Harrison action movies I remember from 90s - Fugitive, Clear and Present danger, The Devil's Own and Air Force one - all 4 have different director, 3 directors nobody remembers and 4th only thanks to Das Boot.
Yup, it's increasingly becoming the solution.
I have memberships to a handful of streaming services and yet somehow everything I've looked up to watch over the last month is not available on any of those services. Some of them are really old too; like the movie "Con Air" for example, but the only place I could find it was Amazon and it was only available to rent/buy.
Relatively speaking, this almost feels worse than the cable and video rental offerings we had two decades ago.
A movie doesn’t have to be cerebral to be good. The Rock is a good movie for the type of movie it is. There are bad movies in the same basic genre as The Rock or Con Air, many of which also starred Nicolas Cage.
yeah, 1 in a 100 movies I don't know - not sure I put Sorkin at 1 in a 100 as a writer. Also one person's 1 in a 100 is another person's pretentious piece of whatever.
I think for a lot of people Star Wars is a 1 in a 100 - if so, to quote Harrison Ford: "George, you can type this shit, but you can't say it!"
on edit: I had missed that he was looking for a 1 in a 100 movie originally so I went back and reread, he says "Perhaps worst of all is the realization that the movies you like are very rare, and as you dive deep into film, you’re on a quest for the one-in-a-hundred experience." so it is not that he is looking for an objective 1 in 100 movie, but rather the 1 in a 100 he likes, thus Con Air and The Rock could stand for someone as those 1 in a 100 - for example I like both those movies but I hate everything else Michael Bay has ever done (don't know who directed Con Air - hmm Simon West quick google, yeah looks like I hate all those too)
> Con Air and The Rock were not written by a writer as good as the ones you mentioned but they did have the right actors to make those movies really enjoyable for a lot of people. I would submit the actors salvaged those movies.
I mean we can expand the scope of the conversation and lower the bar, but the article writer's scope seemed to be one of being "on a quest for the one-in-a-hundred experience" to which I was responding to the dearth of such.
Are Jerry Bruckehimer movies really one-in-a-hundred experiences?
I mean I get where you're coming from: I loved and still love Starship Troopers but I'm not gonna assert its high-value cinema or on the level the article writer is seeking.
Friends is some of the most mindless television I've ever seen but its basically the most popular and successful TV show ever, so what do we want to measure?
>If you have a bad writer, no amount of good other stuff can salvage your movie.
no, if you have good actors they can make your bad writing in some ways standable.
There is the whole "so bad it's good movie" which is generally because the actors manage to make the badness bearable.
Con Air and The Rock were not written by a writer as good as the ones you mentioned but they did have the right actors to make those movies really enjoyable for a lot of people. I would submit the actors salvaged those movies.
The pirate scene occasionally hits this as well (copies of the film "Con Air" which would be named "Con.Air.<foo>" by convention were instead named "Con_.Air" or "Con_Air" etc. All thanks to the legacy CON device.
A pedophile emotionally identifies with children. A perfect example of this was the guy in the movie Con-Air who sought out the little girl in the trailer park and sat with her to play at tea-time.
It's all about use cases. I have many tablets that I use for a variety of purposes. They all fit a certain need.
I have one in the garage that I use as a Sonos (whole-house music system) controller and to occasionally look up shop-related queries (IE - "what is the torque spec on the axle bolt for my bike?").
I have one next to the couch that is also a Sonos controller and I use for weather and "2nd screen" duties. IE - "Why does Con Air's cinematography style look so much like Michael Bay movies?"
I've got one in the home office I use for hacking, many other gadgets I use have tablet-based interfaces.
I have a retina iPad on the nightstand for reading, checking the news/weather/sports/social networks and to control my house lights - part of my bedtime routine.
My most compelling use though is for when I need a light computer for travel. Two years ago, I went to Hawaii for a week on two carry-on bags (including big camera and diving gear). I had my iPad with me and, while there, work had a serious server outage. I was able to SSH into the server, initiate repairs, and get everything fixed while sitting on the balcony in the sun. I did not carry (and could not have fit) any normal sized laptop in the carry on. I also used to it check out various tourist destinations and find places to eat while I was there (which I could have done on a smartphone, true).
I'm an extreme geek, I have embraced the culture of technology, my house is filled with many gadgets that have served me well and others that have served only to drain my bank account. I have no hesitations about buying something if I have even the slightest inkling that it would improve my life/workflow.
In the above, all but the iPads were cheap Android tablets that I dont think I paid more than $200usd for (none of those needs required a whole lot of horsepower).
To speak to your specific interest, tablets are awesome for casual web navigation and almost awesome for note-taking. I have yet to duplicate the ease and awesomeness of a pen on paper for note-taking with any tablet app/stylus combo. Many tablet note-taking apps have great features, but the actual 'feel' of a quality ballpoint pen on wood pulp has yet to be duplicated - for me, I've spent far too much time being 'constrained' by computers to be able to think as freely as I can with a pen and paper. Switching will almost certainly be a painful adjustment. That said, if 'computers' are your native medium, then note taking on a tablet can be a powerful thing.
For example, Microsoft OneNote is an amazingly awesome note-taking app for computer-savvy folks. They really nailed the balance between digital data entry and analog notation while presenting it in a fairly intuitive interface. I've only ever used it on PC, I'd love to see as brilliant an implementation on a tablet. Not sure it's possible without a mouse-'mindset' interface.
Though really, as long as you don't need big horsepower and aren't on an extremely constrained budget, it's not too hard to get your feet wet in the tablet world cheap. I just saw a not-horrible import Android tablet for <$40 on a sale site.