Craving retribution against the murderous Manchu army, an orphaned student seeks guidance and, more importantly, martial arts training at a secluded mountaintop monastery. There, he faces the thirty-five challenges that separate novice from master, devotes himself to an intensive training ritual and learns to soothe his troubled spirit.
This one took a while to get moving. The plot-heavy first act is a real chore to push through, loaded as it is with difficult names and unnecessary political exposition. That’s all cast aside when the wayward student, San Te, escapes his pursuers and staggers, wounded, into the Shaolin temple. The ensuing training sequence, which stretches to encompass seven years of his life (and a majority of the film’s running time), is pure dynamite. We don’t see all thirty-odd stations, but the ones we do are riveting; clever puzzles and challenges of more than just the physical variety. These monks practice an excruciatingly strict regimen that demands mastery of body and mind alike. Philosophically-charged kung fu at its very best.
Showcased in the leading role, Gordon Liu carries the film. His action cred is undeniable - lightning-fast and tightly disciplined - but those skills weren’t entirely uncommon in 1970s Hong Kong. Liu’s ability to convey complicated emotions, wordlessly, with grace and subtlety, is rarer stuff. The movie’s much better off when it embraces its role as a simple, introspective action flick and forgets its aspirations to be a meandering historical epic. So is Liu. Released from the wordy tangles of the film’s initial half-hour, he blossoms as a quiet, conflicted Buddhist with a special talent for violence.
Not without its flaws, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is magical when it finally gets cooking. Its prologue is far too long and its climax is thin and lazy, but those crazy chamber trials, like a string of meditative Double Dare challenges, should be seen by all fans of the genre.
Roger Corman’s famously low-budget superhero picture that, some say, was never really meant to see the light of day. The director, stars and creatives all insist their efforts were genuine, but Marvel considered it a brand-tarnishing disaster, rushed out the door to renew a timed licensing agreement. They bought and destroyed the negatives, canceled promotional engagements and denied its existence for years. Fortunately, a bootleg VHS copy eventually leaked to the comic convention scene and this miraculous golden turd is now readily available for anyone who knows where to look.
And man, is its reputation well-earned. Fantastic Four is an astoundingly incompetent adaptation, jammed with laughable special effects, listless performances, cruddy camerawork, groan-worthy dialogue and dated hero/villain dynamics (even by 1994 standards). Its sets are cheap and dreary, trapping the colorful heroes in a series of clinical corridors and dim cellars. Their use of super powers is extremely limited, no doubt owing to a tight budget that mostly went to a half-animatronic rubber suit for the Thing. Who, for the record, looks like a reject from the live-action Ninja Turtles movies, his robotic lips sneering in a creepy, out-of-sync, private dance. Sometimes they almost match his dialogue. Thing and Doom are both dying for overdubs, their actors’ voices muffled by so many layers of fake metal and prosthetics. In fact, there’s a lot of ambient sound in general. Doom’s clickety-clack fingers are a prime offender there, accented by Joseph Culp’s penchant for hilarious physical over-acting to compensate for his lack of expression behind the mask. Culp’s technique is like a blend of jazz hands, interpretive dance and American Sign Language; a constant, reliable trigger for unintentional laughs.
In a light ninety minutes, we rush through Doom and the Fantastics’ well-tread origin stories, meet a few uninspired supporting characters (including “The Jeweler,” a movie-only concoction who’s little more than a Dollar Store Batman Returns Penguin), escape captivity and point shiny green death lasers at New York City. None of it really matters. You’re either here to bask in the flames of big-time comics’ Hindenburg moment or you’re watching the wrong movie. Fantastic Four’s only rewards are of the perverse variety, but ironic audiences will find plenty of those to enjoy. A GREAT ambush selection for movie night with friends, with a parting shot none will soon forget.
The original stoner comedy, from the duo that helped push pot out of the fringe and into the mainstream. Up in Smoke casts Cheech and Chong as very mildly fictionalized versions of themselves, absent-mindedly cruising the streets of Los Angeles (and, eventually, Tijuana) in search of a fresh score. There, they meet an increasingly loony assortment of crackpots and crazies, dodge about a dozen police busts, smoke or swallow everything in front of them and, finally, show up on stage for the main event in a local battle of the bands.
I’ve probably seen this 2-3x in bits and pieces over the years, but as this was my first single-sitting experience, I got myself good and high before diving in. Even in the right state of mind, I didn’t think it was a very big hit: a good ride for the first half-hour, but the novelty quickly wears off. Watching the boys bond over a colossal joint, which Chong just so happened to carry in a secret pocket somewhere, is a hoot. Their glazed expressions and loose associations with reality are dead-on, familiar to anyone who’s ever been stoned at a party, or seen someone thus engaged. The headliners lather it on thick, delighted to share their happily-confused states of mind with a similarly inclined audience, and for a while that’s good enough. Eventually, even the burnout in me started to yearn for more than pot gags and bad slapstick. The best bits still land - the famous “fiberweed” van that powers the home stretch is a great example - but a majority of these ideas probably sounded better on paper than they actually play on the screen. After the third or fourth go-around, the punchline of another accidentally-stoned cop loses its charm.
This was probably a revelation in ’78, when blunt weed references were still edgy and rebellious and cocaine was downright taboo. Now that the latter has fallen out of fashion and the former is available in chic, glitzy Apple Store sales environments, it’s just a couple funny guys floating through a very thin premise. Watching this was like getting high with my dad. Not really a bad time, but a little awkward and you’re going to hear the same stories over and over again.
During the late 1970s, somewhere near the Arctic circle, construction crews unearthed literal buried treasure. Beneath the ruins of an old rec center, covered by a hockey rink, lay a stash of nitrate film prints; lost relics from Hollywood’s past. In all, nearly four hundred silent films were recovered and whisked away for restoration. Dated between 1903 and 1929, they’d been largely preserved and protected by the permafrost. An honest-to-god time capsule.
Frozen Time sees opportunity in this old discovery, both to explore the past and to recognize the faded artistry of a bygone age. Using footage pulled directly from the cache, we note Dawson’s earliest days as a gold rush destination, its transformation into a small, family-oriented town with an appetite for cinema, and its gradual decline into obsolescence. Not exactly an unusual story for this region, but the top-notch presentation (all music and title cards, just like those forgotten films) and a few rich surprises make for irresistible viewing material. And the silent movie highlights, curated with a care, are something special. Absolutely mesmerizing.
Along the way, we also get a little history lesson about the nuts and bolts of film. An essential component of the larger story that explains why pictures from this era are so scarce (a jaw-dropping 75% of all silent movies are now considered lost) and how so many of them wound up stranded in the same unlikely place. Fans of Ken Burns and very early cinema will have a field day with this. Count me among them.
Another Christmas, another set of terrorists for beleaguered celebrity cop John McClane. All our hero wants is to collect his wife from the airport, talk his way out of a parking ticket and crash in a warm hotel bed. Instead, instincts get the best of him. Giving chase to suspicious characters, he exchanges gunfire in the baggage warehouse, butts heads with cocky local authorities and uncovers a plot to spring a political prisoner by shutting down air traffic control.
The airport represents an effort to expand McClane’s character beyond the claustrophobic confines of a high-rise office building, but the larger setting is probably a mistake. Where Nakatomi Plaza provided ready-made tension, with gunmen conceivably around every corner, the extended Dulles Airport is a sprawling, confusing set that rarely feels connected. The lead doesn’t really benefit from his new environs, either. While he remains personable, resourceful and daring, traits which made him appealing in the first film, his new status as a bulletproof action hero is a backwards step. John’s sense of self-preservation, careful caution in a dangerous situation, once made him sympathetic and real. Somewhere between the escalator shootout against overwhelming odds and his leap from a helicopter to the wing of a taxiing jumbo jet, that went out the window. He’s gone full Stallone / Schwarzenegger in the sequel, and mastered the art of clairvoyance to boot. Bruce Willis remains magnetic in the role, but this isn’t the same desperate, punchy character that powered the original. He’s lost a lot of that edge.
As generic action movies go, one could choose worse. Though this example is rife with obvious plot holes, it does go hard and the action scenes pluck all the right notes. The big explosions are appropriately bright and well-spaced; men are nearly run over on the tarmac, and one falls into a jet engine; the hero fires guns from all sorts of vehicles and vantage points. The terrorists’ big plot is far too twisty, though, and I think the narrative would’ve been better off without the cut-aways to McClane’s wife aboard a delayed, circling passenger plane.
In their first solo feature, the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation reconvenes to follow the Borg through a temporal vortex. Popping out in the mid-21st century, the cybernetic bad guys plan to stunt (and eventually assimilate) the Earth’s population by nixing its fabled first warp-powered flight and ensuing contact with extraterrestrial life. This puts the Enterprise b-team in close proximity to Zefram Cochrane, a revered historical figure in their time, who bristles at the prospect of becoming a legend. Elsewhere, Data is tempted by the prospect of becoming more tangibly human and Picard struggles to address his personal connection to the enemy.
It may have been too soon for Star Trek to play the time travel card again, ten years after The Voyage Home. While First Contact’s plot is distinct enough, it often relies on the same vein of comic incongruity for relief. Modern engineer talks shop, Starfleet graduates share a knowing smile - that sort of thing. We’ve already been there and done that, so much of the Earthbound humor doesn’t connect. Picard’s push for vengeance, and its noted similarity to Captain Ahab, provides the more interesting developments, anyway. Even if they are tempered by the nonsensical introduction of a sexy female mother cyborg, a mess of curves and cords who does her best to seduce man and synthetic alike. I preferred the Borg as a mindless collective, dedicated to overwhelming the galaxy through cold logic and sheer numbers alone.
First Contact’s mood represents a welcome shift from the stale, serious tone of preceding films. This chapter is more action oriented, but also softer, with a recognizable admiration for the TV series. In fact, it could easily pass as a big-budget, multi-part episode of either TNG or TOS. And, while that’s a strength in terms of tone, it also applies in less favorable respects. The story assumes prior knowledge of the cast (there’s no reason to care about Riker, Crusher and Geordi otherwise), its acting is generally a step below what we’d expect from a big studio feature, the sets look cheap and the special effects haven’t aged well at all.
Still an enjoyable light sci-fi adventure, with spirit and charm, but not quite the level-up that one might expect from a popular show turned film franchise.
Those looking for more of the same from Denis Villenueve’s Dune franchise can rest easy. The sequel offers precisely that, in every sense, but this isn’t always good news. While the immense set pieces, rich multi-cultural landscape, challenging moral dilemmas and dazzling visual effects remain intact, so does the glacial pacing, extreme duration, cloudy cerebral temperament and ambiguous ending. That last aspect is particularly frustrating, given the previous film’s equally flat, abrupt mid-stream fadeout. Fool me once, shame on you, as they say. Which isn’t to say I was less than entertained. Despite its proud eccentricities, and certainly a case of diminishing returns, Dune 2 had me on the hook from the word go. It’s not a conclusion, though, just another chapter, and after almost six hours of fruitless culmination, I grow impatient.
The first film left our protagonist, Paul Atreides, on the brink of an existential revelation. Forced into exile by galactic politics, he finds uneasy refuge amongst the über-religious desert dwellers. Though their leaders debate his intentions, he proves capable and joins the cause, sabotaging the efforts of his fellow off-worlders in acts of guerrilla rebellion. These scenes are the film’s finest, as Paul attempts to straddle the thin line between messiah and outcast amidst a sea of critical eyes. He doesn’t just learn to become a sand walker, or to take advantage of an ancient, convenient prophecy, he discovers what it means to be a man. Paul’s growth from apprehensive nobody to charismatic leader is well-earned, as is his respect for the manner and traditions of the native people. So convincing, is this development, that I felt a palpable sense of betrayal when he inevitably returns to the old interstellar chess board for revenge. I mean, I felt personally offended. That’s great storytelling, no matter how muddied it might get along the way.
And muddy it is. Alongside the brilliant character moments and astounding set pieces (Paul’s long-foreshadowed sandworm ride is especially epic), Villenueve’s sequel indulges in all sorts of metaphysical ramblings. Many seemingly important plot developments occur off-screen, which makes the timeline difficult to pin down. A number of major players are killed off, suddenly and without ceremony, robbing their deaths of weight and circumstance. If the first film had a few minor concerns, this one has genuine issues. I’d include a certain weird, surprise casting decision among these. Part One had no shortage of celebrity actors in key roles, but each fit their part and enhanced the whole. This guy sticks out like a red thumb.
So it’s good, but not that good, even if its creators might think it is. Where the first film felt confident and ambitious, this one’s a little more smug and self-assured. Perhaps the widespread acclaim surrounding the original had a negative influence.
Young love sprouts amidst efforts to save a beloved campus clubhouse in this charming, small-scale schoolyard drama from Studio Ghibli. The product of a single-parent household, Umi is a responsible teenager whose dedication to preparing family meals takes precedence over her after-school activities. That changes when she meets Shun, a similarly bright, composed boy who introduces her to bustling afternoons in the Latin Quarter, a dusty, three-story, common meeting ground for extracurriculars. Drawn together, the two nurture a spark, but something comes up before they can make anything of it. In its aftermath, they’re forced to step back, reassess their feelings and try to move forward as friends when they were so close to becoming something more.
Like the very best Ghibli locales, the Latin Quarter brims with life, color and delightful peculiarity; a chaotic mess of excited kids with diverse tastes. The students’ enthusiasm for the building, and for preserving it when the administration threatens to have it replaced, brings essential flavor to a film that might otherwise seem too softly-spoken. Its relief allows the simple beauty of Umi and Shun’s relationship, and the poignant resolution of their individual stories, room to unfold at a more appropriate pace. A dueling narrative that serves both, short-changing neither. And, in between the heady personal drama and the energetic activities around the old building, there’s sill time to explore the peaceful, everyday life around 1960s Yokohama. Rich rewards for those with the patience to soak it all in. It’s a real delight.
Released in the fall of ’94, Wildflowers came about during a period of change for Tom Petty. His first album since leaving MCA for Warner, and his first solo record since the 1989 smash hit Full Moon Fever, it introduced a new drummer (original Heartbreaker Stan Lynch left the group during recording) and tested the waters with a fresh producer. Petty was also in the early stages of separating from his wife of twenty-plus years, which led his songwriting in softer, more contemplative directions.
Armed with an exhaustive collection of candid behind-the-scenes footage, filmed and narrated by friends and family, this documentary takes us beyond the veil of a rock legend to reveal the man beneath. Fans won’t be disappointed: the famously mellow, good-natured singer seems just as cool in the studio as he was on the stage. The music still holds up, too. It’s been a few years since I gave this one a listen, but the old magic drifted back like memories of a good friend. Petty’s one of those guys most people don’t realize they love as much as they do. His greatest hits album is all killer, no filler, a dozen-and-a-half cuts that charted the course of pop/rock throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s. Wildflowers follows that same blueprint. It’s rock-solid; even the deep cuts are grooves.
This record was a challenge - a lengthy writing and recording process that demanded tough answers and moved in uncomfortable directions - but the Petty we see in Somewhere You Feel Free faced it with patience and good humor. It’s a privilege to eavesdrop on his constructive working relationship with longtime bandmates, to hear familiar songs emerge from rough drafts, and to catch his rapport with new producer Rick Rubin, who pushes him to expand his sound and test his limits as an artist. The world lost a little luster when Petty passed in 2017.
Hip teen Kevin Bacon moves from the big city to a podunk town in the sticks, where he’s shocked to learn that dancing has been forbidden. The absurd legal prohibition frustrates his fellow high schoolers, but they find other ways to act out. Particularly Ariel, the preacher’s daughter, a would-be angel who rebels against her ultra-conservative upbringing by sleeping around and risking her life in a string of dumb stunts. Bacon’s boundless confidence and earnest manner nets him plenty of friends around the school, and the romantic attentions of Ariel, but also waves red flags in the community. Doubly so when he speaks out at a council meeting and organizes a senior prom, complete with rock music and dancing, at a grain mill just outside city limits.
This one kept surprising me. It skips most traps of the silly, stereotypical ‘80s high school comedy and delivers an impressively thoughtful, level-headed take on the generational divide. Bacon’s character is a smart, personable, even-tempered sort who has no trouble forming lasting friendships and possesses the self-assurance to call out his peers when they posture and front. He pushes his friends to grow and his opponents to think again, shows maturity in tough situations and, goddammit, he really, really loves to dance. Intense, precise, balletic dancing. Especially when he’s all charged up with adolescent rage in an abandoned warehouse. Even the hard line preacher / councilman (John Lithgow), driving force behind the city’s anti-dance crusade, is afforded a layered, sympathetic back story. I wasn’t prepared for so much impartiality in a music-driven PG comedy from the heart of the ‘80s.
While its tempo is up, Footloose is a refreshing change of pace for an era that was flush with shallow screwball sitcoms. Though it provides an easy conflict, a catchy pop soundtrack and an embarrassment of montages, just like many of those contemporaries, its cast is less clichéd and more human. Most of the third act lingers in self-pity, an excessive drag, but it rebounds in time for the big finale and hits the credits at just the right time. Much better than I expected.
An oral history of the launchpad abortion that would’ve asked us to believe Nic Cage can fly. Superman Lives was such a bizarre near-production, so stuffed with intrinsically weird players and ideas, that I’m not sure if I’m glad it was canceled or disappointed to have been denied the spectacle. In the late ‘90s, it came awfully close to reality. Cabinets’ worth of concept art, screen tests, casting ideas and shooting scripts were already finished and a release date had been penciled into the studio’s schedule for the summer of ’98. Then... it all fell apart, scuttling years of work and redirecting its capital to another disastrous flop: Will Smith’s Wild Wild West.
Here we shadow Jon Schnepp, nerd culture aficionado, as he sifts through old assets and chats with those responsible. Although this documentary was funded through Kickstarter and is obviously a very low-budget production, its access is all we could’ve asked for. Schnepp sits down with everyone from studio execs to comic book writers, even spending a puzzling afternoon with the eccentric Tim Burton (filmed in the would-be director’s creepy, echoey attic space), providing us with a very thorough (if not cohesive) idea of where the film was trying to go. The artwork, at least, is excellent. Many members of this team went on to high-profile gigs elsewhere in Hollywood, and it’s fascinating to enjoy this peek into their creative processes. The most entertaining bits, though, involve an indirect back-and-forth between screenwriter Kevin Smith, who’s made a nice secondary career of shit-talking producer Jon Peters in his comedy specials, and Peters himself. Actually, Peters is mesmerizing even when he isn’t trying to justify his lust for giant spiders; a living embodiment of the snobby, vapid, fake-ass producer stereotype, he embraces every last one of his insane eccentricities. Is this guy for real? I’d love to hear a few more lies about his days as a young, street-fighting hairdresser.
Surprisingly, for a film that was never actually realized, there’s probably too much material to cover and the documentary seems reluctant to overlook anything. So it goes long, and Schnepp indulges in a bit of ego, framing himself into the picture and nodding like a bobblehead during each answer. I appreciated the insight, enjoyed the lunacy of it all, but was ready to wash my hands thirty minutes before the closing credits.
I mean, it’s a movie about a golden retriever playing competitive basketball. My expectations were low going in. Still, even by the standards of a dumb, one-note, live-action Disney Channel daydream, Air Bud is uh, not great. Cut out the dog and you’ve seen this plot a thousand times before: middle school kid loses his father (a FIGHTER PILOT), moves to a new town, struggles to make friends, kicks rocks for a few weeks, befriends an affable janitor and dutifully wins the hearts and minds of the school basketball team. Bland, sappy, overplayed material. Tossed into that mix is said retriever, literally kicked to the curb by a cruel middle-aged party clown, who sees the kid as a kindred spirit and, oh yeah, also has a nasty jump shot. Cue the practice montage, the “technically there’s no rule against it” referee’s decision, and (eventually) the vengeful former owner looking for a slice of the pie.
The dog’s fun to have around, but his schtick is just entertaining enough for a short, lighthearted clip on the evening news. The rest of the movie is as blunt and cheesy as they come; a dozen soap opera acting performances paired with a heaping dose of white bread morality. Bad slapstick around every corner. Bud hits the same shot thirty times in slightly different environs, always accompanied by delighted cheers and uplifting music. Once, he does so while wearing a jersey and cute doggy-sized sneakers. Despite its depiction on the box art, he attempts no dunks. No dunking dog! What are we even doing here?
For his second “talkie,” pioneering filmmaker Fritz Lang crafted a sequel to one of his early silent pictures. It sees the titular villain, once a brilliant criminal mastermind, now reduced to an empty, twitching husk in an asylum bed. Although most of his capabilities have left him, Mabuse’s right hand still follows orders and, provided with pen and paper, he’s able to sightlessly scrawl a steady stream of evil plots from the abyss. Soon enough, a mysterious figure steps forward to assemble a posse and enact the madman’s schemes, while a police inspector and a lovesick turncoat rush to crack the case before a broader anarchic manifesto can be realized.
In a purely technical sense, this film was years ahead of the curve. During his prime, Lang was one of cinema’s first true masters, pushing the envelope in ways that his contemporaries hadn’t even dreamed about. Mabuse is dense, dark and atmospheric, cynical like a film noir, with a dazzling capacity for grandiose scenery and an unrivaled cinematic eye. In such respects, its influence can’t be denied. Decades of nascent auteurs took notes on these experiments and applied them to their own works. I appreciate it far more in that sense than I do as a narrative. At two hours and change, it’s fatty and sluggish, trading essential tempo beats for a few extra moments’ gaze at the scenery. In this sense, it falls into the same trap that snared many contemporaries. There isn’t enough story to justify this long a telling, and the climactic home stretch feels dated and hollow.
While it’s noteworthy for its cinematic innovations, the film also marked a turning point in Lang’s career. During production of Testament, the Nazi party claimed national power and made an effort to recruit the director for official propaganda purposes. Lang told them he’d think about it, packed his bags, fled the country and never went back. Joseph Goebbels soon deemed the film subversive and banned it from German theaters, though he kept a copy for himself and allegedly screened it in private for certain guests.
A romantic oral history the Apollo moon missions, as told by the participating crew members. Although this phase of the space program spanned four years, ten missions and six crewed landings, the filmmakers have bundled the whole lot together in a single loose narrative, presumably to avoid covering the same subjects multiple times. Other documentaries, before and since, have addressed the scientific, societal and dramatic aspects of each excursion. This one takes a more personal angle. What did the Apollo astronauts see, hear, feel and imagine while they coasted through the cosmos at 25,000 miles an hour?
Our answers are culled from a cache of old materials - candid handheld footage, behind-the-scenes film and spoken recollections - and they reveal a refreshingly human side of the team. Now that we’ve erected statues and dedicated textbook chapters in their honor, it’s easy to paint these guys into a corner as some thing more; hard-nosed, no-nonsense, tirelessly dedicated to the job and nothing else. In reality, they were snared by feelings of isolation, reflection, jealousy, elation and wonder, just like anyone. The trip to the moon is a long one, so it probably shouldn’t come as such a surprise that the crew allowed themselves ample time for quiet, poetic rumination. For All Mankind is at its best while indulging such flights of fancy. Marveling at the dozens of campfires spread over the African continent after dark, each representing a unique Saharan tribe. Pondering the significance of it all whilst a stark, shrinking Earth is offset by a field of infinite darkness. Sharing a good private joke with the boys back in mission control. Enjoying the score of 2001: A Space Odyssey while screaming towards the unknown. It all serves as great imagination fuel that comforts, excites and broadens the mind.
Though it’s short on duration and light on background, For All Mankind provides a wealth of intellectual brain candy and frequent insights that border on the profound. It’s neat to contrast Armstrong and Aldrin’s dreamy observations from the first expedition with those of Harrison Schmitt on the last, but I’d have appreciated better orientation. It can be confusing to leap straight from the famous Apollo 13 near-disaster to another flight’s successful landing on the lunar surface, and that could’ve been avoided with a few simple captions. In the end, this well-regarded documentary contains a wonderful assortment of almost-lost footage that deserves to be preserved forever, but its presentation could’ve use some fine-tuning.
As the debate over slavery tears through early nineteenth-century America, the occupants of a small Cuban schooner find themselves caught in the political and judicial storm. When it’s intercepted by a US cruiser near the east coast, the vessel carries two brow-beaten Spaniard navigators and some forty African captives. Targets and perpetrators of a violent insurrection, as it happens, and soon the subjects of an international dispute. Though most lawmen recognize that it doesn’t justify such scrutiny, the ensuing court case becomes a hot-button public issue, weaving its way through the court system and threatening to set a contentious legal precedent at the onset of the Civil War.
Though he fudges a few historical details, Spielberg’s big slavery epic gets the mood and the messaging right. Part self-righteous morality lesson and part wordy courtroom drama, Amistad often leans on its star-studded cast to hook the audience. In this, it chooses wisely. Where the production is often dry, fickle and melodramatic, its key performances have flavor to spare. Morgan Freeman and Matthew McConaughey, both as steady and reliable as ever, chew a lot of screen as core members of an abolitionist legal team. Anthony Hopkins transforms a short, preachy almost-cameo role as ex-president John Quincy Adams into a nuanced, impassioned, can’t miss performance. But all three bow before the efforts of a virtual unknown: Djimon Hounsou, who would go on to play memorable supporting parts in Gladiator and Guardians of the Galaxy, steals this show. As de facto spokesman of the would-be slaves, Hounsou demonstrates power, bravado and charismatic magnetism, all without speaking more than three words of English. His character is the film’s lifeblood, its touchstone, and Hounsou ensures the audience can’t look away.
Beyond the acting, though, Amistad is just decent. It looks and feels very of-its-time, especially as serious, message-driven films went in the late ‘90s. Efficiently produced, steadily interesting and sufficiently meaty, it doesn’t go above and beyond in any of those respects. A reasonable night’s entertainment, but apart from Hounsou’s blow-away performance, I won’t remember it in a few months.
This schlocky, infamous dose of early ‘90s body horror waves its admiration for the Evil Dead films like a flag. More specifically, it sets out to emulate the campy humor, cheeky one-liners and gross-out special effects of Sam Raimi’s slapstick screamers. As story goes, Dead Alive only provides the bare minimum. There’s a plot, some silly gibberish about a Sumatran rat-monkey whose bite induces zombism, but it’s nothing more than a vehicle from one zany, gore-drenched horror-gasm to the next. The monkey gets its claws into an old woman, she spreads the infection, her doting son takes it upon himself to clean up the mess... that’s really all you need to know.
At heart, this is a fond, playful farewell for budding director Peter Jackson; his last (and bloodiest) low-budget splatter-fest before moving on to more serious material. And why not shift genres at this point? He’s just left everything on the abattoir floor. Dead Alive is so morbidly droll, so wickedly juvenile, so blissfully profane, it’s impossible to imagine a bridge much further. Any time it seems the hijinx cannot possibly get any more obscene, whoops, here comes something much, much worse. The unregulated mayhem is admirable, absurd hilarity at its best, but even at a breezy ninety-odd minutes, the total reliance on shock value wears thin. I cackled for an hour, but somewhere between the food processor baby and the shoulder-mounted lawnmower, I could feel my smile fade. Diminishing returns, I’m afraid.
Make no mistake: Dead Alive is bad cinema. It’s crammed full of weak performances, overbearing camera angles and cut-rate soundtrack riffs (at unnecessary volume levels). And man, it’s ruthlessly stupid. But stupid doesn’t always equate to no fun. This is a ball while it lasts, and there’s no question that Jackson and company are in on the joke, but it doesn’t last forever. Not as long as the film does, anyway. Bad + entertaining is still bad.
Sometimes a delayed second viewing can dull the shine of a film you once loved. I’ve had that experience fairly recently, but not here. No, Dune is a welcome exception: revisiting it this weekend in preparation for the sequel, I may have grown even further enchanted.
Denis Villenueve’s interpretation of this classic, difficult Sci-Fi cornerstone borders on revelation. Not only is it a stunning audiovisual masterpiece, a jaw-dropper in every sense, but its performances are universally great and its storytelling is every bit as rich and expansive as the property deserves. Sure, on the surface this is a plot about mechanical dragonflies and skyscraper-sized underground worms, but it’s also about cultural warfare, fanatical religious zealots, high-stakes socioeconomics and political gamesmanship on a galactic scale. Villenueve balances these lofty subjects, not to mention an extremely large cast, with surprising grace. Dune is complex but not overwhelming, dense but not impenetrable. It can move quickly and violently, but also take the time necessary to ponder the reverberations and appreciate their implications.
Certainly, much of what makes this possible is its careful tempo, confident in the knowledge that another lengthy chapter would be necessary to complete the story. And I’m conflicted, because the non-ending is really the only thing I can hold against Dune. I hate this trend of half-movies just as much as anyone, but to try to accomplish such a feat in one shot would’ve spoiled the sauce. It does such a fantastic job of utilizing the extended screen time that I don’t know where or how I’d suggest any cuts. Sometimes big stories merit big durations, though if I’m nitpicking I’d wish for a more suitable spot to cut away. Concluding this half of the story so abruptly feels hollow. The two-plus hours of preceding magic merit a better parting shot.
AKA how to build a bureaucratic monster. When a frustrated farmer speaks his mind and cultivates a grassroots political following, he’s recruited to throw his hat into a state-wide election. It’s a trick, of course, a ruse by the incumbent to split votes during a contentious campaign, and the initial results are effective. On the trail, our farmer is flustered and overwhelmed, a neophyte in over his head who struggles to maintain his former vigor while remaining on-message. Eventually he figures things out - both the deception and the secrets of electoral success - and, though it’s too late for that first ballot, he applies these lessons four years later with far better returns. While he may still have a lot to learn about the gig, the state’s new governor doesn’t need instruction on everything. Like the correlation between power and corruption.
The core of this idea is strong. There’s pathos in watching a good person fall victim to the system, sacrificing ideals in favor of popular acclaim and personal rewards. Broderick Crawford is exceptional in that role, retaining shades of the simple man he once was in the grand narcissist he eventually becomes. The editing is all over the place, though, and that can make for some very difficult sailing as the plot intensifies and Crawford’s actions grow more erratic. Rumor has it that director Robert Rossen’s original cut was obscenely long and borderline-incoherent, leading to more drastic edits that left countless scenes and stories shredded. Lost subplots are referenced without explanation. Mid-stream conversations abruptly fade to the next scene. Minor characters are never properly introduced, only tossed into the churn. This makes for a frustrating, confusing watch and eventually robs the inevitable climax of some power. Even that crucial moment wasn’t immune to the editor’s knife, it seems.
I feel like this particular best picture winner was rewarded for the potential of what it could have been, more than the reality of what it is. It definitely has the bones to be something great, but the end result is an underachievement.
While evading a team of repo men, a struggling writer stashes his car in the garage of what he thinks is an abandoned Beverly Hills mansion. Soon spotted by the resident, a delusional former silent film star, he agrees to step inside and spies opportunity in her desperation. She’s been working on a crappy screenplay, the crux of a comeback effort, and he figures he can bleed a few months’ salary out of a rewrite. She agrees, even invites him to live in the palace rent-free, but as their arrangement grows beyond mere professional courtesy, he begins to question which of them is the spider and which the fly.
A faded silent starlet herself, Gloria Swanson shines anew as Norma Desmond, the unhinged actress who thinks she’s doing the studio a favor by emerging from retirement. Like a triumphant former queen back from exile, this misguided character believes she’s bigger than the scene, but in truth it’s Swanson’s performance that’s oversized. Manic and complex, her unsettling depiction plucks every note from pride to despondency, manipulating her target(s) and the audience alike. She plays well with costar William Holden, whose straight delivery lends gravitas while his inner conflict grows increasingly panicked. Although the opening scene surprisingly spoils his fate, both characters remain sharply written and unpredictable right to the inevitable climax.
Hollywood does love a film about itself, and this one was certainly blessed with an embarrassment of accolades. Nominated for nearly a dozen awards at Oscar time, its constant winks and nods to the industry could have easily felt cheap and pandering. Instead, they enrich the fabric without overshadowing the tapestry. Quick, wonderful cameos from the likes of Buster Keaton and Cecil B. DeMille reinforce crucial plot points, while the backstage pressures of life among the silver screen’s less-celebrated feeds directly into the drama. A sad, sardonic glimpse at the harsh realities of the business and the avenues some stars navigate after the never-ending gala has moved on without them.
Writer / director John Woo essentially invented a sub-genre with the string of hits he released in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Later dubbed “heroic bloodshed” films, their plots typically place a conscientious anti-hero in conflict with his superiors, pitting loyalty against a private code of honor. Essentially pure and simple action movies with an added dash of self-reflection and a jaw-dropping capacity for ammunition. This one, sandwiched in the middle of a six-year collaboration with star Chow Yun-Fat, would become the pair’s international breakthrough.
In The Killer’s setup, Woo pays tribute to a personal influence. Calmly infiltrating a busy night club to fulfill a contract, Yun-Fat slays the manager and fatefully encounters a beautiful lounge singer, just like in Jean-Pierre Melville’s fashion-conscious 1967 gangster film, Le Samouraï. The similarities end there. In the ensuing firefight, the girl is inadvertently blinded and the killer has an epiphany, casting aside his career to atone for the collateral damage. At first, he’s tracked by a persistent undercover officer, but the two soon develop a sense of mutual respect and unite against a common enemy.
Though the intention may have been for an even split between fierce, kinetic violence and soul-searching contemplation, only the former aspects are worth mentioning. Bad dialogue, ham-fisted delivery and a clunky, low-rate production may spoil the film’s deeper aspirations, but hey, at least the fight scenes are lights out. Easy to see how the title character, and this film, has influenced action cinema for decades to come: he’s John Wick, twenty-five years ahead of the curve. Yun-Fat is perfect in that role, always the coolest guy in the room and a fluid natural with pistols and rifles of all sizes. That said, the constant gunplay can grow tiresome, especially during the jumbo-sized final shootout, and the main characters’ plot armor is outrageously thick. A fun ride, if perhaps a bit shallow. Remember to wear ear protection.
Born without a penny to their names, nor the promise of a future worth living, a pair of depression-era twenty-somethings find motivation in one another. Emboldened by their romance and certain about their invulnerability, the pair sets off to get rich quick via a string of car thefts and brazen, bloody daylight robberies. Joined by a small trio of accomplices, tales of their exploits soon capture the public imagination in an age when many felt hopeless, crushed and discarded by the system.
This film brings us up-close and personal with the title characters and their little family, learning about their various quirks and tics between heists. Like most young adults, Bonnie and Clyde’s self-confidence is both a blessing and a curse. Their opportunistic nature makes them difficult to track but also traps them in some very sticky situations. They don’t intend to commit mass murder, but when the other shoe drops (and it often does), sometimes their guns are the only way out and hey, better you than me. An experienced criminal, Clyde knows the score, but Bonnie sees their cross-country escapade as a sort of childish fantasy, never truly recognizing how much danger she’s in until the numbers catch up and the situation grows dire. They’re just kids, playing at being adults, but the law ain’t messing around.
Looking back almost sixty years later, the amount of blood and violence depicted in Bonnie and Clyde hardly seems excessive. It can be harsh and brutal at times, sure, but these doomed lovers chose a harsh, brutal life together and the film portrays that appropriately. Nobody’s ever robbed a bank with cap guns and candy apples, after all, or ditched the police by blowing kisses through a window. Way back in 1967, however, this was held up as evidence of our decaying moral fabric and many contemporary reviews were outraged. What kind of cinema will our children be watching, should this awful trend towards graphic bloodshed continue? I’d hate to see their reactions to Tarantino.
Love, adventure and hand-to-hand combat at the peak of the French and Indian War. On the outskirts of the battlefield, a white man and his adopted native family scoff at the Brits’ latest recruiting efforts and move to abandon their land, but happen upon an ambush on the way out of town and find themselves drawn into the conflict anyway. Now accompanied by a pair of pampered ladies and their posh one-man military escort, the small brood resumes its cautious retreat with an angry Mohawk war party in hot pursuit.
Under the guidance of emerging director Michael Mann, The Last of the Mohicans is a sleek, well-produced picture. It boasts a superb soundtrack, several big, diverse fight scenes and a powerful climax, but the plot is slow, the performances are stiff and the central romances lack a collective spark. Native brothers Uncas (Eric Schweig) and Hawkeye (Daniel Day Lewis) wear a wide assortment of grim, determined faces, which serve them well during the action sets, but their matchmaker moments with the two rescued damsels seem more convenient than romantic and I didn’t buy into their oft-stressed status as star-crossed lovers. In the void of effective romance, the emotional heavy-lifting is left to a subdued and under-explored subplot about a tribe near extinction and a whole lot of whinging about honor, duty and sacrifice.
I had fond memories of watching this one back in the VHS days, but the years haven’t been terribly kind. It’s not bad, it’s just unremarkable.
Certain films innately embody the spirit and flair of a particular point in time. In Snatch’s case, the essence of the late ’90s is laced into its DNA. From the groovy, thumping soundtrack to the flashy, in-your-face visual motifs; the grimy criminal subject matter to the extreme sports-inspired camerawork, it boasts an impressive collection of very specific, time-sensitive pop culture calling cards. Watching this now, almost a quarter-century later, is like cracking open a time capsule. Imagine Pulp Fiction as produced by MTV.
Motivated the ultimate MacGuffin, a diamond the size of a cueball, the plot follows a number of desperate London criminals as they conspire and connive to pull one over on their rivals and reap the riches. We’ve got high-profile mob bosses and blue collar boxing promoters, ex-KGB agents and common street thugs, each armed with their own peculiar bag of quirks and colorful idiosyncrasies. Though most parties are unaware of the others, their paths constantly interlace and overlap, and the whole mess eventually falls together in a great dogpile during the final act’s frantic, crowded, hilarious payoff sequence.
Snatch is an essentially dark comedy, stuffed with all manner of eccentric lowlifes, surprise twists and grim, ironic punchlines. It is a Guy Ritchie / Matthew Vaughn joint, after all, and following hot on the heels of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, their successful debut, it punches a number of the same buttons. Reuses many actors, too, with Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones the most recognizable of the bunch. It’s newcomer Brad Pitt who steals the show, however, in his spectacular turn as an unintelligible, tattooed, caravan-dwelling boxer. His whole community is a riot, in fact, a tight group of lawless drunkards who honor no set of rules. Their unpredictability is just the fuel this film needed to bump its fire from a small blaze into a lofty inferno. Is it dated? Sure. Is it still entertaining? Yeah, that too.
On the brink of a midlife crisis, big-name Broadway player Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is introduced to a starstruck fan (Anne Baxter), admires the kid’s enthusiasm and hires her as a live-in assistant. Margo can be a handful, a drama queen in every sense, but she’s a loyal, compassionate friend and immediately shares those virtues with the new girl. And the new girl, for her part, spins the star’s influence to her own benefit, proving she’s not half as clueless as she seems. Though Margo catches on quickly, her friends and associates remain enchanted with the youngster and chalk their growing divide up to mere jealousy. Which isn’t untrue - now on the wrong side of forty, Margo knows she’s got to start losing those glamorous leading roles to someone - but the aging star’s famously erratic behavior and deep-seated insecurities are the real issue. Those self-destructive tendencies do more to reverse her fortunes than any amount of conniving from the ambitious younger model. She’s fighting the same uphill battle that defeated her predecessors, she knows it, and the desperation only makes things worse.
Well acted and well directed, All About Eve makes good observations about the industry and delivers big twists, but it’s incredibly, distractingly wordy. While I could believe an actress or playwright might speak in this way, an onslaught of witty metaphors and rare adjectives, it’s exhausting to hear it from the entire cast. Every line’s a mouthful. And while that does result in some great material (Davis’s famous “fasten your seatbelts,” for example), it also slows the plot to a crawl. Smart and amusing but overwrought, this film uses sheer hot air to stretch ninety minutes’ worth of material across two hours and change.
Feuding superstars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford came together for this, their only shared screen credit, a good decade-plus past their respective peaks. In it, they play faded showbiz sisters sharing a crumbling Hollywood mansion. While the youngest (Davis) experienced child celebrity and then fell on hard times, her elder sibling (Crawford) enjoyed a successful adult movie career before an untimely auto accident rendered her paraplegic. Now, she depends on little sis to deliver her meals and interact with the world on her behalf, a weakness that the bitter, jealous former Baby Jane relishes and abuses.
There isn’t much more to the story. Jane’s a crazy person who’s allowed years of disillusion and resentment to irreparably crack her while Blanche, the older sister, has no choice but to appease her tormentor and eat punishment. This drags on for quite a while, a cruel monotony that’s only broken by occasional visits from the housekeeper. But that’s not really what this show is all about. Most audience members came out to see the spectacle of Davis and Crawford’s cohabitation, and on that front we get plenty of fireworks. The only thing these two despised more than each other was the thought of having their scenes stolen. There’s a frosty, constant chill between the pair that extends well beyond the typical dramatic fare, like they’re always on the verge of scratching each other’s eyes out. That, plus Davis’s preposterous makeup job (caked at least twenty layers deep) add unusual amounts of authentic, unsettling tension to a picture that would’ve, otherwise, been rather shallow.
Well, it’s still shallow. Hammy and drawn-out, too, but at least there’s something more to it than all that. A film that’s more about the squabbling starlets than the story they’ve set out to tell, Baby Jane aims to be a dark, Hitchcockian thriller, but it hasn’t got the brains to deliver. Instead, it’s more akin to a mad, morbid sideshow.
LucasDisney brings us the Han Solo origin story nobody really asked for, recasting several iconic roles to get the ages right and unintentionally positioning the new crew behind the eight ball because, let’s face it, Harrison Ford and Billy Dee Williams are an awfully tough act to follow. This is really the breaking point of the entire picture: either you’ll accept Alden Ehrenreich as the Skywalker family’s favorite bootlegging scoundrel, minus about fifteen years, or you’ll never be able to move past the comparison and the movie will have already lost you.
I thought I was in the second camp, avoided the film for years due to it, then found I was actually in the first. Ehrenreich doesn’t look like Harrison, doesn’t move like him and barely manages a halfway decent vocal approximation, but somehow, he fits the role. He carries the same charismatic magnetism, the same visible delight over adventure, excitement and ridiculously long odds. He’s got more nervous energy than a sugar-crusted toddler, a witty retort for every occasion and, crucially, he’s fun to watch, whether luck is on his side or, more often, not. I still think the film would’ve been better served by a brand new character struck by the same circumstances, but then we’d lose the little dashes of lore and history that make the third act such a rich ride.
Donald Glover, on the other hand, is unqualifiably excellent as Lando, all swagger and confidence and allure. I just wish he had more to do. As it stands, he’s little more than a flashy minor supporting character who conveniently connects plot waypoints. I’m sure his role would have expanded in the planned sequels, but no extended franchise is a given - even in the Star Wars universe - and, as those follow-ups appear to be dead in the water, it’s now just a missed opportunity.
Solo was better than I expected. I enjoyed it, in fact, largely because it had the balls not to take itself so damned seriously. A New Hope wasn’t all grit and consequence, so why have so many of the newer films leaned so hard in that direction? I’m curious how much of this one’s pervasive sense of humor can be attributed to original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, chased from the project after five months because the Disney bosses found their work “too screwball.” New captain Ron Howard toes a difficult line in maintaining that freewheeling air while also mixing in a little gravitas, but he gets carried away with sentimentality at the very end.
Released less than two weeks before the disaster at Three Mile Island, The China Syndrome’s depiction of near-meltdown at a Los Angeles nuclear power plant probably seemed impossibly prescient at the time. In truth, most of its plot points were drawn from other, similar near-misses and cover-ups at plants elsewhere in the nation, knowledge which lends extra credence to its firm anti-nuclear agenda. And while it could’ve been forgiven for taking the easy route, this is more than just a scare picture or disaster movie. Behind the alarmist terror of radiation in the American backyard lies an adept piece of roiling suspense and a pertinent philosophical debate.
The crux of the conflict falls between a TV news team, a sympathetic atomic engineer and the bigwigs who control both sides of the narrative. With hearings already underway concerning the construction of a second plant, there’s a lot of money involved and none of the suits - neither the plant officials nor the network executives - want to rock the boat. This leads to great mutual consternation, as the reporters seek to blow whistles, the engineer struggles to get to the bottom of the anomalies and their bosses intend to just sweep the whole mess under the rug and move on. We all serve masters of one shape or another. The real question is: do you have the courage to do what’s ethical, at the expense of a comfortable lifestyle and steady paycheck? Not everyone can answer this in the affirmative.
A bit pokey and redundant, especially during the tiresome setup scenes, The China Syndrome hits an excellent rhythm in the second act that climaxes with an intense control room showdown on live TV. Jack Lemmon shows great range as the troubled engineer whose personal sky is falling, while Jane Fonda and a young Michael Douglas lather it on rather thick as key members of the pesky, vocal, self-righteous news crew. It’s preachy at times, hyperbolic at others, but the deeper messages hit their target and the closing scenes are spirited and well-realized.
Sometimes all it takes is a memorable setting and simple motivations to make a story work. 1917 offers a great example: stationed near the front lines of World War I, a pair of British soldiers are sent on an urgent mission to halt a friendly regiment before it advances into a trap. Intel claims the enemy has abandoned their nearest posts, part of the ruse, and since time is of the essence, the runners are sent straight through yesterday’s hostile terrain to accomplish their objective. Apart from a few minor character-related subplots and side encounters, that’s really all there is to it. Get from A to B, as quickly as you can, and try not to die along the way.
This bare-bones plot allows 1917 to really focus on the gruesome scenery, and unique pressures, of life amongst the harried soldiers of the western front. Rattled and terrified as they are, our couriers must learn to trust their lives to unseen information, speed run through no man’s land, escape an abandoned enemy trench system without triggering any snares and come to grips with the constant, unavoidable presence of rotting corpses around every corner. Like macabre tourists, the audience ogles at these sights and, gradually, comes to understand the sense of hopeless, mutual futility that must’ve been so overwhelming for these young men.
Deftly stitched together and presented as one long, uninterrupted take, the film thus feels intimate to every viewer; a truly immersive experience. The seams are there if you really want to look for them, but the effect is undeniable. We’re experiencing the chaos of war in real-time. This is the kind of intense, enveloping filmmaking that’ll make you hold your breath without realizing. A real audio/visual showpiece, it’s also got one hell of a knack for gut punches. I don’t know why I waited so long - it’s exactly what I was hoping it would be.
A decidedly different, folklore-inspired story from Studio Ghibli’s other founder, the somewhat lesser-known Isao Takahata. The Tale of Princess Kaguya depicts a divine child, mystically delivered to a pleasant little farming family in the base of a bamboo stalk, who begins growing at a rapid pace. When the same family discovers a wealth of gold and silks in another stalk, they take the windfall as a sign that the girl should be raised amongst royalty and whisk her away from their happy, humble country life to join the pompous, self-serving world of the upper class. Which, sadly, is the last thing the girl wants from life.
Driven by its storybook visuals, lush with watercolors and restraint, this film looks like nothing else in the Ghibli catalog. Sparse but expressionistic, it’s a mesmerizing alternative to the warmer, more detail-oriented portrayals of the studio’s house style. That shift is a welcome one, especially when the new methods prove their flexibility during the infrequent high-energy scenes; a real testament to the artists’ ability to adapt and excel while outside their comfort zones. In a storytelling sense, however, it falls short of Ghibli’s better films. I felt the same way about Pom Poko, another of Takahata’s directorial efforts: delightful and charming for the first hour, but then the sprawl sets in and our sense of enchantment quickly fades away.
I loved this as an artistic exercise, and was entranced by the establishing shots, but the plot didn’t have enough steam to carry its goods through two-plus hours. Takahata films just can’t seem to find the exit before overstaying their welcome.
Fresh off a divorce, highly peculiar for the era, a timid young mother throws herself into the art scene of 1950s San Francisco. There, she falls under the spell of Walter Keane, an unspectacular local painter who’s been pestering critics and making “real” artists roll their eyes for years. Together, the two make a sort of magic - while she quietly produces kitschy, haunting portraits, he finds a space to hang them, drums up publicity and schmoozes with the right people. It’s a wildly successful artist/manager partnership, especially when Keane hits on the idea of mass-producing the work to reach a new, lower-income audience, but success goes to his head. Just as they reach the big time, he begins taking credit for her work, and that lie soon eclipses their relationship.
Though it’s directed by Tim Burton, who cites Margaret Keane as an important personal influence, Big Eyes is decidedly un-Burton in most every way. I would’ve expected the director to embrace the more ostentatious aspects of the atomic age, to add his own unique perspective to the creative process and the tackier side of the art scene. Instead, everything just feels run-of-the-mill and workmanlike. He tells the story adequately enough, but adds nothing that wasn’t already printed in the script. Everything’s so blasé, an interesting story told in a thoroughly uninteresting way.
Burton’s gone straight once or twice before - notably in Ed Wood, his most traditional film and first biographical work - but there’s a wide gulf between the emotional punch and subtle character moments of these two films. Even the obligatory accompanying Danny Elfman soundtrack lacks its quirky beats and unmistakable idiosyncrasies. It seems this once-vibrant creative well has run dry, its source content to keep wringing and hope for a few drips of eccentric nostalgia. Nothing so far.
