The Best Films of Charlton Heston

Oct 112017
  October 11, 2017

charltonhestonThis one is by request.

Now Charlton Heston is not your typical actor. It isn’t that he is bad, but rather that he is limited, and works best where a very stylized performance is called for. If you are running a tent revival meeting, he is your man. Sometimes, an actor needs to speak to the heavens and announce how the universe is rather than have a nice chat. This works beautifully in The Ten Commandments, whereas in The Agony and the Ecstasy, I would have preferred a human performance. Not that Heston was incapable of playing real emotion—just watch some of the quieter moments from Soylent Green—but larger than life was his norm. So he could come off as either bold and powerful, or silly, depending on the film and direction. His Andrew Jackson (he played him twice, which is fitting…sadly) in The Buccaneer is an excellent case of the latter. I tend to snicker while watching. And the less said about The Savage the better. Most of his attempts at westerns or war films fail because he plays it too broadly.

So, he’s best when his big personality fits (and the film isn’t too condescending), which means fantasy epics are his thing. He’s a natural for Shakespeare, except his Shakespeare films just weren’t very good (Hamlet is decent, but I’ll leave that as an honorable mention for his cameo).

As for some of his better known films that aren’t on my list, I have a whole piece written up on why Touch of Evil is, and should be, missing, and I’ll just say that the third act of Ben-Hur knocks it out and leave it at that. Then there’s the Academy Award-winning The Greatest Show On Earth, which is on every list of the most unworthy Oscar-winners. The Greatest Story Ever Told is a snooze, but it isn’t his fault. He’s fine in The Three/Four Musketeers, but those are middle-tier swashbucklers. And since I’m not stooping to Airport 1975 or Earthquake, for Heston, I’m dropping my top 8 to a top 6:

6 – In the Mouth of Madness (1994) – A nicely constructed bit of faux-Lovecraft from John Carpenter. Heston has little to do with the quality of the film one way or the other. Sam Neill, on the other hand, is excellent.

5 – The Omega Man (1971) – It’s a film of its time, and something of an attempt by establishment Hollywood to understand those hippy kids and their new ways. Yeah, its condescending, but way less than the hippies-in-space episode of Star Trek. It’s amazing how well a story about vampires works when you remove the vampires. The cult scenes have particular power, and even more so in the 1970s.

4 – The Ten Commandments (1956) – And now we’re in the big leagues. The most Heston of Heston roles, he is loud, inhuman, and pretty much perfect. The film has no sense of subtlety and is all the better for it. You want religion and fantasy crashing down around you? Here it is. [Also on both the Vincent Price List and the Edward G. Robinson list]

3 – True Lies (1994) – Again, Heston is more of an after thought. This is James Cameron’s show, wielding another blunt instrument, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with about as much skill as can be done. And Jamie Lee Curtis managed just fine. This is great action/adventure. Not too smart, but not too dumb. Funny and exciting.

2 – Planet of the Apes (1968) – Few films have so entered pop culture, and it’s a bit of a shame as people know the ending (that marvelous ending that screamed out for an actor like Heston), but forget the rest of the film. It’s really a great work. Heston makes Taylor an ass, but one that we can sympathize with, which totally fits with the times. He’s the last establishment man, so yeah, the metaphors are wonderful.

1 – Soylent Green (1973) – Another film where the ending has eclipsed the rest of the movie, which in this case, is just wrong. There’s so much good in Soylent Green, and so much that is better than the ending. The relationship between Heston’s Thorn and Edward G. Robinson’s Sol is the heart of the film, and gives us both actors’ finest performances. This is one of the great science fiction films that doesn’t get the credit it deserves. [Also on the Edward G. Robinson list]

 

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 Actor Best Lists, Lists, Thoughts

The Best Films of Bob Hope

Oct 112017
  October 11, 2017

bobhopeSure, I’m still doing these–and one I was working on required some re-watching, so I went with Hope for today. Bob Hope was such a dominant comedian when I was a kid that is is bizarre to see how he is slipping from public consciousness. He also wan’t a very good comic when I was young, but he had been, years earlier. In the ’40s he was one of the best, producing a string of hysterical films. He’d been a stage and radio comic first, and that background was always with him. His routine was always verbal, and quick. His weak spot was one shared by many of the other comics and teams–he was repetitive. He always played more or less the same guy and did more or less the same jokes. They generally worked, but it makes a Hope marathon a bad idea. But then he had reason to keep doing the same thing–it worked, at least for a time. His better films tended to fall into three groupings: the Road pictures with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour; the “My Favorite” pictures where he was mistaken for a spy or PI and got mixed up in espionage; his period costume comedies, which usually had people again mistaking him for someone important.

I’ve been doing 8 films per actor, but I’m enlarging that with Hope because otherwise this would be close to just listing the Road pictures. Additionally, most of the non-Road pictures on this list are very close in quality (and in the jokes and characters…), so much so that they are good, but interchangeable.

Honorable mentions go to The Cat and the Canary (1939) and The Ghost Breakers (1940), both of which have some brilliant horror stuff (the zombie scenes in The Ghost Breakers are must-sees for horror fans) but are brought down by other elements.

So, here with go with #12

12 – Road to Rio (1947) – The 5th Road picture and 6th in quality, Rio is good, but pales next to earlier ones. The songs are forgettable and stop the film and the jokes are old, but the boys have a few laughs still in them. [Also on the Bing Crosby list]

11 – My Favorite Spy (1951) – Winning out over My Favorite Blonde on the sex appeal Hedy Lamarr. If she isn’t your type, then best to choose one of the other similar films.

10 – The Paleface (1948) – Hope in Western garb. He’s a dentist who’s mistaken for a gunman. Jane Russel handles the plot, trying to discover who is selling guns to the Indians. (Yup, it’s racist, but hey, it’s a lot less racist than The Ghost Breakers…)

9 – The Princess and the Pirate (1944) – Hope in Pirate garb. This one is lavish and in bright color with great character actors surrounding Hope.

8 – My Favorite Brunette (1947) – Hope teams with his Road picture co-star Dorothy Lamour in a Noir spoof that has him battling Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr.

7 – Monsieur Beaucaire (1946) – Hope in French revolution garb. This one takes its swashing and buckling more seriously by adding a young male lead to carry the action.

6 – Road to Bali (1952) – The 6th of 7 Road pictures (only the much later Hong Kong doesn’t make this list), Bali is a return to form as Hope and Crosby go to the South Seas, and toss off a non-stop string of one-liners while breaking the 4th wall. It’s wacky and fun. [Also on the Bing Crosby list]

5 – Road to Zanzibar (1941) – The 2nd Road picture has Hope, Crosby, and Lamour spoofing (or just inhabiting) a jungle picture. It is one of the less wild outings, with the 4th wall unbroken. [Also on the Bing Crosby list]

4 – Road to Utopia (1945) – The Road pictures were at full steam here as our three are in Alaska during the gold rush, but all that matters are jokes. [Also on the Bing Crosby list]

3 – Road to Singapore (1940) – The first Road picture and things are a bit different, with Hope and Crosby playing characters and sticking with the plot. Dorthy Lamour is an Island fantasy, which was her gig at the time. It’s the only Road picture where you might care about something other than if the jokes are funny. [Also on the Bing Crosby list]

2 – The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) – Based on a Damon Runyon story, this one is different for Hope in that story and character trump actor. Yes, Hope is still playing a variation on his typical character, but he keep it within the lines. The humor comes from the good natured street criminals of New York dealing with sweet old ladies as they try and do a good thing. It introduced the song Silver Bells, making it a Xmas classic.

1 – Road to Morocco (1942) – Ah, where to start. Many people claim this is the funniest movie of all times and I wouldn’t argue that. It is absurd, with no concern about the rules of filmmaking. Hope and Crosby talk to the audience, they refer to the last film and their contracts, and its all brilliant. Even the songs are good for a change. [Also on the Bing Crosby list]

 Actor Best Lists, Lists, Thoughts

The Shape of Water (2017)

Oct 082017
 
four reels

It’s 1962 in America, and mute—though not def—Elisa (Sally Hawkins) works on the cleaning crew of a secret government laboratory with Zelda (Octavia Spencer). Outside of work, her only friend is Giles (Richard Jenkins), an aging gay artist. One day a new team arrives at the base, including scientist Dr. Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) and zealous patriot Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). They are studying a humanoid river creature (Doug Jones) in hopes to find information to aid America against her enemies. Dr. Hoffstetler takes a scientific approach, while Strickland tortures the creature. Elisa sneaks in to see it—or him—bring eggs and music and sign language, and forges a connection.

Earlier this year Universal attempted to bring back their monster franchise by taking various things they’d done before with mummies and slapping them all together. It failed. Here, Guillermo del Toro essentially reboots The Creature From the Black Lagoon, bringing in new ideas and a form of storytelling rarely used for monster movies (at least ones not made by him), and slips it into a different genre, and succeeds spectacularly. This is how you revisit old material—by touching the past while reaching for something new. There have been many films like The Mummy before. There’s never been another The Shape of Water.

This is a fairytale, one that involves politics and antifascism, diversity and oppression, and loneliness and need. It sounds theme-heavy, and it is, but I wasn’t pulled out of the film’s world by the messages, but rather they seeped into me with hardly a notice, as The Shape of Water is about character first. Zelda and Dr. Hoffstetler are drawn so deeply that I can imagine their un-produced movies. I know who they are, what they want, how they feel, and how they fit in. Then there is Strickland, the icon of the American way twisted into sickness. This is the part Shannon has been practicing for. He’s specialized in the near-psychotic that is easy to hate and it has all just been a warm-up. Strickland is alive and I knew him as well as the others. I hated him too, but del Toro knows this, so gives me comfort along the way. Yes, Strickland makes others suffer, but he suffers right there with them. And if you don’t think there’s symbolism in play in what happens to him, you aren’t paying attention. It is no accident that against this villain del Toro arrays three outsiders, nor that Strickland is so extreme on being the foundation of his America that he too ends up as an outsider. That’s the funny thing with fascism: in fighting to be part of something and exclude others, you end up alone.

But the character that matters is Elisa and she is so real. I feel her ache, her desire, her longing, her weakness and strength. del Toro understands that cinema is not about thought, but emotion, and he’s found a perfect partner in Hawkins.

Lesser artists approach similar subject matter coldly, but that’s not how The Shape of Water works. Of course belonging, equality, hope, and happiness are expressed sexually. How else would they be expressed? del Toro is a very sensual filmmaker and he brings that to the center. This film is about sex, same as life is. Elisa needs to be touched, and again, if you are missing the symbolism


As for the nuts and bolts of filmmaking, The Shape of Water is remarkable nearly across the board. The sets are amazing, the cinematography is fantastic and the colors
 Oh, the colors. Can we send someone over at WB who’s working on the DCEU to del Toro and company to talk about color? It’s as dark as Batman V Superman, but it is never drab; it is wondrous.  Awards were invented for this film. If I ran the Oscars, it would be up for cinematography, score, production/art design, and makeup, besides director, writer, and a couple acting slots.

Is it perfect? No. It could have been generally tightened. And the Giles character should have been cut way back. Yes, someone is needed for Elisa to bounce things off of, but that’s all he’s needed for. The rest of his story is redundant and better handled by our other outsiders. And I was a bit distracted with the similarities between the Creature and Ape Sapien that Jones played in Hellboy. But when the credits start to scroll, you won’t be thinking about a few unnecessary moments, but about Elisa and a river god and the beauty of it all.

 Fantasy, Featured Review, Horror, Reviews Tagged with:

Power Rangers (2017)

Oct 082017
 
two reels

Long ago, a team of alien Power Rangers were destroyed, along with their enemy, Rita (Elizabeth Banks). In modern times, a group of supposed troublemaking teens—white jock Jason Scott (Dacre Montgomery), white depressed Kimberly Hart (Naomi Scott), black autistic Billy Cranston (RJ Cyler), Hispanic gay Trini (Becky G), and Asian wildman Zack (Ludi Lin)—discover the power ranger talisman that have been buried all these years, turning them into the Red, Pink, Blue, Yellow, and Black Power Rangers, in that order. At the same time, Rita’s body is found by fishermen. Zordon (Bryan Cranston), who is part of an ancient spaceship, trains The Power Rangers to protect a crystal from Rita.

The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was an odd kids show, created by taking the costumed combat parts of a Japanese show and adding in segments with American actors. It was pretty popular among the six-year-old set. A few very sad thirty-year-olds, looking back with nostalgia, have an unnatural fondness for the show, but for everyone else, the Power Rangers were both obnoxious and unnecessary. So naturally they decided to tone down the silliness and aim the reboot movie not at little kids, but at young teens. That was the first of many terrible ideas, that include jokes about milking a bull, and hiring a director who has only made one small budget feature.

The real shock here is that the film isn’t horrible. For a bad idea, filmed with a putrid dark filter, and seeped in self-importance, it is strangely moving. The five Ranger teens, which scream out that they were created in a corporate boardroom, have surprising chemistry. Each is likable, with just enough back story to give the audience something to hang on to, and together they are better. I’ve seen many teens-coming-together films back to the days of John Hughes, and this one works better than most.

And when all the sincerity starts to get too much, we get an amusing robot (voiced by Bill Hader) and a brightly-colored, over-the-top villain that’s a whole lot of fun. I wouldn’t have pegged Elizabeth Banks as a kids-level-creepy type but she pulls it off with gusto.

We wait for three quarters of the movie to get the Power Ranger in their armor and for the big fights to begin, and when they do, they are
 OK. But while the punches and kicks are mediocre, the dialog between the Rangers, filled with feel-good emotion, and the evil monologuing from Rita, makes it all a little better.

This is not a good movie. It was never going to be a good movie. But it’s not a bad one. And that’s some kind of victory.

 Reviews, Science Fiction, Superhero Tagged with:

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Oct 062017
 
three reels
blade-runner-2049-poster

K (Ryan Gosling), a replicant blade runner, lives in a future where new replicants are constructed to obey due to the peculiar, corporate overlord, Niander Wallace (Jared Leto). So the job of the blade runner is now running down old-style replicants who were made before the great blackout. In “retiring” one of these (Dave Bautista), K discovers a secret that his boss (Robin Wright) wants him to follow up on so that it can be destroyed and hidden forever, while Wallace wants that secret for himself. His investigation leads him to missing blade runner Deckard (Harrison Ford). K spends his off-time with a holographic lover, Joi (Ana de Armas), who may or may not be sentient.

Well, they didn’t take the easy way. This isn’t a sequel that just makes the original elements bigger and louder. Nor is it empty, dripping in theme almost as much as Blade Runner was before it. And I had the advantage of attending a double feature with the original so comparisons were easy. Is the new one as successful as the old? No. Is it a masterpiece that will change genre film? No and no. It is interesting and well made, and doesn’t harm its predecessor (there is one attempt to change the meaning of everything that happened in Blade Runner, but that’s just one guy talking and there’s no reason to believe him).

In many ways it is an anti-Blade Runner. The first was Film Noir in a future setting. 2049 is not Film Noir. It has neither the feel, the themes, nor the look, instead being a purer mystery story. Where no one was special in Blade Runner, 2049 is all about a special person. In Blade Runner, individual memories didn’t matter. In 2049, they are everything. Blade Runner was a personal film, about what being alive means to the individual. 2049 is about externals, where what it means to be human is a given, and now we are dwelling on what we should do with our lives, and its answer has to do with large-scale politics. Think Spock in Wrath of Khan. The message here is that individualism pales next to the greater good. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, but at times it feels like the two films are fighting each other.

The future world has changed since the first film. Where before it was a living world, but a sick one, with evil running out of its pores, and yet somehow still beautiful, now it is a dead one, and ugly; a well-shot ugly world, but an ugly one. In 1982 the visuals drew me in. In 2017 they just let me know I don’t want to be there. Blade Runner’s look was directly related to ‘40s Film Noir with a bit of spin from Italian horror. 2049‘s style comes straight out of ‘70s and ‘80s post-apocalyptic cinema. There is less of The Maltese Falcon here, and more Zardoz. I appreciate the difference, even if it is less appealing to watch.

This is a very plot-focused film, and for the most part that plot holds together well. It progresses slowly, but that was a given going in (there is nothing about this film that could be considered fast). There are a few glitches, with characters making some strangely stupid decisions to keep the story going (You are really just going to leave that person laying there? Really? And you’re not going to concern yourself at all with the fact that you are being watched and in one case, aided? Huh.). And we’ve got multiple annoying Michael-Myers-rising-from-the-dead moments, but most of the elaborate story is good and keeps everything trundling along.

If you like call-backs, you’ll be really happy. We’ve got characters who pop up that you’ll remember and musical cues are repeated. Animal figurines are once again a thing. Previous dialog is referenced, and if your favorite part of Blade Runner was enhancing that photo, wow are you in for a treat. If there’s an image, someone will enlarge it. These homages draw extensive attention to themselves, but are still fun and never bothered me.

For such a long and thoughtful film, 2049 lacks intensity and heart. It wants to be important. It cries out that it is. But it isn’t. It is not half as smart as its deeply serious nature needs it to be. Everything was there to make a great film, but it wasn’t used. I didn’t care about the big political and moral notions and nothing in the film makes that large-scale stuff matter. I wanted more of the personal story that pops up occasionally, mostly with Joi. That material is golden, and the sex scene is by far the best moment of the film. I’d have been happy to jettison the entire plot and just focus on K and Joi and what their relationship means. Instead I got a lot of solid world-building, excellent acting, and plenty of subjects to fill several lunch conversations, but no magic. Close to 40 years ago I left the theater enthralled and wishing to see Blade Runner again. I left Blade Runner 2049 tired and unengaged, feeling I’d done my duty in seeing it, but with no desire to do so again any time soon.  It’s a fine film, but we won’t be talking about Blade Runner 2049 in 2049.

 Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Reviews Tagged with:

Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)

Sep 162017
 
one reel

Optimus Prime (voice: Peter Cullen) has left Earth to return to Cybertron where he meets an evil mother robot who turns him evil and sends him back to Earth to swipe Merlin’s staff so the planet of Cybertron can suck the life out of the Earth. Really. But forget about that as we won’t hear any more about it for two hours. Instead we’re on Earth with Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg), who’s a fugitive because all transformers are now “illegal.” Cade protects them in his huge but somehow hidden junkyard. He picks up a replacement daughter, but she ends up doing nothing. He is given a talisman that makes him the thirteenth knight of the round table, which also ends up as nothing except it causes Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins) to summon him to England to meet Vivian Webley (Laura Haddock), the last descendent of Merlin who happens to be both a professor and ridiculously hot so Michael Bay can focus on her ass. As Sir Burton and his super steampunk robot explain—and explain and explain and explain—only Vivian can find and use Merlin’s staff and if she doesn’t in two days, the world will end. No, I’m not kidding. That’s the plot. Honest. That and a lot of generic stuff with the military and a subplot of Transformers playing ball in Cuba (still not kidding) and a bitchy scientist who exists because Michael Bay doesn’t like scientists. Then they all run around a lot and there are many, many explosions.

What’s the point? This is a Transformers movie and Transformers movies are all the same. There’s no good one. Nor is there a bad one. They are all ugly. They are all noisy. They are all nonsensical. They are all overly serious with a lot of lines that should be jokes if they weren’t delivered with great pretension. The difference in quality between the films—or in plot, or in character development, or in number of explosions—is trivial. And no one will, or should, start with the 5th. So if you hated the others, you’ll hate this one. And if you liked the others, there’s no helping you.

So what can I say? What’s different? Well, it is less racist then other outings (which means it is only a little racist). So
that’s good. The sexism is also dialed back a bit. The “jokes” are less cringe-worthy than in the second film, though still not funny. We have longer segments than usual without transformers doing anything, which I really can’t say is good or not, but it is a thing. The dino-transformers do more fighting and the dragon transfomer looks pretty cool by 1990s standards. Micheal Bay’s military fetishism is still on display, but his libertarian-anti-government side is stronger so we are more often meant to dislike the military. Product placement is down from the last film, though still obvious. And Anthony Hopkins can somehow say his ludicrous lines without embarrassing himself, and that’s real talent.

And that’s it. Otherwise, it’s the same garbage that Bay has spat out for ten years. This is supposed to be Bay’s last Transformers film, but it is also supposed to be the birth of a Transformers Universe of films, starting with a Bubblebee movie, so there’s no good news to be had, except, maybe, in the box office. Last Knight made over 400 million less than Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, and at least 200 million less than studio expectations. It still made a profit, but that’s not a sign of health for the franchise and the accountants won’t have missed that. It’s too much to hope that they’ll stop making Transformers movies, but I am a hopeful kind of guy.

The previous films were Transformers (2007), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), and Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014).

 Giant Monsters, Robots, Science Fiction

Best/Most Important SF Films of the ’50s

Sep 152017
  September 15, 2017

I was asked by a friend (yes, a real one, not just a Facebook one) what the Best ‘50s—early ‘60s science fiction films were. I asked if we were talking “best” or “most important” and he said “Why not both?” As I’ve just finished a panel at Dragon Con on the subject, and making that distinction, it is a pair of easy lists for me.

Explaining what makes each of the best, “the best” would take complete reviews, so I’ll link my previous reviews to the titles for the ones I’ve reviewed, and for the rest, you’ll just have to believe me (and you should). For most important, I’ll give the briefest of reasons. And these are sorted by date.

 

The BEST ‘50s—early ‘60s SF films

 

The MOST IMPORTANT ‘50s—early ‘60s SF films

  • Destination Moon (1950) — Restarted American studio SF after the failure of Just Imagine (1930).
  • The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) — Cultural milestone. The liberal statement to counter the far more prevalent conservative SF statement.
  • The Thing from Another World (1951) — The right-wing statement, but one with good dialog. It gutted an important short story, but it did bring an important story to the screen.
  • The Beast from 20.000 Fathoms (1953) — The first atomic monster film. The mother of the many Western ones to follow as well as the entire Daikaiju sub-genre. And another step in Ray Harryhausen’s career.
  • The War of the Worlds (1953) — Cultural milestone that brought money, spectacle, and color to film SF.
  • Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) — The last of the Universal monsters.
  • Forbidden Planet (1956) — Ended the age of cheap B&W SF and ushered in a time of smarter, literate SF film.
  • Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) — Combo anti-Soviet rant and examination of isolationism; it was incredibly effective at both. Has been copied many times.
  • On the Beach (1959) — Brought post-apocalyptic films to the masses. Made it clear that SF is best not as adventure, but as political or philosophical message-holders.
  • The Day of the Triffids (1962) — The precursor to the modern zombie film.
 Lists, Thoughts

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

Sep 142017
 
three reels

Henry Turner (Brenton Thwaites) wants to save his father Will (Orlando Bloom in a cameo) from his curse of being the captain of The Flying Dutchman. To do this he needs the aid of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) to find the Trident of Poseidon. Carina Smyth (Kaya Scodelario), who is always being accused of witchcraft because she’s smart, wants to find the Trident in honor of her missing and unknown father. Jack needs the Trident to stop a ship full of ghosts, lead by Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem), who want him dead. And Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) is around because this is a Pirates movie.

The fifth film in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is both enjoyable and unnecessary. It beats the previous entry, the unfocused On Stranger Tides by moving Jack back into the elaborate sidekick position and making the story once again about two appealing young lovers. Yes, that makes it a retread of the first trilogy, but as that structure works it was the best choice Disney could make short of doing something original, and that wasn’t going to happen. Since it is three films compressed into one that’s shorter than each of the others, it suffers from too much material. There are whole subplots of the nasty British empire and witches that go nowhere and are tossed away. There’s at least one major character too many (Barbossa was the obvious one to drop, even if he is the only one that develops) and everyone, except Jack, could use a touch more screen time.

But, for a CliffsNotes version of the earlier films, it isn’t bad. We get lots of ships blowing up, sword fightes, CGI ghosts, and wacky hijinks. Jack Sparrow is still fun, if a bit less fun with each outing and now more of the oaf he appears to be rather than the brilliant pirate hidden by his eccentricities. Brenton is more charming than Will and Carina is stunning, giving the film core characters worth rooting for. Directors Joachim Rþnning and Espen Sandberg lack the flair of original Pirates director Gore Verbinski, and his understanding of physical comedy as some bits—like Jack stepping off of a crashing building onto a bridge—should have been hysterical but instead elicit smiles at best. Still, a smile is a smile. It doesn’t measure up to The Curse of the Black Pearl, but that was something new and clever and is asking too much of a sequel. In a summer of franchise entries like Alien: Covenant, Transformers: The Last Knight, The Mummy, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, and The Fate of the Furious, Dead Men Tell No Tales stands tall for not being an embarrassment.

But I can’t help nitpicking its place in the Pirates of the Caribbean Franchise. Will and Elizabeth’s story was done. They had their love, though they could only see each other infrequently. But sacrifices had to be made as The Flying Dutchman’s mission of ferrying the drowned to the afterlife was vital and Will had taken on that sacred mission. He wasn’t “cursed.” So why does he start this film with a touch of the infection that had infested Davy Jones in the earlier films? It was clearly stated that the deformities only came from diverting The Dutchman from its duty. And if Will is de-cursed, doesn’t that screw things up for everyone who dies at sea? OK, so the films are inconsistent. I can live with that. However a sequel shouldn’t mess up the ending of a story from a previous film (See Alien 3) and that’s what Dead Men Tell No Tales does. That would be more of a problem if this was a better film. But it is candy floss—enjoyable enough and easily forgotten.

 Fantasy, Reviews Tagged with:

The Defenders (Netflix-2017)

Aug 222017
 
1.5 reels
The Defenders

The evil ninja crime syndicate, The Hand, led by Alexandra Reid (Sigourney Weaver), needs the Iron Fist (Finn Jones) to fulfill their scheme in New York city. Coincidentally, Luke Cage (Mike Colter) runs into pointless Hand activity in Harlem. Doubly coincidentally, Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) takes a case that leads to The Hand in the most unlikely way possible. Stretching the notion of coincidence far past the breaking point, Daredevil (Charlie Cox) becomes Jessica Jones’s unrequested lawyer. And requiring a new word to replace “coincidence,” the four of them all end up attacking The Hand’s headquarters at the same time. Along with Stick (Scott Glenn), who coincidentally (that word sure is popping up a lot) shows up at that moment, the four superheroes decide to team up to destroy The Hand, while saying repeatedly how they can’t be a team. And Electra (Elodie Yung), who is coincidentally Daredevils ex-girlfriend, coincidentally is resurrected for no reason ever explained besides Alexandra‘s personal prophecy, so that she can be the big bad.

The Defenders is bad. Not Iron Fist bad. Nowhere near. It is leagues better than Iron Fist. Iron Fist was terrible in every way used to evaluate a show. The Defenders is simply empty and unnecessary. You skip Iron Fist because it is unpleasant. You skip The Defenders because there’s no good reason to see it.

The Defenders is The Avengers of the MCU Netflix series. After two seasons of Daredevil, and one each of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist (go here to see my reviews of all of these), The Defenders should bring together the parts of the Netflix universe into a greater whole. It does bring the characters together, but only as a cheap, empty, crossover event instead of as a climax that brings additional meaning and depth to the individual pieces.

Discounting Iron Fist, the separate shows are worthwhile, but flawed. They are too long at thirteen episodes and often wander about aimlessly (a problem that The Defenders avoids by being a more appropriate eight eps long), but Jessica Jones and Luke Cage—and to a lesser extent Daredevil—overcome those and other flaws with powerful themes. They mean something. The Defenders is themeless. There’s no message here. There is nothing to think about. There’s a plot, but it isn’t much, and without theme, it is abundantly clear how little there is to the plot.

Joining lack-of-theme is lack of character development. The only character that has an arc is Electra, which could have been engaging if she was the main character (not something I am recommending), but as is just takes up time. The rest are just what they were before, with no change nor examination of their character. Danny—the Iron Fist—is still an unpleasant, juvenile, privileged douche bag, performed by Jones as if his laxative hasn’t kicked in. Matt Murdock—Daredevil—doubles down on the most annoying parts of his personality, making him little better than Danny. For Luke Cage, Marvel has forgotten what they did with Captain America. Luke is so noble, so good and pure and straight-laced that he is a walking sleeping pill. Only Jessica comes out looking good. We learn nothing new about her, but she is engaging and often funny. Krysten Ritter is superb in the role, perhaps even better than she was in her stand alone series, but one actress, and one character, cannot support an ensemble work. Making it worse is that she plays no part in the feather-light plot. This is The Iron Fist & Daredevil show, with Jessica and Luke just along because it said so in the comics.

The character interactions are a mixed bag. The jokes work, and it is cute to see the other three Defenders reacting to Danny the way much of the audience did in his solo outing, but the “I work alone” discussions get old fast. And like all the other shows, this one insists that the characters knowledge and beliefs are far behind the audience’s. We know that Danny has mystical, semi-racist, oriental powers, so watching the others catch up is a bore. “Sure, space aliens, Nordic gods, green rage monsters, mind control, and super science are all real, but I draw the line at ninja powers!”

The fight scenes are—with the exception of a bit in a hallway which was in all the trailers—nothing special. One glaring flaw is that everyone does the same thing. They all punch things. Danny and Matt even punch with the same style, the one used by all the villains. Sure you can have great action without Avengers-type power diversity—the Shaw Brothers prooved that over and over—but that requires talent and money not on display. To make the combat scenes work to the limited degree that they do, they resorted to old tropes: the villains shoot like stormtroopers and each wait to attack in sequence. That can produce enjoyable fights in a properly goofy show, but The Defenders wants to appear serious and real. If those scenes had been directed “realistically,” the heroes would all be dead. Why is it they can’t aim at anyone except Luke?

The villains are reasonably good for the MCU. Alexandra has some depth, even if her “Black Sky” plans are never explained and mean nothing; Weaver is a pro and it shows. The rest do their jobs. The sidekicks neither elevate nor depress the proceedings. Only Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick) stands out for being horrible when she’s with Danny, but OK when she’s with anyone else. The dialog is significantly worse whenever he’s involved, a sign that the writers had no idea what to do with him.

I’m saying to skip The Defenders, but I’m not saying it emphatically. Ritter and Weaver almost save it, it isn’t too long, and except for anything related to Danny and a little of Matt, it isn’t a bad time. It’s just an inconsequential time. It clearly will not affect what is to follow in the Netflix MCU. It’s just
there. I’m not sure it is any worse than Daredevil Season 2, which I gave a very restrained thumbs up. But I prefer a positive reason to watch something. If you already are paying for Netflix, and you feel compelled to keep up the latest super hero shenanigans, letting this play as you make dinner or dust the living room won’t hurt anything.

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Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)

Aug 152017
 
2.5 reels

Poison Ivy (Padget Brewster) and the Floronic Man (Kevin Michael Richardson)—yeah, I had no idea who Floronic Man was before this—plan to turn all animal life into plants. Batman (Kevin Conry) and Nightwing (Loren Lester) need Harley Quin’s (Melissa Rauch) help to find Ivy and stop her.

The last eleven DC Animated films have—more or less—fit together into one universe, vaguely based on The New 52 comics run. Not Batman and Harley Quinn. This looks and feels like Batman: The Animated Series, though with more comedy. Considering the major fall off in quality of the movies, that’s a good thing. Batman and Harley Quinn is the best of the franchise in the last four years, which is not a bold statement. Beating Throne of Atlantis is not a significant accomplishment.

The plot is kid’s show simple, as are the villains. The bad guys have an over the top and unlikely plan to kill everyone and our three “heroes” just have to reach them and punch things. That’s it. Even with the addition of swearing and implied sex, this is juvenile. But it isn’t as if the other DC animated films have been sophisticated. What it lacks in story and character, it makes up in humor. This is the Anti-Killing Joke. If you need your superhero films to be serious to justify your childhood, you are going to hate this movie.

Harley dominates, though Nightwing and Batman have their moments. She’s cute, with every other line a joke, and every third of those a really solid one. She’s played even more broadly than in the TV show where she originated, but I’ve no complaints. The linear story pauses from time to time for unrelated gags which tend to be a better use of time than anything that progresses the plot.  The henchmen dance bar is one of the better ideas DC has had in recent years. DC has never used music so well, in animation or live action.

Batman and Harley Quinn isn’t quite as silly as the 1966 Adam West Batman, but it isn’t as clever either. It is at least as funny. After sitting though Batman v Superman, this is the proper medicine.

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The Mummy (2017)

Aug 042017
 
two reels

Unlovable rogue and antiquities thief Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) stumbles upon an ancient Egyptian tomb that is really a prison for Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), a “mummy” who failed to bring the god Set into the world. Now freed, Ahmanet has chosen Morton as the new host for Set. Standing in her way is archeologist and misconceived love interest Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) and a secret organization of monster hunters lead by Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russel Crowe). Along for the ride is Morton’s dead friend, Jake (Chris Vail), who appears to make comments.

If somehow you missed the entertainment news on this one, The Mummy is the first entry in Universal’s attempt to create a shared universe. Shared universes are all the rage now that Marvel has made a few billion dollars on the concept and even though the other attempts, such as the DCEU (Superman, Batman, and friends) and the giant Monsterverse of King Kong and Godzilla, have met with mixed results, everyone is trying their own. Universal dug into their back catalog of ‘30s and ‘40s monster films and decided to start with The Wolfman (2010). But they hadn’t nailed their plan yet and the film failed, so they decided to restart it with Dracula Untold (2014). However that film failed as well so it was jettisoned and the first film in this shared universe is now The Mummy. Considering it is not making the kind of money Universal had hoped, it is unclear if this is the start or the end of a franchise.

What everyone, including Universal, seems to have forgotten in christening the original Universal horror films as the first shared universe is that it wasn’t. There was little connection between movies and less to imply things happened in the same universe. The Mummy movies (there were five) didn’t even connect up completely with each other. Likewise the Invisible Man films had little to do with each other and nothing to do with any other monster films. Of the 30-80 films in the cycle (depending on what you count), only four crossed monsters (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man had the two titular monsters and House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein had those two and added Dracula). All four films were tacked on after the fact and didn’t concern themselves with continuity or that the dates didn’t line up. The best of the old pictures (Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, The Invisible Man) stayed in their own universes and were the better for it. But these are the properties Universal owns and they are going to make a shared universe out of them no matter what.

So we get The Mummy, a film far more interested in introducing its universe-connecting threads then telling a story. We get plenty of time with Dr. Jekyll where he explains this universe of evil and get to see plenty of Easter eggs for films not yet made, and none of it matters for this film. All could be cut with very little effect on the story.

As for that main story, the film had six people involved with the screenplay and it shows. I’m surprised there wasn’t six directors; that would explain why it all fits together so poorly. At times the movie tries to be a dark horror picture. Other times it wants to be a serious action film before it slips into horror comedy and then onward into pulp. They clearly wanted to make a mummy movie, but no one decided which one. Many sections would have been fine in a full movie that matched that style, but as is it is a stitched-together mess. That’s made all the more visible by the volume of theft involved. The Mummy swipes bits from The Mummy ’99, An American Werewolf in London, Lifeforce, and Queen of the Damned. The pieces don’t work together and only draw attention to themselves—the sandstorm face and sarcastic ghostly friend are the worse offenders. Rumor has it that Tom Cruise and his people got involved during editing, trying to salvage the production, and I believe that. The Mummy looks like a film that was constructed in post.

With all the differing and unfitted parts, the characters get lost. They play with Ahmanet being ultimate evil as well as being sympathetic, but not enough is given to either view for it to mean anything. Taken one way, it might have been interesting. Taken the other, it is likely to have been moving and given Sofia Boutella something to do with her underwritten part. But we get nothing. Still, Ahmanet comes out better than Wallis’ Jenny. She has little personality and the only clear thing about her is that she wouldn’t be romantically involved with Nick. So naturally, she’s romantically involved with Nick. As for Nick, he never becomes a stable character of any kind, changing as often as the style of the film changes. I suspect that when one of those screenwriters re-wrote a scene, he didn’t bother to look back at what the others had done. The only certain thing about Nick is that he would never be romantically connected to Jenny. And yet


Cruise is never a great actor, but he has enough charisma to pull off an action flick; here he looks tired. There is no sign of a movie star. I question if Wallis bothered (or was allowed) to read the entire script as she is disengaged, and Crowe is in easy-paycheck-mode. Boutella is the only one not embarrassed by the film, though it isn’t the actors’ faults. There was nothing they could have done.

I wish they had made a horror film as what works could have best been served by that genre. If not, than a fun, empty, monster mash-up where character development is of little importance. But this is what they made, and I can’t hate it, no matter how stupid it is, and it is pretty stupid. It is hardly a film at all, but there is a lot of running and jumping and zombie fighting and stabbing, along with magic casting and pretty girls, and that’s all stuff I like. I can’t blame you if you hate it, as there is so much to hate, but for me, it’s OK. Universal was hoping for more than “OK.”

Other Universal Mummy films include The Mummy (1932) The Mummy’s Hand (1940), The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), The Mummy’s Curse (1944), The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008).

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Geostorm (2017)

Jul 242017
 
two reels

Several years after the “Dutch Boy” weather control system saved millions of people by stopping massive storms caused by global warming, a village in Afghanistan is flash frozen. The Dutch Boy system is at fault and the only person who can save the day is Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler), the troubled scientist who built the system but was fired by his more political younger brother Max (Jim Sturgess). Jake heads up to a space station and quickly discovers that the problem is sabotage while Max finds this out separately on Earth. The two brothers must now uncover the plot and who is behind it in order to save the planet from a “geostorm” which will kill millions if not billions.

While advertized purely as a standard disaster feature, Geostorm is more akin to a SyFy channel disaster film. The normal multiple intertwined tales of unrelated and semi-related characters all experiencing the disaster in different locations are gone. Instead we have one rebellious he-man scientist and his unlikely younger brother (props to mom and dad for somehow raising two kids at the same time who appear to have been born 20 years apart) looking at computer screens and talking about conspiracies. Sure, there’s multiple scenes of disastrous storms knocking down building and killing folks, but these happen far away from anyone we know. Cut one or two of those, and cheapen the effects a bit and this would be a SyFy channel film.

Which isn’t to say Geostorm is bad. Those made-for-TV films can be fun in a stupid kind of way, and the FX aren’t cheap. It is more or less what you’d expect as the directorial debut of Dean Devlin, the writer and producer of Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla, and Independence Day: Resurgence, at least after bad test screenings caused a lot of reshoots with a different director. The film feels like it was constructed from scratch in editing, inventing a story to go with the footage they had on hand and covering the seams with those re-shoots. The big set pieces look like Independence Day, but who cares if there’s no human characters to follow as the streets rip open and the oceans freeze? I have to figure there were originally some major characters in India and Arabia who got cut, leaving us some nice shots of major mayhem that don’t matter.

But this is a disaster film, meaning things tend not to matter that much anyway, and that includes the plot. Geostorm is as silly as film gets, with a good deal of questionable storytelling, but “I didn’t find a deeply meaningful theme” and “At least half the movie is nonsense” are not legitimate complaints against the movie. The Poseidon Adventure was light on theme and Independence Day didn’t make a lot of sense either. Geostorm is what it is: mindless action with a lot of big things going boom. It’s been done better before, several times by Devlin, but it is passable in its subgenre. It needed more compelling characters (rumor has it Butler didn’t know his lines and that’s how it looks while watching) and a reason to care about those collapsing buildings, but if you ask little of it and don’t have to pay full price, you’ll have a good time.

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