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The Best Films of Maureen O’Hara

Mar 062018

March 6, 2018

maureen-ohara O’Hara was a young stage beauty when Charles Laughton became captivated by her eyes, put her under contract, and changed her name to O’Hara. While starting off her film career as a maiden in distress and a gypsy girl, she is best known for a stream of Swashbucklers. In each she played a “fiery” red head—a welcome change from the more timid female characters that filled the genre, but not entirely a successful one as these ended up more often annoying than strong. As such, only two of my top eight O’Hara films are Swashbucklers.

#8 – Jamaica Inn (1939) — An early Hitchcock thriller that has as much of Charles Laughton’s fingerprints on it as the director’s. It was O’Hara’s first big role and her first time using her screen name of “O’Hara” instead of “FitzSimons.”

#7 – The Spanish Main (1945) — A standard but enjoyable Swashbuckler with Paul Henreid as the noble pirate and O’Hara as her normal moody maiden. Call it a solid second tier adventure film. (Full Review)

#6 – The Quiet Man (1952) — An over-rated but still good dramady romance with John Wayne trying for a human role for a change and not quite making it. Romance, not to mention dramatic acting, was not in his range. Parts of the film are silly—the never ending fight and the cross-country dragging of O’Hara are the most obvious—but enough works, including O’Hara, to make it a fun film.

#5 – At Sword’s Point (1952) — A surprisingly good Swashbuckler considering the silly premise. The sons and daughter (O’Hara) of the original Musketeers must save France once again.

#4 – The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) — Charles Laughton again dominates a picture on this list, at least behind the scenes. He brought O’Hara into the production, and she outshines him. This is the best adaptation of the novel, and the one that influenced all those that followed.

#3 – The Parent Trap (1961) — A joyful family film that’s funny and romantic while escaping the saccharine tones that infected so many Disney films of the time. Hayley Mills plays identical twins attempting to reunite their divorced parents, Brian Keith and O’Hara.

#2 – Our Man in Havana (1959) — A darkly comedic satire on spies and politics, shot in Cuba just after the revolution. Alec Guinness stars as a vacuum cleaner salesmen who fakes being a spy. O’Hara is his assistant, sent from London to help him in his “fine” work. (Full Review)

#1 – Miracle on 34th Street (1947) — A Christmas classic. O’Hara is one of the romantic leads as a mother who doesn’t want her child to be raised with fantasy, but is overshadowed by Edmund Gwenn’s Kris Kringle. (Quick Review)

Actor Best Lists, Lists, Thoughts

Oscar Predictions 2018

Mar 042018

March 4, 2018

Oh, what the hell. The Oscars have always been a mess and this year it is already junk at the nomination level. But it is tradition, so I’ll give it a shot. I’ll kinda sorta say who I think should win and what I think will win. And just like the Academy voters, I haven’t seen every nominee. Note: I’m skipping the doc, shorts, and Foreign Language categories. So here goes, following the order of presentation:

Supporting Actor:

NOMINEES: Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project), Woody Harrelson (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). Richard Jenkins (The Shape of Water), Christopher Plummer (All the Money in the World), Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)

WHO SHOULD WIN: Jason Sudeikis (Colossal) Really. Watch it. Forget the nominees—unless he’d count as lead actor.
WHO WILL WIN: Sam Rockwell

Costume Design:

NOMINEES: Beauty and the Beast, Darkest Hour, Phantom Thread, The Shape of Water, Victoria and Abdul

WHO SHOULD WIN: Really? Just ignore the MCU, sure…
WHO WILL WIN: Phantom Thread

Makeup and Hair:

NOMINEES: Darkest Hour, Victoria and Abdul, Wonder

WHO SHOULD WIN: Again, really? So, no genre films? Idiots
WHO WILL WIN: Darkest Hour

Sound Editing/Mixing (Two categories, same nominees):

NOMINEES: Baby Driver, Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

WHO SHOULD WIN: Only professional sound people should have an opinion
WHO WILL WIN: Dunkirk (at least once)

Supporting Actress:

NOMINEES: Mary J. Blige, (Mudbound), Allison Janney, (I, Tonya), Lesley Manville, (Phantom Thread), Laurie Metcalf, (Lady Bird), Octavia Spencer, (The Shape of Water)

WHO SHOULD WIN: flip a coin
WHO WILL WIN: Allison Janney

Animated Feature:

NOMINEES: The Boss Baby, The Breadwinner, Coco, Ferdinand, Loving Vincent

WHO SHOULD WIN: None!!!
WHO WILL WIN: Coco

Production Design:

NOMINEES: Beauty and the Beast, Blade Runner 2049, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, The Shape of Water

WHO SHOULD WIN: No Thor? No Guardians of the Galaxy? Screw it!
WHO WILL WIN: The Shape of Water

Visual Effects:

NOMINEES:: Blade Runner 2049, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Kong: Skull Island, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, War for the Planet of the Apes

WHO SHOULD WIN: War for the Planet of the Apes
WHO WILL WIN: War for the Planet of the Apes

Film Editing:

NOMINEES: Baby Driver, Dunkirk, I, Tonya, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

WHO SHOULD WIN: I’ll leave this to professional editors
WHO WILL WIN: Dunkirk

Cinematography:

NOMINEES: Blade Runner 2049, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Mudbound, The Shape of Water

WHO SHOULD WIN: The Shape of Water
WHO WILL WIN: Blade Runner 2049

Original Score:

NOMINEES: Dunkirk {Hans Zimmer}, Phantom Thread {Jonny Greenwood}, The Shape of Water {Alexandre Desplat}, Star Wars: The Last Jedi {John Williams}, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri {Carter Burwell}

WHO SHOULD WIN: Star Wars: The Last Jedi {John Williams}
WHO WILL WIN: The Shape of Water {Alexandre Desplat}

Original Song:

NOMINEES: “Mighty River” from Mudbound, “Mystery of Love” from Call Me by Your Name, “Remember Me” from Coco, “Stand Up for Something” from “Marshall, “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman

WHO SHOULD WIN: none
WHO WILL WIN: “Remember Me” from Coco

Adapted Screenplay:

NOMINEES: Call Me by Your Name, The Disaster Artist, Logan, Molly’s Game, Mudbound

WHO SHOULD WIN: The Girl With All the Gifts (screw the nominations)
WHO WILL WIN: Call Me by Your Name

Original Screenplay:

NOMINEES: The Big Sick, Get Out, Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

WHO SHOULD WIN: Thor: Ragnarok (if that counts as “original”)
WHO WILL WIN: Get Out

Director:

NOMINEES: Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, Greta Gerwig, Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo del Toro

WHO SHOULD WIN: Guillermo del Toro
WHO WILL WIN: Guillermo del Toro

Actor:

NOMINEES: Timothée Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread), Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq.)

WHO SHOULD WIN: Chris Hemsworth (comedy is hard)
WHO WILL WIN: Gary Oldman

Actress:

NOMINEES: Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Margot Robbie (I, Tonya), Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird), Meryl Steep (The Post)

WHO SHOULD WIN: Sennia Nanua (The Girl With All the Gifts). Either she wins in a write-in or the Academy Awards needs to be dumped now. She is clearly the best.
WHO WILL WIN: Frances McDormand

Best Picture:

NOMINEES: Call Me by Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, The Post, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

WHO SHOULD WIN: The Shape of Water, of the nominees
WHO WILL WIN: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Thoughts

Black Panther (2018)

Feb 232018

Following the events of Captain America: Civil War, where the King of the secretive king of Wakanda was killed, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) takes on the role of king and the Black Panther, aided by four powerful women, his technologically gifted sister Shuri (Letitia Wright), his spy girlfriend Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), the loyal general Okoye (Danai Gurira), and his mother (Angela Bassett). Soon after his coronation challenge, he is informed that Klaue (Andy Serkis), a vibranium smuggler and murderer has resurfaced. The pursuit of Klaue will bring T’Challa into contact with CIA agent Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) as well as Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), an angry, skilled killer with a claim on the throne.

You can’t separate the film from the cultural event. Black Panther is the first Black blockbuster (and no, Blade does not count). It has a brave, noble Black hero, supported by a group of strong, equally noble Black women. It brings the style of Afro-futurism to the screen; Wakanda is an African country that was never colonized, so the culture, the social customs, the décor, the fashions, the music, and the traditions are what might have been if Europe had kept its grubby hands to itself. Black children will now grow up with a powerful icon who looks like them, and White children will see other possibilities in the world. This is all important, making Black Panther an important film.

And it needs to lean heavily on that importance, because without it, it is just OK. It’s a nice action film. It’s part of the MCU so it was going to be good, and it is, but its cultural significance is the only reason to ever call Black Panther great. As I said, this is an MCU film, so don’t take my criticisms as condemnation. It is miles better than Justice League or X-Men Apocalypse or, if we want to walk outside of superhero flicks, The Fate of the Furious. It’s a good action picture, and maybe that’s all it could be in order to be a cultural moment. Perhaps everything had to be simple and clear to be what it needed to be. Perhaps. Still, I’d have liked a lot more depth and emotion. The major heroes all have great potential, but because there is so many of them, we don’t get to know any of them (we are told that Nakia is/was T’Challa’s girlfriend, but shown nothing about it and barely shown who she is). Maybe in the next picture we’ll get more—the women deserve a whole lot more screen time. Ryan Coogler is not Joss Whedon; he doesn’t know how to flesh out 5 or 6 characters with only a few lines. So by the end I liked T’Challa and the four women, but know them only well enough that the term “the four women” is fitting. And they are the best thing about the film.

Killmonger also had potential. He had the high ground both philosophically and personally, which should lead to an interesting morally gray conflict, but we didn’t get that. Instead Killmonger has “evil murdering psychopath” tacked on to his character so it is very clear who is right and who is wrong. Again, perhaps that is how it had to be, but it isn’t interesting. And Killmonger leads to a second major problem—he has a legitimate claim to the throne. His goal is to challenge for the throne, so what was the point of the whole first act? He didn’t have to do anything evil or violent. He could have just walked up and introduced himself. But then we wouldn’t have gotten Black Panther riding on a car roof for the trailer (that product placement has to go somewhere).

As for the action, it is the worst of any MCU film. It isn’t a miserable failure (Again, I’m looking at Justice League), but the framing is off more often than not, the camera is generally too close, and most of the time nothing has weight. The chase reminded me of Quantum of Solace. In the “large” battle scene (I guess Wakanda isn’t all that big after all), the camera never tells us where we are. People hit people. People fall down. Who knows where anyone is or who is winning. Plus we have a cavalry-deus ex machina, which is always a cheap out in a script.

So we have a dumb but enjoyable action flick, elevated by its cultural significance. The characters are mostly good if underdeveloped, the style is fantastic if filmed in a mediocre fashion, the dialog is acceptable if a bit too serious and mostly forgettable, the action is above average if nothing special, and the plot is workable as long as you weren’t showing up for the story. Black Panther is another success for Marvel and Disney, but Marvel and Disney have raised the bar for superhero movies, and Black Panther slips under it. Well, I expect to see a deserved Oscar nomination for costume design. That’s something.

Reviews, Superhero Tagged with: Three & 1/2 Reels

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

Feb 092018

An account of the “Doolittle Raid” in which the US bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities, undertaken to raise US morale and damage Japanese morale instead of for the physical damage that could be done. We follow the crew of “The Ruptured Duck,” captained by Ted Lawson (Van Johnson) and including gunner David Thatcher (Robert Walker) and navigator Charles McClure (Don DeFore) as they go through special training with other airmen, including Bob Gray (Robert Mitchum), all under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle (Spencer Tracy), then as they attack Tokyo and attempt to survive.

This is a WWII propaganda piece, less of the “Why we fight” sort and mostly of the “Average Joes just like you” kind. There is a lot of time spent showing the crews doing average stuff (a lot of time). They play poker, sing songs, and smoke enough to give cancer to the entire state of Maine. The actual bombing mission takes only a few minutes of screen time, a fraction of what we spend being shown how these are regular folks.

It has a touch of the “We all love each other” propaganda here and there. The seamen say how much they respect the airmen and the airmen return the compliment. Our heroes announce that the Chinese are “our kind of people” and how they hope to come back and fight with them arm in arm. And there are lots of “Aw shucks” moments. This is the kind of picture where a solder says, “Gosh I’ll be glad when this war is over.” You need a better actor than Van Johnson to sell that line.

The relationship between Lawson and his wife is awkward and unnecessary and the training and “getting to know you” segment is way too long. The film doesn’t get going until the raid begins but then things become much more engaging. The attack itself is brief. The real story is after that, when the The Ruptured Duck is forced to ditch in the sea and the wounded fliers are aided by Chinese resistance fighters.

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is a good movie that could be much better with trimming. At 138 minutes, it is too long; a half hour could have been chopped without effecting the story, which means it should have been chopped. But the Chinese section of this overlong cut makes it worth seeing.

Miscellaneous, Reviews Tagged with: Three Reels

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

Feb 062018

The world is running out of energy. The only chance of saving civilization is a super-particle accelerator energy experiment being carried out on a space station. The multinational crew consists of Captain Kiel (David Oyelowo), Hamilton (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), Schmidt (Daniel Brühl), Monk (John Ortiz), Mundy (Chris O’Dowd), Volkov (Aksel Hennie) and Tam (Ziyi Zhang). After two years of failures, the crew is feeling the stress. Things are falling apart on Earth as well, with Hamilton’s husband, Michael (Roger Davies) filling her in on the disasters. The next experiment appears to work, but then rips a hole in space and time, causing catastrophes on Earth and a string of weird and horrific events on the station, including an unknown woman (Elizabeth Debicki) appearing in the wall.

Paramount had no faith in this movie. The third film in the odd Cloverfield branding exercise was, as of a month ago, titled The God Particle. The new head of Paramount found nothing of interest in this kinda-sequel, as well as the need for quick cash after a fortune-destroying 2017 (Did you see Baywatch? Monster Trucks? Ghost in the Shell? Downsizing? Yeah, no one else did either). But no one heard another peep about this film until the middle of the Super Bowl when it was announced that it was now called The Cloverfield Paradox and would be released in a few hours on Netflix. Well, I gotta hand it to them. If you want to show how much disdain you have for your own film, that’s how to do it.

Was it deserving of such treatment? Probably. It is very familiar, “borrowing” heavily from Event Horizon (1997) and 2010 (1984) and noticeably from Life (2017) and even Alien (1979). But it doesn’t manage to say anything as coherent as any of those. The problem is no one decided what story they wanted to tell. I’m not talking about plot, but story. Was this supposed to be the arc of a mother—Hamilton—dealing with the death of her two children? How about a haunted house-type horror flick, with unexplainable and cruel things happening to our crew? Or maybe a science fiction tale of people looking at the cost of survival? Since no story is ever selected, we get a little of each and none are satisfying. Nothing with Hamilton’s grieving story is earned, particularly her late-in-film speech. We don’t feel her loss; we are just informed about it. It also doesn’t tie into anything else that happens. The haunting-type horror sprints out of the box, with unpleasant eye manipulation, an unknown woman appearing with her body pierced by wires, a wall sucking in a man’s arm, and worms exploding from a corpse. But except for one event in the third act, all that stops without explanation. Everything goes back to behaving absolutely normally. After an arm is magically dragged through solid metal, a human turning on another human is an extreme de-escalation.

Then there is Michael down on Earth. Everything he does is irrelevant to the rest of the movie. He takes up time and breaks tension. That’s it. Rumor has it that he was given extra scenes to tie this film tighter to Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, but it is unnecessary. The connection is clear and is the one thing the film does well, even if it does it with bland exposition. Early in the first act, we hear of the titular paradox (that fails the definition of the word “paradox”): if something goes wrong with the experiment, then time and space will be shattered and monsters will appear, not only now, but in both the past and future. So where did the monster in Cloverfield come from if he seems to have had no effect on our world? Well, he was inserted into the time line due to the experiment. Likewise the events that concluded the second film. It’s nice and neat, if that’s what you want. Michael’s scenes aren’t nice and neat but a waste of time.

With characters we could root for, maybe the film could have evoked some emotion, but we don’t know these people and are given no connection. Hamilton is the only one with a back story and it should have been cut. The rest are black boxes. I don’t know why any of the other crew members are there (they certainly were not chosen for their emotional stability) or why they act the way they do. There is an attempt to give three of the characters a trait in making them annoyingly religious, but this comes to nothing (when Earth vanishes, the laws of nature no longer function, and horrific things happen, wouldn’t religion come into play?) so is really just a one-off quirk. The actors do their best, particularly the two Marvel alums (Brühl and Debicki) but the script gives them nothing.

I’m being generous in awarding The Cloverfield Paradox two stars, but it isn’t a bad film—it’s just not a good one—and I want to put it in a different category than the first Cloverfield movie.

Reviews, Science Fiction Tagged with: Two Reels

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Jan 282018

In the very near future, Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) gets a telemarketing job. Once a coworker (Danny Glover) shows him how to use his White voice, he becomes a “power caller.” His radical artist girl friend (Tessa Thompson) isn’t happy about the change in him, nor is his old friends and new union leader (Steven Yeun), and he has is own doubts as he is now selling slave labor. When he and his boss (Omari Hardwick) are invited to a party by multimillionaire Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), things get really strange.

Sorry to Bother You is a close cousin to Brazil. It’s heavy social satire, delivered surrealistically, that is never more than a few seconds away from a joke. But the largest joke is on you as it is calling out the viewer on what a useless sellout you are in a world going to Hell. It rips into capitalism, corporate culture, race relations, and even “reality” TV, and it would be painful if it wasn’t so funny. And like Brazil, there’s no heroes here, and no real-world answers, although it does try to be upbeat (when it really shouldn’t).

Cassius is non-too bright, non-too pleasant (he blames his uncle for his own failings), and far from loyal. He just has a talent for selling. His best friend is less bright. The labor agitator doesn’t do any good, starting strikes where no one cares. And his girlfriend’s art happenings are almost enough to make me root for the slavers. But they are as good as this world has. His boss is amoral and Steve Lift is drifting into psychopathy. But they are all just the children of their world, which is pretty much our world. Anxiety about surviving is so high that people are selling themselves into slavery, which is advertised as just the greatest thing ever. The highest rated show is just people getting punched in the face, which is a direct comment on you, the viewer. To go with Brazil, there’s go deal of Robocop and Idiocracy on display.

With so much to say, such a fleshed out world, quality performances, and so many jokes, Sorry to Bother You should have been approaching masterpiece status, but it doesn’t all click. Rapper Boots Riley doesn’t have the experience to pull off this complex of a film. Too often the jokes lack the punch they need, or moments will go on too long, or cut too quickly. Character’s need a bit more development here, and a bit less there. It’s an amateur digging into a major professional job. He does a respectable job, but any workman-like director with 6 or 8 films under his belt would have done better, and this is a film that cried out for a real artist. I suspect simply another editing pass with the footage they had, by a different editor under different supervision, would have produced a significantly better film. But this is a good film.

Dystopia, Reviews, Science Fiction Tagged with: Three Reels

The Best Films of Errol Flynn

Jan 262018

errolflynnbest No man has personified a film genre like Errol Flynn. He is the icon of Swashbuckling. He was rarely acclaimed for his acting, which is unfortunate. He may have been limited both in his abilities and in his opportunities, but given the right part, no one was better. Who else could wear tights and project pure masculinity? He could stand on a tree branch, laughing, wearing a funny little hat with a feather, his hair curled, and look completely natural, comfortable, and manly. That’s some kind of weird skill.

Flynn costarred with Olivia de Havilland in eight films. While pairings of other major stars tended to be structured to consistently give the couple a happy ending (in similar type films), that wasn’t the case with these two. Only half of the time did they end up together, and in three, Flynn died.

Flynn is an exception to the rule that while women are not allowed to age gracefully in Hollywood, men are. As soon as a few lines creased his face and he added a few pounds, his career was over.

While remembered as an action star, Flynn also was very effective in comedies—that shouldn’t have been surprising as he could be funny in those action parts. His eight films are made up of four Swashbucklers, three comedies, and one WWI film.

An honorable mention to Don’t Bet on Blondes (1935), where the yet-to-be-a-star Flynn has a long cameo. The star was Warren Williams as a bookie turned insurance agent and Flynn was a suitor for a girl whose father had bought anti-marriage insurance. Clearly, this was a comedy.

#8 – Adventures of Don Juan (1948) — The last and least of Flynn’s epic Warner Bros. Swashbucklers, it is a fun farewell to an aging sub-genre and an aging star. (Full Critique)

#7 – The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) — This is the least of the major British-in-colonial-India adventure films, mainly due to the weak romance (poor Olivia de Havilland gets stuck with the worst role of her career). It is also bizarrely historically inaccurate (they didn’t even get the guns right, much less the reason for the charge) and the production was so vile it caused animal welfare laws to be passed. But Errol Flynn is charming, the combat exciting, and it all looks spectacular. [Also on the Olivia de Havilland list]

#6 – Four’s a Crowd (1938) — Flynn is a charming cad who runs positive PR for the worst people. It’s a romantic comedy and one of his pairing with Olivia de Havilland. [Also on the Olivia de Havilland list]

#5 – Footsteps in the Dark (1941) — Flynn plays a respectable man who secretly writes lurid murder mysteries and stumbles upon a real murder.

#4 – The Dawn Patrol (1938) — One of the finest war pictures, with Flynn, Basil, Rathbone, and David Niven as WWI pilots in horrible situations, having heroism forced upon them. [Also on the Basil Rathbone list]

#3 – Captain Blood (1935) — The first of the three great Flynn Swashbucklers. Flynn is a physician forced into piracy. His costar is Olivia de Havilland. (Full Critique) [Also on the Olivia de Havilland list and the Basil Rathbone list]

#2 – The Sea Hawk (1940) — The last of his three great Swashbucklers, it shares much of the cast and crew with Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Besides being a fine adventure film, is was a solid piece of propaganda for an England that needed it. (Full Critique) [Also on the Olivia de Havilland list]

#1 – The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) — The greatest classic Swashbuckler and one of the Best films ever made. It is beautifully shot, with a wonderful score and a strong supporting cast, including de Havilland. It is here that Flynn became an icon. (Full Critique) [Also on the Olivia de Havilland list and the Basil Rathbone list]

Back to all Best Films By The Great Actors Lists

Actor Best Lists, Lists

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)

Jan 262018

In a Victorian-era Gotham City, Batman (voice: Bruce Greenwood) searches at night for Jack the Ripper, who is murdering prostitutes, dancers, and to a lesser extent, women in general. Aiding him is his loyal butler, Alfred (voice: Anthony Stewart Head), and to a lesser degree James Gordon (voice: Scott Patterson) and Bruce Wayne’s men’s club buddy Harvey Dent (voice: Yuri Lowenthal). Separately, Selina Kyle (voice: Jennifer Carpenter) is attempting to defend the lower-class women of the city.

This is the best Batman story to see film in 20 years. The major characters are well developed, emotional, and engaging, and the lesser ones make sense within the plot. The world is well built—call it steampunk-lite—so I knew how everything worked. They made me want to know the answers and care about what happened to Bruce and Selina. It was also a great use of Robins—as a gang of thieving orphans.

Adding to that is some of the better voice-acting we’ve had in a DC-Animated film and Batman: Gotham by Gaslight is looking like one of the great superhero films. But it isn’t. It’s good, but not great. That’s how film works: story and acting aren’t everything. So what is pulling it down? Call it the directing. The animation looks like it came from a well-done kid’s TV show, which is fine if you have a kid’s TV show. But for a feature, and an R-Rated feature at that, it is underwhelming. It’s not just that the backgrounds are about half as detailed as they should be, or that the characters are simply drawn, but that there is no style. It’s generically drab. If it looked like Mask of the Phantasm or even Batman Year One, I’d be exclaiming that finally we have a great Batman movie again. But it looks dull, and looks matter in film. And because it doesn’t look interesting, none of the action scenes are interesting. They are competent, but I cannot recall the last time I gathered all my friends together and yelled, “Hey, let’s have a wild night on the town doing something competent!” So during those action scenes, I was left thinking, which is never a good thing for a action picture. I started thinking about how Batman really didn’t do a lot of detecting, which he should have been doing. I shouldn’t have noticed, the way I don’t notice that Captain America: The Winter Soldier doesn’t makes sense while watching it. I should be caught up in the action.

Then there is Batman himself. Apparently they didn’t want to upset fanboys, so Batman looks way too much like Batman. This was a chance to do some interesting design work on his costume, but they just gave us a slightly alternate Batman. He could show up in this outfit in any of the other animated films and no one would find it out of place.

I’m sounding negative not because this film is bad, but because Batman: Gotham by Gaslight could have been so much more. It should have been on the top rungs of Batman films, and it isn’t. So, good, but disappointing.

Reviews, Superhero Tagged with: Three Reels

Godzilla: Monster Planet (2017)

Jan 222018

A fitting poster as it doesn’t have Godzilla on it.

Giant monsters rose up all over the Earth, with the final one being Godzilla, and destroyed the planet. Two alien races showed up at the last minute to help—one of them religious fanatics—but they failed. A single spaceship escaped, with a mixed crew, looking for a new world. Twenty years later, overly emotional and always annoying Haruo throws a tantrum and is arrested. While in the brig, he comes up with a way humans could have beaten Godzilla. As the crew can’t find a new planet, they decide to return to Earth, where 10,000 years will have passed. On returning, they find Earth to have changed wildly and worse, Godzilla is still alive. A team, including Haruo who is still throwing tantrums, lands on Earth in an attempt to kill Godzilla.

Note: English Version

I’d welcome a Godzilla movie that was thematically meaningful, with an interesting plot and intriguing characters. We got one of those in 1954, but since then, pretty much the only reason to watch a Godzilla movie is because giant monsters are cool. So if that’s the point, and you’re making an animated movie where scenes of giant monsters don’t cost any more than scenes of people walking around or spaceships flying, wouldn’t you have Godzilla show up before 55 minutes into an 88 minute movie? And then keep him around? He’s on screen for around 5 minutes.

So, like the live-action movies before it, most of the film is filler with unpleasant or uninteresting humans (and near-humans) talking and talking and talking. And wow, do they fit the description. Haruo is unpleasant on an epic scale. I don’t mean unpleasant like so many captivating cinematic characters of the past, but unpleasant to watch and listen to. Unless you love toddlers kicking their feet and screaming, he is the definition of non-entertaining. The rest of the always-talking characters are either impossible to tell apart or just boring. Do you like a lot of empty religious murmuring? Well, you’ll get it.

The animation is nothing special—with differing styles not always fitting together—but by anime standards, it is passable. It is neither a reason to watch Godzilla: Monster Planet or to avoid it.

I cannot figure what the people behind this video (should I call it a film?) were thinking? Why would you make THIS Godzilla movie. Go for character or plot, or go for monster fun. But they didn’t. The only way I can make sense of it is if these are the cut scenes from an unfinished video game.

The “film” doesn’t have an ending, but just pauses in the middle of events. Godzilla: Monster Planet is planed as the first part of a trilogy, so, there will be two more videos you don’t need to watch.

You can find my reviews of other Godzilla films here.

Foreign Language, Giant Monsters, Godzilla, Reviews Tagged with: One Reel

2017 F&SF Films Ranked

Jan 182018

January 18, 2018

2017filmranking2 I remember years when getting a dozen fantasy and science fiction films was impressive. 2017 gave us 59. Yeah, if you look carefully you might find another or three, but I think I’ve done my share so this is my final ranking for the year. And its been a good year not only for having so many genre films, but having so many good ones. Yes, there are more bad than good, but there are always more bad than good films.

I’ve already created a list of the 10 Best Films of 2017 and the 10 Worst Films of 2017. In the case of the second, it doesn’t match this list because here I’m including all the F&SF films I’ve seen, where that list focuses on the garbage that deserves the focus, that is, big budget or widely released films.

Unless stated otherwise, the titles link to my review.

*US wide-release in 2017

Lists, Thoughts

Aquaman (2018)

Jan 102018

Arthur (Jason Momoa) is the son of the escaped queen of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman) and a lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison). She returns to Atlantis to keep her son safe, and he mopes about it, except when he’s in secret training montages with Willem Dafoe, who I suppose I should give a character name, but he’s just playing low-energy Willem Dafoe. Then there’s some stuff about pirates and a guy who will become the super-villain Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) but it doesn’t matter and could/should have been cut from the film. Enter Mera (Amber Heard), super water-sorceress who could easily have solved all the problems if she’d bothered to do so, but instead goes to enlist Arthur to fight his non-descript brother King Orm (Patrick Wilson) who’s planning on attacking the surface world. Then apparently someone got confused and slipped in some Tomb Raider script pages as Arthur and Mera travel around the world to find ancient treasure until they find the proper script pages and it all ends in a big fight involving men on sharks with lasers.

There are men on sharks with lasers (punctuation intentionally missing). That should be a riot. How much fun are men on sharks with lasers? And dinosaurs? And seahorse mounts? This is dumb stuff, but fun. How can you fail to make a fun picture with men on sharks with lasers? For a start, they should have actually spent some time showing us the MEN ON SHARKS WITH LASERS instead of repeatedly whipping past them or keeping them in the indistinct background.

They needed to decide what kind of film they wanted to make. Is it a light hearted comedy adventure film? Occasionally, and those bits work best. But then it wants to be a deeply serious epic film. Then it wants to be a romantic comedy. Then an angry revenge picture. The tone flips are startling, though less so then they’d have been if they’d ever nailed any tone. The worst tone dissonance comes from the music, which is mindboggling. How did any composer write this and why the hell did any producer OK the film for distribution without demanding a re-score? The music shifts from the overly serious choral (nothing short of Masada could handle it), to epic adventure symphonic, to electronica, to goofy, to light piano, to retro rock, to hip hop. Maybe they didn’t actually have music written and faked the composer’s name and just left in the temp tracks they’d stolen from random films for editing. It’s distracting. One scene shifts musical genres four times.

If you can somehow get past that, it still doesn’t work. Villains matter in a superhero flick, and King Orm is bad even when compared against other DCEU villains. Yes, he’s worse than The Enchantress. Yes he’s worse than twitchy Lex Luthor. How can I say that? Specifically because I can say I hated Jesse Eisenberg’s performance; that means there was a performance. There’s something to hate. With Orm (and Wilson) there’s nothing. There is a great empty void where a villain should be. Being terrible is better than being nonexistent. Wilson doesn’t even embarrass himself because you won’t remember him.

Surprisingly, the best element in the film is Momoa. Acting is not his strong suit, but he’s a big, amiable bear of a man, and when he can just be himself, he’s fun (remember I mentioned how this film should be fun). If they’d have let Amber Heard relax, then the two of them might have managed to save this thing. There’s some cute interplay between them that should have been the whole film and shows what could have been. Nicole Kidman isn’t good, but she’s not bad, making her the third best thing about Aquaman. Faint praise.

With all those problems, a weak plot (I didn’t like it as a comic or when they made into the animated Throne of Atlantis), and no continuity (there’s no way to fit Arthur’s undersea actions from Justice League into this film’s world and make the characters make sense), it’s only saving grace would be bright, fun, amazing world building. No luck there either. There’s just no artistry behind the art design and no skill with the lighting. The film is muddy. Nothing looks epic or even pretty. Atlantis has a drab murk over it. It’s worse when they pop up in the dessert and Rome, which don’t look impressive, but do look competent. It’s the only time when the lighting and contrast are close to what they should be, making it clear someone wasn’t paying attention the rest of the time. Aquaman should have at least been pretty, but it isn’t. Compare it to another film with multiple failings: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. There, the foreground might not have anything worth seeing, but the cityscapes were amazing. Here, there’s nothing but murk.

I didn’t hate Aquaman, and for the DCEU, that’s some kind of victory, so I’ll be generous and give it Two Reels, but a low Two Reels.

The other DCEU films are Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Suicide Squad (2016), Wonder Woman (2017), Justice League (2017)

Reviews, Superhero Tagged with: Two Reels

Best Films of 2017

Jan 082018

January 8, 2018

thor3cute What a year it has been in film. My best list is for fantasy and science fiction films, in all their many forms, so everything from dedicated scientists in the near future to dragons and elves to evil clowns (though no evil clowns will made this list). And it has been an amazing year for genre film. It is the best year ever for superhero films. No, my favorite superhero film of all time is not from 2017. But there are four such films in my top 10. No year has come close to that. There’s also an adult fairytale, a giant monster flick, a musical, a zombie film, a space opera, and even a slasher. (If you are more interested in the worst of the year, my roundup is here.)

So here we go, the 10 genre films you need to see if you haven’t, and need to own. Starting with:

#10 Happy Death Day

Well, that was a surprise. A Slasher that is fun, clever, and well made. Huh. Happy Death Day is Groundhog Day as a Slasher. And while that sounds like a reasonable idea, it plays out better than expected, ending up as much a dark comedy as a horror film. (Full Review)

#9 The Lure

{US release 2017} A Polish, surrealistic, comedy, tragedy, fairytale, horror, art house, musical—sometimes all at once, more often swapping from one genre to the next—The Lure is as odd a film as you are likely to find. I never knew if I was about to see disco dancing, nudity, or an artery being ripped open, or perhaps several combined with some bittersweet romance. (Full Review)

#8 Spider-Man: Homecoming

Spider-Man enters the MCU and he’s treated right. Finally, he seems like a teen, and the funny one he’s meant to be. And to counter his youth we have Michael Keaton’s Vulture, a villain that has adult problems that I understood and real world anger I could feel. He just wants to take care of his family, which is a more moving motivation than Peter’s naive view of good and evil. (Full Review)

#7 Wonder Woman

Sometimes a film is about plot or theme or some tricky mystery. This one is about a character and an actress. There’s plenty to like, but it didn’t matter. It all came down to Wonder Woman, and I loved her. I don’t know if Gal Gadot is a good actress, but she is a charismatic one, and she was born for this part. (Full Review)

#6 Colossal

{Wide release 2017} This is indie art house meets geek. A daikaiju film about character. The dialog is sharp, the plot is smart, and it is shot beautifully. Colossal is by far the most original film on my top ten list. Daikaiju films often attempt to be about big themes, but few succeed. This is how it is done. (Full Review)

#5 Star Wars: The Last Jedi

As The Force Awakens was a remake of Star Wars (A New Hope), The Last Jedi is a remake of The Empire Strikes Back, but, it is a cleverly made, artistically constructed, updated and upgraded remake—a remake done right. We get all the old notes, but some are sung differently and we get a few new melodies. Which means this film is surprisingly good. There’s been grumbling from some fanboys, but ignore that as their upset has nothing to do with the quality of the film. (Full Review)

#4 The Shape of Water

This is how you revisit old material—by touching the past while reaching for something new. This is a fairytale, one that involves politics and antifascism, diversity and oppression, and loneliness and need. It is also about beauty, sexuality, hope, and love. It is Guillermo del Toro at the top of his game, and a wondrous film you shouldn’t miss. (Full Review)

#3 The Girl With All the Gifts

{US release 2017} Just when I’ve once again declared zombie films to be dead, we get The Girl With All the Gifts, an emotional, exciting, and original take on that too often used sub-genre. We simply don’t see this skill and talent in zombie films, or most films generally. Everything works on every level. (Full Review)

#2 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

If you liked the first Guardians of the Galaxy, you’ll like this one. If you didn’t like the first film, you are an inhuman monster who should meet your end at the hands of the coolest of all heroes, Mary Poppins. Vol 2 is is everything the first was taken up a notch. It’s funnier, more exciting, and more emotional. (Full Review)

#1 Thor: Ragnarok

This is the first time that I’d call an MCU movie a comedy first, and an action picture second. The humor alone is enough to make this a great time, but the jokes serve the characters as well. Doesn’t that leave it wanting in action and drama and power? Nope, because after “comedy” the word I’d use to describe this film is “METAL.” And I don’t mean hair METAL or even Metallica METAL. I’m talking Dethklok METAL. This is the most METAL movie ever made. (Full Review)