Archive 5, Vol.10

Posted on March 27, 2024 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 520 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2023 viewing. This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, we’ve got quite the variety, from Oscar nominees to straightforward action entertainment; from super-timely recent documentaries to pioneering animation from almost a century ago. But they’re all connected by… the fact I wrote some notes after I watched them. Thank goodness, otherwise reviewing some of them years later would be bloomin’ impossible. (That’s not much of a connection, I know, but it was on my mind after In the Mood for Love last time.)

This week’s Archive 5 are…

A Star Is Born (2018)

Boss Level (2021)

Coded Bias (2020)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

A Star Is Born

(2018)

This is the fourth version of A Star is Born, for whatever reason, but I’ve not seen any of the others so I won’t be making comparisons. I’m sure the story has been modernised (the last version was made in the ’70s, with the previous two in the ’50s and ’30s) without losing its fundamental essence: successful musician (here, Bradley Cooper) uncovers a new talent (Lady Gaga) who comes to outshine him. I guess it’s a timeless tale in the age of celebrity.

Singers-turned-actors have a mixed history, though casting one in a story such as this is fitting, given how you need to believe they’re a top-drawer musical artist. Fortunately, Gaga actually can act as well as sing, so she’s an unqualified success here. The headline song, Shallow — a duet between the two leads, which attracted even more attention for how they performed it at the Oscars — is… perfectly fine. People went a little too crazy for it at the time, I feel. But it’s given weight by how well it’s used in the film, so I guess that could sway you.

Also pulling double duty (well, triple if you count the singing) is Cooper, directing for the first time. (With all the talk this past awards season about how desperate Cooper is for an Oscar, it’s easy to forget that Maestro was only his second time behind the camera.) I seem to remember there being some complaints when he wasn’t nominated for direction for this one, but I think that was a fair omission. It’s not bad, but his directorial choices are a little too wavering. Like, in the early scenes, when the camerawork is all a bit documentary-ish, is effective — it undercuts the “glamorous story”, the almost-inherent fakeness of Musical as a genre, by making it feel Real. But later he gives in to glossy stylings too often; and too many of the song performances are captured with a lazily floating camera, lacking focus or decisiveness. It’s how they often shoot musical performances on TV: just kind of nothingy, moving the camera back and forth and side to side for the sake of making it ‘dynamic’. But, when you remember this is his first film, that’s fine — there’s a lot more good than bad about his work behind the camera.

A Star Is Born was #18 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Boss Level

(2021)

For a long time, there was Groundhog Day. And then someone had the bright idea, “what if Groundhog Day but mixed with another genre?” So now we’ve had the sci-fi version (Edge of Tomorrow), and the horror version (Happy Death Day), and the YA version (The Map of Tiny Perfect Things), and the “what if there were two people” version (Palm Springs), and the TV series version (Russian Doll)… Here, we get the action movie version. And it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect and hope “Groundhog Day as an action movie” would be. That’s praise, not criticism.

Interestingly, considering the context I’ve chosen to place this in, the film itself acknowledges — you might even say relies on — the fact we’ve all seen time loop movies before. Rather than begin at the obvious beginning (i.e. the hero’s first loop), the story starts dozens of loops in, then fills in the backstory with flashbacks later on. It’s somewhere between a sensible choice (who hasn’t seen Groundhog Day?) and a bold move (what about people who haven’t seen Groundhog Day?) That said, I imagine people in the latter group can still follow it, it just might be what’s going on is mysterious for longer (most of us will instantly get “he’s in a day-long time loop”, they’ll just have to wait for that information to become clear).

In fact, it’s a pretty economical movie across the board, hitting the ground running and rarely letting up. There’s very little repetition of “the same stuff every day”, instead taking our hero off in different directions. It does lean on voiceover quite a lot to get through some of the exposition, which won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it means it can hurry through the technicalities and get to what we came for — action and gags — so I can let it slide. On the basis of the kind of entertainment it’s designed to deliver, Boss Level succeeds admirably.

Boss Level was #160 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Coded Bias

(2020)

Given the precipitous rise of AI in the past couple of years, I don’t know how relevant this documentary from 2020 still is. Back then, it was ultra-timely, but tech evolves so fast, I have to wonder if it’s already dated. Well, if you want to find out for yourself, it’s on Netflix.

Not that it’s just about AI. It touches on a lot of interesting tech-related topics, like how facial recognition struggles with non-white people, or how algorithms were increasingly being allowed to control… pretty much everything. It makes a lot of broadly scary declarations about these things, but often lacks the detail to back them up. Not that it’s necessarily wrong, but it doesn’t prove its point; doesn’t clarify what’s scary beyond the gut reaction that this all sounds scary. This is partly because there’s so much to cover — it keeps jumping around between topics in short vignettes — which at least makes clear what a big field this is. There are also signs of hope, with the film offering some solutions (primarily: regulation in law) and highlighting fantastic people (almost all women, incidentally) doing great work to combat these things.

Ultimately, the areas the film explores are interesting and it’s sometimes informative about them, but it’s also unfocused and disorganised in its structure, which is a shame.

Coded Bias was #243 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Shadow of a Doubt

(1943)

I feel like Shadow of a Doubt sits in a certain tier of Hitchcock film; one where it’s not one of his very best known (Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, etc), but regarded well enough that it definitely has its fans, for some of whom it probably is Hitchcock’s best film. Hitch himself repeatedly said it was his favourite of his own work, chiefly because he enjoyed how it brought menace into the surface-level perfection of small-town America. One critic has even described it as Hitchcock’s “first indisputable masterpiece”, which I would certainly dispute considering its predated by the likes of The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and Rebecca. Well, taste is relative.

Personally, while Shadow of a Doubt definitely has a neat premise and strong moments, overall I felt it lacked any of the truly exceptional elements that mark out Hitch’s real classics. Sure, if most other filmmakers had made it, it’d probably be one of their best; but you’re competing with an incredibly strong body of work if you’re a Hitchcock film and, for me, this one is definitely second-tier. Of course, as I just intimated, being a second-tier Hitchcock film is still some achievement. It’s a shame the relative hype for this one is leading me to focus on the negative. Heck, maybe I’ll like it even more when I rewatch it someday. Until then, I feel it missed the mark of my expectations in places. I even thought it was the kind of movie someone could remake and possibly get something really great out of. (Blasphemy!)

Shadow of a Doubt was #90 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2023. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2023.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

(1926)

aka Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed

The earliest (surviving) animated feature film is an ‘Arabian Nights’ fairytale about… well, the short version is in the title.

But story schmory, because the real star here is the medium itself: Lotte Reiniger’s animation. There are so many wonderful little bits of work, it’s impossible to list. Consistent throughout, it’s remarkable how much character and personality Reiniger manages to convey through her ‘simple’ cutout silhouette puppets. Then there’s little naturalistic details, like boats bobbing on the water. Some of it even feels surprisingly modern. Not massively so, perhaps, but it doesn’t have that staid, stilted formality you might expect from a hundred-year-old rendition of a fairytale. And that’s not to mention the homosexual subplot. Plus, there’s so much more to the style than just silhouettes on plain backgrounds. There are shades and effects, to add depth or style: the wavy lines of a river; a mountain range fading into the distance; and subtler and clever things, too. It’s a visual feast.

The restoration could be better, mind. There are a lot of dirt and scratches, which I can live with (there are so many of these, it would have to be manually patched up frame by frame, which would cost a fortune), but more egregious are stability and alignment issues. For example, during one scene, the top part of the next frame keeps appearing at the bottom. Surely that could’ve been fixed?

Better is the soundtrack. The BFI Blu-ray offers a choice: the original 1926 score by Wolfgang Zeller (recorded in 1999) or an English narration (with effects), based on Reiniger’s own translation of her German text (recorded in 2013). Having watched the film with both, I’d say the narration adds nothing of value to the experience, especially as it sounds like narration from a preschool storybook. Just stick to the original music.

But however you watch it, minor technical issues can’t distract from the artistry on display. This is truly the work of a master of her craft. Magnificent.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed was #35 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

2024 | Week 3

Posted on February 12, 2024 by badblokebob

I’ve already covered Barbie, so here are the other films I watched during Week 3…

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)

The Best of the Martial Arts Films (1990)

Chicken Run:
Dawn of the Nugget

(2023)

I wasn’t a massive fan of the original Chicken Run (it’s not bad, but it pales in comparison to some of Aardman’s other works, not least any of the main Wallace & Gromit films), so I approached this belated sequel more with trepidation than excitement. You could interpret a near-quarter-century wait as indicative of holding off until someone had a genuinely good idea; or you could see it as a shameless effort to generate a hit by tickling childhood nostalgia through a return to a cult-ish favourite. Behind-the-scenes stories of unnecessary cast changes (the primary offender: apparently 55-year-old Julia Sawalha is now too aged (for a voice role as a hen?) so they recast her with 51-year-old Thandiwe Newton) did nothing to bring confidence.

Anyway, setting all that aside, the end result is… adequate. I’d probably have said the same of the first one, so maybe that’s no surprise. But even that felt like it had some moments that stood out, whereas this is just unrelentingly fine. The plot concerns the chickens having to break in to a farm — yes, it’s taken 25 years to have the genius idea of “what if we just reversed the story?” The immediate point of reference for break-in-type movies nowadays is the Mission: Impossible franchise, which features a noteworthy heist a least once per film. And so Dawn of the Nugget references M:I, and the gag goes thus: “It’s an impossible mission.” “Uh, shouldn’t it be the other way around?” That level of underscored bluntness is about the level all the humour operates at: unsubtle, unsophisticated, unvaried, and uninspired.

The arguable exception in terms of quality is the animation itself. That it’s done well almost goes without saying — Aardman remain one of the masters of stop-motion (Laika having challenged them in recent years) — but, on the other hand, there’s nothing to wow you. It’s more than competent, slick and expressive and so on, but there’s no imagery you’ll take away; no shot or sequence that would make you reach for adjectives like “beautiful” or “stunning”.

Aardman’s next major effort (it’s a bit unclear if it’s a feature or a short, as it’s going direct to the BBC in the UK) is a return to Wallace & Gromit, planned for later this year (no doubt a Christmastime treat, as usual). As I said, I prefer that duo, so I’m always excited to see them back on the screen. I just hope that belated sequel (almost 20 years since their feature film and 16 since their last short) doesn’t feel this… unnecessary.

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget is the 5th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

The Best of the Martial Arts Films

(1990)

aka The Deadliest Art

Originally released on VHS (back when martial arts films weren’t necessarily easy to come by for consumers, so I’m told), this hour-and-a-half selection of fight scenes is now available remastered / reconstructed in HD, with all the film clips also in their original aspect ratios, included on Eureka’s When Taekwondo Strikes Blu-ray. Hurrah!

It is, primarily, a showcase for fight scenes. Whole uninterrupted sequences are shared, which is at least the right way to do it if that’s what you’re doing; unlike modern TV clip-show compilations, which seem to feel the need to cut the scenes to shreds and intersperse them with inane talking heads. There are a few interviews included here too, but rather than early-career comedians who’ll discuss anything for a paycheque, the interviewees include stars Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Cynthia Rothrock, and, er, Keith Cooke; plus Robert Clouse, director of Enter the Dragon.

“Best Of” is more a titling convention than a fact, considering the film was co-funded by Golden Harvest and so only has access to their back catalogue, thus skipping entirely the output of the legendary Shaw Brothers studio. But then, what else would you expect them to call it — Some Pretty Good Bits of the Martial Arts Films We Had the Rights to Include? Of course, however you look it, 90 minutes of fight scenes is a pretty hollow experience — there’s no narrative; even the interviews offer mostly behind-the-scenes anecdotes rather than, say, a “history of the genre” approach. But if that’s all you expect, you get your money’s worth, because there are some stunners in here.

Mind you, as well as being mostly limited to one studio, it’s also limited by time: having been made in 1990, there’s no Jet Li, no Donnie Yen; Van Damme is mentioned as a “rising star”… You could do the whole film over again — several times — if you were able to encompass a wider spread of studios and stars. But nowadays there’s no need: we can just head to YouTube for our out-of-context fight scene fulfilment… so long as you know what you’re looking for, anyway. That will always be the value of a curated experience.

The Best of the Martial Arts Films is the 6th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

The Return of Archive 5

Posted on January 19, 2024 by badblokebob

Hey, look what else is back! Almost a whole year on from the last instalment in the series, I’ve finally managed to rustle up a new Archive 5. Although, that previous post was also a comeback after a long time off, so I probably shouldn’t celebrate until I mange two in a row.

Being another year on, the pool of possible reviews has increased — quite significantly, as I’ve so far covered hardly anything from my 2023 viewing. But today’s five were chosen (but not written up, otherwise I’d’ve posted it) back when Vol.6 was published, so they were selected (at random) from the backlog of then-443 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2022 viewing.

This week’s hideously delayed Archive 5 are…

The Mummy (1932)

So Dark the Night (1946)

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

A Brief History of Time Travel (2018)

Misery (1990)

The Mummy

(1932)

The third classic Universal Monster film, following Dracula and Frankenstein, The Mummy ditches literary adaptation for a horror based in then-contemporary fears. Nowadays, the notion of digging up of mummies is an Old Thing, but in 1932 they were just a decade on from the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb, and it was only in that year that it was finally fully excavated, so that kind of thing — and, of course, the attached curses — were still fresh in the public imagination.

In the wake of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, and The Mask of Fu Manchu, Boris Karloff was now the horror star in Hollywood, and so The Mummy was conceived as a starring role for him. Perhaps that explains why, plot wise, it’s a remix of Universal’s take on Dracula: the villain is after the girl, using supernatural tricks to lure her; the dashing young man is in love with her; there’s even a Van Helsing-esque figure with the knowledge to stop the monster. But originality is not the be-all-and-end-all — overall, I much preferred this to Dracula. Karloff is superb as the antagonist; Zita Johann (and her array of skimpy outfits) makes for an appealing (and, perhaps in spite of said clothing, competent) female lead; and there’s some intensely atmospheric direction from Karl Freund. His name may not seem as familiar as Dracula’s Tod Browning or Frankenstein’s James Whale, but he was already an acclaimed cinematographer, who’d shot the likes of Metropolis and, er, Dracula.

The Mummy presented considerably less bandaged-wrapped foot-dragging living-corpse action than I expected. I guess those clichés come from the sequels (reportedly, their stories are entirely unconnected to this one) or another studio’s efforts (Hammer, perhaps). Instead, it’s quite simply one of my absolute favourites from the initial wave of Universal’s classic monster movies.

The Mummy was #122 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

So Dark the Night

(1946)

How many serial killer mysteries have you seen that spend their first half being bucolic romances? I can’t think of any others than So Dark the Night. The title and setup don’t prepare you for it, but the first half-hour is more of a genteel country romcom, with only the slightest hint there might be darker turns to come. Half-an-hour isn’t long generally, but it’s almost halfway through a film this short — and that’s when things take an abrupt turn for the murderous.

The short running time probably works against the film, on the whole. For example, it makes it easy to miss that there are several interesting supporting characters or facets to main characters. Love interest Nanette is sort of depicted as an innocent ingénue, but we first meet her ogling the expensiveness of Henri’s car, and then she and her mother conspire for her to meet Henri and try to elicit a romantic connection, even though she’s already got a long-standing engagement. That’s not exactly upstanding and sweet behaviour, is it? Then there’s the widowed maid, who’s so lonely and desperate to escape that even after she suspects the killer, she pleads to be taken with him.

Along with a few other factors that are rather spoilersome, this is a film that takes the usual shape of the whodunnit and subverts it to disquieting effect. It’s a film that, on the surface, looks nothing like a noir — it’s set in a pretty French village (created with surprising authenticity on Columbia’s backlot) — but exposes that the darkness and violence of the human condition can exist anywhere. I say “on the surface” because the film’s photography is great, with many interesting shot and lightning choices peppered about, without overwhelming proceedings with unnecessary flourishes.

So Dark the Night was #57 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

The Adventures of
Ichabod and Mr. Toad

(1949)

Disney’s canon of animated films goes through a weird blip between Bambi in 1942 and Cinderella in 1950. That’s when the six so-called “package films” were released, bundling together short films into themed features. They’re almost a footnote in the Disney animated canon — I mean, before them you’ve got Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, and after you’ve got Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, and so on… and on… But it’s not a period of hidden gems: these are films mostly only worth bothering with if you’re a completist. This final one is, perhaps, the exception. At any rate, it’s easily the best of the package films.

Whereas the others contained multiple short features, here there are just two: adaptations of The Wind in the Willows and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. There’s barely any faffing about with linking segments, either: a quick intro from Basil Rathbone (who narrates Willows), and an equally speedy transition from Bing Crosby (who narrates Sleepy Hollow), and that’s it. And that’s all it needs, instead spending time and resources on the stories themselves.

I’ve never been a huge fan of The Wind in the Willows, but this is a fast-paced and fun version, with a particularly entertaining ‘action sequence’ in Toad Hall as the good guys and weasels run around trying to keep hold of the property deed. Then, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow recasts the famous horror story as… a small-town romantic farce. No, seriously. It’s fine if a little dull, but picks up considerably when it reaches Halloween and we get a song about the headless horseman, a highly atmospheric sequence in spooky woods, and an exciting/comical chase between Ichabod and the horseman. It takes a while to get there, but it’s worth it.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was #176 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

A Brief History of Time Travel

(2018)

Gisella Bustillos | 69 mins | digital (HD) | 16:9 | USA / English

It’s a decade this year since I backed this documentary on Kickstarter — how’s that for time travel for you? I mean, technically, “normal and linear”, but also: time flies. It doesn’t feel like Kickstarter’s even been around that long. What the hell is going on with our perception of time (for example, the increasingly widespread observation on social media that everyone’s perception of how long ago things were is stuck somewhere in the early- to mid-2000s) would be an interesting topic for a documentary.

But anyway, that’s not what this is. This is a wide-ranging overview of the concept of time travel, taking in fiction, science (both real and theoretical), and religion, as well as how those things interrelate and influence each other. It’s probably most interested in the science side, using other angles to illustrate rather than be examined in their own right. For example, it details the significance of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine (the first story to involve time travel into the future, and one of the first where the travel was achieved via a man-made machine rather than some form of magic), but that’s about the last fictional story it describes. There are clips from Doctor Who and Back to the Future, but no discussion of their influence, nor of the kinds of time travel they present.

At its best, the film draws interesting links and parallels between the different spheres it’s encompassing. This is at its most poignant when we meet a physicist who got into the field because his father died when he was young and time travel stories offered the idea that he might be able to revisit his dad, which developed into him learning the real science and becoming a physicist. Now, he believes he has a workable theory for how information could be sent into the past. I have no idea if that stands up to scrutiny, mind — the film doesn’t vet it with other interviewees’ opinions.

Considering it only runs a little over an hour, it’s unsurprising that there’s not room to cover everything in depth. Nonetheless, it’s so blatantly leaving significant amounts of material untouched that you can’t help but feel disappointed. To be kind, it’s a reasonable primer for the uninitiated, with interesting bits of info dropped here and there, but almost every topic covered would merit a deeper, dedicated examination.

A Brief History of Time Travel was #123 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Misery

(1990)

I feel like Misery is one of those movies that was once very well known in general pop culture, but has since slipped back, if not into obscurity then certainly into a lesser-known status, remembered only when mentioned by people who were there or as one in a list of Stephen King adaptations, that sort of thing. And that also feels fair enough, because it’s very much a movie that’s pretty good but not exceptional. The author whose work it’s taken from, the filmmaker who’s adapted it, and the main players on screen have all been responsible for or involved in even better and more enduring works of cinema, so of course this has become an “and also” note in their careers.

Perhaps transcending that — and, certainly, by far the most famous thing about Misery — is the ankle-bashing scene, which unfortunately means you spend most of the film waiting for it to turn up, and when it does it’s rather unaffecting. That’s time and infamy for you. The former: it’s not as gruesome as it would be if shot today. The latter: I’d already seen the clip a dozen times. I can see how it was striking on the film’s original release, but familiarity has really blunted it.

Fortunately, there’s more to the film than one shocking act of violence. Kathy Bates is excellent as Annie Wilkes, making her wild mood swings terrifyingly plausible. Her Oscar was well earned. Then there’s the subplot with the local sheriff and his unceasing investigation, which also introduces a welcome note of comedy via his interactions with his deputy (who’s his wife) and some of the other townsfolk. He’s brought to life with immense likability by Richard Farnsworth, and I’d’ve happily watched a whole movie based around him. On the whole, the film has a somewhat underwhelming “TV movie” feel to its visual (lack of) style, but there are some nicely done bits: the scene where Annie’s coming home while Paul tries to cover up that he’s been out and about; the final fight, which is just the right mix of tense, scrappy, and believably comical.

Misery was #230 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

2024 | Week 2

Posted on January 15, 2024 by badblokebob

Hey, look, it’s an actual reviews post! Well I never! Wonders will never cease! Etc.

Yeah — I thought, “new year, new start”, and so here I am with short reviews of the first three films I watched in 2024. I was going to call this “Weeks 1–2”, even though they’re all from Week 2, because beginning the year with a post titled “Week 2” just felt wrong. But then I figured I’d begun the year already with my various other posts, so in some respects Week 2 feels natural and right. I could’ve waited for “Weeks 2–3” (there are only three films reviewed herein, after all), but I wanted to set out the stall of “look, reviews are back!” Whether they’ll stay back… I mean, they didn’t in 2023… But we live in hope.

Anyway, onwards to:

Lift (2024)

Only Yesterday (1991), aka Omohide poro poro

Jackass Forever (2022)

Lift

(2024)

Netflix’s latest original is a high-concept heist thriller, in which a gang of art thieves are recruited by Interpol to steal a terrorist’s gold bullion fortune from a passenger flight in mid-air.

I love a good heist movie, and Lift is certainly a heist movie. The joy of the genre, at least for me, is in the almost magic trick-esque way in which our gang pull off the score — doubly so when it’s eventually revealed in a third-act twist that what we thought was going on wasn’t going on at all. Unfortunately, that means someone — the writer, director, whoever’s in charge — needs to have a big, clever idea, and those are hard to come by. Lift‘s heist isn’t bad, it’s just nothing special. On the bright side, it ticks the box of having that last-minute reveal. Again, it’s not a particularly innovative subversion (if you were tasked with guessing it, it would probably be your first idea), but at least it’s there.

Another common aspect of the subgenre is snappy, funny dialogue. Not so here, I’m afraid. Indeed, the dialogue is unrelentingly mediocre, and never more so than when it tries to be funny. Characters’ emotional arcs are built via Screenwriting 101 backstory dumps. You know: “How did you learn that?” “Well, when I was a kid, this very specific thing happened that taught me exactly that.” Perhaps belying a lack of confidence in the screenplay (or perhaps just Netflix realising they don’t need to spend as much as they have in the past), the film doesn’t look particularly expensive either, with middle-of-the-road CGI. Like everything else, it’s not bad, but you’re never going to imagine they went down the Mission: Impossible / Christopher Nolan route of staging it for real.

The cast is headed by Kevin Hart, doing his best to channel whatever he’s learnt from previous co-stars and be a charming leading man type. I’ve seen worse, but it’s not a natural fit. The Interpol agent / love interest at his side is Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who you can feel is doing her best to inject some verve into proceedings. Some of the supporting roles hint at where the budget may actually have gone. Why else would Jean Reno drop in as a villain who’s mostly just on the end of a phone? Or Sam Worthington pop by as a senior Interpol agent who’s not even interesting enough to turn out to be a secret baddie? Plus most of the henchmen are faces you might recognise from British TV, like Torchwood’s Burn Gorman and Peaky Blinders’ Paul Anderson, who you’d think would be getting better offers than Henchman #2 at this point.

If this review sounds full of faint praise… yeah, that’s about right. Lift is nothing special, but if a gang of crooks pulling off a seemingly-impossible score is your bag, then it’s passably entertaining fare for an undemanding Friday or Saturday night.

Lift is the 1st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

Only Yesterday

(1991)

aka Omohide poro poro

The fifth feature animation from Studio Ghibli’s other director, Only Yesterday introduces us to 27-year-old Tokyoite Taeko as she prepares to take a short summer holiday working on a farm in the countryside, which brings up memories of her ten-year-old self. The latter were the subject of the original manga the film is based on, with Takahata adding the storyline of the older Taeko reflecting on her childhood as a way of tying the stories together into a cohesive narrative.

I didn’t know that piece of trivia going in, but I sensed something along those lines, because I generally dislike movies that play as “nostalgic vignettes from the author’s childhood”, and this is no exception. The ‘present day’ stuff, on the other hand, is very good, with beautiful moments in and about nature, and superb character beats related to what Taeko really wants and what she’s really like. (“Ever since I was little, I just pretend to be nice,” she says at one point, a sentiment I certainly felt I could agree with. Mind you, it’s in moments like this that the film’s dual timelines pay off, contrasting how younger Taeko behaved and how she has and hasn’t changed.

Only Yesterday is sort of a film of two simultaneous halves, then. Not that I would lose the childhood bits entirely, but I would prefer a version of the film that pared them back considerably, only retaining the material that really enlightens the older Taeko’s storyline. As it stands, the bits I didn’t care for were quite tedious, but the bits I liked were captivating.

Only Yesterday is the 2nd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2024.

Jackass Forever

(2022)

A decade and change after their last outing, the Jackass crew are back (minus some members, for various reasons, and plus some new ones; the latter distinctly upping the diversity quotient), doing the same crazy and dangerous shit they always did. Why? I think most of them are asking themselves the same thing. There was a definite sense in the last film that they were getting too old for this and it was time to call it a day, so what inspired them to come back to it — even older, even more prone to injury, with even longer recovery times — I don’t know.

It certainly wasn’t fresh ideas. Despite all that time away to think up new stunts, nothing here feels particularly innovative or freshly imagined. Maybe that’s a highfalutin’ thing to analyse about a franchise that has always been just about doing dumb stunts, but some of them have been memorable, even to the extent of transcending the series itself (surely you’ve heard about the paper cuts, even if you haven’t seen it?) Forever is just variations on a theme; sometimes literally, as they expressly revisit old stunts in slightly different ways, like testing an athletic cup against various fast-and-hard objects, or pitting ringleader Johnny Knoxville against a bull — a stunt that ends rather seriously. Maybe if the film had taken that as a cue to say something about mortality or ageing… but that wouldn’t be so much fun, would it?

So, it is what it is, which is it what it always has been: a bunch of silliness, usually resulting in pain and injury for the cast, and sometimes in laughter for the audience. It’s not the best Jackass film, but it’s not so significantly inferior as to warrant a lower rating. If you were a fan back in the day, you might appreciate the value of hanging out with old favourites for one last rodeo. And if you’re watching the films afresh, presuming you enjoyed them enough to get through the first three, you may as well watch the fourth too.

Jackass Forever is the 3rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.

2022 | Weeks 27–28

Posted on October 19, 2022 by badblokebob

Hello! Yes, it’s me — I am still here. I’ve just been finding my time filled up with other stuff: working on the 2022 iterations of both WOFFF and FilmBath Festival (in addition to the ol’ day job); dogsitting for the in-laws; throwing up from eating bad garlic…

Anyway, here are some reviews of films I watched all the way back in July. (Oh dear, I am behind. Well, let’s see if I can catch up…)

Johnny Gunman (1957)

A Better Tomorrow (1986), aka Ying hung boon sik

Mifune: The Last Samurai (2015)

The Lost Daughter (2021)

Johnny Gunman

(1957)

Art Ford | 67 mins | digital (HD) | 4:3 | USA / English

The history of cinema is littered with fascinating asides and dead ends, and this is one of them: an independent film from before independent films were really a thing; from the time when the studio system was beginning to falter, but the film school auteurs hadn’t yet arrived (Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, et al were still in their teens when this was made).

As with the films that would later break similar new ground after the digital video revolution in the ’90s, there are cracks — it’s amateurish and undeniably low-budget in places — but also artistry — every once in a while it’ll whip out an exceptionally well-lit scene or interesting visual. Story-wise, it’s an odd mix: there’s the noir-ish gangster plot line, which is derivative and clichéd; but it takes over the film from what you feel like it almost wants to be, which is a Before Sunrise-style slice of life. Maybe, in a freer world, that’s what the filmmakers would’ve produced; but when you’re one of the first people trying to break in from the outside, hitting the familiar beats of a genre is no bad idea.

Some of the highlights of the film come at the start, with documentary-like shots of New York street life when our heroine visits the Greenwich Festival. It’s a brief little window into the real 1950s NYC, before the rote gangster plot comes to dominate. Indeed, being shot on location, and with an inexperienced cast, lends the whole production a certain veracity that you don’t always get from soundstage-bound studio pictures of the era. On the other hand, that’s also what gives it the rough edges that will make it unpalatable to some viewers.

However you cut it, this is hardly a forgotten gem, but it’s an interesting detour of movie history that I’m glad I stumbled across.

Johnny Gunman is the 45th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

A Better Tomorrow

(1986)

aka Ying hung boon sik

A Better Tomorrow was the first in a run of modern-day gangster action movies that would make director John Woo’s name. Its original Chinese title translates as True Colours of a Hero, which is just as apt: it’s about a pair of mid-level crooks, one of whose brother is a cop, and the ways and whys in which they try and fail to escape the criminal life.

Woo’s style was cutting edge back in the day, but that day is now pushing 40 years ago. Of course, his flamboyant style has never been to some people’s taste (witness the dismissive stance some still take towards M:i-2). Viewed now, this is cheesier and less stylistically polished than his later career-defining HK films like The Killer or Hard Boiled, but, on the couple of occasions it does explode into action, it’s suitably grandiose, and it has an engaging storyline and character dynamics.

In regards to the latter, you can definitely see why Chow Yun-Fat was the breakout star. He’s actually got a supporting role, but his charisma shines off the screen, and there’s a plausibility to the way he handles the action. (Ironically, although it made Chow an action icon, he was cast because Woo didn’t think he looked like an action star.)

Not Woo’s strongest film, then, but a definite sign of someone headed in the right direction — and, clearly, his later work paid off that promise.

A Better Tomorrow is the 46th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2022.

Mifune: The Last Samurai

(2015)

Steven Okazaki | 77 mins | DVD | 16:9 | USA & Japan / English & Japanese | 12

At just an hour and a quarter, this biography of the actor Toshiro Mifune feels more like a primer on his work and life (complete with newcomer-friendly contextual asides into the history of Japanese cinema, the career of Akira Kurosawa, etc) rather than the deep-dive exploration of the man and his legacy that some reviewers hoped for. I certainly learnt stuff, but such criticism has validity. For that reason, the less you know about Mifune (and Kurosawa), the more you’ll get out of the film. That said, it might pay to have already seen some of their films — it’s not that director Steven Okazaki doesn’t introduce and summarise them adequately; more that, if you’ve seen them, you know the full context.

Nonetheless, a good range of interviewees ensure the documentary is not without insight, managing to explore both what made Mifune the man tick and what made him such a phenomenal screen presence. Plus, the fact that Okazaki is happy to explain contextual topics (like a history of chanbara films; or matters of social history, like what losing World War 2 was like for the Japanese people) is both education and useful, because I imagine most non-Japanese viewers don’t have much baseline knowledge about this stuff. The film is definitely a biography of Mifune (not, say, a history of 20th century Japan using the actor as a gateway), but there’s much to be gleaned here for the interested viewer.

Mifune: The Last Samurai is the 47th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

The Lost Daughter

(2021)

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, based on a novel by Elena Ferrante, stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a woman on holiday alone in Greece, where she encounters a young mother (Dakota Johnson) whose daughter briefly goes missing, reminding Leda of her own younger days, when she was played by Jessie Buckley and had a husband and two daughters herself.

It’s perhaps initially difficult to pin down exactly what The Lost Daughter is driving at — I suspect it’s the kind of film in which some people would say nothing happens. But it’s really a kind of mystery, where the mystery is the lead character’s psychology: why is she like this? There’s also the more obvious mystery of what exactly happened in her past, but that isn’t solved so much as gradually doled out in flashbacks. Obviously that kind of story relies a lot on its performances, and Colman is as strong as ever. So much of the importance of the film, which lies in her character and emotion, is conveyed without dialogue. That’s not do down the able support from Buckley and Johnson, mind.

Gyllenhaal’s direction is interesting and effective, using lots of fairly extreme close-ups to give a kind of tactile sensation to the film. On the other hand, I would say it feels a little longer than necessary (especially after the ‘reveal’ scene, where the final piece of the puzzle clicks), and I’m not convinced it knows how to end (or perhaps it’s my fault for not really ‘getting’ the finale).

Overall, though, it’s an impressive debut from Gyllanhaal, and a great alternative perspective on motherhood.

2022 | Weeks 12–13

Posted on May 15, 2022 by badblokebob

So, it’s already the 15th — fundamentally halfway through the month — and this is just my ffith post in May. (It would’ve been third, but then my West Side Story and F9 reviews felt like they should have their own posts.) In my mind, I’ve raced this batch out as quickly as possible following my start-of-month posts, but it certainly doesn’t feel very speedy when you look at the dates.

And, talking about messing with time, this roundup begins by taking us all the way back to March: week 12 ended on the 27th of that month. I might’ve posted sooner, were it not that week 12 seemed too small to run by itself. For what it’s worth, week 13 ended on 3rd April, so I’m still over a month behind now.

Anyway, here are the rest of the new films I watched that fortnight…

Muriel’s Wedding (1994)

Cobra (1986)

Django & Django (2021)

A Man Escaped (1956), aka Un condamné à mort s’est échappé

Death on the Nile (2022)

Muriel’s Wedding

(1994)

This is one of those films I’ve been sort of aware of forever, but never really paid a huge amount of attention, until suddenly I’m watching it almost on a whim. It’s the story of the misadventures of small-town Australian girl Muriel (a breakout performance from Toni Collette), who doesn’t fit with her family or ‘friends’ and so sets off to the big city for a different life.

I don’t know what I was expecting from the film, exactly — a kooky Aussie romcom, I guess — but not a surprisingly dark, quirky almost to the point of being twisted, black comedy. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it kind of bamboozled me by being a lot odder and more tonally complex than I’d anticipated. I liked it, but it’s a weird one.

Cobra

(1986)

This is the kind of film I might never have watched were it not for my WDYMYHS challenge. It’s a film I’d heard very little about, and what I had heard wasn’t good, but when it came to selecting the 12 most significant films I hadn’t seen from 1986, it scraped in. I’m glad things like that happen, because while Cobra is far from being a new favourite or something, I did enjoy it.

Sly Stallone stars as a hot-shot cop on the trail of a serial killer with cult affiliations. That’s about it for the plot. This is a film that’s all style and no substance — though, when you’ve got this much style, maybe that is the substance. It’s so much a stereotypical ’80s macho action fest that it plays like a spoof of itself in places, with over-the-top editing, performances, and one liners that all seem driven by some sense of ‘cool’. I kinda love it for that. Take the car chase at the halfway mark: it’s a ludicrous sequence (one bit barely connects to the next; cars explode when shot; etc), but it’s filmed and cut with style and packed with excitement. It’s epic.

Remarkably, it’s based on a novel. I say that’s remarkable because novels are devoid of being able to show off flashy visuals or dynamic action sequences, so you think of them as being heavier on things like plot and character — but, as discussed, this has very little plot, and even less character development. The already-brief running time seems to mostly contain music montages and extended action scenes. Reportedly the original cut was around two hours, which was then mercilessly shorn down to the under-90-minute final cut in an attempt to squeeze in more screenings per day. I imagine a lot of what went was the plot, although apparently there was also a lot of graphic violence — and what we’re left with still earnt an 18.

I guess if a “director’s cut” was going to surface it would’ve done so by now (given all the other films that got them back in the ’00s). It’s something of a shame, because perhaps that version would round out the storyline enough to match the flair that’s all we get from the existing cut. Really, it’s a trashy film, but I rather enjoyed its trashiness. As stated, it’s all style and, at just 87 minutes, all business.

Cobra is the 23rd film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2022.

Django & Django

(2021)

The work of the “second-best Spaghetti Western director”, Sergio Corbucci, is analysed by admirer Quentin Tarantino, and supplemented with a handful of anecdotes from a couple of people who worked with him. The small number of interviewees means the film is lacking in the depth you get from having multiple perspectives, but it’s a fine overview of Corbucci’s work nonetheless.

Indeed, the title — implying a focus on two specific films — is a bit of a misnomer. Not only is it about Corbucci’s career as a whole, with Django just one film among many, but there’s only a single clip from Django Unchained, when QT mentions how Corbucci’s style influenced his choice of Southern setting. That’s it for discussion of Tarantino’s own work — barring a lengthy opening aside into the alternate history of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; a ‘short story’ about Rick Dalton’s time in Italy and his meetings with Corbucci. Tarantino relates these events as if they’re historical fact — the guy really did thoroughly imagine his alternate history!

Django & Django is the 24th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

A Man Escaped

(1956)

aka Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut

Most “prisoner of war” movies are about plucky Brits and/or Yanks stuck in jail somewhere behind enemy lines, working out ways to escape almost as a time killer, or at best a matter of honour. A Man Escaped is something different. Based on the memoirs of André Devigny, a member of the French Resistance held in a French prison by the occupying Germans during World War II, and written and directed by Robert Bresson, who was also imprisoned by the Germans as a member of the Resistance, you can’t doubt its pedigree for authenticity. Indeed, Devigny was an adviser on the film, and lent the production the actual ropes and hooks he had used in his escape. More than these points of fact, it’s the film’s overall tone that’s striking — more dour and pessimistic than the usual POW drama, at least as I remember them. Here, the need to escape isn’t a game, it’s literally life or death.

Bresson certainly knows where he wants his focus to be. The film begins with our hero, Fontaine (François Leterrier), arriving at the prison, although an escape attempt on the way there sees him immediately condemned to solitary confinement. Nonetheless, we remain by his side, never leaving him or his point of view, right until the end, when… well, that would be a spoiler. In terms of background, there’s only what we can pick up along the way; the barest outline of who he is, why he’s there, and what awaits him on the outside. That’s extraneous detail — this is all about his time in prison, his mentality in prison, and how he intends to escape the prison.

To that end, Bresson spends a lot of time detailing very little. The process by which Fontaine fashions ropes, or chips away at a crack in his door to facilitate a way out, is shown in almost-excruciating detail. It’s all about the prep. When something truly dramatic does happen — like Fontaine gaining a roommate, and the question of whether that man can be trusted — it’s dealt with quickly, confined to a couple of quick scenes. I can only think that’s part of the point: much of the work to escape prison is tedious preparation, but when a spanner gets in the works it has to be dealt with quickly lest it derail the whole enterprise. Such ‘big things’ are a potential threat, but it’s arguably the little things that are even more dangerous. Accidentally drop something noisily, thus alerting the guards to your suspicious activities, and it’s all over.

As a film, it doesn’t feel as strikingly stylised as the other Bressons I’ve seen, but it definitely has a stripped-back simplicity that’s part of his overall ethos. It’s debatable if we need the semi-monotone voiceover that describes exactly what we can see on screen — I’m no expert, but such an unnecessary and purely cinematic addition seems out of sorts with Bresson’s usual style. That said, at points it adds insight into Fontaine’s thought process, so the narration is not without merit.

A Man Escaped is the 25th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2022.

Death on the Nile

(2022)

Kenneth Branagh returns as both director and star for another Hercule Poirot mystery, after the somewhat-surprising success of his Murder on the Orient Express — “surprising” in the sense that it did better at the box office than I think anyone expected. It performed less well with critics, but I enjoyed it. Sadly, this followup is not its equal… though that’s not necessarily saying it’s bad.

For me, it was a film of two halves — although, often as not, those two halves occurred simultaneously. For example: there’s an over-reliance on CGI for the Egyptian vistas makes many scenes look disappointingly fake; but then there’s a fantastic, huge set for the boat where much of the film takes place, and the real-life elements are quite handsomely shot on 65mm. Story-wise, there’s been a lot of rejigging (try to line up the cast with who played the roles in previous adaptations, for example, and you’ll soon discover a lot of the characters are amalgamations), but Christie’s typically excellent plotting survives mostly intact. That said, the ratio of buildup to detective work feels off, with the murder seeming to occur quite late in the film and the subsequent investigation feeling rather rushed.

The motive behind screenwriter Michael Green’s remixing seems to be a serious attempt to make the film All About Love — not just the motive for the crimes, but all the subplots and whatnot too. I guess they were seeking some kind of justification for why this story is being filmed again, and what makes it worthy of the all-star movie treatment, rather than being just a run-of-the-mill, see-it-every-week-on-TV whodunnit. Plus, there’s a bizarre attempt to provide a backstory for Poirot’s moustache. No, seriously.

Branagh initially seemed miscast as Poirot, but wasn’t bad in Orient Express, and that continues here. His version of the character is rather likeable, imbuing the Belgian with a neat sense of humour that marks his interpretation out from previous incarnations (Ustinov often played it for laughs too, but with less subtlety). There’s the customary all-star supporting cast, but they’re somewhat wasted, with some big names or talented performers left with too little to do. Though, when about half of them are employing dodgy accents, maybe that’s no bad thing.

A mixed bag, then. It’s far from my favourite Christie adaptation; although it might actually be my favourite Death on the Nile by default, because I don’t think the previous versions (a Ustinov film and Suchet TV episode) are the best their respective series have to offer either. Whatever — I love this kind of stuff, and I’m glad to hear they’re intending to forge ahead with a third outing.

Death on the Nile is the 26th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

2022 | Weeks 9–11

Posted on April 5, 2022 by badblokebob

Right, let’s try (again) to get things back on track.

These compilations were/are meant to keep my reviewing roughly up-to-date with my viewing, but I don’t think stuffing them with too many films at once is the right way to go. I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel like five or six per post is about right (with some leeway, of course — I’m sure four or seven would be fine too). However, dividing like that means getting out of sync with Real Life, so I suppose I should clarify when “weeks 9–11” were: Monday February 28th to Sunday 20th March, to be precise. And back then, I watched…

Tintin and the Temple of the Sun (1969), aka Tintin et le temple du soleil

Los Olvidados (1950), aka The Young and the Damned

The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee (2020)

The King’s Man (2021)

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)

Nothing Like a Dame (2018)

Tintin and the Temple of the Sun

(1969)

aka Tintin et le temple du soleil / The Adventures of Tintin: The Prisoners of the Sun

Eddie Lateste* | 75 mins | DVD | 4:3 | Belgium & France / English | U

This fourth big-screen outing for the Belgian reporter also continues the popular TV series, Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin, made by Belgian studio Belvision from 1957 to 1962. Having adapted ten of Hergé’s volumes for TV, here they tackled two more: two-parter The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun. The story sees Tintin and chums head to Peru on the trail of their kidnapped friend, Professor Calculus, and to investigate an Incan curse that has befallen a previous party of archaeologists.

Trekking up mountains and through jungles, with nefarious agents in pursuit, plus all the to-do with ancient curses and whatnot, this is chock-a-block with good old “Boy’s Own Adventure” stuff. As with so many of those, the joy lies in being swept along with the adventure rather than thinking about it too hard (our heroes are saved at the end because the Captain happens to have a scrap of newspaper that Snowy happens to steal that Tintin happens to fancy having a look at that happens to mention a handy forthcoming event). By the same token, there’s also the unavoidable effects of time: some of it feels a teensy bit racist nowadays; Tintin makes his way through the jungle merrily murdering animals left, right and centre. The animation itself is fine, with designs and an overall visual style that emulate Hergé well, but it does have a certain TV-ness.

It’s also not available in the greatest of copies, at least to English-language viewers. Reportedly the original version contains two songs, both of which were cut from the UK video release, but only one of which has been restored for the DVD (and, I presume, the version currently available to stream from Apple, etc). Although most of the film is dubbed, the song is in the original French, unsubtitled; and has clearly been edited, because there are digital freeze frames around it. At the start of the film, the title card has been replaced in a similarly awkward fashion. Then there’s the 5.1 remix, which seems to be missing some effects and music cues. You can still enjoy the majority of the film despite these distractions, but it’s disappointing that we still have to put up with such palaver nowadays.

Tintin and the Temple of the Sun is the 19th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

* Many (but not all) online sources list Lateste as the director, including IMDb, but the film itself doesn’t actually credit him — the only director-like credit is for “Belvision”. Lateste is credited as one of the screenwriters, at least. ^

Los Olvidados

(1950)

aka The Young and the Damned

Combine the literal translation of the film’s title — The Forgotten Ones — with the US retitling — The Young and the Damned — and you build a sense of what Los Olvidados (as it’s been released in the UK) is about. To be clearly, it’s a socially-realist depiction of life for children in the slums of Mexico City. Although initially condemned (according to IMDb, it only played for three days in Mexico before the “enraged reactions” of the press, government, and upper- and middle-class audiences caused it to be pulled), it’s since been reevaluated as one of the greats of Latin American cinema. Certainly, watching it after films like The 400 Blows (made almost a decade later), City of God (over 50 years later), and Capernaum (almost 70 years later), its influence is felt.

The downside to that is the film feels somewhat less fresh and more worthy than the later efforts. It’s got an overt anti-poverty message that is admirable but sometimes heavy-handed (a school principal character feels like he’s been inserted just to state the film’s thesis out loud) or naïvely optimistic (the opening voiceover asserts that child poverty will ultimately be solved by progress. Over 70 years later, I don’t think progress is doing a great job…) While much of the movie works at its intended goal, when aspects like these intrude it stops feeling like a realistic depiction of poverty and more like a straightforward polemic about how it should be fixed. On the bright side, it avoids the lure of a pat happy ending — although one was actually discovered in 2002, apparently shot to appease Mexican censors. Clearly they managed to get the film released without having to cave on that point, and it’s better for it.

Los Olvidados is the 20th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2022.

The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee

(2020)

Not a fourth Crocodile Dundee film, but rather a depiction of the accidentally-chaotic life of that series’ leading man, Paul Hogan, the archetypal Aussie now living in LA and, reaching his 80s, somewhat bemused by the modern world.

Even from that quick summary, you can tell it’s not a terribly original premise. Couple that with a clearly small budget and you have a recipe for many dismissing the film out of hand. Personally, I found it to be surprisingly enjoyable, in a laidback, undemanding way. None of it is properly hilarious (though a bizarre musical sequence comes close), but it’s kinda amiable, and almost heartwarming at the end. Discerning viewers should perhaps not apply, but if you have any affection for the second or third Crocodile Dundee films (again, widely maligned instalments that I found passably entertaining), this is worth a punt.

The King’s Man

(2021)

Co-writer/director Matthew Vaughn expands the Kingsman universe with this World War I-era prequel that delves into the backstory of how the eponymous organisation was founded. Unlike so many prequels, this does feel like a story worth telling — we don’t necessarily need it, but it’s not merely an exercise in visualising events we’ve already been told, or coming up with over-elaborate reasons for people’s names or whatever (why couldn’t Han Solo’s birth name have just been Han Solo, hm?)

The story begins with Europe on the brink of war, and our heroes — led by the Duke of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) — attempting to stop it. History tells us they fail, and so the narrative unfurls across WWI as they try to bring it to a close. That will see them come up against the manipulations of Rasputin (Rhys Ifans), who’s part of a secret organisation plotting to bring down the great empires.

Let’s cut to the chase: the Kingsman films have a rep for elaborate fight scenes set to pop music. One of the major villains is Rasputin. You only need a passing familiarity with the disco hits of the ’70s to know what I was looking forward to here. Well, it doesn’t happen. Indeed, that stylistic calling card is more or less entirely abandoned (the fight does happen, of course, but it’s set to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture — kind of like era-appropriate ‘pop’ music, I guess?) Apparently Vaughn did originally intend the sequence to be set to an orchestral version of the song in question, but ultimately felt it didn’t work.

This, perhaps, speaks to another concern I had going in, which was that Kingsman’s highly irreverent, almost satirical tone might clash with the all-too-real WWI setting. Such an historical tragedy doesn’t feel right to be made light of in that way, even over a century later. So, as if to compensate, Vaughn and co have toned down the humour, making The King’s Man fairly serious… but without fully sacrificing the near-whimsy at other times, because, well, it’s part of the franchise. The result is a little awkward, tonally, swinging back and forth between historical seriousness and franchise-establishing fun. Put another way, it’s hamstrung by being an entry in a series known for its irreverence that feels the need to show due reverence to WWI. That’s a clash of values it struggles with, some might say admirably, but can’t quite reconcile. In short, it’s too serious to be a Kingsman film, but too Kingsman-y to be a standalone WWI-set action-adventure.

I wouldn’t say it’s a disaster, by any means — but then, I enjoyed The Golden Circle when many lambasted it, so make of that what you will. Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to the next film getting back to Eggsy & co in the present day.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

(1988)

Michael Caine and Steve Martin star as a couple of chalk-and-cheese con men, pilfering the fortunes of wealthy single ladies on the French Riviera, in this fun con caper with a neat sting in its tail.

Caine hits just the right note as a charming con artist, his manner inspired by David Niven, who played the role in the original, 1964’s Bedtime Story. I was unaware the film was a remake until after watching it, though I did know it was itself subject to a gender-bent do-over in 2019, The Hustle. I don’t know how similar Bedtime Story and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels are, but, based on its trailer, The Hustle seems to be a direct lift from this, albeit peppered with the kind of pratfalling that’s de rigueur in modern big screen comedy.

Marlon Brando was Niven’s co-lead, whereas here Caine gets Steve Martin as the very embodiment of a brash American — a little too brash, if anything, though reportedly there were bits he actually reined in. The running time could have done with a similar consideration, because it’s a little long for its breezy premise and tone (running 110 minutes, it would be better nearer 90), but that’s a minor complaint — it rarely feels too slow or draggy, just a little long overall.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is the 21st film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Nothing Like a Dame

(2018)

aka Tea with the Dames

Four thespian friends, Dames all — Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, and Maggie Smith — gather for a natter about their careers and lives. That’s it, that’s the film.

Given the setup, plus the style of advertising and US retitle, you’d be forgiven for expecting a gentle bit of fluff; eavesdropping on a pleasant chinwag with four venerable British actresses. The film is that, in places, but it also has a surprising undercurrent of sadness running throughout, as these ageing ladies reflect on the ups and downs of their careers and personal lives now that they’re (shall we say) closer to the end than the beginning. It rarely bubbles to the surface, but it always feels like it’s there, somehow inescapable.

If that gives proceedings more texture than you might’ve expected, then the film’s biggest flaw lies elsewhere. For me, it’s that it wasn’t long enough. The conversations are often delightful and occasionally insightful, but you feel like there’s so much more to be gleaned from these women. The film chops about between topics and pairings, always feeling like we’re getting snippets of the full conversation, never the true depth; like we’re watching a highlights reel of what should be a three-hour series, or something like that. I know it’s an old theatrical adage to “leave ’em wanting more”, but I really did want some more.

Archive 5, Vol.5

Posted on February 22, 2022 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 427 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2021 viewing. This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today, melancholic Frenchmen, screwball Americans, and royal Africans are followed by a superhero team-up and a lesson on the evils of social media.

This week’s Archive 5 are…

La Belle Époque (2019)

The Awful Truth (1937)

Coming to America (1988)

Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2018)

The Social Dilemma (2020)

La Belle Époque

(2019)

Sixtysomething Victor (Daniel Auteuil) is officially a grumpy old man, and his marriage is on the rocks because of it. To cheer him up, his son buys him an experience with his friend’s company, who stage bespoke historical reenactments as a form of time travel. When Victor’s wife finally has enough and throws him out, he uses his experience to revisit 1974, when they first met and fell in love.

To oversimplify things, it’s kind of like Groundhog Day by way of Charlie Kaufman: the immersive theatrical experience recalls Synechdoche, New York (in a superficial way, I guess), and Victor’s desire to live it over and over again is, well, obvious. Except he’s not stuck there, but choosing it. It’s a mix of nostalgia and melancholy, because, of course, he’s not actually reliving that day, however much he comes to believe in it.

Advance reviews led me to believe La Belle Époque would be little more than a pleasant diversion, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It clearly has something to say as regards the power of nostalgia and the need to live in the present. But, deep thoughts aside, it’s also a charmingly romantic film — sharply witty, unexpectedly beautiful in places, and genuinely emotional by the end. It’s a shame that it seems to have had half-hearted distribution outside of France (perhaps the fault of it being acquired by Disney, I suspect with an English-language remake in mind, rather than a ‘proper’ distributor of foreign fare who would’ve shown it more love) because I think it deserves, and would reward, a wide audience.

La Belle Époque was #140 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2019. It placed 7th on my list of The 15 Best Films of 2019.

The Awful Truth

(1937)

When Leo McCarey received his Best Director Oscar for this film, he said that he got it for the wrong film — a clear reference to his fondness for Make Way for Tomorrow, which he made the same year. I’m not wholly sure I agree with him, although Tomorrow’s is clearly the ‘worthier’ picture — but that doesn’t always mean better.

The Awful Truth was the first of three screen pairings of Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, and the film that refined the latter’s famous screen persona. Here, the duo play a married couple who begin to divorce, only to then interfere with each other’s further romances. When it’s on form, the film is up there with the best of its subgenre: a sparkling screwball comedy with glorious dialogue, a pair of splendid lead performances, and a magnificent dog. Unfortunately, it goes on a mite too long and begins to lose steam in the final act. While that might hold the film back from perfection (and so open the door to the idea that Make Way for Tomorrow is somehow superior), the magnificence of what comes before means it’s still a must-see for fans of this style of comedy.

The Awful Truth was #95 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Coming to America

(1988)

Eddie Murphy plays a pampered but bored African prince, who dodges an arranged marriage to travel to America and find a bride. With that plot and the fact it was made a few decades ago, I was half expecting Coming to America to have aged badly. If nothing else, it seemed primed to base its humour around cringe-inducing culture-clash awkwardness — not necessarily an invalid kind of comedy, but not one I personally enjoy.

As it turns out, it’s nothing of the sort. In fact, it’s actually rather sweet and kind-hearted, with just enough lewdness to give it a kick rather than make it eye-rollingly vulgar (I’m sure it would only take a couple of minor trims to get that 15/R rating down to a 12/PG-13). Some have criticised it for being too slow — including director John Landis, who asked Paramount if he could re-edit it for the Blu-ray release (they refused) — but I thought it was quite well paced. It doesn’t move at whipcrack speed, but it doesn’t need to. All in all, it holds up well enough that I can see why they decided to produce a belated sequel (which is still on my watchlist).

Coming to America was #28 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Scooby-Doo! & Batman:
The Brave and the Bold

(2018)

Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold

There are an awful lot of Batman movies nowadays (58 and counting, according to my Letterboxd list), but I thought I was at least aware of them all. Turns out not, because I hadn’t even heard of this one until I happened to see someone log it on Letterboxd several years after its release. (It’s a direct-to-video production that they didn’t bother to release on Blu-ray, so that’ll be a big part of why it slipped under my radar.)

A plot description is pretty unnecessary here: the title tells you all you need to know. The reason it’s a particularly unwieldy one is because Scooby-Doo and friends team-up with, specifically, the Batman from animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold. I watched a selection of episodes from that show a few years ago and, frankly, didn’t enjoy most of them (although a couple are excellent: Mayhem of the Music Meister is so good I watched it twice in as many days, which regular readers will know is very unlike me), so I didn’t have high hopes for this movie either.

At least it’s an appropriate iteration of Batman to crossover with Scooby-Doo, because (a) the whole point of the show was team-ups, with every episode seeing Batman join forces with a different DC hero (the subtitle is derived from a classic DC team-up comic), and (b) the overall tone of the show was camp and comical, which chimes well with Scooby-Doo. In fact, despite Scooby-Doo getting top billing, the film is really a feature-length episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold guest starring Mystery Inc, rather than the other way round. I mean, it’s set in Gotham City, stuffed with appearances and cameos by other DC characters, and (most of all) it uses The Brave and the Bold’s animation style, even featuring a version of the series’ title sequence and theme music — with a Scooby makeover, of course. Nonetheless, it also adopts plenty of the tropes of a Scooby-Doo story, like the unmasking at the end.

Thanks to all that, it’s everything you’d expect from “Scooby-Doo meets Batman” — they leave nothing on the table, right down to having Scooby actually say, “Holy Scooby-Dooby-Doo, Batman!” And would you have it any other way? It’s a daft concept, mashing these two cheesy franchises together — there’s no point trying to be above it. By embracing what it is, it delivers what you’d expect as well as could be imagined. For that, I quite enjoyed it on the whole. And so I would say that, if the basic idea of it doesn’t interest you, give it a miss; but if you think it sounds potentially appealing, you should definitely watch it.

Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold was #105 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

The Social Dilemma

(2020)

One of those Netflix documentaries that everyone seems to be talking about for a while but then forgets just as quickly, The Social Dilemma is essentially about how dangerous social media is, as told to us by the people who created it. Not the Mark Zuckerberg of the world, obviously — they’re still raking in far too much cash to want to dissuade us from using their products — but various other developers and whatnot who’ve been involved over the years.

Naturally, the main reaction to all this information is: “OMG, I totally need to change all my social media habits!” And do people? Not as far as I’ve seen. As one contributor in the doc comments, “knowing what was going on behind the curtain, I still wasn’t able to control my usage. So that’s a little scary.” Eesh. We’re doomed.

The Social Dilemma was #20 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

2022 | Weeks 4–6

Posted on February 18, 2022 by badblokebob

It’s been a busy start to the year… at my day job, which has had the knock-on effect of lower film viewing than has been the case in recent years. (I say that, but as February passes its midpoint, I’ve actually watched slightly more films than I had at the same point in 2020; but the last time I was lower than that was right back in 2014, so…)

As well as work, there’s the psychology of my new reviewing practices. These regular up-to-date roundups have taken me right back to the days when I used to review everything in order, and how not being caught-up on my reviews made me not want to watch anything more. I’m getting those same kinds of twinges now. I need to try to use them to my advantage — take the time to read more books or something.

Anyway, enough about me — let’s have some film reviews…

Voyage of Time: An IMAX Documentary (2016)

L’avventura (1960)

She’s Gotta Have It (1986)

Don’t Look Up (2021)

Jackass: The Movie (2002)

Jackass Number Two (2006)

Voyage of Time

(2016)

aka Voyage of Time: An IMAX Documentary / Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience

Calling a film “a visual poem” sounds either clichéd or pretentious, or both, but how else to accurately describe this work by Terrence Malick? It’s labelled “a documentary”, because only because it’s not strictly fiction — if you come looking for the kind of education you’d get from something narrated by David Attenborough or Brian Cox, say, then I think you’d leave disappointed.

No, film-as-poetry is the most appropriate way to attempt to engage with Voyage of Time; and, as with so much written poetry, your personal tolerance for and interest in it will vary. That’s how I found it, anyway: like most poetry, I felt I should appreciate it, but really was glad it was quite short. (The non-IMAX version of the film, subtitled Life’s Journey, runs about twice as long.) There’s some stunning photography, of everything from the birth of the universe to prehistoric vistas (presumably shot in remote modern-day locales rather than computer-generated), and Brad Pitt occasionally whispers some abstrusely meaningful ponderings over the top. As much as the pretty pictures are a draw, you can also find gorgeous nature photography in a BBC Attenborough documentary, and you’ll learn something at the same time.

The IMAX version of the film has been streaming on MUBI since the end of last year, and they definitely sold it on the visual experience, boasting about offering it in 4K. I found the quality to be variable, with the stream unable to keep its end up for the whole running time, sometimes sinking to sub-1080p levels, becoming blocky and compressed. This is why physical media remains the best, when possible.

Voyage of Time: An IMAX Documentary is the 11th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

L’avventura

(1960)

aka The Adventure

I don’t have a great track record for enjoying acclaimed classic Italian cinema (neither Bicycle Thieves nor 8½ were to my taste, for example), so I’ve put off watching L’avventura for years, expecting I wouldn’t get on with it. But, inevitably, I had to face it someday… and, as it turned out, I really liked it… for a while…

The film begins with Claudia (Monica Vitti) and her wealthy friend Anna (Lea Massari) meeting up with the latter’s wealthy boyfriend, Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), to go for a cruise on the yacht of some other wealthy friends. When they dock on a small island, Anna goes missing. The party scour the island, but there’s no sign of her. Police and divers arrive, but no luck. Reports suggest maybe she boarded another boat; possibly she was kidnapped. The wealthy friends quickly drift back to their lives, but Claudia and Sandro keep searching, following scant clues. Soon they too begin to get distracted — by each other.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that L’avventura starts out looking like a missing-person mystery only to get sidetracked into being a kind of romantic drama. I certainly knew that going in; and it’s probably beneficial to know it, spoiler or not, so as to manage your expectations of the film appropriately. Anyone expecting a Christie-style hunt through clues and suspects until the truth is unearthed will come away severely disappointed. No, this is the Mystery genre reimagined through an arthouse lens: it’s inconclusive, more interested in the characters than the hunt they’re on, and notoriously slow paced.

With that in mind, I was surprised by how effective I found the mystery part of the movie. It’s not a whistle-stop action-adventure, but it’s not significantly slower than your average murder mystery, and accusations of it being uneventful seem misplaced — if I were expecting it to unfold like a regular mystery, there’d be plenty of places to look out for clues. It’s as the film shifts more towards Claudia and Sandro’s burgeoning romance that it begins to drag. The pair start just hanging around places as tourists, at which it does begin to seem like nothing’s happening and so what’s the point? The conceit of them falling for each other when they’re meant to be searching for someone they mutually care about is a good storyline, but I wasn’t convinced by how it played out. There doesn’t seem to be any time when they’re actually falling in love, they just suddenly are. Maybe I’m missing some point there. Or maybe it’s beside the point. Until I can work that one out, I’m going to have to chalk this up as half great, half A Shame.

L’avventura is the 12th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of Blindspot 2022.

She’s Gotta Have It

(1986)

Spike Lee’s post-student debut concerns twentysomething Brooklynite Nora Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns), who’s openly dating three men: upright ‘nice guy’ Jamie (Tommy Redmond Hicks), preening model Greer (John Canada Terrell), and streetwise Mars (Lee himself). And let’s not be coy (because the film certainly isn’t): she’s not just dating them, she’s sleeping with them all. The story of this love ‘square’ is partially narrated to camera by its four participants, as well as some of Nora’s other friends and acquaintances.

It’s kinda crazy to think that the American indies were making sexually frank films like this and sex, lies and videotape in the late ’80s (a precursor, no doubt, to the wave of ‘real sex’ movies in the early ’00s), while nowadays we regularly get young people on Twitter arguing that no movie ever needs to have a sex scene, ever. So while I’m tempted to describe the film’s views on promiscuity as “then-modern”, perhaps just “modern” will still suffice — it’s certainly taken most (arguably all) of the intervening decades to get rid of the double standard for men and women as regards having multiple partners. That said, what has perhaps changed is our idea of what counts as “sexually explicit”. The film was obviously quite shocking back in its day, with the MPAA insisting on cuts before they’d give it an R (the unrated “director’s cut” had a Criterion LaserDisc release, but hasn’t surfaced anywhere else since), but you’ll see more nudity, more thrusting and moaning, on certain TV shows nowadays.

Sexual stereotypes are not the only ones Lee sought to subvert here, as he also attempts to combat stereotypical depictions of African-Americans on screen — note the prominent message in the end credits that “this film contains are no jerri curls!!! and no drugs!!!” (punctuation as seen on screen). It extends beyond those basic signifiers; for example, how Nora’s three lovers are such different personalities. Partly that makes sense for the plot — that different sides of Nora’s personality like different types of guy — but also it shows different ideas of male Blackness; that The Black Guy is not just one thing. The jazzy score is another definite contrast to what you’d expect from a Hip Young Black Movie in the ’80s. Maybe that’s just Lee’s personal preference, but maybe it’s another conscious subversion of expectations.

Lee’s politics are clear and forthright, but his filmmaking still needed some work. A lot of the film looks great, mostly shot in high-contrast black-and-white (plus one striking, ultra-saturated colour sequence), but some of the editing and performances could use refinement. Rough round the edges though it may be, She’s Gotta Have It is so clearly the calling card of a talented and individual voice with something brand-new to say that those rough edges are almost more of a feature than a bug.

She’s Gotta Have It is the 13th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022. It was viewed as part of “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen…?” 2022.

Don’t Look Up

(2021)

2022 Academy Awards
4 nominations

Nominated: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Original Score.

Having targeted those responsible for the 2008 financial crash in The Big Short, and Dick Cheney and his responsibility for everything bad that’s happened in the last few decades in Vice, writer-director Adam McKay now turns his satirical attention to a fictional scenario, basically so he can have a go at anyone and everyone he feels like. The plot concerns a giant asteroid headed for Earth; an extinction-level event just 6½ months away. But, despite a handful of scientists trying to warn everyone, nobody seems in a great rush to do anything about it. It’s all an allegory for America’s carefree attitude to climate change, see.

Really, this is a film I should be fully onboard with. It’s setting its sights on vacuous mainstream culture and Trumpian politics, after all. The problem is, these targets are low-hanging fruit, and — somewhat ironically, given its title — Don’t Look Up is satisfied with only plucking those lowest branches. Repeatedly. Unhurriedly. When they said the comet was 6½ months away, I didn’t expect the rest of the film to feel like it was covering that in real-time. It needed a better editor, or perhaps a studio who exerted a bit more quality control than Netflix’s famed “do what you want, we’ll just release it” approach. There are funny moments, certainly, but they’re literally few and far between when the pace is languid and the satire so broad, simplistic, and repetitious. Indeed, the most laugh-inducing stuff has nothing to do with the satire at all, just funny bits of business along the way (the best is a running gag about a general and snacks, which keeps cropping up unexpectedly).

And for a film that’s entire thesis is being critical of American attitudes, it’s (again) ironic that it depicts this global crisis as so America-centric. Sure, there are cutaways to people watching events in other parts of the world, and a couple of belated nods to the idea that other countries might have their own thoughts on this impending disaster, but that’s all they are — sops and nods. “If America’s not going to fix this, no one can,” says the film. Ah, fuck off.

Jackass: The Movie

(2002)

Jackass never appealed to me. I was a 14-year-old boy when it started, surely the franchise’s target audience; but I was an intelligent 14-year-old boy, so I was above it. Sorry, not sorry. But with everyone going on about the new movie, and reevaluating the whole franchise as some kind of essential classic of Cinema, I thought it was finally time to see for myself.

For those not au fait with the series, it’s about a bunch of men who clearly aren’t old enough to know better performing stunts and pranks that no one in their right mind should ever want to do anyway. They’re frequently designed to induce pain. They’re often trying to be as crude or gross as possible. Some may make you feel ill just by watching them. And yet others are almost on the level of wholesome fun… albeit “wholesome fun” where you know participants will come away with bruises, at the very least.

Almost everything the guys get up to is “dumb” — that’s kinda the point — and yet… It borders on “educational” when, for example, lead troublemaker Johnny Knoxville submits to being shot by “less lethal” riot control ammunition. The plan was for him to be shot in the chest, but the guys who make the stuff say if it hits his heart it could kill him, so they revise it to him being shot in the abdomen. Whereas most of the other stunts are followed by cutaways to the rest of the crew in hysterics, here the shocked silence of their reaction is telling. Or how about the kinda-feminism of a segment called “Ass Kicked by a Girl”, in which one of the gang enters the ring against a world champion female kickboxer. There’s no “haha, I can take her easily ’cause she’s a girl” posturing: the guy knows he’s about to get his ass handed to him. There’s some kind of respect for women in that, anyway, which you might not expect given the rest of the laddish antics.

Taken as ‘a movie’, it’s rather formless — I suspect the TV show was exactly the same, just shorter — but the rapid-fire, standalone-stunt style does mean that no sketch hangs around too long. Some are literally seconds. But there’s not even a sense of escalation, say — it’s not like they save the largest or most outlandish stunt for the end (although there’s a post-credit scene that seems like it was probably the film’s most expensive single sequence). In some respects it doesn’t matter (who cares about the structure of a Jackass movie?), but in others, it’s what keeps it at the level of “feature-length special” rather than true Movie.

But, ultimately, the important thing is this: some of it is funny. Reader, I laughed.

Jackass Number Two

(2006)

Even Jackass isn’t immune from the law of diminishing returns: after three seasons on TV plus a movie, this second big-screen outing feels kinda uninspired, like they’ve used up all their truly great ideas and are mostly running on fumes. That said, there are some good sequences — a variety of rodeo-based stunts with real live bulls are among the highlights — but other pranks feel reheated, or are just underwhelming; things you suspect would have been rejected in favour of better material before.

In that sense it almost feels like it was rushed out to capitalise on success, but there’s a gap of four years, the TV show had ended, and they hadn’t necessarily intended to do any more — surely the only reason to return, then, was fresh ideas? Or, perhaps, being given the budget to do things they couldn’t before. That might be the case, because some of the material does feel like it’s got too much money and/or time behind it. I say “too much” because I think Jackass works best when it has a rough, cheap, “made at home” vibe. The finale here — a big “old Hollywood”-style musical number, with stunts mixed in — feels particularly out of place. Obviously it’s all a big joke, but the glossy, clearly-expensive visuals don’t feel of the right style.

Plus, at various points you can feel some of the cast are getting genuinely fed up with this shit. Maybe they’d been doing it for too long by this point (I say there was a years-long gap, but some had been involved in spinoff projects). Whatever the reason, it serves to undermine the fun somewhat. One of the reasons you can enjoy these fools doing life-threatening stunts is because they’re volunteering for it and they seem to be having fun, however much they’re getting hurt or disgusted. But if they’re not enjoying it, aren’t we just watching people be tortured for our entertainment? It almost tips it from being stupid-but-funny into exploitative bullying. And we shouldn’t be having to think about anything that deep during a Jackass movie.

As I’ve given both films 3 stars, let’s be clear: I’d definitely rate the sequel lower than the first movie, just not a whole star lower — it doesn’t merit being pulled down to a 2, while the first doesn’t merit a retrospective bump up to 4. If this kind of tomfoolery tickles you, there’s still plenty of entertainment to be had in Number Two, it’s just (mostly) not their finest output — which I guess is kinda apt, given the title.

Jackass Number Two is the 15th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2022.

Archive 5, Vol.4

Posted on February 16, 2022 by badblokebob

I have a backlog of 432 unreviewed feature films from my 2018 to 2021 viewing. This is where I give those films their day, five at a time, selected by a random number generator.

Today: singing vicars, grumpy gamers, very nice Kazakhs, and deleted actors.

This week’s Archive 5 are…

Going My Way (1944)

The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945)

Zero Charisma (2013)

Borat (2006)

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Going My Way

(1944)

The Oscars, eh? Every year film fans pay them a load of attention, and every year we seem to be disappointed with the outcome. But this isn’t some new phenomenon: Going My Way hails from the 1940s, but is perhaps the definitive example of a film that managed to sweep the Oscars (it won seven awards from ten nominations) against a bunch of films that have endured to much greater acclaim (films it competed against included Double Indemnity, Laura, Lifeboat, Gaslight, and Meet Me in St. Louis. I think we can agree those are all better-remembered on the whole).

None of which is to say it’s a bad film. It’s a gently-paced series of vignettes, almost like a collection of short stories, springing from young priest Father O’Malley (Bing Crosby) arriving to take charge of a struggling New York City parish. His modern ways clash with the old-fashioned values of the incumbent Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald), but his worldly knowledge allows him to connect with some of the parish’s disaffected inhabitants. Despite the religious setting, it doesn’t lean too heavily on the wonders of Christianity (you know I’d be the first to rip into it if it did). Overall, it’s perfectly pleasant; an easy afternoon’s viewing.

Incidentally (and here’s a good bit of trivia that might come in handy for a quiz someday), it was the first Oscar Best Picture winner to have a sequel: The Bells of St. Mary’s, released the very next year… and also the very next review in this roundup…

Going My Way was #93 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

The Bells of St. Mary’s

(1945)

This followup to Going My Way was not only the first sequel to an Oscar Best Picture winner, but was also the first sequel to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

Bing Crosby returns as Father O’Malley, sent to a new locale, ready to solve another series of subplots at a struggling religious institution, this time butting heads (sort of — it’s never as dramatic as that makes it sound) with Ingrid Bergman’s head nun. Like the first one, it’s really a bundle of subplots for Bing to ‘solve’. The low-stakes problems and amiable tone between the two leads, even when they’re disagreeing, makes for a gentle and relaxing kind of film. I’d give it the edge over its Oscar-winning predecessor, thanks primarily to Bergman’s performance, but neither film is likely to set anyone’s world alight.

As well as their Oscar success, the films were the highest grossing at the US box office for 1945 and ’46, respectively, another first for a film ‘series’. And yet, with six decades distance, they’re little more than also-rans; nicely obscure trivia answers to “films that won/were nominated for Best Picture”. Maybe there’s a lesson in that for anyone obsessed with the current cultural zeitgeist.

The Bells of St. Mary’s was #187 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2021.

Zero Charisma

(2013)

Katie Graham & Andrew Matthews | 88 mins | digital (HD) | 16:9 | USA / English

I’d nickname this Portrait of a Manbaby on Fire. The manbaby in question is Scott (Sam Eidson), a stereotypical alpha-nerd: he has a neckbeard; he wears black T-shirts that feature elaborate depictions of grim reapers and the like; he lives with his grandma; he paints miniature fantasy figurines; he’s the Game Master of a role-playing group, which he rules with an iron fist. But when into-geeky-stuff hipster Miles (Garrett Graham) joins the group and everyone really likes him, Scott finds his position threatened, and he’s not happy about it.

As much as geek/nerd culture has transitioned into the mainstream over the past couple of decades, there’s still stuff that remains the preserve of the hardcore; the truly nerdy. That culture clash is part of what Zero Charisma is about, of course, with Scott’s true old-fashioned kind of nerdishness clashing with Miles’s new-school cool. But it’s also a character study of the former. Scott may seem a stereotype — like The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy rendered in live-action — but I’d wager anyone who’s moved in nerdish circles has known someone at least a bit like him. Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. The film exposes and examines those to often amusing effect. Some have said it exaggerates these things, but I don’t think it’s particularly guilty of that. Maybe it generalises them, and lumps all the worst characteristics of the extremely nerdy together into one character, but that doesn’t make it inaccurate, just broad.

My only real problem was the ending. There’s a scene where everything comes to a head — a climax, if you will — but, in the wake of that, I felt it lacked adequate resolution. Has Scott learnt anything from this experience? Is he a changed man? Maybe a little, but not completely. To be fair, that’s a realistic character arc, because whose personality changes overnight after a single revelation? And yet it also doesn’t feel like the filmmakers quite know how they want to leave things. If they’d been going for a “change takes time and is incremental, but Scott’s started on that road” kinda message, I would have approved. Instead, the film tries to have its cake and eat it by showing Scott as better on the surface, but then secretly GMing a game where he still behaves like an asshole. Maybe it’s trying to say we can never truly change, however much our flaws are highlighted to us, which would be a pretty glum way to end an otherwise likeable comedy.

Zero Charisma was #109 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

Borat

(2006)

aka Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Ali G’s Sacha Baron Cohen adopts the persona of a Kazakh journalist to ostensibly interview Americans about their culture, but, unbeknownst to them, he’s of course really looking to expose their ludicrous views (you just know that, ten years later, a lot of these people voted for Trump) and take the piss out of them for our entertainment.

As with most sketch-based comedy, the end result is a mixed bag. Sometimes it’s very funny; other times, it’s just being gross for the sake of it, like in a naked fight between Borat and his portly producer. A few bits don’t quite land — sometimes you can feel Baron Cohen’s not getting the response he wanted out of his target — and, even though he’s taking the piss out of people who deserve it, it sometimes gets a bit uncomfortable (though that might just be my English reserve/politeness kicking in and making me cringe). Most of the sketches are quite short, which is nice — they generally don’t outstay their welcome, and, if one isn’t working, you can be assured another will be along shortly.

Borat was #220 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020.

The Thin Red Line

(1998)

An extensive cast of famous actors and recognisable faces star as a battalion of soldiers who spend 2 hours and 51 minutes taking one (1) hill in Terrence Malick’s very Terrence-Malick-y World War 2 movie. I mean, this is a movie about a battle in which the first shots aren’t fired until past the 45 minute mark, but there are plenty of shots showing the minutiae of nature. And there’s a lot of discussion about how there isn’t enough water.

None of which is necessarily a problem — indeed, there are plenty of people who think this is a great movie, and I’m glad for them. But for everyone who loves it, there’s someone who’d call it “pretentious and self-indulgent, despite gun battles and lush cinematography.” I find myself somewhat stuck in the middle. I mean, if you were expecting a normal combat movie from Terrence Malick, more fool you. And it’s unquestionably beautifully shot — so many gorgeous visuals, but also effective camerawork and editing to convey, say, the chaos of battle. But I also found it to be bitty and episodic. Well, calling them “episodes” might be kind — they’re scenes; sometimes less than scenes; just moments, or even shots. It’s like a really long deleted scenes package pretending to be a movie.

Of course, the behind-the-scenes stories sort of support that reading. The first cut clocked in at five hours. It took two editors and thirteen months of post-production to get it to a manageable size. Hans Zimmer composed over four hours of music, but only for a few bits of his work made it into the final cut. Billy Bob Thornton recorded narration for the entire film; the released cut has eight different narrators, but none of Thornton’s work is in there. Many actors thought they had significant roles, but found their performances reduced to little more than cameos. Most famously, Adrien Brody thought he was playing the lead role, only to discover at the premiere that he’s in just a couple of shots, and doesn’t even speak until over halfway through (and then it’s just a brief voiceover). And then there are the actors whose work was left on the cutting room floor: Bill Pullman, Gary Oldman, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen, Martin Sheen, Jason Patric, Mickey Rourke… This movie has more great actors whose performances were deleted entirely than most movies have in their entire cast!

All of which suggests a movie that should be universally recognised as a disaster. That it isn’t — quite the opposite — is testament to something. Maybe someday I’ll rewatch it and find out what.

The Thin Red Line was #77 in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2020. It was viewed as an additional film for Blindspot 2020 after I failed to watch it for WDYMYHS 2019.