[10 for 10... that's 10 movies which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about. Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch. How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?]
In this edition:
The Mask of Zorro - 1998, d. Martin Campbell (Netflix)
Jumanji: The Next Level - 2019, d. Jake Kasdan (AmazonPrime)
F9 - 2021, d. Justin Lin (rental)
Turbo Kid - 2015, d. François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell (AmazonPrime)
Dog Days - 2018, d. Ken Marino (on demand)
Unstoppable - 2010, d. Tony Scott (Disney+/Star)
Charade - 1963, d. Stanley Donen (Netflix)
I really wanted nothing to do with a Zorro movie when it came out 20+ years ago. The property was so old-world to me, that I questioned why, why revive a property that had been long in the tooth even 15 years earlier? I now realize that the franchises of any era are built on the childhood nostalgia of the producers who are in their 40's and 50's at the time, so with pulp heroes like The Phantom, The Shadow, Dick Tracy and Tarzan all getting a go in the 90's, of course Zorro was an option.
Jumanji: The Next Level is a surprisingly entertaining return to the video-game reality established in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Spencer, having seemingly come out of his shell after the last Jumanji adventure finds that his newfound bravado was short lived, and he longs for the Rock-like strength and willpower he had in the game. After he disappears into the game his confused romantic interest Martha joins him, but so do his grandpa Eddie (Danny Devito) and Eddie's antagonistic friend and former business partner Milo (Danny Glover). And unfortunately for Spencer, it's Eddie in Rock's body and Milo get into Kevin Hart's compact frame.
F9, the Fast and Furious Saga, just as with each film in the series before it, takes things to another level. Somehow the budgets get bigger, the action more unbelievably ridiculous, the mythology more intricately (though far from delicately) woven, and the family keeps expanding.
Now, the world's in danger because Jakob (in the form of John Cena, supposedly Vin Diesel's older brother) has allied with some maniac and a returning Cypher (Charlize Theron in a veeery bad wig) and only Dom can stop him. There's some other nonsense with the rest of the gang too, including bringing back supposedly dead Han and, independently of that, some of the other crew from Tokyo Drift who are now rocket scientists for the sole reason that they'll need to launch Roman and Tej into space. Yeah, they go to space... in a car... what of it?
Toasty really seemed quite taken with Turbo Kid in his review years ago, and it stuck with me. But I couldn't get past the very Canadian appearance of it's poster...plus Michael Ironside is who Canadian low-budget filmmakers get to add gravitas (because they can't afford Bruce Willis or Nic Cage). As I've established many times in this blog, I have Canadian inadequacy issues, and it keeps me from even attempting to enjoy most Canadian film and television.
Dog Days is yet another quasi-anthology/ensemble cast romcom in the vein of Love, Actually or New Year's Eve or Valentine's Day or any of those other holiday themed romcoms. Here, it's centred around people with dogs (or people without dogs, as it were).
These are the main threads, but the cast is stacked with others in LA's comedy scene (and from the sketch comedy troupe The State which director Ken Marino was a part). These include Adam Pally, Jessica St. Clare, Thomas Lennon, Lauren Lapkus, Jon Gemberling, Ryan Hansen, David Wain and Tig Notaro.
In 2010, Tony Scott made a movie about a runaway train with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine called Unstoppable. Through a series of silly misfortunes, a train manages to take off, gaining speed, without a conductor. It's carrying hazardous materials, and at a certain point it will hit a bend which will cause it to tip over and contaminate a whole Pennsylvanian town. The events of the film follow the various employees and the corporate train overlords, as well as a couple of hero conductors as they all independently plot on what to do about stopping that dang train.
I'll be honest, I started writing this, the last 10-for-10 ever (or so he says), about 6 weeks ago. I also stopped writing it about 6 weeks ago. Why? Because I've kind of forgotten everything about Charade, which I watched over half a year ago now.
Police Story - 1985, d. Jackie Chan (Crave)
Police Story2 - 1988, d. Jackie Chan (Crave)
Police Story2 - 1988, d. Jackie Chan (Crave)
Wing Chun - 1994, d. Woo-Ping Yuen (dvd)
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I really wanted nothing to do with a Zorro movie when it came out 20+ years ago. The property was so old-world to me, that I questioned why, why revive a property that had been long in the tooth even 15 years earlier? I now realize that the franchises of any era are built on the childhood nostalgia of the producers who are in their 40's and 50's at the time, so with pulp heroes like The Phantom, The Shadow, Dick Tracy and Tarzan all getting a go in the 90's, of course Zorro was an option.
Also no property is ever dead if there's the possibility of making money off it.
Even at that time, 1998, I knew there was something off about casting British (Hopkins) and Spanish (Banderas) actors as a Mexican folk hero (especially when the Spanish are the enemy in the film). Were this made today there would certainly be some noise about it (I think there was even at the time but calling out that kind of casting barely made a dent back then).
But, you know, that aside, (if you can put such things aside) it's a pretty fun romp about legacy and choosing to serve greater good over self, and of course both Hopkins (who I assumed was a mistake) and Banderas are just charismatic as fuck. Zeta-Jones, though a big part of the film, is basically the cliched reactive female of these sorts of things. I was hoping she would have a more to do.
It's perhaps a smidge overlong, but quite, quite watchable, a testament to Campbell's keen sense of adventure and a script that plays nicely with themes of legacy.
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Jumanji: The Next Level is a surprisingly entertaining return to the video-game reality established in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Spencer, having seemingly come out of his shell after the last Jumanji adventure finds that his newfound bravado was short lived, and he longs for the Rock-like strength and willpower he had in the game. After he disappears into the game his confused romantic interest Martha joins him, but so do his grandpa Eddie (Danny Devito) and Eddie's antagonistic friend and former business partner Milo (Danny Glover). And unfortunately for Spencer, it's Eddie in Rock's body and Milo get into Kevin Hart's compact frame.
Honestly, after many months, I can't really tell you too much about the events of the film, except to say that Dwayne Johnson's Devito impersonation is great fun, but it's Hart's Danny Glover impression made me laugh every single moment on screen. The avatars of Jumanji are a suitable mask to explore the emotional subtext of the exterior world, the only problem being we don't really care so much about those characters in the exterior world. While Spencer's feelings of disappointment and insecurity are pretty much expected, it was the emotional underpinning of Eddie and Milo's septuagenarian friendship that really lifted this movie out of its middle ground. There's a whole body-swapping bit in the middle of the picture which gives all the main performers a chance to play as each other, with Karen Gillen getting to really show off her versatility.
There's a plenty of action, most of it fairly non-descript and excessively video-gamey (apt for a video-game movie but not altogether exiting). Overall, enjoyable, but, like the first one, ultimately forgettable, or, at best, kind of indistinguishable from one another.
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F9, the Fast and Furious Saga, just as with each film in the series before it, takes things to another level. Somehow the budgets get bigger, the action more unbelievably ridiculous, the mythology more intricately (though far from delicately) woven, and the family keeps expanding.
In F9, we get our first ever flash-back sequences, to a young Dom Teretto and his heretofore unheard of brother Jakob as they help their father as pit crew for his race car. But when Dom learns that Jakob helped his dad rig his car to fail, thus throwing the race, but causing a fatal accident killing their dad, well, family apparently doesn't mean enough to young Dom.
Now, the world's in danger because Jakob (in the form of John Cena, supposedly Vin Diesel's older brother) has allied with some maniac and a returning Cypher (Charlize Theron in a veeery bad wig) and only Dom can stop him. There's some other nonsense with the rest of the gang too, including bringing back supposedly dead Han and, independently of that, some of the other crew from Tokyo Drift who are now rocket scientists for the sole reason that they'll need to launch Roman and Tej into space. Yeah, they go to space... in a car... what of it?
Helen Mirren gets a driving sequence (and wakes Vin Diesel out of his acting coma, seriously there's infinitely more heat between Mirren and Diesel that between Diesel and any of his other female co-stars in any of his other films...he kind of lights up when she's around...but I mean, who wouldn't?) and there's a whole wonderfully absurd sequence involving magnets that has to be seen to be believed (but even then you won't believe it). Dom at one point even pulls a whole building down upon the dozens of bad guys rushing him because he performs herculean feats now.
I'll pull no punches, this movie is insanely dumb, but it knows it's dumb and doesn't care. In fact it embraces it, and has fun...it's really only Diesel, for the most part, who is taking the whole thing seriously, bless him. I can't believe they make these films. I can't believe I watch these films. I can't believe I like these films. I can't believe so many other people like these films too.
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Toasty really seemed quite taken with Turbo Kid in his review years ago, and it stuck with me. But I couldn't get past the very Canadian appearance of it's poster...plus Michael Ironside is who Canadian low-budget filmmakers get to add gravitas (because they can't afford Bruce Willis or Nic Cage). As I've established many times in this blog, I have Canadian inadequacy issues, and it keeps me from even attempting to enjoy most Canadian film and television.
But, sometimes all one really wants is something familiar, but also new. You know, a simple order for a Sunday afternoon.
Turbo Kid is a post-apocalyptic science-fiction adventure film about a lone teenager who manages to survive the roving gangs and toxic lands with dreams and aspirations of being a hero like Turbo Man from his comic books. He meets a quirky, perky, yet completely capable girl named Apple who follows him around like a lost puppy despite his protestations. They get in trouble with the big mob boss of the wastelands (Michael Ironside) but team up with a rambling vigilante to fight him change the landscape of the wasteland.
The aesthetic of the film is intentionally retro 80's futuristic, as it's post-apocalyptic time period is 1997, which for a film made in 2015 is just so cheeky but they do a great job with it. While being a pretty clean adventure film with a young protagonist, the storytelling aesthetic is paired with a ridiculously cartoonish level of gore. It takes what would otherwise be a PG movie into a hard R rating. It's quite absurd, the blood spray and kill gags which seem so out of step with this otherwise kind of innocent seeming po-ap-for-kids story. I think it's ultimately what distinguishes it, but it's also quite a barrier to get over.
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Dog Days is yet another quasi-anthology/ensemble cast romcom in the vein of Love, Actually or New Year's Eve or Valentine's Day or any of those other holiday themed romcoms. Here, it's centred around people with dogs (or people without dogs, as it were).
Nina Dobrev (Love Hard) is a morning news show host who has a big time will they/won't they with her new cohost (Tone Bell) which becomes more "they will" when their dogs take a shining to one another. Meanwhile, Vanessa Hudgens (The Princess Switch) is a coffee shop employee crushing on the cute veterinarian (Michael Cassidy) who patronizes her establishment, but befriends the dorky Jon Bass (who has been crushing on her) and starts volunteering at his animal care shelter. Eva Longoria and Rob Coddry are new parents to an adopted 9-year-old with whom they are having trouble connecting, but when a stray dog is brought home, the girls starts to open up. But that stray dog is the beloved pet of lonely widower Ron Cephas Jones, who winds up befriending his nuisance teenager, Finn Wolfhard as he helps him look for the dog.
These are the main threads, but the cast is stacked with others in LA's comedy scene (and from the sketch comedy troupe The State which director Ken Marino was a part). These include Adam Pally, Jessica St. Clare, Thomas Lennon, Lauren Lapkus, Jon Gemberling, Ryan Hansen, David Wain and Tig Notaro.
Given the talent involved, this should be a far funnier film than it is, but it's not actually trying to lean into the rom or the com. It's just trying to be like every one of these romcom anthologies, which means it's just the same mixed bag that they all are. It's not an outright disaster but it leans too hard into the sentimentality and tries too hard to tug at the heart strings and you can see the results coming a mile off. The main Dobrev story is weakend by the terrible attempt at recreating a morning talk show vibe (they're typically unscripted and this is so scripted). Hudgen's arc is much better mostly because, well, it's Hudgens, but it suffers a bit with just how dorky Jon Bass plays his role...it's supposed to be charming, but always smacks a bit of desperation. The adoptive parent story and the runoff into the Jones/Wolfhard story are both emotionally resonant, but don't fit well into the romcom mainline vibe.
It's not the worst of this style of film.
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In 2010, Tony Scott made a movie about a runaway train with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine called Unstoppable. Through a series of silly misfortunes, a train manages to take off, gaining speed, without a conductor. It's carrying hazardous materials, and at a certain point it will hit a bend which will cause it to tip over and contaminate a whole Pennsylvanian town. The events of the film follow the various employees and the corporate train overlords, as well as a couple of hero conductors as they all independently plot on what to do about stopping that dang train.
It's not an outright silly movie concept, and were it made in the 70's there would be a very grounded feel to it, as well as a very modest amount of action. In Tony Scott's hands, this thing just keeps ramping up, with the train crashing into things and helicopters and hopping from train to train and all sorts of blue collar heroics.
The film tries very very hard to feel like it's at the blue collar level, peppering the dialogue with "train speak" and union talk, and it looks to speak directly to the blue collar workers of America. But how many of them look like Chris Pine, Denzel Washington or Rosario Dawson? There's got to be a few right, and of course if anything bad were to happen, the prettiest ones would step up to save the day. But that's Hollywood. Scott wants this to be both grounded in lower-middle class America and also have all the glamorous facade of Hollywood. He achieves both but they really don't fit together well.
I don't know if this film birthed the term "peril fatigue" - describing how the increasing stakes and dangers of a story ultimately become tiresome and tedious - but it definitely fits the bill. I found this film to be more exhausting than exciting.
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I'll be honest, I started writing this, the last 10-for-10 ever (or so he says), about 6 weeks ago. I also stopped writing it about 6 weeks ago. Why? Because I've kind of forgotten everything about Charade, which I watched over half a year ago now.
Looking to pilfer what I wrote in Letterboxd, all I came up with was:
I just took another 5 minutes to read the Wikipedia synopsis which did remind me that, yes, in spite of my failing memory, I had seen the film. The plot is fairly fleet involving death and deception, but it's sort of a pithy comedy. On the romantic side, Hepburn and Grant should seem like an ill-suited pair, given their age difference, and yet, they basically speak the same language the same way, so the attraction quickly becomes palpable.
The other day I was thumbing through my "Diary" on letterboxd to see just how many movies I gave 5* to, and the results were...well, not many, but more than I thought. Star rating is not something we do here on the blog, because I think Toasty and I agree that those kinds of ratings systems are problematic. I mean how do you give a classic like The Third Man 4 stars, and also give a cheapy holiday romance like Under The Christmas Tree the same 4*. Well...it's because it's not the same 4*. Those two movies are ranked on completely different scales in relation to one another.
Well, here's the deal. Police Story isn't a very good movie. It's not even a good movie. It's a very bad movie with some amazing stunts.
I was told Police Story 2 is superior, and well, that's true, it is, as reflected by my letterboxd rating of 3 1/2 (which puts it squarely in league with the top tier cheapo holiday romances) but if you were to ask me what stood out, what I took away, it would mainly be that Chan's character Chan Ka-kui is such an awful boyfriend to Mai (a fully put-upon Maggie Cheung) and it makes him rather unlikable.
I've had a little crush on Michelle Yeoh since first seeing her in Tomorrow Never Dies, but cemented when someone, not long after, invited me to a screening of Wing Chun.
Is it worth watching Audry Hepburn and Carey Grant be witty and playful with each other for almost two hours? Yes, it absolutely is.
Seriously, it's like a charm duel between these two, and everyone's a winner.
I mean, I kinda just want to watch it again.
I just took another 5 minutes to read the Wikipedia synopsis which did remind me that, yes, in spite of my failing memory, I had seen the film. The plot is fairly fleet involving death and deception, but it's sort of a pithy comedy. On the romantic side, Hepburn and Grant should seem like an ill-suited pair, given their age difference, and yet, they basically speak the same language the same way, so the attraction quickly becomes palpable.
It's obviously not keenly memorable -- visually, nothing sticks out in memory -- but it remains quite enjoyable nearly 60 years later.
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The other day I was thumbing through my "Diary" on letterboxd to see just how many movies I gave 5* to, and the results were...well, not many, but more than I thought. Star rating is not something we do here on the blog, because I think Toasty and I agree that those kinds of ratings systems are problematic. I mean how do you give a classic like The Third Man 4 stars, and also give a cheapy holiday romance like Under The Christmas Tree the same 4*. Well...it's because it's not the same 4*. Those two movies are ranked on completely different scales in relation to one another.
Much in the same way a decent, if forgettable, holiday romance would get 2* but also Jackie Chan's classic stunt-fest Police Story also only gets 2*? It's a Criterion selection, and the letterboxd average puts the film at a 4.0? What's going on here?
Well, here's the deal. Police Story isn't a very good movie. It's not even a good movie. It's a very bad movie with some amazing stunts.
I was so very excited to watch Police Story and I was definitely not expecting what I got. I tried so hard not to view this with the detached western ironic gaze but I couldn't help but laugh and laugh at so much of the early scenes, but the police breakdown of the targets, the subsequent bungled surveillance mission and resulting clusterfuck of a shootout. I often couldn't tell the difference between what was intentional comedy and what wasn't. That made me feel bad.
It's an ugly looking movie with an atrocious soundtrack, but obviously everything to do with Jackie Chan's physicality --and the life-endangering stunts by he and his team -- are always marvellous to watch . They are absolutely the draw and Chan's comedic abilities should also never be undervalued, with all the skills of a silent film master. But the majority of this was just so painful to watch, and I don't mean in the "oof, that's gotta hurt" kinda way. That courtroom scene was so cringe inducing.
If you were to just watch the compilation of stunts on youtube, you wouldn't be missing anything.
I was told Police Story 2 is superior, and well, that's true, it is, as reflected by my letterboxd rating of 3 1/2 (which puts it squarely in league with the top tier cheapo holiday romances) but if you were to ask me what stood out, what I took away, it would mainly be that Chan's character Chan Ka-kui is such an awful boyfriend to Mai (a fully put-upon Maggie Cheung) and it makes him rather unlikable.
The comedy in this second feature is certainly much more heightened (and perhaps more obvious) than in the first, as well the characters here are much better defined (even if we like them less as a result). Even the storytelling is more cohesive and not *just* a framework for building towards stunts. The production quality is better, but Chan is only marginally a better director than the last go around.
I really like Jackie Chan's on screen persona, he's got a million-dollar smile, and his energy is infectious. His physical talents and comedic sensibilities are beyond reproach, and yet I really don't like either of these films. I appreciated more attention to story on the second, but it seems to have come at the expense of stunts, and the first one's singular fixation on phyiscal gags makes the story a slog to get through.
The third police story co-stars Michelle Yeoh, and though I have yet to see it I can absolutely declare it the best of the franchise....
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I've had a little crush on Michelle Yeoh since first seeing her in Tomorrow Never Dies, but cemented when someone, not long after, invited me to a screening of Wing Chun.
If you're not absolutely steeped in wuxia films all the time, then I have a sneaking suspicion that your favourites are almost always going to be the first few you see. Wing Chun, Iron Monkey, Legend of the Drunken Master, and Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain are going to be hard to ever top, because they are cemented in my mind as the best of the genre... maybe it's because they were presented to me as such. I don't watch wuxia often (or often enough) and I find it tedious to wade through the melange of cgi messes in order to find the gems that still get made (I'm sure). I don't even watch classic wuxia enough because I don't really have a guide to help me wade through the miasma of dreck that surround the stone cold classics. And I don't even watch the ones that I have genuine affection for enough, because my precious screen time these days is so given over to watching new things.
That all said, I think Wing Chun is my favourite. I dig it so hard. And it's not just that Michelle Yeoh is so pretty, and graceful, and badass in this movie (ok, yeah, it's mostly that) but it's also really, sincerely funny. It's basically a 1980's style sex comedy/rom com in wuxia form that dabbles in misguided, backwards gender politics but comes out the other side sort of ok. I mean, it's patently absurd that Wing Chun's childhood best friend (I mean, Donnie Yen, c'mon!) would return some ten years later and both not recognize her but also mistake her for a man... I mean...Michelle Yeoh, one of the most beautiful women in the world...a man... right.
Directed by master choreographer Yeun Woo-ping, this is just an astounding display of what he does best. I like the wire work here better than The Matrix or Crouching Tiger...better than most movies. The cast here does everything asked of them perfectly (no matter how regressive it may be), and in the end the three female characters are decidedly the strongest of the feature, each in their own distinct way.
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I started this post months ago with a migraine, and now I'm ending it with a headache, so...progress?
As noted (somewhere) this will be the last 10-for-10. It's proving to be more inhibitive to posting than helpful in getting more reviews done. I'm sure I start some other similarly stupid means of trying to crank out more posts that won't hold water after the first few attempts....
As noted (somewhere) this will be the last 10-for-10. It's proving to be more inhibitive to posting than helpful in getting more reviews done. I'm sure I start some other similarly stupid means of trying to crank out more posts that won't hold water after the first few attempts....
-fin-
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