Kent's Week in Film is this: each week (or so) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts... just to speed things along. I usually write this on a Sunday. Today is Wednesday. This entry covers the past two and a half weeks minus some rewatches.
Bullet Train (2022, d. David Leitch - AmazonPrime)
The Visitor (1979, d. Giulio Paradisi - tubi)
Galaxy of Terror (1980, d. Bruce D. Clark - tubi)
Two Little Boys (aka Deano and Nige's Best Last Day Ever) (2012, d. Robert Sarkies - tubi)
Hercules (1983, d. Luigi Cozzi - tubi)
The Dungeonmaster (1984, d. [x6] - tubi)
The Young Master (1980, d. Jackie Chan - Crave)
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Sitting pretty evenly between the stylish cool of John Wick (and his world largely populated by assassins) and the overwhelmingly frenetic comedic tone of Deadpool 2 (both in which director Leitch had a hand), Bullet Train is both highly entertaining and allcaps A LOT.
A necessary bio-break meant pausing the movie, and with half the players seemingly dead or out of the picture, I thought "surely we're about to hit the endgame". But the time elapsed showing on screen read 1 hour 10 minutes with another 50+ left to go. That seemed like too much movie. And it was!
Though I was never bored in this latter half of the film, it did lose a lot of its mojo when the boss level shows up, mainly because, at this point, it started to incorrectly think we cared about the larger story it'd been attempting to weave. The problem is Brad Pitt's Ladybug is our central POV character and he's utterly circumstantial to the whole affair of this underlying story, so while the film is trying to invest us in its story from an insider's perspective, we're actually tracking it as an outsider. And given Ladybug's sort of laissez-faire attitude, the film shouldn't care as much about the story as it does. I certainly didn't.
The film does a better job at getting us to care about many of its characters, largely a lot of ruthless killers (Ladybug being the "no guns", trying-to-find-zen exception). Lemon and Tangerine are "The Twins", played by Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Henry and Taylor-Johnson are both immensely charismatic in this, which sort of neuters their intimidation factor. They're supposed to be a couple of psychos, the dialogue keeps reminding us of this, but the performances and characterization don't really show it.
As said, a very entertaining movie, but also one that constantly thinks were too dumb to keep up with it (given the shape of the world, there may be a point there). It's continually doing visual cutaways or brief flashbacks to moments or objects or people from earlier in the film, because it thinks we've forgotten or aren't paying attention? It also takes a lot of side trips into the various characters histories, but in a very inconsistent manner (some players get extensive history sequences, others don't get any). This imbalance would be more bothersome if the film had any room to breathe, but it's pretty go-go-go from the get go.
There is a lot to drive an astute film goer nuts within Bullet Train, and I can see how the vast amount of real-world improbabilities and impossibilities, on top of the overbearing cinematic devices used in telling its story would be frustrating, annoying or maddening, if you let it be. There's a better, cleaner film within what's presented, sure, but that's not really what its striving for. Taking it just as surface level entertainment, it delivers pretty highly.
[Toasty's take (we agree)]
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Something I enjoy doing all too much is browsing the ghastly Fox-owned streaming service Tubi. It is absolutely overloaded with content with zero discretion as to quality or subject matter. It is currently the best source for 70's/80's also-ran/B-grade genre schlock, the kind that used to lure you in at the video store with a lurid tape-box/sleeve cover image (often a painting of some kind) that falsely presented intoned a film with scale and quality far beyond its means.
The Visitor jumped out at me primarily because of cast: a young, already leathery-looking Lance Henriksen, Glenn Ford, John Huston, Shelley Winters.... Names like these in schlock is never a demarcation of quality, but it is a lure, as was its description that promised demonitc, telepathic children and an "intergalactic tug-of-war". My mind, as it so often did with the text on the back of the VHS box (paired with the front-of-box painting), reeled with with potential.
The film opens with that potential revealing itself via a stark, desert-like wasteland with an ever-so-alien sky, shot with all manner of low-budge effects tricks. It's very striking. An impressive soundtrack of tones and whistles and scratching strings accompanies a sudden snowfall as a haggard, cloaked old man faces off against an unknown cloaked silhouette. It's 4 minutes of ominous, menacing, wordless visuals which falls apart the moment a talking head starts to try and fill in the eye-roling mythos for this tale, as a christ-like figure explains its good-vs-evil concept to a group of bald, white robed children in an indoor arboretum. The film crashes and burns the moment the overwhelmingly 70's funk horns start blaring as we're transitioned to a 5 minute sequence of a basketball game (culminating in a ball exploding, no questions asked) during which any sense of the fantasy of what came before is completely lost.
The film doesn't know what direction its going it, its not at all confident in its plot. I heard tell (via a later listening to the Video Archives podcast) that this was originally scripted as a proposed sequel to a sort of demon-seed pregnancy movie then re-formed into a sci-fi horror. The kind of confused conception is evident, and the storytelling never settles into its more fantastical plot. It could have been the original The Orphan had it not reached too high. It's too boring to be bonkers, ironic viewing, and it's too bonkers to even approach being good.
BUT IS IT HORROR?
It's more genre thriller or suspense than horror, at least it's trying to be.
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Galaxy of Terror, from Roger Corman's New World Pictures, does a good job at feeling like a film ahead of its time, and by that I mean you could easily mistake it for a cheesy rip-off of sci-fi horror films from 1987 as opposed to 1980. What works in the film's favour is its incredible set designs, it's moderately competent special effects, and some costuming that isn't outright embarrassing. The acting is fine but the script is garbage nonsense that doesn't matter. It's almost like it was written to employ sets, creatures, models and costumes that Corman already had sitting around, and less like they were constructed solely for the purpose of this picture. I'm sure it's a mix of the two.
A rag-tag team on a rescue mission arrive on a strange planet and encounter the same dangers the prior crew clearly died from. It's a film built entirely around set-pieces, gross-out gags and tentacle rape. Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Erin Moran, Ray Walston and others sleepwalk through the meaningless dialogue and tolerate the humiliating horror gags they're forced to suffer through to collect their paycheck.
It's said that James Cameron was working effects on this, when he requested to do second unit filming of the sets to give them more coverage, which got him noticed for his first directorial gig, Piranha 2. The trivia on this film is kind of more interesting than the film itself.
BUT IS IT HORROR?
sure, barely. It's surely horrible.
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So many of the Kiwi comedy films I've seen seem to center around naive simpletons or awkward oddballs (or both), and I've generally been quite receptive to that sort of thing. There's a subtle, sly tone and balance these films have to sustain, seeing the humour in the oddities of the characters, but also retaining some sense of empathy and affection for them. We want them to succeed, or at least find some growth in their journey (although it seems a particular NZ trait for these characters to kind of learn nothing or refuse to change).
Two Little Boys (or it's original name, Nige and Deano's Best Last Day Ever) centers its story around two nitwits who are trying to cover up the accidental killing of a Norwegian backpacker in the opening moments of the film, which makes it particularly tough to invest in these characters. I don't know that we want them to get away with it, or if we're even supposed to (Nige's guilt being what it is).
Nige and Deano are estranged best friends reunited by the accident, but very quickly the toxic nature of their relationship returns, and it's clear why Nige wanted to end the friendship in the first place.
So, if the film doesn't really want us to want the boys to get away with manslaughter, and if it doesn't want us to hope for reconciliation than what outcome exactly are we supposed to want here?
It's not a poorly done movie. There's some interesting editing choices, some fine needledrops, and even some fun vfx and camera trickery. McKenzie, Blake and Pohatu are all really quite good, inhabiting their roles well, making me quickly forget their more prominent personas in Flight of the Conchords, Lego Masters and Wellington Paranormal where I know them each well, but it's just fundamentally flawed story with a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion (and an even more unsatisfying coda).
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I've watched a couple of Hercules movies in the past year, and they are, when in the hands of Italian filmmakers, passable escapist entertainment. This one, though, is a spectacularly ill-conceived peplum that tries to smush together all of Hercules' 12 labors into one 90 minute story in an awkward mish-mash of fantasy, sci-fi and mythology that dares to rip-off Superman, Star Wars and Clash of the Titans at once but with a quarter of their budget.
The effects are pretty daring but done on a frugal budget, so they can be either read as really charming or really bad (or perhaps both?). The costuming, though, is superb, and super sexy. This is the best Hercules look, methinks, and the ladies are totally va-va-voom without being lurid about it. I was surprised to find the lip sync was totally on point, like, amazingly so. There are also some fairly amazing sets, which the Italians have been great at for some time, but there's also some that really feel the budget limitations.
This was under the Canon film group logo, so there's a sense that this was trying to capitalize upon the success of Masters of the Universe, by mixing sci-fi with fantasy and superheroes, but they would have to take another crack at it a few years later.
So, that final sequence...Hercules is warned that if he removes the sword from the stone, it will result in the awakening of the pheonix. He needs the sword to fight the big bad guys, and so he does unsheath it. The phoenix is awakened and the whole bloody island begins to collapse, killing thousands in the process? This is the big heroic ending??
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The Dungeonmaster basically auto-played on Tubi after Hercules. I didn't select it, and I didn't intend to watch it. It opens with a sequence that plays out like an 80's glam metal music video, of a toe-headed man in glasses following in slow motion a woman in a flowing red dress through some weird local architecture that could is weird enough to be vaguely construed as "fantastical" without any set redressing. She strips, lays on a bed, and beacons him near, only for demonic creatures to break through the wall and capture her, leaving the man, confused. Title sequence and credits. Man wakes up from dream. The film starts with a cold open. It's rather inane.
We later see the "real life" scenario of this couple, their existence. He's a too-handsome nerd who has made a primitive 80's computer AI assistant that makes his aerobic instructor girlfriend jealous because of how much time he spends with it. Then they seem to get sucked into another dimension, she's chained up, he's in a weird costume, and a tall, deep-voiced, sallow-looking figure tells him they're going to play a game.
What follows is a series of vignettes, each from a different director, each in a different genre, including a Mad Max-style chase and fighting a Harryhousen-esque stop-motion animate statue. None of it is particularly well-executed, and our "hero" is armed with his AI in a wrist gauntlet that serves as a total deus ex machina in every scenario.
It is supremely goofy 80's genre trash, and yet it's not unwatchable, thanks mostly to a charming Jeffrey Byron. Like most anthologies, it's not very unified, nor is this all that satisfying in whole or in part. But it also doesn't take itself too seriously, which doesn't exactly save it, but does help elevate it somewhat above some of the other more unwatchable low-low-budg fantasy trash of the era.
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I'm not as well versed in Jackie Chan's filmography as I would like to be. Having recently watched the Police Story trilogy (I know there are more than three, but I've only seen the first three at this point), I have to say I much prefer the fight-coordination-focused Jackie Chan pictures to the stunt-set-piece-focused Jackie Chan. I mean, yes the stunts are cool but...are they maybe only cool because of the end-credits revelations showing the behind-the-scenes attempts? As opposed to films like Drunken Master or, here, Young Master, where the film is instead built with a simple story meant to weave through a series of fighting set pieces that showcase the performers' physical prowess, Chan's inventiveness, and humour? It's not like the Police Story films take themselves overly-serious, but they're not really comedies, and the fights definitely take second fiddle to the stunts in those films.
I like Chan's sensibilities, and the sheer cleverness and comedic timing that is built into the very balletic martial arts fights needs not just the movement skills, but comedic acting chops as well to sell it all. In Young Master, Chan and his various scene partners can run up to 10 minutes through a mesmerizing coordinated routine that is as much dance and pantomime as it is kung-fu. It is ridiculously entertaining, and not a single fight seems redundant or repetitive, somehow Chan and crew constantly keep it fresh. The opening Dragon dance sequence is a stunner, the coordination difficulty level cranked up to 10, as two two-man teams must react to each other team, themselves within the team, and their surroundings, as they traverse the edges of water barrels and climbing to a 10-foot-high narrow platform. It's at once joyous and intense.
Chan's direction with Young Master is so much clearer than his Police Story 1 & 2 work, likely because they are somewhat more involved in their shooting (being shot on city streets and active locations). He knows exactly what needs to be focused on in any given sequence, and even at this early stage in his career, seems to have a crew of people he trusts to carry out the plan, and follow the action. Again, I don't have a deep knowledge of his repertoire, but this is a completely clean, crisp effort that doesn't attempt anything flashy behind the camera because it has absolutely no need to. The performances are all the flash needed. An absolute gem of a movie, that I watched twice in the same week.
