Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

#318 - Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm, 1993



A mysterious masked villain starts murdering crime bosses and people start to suspect that Batman is responsible, forcing him to put an end to things once and for all.

I don't think I've ever watched a single episode of Batman: The Animated Series, but apparently the feature-length Mask of the Phantasm is good enough to crack the MoFo Top 100 Animated Films List so I figured that, despite a fairly ambivalent attitude towards Batman and superheroes in general, I decided to give it a shot. The animation has a distinctive style but hasn't aged all that well in parts. The main story that I outlined in the logline above is also fairly basic, though it gets complicated by the introduction of an old love interest of Bruce Wayne's who has come back to town and the re-introduction of the Joker, who is brought into the fight against the Phantasm by one of the prospective victims. Unfortunately, much of the film tends to come across as build-up and is often told through fragmented flashbacks; while these flashbacks tend to end in an action scene to maintain the movie's cartoon pacing, it's not enough to make that much of a difference to how things are handled. Things only really pick up with the introduction of the Joker (played with appropriately theatrical lunacy by Mark Hamill - now I can understand why there are so many people who consider his voice work the definitive Joker), even if he does feel more than a little shoehorned into the main plot.

Mask of the Phantasm never really overcomes its TV origins, feeling like an an overextended episode that has just enough quality to stop it being written off as mindless kids' entertainment. It's got its fair share of plot holes, the animation is decent but not amazing, and virtually every performer pales in comparison to Hamill (though the interplay between Bruce and Alfred is always a highlight no matter what). The action is paced reasonably well, though again nothing truly impresses until it gets close to the end. It's an easy enough way to pass an hour-and-a-bit (and when life starts proving a bit too hard to keep up with a movie-a-day challenge, you get familiar with shorter features very quickly), but I guess I'm just not enough of a Batman fan (or Batman: The Animated Series fan, anyway) to appreciate it.

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

#319 - Lawless
John Hillcoat, 2012



Three brothers who run a moonshine operation in rural Virginia during the Prohibition era are forced into a conflict with a corrupt lawman.

In theory, John Hillcoat should be one of my favourite directors with his tendency towards directing grim yet striking dramas that cover a variety of eras and settings. However, with the slight exception of his 2005 outback Western The Proposition, he hasn't done much to truly amaze me. Grim prison drama Ghosts...of the Civil Dead was a striking calling card but didn't have much substance, while his 2009 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road came across as a rather bland post-apocalyptic film that never quite did justice to its source. Even in that company, Lawless stands out as an especially weak film not just in comparison to Hillcoat's earlier works but also on its own "merits".

Though Lawless may have been scripted by Proposition screenwriter Nick Cave and brings the same combination of graphic violence and harsh period drama, it ultimately feels rather neutered as a result. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the story feels awfully underweight. Making Shia LaBeouf the viewpoint character for much of the film does make some sense as he is the weakest and therefore most ostensibly relatable of the three leads, though neither his growing involvement with his brothers' business nor his budding relationship with Mia Wasikowska's local Amish lass do much to endear him as a character (the same goes for his haphazard narration). Tom Hardy does a fair bit of heavy lifting (figuratively and literally) as the tough brother who runs the operation and leads the fight against Guy Pearce's extremely bizarre villain (who ends up being the most memorable character thanks to his unusual appearance that reminded me of the Mystery Man from Lost Highway), all while having his own romantic sub-plot with Jessica Chastain's newly-arrived city slicker. Hardy and Chastain are at least solid enough to make up for the material they're given, while Pearce's ability as a grotesque antagonist is debatable beyond his uncanny look. Other characters tend towards the inconsequential - Gary Oldman may pop up as a notorious gangster, but he doesn't get to do much of note in the role.

The film does deliver somewhat when it comes to action, but only does so by sparingly throwing in a gangland hit here or a shoot-out there - besides, it never seems to have any real sense of consequence due to the unremarkable nature of the underlying drama. Cave and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis bring a lot of their usual country Gothic sensibilities to the soundtrack, though rootsy re-interpretations of anachronistic numbers such as the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" prove a distraction whenever I notice them. Lawless only adds to my perception that Hillcoat is a one-trick pony who may work with some fairly talented collaborators on both sides of the camera, but said collaborators are extremely hit-or-miss here as the normally-talented Cave fails to deliver a decent script here, shooting the whole film to hell as a result. Hopefully Hillcoat's next feature has a better source to work off.

#320 - John Dies at the End
Don Coscarelli, 2012



A pair of slackers get drawn into a plot involving a brand-new drug whose effects threaten to destroy not just their minds but also the fabric of the universe.

What if David Cronenberg directed a buddy comedy? That would probably be the best way to describe John Dies at the End, an exceptionally bizarre little movie written by a Cracked.com columnist and directed by the maker of Bubba Ho-Tep. Given the blackly comic premise on offer, you'd think I would have enjoyed this a lot more, but sadly I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I wanted to (but that's cult cinema for you). It's not like it doesn't try to provide a memorably weird experience with its tale of two friends who specialise in dealing with supernatural threats (as established by an early scene where they end up performing an exorcism in a basement). Of course, thanks to the extremely disjointed nature of the film (which is only exacerbated by the fact that protagonist Dave is narrating the events of the film to Paul Giamatti's intrigued journalist) it's hard to know how seriously to take said exorcism in the context of the rest of the film, which plays out more or less the same as if Dave and John had been complete strangers to the paranormal, but that's just one of many ways in which I can't quite accept John Dies at the End as the cult classic that it tries to be.

It's a shame, then, because John Dies at the End definitely introduces some interesting enough concepts amidst its horror-comedy nonsense. The concept of a drug that changes one's interpretation of reality is obviously very familiar, but here it's taken to an extreme as Dave is capable of talking to the dead through an ordinary hotdog and can process the enormity of the universe in less than a second while on this film's alien drug. The technical side of things bounces around a lot in terms of quality - while the practical effects courtesy of horror veteran Robert Kurtzman are solid as always, the film's attempts to go more advanced than that just make the cracks show and not always in a good way. It just showcases how much of a mishmash the resulting film is, which isn't all that amusing beyond the occasional spot of pseudo-intellectual gibberish (the most obvious example being the opening segment about the axe riddle). Of course, things eventually get bogged down hard as the revelations start piling up and the film seems to be throwing in surreal and bloody imagery in order to prop up its alienating weirdness and thus means that the film feels rather anticlimatic.

Though the bulk of the performances are fairly flat (though in defence of the two leads, they are supposed to be a couple of deadpan dopes), the inclusion of solid character actors such as Giamatti or Clancy Brown or Glynn Turman works when it comes to improving the acting on offer, though they don't always get that much to do. Trying to judge films that have already built their reputations (or sought to, anyway) on being weird or awesome or some combination of the two is always difficult because the film you build up in your mind is almost always going to be better than what you end up watching. John Dies at the End ultimately ends up being one such film, though it has enough promise that I don't exactly mind too much. It's goofy enough to be mildly entertaining and its frequent forays into existential dread work surprisingly well. I definitely hope that this ends up growing on me, but it's not hard to feel like it's wishful thinking on the part of a film that was always going to be more impressive in theory than in practice.

Lawless is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. I don't consider it a very good film, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

#321 - Victor/Victoria
Blake Edwards, 1982



In 1930s Paris, an impoverished female soprano ends up diguising herself as a man and pretending to be a female impersonator in order to make ends meet.

Given the year, it's not hard to think of this as something of an unintentional companion piece to Tootsie, if only because of the fact that both films take a person cross-dressing out of financial necessity and mines it for a considerable amount of dramedy. Victor/Victoria also has its fair share of similarities to other well-known musicals, but it's a credit to this particular film that none of these similarities feel like a major obstacle to the film. Instead, the film makes the most of the interplay between Julie Andrews as the soprano protagonist and Robert Preston as the homosexual cabaret performer who takes her in and becomes her mentor in the ways of being a female impersonator, as well as the various romantic and comedic complications that arise as a result of the convoluted plot involving characters of multiple genders and sexualities. The film generally plays things for laughs; while one could argue that the few instances of homophobia are downplayed or disregarded and might serve to sanitise the period setting somewhat, here it doesn't come across as a significant problem because it simply wouldn't work. Saccharine? Perhaps. Intolerable? Not at all.

If anything, my main problem with Victor/Victoria is that it's not that funny. There are plenty of comedic moments but nothing that provides anything more than mild amusement. The film thrives on both physical jokes (as is to be expected from the director of the Pink Panther films) and a real comedy of errors thanks to the various characters' conflicting affections and Andrews' need to maintain her masquerade no matter what (even in the face of a romance involving James Garner's straight nightclub owner), but they almost never result in genuine laughter. The musical numbers are decent but not amazing - at least Andrews' voice is still strong and she carries the numbers reasonably well. The characters in the film are also solid - Preston steals the show as the theatrical old singer who provides an ample source of clever dialogue, while Lesley Ann Warren does surprisingly well in a role that initially seems to be a complete carbon copy of Jean Hagen's shrill-voiced, jealous blonde from Singin' in the Rain but gets more to do beyond mere imitation. Victor/Victoria is a decent enough film that is a little lighter on laughs and entertainment than it should be (and it's a little on the long side as well), but it doesn't feel like a waste of time and keeps things rolling along with its slick technical quality and amusing enough usage of a talented ensemble.

#322 - Meet Me in St. Louis
Vincente Minnelli, 1944



Centres on a middle-class American family at the turn of the century.

Despite its status as a classic Hollywood musical, Meet Me in St. Louis is about as boring and forgettable as any such purported classic could possibly be. Sure, I took Seven Brides for Seven Brothers to task for its horribly outdated take on sexual politics but I was at least willing to admit that it had its entertaining moments here and there (often through some decently-choreographed dance numbers). No such luck with Meet Me in St. Louis, which does tend to be more about songs than dances and thus isn't all that visually compelling (or generally compelling) as a result. Its tale of the various sundry problems that are encountered by the members of a blandly middle-class family could be read as either a vapid celebration of the all-American family and their suburban lifestyles or a subtle critique of the same; I'm obviously inclined to lean towards the latter, if only because it makes sitting through this a bit more tolerable (and would certainly lend an extra edge to what is already a rather disturbing sequence that takes place on Halloween).

That being said, "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" is a decent little number and the only one I remember with any degree of favourability. I can take or leave Judy Garland's performing ability, but I struggle to care about any of this melodramatic claptrap whether it's being said or sung. It goes through a lot of the usual motions for a Golden Age musical without providing any remotely interesting variations, plunging through some boring romantic sub-plots and family strife between numbers. Not even the Technicolor flair behind the camera is enough to save this extremely forgettable movie.

I like Meet Me In St. Louis. One of the few musicals I like. I'd also have "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" as one of the greats. Decent my arse.

I remember little about Victor/Victoria other than my mum really liked it, while I didn't care for it. Which makes sense as I've never liked Julie Andrews and I was about 10 or 11.

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

Don't take this too seriously if you think it's wrong-headed, but I think it's a "decent" suggestion. Just stop watching old movies already! You obviously don't understand them. You're talking about Meet Me in St. Louis as if it's a movie about fixing one's plumbing. The whole thing is visually compelling, it's a comedy about growing up with some sentimental yearning for the old-fashioned days, and the songs are terrific. You seem to be disturbed by a lot by things in 60 and 70 year old G-rated movies. I know I should just let it go, but here you pick on one of my wife's faves which we watch every Christmas.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

#323 - Sunset Blvd.
Billy Wilder, 1950



A struggling screenwriter on the run from debt collectors hides out in the decrepit mansion of a former star of silent films and becomes caught up in her eccentric lifestyle.

Sunset Blvd. takes a premise that mixes psychological drama and darkly comic satire and films the whole thing through a noir filter, making for one of the most striking films of the 1950s in the process. William Holden plays the writer protagonist with the level of cynicism and charm that would belong to a person struggling to keep a foothold in such a cutthroat business as the film industry. However, it is most definitely Gloria Swanson's film as she plays an ageing, reclusive starlet who has spent the past couple of decades inside her haunted-looking manse with only her stern butler (Erich von Stroheim) for company and is under the impression that she is due to return to her legions of adoring fans with a starring role in a Cecil B. deMille picture written by her. While Holden is initially forced to stay with Swanson in order to hide from debt collectors, but as things develop the situation becomes a lot more complicated, especially when Holden starts co-writing his own screenplay with a script reader (Nancy Olson).

Though Sunset Blvd. is most obviously a satire on not just the film industry but also the people it chews up and spits out (as well as the occasional jab at the audience, such as Holden's rumination that being a screenwriter doesn't matter because audiences tend to assume that movie characters make up everything as they go along), it becomes much more than that as it plumbs the complicated relationships between its main characters. Swanson is a tragic figure, even if she does end up functioning as the closest thing the film has to an antagonist as her obsession with both her comeback and Holden threatens to stifle him and only serves to cause second-hand embarrassment when she ventures into the outside world. Holden is a sufficiently complex and not entirely sympathetic protagonist who delivers appropriately world-weary narration with aplomb, while von Stroheim and Olson also get more development than you would think underneath their superficially basic characterisations. von Stroheim has a stern crustiness that does well to both obscure and lend weight to his character's true motivations, while Olson holds her own against Holden in what does come across as a banter-heavy relationship straight out of a screwball comedy. Deliberate parody or straightforward relationship-building? Probably the latter, but it's still well-written.

As far as the technical side of things goes, it's a good-looking film soaked in noir atmosphere with some strong (though not amazing) camerawork on display. The music does get a little histrionic at times (such as some stings that come out of nowhere over relatively insignificant events) and the characterisation outside of the main four characters tends to fall a little flat, with the possible exception of all the people that play themselves (most memorably Cecil B. deMille as himself). In any case, this is most definitely a film that emphasises its razor-sharp wit and scathing deconstruction of old Hollywood over any type of superficial flair (save for the occasional bizarre image such as Swanson's elaborate funeral for a recently deceased chimpanzee), and as such definitely holds up as one of the best films of the 1950s.

Great write up IRO . Love Sunset.

I thought it would be funny to post that immediately after Mark's suggestion that I stop watching old movies.

Sunset is pretty good indeed. My favorite Wilder movie, however, is The Apartment.

Maybe I should have said "old musicals".

It's not like I dislike all of them on principle - case in point. If I didn't think there was something of worth to that particular sub-set of cinema then I wouldn't keep watching as many of them as I do.

#324 - Woman of the Year
George Stevens, 1942



Focuses on the tumultuous relationship that develops between two journalists - one a sports writer, the other a foreign correspondent.

After having liked Adam's Rib and how it mined its high-concept premise for some solid humour and pathos, I was looking forward to the next collaboration between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy that I had lined up. Unfortunately, Woman of the Year ended up being something of a let-down in comparison, though that much could be credited to the film not having that much of a strong premise to run off. It starts off with the promise of charmingly disagreeable interactions between Hepburn and Tracy as the former's suggestion to disallow professional sports in the name of helping the war effort prompts the latter to actually take her to a baseball game to show her why it should be allowed. From there they have a spark that builds into a proper romantic relationship that of course has its ups and downs as both characters' careers and personal decisions cause conflict between the two.

While it does have its fair share of moments that go a little deeper than its screwball premise might suggest (such as Hepburn's involvement in wartime politics extending to housing defectors and adopting orphans, which causes some conflict with Tracy) and is carried by the snippy yet fundamentally warm chemistry that develops between Hepburn and Tracy, it's ultimately a rather dry excuse for a comedy. I don't necessarily think it would have worked as a straight drama, but none of the jokes really landed for me. Still, it's a testament to the talent on board that it never actually grated on me due to its lack of laughs - it just feels like a rather underwhelming and overlong way to spend two hours.

#325 - Gunbuster
Hideaki Anno, 1988



In the not-too-distant future, a young Japanese schoolgirl joins an army consisting of giant robots in order to fight off an alien invasion.

Gunbuster was originally released as a series of six half-hour episodes that was later condensed into a single 90-minute feature, which might be part of the reason it was allowed to be nominated as a film instead of a series for the recent Sci-Fi HoF thread. All six episodes were available to watch on YouTube, but the 90-minute version was not, so I decided what the hell and watched all six - if it doesn't count as a film review when I submit it then so be it. While I can definitely see how this could have been trimmed a bit here and there (or should have had some things written out entirely), more often than not I found myself genuinely enjoying Gunbuster in spite of its seemingly ridiculous nature. While I can accept that Earth's response to an alien invasion would be to build giant robots, there's not really a lot of sense behind the notion that the two people chosen to pilot the extremely powerful experimental robot that gives the series its name would be a pair of Japanese schoolgirls (one of whom is a clumsy and awkward girl who just so happens to be the daughter of a heroic general, which probably has something to do with it). Of course, this show does focus on how these girls (especially the awkward one) eventually prove themselves to be formidable thorns in the sides of the enemy.

Leaving aside the inherent silliness in the mashup of giant robots and high school drama, Gunbuster does have the odd moment of poignancy and intelligence to supplant its more ludicrous tendencies. Seeing as much of the battle takes place in deep space, the introduction of time dilation makes for significant levels of drama as months spent in space translate into decades back on Earth. That's what really does it for me more so than any of the boring relationship-based drama that ensues involving the cast (especially involving the jerkass coach guy whose hidden depths don't make him significantly sympathetic or the protagonist's shallow love interest who appears in exactly one episode). The time dilation ties in with the threat of alien invasion to be the real source of dramatic tension here, especially as the climaxes of each installment raise the stakes significantly in terms of both action and drama. The animation is decent enough for the time period and the action is handled reasonably well (even if the triumphant awesomeness doesn't gel l with the more sombre emotional moments as well as it should), though I question how having part of the finale play out using stills actually works (even though the decision to make it black-and-white is rather inspired and is a really good way to let you know that sh*t is about to get real).

Much of Gunbuster is ultimately a little too goofy for its own good, but it has a surprising level of quality beneath its seemingly immature surface. Some decent robot-on-alien action and an interesting use of time dilation as a dramatic device (among other science-fiction dilemmas) are what really make this series work for me, while the rest of the character-based moments tend to vary quite wildly in terms of effectiveness. Though your tolerance for this will be rooted in how much you can tolerate animé and some of its more ridiculous stereotypes, if you feel like you can hack it then by all means go for it.

#326 - Kung Fury
David Sandberg, 2015



An '80s-style action parody concerning the titular police officer as he decides to go back in time to fight Adolf Hitler.

Kung Fury embodies basically everything I hate about a certain type of parody. To be fair, it is not as inherently awful as the extremely lazy reference-laden parody defined by Seltzer and Friedberg; instead, it's the kind of parody that does a straightforward emulation of what it's parodying but with jokes thrown in for good measure. While that particular sub-genre of parody does offer its own set of classics, it also means that the creators have to work extra hard in order to make sure that their parody not only nails the mockery but also ends up being entertaining in its own right. Kung Fury is definitely a failure in that regard - it is the latest in a long line of action-style parodies that rely on superficial irony and a preconceived notion of awesomeness in order to get away with making a fundamentally lacklustre film.

A major problem with Kung Fury is that its attempt to mimic the aesthetic of cheesy '80s entertainment (right down to having several instances of VHS tracking ruin the image) only makes the fact that the whole thing is shot on green-screen and riddled with CGI especially egregious. There's also the fact that its entire plot about a gruff-sounding martial artist police officer going back in time to kill off Adolf Hitler only serves to make me think of this as an unapologetic rip-off of Australian spy comedy Danger 5. The only funny gag in this whole movie involves a character answering a phone and being killed by another character firing a gun down their own phone, which was literally used in Danger 5 already. Of course, listing all the similarities to Danger 5 would take up a paragraph by itself, but I think that says a lot about how, despite promising a totally off-the-wall action experience. Kung Fury ends up being depressingly unoriginal and boring underneath its gaudy surface.

If there is one thing that stops Kung Fury from sliding completely into 0.5 territory (for now...), it's that star-writer-director-producer Sandberg does have some half-decent martial arts moves and gets to show them off against some masked Nazi troops (who are probably CGI anyway) in one relatively extended long take (that may or may not involve cuts disguised with whip-pans - let's be honest, it probably does). Even the one remotely awesome moment in this whole half-hour comes with caveats. That aside, it's just a mess of a half-hour that seems to think that trying to fill its running time with anything that comes across as sufficiently random and awesome will pass for entertainment. Dinosaurs, Vikings, kung-fu, robots, time travel, gore, synthesisers, computer hacking, a Knight Rider-style sports car with an onboard computer voiced by David Hasselhoff (who also sings the theme song)...this is the kind of entertainment made to appeal to audiences that are once jaded by the banality of mainstream entertainment yet are ironically susceptible to anything that plays into a very particular type of "awesome" spectacle. As long are there are audiences willing to indulge this irony-laden filmmaking trend, I know it isn't going to go away any time soon. Despite films like this supposedly trading on irony in order to succeed, the fact that they are successful in any way is probably the greatest irony of all.

Kung Fury seems like a great idea, but I'm bored by the end of the trailer. Even 30 minutes sounds far too long.

Glad you enjoyed Gunbuster a little, even if its to give it the same score as that Batman cartoon. its regarded as one of the greatest OVAs ever made. A model of animation as a storytelling medium. 6/10 is heresy (though same can be said by my rating for About Elly).

You're right, if anything it's made me realise that I definitely overrated Mask of the Phantasm (the hell do I care about Batman?), though to be fair Gunbuster is at least twice as long (you know, because it isn't a movie) and it's extremely inconsistent in terms of good content. I didn't particularly care for either the Noriko-Smith or Kasumi-Ohta relationships and they did soak up a lot of screen-time just for the sake of giving both characters even more stuff to angst over when they had to go back into dangerous space battles. That kind of stuff was what dragged it down a lot for me, but not that much considering how well it delivered on the science-fiction front. In that case, 6/10 is definitely a fair rating.