Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

#546 - Death Wish V: The Face of Death
Allan A. Goldstein, 1994



A professor of architecture with a history of vigilantism takes action when his girlfriend is disfigured on the orders of her gangster ex-husband.

So continues my anachronic viewing of every single Death Wish movie, with this one definitely holding little promise of being genuinely good. By this point, leading man Charles Bronson was in his seventies and this film seems to have been written around that, focusing less on his milquetoast protagonist cutting a bloody swath through gangs of one-dimensional villains and instead trying to build a more conventional thriller in keeping with the tone of the original film. Here, Bronson is living a quiet life in a witness protection program and about to propose to his fashion-model girlfriend (Lesley-Anne Down) when she starts being threatened by her ex-husband (Michael Parks). Parks is actually a leader of a criminal organisation using his business-minded interest in the fashion industry to act extremely coercive towards Down, especially when he is trying to get his estranged daughter back. Before long, Down is disfigured by one of Parks' henchmen, which prompts Bronson to (briefly) contemplate "returning to his old ways", as characters in the film put it so bluntly. Much like how Rocky V attempted to revitalise a self-parodying franchise by cutting out the sillier elements and deliver an earnest film about Rocky falling on hard times, Death Wish V also opts to create a more focused story that doesn't centre completely on Bronson killing crooks left and right. It is also very much like Rocky V in that this noble intention ends up being wasted underneath a very sub-par execution.

Unlike other later installments in long-running franchises that like to comment on their characters' advanced ages, the film never really acknowledges Bronson's mileage except by having him eliminate his enemies through cunning tricks rather than through physically taxing acts of direct violence. While this is understandable for multiple reasons, it does lead to some ridiculous scenes such as Bronson killing an enemy by using a remote-controlled soccer ball filled with explosives in a manner that seems awfully reminiscent of the toy car scene from The Dead Pool. That still doesn't account for how Bronson seems to be sleepwalking through his role; while his character has always been a fairly stoic individual, here his attitude really does come across as a man who knows he's too old for this. Parks has recently become a cult actor as a result of delivering memorable appearances in films by directors like Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino. Here, he's kind of a mess as he plays an Irish-American mobster who struggles to maintain a consistent accent, snarling his way through a performance that manages to be both hammy and boring. Other actors like Down or Saul Rubinek do what they can with their fairly limited roles, while Robert Joy delivers a very questionable performance as an eccentric dandruff-stricken hitman.

In some ways, Death Wish V is arguably an improvement over the banal quasi-exploitation style of the Michael Winner-directed Death Wish films. This film's plot may hinge on a woman being brutally attacked and there are the occasional instances of gratuitous female nudity, but at least the makers didn't feel the need to add graphic rape scenes this time around. While Death Wish V may exercise restraint (if only to accommodate its geriatric star), for too much of the film it feels too restrained and ends up becoming (pardon the pun) deathly boring. As a result, there is very little to sincerely recommend about Death Wish V. I definitely can't recommend it as a stand-alone film or even a good film by the already-low standards of the franchise. It's marginally better than the offensively dreary (or drearily offensive) Death Wish II, but lacks the illusion of depth offered up by the original Death Wish or even the sheer entertainment value of Death Wish 3. I am probably going to end up watching Death Wish 4: The Crackdown once I get the chance (I've come this far, haven't I?) but I can't imagine it being a major disappointment after watching this fairly turgid swansong for everyone's favourite architect-turned-vigilante.

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

#547 - Candy
Neil Armfield, 2006



A young man and woman fall in love, which is threatened by their combined addictions to heroin.

I'm starting to think that there's a fundamental weakness to movies where the conflict is completely dependent on a character's debilitating drug addiction, especially if the drug in question ends up being heroin. A downward spiral with an apparently foregone conclusion can work, but that's awfully dependent on how much you can make an audience care about the characters even when their fates are probably not going to be good ones. As a result, Candy ends up being a fundamentally boring excuse for a drama as it centres on two pretty young leads in Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish. Ledger's character is already a regular heroin user as the film begins and he initiates Cornish's character into his world. Thus begins a chemical romance of fleeting highs and crushing lows as the two get married, move in together, and constantly struggle to feed their habit by any means necessary - when they're not trying to quit, of course. As a result, they go through a lot of the usual trials associated with drug abuse such as resorting to criminal behaviour or sexual favours in order to pay off their expenses, plus their attempts to shake the habit are grim and uncomfortable experiences. Throughout it all, their relationship towards one another is rarely on the up, with sweet little platitudes of eternal love often being buried under domestic disputes and mutually traumatising experiences.

The main problem with Candy is that it is a boring film. It offers no genuinely interesting variations on its tried-and-true drugs-are-bad narrative and offers no surprises to anyone who's already experienced such a narrative before. The closest it does get to being halfway-interesting involves a plot thread where Cornish learns that she is pregnant and thus vows to quit using, but its placement in the middle of the film doesn't do it any favours. Not even featuring talented actors like Ledger or Cornish (or even Geoffrey Rush in a supporting role as a fellow addict) can do enough to salvage such trite melodrama; this is especially true when the two leads play an aspiring poet and starving artist respectively, which only allows the film to be padded with weak visual metaphors and clunky attempts at "deep" writing that don't even feel like they were meant to be clunky. The film's visual direction might have proved a point in the film's favour, but it's all dreadfully straightforward and lacks any possible flair that might help to prop up such a numbing narrative (which is a shame, because a scene where one character comes home to find that the other has written their life story on the walls and then left was admittedly intriguing but only enough so to overcome the rest of the film's dreary nature). Candy is not offensively bad, but it's extraordinarily dry and manages to lack any serious emotional heft despite its apparently devastating narrative. People may not want to watch movies about drug addiction because they're so raw and upsetting; I think I might not want to watch them because seeing one is like seeing them all.

#548 - House
Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977



When summer vacation starts, a schoolgirl convinces a group of friends to to accompany her to her aunt's remote house.

Original review found here.

#549 - Braindead
Peter Jackson, 1992



An awkward young man living with his domineering mother is forced into a complicated situation when she becomes a zombie.

Original review found here.

#550 - Gojira
Ishiro Honda, 1954



Japan is threatened by a gigantic lizard-like creature.

That's about as basic a logline as Gojira needs. Granted, there is more to the plot than that; the titular monster's initial appearance in the middle of the open sea begins with it destroying various ships and soon leads to it menacing the inhabitants of a remote Japanese island in a typhoon-like manner. Said inhabitants proceed to refer to the monster as "Gojira" in reference to a mythical sea monster, which sticks when official investigators of both scientific and military disciplines start to discuss the monster. A conflict arises between the humans; the scientists and those who side with them are presented as being the nominal heroes of the piece because, while they do not wish for Gojira to cause any more destruction, they do acknowledge that it is a brand-new and mysterious life form and thus wish to study it. This naturally contrasts with the attitude of the military and the politicians, who just want Gojira dead as quickly as possible before it can cause any more destruction. It's a sufficiently ambiguous conflict that is further complicated by the interpersonal drama that unfolds between the four main human characters - a leading paleontologist (Takashi Shimura), whose younger colleague (Akihiro Hirata) is in an arranged engagement to his daughter (Momoko Kōchi), who is more attracted to a ship captain (Akira Takarada).

I've watched both of Hollywood's big-budget attempts to bring the iconic lizard to a wider audience and found them wanting (one more so than the other), so it seems like I'd either really like the original rubber-suit version or be similarly unimpressed. The film definitely isn't subtle about how Gojira is supposed to be a metaphor for the effects of the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the creature's origin being attributed to nuclear tests mutating prehistoric life forms into massive, powerful juggernauts. That still doesn't stop it from providing some interesting subtext, with some debate other whether or not something capable of killing Gojira should even be allowed to exist in the first place. The film doesn't develop much in the way of plot or characterisation, but scenes that focus on developing both at least don't feel like completely unwelcome intrusions (even if they are fundamentally basic and slow the film down a little). Akira Kurosawa regular Shimura is definitely a welcome face as he provides his role as the expert with an appropriately serious and downplayed charisma. Though the effects naturally look extremely artificial to a 21st-century viewer, that doesn't stop them from being used and combined in some visually compelling ways, plus the sound work is remarkable (especially the creature's roars). I can certainly appreciate Gojira to an extent, but at the end of the day I can't really bring myself to think of it as anything greater than an old monster movie that's just happened to hold up really well. One can easily identify the ways in which it laid the groundwork for decades of disaster movies to come, but it is still good enough so that these qualities don't become retroactively boring or irritating, and that's worth at least some commendation.

#551 - The Warriors
Walter Hill, 1979



When a prominent street-gang leader is publicly assassinated, the gang that has been wrongfully accused of the deed must fight their way through a city full of angry gangs in order to get back to their home turf.

The Warriors has rightfully become recognised as one of the greatest cult classics of all-time for plenty of good reasons. For starters, it builds an interesting dystopia-like film out of a premise that is virtually science-fiction, with co-writer/director Hill intending to set the film in a not-too-distant future not unlike the weird but recognisable Britain seen in A Clockwork Orange, which is an obvious influence on this film. In Hill's film, New York City still bears a superficial resemblance to its equally grim-looking real-life counterpart, except there there are lots and lots of gangs strewn throughout the city to the point where they outnumber the already-sizeable number of police officers. The leader of the city's most powerful gang, a charismatic fellow named Cyrus (Roger Hill), thus gets the idea to call a city-wide truce followed by a massive meeting between every gang in the city. He intends to have them call off their feuds, ally with one another, and rise up to take the city of themselves. Unfortunately, after making this announcement Cyrus is shot and killed, leading to perpetrator Luther (David Patrick Kelly) blaming the eponymous crew. The plot then kicks off with the Warriors (who are unaware of the city-wide manhunt targeted against them) trying to make their way back to their home turf of Coney Island, working to fight or avoid whatever enemies they encounter on their journey.

With a premise as relatively bare-bones as this one, it pays to pack it out with anything that can make the film work, which The Warriors most definitely does. The film itself looks fairly gritty thanks to its being set in a New York full of run-down urban landscapes coated in grime and graffiti, but that's about where the true grit ends as the rest of the film builds an out-sized yet oddly believable world of cartoonish street gangs. The Warriors and their Native American-themed vests look mild compared to many of the other gangs; The Baseball Furies are probably the most iconic characters in the film with their bizarre combination of baseball uniforms and brighty-coloured face-paint, though other gangs include the all-female Lizzies wearing tie-dye shirts and denim or the Turnbull A.C.'s and their skinhead punk aesthetic. In this company, the actual police are no different from any other gang with their all-blue uniforms and signature nightsticks. Despite the apparent goofiness of each gang's look, the film manages to balance silliness with seriousness as the other gangs force our would-be heroes into various fight-or-flight situations. The world also throws in plenty of weird little details to properly flesh out the world, such as the silky-voiced radio announcer who provides updates on the Warriors' progress in between pumping out all sorts of era-appropriate jams, which make for an interesting blend with the wide variety of moods provided by Barry DeVorzon's mainly-synthesised original score.

Despite the low budget and minimalist narrative, the film still manages to provide solid characterisation for its sizeable cast. The main cast of characters may be fairly one-note in terms of development (the stoic leader, the oversexed bully, the nervous new kid, the talkative comic relief, etc.) and not all that great as actors, but none of them ever come across as irritating despite these qualities. Michael Beck and James Remar in particular deliver surprisingly charismatic performances (in a cult way) as the group's no-nonsense de facto leader Swan and his brutish rival Ajax respectively. As Luther, Kelly makes for a great love-to-hate presence as a chaotically evil prankster whose screechy voice and unbalanced personality result in one of the most iconic movie moments to ever involve beer bottles, while Roger Hill as Cyrus makes the most of his one scene to deliver an amazing grand-standing monologue to a rapturous audience. The impressive performances even extend to incredibly minor characters, whether it's Cyrus's vengeful second-in-command yelling out his demands or even future Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl in a bit part that doesn't deserve to be talked about because of spoilers. The film doesn't quite stick every narrative landing, especially with the addition of a random woman named Mercy (Deborah van Valkenburgh) who decides to tag along with the Warriors in hopes of finding anywhere that's better than her current situation involving the weakest gang in the city. While her sudden presence does take a while to get used to, she's good enough to add a decent enough layer of depth to what could have been another hackneyed romantic sub-plot (and also results in one of the film's s best character moments when she ends up on a train with a group of preppy teenagers coming home from prom night). In any case, they are all good enough to sell some incredibly punchy dialogue that's littered with old slang and the occasional great turn of phrase - look no further than Ajax's menacing threat to a Baseball Fury that has him cornered.

In terms of being an action movie, The Warriors deserves credit for working around its limited budget. Granted, it's mostly limited to being a toss-up between chases, fights, or combination of the two, but it's not like you're expecting a film about impoverished gangs in the slums of a '70s-looking New York to be getting into destructive gun-fights (though there is the occasional gunfight or explosion). There's an economy to the fighting that makes it feel surprisingly tactile despite obvious moments of staging and choreography. Slick combinations of semi-realistic cinematography and editing alternately make it feel grounded or heighten the fantastic elements, whether it's the use of punctuation-like cuts during a brawl or resorting to slow-motion in order to capture especially graphic moments (such as a chair breaking on someone's head). Though the violence itself has arguably grown fairly tame in the decades following its release, it doesn't feel like it when baseball bats are getting broken or people are getting smashed into bathroom mirrors. It is that weird hybrid of rough-edged realism and vibrant comic-book fantasy that makes The Warriors a true cult classic. Walter Hill and co. draw on all kinds of sources from Greek mythology to KISS in order to put together a film that resides on the very fine line between dour slug-fest and campy free-for-all. The characters are memorable in frequently good ways, the plot is simple yet compelling, the action is most definitely watchable no matter what tone it's going for, and the film's whole retro-futuristic sense of artistic direction is simply so aesthetically and aurally pleasing. It's far from perfect and I don't doubt that there are plenty of reasonable arguments against it (some people might dislike it on the basis of all the reasons why I've praised it, to say nothing of the many moments where the cracks show), but who's writing the review here? Either you can dig it...or you can come out to play-ay...



Addendum: If you haven't seen this movie before and want to check it out, make sure that you try to find the original 1979 cut of the film. Walter Hill released an "Ultimate Director's Cut" in 200X that grafted on a variety of technical changes such as comic-book intertitles, post-production zooming, and a prologue comparing the Warriors to ancient heroes of Greek history. While this is semi-tolerable on one watch, it ruins both the pace and the feel of Hill's original enough so that I definitely recommend making the effort to see the original version wherever possible. Seriously, I know he did it with the best of intentions but it does feel like an affront on par with the special editions of the Star Wars Original Trilogy.

#552 - Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Mamoru Oshii, 2004



A cyborg commando and his mostly-human partner are assigned to investigate a series of murders that all appear to be committed by different robots of the same type.

The original Ghost in the Shell is an extremely dense animé to get into despite its brief running time, building a strong reputation off its well-realised depiction of a futuristic Tokyo where the line between humanity and machines is becoming more and more blurry. The decision to emphasise existential queries about what it means to be truly alive over elaborate action set-pieces has proved divisive, with many viewers dismissing the film as pretentious in its attempt to philosophise when it wasn't having its cyborg heroes engage in shoot-outs with assassins or tanks. Though I initially held this opinion after my first viewing, I like the film's enigmatic treatise on the nature of artificial intelligence and have re-watched it several times. As a result, I expected nothing less confounding when I finally got around to watching its sequel. The plot does work to distance itself from that of its predecessor by shifting the focus from original protagonist Motomo Kusanagi to her long-time partner Batou. Like Kusanagi, Batou's body and brain are almost completely synthetic, with only his "ghost" (the film's term for what is probably best likened to a soul) being the only thing human about him. Along with his largely-organic co-worker Togusa, he investigates a series of brutal murders where artificial sex dolls go berserk and kill their owners. What initially seems to be little more than a dangerous glitch soon gives way to a greater and far more sinister conspiracy as Batou must not only to track down the people responsible but also try to avoid losing what little is left of his humanity in the process.

Naturally, Innocence proves a challenging experience during its relatively brief running time. Visually, the film has the same smooth line-drawing animation that made the original such a treat to watch, but that film's sparse use of 3-D computerised animation has been taken to considerable excess with this film to the point of being a constant distraction. While I can sort of appreciate Oshii's willingness to experiment with the blending of both types of animation and that such blatantly artificial effects only serve to reflect a story that hinges on artifice as a concept, that doesn't stop it from being a bit of an eyesore at times. The film also backs up its visual gymnastics with a story that is a bit more focused on the procedural narrative with the occasional spot of action to liven things up (such as Batou's attempt to track down a lead forcing him to fight his way through a Yakuza bar). It frequently feels like a deliberate attempt to change things up from the original; as a result, there isn't as much ponderous dialogue this time around, though whether or not its replacement with reality-bending scenes of nightmarish fantasy are all that much of an improvement. While the film expands upon a lot of the same themes regarding human nature and technophobia that were present in the first film, it's hard to tell if it does a good job of expressing them with any more clarity, especially when the film starts getting a little too wrapped up in delivering action sequences. As a result, I don't really feel like I can praise Innocence too highly but I can definitely respect it as a decent follow-up to a classic that at least doesn't get things horribly wrong. As with all of Oshii's other films, I feel like it needs a second viewing to truly absorb everything that's going on, but as it stands I think I can afford to wait a while before the next time.

#553 - The Last Seduction
John Dahl, 1994



After her husband pulls off a lucrative drug deal, a woman steals the cash and proceeds to hide out in a small town.

The Last Seduction offered an interesting premise in that it decided to take one of the most fundamental yet admittedly overused noir tropes and build an entire film on subverting it. In your archetypal noir story, a femme fatale is a female character who often serves as a catalyst for the plot when she meets the male protagonist and soon enough gets him involved in the narrative at large. Said character is often an alluring type who will use her attractiveness in order to manipulate male characters to her advantage (which naturally includes the protagonist) and thus makes her just as much of a threat as any gun-toting gangster or nosy official. The Last Seduction takes a different tack by actually making a femme fatale the protagonist - in this case, a tough-talking call-centre supervisor (Linda Fiorentino) whose husband (Bill Pullman) has just acquired a pile of cash in the wake of a drug deal. After a brief domestic incident, she decides to take the money and run, eventually stopping in a small town where her straight-shooting attitude causes a stir with the locals. She eventually decides to settle in for the time being, acquiring an office job and beginning an extremely casual relationship with a local guy (Peter Berg). Of course, she still has to contend with Pullman doing whatever it takes to track her down...

While The Last Seduction starts off rather promisingly, that promise soon fades away. While I suppose I can't judge the film all that harshly for its mid-'90s made-for-TV visual style, I could definitely take issue with the conscious attempt to utilise a jazzy score, which seems to drive home the genre homage a little too hard for its own good. These stylistic choices are nominally inconsequential but they serve as unfortunate window-dressing for a less-than-stellar film. Given how important the lead role is to the film at large, it's just as well that Fiorentino ends up providing such a good performance. With a husky voice and a wide range of adequately convincing emotions (even though we know she is likely to be feigning them), she has just enough complexity and understandable motivation to avoid being a one-note villain. The rest of the cast get some fairly unchallenging roles; Pullman gets to play a slimy antagonist who definitely isn't a good guy but isn't all that one-note either, while Berg manages to take a character who would nominally be the "hero" of a typical noir yet displays a pathetic nature that exposes how fundamentally ridiculous a certain type of noir protagonist tends to be. Given the production value, it practically goes without saying that, with the exception of those three and also Bill Nunn as a private investigator hired by Pullman, the acting leaves a fair bit to be desired.

The film arguably goes on a bit too long and its premise only goes so far in creating a genuinely interesting film. Filtering many of the usual noir tropes and clichés through the femme fatale's perspective does little to make you forget about their inherently clichéd nature so the film doesn't feel especially impressive on that account. Granted, there are the occasional darkly amusing moments caused by the film's approach to its material, such as Fiorentino's plot to escape Nunn's custody at one point, but these are arguably counter-balanced by the film occasionally resorting to some problematic twists (such as a major late-stage reveal involving Berg's character), which might be justified by the characters' personal flaws but does seem to date the film's sensibilities for the worse (even if it is in the name of humour, such as the small town's entirely-white inhabitants nervously noting the black Nunn's presence in hushed tones). As such, The Last Seduction is interesting as an exercise in toying with genre expectations and it's at least carried by a decent lead performance, but beyond that there doesn't seem to be much to recommend about it beyond its status as a cinematic curiosity. I'd argue it's worth a watch simply because it exists, but it's very debatable as to whether or not it's actually all that good a film.

#554 - Run Ronnie Run!
Troy Miller, 2002



After making a memorable appearance on a Cops-like reality TV series, a white-trash deadbeat gets his own spin-off series and moves to Hollywood.

I recently watched the entire four-season run of Mr. Show, the cult sketch comedy series created by and starring Bob Odenkirk and David Cross that ran from 1995 to 1998. The show built a considerable reputation thanks to its hilarious ensemble of underground comedians who powered their way through episode after episode of incredibly absurd and frequently satirical skits that often bled into one another for maximum comic effect while singularly yielding comedy gold. Such an approach makes it easy to draw comparisons to legendary British sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus; this does make one wish that the show's sole cinematic spin-off, 2002's Run Ronnie Run!, could have been a stand-alone testament to the same talent that made the show such a beloved entity in the same vein as ...Holy Grail or Life of Brian. Unfortunately, Run Ronnie Run! ended up being a severely flawed attempt to spin an entire film out of one of the show's recurring characters and ended up torpedoing what little chance the creative minds behind Mr. Show had of translating that particular sensibility to a wider audience than late-night HBO obsessives.

Given how much Mr. Show tended to avoid relying on recurring characters in favour of building consistently entertaining episodes around many single-use sketches, the decision to base an entire film around one such character seems pragmatic but also just doesn't work. It might have something to do with the fact that the recurring character in question is Ronnie Dobbs (Cross), a so-called "Southern gentleman" who lives a stereotypically trailer-trash lifestyle where his only real goals are chasing cheap thrills and avoiding capture by the local law enforcement. The latter results in him ended up appearing on a show that is obviously supposed to be a parody of Cops. His memorable appearance attracts the attention of British entrepreneur Terry Twillstein (Odenkirk) who seizes upon the idea that Ronnie's antics are entertaining enough to deserve their own show. Before too long, Terry tracks down Ronnie and convinces him to go along with his scheme, launching a standard rags-to-riches plot where Ronnie's rise to fame and fortune conflicts with his desire to re-marry his childhood sweetheart Tammy (Jill Talley), who is naturally tired of his irresponsibility and wants him to grow as a person .

Choosing such a simplistic character as Ronnie to be the crux of the film definitely proves to be a problem, especially when a large bulk of the film seems to be stretching out the existing storyline established within the character's brief appearances on Mr. Show. The film seems to realise the limited potential of a story based entirely around Ronnie, though its attempts to pack out its running time lack any serious comedic innovation and instead rely on anything from numerous celebrity cameos (with the only genuinely funny one involving Mandy Patinkin as the star of a musical based on Ronnie) to repeating the same types of gags over and over (the running gag involving David Koechner as Ronnie's increasingly injured drinking buddy being the most egregious example of such). It thus results in a comedy that is not just low-brow but is nearly indistinguishable from the sort of film that I'd go out of my way to avoid if it didn't have such talented creators involved. A brief appearance by another couple of Mr. Show characters in the form of white R-'n'-B duo Three Times One Minus One only makes me think that those characters have enough depth to their incredibly absurd nature that I think they'd be far better candidates for the feature-length treatment (coincidentally, their sudden appearance happened to garner the biggest of what few laughs I got out of this film).

Unfortunately, it was not meant to be and so Run Ronnie Run! ends up feeling like an excessively boiled-down version of everything that made Mr. Show great. Even if I wasn't going to compare it to the source series, it'd still come across as extremely light on laughs thanks to its weak premise that doesn't make good on its satirical promise, especially in incredibly dated instances such as a parody of hit reality series Survivor. I would like to think that the film was intended to be a mockery of such comedies that are aimed at the lowest common denominator (even before the executives responsible apparently turned it into a shell of itself) but that's probably just wishful thinking on my part. I guess I should just be grateful that it wasn't completely devoid of laughs, which I suppose can be credited to the talent of the performers and writers, which can't quite be suppressed even under such unfavourable circumstances.

Ito, Liked your excellent review of a personal favourite The Warriors. Also loved your description of Charles Bronson as a milquetoast protagonist . Made me smile that did

Glad to see another fan of The Warriors; it's one of my favorites as well. I didn't know about the other cut, screw that!

I didn't like Braindead-too over the top for me.

House wasn't my style either, but I did like it.

I don't know how easy it is to get an original cut of The Warriors now. I've not seen one since the Directors cut came out. Thankfully I still have my VHS copy, should I really need to watch it properly.

__________________
5-time MoFo Award winner.

I can only speak for Australian/R4 DVDs, but at some point in the past year or so I noticed that they'd re-issued the original version on DVD so of course I snapped up a copy. We'll see if this means the Director's Cut gets phased out completely.

#555 - Disciples of the 36th Chamber
Lau Kar-leung, 1985



Three Cantonese brothers are forced to hide in a Shaolin temple after the most irresponsible member of the trio causes a conflict with their Manchurian overlords.

The 1978 Shaw Brothers film The 36th Chamber of Shaolin earned a place as one of my favourite martial arts films on the basis of having its incredibly capable leading man, the one and only Gordon Liu, prove a fascinating screen presence despite lacking the Confucian charisma of Bruce Lee or even the foolish charm of Jackie Chan. The film itself managed to be impressive simply for having half its running time consist of a hellish training montage for Liu's character as he worked to develop the skills necessary to become a Shaolin warrior monk in sequences that were so well-executed that I was able to look past how fundamentally uninteresting an extended training montage should be. 1985's Disciples of the 36th Chamber is apparently the second sequel to that particular film (I have not seen 1980's Return to the 36th Chamber, though I do still want to) and brings back Liu's character San Te, this time a far more experienced Shaolin monk than the novice of films past. However, San Te ends up being a supporting character in this particular tale that instead focuses on three Cantonese brothers who end up residing in his order's temple after one of them upsets the local Manchurian rulers, essentially forcing the trio into exile.

Much like Jackie Chan's Drunken Master, Disciples of the 36th Chamber thrives on having its protagonist be based on an actual Chinese folk hero whose on-screen exploits are heavily rooted in slapstick buffoonery. Here, the protagonist in question is Fong Sai-Yuk (Hsiao Ho), one of three brothers who is introduced to us as being the dunce of a class where every other student is more than half his age. Unfortunately, there is nothing especially amusing about this hero who has to be forcibly tied to his brothers when he is out in public for fear of the mischief and mayhem that he may cause. Though circumstances eventually lead to him being untied and made to fight, they only cause further complications to the already-tense feuds between the Han populace and the Manchu ruling class. Even when the brothers are packed off to the Shaolin temple, Sai-Yuk still does his best to escape from the rigours of training. To go on would probably count as a spoiler, but I make my point well enough. Sai-Yuk's actions and personality make him an especially obnoxious and hard-to-like hero whose rebellious yet naive nature end up causing so much unwarranted conflict that he makes the villainous Manchurian characters seem downright tolerable in their pantomime evilness. Without a decent enough hero to root for in these circumstances, Disciples of the 36th Chamber flounders severely for far too much of its extremely brief running time, and this is coming from someone who liked Drunken Master.

It's a shame, then, because that severely scuppers what is otherwise a fairly decent Shaw Brothers film. The production is rife with silky costumes and ornate backdrops and the sound work is naturally packed with all sorts of snappy, swishy noises. Though he is significantly diminished by being stuck in a supporting role without an arc of his own beyond being a strict mentor, Liu is still great to watch. Speaking of which, the finale really is the only good reason to even consider watching Disciples of the 36th Chamber because it features some well-choreographed wire-fu. That (along with one comical scene in which the heroes' mother challenges the main villain to open her thighs...it makes sense in context) are minor highlights in a film that tries to be funny by doing a comical reiteration of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Sadly, Sai-Yuk is too annoying a character to make even his most well-deserved comeuppances induce any sort of amusement, instead irritating me to the point where I not only don't care about whether or not he becomes a hero but I also struggle to care about what he does when he is the hero. While there may be the same level of quality common to Shaw Brothers productions, here it just feels wasted on a film that fails pretty badly at what it sets out to do.

#556 - Enter the Void
Gaspar Noé, 2009



When an American drug dealer living in Tokyo is shot to death by police, he proceeds to have a prolonged out-of-body experience.

I first attempted to watch Enter the Void when it was doing the rounds of the festival circuit towards the end of 2010 and I went to see it on a double-bill with Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime. I had already seen both I Stand Alone and Irréversible, so I was already familiar with Noé's extremely abrasive cinematic sensibilities. Enter the Void sounded theoretically more "enjoyable" than those films, if only because it promised a lush psychedelic experience thanks to its plot about drug dealer Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) getting killed in a sting operation one night and then proceeding to become a spirit who observes how things play out in the wake of his death. Between the displays of sensory abuse and the extremely disconcerting subject matter, I soon grew uncomfortable enough that I ended up walking out of the theatre after roughly an hour, marking the first time that I had ever actually walked out of a movie. As a result, I thought that someday I would get around to finishing Enter the Void, and when I saw that it was available for viewing on Netflix I decided that then I would finish what I started.

After going through its notoriously brief yet explosive opening credits, Enter the Void is split up into three clearly-defined sections. First, there's the entire section that follows Oscar through the last night of his life, then there's an extended sequence where his life effectively flashes before his eyes before finally having his spirit observe what happens in the wake of his death. The first part plays out entirely from a first-person perspective and introduces a number of the major players in Oscar's life and enough foreshadowing to carry the remainder of the film. The second plays out like a massive chunk of exposition that serves to give background details to what is already hinted at during the first part of the film, developing relationships such as the...complex one between him and his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta), as well as that with his best friend Alex (Cyril Roy) who gets him into dealing as well, in addition to showcasing the various other memories and choices that have led up to his terrible fate. The third part simply involves him being a passive presence who examines what happens to the others in the aftermath of his death.

Unfortunately, as with Noé's other films the actual development of plot and characterisation is probably the weakest aspect of this film, especially considering how much of the second act consists of making incredibly blatant what was already clearly implied during the first act (such as the conflict that arises between Oscar and the friend who ultimately turns him in to the police). The decision to use a largely amateur cast and significant amounts of improvised dialogue adds a certain degree of authenticity to the parts of the film that aren't explicitly intended to be fantastic; however, it's still the weakest part of the movie due to its focus on characters of varying levels of both sympathy and complexity. At least Oscar and Linda get enough development so that we at least care about what happens to them, especially the latter as she attempts to cope with the former's death (while the former acts a little too foolish at times to be all that sympathetic in his own right). Meanwhile, Alex is a character who may not be so easy to tolerate due to his cheeky fast-talking and generally cocky attitude. Everyone else is pretty one-note and not exactly worth further examination.

If there's any reason to watch Enter the Void, it is most definitely for the audio-visual experience more so than any real development of plot and characters. While said experience was admittedly a major factor in convincing me to bail on a theatrical screening (that and the film's treatment of its protagonist's death, which was perhaps a little too effective at communicating the obviously weighty nature of the subject), even then I was able to see that Noé was at least passionate about crafting one of the most brightly hypnotic films ever made. Setting it in the lurid, neon-soaked streets of Tokyo yields many locations and scenes that feature gorgeous combinations of every conceivable colour complete with uncannily strong contrasts. The same goes for the camerawork; after the conclusion of the impressive and lengthy first-person sequence (complete with blinks, which is a nice touch even if it makes you wonder where the film cuts), the film then switches up to Oscar's disembodied spirit flying around Tokyo and hovering over many scenes that run in many long takes, blending real footage with CGI in order to create a consistently believable illusion of being a lost soul roaming the land of the living. Though not every shot in the film is guaranteed to be a free-floating psychedelia-tinged extravaganza, enough of them are to make it at least worth your while.

Of course, this doesn't stop Noé from lapsing into a lot of his trademark gimmicks such as disorienting strobe lighting and deliberately jarring drones on the soundtrack (on a lesser note, I also find the chintzy music-box version of Bach's "Air on a G String" that plays repeatedly throughout the film to get more than a little tiresome after a whole). The shock tactics are out in force and, though they do make the experience a little unpredictable, they can also get a little too repetitive (such as one graphic jump-scare moment that is repeated a couple of times) Seeing as this is probably the closest that Noé has come to making a film that could be described as "enjoyable", one is likely to resent the moments that once again try to grind an audience back down into feeling cynical and depressed over the fragility of life and all that. The same goes for whether or not the more graphic content in the film feels like overkill - though this is arguably the most tolerable feature Noé has done yet, sequences such as Oscar gliding his way through a love hotel filled with couples having sex still feel gratuitous even though the combined technical choices definitely don't make these scenes feel even remotely titillating.

Now that I've had a chance to finish Enter the Void, I have to admit that I do kind of like it. Granted, there's still a lot to dislike about it - the incredibly shallow plot that's packed out with some rather stock characters isn't improved by Noé's preference to shock people's senses through physically unsettling stimuli more so than narrative weight, plus it's maybe a bit too long even in the slightly shortened version that I watched. I still think I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for the time being. If nothing else, the underlying structure isn't too obnoxious to off-set the colourful visuals (*cough*Spring Breakers*cough* - incidentally, both films share the same cinematographer and it shows), and ultimately that's what matters. The story does get dark in its meditations on sex, drugs, death, love, loyalty, and the nihilism that arises from the mournful absence or ultimately unwanted presence of those particular things. My feelings about the film are most definitely flexible - after posting this, I could decide that it deserves to be disliked instead of liked - but I give it credit for providing a genuinely interesting cinematic experience that doesn't threaten to completely alienate an audience like Noé's previous films deliberately set out to do. Enter the Void may not have that much to offer in terms of thematic depth, but it makes up for it in being the film version of looking through a kaleidoscope that's pointed at the gates of Hell. At the very least, it's the first film he's made that I actually feel would be worth watching more than once.

#557 - Incident at Loch Ness
Zak Penn, 2004



A documentary crew follows acclaimed director Werner Herzog as he is hired to direct his own film about the Loch Ness monster.

What an odd little duck of a film this turned out to be. Incident at Loch Ness is a behind-the-scenes chronicle of what happened during the filming of famed German director Werner Herzog's documentary about the fabled Loch Ness monster. Herzog, who has earned quite the level of notoriety for presiding over some incredibly difficult film productions, naturally has a camera crew following him in case this production goes wrong. The film, tentatively titled Enigma of Loch Ness, is being produced by Hollywood screenwriter Zak Penn, who has his own ulterior motives for getting a director of Herzog's stature involved in his project. After assembling a small crew to work on the film-within-a-film, everyone heads to Scotland and prepare to make the film and its behind-the-scenes documentary. It is at this point that I feel that I should avoid delving too much further into what happens in this film, but it practically goes without saying that the shoot encounters all sorts of setbacks ranging from minor technical issues to the friction that develops between the crew members as the production grows increasingly futile and dangerous.

Herzog's presence is at once the film's greatest strength and its greatest weakness, though in the latter case it has less to do with the man himself and more with how the film itself is built around him. With his airy German drawl and distinctive countenance, Herzog makes for a great protagonist in his own right who commands virtually every shot in which he appears. The other people in the film may not have his sheer force of personality, but many of them distinguish themselves just fine. Penn makes for an appropriate antithesis to Herzog, with his role as a gormless American responsible for writing Hollywood blockbusters like Behind Enemy Lines or X-Men 2 making him the ideal foil for this cultured European responsible for making some of the most respectable art films of the 20th century. The crew tend to be serviceable people who generally maintain down-to-earth vibes, with the stand-outs being the bearded cryptozoologist who could have been the protagonist of an actual Herzog film thanks to his bizarre obsession with the paranormal and the token female crew member who just so happens to be a model and whose late arrival into the film is at once a shameless stunt-cast on Penn's part yet also a surprisingly vital part of the film's plot. With an appropriately mismatched collection of individuals in place, the film is ready to progress.

Of course, the true weakness comes from how Incident at Loch Ness is a little too conscious of how much it wants to duplicate the same craziness that has happened in and around actual Herzog productions. If the fact that the film's conflict comes from a group of people being trapped on a boat isn't enough of a tip-off, then it becomes extremely clear thanks to the scene depicted in the header image, which features Penn angrily aiming a flare-gun at a recalcitrant Herzog in a deliberate homage to the apparently apocryphal story of Herzog directing Klaus Kinski at gunpoint during the filming of Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The film's attempts at providing clever riffs on its leading man's reputation work to an extent, though you definitely can't shake the feeling that the film is trying too hard in instances such as the one depicted above; this is especially true considering how Penn bluntly name-checks the incident in question and asks Herzog how it feels to be on the other end of the gun for a change. I can definitely understand how incidents like this seem to be deliberate attempts by Penn to showcase the stifling and self-destructive nature of Hollywood producers trying to force creative energy out of a person like Herzog, especially when Penn's actual plan is revealed and Herzog has a...complicated reaction. Though it's arguably intended to be played for humour, I honestly don't think it translates all that well, or at the very least not enough so as to get a laugh. This sort of clever self-referential attitude is what ends up distinguishing the film for better or worse; otherwise, it is a fairly standard example of a behind-the-scenes film where conflict is driven mainly by in-fighting more so than external obstacles.

Even though the humour is a little too self-aware for its own good, Incident at Loch Ness is a generally decent film that uses its documentarian approach to provide a rather amusing (albeit not particularly deep) take on Herzog's notoriety. This is less because of anything Herzog himself does and more thanks to how he reacts to the increasingly absurd situation surrounding him. The understated cast sell the material well enough, while Penn's presence is definitely noteworthy as he ends up becoming the true subject of the film more so than either Herzog or the Loch Ness monster. Though the film's attempts to either parody or pay homage to Herzog's extensive career are a bit hit-and-miss, Penn himself becomes a very Herzog-like protagonist as his true intentions for hiring Herzog to come to Scotland are revealed and his behaviour only keeps getting more bizarre as the film goes on, which is just as well considering how fundamentally by-the-numbers it can be compared to other films and shows of its ilk. If the truth is always stranger than fiction, then that does do an intentionally weird film like Incident at Loch Ness a bit of a disservice, but at least it's not a major one.

That's a great review of Enter the Void, a pretty off the wall movie. I would give it the same rating, and I think I liked it slightly more than I Stand Alone, and I'd rank Irreversible last out of the three. The guy is a fascinating director for sure. It's funny that you walked out of the cinema as that seems the ideal place to see it, although I can understand it.

Yeah, I do regret walking out on it, but it really was proving too tough to watch at the time. Oh, well.

#558 - Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Kevin Smith, 2008



Two lifelong friends decide to make their own adult film in order to pay the bills.

If I were to pinpoint the moment at which I started to seriously question thinking of Kevin Smith as one of my favourite film-makers, it was probably when I watched Zack and Miri Make a Porno. After making five mostly-comedic films set in his inter-connected "View Askewniverse", Smith proceeded to make an unconnected film about a single dad and called it Jersey Girl, which took enough of a critical and commercial drubbing that Smith's next project ended up being a rather safe choice in that it was a direct sequel to his breakthrough no-budget debut Clerks. This was around the same time that a veteran comedy writer by the name of Judd Apatow made his big-screen directorial debut with 2005's The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which proved to be such a surprise hit that it effectively launched not only his own film-making career but also ushered in a new wave of fresh-faced and not-so-fresh-faced comedic actors who soon started making their own movies. While I cop to enjoying The 40-Year-Old Virgin the first time I saw it, repeat viewings were not kind to it and I grew rather fatigued by Apatow's particular brand of comedy, which tended towards the overly long, the heavily improvised, and the pointlessly dramatic. That negative impression has stuck with me year after year so whenever I am faced with any comedy that even looks like Apatow had anything to do with it, the best-case scenario is that I tend to be skeptical of it being any good.

This brings me to Zack and Miri Make a Porno, a film in which Smith shamelessly decides to make a film aimed at appropriating Apatow's style. This extends to not only stacking the cast with several actors who had previously worked with Apatow, but also by building off the same kind of R-rated high-concept that is simple enough to be used as the title, promising both filthy chuckles and a warm emotional depth to otherwise unsentimental characters. So far, this all comes across as territory that Smith's staked out before anyway, but it also marks his second attempt to make a film based outside the comfort zone of the Askewniverse (with the first being the bland but inoffensive Jersey Girl). However, he focuses on copying Apatow to the point where it either obscures or compromises his few strengths as a film-maker; Smith has always been more of a writer than a director, which puts him at odds with his conscious decision to imitate a film-maker whose films tend to involve significant levels of improvisation. Apatow's sensibilities were already enough to seriously alienate me, but they're made even worse when they clash with Smith's, leading to scenes such as the one where Seth Rogen's Zack makes multiple amused comments while watching a pair of gay men have an argument. As such, there's a certain aura of self-satisfaction to the way that a lot of the interactions play out as the film becomes less about organic interplay (pun not intended) and feels way too much like everyone is trying to one-up each other's jokes, which only hurts the film as a whole.

On the acting front, things are far from great. A lot of that can be pinned on the incredibly weak characterisation on display. The eponymous duo (played by Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks respectively) embody a fairly typical goofy-guy-less-goofy-girl dynamic that pays true homage to Apatow by disguising the lack of serious depth through many a foul-mouthed exchange and a dependence on the stars essentially playing themselves. This is a problem in Rogen's case since this comes from a period where he almost invariably played immature slackers who were so awfully similar to one another that one could easily tune out any variations (if there were any), while Banks gets little more to do than play his neurotic foil. Craig Robinson doesn't fare much better as Rogen's co-worker who gets roped into his crazy make-a-porno scheme while also trying to hide it from his wife (oh, those wacky married couples) and proves some very debatable race-based humour. They even bring in Gerry Bednob, who apparently made such an impression with his bit part as the cranky old Indian guy in The 40-Year-Old Virgin that this production went out of its way to get him involved as if to remind audiences, "Hey, you liked The 40-Year-Old Virgin, right?" There are a couple of actors who have worked with Smith such as Jason Mewes (once again playing a foul-mouthed doofus, albeit one who's far less obnoxious than Jay) and Jeff Anderson (a.k.a Randal from Clerks, though here he plays a far less defined character). Their presence feels like little more than a wink to Smith fans that, yes, this is most definitely a Smith film; that being said, Mewes is probably the most amusing performer in the film by some distance, with some of his more foolish antics and turns of phrase definitely earning a couple of chuckles.

Of course, just because Zack and Miri Make a Porno wrings a couple of chuckles out during its feature-length running time doesn't mean I can bring myself to like it. I already mentioned the clashing comedic sensibilities and techniques, but they only exacerbate the problems with a script that definitely embodies more of Smith's flaws than usual. The premise pretty much guarantees that the humour's going to be filthy, but here its relentless application ends up being numbing. The more explicitly pornography-themed humour is extremely dire, whether it's Zack and Miri delivering a constant stream of pun-based movie titles as they try to name their project (eventually settling on "Star Whores" because guess what sci-fi franchise Smith really likes...) or the awkwardness involved in the actual production itself (complete with one extremely quick gross-out gag that should theoretically provide one of the film's biggest and most sudden laughs but...doesn't). It is "complemented" by the film's attempts to build an emotional core behind its cheeky shenanigans, which predictably revolves around how platonic roommates Zack and Miri are made to confront the supposedly non-existent romantic tension that exists between them yet is predictably challenged by their work on this production. Smith may have semi-competently balanced relationship drama with slacker comedy in films like Chasing Amy or Clerks II, but here his touch is clumsy and what was already a pretty joyless excuse for a comedy gets even more bogged down as more and more attention is paid to complicating and resolving a very inconsequential plot.

I am now wondering which of Smith's films I wish to cite as my least favourite - this or his 2014 mad-science horror-comedy Tusk (his 2010 buddy-cop comedy Cop Out is also terrible, but in a bland and slightly less insulting manner than either of the other two films). Despite both films' superficially dissimilar plots and intentions, they do manage to showcase Smith at his absolute worst underneath their provocative premises. Both films are grossly derivative (what is Tusk if not a more broadly comical version of The Human Centipede?) and are marred by serious tonal inconsistencies, to say nothing of the ways in which the humour lapses into unpleasant self-indulgence far too often for either film to be genuinely funny. Though the extremely fatalistic and disgusting body-horror premise of Tusk may make it fundamentally worse than the simplistic lewdness of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, that doesn't exactly let the latter film off the hook. The passage of time has led to me re-assessing all of Smith's films (frequently for the worst), but this was the first time that I saw a Smith film and didn't just feel disappointment (as was the case with Chasing Amy) but genuine hatred. I still look to this film as the turning point where I started the journey from impressionable fanboy to "Well, at least Clerks is still kind of good". That should tell you everything you need to know about this aggressively mediocre and obnoxious attempt to ride a bandwagon.

I have a copy of this, but haven't watched it. I bought it when it came out but even then I wasn't psyched by the prospect of watching it. Being a Smith film was all it had going for it. One day I'll watch it (much like Juno) but much of what you said is as I feared.