Rhapsodies

Wednesday Double Features – Hong Kong Super Heroes

by wpmorse on January 23, 2018 at 8:25 am

Posted In: Test

Since last week’s selection was a little artsier than I expected, I decided to clear my palette with total fluff. I went with a small handful of superhero films from Hong Kong. (Quick note, for the sake of this post I mean taking place in the modern day an wearing a costume. If I included period films just about half the WuXia films out there could count.)

The inspiration for this week’s theme came from last week’s Irma Vep, where we’re shown clips of Maggie Cheung in Johnnie To’s Heroic Trio. So I thought what the heck.

Heroic Trio tells the story of three powerful crime fighters (well actually one of them starts out as one of the villains but changes her mind ) Wonder Woman (no not that one) (Anita Mui), Thief Taker (Maggie Cheung) and The Invisible Girl (not that one either) (Michelle Yeoh).

Babies are being kidnapped for nefarious reasons, and it’s up to our heroines to stop them. (Provided they don’t kill each other first.)

This was fluff. The plot was pretty much a way to link all of the wirework fight scenes together. Still, it was charming in one of those so bad it’s good kind of ways with Cheung stealing the show as the dynamite chucking Thief Taker.

Because Scarecrow only had the sequel to Heroic Trio I ended up picking up that one and watched the original online.

Heroic Trio 2: The Executioners takes a couple of years later after a nuclear war. The team’s been disbanded with Wonder Woman retired raising a daughter. Because of the war, there’s a water shortage which the government is trying to use to stay in power, while a mysterious figure is trying to use the crisis to cause a coup. Once again it’s time for the trio to settle their differences and save the day.

Regrettably, this one was even worse than the first one with none of the original film’s charm

The second film on my list, Jingle Ma’s Silver Hawk, opens with Michelle Yeoh as the titular character in a battle against panda smugglers. This pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the film.

Silver Hawk is a mysterious masked motorcyclist who fights crime. In the process, she finds herself at odds with the police led by police commissioner Rich Man (yes really) played by Richie Jen. Man turns out to be a childhood friend of her secret identity, Lulu Wong, who still regrets them being separated when she left the martial arts school they were attending to get better training elsewhere.

Meanwhile, a mysterious villain named Wolfe (Luke Goss) is kidnapping scientists and CEO’s to carry out his evil scheme to take over the world. It’s up to Silver Hawk to save the day.

While this one had a lot better production values than the first two films it wasn’t really that much better. It’s saving grace is it didn’t take it’self too seriously. The two main fights in the film involved mooks on bungee chords for the first one and ones with futuristic armor with rollerblades and hockey sticks. I think the best way is to look at it as a modern-day version of the sixties Batman TV show… but I’ll take Michelle Yeoh over Adam West anytime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXfNg6NN3C4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovQyOz57oDc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcp-Ek1aPYI

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Wednesday Double Feature – French Films Within French Films

by wpmorse on January 17, 2018 at 8:48 am

Posted In: Test

I started this week’s selection with a sub-genre I love, the show within a show. Or in this case a film within a film. This quickly changed to films about filmmaking and by sheer coincidence, French films about filmmaking.

The first on my list was Day for Night,(or La Nuit Américaine} by the great Francois Truffaut. It tells the story of Ferrand, played by Truffaut, a director who is the middle of making his latest film, Meet Pamela.

Unfortunately, nothing is going right for the production, his celebrity lead is in the middle of a nervous breakdown, while another of his actresses is being consumed by her alcoholism, and, since the backers refuse to change the production schedule, Ferrand is fighting a losing battle with his deadline.

This was a fun film, which is even more fun if you know anything about the film industry. It is full to the brim with in-jokes and fun scenes. My favorites include a rebellious stunt kitten and the aforementioned alcoholic actress repeatedly walking into a closet by mistake.

All and all this kind of made me think of a live-action Muppet Show with Truffaut as Kermit.

I’d been familiar with the character Irma Vep, the star of the film Les Vampires for a couple of years. I was intrigued enough by this iconic cat burger who inspired DC’s Catwoman and others, that I wanted to see if there had been other films about the character. All I found was the next film on my list, Irma Vep, by Olivier Assayas, which while being about our title character, really isn’t.

What it is about is a film crew that is making the titular film as a low budget remake of Les Vampires. And when I say that I am not talking about an up to date thriller. I’m talking about a strange avant-garde, art for art’s sake silent film.

Hired to play the title role is Hong Kong star, Maggie Cheung, played by herself. Maggie finds herself a stranger in a strange land, unable to speak the language (everybody else can speak English to her but it still feels off-putting) and continually confused by the crew’s lack of professionalism (in comparison to what she’s used to, back in Hong Kong) To make matters worse her costume consists of a latex catsuit, that literally started out as fetish wear.(There’s a fun scene with her being fitted for it by the customer, Zoe, (played by Nathalie Richard) at a sex shop.

All and all this was a fun film, showing the horrors of producing a low budget film through the eyes of an outsider.

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Wednesday Double Feature – Sherlock Holmes

by wpmorse on January 10, 2018 at 8:58 am

Posted In: Test

A couple of months ago I did a group of movies about people who were blatantly and totally not Sherlock Holmes. Even if they claimed or even believed to be. This week I decided to go with films about the great detective himself. To make things more interesting I went with actors who were not particularly associated with the part, having played him only once.

I’d known of Murder By Decree by Bob Clark, starring Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes for some time, though I’m afraid that all I knew about it was that it was “Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper. “

Our story starts in the middle of the Ripper murders with Holmes finally being contacted by some “concerned citizens” who think the killings are bad for business. (The fact that Holmes has not been contacted by the police already is immediately suspect) Holmes is on the case but as things go on it’s clear that things go far beyond a mere serial killer with cover-ups going as far as the Prime Minister… and possibly even higher.

This film was blatantly based on Steven Knight’s Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution and having watched and read other Ripper fiction using this material including the 1988 Jack the Ripper starring Micheal Caine, and of course Alan Moore’s From Hell, this one felt painfully predictable and by the numbers. The only thing that saves it is that Holmes is functioning just outside of the actual history-making for his own story.

Next on my list was the Hound of the Baskervilles. Now there are lots of different versions of the original novel, and I had an entertaining comedy of errors when many of these were at Scarecrow’s Sherlock Holmes shelf in their crime and mystery room except for the one that I was looking for, the 1959 Hammer Films version. Turns out it was downstairs with its director, Terence Fisher.

This film went through the usual notes of this story. Holmes and Watson are contacted to investigate a legendary ghostly dog in the moors of Dartmoor that apparently is targeting the latest holder of the House of Baskerville.

This was mostly a mediocre effort with only one thing making it worthwhile., in fact, the main reason I picked this in the first place, was Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes. As always Cushing owns every scene he’s in, making me wish he’d had the opportunity to play the role many more times.

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Wednesday Double Feature – Cary Grant Comedies

by wpmorse on January 3, 2018 at 10:13 am

Posted In: Test

To start up the new year in a slightly optimistic note I decided to watch a few comedies and check off a few more items on my Cary Grant list.

The first film on my list was one I’d been meaning to see for a while, Howard Hawk’s I Was a Male War Bride. Grant plays a French army officer Henri Rochard who is sent on an intelligence mission in post-war Germany with American lieutenant Catherine Gates played by Ann Sheridan. They bicker all the way through the mission. Its the process they are drawn to each other, finally falling in love.

Once they get back to base they get married but on their wedding, Ann is tent back to America. The only way to accompany. Henri has to register as a war bride under which while the gender of the spouse is assumed to be female, in the actual paperwork it isn’t actually stated. This leads to a comedy of errors and red tape.

This was a fun film with some great dialogue. But by the standards of Hawks and this screenwriter, Charles Lederer it was subpar, and a bit choppy. The bits were all there and they were great bits, I enjoyed all of the verbal sparring with Grant and Sheridan were great, and Grant’s night trying to find a place to sleep for the night is hilarious. However, it all feels rushed and doesn’t seem to hold together.

In the next film Father Goose, Grant plays Walter Eckland an American beachcomber living in the south pacific in the outbreak of a Japanese invasion in February 1942. He’s has been drifting with no purpose in life and enjoying every minute of it.

His routine is broken when an old friend of his Commander Frank Houghton (Trevor Howard) coerces him into being a coast watcher for the British navy. (That is to say, someone left on an island to watch for enemy planes.) To make sure he stays on the island, Houghton sinks Walter’s boat. He also bribes him with the location of hidden bottles of whiskey for every confirmed sighting of Japanese planes.

Things go about as you expect for a couple of weeks until Houghton offers Frank a replacement, the only catch is he has to pick them up from a nearby island. Instead of his replacement Frank runs into the Frenchwoman Catherine Freneau (Leslie Caron) who has been left on the island with seven school girls she’s been caring for. (Franks replacement was killed) Frank has no choice but to take them back with him.

What this leads to is a battle of the sexes with the fastidious and proper Catherine (and her entourage of seven adorable moppets) versus the surly drunken Walter.

This was a sweet little fun with Grant clearly having fun playing against type.

└ Tags: Cary Grant, Movie Reviews

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Wednesday Double Feature – Flawed Santa

by wpmorse on December 20, 2017 at 9:18 am

Posted In: Test

With Christmas coming in less than a week I found that it was time to start to get my quota of seasonal holiday films over with. I decided to go with my favorite holiday subject, Santa Claus, and all of the myths that the media creates about him. Since I was in a rather cynical mood, I decided to focus on films where Santa was a little less than pure.

The first film on my list, Fred Claus, starring Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti, was one of those films I hadn’t heard anything that really impressed me besides Paul Giamatti’s performance as Santa Claus.

Vaughn plays the title character, Santa Chaus’s estranged older brother. (In this setting all of Santa’s family are just as immortal as he is). Fred’s been going through some tough times. In exchange for some help from his brother to fund his latest business venture, he’s invited to help out at the family business.

Meanwhile, Santa’s a little stressed out as the North Paul is under observation by an efficiency expert who threatens to shut down the North Pole.

This film was pretty much predictable and by the numbers with nothing but current pop songs on the soundtrack and only Giamatti making it worth the time.

The next film on my list, Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa has Billy Bob Thornton plays Willie T. Soke, the worst mall Santa known to man. He’s a cynical, misanthropic drunk who is rarely seen sober. He clearly hates this job, in fact, there’s only one reason he’s doing it. It’s all a scam. He and his partner Marcus, (Tony Cox) do the mall Santa routine, casing the joint and on Christmas Eve they rob the mall’s safe. They do this every year in different parts of the country.

This year Willie meets a slightly autistic boy who is fixated on him as Santa. The Kid helps Willie after a close call with the Mall’s head of security, played by Bernie Mac, searching his apartment, lets Willie use his home as a place to hide. Will this soften the heart of this worst of Santas?

This was a fun dark film with a bitter sense of humor but it’s Thornton that makes it work in his performance as the wonderfully despicable Willie. It does a good job satirizing the materialism of the season while somehow pulling a moral out of all that dark cynicism.

└ Tags: Christmas, Movie Reviews, Santa Claus

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Wednesday Double Feature – Naval Time Travel

by wpmorse on December 13, 2017 at 9:09 am

Posted In: Test

This week I started to skim the bottom of my list of science fiction films I hadn’t seen yet. I ended up watching a tiny sub-genre that I will choose to refer to as naval time travel… that is to say, time travel that somehow involves the navy or a naval vessel.

The first film on my list, The Final Countdown by Don Taylor starring Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Farentino, Katharine Ross and Charles Durning, tells how the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is caught in a time vortex in the middle of a training exercise. They find themselves in 1941 just a day before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

This leads them trying to figure out what to do next. Do they save the day by preventing the attack, (for that matter use their superior technology to win World War II all by themselves.) Or do they do nothing and preserve history as they know it. This is made all the more difficult when they mistakenly rescue a senator and his secretary who according to history had disappeared.

This film was… okay. It looks really cool since it had the full cooperation of the US Navy and is filmed on the actual Nimitz. For the most part, I liked it best when it was a military procedural, with professionals reacting to really weird stuff professionally. The science fiction itself was kind of weak. It really couldn’t seem to decide whether history could be changed or not.

The next film on my list was The Philadelphia Experiment. I have to confess that I was going to get the 1982 film by that name. I found out when I started playing it, I had picked up turned out to be a 2012 remake made for television on SyFy.

It tells the story of a shady corporation with military connections. developing a cloaking field. In one of their experiments, they somehow bring a military destroyer, USS Eldridge, which according to urban legend was part of a similar experiment, into the present.

The Eldridge starts to teleport all over the world with the effect of its presence causing mass destruction. It’s last surviving crewman is trying to track it down and stop it. While being chased by the agents of the corporation who are trying to cover the whole thing up.

Regrettably, this movie was about what you’d expect from a film that showed on SyFy. It was heavy-handed with a by the numbers hubristic corporation along with lots of other stale cliches.