"Accomplishments"
At home: The recreation of a SEAL mission in Iraq that went wrong and its difficult evac, Warfare is based on the recollections of those involved, and plays out mostly in real time. Director Alex Garland doesn't try to too obviously embellish - there are no war movie tropes like soldiers talking about their back stories, etc. - though there's certainly a hidden message in the way it doesn't expose any information the characters all know and wouldn't realistically talk about. Because this means that not only is Warfare very procedural and filled with jargon non-military audiences are unlikely to understand, but there's also no real sense of what the mission was, initially. And if you want to see this as a portrait of the Iraq War in small, I think you'd be justified. But by necessity, it means we don't get to know anyone except cursorily and may no invest fully in the carnage. Honestly, I was more interested in the way Garland portrayed the tedium of the mission than the furious action of the retreat, which hinged closer to things we've seen often in war films. I kept thinking back to Black Hawk Down, which had similar ambitions, but was a stronger cinematic experience. Warfare will mean something to service members, I'm sure, but this outsider, at least, didn't think it transcended the kind of rote rah rah patriotism that's often necessary to get military support for such a production, and which touches me not at all. Interesting sound design, though.
The original City Slickers isn't just a great movie, it's also very personal to me. City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold... not so much. The main attractions are that great soundtrack and seeing those characters again - even Norman! - but Bruno Kirby's presence is sorely missed, as Jon Lovitz, playing Billy Crystal's deadbeat brother, is scarcely a replacement. An annoying character both in universe and out, I understand he's there to have an "arc" because Crystal is now pretty adjusted, but Daniel Stern is still having problems, so that could have been laid at his feet instead. The movie takes way too long to get to the West, and things only pick up when Jack Palance makes his return as Curly's brother Duke. Duke is slightly different from Curly, and seems to be having more fun. Unfortunately, I'm not. The comedy is very broad and altogether too dependent on light gay panic. And honestly, once you know the nature of the treasure, it all feels a little pointless on the rewatch, give or take the final cheat.
While Cocoon: The Return brings back the original's cast, and I think fans of the first film will be happy with that, its A-plot is secondary to its many subplots and gives the sequel a scattershot feeling. The aliens are back to retrieve some cocoons, but one has been taken by marine biologists - which include a young Courtney Cox in a Star Trek IV type plot - but that feels rather disconnected from the various pensioners who make their return and variably face a dilemma about whether to stay or go back to functional immortality. They each have their bits, not least of which Jack Gilford's Bernie, the curmudgeon who never left, and the object of another type of rescue. The great Elaine Stritch joins the cast in a key role, too, so there are a lot of stories to pay off. I was even forgetting the Steve Guttenberg renewing his romance with Tahnee Welch's alluring alien, probably because there seems to be something going on with her that's never fully addressed. And yet, I think we ARE happy to see what's next for these characters and I fully let the final moments and goodbyes affect me emotionally, so The Return is doing something right. I just wish its many threads had been better integrated.
A year before Batman, Michael Keaton trained to be the Dark Knight by playing Daryl Poynter, a strung-out real estate a-hole at the end of his rope in Clean and Sober. Well, he needed to show he could do drama to the nerds who didn't think someone with a comedy background should be Batman, right? I'm only half-kidding. I doubt those same nerds went out to see an "issues film" like this. Clean and Sober does have a nice hook for this kind of material - our coke addict only enters rehab because it's confidential and he's hiding from the cops and his bosses because of various extra-legal activities. It's therefore unfortunate that it doesn't stick to the thriller elements in the third act, but by that time, it's really become an "issues film". Not to say what happens after rehab isn't an important part of such a story, but the narrative drive evaporates as we follow Daryl's attempts to romance a fellow addict played by Kathy Baker (Picket Fences) - I'm not exactly complaining, she's great. But C&S has trouble staying with any given conceit, including the transitions covered by AA testimonials, which shouldn't have been forgotten about in the middle section, seeing as we return there for the film's strong finish. Ultimately, this is about Keaton's performance, and it's an intense and ruthless one across his obsessions and misbehavior.
In Clockwise, John Cleese plays a time-obsessed school headmaster asked to speak at a headmaster conference that normally doesn't admit public school people (so it's a big deal) whose trip immediately becomes derailed. Will he make it there on time or explode in a fiery ball of OCD? It's an amusing premise on paper, but Cleese's Mr. Stimpson is a tedious man who, while he deserves to be hoisted on his own petard, makes the movie rather tedious itself. To get to the conference, he is forced to make a student drive him, leading to all sorts of misunderstandings about their relationship (hardy-har, pedos, amirite?), while her ACTUAL inappropriate student-teacher romance is played as a laugh and is a subplot never resolved. There's a supplemental pedo joke, in case you needed it. At its best, Clockwise takes aim at the snobbish posh schools and classism, but it's not often at its best. Alison Steadman and Penelope Wilton are the women who suffer this fool and rather wasted in this road trip movie that's pointed at a dead end.
Has the time come for a reappraisal of Coneheads? I mean, its satirical look at being an "illegal alien" in America has only become more pregnant than it was in the early 90s, and the scenes with Michael McKean's INS are all too real despite being lampoons and uses tricks we now associate with ICE. The movie might even answer the ignorant question of why immigrants don't want to go home, when we finally visit Remulak (impossible in SNL's sketch budget) and Beldar has to make a decision. But while our understanding of the immigrant situation enhances the film, it really can't make up for its inherent weaknesses. First, it's silly, perhaps charming, but not particularly funny. Second, it came from comedy sketches and still feels like a bunch of the sketches strung together, with a dreadful lack of connective tissue that make you wonder if there's a missing hour of material. Third, the Conheads are too broadly inhuman to really care about - speak too quickly and robotically, eat gross stuff, etc. cartoon alien stuff - though they still manage to eek out a couple of sweet scenes. The two still impressive things are 1) Dan Aykroyd's French (it's very funny to hear Beldar speak in an Anglo-Canadian speaking perfect French accent), and 2) the casting, which is a veritable who's who of comedy stars (or then up-and-comers) from the era, and not just the SNL of the day. And often in tiny one-line roles. The teenage daughter's friends? Somehow Joey Lauren Adams and Parker Posey. Her diving coach is Ellen DeGeneres. Beldar picks up Drew Carey in his cab. A lot of, hey was that...? Kind of gave me a bird watcher's thrill.
So the joke is that Ralph Bakshi saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and came out of it wanting to bang Jessica. And Cool World is definitely pervy, with the biggest crime in this particular Toon dimension being flesh and blood humans having sex with "Doodles", even though they all lust after each other, and notwithstanding the fact that most humans access this place through dreams and would feel warranted. While not unwatchable - the level of crazy alone may be worth the watch - there's a lot wrong here. While baby-faced Brad Pitt, as a soldier with PTSD hiding out as a police detective in Cool World to avoid reality is well developed, his story is secondary to Gabriel Byrne's comic artist who wants to bang his creation, and HIS story is underwritten and less interesting. Bakshi never finds a way to organically explain the rules of Cool World, so they come up as deus and devil ex machinae. And of course, it's no Roger Rabbit even technically - interaction between Toons and live action is often pretty dodgy and the Doodles often just look overlayed over the film (a lot of it comes down to mismatched lighting and eye lines), but I wasn't expecting it to reach the absolute gold standard. But I do resent its borrowing of so many elements from Roger Rabbit - the initial 1940s aesthetic, the Noir detective, the cartoon femme fatale - while simultaneously finding the 90s cartoons pretty ugly (where were Ren & Stimpy during all this?). I still find things to enjoy (Holli Would flashing in and out of a more cartoony form, Pitt's cute love story, the batshit crazy Vegas sequence minus the numbskull superhero bit), but yeah, it's a mess. Still appreciate the effort.
Though 16 features down the line, Cinderella is only Disney's second "Princess" film, and therefore feels like watershed moment. Will all due respect to Snow White, Cindy looks and feels like much of the animation studio's output for years to come, a blend of slapstick animal comedy (the mice are very present, and the cat is more of a villain than any of the stepfamily in terms of screen time - who calls their pet Lucifer in a Medieval-ish setting?!) and incredibly realistic performances for the human characters. The clash almost doesn't work, but the critters are fun, and the human sequences are beautiful, the songs memorable, and we forgive everything. After this, we'll get many more "Princess", or "Princessish" (stories with beautiful young women like Alice and Wendy), movies from the studio, and Cinderella is the template. You could say it still is. Snow White walked, as they say, but Cindy ran. I saw Cinderella in theaters in 1990 - no doubt one of those airings out of the vault, and it looked like what the Mouse was doing contemporaneously. Today, everything's in frenetic digital 3D, but the formula is the same.
[1948] The Naked City: A crime picture that broke the mold at the time, its influence can be felt today, more so on television. Not only was there a Naked City series in the '50s to tell some of the OTHER 8 million stories (and likely the reason the catch phase is so familiar), but shows like Dragnet and Law & Order seem so beholden to its procedural real world approach that I half expected the back half of the film to turn the narrative over to the district attorney's office. We really do see a step by step investigation into the spotlit murder, with its side research and dead ends. Barry Fitzgerald is great as the veteran Irish copper heading the investigation, but he has a team, and they get their fair share of work and action. The format is recognizable today - even overused - but it's not the only innovation. The Naked City prides itself on its use of locations rather than sets, and director Jules Dassin uses guerrilla techniques to catch real life in New York. Voice-over is used interestingly, too. Not only do we have producer Mark Hellinger narrating, commenting and even addressing the characters throughout (a conceit I thought would be annoying, especially after Hellinger spoke the opening credits at us, but it was really entertaining), but we often hear people's thoughts, giving us a glimpse at the stories we WEREN'T looking at. I think sometimes some of the acting is a bit melodramatic for the general tone, but a great achievement on several levels.
[1949] The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad: What a strange combo. I like the conceit of having a British and an American narrator ostensibly choosing a character from each tradition's literature to star in an animated short, and that these each hit a holiday associated with their country (Christmas and Halloween, respectively), but otherwise... You're just sort of waiting for the climax sequences of each, aren't you? The Mr. Toad stuff is very hard to get into - I hate the real estate scheme trope, but it's the kind of thing they keep putting inc children's entertainment - perhaps because The Wind in the Willows is too long to be abbreviated this way. Too much happens, too many characters are introduced, and I often felt confused. Many of these characters reappear in other Disney cartoons, including their Christmas Carol adaptation, and I loved the weasels (big flashback to Roger Rabbit). The best part is the game of keep-away with the deed, by far. As for the Legend of Sleepy Hollow sequences, it has a lot of songs because Bing Crosby is narrating, whose style seemed at odds with the time period depicted. It's still the better, more straightforward short, though again, I don't know that kids would tap into the whole thing with Ichabod wanting Katrina for her money, nor that the bullying of the schoolmaster would be acceptable. The final Headless Horseman sequence is, of course, superlative, and you've probably seen it clipped. In the final analysis, while there are a lot of fun moments in both parts, the sum total just doesn't work for me.
[1950] Orpheus: On poet/film maker Jean Cocteau's contentious that myths are unmoored from a specific time and place, his take on the Orpheus myth sets it in contemporary Paris, where poets are treated like rock stars (not that there was yet such a thing), and Orpheus's fatalistic fascination with death is translated into an affair with an alluring incarnation of Death. A jealous Death takes Eurydice away from him, a portrait of the artist's obsessions taking them away from loved ones. And perhaps in the "underworld" of bombed-out post-war France can we see the country's own flirtation with Death, in the form of the Vichy regime. Perhaps. The film doesn't easily give up its secrets, and the wonderfully dreamy effects - a Cocteau trademark - suggest a more surreal reading anyway. I love the idea of Eurydice coming all the way home, but Orpheus being unable to look at her even in their marriage lest she be taken back to Hell. And the resolution is romantic in a way that the myth doesn't entirely achieve. Despite the theatrics, it manages emotional beats that may linger as much as the memorably strange images.
Gaming: An unusual sandbox game one might be tempted to call Grand Theft Shark, Maneater puts you in control of a baby shark that grows up and mutates until she's a powerful monster able to take revenge on the Cajun fisherman who killed her mother (in a very nice twist, you start off AS the mother, it's a great intro, and the "villain", Pierre "Scaly Pete" LeBlanc, has some real Cajun/Acadian moments that I especially appreciated given my own heritage. From the shallow bayou to polluted harbors, to glitzy resorts and the open sea, your shark is accompanied by a Shark Week voice with some pretty humorous "facts" about marine biology, and I was especially amazed at how well the fish handled in the 3D environment given how many games have frustrated me on this (like any time you have to fly a plane in a sandbox made for cars). For once the DLC is well worth it, not only adding a large new region that's like a marine Area 51, but much fiercer threats like helicopters and radioactive alphas, and new stuff to do even on the older map. Though you ended the main game as a Megalodon (my fervent wish when the little bull shark started evolving), "Truth Quest" has it turn into a hammerhead that shoots radiation blasts. A teaser of some of these new features is in the main game, and it certainly worked on me (especially at the prices for older games no one cares about). If you play, I do recommend switching between mutations as needed - there are forms that are better for fighting, for farming, for racing... and they all look cool. Story done, all secondary objectives done, achievements all unlocked, NOW what am I gonna do?
RPGs: This is it, the week Furn joins the group, albeit with a temporary character. The gang is quite low on combat (the opposite of the main campaign team), so he's made a Gun Fu Mercenary with unlimited weapons and ammo, also an undercover agent, though his team (of which he is the only survivor) is more into sabotage than espionage. I set him on the trail of the were-bat the PCs killed last time, resolving the subplot about the Nightmare Seed it was supposed to plant (the PCs didn't investigate), the Merc's tracking eventually leading him to the group, just as they needed the extra firepower, perhaps. (Thankfully, we left the Street Ninja poisoned, so there was something to cut back and forth with until everything came together.) The climax was about planting an alien stelae in a lagoon, which would either turn the whole of the Philippines into a Pan-Pacifica zone OR a Malagwa (think Pirates of the Caribbean) zone, depending on the players' choices and/or rolls (they chose PP, but it wasn't unanimous). But they miscalculated last episode. By refusing to ever help anyone with the local pirate problem, they invited treachery. The locals sold them out for their own safety, and several pirate speedboats bore down on them (oh, and an Orrorshan Megalodon for good measure, attracted by the Seed), requiring the help of a certain mercenary. But what happened was, they dealt with separate threats and were separated by water, so the new guy has yet to meet the team! Next time.
Best bits: The new guy is so polite for someone who looks like Snake Eyes on steroids. The Psionic finds the antidote herb by reading the Edeinos leader's mind. The ruthless Hacker then convinces the dumb Ninja to stop thinking and just off the man-beast - I'm having them make Corruption tests left and right, but they always pass them - that's how evil grows. The Merc has to row for his life, then run through a jungle with a machete to reach the group, and manages to make one of the pirate boats explode with a hail of bullets, before the corrupted Megalodon enters the lagoon and makes a beeline for where he's sitting on the beach. He tapes the Nightmare Seed to a batch of C-4 with the duct tape from his first aid kit and throws it into the animal's mouth, but it survives the explosion. I had it jump out of the water and onto the beach, snapping at him and spitting dark bile from the seed. Meanwhile, Hacker makes a big, card-assisted speech about her new understanding of Reality so she can get bonuses on the anchoring of the stelae, but is ultimately pushed off the task by the Psionic because she's run out of possibilities and time is running out (same thing happened when she failed to cook the antidote earlier. The Street Ninja, for his part, swam to intercept a pirate boat, jumped aboard and sliced six guys up in a single move, then rammed the boat into the last remaining boat and jumped on there. He kills five guys with a counter strike when they attack him with machetes, leaving only the pilot. He tried to be cool and intimidate, then fight him hand-to-hand, but those rolls failed badly, so he had to just do the ordinary thing. Undeterred, he next rams THAT boat into the beached shark and, using the VTT map to good effect, plays a card to make the crate visible (but unimportant to the plot) full of explosives, so the shark and boat blow up as he easily somersaults out of the crash.
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