"Accomplishments"
In theaters: The original Top Gun was a cheesefest. Iconic, but something easily made fun of. Top Gun: Maverick is something else. It's first, best idea was to focus on a single, difficult (not to say suicide) mission. Yes, it's a mission that's right out of Star Wars, but it gives the movie a direction the original didn't really have. And despite seeing all the training, it still surprises and thrills when it's go time, and leads to as suspenseful and rousing a finale as you're likely to see in an action flick this year. Part of the trick, of course, is how real it all feels thanks to madman Cruise requiring all the cabin shots to be, in fact, real. The actors are in the air, pulling Gs, and if there's CG in this thing (I'm sure they didn't really destroy planes), it becomes impossible to see the difference. Even beyond the stellar action, this is a good-looking movie, purposefully paying tribute to Tony Scott - the anamorphic lens, the perpetual golden hour, sweaty bodies glistening, even the synthy score. It's nostalgia, but well done nostalgia, and in a way, fits the theme of this story about a man who hasn't been able to let go of the past. Maverick is stuck in place and has no upward mobility because of his insubordinate attitude, but emotionally too, having never recovered from the death of Goose. The heart of the picture is his difficult relationship with Goose's son Rooster (Miles Teller) who he is trying to shield, but also holding back. While satisfying on that emotional level (with additional counterpoint by Jennify Connelly as his first age-appropriate love interest in a long time, and Bashir Salahuddin as his ground crew sidekick), the movie is also frequently funny, making fun of Maverick himself as a guy who's really too old to be pulling this kind of crap. Has Cruise finally decided to allow his screen persona to age? This really is the complete entertainment package.
At home: This year's big Indian blockbuster, RRR (Rise Roar Revolt), is worthy of its growing reputation. I was reminded of 1975's Sholay and that's the highest of compliments. This 3-hour epic presents a high-octane alternative history of the people's uprising against the (very evil) British Raj, with cranked up dance numbers and memorable action set pieces that walk the high wire between absurd and awesome. Trust me when I say you will see things in RRR you've never seen elsewhere. The two leads are immensely cool and essentially played as Indian superheroes - Bheem is a sweet "tribal" with the strength of a lion and a certain animal empathy; Ram is an intense, unstoppable Terminator with perfect marksmanship. They were made to be friends (the bromance is really the best part of this), but Fate is cruel to the two of them and puts them on a collision course from the beginning. Water vs. Fire is a recurring theme. Despite the comical and rousing action, it IS very violent - there's an element of martyrdom to any revolution story - just mentioning it in case you were interested for the musical aspect. But RRR is funny, emotional, insane in the best way... and though I don't understand the language, I really liked its songs.
It's practically impossible to screw up Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, and the 1952 classic (cue Handbag Meme) is still as fun as it ever was, even 70 years on. Michael Redgrave may overplay a comic moment here and there, but there's never been a Lady Bracknell as iconic as Edith Evans. Her deliveries are the ones I hear in my head when I think of Lady Bracknell, and indeed, any character like her. No doubt because it's been so often imitated as a "type" of Victorian battleaxe. Michael Denison has a lot of fun as Algernon, as he should, and well, everyone is quite delightful indeed. It's Wilde's masterpiece, after all, and every line is a cracker. There are those you've memorized, and then there are those that you only recognize, but that still surprise you and make you laugh all over again. I laughed often. The extra layer of artifice at the beginning, with people sitting down to watch the play was an interesting idea, but I don't think it pays off (perhaps they could have returned at the end and dropped - perhaps dismissively - one of Wilde's recorded dictums, I don't know), but it doesn't take up a lot of real estate, so it's fine. With Wilde, there's really no reason to get off the page.
The Hungarian film Hurok (Loop) doesn't present a Groundhog Day time loop. Rather, the main character keeps looping into his own timeline where he already exists, or has existed, as mysterious evidence of his passage in earlier "loops" suggests. It's about a couple who act as drug mules, but want to break out of the life. He, by scamming the supplier and disappearing; she, because she's now pregnant, by going to the authorities. Though the loop formula isn't what we're used to, the way to break free still has a moral component. It's more complicated than that, but Adam (Dénes Száraz) must still get his priorities straight and, especially, do right by Anna (Dorina Martinovics) if he's to even attempt a solution. I would love to some day go back and try to draw a schematic of what's happening and when within the confines of the loop, though I might worry that it doesn't entirely connect. It certainly seems like it does, but a cheat here and there might be inevitable. I'm a sucker for this kind of puzzle movie, so that might not matter.
If you haven't seen F/X in a while, F/X 2 will have you believe special effects wizard Rollie Tyler had this supporting cast in the first one. He didn't, but I quite like him as a surrogate dad to his girlfriend's kid, and the dad being a police officer draws him back into helping the cops in an operation sure to go pear-shaped. At which point, the return of Brian Dennehy disgraced cop, yadda-yadda-yadda. I was critical of his character in the first film because his co-lead status took away from the sfx concept that had been built previously. There's a bit of a switch here too, but it's play with more humor and not as disruptive. I'd call the movie out on a different problem: Many of the special effects border on science-fiction, including that old saw about digital enhancement and animatronics that are almost prototypes for Westworld. Still have to admit that these are used to create some pretty amusing and unusual action scenes. But if I think I prefer the sequel to the original, it's because they really do play up the "con man" elements of Rollie's skills in the final reel and give us a pretty fun finale.
Though it's a piece of fluff, Bandidas is a pretty FUN piece of fluff. Penélope Cruz and Salma Hayek (oh myyyyyy) are daughters of men killed in a murderous land grab by a slimy Dwight Yoakam working for an American bank down in Mexico, though he's clearly drawing between the lines. They pull a Cat Ballou and get themselves Sam Shepard of all people (certainly lends the film some gravitas) to teach them how to rob banks so they can become revolutionaries, though they did already have their own special skills. Farmhand Cruz is a horse whisperer and crack shot; cultured Hayek is better with knives and seduction. And there are some fun horse tricks and fights throughout, as well as some western takes on more modern tropes, like the heist sequence and Steve Zahn as America's first C.S.I. What doesn't work so well is all the sex stuff - the silly kissing context and sexual competition between the two women. At least they get called out on it, but it's still the stupidest of subplots. But overall, it's an amusing western adventure with engaging leads and for fans of the genre, some visual quotes taken from spaghettis, Butch Cassidy, etc.
Miloš Forman got the Czechoslovakian government angry with The Firemen’s Ball because firemen are authority figures and you don't make fun of Authority behind the Iron Curtain, apparently. Even if the film is based on a small town ball Forman and his crew attended during a previous production. Everything happens in one night. Old firemen are shown to be terrible event planners (the impromptu beauty pageant is particularly humorous), and not great at firefighting either, but it's the Committee structure that suffers a glancing blow, and thus the Communist regime in toto. There are certainly political allusions in the film, like the raffle prizes getting stolen (and especially the State's - I mean the fire brigade's - reaction to it) and how an old man who's lost everything is treated, but generally, it can all be taken as simple observational humor. Observations that happen to ridicule the wrong people. Or used it. Let's just be glad the film survived to reach our eyes and ears once the curtain lifted. It's very amusing.
Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear) perhaps takes too long getting its characters on the road, but once they are, you're in for a series of suspense set pieces like no other. Two trucks must take a shipment of nitroglycerin across a 300-mile obstacle course to deal with an emergency, and only through bravery and cleverness will they be able to navigate the terrain safely. With a certain existentialism pervading the film, you don't give them good odds of succeeding. And though obviously, the actors aren't carrying real explosives, the action nevertheless looks dangerous. The trucks are really put in precarious positions, and the actors too. It's 1953, and it's all done for real (give or take the South of France playing South America, not that you can tell). Though I quite enjoy Luigi and Bimba in the second truck, it's really Mario's and Jo's (Yves Montand and Charles Vanel) story, the latter a bully who seems to have the required nerve, the former whose man crush on Jo turns him into a sycophant. At least, that's their starting point, and it doesn't take long for Mario to reassess the dynamic. The Wages of Fear makes some odd decisions at times - it's first act is too long, it features an anti-climax or two, and you might resent its coda - yet there is value in each of those decisions and consequent moments I wouldn't want to do with, so... history has proven Clouzot correct in making them.
If Buried didn't turn Ryan Reynolds into a claustrophobe, I don't know what could. I like a minimalist movie, and this is as minimal as they come. Just Reynolds in a coffin for more than 90 minutes, with unreliable practical lighting and all his co-stars over the phone (reminded me of the later Locke, but with more gripping stakes). How did he come to be in there is something resolved without going to flashbacks. How he uses the cell phone left in the box to get himself out is equal parts ingenuity and panic. There are things I wanted him to try, but then had to acknowledge that in such a situation, no one is expected to think straight. Ultimately, however that roller-coaster of an ending goes, it's about the failure of the system and an indictment of the war in Iraq (or any interventionist conflict, really). Reynolds' character isn't just buried in the ground, he's buried in red tape too. This must have been quite something in the theater.
It's a damn shame that The Last Man on Earth's fourth season is its last, or rather, that it couldn't be foreseen. Will Forte's group of survivors had a perfectly good finish in sight, if only that cliffhanger element hadn't been woven in, or given a couple more episodes to resolve positively. (I've read Forte's plans for Season 5, and it would have actually gone darker than this already dark comedy has gone before.) But there's no television series with a science fiction premise that Fox won't cancel at the wrong time (except X-Files which was forced to go on well beyond it's best by date). Season 4 has the group move around a bit more than usual, looking for the perfect place to raise their kids. New survivors pop up here and there (all comedy stars, the bigger, the more short-lived, as per the show's tradition), creating the sense of multiple arcs and drawing you back in the overall story. By this point, the group can be more firmly called a family, which is why it was a good time to end. You might also think the laughs would have dissipated when the pandemic struck, the first lockdown hitting around the fifth season's last few episodes. Still...
Role-playing: This weekend, we played Part 2 of our GURPS Deadlands chapter of the Great Shiftworld Finale, in which our two boys find it very difficult to turn the tide in a quickly terrorforming town. It's already not great - mind games, deaths piling up and supernatural manifestations on the rise - and then the Fear Level jumps even higher! I've never really thought of myself as a horror GM - and I consider Deadlands a monster-hunting game anyway, there's a difference - but this is as close as I've ever gotten, pushing despair and events as inexplicable as they are creepy. One player helped out by failing a Fright check and from then on just wanting to go home. I was in a ROLE playing mood too, as evidenced by my depressed mayor drowning himself in a bottle of absinthe (real tears!). Though there were opportunities for action, these two last sessions really were more about role-playing - the fear, the frustrations, the attempts at giving people hope - but evil has momentum. Eventually, the characters feel like they must ride out of town and leave it to be swallowed up by hell (a figure of speech... at least for now!). As they head into the mountain whose shadow looms over the cursed place, they find... help? That remains to be seen.
Comments