BuysI have to admit I'll never get to 100% completion on Bully on account of that piglet dissection, so I decided to jump into Watch Dogs 2.0, which to date, has a better sense of fun than the original.
"Accomplishments"
In theaters: I wasn't expecting much from Beast - and it IS basically just Jaws, Jurassic Park and The Grey with an angry lion - but in several ways, it exceeded those expectations. Idris Alba is of course very strong (in both senses of the word, I guess), as a single father wrestling with demons and protecting what's left of his family in a distorted mirror of the rogue lion's own plight. And generally, the film is well structured, sets things up and pays them off pleasantly, and provides some good twists and real tension. Black Panther gave the public a thirst for more mainstream films set in Africa (though I feel there's no substitute for ACTUAL African cinema, which is doing some very interesting things right now), we just have to wonder if a creature feature is really what we had in mind. So if it triumphs at all, it's by offering interesting protagonists and intriguing locales. The lion also works as a monster, but it brings a certain measure of pathos - we all know who the real monster is. If it STUMBLES, it's largely due to the elder daughter who is definitely a horror movie pawn, always sure to do the wrong thing to create more jeopardy, say the wrong thing to initiate clumsy exposition, or unnecessarily explain the plot. She had me gritting my teeth through no fault of the actress. For all its faults, I'm in for Beast 2: Urban Jungle where the rogue lion survives, is sent to the New York zoo, escapes and hunts Idris Elba and his girls in the airport, until it bites on an electric cable and dies.
At home: Imagine (the later) Sing Street, but with girls and Swedish punk, and you have an inkling of what We Are the Best! is like. But Vi är bäst! feels more grounded, the two 13-year-olds who decide to create a band regardless of their musical ability, really just to spite the noisy boys at their rec center - and the more musically minded 8th-grader who later joins them - quite real. In that description is the essence of punk. No rules, no "prettiness", no particular talent except the one required to rage against an unfair world. The year is 1982 and punk isn't dead just because YOU - whoever you are - said it was. Of course, this is largely about a sisterhood between the school rejects, the things that bind the trio and those that threaten to break it apart (as anarchy isn't particularly useful as a way to keep people together, but boys, mostly). It's a little bit tragic, but not melodramatic. It's often funny (the rec center guys trying to teach the girls chords, and the climax, of course), and their one song is pretty catchy. These kids are the worst, but that makes them the best - that's punk, man!
I was all set to watch a bad sci-fi film, but as it turns out, Freejack a kind of fun! The idea is that in dystopian 2009 (they're ahead by 10 years, I think, except for the utopian stuff which is pretty Buck Rogers), they have the ability to snatch a person out of time at the moment of their fiery death and hand the body off to the Top 1% so they can have virtual immortality. In 1992, they grab a Formula One driver (Emilio Estevez), but he escapes because of corporate war shenanigans, meets up with his old girlfriend, and gets into a lot of chases (as per his skill set) in weird vehicles. Some of this is a bit predictable, but there are just enough surprises to make it interesting. Ultimately, it's the cast that makes this a more-than-decent entertainment. Rene Russo is striking (playing her actual age in the future, and younged-down in '92). Mick Jagger is having a lot of fun as the mercenary coming after the "freejack" and is probably the best thing about all this. Amanda Plummer as a violent rebel nun deserves her own movie. Jonathan Banks? Anthony Hopkins? What is this cast?! The one actor I would swap out, unfortunately, is Estevez himself who is sort of un-acting in this. Put someone who actually has chemistry with his fellow performers, or has more action cred, and people wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this cyberpunk action thriller.
They finally dropped the second season of Hyperdrive on streamers (despite having aired in 2007) and it's much the same as the first. The comedy doesn't often rise above the level of amusing, and in some cases - like a very 2007 transphobic joke or the fact that Sandstrom is still a practical slave (though the actress gets more to do, happily) - is rather ugly. It's all down to the same reasons that sank the first season: The characters are caricatures to the point where the show has no heart. The last couple episodes perk up, I felt, with better lore and more character depth, but it's a little too late for that and the show would not return. Not that I really care about the quality of the effects in Hyperdrive - the props and costumes have a B-movie look on purpose, after all - but in whatever conversion was used to make the episodes streamable, many of the CG shots are blurry, reminding me of the terrible Babylon 5 DVDs. Just a minor annoyance, but one nonetheless.
Part of Joaquin Phoenix's "Taxi Driver" cycle, I suppose, You Were Never Really Here presents a well-trodden plot - the one used in 75% of Liam Neeson flicks - with the military veteran who has a special set of skills and uses them to help people (in his case, bust kids out of human trafficking operations and other jams). The twist is that writer-director Lynne Ramsay treats the material as if it were real. Our man Joe had childhood PTSD even before he went to the Middle East to accumulate more. And the dialog is naturalistic to the point of whispery mumbling (we opted for subtitles). The film has a very striking look, like something out of Michael Mann's canon, but at once more ominous and more intimate. Ramsey not only puts us in Joe's head with quick flashback fragments that expose his trauma over the course of the story, but also lingers on small, sensual details. The camera tells us what Joe notices, not just with his eyes, but all his senses. It's a bleak tale for sure, but the wealth of arresting shots makes this an immersive experience. I'd only seen Ramsey's shorts before this, but I'm glad to see the same sensitivity at work even in long form, and in a genre piece too!
From the very first sequence of Love Me Tonight, you know you're in for something special with this delightfully clever musical comedy. Maurice Chevalier is the Frenchiest tailor in all of Paris, who gets mistaken for a blue blood when he goes up to the Chateau to see his bills paid, and of course, falls in love with the princess, Jeanette MacDonald, his usual movie match (though Myrna Loy also has a small role as a possible rival). If nothing else, this has to be seen for the highly entertaining "Isn't It Romantic?" number, but stick around, because director Rouben Mamoulian stuffs the movie to the gills with fun, quirky ideas, resulting in a very modern-seeming musical compared to, oh, the next couple decades. And I laughed a lot. Big belly laughs. Often thanks to the deadpan Charles Butterworth, but there's the introduction of a certain horse too... And though it doesn't take itself seriously, it's still pretty cutting about classist society. Shame all we have is a post-Code edit, I wonder what the missing minutes were like.
Penthouse is 88 minutes long, and it takes about 35 for Myrna Loy to put in an appearance, despite her high billing. Instead, we're far more concerned with defense attorney/detective Warner Baxter, looking like frequent Loy pairing Clark Gable on the poster there, and even he seems secondary in a first act that introduces a large cast and sets up the murder mystery. When Loy does appear, it's as a high-price call girl (pre-Code, baby!) who, if not exactly a witness, is at least an informant. And a charming one. But there's always the risk in this kind of movie that she'll be a fatale and end up betraying our daring lawyer. Director W.S. Van Dyke does for her here what he'll do for her again and again in the Thin Man movies and others - help her shine in bantery romcoms and flippant mystery tales. Penthouse is historically notable as the first of many collaborations for them over the next 8 years. But as a mystery? It's just okay. Not so much a whodunit as it is a how-to-prove-it, its best twist the lawyer's guardian angel, a racketeer he recently got off. And the worst bit is the women's fashions, so not too bad. More Myrna would have undoubtedly raised its rating.
Aside from Myrna Loy playing a character code-named Fraulein Doktor, Stamboul Quest has very little to do with Germany's real life counter-espionage agent of WWI, up to and including the reasons for her stay at a sanatorium. The fictitious adventure is nevertheless filled with authentic spycraft, head-over-heels romance (as only the Golden Age of Hollywood could do), and might even offer one of Loy's best dramatic performances. Trying to juggle love and her mission of seduction in Turkey, Loy has rarely been so pointedly alluring. In places, the direction fails her - giving a pass to a take with a bit of a line fluff, or some awkward editing - but these are minor concerns. All in all, I find this to be an unusual spy story, with a bit of exoticism, and a no-nonsense heroine with obvious intelligence trying to gain a double-victory out of her circumstances. If Hollywood were better at justifying "love at first sight" stories, it might even have risen higher in my esteem. Alas, we'll just have to chalk it up to boyishness and a brief shared tragedy.
Myrna Loy plays against Werner Baxter (not for the first time) and a horse (not for the last time) in Broadway Bill - which is the name of a congenial race horse, or WOULD-BE race horse, if his owner can jump the many hurdles in his way to the big derby. This is a lesser-known Frank Capra film, filled with the kind of idealism that used to be a conservative staple - leave corporate nepotism behind to raise yourself up by your bootstraps, but also the power of the common man. (You still can't escape the lie behind the American dream though: that you need money - how did he acquire Bill in the first place, eh? - to make money, and that success often comes at the cost of exploiting others - here, the horse. Not that the movie really wants you to think about that.) Baxter has two helpers, Loy as his sister-in-law who understands and loves him more than her sister does, and Clarence Muse as (oh Lord) "Whitey" the stable hand, a meatier role than black actors usually had access to in these roles, but still racialized. There are some clever moments and some fun gags, and you do get swept up in the races, but it doesn't all work. For one thing, Baxter and Loy are NOT a good onscreen match, and he looks like he's way older than the 15 years he has on her. I also feel like parts of the climax require the audience to understand how one cheats at horse races more than we ultimately do, and those last dozen minutes are just too much. I almost rolled my eyes inside my head permanently.
A cop (Spencer Tracy) plays a con game on a jewel thief's accomplice (Myrna Loy) to get her to take him to the prime suspect? On paper, Whipshaw seems tailor-made for me and my interests. (In movies, I don't practice the gentlemanly arts of roof-climbing and grifting myself.) Bit of a complicated set-up, but once we're past it, it's certainly got its moments, and you may know where it's expected to go in the romance department, it still manages some surprises on a plot level. In other words, it's NICELY complicated. I just wish it had a little more fun. Tracy's character holds up his end, but Loy's is rather serious, a kind of hard dame you'd expect in Film Noir, but this isn't that either. A couple of directorial mistakes make me wonder if Sam Wood was just sitting there and letting the Marx Brothers call the shots in his collaborations with them, because I've yet to see one of his films that wasn't a bit of a let down despite their star power.
Oh, the dangers of loving a man in a dangerous profession... Test Pilot has Clark Gable make an emergency landing in a Kansas field where he meets Myrna Loy's thoughtful, smart-mouthed country girl (once her career got going, it's like she had someone to punch up her dialog on retainer - every line a cracker) and they're soon married. Though there are some pretty exciting aerial sequences (well executed), we always return to the relationship, which also includes Spencer Tracy as the third wheel who also loves Gable's character and finds himself in the same position as Myrna. He's easily the more interesting character. Gable plays his usual hard man, threatening to slap women, entirely self-absorbed, etc. - it's the reason he doesn't resonate with me - but in Test Pilot, it's something of a front, and by golly, I actually thought he gave a touching performance. Of course, the relationship politics are pretty dated - the bad boy as the more exciting option, and anyway, you'll change him if you stick around long enough, baby, but let him live his man-child life 'til then. That, and a couple of racially-insensitive moments, really hurt the picture 80+ years on.
I don't like to see animals suffer, even if it's fake, so The Red Pony wouldn't have been on my list except for Myrna Loy. And Steinbeck, adapting his own novella? You just know it's not going to end well and the pony is going to go the way of Lenny's rabbits. Things that work in literature don't always work on film, and in this case, the bleak outlook has everyone being sad to the point of dullness. Myrna Loy is particularly impacted, often relegated to exhausted reaction shots as she sees her family suffer, largely from the weight of what others think of them. That's really the theme of this adaptation of the novella's first of four chapters (with a bit of the others mixed in, and changing one plot point to wring a happy ending out of it), but the "family picture" structure, the sequences where the boy's imagination takes over the imagery (forgotten by the end of the first act) and music - the much-ballyhooed score is way too happy-Disney-life-on-the-farm to fit what eventually happens - doesn't really bring it out. It's like the director/studio had Steinbeck, but didn't want to do Steinbeck. Although depending on your opinion of American Lit, you may think it appropriate that the movie is generally boring.
RPGs: Torg Eternity Day One proceeds apace, with the first of two chapters set in London... and the fantastical world of Aysle. Bebert just had a baby so we released him from play to try out two of Pout's colleagues and friends, and they did quite well (I mean, if this was an audition). I am a little sorry that the whole thing was a bit breakneck and didn't allow for as much role-playing as I'd like, but there's a lot more of that in Act 2. At the same time, it needed to be a crash course in the system and the Foundry tool. Any session where the characters come out as "dragon slayers" still has to be a good one though, right? Even a severely wounded one. It's Torg, so jets crashing into flying dragons is something that can happen. Now if only the teacher character didn't lose sight of the precocious 10-year-old student, she might not have gotten kidnapped by evil fiends. I guess the heroes need a reason to delve into the dark tunnels now criss-crossing London (and beyond). Still plenty of secrets to uncover in our next session - come Labour Day!
Best bits: "Hey, if we were turned into fantasy characters, what if the Lord of the Rings movie props in the museum exhibit were also transformed into the real thing?" And they were. Player aghast that I had the item stats ready. Me: "DID YOU THINK I WOULDN'T BE PREPARED FOR THAT?!"
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