"Accomplishments"
In theaters: The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, Mutant Mayhem, is a lot of fun! The animation is sketchy and borderline papier maché stop motion, one of these 2D/3D animation hybrids we've been getting lately (and I love it). Non-Turtle, non-April characters look distorted and ugly, New York is a cesspool... it looks more like Eastman and Laird than the toyetic cartoons from decades past, though the Turtles themselves are much more differentiated than in the past. In fact, one of the things I like is how much freedom they gave themselves with the lore. The Turtles are updated to act and sound like young teenagers of today, April is a teen herself, character affiliations might surprise, and we don't get to Shredder quite yet. Nice hip-hop soundtrack that actually supports the humor, and it IS quite funny overall (they even make Leonardo funny). The milking thing alone... The action is cool, and our heroes' quest for acceptance well played. Can't wait for another instalment.
At home: Man, Nida Manzoor really goes for her culture's tradition of arranged marriages in Polite Society - women are ultimately supposed to give up their ambitions and become wombs for children who will be molded by the family's matriarch. Or at least that's Ria's fear when her sister falls for a young doctor/mamma's boy, and since the teenager would-be stuntwoman sees the world as an action film (it's how the angst is translated, kung fu where other movies might have done a musical), that might be really happening. The fight choreography is only so-so, but there's a real sense of fun to the enterprise, with Ria's school friends particularly hilarious as they help her on her capers to prove the fiancé and his mother are up to no good, if not outright supervillains. The jokes land, fun soundtrack, great-looking frocks, a Bollywood number, and a very nice relationship between the sisters. I'm there for it.
The Chinese blockbuster that launched a franchise, The Wandering Earth is one of those dumb, brash sci-fi disaster movies that do well financially in the West, but only very rarely critically. You know the ones, don't force me to name names. Having been based on a novel by Cixin Liu is one of its saving graces, because there's a lot of world building. Essentially, the sun is about to expand and humanity has put engines on the planet Earth to escape Armageddon, on what is going to be a 2,500-year multi-generational trip to another star system. It sounds insane, but it's pretty well-realized. Having to slingshot off Jupiter creates a first crisis as engines fail and the planet starts getting drawn into the gas giant, and workers mobilize to fix them before it's too late, including the kids of a man working on a space station that follows Earth around and who may have the key to their salvation... if the computer system doesn't pull a HAL 2000 in the middle of it all. So there's a LOT happening, and during some of the action scenes in the middle, my eyes were sort of glazing over. I needed a break where they did more with the characters. These are thinly-drawn, but I still felt their deaths and triumphs. The Wandering earth is wall-to-wall CG and sometimes proves to be over-ambitious and starts to look like a video game, but for the most part, it stands up fine. Chinese cinema has always been behind on these kinds of effects, but it doesn't prevent its movies from going for broke. As with the premise, it's all overblown, and there's a certain joy in that, but restraint would have made things matter more.
With a 2,500-year journey ahead of it, you'd think The Wandering Earth II would have covered a later crisis (ad infinitum, if they wanted to keep this thing going forever), but it's a sequel. I was doubtful and probably only went in because Andy Lau joins the cast, but no, this is a better movie than the first by a light-year, and even manages to give the original some depth. Wu Jin reprises his role as an action astronaut, which means all his family members from the first film are involved, and this time, though it makes the movie a daunting three hours long, we do get quieter character moments in among the various crises surrounding the Wandering Earth project, as terrorist attacks and opposition from those who would rather save humanity as digital avatars (secret origin of the HAL-like MOSS incoming) threaten Earth's survival. The action is easier to follow, and on such a scale (as when the plan to get rid of the Moon so Earth can safely leave) that like TWE 1, several heroic teams must work in tandem to bring it off. This one is even more pro-China than the original, if that's possible, with the collective saving the world and the Americans being especially obnoxious and contrary (as opposed to merely absent), but our heroes are still trying to save their loved ones and have an individualistic streak that goes beyond communist propaganda. And if the effects of the first one bugged you, there are no such problems here. A true epic, and while I wish the third chapter would either take place in the void of space or at the destination, I have a feeling it'll just be a few years later (another crisis in referenced in the epilogue) to use some of the franchise actors. I'll still be there for it.
Ang Lee's first feature, Pushing Hands, was shot in New York, but if you told me it was actually made in Canada, I would believe. It has a vibe that I associate with 90s Canadian film. Sihung Lung is great - lost, defiant and endearing - as an old tai chi master recently come to the States to live with his son's family and having trouble integrating and finding his independence. It's an immigrant's story, but also a senior's, and "Old Chu" doesn't find either state easy on his pride and traditional thinking. In particular, the push back from his American daughter-in-law is painful, but the underlying tension is American impatience, anathema to his chi-flowing, disciplined philosophy. The clash of cultures is overt, yet subtle, and Lee already shows the dramatic sensitivity that would, within a few short years, make him a star director. And Pushing Hands is also a martial arts movie grounded in a way 99% of the genre simply isn't, in the service of the drama and not vice-versa.
In terms of screwball, Howard Hawkes' Monkey Business isn't quite on point, with sequences that take a little too long to play out, especially when it gets talky ("not yet, Cary" indeed), and then is less about quick patter and misunderstandings than it is about slapstick and people acting like children. Thankfully, Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers have the comedy chops to amusingly play at being teenagers or little kids, according to the dosage of "fountain of youth" potion they imbibe, but I still like it better when they have a loving husband-wife banter going (dated social mores or not) and the more "classic" screwball elements. And then there's Marilyn Monroe as the ditzy secretary, a real charmer (as usual) in a smallish role. Plus a well-trained chimp doing chemistry. Hawkes' great screwball classics were almost 15 years earlier, but is undermined, I think, by the high-concept premise this time around.
I went into Don't Bother to Knock without knowing its genre, which added a special thrill. Because on the surface of it, the poster wants you to think it might be a rom-com starring Marilyn Monroe, but Richard Widmark's participation makes you fear it'll be a crime thriller, and then Anne Bancroft turns around from a conversation, a spotlight hits and her she starts on a musical number. Ultimately, it's rather theatrical melodrama (though based on a novel, it could easily be a play) about Widmark getting dumped by Bancroft and immediately putting the moves on Monroe's fragile and naive babysitter in the hotel room across the way. Both are acting like other people initially, but we soon discover that perhaps he's not as mean as he makes out, nor is she as nice as she does. Cruel truths are exposed, and the ending is heart-breaking, with Marilyn putting in a full performance - cute, broken, scary, and touching. There are even some genuine laughs from time to time, and a larger point to be made about World War II's emotional fallout.
So... I don't think a 90-minute movie warrants 6 minutes of overture with full orchestra on screen, ESPECIALLY if it's not even going to be a musical! That's the first sin committed by How to Marry a Millionaire, a spiritual sequel to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes that adds a gold digger to the formula - Betty Grable turns out to be one too many as her plot takes up too much time and because her character is a little indistinct and her millionaire is a jerk, annoys more than amuses - but takes out the music in favor of, I dunno, a fashion show? The story: Three models take a fancy New York apartment so they can lure in rich men they can marry, and their stories quickly split from there. If Grable's uses too much real estate, Marilyn Monroe's is too thin. It's unfair because she's a charmer as always, here playing a naive, open-hearted Mr. Magoo of a girl. Lauren Bacall is the brains of the operation and too wise for her own good, but we see her romcom plot coming a mile away (the final punchline falls flat because we've been waiting too long for it). But she's great, as is the always-great William Powell in one of his last roles, playing her "big fish". Millionaire doesn't hold a candle to Gentlemen, but between Monroe, Bacall and Powell, it's still very watchable. And that Bogie reference!
Despite posters overselling Marilyn, she's hardly in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. She wasn't a star yet (and honestly, isn't very good in it), and even gets to use her own voice. Rather, this is a Noir about a heist, focusing on the characters (before, during and after) more than the mechanics of the crime. Who can be trusted and who will betray the group? Getting to know the principals ahead of time gives us insight into how it will play out, and builds tension in the process. Though the early 50s notion that crime simply CANNOT pay makes the third act a series of inevitabilities and spawns the movie's one bad scene - a cringy pro-police op ed that seems to imply people in 1950 weren't sure this policing idea would catch on. The absolute highlight is Sam Jaffe as the wise mastermind of the theft, extremely likeable, interesting and naturalistic. By contrast, the purposefully unlikeable thug (and main character) played by Sterling Hayden is melodramatic and theatrical. Solid and watchable, but it does sometimes feel creaky.
Stanley Kwan's love letter to tragic silent film legend Ruan Lingyu, Center Stage, is a gorgeous, if peculiar, piece of film making that intercuts the drama with the present day where he, his crew and actors prepare and reflect on Ruan's work and life, as well as rare footage from her surviving films. If Maggie Cheung wasn't so good (ironically, he co-star Carina Lau looks more like Ruan, physically, but if you're gonna get anyone to play a part with this much sensitivity, it would have to be Cheung), it would feel intrusive. Instead, it provides background (especially for a Western audience) and a ticking clock for what in normal melodrama would have been shocking twists. Here, they are discussed casually before they ever happen. Ruan had played a tragic actress herself in one of her last movies, and Maggie Cheung makes three, and does question her own ego and mortality. The cinematography is strong, especially when recreating scenes from the films, most of which we are told are no longer available - my heart broke every time that card came up. But the film wears its sources, choices and inventions on its sleeve, creating an uncommon fair biopic of a star gone too soon.
While Méliès' films were so short as to call them vignettes from today's perspective, the length did allow him to give each one special attention, like painting color onto each frame, which a longer film would have made prohibitive. His 11-minute Joan of Arc looks like a religious postcard - one your grandmother might have sent back from the Vatican in the 1960s - brought to life. If you don't know the history, you're not always sure what's happening (there are no interstitials), but a modicum of knowledge situates you well enough. In addition to the color, Méliès superimposes angelic figures, some of them right out of books (it's easy to see how his work would have inspired Terry Gilliam's Monty Python animations), and at one point, Joan's vision/dream involves another piece of film being cut and placed on the frame. The year is 1900 and we already have one of the art's most experimental artists entering his golden age, with his longest film yet.
Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality is a cross between the Hatfields and McCoys (here, the Canfields and McKays) and Romeo and Juliet, with him playing an orphan thrust into his family's old feud when he inherits its estate and meets the girl of his dreams, only to have her father and brothers try to kill him for some old vendetta. It actually starts like a drama, and not until he comes onscreen do things start to get humorous, with an extended railway sequence that has its own gags, but assuredly serves as a template for The General. On the one hand, the story here is stronger than in some of his more "chain of set pieces" films, but I do wish they got to the family feud quicker, having Keaton start running and fooling the assassins sooner, with ever crazier results, because after the middle section lull, it really starts to get good. The third act really takes it over the top with mountain and river gags that had me wondering how it was done - fine special effects and harrowing stunts! We're at the beginning of an amazing run for him here.
Mike Leigh's Grown-Ups is one of the most working class things he's ever done, and that's saying something. A tooth-grinding comedy that marks his first collaborations with Lesley Manville and Brenda Blethyn, who would both go on to great things (with and without Leigh). Manville is half of a young couple who move into a council house, next door to slightly higher class school teachers who nevertheless are as unhappy and tasteless as their lower-class neighbors. The pair get constant visits from Blethyn playing her older sister, a very needy character unable to cut the umbilical, taking things to extremes in a way that's both comical (and had me exploding with laughter) and tragic, especially as it's all heading for one of those Mike Leigh resolutions, i.e. a screaming match whose fallout will reorder the characters' lives (at least, somewhat... maybe they'll even start to act like grown-ups - but there is a distinction between "grown-up" and "adult").
Comics: Dynamite's Warehouse 13 comics were collected as a trade, and the 5-issue limited series supplies interlinked missions surrounding a lost cache of artifacts from Warehouse 12 that have been popping lately. While the comics absolutely follow the TV show's formula, they can do things TV can't. So the missions take Pete and Myka all over the world with no thought given to travel budgets, and sometimes indulges in visuals not easily achievable with effects. Unfortunately, they also suffer from the format's limitations, and the chapters are too short - the investigative part is made easy by telegraphed clues, and the action part is very quick to the point of unsatisfying resolutions. And while Lattimer and Artie's likenesses are fair to good, the ladies almost never look like their real-life counterparts. I feel robbed of Joanne Kelly's expressiveness especially! I'm also a little miffed when issues in a same, short series are written and drawn by different people issue to issue, with quality varying consequently. But ultimately, this is a fun enough runaround for fans of the show. Claudia shines in character moments, and I like the 1st-person narration when in Myka's or Pete's voice.
RPGs: So... I've had the notion for months, if not years, that Al Amarja, the high weirdness setting of the Over the Edge RPG (think Interzone in the Naked Lunch film) should be on Torg Earth as a place where, somehow, all realities can co-exist, and I pulled the trigger on the idea this week (mechanically, different places/adventures would have one Cosm dominant, but you could draw and use Cosm cards from any deck as all Laws linger, though you'd have to discard "monster summoning" cards because of the "treaty" - though really, this is a refuge for people from different Cosms and not under any High Lord's control). And so I pulled my old Welcome to Sylvan Pines OTE adventure off the shelf and used the insane asylum therein as a setting and a source for some of the NPCs and backgrounds. The PCs wake up in their rooms with no memory of how they got there. Everyone tells them they've been there seven weeks (the length of the campaign) and that the Possibility War is their shared delusion. And because of Al Amarja's nature, they can't pick up on the local axioms (Pan-Pacifica dominating in this case, so everyone has a secret), and for reasons that shall for now remain mysterious, "Grimm House" is filled with technology that mixes various decades between the 50s and 90s. Things are purposefully indistinct and the players eventually escaped with more questions than answers (but with a young telekinetic recruit). While there were contingencies for early violence, the players decided to "play the game" and go through the motions - meals with other patients, exercise sessions run by a closet dominatrix, group therapy, and a possibility-sapping treatment that should cure them of the delusion of having special abilities - but this group generally loves big casts of NPCs they can interact with. A murder in the night brings thing to a head and things get weird when a sentient computer uploads itself into a dead man already possessed by an extradimensional entity with psionic powers (told you, Pan-Pacifica) and a few people explode before our heroes stop the threat with extreme prejudice and fly away before Al Amarjan authorities show up. But why are the locals so afraid of breaking the truce, even accidentally? Where things reconnect with the larger Torg arc is back at the base, when Delphi Council leader Sebastian Spade (our version of Sebastian in the sourcebooks, and one of our PCs' uncle) arrives almost at the same time, badly wounded, from a doomed mission in Orrorsh (Sebastian's Folly, if you're a Torg GM). Not saying they could have turned the tide had they been there...
Best bits: Our Monster Hunter never believed it for a second, and called out one of the orderlies early to say he would kill him. Though they kept spiking the guy in a volley-ball game, he was only left unconscious. Without really saying anything, I had the cannibal drag him to his room and eat him on the battle map while other things were happening. Our Rocketeer used group therapy to unload a secret he had been keeping from the other players about his reasons for joining the team. Our Realm Runner used it as a comedy bit where he let his narcissism fly and always took control of the conversation. To view the body of the murdered man, he invented a story about needing to see the body to dispel his trauma, which turned into a weird joke as people kept dying in front of him and everyone was "well, at least you see the body". The discovery that their Famous Perk - because they have camera drones following them and being converted into Glory Moment movies (hopefully) has a dark side and put a target on their backs. The monster is burned to a crisp in such a way as to momentarily validate some players' guess that they were in Orrorsh or Tharkold.
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