"Accomplishments"
In theaters: The last in Ti West's and Mia Goth's trilogy, Maxxxine is the least of the films. I generally had a good time with it, mostly because Goth's performance is fearless and engaging - Maxine as Death Wish vigilante is a lot of fun - and the fun West usually has with pastiching the era any given film is set in (in this case, 1985, using the actual Night Stalker history to fuel copy-cat killings). But it unfortunately comes off as rather piecemeal, and the whole thread about Maxine finally getting a proper movie role isn't as well integrated into the larger plot as I would like. It intersects with it, but is it really saying anything about the industry despite Elizabeth Debicki's horror director making speeches about it? It almost connects but doesn't. Similarly, the Satanic Panic climax, which goes even more 80s than that by including buddy cops and a shootout, is kind of just okay. At once predictable and coming out of nowhere, with a great fantasy moment in the middle of it, which is better than the actual ending we then get. There's a lack of focus as the film tries to hit too many beats (whether in service of its lead or its pastiche) and the verdict rests on "that's it?", which is a shame.
At home: Stephen Merchant's The Outlaws (3 seasons, 17 episodes in all) tracks the lives of seven people sentenced to community payback (as they call it in the UK) and their comical supervisor, and if there's a theme running through this dramatic comedy, it's that crime begets crime. No matter how much our little "family" (and they do become friends who touchingly have each other's backs) tries to avoid it, they keep getting drawn back in... and propelled to new heights of criminal behavior far removed from the small-time stuff that's gotten them this particular punishment. The series soon turns to cons and heists, which are favorite genres of mine, as things spin out of control. The big name here is Christopher Walken, and he's great, but so is everyone else (I came to care about even the characters who turned me off in the early episodes). This was a two-season story, and I really liked how season 2 ended for each of the characters. I was therefore wary of a third season that might reset things. But it IS a fair continuance, resolving loose ends I wasn't considering and exploring new ground as well. The new endings aren't as strong as season 2's, but the final moment is a great one. I'll miss these characters and wish them well.
Based on trou--I mean, true - events, Le Trou (The Hole) is a procedural prison escape movie that in fact uses several of the actually convicts as actors in the drama, most prominently the group's leader who does all the "lockpicking tricks" in camera. It's fascinating despite (or perhaps because of) the stark proceduralism. You're watching people dig through concrete or saw metal bars, often in real time, with no music whatsoever. The plot: To use noisy renovations on the prison to cover a noisy escape. The complication: Our four guys have just gotten a surprise cellmate (Marc Michel, Cassard in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) who they don't know if they should trust. But as there's a ticking clock... Well-drawn characters each have their own personalities and relationships, an effective use of locations, and tension that's always present, but never overdone. The ending is a little ambiguous, so I arched an eyebrow. Jacques Becker died weeks after putting the film to bed, but it's the one he'll be remembered for. Possibly the best prison escape movie ever made, at least in terms of showing the mechanics of such a project.
Part of the oddness of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is that in the original Chinese (included the subtitles), the lead isn't called Ricky; that's the character's name in the original Japanese manga, which explains the rest of the oddness, perhaps. The level of ultra-violence (this is a world where a punch can easily go through a human body), the empty locations (a prison that often seems empty, to match the white backgrounds of the comics), and it generally feeling more like superhero action than it does Hong Kong wuxia (even if it borrows liberally from that tradition). There's a certain frisson is reading the exposition card, which tells us that by 2001, prisons have been privatized - don't we know it! - though from there we find out that they're being run by criminal empires, using slave (incarcerated) labor (again, prescient) to produce opium (the buck stops there, but I really couldn't say for sure). "Ricky" quickly becomes a defender of the abused convicts and singularly motivated to destroy everything the prison has built. And he's got the super-powers to make it happen, though the bad guys have a lot of powered fighters too. The movie is plainly bonkers (and outrageously gory), which is what makes its reputation despite its low budget and exploitation vibe. I'm perhaps not as enthusiastic as others - there's better made and acted HK cinema out there, and the broad comedy hurts it - but it's full of moments you're never going to see anywhere else and therefore deserves one's attention.
With The Castle, Michael Haneke confirms that Kafka's novels - unfinished, all of 'em - are essentially unfilmable, but he makes it a feature more than a bug. Kafka operated by subtraction, removing words in editing to create an existential absurdism open to multiple interpretations. At the core of The Castle is a unknown and unknowable bureaucracy that both hires K (a land surveyor) and claims it doesn't need him or want him. Professional, financial, and eventually, romantic anxiety ensues, relatable to anyone who's worked where the left hand doesn't know (or respect) what the right hand is doing. The first assemblies and translations of The Castle took this as a religious metaphor, with K trying to appeal to different saints to gain entry into heaven (the Castle) while burdened with two useless assistants who, in Haneke' vision at least, could be K's sins. I rather see a topsy-turvy Hamlet in K, trying to juggle being and not being while poorly attended by Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, and where acting is impossible not because of any fatal flaw in HIM, but because Elsinore's bureaucracy is opaque and impressive. "To me, Denmark is a prison." But because the book was never finished - which Haneke turns into a joke that's part of the mystery - it's impossible to really pinpoint Kafka's full intent. The film is edited to feel fragmentary, but still feels like it's being propelled towards a destination. Probably better than if the film maker had tried to "complete" it for the author.
In Blue Collar, Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto are down on their luck Detroit automobile assembly workers, who decide to stage a daring heist to get at whatever's in their crooked union's safe. It's not exactly the crime of the century, and the hijink comedy during this portion of the film is really at odds with the literary naturalism (i.e. bleakness) of the second half. Well, no one ever accused Paul Schrader of being funny. This is otherwise very 70s, with corruption at every level keeping the working joe down (a joe who is also corrupt, I might add, as the boys don't mind spending money on things that would better fit a gangster movie), decaying locations (Detroit isn't shown in a touristy light, that's for sure), and an abortive ending that makes a point and forgoes a normal plot resolution. My personal sensibilities make me give the advantage to the more humorous parts of the story, and kind of wonder what the Coen Brothers might have done with the same premise. As is, the tonal imbalance isn't a deal breaker, but it's not anyone involved's most memorable work.
You know how much I like heist pictures, and Loophole certainly has a good one - mechanically speaking. And I'll explain that caveat in a second. Martin Sheen is a down on his luck architect (although truthfully, his expertise is more like that of an engineer) who gets roped into participating in a daring bank robbery (through a building's foundations) organized by Albert Finney. I would place in the same category of procedural heist films as Jules Dassin's Rififi, it's a lot of real-time drilling and sweating over the weather, at least preceded by a good con job and impeccable planning. So why is it so dull compared to Rififi or similarly dig-centric Le Trou? Part of it is that the corruption of Sheen's character isn't explored fully. One minute, he won't accept money from the thieves even if he hasn't yet committed a crime, the next, he's in like Flynn, going above and beyond to make the caper succeed. I perhaps also gave trouble caring for the stakes - Sheen is living a posh life and is desperate to hold on to it, rather than actually being at the end of his rope. Meh. And then there's the ending, which uses clever editing, but also seems cursory and unsatisfying. Its stars deserved a bit more oomph from those behind the camera.
When Blood and Wine starts, it has the makings of a perfectly fine con/heist movie where old hands Jack Nicholson and Michael Caine are kind of over the hill for this kind of work, but still navigate their way to a hard-to-fence treasure. And this is completely at odds with the viciousness shown not only be them, but also nominal hero Stephen Dorff (as Nicholson's stepson who puts the scheme in peril). Granted, this is a film that begins with Dorff's murder of a shark, but foreshadowed or not, it's still a poison pill when it comes to this genre (or to the genre it pretends to be in the first act). Jennifer Lopez is an ambivalent character that might be helping one side or the other, but the baits and switches aren't really twists so much as a character who can't make up her mind. That all said, the dark turn the story takes is warranted, and the post-heist fiasco has merit. Perhaps I just needed to care more about, well, ANY of the characters (Nicholson's long-suffering wife Judy Davis comes closest), or else more energetic direction. This cast deserved a defter hand.
Night of the Living Dead claimed to be based on true events, but they had to change a lot of it under pressure from the U.S. military. 1984's The Return of the Living Dead sets the record straight as the zombies make their return in a film that trades very well on gallows humor - the medical equipment warehouse, the entirely-too-prepared mortician - and is undeniably having fun with its subject matter. Who can take split dogs seriously? Or zombies calling first responders so they can get more brains on site? The group of 80s kids, all styles like they come from different movies and would never hang out together for real (including the consistently naked "Trash" played by fitness tape scream queen Linnea Quigley), are part of the joke, surely. The practical effects are all over the place, from cakey make-up to full animatronics, going through a very bad yellow dummy that got a special effects man fired on the spot. But again, part of the fun. The attack on the cast, their response, sometimes hapless, often well reasoned, and the well thought-out consequences do not, however, entirely erase just how shouty the movie is. Screaming, I expect. Shouting, okay, dial it down a bit, guys.
My Companion Film of the week features Mark "Turlough" Strickson, and for once it's one the higher end of things... 1984's A Christmas Carol is perhaps the best adaptation of Dickens' classic since 1951's Scrooge, even if it was made for television. It certainly restores a lot of scenes that are missing in more cursory adaptations - more of Scrooge's youth (which is good for Doctor Who's Mark Strickson who plays young Scrooge), a visit to the poorer side of town, and a lot more than just pointing at a tombstone in the final act. George C. Scott isn't as mean as our usual idea of Scrooge, it's just that he's singularly obsessed with business concerns (interesting that he plays an amoral capitalist rather than a cruel miser given that he's the only American actor in the piece). It's easy to believe that he would have his moral turn, because he's easily affected by sights of misery and poverty. He just had his head in the sand (the snow?) and felt his taxes took care of all of that. The movie makes it about the blindness of privilege. Some good ghosts too. They're particularly sarcastic (even the silent Ghost of Christmas Future), and this is probably my favorite portrayal of Christmas Present. I hope you'll excuse this bit of Christmas in July!
Books: Fantastic Four Omnibus vol.4 collects issues 94-125 of the book, completing both Jack Kirby's and then Stan Lee's historic run. And it's where it all falls apart. Kirby, tired of his treatment at Marvel, jumps ship in the middle of a storyline (after 102), surely in the wake of a full issue being rejected on the grounds that it wasn't exciting enough - an issue they then cannibalize to create a confused story (#108), compare yourself since the restored story is in the Omnibus as "The Lost Adventure". John Romita tries to then draw in the Kirby style (with unhelpful inks until Joe Sinnott is reassigned to the book), followed by John Buscema who eventually finds his own way of telling exciting FF stories. But on the writing end of things, everyone's scrambling. After all, Kirby was doing most of the work, so Stan (or still the artists?) has to rush in with recycled Greatest Hits. There's a big chunk of the book that doesn't even credit Stan Lee on plot or script, with the likes of Archie Goodwin and Roy Thomas pinch hitting because "The Man" was off working on a movie project. Stan briefly returns at the end (justifying the collection going to #125), before becoming publisher and dropping all writing duties. There's every sense that without Kirby, everyone's struggling, and even the characters are exhausted (there's literally a story where Reed is hospitalized for it), everyone's angry and unreasonable... It feels like the 90s extreme before the 90s extreme. An interesting historical document, but a disappointment overall.
Volume 4 of The World of Black Hammer collects two more of Jeff Lemire's mini-series spinning out of Black Hammer, both linked by there taking place (mostly) in the 1990s, and therefore something of a pastiche of comics of that era. Skulldigger, though it ends a little abruptly for me, is the better of the two. I guess you could say it's a little as if the Punisher got himself a tween sidekick, though the references are also to Batman's relationship to Robin. In the art, Tonci Zonjic evokes Frank Miller with several pages going to Sin City black and white (generally, the coloring is enhances the mood, big time, and is a real highlight). Lemire and Tyler Cook's The Unbelievable Unteens is an X-Men/New Titans riff that kind of parallels Black Hammer: Age of Doom and is therefore the weaker for it, with the heroes forgetting who they are and having to remember, as well as some meta elements, like a comic book from the future initiating the action. As Age of Doom will do all this better, it feels a little repetitive. I do like the art styles used between the comic's "flashbacks" and the main action, however. To my surprise perhaps, it's Skulldigger I wish I could read monthly, but that's because the set-up is too good to leave it so unresolved.
Black Hammer Omnibus vol.2 collects Black Hammer: Age of Doom #1-12, Cthu-Louise, and The World of Black Hammer Encyclopedia (which is where I put my reading on pause until I read those spin-off mini-series on account of some - mostly mild, but not always - spoilers). The main story finally has the new Black Hammer find the farm and attempt to get our heroes out of this fictional reality - taking some detours into Grant Morrison's Limbo from Animal Man and Final Crisis; sometimes the pastiching is too close to other work - and into one that feels like a reboot or an Earth-Prime where they never existed. It's the promise of Lemire's Crisis (or Cataclysm) brought forward with a (temporary) retcon. As good as any Black Hammer arc, but it has more variety in terms of characters, places and action thanks to the world building Lemire has been engaged in (with the "World of" minis, and in the main series itself). The Cthu-Louise one-shot is a delight and I long for a follow-up. The Encyclopedia is a highly readable "Who's Who" that sometimes has a lot of fun with the copy, not sticking to any single editorial "voice". I'm a sucker for superheropedias, so. Overall, It's an adventure on a grand scale, but did it really upend the status quo? I guess I have to keep reading.
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