"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Zach Cregger's follow-up to Barbarian, Weapons, is just as unpredictable and I think I like it better. Told in different point-of-view chapters, it tells the story of a class of school children that all run off into the night simultaneously, creating an impenetrable mystery and a shared tragedy. Julia Garner is the dramatic center of the film - the teacher who is scapegoated for the event - and Josh Brolin is actually quite funny in his bits, even though you'd think the role of the grieving, obsessed father wouldn't be. At first, the horror seems to come from creepy dream sequences, but eventually we do get some interesting reveals, and traditional devices we don't see a lot of in contemporary horror cinema. I don't want to say, but it was a major plus for me (and fun performance from Amy Madigan). Leitmotifs take us on the right path thematically, but not literally, so it's hard to guess the movie. Bottom line, Weapons isn't just a potent creepfest, it's also a lot of fun, throwing twists at us in every chapter, and though its characters make a lot of bad decisions, they're not "horror movie bad decisions".
At home: A musical for our last days on Earth, The End is actually a savage satire of the Top 1% destroying the Earth and reaping, well, WHAT rewards exactly? Leading with greed and selfishness has landed this powerful family (and a few of their most useful "friends") in a cozy bunker while the world burns, the final luxuries of the privileged being pointless busy work, delusional self-actualization, and the re-writing of a history no one will read or be able to contradict. Don't think I didn't notice the ostrich leather on that wristwatch. Into this closed loop enters Moses Ingram's character, a lower-class character we can finally sympathize with despite her flaws, motivated to a similar selfishness, but by desperation - we can certainly compare crimes by class and find where the greater evil lies - who will shake their world up and make their son, raised to be the last human, essentially, start to question things. There's a Disney-esque quality to the songs that make them pretty against the ugliness of what's actually happening, which I think is part of the point. All these songs are part of the greater delusion and should be taken as venomously ironic.
What were sold as measures to keep people safe in the advent of a nuclear strike back in the Cold War - sticky tape and hiding under school desks - was, of course, poppycock. When the Wind Blows uses an interesting blend of traditional animation and live action props and sets to introduce us to the Bloggs. Just a couple of rather dim and under-educated retirees struggling with building the government-suggested shelter in case of atomic war. They take the absurd recommendations seriously, and then the bomb actually hits, and we go from light British comedy to Grave of the Fireflies. It's a story that shows how this particular generation, basically filtering their experience through that of the Second World War, was ill-equipped to deal with the nextgen warfare. Spoofing the UK's trademark stiff upper lip as comic relief doesn't take us off the road leading to a depressing Plague Dogs-type experience. And I mean that in a good way. Cold War's over, but this is still relevant. Our "life goes on" attitude will fail us in the end.
Kathryn Bigelow's first declassified tell-all (though I hold out hope that Point Break will turn out to have really happened), K19: The Widowmaker wants to split the difference between Crimson Tide and Apollo 13. Unfortunately, the dynamic between the two commanders - the cautious Liam Neeson who cares more for the men than the mission, and hardliner Harrison Ford who is the opposite, though his arc may change things - isn't as intense as Crimson Tide. But as a "cursed ship" narrative, Bigelow eschews her usual stylishness in favor of clear proceduralism and makes many of the crew distinguishable and memorable, more than you'd expect, and while I'm sure the true events bear most of this out, the reasons why the Cold War mission was such a bust smack of American propaganda (if it had been made in an earlier era, I would totally make that claim). I did find the variability of accents distracting - the USSR was so big, it would have many accents, no problem, but Ford, in particular, can't maintain a believable or even consistent one. K-19 is put together very well, but I just can't muster as much enthusiasm for it as I do for other submarine movies.
At odds in A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box is, on the one hand, the gorgeous Taiwanese-style cinematography (evoking such films as The Bride with White Hair) and the broad slapstick humor and incessant cross-dressing you would expect from a Stephen Chow vehicle (like Kung Fu Hustle or The Royal Tramp). Chow plays "Joker", an initially ridiculous bandit chief who may or may not be the reincarnation of the Monkey King, torn between the demon sorceresses who want him for different reasons. There's a big WTF IS HAPPENING vibe, perhaps lessened if you've seen versions of Journey to the West, which this is mocking, but it doesn't really matter. Sit back, enjoy the crazy fights and effects (that is a very cool Spider-Woman), and you'll suddenly realize you DO understand the plot. Or at least enough to get into Part 2...
Stephen Chow goes back in time to Mythical China in A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella, and despite an even sillier Westernized title, its focus on his character's tragic romance(s) means Part 2 is better than Part 1. It certainly downshifts on the broad comedy to allow Joker to fall for his Part One love interest's mentor, very sweetly played by Athena Chu Yan, so that the third act means something. Ultimately, if Joker accepts his Monkey King heritage, he will have to sacrifice his humanity and his capacity for love - it's not a good idea to fall for a trickster god - but in Part One's most ridiculous moments, he showed he would do anything for love. And so by the time we get to the end, it plays the tragedy seriously and sensitively, with a really cool final fight between Immortals and a very romantic button on the whole thing. Not gonna lie, I tracked back and replayed the last couple reels immediately after.
Sammo Hung does Rambo: First Blood Part II in Eastern Condors, or perhaps less generously, Missing in Action, though the basic set-up is essentially the Dirty Dozen goes to Vietnam. So this suicide squad is built out of illegal Chinese immigrants convicted of mostly violent crimes in America. Can they earn their freedom by destroying an abandoned weapons cache in the heart of the Viet Cong-held jungle? Maybe with the help of a trio of badass female Cambodian guerrillas and Yuen Biao's fixer/con man. But not without loss of life as per the premise. Though a comedy, it's a nasty, violent, black one, and Sammo himself plays it pretty straight. From the beginning, it's a giant middle finger at American patriotic cinema, and I was surprised at how efficiently it made me care about many of the doomed characters (but not all, there's definitely cannon fodder in the group). I could have used less video slow-mo, but the action beats are nevertheless pretty cool, which is why you're here, surely. Rambo? M.I.A.? I liked this better, and despite the comedy stylings, felt it was more honest.
As a director, Sammo Hung is bold with his tonal shifts, and while that might make Pedicab Driver a bit messy (in plot as well as tone), I'd rather view it as a roller-coaster (or a wild pedicab ride) of emotion. From the opener, you might think this will be a cabbie vs. delivery truck driver war on the streets, but no, it's really about a couple of sweet romances between pedicab drivers and cute young women, one of which is really the dramatic heart of the film as we move from comedy to something shockingly afield of that. The level of martial arts action is quite high (albeit often sped up a bit), in the finale, of course, but never more so than in a completely gratuitous fight between Sammo and veteran martial arts director Lau Kar-Leung. I loved how, though Sammo himself prefers quick impact cuts, this sequence was shot like Director Lau would have done it, with long unbroken shots covering a dozen or more moves. There's a reason he's my favorite Shaw Bros. director, and it's fun to see a mentor passing the torch here even if his character doesn't return later in the film. Improbably touching and socially-conscious, Pedicab Driver's parts are greater than their whole.
[Madagascar] A testament to the universality of the Bard's work, Makibefo is Macbeth set in Africa, played by non-actors from a very traditional tribe, with a storyteller conceit reading Macbeth's own words at intervals (the rest is in spare Malagasy). And it works. Ambition breeds corruption no matter where or when you are. Cutting most of the language - but not the best parts - makes for a short Shakespeare adaptation. Might have been shorter still had they not included what one might call "cultural elements", which, I do admit, feel like padding. Showing native ceremonies is fine, to a point, but I'm never going to enjoy seeing an animal sacrificed and butchered on screen.
[Comoros] The Grand Marriage is an interesting tradition - if you thought weddings were big expensive events in the WEST, and that's before you factor in the legal bigamy - but at 45 minutes, there's a lot of repeated information. Just looks to me like the Comoran president wanted Al Jazeera to pay for part of his wedding party.
[Mayotte] Wassi (Us) concerns a young mother struggling with her baby, its deadbeat dad, and probably postpartum depression, none of which the short accepts as an excuse for negligence. If you want to be preached to, look no further.
Books: Taking place while the Doctor and Jo are on Peladon, David McIntee's The Face of the Enemy is a pretty fun UNIT story in which the Brig has to call in past and future companions - and the Master (this acts as the third in the writer's Master trilogy) - to stop a secret invasion by one of the Doctor's old foes I really wasn't expecting. One of McIntee's strengths was genre emulation, and in this case, he serves up an action police thriller, which taps into his OTHER strength, which is clear and exciting action sequences. There's a lot of mayhem, a police detective we can care about, and an intriguing mystery. But overall, the book shines thanks to its on-point characterization of the UNIT crew (McIntee tries to use or at least reference all the named characters of the past 2½ seasons) and whatever other Doctor Who stars he manages to bring in (withheld to keep the surprises alive). I didn't miss the Doctor at all!
I always like to break open one of Malcolm Hulke's Target adaptations because he never sticks to the script, but rather rewrites even his own episodes, and gives us something new. Of course, Doctor Who and the Sea-Devils (sic) adapts one of my favorite Third Doctor stories, so changing it could be dangerous. Indeed, there are a lot of my favorite bits missing, in particular things that feel like they were worked out in rehearsal or on set/location, like the Master's tastes in television, the Doctor eating everyone's sandwiches, the sword fight, the crazy vehicles... Hulke writes action well, but it's not his focus - indeed, the action-filled last episode takes up less than 10% of the page count! So what do we get in exchange? Well, we get into people heads more, which is always worthy, the prison warden has a different and more ironic fate, and the Doctor's solution hits harder as the Master brings it into focus. I miss too much of the televised version to love this book, but the best version of the story would be an amalgam of the two.
To me, the televised version of Doctor Who and the Mutants is a bad episode of Star Trek (in other words, an episode of Space 1999), and it therefore can only be improved by turning the kitschy 6-parter into a crisp Terry Dicks novella. In my mind's eye - I was pretty easily able to forget the actual episodes - the space station looks huge and actually populated, the jungle doesn't look like an overgrown hill, and what happens in the cave actually understandable. There's some interesting back story for the villains, though it doesn't help the Marshall - surely one of Doctor Who's most cartoonishly evil villains - all that much. And yet, Dicks also omits some of my favorite moments from the serial, like the bit with the sonic screwdriver being passed around and at some of Jo's badassery. I blame this on bits of business worked out by the actors and not in the script. At least, that's what it feels like. As a Target adaptation, the Mutants is still pretty okay. On television, it's one of the Third Doctor's worst.
There's no doubt that The Time Monster, whether televised or novelized, is a very messy. Dicks can't fix that because the central problem of the serial is too many things going on, and the Targets' breakneck pace only exacerbates the situation. And yet... As wild and, frankly, stupid, as The Time Monster is, it's still a lot of fun and full of little nuggets important to the canon - the daisiest daisy, the non-technological technology, references to telepathic circuits, TARDISes inside TARDISes, chronovores - and bits I wouldn't want to part with - it's Benton's best story, for example, and Jo is particularly strong. Like, sure, we don't get Ingrid Pitt as the Atlantean Queen per se, but the Master's reveal is kept 'til later thanks to the lack of visuals. Dicks doesn't make very many changes at all, which lands this particular adaptation about in the middle. So if you like the episodes, you'll like the book. If you don't, you won't.
The 10th Anniversary story, The Three Doctors, gets an unlimited budget in Terrance Dicks' adaptation, with Omega's lair less claustrophobic, his planet more expansive, and the Gel guards (Blob men, here) far less silly. There's, in fact, every indication that Dicks thought the end result was lacking and decided to make the appropriate changes. One almost wishes he'd gone further and restored the First Doctor's role to what it was before the production was told Hartnell was too ill to do more than read cue cards on a closed set. I'd have loved to see what that would have been like. As it is, Dicks does give him a little more to do, but he's still trapped in limbo somewhere. The adaptation creates a FEW new scenes, actually, and Dicks has fun making clear which Doctor is which (could have been confusing). A brief note on the title: Only the second edition of the book was called Doctor Who AND the Three Doctors, which sounds ridiculous.
RPGs: Our most recent Call of Cthulhu session somewhat confirmed we were in the Dreamlands - a Mythos element I know nothing about except that the sourcebooks looked really interesting, but then, my character wouldn't know anything either - with the party getting split into different "dreams" (not ours, but dreams of the dead?) to get clues as to how to get out of the present situation. Which, I fully admit, is so surreal and bizarre, I was kind of at a loss. In another game, I would have had ideas... I kept thinking of a similar situation in the Thunderbolts movie, but CoC characters aren't superheroes. Here, I was, like, Keeper, what are you expecting from us? I just didn't feel like I had the proper lore to address the problem. Flying sharks, fine, bang bang, zap zap. But otherwise... Felt better about it once in the dream (ironically). A good talk with a cat (or an entity manifesting as a cat) will do that. Not that my character trusts in anything, and perhaps he was a bit of an obstructionist when dealing with the ghost of a former PC, but I liked spinning the philosophy. "You can't follow me back. You literally don't have the will to live." But really thinking "You're a devil trying to pull me into hell, aren't you?" We left things with all the clues in hand and about to do dangerous things so we could decipher them. Now if only our Gravedigger can resist the Keeper's paranoid teases about the "pickle man" red herring...
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