While there are plenty of things to envy regarding today’s youth (how I wish I had the technology available at their fingertips when I was in my teens!), I can say with some nostalgic pride that I’m pleased to have lived through the heights of the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker filmmaking.
So take that, all you society-changing innovations!
All right, so the filmmakers are still around but their best output, in my humble opinion, occurred roughly from 1977 and the release of their first feature, The Kentucky Fried Movie, through the early to mid-1990’s.
In between that time they released what I consider is one of the all time best comedy films ever made, Airplane!as well as one of the funniest, again IMHO, TV shows ever made, the sadly short lived Police Squad! (6 episodes were made in 1982). That show’s concept and characters (as well as lead actor Leslie Nielsen) would return for the more successful Naked Gun films, three of which were made between 1988 and 1994. I consider the first of the three films the best of the lot -and it is really high up there on my list of all time favorite comedy films ever made- but the other day I got to see the second one all the way through and here are my thoughts…
To begin, The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear is not as good as the original The Naked Gun but I knew that going in. So much time had passed since the last time I saw NG 2 1/2 that I wanted to experience it again as fresh as possible. I did, and most of the material really worked well…while some of it didn’t.
I’ll get to the not so good first: The film really starts on an emotional downer. Sure, the original The Naked Gun did as well. If you don’t recall, the original film, post credits, had us find Detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin’s (Leslie Nielsen, absolutely nailing the role) wife had left him. Eventually and through the course of the movie he finds love with Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley showing some great comedy chops as well).
NG 2 1/2 similarly opens on an emotional downer as this time we find that Drebin and Jane have split up in the time between the films and, while one of this movie’s themes is their reconciliation/re-connection, those opening minutes with Drebin being down and out regarding the breakup are played, in my opinion, a little too long. We don’t want a comedy to dwell too long on sadness! Thankfully, even through this rougher patch there are plenty of great sight-gags and verbal screw ups to keep us going and, after a while, the movie finds its footing and hums along.
George Kennedy, as Drebin’s partner Ed Hocken, is a particular delight this time around and has some of the funniest lines/scenes. Check out this trailer for the movie and pay particular attention to the 1:25 mark and Mr. Kennedy’s response to Drebin congratulating him on his wife’s pregnancy:
They don’t make humor like that anymore!
The movie’s funniest scene, again in my opinion, involves Mr. Kennedy and one of the biggest cop show cliche’s ever, that inevitable point where the cop puts his badge away and goes “mano a mano” against a criminal. The clip below features that joke and its set up which leads to one of the funniest payoffs:
What can I say? I really like this silly type of humor!
While NG 2 1/2 isn’t quite up to the level of the first Naked Gun as I already mentioned before, I still enjoyed the hell out of myself watching it again and therefore it is an easy film to recommend.
I vividly remember his rapid rise, from his first “major” role as the gloriously repellent, villainous Tony Amato in the Miami Vice episode No Exit (one hell of a performance) to his about face humorous-goodguy David Addison Jr. in Moonlighting (another great role where he shined very brightly) to his first couple of movies (Blind Date and Sunset, both of which were late era Blake Edwards works which didn’t have the charm or comedic timing of his past successes) until he hit the big time in a big way with 1988’s Die Hard.
It was at that point Bruce Willis became a bonafide superstar and would appear in a great number of films, usually as the protagonist. Like many actors who appear in many films, he’s had his ups and downs but in general audiences continued liking him for many, many years and he’s remained a very much in demand actor.
Lately, however, things appear to have changed. Mr. Willis, like all of us, has gotten older and it’s difficult for him to carry the lead action hero role like he used to. The last, and least, of the Die Hard films, for example, had him playing opposite his character’s “son”. Lately he’s appeared in a surprising number of “straight to video” features, movies that suddenly show up on your Pay-Per-View or as DVDs in your local Target and/or Walmart and just as suddenly disappear.
While perhaps not the all time best trailer I’ve ever seen, it doesn’t do a bad job in getting one interested in the film it’s selling, at least in my opinion. The idea behind the film is pretty clear: We take elements of the 1973 film Westworld (written and directed by Micheal Crichton who would reuse the concept/theme for his Jurassic Park novels and the movies they were based on) and combine them with the video game Grand Theft Auto and -voila!- we have our film.
In Vice, like Westworld, we have an “adult” theme park, named “Vice”, where human clients interact with cloned/robotic beings. How much of the artificial beings is cloned flesh and blood versus metal is never adequately explained. The human clients, when in this theme park, engage in all manner of Bacchanal behavior ranging from outright violence to murder to rape to what-have-you.
Like Westworld, there is one major flaw to this concept: How do human guests distinguish between other guests and the robots/clones? They can do whatever they want to the clones, but what if they attack/assault/rape/murder a fellow guest by accident or, worse, on purpose?
Anyway, never mind all that…on with the show!
In Westworld, the robots ultimately experienced some kind of software glitch and turn on the human clients. In Vice, the clones/robots have their memories wiped each night and, if they’re killed/maimed, get fixed up and/or revived and do a version of Groundhog Day with each new day. Until, that is, robot/clone Kelly (Ambyr Childers) has memories of her previous day(s) bleed in to her present being. This freaks her out as she was the victim of considerable violence over her time as a Vice-robot. She eventually escapes the clutches of the theme park’s nefarious rulers, including Vice’s version of Walt Disney, Julian (Bruce Willis, sadly not quite as menacing as the villain here as he was in that old Miami Vice episode) and makes her way into the real world.
In the real world Kelly’s path intersects with Police Detective Roy’s (Thomas Jane playing the cliched grizzled take-no-bullshit police officer) and eventually the two plot to take down Vice.
While many lambasted the film (it has a truly dreadful 4% positive among critics -a worse rating than the latest Fantastic Four film!- and a 17% positive rating among audiences on RottenTomatoes.com), I found it wasn’t quite as bad as all that.
Mind you, I’m not saying it’s necessarily good, either.
Perhaps its something unique to me, but Vice pleasantly reminded me of the cheesy low-budget B-movie sci-fi films that seemed to come out semi-regularly during the 1980’s and disappeared sometime into the 1990’s. We’re talking about movies like Cherry 2000, Trancers and its many sequels, Split Second, Dark Angel(aka I Come In Peace), etc. etc. etc.
Here, take a look…
“The only thing we know for sure is that’s he’s not a vegetarian“?!?! Come on, how can you not smile at that?!
None of these films would go on to be considered “classics” but for what they are -and depending on how critical your feelings are toward them- they could be pleasant enough time-killers with a certain amount of camp value.
Vice has plenty of flaws, from a script that needed a little more work (at one point Kelly is offered to have her system “upgraded” and she declines only to accept something like ten minutes later. The “upgrade”, based on what she does afterwards, consists mainly of getting her hair gelled), to indifferent acting (Bruce Willis is way too passive through most of his scenes), to bewildering acting (while Thomas Jane has some great lines and his character is presented as the audience’s surrogate, he looks somewhat lost in this film), I was nonetheless entertained enough to not feel like I had totally wasted my time.
Which makes recommending this film something of a head-scratcher. If you’re like me and have a certain nostalgic fondness for those low-budget B-sci-fi films of the 1980’s/90’s, you may get a little more out of Vice than your average viewer. All others best stay away.
After Tom Cruise (in)famously did a couch jump to physically express his love for then wife (now third ex-wife) Katie Holmes in an Oprah Winfrey interview, many potential fans/audiences cooled to him personally (his dabbling in Scientology, complete with YouTube videos of said dabbling, didn’t help matters much as well).
Despite this personal low and the ridicule engendered, Tom Cruise kept right on working, releasing film after film after film and while not every one of them have been box office hits, it is difficult not to appreciate, or at the very least respect, the fact that he’s devoted to his art and continues to work hard on each new project after all these years. There are many actors who, after decades in the industry, have taken to “phoning in” their roles. Mr. Cruise, like him or not, still gives his all in each new film.
Now, at the risk of sounding waaay too psychological, the above history makes me wonder if the latest Mission: Impossible film, Rogue Nation, is, apart from another entertaining M:I film, also something of a Tom Cruise autobiography.
In Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise’s character in M:I, we have someone who is essentially a cipher. A blank character (aren’t all actors that?) who submerge themselves into their role, in this case a do-gooder intent on proving himself in spite of the fact that his superiors (in the movie’s case Alec Baldwin as Alan Huntley, a high up U.S. politician who wants to shut the IMF group down; in Mr. Cruise’s case, the audiences) have turned on him.
Like Tom Cruise, Ethan Hunt is a very hard working individual and, despite all obstacles, will perform what’s needed (including having Hunt/Cruise hang on to the outside of a plane as it lifts off and flies around!) to get the mission done.
I tell you, we’re deep into psychological territory here.
But lest that turn you off from seeing M:I – Rogue Nation, don’t let it. This film, as mentioned before, is entertaining despite having many of the same flaws I found in the last M:I film, Ghost Protocol. Unlike Ghost Protocol, I don’t get the feeling the script was radically changed toward the second half of the film (In my Ghost Protocol review, which you can read here, I noted that it is my belief the film’s original bad guys of that feature were Paula Patton’s Jane and Josh Holloway’s Hanaway. Read my review to see why I felt this was the case!).
But like Ghost Protocol, we once again have a film with a nebulous and, ultimately, not fleshed-out enough villain. In GP (I’ll refer to Ghost Protocol this way from now on), part of the problem was that change in the script, which I’m quite certain happened. In RN (I’ll refer to Rouge Nation in this way from now on), the villain is simply too often on the sidelines and out of the picture. When we finally get an understanding of what he’s up to, it winds up being a plan that, if considered seriously, is way too complicated to have any expectation of succeeding. At the risk of getting too spoilery, there has to be a better way for this very clever man to (ahem) make a buck.
Still, like GP, RN moves along like lightning and doesn’t give audiences the time to dwell on these defects. The action is crisp, the characters are likeable, especially newcomer to the M:I universe Rebecca Ferguson who plays Ilsa Faust, an Ethan Hunt-level female agent whose nebulous allegiances we’re never quite sure of until the movie’s climax.
Thanks to the success of MI: RN and the last batch of Tom Cruise films, audiences who once scorned the actor appear willing to give him a second chance. Like Ethan Hunt in M:I – RN, it would appear Mr. Cruise’s personal mission has been accomplished as well as the one on the screen.
I don’t know how I was clued in on this film but somehow I must have read its description…
After finding their scientist neighbor dead in a storage room, friends Callie, Finn and Jasper come across a strange machine in the man’s apartment — and soon discover that the device can produce pictures of events 24 hours before they happen.
…and decided to put Time Lapse on my Netflix que and got it the other day. I watched it and…
The movie was pretty damn good…with a couple of quibbles I’ll get into in a moment. But first, the theatrical trailer:
So between the description and this trailer you should have a pretty clear idea of what this film is about: A group of three young friends investigate the possible disappearance of their neighbor and discover he’s dead. More importantly, they discover he created a camera which takes a picture out of his window and at their apartment. Each photograph taken depicts what will happen 24 hours later.
Now, I love time travel stories, though the biggest problem with them is they often unravel if you think too hard about what’s going on in them. Add to that the idea of paradoxes and possible history changes and, well, you can rightly spin your brain into a pretzel.
And yet, I still love time travel stories, particularly if they present a fascinating twist on the subject matter.
In the case of Time Lapse, the characters don’t travel in time, per se, but have access to information from the future and this, in a devious way, winds up very much affecting their present.
I have to give great props to Bradley Cooper and Bp Cooper, the film’s co-writers and director, who have obviously spent many hours thinking up the movie’s twisty plot and delivered a work that despite its very intricate nature (which, to be fair, had a couple of minor misfires) holds up and delivers, especially in the climax.
Having said that, I did have some issues with the film which kept me from fully embracing it despite its for the most part solid story.
To begin, the acting in the film was at times…not quite what I was hoping. I don’t want to point fingers at anyone in particular (after all, a good director should be able to encourage good acting and vice versa), but suffice to say there were times when the actors didn’t convince me they would do what they were shown to have done. While the movie is effectively a time travel feature, it is also very much a film in the vein of such works as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where a group of friends are undone by temptation.
The thing is, you have to believe the characters and their deterioration. They have to be real people to you, and at times I couldn’t help but think of them only as characters. This goes for some of the external characters as well. In the hands of others, I can easily see the menace and the succumbing to temptation handled in a much stronger, much more immediate way, but in this film, unfortunately, my breath is never quite as taken away as the film’s makers hoped it would be.
Having said all that, I’m going to make an abrupt 180 degree turn and applaud the movie’s makers and actors for pushing themselves and trying hard to create something unique and interesting versus so many features out there that go for the lowest common denominator and deliver subpar entertainment.
While Time Lapse may not be a perfect film, it is ambitious despite its low budget and presents a twisty turny plot that I can’t help but admire, even if the execution leaves a bit to be desired.
So, even with these quibbles, I recommend Time Lapse to anyone interested in a time travel movie that pushes the limits of this genre in interesting directions. While not a perfect work, you have to give the makers of this film credit for trying hard to deliver something unique and very interesting.
Up until the flood of Anime’s first big wave hit in the late 1980’s, all the Anime-type shows I found on U.S. stations were things like Speed Racer and Kimba the Lion. Because I lived in South America and they didn’t have as many U.S. animated shows available, I was inundated with many fine Japanese Anime serials and therefore got to see these types of shows a little before they became “hot” in U.S. markets.
When I moved out of South America and began living in the U.S., I found it curious to see as a spectator Anime’s quick rise. Even today Anime holds a strong spot in animation lovers’ hearts, with one of the bigger hits of the past year being Attack on Titan.
But looking back, the first two really big Anime hits to make it in the U.S. during that original golden wave, if I remember correctly, were Akira and, a few years later, Ghost in the Shell. Both were originally released, translated, in their comic book form, gained great interest, and then had their movies released with great fanfare (again, if memory serves).
While I enjoyed the movie version of Akira, its ending veered wildly from the comic book’s ending. From what I understand, the movie was based on a comic book serial that, at the time, wasn’t quite finished and therefore is the reason movie and comic book veered wildly in their concluding moments (one wonders if the same might happen with Game of Thrones?!).
As for Ghost in the Shell, I don’t recall following the comic book and don’t believe it suffered from the same problem. Regardless, I only had the movie by which to judge the material and I recalled liking it when I originally saw it back in the late 1990’s. However, over the years I’d forgotten most of what happened in the film.
The other day, Amazon.com had a great sale on the complete Cowboy Bebop and, in ordering it, I noted that the 25th Anniversary BluRay Edition of Ghost in the Shell was available (and at the moment I’m typing this is still available) at just below $10. I added it to my order and, yesterday, got to see it once again after many, many years.
As I watched it, I was struck by the visuals, something that most certainly remained incredibly strong. The plot, which I recall somewhat confused me way back when, was more easy to follow this time around…with the exception perhaps of the opening minutes (why was that diplomat killed?!).
Basically, Ghost in the Shell concerns a society where flesh and machines are forming hybrid “humans”. The protagonists of the movie consist of two “Section 9” agents who are investigating a mysterious hacker that is infecting high prize software as well as androids.
The movie moves along well, using elements borrowed from film noir while mixing them with this view of a futuristic society, clearly a path the movie Blade Runner blazed.
Ultimately, the film becomes something not unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey, a meditation on the thin line between machine and humanity. While by today’s standards the story may not be quite as deep and mysterious as it was when it was released (there have been many such meditations offered since), Ghost in the Shell still holds its own.
If there’s one major quibble I have with the film it is that it ends rather abruptly. It felt like there was a lot of buildup leading to that ending and that there could, indeed should, have been a little more story to tell initially. I know there have been sequels and reworkings of this feature and I may just have to give them a look.
I recall when back in 1985 and on TV appeared a brand new show called The Equalizer. Robert McCall, the show’s protagonist, is an aging ex-British secret service agent turned do-gooder for anyone in need. As played by Edward Woodward, McCall charmed me with his very tough, no-nonsense attitude which was pleasantly mixed in with a genuine altruistic streak. Despite his age, McCall was still very much a willy, dangerous man, one who could -and would- coldly take down the most hardened killers. But his decision post-retirement to help those in need, often for no pay at all, allowed viewers to see that a very good heart beats beneath that hardened granite exterior.
There was something else that made the show unique, and that was the fish-out-of-water aspect. As mentioned before, Robert McCall is an elderly British secret agent operating in an American milieu (his base of operations was New York City). This added, in my opinion, a unique element to the show, not unlike the excellent music by the Police’s Stewart Copeland…
I had the feeling that in Robert McCall’s Equalizer audiences were presented with a thinly veiled James Bond, now much older, who decided to spend his twilight years helping others.
The show was a success and lasted for four years before leaving the air in 1989. In 2014, a movie adaptation of the TV show was made. As directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen), the film version featured considerable changes to the TV show’s original concept, along with several similarities.
Of course, the biggest change was getting veteran actor Denzel Washington to play this version of Robert McCall. Yes, Mr. Washington isn’t quite as “old” as the Edward Woodward version and certainly isn’t anywhere near as British (sarcasm mode…off!) yet as written the character isn’t that far off from the TV show’s version.
The movie version is basically an “origin” story. We are introduced to McCall and through various circumstances he winds up butting heads with a dangerous Russian mob, culminating in a showdown in the Home Mart, a Home Depot-like store where the retired McCall works.
It is at the very end of the movie that we dive into the heart of the TV show’s premise. We find that all this action has awoken in McCall a desire to help others. He now has a website that asks people who need help to contact him, and that he will “equalize” the odds.
As a film, The Equalizer isn’t bad. Unfortunately, neither is it particularly memorable. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it is a perfectly adequate film that never really rises above any other number of good but not great action films out there. Denzel Washington is always a pleasure to watch on screen, but the general emotionlessness of his character as written made him hard for me to get into him. Worse is the movie’s main villain, an ex-Russian Spetsznaz enforcer for a Russian mob boss who might just as well have been called Mr. Villain.
In sum, I can only give The Equalizer a mild recommendation. There is nothing terribly wrong with the film, but neither is there much that makes it stand out from so many other, better, action films.
Ok, so now let me get into my musings…
There has been much made, in particular with the casting of the upcoming Fantastic Four film, with the way Hollywood has of late remade known works yet changed the race of protagonists in these reworkings.
In the Fantastic Four movie, the white, blond haired and blue eyed Johnny Storm, aka The Human Torch, has been cast with Michael B. Jordan in that role.
Mr. Jordan is an up and coming actor whose previous work has been praised. He’s also, for those who haven’t noticed in the picture of him above, an African American, just about the exact opposite of the Johnny Storm we’ve seen in print and movies since his first appearance in the first Fantastic Four comic way back in 1961.
To make matters…stranger, Johnny Storm’s sister is fellow Fantastic Four member Sue Storm, aka The Invisible Girl/Woman. In the comics, she looks like her brother…
And in the upcoming movie, Sue Storm is being played by Kate Mara…
The explanation as to how Michael B. Jordan and Kate Mara are siblings, I believe, is that Sue Storm was adopted (Don’t hold me to that, I believe I read it in an article somewhere).
As mentioned, there has been some controversy generated by this casting, with some arguing that changing Johnny Storm from a white guy to an African American goes against the character’s very long history. To which others say “grow up”, that we’re living in a different society and this is a comic book character and showing him as being a different race than originally conceived doesn’t matter. What matters is showing the diverse culture that actually exists in this world.
To which I say yeah…but…
Sometimes, the character’s originally created race does matter with the work they are associated with.
When I first heard the movie version of the TV show was in the works (and before it was released and almost universally panned), I couldn’t help but shake my head at the casting choice. Sure, Will Smith was at his very “hottest” at the time, having just appeared in Independence Day, Men in Black, and Enemy of the State. But having him in the role of James T. West, a U.S. Secret Service agent operating just after the end of the Civil War, made no sense at all. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I couldn’t help wonder how an African American would fare during that time and in that particular job. Yes, The Wild Wild West movie and TV show were strictly fantasy, but they nonetheless took place during a specific historical period, one in which it would be difficult, if not impossible, for an African American to be able to take and succeed in such a job/role.
In the case of the Fantastic Four movie, I believe switching the Human Torch’s race may be ok, but it does create a bit of confusion, specifically with regard to his “sister”, and I can’t help but wonder if doing so -and spending precious screen time explaining how exactly they’re siblings- will ultimately take away from the movie or not. I also couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t just re-cast Sue Storm with an African American actress as well and avoid all the inevitable questions to follow.
In the case of The Equalizer, while the movie did echo elements of the TV show, I felt that changing the Robert McCall character from an ex-British agent to an ex-American agent changed the movie’s dynamic to a degree that I couldn’t help but wonder why they bothered calling it a remake at all. As I said before, there was a “fish out of water” element to the original TV show in having McCall be a very obviously British individual operating on the streets of New York. By having Denzel Washington play McCall, we now have an ex-US secret agent in a US city and that whole fish out of water element is completely and totally gone. He’s as much a part of the scenery as the TV McCall wasn’t.
In fact, had the makers of the film renamed Denzel Washington’s character from Robert McCall to Paul Kersey, removed the few elements of his being an ex-agent and the scene where he visits his old handlers, they could just as easily converted this film into a remake of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish, albeit with a more resourceful protagonist.
The point is this: The Equalizer was created with certain elements regarding the main character. So too, for that matter, were The Fantastic Four and The Wild Wild West. While one can applaud modern entertainment companies’ use of diverse races in their features, there may be times where changing racial elements present in the original work begins to work against the remake, providing us something that is perhaps too far removed from what it is trying to adapt. Should this become the case, it might be better to create something “new” rather than a remake that wanders too far afield of what the original was all about.
Before the summer movie season formally began, I checked out various lists of (in some cases then) upcoming films and found myself looking forward to a precious few. There was Mad Max Fury Road (seen it), Furious 7 (was curious but decided to wait for the home video release), Avengers: Age of Ultron (ditto, at least for the moment), and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.
Summer usually means action, action, and more action, and at least with regard to the films listed above, this was most certainly the case.
There was at least one other film, however, that didn’t seem to fit in with that mold and, at least based on the trailers, looked to me like it could be a lot of fun: The Paul Feig directed/written, Melissa McCarthy starring comedy vehicle Spy. The red band trailer is presented below. Careful for the decidedly NSFW dialogue spoken with!
Okay, first off: I know there are those who aren’t fans of Ms. McCarthy. I can understand. There are some “comedians” out there releasing movies on a regular basis I have absolutely no interest in seeing. Further, I know there are also those who don’t like comedies with raunchy dialogue, something that is a Paul Feig specialty.
Me? I like raunchy dialogue, if done well. I also like Ms. McCarthy, so going in to see this was a no-brainer.
And as it turned out, with Spy I’ve found all three of Ms. McCarthy’s movie appearances in films directed by Mr. Feig to be a hoot (the other two were Bridesmaids and The Heat).
What makes Spy so good is that although it is a starring vehicle for a very hilarious Ms. McCarthy (the first time she is as with Bridesmaids she was a supporting character and in The Heat she was a co-star with Sandra Bullock), the supporting cast is also quite terrific. Special mention has to be made to two co-stars in particular, Jason Statham and Rose Byrne (I don’t want to slight the other actors, particularly Jude Law who gives a terrific turn as a pseudo-James Bond, but his role is a little more straightforward and not meant to be as humorous).
Jason Statham is glorious as Rick Ford, a Clint Eastwood-esq “bad ass” secret agent whose legend, it becomes apparent rather quickly, is in his own mind. His preposterous character appears to be the missing genetic link between Yosemite Sam and the Tasmanian Devil and every scene he’s in is an absolute delight.
So too it is with Rose Byrne who brings a cool, razor sharp wit to her role as Rayna Boyanov, the movie’s main villain. While testosterone (over) fueled Rick Ford is the walking definition of a bull in a china shop, Rayna is Euro-Cool to the extreme and whenever she’s with Melissa McCartney’s not-quite superspy they engage in some devastatingly funny (and raunchy) verbal jabs.
As for the movie’s plot…well, it may not be the most logical thing in the world, but it is more than enough to keep things interesting.
One final note: while Spy is a comedy, its humor comes from the characters. The movie itself is not a parody of the superspy genre. In fact, there are some pretty brutal action sequences sprinkled throughout, in particular a close quarter fight in a kitchen. Though it might seem incongruous for a comedy, this film does feature its share of gory/bloody stuff.
With all the above said, it should be obvious I highly recommend Spy to anyone who likes what they’ve seen/read. While it may not be one of my all time favorite comedies of all time, Spy is a damn good time.
Personally, I hope we get to see the further adventures featuring the entire cast. Give me more Rick Ford!
A few months back the kind folks at the Criterion Collection, makers of some of the finest BluRay/DVD releases of intriguing national and foreign films, had a sale on their products.
I checked through their stuff and considered some films here and there but nothing stuck out. As diverse as their listings are, for the most part I had the films I wanted and, while there were some that called out to me, they didn’t make me curious enough to outright buy them.
So I narrowed my search to “science fiction” titles and, in a few seconds, stumbled upon the listing for the 1973 2 Part German TV movie World on A Wire. The description of the film, as presented in the Criterion listing, follows:
World on a Wire is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of reluctant hero Fred Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy. At risk? (Virtual) reality as we know it. Originally made for German television, this recently rediscovered, three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the world of tomorrow from one of cinema’s kinkiest geniuses.
Huh, I thought.
I had never before heard of this film and had only the barest idea of who director Rainer Werner Fassbinder is/was. Yet that description had me and I ordered the movie. Before it arrived, I researched Mr. Fassbinder and found him to be a fascinating character. He died in 1982 at the age of 37 from an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills…and left behind a mind-boggling legacy of 41 films made in a span of 13 years, many of which are considered classics of German cinema.
Incredible.
World on A Wire would be Mr. Fassbinder’s only science fiction film and, as stated in the Criterion description, it was essentially forgotten and lost (hence the need to be “rediscovered”) for many years. No doubt this was due in part to the tremendous amount of work Mr. Fassbinder released. As was stated in some of the supplemental materials on the BluRay, there is such a wealth of material Mr. Fassbinder left behind that much of it even today waits to be rediscovered.
Based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye, World on a Wire can rightfully be called one of the very first -if not THE first- film to deal with the concept of virtual reality, something explored to great effect in more recent years and in movies such as eXistenZ, The Matrix, Dark City, and The 13th Floor (itself also based on the novel Simulacron-3) Virtual reality has also found its way into various TV shows, including the concept of the “Holodeck” in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Even I’ve explored the concept in my short story Virtual found in the short story collection Shadows at Dawn. (self promotion ends in 3…2…1…)
As I put the movie into my player, I frankly didn’t know what I’d get. It is, after all, an older film and a TV movie to boot. It’s long, consisting of two parts each of which run a little over an hour and a half. It was a daunting task to find that much free time…
Still, that description had me. I gave the film a go…
…and I couldn’t have been happier with what I saw.
World on a Wire is, paradoxically, an incredibly forward thinking work yet one whose luster is nonetheless -perhaps inevitably- somewhat dulled by the movies/TV shows I’ve mentioned above. I imagine audiences in 1973 were floored with the cliffhanger revelation at the end of the first part of the film but modern audiences, I suspect, will have figured out that particular twist long before it is formally revealed.
The thing is, once that revelation is made, we’re left with the entire second part of the film and this is where we venture into “new” and unexplored territory. To put it more clearly, part 1 of World on a Wire acts as a “rules of the game” presentation while part 2 gives us the story/resolution proper. This very logical progression worked incredibly well and, in spite of my familiarity with the concepts, had me intrigued until the very end.
Those expecting to see a special effects extravaganza need look elsewhere. Despite its science fictional trappings, World on a Wire is decidedly low tech and features almost no special effects. Its tone is more in line with film noir mysteries, and indeed that works best for the mysterious story presented. Our hero, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), as also noted in some of the extra material on the BluRay, is essentially a Humphrey Bogart detective-type, a man who is presented with an initial mystery involving a disappeared co-worker no one else but he remembers existed. It is this initial mystery that leads him down dark paths and strange new experiences and tests his very sanity.
World on a Wire turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. I so enjoy discovering older, fascinating works that put into perspective other works. In the case of this film, it clearly is the granddaddy of many more famous, recognized virtual reality works, yet it stands out on its own.
Question: When do you know your personal movie collection is spiraling out of control?
Answer: When you find films you purchased years before and didn’t remember having them.
A little while back I wrote a review of Phantasm II and noted the following regarding the original Phantasm and its sequels:
Over … time I became aware that sequels were made to that original film. However, I missed pretty much all of them, only realizing there were sequels when the (I believe) third film was shown on TV one night. I found the sanitized version I saw Ok enough, but I was confused by the various characters and situations. It felt like I needed to brush up on the original and its sequel to understand what was happening now.
So the other day I’m going through my DVD/BluRay collection and its so damn large that its two rows deep, with the DVDs in the second row covered by those in the first. I move around a few DVDs and, viola, am shocked to find that I have a copy of the Anchor Bay release of Phantasm III! I grab it and realize that when I wrote the above paragraph regarding Phantasm and its sequels I had conflated two memories into one: I did indeed see a sanitized TV showing of Phantasm III at some point but obviously I had also purchased this DVD and must have seen it too… only I forgot most of what I saw.
This is not a terribly good sign, I’m afraid.
Still, after seeing Phantasm II so recently and having a more solid idea of where we were, story-wise, with the whole Phantasm universe, I eagerly popped my copy of Phantasm III into the DVD player and gave it a whirl. Would the fact that I had more of a backstory of what was going on make the difference? Would I react more positively to the film?
As it turned out, the answer is a definite “yes”.
Phantasm III compresses the entire second film into its first few minutes to give new viewers a sense of what happened before. But because what happened before was so out there, newbies might find the recap -as I originally did- more confusing than illuminating.
In one particular way, this film’s opening reminded me of Alien 3 in that it brutally eliminated one of the main characters featured in the second Phantasm movie in the opening minutes. Without getting into too many spoilers, the actor who played that particular role chose not to return to the third film and was therefore disposed of right away, a curious thing given how “important” the character was supposed to be to the Phantasm story…well, at least in Phantasm II.
The other big difference is that the original actor playing Mike returns to that role (Phantasm II was the only big studio release of the Phantasm series and the studios forced writer/director Don Coscarelli to feature a more prominent actor in that role).
For better or worse and depending on your views, this movie is very much in the vein of Phantasm II. In fact, at times I felt I was watching a in-tone/spirit remake of Phantasm II with Phantasm III rather than an entirely “new” film.
As I said before, depending on your views this will be a positive or not. For me, it proved to be a positive. Having a better understanding of the characters and situations thanks to having seen Phantasm II, I found Phantasm III a far more coherent affair than I remembered. The same mix of humor and suspense can be found within this film though clearly the budget was much lower this time around versus for the second studio paid film.
In sum, if you’re in the mood for an oddball horror film that features some genuinely creepy scenery along with some sly humor, you should check out Phantasm III…but I recommend doing so only after seeing Phantasm II.
I said I’d see the film while it was in the theaters and early this morning, at the 10 A.M. 3D showing, I caught Mad Max Fury Road.
aaaaaannnndddd….
While I’m overall pleased with the film, I also have certain mixed feelings regarding the overall work, which I’ll get into below.
There are parts of the film that absolutely enraptured me. Hell, there were parts where I shed a tear or two (it was the dust in the theater…right?), yet despite so much to like, and there was an awful lot to like, I still feel the best Mad Max film remains The Road Warrior.
Having said that, I loved the fact that director/co-writer George Miller returned as strong as he did to the Mad Max universe. Sadly, we’ve recently seen damn good directors return to past triumphs and unfortunately fall on their faces (Spielberg/Lucas with Indiana Jones, Ridley Scott with the Alien universe). In this case, Mr. Miller delivers a film he has clearly thought about and tinkered with in pre-production for a long time. Word is that it took him ten years to get this film done and that thought process shows with a deceptively simple plot that nonetheless gives you plenty of characterization in its quiet moments and a logical story progression that continues the previous films’ exploration of mythology (Like The Road Warrior, Mad Max Fury Road is essentially an apocalyptic western with steel instead of flesh horses).
For those like me who wondered how this particular movie would fit in with the other three and the answer is: It doesn’t.
Mad Max Fury Road is a “soft” reboot of the Mad Max story. We get bits and pieces of Max’s (Tom Hardy taking over the role that made Mel Gibson famous) past in the form of flashbacks but these flashbacks don’t necessarily correspond with the other movies in the series, especially, the original Mad Max. Yes, Max is still a burned out ex-cop who lost his family and now roams the wasteland as a solitary soul, but the flashbacks point out something slightly different than what we saw in the previous films, including a much older daughter he lost (in the original Mad Max, he lost his wife and baby child) and an attack on him that was bigger in scale than the motorcycle gang that attacked him originally. Finally, Max still drives the car (mild spoilers) that was absolutely destroyed in The Road Warrior.
As the movie opens, Max is chased, captured, then taken to an oasis run by a fearsome fascistic individual named Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne returning to the Mad Max universe as the villain of this movie…he was the badguy Toecutter in the original Mad Max!). Immortan Joe, to my eyes, is a mild re-tread of Auntie Entity in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
Shortly after Max’s arrival, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) heads off to transport a truck from the Oasis to a fueling station but, it turns out, she has other plans and leaves the designated route. This in turn causes a series of events to occur which eventually bring Max and Furiosa together as they try desperately to escape the forces of Immortan Joe while in search of a green paradise Furiosa insists still exists out there somewhere.
I don’t want to get into too many more spoilers but I will say this: Mad Max Fury Road’s story winds up using elements from both The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. In fact, one could say the film is something of a mash up of those two films.
If you’re as familiar with those earlier films as I am, you’ll see these similarities (like the one I pointed out above regarding Immortan Joe) and, while it does take away a little in terms of Mad Max Fury Road’s “originality”, given that it’s been some thirty years since Beyond Thunderdome’s release, you can sorta forgive this.
Now, to details: How is Tom Hardy as Max? I feel he was good in the role. Having said that, I can’t help but think Mel Gibson would have been better. Sure, Mr. Gibson’s much older now, perhaps too old for some of the stuntwork, but when he played the character he managed to convey something Mr. Hardy, as good as he is, never quite captures. It is my understanding Mr. Miller wanted Mel Gibson back but the actor declined, so I suppose its worthless to worry about that now.
Regardless, Max’s character in this film is interesting in another respect because despite the movie’s title, I would argue he isn’t the movie’s protagonist.
I won’t pretend to be the first person to point this out, but Mad Max Fury Road could just as easily been called Imperator Furiosa Fury Road. In fact, and I know I’m about to say a MAJOR heresy here, but I think the film might have been better had it NOT been a Mad Max film and instead a “sideways” sequel to the Mad Max films…set in the same universe but without the presence of Max.
Not that Max’s presence is unwelcome, its just that the contortions of getting him into the story early on could have been eliminated and I don’t think it would have hurt the film. In fact, it might well have helped it!
However, once he was part of the story things were fine, right?
Well…
In The Road Warrior, Mel Gibson’s Max was very much in the eye of the hurricane. Everything happens around his character and without him you wouldn’t have the movie. But in Mad Max Fury Road the eye of the hurricane, even when Max joins up with her, is Furiosa and it is she around which all occurs and it is she who is the core of the film while Max just kinda helps out after a fashion.
Mind you, this isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, but given the fact that I came into the film expecting a Mad Max feature and getting a Imperator Furiosa feature does take a little adjusting.
The second, somewhat smaller problem I had with the film was the admittedly incredible stuntwork. I’ve noted before reading a quote from a director or stuntman who stated something along the lines that with respect to stuntwork in movies, what you present should be about 30% more than what can happen in real life. The implication of this statement was that if you push things too far beyond that 30%, you run the risk of making a cartoon of your action scenes rather than something audiences might still take as “realistic” and therefore dangerous.
There are an awful lot of great stunts and effects in Mad Max Fury Road, but after a while (another heresy!) I felt they got so broad and exaggerated that it was hard to take them very seriously, especially toward the end when people are jumping from car to truck to car while engaged in a high speed chase.
This is, obviously, a personal issue to me. Others might not mind and your mileage, as they say, may vary.
So I’ve spent over a thousand words here and its time to wrap it up: Is Mad Max Fury Road worth your time?
Absolutely.
Despite the negatives mentioned above, the film nonetheless shows director George Miller remains one of the premiere action directors out there. While Mad Max Fury Road may not quite capture the lightning in a bottle magnificence of The Road Warrior, it nonetheless gives you a potent, grueling, and ultimately uplifting story that should have you on the edge of your seat.
Recommended.
A quick note: Since the movie’s release some far right conservative talking heads have criticized this film as a “feminist” work. Loathe though I am to agree with anything those on the far right say, they’re right here. Mad Max Fury Road does carry an undercurrent of feminist empowerment in it, up to and including the hot button issue of fertility and (yes) abortion. In this movie, we see a society run by a man who controls fertile women and forces them to have children against their wills. The movie’s central plot involves these same women, led by Imperator Furiosa, rebelling against this tyranny and taking control of their destiny and, yes, their bodies.
