Space Sweepers (2021, Jo Sung-hee)

Space Sweepers is a special effects spectacular. Director Jo keeps up the pace during the CGI space battles, but always takes the time to be excited at how the scene plays. The film’s set in a post-climate change future where all the rich people live on a giant satellite (with Richard Armitage as the “casting we could afford” evil CEO with multiple evil secrets and a very bad James Earl Jones voice impression at one point) and all the poor people live on a rotting Earth while working for the rich people somehow.

The heroes of the film are a group of… you guessed it… Space Sweepers. Interplanetary contract garbage services. All the satellites and space docks and assorted garbage the human race pollutes space with, these scrappy independents clean it all up and get paid barely enough to eat on. Sweepers is very matter-of-fact with its class politics; never cynical (heck, they think it’ll be 2092 before climate change calamities hit, which means South Koreans lie to themselves about climate change too).

The protagonist is Song Joong-ki, a former child soldier (for Armitage’s company), who gets a heart when he discovers humans are little and cute at some point and adopts a baby he’s just orphaned. Tragedy strikes—it takes a while to find out the specifics because Jo’s script loves only somewhat effective expository flashbacks—and he’s trying to earn enough money to find her little dead body in orbit before she crashes into Earth’s upper atmosphere. The technology exists to do it immediately but only if you’re rich.

It’s a weird character motivation subplot and mostly just serves as an excuse for Song to do churlish, inhumane plot stimulators throughout the film. It’s kind of amazing how likable Song’s able to remain.

Especially since the other members of his crew are completely likable without obsession, pointless subplots.

The captain is Kim Tae-ri. It’s unclear why she’s the captain as she doesn’t pilot the ship or handle the money. It’s possible she arranges the jobs, but the work is just grabbing space debris before other junk collectors can find it. She also doesn’t do much leading. Regardless, Kim’s very sturdy and when she finally gets to kick ass—she too was a soldier for Armitage, though not a child one—it’s a great effects sequence.

The most fun crew member is either Jin Seon-kyu as the crime lord turned junker or Joo Hae-jin as a robot. It’s a motion capture and voice performance from Joo and while the voice acting is good, the special effects are what make the robot so impressive. Space Sweepers has outstanding special effects, both macro and micro, out in space with Jo’s homage to Star Wars space dogfights—but without lasers, since they’re grabbing space garbage—and inside with character moments for Joo. Actually, besides Song, Joo's got the biggest character arc.

But Jin, the former crime boss who turns out to be a big teddy bear when the crew happens upon renegade child android Park Ye-rin? Absolutely adorable.

The story has the crew having to protect Park from Armitage’s malicious plans, which will take them through various well-executed CGI set pieces as the dangers increase from all directions. Including Jong’s single-mindedness.

The cast’s incredibly appealing, with Jo getting excellent moments between each of them and Park, so it’s a breezy two hours and fifteen minutes. The English language (white people) cast, including Armitage, is fairly bad. The multi-ethnic future makes perfect sense and looks great, just Jo doesn’t know how to direct them. Or they don’t know how to act. The last hurdle to South Korean cinema—though, I don’t think any of Asian cinema’s ever really done it—is getting a decent performance from a white actor.

Armitage manages never to be campy enough to be amusing or good enough to be… good, which is a bummer and hurts the third act. But a lot hurts the third act and the epilogue is too short given the enthusiasm the film’s ginned up in the characters.

Hopefully they’ll do a sequel.

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021, Adam Wingard)

Kong vs. Godzilla is a rather bad film. Director Wingard is bad at every single thing the film tasks him with. Kong expert Rebecca Hall and adopted daughter Kaylee Hottle going to the Hollow Earth with pseudo-scientist burn-out Alexander Skarsgård? Terrible. Teens Millie Bobby Brown and Julian Dennison teaming up with kaiju conspiracy podcaster Brian Tyree Henry? Somehow worse. Giant CGI ape fighting giant CGI lizard? Even worse.

Wingard directs the giant monster fight worse than if he were doing a pro-wrestling homage. Wingard does have some homage in vs., just never good. Like when Kong jumps Die Hard-style or knocks his shoulder back in like Lethal Weapon. Or when there’s a Twister reference. The movie’s a smorgasbord of unoriginality, tied together with bad acting—Skarsgård is godawful, but the rest of the main cast is tolerable (Hottle is probably even good under the circumstances and it’s clear Dennison needs to fire his agent and get a better one). The main supporting cast—actually, just the supporting cast, there are only like ten people in the movie, the rest are collateral damage. But gazillionare inventor Demián Bichir? He’s real bad. Eiza González as his merciless daughter? She’s worse.

If Wingard had a sense of humor and tried to do vs. campy, it might work. Even with the terrible acting. But he doesn’t have a sense of humor. However, he’s not overly serious because serious suggests some kind of thoughtful and there’s no thought in the direction. As bad as some of the acting gets and it gets painfully, absurdly bad, Wingard’s clearly responsible for at least twenty-five percent of it. The script’s really bad too, so maybe twenty percent to the script, which means the cast is only like half responsible for their lousy performances.

And some get it worse than others. Like Brown and Henry. The movie’s giving them some very bad material. There’s not really anyway to make gold out of it.

The CGI is good. Nothing Wingard does with the good CGI is good, but the CGI is good. Outside being an eighties action hero, Kong has some personality (he’s pals with Hottle). Godzilla gets none. It’s hilarious they’ve got Godzilla first in the title this time because Godzilla is a very special guest star.

Luckily, Godzilla vs. Kong doesn’t start strong and have a stumble. It starts low and sort of flops around in the mud without ever getting on firm land. In fact, considering the affordable-to-license sixties songs they accompany Kong with because apparently composer Tom Holkenborg can’t handle a full score, it kind of improves. The songs are terrible. Holkenborg at least tries. There are a few moments when Holkenborg manages to find wisps of potential in whatever Wingard’s going. The wisps wisp away, but still. There are a couple almost good narrative beats thanks to Holkenborg.

No one else involved achieves anywhere near as much.

There’s a lot of bad ideas in Godzilla vs. Kong, a lot of silly ideas and a lot of bad ones (not to mention ones they ripped off from Toho’s post-2000s Godzilla movies—and Kong doesn’t get a creator credit, which isn’t cool). But with all obvious ability in the CGI—minus the shots where they have to match with whatever cinematographer Ben Seresin’s shooting with a lot of glare to hide the composite—it should’ve had some spectacle.

It’s not so bad the giant monkey fighting the giant lizard isn’t the most visually engaging material in the movie. But if the acting and writing and directing of the “plot” weren’t so paltry, the kaiju fight would definitely take backseat. Wingard’s fight scenes for the monsters are so bad, only him being worse at the rest makes them better in comparison.

Godzilla vs. Kong is the pits.

The Sicilian (1987, Michael Cimino), the director’s cut

The Sicilian is based on a Mario Puzo novel about a real person and real events. The director’s cut runs about thirty minutes longer than the original theatrical version, which no doubt desperate distributors and financiers took away from director and co-producer Cimino in hopes of recouping some of their cost. Alas, no luck. It stars Christopher Lambert as The Sicilian. Lambert is not Sicilian; most of the principal actors in the film do not appear to be Sicilian or Italian. There might be a joke about Cimino trying to avoid the wrath of a Sicilian-American Civil Rights League showdown but in reality… they just couldn’t get the people. But Cimino professionally muscles through it and gets what might be the best performance Joss Ackland could give as a Mafia King of Sicily. Cimino doesn’t have as much luck with anyone else, though he comes closest with guys like Andreas Katsulas, Michael Wincott, and Ramon Bieri. Sicilian’s a troubled production with a terrible script (Steve Shagan), what would be bad for a late nineties, made-for-cable disaster movie cast, and an obstinate, ludicrously confident director.

For a terrible film, The Sicilian is very watchable. You don’t have to pay much attention and sometimes it’s better when you don’t. You might not realize how obvious the looping is on some of the main actors—I’m not familiar enough with Barbara Sukowa and Giulia Boschi to recognize their voices on the looping, but it’s obvious Terence Stamp did the looping on his own stuff. And then there are occasionally times it really doesn’t sound like Lambert, usually during scene transitions, in medium or long shot. Troubled production, Christopher Lambert playing a Sicilian Robin Hood, at some point what do you even expect.

The photography’s glorious. Alex Thomson gets to light all sorts of scenes—lots of exteriors in the Sicilian mountains (on location, which is cool) and it’s kind of fun to pretend you’re watching something really weird like Lambert doing a Highlander sequel (the guy he’s playing also dies and comes back to life magically here in Sicilian, though through force of will and good looks; more on those in a bit). But then Thompson gets to do terrible night club scenes, which are really badly directed and silly but at the sets are great and the lights are great. Even in Cimino’s most tedious shots, Sicilian always looks great. Oh, and there are palaces or great houses or whatever because Stamp and Sukowa are royalty. Plus lots of Catholic churches because the Church conspired to kill the guy Lambert’s playing.

Lambert’s playing Salvatore Giuliano. The movie starts with the origin story. Lambert and John Turturro—who is not good—steal some grain to feed the peasants, who the royalty and the mafia are somehow starving. With the church helping. I’m not being vague because it seems like bullshit, I’m being vague because of course they are. No shit they’re screwing over the peasants. To be a peasant means to be one being screwed over. So Lambert’s going to be a Robin Hood… or something. Because during the origin story, he gets shot and then miraculously recovers—to the point one of the very not-Sicilian priests in Sicily post-war (Richard Venture) tells him God was on his side until he turned against mother church, because obviously. He’s been blessed.

I think that scene is where you realize Lambert just can’t move his face muscles. Because everyone else in the car—Turturro, turning it up to eleven like he’s convinced himself he’s the Sonny Corleone in this one, Katsulas (who seems to know what kind of movie he’s in), and a trying super hard Wincott—they all can do immediate reaction. Lambert can’t be phased. But everyone around him acts phased, which just makes it more obvious. The love scenes in the movie are painful. Though given the film introduces Sukowa stripping on her way to the bath while making it shitty for her Sicilian maid? Oh, and then how Sukowa’s attempt to seduce Lambert goes… they could be worse. Cimino’s really tiresome with it.

Actually, with the female characters… I’m not sure Cimino got what Shagan’s script was going for. It would explain why Boschi has a really great character but a really shitty part and a not very good performance. Cimino’s really not interested in her. Sukowa’s an American-born duchess who flashes the local boys for goodness sake; she’s super interesting. Hashtag sarcasm.

But then, if Sicilian actually had any good ideas, it’d be less amusing a disaster. Part of it being digestible is its inability to challenge or surprise. It’s like a two hour and fifteen minute justified eye roll (the end credits are ten glorious minutes). Cimino’s really convinced he can get over the hurdles and somehow it’ll connect. This tale of a vain narcissistic heartthrob—everyone wants to be Lambert’s friend because he’s so cool (it’s occasionally cringe-worthy, especially when Turturro whines about Lambert’s greatness)—who doesn’t end up sticking up for the peasants and getting a lot of innocent people killed because he was full of shit. I’m not sure what the actual guy did, but in the movie, Lambert screws people over and then says he’s sad when they don’t forgive him. Then there’s a bunch of intrigue and sort of Godfather ending montage homage slash Puzo-verse thing.

The first act is the worst, before Lambert shows up and it’s just his godfather, Richard Bauer (who acts out his heart and is never any good), introducing the ground situation—Ackland the Sicilian mafia boss, Stamp the Sicilian prince, Sukowa the American duchess, all very silly, all immediate fails. Ackland works up from a very low place to be as close to adequate as possible. It’s incredible.

Not Stamp or Sukowa sadly.

Hopefully they bought nice things with their paychecks.

There are some familiar faces in the supporting cast. It’d be kind of embarrassing to call them out. Again, if it filmed on location, maybe a paid trip to Sicily isn’t the worst thing.

Besides the stunning Alex Thomson photography, the film’s technically middling. Françoise Bonnot’s editing can’t work actual miracles, but it doesn’t make anyone’s acting worse. Cimino’s direction is tedious, obvious—outside the film neon noir finish, which is actually good—but while a scene’s never efficient, they’re rarely ever too too long. They’re too long, but only by a line or two. Cimino does Sicilian with a really straight face, mirroring perhaps the emotional output of the lead.

David Mansfield’s music always seems like it’s going to finally take off but never does. It’s pretty though. It’s really pretty.

Great production design, set decoration. Costumes aren’t great but they’re occasionally amazing. Turturro goes around in a Christmas sweater for half the movie with no explanation. And what if the explanation for Lambert’s performance is as simple as costume designer Wayne A. Finkelman telling him he couldn’t move in the clothes or something.

Thanks to history, there’s now an audience for The Sicilian, it hits on just the right amount of film studies (Cimino and his John Ford shots are exhausting), bad movie standards (I mean, Lambert, plus Joss Ackland as a Sicilian mafia boss), and, hopefully, Thomson aficionados. But. Wow. It’s a stinker.

Year of the Dragon (1985, Michael Cimino)

Year of the Dragon is going to be so racist it opens with a disclaimer from the distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, basically saying they didn’t realize how racist director Cimino and co-screenwriter Oliver Stone were going to get and they’re sorry. Please enjoy the film.

It came out in 1985. Year of the Dragon was too racist in 1985. Against Asian people. 1985. The disclaimer’s kind of astounding and yet, doesn’t really prepare for the film.

Because it’s about a cop who’s too racist even for the other cops—Mickey Rourke (thirty-three playing thirty-seven to forty—getting assigned to Chinatown to clamp down on gang violence, only it turns out the increase in gang violence is junior gangster John Lone orchestrating a takeover. The takeover thing has to be from the source novel because it makes sense and almost nothing in Dragon makes sense.

Unless you look at it through some very twenty-first century critical lenses; now, a disclaimer of my own. I’m going to pay this film as much respect as it’s due, given the only way Stone and Cimino have to move Rourke’s character—not even character development, just getting his character to be active in the plot—is to make the women in his life suffer. They suffer rape, they suffer murder, their humiliation serves as a stage for Rourke to speak on about how much their suffering affects him. It is a lot. The further Year goes, the more reasons there are not to watch it. Other than a dissection, there isn’t a reason otherwise. Not in the 2021, not after The Wrestler and Rourke finally getting to prove his ability. Because there’s some raw talent in his performance here, but it’s a big swing and a bigger miss.

Now. A plot description, using the most appropriate terms to examine Cimino and Stone’s screenplay. Year of the Dragon is about white guy Chad (Rourke) and an Asian guy Chad (Lone). Rourke is married to a white Becky (Caroline Kava)—from the old neighborhood—but is after a younger Stacy, Asian newscaster Ariane. The newscaster thing is important for a few reasons. First, Ariane’s not even believable as a bad newscaster, much less the up-and-comer she’s apparently supposed to be but they never cover her work because who cares she’s a girl. Second, somewhere in the plot there’s something about Rourke feeding Ariane tips for her reports, only it’s never clear how he’d get the information. Second, Cimino and Stone are going to use the newscaster stuff for exposition through the entire film.

And they do have other ways to dumping exposition. At one point Lone’s bodyguard—who doesn’t appear to be in the credits—does an entire recap of their reason for going to Thailand because it serves absolutely no purpose in the narrative. Unless Stone and Cimino actually thought Lone’s arc was dramatically compelling, which it is not. Though them thinking so might explain a lot.

It’s pretty bad. Like, it’s so bad if Ariane and Rourke had bonded over their love of Chinatown and it ended with a “This is Chinatown, it would’ve been better. Instead, they bond over Rourke’s seduction techniques, which are basically ignoring Ariane or Kava saying no until they stop saying it. Again, no reasons to watch this movie.

Stone and Cimino have some other big macho moments for Rourke and company in the film, like Rourke very obviously suffering from untreated Vietnam-related PTSD (no, man, you don’t get it, see his racism isn’t racism, it’s just applied classical liberalism). But Cimino and Stone don’t believe in PTSD; when concerns about Rourke’s mental status come up—from childhood rival for Kava’s affects Raymond J. Barry, who’s grown up to be a cuck cop boss—they’re dismissed.

Also a car explodes when it crashes.

Year of the Dragon’s bad. It’s very obvious in how it’s bad, like thinking you’re inspecting vegetables for a mold spot only to discover it’s intentionally moldy.

Okay photography from Alex Thomson. They use a too spherical lens to the point if you cropped out the distortion it might actually look better, not a good situation. Really good editing from Françoise Bonnot in the first act, not so much for the other two hours of the movie. Not good David Mansfield music. Cimino’s composition is occasionally decent, but mostly it’s low middling.

Really bad dialogue.

Really bad plotting.

Victor Wong might give the most wholly successful performance as the old guy Lone’s trying to muscle out.

Rourke’s doing his best in a bad part, ditto Lone, ditto Barry, ditto Kava. Ariane’s got the crappiest part—Rourke approaches her because she’s Asian and therefor no one can accuse her station of anti-Asian racism when she runs his stories—and gets an exceptional amount of pointless nude scenes. Cimino doesn’t even pretend. He’s never more artful than her nude silhouette sequences.

So while the film exploits Ariane as an actor and her character in general, Ariane’s still pretty terrible. She exists in the universe where twenty-two year-old newscasters are stars but not star stars. Her amazing apartment isn’t in Manhattan, for instance. Not yet. The apartment appears to have been designed to facilitate the nude shots, which is again more effort than anywhere else in the film gets. Rourke doesn’t even have an office. Most of the transitional dialogue is excuses about him not being at his own police precinct, which is either budgetary or Stone and Cimino just being bad at writing this script.

Dennis Dun is the Asian cop who looks up to Rourke for treating him like a real man, being racist to his face.

Given Rourke’s too racist even for the movie cops, you’d think there’d be some kind of redemption arc. But it’s actually about how no one’s racist enough. Or fascist enough. I skipped the fascist stuff because it’s so insipid.

Year of the Dragon’s like a can of garbage. Some stuff in it used to be good, some stuff in it was never good, some stuff in it should be recycled, but all of its covered in unidentifiable, odious liquid.

The Green Mile (1999, Frank Darabont)

The Green Mile takes place in a world where racism wasn’t really a big problem in 1930s Mississippi—not even grieving father Nicholas Sadler is going to say something racist to the Black convicted murderer of his daughters, Michael Clarke Duncan—but it also takes place in a world where the Christian God is real so… I mean, if you’re going to give them God, might as well let them magic away the racism. Because while the film’s a character study, it’s not about death row cell block captain Tom Hanks overcoming racism—no saviors, white or otherwise, possible here—it’s about him learning the cost of betraying a miracle. But without much religiosity. Screenwriter and director Darabont has to tow a very fine line to pull it all off and tow that line he does. Unwaveringly.

Even in the exceptionally tricky second-to-third act transition. Even at the finish with the lengthy narration. Whatever Darabont tries, he accomplishes, but not without a lot of effort from everyone involved. Green Mile is downright fastidious.

The film opens with old man in a retirement home Dabbs Greer living a somewhat mysterious life. Residents aren’t allowed unaccompanied on the grounds—one imagines it’s Maine, because Green Mile’s Stephen King—but he sneaks out every day to a mysterious cabin in the woods. He’s got a lady friend, Eve Brent, and pretty soon he’s sitting her down to tell his story.

We know younger Greer is Hanks because of one of boldest moves in film narrative—we know Matt Damon’s not going to end up turning into Greer because of a bladder infection. It is the story of Greer’s worst bladder infection, cut to multiple Academy Award winner Tom Hanks essaying peeing with an untreated bladder infection in a prison in Mississippi in 1935.

And from that moment, Hanks nails the part. All the way through the next two hours and fifty minutes or whatever. No matter what happens—no matter who shows up in a stunning performance—it’s always Hanks’s movie, it’s always about his performance. When Darabont’s got to close his bookend, he takes it into account and figures a way to plug it in (though, post-CGI de-aging, there’s now a lot to say about using actors of different ages playing the same part and how it affects the verisimilitude of a picture).

Hanks runs the death row cell block–The Green Mile—as a place of serenity. No reason to agitate anyone. When the film starts, there are two prisoners awaiting execution—Graham Greene and Michael Jeter. The film takes place over a summer, with the time somewhat tracked by the executions. All of the execution scenes are tough, a couple more than others, and Darabont takes the time to inspect the men conducting the executions.

Green Mile’s a man movie. There are a couple significant parts for women, but it’s about the guys. It doesn’t try to comment toxic masculinity, but still does so because of the nature of the piece and of Darabont’s interests in the relationships between the characters. It gets into class a bit—and intentionally—while directly avoiding the race issues; Green Mile is kind of Norman Rockwell Gothic; Capracorn but sour. None of the characters are allowed to express themselves fully at work—Hanks and main work sidekick David Morse have an almost entirely silent understanding of one another—and contemporary, religiously informed gender roles don’t allow them to speak about it at home. But not even the inmates are allowed to express themselves, though sometimes it’s because they’re not able.

For example, Duncan’s character. He arrives almost immediately once the flashback starts, during an incredibly efficient introduction to Doug Hutchison’s vile twerp of a prison guard, and towers over the rest of the cast. Duncan’s just over 6’5” but Morse’s 6’4”, so they exaggerated things. Now, Duncan being a gentle giant—convicted of terrible crimes but afraid of the dark—allows Darabont to keep him passively imposing. More on the scenery than the scenes. Not having Duncan’s lack of character arc be a monumental cop out is kind of Darabont’s most incredible work, at least in how he plotted the script. It does help, of course, Duncan’s character’s initials are “J.C.” Because if you’re going to do space wizard magic, you can be obvious about it.

With Duncan and then final death row addition, Sam Rockwell, we don’t see them experience their time on death row. We see how guards Hanks, Morse, Hutchison, Barry Pepper, and Jeffrey DeMunn react to their experience of it. Greene and Jeter (especially Jeter), we see them experience it. Jeter works as a common ground between the narrative distances, which generally stick to Hanks with occasional exception. Nothing like someone not at Normandy having a video game flashback of D-Day, but, you know, not being present for mouse tricks.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (2017, Martin McDonagh)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri needs a lot of passes. On one hand, writer and director McDonagh writes really shallow female characters outside protagonist Frances McDormand (well, part-time protagonist). On the other, he’s got a really shallow way of characterizing racists—they’re literally too dumb to know better. And then he’s got this weird way of writing Black characters, only two of whom exist in the aforementioned town. Given they immediately hit it off romantically, it’s weird they never met each other. There’s a third Black character–played by Clarke Peters—but he’s from out of town. And he’s got a way of getting the crackers in line.

There have got to be TV movies from the eighties and nineties with more depth, but not with the caliber of the cast. McDonagh gets a bunch of great performances out of his cast, who have mostly easy parts. Like Sam Rockwell as the numbskull racist stormtrooper deputy? Rockwell can do it. He can do it well. But it also doesn’t take much, which is why the performances seems less impressive after Caleb Landry Jones is able to run their scenes together. Or Zeljko Ivanek. Or Peter Dinklage. Or Lucas Hedges.

Wait, Hedges doesn’t have a scene with Rockwell, but Hedges is great and would be able to run the scene. Because Rockwell’s a victim of sorts too. His momma—Sandy Martin in an odd performance—raised him bad because she’s a numbskull racist too, what else would happen. And if it weren’t for sheriff Woody Harrelson’s terminal cancer, he might have a chance to teach Rockwell to stop torturing Black people in custody–which is a running “joke” for the first act and a bit of the second. Apparently McDonagh wanted to go for the audience who’d laugh at everyone repeatedly talking about torturing Black people but know it’s wrong. The torturing, not the laughing. His audience is very much the people who want to defend the laughing.

Harrelson gives an incredibly phoned in performance as the sheriff, who’s unable to solve the murder of McDormand’s teenage daughter (a good Kathryn Newton in flashback), so McDormand takes out three billboards drawing attention to that inability. Harrelson’s got the cancer subplot, he’s got the wife and kids subplot (though no one in the film is less important than Harrelson’s wife, Abbie Cornish, whose personality is her Australian accent), he’s too busy for a crime solving subplot.

McDonagh works a compelling enough melodrama—though, again, it’s frequently cringe-y and not just because all the guys are with women twenty years their junior and said women are just dehumanized ditz jokes—through the second act, but then fizzles when he tries to make it about the mystery. And the redemption arcs. So much redemption, so many abandoned characters.

If it were better, it’d be a mess, but McDonagh’s never able to pull it off after his first big twist. He’s only got two; neither are good. But the second one is at least in the finale, where there ought to be a big twist. The other one is where there shouldn’t be one so it draws attention and McDonagh never recovers from it.

Technically good performance from John Hawkes as McDormand’s abusive ex-husband who regularly beats her in front of their kids, which the kids have normalized and turned into a joke. Does Hawkes make the situation believable? No. But he’s good. Samara Weaving’s good as his nineteen year-old girlfriend who apparently supports him on her wages at a petting zoo or something.

Brendan Sexton III has an appropriate cameo, but it’d have worked better if I’d known it was him. Nick Searcy has a good cameo, but his name’s not on the movie because I think it came out he was too racist even for a vaguely edgy production like this one to promote. It’s in the first act when McDonagh’s writing for McDormand is best. Great scene.

Ben Davis’s photography is fine. McDonagh shoots it Panavision and can’t fill the frame, which is a bummer. Carter Burwell’s there to remind you Frances McDormand was in a Coen Brothers movie once so if you watch through half-closed eyes it seems like a Coen riff on a redneck gothic melodrama character piece. Only the movie ditches McDormand and switches to Rockwell in the third act to give it a very literal ending for the people in the audience who weren’t paying enough attention.

Otherwise, McDonagh’s direction is good. He’s very good with the cast. The problem’s his lack of insight.

McDormand’s good enough to carry it too, so when he shifts it to Rockwell, who can’t because it’s a nothing arc, way too little, way too late, Ebbing takes a big third act stumble.

It’s fine, actually. If it had a good finish with all the icky bad asterisks on it, it’d be worse. Once it’s clear McDormand and Rockwell don’t have great parts and Harrelson’s out of it… it’s fine. Just with a bunch of asterisks.

The Benson Murder Case (1930, Frank Tuttle)

The most interesting part of The Benson Murder Case is the Black Tuesday setting. I missed the newspaper dates for the montage about the stock market crash so I’m not sure if they do the Black Tuesday or just a Black Tuesday, but the movie opens with broker Richard Tucker selling off all his clients’ positions. They come to the office and yell at him and threaten him, so we get a parade of the suspects.

There’s gigolo Paul Lukas, who used the money his sugar momma May Beatty sent to cover her stock positions on pearls for Natalie Moorhead, which he then stole from her to give to Tucker as collateral on a forged check. It’s wordy complicated, not useful complicated; they just need to establish motive. Moorhead’s a working girl made good, but she believes Lukas loves her because… it’s unclear. Tucker wants to whisk Moorhead off her feet but she won’t go for him, money or not, because he’s ugly.

Then there’s gambler, rich guy, and apparently indicted but never convicted killer William 'Stage' Boyd, who’s pals with Tucker because they’re both in it to win it. Apparently it’s a bond.

After everyone meets at Tucker’s office to yell at him and get the light bulb about bumping him off, they soon end up at his country house to plead with him for financial mercy and maybe kill him. Mostly it’s just Tucker berating them for being thinly written characters and Boyd being slightly creepy.

Coincidentally and conveniently, Tucker lives next door to the district attorney, E.H. Calvert, who stops by for a chat during the gathering of the potential murderers. Again coincidentally and conveniently, Calvert’s got his pal—playboy amateur sleuth Philo Vance (William Powell)—along with him. So right before the murder there’s a lot of Boyd posturing for Powell.

After the murder, numbskull police sergeant Eugene Pallette shows up for a lot of solid comic relief. The murder happens around twenty-five minutes into the picture, which runs just over an hour, so Pallette’s got a lot to keep moving because the red herring suspicions Calvert’s got are obviously red herrings. He’s ranting about them while Powell just sits calmly and says wait for the last seven or eight minutes then they’ll know everything.

Benson Murder Case is mildly engaging, not much more. Director Tuttle showcases everyone except Powell (and maybe Beatty) and gives Tucker and Boyd the spotlight. They’re both fine. Powell’s charming, Pallette’s funny….

The mystery itself is kind of blah—the biggest reveal happens offscreen; besides Powell, Pallette, and maybe Boyd, the biggest selling point is the short runtime.

Jewel Robbery (1932, William Dieterle)

Jewel Robbery is a delightful mostly continuous action not-even-seventy minute picture; it’s a play adaptation but never feels stagy, just enthusiastic. Especially once William Powell shows up, then the film revels in his performance. Until he arrives, director Dieterle toggles between showing off filmmaking techniques (with some able cutting courtesy editor Ralph Dawson) and showing off star Kay Francis.

The film opens with a funny bit about state-of-the-art jewel store security, ostensibly setting up something for the eventual, titular heist. Then the action cuts to Francis and sticks with her the rest of the movie. She’s a bored trophy wife who’s only mildly amused by life anymore—she can’t even find a reasonable young stud to have an affair with; her husband’s rich, old, and boring. But he is at least going to buy her a very expensive diamond today. It’s so exciting Francis invites best friend Helen Vinson along to observe the purchase.

All the exposition comes as Francis gets ready for the day in various states of undress, starting with a bubble bath. Jewel Robbery seems immediately dedicated to being a Pre-Code exemplar, although not even scantily clad, decidedly unfaithful Francis is going to compare to where they eventually get.

At the jewelry store, the film introduces the rest of the cast. In addition to Francis and Vinson, there are five more characters to track—shop-owner Lee Kohlmar, special security guard and monumental putz Spencer Charters, Francis’s husband Henry Kolker, Vinson’s husband (presumably, it seems unlikely Kolker would pal around with one of her boyfriends) André Luguet, and Francis’s latest affair, Hardie Albright. Now, Albright and Kolker are blue blood pals, but Albright is determined to win Francis away from him. Except fooling around with Albright has made Francis realize how miserable her affairs have been because he’s such a wet noodle.

Luckily, Francis is still in the shop when gentleman robber Powell and his band of courteous henchmen arrive to rob the place so she can experience some adventure. And Powell’s irresistible charm. The robbery scene is enchanting even without Powell, just the way the robbery is choreographed and how Dieterle and Dawson time the whole thing.

But once Powell puts on Blue Danube to calm the victims and accompany the robbers in their task, he’s the whole show, keeping everyone (particularly Francis and the audience) amused. Once it becomes clear Francis has recognized his potential for fresh excitement in her life, they gradually move into banter. There’s still stuffed shirts Albright and Kolker to deal with, as they don’t consent to smoking dope to chill out with Kohlmar.

Literally.

A major plot point in Jewel Robbery is straight edges getting stoned and chilling out about the whole robbery thing. Powell provides them with marijuana cigarettes for just that purpose. It’s hilarious the first time, but when it comes back later with some very unexpected participants for the film’s single subplot… it’s hilarious.

It’s also more than the resolution can ever hope to surpass. Powell and Francis doing a fifteen or twenty minute Pre-Code flirtation dance (not literal dance, there’s actually no dancing, even though it’s kind of foreshadowed)… it’s great, they’re charming—Francis keeps up impressively with Powell—but it’s not a laugh riot. It’s charming and glamorous and risqué; all good just not substantive. Though it’d be kind of hard to get super substantive in sixty-eight minutes.

So instead a delightful amusement, with an often beguiling Powell performance. Francis is good, especially after she gets dressed and gets some character. The supporting cast is all solid, though for whatever reason Dieterle can’t direct Vinson and Francis together. The script goes one way and he goes sort of screwball… it doesn’t work. Otherwise Dieterle’s direction is excellent. Erwin Gelsey’s script has a number of good jokes and a fine pace.

Oh, and an inspired cameo from Clarence Wilson.

Jewel Robbery’s a lot of fun.

Hard Boiled (1992, John Woo)

The first act of Hard Boiled is fantastic. Between Woo’s glossy, smooth jazz but with bite tone and Chow Yun-Fat’s glorious lead performance; it’s all like butter. There’s a big, intricate shootout with Woo (and his editors Ah-Chik, Kai Kit-Wai, and David Wu) doing masterful work, there’s some workplace humor with cop Chow being on the outs with some of the time girlfriend and all of the time supervisor Teresa Mo, there’s Chow at a jazz club, and there’s Tony Chiu-Wai Leung doing a cool soulful (but smooth jazz soulful) gangster. It’s awesome.

Unfortunately, Hard Boiled runs two hours and change (depending how much violence has been cut out) and while the first act lasts a quarter of it and the next thirty or so minutes is still solid—as Leung has to decide whether or not to betray nice guy (for a triad) boss Kwan Hoi-San for obnoxious but successful Anthony Chau-Sang Wong while Chow enters the orbit, out for Wong’s head—but the movie runs out of story in at about the hour mark. There’s some plotting for the rest of it, but it’s really just moving bodies to their next stunt point.

And the second hour of Hard Boiled, which takes place in one location, which gets shot and blown up to hell as Chow, Leung, and Wong (mostly through his main enforcer, a very effective Phillip Chung-Fung Kwok) wage war on each other. See, Wong’s an arms smuggler so there are all sorts of neat guns and explosives for the fellows to play with as the bad guys go from endangering civilians to holding babies hostage. You know Wong and his guys are bad because they’re willing to kill babies.

It’s a really cheap way to drum up concern for the collateral damage, but it’s fine. The star of the second half of Hard Boiled is the pyrotechnics. Things are always blowing up. Yes, the infinite ammo mode gunfights are elaborate as well, but Woo doesn’t really direct them so much as execute them. The bangs and booms are the stars of the movie, not Chow or Leung. They’re just the guys who led the camera to the best places for bangs and booms.

The movie doesn’t even take the time for big bad fights—there’s more of one in the opening gunfight than anywhere else, even though Kwok’s in the movie a lot more than Wong—because it rejects the idea any of it can be personal. Barry Wong’s script doesn’t do character development or character arcs. It just does setups to action set pieces for Woo to execute. Leung gets some pensive alone time, which is fine and sympathizing (eventually and sort of retroactively), while most of Chow’s is spent with… director Woo, who also plays the jazz club owner, who used to be a cop too.

Woo is not a good actor and the scenes—outside when they bring the main plot in—are pretty blah. Especially since Chow and Mo are a really fun bicker couple. Mo’s usually around in the film, but never with enough to do. Woo doesn’t have time for a badass female super cop, just the one dude. And Chow’s good for it. Though even he loses his energy by the third act, maybe as he’s waiting for the scene where they blow up a set while he walks through it. There are a lot of stunts in Hard Boiled and you can usually tell when it’s not Chow and when it is Leung. Leung seems to be in the fistfights more than Chow, but Chow then turns around and lets them blow up the floor of a building with him on it.

Great stunt work, great action choreography, but Woo’s directing to show off those elements, not make it part of a narrative gesture or anything. The first hour’s just an excuse for the second.

Leung’s great, Chow’s great. Wong’s low okay. Kwok’s good, Mo’s good. Philip Chan’s fine as the big cop boss. His part’s iffy.

And the rest of the cast, eventual bang and boom fodder, sometimes for set decoration sometimes to motivate Leung or Chow, they’re all solid. Wong doesn’t even take the time to make them caricatures they’re so disposable, especially after the first act.

Hard Boiled’s sometimes really good, always pretty good, and just a little long at times. It’s got a lot of expertly executed action and some good performances, it just doesn’t really have much of a movie. It turns out it is, after all, smooth jazz.

Broken Arrow (1996, John Woo)

At one point or another, everyone in Broken Arrow tries very hard and gives it their all. Sometimes it works out, like when Samantha Mathis has her violence free stunt sequences or Delroy Lindo gets to deliver a lousy line well, sometimes it doesn’t work out, like Howie Long as one of the goons or… well, lots of John Travolta and Christian Slater. More Travolta, obviously, but also because he tries all the time. Slater doesn’t try as hard so doesn’t fail as hard.

Oh, and Frank Whaley. Broken Arrow is impressive in its earnest attempts at obvious moments; it’s unclear why they’re in the movie, like if director Woo wanted to do bland American jokes or if writer Graham Yost fought for them… one-liners to exit scenes with. Really bad banter stuff. And it’s all Whaley is there for and he doesn’t do any of it well. He doesn’t do the one-liners well, he doesn’t do the nerdy analyst stuff well, he’s a charisma vacuum.

But he does try and the movie tries too with him and they both just fail. So while Whaley’s a charisma vacuum, you do feel empathy for him in his plight… being trapped in this very silly movie.

Long, on the other hand, is an unsympathetic charisma vacuum. Once the movie pairs Travolta off mainly with Long, it’s like Travolta’s bad performance gets less annoying because not only isn’t it Long, you get to watch Long watch Travolta’s performance and be entirely incapable of reacting.

Most of the other performances are fine. And Travolta’s even got some moments. He and Slater both do this “I did Tarantino” thing with their banter and it does bring some energy, but it’s only with one another and it’s never consistent. Or good, really. I mean, it’s… amusing from a certain point of view. They’re trying.

And Broken Arrow’s trying often has some ingenuity. There’s a lengthy suspense action sequence in a mine because you can do a fairly impressive mine set on the cheap. The train sequence is limited but good. Woo certainly shows off his range when it comes to action settings. There are some gunfights (but not many), fistfights, and lots of running and jumping from explosion stunts. Broken Arrow’s glorious in its pyrotechnics.

The story—involving a traitorous Air Force pilot stealing a nuclear warhead to blackmail the Pentagon—feels more like a B+ movie plot than an A one, but it’s only 108 minutes and there are a lot of pyrotechnics credits to get through. You only have to amuse for so long.

Oh, and the Hans Zimmer score. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s for a video game. Besides Howie Long, Frank Whaley (sorry, sir), and a perplexingly miscast Jack Thompson, all of Broken Arrow’s defects are kind of charming. And it’s quite competently made, it’s just… you know… silly.

And Travolta’s kind of silly. Like, really, really silly. But tolerably silly.

And Mathis is really likable. Enough I wish they’d made Broken Arrow 2: Flight Control with Mathis and Slater teaming up again. They’re not exactly good together or even charming together, but they work together. Actually, that sentence also sums up Broken Arrow.