The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992, Brian Henson), the extended version

There’s a lot great about Muppet Christmas Carol: obviously the Muppet performers (their first outing after Jim Henson died—Rowlf is silent in memorial), Brian Henson’s fine direction, Jerry Juhl’s inventive script, strong special effects, Val Strazovec’s production design, Michael Jablow’s editing, the Paul Williams songs (the repetition even helps); but what makes it so special is Michael Caine as Scrooge.

By the end of the movie it ought to be Michael Caine and the Muppets’ Christmas Carol because he’s been so spotlighted for the previous seventy-five minutes or so. Caine breaks pretty early on in the night, Scrooge-wise. The film opens with him being mean to nephew Steven Mackintosh, Bunsen and Beaker (collecting for charity), the odd cute Muppet, then Kermit (as Bob Cratchit) and the office staff.

But he’s never too mean. He’s intimidating, he’s callous, but he’s ignorant of his cruelty in some ways; he’s kind of a libertarian a bit. Like he’s a blowhard, which his peers figure out, and then Christmas Carol is just all about him realizing he needs to alleviate suffering with his fortune. Incidentally, A Christmas Carol—the source material—is really depressing in 2020 when the story is 175 years old and there’s basically never been a redeemed Scrooge in reality. The genetics of Kermit and Miss Piggy’s kids in the movie are more realistic than the core tale.

Caine’s Scrooge cracks the first time during the Christmas past sequence (though maybe not in the theatrical version) and then the rest of the film and Christmas ghosts aren’t about him realizing Christmas is good, actually, but he’s bad, actually, and his bah humbug attitude about Christmas is just a symptom.

The Tiny Tim scene where Caine just stares at the puppets and tears up is fantastic. Henson drags it out, he and Jablow changing the intervals on the reaction shots to Caine, and it’s just this great expression work from Caine. His reactions to his emotions have their own arcs, with this amazing verklempt period for the end of Christmas Present and all of Christmas Future. Henson, Juhl, and Caine turn it into a character study, with the familiar Muppets doing a lot more in the supporting cast department.

Gonzo and Rizzo narrate the film, which is hilarious and one of the film’s best “Muppet” instincts. They have the right personality clash to make their antics particularly funny. Because there aren’t many laughs in the rest of it. It’s a tragedy and all. Even the songs—which have some really funny lines—are always sincere and often solemn. Outside Gonzo and Rizzo, the playfulness is quite muted. It’s a very nimble film; Henson’s able to control the mood just right.

So the special effects should get a callout because they have so much to do with the mood. The Ghosts of Christmas aren’t traditional Muppets—well, maybe Ghost of Christmas Present but even then not exactly; the Ghosts are their own specific characters outside the Muppet movie aspect of Christmas Carol, which is all the more ambitious and all the more successful. Henson and company found the right formula here.

Though it all hinges on Caine’s performance. Including him singing. Somehow Muppet Christmas Carol makes singing Michael Caine an absolute delight.

Other highlights include Statler and Waldorf’s cameos—including young age make-up on them—Jerry Nelson as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Meredith Braun as young Scrooge’s love interest. Braun’s only it for a scene and a half but makes a singular contribution.

Well, if you’re watching the extended version, anyway.

Muppet Christmas Carol is most assuredly sensational, inspirational, celebrational, and, indeed, Muppetational.

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932, Robert Florey)

Murders in the Rue Morgue buries the ledes a little too often. First, it hides it’s Expressionist until we get to Bela Lugosi’s mad scientist lair and then the production design is absurdly Expressionist. There’s eventually a scene with Noble Johnson (who I thought was in white face, but I guess not based on his billing) blocking this little door to keep the cops out and you’re wondering where you are on the Wonka factory tour. It’s at least interesting set design (Herman Rosse, uncredited) and director Florey is much better at showcasing it than any of his actors.

Florey is real bad with the actors.

Like, Lugosi’s definitely better than lead Leon Ames—Ames is actually the second buried lede—but only because Ames is indescribably bad. Though neither of them can really make the “walking with a fashion cane” thing work. I thought Lugosi was going to pull it off after Ames is so awkward with his cane strut, but Lugosi just lifts and carries his cane too.

Anyway. The second buried lede.

So, although I’m not a fan of Poe’s Dupin, I am familiar with the original story and its place in detective fiction history. Somehow I missed third-billed Ames having the Dupin surname—he’s Pierre not C. Auguste—and the first scene at a carnival is all about Lugosi and his pet ape, not about Ames taking out lady friend Sidney Fox. But then Ames heads to the morgue to investigate dead girls and gives his name… seems like it’s going to be more of a straight adaptation. Except Ames isn’t a porto-Sherlock Holmes deductive reasoner… he’s just some horny French dude.

Maybe the best part of the movie—outside the sets—is D'Arcy Corrigan as the disinterested morgue keeper. He seems to understand the movie he’s in better than anyone else.

Also, the original story does not have a mono-browed (but with two different hair textures) villain named “Dr. Mirakle” (Lugosi) who’s out to prove evolution from apes by interbreeding one with a human. Good to know there’s precedent for terrible naming pre-Star Wars but also not.

Worst part of the movie—outside Ames—is when they try to do comedy to kill time. The movie runs barely an hour and there are multiple comedic time fillers. If you’re familiar with the original story, there are certain memorable plot points, so you’re waiting for those set pieces. Except they just keep doing bad comedy.

Like Bert Roach. He technically maybe be the original story’s unnamed narrator (Watson to Holmes) but doesn’t actually participate in anything interesting, just whines about Ames not studying hard enough for school or eating his lunch. Of course, Ames isn’t solely obsessed with his extracurricular morgue studies—he’s always got more than enough time for Fox—he just doesn’t have time for his girl, his studies, and his obsession with drowned women. And doesn’t care when Roach makes him special lunches to help with his resolve.

It’s all fairly dreadful. Roach is bad. He goes away after this weird Pre-Code horny French boy montage where all the couples are at a picnic and they’re all trying to talk their ladies into impropriety. Though that sequence, which has Florey aping (no pun) some Abel Gance Napoleon shots, is the last time there’s anything like character development. Or ambitious shots. Florey doesn’t ask a lot from Karl Freund’s photography in the rest of the film, other than making sure to keep the crosses lighted well. Because there’s apparently a Christian message to the ape not understanding Lugosi didn’t mean he’d get to mate with the girl, just like, have their blood commingle successfully in a beaker.

Yes. I buried the lede. The lede Murders doesn’t bury—it’s about an actual ape out to rape an actual human girl. Pre-Code style. See, Lugosi translates for the ape—who talks in ape—but by the end it’s fairly obvious the ape hasn’t been understanding Lugosi’s hard professional limits.

You feel bad for the real ape they use as the inserts. It’s mostly a not great, pseudo-orangutan costume, but the close-up inserts are this chimp (maybe) yelling or making faces. It’s not an effective device. And even if it somehow did work better, Milton Carruth’s editing is fairly bad on everything so he’d have screwed up the cuts no matter what.

If Murders were a silent, it might actually work out. Carruth’s cutting would still need some work but Lugosi, Ames, and Fox would no doubt be more effective without hearing them delivery their dialogue and Florey certainly seems to be directing a silent.

Sure, you’d lose an impromptu singing scene with Fox but in that case, “wouldn’t suffer through” is the more accurate phrasing.

Murders in the Rue Morgue is a very long sixty-one minutes. It peaks really early and really low. It’s just a fail and not even a messy one. Start to finish, there’s always one thing or another going very wrong.

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (2020, Frank Marshall)

The Bee Gees deserve a more comprehensive documentary thanHow Can You Mend a Broken Heart. The film skips over a lot of specifics in the early years, then ends its main narrative in the late 1970s with the Disco Demolition, which could have been a major turning point in the film as they’re talking about the racist and homophobic undercurrents to the anti-disco movement. Forty years later and disco (and The Bee Gees) are still entertaining and I’m not looking up Steve Dahl because I don’t want to know if he’s an anti-masker.

It certainly wouldn’t be a surprise given how he comes off in the contemporary news footage. Shame he didn’t do any interviews for Heart, sort of a serious statement, sort of not. I’ve got no confidence in director Marshall or writer Mark Monroe to do with anything even slightly argumentative. But given how little the Disco Demolition stuff figures into the actual narrative–sure, there’s a little about the immediate post-disco stuff for the group, but it’s a rush to the finish. Story’s over. No one cares, apparently, about the Staying Alive soundtrack. Though everyone has noticed there’s no mention of The Bee Gees’ movie, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band either.

Broken Heart’s one of those documentaries where it’s not only successful because of its subject, it’s successful because of its subject’s content. There’s a bunch of old home movie footage, including stuff with the band—for some reason Marshall and Monroe avoid the band subplot (whether or not The Bee Gees are a band or a, what, pop group?), even though it’s clearly important to Barry Gibb, the only one of the brothers still alive and able to participate. There’s archive footage of brothers Maurice and Robin from the late 1990s, but the film treats it like a big constraint, which is strange because they do get a bunch of good material from other band members. We just don’t ever find out what really happens with the music—why people left and so on. The little narratives the interviewees introduce go nowhere.

The modern interviewees—Eric Clapton because he was involved with the same labels in the seventies, Noel Gallagher and Justin Timberlake because they like The Bee Gees, Chris Martin because he knows about being really popular and then no one liking you, and Nick Jonas because brothers—are hit and miss. Some of them are amusing and know their Bee Gees. Some of them get lost. Even when they have something relevant to say. Meaning Chris Martin.

Anyway.

Given the film’s focus on the disco era for the narrative conclusion, they probably should’ve just done a better job talking about the disco stuff. I’d heard it cut off before the movie with brother Andy Gibb’s… well, not death, because it sort of ignores it fades out on Andy Gibb in 1979 and he died in 1988. But I knew not to expect anything post-seventies. Given the hundred minute runtime, I figured it would be a two-parter. Nope.

They really do a rush finish over the last couple decades of The Bee Gees, so Broken Heart isn’t really interested in the band as people or artists and whatnot, it’s just a quick, amiable survey of the rise to the glory days, the glory days, and then scene. Because the glory days are awesome, based on the footage—they were great at working the camera—and we don’t get much of it. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart isn’t interested in the available subject today, it isn’t interest in showcasing the music, and it’s not interested in the subjects as they developed as anything but celebrities.

There’s some really interesting stuff about the music. The best interviewees are the ex-drummers, ex-guitarists, ex-producers. The stories of how they all came together to create these mega-hits, all thanks to these seemingly amiable—still unproblematic (enough if not entirely) after sixty years of celebrity—basic but sincere British brothers who could fucking sing. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart initially does a pretty good job showcasing the ability then loses interest; Marshall just plays it all wrong. It gets over a lot. And mostly because the music’s good. Like. Forty years later… Bee Gees good, sometimes better. Yes, it’s a trip to see them performing the folk stuff looking like the boys too square for Marcia Brady but then Robin sings and all of a sudden it doesn’t matter it’s square and obvious.

It’s a fun, entertaining hundred minutes. But it should be a lot better. Just for itself, it should be better; shouldn’t have ignored subplots and so on. Marshall’s entirely absent as director and it’s a mistake. The film need some personality. Marshall and Monroe bring none.

So it’s a testament to The Bee Gees how much Broken Heart succeeds.

WarGames (1983, John Badham)

All WarGames really needs to be better is a good script rewrite, a better director (apparently there are some leftover shots from when Martin Brest tried directing it but got fired), and more John Wood. The Arthur B. Rubinstein music is a little iffy too but has its charms.

And WarGames has its charms. Matthew Broderick is often nearly charming in the lead; he’s a teenage computer hacker who tries to impress a girl (Ally Sheedy) by changing her grades only to get them involved in… well, not espionage. Basically Sheedy helps Broderick convince a lonely computer it wants to play a game; she gives him the big clue, which is regular people love their children. Based on Broderick’s parents in the film—an oblivious William Bogert and a nagging vitamin-obsessed eighties working movie mom Susan Davis—it makes sense he wouldn’t know to try the programmer’s dead son’s name.

They play a quick game of Global Thermonuclear War, then Broderick has to go clean up after his dog. The computer keeps playing—they hook it up to a voice box but Douglas Rain it ain’t, though—and I know John Badham had seen 2001, watching WarGames, you’d think he’d proudly declare he hadn’t—anyway. The Feds figure out Broderick hacked them, kidnap him off the street, and take him to NORAD. Where they do regular tours.

We’ve already been to NORAD because the movie opens with this hook—General Barry Corbin, who’s so proudly ignorant and backwards he’s probably an accurate depiction of an Air Force general (when they have him on the phone with the President and you realize it’s Reagan, WarGames becomes absurdist comedy), doesn’t have enough men willing to kill Russian babies. Now, eighty percent will do it, but twenty percent are wusses. So Dabney Coleman says they should let a computer do it. Said computer, housed in Colorado at NORAD, is hooked up to an outside phone line somewhere in California so Broderick can happen across it.

Pretty soon Broderick’s not only got to convince the adults he’s not a Russian spy, he’s also got to find a way to stop World War III. Luckily he’s got his best gal Sheedy, though they have very little chemistry and their kisses on the cheek are the most natural parts of their relationship, and she’s got enough money and her own car to keep the plot going. Also Broderick is able to MacGyver his way out of any situation thanks to his hacker skills. Though he doesn’t know anything about anything except those things. We see his grades and he’s ever ignorant of things he’d know from watching any modern television drama.

Though it’s a little better than Sheedy, who seems to be around to decorate and be decorative.

Outside a flashing light sequence at the end, William A. Fraker’s (surprisingly Oscar-nominated but so was the script so whatever, she don’t lie, cocaine) cinematography is fairly tepid, which matches Badham’s direction. Tom Rolf’s editing is not an asset either. Again, WarGames just needed a better director and a good script rewrite.

Broderick and Sheedy are fine. They both have solid moments, Broderick more but because they stumble upon how to make Broderick a movie star and occasionally repeat.

Besides the surprisingly effective third act and trying to figure out what computer programmer Wood is thinking when he’s acting so goofy, the most amusing part of WarGames is spotting the character actors in the cast. I’m going to miss a few because I don’t recognize their names just their faces but this movie’s got… John Spencer, Michael Madsen, James Tolkan (didn’t that guy ever have hair, sadly he doesn’t call Broderick a slacker), Jason Bernard, Alan Blumenfeld, Maury Chaykin, Eddie Deezen, Stephen Lee, and Art LaFleur. I’m leaving out a bunch of the military guys but it’s like, Michael Ensign from Ghostbusters (but not Raiders, so I’m confused). But the listed folks, those I’m sure about.

Oh. And Broderick’s joke at teacher Blumenfeld’s expense is great, actually.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016, Taika Waititi)

I kept waiting for something to go wrong in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The first act is this exceptionally tight, efficient narrative—but with time for montage digressions as director (and screenwriter) Waititi gently examines lead Julian Dennison as his life goes through a pastoral upheaval.

Dennison is a tween on the edge of teen and has been bopping around the foster care system his entire life. He’s at his last attempt at a home placement—Rima Te Wiata is going to take him; she just happens to have a farm on the edge of the New Zealand bush (New Zealand bush being rainforest). So city boy to the wilderness.

We also meet intense but not empathetic child services worker Rachel House (and her suffering flunky Oscar Kightley); they’re going to both be important later on. Especially for absurdist—but good absurdist—humor.

And then there’s Sam Neill; he’s Te Wiata’s husband who she didn’t tell child services about (but they don’t care, apparently). He’s a gruff, tough, farming guy who’s not into the foster dad thing but loves Te Wiata. Waititi leans heavy on making Neill mysterious in the first act, but we soon find out the social awkwardness around Dennison isn’t just for dramatic impact; Neill’s an odd duck. It’s a particularly choice part because no matter what, there’s a hard limit to how much Neill’s going to have to do. The character’s got insurmountable constraints, which gives Neill and Waititi a lot of room to flex without having to worry about breaking through.

Also it’s not Neill’s movie. It’s Dennison’s movie.

Waititi splits Wilderpeople into chapters, with the first playing more like a short subject, complete with its own epical structure. The chapters end up working out, especially in the second act, which has Neill and Dennison thrown together by tragedy, on the run from House while trying to do right by Te Wiata.

Most of the film takes place over uncounted miles of New Zealand rainforest, with occasional stopovers at ranger stations or whatever, and Waititi makes the bush feel like a consistent, familiar setting without it actually ever being the same spot. Except when he does one of the really cool, digitally enabled composite shots—the camera pans in a circle, capturing the characters in the space at different times. Sometimes because they’re lost, sometimes because they’re found, sometimes because they’re on the run. Usually there’s great music accompanying it. If there’s not great music, then it’s just great sound. Wilderpeople, technically, is pristine work.

So while Dennison and Neill play fugitive—no one-armed references but a great Terminator one (though nothing compared to a First Blood riff, which is out of nowhere but absolutely phenomenal because Waititi makes it absurd, hilarious, and also exactly what the scene needs). Waititi’s rather good with the asides and outbursts. They always end up fueling something new in Wilderpeople, even at the very end.

The film’s a bit of a character study grafted to a wilderness adventure, complete with faithful dogs, stupid hunters, and bush folk vs. city folk wisdom. Oh, and Dennison having his “I like girls differently now” moment, after he meets Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne. Ngatai-Melbourne’s only in it for a bit but she’s fantastic and gets to show Dennison’s able to maintain the high level of acting even without the precise structuring of his scenes with the foster family. Dennison’s great, full stop, but Waititi’s also made a film where it’s so strong on everything else it could get away with him being one note.

He’s not, which surges Wilderpeople ahead.

Along the way, we find out more about Dennison, Neill, and Te Wiata while they’re finding out about each other and themselves. Maybe if Te Wiata and Dennison weren’t so good in the first act when they’re doing their getting to know you scenes, Neill would be able to steal some of the thunder but he’s very much there to give Dennison a frequent foil. It’s an exceptionally well-acted film, with Waititi’s direction of those actors as integral as the performances to its success.

The third act falls apart a bit because of course it falls apart a bit; once the film hits a certain scale, it’s inevitable the conclusion is going to be rough. Waititi holds it together through a bit of a too fast segue to the superior epilogue.

Wilderpeople’s fairly great. Waititi’s direction, his script, Dennison, Neill, Te Wiata, House, Ngatai-Melbourne, editors Tom Eagles, Yana Gorskaya, and Luke Haigh—lots of spectacular work on display.

Absolute Beginners (1986, Julien Temple)

Absolute Beginners, the David Bowie song, is so good Absolute Beginners, this Julien Temple directed musical film adaptation of Colin MacInnes’s presumably autobiographical novel would have to be singular to be better than the song.

Okay, singular in a good way.

Because I suppose Beginners, which Temple stages as a Technicolor stage production, is singular in a bad way. The film’s never too far away from its next bad decision, like having Bowie—who also cameos on screen as one of the few people who can actually sing the songs, otherwise it’s unimaginative lip-syncing from leads Patsy Kensit (at least, I hope she’s lip-syncing) and Eddie O’Connell. As far as the dance numbers… well, whoever Temple and cinematographer Oliver Stapleton had running the Steadicam did a great job, but they’re not good. Temple composes all of his shots for what seems to be eventual pan-and-scan, so there’s empty space on half the screen, either on the sides or on one side. Not good for the dance direction. Though I suppose the scale of the production is impressive.

Beginners takes place in the late 1950s, when it was more pragmatic for white London youth to be progressive and live and hang out with the marginalized—because cheap rents, but it still did lead to personal growth. O’Connell likes the working class melting pot, Kensit wants stability so much she’s willing to marry old gay fashion designer James Fox so she can be a kept woman.

Now, Beginners Technicolor dancing melting pot includes a lot of gay folks and O’Connell always seems more anti-homophobic than anti-racist (eventually it’s going to turn out he was just too busy trying to be a teen heartthrob to notice the subtle hints of a white terror organization in his photographs but also because he didn’t talk to his one Black friend, Tony Hippolyte, about Bruce Payne and his sidekicks burning down buildings)—but there’s a lot of digs at Fox for being a gay guy pretending to be straight so he could have a business in 1958. He’s a villain, sure, but… the last thing Beginners ever needs to do is come off more white. Especially once the film decides it’s going to do race riot as musical number.

Other bad choices… Bowie’s accent. I got lost in the other rotting weeds of the film but Bowie’s accent. Wow. It’s a fake American accent looped in, so there’s an added level of unreality to it. It’s such a profound move, I suppose whether or not Bowie is good or bad isn’t an answerable question. Is he effective?

No. But it’s not his fault. They stunt cameoed him in a bad part.

The film’s at its best—so it takes about an hour—in the studio-built streets where O’Donnell, Hippolyte, and Payne collide for the big race riot musical number third act. Beginners has four editors, but only the one or ones who worked on the third act managed to establish any kind of pace. Otherwise it’s jerky, with O’Donnell’s unwelcome narration popping in. At first I thought it was Bowie doing it from old age, which would bring some personality.

Instead, it’s O’Donnell, who’s absent personality, which it turns out isn’t the worst. Kensit’s got some personality but it’s all bad. Bowie doesn’t have any because of the dubbing, though Anita Morris isn’t dubbed and she doesn’t have any either. Lionel Blair does but it’s potentially problematic personality. Steven Berkoff’s cameo as a British Hitler wannabe is easily Temple’s best direction of an actor in the film, which is certainly something.

The Sade cameo—she sings a number—is easily the best musical bit outside the opening and closing use of Absolute Beginners, though the finale action is so bad it would’ve been better to hold the song for the end credits.

I Lost My Body (2019, Jérémy Clapin)

I Lost My Body is the profoundly vapid tale of a man (Hakim Faris) and his hand. The hand has been chopped off and as it travels through a computer animated Paris, the film flashes back to Faris’s tale and, presumably, how he lost his hand.

Along the way, the hand kills a young mother and terrorizes a family, while Faris concentrates on stalking Victoire Du Bois. Faris is a pizza delivery guy and a bad one. During one of his failed outings, he meets Du Bois over the intercom and stalks her to her place of work, then home—or so Faris thinks—but instead finds a way to insert himself into her life via a sickly uncle, Patrick d'Assumçao.

Also important is Faris’s tragic backstory—he distracted his parents while they were driving, resulting in a car accident and killing them and shipping him off to poor relations.

Body doesn’t have anything going for it—not the direction, as Clapin seems to think he’s composing his shots for live action or at least CGI, then relying on computer shadow effects for the “hand style” animation. If you don’t mind your precious being insincere, I guess it could be worse. It could actually cause nausea to watch.

Similarly insincerely precious is Dan Levy’s music. Not “Schitt’s” Dan Levy. Another Dan Levy. One who does fine enough montage music just on bad projects.

The script’s terrible and profoundly unaware of itself. When the third act hints at some amazing possible turns of events before the film chickens out of all of them, there’s a moment where I Lost My Body might actually achieve something. Albeit something related to its stalker, toxically masculine hero, but at least it’d be trying. Instead it gives up, which is what everyone should do when confronted with the possible viewing of I Lost My Body.

Give up.

Bastille Day (2016, James Watkins)

Bastille Day is an abject waste of time from the start, which opens with some very bad “video stock” only it turns out to be supposed to be “bad” video from a smartphone. Not even getting into the opening sequence, a terribly directed one, seems more appropriate for an eighties Porky’s rip-off more than a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. Except Bastille isn’t even a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. It’s a buddy flick, only without any of that fun chemistry between the buddies.

Bastille’s buddies are top-billed Idris Elba, as an American CIA lifer who is more a blunt instrument (it doesn’t matter, director Watkins and co-writer Andrew Baldwin’s espionage details suggest they didn’t even bother checking Wikipedia), and Richard Madden, as an American ex-pat pickpocket in Paris. If Elba and Madden had okay American accents, it wouldn’t matter they’re not, except their accents are terrible. Occasionally the most amusing thing about Bastille is wondering what they must’ve sounded like between takes, when they aren’t retching out Watkins and Baldwin’s insipid dialogue with their very shaky accents. Elba seems more like he’s doing an impression of an American actor than giving a performance, which is a bummer because he comes in late enough to save the movie from Madden and then doesn’t.

Madden’s performance isn’t even serious enough to call a performance so no time on that aspect, sorry. Though it is also fun watching him strain to emote as you can watch him consider making that decision, then not doing it.

It’s impossible to say, of course, how much is director Watkins’s fault. Watkins is really, really bad at the directing. So maybe Elba and Madden would be great if they’d just had the petty cash buyer or graffiti artist take over directing. It certainly wouldn’t be any worse.

Though I do suppose neither Madden or Elba get anywhere near as bad as Kelly Reilly, who hopefully locked her agent in a metal box and dumped them in the ocean after this one. She’s atrocious. And paired with Anatol Yusef, who’s so bad as the Paris station chief (they don’t have station chiefs, the writers didn’t Google deep enough), I spent the movie wondering if he was the producer’s nephew or something. He’s not. He’s a professional actor. He does dramatic moves with his glasses professionally. It’s rough.

The story involves Madden getting involved in a terror attack—Bastille’s politics are dumb but also occasionally, unintentionally insightful—which leads to Antifa (or are they) getting involved with CGI-enhanced demonstrations before, you guessed it, Bastille Day. Elba is the super-agent saving the day without involving the French, namely bureaucrat José Garcia.

Throw in a damsel in distress (presumably native French speaker Charlotte Le Bon, who’s better at delivering her lines in English than Madden for sure) and a scary bad guy leader (Thierry Godard) and you’ve got a movie.

Though Bastille Day is a long ninety-two minutes. It gets even worse after the action sequences start and it turns out they did actually hire someone who can choreograph big guy Elba in fight scenes, Watkins just can’t direct them. At all. There are a couple potentially, actually good fight scenes and Watkins sinks them both. Though editor Jon Harris tries hard to mess them up too. Harris’s never any good at the cutting but during the action scenes he’s downright annoying.

Bastille Day is dumb and even if you’re sympathetic to the actors, it’s not like they haven’t given better performances elsewhere. A still photograph of Madden, for example, probably exhibits a lot more depth than anything in this movie. It’s a bad, dumb script, with some truly incompetent direction from Watkins.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman)

Once I’m Thinking of Ending Things makes it painfully, obviously clear what’s actually going on with nondescript Oklahoma intellectual artsy girl Jessie Buckley, her pseudo-intellectual, experience matters more but wait is actually smart or is he boyfriend Jesse Plemons, his weird parents—Toni Collette (who somehow manages to be the only person in the not-untalented cast to give a consistently good performance—hashtag, it’s the script’s fault) and David Thewlis (who, along with Plemons, seems to be doing an advertisement for “Fargo: The TV Show”)—and possibly creepy high school custodian Guy Boyd for the third or fourth time, the film becomes something of a waiting game. Waiting to see if director and screenwriter Kaufman can actually make anything out of it or not.

He does not.

It’s a big hill to climb, considering the script is all about presenting caricatures and his direction of his actors isn’t any better. Though it’s not like you really want Kaufman to put more effort into lionizing flyover country; he clearly wouldn’t do a good job of it.

The film actually seems structured to resist criticism, like Kaufman’s laughably bad 4:3 composition. Things is a Netflix streaming exclusive, Netflix streams in 16:9, Kaufman is a rebel who shoots in 4:3. Shame he doesn’t showcase his actors in their tight close-ups as much as have them showcase his pat dialogue; though I guess quoting Pauline Kael en masse is a flex for certain people. Stars Buckley and Plemons do get better eventually, but not permanently and it’s so obvious why they’re better the improvement just ends up annoying.

The film opens with Buckley narrating about her six week relationship with Plemons, who she either met at a trivia night or somewhere she saw in a Robert Zemeckis movie (Kaufman throwing poop at Robert Zemeckis is as good as the film gets so you can stop if it doesn’t connect, or if you don’t get the reference because then you’re not going to get the seventy-five other conversations when Kaufman tries to appeal to a “New Yorker” audience like it’s 2002 and the David Foster Wallace thing is a lot)….

Anyway.

The film opens with Buckley and Plemons driving to his parents. It’s like twenty minutes of them in the car in one shots talking to each other but not because Buckley’s interior monologue is running the whole time about how much she wants to dump Plemons. Then the parents, where Thewlis opens with a variation of his “Fargo” performance (which is just a mainstream Thewlis anyway) and does some refinements. He at least shows the capacity for range. Collette does wonders with a superficial role, showing the range but also the ability. Plemons and Buckley don’t have exhibit any range, which is kind of fine. At some point you’re glad it’s not better actors being wasted in the film.

Then there’s a second car ride where Kaufman decides to do some two shots so the actors get to… act together (he doesn’t do much actors acting together with the parents either; if anything, Ending is two hours and fifteen minutes of a director not actually knowing how to direct a movie). Plemons and Buckley get immediately better and then even better as the script gets weird for a moment and it seems like the obvious reveal isn’t coming.

The obvious reveal, of course, does arrive, albeit with some solid cushioning. Kaufman doesn’t do a great job with the reveal sequence but it shows more imagination than anything else in the film has to that point. The two hour mark or so.

Good photography from Lukasz Zal—not his fault Kaufman can’t compose a 4:3 shot—not good editing from Robert Frazen—but not his fault Kaufman can’t shoot scenes—not good production design from Molly Hughes, especially not for 4:3. Jay Wadley’s music is… fine.

Outside Collette being great just because, there’s no reason for Ending Things. Other than seeing what proud pseudo-elitist hipster streaming cinema looks like in 2020.

The Sapphires (2012, Wayne Blair)

When we were about halfway through The Sapphires I figured something must go wrong otherwise the film would have a better reputation. Though you never know; music biopics do have their unfortunately hidden gems (no pun). Sapphires doesn’t succeed as a music biopic or a music pic or a biopic but it’s got some excellent performances and a sincere script (screenwriter and source play author Tony Briggs is son of one of the real-life principals).

Outside Don Battee not delivering in his big scene during the third act, which is a combination of the script and Battee, nothing really goes wrong so much as director Blair and co-writers Keith Thompson and Briggs turn the film, which promised to focus on the experiences of four Indigenous Australian women as they went from their home to Vietnam to perform as a soul quartet for the U.S. troops in 1968. Through the second act, two of the four women get their spotlights turned off while two of the other women then get the focus. But one of them only because she figures into top-billed Chris O’Dowd’s story arc in a more significant way than originally forecast.

It’s particularly frustrating because O’Dowd’s so good because Sapphires never just relies on him. Instead he has these killer moments as a stranded Irish soul music aficionado who “discovers” sisters Deborah Mailman, Miranda Tapsell, and Jessica Mauboy in a singing competition and soon finds himself involved in their scheme to become famous. Sort of a royal their; it’s mostly Tapsell and Mauboy, with Mailman being the responsible oldest sister, who immediately finds herself at odds with constant and somewhat malfunctioning drunk O’Dowd, who assumes the manager role, which just reminded me the movie opens up a big plot hole where they were going to do some character building for Mailman and instead just skips it. But at least she gets the set up, I suppose.

Briggs and Thompson do a good job plotting the script—it moves at a fantastic pace (the plot holes not obvious until it’s over, which is about all you can hope for with them) and is always entertaining. It’s most entertaining when it’s O’Dowd, but because O’Dowd gets more and more to do in the second half of the film as the sisters—who also have brought along cousin Shari Sebbens, who had been one of the stolen light-skinned Indigenous Australian children, which then causes a lot of drama as Mailman has let her anger over past behaviors fester. Weird and easy resolution to that subplot. It feels like Sapphires is missing four or six minutes where everyone decides the movie’s over and so they’re going to wrap things up but instead it’s just the wrap up. And even the wrap up is rushed and feels truncated, like Blair just doesn’t want to give his ostensible leads any more material, he just wants to showcase having O’Dowd in his movie.

It’s a bummer.

But O’Dowd’s still charming as hell.

The best performances are Mailman and Sebbens. Both ought to be better because their parts ought to be better. Youngest Mauboy gets ignored when the adults are talking—or flirting—but she’s good with the little she gets. Tapsell gets the least of the four; she’s good, definitely, but it’s the worst part by far. And Mauboy’s part is bad. Like, they skip very important character development for her all the time. But then when the film gets to the postscript real-life biography title cards… it turns out the women were all far more interesting after their time as a girl group than during their time as a girl group.

Except in the historical context, something the film heavily embraces but then abandons. It’s smooth sailing until the third act and then it’s immediately going down. It’s never a race to see if they can finish before the film goes under—there’s O’Dowd—but… only because it’s obviously going for unambitious and mediocre but also sincere and competent. All fine enough things.

Pretty good photography from Warwick Thornton until the nighttime war action and then not really. Blair does better with the war action than he needs to do; it’s the only place where he shows any directorial flourish, the rest of the time just relying on the actors. But there were plenty of opportunities for said flourish in the other parts, he just doesn’t take any.

Excellent production design from Melinda Doring and costume design by Tess Schofield.

It’d be nice if Sapphires were as impressive as its cast. Or if it even knew how to properly showcase them.

Outside O’Dowd, obviously. Blair’s got showcasing O’Dowd down. But Mailman, Mauboy, and Sebbens deserve it more. And Tapsell too. But after a certain point, Sapphires wants to be about everything except its title characters. Like I said, it’s a bummer.