Miss Hokusai (2015, Hara Keiichi)

Miss Hokusai is the story of real person Katsushika Ōi. Well, stories of real person Katsushika Ōi. The anime is an episodic memoir mostly about Ōi (voiced by Anne Watanabe) and her younger sister, O-Nao (voiced by Shimizu Shion). The film doesn’t specify but they’re half-sisters, daughters to famous Japanese Edo period artist Katsushika Hokusai (Matsushige Yutaka). Ōi is also an artist, working under her father’s tutelage and when the movie’s not about her and her blind, sickly sister, it’s about her and her dad’s other slightly eccentric (and obviously all male) students.

Oh, and her love life. Almost the entire second act is about Ōi not being good at the erotica art because she’s a virgin. Except it’s all done in fades-to-black-in-between episodes (to the point you can tell when one is running too long), which would be more effective if it had a lyrical structure instead of just a herky-jerky epical.

The problem with Hokusai—other than the disaster third act—is the narrative distance. It’s not a character study of Ōi, it’s a mildly cloying look at the world she inhabits. Someone—screenwriter Maruo Miho or original mangaka Sugiura Hinako—utterly punts on the character study approach, which leads to the father ending up the most compelling character (and performance by a voice actor). The most compelling character overall is the sick sister because she’s literally just there for a combination of sympathy and period empathy (the kid’s convinced she’s going to someday end up in Hell because she’s blind). Shimizu’s good as the kid. None of the performances are bad, but Shimizu’s good enough to stand out. Otherwise it’s just about waiting for the father to speak because it’s always words of wisdom; Matsushige does a great job with it.

There are a lot of effective sequences once Ōi starts showing some agency (she’s got to worry about her dad’s professional contracts because he’s an artiste and can’t be bothered with money, wives, or blind daughters—but in a soulful way… they really should’ve gotten Mickey Rourke to do a dub); anyway. The directors do an all right job with a lot of it, leveraging a bunch of CGI backdrops—but not bad until the end when it’s too late anyway—and for a while Hokusai’s somewhat jarring rising action is effective.

Until the third act when the movie gives the best stuff to the father and reduces Ōi to a narrator of his biography, then her own. In that order, obviously. The finish is reductive and truncated in the worst ways. Then there’s some terrible CGI. Plus rock music.

Hokusai’s music is a whole thing. There’s rock to show how Ōi is really a modern girl living in nineteenth century Japan. Except the generic rock music’s for some eighties movie about white kids learning to dance in rural America. The rest of Fuuki Harumi’s music is fine; I wouldn’t be surprised if the rock was added for the American releases (even the Japanese language ones). Though I also wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t.

The animation’s solid. There are some highlights when visualizing the painting of the actual historical artists’ paintings.

After a very slow burn, Miss Hokusai goes into its third act at a reasonable high and then belly flops. It could’ve been a success of cloying melodrama. Instead it’s just respectably unsuccessful.

In the Heights (2021, Jon M. Chu)

In the Heights is anemic. Tedious and anemic. There are some good performances—Jimmy Smits is great, Gregory Diaz IV seems to be good (he doesn’t get a lot of acting to do), and Daphne Rubin-Vega similarly would be good if it weren’t for Chu’s terrible direction. But since Heights is all about Anthony Ramos and his charmless proto-romance with Melissa Barrera and both Ramos and Barrera give the most middling performances amid numerous middling performances… the acting is a wash.

Supporting romantic players Leslie Grace and Corey Hawkins are much better than Ramos and Barrera (they seem to enjoy each other’s company and both—particularly Hawkins—try with the acting) but they disappear in the tacked-on third act so there’s no way they can save it or even help it. Same goes for Diaz, Smits, and Rubin-Vega… they’re all absent for the big finale. Instead, it’s all about Ramos and Ramos is pictured in The Antonym Finder next to transfixing.

The film tries multiple narrative structures to force a dramatic arc. There are book ends with Ramos telling the story to a bunch of kids, who we’ll learn a little bit more about throughout the protracted two and a half hour runtime whenever the movie needs to get its pulse up with a reveal. But then there’s also an impending citywide blackout (or so the title cards keep saying) along with it being very hot, though the heat doesn’t really factor meaningfully into the action. It’s not like there’s less singing and dancing based on temperature. It’s not like when it’s hotter Chu all of a sudden can compose a better shot.

In the Heights is like a badly done Pepsi commercial (very specifically Pepsi, Coca-Cola would’ve done a better job, especially with the CGI). Chu’s use of the Panavision frame is… well, not disappointing; it’s a predictable, constant fail. It’s clear from the start Chu’s not going to direct the film well (somehow his over-the-shoulder shots manage to be worse than the boring dance numbers) so it doesn’t disappoint but it never gets any better. There’s no show stopping number. There are a few where maybe it should be a show stopper, but Chu’s never any more or less interested in the content, which really hurts Rubin-Vega and then Grace and Hawkins (who get the showiest number, a CGI-fueled dancing on a building sequence where Chu and company can’t make it as convincing as the old “Batman” wall-climbing from the sixties; I guess it’s good to know Warner Bros., as a film studio, really just doesn’t care about special effects, be it wizards, space wizards, or musicals).

Olga Merediz is another of the “ought to get a show stopper” but her big number is an abject whiff. Though Merediz’s performance is wanting. About a quarter of In the Heights’s cast can work without acting direction from the director. Merediz is not in that quarter. But she still ends up sympathetic thanks to her big number flopping.

Bad editing from Myron Kerstein, bad use of incidental music, bland photography from Alice Brooks.

For the first fifteen minutes, it’s possible to keep the synapses firing wondering what a good director could do with the musical adaptation. Then the next two hours and five minutes wondering what an even barely capable director could do with the rest.

I started the film wondering if Chu’s ever seen a good musical, I left wondering if he’s ever seen a good movie.

There’s a great cameo from Marc Anthony, who—like a handful of the cast—belong in a better film. Unfortunately, Anthony’s opposite Ramos in the scene so it sadly ends up in this one.

Departures (2008, Takita Yôjirô)

Departures suffers for its DV photography. Suffers. Hamada Takeshi cannot figure out how to light for the video and, as a result, the film never looks good. Maybe if director Takita were somehow taking it into account, but no, Takita just pretends it doesn’t look like an ornate Hi8 camcorder production.

With some competent mise-en-scène, Departures might be able to get away with its other big problems. Though the score—composed by Joe Hisaishi—definitely part of the wanting audiovisual tone—would also need to upgrade. Otherwise it’s just a disaster third act and middling acting from its leads, sometimes due to the script, sometimes due to Takita not directing them, sometimes just the actors.

The film’s about failed cellist Motoki Masahiro returning to his hometown after his latest failure. Except Departures opens in a flash forward revealing the film’s actually going to be about Motoki becoming an encoffiner and the antics of the job. An encoffiner is a class of mortician who prepares the body to be placed in the coffin, including doing makeup, usually with the family watching. The film immediately establishes it’s a solemn, ritualistic, respectful ceremony.

And then veers into transphobia as a joke, though who knows how the scene would play if Motoki were capable of emoting. He’s capable of reflecting, with Takita setting up the object, event, or person for Motoki to respond to with reflection, but Motoki can’t reflect without stimulus.

Then the film flashes back to Motoki’s latest orchestra collapsing (he went with a bad one because he’s not very good) and him having to convince wife Hirosue Ryôko they should move to his hometown. There’s no subplot about returning to the hometown outside running into old friend Sugimoto Tetta, who’ll end up shunning him for being in the funeral trade, but Departures avoids a “returning home” plot for Motoki like the plague. Maybe it just cut. Like when he finds out coworker Yo Kimiko worked for Motoki’s mom for years before she died and he doesn’t tell her the connection. Motoki’s got no interest in the dead single mom who sacrificed all to raise him. He just obsesses on his dad leaving when he was five because dudes.

He’s going to have a terrible arc with Hirosue, who seems utterly personality-less (she just giggles for the first half of the movie), only to discover she’s actually got lots of thoughts she hasn’t been sharing because they’re have screwed up the narrative. Hirosue’s not good. She also doesn’t get a single good scene in the film. They cut away from potentially good scenes occasionally, but usually she doesn’t even have them set up. It’s mildly annoying.

The real star is Yamazaki Tsutomu, the encoffining boss, who hires Motoki for his initial gumption and is convinced Motoki will be great at the job for some reason. Also Motoki can’t remember what his dad looks like so is it impossible Yamazaki’s his dad? No, not impossible. It’s a mystery to be solved it turns out, because Koyama Kundô’s script goes for the predictable and obvious every single time. Sure, sometimes there’s a skipped scene to finish a character arc, but you can always guess what would’ve happened. I guess at least Departures isn’t patronizing… but it’s almost stranger it isn’t.

Yamazaki is great. Motoki is middling. Every time you want to cut Motoki some slack because the direction and photography is wanting… you realize Yamazaki is excelling under the same conditions.

Then there’s Hisaishi’s score, which you might think would leverage a lot of cello. Nope. Piano. Even during scenes where Motoki is playing the cello onscreen, eventually there’s some kind of non-diegetic accompaniment. It’s like… pick an instrument you at least want to have run the score. There’s no reason Motoki couldn’t have been a mediocre pianist. It also would’ve made for a more visually interesting scene with he sits alone outside playing to nature.

Departures is what happens when you don’t balance your character study right. And you don’t have the technicals down. And you don’t have the right leads.

But Yamazaki is outstanding and there are a bunch of great ideas. Just with a muddy result.

Emma (2009, Jim O’Hanlon)

Somehow this four hour adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma has rapidly delivered dialogue but never manages to work up any energy. It’s just people talking fast at one another, then lengthy “action” sequences, then more fast talking, then more dragging out. It’s especially noticeable with something like the oft-adapted Emma because there apparently isn’t a lot the half as short adaptations missed. Four hours doesn’t reveal anything new about Romola Garai’s protagonist, other than she really wants to go to the seaside but can’t.

This Emma isn’t just a four hour movie, but a four-part BBC miniseries. The four separate parts don’t have any inherent epical structures, just the scenes strung together for director Jim O’Hanlon to badly direct. He’s got a handful of shots he goes through, over and over, medium shots mostly, the same other the shoulder reaction shots, over and over, never getting a good moment of the actors’ performances. If they have any good moments, it’s never clear thanks to O’Hanlon and editor Mark Thornton. The way Thornton works is shot on person talking, cut to next person talking, no people listening. Even though Emma’s all about people talking and therefor listening to one another.

It’s really badly done.

Slight pun intended.

Also whoever told composer Samuel Sim to try to make up for O’Hanlon’s lethargic, inept direction with the music… the music tries, but it can’t compete against the technical inadequacies.

Though Sandy Welch’s teleplay doesn’t do Emma any favors. There’s a prologue tying together Garai, Laura Pyper, and Rupert Evans. All their moms died, two of their dads—Pyper and Evans—send their kids away. Michael Gambon keeps Garai and her older sister, Poppy Miller. So while Garai feels this connection with Pyper and Evans, they don’t share the same feelings at all. Possibly because Garai’s incapable of expressing her feelings, not even when she’s narrating (it does a terrible job with the narration—which only picks up after the first part; the first part has some dude narrating, presumably straight from the novel, which at least has some personality; Garai’s narration does not).

Over the four hours, Garai’s performance goes from silly—her catalog of expressions is a bunch of literal sitcom mugging, which stands out even more as neither Welch or O’Hanlon finds any of the very obvious humor in Emma—to just plain ineffective and finally, way too late, to at least effective. It’s never going to be great with O’Hanlon’s lousy composition but for the last half hour, even with Welch’s melodrama plotting, she’s effective. It’s not easy because she’s usually opposite dad Gambon, who manages to be so bored he doesn’t even look bored; he’s visually present on film. Garai and love interest Jonny Lee Miller only occasionally ever have chemistry. Jodhi May—as her former governess and closest confidant—is fine. Louise Dylan’s okay enough as Garai’s friend who she keeps trying to marry off and always just ends up getting Dylan’s heart broken. This adaptation avoids any of the hard talks because it can’t figure out how to keep Garai sympathetic after she’s so incompetent at the match-making.

Quite a few important performances are middling or worse. Tamsin Greig’s not good. Blake Ritson’s in the middling class but gets worse as it goes, more because of Welch’s plotting. Evans is bad. Pyper’s okay. Christina Cole’s pretty good. Dan Fredenburgh’s another middling performance but he’s also the only character Welch tries to give any personality in the script so he at least gets some consistent personality. Obviously the characters are supposed to be very reserved and proper but O’Hanlon directs them like they’re tabula rosa every scene and Welch doesn’t deign to figure out how to express character development in the adaptation.

Maybe if Adam Suschitzky’s photography weren’t so muddled and gray there’d be some visual personality. Probably not with O’Hanlon but it’s really muddy so an actual sun beam might do wonders. Especially since it’s a plot point. Though O’Hanlon doesn’t seem to have read the script before filming; it’d be better if he’d never thought about the scenes and then directed Emma than to have tried. Because an incomplete is better than a fail.

And nothing at four hours should be incomplete.

The miniseries format does reveal there’s plenty of possibility for a longer Emma adaptation—imagine doing long-form serialized character development instead of throwing all the big conflict into the last fifty some minutes of 240—but this one only gets to the finish thanks to Austen’s source material and the professionalism of the cast.

It’s disappointing and frustrating, but at least never boring. Again, got to be thanks to Austen.

Night Nurse (1931, William A. Wellman)

For most of Night Nurse’s seventy-two minute runtime, lead Barbara Stanwyck is able to keep the film going just through her intensity. She’s a new nurse on her first assignment after the hospital, caring for a couple of anemic kids in their mansion, condo apartments, or just studio apartment set. The hospital set in Night Nurse is solid. The ritzy rich place, not so much. They need the separate apartments because the kids—vaguely annoying but not entirely unlikable Betty Jane Graham and Marcia Mae Jones—need to be kept away from their mother, Charlotte Merriam, who’s busy getting drunk while they get worse.

The family is under the care of creepy doctor who doesn’t have a license Ralf Harolde. You know Harolde’s creepy because he winks a lot. It’s a weak, unsure performance. Some of it’s the script, some of it’s Harolde, some of it’s Wellman’s direction. Screenwriters Oliver H.P. Garrett and Charles Kenyon can’t seem to crack the dialogue, Harolde’s not bringing anything of substance, and Wellman’s relying on the gimmicks. Wellman has a handful of good sequences in Night Nurse, but they’re relatively short and never when the film really needs them. And nothing he does with the actors ever works. When an actor succeeds, it’s not thanks to Wellman (or the editor, Edward M. McDermott, who’s always at least a half second off in his cuts). Meanwhile, Garrett and Kenyon try a few things themselves—repetitive dialogue for Stanwyck, which doesn’t land the first time and doesn’t land the next four times they use it as a touchstone; they have a little more success with the callbacks mocking mean head nurse Vera Lewis.

Lewis initially doesn’t want to hire Stanwyck because she doesn’t have a high school diploma, but after Stanwyck literally bumps into hospital head of staff Charles Winninger and they make eyes at each other–and potentially Winninger at Stanwyck’s ankles—he makes sure she gets the job. Winninger and Stanwyck having any kind of horizontal interest (one assumes it’s more Winninger’s interest) in one another doesn’t make it through the first ten minutes, much less first act. After one lewd implication from Stanwyck’s roommate (it’s room and board for nurses) Joan Blondell, Winninger’s forgotten until they need a real doctor to tell Stanwyck no one’s going to believe some woman about the weird goings on at the Merriam house whether she’s a nurse or not.

The first third of Nurse is Stanwyck and Blondell’s antics while in training, which includes Stanwyck patching up a shot bootlegger—Ben Lyon—who then supports her career ambitions from afar. The rest is Stanwyck and Blondell on assignment—Blondell’s the day nurse and Stanywck is the night—with the sick kids. The house has a suspicious housekeeper (Blanche Friderici, who’s alternately fine and miscast, just not actually peculiar enough for the household), drunk mom Merriam’s drunk, rapey boyfriend Walter McGrail (who’s a great minor villain), and then brute chauffeur Clark Gable. Gable’s fairly terrifying for most of his scenes, which is a high light as the last third of Night Nurse just gets talkier and talkier. The movie only runs seventy minutes but they’ve only got story for maybe sixty. There’s so much padding, which gets particularly frustrating thanks to Wellman’s tedious composition and pacing.

Night Nurse isn’t just slow, it’s repetitive. No one can figure out how to stretch the scenes so they just keep saying the same things over and over again until the script can gin up some coincidence. There are also so many dead end tangents, including major characters. The film follows the tangent for a scene, dragging it out, then drops it and never mentions it again. If these moves were successful, the film would be narratively efficient. Since they’re not, it’s just floundering.

Stanwyck’s a good lead—which is different than giving a good performance; she’s fine, but she can only sell so much because she’s the only one interested in selling it. The script and Wellman are indifferent at best. Blondell’s good. Lyon’s really likable. Gable’s solid. Winninger’s disappointing, but a bunch of it could be the script not giving him anything to really do. But not all of it.

I somehow managed to forget to mention a large portion of Night Nurse is dedicated to getting Stanwyck and Blondell into various stages of undress. Wellman’s not particularly interested in those sequences either, which is good and all, but the way he shows his disinterest is to be just as disinterested in everything else. And if the screenwriters were as inventive with the mystery aspects as they were getting Blondell and Stanywck to change their clothes… Night Nurse might work out.

As is, Stanwyck keeps it engaging until the third act when the dramatics take over and then the movie fizzles when leveraging those.

The ending’s a bit of a trip, morality-wise, but not in a way it helps (or even hurts) at all.

Professional Sweetheart (1933, William A. Seiter)

There are a handful of Pre-Code elements in Professional Sweetheart it doesn’t seem like the Code broke so much as saved movies from. For instance, when Ginger Rogers needs to break out of her Stepford Wives mindset—Kentucky cracker Norman Foster has beaten her into it—all the city boys need to do is put her former maid, Black woman Theresa Harris, on the radio in her singing spot and they know it’ll get Rogers upset enough to return to New York and her job. Mind you, Harris was a pal to Rogers, though given Harris’s singing can get through Foster’s layers of whitebread and make him feel funny in his hips in a way Rogers can’t… I mean, it’s gross.

Also gross? Having Zasu Pitts playing a vaguely Hispanic character so they can simultaneously make fun of her name and her being a ditzy woman.

There are probably some other things but those two and a half are the big standouts. The half being all Rogers needs to get her sinful thoughts of out her head—she wants to dress sexy, smoke cigarettes, and go to the clubs in Harlem—is for a red-blooded dipshit cracker like Foster to bop her one when she shows too much agency after being kidnapped.

Most of those elements—not Pitts, the movie craps on her from the start and she’s entirely complicit in the characterization—come in the third act, though Foster’s never a good character. He’s okay when Rogers is making eyes at him for a scene; otherwise he’s a hick punchline, literally hired to be her boyfriend because he’s the whitest guy they can find.

The “They” is wash cloth manufacturer Gregory Ratoff and his gang of cronies. There’s press agent (and former newspaperman) Frank McHugh, designer Franklin Pangborn (he makes all Rogers’s dresses and decorates her apartment and might be what 1933 codes as gay, but there’s a final twist on that subtext), and then lawyer Frank Darien. Rogers is their radio personality, their “Purity Girl.” They plucked her out of an orphanage and made her a star in New York City, but she just wants to get smoking, drinking, and dancing. Not to mention getting a fellow or two.

Hence the boys tracking down Foster to try to create a wholesome romance narrative.

Professional Sweetheart’s big problem is the script. Director Seiter’s able to get some good energy going for the comedy—Ratoff and his sidekicks are bickering goons—but the film doesn’t have anything to do with Rogers. Except occasionally parade her around in underwear. But for a movie where she’s top-billed and the titular character… the first bit of agency she gets to show is her misogynoir.

McHugh’s pretty funny and has good timing. Ratoff’s maybe the best performance overall, even though he’s playing a vague European ethnic caricature—there’s this whole subtext about melting pot Americans trying to sell to stupid middle Americans, which is just Hollywood at that point. Pangborn’s good too, though it takes a while and there are caveats. Darien has the absolute least of any character but somehow provides the most stability to scenes.

Allen Jenkins is good as the dish cloth salesman out to steal Rogers away and Lucien Littlefield’s reliable as the radio announcer. It’s weird how reliability and stability are in so short supply in the film’s performances but there’s only so much anyone can do with the script.

Seiter’s direction is low middling. He shows some energy whenever he gets to do outside scenes, but is more often lethargic. It’s a bummer since he at least seems to be trying in the first scene, as the action pans from Rogers and Littlefield on air to Ratoff freaking out his nightly lingerie bribe for Rogers won’t come in time and she’ll presumably tell the audience to frack off.

Professional Sweetheart never gets near living up to the cast’s potential—it’s impossible to say whether or not Foster’s good or bad in the picture just because of the script–but the third act such a perfunctory, easy, icky conclusion, it drags the film down for the finish. It’s particularly odd how the first act is based around the idea Rogers is a star only to continuously demote her importance the rest of the picture.

Needs a rewrite. And maybe a new director.

And not to be so bigot-y in its progressiveness.

Of Human Bondage (1934, John Cromwell)

The best performance in Of Human Bondage is Frances Dee; despite doing a lot of close-up one-shots with the actors staring directly into the camera, the only time director Cromwell ever gives one anything to do is Dee. She’s mooning over Leslie Howard, which just draws attention to how little Howard mooned over anyone in his previous close-up one-shots. And since Bondage is all about how Howard’s “bound” to Bette Davis, it’d have helped if he’d done some mooning. Instead, at best, he seethes in his close-ups, jealous Davis is giving all the other fellows the attention he apparently craves.

“Apparently” because his attraction to Davis never makes any sense, other than wanting to force her into social situations where she’s subservient to him. The film opens with Howard in Paris, having studied for years to be a painter only to turn out to not be a great one, just a mediocre one. So instead he goes to medical school. Presumably even as a mediocre painter he’s got the fine motor required for surgery.

Other than his professor making Howard exhibit his club-foot for the class, he seems to be doing all right until he meets Davis. “Seems” because there’s nothing the film avoids like providing any character development for Howard outside his pursuing Davis’s affections.

Howard’s got two pals in medical school—Reginald Denny, the class Casanova, and Reginald Sheffield, the filler first act sidekick. Sheffield’s got a crush on Davis and brings Howard along to tell her jokes. All of Howard’s jokes are at Davis’s expense, which shockingly doesn’t endear the two men to her. She’s far more comfortable with flirtatious businessman Alan Hale.

The film soon establishes a pattern, which it’ll keep going through the entire (quite lengthy) eighty minute runtime. Howard will be jealous of Davis and some other dude, Howard will go on a date with Davis, Davis will throw him over for the other dude, Howard will vow never to see her again, Davis will return to Howard once the other dude throws her over. The movie goes out of its way to call it “human bondage,” this relationship between the two, but since Howard’s so stone-faced and the script’s so muted, we never get much insight into his actual feelings. In the salad days we do get some misguided dream sequences, which also reveal Howard wishes he didn’t have the club-foot.

There are some pseudo-character developing romantic misadventures with other women for Howard. Kay Johnson gets a crap part as his first rebound and then Dee. There’s very little development with Dee, who’s mostly in the film as at home waitress to father Reginald Owen. Owen’s one of the patients on Howard’s rounds and they take a liking to one another; Owen’s an old fashioned, fallen on hard times blue blood, who lives in squalor with his family—nine children and counting. Owen’s old fashioned values extend to keeping women barefoot and pregnant, promising Howard that kind of service if he’ll marry Dee away. Only Dee’s too young for Howard. Presumably. There’s a line about it, but given Howard’s got no chemistry with Dee past their flirtatious first scene, it seems like a throwaway not a major plot thread running through the montage heavy third act. The third act takes place over years, with maybe four full scenes and everything else in montage. Director Cromwell’s got some great techniques, which don’t accomplish very much, but he and editor William Morgan’s montage work is not one of those great techniques. They’re tiresome admissions the film has become too tiresome to sustain actual scenes.

It’s a surrender.

Davis is all right. It’s a crappy part, with her character intentionally portrayed in the worst possible light—she’s full caricature in Lester Cohen’s screenplay, every time, even in Howard’s dreams. Howard is barely middling. He’s more vapid than bland—at one point Davis asks him for medical advice and it seems unlikely anyone should trust his doctoring. Dee’s fine. She also doesn’t get a good part. Denny’s good, Hale’s good, Johnson’s fine (and deserves better from the film); Owen’s blah, so it’s good he’s barely in the thing.

For the first third of the film, it seems like Cromwell’s directing might carry the thing, but Bondage never adds up. The messy third act failure seems more inevitable the longer it plays.

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.

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.

The History of Time Travel (2014, Ricky Kennedy)

Once The History of Time Travel gets to the gimmick, it’s a good gimmick. Writer and director Kennedy even manages to get a good finish with the gimmick, which is something since it means making the third act of History incredibly tedious to build anticipation. And a lot of History has already been tedious, so it’s a definite accomplishment when Kennedy can pull it off. He bets on the gimmick, he bets on how to introduce it, how to change the intensity of it, and it works.

History is a mockumentary about, you guessed it, the history of time travel if someone had done time travel. There are a bunch of talking heads interviewees—none of very good, Michael Tubbs is the worst, followed by Bill Small, who’s just trying too hard versus being bad. The rest of them struggle through the first act, when History is at its most “authentic,” but do much better once the gimmick takes off.

The pseudo-authenticity is one of the film’s biggest hurdles—the interviewees are supposed to be Ivy League intelligentsia but can’t pull it off. Especially not with Kennedy's script. The narration—and the narration performance by Brad Maule—are terrible. The dialogue’s not great for the interviewees either, as they’re contradicting themselves one sentence to the next or their entire sound bite will be filler nonsense.

Also a problem is just the technicals on the “primary sources,” like the fake photographs of the scientists working on time travel. Also I was waiting for the home movie camera to get introduced earlier in history since there’s a sequence with it in 1941 or something and then the technology apparently gets worse when they get into the home movies of the sixties. Though whatever filter they use to fake the eighties videotape is great.

Back to the photographs. They’re not good fake old photos and, even more awkward, Daniel W. May is terrible. In the still photos. Some of it isn’t his fault—presumably, maybe the pipe was his idea—but every photo has him mugging for the camera. And unfortunately it’s not even the most unlikely bit of the “historical” photos—there’s a bunch of stuff with Elizabeth Lestina (as his wife) where it’s unbelievable there’d be photos taken.

The movie’s front loaded with this material, waiting for the gimmick to save it, but at some point—before the gimmick—it gets very tiring for the movie just not to be trying very hard. Outside the gimmick and the definitely good implementation of it, Kennedy’s got no ideas. He’s got some enthusiasm about time travel so long as charts can explain it—the charts disappoint—but none for, I don’t know, character or history, which wouldn’t matter if History were aping a forty-two to forty-eight minute special and not running seventy.

If it were shorter, the obvious production deficiencies wouldn’t be as much a problem. May’s “performance” would still be a pitfall, but maybe if he and Kennedy had agreed on a tone.

So in spite of the laundry list of flaws… Kennedy and his cast pull off the gimmick with aplomb and make History an extremely qualified success.