Elizabeth Is Missing (2019, Aisling Walsh)

I’m not sure what I thought Elizabeth Is Missing was going to be—I only half read a description—but when it became clear Glenda Jackson’s character (not Elizabeth) would be searching for that character (played by Maggie Steed) but also Jackson having Alzheimer’s and also sort of live action flashbacks with her younger self… Well, I hoped they weren’t going to do a Memento where the gimmick was someone’s Alzheimer’s.

My hope was not realized. Elizabeth Is Missing is indeed a ninety-ish minute pseudo-mystery where there’s no mystery it’s just Jackson’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse and she’s having a lot of bad memory triggers. Jackson not understanding what’s going on is director Walsh, screenwriter Andrea Gibb, and presumably source novelist Emma Healey’s gimmick. Jackson can’t remember the really important parts of the plot so we discover them late, creating opportunity for Jackson to experience realizing she’s not remembering something and consequently having a trauma.

So while Jackson’s really good, it’s by definition exploitative. Like. Dementia advisor or not; the plot itself is inherently exploitative.

Bummer, I guess? In hindsight—you know, if you went through and looked for all the signs Bruce Willis was a ghost, which I’m sure you can—it’s probably inevitable it’s going to fail. The scant subplot about Jackson’s daughter, Helen Behan (who should talk to her agent about better parts), being exhausted with having to care for an ailing parent while her older brother and the prize child (Sam Hazeldine) occasionally Skypes from Germany and is no help… they definitely could’ve done it better. I just hadn’t realized it was them doing it the best they could.

Because Jackson’s really good and you’re really invested in her and flipping it to make her an unreliable narrator and a pitiable subject… it’s really unfortunate. And a waste of Jackson’s time. There’s a far better movie in granddaughter Nell Williams and Jackson, I don’t know, going to the library for ninety minutes in real time than there is in a Double MacGuffin with Cheese murder mystery.

The flashbacks are all about young Jackson—played by Liv Hill—and her missing sister Sophie Rundle, which has all sorts of analogues with missing best friend Steed. It also has the memory loss MacGuffin being the only part because there’s no character development for young Hill. And there’s also a deus ex machina? Because it’s really lazy and a waste of everyone’s time.

Kind of good music from Dominik Scherrer; like a horror movie score but he never leans into it enough.

But no. They can’t even manage to give Jackson a good part by the end of it. Once they’ve made all the reveals, the filmmakers have no enthusiasm for the finish. Behan and Williams have some good moments—though Williams’s are a lot less problematic than Behan’s—otherwise the supporting cast is middling.

It’s a strange, unfortunate ninety minutes.

The Swordsman (2020, Choi Jae-hoon)

Many years ago, Val Kilmer talked about how the original Tombstone director got replaced and one of that guy’s crimes was making the actors wear accurate textiles, which doesn’t matter on film. You can have a lightweight poncho and it’ll look the same on screen.

Welp.

I don’t know if it’s the benefits of shooting in 8k or whatever, but even though The Swordsman is not a cheap movie, it looks like a cheap movie because you can tell the costumes are very modernly produced. It’s very distracting because it never stops. There’s always something else onscreen to wonder about. To be fair, of course, it’s not just the costumes. The movie looks so hyper-real the sets look like a renaissance faire; so if Korea has Joseon Faires… Swordsman looks like they filmed it on the off-season.

Some of that responsibility falls on cinematographer Son Won-ho, who shoots Swordsman way too flat. Director Choi is going for un-steady Steadicam for reality’s sake or whatever, but Son shoots it documentary-reality. Like, I would much rather watch the movie where pseudo-costar Jeong Man-sik figures out Mr. Big villain Joe Taslim is a comically bad actor and then Jeong talks about it in an interview segment, but unfortunately Swordsman is a historical action movie and Taslim’s supposed to be serious.

Even though he really adds to the Joseon Faire thing because he’s like if the owner had a talentless but good-looking enough kid who made a movie in the summer. Or winter. Whatever. Offseason. Oh, and for no reason at all brought along his white wife (Angelina Danilova). Everything except a couple times it appears Taslim laughs out-of-character with Taslim and Danilova (who, to be fair, isn’t in it much but is cringe whenever she’s around) is appallingly bad.

Swordsman runs an hour and forty. When Taslim shows up, it seems like he might just be a cameo.

Nope.

Half the movie is laughably bad thanks to Taslim. While the whole movie raises an eyebrow thanks to costumes and sets.

The other half of the movie, about former king’s guard Hyuk Jang now raising the dethroned and presumably decapitated king’s daughter, Kim Hyeon-soo, in hiding. She’s a teenager now and she wants to go into town to the mall or whatever and so Hyuk finally takes her. Oh, and Hyuk’s blind, which is entirely unimportant and just how they get him to town.

So Taslim’s dad is ruler of the Chinese Qing dynasty and they’re forcing the Koreans to give them their daughters so the Koreans have to buy them back or else. Swordsman never gets darker than when it’s fairly callous about the whole kidnapped women in cages being sent to China to be sex slaves. It’s arguably glib about it.

But Kim’s charming and Hyuk’s not bad, he just hasn’t done his returning hero arc yet so we don’t know if he’s going to be good as the Korean Zatoichi.

He’s middling?

The sword fight choreography is pretty good for a lot of Swordsman, just not like… the beginning or the ending.

For a while it seems like the film might be able to get over some of its problems for a satisfactory resolve—the second act gets good—but it does not. It’s a bummer.

Especially since everyone interesting disappears in the third act. Instead it’s Jeong not paying off in his extended cameo, lots of bad Taslim, lots of middling Hyuk, and a little bit less sword fighting than you’d want. They’re saving up for the disappointing final battle.

Gong Sang-ah is good in a small part as the shop owner of the Joseon Faire tchotchke shop who apparently wet-nursed Kim as a baby and is majorly into Hyuk. Lee Na-kyung is less good as the big city shop owner who gets duped into human trafficking because… I mean, she’s a woman and Choi’s script isn’t very good. Lots of bland misogyny.

There are also Taslim’s three goons who Hyuk has to fight his way through in the game. They look very silly because of the costuming and photography, but they’re still better than Taslim.

Having Taslim as the bottom really does make even the worst supporting performance a delight because it means the camera isn’t on Taslim.

So, lots of solid sword fighting action—even though it doesn’t seem like there will be—but nowhere near good enough to make up for the rest. And, lastly, if you do see The Swordsman, opt for a low resolution. It might help.

Not sure what would help with Taslim though. Maybe the dubbed version.”

The Suspect (1944, Robert Siodmak)

The Suspect is the unlikely tale of middle aged shopkeeper Charles Laughton, who forms a friendship with a young woman in need (Ella Raines), which gets him in trouble with his wife, Rosalind Ivan. There are complications—the film’s established Ivan has been a horrible wife to Laughton and a bad mother to their son, Dean Harens, even getting in the way of the young man’s potential at work; she and Laughton no longer sleep in the same bedroom. And he’s been perfectly appropriate with Raines, as far as advances go.

The film’s rather smart in that regard, not ever letting Laughton seem like a lech; in fact, when it comes time for someone to confess their adoration, it’s Raines mooning on about Laughton to her fellow shop girls. The film’s very careful about how it presents Raines and Laughton; they’re utterly passionless with still completely devoted.

Unfortunately, in addition to an unpleasant, uncooperative wife at home, Laughton’s also got an absolute asshole of a next door neighbor, a perfect Henry Daniell, who’s not above a bit of blackmail. Daniell’s married to suffering Molly Lamont, who’s pals with Laughton because they’re both friendly and their spouses are not.

Tragedy soon befalls the neighborhood, leading to police inspector Stanley Ridges noising around. His first appearance in the film has some of Suspect’s best filmmaking, if only Ridges’s voice weren’t so unimpressive when he’s narrating this terrifying reenactment sequence. The writing’s good, the direction’s good, the photography and editing (Paul Ivano and Arthur Hilton, respectively), but Ridges’s read of his dialogue is terrible.

Ridges will be responsible for ruining as much of The Suspect as one can ruin without taking into account the hoops they must’ve gone through to keep this thing Code-compliant. It is, after all, about a married man whose only way to find true happiness is to rid himself of his loathsome wife. And she was a bad mom and proud of it. And she does dare Laughton to do it. So if he did do it, would he really be responsible….

The film’s usually intriguing so long as it seems like Laughton’s got a surprise up his sleeve. He breaks with expectation a few times in startling ways, good and bad, and it’s a lot of fun. Until it isn’t and the plot just scampers along trying to find a twist to reveal. Director Siodmak keeps the red herrings to a minimum, which actually turns out to be too bad given how poorly the whole thing wraps up. The third act’s a disaster.

The first act’s good, the second act’s not as good but good (Raines loses screen time in direct contradiction to when she should be getting it), then the third act’s a mess and somehow to ending is even worse.

If the script and the Code didn’t fail Laughton, it’d be a great part. Raines is charming and gets to wear some great hats but it’s a very shallow part. Ivan’s good. Harens is in it so infrequently he’s fine. Lamont’s good.

And Siodmak’s got some excellent direction. But far from enough to make up for the narrative problems, much less Ridges’s woefully inadequate antagonist. Thanks to Ridges, The Suspect ends up wasting everyone’s time, particularly Laughton’s.

The Pay-Off (1930, Lowell Sherman)

The Pay-Off opens with young lovers William Janney and Marian Nixon in Central Park, snuggle-napping on a bench in the middle of the night because they’re got to maintain their chastity. Everything’s about to change for them because Janney’s finally saved up enough money they can get married, only he talks about it too loud and criminal Hugh Trevor overhears so he’s going to rob the kid to teach him a lesson.

Now, before the holdup, Nixon wants Janney to get her a job working at the swank apartment building where he’s a handyman and I was kind of hoping for that turn of events—though, as it turns out, not really because Nixon and Janney are both pretty bad at the acting thing so it’d have been unpleasant—but Janney’s got a far better idea: follow Trevor and hold him up for their money back.

Trevor’s in said swank apartment building hanging out with the rest of the gang—Robert McWade, Walter McGrail–and the molls, Helene Millard and Lita Chevret. It’s just a regular night, waiting for the big boss, played by director Sherman, to get home, with Trevor and Millard worrying Sherman actually does care they’re shacking up—Millard used to be Sherman’s girl but he discarded her and she’s sure he really still loves her. We’ll find out he obviously doesn’t because when Sherman is overcome with emotion he flutters his eyelids uncontrollably and he never flutters for Millard.

Millard’s also somehow worse than Janney, which is an exceptional feat. Janney’s real bad.

Anyway. Janney and Nixon’s hold up goes wrong but Sherman’s curious why they’re doing it and they tell him the whole story about Trevor. Sherman feels bad and decides he’s going to make it up to the kids; they’re going to live him and they’re going to play “family.”

Now, Sherman’s just old enough to be a parent but only just so he’s more like a benevolent uncle. One whose daydream is something magics Janney away and Nixon realizes Sherman’s the only man for her. There’s a kind of good scene with Sherman and his butler, retired crook George F. Marion (in the film’s most likable, if not best, performance), talking in very vague terms about Sherman’s devotion to Nixon. It’s impressive how well they’re able to sell it especially considering the absence of chemistry between Nixon and Sherman and, well, Nixon and the camera.

Most of the movie—which runs an hour and five minutes—is going to be Sherman and Trevor bickering about who’s better to run the gang. Sherman’s a master planner—he comes up with the idea of a guy going into a jewelry store and saying “This is a hold up,” which district attorney Alan Roscoe calls the greatest criminal planning he’s ever seen—and Trevor’s a gunsel. He just wants to shoot everybody. Though Trevor spends all spent a lot of his time in a glitzy nightclub dressed to the nines whining about Sherman wanting to hang out with blue blood swells instead of him.

It’s all going to work out to a very simple morality tale and it’s kind of impressive Sherman, as a director and an actor, is able to distract from that eventuality and make it seem like The Pay-Off might go somewhere interesting.

The direction’s fairly bland—Sherman loves holding his medium shots while the dialogue exchanges play for minutes on end—but it’s rarely bad. Plus we get to see Sherman, as an actor, trying to figure out the part. No one else really worries about it because they’re all just caricatures and seemingly unaware they could expand, which makes Sherman a lot more interesting to watch than anyone else. Except Marion, who does get some added depth throughout because it’s funnier for him to have it than not.

Trevor’s fine. Especially opposite Janney and Nixon. Again, Millard’s terrible. McWade’s pretty good. Roscoe’s bad too. It’s an uneven cast.

Technically, solid photography from J. Roy Hunt, bad editing from Rose Smith.

The Pay-Off never pays off but it could be a lot worse (or better); it’s nearly worth it for Sherman’s ambitious but monumentally constrained performance.

The Call (2020, Lee Chung-hyun)

It’s unclear for a while but what The Call needs more than anything else is a great villain. It’s got its villains, starting with very bad mom Lee El, but she’s not great. She’s kind of one note too, with writer and director Lee cutting away from her when she’s going to be establishing the most character. The Call tries very hard to avoid getting too much into character development because it’s eventually going to be a thriller. It doesn’t start a thriller, it starts a weird mix of comedy, drama, and sci-fi, but it’s eventually going to shave off the laughs and dramatics and just be the thrills with sci-fi trappings.

As a director, Lee can do all the film’s tones—whether it’s Park Shin-hye and new friend Jun Jong-seo bonding over music and small talk or Jun getting temporary freedom (she’s got the very bad mom in Lee El) and going off to have a fun day trip to Seoul from she and Park’s more rural town. He can also do the harrowing thrills as Park’s mom, Kim Sung-ryung tries to escape a dangerous situation she’s found herself in without knowing. The last third of The Call isn’t real time, but it often feels like it, as we’re just watching Park wait for the next bad thing to happen.

Actually, we’re waiting for Park to get the next call. The Call‘s always all about the next time the phone rings.

The film starts with Park getting home to check on mom Kim as she heads into surgery. She’s staying alone in their big house and she’s left her phone on the train. She digs out an old landline portable phone and after the bad samaritan who found her phone trying to shake her down—which seems like it’s going to be a bigger subplot than it turns out to be—she gets a wrong number call from Jun. Jun’s terrified of mom Lee El, trying to get ahold of local shop-owning pal Jo Kyung-sook but gets Park instead.

It takes a while for the friendship to develop—initially juxtaposed with Park and Kim, then Park alone in the house and discovering some mysteries—but eventually they get to be phone buddies.

And the way Lee’s script leverages some obvious discussion topics, it should’ve been clear he wasn’t going anywhere with anything like character development. Especially after the supporting cast expands to include Park Ho-san, who’s got plenty of presence, but absolutely no character. Same goes for Oh Jeong-se as the neighborhood strawberry farmer, who’s friends with Park and has the potential for an interesting relationship with Jun, but it needs to be a thriller and so Lee rushes quite a bit, racing to the third act.

The Call’s third act, which is all about its twists and turns—in fact, so’s the shrug of an epilogue—is perfectly solid thriller stuff and the characters are incredibly sympathetic, but they’re only sympathetic because of the exceptional, insurmountable dangers they face. Not to mention child in danger stuff. Big time child in danger stuff. And Lee seems to know it’s too much and visually avoids it while doing all sorts of implying.

Most of the film’s action takes place at Park’s house. For a while it seems like a budgetary constraint, but then Lee takes the action to Seoul with Jun but then opens things up more with Park getting out too. Despite it being an effective thriller, Lee’s direction is best when it’s not playing thriller. There are so many constraints on the thriller stuff, which is all very intricately plotted, Lee just figuring out how to play the audience not tell a story.

The Call’s better when it’s got a story to tell and not just a puzzle to solve.

Park’s fine; she’s very sympathetic. Jun starts better than she finishes; the movie stops asking her to do different things and instead the same thing over and over just with different clothing choices and accessories. Kim’s good. Lee El’s fine. She’s kind of one note but it’s the part.

There are some questionable music choices but they’re intentionally going for a late nineties vibe at times so it’s not inappropriate just not great. Lee’s choices all make sense, they just could be better while still making sense.

The Call’s an effective, inventive—though maybe not imaginative—thriller.

Though the epilogue is pointlessly too much. It’s kind of a cop out, showing how easy it is to manipulate expectations but without any actual payoff because the movie’s over.

But, again, The Call definitely engages as it plays.

The Invisible Man (2020, Leigh Whannell)

The Invisible Man is surprisingly okay. I mean, once you realize it’s just going to be lead Elisabeth Moss in constant terror of an invisible abusive partner lashing out at her and Moss is good at being terrified for long periods, it seems like a bit of a gimme, but until the middle of the movie… it could potentially be good even.

Unfortunately director (and writer) Whannell can’t figure out how to turn his actual invisible man into a good visual monster—the eventual set pieces are like video games where you’re in stealth mode and the biggest effects sequence ends the second act, which… I guess is good if it’s because Whannell’s got no confidence in his abilities to pull off a bigger set piece. Odds are it would’ve been disappointing.

The movie stops being scary once they “visualize” the invisible man, it stops being much good in the third act. The Invisible Man runs two hours. Even with ten minute end credits, Whannel has to pad a bunch of it out so there are multiple twists and reveals. Especially since there are no subplots and the whole “everyone thinks Moss is making it up” stuff only matters for a bit at the beginning of the second act and then it’s inconsequential because everything’s a long suspense sequence. Moss’s friends not believing her is just the longest expository section before the next suspense sequence, it’s not like Whannell’s actually got narrative ambitions.

The movie opens with Moss escaping abusive boyfriend Oliver Jackson-Cohen (who’s terrible). Moss’s sister, Harriet Dyer (not good and definitely the worst performance before Jackson-Cohen gets to shine), helps her but they’re not close enough Moss has told Dyer why she needs help.

Moss stays with family friend Aldis Hodge, who’s a cop we find out later–Invisible Man loves cops, at one point Moss tells Dyer she’s awesome because she’s like a cop, it’s a weird flex but Whannell’s dialogue is fairly vapid and Moss’s worst scenes are the expository ones so whatever. Hodge being a cop isn’t really going to be important. The movie pretends it’s important, up until the very end, but it’s not important at all.

Hodge isn’t good. He’s profoundly disappointing.

Storm Reid is his precocious teenage daughter. She’s pretty good. It’s not a good part and she’s eventually and inevitably reduced to potential slasher victim number four or whatever. But she’s pretty good. Especially compared to Hodge and Dyer.

After some relative calm and good news and putting her life back together stuff, we get to the invisible man antics. Only The Invisible Man is low budget and pragmatic about it so the antics are mundane, pseudo-inventive stuff. Pseudo because there’s CGI and it’s easy to get rid of any strings.

And because Whannell shoots everything in long shot and then has the action unfold in the long shot. Again, easy now thanks to CGI and relatively effective so long as Moss can stay terrified. And she can.

Before The Invisible Man and during the ineffective stylized opening titles, I wasn’t expecting much. By the hour mark, I was expecting at least something. With the blah third act and so many middling (at best) performances, it comes in definitely about not much but decidedly below at least something.

But still much better than expected regardless.

Back Page (1934, Anton Lorenze)

It makes sense director Lorenze never made any other films after Back Page because there’s no easy way to describe the disinterested direction. Well, outside Lorenze and cinematographer James S. Brown Jr. using the same exact camera composition for what seems like ninety percent of the film. When there’s an actual reaction close-up of someone (besides lead Peggy Shannon, who gets them occasionally), it feels like a momentous occasion, like Lorenze is finally going to take an interest.

He does not.

And it’s fine. Back Page is only sixty-five minutes, which is how long lead Shannon has to carry the thing on her charm alone.

Shannon is a big time New York newspaper reporter who gets canned for doing a story about a rich guy (Richard Tucker) writing to his mistress she should kill herself and then she kills herself. Shannon just refuses to learn the first rule of newspapering—rich white men are not accountable.

Her work buddy Russell Hopton sets her up with a job out in nowheresville California running a tiny newspaper. Hopton knows the newspaper owner (Claude Gillingwater) and knows he won’t hire a woman, so it’s good Shannon’s name is “Jerry” so everyone assumes she’s a dude.

Shannon does have to talk Gillingwater into a trial run before it becomes really obvious she knows more about how to run a newspaper than Gillingwater ever did, plus she isn’t going to kowtow to the local businessmen just because.

Pretty soon—like after a terrible scene introducing Shannon to the office staff (Sterling Holloway is profoundly, exponentially bad to the point Fred Bain’s editing can be described as misanthropic for subjecting the audience to more Holloway)—Shannon discovers there might be something hinky going on with local Scrooge Edwin Maxwell and the oil well he suspiciously encouraged the town to invest in.

Also it turns out Gillingwater’s got some arrangements with Maxwell he hasn’t told Shannon about and then Hopton shows up to throw an addition spanner in the works.

Outside Holloway none of the acting is particularly bad. Not even David Callis, who starts as a buffoonish business owner but ends up being one of the better characters. A better director would’ve helped Callis (and probably Holloway) but the script is fairly tepid too.

Shannon’s reasonably engaging and always sympathetic throughout. And she and Gillingwater are genuinely cute. Shame the same can’t be said about her and Hopton. Though Hopton’s definitely the weakest performance outside Holloway.

Luckily, it’s only sixty-five minutes and only tedious for ten of them.

Red Scorpion (1988, Joseph Zito)

I wasn’t aware of Red Scorpion’s production history, which has original distributor Warner Bros. pulling out because it filmed in Namibia, under apartheid South African control at the time, as well as the investors and producers being pro-apartheid… you’d think Warner would’ve checked. You’d hoped Warner would’ve checked.

And, now, if we can “but anyway” away from that grossness, I’ll get back to saying Red Scorpion isn’t bad, actually. For a movie with a questionable script—it’s a white savior movie about Soviets special forces titan Dolph Lundgren going to Africa to kill a revolutionary only to discover the Soviets are the bad guys and he really should be helping the native people. There’s also a thing where the Cubans are the real bad guys and the Russians are still basically okay. A little.

Lots to unpack with Red Scorpion, even before you find out the production history.

Also there’s M. Emmet Walsh, whose entire schtick is screaming about how everyone needs to kill Russians, go America. He’s a reporter covering the native Africans fight against the Cubans and Soviets. His entire bit is swearing and being that most fictive of creatures… the non-racist Reagan Republican. Walsh isn’t good by any stretch, but he’s also not bad in any particularly egregious ways. He’s got chemistry with costar Al White, who’s the revolutionary Lundgren needs to buddy up with in order to get to the leader.

Ruben Nthodi is the leader. He’s bad. Not like, not good but not too bad like Walsh or White, he’s just bad. It’s unfortunate, because the script’s surprisingly sincere in his characterization and if they’d spent the M. Emmet Walsh money on the Nthodi role… probably would’ve worked out better.

Will Lundgren discover the native Africans aren’t actually enemies of the people? Will he go on the requisite white savior vision quest with magical African bushman Regopstaan? Will Regopstaan and Lundgren, despite neither of them having much in the way of acting skills, be sort of adorable together?

It helps everyone sort of knew what to do with Lundgren… what to expect of him. He can run around, he can punch things, he can kick things, he can play injured, he can play like he doesn’t understand the language, he can do pretty much everything but talk. He’s totally fine just playing a silent, gigantic, slow on the pickup hulk. The movie misses the chance to call him “Blondie” in the lost in the desert sequence but of course it does… Red Scorpion gets by on a strangely sincere flex in its exploitation, some surprisingly solid action editing from Daniel Loewenthal.

Well, not in the third act, which isn’t a complete misfire but is far from a success after the surprisingly solid second act. Red Scorpion gets a whole lot of mileage out of the Lundgren and Regopstaan material in that second act.

Plus the third act has Lundgren attacking the bad guys wearing Jack Tripper shorts? Like, I guess it makes sense in the second act when he loses all his clothes and his body seems to be excreting oil to protect against the sun, and leads to one of those adorable Regopstaan subplots… but for leading the assault? Pants, man, pants.

Or it’s like the one time cargo shorts would be okay.

There are some special effects gaffs (and also some rather good effects) and Zito doesn’t really shoot the interior action sequences well, but Red Scorpion’s… not bad given the litany of caveats.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020, Patty Jenkins)

Outside allowing Chris Pine to charmingly mug for the camera while doing an eighties men’s fashion parade, there’s not much reason for its 1984 setting. Unless they thought it would be absurd if Wonder Woman Gal Gadot pined after dead WWI love Pine for more than sixty-five years or so. No reason for the setting until the third act, anyway, when it turns out director Jenkins and co-writers Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham just need the time period so they can do the USSR vs. USA nuclear war bit. It’s one of the only eighties movie accurate tropes.

Though there could theoretically be others and Jenkins and company just made them eight times longer than they needed to be so they ceased being homage and just caused micro-naps. 1984 isn’t very good at homage. Based on the mid-end credits scene, it’s not even good at self-homage, but Jenkins really screws up a Superman: The Movie homage. Just stunningly messes it up and you wonder why they’re doing the homage if Jenkins and cinematographer Matthew Jensen are going to shoot it so poorly. But it’s an effects heavy shot and Jenkins is terrible with those throughout the entire film.

But nothing like the last act, which has Gadot’s showdown with pseudo-nemesis Kristen Wiig. The sky is muddy, but somehow still has more detail than the CGI eighties James Bond movie playset they’re rendering the CG in? On? Where does one render CG objects in CG sets. Regardless, it’s a terrible action sequence. And for it to be terrible is something because 1984 already has this graded on a curve action sequence thing because none of them have any weight.

1984 is full of action set pieces with absolutely no dramatic impact starting with the prologue flashback, which takes place on Paradise Island so they can put Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen in the movie for way too long and so young Gadot (Lilly Aspell) can learn a valuable lesson to reference in the finale and for it to have no emotional weight because it’s a terribly written and directed scene. But there are no stakes in the fight scenes. Not until somewhere near the end of the second act and then it’s the one fight scene with some drama. But still not very much.

The first act, minus the prologue, is pretty good. It’s silly in a surprisingly good way and almost charming. It’s hard for it to be charming because the writing’s so bad—like when Wiig and Gadot become gal pals. For a lot of the movie, Wiig’s actually pretty good. She can’t survive it but there’s no way to survive her arc. And the stuff with her and Gadot has potential. But not because of the writing. The writing is terrible. But there’s an inkling of possibility, at least until Pine shows up and Gadot doesn’t need any new friends.

The stuff with Pine and Gadot is a lot of fun . It’s not really heavy lifting—Pine mooning on about flying just makes you want Star Trek IV 2, but there’s some gravitas to the resolution of their whirlwind weekend romance. It’s just a cute couples adventure. There might even be some deleted scenes from it—unless, you know, someone forgot where they parked. They could’ve left off the end of the movie and just had outtakes. Because Gadot doesn’t have an arc. She’s got a contrived ground situation and the absurd indignity of having to be a “secret” superhero for continuity’s sake, which is a bummer because Jenkins at least has fun with the Gadot rescuing people and whatnot sequences. When it’s stopping Middle Eastern military caravans, it’s all crap unless Pine’s around to grin and be selfless and give the whole thing some heart.

Oh, yeah. The Middle East stuff. 1984 likes all its standard 1984 movie villains, including the Egyptian president (Amr Waked). The movie tries to compensate by having the Reagan analogue be a warmongering putz (Stuart Milligan) but no.

Pedro Pascal is the actual villain. He’s a failed telemarketer who becomes magic and grants wishes until the world goes to shit. There are all sorts of details and rules (nothing fun, like don’t feed him after midnight). Pascal’s okay. It’s a big shallow part and, what’s the best you could hope for in a performance? Frank T.J. Mackey? Like… really bad villain choice.

But the movie’s full of bad choices.

Gadot escapes mostly unscathed. Nothing bad is ever her fault. Though she is a producer, so never mind. Also if she like refused to do effects work, it might explain why her CG model for a bunch of the action sequences don’t even look like her.

Though the CG’s terrible. Like. Really, really terrible.

Richard Pearson’s editing might be good? Hans Zimmer’s music isn’t.

1984 is kind of a bummer but also kind of inevitable. The script’s shockingly insipid for such a “big concept” blockbuster. Even with the bad action scenes, Jenkins’s direction has its pluses, and the cast keeps it afloat. Wiig, Pine, Pascal, Gadot.

No doubt it could be better, but it’s very obvious it could be a lot worse. Which is some kind of a win.

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.