No Highway in the Sky (1951, Henry Koster)

No Highway in the Sky has a peculiar structure. It starts with Jack Hawkins; he’s just starting at a British aircraft manufacturer and, during his tour, meets scientist James Stewart, who’s hypothesized a catastrophic, inevitable failure for the latest, greatest plane. Stewart’s convinced the tails will rattle off the planes, which are made with a new kind of metal composite.

No one has paid any attention to Stewart until this point because he’s absent-minded, but Hawkins is curious, so he gives Stewart a ride home and has a drink. Hawkins remains unconvinced of Stewart’s theory and now more suspicious he’s wrong because it turns out Stewart’s an egg-head who does science at home too. Plus, Hawkins doesn’t think Stewart’s raising daughter Janette Scott right. Hawkins doesn’t have any kids of his own, but he’s not an egg-head, so he knows better.

It’s a very awkward, vaguely ableist scene, making fun of Stewart with Hawkins having no cachet except… not being really smart.

Then Hawkins runs into an old war buddy, an uncredited David Hutcheson, who has his own suspicions about the plane, and then Hawkins immediately believes Stewart. At numerous times throughout the film, people will be against Stewart, then change their minds by the next scene. R.C. Sherriff, Oscar Millard, and Alec Coppel’s script is meticulous in contiguous scenes, but then transitions are almost non-existent. Or, presumably, cut for time.

Anyway.

With Hawkins convinced, he and big boss Ronald Squire decide they will send Stewart to Canada to investigate a crash. Because Squire hasn’t had his reversal yet, he’s thrilled to be sending Stewart as punishment for complaining. There’s also this strange—possibly unintentional—subtext with Hawkins and his wife (Elizabeth Allan, credited but not really in the movie) watching Scott while Stewart’s away. It seems intrusive, probably because Stewart and Scott only really have that first scene together to develop their character relationship. Everything else is for the plot.

The plane trip to Canada is where No Highway gets going because it turns out Stewart’s in one of the planes he predicts will fail. So even though he’s previously been entirely indifferent to potential deaths, they’re suddenly on his mind. Specifically, movie star Marlene Dietrich, who’s on the plane with him; Stewart’s wife liked Dietrich’s films, so he tells her how to, maybe, survive a crash into the Atlantic.

Stewart tries telling the pilot (an uncredited and very good Niall MacGinnis) and telling the friendly stewardess, Glynis Johns, but no one believes him enough to turn the plane around. Instead, they believe him enough to consider the possibility, which leads everyone to resent Stewart as the plane becomes Charon’s ferry. Maybe.

Lots of good acting on the plane ride, along with some unfortunate composite shots. No Highway’s a tad overconfident in its special effects, with director Koster giving his actors way too much to do in front of lousy projection shots. The instincts are good, but the execution’s disappointing.

After the flight, everyone is again forced to reexamine their relationship with and opinion of Stewart. Not just the people on the plane but also Hawkins, Squire, and—eventually—Scott. The third act turns Stewart back into the subject after begrudgingly making him the protagonist for the second. The film would rather stick to Johns or Dietrich and their experiences with Stewart, but since he’s the only active player, he’s got to play protagonist.

The third act is split between Hawkins (handling the professional repercussions) and Johns (taking the home life ones). Johns and Dietrich end up with one really good scene together—along with Scott for a bit—where they talk about who wants to fail Bechdel more. There’s an excellent subtext to the scene, though, with some really incisive moments from Dietrich. In the third act, Johns sort of runs out of character; she’s just a good British homemaker, even if she’s not currently married. There’s only so far she can go.

Most of the film’s problems resolve after that rocky first act. After a certain point, all of Stewart’s associates just talk really nice about him, which the film says makes up for them talking shit earlier. Not playing ableist assholes, Hawkins and Squire do much better (though basically just doing a quality assurance procedural). Johns suffers because her role goes nowhere, but she’s good. Dietrich’s got some good stuff. Stewart has a handful of good and great scenes, but for the most part, he’s just okay. The film doesn’t allow him an internal arc, instead making him project it; sure, acting out provides dramatic fodder, but limitedly.

Koster’s direction is occasionally peculiar, and he and cinematographer Georges Périnal don’t know how to shoot inside the airplane, but it’s all right. Koster’s good with the actors, and he keeps the pace up. The other technicals—besides the composite shots—are solid.

It takes a while for the film to get going, but once it does, whenever No Highway gets good (and it frequently does so), it gets very good.

This post is part of the Aviation in Film Blogathon hosted by Rebecca of Taking Up Room.

Young Man with a Horn (1950, Michael Curtiz)

Young Man with a Horn has a third act problem. It’s got too many of them as it tries to find a way not to end on a down note. As a result, each third act gets more depressing, more dire, and correspondingly adjusts the expected bounce-back. But Horn’s got a bookending device with co-star Hoagy Carmichael; he’s narrating the film, telling everyone about this great jazz trumpet player he knows… played by Kirk Douglas.

At its worst, Horn’s aggressively misogynistic. At its second-worst, it’s passively misogynistic. At its third, it’s just Oscar bait for Douglas; it’s basically fine at that level. Douglas eats through the performance, bringing just as much intensity to his trumpet solos as when he’s listening to love interest Lauren Bacall talk all book smart around him. It’s an intense, measured performance. There’s just too much of it because there’s too much movie.

The film takes fifteen minutes for Douglas to show up, instead opening with Orley Lindgren playing the character as a kid. He’s an orphan, living with a disinterested (but seemingly okay) older sister, Mary Beth Hughes (who’s got maybe a scene and a half); one day, walking around L.A., he happens into a mission where he hears the good word but more importantly… a pianist is accompanying the hymns. Once the needy are sufficiently contrite, they get to eat, leaving the piano open, and Lindgren just starts playing. It turns into the trumpet because the trumpet’s cheapest in the pawnshop, then Lindgren soon happens upon Black jazz trumpeter Juano Hernandez and his band. Hernandez will take Lindgren under his wing and teach him to play, becoming a surrogate father, but the film can’t say it.

Once Lindgren ages up into Douglas, it’s conveniently time for Hernandez to amscray so Douglas can make some white friends. The closest Horn ever comes to talking about race is when big-time band leader Jerome Cowan gives Douglas crap for playing music with “those…” but then Douglas interrupts him, and it’s over. Not doing more with it means Hernandez has got a whole lot less to do once he and Douglas reunite when Douglas ditches him in a time of need for awful lady friend Bacall.

Before then, however, Horn introduces its love interest, Doris Day. She’s the singer in his first real band, where he also meets Hoagy Carmichael (who’ll pretty much be white Hernandez, which means he gets to be around a lot more and, you know, narrate the movie). Day thinks Douglas’s brash, talented, and captivating. He likes having a girl share the excitement about music. That section of the film is where director Curtiz and cinematographer Ted D. McCord establish the style and quality it’ll hold for the rest of it. Horn’s gorgeously directed, gorgeously shot. Once Douglas is onscreen, there’s a single tepid-looking sequence—Day and Douglas’s first date on a pier, which is way too obviously soundstage. Otherwise, the film’s phenomenal looking. There are eventually these great location New York City exteriors. Other than the passersby getting too interested in the film cameras, they’re superb. Luckily, the studio stuff is well done; even though it’s unfortunate they didn’t make it all on location, it satisfactorily syncs up. Alan Crosland Jr.’s editing is vital in that department too.

The plot has Douglas meeting, losing, then reuniting with most supporting cast members. Day will go from Los Angeles dance halls to New York theaters, for example. The film uses the career progression to perturb Douglas’s arc—at one point, Carmichael mentions all you need is friends in high places to give you jobs at the right time—and he’ll eventually meet bored rich girl Bacall.

And once they met, he’s smitten and on the road to ruin.

Though the film’s never particularly good about the timeline of their relationship. Given how little the film does with Bacall, most of the time spent on their courtship is a waste. Her arc’s where the film’s aggressively misogynistic. Also, Bacall’s supposed to be playing a lesbian (which she didn’t realize at the time, apparently), which would just make it homophobic too. It’s a really lousy arc, and Bacall seems checked out fairly early.

The passive misogyny is Day, who’s literally just around to talk about Douglas and dote on him. Day does as much as she can with it, but some of her best scenes are the singing numbers, including the one where Curtiz has to force himself to direct a boring singing number. Day gets a thankless part, even if she’s the most interesting character for much of the film.

Carmichael’s fine. He’s really likable, but his part’s pointless. He’s just there because Hernandez can’t be.

Similarly, Hernandez is fine but doesn’t have enough.

Cowan, Nestor Paiva, and Walter Reed are okay as Douglas’s various bosses. Reed’s got the most to work with (Douglas’s stealing Day away from him), but all three are basically cameos.

The film rallies a little bit between the second and third third acts, where they lay into the New City location shooting, and for a minute, it seems like they might bring it all around with the end. They don’t—studio-enforced finale—but they sustain the uptick for a good while.

Young Man with a Horn’s got a great lead performance in search of a great lead role, a solid and underused supporting cast, and some fantastic filmmaking. It’s also got a troubled script and finish.

This post is part of the Sixth Annual Doris Day Blogathon hosted by Michaela of Love Letters to Old Hollywood.

The Phantom Carriage (1921, Victor Sjöström)

Victor Sjöström directs, stars, and adapts The Phantom Carriage. He gives himself a great showcase. Most of the film is a breathtaking character study of an abject bastard. The film throws reason after reason for Sjöström being an irredeemable, abject bastard, and none of them stick. He’s always ready to deliver more bastard. It’s his entire character.

It’s not supposed to be his entire character, of course. But the film intentionally skips when he’s not an awful person.

And even though the whole point is Sjöström, it doesn’t start with him. Because—and here’s one of the film’s most significant failings—Carriage isn’t actually all about Sjöström, it’s all about why women need to save Sjöström. Sure, it’s 1921; sure, patriarchy; sure, Christian morales (read: the subjugation of women). But Sjöström—as director and adapter—repeatedly sets women up for character development then knocks them down. The film rejoices in failing Bechdel. What the hell would women talk about if it wasn’t a man?

It opens with Astrid Holm on her deathbed. She’s a Salvation Army worker in the slums, and she’s dying of consumption because it’s 1921 or so (the novel’s from 1912, so pre-war, pre-influenza). Through a series of flashbacks, we get the whole story, how Holm met Sjöström the night the mission opened and became obsessed with redeeming him. Only Sjöström’s not a bastard because he’s a poor drunk; he’s a poor drunk because he’s a bastard. It’s not his fault. At this point, it’s wife Hilda Borgström’s fault for running out on him with the kids an indeterminate length of time before. Before it being Borgström’s fault, it was Tore Svennberg’s fault. Svennberg’s the college-educated drunk tramp amongst tramps, who sort of manipulates all of them. Or at least takes credit for it. Before Svennberg convinced Borgström to become a drunken tramp, he was a loving father and husband, with a good job and a fantastic kid brother (Einar Axelsson).

If only it weren’t for the drink.

Pretty soon, everything’s gone to hell, and everyone Sjöström is condemning him publicly. Borgström running out on him is the last stray. How dare she run away when he’s in jail and harboring murderers at her house. Wives and children are very much property in Carriage.

Anyway, after we get some of Sjöström’s backstory—but not his initial hunt for his family or how exactly Svennberg convinced him to descend into poverty with a single drink—there are more flashbacks with Holm.

Turns out Holm dedicated herself to meddling with Sjöström’s life—and the people in it—without regard for the consequences.

Sjöström is great, Holm is excellent (with some delay, with the initial sickbed stuff just okay), and Borgström is fine. Ish. When Carriage is just about Sjöström being a monstrous asshole, it doesn’t need Borgström to be particularly good. But by the third act, she needs to be great, and she isn’t. Mainly because the part’s weak. It’s an inglorious arc. Or whatever the Swedish word is for an arc when it’s just for the glory of your abusive husband. The Christian arc, I suppose.

Starting in the fourth part, so the latter half of the second act, the didactic religiosity starts boiling over, and it’s a race to see if the Carriage is going to make it before it submerges.

It does not.

Also doesn’t help the best filmmaking is all before the finale. There are some exceptional effects sequences, but Sjöström also does an excellent job directing the dramatic scenes. Right up until the finish, when he suddenly runs out of ideas and just starts churning through the scenes. It’s disappointing. But it’s also a 1921, patriarchal Christian movie. It does really well considering those constraints.

And when Sjöström and Holm are great, they’re profoundly great.

Much Ado About Nothing (2011, Josie Rourke and Robert Delamere)

The best thing about Much Ado About Nothing, except the dialogue, is Delamere’s direction. Not the stage direction, Rourke did that job, but Delamere’s direction of this recording. There’s some ho-hum headroom stuff going on to keep actors in the shot, but it’s a phenomenal showcase of the actors’ performances. They don’t credit the editor, which is a shame. Thanks to Delamere, watching Much Ado really does feel like seeing a play. It’s very cool.

Rourke stages the play as… an eighties sitcom. The location is Gibraltar, the prince and his men are British navy, with the rich people apparently Brits, the workers are—primarily—Spanish. There’s no colonizing awareness, which is disappointing, but it’s just another item for the disappointments list. The setting does involve constant boozing from the entire cast, which proves interesting—if everyone’s making these decisions while wholly bombed, it changes things a bit. Or could. Much Ado’s setting—besides providing amusing costume choices, a gimmick for Dogberry (John Ramm), and some soundtrack selections—never actually matters.

It’s fine. It’s a good play—with some terrible toxic patriarchal bullshit—and the acting’s good, but as it progresses, the setting makes some of the play worse. Having Claudio (Tom Bateman) and the Prince (Adam James) be in naval uniforms while being viciously cruel to civilians is a look. Though nowhere near much of one as having their showdown with ostensibly grieving parents Jonathan Coy and Anna Farnworth, which Rourke stages in the church where Bateman has just denounced and assaulted fiancée Hero (Sarah MacRae). One of Much Ado’s caveats is the relationship between Claudio and Hero is patriarchal garbage. And Rourke finds a way to make it worse.

Of course, the point of Much Ado isn’t MacRae and Bateman, it’s David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the leads. As much as Benedick and Beatrice are the leads in a full-length production. There are long stretches without any Tennant or Tate. And then the third act when they’re background for most of the drama. Their first love scene, which is very amusing as far as a sitcom take, ends up dramatically inert. It’s also a letdown—staging-wise—after Rourke’s big slapstick and screwball swings in the second act, which both Tate and Tennant excellently realize. Though Tennant much more. She has to do real stunt work. Tennant has to bump into things.

Neither Tate nor Tennant get through the third act particularly well. Tennant tries hard for a good falling out with Bateman and James, but it barely plays. Partially because Bateman’s third act histrionics are so wanting, but also because Tennant just can’t crack it. Tate just doesn’t have the material. Natalie Thomas—as Margaret—makes much more of an impression. To the point I assumed she and James would make eyes at one another as the Prince ends up very much the protagonist of the last few minutes, his honor restored; Much Ado doesn’t have very high bars for officers or gentlemen.

Clive Hayward does best in the third act, the friar now a Navy chaplain, and Coy’s okay again once he gets all his patriarchal ranting done and realizes he should maybe believe daughter MacRae over some random dudes just because they’re rich. And Thomas—she’s good, she just takes time away from Tate, who’s the initial big draw until Tennant gets to show off.

So for the first two acts, everyone’s first-rate. Not Bateman. He’s acceptable but never out of his depth (though again, Claudio’s problem isn’t the performer, it’s the play, with Rourke aggravating it). Tennant’s great, Tate’s great. James is great. MacRae has some good scenes. Elliot Levey is a wonderfully smarmy Don John.

Oh, and Ramm. Ramm plays Dogberry as a paramilitary goon who idolizes Rambo: First Blood Part II. It’s an appropriate enough take—I mean, such a good idea Caddyshack II did literally the same thing with Dan Ackroyd—but it doesn’t go anywhere. And Ramm’s on one of Much Ado’s other inglorious lists… the actors who use feyness as a homophobic punchline.

Tennant leans on it as well. With Ramm, it’s to encourage the audience to laugh at him; with Tennant, it’s to encourage the audience to laugh with him. Because Rourke’s Benedick is a shitty cishet white man comedian. I think some of the other actors fall into it as well, but I didn’t mark them. Tennant does Shakespeare well, and having him screw it up is disappointing.

Though it’s Rourke’s fault first and foremost.

It’s a good staging of the play with some excellent performances, and Delamere does a magnificent job directing the recording. It’s also a lot more rotten than it needs to be. Much Ado About Nothing, the play, has enough problems you don’t need to add colonizing and homophobia to it.

The alcohol abuse works, though.

Gunpowder Milkshake (2021, Navot Papushado)

Gunpowder Milkshake is a moody, neon, sometimes minimalist mix of neo-noir and spaghetti Western. Director Papushado approaches the film’s budgetary constraints with creativity and ingenuity, focusing tightly on lead Karen Gillan and her dangerous presence. The film bookends with noir narration from Gillan, which creates a dreamscape for the runtime. A highly stylized dreamscape, full of lengthy, determined action sequences and occasionally pat but effective enough character moments.

Gillan’s an assassin who works for Paul Giamatti, who’s also been her guardian for the last fifteen years since mom Lena Headey walked out on her. We get the walk-out in a first act flashback–Gunpowder has an actual first act, which is somewhat unnecessary given the eventual plot but also a nice touch. Papushado and co-writer Ehud Lavski do the work. They give Gillan the time for character development, leveraging her inability to essay affect as a cold-blooded killer-type thing.

All of Gunpowder takes place over a day or so, starting with the narrated prologue with Gillan on a hit gone wrong. Then we get the flashback to Headey, who–given the determined world-building effort– could just be a cameo at this point, then Giamatti and the next big job. The main plot starts when Gillan’s got to make up for the screwup and take out an accountant, Samuel Anderson, who up and took a bunch of money from Giamatti’s WASP gang, “The Firm.”

Only it turns out Anderson’s got a kidnapped daughter (Chloe Coleman), and how can Gillan not help him rescue her; the stolen money’s just to get her back. And it seems like just as long as Gillan can recover the money, everything’s going to be okay with Giamatti… except it turns out she killed rival gangster Ralph Ineson’s favorite son in the opening. Lots of details coming real fast, adding up as the film progresses; Papushado and Lavski’s pacing keeps Gillan running in front of a plot boulder, which gains more and more momentum throughout. Especially once things start going wrong and it turns out being a great assassin doesn’t mean you have the best planning skills. Because Gunpowder’s actually all about working together.

First, Gillan has to work with Coleman to escape multiple sets of bad guys. Gillan improves her collaborating approach between escapes, the plot forcing character development, even if Gillan’s stone-faced to it. Sure, it’s about ornate, intricate ultra-violence and an eight-year-old, but Papushado does keep Coleman away from the action. Just not the preparation for it. And they skip over the resulting corpses entirely. Papushado’s first couple action sequences are nothing compared to the third, which raises the bar for the rest of them. Gunpowder’s action scenes—at their best, and there are at least two bests—are all about the characters’ experiences in them, like little gory, tragic poems. They’re dreadful more than exhilarating; they captivate and horrify.

But since Coleman’s a kid and never turns into a junior assassin (got to save something for the sequel, though it might work better as a trilogy), Gillan’s going to need some friends. Because it’s all about finding your family. And we learn Gillan and Headey had a family—Carla Gugino, Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh—and Headey screwed it all up and then stuck Gillan with Giamatti instead of the three ladies. They run a library of weapons. It’s a literal library, with the weapons in books with appropriately related titles. It’s a little too intentional and nonsensical but stylish and allows for an age-inappropriate Narnia reference.

Gunpowder’s never insincere. It’s sometimes less earnest than it could be, but it’s never craven. Papushado and his crew put in too much work for it to be craven. So it gets a lot of leeway. Especially when seemingly disappointing bad guy lieutenant Adam Nagaitis turns out to be good, actually. Not like a good guy but a good actor. Gunpowder rewards; trust in it, and it does pay off. Sometimes incredibly unpleasantly. It’s reservedly gory but often very tough.

Acting-wise… Headey, Coleman, and Gugino are the standouts. Bassett’s awesome, but it’s the toughest badass part, so there’s not much she actually gets to do. Yeoh’s good. Giamatti’s good. In the lead, Gillan’s effective. It’s a good part for her as it doesn’t require expressiveness; Gillan’s timing starts decent, improves throughout, following the character arc trajectory. It works out. Mainly because the costars are good and Papushado knows how to direct her.

Gunpowder Milkshake’s got its problems—there’s a lot of story and limited locations, so it occasionally meanders—but it’s an excellent, thoughtful action picture. Michael Seresin’s photography, Nicolas De Toth’s editing, David Scheunemann’s production design, Louise Frogley’s costumes, and Haim Frank Ilfman’s music–all outstanding.

Avalon (1990, Barry Levinson)

Avalon is not a success.

It very frustratingly waits until the very end of the picture to clearly not succeed. After trying real hard, there’s just nothing to it. Writer and director Levinson makes a whole bunch of big swings in how he directs the narrative, which is an attempt at doing lyrical structure–just one based on sort of protagonist Elijah Wood’s experience over three momentous years in his childhood—while still keeping some big epical trappings. There’s a rising action but only to get certain kinds of drama. Levinson also drops Wood as the even pseudo-protagonist like a hot potato in the third act, as his relationship with grandpa Armin Mueller-Stahl makes way for Aidan Quinn (as Wood’s dad and Mueller-Stahl’s son), but only barely. The film’s strength was Levinson’s way of orbiting these characters and finding imaginative ways into the scenes, particularly with Joan Plowright (who gives the film’s best performance as the matriarch of the family), and then he completely fumbles it for the hurried conclusion.

Avalon is really good throughout. The remembrance stuff Levinson gets away with is great. He’s got this ode to television tracking shot; he stops the story to do it, showing the way life was for these people before they’d be glued to the tube, and it’s beautifully melancholic. Levinson is sentimental about everything, he picks no favorites—but he does choose very carefully what he’ll showcase. The coming of television sequence has no bearing on the story—Quinn and cousin Kevin Pollak start their eventual discount department store with a TV-only storefront, but it’s a detail along the way in the story, not an ongoing theme, even though it’s a recurring detail. Very weird.

Instead the tracking sequence is just what Levinson did with this particular footage, what he very intentionally did with it, begging for attention. The sequence would seem a lot less intentional if the first act weren’t full of visualized flashbacks. The film opens with Mueller-Stahl telling the story of how he came to the United States, Fourth of July, 1914, Baltimore. Levinson, cinematographer Allen Daviau, editor Stu Linder, and composer Randy Newman create this distinct style for the flashbacks. You can feel the silent movie influence more than you can see it, though Daviau never loves color anywhere else near as much in those sequences. The vividness of memory.

The flashbacks are an indulgence, then a shortcut as Quinn has one to set up a couple other scenes later on, but then they’re nothing in the finale. Levinson gives up on them, but still tries to leverage them. It’s such a rushed finish. Levinson runs screaming from the narrative promises, all of a sudden desperate to make them vignettes. Avalon is a vignettes movie in its third act, but not in the first and second acts. The flashback sequences don’t work with the vignettes. Conceptually. Basically it’s just got a bad third act and it’s bad enough it’s kind of disrespectful to the cast. Levinson shafts every actor in the movie, leaving it all for a tepid stunt cast.

In just a few minutes, Levinson pulls the rug out from under Mueller-Stahl and Plowright, demoting them in what’s been equal share their film. In their place… he puts in filler, taking advantage of the lovely wistful techniques they discover earlier, using them to skip along. Levinson doesn’t want there to be any voice in Avalon except Mueller-Stahl’s, but he goes so extreme he doesn’t just end up silencing Mueller-Stahl, he straggles the narrative distance. Avalon has a point of view from jump, an unspeaking narrator guiding us through the experience; Levinson can’t make it work in the finish and doesn’t even try. It’s an incomplete.

Albeit one with some beautiful filmmaking and great performances. Even Quinn—whose Baltimore accent comes and goes. But it’s Plowright and Mueller-Stahl’s show. Elizabeth Perkins and Eve Gordon are good as Quinn and Pollak’s wives, respectively, but they don’t get anything to do themselves. Wood’s good. He gets a good arc and then gets chucked just like everyone else.

Wood’s absence is actually the most notable, because as Avalon has just become his story, Levinson immediately wrestles it back from him.

Gorgeous editing from Linder, just wonderful cuts. He and Levinson do nostalgia well.

Avalon’s almost kind of great. Excellent pieces. Real bad ending.

This post is part of the American Experience on Film Blogathon hosted by Debbie of Moon in Gemini.

Deliver Us from Evil (2020, Hong Won-Chan)

The evil in Deliver Us from Evil is specifically Lee Jung-jae’s sadistic villain but generally the entire world of the film, which features drug kingpins, child kidnapping, government assassins turned hitmen, human traffickers, real estate swindlers, organ thieves, and crooked cops. At one point the film gets super-judgy about Park Jeong-min’s cabaret singer complaining about being surrounded by all the, well, Evil. Of course, since she’s a trans woman (actor Park, however, is not; he’s a cis male actor, which is just as shitty a move in a South Korean film as an American), it’s somehow supposed to be her fault. Meanwhile, all the dudes roaming around butchering people, kidnapping kids, and so on… well, it’s just the way it is for them. There’s something more wrong about Park, who’s run off to Thailand because she’s ashamed of being trans and having abandoned a young son back home in Korea.

I’m assuming the source dialogue has all the misgendering (the subtitles sure do), as the film uses Park as a showpiece for various people to discriminate against. It’s a messed up part and Park does all right, but it’s the most exploitative thing in writer and director Hong’s film, which is about kidnapping children and harvesting their organs based for xenophobes. In fact, Hong terrorizes Park’s character onscreen to get out of having to terrorize the trafficked children onscreen. The narrative needlessly tracks Park through a terrified night in jail to the morning where three cops threaten her for information, leveraging her marginalized status as an injury vector. And Hong drags it out to the point I was expecting “hero” Hwang Jung-min to somehow rescue Park from the crooked cops, but, no, it’s just more opportunities to be shitty to Park and terrorize her for sympathy. Except not exactly because Hwang’s super shitty to her too. It’s a garbage move, made even more so when Hong reveals Park to be the only truly sympathetic character in the whole movie (well, adult; well, adult who isn’t a fridged woman).

Of course, there’s an added “(South Korean) Oscar bait” aspect to Park’s performance, which makes it all the more shallow and all the more craven. It’s incredibly insincere, callous, and often mean-spirited.

Hong often tries to veer Evil away from the true meanness he’s setting on film through the outlandish characters. Calling the characters in Evil caricatures is a little too complimentary; they’re cartoonish. Often viciously cartoonish, but cartoonish. Lee’s a terrifying psychopathic supervillain who literally chops his way through crowds of people to get at his target—Hwang, who unknowingly killed Lee’s brother. Hwang spends the first act of the film, outside the hitman sequences, moping around Japan. He’s an ex-pat from South Korea who used to be a happy, well-adjusted government assassin; a bunch of non-murderous people came to power and decided they should stop killing people and disbanded Hwang’s outfit so he had to run to Japan. Where he keeps doing one last job until he can go live on a beach in Panama. Then he’ll be happy.

Except after Hwang does his last hit… someone kidnaps his previously unknown daughter Park So-yi over in Thailand, where she’s been happily living with naive mom Choi Hee-seo. Notice how much the plot hinges on previously unknown characters (Park, Lee) coming to the fore as inciting actions–Hong doesn’t really have a story, he’s got a hero (Hwang) and a villain (Lee) and various set pieces where they interact.

Both Hwang and Lee are capable of infinite violence—at one point someone injuries seem to supernaturally heal because he’s needed for the next action sequence, which involves chasing a car on foot while suffering multiple stab wounds; the leads chop through a legion of fake shemps, having both run afoul of the local crime lords in Thailand on their arrival, invincible until they have their inevitable showdown. Only Hwang’s not in the movie for an inevitable showdown with Lee, he’s in the movie to rescue daughter Park. Hong loses sight of the main plot, too wrapped up in the pretty good grisly action sequences. There are no heroics in Evil, just bloody action scenes—lots and lots of knives; it’s a third act problem because the film sets Hwang up as a tactical genius while Lee’s the bull stabbing everything in the china shop.

Hong does a great job directing Evil, Hong Kyung-pyo’s photography is excellent, ditto Kim Hyung-ju’s editing, and Hwang’s performance is outstanding the lead. Lee’s good but he’s just doing an unstoppable, unpredictable bad guy thing. It’s like an audition reel for another Joker movie or something. The different tones in the adversaries is usually a plus; it craps out at the end, when Hong turns out to have no organic way to bring them together and has to gin one up; Hong gets through thanks to his directing and his crew.

It’d be nice if Deliver Us from Evil’s biggest problem were just the third act, or just the title, instead of the transphobia and xenophobia. I didn’t even get to the xenophobia but basically the film portrays Thailand as a shithole country full stop. For a transphobic, xenophobic, exploitative revenge and avenge thriller, Evil’s about as good you can get. It’d be nice if it didn’t come with so many gross caveats.

Hard Boiled (1992, John Woo)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Famous Sword Bijomaru (1945, Mizoguchi Kenji)

The Famous Sword Bijomaru is a tragedy. Well, at its best, it’s a tragedy.

The film—which runs sixty-five minutes and has zero subplots, very few close-ups, and no establishing shots or sequences—opens with apprentice swordsmith Hanayagi Shôtarô presenting his benefactor, Oya Ichijirô, with a new sword. Hanayagi is an orphan, Oya took him in at twelve, Hanayagi’s trying to show his gratitude.

Unfortunately, it turns out Hanayagi isn’t quite ready for prime time on the sword-making front, though it turns out maybe his teacher (Yanagi Eijirô) isn’t great either—the film never explains how these guys are so inept at making swords when they’re literally professional sword makers—anyway, Oya ends up shamed and then worse and Hanayagi blames himself and spirals.

Luckily, Oya’s got a daughter—Yamada Isuzu—who doesn’t thinking running off and cutting open your belly to get out of responsibilities is the way to do it and she tries to get Hanayagi to make a new sword. With this new sword, they can all reclaim their honor, not to mention getting some vengeance. Only it’s also just before—like, just before—the Meiji Restoration kicks off and there’s a lot of overarching political stuff going on. Basically Yanagi is distracted with the politics and the potential return of the Emperor, which I guess is a subplot. Sort of.

After lots of foreshadowing and lots of angst—Hanayagi isn’t just feeling incapable, it’s also his fellow apprentice sword maker Ishii Kan and, obviously, boss Yanagi—the third act entirely hinges on the battles between the Shogun and the Imperial forces. It goes from being background to foreground between two scenes; director Mizoguchi has this exceptional way of splitting the action between foreground and background and he literally shoves his protagonists into the background to bring the battle forward. At the time, it doesn’t seem too concerning because the drama is just colliding and so on, but by the end… it’s clear that point is where Sword starts stumbling.

The conclusion is fine. Mizoguchi whiffs on the resolve to the sword-making, seemingly so he can showcase the accompanying battle, but it also flushes all the character development he’s been doing to this point. Given the entire film, save Yanagi’s “subplot,” is character development… well, it’d have been nice if the sequence had been like a good sword fight at least. It’s like Mizoguchi forgets what the central tension of the film has been to this point.

And the ending is really pat.

It’s always well-directed—with the single caveat being a strange ghost apprentice sequence, but the idea isn’t bad, Mizoguchi just can’t figure out how to visualize it. Also it’s 1945 and composite photography was only so good. Really good photography from Miki Minoru and Takeno Haruo; the way they shoot the exterior scenes—often on sets—is incredible.

The acting’s fine. Since Mizoguchi stays out of close-ups, it’s mostly about blocking and moving; Ishii and Yamada give the best performances. Hanayagi is a little inert–intentionally as a character, but the performance overdoes it.

Sword is a very well-made hour of film. Mizoguchi’s direction certainly makes it seem like it’s going to be better than it finishes, but it’s still pretty good.

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.