The Last Days of Pompeii (1935, Ernest B. Schoedsack)

The Last Days of Pompeii opens with a disclaimer. Despite sharing a title, it is not based on Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1834 novel. That disclaimer should be read as a warning.

The film runs ninety-six minutes. The last days of Pompeii are the third act; the first two acts… wait, no. The timeline doesn’t even work internally. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, but when lead Preston Foster doesn’t give his life trying to free Jesus from the cross on the way to Golgotha, it’s 33 AD. Oh, sorry, spoiler. Last Days of Pompeii is not an exciting disaster movie; it’s a jejune Christian movie about how selfish dipshit jock Foster finds Jesus but not really.

Anyway.

In 33 AD, Foster’s got a nine-year-old adopted son—played by David Holt. It’s Foster’s second try at fatherhood; the first time, his selfishness and stupidity got his wife and baby son killed. After their deaths, he became a gladiator, eventually killing Holt’s dad in the ring. So Foster adopts him and strives to provide him with all the money in the world, including taking him to Jerusalem on a business trip. An old lady fortune teller tells Foster to take Holt to see the greatest man in Judea, so he takes Holt to meet Pontius Pilate (Basil Rathbone).

When the action gets to the Last Days, Holt’s character has grown into John Wood, who’s eighteen years older. Wood’s probably supposed to be playing a teenager, so screenwriter Ruth Rose’s taking the timeline even less seriously than she could.

Wood’s grown to resent his adoptive father’s greed and is trying to help escaped slaves get away from Pompeii. The slaves are headed to the gladiator games, dad Foster runs the games, but Wood knows he can’t tell his dad to stop being terrible. Even though they both met Jesus once, Foster has been trying to gaslight Wood into forgetting ever since.

The scary part of Foster’s performance is his angry old man, complete with makeup, is his best work in the movie. He’s lousy when he’s the greasy stud in the first act. He’s not the worst, but he’s bad. He slightly improves in the second act, when Pompeii introduces the real master of Judea, wink wink (not on screen, rather the Marsellus Wallace suitcase device), but only barely. Maybe the improvement is the lack of a greased-up chest.

Along the way, Foster buys a family slave, Wyrley Birch, who’s supposed to be a tutor but never tutors. Instead, Birch plays butler for Foster and sounding board for Wood. Birch seems like he’s always going to be better, but the movie never gives him anything to do.

Besides Rathbone alternating between sincere in his Christian movie performance and visibly restraining himself from chewing up the scenery, the most amusing thing about the film is spotting the character actors in the supporting cast. What other movie’s got Ward Bond as a gladiator (uncredited, which is weird because it’s a reasonably prominent role), Edward Van Sloan, Louis Calhern, Frank Conroy, and Jason Robards Sr. hacking it up in a costume drama. Plus a cameo from Jim Thorpe — All-American!

Unfortunately, the occasional appearance of a familiar character actor isn’t enough to keep the film going. Especially since none of them recur enough to matter. Alan Hale, but he’s second-billed and just not bad like Foster. Hale and some of the character actors can overcome the script, Foster cannot. Neither can Wood, unfortunately. Though he does better than his love interest, Dorothy Wilson. Pompeii’s got no time for ladies; they’re one kind of fodder or another, chariot or class.

Obviously, if the script were better, who knows. Director Schoedsack’s similarly unenthused, going from one rote setup to the next. He doesn’t even put any energy into the early gladiator fights, instead waiting for the finale when there’s much less time–though for a while, I wondered if they were going to skip the eruption altogether. The amphitheater in the finale’s much more elaborate than in the first act; maybe they weren’t done building it.

Most of Pompeii is just backlot street shots with questionable architecture. There’s not much special effects work outside some composite establishing shots. Unfortunately, the finale’s nowhere near enough to make up for it.

There’s more to say about Pompeii, especially the film’s presentation of slavery, but there’s not much reason to say it. It’s atrocious from the start, with some good but not good enough special effects at the very end.

Presumably, the Bulwer-Lytton novel has to have a better story, but I’ve got no inclination to find out.

This post is part of the Second “Disaster” Blog-A-Thon hosted by J-Dub of Dubsism and Gabriela of Pale Writer.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (2021)

Last stand

According to the "About the Creators" section, the 2004 prose non-fiction book, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, is based on declassified documents and interviews with participants, which raises the question of whether or not Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors comic adaptation writer Doug Murray ever read the book. Or were all the participants original author James D. Hornfischer interviewed so insipid and bland as Murray writes them?

Insipid is almost too complimentary a phrase for Murray's writing because insipid suggests some ambition. You have to try to be insipid. But inept suggests too much basic competence and incompetent… well, it also implies there's a possibility of competence, and there's nothing remotely competent about Murray's script or Steven Sanders's art. I guess some of the military machinery is appropriately detailed, but not all of it. Like, Sanders does not give a crap about detail on the ships, and the comic's all about the ships.

It tells the tale of World War II sea battle where Admiral "Bull" Halsey (played by Jimmy Cagney in the movies, not John Wayne) lets his megalomania and stupidity get in the way of being a good commander and a bunch of people suffer for it. Tin Can Sailors doesn't give a hoot about the casualties of the battle—I'm trying not to just curse the book out because it's not worth the energy—because Murray's primary interests are the low-key racism, boring toxic masculinity, and the occasional vague misogyny. It, of course, can't be racist because the Japanese were sub-human after all… oh, wait, hole in the logic at literal first glance. If Tin Can Soldiers were any more competent, it might be a concerning bit of Christian nationalist, white supremacy, but Murray's a laughable writer. Most Beetle Bailey strips are better written than this comic.

And then there's Sanders. What's worse, his inability to draw people or him using pictures of the ocean instead of drawing the ocean? I kept hoping there'd be at least one good idea for a panel, and maybe there's a first-person POV one with some ambition, but Sanders is so bad at the drawing part of it trying for composition one panel out of 200 pages isn't anywhere near enough.

Murray's also got the problem he can't make the battle interesting because he's got to show the Japanese as incompetent, unworthy enemies to the white men. Also, he's terrible at plotting out the battle. And showing how it affects recurring cast members. And writing those recurring cast members to be distinct characters instead of disposable jingoistic, narcissistic numbskulls. At best. If they really are supposed to be so indifferent to the death and destruction around them—does Murray believe in PTSD, or is it just for wusses—they're even worse. Because it's hard rooting for them.

Murray doesn't, you know, show the Japanese side of things. Sanders would then have to do more than two drawings of their admiral instead of reusing the same one over and over. So it's basically the Japanese did a sneaky maneuver, the Americans caught them, then kicked their asses all day long because they suck, and the USA is great; also, lots of people died, the fleet admiral was incompetent, and whatever. Man up or something.

Murray and Sanders's Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is clearly terrible from the first or second page, and there's no reason to keep going with it except self-flagellation. The writing starts bad and stays bad, with Murray missing very obvious opportunities to make the read more engaging or informative. Because it ought to be informative, right? Like, it's a history comic, it ought to convey some historical data into the reader's mind to process. Nope. It's the worst written thing I've read in ages. Murray's copying-and-pasting it in and without the enthusiasm of a disgruntled office temp.

And Sanders.

I mean.

You could read Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors as your first work of "graphic non-fiction" or whatever they're calling non-fiction comic books these days, and you still wouldn't have read one. Because it doesn't qualify as a comic book.

The whole project is an unmitigated disaster, which then manages to get even worse when it turns out Sanders isn't going to draw any water. So it's not even embarrassing for the creators. I mean, I'm sort of embarrassed I finished it, but I've got the "I'm writing a blog post" excuse. But the creators shouldn't be embarrassed. Their work is too obviously bad to expect anything better from them.

The comic also skips what seems to be the most interesting historical aspect—this battle is when the Japanese air force started doing kamikaze attacks? It's an aside from Murray. Because he does a terrible job. Because the comic's terrible.

Almost unimaginably terrible. Especially in 2021, especially when the medium has gotten so much more competent across the board. It's a dreadful experience.

Ladies Should Listen (1934, Frank Tuttle)

There’s a funny moment in Ladies Should Listen. As in a singular one funny moment. I can’t remember the joke because it wasn’t very good and was too busy being shocked at something vaguely amusing in the film, especially coming from Rafael Corio, who has the distinguished honor of giving the worst performance in a film of bad performances.

Though it’s hard to blame the actors much for their performances. At its best, Tuttle’s direction is scant middling while the script manages to be charmless, laugh-less, bad, yet decently paced during the first half. Screenwriters Claude Binyon and Frank Butler are adapting a play and afterwards I got to look back on how naive I was during the opening titles when I thought the worst problem would it being stagy.

In fact, I don’t think I’d ever use stagy as an adjective for Ladies Should Listen. Something about the truly atrocious editing—by an uncredited, unknown cutter—makes it seem far less stagy than prescient about laugh-track heavy sitcoms. After every joke or gag, the shot lingers or, worse, and these ones are on Tuttle, goes to a close-up, then lingers. Every time it brings the film to a dead stop and it’s a race to see if there will be any significant momentum before the next stop.

The answer is always no.

It’s possible the film would be funny if it had a Marx Brother in the lead instead of Cary Grant. He doesn’t mug well and his character is a little thin. He’s a penniless blue blood who sleeps around a lot but never settles down because he’s of weak character. Or because his partners soon realize he’s a pretty boy without any substance. We only find out about his romantic history after Frances Drake shows up.

So, Grant’s this creep who tries to manipulate women into sleeping with him—including deceiving them about meteorological conditions—but then it turns out Drake is his apartment telephone switchboard operator who’s stalking him through the phone. And Grant apparently always calls someone and gives a full account of his day, because Drake knows things he says in person. Doesn’t matter.

When it turns out his latest conquest—Rosita Moreno—isn’t just married (to Corio) but they’re out to get Grant’s options on a Chilean mining concern, Drake has to save him even if he doesn’t want to be saved. Throw in Grant’s best friend, a similarly unfunny Edward Everett Horton, and Horton’s romantic pursuit, rich girl Nydia Westman (who the movie craps all over for wearing glasses and thinking Cary Grant is handsome), and you’ve got an hour of comic gold. Or so someone at Paramount incorrectly thought.

Grant’s not good, Horton’s not good, Drake’s not good but gets some sympathy because it’s obvious Tuttle is messing her up with his direction, Westman’s not bad but the movie’s literally against her so maybe she’s just overly sympathetic, and Moreno’s actually nearly okay. Moreno and Charles Arnt are the closest Ladies gets to okay acting. Arnt’s Grant’s valet and makes all sorts of date rape-y inventions for Grant to use around the apartment. Because what if Quagmire were great looking.

Look fast for Ann Sheridan.

But if you’re suffering through and wondering if it’s ever going to get better… no. The answer is no. It’s bad right up until the last scene, even if there’s a decent Paris cityscape backdrop.

The Lady Refuses (1931, George Archainbaud)

The Lady Refuses gets frustratingly close to making it to the finish. It collapses in its final moments, though it’s barely been keeping it together through the third act, when everything (by everything the main plot and the single directly related subplot) comes together and profoundly fizzles. The only reason it provides any tension at all is because the movie puts its most likable, appealing character—maid Daphne Pollard—in some kind of danger. Without that peril, it’s just a shrug, like everyone’s lost enthusiasm for the story.

Not a surprise given the eventual resolution.

The film tells the age-old tale of London gal down on her luck, Betty Compson, who has to chose the bridge or working the street–Refuses is kind of shockingly real about that dichotomy—and picks the latter. Only her first night out the cops decide to harass her so she knocks on a fancy door and who should answer but lonely old widower Gilbert Emery. Refuses juxtaposes the cops on Compson’s trail and Emery’s layabout drunkard son John Darrow being disinterested in hanging out with Emery and Emery getting the sads. So when Compson needs help—any kind of help—Emery’s an enthusastic aid.

Soon after a nice dinner and Compson’s assurances she’s never actually worked the street before tonight and hasn’t yet had any customers, Emery hires her to get Darrow away from Margaret Livingston. Now, Darrow thinks Livingston is just after him for a good time, but she’s actually in cahoots with his childhood friend Ivan Lebedeff to get a sizable chunk of Emery’s estate somehow.

By somehow it involves Livingston bedding Darrow on a regular basis and Lebedeff getting more and more insanely jealous over it even though he’s apparently in on it. It’s unclear. There’s zero backstory for any of the characters outside an occasional line—actually, wait, I’m not sure there’s anything in backstory except Darrow and Lebedeff being childhood friends, no one else gets anything.

For instance, there’s no explanation to Emery being openly British and Darrow being obviously American. Ditto Compson, who’s ostensibly a Brit but the character maybe makes more sense if she’s American and there’s even an implication but it’s subtle and Refuses, you know, refuses to do subtle. And the only time Compson does try an English accent… well, a more gracious reading would have her being faking it intentionally.

Anyway.

Things quickly become a love triangle—wait, actually a pentagon when you through in Livingston and Lebedeff—because while Darrow falls for paid personal savior Compson, Compson and Emery are in love. It’ll all work out in the end, Compson and Emery are sure.

As The Lady Refuses is a Pre-Code melodrama (not to mention the title), things very obviously do not work out and the last twenty to thirty minutes they just get worse and worse.

Acting-wise, Compson’s probably the best, though she’s far more effective for her ability to emote than to read her lines. Though the biting her lip thing is kind of annoying (but nowhere near Darrow’s terrible Groucho Marx impression). Darrow’s bad. Emery’s occasionally cute but not good. Archainbaud’s direction is standoffish but when it’s Emery, it just seems British. Albeit British with some boring composition, which eventually gets editor Jack Kitchin in trouble because Archainbaud’s obviously not shooting enough coverage.

Refuses is occasionally academically interesting as an early talkie or a Pre-Code or whatnot, but it’s a fail overall. The resolution’s an odd mix of disappointing and insulting.

L’Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)

L’Atalante begins with a wedding procession; village girl Dita Parlo has married commercial barge captain Jean Dasté and is going off to live with him on the barge. The wedding guests drop all these details through exposition—we’re not privy to the newlyweds’ conversations as they walk through the village to the barge. Juxtaposed, first mate Michel Simon and cabin boy Louis Lefebvre race ahead to have the boat ready for the captain’s wife’s arrival.

Both Simon and Lefebvre bumble comically while the guests’ exposition establishes Parlo’s never even left the village before and is also a bit more of a dreamer than the rest of the town. The exposition drops turn out to be important as one of Parlo and Dasté’s problems is going to be their inability to talk to one another. It’s also going to allow director Vigo to do these wonderful sequences inspecting how Parlo’s experiencing her new reality. There’s never any discussion of what she expected or what Dasté told her, but she arrives readier to work than he’s comfortable with, leading to a fine comedy sequence involving the laundry.

Life on the barge is initially as idyllic as it’s going to get with outrageously eccentric Simon making things interesting, but the newlyweds have discovered the pleasures of the flesh so they can put up with a lot from Simon. In addition to being a tchotchke and junk collector, Simon has an uncounted amount of cats aboard the barge, leading to some adorable comic relief moments.

But when Parlo starts to get bored—after Dasté’s back to piloting the barge instead of keeping her warm in bed—things start getting testy. Especially after Dasté gets into a fight with Simon, which acts as the inciting incident for the rest of the couple’s troubles.

All Parlo wants is to see something besides the barge and the riverbank, but Dasté’s responsibility is to the barge and Simon’s not in the mood to do him any favors. Pretty soon Parlo (and the audience) learns Dasté’s jealous outbursts aren’t rare but rather the norm. And neither of them wants to talk things through, leading to a couple impulse decisions, but one with far greater consequences for the couple and the film.

L’Atlante has a handful of dreamlike sequences, usually from the perspective of the characters, though sometimes Vigo gets so enthusiastic he lets the film get lost in them. Most impressively he’s able to maintain the dream in one character’s plot while toggling back and forth to another’s; the latter threatens to turn the former into a nightmare, but Vigo doesn’t let it intrude, with Maurice Jaubert’s helping keep the two threads in balance. It’s precise and glorious work.

Starting towards the end of the second act, Vigo’s also able to tighten the focus on Dasté’s performance, something the film had never suggested would be an emphasis. Not with Simon able to handily walk off with any scene, his costars and Vigo enthusiastically giving him all the room he needs or wants. So when the focus tightens on Dasté, Parlo and Simon maybe not fading but definitely given some distance, everything all of a sudden hinges on Dasté being able to be sympathetic without the narrative giving him any help in deserving it. Vigo changes up the narrative distance, but maintains the same approach to characterization. It ends up letting Vigo leverage the supporting cast, which works out and keeps from letting Dasté get mawkish.

The film’s a technical delight. Boris Kaufman does a great job shooting it all, with he and Vigo getting some amazing shots on the barge and of the barge. Louis Chavance’s editing is magical, especially with Jaubert’s music running under his cuts.

Parlo and Dasté are both good. The film incidentally builds their character relationship, letting everything else take precedence—okay, usually Simon, but how isn’t he going to walk away with a scene, but again, Vigo makes it work—so once they start having troubles, there’s no real inherent sympathy. Because L’Atalante can be a fairy tale, a day dream, a nightmare, and a dual character study all in one. No one—not Vigo, not Dasté, not Parlo, not Simon—even has to toggle. They’re able to do all of them simultaneously, no doubt thanks to Vigo, but the cast keeps up.

Of course, Simon’s the best performance. He’s an aged sailor who’s traveled the world and ended up on the barges, he likes his drink, he likes his cats, and he likes ladies. Maybe too much. The way Vigo and Simon balance Simon right up until the end is phenomenal. Even as Dasté gets more and more volatile, the energy always buzzes off Simon. So good.

Lefebvre’s fine as the cabin boy. He’s entirely support. Gilles Margaritis’s good as a flirty traveling salesman who happens across the naive but separately so newlyweds.

L'Atalante’s glorious.

Land of the Dead (2005, George A. Romero), the director’s cut

While Land of the Dead is almost always an unfortunate misfire, it’s also never an unmitigated disaster. It’s full of missed opportunities, but they’re usually missed because director Romero just can’t crack the scene. And when he doesn’t crack a set piece, he often goes in the entirely different direction; maybe it’s about the budget, which is way too small, maybe it’s not. But it seems like the budget. After the successful opening set piece, there’s no reason to think Romero isn’t going to be able to execute at least the same quality again. And he’s never able to do it, but he also never really tries to do it. Romero front loads the movie; it deflates just when it should be doing the opposite. The characters gradually lose personality and importance. Because it’s time for the adequate but bland zombie action.

The film takes place in the future… the zombies have won, people all grouped in the big cities, the rich people live well, the poor people do not. Romero is shooting Toronto for Pittsburgh with a cinematographer (Miroslaw Baszak) who lights it to look as Canadian as possible. Land lacks any visual personality; the mix of Romero’s composition, Baszak’s flat lighting, Michael Doherty’s fine but bland editing, and Arvinder Grewal’s production design looks less like a post (zombie) apocalyptic vision and more like a pitch reel for one. Same goes for the actors, save Dennis Hopper, who’s just plain terrible. Simon Baker, Asia Argento, John Leguizamo, Robert Joy; at best their performances feel like stand-ins for better ones once the project gets the green light. At worst, it’s a charmless lead like Simon Baker, who is more than capable of being charming, Romero just doesn’t seem to realize it. Not in his direction or his script, which gives his actors really bad life stories purely for expository purposes. There’s not just no character development in Land, Romero doesn’t take the time to even establish the characters.

And it’d be fine if the film could have retained the first set piece energy. So Baker, Leguizamo, and Joy all work for Hopper. They leave the city to raid neighboring towns for supplies. Apparently there’s an almost endless amount of neighboring towns to raid; all you have to do is shoot fireworks and the zombies all look up and everything’s jim-dandy—the zombies don’t attack, they watch fireworks. It also allows Romero to set a lot of action at night, which was apparently less expensive and does nothing to help with that lack of personality thing. Only Baker and Joy discover there’s one zombie—Eugene Clark, in the film’s best performance—who doesn’t look up at the fireworks.

The movie ends up being about Clark leading a bunch of zombies to attack the city, where the rich people live in a ritzy skyscraper and Romero only has the money to establish it through a promotional video playing on a TV–Land of the Dead has both too little budget and too much. The tricks and devices Romero uses to cover for not having more money lack inventiveness; there’s a ton of bad CGI composites. Like, a static matte painting would’ve been much better bad. But you do bad CGI composites because they’re cheap. And it shows. And it hurts the movie.

Anyway, while Clark’s leading the slow-moving attack—see, he’s learned how to use objects and can teach other zombies how to use objects so it’s going to be a different kind of zombie attack (only, not really as it turns out but the attack’s immaterial)—Leguizamo has gone rogue and Baker has to track him down, bringing pals Joy and Argento.

Of the three, Argento’s probably best. She’s not good overall—the writing doesn’t allow for it—but she’s got some rather strong moments. She takes the job more seriously than anyone else. Though who knows what’s going through Hopper’s head as he woodenly delivers lines; who knows, maybe Romero did cast him to be a personality-free rich jackass with a goatee. Hopper’s reaction shots to zombies eating flesh look like someone told him to stand still for his picture to be taken. Romero would’ve done better to give Leguizamo that part. To do something to mix it up.

But there’s no mixing it up. Because outside a couple Romero-Dead nods and sufficiently revolting zombie feasting (though Baszak’s lighting makes it look… not fake, but not real), Land of the Dead has less of a pulse than its zombies.

It’s a shame.

The Lady from Shanghai (1947, Orson Welles)

It’s immaterial to the film overall but I want to talk about how Welles compensates for projection composites looking like projection composites. He changes up his focus, sometimes focusing on the person in the foreground, sometimes not. Is it intentional? Is he really trying to compensate?

Well, the technique does compensate a little for it. The Lady from Shanghai does have, technologically speaking, a more consistent visual look as the film goes between projection composites and location shooting.

Again, it’s immaterial. It’s just one heck of a what if.

The Lady from Shanghai moves very quickly. It runs just under ninety minutes, with a present action of five or six months. However long it takes to sail from New York City to San Francisco, through the Panama Canal, with some extended stops in Mexico, plus a murder trial. There’s a lot of summary, always ably narrated by writer, director, producer, and star Welles. Welles is a world-traveling Irish sailor who meets Rita Hayworth one night in Central Park, while he’s waiting to find a ship out. Welles, who tries the Irish charm on Hayworth at first sight, ends up saving her from some muggers. He takes her to safety, they talk, they flirt, and wouldn’t you know it, she’d love to hire him on to sail her yacht.

Oh, and she’s married.

So Welles, in the first and last smart thing he does in Shanghai, says no. But when he gets another chance in the form of Hayworth’s much older husband, played by Everett Sloane, shows up to beg him, Welles takes it. He’s feeling way too young, strong, and virile comparing himself to Sloane, who’s a disabled person. He’s also an extremely wealthy lawyer. And he calls Hayworth “lover” in a way it makes everyone’s skin crawl and almost seems like Sloane knows he’s having that effect. Even though Welles is narrating the film, he never reveals his character’s hopes and dreams when he signs on to the yacht. He’s infatuated with Hayworth, yes, but he’s also got a sidekick along, fellow able-bodied seaman and not yacht guy Gus Schilling, and he soon finds out everyone around Sloane’s very, very weird. Like Sloane’s business partner, Glenn Anders, who’s a sweaty drunk.

See, Anders figures out the Welles and Hayworth thing—even more than Sloane, who’s at least passingly aware of the attraction and uses it to humiliate both Hayworth and Welles—but Anders realizes there’s more emotion behind it than Sloane expects. Welles has the heart of a poet and the fists of a six foot three Irishman. He sees through Hayworth the pin-up to the woman; see, Sloane likes it when Hayworth wears skimpy bathing suits in front of all his pals.

Sloane’s a great villain. The film doesn’t really have villains or heroes, but Sloane’s great in the villain spot. He’s cruel, calculating, immodest. He’s a major creep in a film with a bunch of major creeps—like Anders is clearly more dangerous than Sloane, but are you just underestimating Sloane because he doesn’t have use of his legs. Because there’s something else going on besides Sloane wanting to humiliate his trophy wife for being gorgeous, someone’s planning on killing him. Actually, no one seems like they’re not planning on killing him, except Schilling, who just does his job.

So those two plots go on simultaneously, plus the class commentary. See, Welles doesn’t like being privy to the goings ons of these shitty rich people. But they all love being condescending to him, even Hayworth, who runs hot and cold as far as their flirtation goes.

Then there’s a murder and then there’s a trial. There’s an action-packed, hallucinatory finale. There’s a great de facto chase sequence through Chinatown, there’s a big fight scene. An Orson Welles fight scene. He’s really good at some of it, though Viola Lawrence’s editing is key. Her editing is key for everything in Shanghai because the film only exists in its shots and angles, intrusive ones. Welles pushes the camera into faces—with the exception of Hayworth, who gets cradled by the camera, Welles’s infatuation controlling the shots. Welles and Hayworth were married at the time, which doesn’t add a real layer, but is kind of fun to think about. Especially during Hayworth’s big scenes. She’s got a handful of them and they’re all awesome. Welles gives himself the showier part, with his Irish accent—which gets amplified thanks to Welles’s audio process. All the dialogue is looped. The actors performing their lines separately from speaking them in their performance. No actual diegetic sounds, just diegetic sound effects, which the characters don’t “hear.” It gives Shanghai this detached but incredibly intimate quality. Even though that intimacy with the characters’ conversations is more often than not intrusive. The film’s very intrusive. Yes, it’s a film noir about hot cheating wives, sexy Irish lugs, corrupt rich people, and boats, but it’s also this careful examination and evaluation of its characters and what they represent and what they don’t and how the disconnects affect them.

So, it’s a tad misanthropic. But deservedly.

The best performance is Sloane. No one else gets to be such an exceptional creep. Not even Anders, who’s a big creep. Or Ted de Corsia, who’s a little creep. But Sloane also gets more complex emotions and they get laid bare. It’s an outstanding, spectacular performance.

Then Welles, then Hayworth. Welles, director and screenwriter, showcases Hayworth for narrative impact and effectiveness. It means she doesn’t get as good of a part as Welles, actor. But even if her part isn’t as good overall—meaning she can’t give a better performance because he’s written and directed it so she can’t—he does give her far better shot composition than anyone else in the film. He’s not just cradling her for that infatuation angle, he’s also amplifying her deliveries. So Hayworth still manages to have a “movie star” performance in this movie without the possibility of movie star performances. Welles doesn’t compose shots for them.

Anders is great; Schilling is good, Erskine Sanford is fun as the judge. Evelyn Ellis is excellent as Sloane’s maid. She’s a Black woman with a very hard life and Sloane exploits her and brags to everyone about it. In front of her.

Because he’s an incredible creep.

Great photography from Charles Lawton Jr. There’s a lot of stuff in Lady from Shanghai. Almost everything except Shanghai. Lawton shoots it all beautifully. The end action sequence is singular, thanks to Welles, Lawton, and Lawrence. The cuts and the lights are integral to its success. And it is a success. So good.

Welles, Sloane, Hayworth, the supporting cast, the crew, they make something special. The Lady from Shanghai is fantastic.

This post is part of the “Some Kind of a Man”: The Orson Welles Blogathon hosted by Sean Munger.

The Laboratory of Fear (1971, Patrice Leconte)

The Laboratory of Fear is all about expectation. For the short’s eleven minutes, writer and director Leconte wants the audience to expect something. Lots of foreshadowing. Some of it matters, some of it is red herring.

The short opens very documentary-like, with a voice over explaining the modern (for 1971) laboratory. The lab’s so hip they’ve even got a woman scientist (Marianne di Vettimo); better yet, she’s actually good at her job (just ask any of the fellows, says the narrator). Cue opening titles, which end with a disclaimer: don’t expect too much scientific accuracy. So why open with the documentary style? To control the audience’s expectations.

There’s no way to predict, from that opening tag, Fear is actually going to be about lovesick custodian Michel Such going from annoying crush to possibly dangerous stalker. di Vettimo, however, doesn’t seem to notice his escalation. She doesn’t know she’s in the Laboratory of Fear, she just thinks she’s at work, trying to make some silver iodine and getting messed up because Such needs constant attention from her. He even tries to show off for her, sticking his hand in various kinds of dangerous chemicals. Presumably the actor didn’t have to do it, but who knows… di Vettimo is manipulating the spilled mercury by hand without a second thought (because 1971).

The short seems to be a race—will di Vettimo take notice of Such’s possible threat before Such escalates to the point of being dangerous? But the race is yet another of Leconte’s manipulations. The punchline, which is excellent, is as unpredictable as the setup. Though Leconte has been building to the punchline since after the opening titles; should it have been expected? Probably not. Not even if one is familiar with di Vettimo’s experiments, since Fear’s not about the hard science.

Good creeper performance from Such. Decent one from di Vettimo, who doesn’t really get anything to do. Leconte’s direction is fine, save the occasional visual flourishes. They’re to play with expectation too, of course.

Fear’s a competently executed narrative with a nice kicker.

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me (2019)

Laura dean keeps breaking 1

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me is another of these YA graphic novels without any chapters or natural narrative breaks. The first time I came across one, I realized it was going to be a trend and yep, it’s a trend. The difference is last time it didn’t work, this time it works out perfectly. Writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s plotting works for a single sitting read. Tamaki has these narrative frames—the protagonist writing emails to an advice columnist—which provide a nice backdrop and structure. The protagonist not being particularly reliable also helps.

Not reliable like she might be dishonestly reporting to the advice columnist (and thereby the reader) but she’s not reliable. She messes up, just enough to stay actively hopeful she won’t mess something else up. Because at some point it just becomes her predicted behavior.

The protagonist, Freddy (short for Frederica), is dating the titular Laura Dean, a popular girl. Freddy’s got her core group of gay friends, while Laura Dean seems to be popular with everyone. It’s never explained why Laura Dean is popular—other than her mom frequently being out of town and there being booze and beds—but it’s also never explained exactly what Freddy sees in her. Presumably it’s some unquantifiable attraction thing but… Tamaki doesn’t give it enough attention. And Valero-O’Connell’s art doesn’t do implying of that nature. It implies other things; it has to imply a lot of other things, actually, because Freddy is frequently turned away from the panel or somehow obscured. We don’t get to see her reaction shots to how things play out around her.

There’s something non-committal about the book too—it’s aimed at a YA audience and there’s a certain age appropriateness. Or not being willing to not be age appropriate, which is fine but is definitely going to limit some potential.

It’s a solid read. Valero-O’Connell puts a lot into the panel layouts and compositions and it works.

I’m not a hundred percent on the coloring. At least every page something is pink. It’s a drab pink, kind of a mopey one. Or maybe the story’s just sad a lot. But it doesn’t add anything to the work.

Last thing—Tamaki has these talking stuffed animals, which is awesome, and not in it anywhere near enough.

The Lake House (2006, Alejandro Agresti)

There may be a pseudo-sly Speed reference in The Lake House, which reunites stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, but it’s a spoiler. Unfortunately it is not Bullock’s Speed 2 co-star Jason Patric as her wet towel boyfriend (Patric infamously replaced Reeves in the sequel). Instead, Dylan Walsh is the wet towel boyfriend. His performance is just as boring as the exceptionally thin role is written.

And it also may not be a Speed nod because it would show some personality from the filmmakers and they truly have none.

Lake House is not an action movie about a bus. Instead, it’s a romantic drama involving a magic mailbox and seemingly magic dog. Bullock is a newly-out-of-residency Chicago doctor who lives in the “present” or 2006. We soon find out Reeves is in 2004. They have lived in the same house at different times; a stilt house on a lake somewhere near Madison, Wisconsin. The house is ostensibly a dump—no one lives on the lake, someone exclaims because Lake House also has magic realistic values—even though it’s gorgeous and designed by world renowned architect Christopher Plummer, who is also Reeves’s father. Only we don’t find out about the history of the house until almost the third act. And, as with many things in David Auburn’s shockingly pedestrian script, stops being important immediately following it getting introduced in exposition. Everything in Lake House is disposable. Including a bunch of logic in the third act.

First act is nearly romantic comedy with Bullock crying at work (because she cares so much about her patients but, thanks to Auburn’s lousy sense of pacing, probably is just mopey because she dumped Walsh at some point in the recent past) and Reeves trying to get his life back together after moving back to the area after four years away. He makes housing developments instead of being a fancy architect like dad Plummer and younger brother Ebon Moss-Bachrach (who is somehow even less present than Walsh). He wants to fix the stilt house, which makes sense because it’s where he grew up and Plummer—who’s a jerk, but not a monster—verbally and emotionally abused Reeves, Moss-Bachrach, and their mother. Then Bullock and Reeves find out the mailbox at the house is magic and they can write to each other through time.

Cue up the endless terrible letters Reeves and Bullock write to one another as voiceovers. At least when they’re reading each other’s letters, there’s some acting to it. When they’re just thinking their letters and having back and forth conversations—Bullock has to drive two hours and twenty minutes—in the best traffic—to get from new home Chicago back to the house in Madison. Or maybe they’re standing at the mailbox and writing back to each other, which kind of gets explored—the film has zero interest in the time travel aspect of the story; Auburn’s script doesn’t have a single neat time travel-related moment. The only reason it gets away with the romantic comedy thing is because the film introduces split screen to show Bullock and Reeves being separately charming. By the end the split screen is still occasionally in use, but never well-utilized because Agresti’s direction is so boring.

Second act is then Reeves and Bullock exploring the time travel mailbox and falling into a chemistry-free long distance love affair. Because eventually Reeves starts stalking Bullock in the past, when she’s got super-long hair and is entirely dependent on lawyer boyfriend Walsh who doesn’t have any reason to want a girlfriend in his yuppie lifestyle. Should’ve gotten Jason Patric.

Anyway.

Second act is also all the revelations about Reeves’s past with Plummer. The worse the revelation gets, more the Reeves tries to bond with Plummer. It’s inexplicable behavior. The only thing Auburn seems to care about in the screenplay is the architecture monologues from Reeves, Plummer, and Moss-Bachrach. The monologues are bad, but at least they’re distinct. And Plummer can make it seem legit instead of terrible. Moss-Bachrach’s the worst, Reeves is nearly middling. Agresti’s inability to direct conversations hurts with the monologues. Alejandro Brodersohn and Lynzee Klingman’s editing is choppy, but it seems like it’s Agresti’s composition more than anything else. He’s got no rhythm to the scenes. Occasionally, when Bullock or Reeves is charming enough you wish the movie were better, you wonder how a better script might have entirely changed things.

But then Agresti does something weird and bad—like his extreme long shots for conversations—and you realize it’s just the production. It’s broken in too many ways.

Bullock’s character is bad. She doesn’t get the “maybe reunite with Walsh” storyline until into the second act and it entirely flushes her doctor storyline potential. Her mom (Willeke van Ammelrooy) is around for occasional scenes, but—like Moss-Bachrach with Reeves—there’s never any surprise at the magic mail box. It’s totally normal stuff. Pedestrian like everything else about Lake House.

Bullock’s performance is probably the best anyone could do. Maybe ditto Reeves? The movie skips the motivation and development scenes where he nice guy stalks Bullock in the past and possibly jeopardizes destroying the entire timeline. Not really because Auburn never addresses any of the time travel elements and explains away Bullock seeing Reeves multiple times and having no idea she’s seen him before because she forgot what the guy she ran off to San Francisco with when she was sixteen to become a singer. You’d trust someone with that terrible a memory to be your doctor.

Okay.

Terrible part. And Shohreh Aghdashloo somehow gets an even worse part as Bullock’s new boss.

Reeves is… mostly harmless. It’s totally his movie, which is bad since his reconciliation arc with Plummer is even worse than Bullock and Walsh rekindling. But the part isn’t as bad as Bullock’s.

Technically, I suppose Alar Kivilo’s photography is fine. The editing’s bad, the directing’s bad, the script’s bad, Nathan Crowley’s production design (and Agresti’s shot compositions of it) is bad. Rachel Portman’s score could be a lot worse. The soundtrack’s really bland stuff, including a Paul McCartney song from 2005 playing in 2004 because it seems like there should be a Beatles song at that moment—the dialogue makes the song sound like a Golden Oldie too. Lake House is full of really dumb gaffs. Like, an obvious staircase where there shouldn’t be one. Or Reeves not being able to figure out his dog is a girl until Bullock tells him she’s a girl. The dog. Reeves knows Bullock is a girl because he stalks her.

Bad costume design too. Like silly.

Still, until the third act, there’s at least the potential for a good ending. Then there’s not and it’s almost a relief because it’s so lacking in ambition (as well as being dumb as far as the narrative’s internal logic goes). But it’s still a bad ending. The Lake House takes place over four years and ninety-nine minutes. It’s not abjectly terrible or anything, but it’s an entire waste of time.

Another dumb thing—well, two so real quick—The Lake House title doesn’t mean jack for Bullock and Agresti’s deathly afraid of directing in the lake house. He avoids it at all costs. It’s constantly aggravating.