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Falling Down (1993, Joel Schumacher)
When the film started, I sort of marveled at how absurd it was–Joel Schumacher and Michael Douglas making a subversive movie, then I quickly realized Falling Down isn’t subversive… it’s “controversial.” Obviously, Schumacher doesn’t have a controversial bone in his body–and neither does Douglas–so Falling Down gets repetitive and boring before too long. I suppose one can enjoy watching Douglas only hurt bad people in his “everyman” gone psycho role. Everyman is in quotes because I’m sure they used it in the promotional material for the film.
Douglas is terrible, playing Michael Douglas playing a psycho (a really, really stupid one–my fiancée asked if he was mentally ill, before we started the film and I told her no, but watching it, it’s obvious Douglas’s character has the mental processes of a nine-year old. A dumb one). Schumacher’s direction is also pretty bad, both of his actors and just composition-wise. He has this whole LA in orange smug thing going for Falling Down and it makes the film ugly, not realistic.
There are a handful of good things about Falling Down, however–though certainly not the music. I can’t forget the music. The film is, again, supposed to be mainstream gone indie, pre-Miramax, and James Newton Howard contributes the score to a Predator movie, possibly even lifting some of the themes. It’s laughable.
Anyway, good things about the film. I’d like to say Tuesday Weld, but the script runs her in such a dumb direction, I don’t get to say it. However, Robert Duvall’s fantastic. Wonderful in fact. His part is poorly written, but seeing Duvall act in such a big role is still a treat. Barbara Hershey’s also all right, so is Lois Smith (in the film’s second or third worst role). Frederic Forrest is terrible in his role, easily the film’s worst.
The terrible script was written by Ebbe Roe Smith. I’d actually list his other screenwriting credits to let you know what to avoid, but I’ll just assume anyone would avoid Car 54, Where Are You? on his or her own.
ⓏⒺⓇⓄCREDITS
Directed by Joel Schumacher; written by Ebbe Roe Smith; director of photography, Andrzej Bartkowiak; edited by Paul Hirsch; music by James Newton Howard; production designer, Barbara Ling; produced by Arnold Kopelson, Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris; released by Warner Bros.
Starring Michael Douglas (D-Fens), Robert Duvall (Prendergast), Barbara Hershey (Beth), Rachel Ticotin (Sandra), Tuesday Weld (Mrs. Prendergast), Frederic Forrest (Surplus Store Owner), Lois Smith (D-Fens’s Mother), Joey Hope Singer (Adele), Ebbe Roe Smith (Guy on Freeway) and Michael Paul Chan (Mr. Lee).
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A Good Man in Africa (1994, Bruce Beresford)
A Good Man in Africa is about the British practicing a modified form of the age-old British diplomacy in Africa (duh) in modernity. As such, when I saw John Lithgow’s name in the credits, I did not expect him to be playing a Brit. However, Lithgow does play one and he does so quite poorly. Lithgow doesn’t really create a character in Good Man, he just creates a posture. He’s annoying but not really in the film often enough to hurt it. Unfortunately, the film’s made with the same approach. Colin Friels’s philandering, hard-drinking assistant to the diplomat (Lithgow) is not a likable character, certainly not one the audience can identify with. Friels’s performance is likable–and good–but it’s a losing battle. Watching A Good Man in Africa is like watching a long, drawn-out error. It misfires immediately and never recovers, nor makes any attempt to do so.
The film’s based on a novel and the novelist wrote the film. I’m not a fan of such behavior because it usually doesn’t work right. I have no idea if A Good Man in Africa is a good novel, but after seeing the movie, I’ll never know. The film toys with having Friels narrate it, but appears to have inserted that narration as an afterthought. If it were going the whole way through, it might work better. Friels is barely the film’s protagonist, since all of the scenes are about other people.
As for the other people, while Lithgow is easily the worst, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer is pretty awful too. The titular Good Man is actually Sean Connery, who gives a better performance than usual, but again, it’s certainly not anything of note. The film’s most underused resource was Diana Rigg and I spent the last act wishing she and Friels would run off together so I’d at least get to see fifteen minutes of good acting and chemistry.
I only watch Good Man because of Friels and knew, given Bruce Beresford directed it, the film would be severely lacking. Maybe that lack of any expectation dulled me to the film’s more obvious deficiencies. Or maybe they were just too dull to care about.
ⓏⒺⓇⓄCREDITS
Directed by Bruce Beresford; screenplay by William Boyd, based on his novel; director of photography, Andrezj Bartkowiak; edited by Jim Clark; music by John du Prez; production designer, Herbert Pinter; produced by John Fiedler and Mark Tarlov; released by Gramercy Pictures.
Starring Colin Friels (Leafy), Sean Connery (Murray), John Lithgow (Fanshawe), Diana Rigg (Chloe Fanshawe), Sarah-Jane Fenton (Priscilla Fanshawe), Louis Gossett Jr. (Adekunle), Maynard Eziashi (Friday) and Joanne Whalley (Celia).
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Trancers (1985, Charles Band)
There’s something real strange about Trancers. It’s not the film’s obvious references to early 1980s sci-fi successes, Blade Runner and The Terminator (cop travels back in time to fight zombie bad guys who look like regular people). It’s certainly not the direction–while Trancers is incredibly low budget, $400,000 still was a few bucks in 1985, certainly enough for this story, which doesn’t need its future scenes. No, what’s strange about Trancers is its love story, between future cop Tim Thomerson and local girl Helen Hunt. It’s real good. The scenes between Hunt and Thomerson, though poorly written, are great.
I used to be a huge Helen Hunt fan, until she became a big movie star, then I noticed she was good when she didn’t have a kid. But in Trancers, she’s appealing, with a great acting sense. She’s around twenty-two in this film, but it’s a reasoned, mature performance. Thomerson is also good, but his acting is a completely different style. I saw Trancers initially, years ago, because Leonard Maltin gave it two and a half or something and based the rating on Thomerson’s comedic performance. Thomerson’s got a tough guy self-awareness in Trancers. The opening of the film–the future–is very film noir. The costumes, the dialogue. But, first it’s in a future cafe, so it shouldn’t really work, and then it’s on a sunny beach, so it shouldn’t work either… but it does. The absurdity of it works. But the scenes with Thomerson and Hunt, you get to watch these two vastly different acting styles, which ought to conflict, seamlessly connect. You enjoy seeing these two people act together.
Another bonus to Trancers (but not one significant enough to save it if not for the acting, which I also need to include Biff Manard in, he’s good) is the economical storytelling. It runs seventy-six minutes and, while the first act with all the future stuff is too long, the second and third acts are real well-paced. Actually, given its writers, Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo are TV guys, it’s not surprising the second and third acts actually feel like a TV show plugged on to the end of (bad) feature’s first act. The writing’s not good, but the movie moves and it’s not bad enough to hinder the performances.
★½CREDITS
Produced and directed by Charles Band; written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo; director of photography, Mac Ahlberg; edited by Ted Nicolaou; music by Phil Davies and Mark Ryder; production designer, Jeff Staggs; released by Empire Pictures.
Starring Tim Thomerson (Jack Deth), Helen Hunt (Leena), Michael Stefani (Whistler), Art LaFleur (McNulty), Telma Hopkins (Engineer Ruthie Raines), Richard Herd (Chairman Spencer), Anne Seymour (Chairman Ashe), Miguel Fernandes (Officer Lopez) and Biff Manard (Hap Ashby).
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Conquest of Space (1955, Byron Haskin)
I rented Conquest of Space because–according to IMDb, Kubrick credited it as a 2001 influence. There are a handful of visual elements I noticed, one as obvious as the rotating space station, one I might be making up (repairing of the antenna tower). Besides looking for these visuals, there’s not much else to engage with. Conquest of Space is ludicrously bad for most of the film. Until William Hopper showed up, there was no one in the cast I recognized. While director Byron Haskin has done good work, he doesn’t have a good way of placing people amid Conquest’s technological surroundings. The sets seem confining, but the shots are wide open. There a number of terrible, distracting edits in the film, all to and from close-up, and I don’t know if it’s Haskin’s fault for not shooting right or the editor’s fault for not being any good.
The writing, however, eventually makes Conquest mildly interesting, at least as a historical document, which is what my greatest hopes were for it once the terrible narration began after the Paramount logo. It’s pre-Space Age, so there’s the space station before there’s a moon landing. There’s not even a moon landing, because they go straight to Mars. The film actually has some sophisticated ideas working–it doesn’t do much with them of any interest. For example, if God makes a tree and Mars is treeless, God stops at Earth while man continues on. I’ve actually never heard it laid out as such and it gives the feeling Conquest wasn’t a completely doomed idea. When the astronauts are stranded on Mars, played right, it could have been good.
The special effects, which must have been cutting edge back in 1955, aren’t good. There’s one good shot of the spaceship approaching Mars, otherwise, the model work is too two dimensional and the matte work, marrying the actors to the models, is too. No perspective in these moments. Some of the miniature work is nice though, but I was expecting more from the special effects. They just added to the film’s rushed feeling… but if it weren’t for the writing, directing, and acting, Conquest of Space might be all right.
ⓏⒺⓇⓄCREDITS
Directed by Byron Haskin; screenplay by James O’Hanlon, based on a book by Chesley Bonestell and Willy Ley, adaptation by Philip Yordan, Barre Lyndon and George Worthington Yates; director of photography, Lionel London; edited by Everett Douglas; music by Van Cleave; produced by George Pal; released by Paramount Pictures.
Starring Walter Brooke (Samuel Merritt), Eric Fleming (Barney Merritt), Mickey Shaughnessy (Mahoney), Phil Foster (Siegle), Benson Fong (Imoto) and William Hopper (Fenton).
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A-1 Headline (2004, Gordon Chan and Chung Kai-cheong)
A-1 Headline is a good, old fashioned newspaper movie. There’s the conflicted editor, the smarter than he gets credit for photographer, the amusing guys around the office. Even the newspaper office looks like a good movie newspaper office: rows of desks, yellowing fluorescents, and antiquated computers. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t have a particularly interesting mystery. The actual investigation, once underway, is the least compelling part of the film, but A-1 still manages to be compelling. However, the characters are compelling. The story is not engaging at all. A handful of important questions go unanswered and I could tell early on there’d be no satisfactory answers to them. It’s just constructed wrong. What starts as a workplace conspiracy mystery ends as a nice little newspaper film, with a little romance no less.
Besides that lack of an engaging plot, there’s little wrong with A-1 (except a lot of the music, which sounds like something from a 1980s commercial). It’s funny, the character relationships develop in interesting ways… It’s a little short in some parts, but overall it’s a fine length since that lack of engagement would get tiring. The acting is particularly good, especially Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, who gives a deep performance. A-1’s borderline cutesy in many ways (mostly because the lead character, Angelica Lee, is a fashion reporter and the introduction to the character requires it) and the film has a fanciful air to it, which the intrusive music doesn’t help, but Wong really brings something to it. It’s not quite his film, but he’s the whole reason to watch it. The rest of the cast is good, with Lee turning in a really nice performance, even when she stops being the center of the film.
Nice is an odd adjective for A-1, but it seems to fit. While the film doesn’t work out well–it’s still all right, but doesn’t decide its thesis until… I don’t know, the last scene–it’s well-made and full of characters who are worth spending a boring ninety-five minutes watching.
★★½CREDITS
Directed and written by Gordon Chan and Chung Kai-cheong; director of photography, Nau Yee-shun; edited by Cheung Ka-fai; music by Johnny Njo; produced by Allan Fung; released by Panorama Distribution Co.
Starring Anthony Wong (Fei), Angelica Lee (Ling), Edison Chen (Kei), Tony Leung Ka-fai (Tsang Tat-si), Eric Kot (Ma) and Lam Ka-tung (Tong).
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