The Staircase (2022) s01e05 – The Beating Heart

So, the present action of “The Staircase”—minus Colin Firth flashing back to being a kid with a shitty dad so he could grow into a shitty dad himself—starts in fall 2001 and goes to 2017. This episode begins in 2004 when Firth’s character has been in prison for six months. Meaning the trial took more than a year. The show did a terrible job with the passage of time on it; it’s possibly the worst thing the show’s done, and it’s had some lows.

Amusingly, the kids get together in this episode and talk about the awkward passage of time; how it hasn’t been so long. Sophie Turner once again has to acknowledge neither Patrick Schwarzenegger nor Dane DeHaan care that Toni Collette is dead; the real question is, are Firth and sons sociopaths or just narcissists. If it were a better show, I’d say the time acknowledgment was intentional.

It is not a better show.

Though this episode’s definitely one of the stronger ones, again with a script credit to Craig Shilowich, whose episodes have been much better than show creator Antonio Campos. Who also doesn’t direct (he did the previous episodes); instead, it’s Leigh Janiak. So maybe less Campos means better “Staircase.”

Besides the kids selling off the house to pay for Firth’s appeals, the documentarians are the significant subplot. Producer Frank Feys wants the documentary to accurately represent the trial from the jury’s perspective; editor Juliette Binoche (who’s having her letter-writing friendship with Firth now) and director Vincent Vermignon want to emphasize Firth’s possible innocence. As a result, there are numerous pointless scenes about it, setting up Feys as an asshole.

Not sure a show entirely based on manipulative storytelling should get meta about manipulative storytelling.

Firth in prison is the main “present-day” plot. He’s in somewhat constant danger and more sympathetic than ever, since he’s got Neo-Nazi meth heads out to kill him. He also confirms he voted for Gore (meaning he’s not racist), which they could’ve established earlier.

Speaking of elections and manipulative storytelling, the episode reveals Firth lost his mayoral election in a landslide, making the first episode’s implication the establishment framed him because he was pushing them out a little much. Never look back, I guess.

In that vein, Toni Collette’s flashbacks are all about Firth being a piece of shit to Turner and nothing about the bats. They have a dinner party scene where he’s a controlling prick, but more interesting, it introduces friends who never appear again.

It’s scary this episode’s so much better than usual. It’s also got the least Michael Stuhlbarg; correlation doesn’t mean causation, but… it’s got the least Stuhlbarg.

Probably Firth’s best acting in the series. He’s outstanding.

And DeHaan finally gets some material, and he’s not very good; not sure why I was expecting him to be any good. But, then again, the material’s wanting.

Whatever.

Blade (1998, Stephen Norrington)

Back when the movie came out—on DVD, anyway—I tried watching Blade 1 a couple times. The first time I turned it off before I was twenty minutes in, which used to be a soft rule (give the movie twenty minutes, depending on runtime); I think I gave it until Stephen Dorff showed up, then had to stop. Stopping when you see Stephen Dorff is always a reasonable action. The second time I with a friend (because a Blade buddy might help me get through it?); we put it on, I promptly passed out. The funny thing about the latter attempt was I passed out before I had stopped it, though I think I woke up for some of the end… but maybe not. I didn’t know Blade had a bad Raiders of the Lost Ark rip for an ending.

The first failed attempt was during the controversial—amongst my film enthusiast friends—“you don’t stop a movie if you start it” period of nineties film snobbery. That period overlaps, possibly entirely, with the “sit through the end credits to show respect for the crew” period of nineties film snobbery. These periods weren’t me solo, in fact I picked up at least the latter from my film snob peers. The former seemed like common sense, but is, of course, the anthesis of common sense. The second failed Blade attempt—I mean, I was also blasted—was during in a different period; “why bother watching if you’re not learning anything from it.” That period didn’t just cover film, it was for all media ingestion. Why read a novel if it’s not going to teach you (specifically) anything applicable for your writing craft. That third period went the longest, well into when I started blogging about film here on “The Stop Button.” While I see that third period as an organic result of the first two, along with some seasoning from academe, my film snob pals never went for it. Somehow it was too far a leap.

And I’ve also given it the boot, slowly over time, as I discovered how I wanted to write about movies.

In some cases, it’s spending three hundred words talking about not watching the movie. And Blade is the perfect subject matter for that approach. Because Blade is not a good movie. I toyed with the idea, after all these years, of how crazy it would be to give Blade a star. But anything good about it is incidental. Director Norrington just couldn’t manage to make it terrible because he was distracted screwing something else up. The film also has a stunningly bad script from David S. Goyer. Between the godawful exposition (Kris Kristofferson gets a lot of it and can’t do any of it) and the quizzical plotting—when the Raiders of the Lost Ark thing takes over in the second half, along with the big second act surprise, Blade feels like a very different film. Sort of. It’s still ugly in all the ill-advised ways Norrington employs, like the harsh, high often contrast lighting (courtesy Theo van de Sande, who either’s responsible or not but I wouldn’t want to track his career either way) or the crappy CG. Blade is ostensibly super-gritty but only when it’s Wesley Snipes. The nineties emo vampire stuff is never super-gritty. Norrington’s understanding of super-gritty is occasional shaky cam and inept head room and letting editor Paul Rubell chop whole seconds of action out to make it seem speedy. Every once in a while, there will be a sequence—like Snipes with his samurai sword taking out an endless stream of vampires dressed like they’re Joker thugs from Batman ’89—and you can see exactly how Norrington could’ve done it well. Because pretty soon it would be done well. Blade anticipates the visual tone of future films but none of the future style or technical ingenuity. Because Norrington sucks.

Someone also got the idea to have Mark Isham score it like John Williams, which doesn’t make sense until the end when it’s Raiders; for a while the movie pretends it’s Terminator 2—Snipes and partner Kristofferson hanging out with on-the-run-from-the-vampires hematologist N'Bushe Wright in their clubhouse; those scenes are really weird with the Isham score. Goyer’s script isn’t derivative and is bad. Norrington’s direction isn’t ever not derivative and is bad. It’s incredibly interesting how the two collide.

Stuck in the middle are Snipes and Wright. Blade can’t help but give Wright a great role and Goyer and Norrington can’t help but try to destroy it. Norrington’s got some… toxic masculinity issues. Or maybe just rape culture ones. It’s a couple things, with Wright being on the receiving end later (courtesy “no way” ex-boyfriend Tim Guinee), but the first one is Norrington’s onscreen director title card. It’s a gross “really, dude?”

Wright comes out very sympathetic, but she’s a lot better at the urban vampire action than the pseudo-Raiders thing. Some of the problem with the Raiders thing is Norrington’s bad visual storytelling, some of it is Goyer not giving Wright enough to do; if any of it’s Wright’s fault, you basically can’t tell. Goyer and Norrington give their separate badnesses 110%. You can barely make-out the acting through it.

Well, except with Dorff, who’s hilariously bad, Donal Logue, who’s hilariously bad, Udo Kier, who’s hilariously bad but also very obviously just playing a caricature and not trying… every once in a while, you get the feeling Blade could’ve been a lot better if it just let itself camp out on the shitty vampires. Wesley Snipes killing a bunch of silly, shitty white vampires would be a fun movie. Especially if Norrington had long enough shots of Snipes kicking ass. Snipes gives his physical performance his all in Blade and Norrington picks up about twenty percent of it. Other times the camera will be focused on a pillar instead of Snipes doing a jump kick or whatnot. Norrington is a stunningly bad action director, even for bad action directors.

Other bad performances include Arly Jover, who at one point seems like she’s going to give a good performance but then doesn’t. Sanaa Latham is actually good, which takes a few moments to comprehend–unqualified good acting in Blade.

For Snipes, it’s a good lead role. Ish. There’s not a lot of heavy lifting, his occasional personable action hero insert shots are weird, but he gets through it. He and Wright have less chemistry than… I don’t know, Kristofferson and Wright or something. It’s unfortunate and another way the filmmakers fail Wright.

I’m a little curious how the Isham score stands on its own—at one point he’s got to add all the tension to an action sequence because Norrington can’t figure it out–but otherwise, Blade doesn’t have much one could learn from it. Outside the contextual trivia.

It’s nowhere near as bad (or good) as it could be, which is the biggest disappointment of all.

It’s eh.

Vampires (1998, John Carpenter)

Vampires is a mess.

I mean, there’s some good stuff in it, but it feels like the least interesting parts of the characters’ stories. There’s a little bit of sequel setup–and the never happened sequel seems a lot better–but so does a prequel to the film’s events.

It takes place over a couple days and a lot happens in them. To fill the audience in, Carpenter has a bunch of expository scenes. While they’re not terrible, they’re just James Woods swearing a lot and beating up Tim Guinee. Woods and Carpenter sell the scenes… it’s just unfortunate the scenes are so narratively unnatural.

Carpenter opens with a big vampire battle scene, introduces his characters, then proceeds to kill off most of them. He leaves Woods and Daniel Baldwin. Woods is the lead, so he has to stick around. But Baldwin? He’s not even a sidekick. Almost immediately after the movie’s done with its setup, Baldwin’s off babysitting Sheryl Lee as she turns into a vampire.

The babysitting scenes are really, really boring.

A lot of the problem is Carpenter’s approach to vampires. They’re very bestial, but by dehumanizing them, they don’t make good villains. There’s not a single scary moment in the film and some of the scenes–the vampires digging themselves out of the ground–just look silly.

The performances are okay. Guinee’s good, Baldwin and Lee have really good moments. Maximilian Schell is bad.

Nice cinematography from Gary B. Kibbe. Carpenter’s totally dispassionate, but still professional.

Men of War (1994, Perry Lang)

Given Men of War’s blind earnestness, the daddy issues, and John Sayles being one of the credited screenwriters, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was going to be Steven Spielberg’s first war movie. I first read about Men of War when IMDb came around and I looked up Sayles. A John Sayles written Dolph Lundgren movie seemed unbelievable and I never got around to seeing it (I didn’t always have a video store carrying the Lundgren oeuvre available). Men of War is pre-Lone Star so Sayles’s connection could be anything, but the film does try to look like a “real” film, not the straight-to-video one it turned out to be. Ah ha, just looked at the ‘trivia’ at IMDb. It was originally going to be directed by John Frankenheimer, who had apparently decided to find a project with the same opening as Friedkin’s Sorcerer. I’m kidding, but Frankenheimer and Friedkin are reasonably interchangeable.

Failed actor turned director Perry Lang tries real hard with Men of War. He stretches the anamorphic image in moments of great intensity and he also does a lot of slow motion and has a lot of obnoxious fade-outs. His battle scenes are awful, but so’s the rest of it, evening out the experience. Men of War is not a good film. I could only spot one scene with any Sayles style to it and then it was Sayles-lite, like it got rewritten or was just a coincidence (if Sayles’s work was not actually on the produced screenplay). The music’s similarly awful, but worse. It’s a rip-off mostly of the Predator score (Lang would have done better if he’d been ripping someone off).

Men of War does have a few things to offer, however, which is an achievement considering it’s worse than the last bad film I saw (Battle for the Planet of the Apes). B.D. Wong is fantastic. Dolph Lundgren has visibly–in the film–become a good actor, but his role’s so flatly written, it’s not really a good performance. Tim Guinee is good, so’s Tom Wright, both as some of Lundgren’s mercenaries (oh, the film’s about a mercenary who decides to help the innocent people he’s been paid to hurt). Don Harvey, who isn’t in it enough, is decent and would be better if his role were better written. Same situation for Tony Denison. Men of War’s biggest failing, besides the direction and writing and some of the other acting (Catherine Bell is unspeakably bad and there are a number of other lame performances), is it’s lack of sense of humor. If it knew how to laugh, it’d probably be a little better. It’d be hard though, since it’s so visually uninteresting. But I’ve finally seen it… even though I’m no longer trying to see all Sayles’s produced screenplays.

But B.D. Wong is great.