Year of the Dragon (1985, Michael Cimino)

Year of the Dragon is going to be so racist it opens with a disclaimer from the distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, basically saying they didn’t realize how racist director Cimino and co-screenwriter Oliver Stone were going to get and they’re sorry. Please enjoy the film.

It came out in 1985. Year of the Dragon was too racist in 1985. Against Asian people. 1985. The disclaimer’s kind of astounding and yet, doesn’t really prepare for the film.

Because it’s about a cop who’s too racist even for the other cops—Mickey Rourke (thirty-three playing thirty-seven to forty—getting assigned to Chinatown to clamp down on gang violence, only it turns out the increase in gang violence is junior gangster John Lone orchestrating a takeover. The takeover thing has to be from the source novel because it makes sense and almost nothing in Dragon makes sense.

Unless you look at it through some very twenty-first century critical lenses; now, a disclaimer of my own. I’m going to pay this film as much respect as it’s due, given the only way Stone and Cimino have to move Rourke’s character—not even character development, just getting his character to be active in the plot—is to make the women in his life suffer. They suffer rape, they suffer murder, their humiliation serves as a stage for Rourke to speak on about how much their suffering affects him. It is a lot. The further Year goes, the more reasons there are not to watch it. Other than a dissection, there isn’t a reason otherwise. Not in the 2021, not after The Wrestler and Rourke finally getting to prove his ability. Because there’s some raw talent in his performance here, but it’s a big swing and a bigger miss.

Now. A plot description, using the most appropriate terms to examine Cimino and Stone’s screenplay. Year of the Dragon is about white guy Chad (Rourke) and an Asian guy Chad (Lone). Rourke is married to a white Becky (Caroline Kava)—from the old neighborhood—but is after a younger Stacy, Asian newscaster Ariane. The newscaster thing is important for a few reasons. First, Ariane’s not even believable as a bad newscaster, much less the up-and-comer she’s apparently supposed to be but they never cover her work because who cares she’s a girl. Second, somewhere in the plot there’s something about Rourke feeding Ariane tips for her reports, only it’s never clear how he’d get the information. Second, Cimino and Stone are going to use the newscaster stuff for exposition through the entire film.

And they do have other ways to dumping exposition. At one point Lone’s bodyguard—who doesn’t appear to be in the credits—does an entire recap of their reason for going to Thailand because it serves absolutely no purpose in the narrative. Unless Stone and Cimino actually thought Lone’s arc was dramatically compelling, which it is not. Though them thinking so might explain a lot.

It’s pretty bad. Like, it’s so bad if Ariane and Rourke had bonded over their love of Chinatown and it ended with a “This is Chinatown, it would’ve been better. Instead, they bond over Rourke’s seduction techniques, which are basically ignoring Ariane or Kava saying no until they stop saying it. Again, no reasons to watch this movie.

Stone and Cimino have some other big macho moments for Rourke and company in the film, like Rourke very obviously suffering from untreated Vietnam-related PTSD (no, man, you don’t get it, see his racism isn’t racism, it’s just applied classical liberalism). But Cimino and Stone don’t believe in PTSD; when concerns about Rourke’s mental status come up—from childhood rival for Kava’s affects Raymond J. Barry, who’s grown up to be a cuck cop boss—they’re dismissed.

Also a car explodes when it crashes.

Year of the Dragon’s bad. It’s very obvious in how it’s bad, like thinking you’re inspecting vegetables for a mold spot only to discover it’s intentionally moldy.

Okay photography from Alex Thomson. They use a too spherical lens to the point if you cropped out the distortion it might actually look better, not a good situation. Really good editing from Françoise Bonnot in the first act, not so much for the other two hours of the movie. Not good David Mansfield music. Cimino’s composition is occasionally decent, but mostly it’s low middling.

Really bad dialogue.

Really bad plotting.

Victor Wong might give the most wholly successful performance as the old guy Lone’s trying to muscle out.

Rourke’s doing his best in a bad part, ditto Lone, ditto Barry, ditto Kava. Ariane’s got the crappiest part—Rourke approaches her because she’s Asian and therefor no one can accuse her station of anti-Asian racism when she runs his stories—and gets an exceptional amount of pointless nude scenes. Cimino doesn’t even pretend. He’s never more artful than her nude silhouette sequences.

So while the film exploits Ariane as an actor and her character in general, Ariane’s still pretty terrible. She exists in the universe where twenty-two year-old newscasters are stars but not star stars. Her amazing apartment isn’t in Manhattan, for instance. Not yet. The apartment appears to have been designed to facilitate the nude shots, which is again more effort than anywhere else in the film gets. Rourke doesn’t even have an office. Most of the transitional dialogue is excuses about him not being at his own police precinct, which is either budgetary or Stone and Cimino just being bad at writing this script.

Dennis Dun is the Asian cop who looks up to Rourke for treating him like a real man, being racist to his face.

Given Rourke’s too racist even for the movie cops, you’d think there’d be some kind of redemption arc. But it’s actually about how no one’s racist enough. Or fascist enough. I skipped the fascist stuff because it’s so insipid.

Year of the Dragon’s like a can of garbage. Some stuff in it used to be good, some stuff in it was never good, some stuff in it should be recycled, but all of its covered in unidentifiable, odious liquid.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986, John Carpenter)

Although Big Trouble in Little China takes place in modern day San Francisco and has a whole bunch of awesome special effects, it’s really just John Carpenter doing another Western. This time he’s doing a light comedy Western and he’s got the perfect script for it. W.D. Richter (credited with an adaptation no less) has some great rapid fire expository dialogue. Practically everything Kim Cattrall says in the film until halfway through is exposition, but Cattrall and Carpenter sell it.

It works because Carpenter’s already established Big Trouble’s tone with star Kurt Russell. Russell’s doing a John Wayne impression, but John Wayne as a goofball who can’t figure anything out. He ends up playing sidekick to Dennis Dun. Carpenter, Russell and Richter take every opportunity to use the character for laughs. But Russell’s able to play the obnoxiousness as likability. It makes for a constantly entertaining film.

There’s also the James Hong situation. Hong plays the villain, both as a seven-foot tall sorcerer and as a wizened old man. Even though the villain’s obviously dangerous–something the film establishes right off–most of his scenes are played for outlandish humor. Carpenter’s big on getting physical humor out of his cast. Cattrall’s especially good in those scenes.

The film’s got excellent production values–particularly the editing. Dean Cundey’s photography is nice, but the fight scene editing is just phenomenal. Also essential is the frantic and playful score from Carpenter, in association with Alan Howarth.

Trouble’s a lot of fun.

King Kong (1933, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)

King Kong is a perfect film. I don’t think I’d realized before. It’s always hard to talk about films like Kong, influential standards of American cinema. I want to talk about how its structure still sets the tone for modern films–the gradual lead-in (it’s forty-some minutes before Kong shows up), the non-stop action of the second half, how establishing characters well in the beginning means they can go without dialogue for twenty minutes and still be affecting. Or the special effects. I’d love to talk about the special effects, like how I’d never noticed the absolutely brilliant sound design–the most effective stop motion moments are the ones with the people Kong interacts with. Murray Spivack’s sound brings them fully to life–best evidenced as Kong’s rampaging through the village and attacks a house. It engenders concern for the inhabitants, who must have been six inch dolls.

But Kong isn’t a perfect film for its impact. It’s perfect because of itself. The film opens with the scene on the docks, quickly establishing the peculiar tone of the first half. Everyone sort of takes Robert Armstrong’s gung ho filmmaker with a grain of salt. They’re bemused by him. Armstrong’s perfect for the role, big and amiable, it’s hard to be mad at him when he does something selfish and stupid. Just like the characters, who get themselves into the mess by listening to him and knowing better, so does the audience. Armstrong’s like a big kid for lots of Kong, always coming up with the best action after the consequence.

That first scene also goes far in establishing Bruce Cabot. Cabot’s character is Kong‘s most interesting–as is the way the film handles him. The scene with Cabot ranting to Fay Wray about women not belonging on ships–we’re supposed to understand it’s Cabot who’s off, not Wray. Regardless of whether or not he’s right, the first forty minutes of Kong are about Cabot learning to stop acting like a little boy (which Armstrong never has to do). It makes the romance between Cabot and Wray a wonderful one to watch unfold–that “Yes, sir” following their first kiss elicits a fantastic mood.

These scenes all happen long before Kong shows up, long before the roller coaster starts. I didn’t even get to the coffee shop scene, where Armstrong’s enthusiasm even gets the viewer going–promising everyone, viewer and Wray alike, the wait will be worth it.

And when Kong does show up, it’s clearly worth it. King Kong doesn’t really make the monster a sympathetic character. He tends to chomp on people and his curiosity usually leads to someone dying in a horrific manner, but they do make him into a real character. Utterly insensitive to the chaos he causes, Kong still has these wonderful, inquisitive moments. He’s frequently confused by the little people and it rounds out the film, bringing about emotional concern for him without having to light it in neon. The film reduces Wray’s part to victim at the halfway mark–and she certainly never shows any concern for Kong–which is narratively reasonable. It also puts the onerous on the viewer–if he or she wants to care for Kong, it’s because of his or her response to him, not because the film’s dictating.

Once Kong gets back to New York, the whole thing seems to wrap up in fifteen minutes. There’s the interesting monologue from Armstrong though, regarding what he’s done to Kong. He’s fully aware he’s been culturally insensitive, as well as zoologically, but he doesn’t care. The people don’t care what they’ve done to Kong and Kong doesn’t care what he does for people. It creates an interesting, ego and superego free narrative. Anything the audience wants to bring to it or attribute to it, they’re bringing themselves.

King Kong‘s a lot of things audiences and critics had to come up with new adjectives to describe back in 1933–a romance, an adventure being the two easiest–but it’s simply just a fantastic way to spend a hundred minutes.

Prince of Darkness (1987, John Carpenter)

I’d forgotten Prince of Darkness‘s more fanciful notions–Jesus the space alien, still sent to Earth to save us from the Devil, but this time, the Devil’s kind of a space alien too (or not)–and its less creative ones (the Devil uses projectile vomit to posses people). It’s Carpenter at his strangest, the late 1980s period, where he made low budget pseudo b-movies. Prince of Darkness isn’t really a b-movie, if only because Carpenter’s intent, the one unaffected by budget constraints, is quite visible. But also visible are the realities of making Prince of Darkness for its budget.

What’s unfortunate about the film is Carpenter’s lack of inventiveness. Compared to what Carpenter did in the late 1970s, Prince of Darkness feels like a TV movie, only a really well-directed one. Instead of relishing in the low budget, Carpenter tries to work around it, tries to draw attention away from some of the obvious giveaways–the movies set in this church with at least three floors, but after a while… we only see one floor, like sets had to be dismantled. Or the exterior shots of the church, with the menacing homeless people. After a while, they’re only in a couple places (the disappearing Alice Cooper is a whole different discussion).

Or just the closed concept of the film. It deals with the end of the world where signs of imminent destruction are plentiful. Except there are no scenes or shots of regular people noticing these signs. Carpenter lays a framework similar to the modern disaster and destruction movie, but can’t fill it in with the fluff those movies rely on. Instead, it’s a creepy feel–which comes together a few times throughout and really well at the end–accentuated with his familiar synthesizer score. And the goofy reasoning behind the movie.

Much of Prince of Darkness‘s philosophizing sounds like Carpenter just copied his notes unedited. His cast are generally believable as physics majors, but smart undergraduate… certainly not doctoral candidates. However, Carpenter’s got some really sharp dialogue in the film, which is a pleasant surprise.

The best performances are Dennis Dun and Victor Wong, as they’ve got most of the film’s best lines. Jameson Parker and Lisa Blount, as the young(ish) lovers, are okay but nothing more. Poor Donald Pleasence has almost nothing to do. The rest of the cast varies. The ones who end up zombies more so then others. But soon-to-be Carpenter regular Peter Jason is good.

Where Prince of Darkness pulls itself together is the end. Carpenter lifts a lot from his other films for this one’s sequences–Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing–but even that unoriginal approach can’t affect his skill. The last twenty minutes, even accounting for Dun not trying to break through a wall from his side, just letting Parker and company come through the opposite, is great. There are some make-up problems–budget–and some silly script stuff, but Carpenter knows how to make it work and he does.

Tremors (1990, Ron Underwood)

When I first rediscovered Tremors, around 1995, it was on laserdisc. In the 1990s, Universal was one of the finest laserdisc companies, probably the finest. They put out a special edition of Tremors and, remembering that I liked it when I saw it on video (everyone saw Tremors on video), I bought it. Probably from the expensive place next to this movie theater… laserdiscs were hard to find in suburbia. At that time, somewhat due to the mad-love for their laserdiscs, but also because Universal still made generally acceptable films back then, I actually believed Tremors was a willful decision–a film to invoke fond memories of Universal’s 1950s sci-fi films. Tonight, I watched Tremors over It Came From Outer Space, also set in the desert….

Tremors, quite nicely, holds up. Perfectly acted, amazingly well-constructed, it’s a shame the team behind it hasn’t gone on to more. They actually went on to more Tremors, during Universal’s 1990s direct-to-video rush… Sequels that are all right. The first film being made for cheap probably didn’t hurt the following films from being cheap either.

I’ve had Robert McKee on the brain all day, reading him for the first time today, all about the deconstruction of a scene. Tremors doesn’t work like that. It has some scenes, sure, lots of them, but it’s mostly action and it’s almost all in one setting. I’m not going to sit around and pick at it–it’s too good–but, for me, thinking about McKee, it’s interesting. I’m reading McKee for fiction writing and McKee writes for screenwriting. So how come he doesn’t work for Tremors? It is–arguably–one of the more lastingly popular films to emerge in the last fifteen years….

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it in awhile, check it out again. I always watch Tremors after dark, though. Don’t know why, it’s just one of those films that you watch after dark.