Excalibur

Excalibur

"Merlin lives in our dreams now.
He speaks to us from there."
- King Arthur in Excalibur

King Arthur, one of the most enduring heroes of literature had not fared so well on the big screen. It wasn't even until Knights of the Round Table (1953) more than a half century after the birth of cinema that any serious attempt was made to tell his story.

In one of the latest takes, director Guy Ritchie brings his cockney gangster aesthetic to the Arthur legend in King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword. The film has been nearly universally panned by critics with the editing and lack of narrative flow being the most frequent complaints: "sloppily edited" (Salon.com), "fast cuts and jagged pacing... a brutal, bleedin' mess" (Rolling Stone), "narrative logic has no purchase" Slate "scattershot edits and on-the-fly plot descriptions" (Toronto Star).
While there have been some successful comedic takes (notably A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail), only one serious film truly stands out - director John Boorman's 1981 film Excalibur.

Excalibur co-written by Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg draws inspiration from Thomas Malory's 15th Century version of the tales, Le Morte d'Arthur. The film is a lavish production featuring the full contingent of knights always clad in exquisite plate mail armor, and outstanding location photography in Ireland. All set to a soundtrack of Wagnerian opera and other classical greats. It's almost impossible to sit still when Arthur rides into battle for the first time, to the rousing strains of Orff's O, Fortuna.

The entire cast is top notch, including Nigel Terry as Arthur, Nicholas Clay as Lancelot, and Cherie Lunghi as Guenevere, but the real show-stealer is Nicol Williamson who gives a uniquely charming take on the old wizard Merlin. The supporting cast is a phenomenal who's-who of then-unknown actors like Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, and Gabriel Byrne!

Surprisingly, reviews were very mixed at the time. Roger Ebert called it, "a mess", and "a record of the comings and goings of arbitrary, inconsistent, shadowy figures". The New York Times called it pretentious, and legendary film critic Pauline Kael called the dialogue "near-atrocious" and said, "Excalibur is all images flashing by... We miss the dramatic intensity that we expect the stories to have". In other words, editing and narrative flow were among the biggest complaints.

But what a difference time has made. Today Excalibur is widely regarded as a classic, and the definitive screen rendition of Arthurian myth. Review aggregating site Rotten Tomatoes give it an 82% "fresh" (favorable) rating. Compare that to fellow British director Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword which has a mere 28% (A.K.A. "rotten") rating. Maybe one day, decades hence, King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword will be seen as a classic too, but somehow I doubt it.

Troma's War 

"Bad" movies come in three basic varieties: movies that aren't great, but are fun (A.K.A. guilty pleasures), movies that are so bad they're good (A.K.A. the "Plan 9" type), and movies that are just a waste of time (A.K.A. boring). Over the years Troma Entertainment has been responsible for movies of all three types, making it hard to know just which Troma films are worth the time.

Troma's War (also known as 1,000 Ways to Die) falls into all three of those categories, depending on which version you end up seeing. The film was made when Troma was at it's creative and financial height - the mid to late 1980s, following two of Troma's best films, The Toxic Avenger, and Class of Nuke 'em High. Unfortunately, the original cut of the film was considered too graphic to receive an 'R' rating by the MPAA, and the film was heavily edited. The edited cut was again rejected, and the film was finally released in a version so heavily edited as to drop it into the "waste of time" category. Predictably it flopped and nearly sunk Troma with it.

The film is a parody of 80s action films, and the undercurrent of biting social commentary is definitely there. The plot involves an airline crash on a Caribbean island which is inhabited by a group of terrorists are planning to launch an attack on the U.S. The crash survivors soon run afoul of the terrorists, and eventually after learning of their plans, lead guerilla attacks to take them down.

Despite being one of Troma's best films, it was treated like a red-headed stepchild, one of Troma's more obscure titles for decades, difficult to find in video stores or big box bargain bins. Fortunately it lives on today and can be found for streaming on numerous sites - for free! The best version, however is probably the one available through Troma's own YouTube channel, as it is the best print and avoids pan-and-scan aspect ratio cropping, and some seriously bad sound issues and technical glitches some of the other versions have.

'The Defender' is like 'The Bodyguard' with Kung Fu

The Defender, original title The Bodyguard from Beijing

The Defender (1994)

What if the movie The Bodyguard had less Whitney Houston and more kung fu? It would probably resemble the film The Defender, whose original title was in fact, The Bodyguard from Beijing. 

It was likely inspired by that Hollywood film as it came out shortly afterward and the premise is essentially the same. A bodyguard (in this case from the capital of China) is sent to defend a beautiful, rich woman, and though he is focused on the mission and she finds his supervision oppressive, they eventually fall in love.

But The Defender not only has kung fu battles, it also has a lot more gun combat than its English counterpart, as well as a younger hotter Asian female lead.

Interestingly, despite being made years before Hong Kong was returned to mainland China, it's extraordinarily pro-P.R.C., with the competent bodyguard from Beijing, and the Hong Kong police portrayed as somewhat bumbling. And even the Hong Kong cops quote Chairman Mao. But despite this decidedly pro-mainland sentiment, the film was still banned by the Communist Party censors.

Like most of its ilk, it requires a lot of suspension of disbelief when it comes to the over-the-top wire work and other stunts (especially in the climactic fight sequence), but fans of Jet Li won't be disappointed.

Reexamining 'Daredevil' (2003)

The 'Daredevil' fans would like to forget.

Reexamining 'Daredevil' (2003)

Most people would rather forget the 2003 film Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck in the title role, which isn't hard to do - it's a very forgettable film. Despite only having come out about 15 years ago, I realized as I recently re-watched it that there were films I saw over 30 years ago that I remember better than this one.

So when the questions comes up, "is it better or worse than you remember," the answer is yes. It's both.

First let's talk about what Daredevil does right. The first half hour of the film is actually quite good. The film opens with Daredevil already a fully fledged crime fighter, and his origin is rapidly, and effectively told in a flashback. There are some changes made to his origin story - instead of a radioactive canister flying by his face, it's a chemical spray from a ruptured drum that blinds him, and it doesn't fall off a truck, it's hit by a forklift swerving to avoid Matt himself who's running from where his father was acting as a mob enforcer on a dockyard. The whole sequence actually makes a lot more sense than even the original comic book version of Daredevil's origin, and it remains the best version of the story ever put to screen.

Other things Daredevil does well includes the red leather Daredevil costume, which is better than even the most recent Netflix Marvel's Daredevil TV series version; the excellent martial arts fight scenes (choreographed by some of the best specialists in Hong Kong film industry); and the excellent CGI representation of Daredevil's radar sense that allows the viewer to see the world as Daredevil "sees" it.

A special shout out needs to be given to the late Michael Clarke Duncan, who is the only actor that hasn't been miscast here. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that his portrayal of The Kingpin is better even than the more recent Vincent D'Onofrio small screen version, though he isn't given nearly as good material to work with, and barely any screen time to develop it. His swaggering hoodlum that started as a mob enforcer from the Bronx and worked his way to the top of New York's criminal underworld is again both faithful to, and an improvement upon the comics' Kingpin of Crime.

That brings up the casting, which is the first big problem with the film. As previously mentioned, nearly everyone here is miscast. While there's a lot of shade thrown toward Ben Affleck as Daredevil and while he's not ideal, he's not too bad either. His Matt Murdock is actually kind of believable - good looking, charming, exactly the kind of guy you think of when you think of an Ivy League New York frat boy turned lawyer. It's the rest of the supporting cast that's wrong. Joe Pantoliano seems lost in the role of Ben Urich; Ellen Pompeo might've been a good Karen Page, but we don't really know as she's given exactly one line in the whole film; and Jennifer Garner is so unlike the assassin Elektra as to be laughable. Other parts seem to have been doled out to people's buddies like Jon Favreau and Kevin Smith. And then there's Bullseye...

Bullseye was always one of the most interesting Daredevil villains, a former Major League Baseball pitcher whose sole superpower was the ability to turn nearly any object into a lethal weapon due to his knowledge of anatomy and deadly accurate pitching arm - the ultimate silent but deadly assassin. But in this film he's an Irish blabbermouth with a bullseye scar on his forehead played by Colin Farrell who mugs his way through the entire film in a cringe-worthy performance every time he's on screen. As soon as he shows up the film goes completely off the rails.

But casting isn't even the biggest problem with the film. It seems like 20th Century Fox wanted their own version of Tim Burton's Batman, and would stop at nothing to get it. There is a needless and intrusive gothic style imposed on the proceedings with Murdock living in a gargoyle-encrusted penthouse and sleeping in a coffin (yes, really). At one point during a climactic battle inside a church, a flock of bats flies out of a pipe organ for no good reason but to distract the bad guy at a crucial moment. 

The twin problems of under-developed script and over-edited final cut result in a disjointed film where characters just show up for fights as if they had been pre-arranged on "X" rooftop at "Y" hour. Little attention is given to Daredevil alter ego Matt Murdock's role as defense attorney of Hell's Kitchen's underprivileged. The whole thing comes off as the bland, forgettable action movie that's representative of everything that was wrong with comic book movies prior to 2008 (The year The Dark Knight and Iron Man came out).

The good news is that there's a Director's Cut of the film widely available on DVD and Blu-Ray that goes a long way toward addressing some of these problems. There's an entire subplot involving Nelson and Murdock defending a murder suspect that adds mystery and courtroom drama, the awkward love scenes between Matt and Elektra are removed, and the overall tone is darker and more violent. The bad news is that even this much improved Director's Cut can't completely redeem the film. It's no longer awful, but it's still largely forgettable.

The War Game

The War Game

It's hard to believe that while the world has lived with the threat of nuclear war for over 70 years, yet the actual results of a nuclear exchange are rarely shown on film. Perhaps it's not so surprising when you consider that the powers-that-be do not like the citizenry to be reminded of either how complicit they are in risking such a situation, or how woefully inadequate they are at dealing with the aftermath of such a situation. 

Case in point, The War Game, a documentary directed by Peter Watkins for the BBC in 1965. Despite being produced by the BBC, it never aired as it was immediately banned by the BBC. The ban has been so long-lasting that even at the time of this writing, more than a half century later, it is still a hard film to track down - despite having won an Academy Award!

The made for American TV film The Day After, itself incredibly controversial and highly censored by the government and the network, made two decades later in the 1980s, is the only other really notable film of its kind that stands along side it, and it too is very difficult to find.

The War Game packs a punch without ever becoming ponderous, thanks to a 45 minute run time. It is one of the first documentary films to use the now commonplace dramatic re-enactment technique to visually illustrate its what-if scenario about a nuclear strike in the south of England.

Although we now know even a limited nuclear exchange would certainly be far worse than even this film depicts, it's still a very relevant document.

Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures

 Until fairly recently nerds really didn't get that much attention in film. If present at all, it was usually as comic relief in some teen comedy best forgotten. Rarer still was (and to some degree still is) the depiction of female nerds, and African-American female nerds are so rarely seen as to be virtually unheard of. This is why this movie, about a group of female African-American mathematicians who worked for NASA in the 1960s is called Hidden Figures.

It resembles other mid-20th Century nerd biopics like A Beautiful Mind and The Imitation Game, Hidden Figures deals with gravely misunderstood and mistreated individuals whose work was critically important to the governments of the Western powers. But unlike those other films, Hidden Figures deals with an entire group of women who worked behind the scenes at NASA rather than just on one individual - focusing on three notable members of the group.

Entertaining and enlightening without becoming ponderous, Hidden Figures is a good reminder that The Right Stuff wasn't limited to just astronauts.

Kedi

Let's face it, cats are the pet of choice among nerds and geeks. They are intelligent and largely self-sufficient. It's why cat memes rule the Internet.

So a feature length documentary about cats is such a no-brainer that one wonders why it took so long. Kedi (Turkish for "cat") is a documentary about several cats in Istanbul.

Since at least the medieval period, cats have been revered in this city for there ability to keep the rodent population in check. There history undoubtedly goes back much farther in the region, though. They are mentioned in the Quran, with the Prophet Mohammad himself said to have fed one, and of course we know cat worship existed in ancient Egypt. The domestic cat is descended from wild cats in that part of the world. Anyone who has ever been to Istanbul can tell you that there are lots of cats around and the entire community feeds and waters them. World leaders come to pet the cat Gli who lives in the world's most famous mosque, Hagia Sophia.

Kedi focuses on telling the story of seven of these cats. Cameras follow the cats around often at cat-level. There is no narration; no judgements or political stances taken, no strongly pushed point-of-view from the filmmakers. Just video of cats, and interviews with numerous people who feed, shelter and give veterinary care to the cats. The film also features some spectacular aerial footage of the city as well.

Overall Kedi is a delight for cat lovers. As of this writing it hasn't found a wide release, just touring the festival circuit, but if you get a chance it's worth seeing if you're fond of felines.