How to go from pretty good to hilariously awful in one sequel...

Disaster films.

The very name conjures up big budget films with 2-3 big budget effects shots and an all star cast generally running around hamming it up. Formulaic to the extreme. And, since the heydey of the disaster film was the late 60s and early 70s (read, before Star Wars), special effects technology wasn’t very advanced, and by today’s standards, often not too special.

Given all that, it’s easy to forget that there were actually a few really good ones made. Case in point, Airport.



Airport may not have been the first, but it was one of the most important of the disaster films, spawning a whole lot of sequels. The problem is it’s easy to dismiss this film given how thoroughly it was skewered in the spoof Airplane! (a film which Entertainment Weekly ranked as the #1 comedy film of all time).

But Airport, actually is a pretty good little film when judged on it’s own merits. It isn’t a horribly improbably incident (like most disaster films), and is often likened to a version of Grand Hotel on a plane. Yes, it’s a soap opera, but an engaging one.

The stand out here is George Kennedy as ground crew chief mechanic. He’s the kind of blue collar hero today’s movies are sorely lacking – a guy who knows his job and can save the day from all the other people who don’t know theirs.

Probably the most amazing thing about Airport, is that it was made over 30 years before 9/11 (which now is most of a decade behind us), but the issues it deals with – terrorists, over crowded airways, overworked air traffic controllers, airports not expanding to meet demand – all these things are still just as problematic, indeed more problematic, today as they were in 1970.

Let’s get one thing straight, Airport may not be art, but it is a fun ride.

Airport 1975



The sequel to Airport is a different matter. Here we have a bigger budget film connected to the first only by Kennedy who is back as Petroni.

This movie is bad.

Really bad.

But it too is fun to watch in the ‘so bad it’s good’ sort of ways. Enjoyed with a six pack, this film might even be funnier than Airplane! the film that spoofs it. I mean just look at this cast: Charlton Heston, Karen Black, Gloria Swanson, Helen Reddy, Erik Estrada, Dana Anrews, Sid Caesar, Linda Blair – it’s like a best of Hollywood Squares crossed with a B-movie marathon! And (as a stretch), there’s Conrad Janis, Norman Fell and Jerry Stiller as 3 drunken old farts (in 1975! – were these guys ever young?). Definitely a good movie to have friends over and see who can hurl the best Rocky Horror style one liners at the screen.

Feel my pain.

Today's movie review comes by request of Joseph Kirschbaum of Cincinnati who writes, "I would love to hear your take on Casshern."



Casshern

Casshern was a 2004 adaptation of a 1993 direct-to-video anime, Casshan: Robot Hunter. It takes place in the future. But this future is a retro future where many things actually resemble past eras like in Brazil. Unlike Brazil, however, there’s no obvious reason for it, apart from perhaps choosing things that looked cool, and maybe because Steampunk is trendy. O.K., I could live with that… if it was the only thing there was no reason for, but…

In 2004, due to breakthroughs in technology, there were a few films that were long on effects and short on everything else - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and The Chronicles of Riddick both immediately spring to mind – and Casshern shares a lot of things in common with those films. In fact, the robot army scene is almost an exact replica of the robot army sequence in Sky Captain – although since both films came out the same year, it’s hard to say who ripped off whom.

The plot of Casshern is so convoluted as to defy synopsizing. It’s like the Matrix movies that way (see previous post about The Matrix). Also like the Matrix films, we have an unstoppable superhero protagonist – he’s even made up of “Neo” cells (perhaps a direct Matrix reference), and a villain who is a “Neo-Sapien” who vows to eliminate homo sapiens (ala Magneto in X-Men). The majority of the film involves these two super powered guys with hazy, unspecified godlike powers beating on each other Mighty Morphin Power Ranger style for most of the film, breaking off and resuming their battle at random times (oh yeah, another thing the film is guilty of – in the middle of a fight the fight will just end – no one wins loses or gets knocked out, they just start doing other stuff and forget about the fight).

Worse, again like the Matrix films, it thinks it’s philosophical, and much “deeper” than it really is, with characters spouting cheesy platitudes rather than engaging in any kind of meaningful dialogue. I generally give the dialogue of a foreign film a pass because I never know how much of it can be blamed on the translators, but there’s just too much of it in Casshern to let it slip by without mention. Don't believe me? See for yourself.

I’ve mentioned a lot of other films in this review, and I’m not done yet because Casshern also borrows heavily from Akira, and just about every other SF anime of the past 25 years.

But, cinematically speaking, perhaps the most apt comparison here is to The Crow: City of Angels – a film that is incredibly beautiful to look at, but makes no damn sense. It’s painfully obvious when watching that even if it were a perfect translation of the Japanese (which it probably isn’t) it still wouldn’t make any sense. Like a cut scene from a videogame taken out of context - a two hour long cut scene.

In fact, on that count it’s down there with some of the worst offenders of the genre, and deserves to share a cell with the likes The Crow: City of Angels and Highlander 2: The Quickening.

On the bright side, it is visually a treat (I was not surprised to learn that the first time director who is also the writer & cinematographer, much like with the aforementioned Highlander was primarily a music video director). But, as gorgeous as it is, I had a hard time sitting through the whole thing.

My recommendation - turn the volume down and the METAL up, and enjoy it for the 2 hour music video it is!

The 2000s in Review

Continuing our look back at the movies of the past decade.

Reboots - we'll be talking a lot about this trend.
Let's begin with a look at how to do reboots right - the most successful reboot of a series in the 2000s:



Batman Begins

I grew up on Detective Comics.

It's where DC gets its name.

The company invented the superhero - and has been making quality stories almost twice as long as their biggest competitor (Marvel Comics Group). Today they are owned by one of the world's largest conglomarates - Time Warner AOL - which also owns one of the oldest movie studios (Warner Bros.). Unfortunately, they have had a terrible track record of getting their superheroes faithfully adapted to the large and small screen.

Until now.

I love the work of Tim Burton - he was an interesting choice to helm the Batman project. He certainly put the Goth in Gotham. But his penchant for cartoony weirdness grew thin the second the master criminal was no longer The Joker.

Joel Schumacher grew up loving the 60s TV adaptation of the comic. Which, though campy fun perhaps, was not Batman, the dark knight detective. Using that as the basis for his run on the Batman franchise yielded... well, let's just paraphrase my physics teacher, "garbage in equals garbage out".

I don't mean that to be harsh - Mr. Schumacher is quite a film craftsman, it's just that his point of reference - like that of much of America's is skewed. When I was a kid, comics were dismissed as trivial children's fare, yet they were tackling things far more mature than the downright juvenile prime time TV hits that were adapted from them (Wonder Woman and The Hulk immediately spring to mind).

Mass audiences were totally ignorant of the very cornerstones of the Batman, grim avenger of the night, mythos. They could never imagine a Batman that picked up a gun, They had no idea who Joe Chill or Ras Al Ghul were. They couldn't tell you a thing about Arkham Asylum. But all of those things are cornerstones of the Batman background, and essential to understanding the character.

The creators of Batman Begins remember though. All of those elements come into play in this film. Is it perfect ? No. Does it take liberties with the source material? Yes, but not to the extent of any of the past efforts. Does it defy the laws of physics? At times, yes, but no moreso than comics generally do. You'll find no Batmobiles driving straight up the sides of buildings for example. Comic book physics are at lest preserved.

And that all adds up to the best Batman movie yet. One that is actually true to the spirit of the comics for the first time. And that, is something to be praised. And seen.

Two Forgotten Classics from 1972

Today we're taking a look at two forgotten gems from 1972. One with Robert Redford, and the other by Director John Huston.

The Hot Rock



I have to admit this film surprised me a little. Based on the title, and the fact that it stars Robert Redford (an actor not known for comedy roles), I was expecting a serious heist thriller. It was a heist film alright, but it was more of a comedic caper, albeit a deadpan one, than an edge-of your seat thriller. Redford, just out of prison, is recruited by a friend to put together a team (Ocean’s 11 style) to steal a diamond for a foreign government. To avoid spoilers, let’s just say things don’t go as planned. While this is by no means must-see stuff, it’s fun to watch. If you like the offbeat crime films of say the Coen Brothers, which rely as much on quirky characters and farcical situations more than outright jokes, The Hot Rock might be worth digging up.



Fat City

At the other pole we have the late era John Huston film Fat City. Fat City is a boxing film that takes place mostly in Stockton, California, and centers on aging boxer Tully (Stacey Keach) and up-and-comer Eddie (Jeff Bridges). The story is a down-and-out look at the American dream that plays like California's equivalent of Midnight Cowboy with fresh faced Bridges in place of Jon Voight, and Keach in place of Dustin Hoffman. Even the soundtrack sounds like Midnight Cowboy. Relentlessly downbeat, but rewarding.

New Orleans past is never past.

In the Electric Mist

In the Electric Mist is an adaptation of James Lee Burke’s 1993 novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. The story deals with Cajun detective, Dave Robicheaux’s investigation of a murder when a body is discovered in a Louisiana swamp following a Gulf Coast storm. But the murder is only one mystery Robicheaux must solve, the other is why he keeps seeing and hearing from the apparitions of Confederate soldiers.

The film starts Tommy Lee Jones as Robicheaux, and is not an action oriented P.I. film but the kind of slowly unraveling mystery typical of other recent Jones films such as his previous effort, In the Valley of Elah.

The last time Robicheaux made it to the big screen was more than a dozen years ago, played by Alec Baldwin in the box office disaster Heaven’s Prisoners, which lost 4 times as much money as it made.

So, why revive this series now? I believe the film itself holds the key to that mystery. The film changes the tropical storm which is responsible for uncovering the long submerged body to Hurricane Katrina – which is logical given the location. But I suspect there is more to it than that. The film itself is kind of like metafiction, because there is a film taking place within this movie, a Civil War film (which supplies a possible explanation for the Confederate soldiers Robicheaux keeps seeing) but is also mentioned as bringing much needed income to the area - “we’re dropping close to 40 million dollars into Iberia Parish”, says one of the characters. This, I believe, is the smoking gun behind reviving this 16 year old novel.

The film stars the usual New Orleans boosters like Ned Beatty and John Goodman, even bluesman Buddy Guy in a small role. It has a lot of heart but lacks punch, coming across as a slapdash Big Easy for Katrina relief. Which isn’t such a bad thing; if you like the genre, it just might be worth your time.

An Early Herzog Work That Not Enough People Have Seen

Every Man for Himself & God Against All
AKA The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
AKA The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser

Many people in the U.S. only know him for his more recent work like Grizzly Man, but
Werner Herzog has pretty much been doing character studies on odd, interesting and provocative people for over 25 years.

Herzog cast Bruno S., (a real life mystery man whose own life parallels the story) as foundling Kaspar Hauser, the young man without a past who showed up in a Nuremberg one day in the late 19th Century.

The film is stark in it’s portrayal of alienation, but with a life and humanity all it’s own. The look of the film is one distinctive to films of the 1970s a time when beautiful technical advancements in color film had been made over just a few years earlier – and Herzog takes full advantage of this to show the quaint, picturesque German landscape.

While I think it fall short of achieving the heights the best Herzog film have, many critics disagree with me, ranking it as his best, and on many top 10 lists. The film has been remarkably influential, influencing movies as diverse as Julien Donkey Boy, and Castle Freak.

The Matrix vs. The X-Men

A look back at the two big sci-fi superhero action series of the past decade.

The Matrix vs. The X-Men

I know I'm a minority on this, but I thought The Matrix was all FX. In fact that is all I can watch it for. The idea of harvesting humans for their body heat is just too ridiculous for words. There's an advanced society.

I also can't stand the way so many people take Fishburn's fortune cookie "wisdom" way too seriously...What was the only good line from Mystery Men?..."You must master your anger..." "Or what? Anger-will-be-my-Master?" That dog came out the same summer, but it was like they were making fun of the Matrix with that line.

But what gets me more than even the bad science and bad philosophy of what is supposed to be a "Philosophical Science Fiction" story, is how it is not even internally consistent. I will forgive a lot, IF you play by the rules YOU set up.

At one point in the film Neo is trying to escape a building. In order to block his escape, the baddies that control reality just throw up a brick wall.

What the Hell?

If they can do that, why not just seal him in by walls. Make a little Neo sardine tin. You wouldn't even have to suffocate him, just keep him imprisoned forever.

Don't get me wrong, I like it for the action and effects. I think it is head and shoulders above most of its ilk in that department. That is what I watch it for. That's why it is still a good movie. But to me its all martial arts and gunfire, if I look past that it annoys me.

It is possible to make an intelligent science fiction/action movie – I thought that X2, for example, had a lot to say about humanity. A friend of mine even saw some parallels to the Iraq War in the movie – now that is a human action movie with a story, to me. When it comes to The Matrix though, overall the story is very black and white. The bad people are bad, the good people are good.

X2, on the other hand, raises a lot of ethical issues. Right now, in the real world, there are governments that require particularly skilled martial artists to be registered the same way a gun is. Assuming people were born with potentially lethal powers, why shouldn't they be registered, or marked so that you could see them (not a concealed weapon). As a matter of fact, if they as a group threatened the world as a whole - regardless of their intent - if their bodies were actual weapons of mass destruction, why shouldn't people be interned or killed? If your people are being oppressed, what is wrong with fighting back by any means necessary?

When I was a kid in the 1970s, before Star Wars, SF movies were not taken seriously by mass audiences because the special effects were so cheesy. But to me, I always just used my imagination - the effects weren't what made the movie. It was the philosophical issues they brought up. I'll take a good SF story with bad effects over a bad story with good effects. For example, I think the original Planet of the Apes is superior to the remake. (And I refused to even see the remake of The Time Machine). I think most people are the other way around. They want the effects, not the story.

With X2, this movie has effects that are not nearly as cool as The Matrix - but that is counterbalanced by a stronger, character driven story. A good strong skeleton on which to hang the effects. This is probably because X2 is basically an adaptation of the excellent graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills.

The Matrix is fun to watch, I enjoy a lot of films that don't stand up to critical thinking, but they rarely stick with me even 5 minutes after the credits roll.