Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

#406 - The Long Kiss Goodnight
Renny Harlin, 1996



When an amnesiac woman living a quiet suburban lifestyle starts to remember her former life as a spy, it plunges her and a two-bit detective into the middle of a government conspiracy.

Four million dollars. That's how much Shane Black managed to earn off the screenplay for The Long Kiss Goodnight, an action-comedy that's not all that much of a comedy despite its many one-liners and off-beat visual gags. Though Black has earned something of a reputation as a screenwriting auteur in a manner akin to that surrounding someone like William Goldman, I have ultimately never been all that impressed with any of the films he's had a hand in writing, though I do acknowledge that there is some spark I'm probably missing. Even so, The Long Kiss Goodnight is a film that's only sporadically likeable with its familiar high-concept being given a somewhat comedic treatment as Geena Davis's chipper schoolteacher/wife/mother sustains a head injury that prompts her to slowly remember her past self, who just so happens to be a callous government agent that is proficient in all sorts of dangerous skills. This happens around the same time that she is attacked by a murderous convict and soon has to team up with a low-rent investigator (Samuel L. Jackson) in order to find out the truth behind what happened to her, which naturally involves going up against a serious government conspiracy.

Davis and Jackson have some decent odd-couple chemistry that changes up as Davis gradually makes the change from hapless innocent to cold anti-hero while Jackson gives a decent enough performance as a character that's at once a complete loser yet is still sort of cool as a result of being played by Jackson. Other characters tend towards the forgettable, even when played by memorable character actors like Brian Cox or David Morse. Though there is the occasional clever one-liner or exchange (often between the two constantly-bickering leads), too much of the script sounds like it's trying too hard to be clever (especially when you have one character watching The Long Goodbye on TV in one scene as if to draw attention to how much this movie wants to be a clever mystery film in its own right), while the conspiracy plot only occasionally throws up a surprise in its development. The action also leaves something to be desired, though the finale is handled reasonably well. Unfortunately, a few smart moments here and there plus a couple of good leads are not enough to make this otherwise pedestrian '90s action thriller stand out.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

I've not seen it in quite some time, but I remember The Long Kiss Goodnight being worthy of more than two popcorn boxes.

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Geena Davis just has unique charisma and that's the main reason I like this movie. Her being tough despite most hopeless situations always puts a smile on my face.

I've seen this a few times but, much like Showdown In Little Tokyo, I've not seen it in forever. From what I remember, I'd probably give it an extra half. Maybe a full box if it turns out I enjoy it more than I thought I did.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Was very happy to read your feelings on The Terminator.

Maybe I missed something.

You say you're doing one movie a day, yet you're at movie # 406??

I think the idea is that he must watch and review at least one movie a day.

Pretty much, yeah.

#407 - Terminator Salvation
McG, 2009



During a post-apocalyptic conflict between humans and sentient machines, an up-and-coming member of the human resistance crosses paths with a mysterious human.

With the apocalyptic conclusion of Terminator 3, the franchise had finally managed to break free of the formula that had worked wonders two times out of three and was now ready to advance the story into the war-torn wasteland that had been hitherto seen in brief glimpses throughout the previous three films. This film, which takes place roughly a decade before the human victory that would prompt the events of the first film to take place, has a certain freedom to the development of its narrative that does suggest there's some serious potential for a good story. However, it's clear from the instance that its title is featured in the opening credits twice that Terminator Salvation is going to have its work cut out for it as it tries to take a classic action franchise into unexplored territory. This installment once again focuses on John Connor (now played by Christian Bale), who still hasn't managed to reach his destiny of being humanity's last best hope for survival and is instead merely a high-ranking member of the human army's chain of command that does butt heads with his immediate superiors, especially when he learns that a young soldier named Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) is being targeted by Skynet. Meanwhile, a death row convict (Sam Worthington) who was executed before Judgment Day stumbles out of the ruins of a research facility into the harsh, machine-dominated wasteland and must team up with other humans he encounters along the way in order to survive.

Without a well-established plot to build off, Salvation definitely flounders when it comes to developing its own original plot. In trying to stay true to the series' mythology, it ends up constructing a plot that starts off being somewhat insensible (why does Skynet think it needs to target Reese, who at this point is merely a young scavenger who's barely a part of the resistance?) and finally heads into full-on nonsensical territory with its dramatic reveal late in the film. In the meantime, it pads things out in both plots - John Connor doesn't have much of an arc beyond being the ignored voice of reason who is torn between loyalty to his bosses and doing what he feels is right, while Worthington's character has an extremely bland redemption arc that is in no way improved by the apparently dramatic reveal of his true nature (which would constitute a spoiler if not for the fact that it was not only in the trailer but is also predictable right from the very first scene of the movie). The flatness of the characters is reflected in their actors' performances; Bale may have earned infamy for a passionately furious on-set meltdown during production, but that same energy barely translates to his take on John Connor as a comically gruff stereotype of a soldier. Worthington, meanwhile, shows off a limited range that doesn't feel justified even by later revelations, but at least Yelchin seems credible enough as a scared young kid. Other characters feel inconsequential and so do the performances (and it's also weird to see Helena Bonham Carter appear in a very brief role as a terminally ill doctor).

Even leaving aside the drastic shortcomings of the narrative, the visual side of things leaves a lot to be desired. I concede that there's only so many ways you can depict a post-nuclear landscape, but even this one seems an especially dull and washed-out shade of brown (which is in stark contrast to the vibrancy of the past few films). The action features CGI to a significant and physically implausible extent, whether it's the inclusion of Transformers-like giant robots or the existence of motorcycle-like robots. It gets to the point that when a familiar-looking face appears late in the film, the deliberately uncanny fakeness is practically welcome. Terminator 3 had already ably demonstrating that upping the scale of the action and effects wasn't an automatic guarantee of quality, but here it's applied in such a way that beggars belief in all the wrong ways. That's without acknowledging the film's extremely tacked-on use of diegetic music with the inclusion of Alice in Chains' "Rooster" and Guns n' Roses "You Could Be Mine", the latter of which also doubles as a bemusing call-back to Terminator 2 even when it also makes sense in the context of the narrative, while there's nothing memorable about Danny Elfman's score.

While one might be inclined to doubt Terminator Genisys being any good on the basis of its admittedly ludicrous "reset the future" premise (which I already discussed in the relevant review), it's at least somewhat preferable to the series sacrificing virtually all its personality for the sake of a largely generic post-apocalyptic blockbuster (and saving all its personality for eye-rolling call-backs to its pre-war predecessors). Its main plot is riddled with some serious gaps in logic even if you haven't seen any of the previous installments, and the acting isn't good enough to sell the characters even when they are played by otherwise-renowned thespians. What started off as a franchise that distinguished itself through astounding effects work and captivating action has now become indistinguishable from any other big-budget sci-fi blockbuster that prioritises spectacle over substance. The fact that this was originally intended to be the first film in a trilogy is both amusing and sad - despite what the film tried to convey through Worthington's character's arc, apparently not everyone (or every film) deserves a second chance.

#408 - Terminator Genisys
Alan Taylor, 2015



With the conclusion of the post-apocalyptic war between man and machine, a soldier in the human resistance is sent back through time to protect the resistance leader's mother but finds that things in the past are not quite what he expected.

Original review found here.

#409 - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Albert Lewin, 1945



In Victorian England, a young man uses magic to transfer any ageing or physical debilitation he encounters onto a portrait featuring his likeness.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is an interesting enough adaptation of the Oscar Wilde novel of the same name, though I do have to wonder whether or not I'd be better served by having read the novel instead. It's an okay enough film thanks to some interesting enough possibilities that cinema affords it source material. The largely black-and-white film has a couple of shots rendered in full-blooded Technicolor in order to effectively capture the titular portrait both when it is first revealed and then towards the end when the effects of his lengthy and decadent life take their toll on the portrait. The first instance is striking because of the sudden shift in film stock and capturing the image in all its photogenic glory; the latter is a genuinely unsettling image that I have a little trouble believing came out in 1945. Between those two pictures, the story unfolds as the titular protagonist (Hurd Hatfield) soon develops an obsession with the idea of eternal youth thanks in no small part to the wry musings of acquaintance Lord Henry Wotton (George Sanders, once again playing a smarmy-voiced high-culture type) about the subject. To this end, he discovers the magic that leads to him being able to attain eternal youth while also weathering the effects of a hedonistic lifestyle.

While having Wilde for a source author guarantees that there are some clever one-liners weaved in and out of both the narration and dialogue as well as no small degree of homosexual subtext, The Picture of Dorian Gray ends up being a somewhat pedestrian example of a novel being put through the Hollywood system. There are decent actors in the mix - Sanders being the obvious one, though Angela Lansbury and Donna Reed turn in alright performances - but it's a shame that Hatfield makes for a relatively dull take on the protagonist who seems like he got the role based on his incredibly youthful and attractive appearance. Otherwise, it's a serviceable but not amazing rendition of its source.

#410 - Premium Rush
David Koepp, 2012



A New York City bike messenger is assigned to deliver a package that draws unwelcome attention from an extremely corrupt police detective.

On its surface, Premium Rush seems like it'll be an engaging enough high-concept mix of lightweight comedy and thrills as it takes a fairly standard MacGuffin plot and builds it into the world of bike messengers, who do exactly what the name implies. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays one such messenger who is ready to narrate his carefree philosophy about how much he enjoys his job in between snarking at every character he comes across regardless of how much he actually likes them. His skill at bike-riding also extends to him developing a preternatural ability to predict different routes through rush-hour traffic and whether or not they would result in him crashing. The plot picks up when he has to deliver a seemingly innocuous package, but he soon becomes a target for an unruly detective (Michael Shannon) who becomes obsessed with getting his hands on the package that Gordon-Levitt is carrying. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game that frequently jumps back and forth in time to showcase the perspectives of various players such as Shannon and the package's sender (Jamie Chung), thus explaining what's in the package and why everyone needs it sent one way or the other.

Despite the supposedly high-speed premise that involves chases up and down the busy streets of New York, Premium Rush ends up being not so much dull as slightly irritating. Gordon-Levitt's cockiness far outweighs his charm and makes for an annoying protagonist while nearly everyone else involved delivers equally flat or unlikeable performances. Shannon is the one who stands out in any favourable way, even if he is just channeling his usual brand of Walken-like weirdness. It struggles to fill out its already brief running time in any meaningful way, relying on extended flashbacks and unnecessarily convoluted circumstances to pad things out. Even the promise of fast bike chases and stunts isn't enough to keep this entertaining. The film also seems unsure of how seriously it wants to take itself as well, with its jokes not being funny while the serious nature of the climax is downplayed considerably. The entire "flash mob" sequence alone is enough to break what little suspension of disbelief you might have left. Premium Rush definitely ends up being the kind of movie that has been done far better before, and the introduction of bicycles does nothing to make it a sufficiently interesting film in its own right.

#411 - Kung Fury
David Sandberg, 2015



An '80s-style action parody concerning the titular police officer as he decides to go back in time to fight Adolf Hitler.

Original review found here.

#412 - Duck, You Sucker!
Sergio Leone, 1971



During the Mexican Revolution, the leader of a gang of Mexican bandits forcibly recruits an Irish demolitions expert to help him carry out a bank robbery.

Out of all of Sergio Leone's six main films, this is definitely the one that gets the least appreciation, though that isn't to say it gets none whatsoever. At first, it's a little hard to see why - it's certainly got plenty of action thanks to the frequently-explosive nature of its premise involving Rod Steiger's trigger-happy bandit and James Coburn's mischievious terrorist, plus its position in Leone's loosely thematic trilogy about American history suggests it's got a depth on par with Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America. In that company, it's not hard to see how it might be overlooked - even in the relatively simplistic context of the Dollars trilogy, one can see how it's perhaps a little too complicated or even derivative compared to those films.

It's not hard to think of the belligerence that Steiger and Coburn share with one another during their journey together is like any of the uneasy alliances that form between characters in any of Leone's previous films, most obviously that which formed between Eli Wallach and Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly because of how much Steiger and Coburn resemble those particular characters. At least they are good enough actors to compensate for the repetition; I can almost buy Steiger playing a Mexican, while Coburn's charm manages to survive his mangled Irish accent (between this and his playing an Australian in The Great Escape, who told this guy he could do foreign accents?). That being said, it's more than a little difficult to sympathise with Steiger's character and his many plights throughout the film when one of the first things he does to establish himself as a fiendish fellow is to not only rob a stagecoach full of wealthy white racists, but also to rape the sole woman amongst them. At least Coburn's character's back-story, which is slowly revealed through flashbacks, makes him a much more likeable and tragic figure.

The film's setting in Revolution-era Mexico (with the occasional reference to Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata plus the inclusion of modern aspects like machine-guns and the German military) does make for good action sequences, as does Coburn's frequent use of dynamite in combination with an utterance of the film's title. The odd-couple chemistry between him and Steiger and the occasional comic moment counterbalance the instances where Leone attempts to deconstruct the concept of revolution by showing us that, while the regime is definitely a reprehensible one that will imprison people in bank vaults and carry out mass executions, the fact that Steiger's amoral-at-best outlaw constantly lucks into being hailed as a revolutionary hero shows just how hollow the heroism behind it can be. Meanwhile, Coburn's background as an IRA member in exile from his homeland demonstrates the toll it can take on a person no matter how much of a success or failure the revolution ends up being. Though I was stuck with a pan-and-scan version of the film (easily the worst possibly way to watch Leone), I could still pick out some well-made visuals. Meanwhile, Morricone provides what's easily his worst collaboration with Leone - even now, the only piece that sticks with me is the lilting leitmotif that plays during Coburn's flashbacks, which is accompanied by an irritating high-pitched voice singing "John, John" over and over again. It's easy to say that Duck, You Sucker! is my least favourite Leone film after only a single viewing, especially since it doesn't quite manage to justify its 150-minute running time no matter how many gunfights and explosions it sets off. Time will tell if it grows on me, though, and being the worst Leone film still puts it far ahead of many other directors' worst films.

#413 - Wild Wild West
Barry Sonnenfeld, 1999



In 1869, a pair of U.S. marshals are forced to team up with one another in order to bring a ruthless Confederate scientist to justice.

I remember being all of nine years old and seeing Wild Wild West when it came out in theatres. At the time, I thought it was amazing, with its combination of eye-catching "cattle-punk" (read: the combination of steampunk and Western) aesthetics, ludicrously over-the-top nature, and of course the constantly bantering cavalcade of cracked-up characters that populated the film. Those were the days. Unfortunately, revisiting Wild Wild West in 2015 because it just happened to be on TV only contributes to the sad and ever-growing realisation that nostalgia as we know it is a fake idea and should not fool us as much as it does. It's a shame, because even now there seems to be hints of a good movie inside as this movie attempts to replicate the success of Men in Black by swapping that film's sci-fi genre for the Western. It once again teams Will Smith's charismatic back-talking persona with a polar-opposite white character (Kevin Kline as a snooty colleague with a love of gadgets and disguises) and puts them both up against an unambiguously villainous scenery-chewer (Kenneth Branagh as a legless megalomaniac). There are differences, sure, but it's still fundamentally the same film.

Unfortunately, the most glaring difference is that Men in Black actually held up as a decent (if not exactly amazing) genre comedy when I re-watched it at some point in the last year or two. Despite the promise of a Western adventure full of wacky antics and clever one-liners, it barely delivers. The humour is off-colour in not quite all the wrong ways, but enough of them. Smith and Branagh's constant exchanges that consist of little else than jokes about one another's race and disability respectively, the many jokes that play the concept of men disguised as women for laughs to the point where even people who'll find that funny will get tired of the terrible jokes based off the subject, or the frequently asinine bouts of physical humour that happen as a result of all the various weird inventions that characters create. Assassins hiding in paintings, extremely elastic ropes, an execution method that involves magnetic collars and giant flying buzzsaw blades, the invention whose appearance marks the beginning of the third act...it's probably the sheer weirdness of the visual aesthetic and the physically implausible action it creates that is the main reason I don't quite feel like giving this a 0.5 at the moment (even though it probably should be generating excitement instead of unintentional amusement). There's also the impressive Elmer Bernstein score that deserves a better movie than this (especially that main theme). Otherwise, it's still a serious slog through all kinds of comedy that I thought was hilarious back in the day but now barely raises the thought of amusement.

Man, you are watching way too many movies you dislike.

The price of high (or maybe just idiosyncratic) standards.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who didn't like Premium Rush. I thought that movie was lame.

#414 - When Marnie Was There
Hirosama Yonebayashi, 2014



When a young city girl with asthma is sent to live with relatives in the countryside, she strikes up a friendship with a mysterious girl who lives in a supposedly abandoned mansion.

When Marnie Was There is the final film produced by Studio Ghibli before the company officially went on hiatus, with the possibility that it may be the renowned studio's final film ever hanging over it and possibly influencing one's perception of it. The same feeling of finality ran through my mind when I watched Hayao Miyazaki's last directorial effort The Wind Rises earlier this year. Fortunately, When Marnie Was There amply lives up to the staggering expectations heaped upon it, and it does so with an admittedly simple storyline that is nonetheless fleshed out with all the things that make Ghibli great (save for excessive amounts of fantasy). Instead, When Marnie Was There takes an approach that involves magical realism with its tried-and-true premise centring on Anna, a 12-year-old city girl heading to the countryside in order to get some fresh air and recover from some recent asthma trouble. Aside from having a physical illness, she also has some trouble relating to others and appears to have depression as well, even as she encounters multiple locals who are willing to accommodate her. Things change when she discovers an abandoned mansion on the edge of some marshland that appears to come alive after dark. There, she meets and eventually befriends the titular Marnie, a blonde girl who seems to be a ghost but claims to be real.

As with any Ghibli film worth its salt, the visuals are top-notch even though there is nothing overly inventive about them - compared to Miyazaki films full of fantastic creatures and elaborate world-building, it's a decidedly mundane affair. This is not a strike against it; if anything, it's a point in its favour that it's able to construct a sufficiently compelling narrative even while being more grounded in realism than your average Ghibli effort. It's sentimental without being mawkish and one can definitely sympathise with Anna even when she makes mistakes, while there are no genuine villains to be found anywhere (except perhaps in the case of a handful of strict guardians on Marnie's side of the story, but they are not major antagonists). Instead, the conflict emanates from Anna trying to figure out Marnie's full story while also learning to confront certain issues regarding her status as a foster child and her general sense of loneliness, which does go into some extremely emotional areas as the film progresses (though an experienced audience member may be able to pick what's likely to unfold before it actually does in certain places). The resulting film ends up being an all-around stunning piece of work in terms of both ostensible style and narrative substance. While I'm not inclined to think of it as a contender for the best film Studio Ghibli ever produced, I reckon that, in very much the same way that The Wind Rises was the right film for Miyazaki to retire on, so too is When Marnie Was There a good film with which Studio Ghibli can conclude an extremely phenomenal run.

But in this case, he's right. Wild Wild West is a terrible movie.