Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

#510 - Ant-Man
Peyton Reed, 2015



A recently released ex-con attempts to pull a burglary and instead ends up being recruited by an old scientist who has designed a high-tech suit that allows the wearer to shrink to the size of an insect.

My general opinion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe varies pretty wildly to the point where I'm not inclined to think of it as a genuinely great franchise but it's at the point where I'm willing to watch virtually every entry, if only to keep up with all the other geeks out there. Even so, Ant-Man had my interest from the outset simply because it had Edgar Wright attached. Wright has been responsible for directing generally likeable pieces of work that combined raw pop-culture enthusiasm with some rather inventive filmmaking and I have yet to see him direct anything that I genuinely disliked. As such, I was intrigued when I learned that he would be handling Ant-Man and then disappointed when I heard that he had left the project due to creative differences. Even so, I figured that I had to see for myself what the final result would be like. At the very least, it seemed like it would be a film that knew how to have fun with its admittedly ludicrous premise even within the studio-mandated parameters common to the MCU. To this end, Paul Rudd is an example of good casting as he plays an ex-con recruited by the former Ant-Man (Michael Douglas) to be the new person to don the red-and-black suit that allows the wearer to shrink down to the size of an ant. The fact that said suit is driven by an incredibly advanced scientific formula also ends up being what drives the plot as Douglas's protege (Corey Stoll) seeks to develop his own version of the formula that can be weaponised and sold off to the highest bidder. In order to stop him, Douglas hires Rudd to help him steal Stoll's prototype suit with the help of his estranged daughter (Evangeline Lilly), who is able to train Rudd while also spying on Stoll.

Much like last year's Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man seems to compensate for its superficially bizarre premise by having its narrative beats play out with a certain degree of predictability. The juxtaposition of an invention being alternately used for good and evil has served as the plot device for many a Marvel film (the ones that don't revolve around magic stone MacGuffins, anyway) and it's getting to be rather repetitive. I can take the recycling of plot developments a bit, but it becomes especially egregious considering how long the film's first act takes to set all the pieces in motion. Origin stories always feel like a chore, though at least in this case it's helped along by the characteristically snarky Rudd and especially Michael Peña, who threatens to steal the show as Rudd's fast-talking and overly enthusiastic ex-cellmate (his speedy storytelling sequences definitely have Wright's fingerprints all over them). Lilly and Douglas also tend to provide good foils not just for Rudd but also for each other as they argue about training and mission specifics while also dealing with the conflict that has kept them apart for years. Stoll ends up being something of a weak link whose character does not stand out enough to avoid feeling like a composite of previous Marvel villains (specifically the ones from all three Iron Man films).

Being a Marvel film, Ant-Man boasts some relatively slick effects when it comes to depicting the hero's powers and how they allow him to provide a rather interesting variation on the standard heist film. The film also mines Ant-Man's powers for comical effect on a regular basis, whether it's through the rigours of the inevitable training montage or the delightfully absurd climatic set-piece (though I am rather disappointed that the fight that plays out to the sound of The Cure is awfully brief and forgettable - it is one of several things that I can't help but feel would have been improved by Wright's direct involvement). There are also an unsurprising number of references to a bunch of other MCU films (such as one scene where Ant-Man must fight off another member of the Avengers in order to recover a plot device), but nothing that feels like a major lock-out to neophytes. While the stand-alone Marvel films tend to vary rather wildly in terms of quality, Ant-Man can at least be appreciated as some fairly escapist fun. It doesn't reinvent the wheel or anything, but nobody really watches Marvel films for that.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

I thought Black Swan was a very good movie overall; I just didn't like the ending. Chypmunk recently shared a similar opinion. Now The Wrestler is a movie that I absolutely loved. Of course, I could very much identify with Rourke's character.

I didn't say it in a bad way - for some reason, I thought of something I read once that was attributed to François Truffaut and said that every director makes the same film over and over again (presumably regardless of quality or talent). Also, I did already note the variations in each of the films but especially how the proximity of The Wrestler and Black Swan made the latter feel like a deliberate attempt to create the opposite film of the former. A heavily stylised psychological thriller about a female ballerina would be quite the antithesis to the gritty realistic sports drama about a male wrestler.

Also, yeah, cricket, the ending didn't really do it for me. That in particular felt like another instance of Black Swan being too similar to The Wrestler for its own good:

i saw Black Swan and The Wrestler right around the same time, and i thought The Wrestler was far more memorable than Black Swan. it hit me right in the feels. i can still remember that 'last performance' Rourke gives before it freezes the frame. Portman, well, i forgot what happened to her until i just clicked on your spoiler there.

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letterboxd

Good review of Black Swan and interesting comparisons, though I don't know if it flaws the picture(s) in any way. I love both of the films and weirdly enough I never thought about the comparison though it is definitely obvious.

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/watching movies for mark f/
MovieMeditation's Cinema Reviews // Film Diary 2015 // Letterboxd Profile // MovieMeditation's Top 50 Horror

I don't think the similarity between the films is enough to significantly affect my opinion of Black Swan. I addressed plenty of other reasons as to why I thought it was merely alright more so than a great one.

#511 - Catch Me If You Can
Steven Spielberg, 2002



Based on the true story of Frank Abagnale Jr., a teenage runaway who becomes an incredibly talented con artist whose actions result in him being constantly pursued by the FBI.

As this thread will attest, I haven't really cared too much about Steven Spielberg's post-2000 output. The films I've seen have ranged from the passably tolerable to the aggressively mediocre (with the possible exception of Minority Report, though I'll see how well that holds up on a re-watch). Even so, I proceeded to re-watch Catch Me If You Can to see if my relatively lukewarm first impression after watching it over a decade ago had changed much at all. Granted, It's got a decent enough high concept based on a characteristically Spielbergian story of a larger-than-life character - namely, Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio), who starts off as an ordinary high school student in the early 1960s, albeit one who receives tutelage in small-time cons from his respectable businessman father (Christopher Walken). When his parents divorce, he decides to run away and eventually starts to devise his own methods of conning people, mainly through combinations of forging bank checks and adopting various cover identities that include pretending to be an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer. Eventually he starts to draw the attention of the FBI (personified by Tom Hanks as a strait-laced investigator who takes the case incredibly seriously) and so begins a merry chase across America and eventually across international boundaries between the two extremely different yet fundamentally similar characters.

Catch Me If You Can does have some strengths. DiCaprio is somewhat unremarkable with his rather familiar method of playing a charmer with a sad side. He is still decent enough to carry the film and has some good interplay with Hanks, who makes for a goofy yet sufficiently threatening antagonist. Walken is also pretty solid in an Oscar-nominated turn as a character with some wily charm and pronounced vulnerability. Other good performers show up as well (such as Amy Adams as Frank's first truly serious girlfriend and Martin Sheen as her affable father). However, these performances are all in service to a film that is drawn out a bit too long and a bit too dependent on the comedic nature of the conflict involving DiCaprio staying one step ahead of Hanks. Some credit has to go to the little flourishes, such as John Williams' score that downplays his typically sentimental approach in favour of a perpetually nervous type of music that suits the film's cat-and-mouse narrative (and combines with the elaborate opening credits sequence to set a tone that the rest of the film can't quite seem to match). I also question the effectiveness of having several scenes throughout the film that detail Hanks' mission to extradite an imprisoned DiCaprio from a French prison; the foregone conclusion and most of the scenes referencing it add very little to the film (not even the fantasy sequence that opens the film and takes place on a made-up game show). As a result, Catch Me If You Can is a very middle-of-the-road film that has some okay performances and the odd clever moment but is generally stretched a bit too thin and doesn't bring all that much to the table.

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#512 - Fantastic Four
Josh Trank, 2015



An experiment with inter-dimensional travel results in a handful of people developing a diverse array of superpowers.

The astoundingly negative hype that surrounded the latest attempt to bring the Fantastic Four to the silver screen meant that it pretty much demanded to be seen. It's not like me buying a ticket was going to stop it from being a tremendous flop, anyway - besides, I somehow have not managed to watch any of the previous Fantastic Four films anyway (apart from a fragment of the 2005 one, though what I saw wasn't particularly impressive). Whereas other heavily reviled superhero films were hated because they were horribly tone-deaf and lightweight films in general, the 2015 edition of Fantastic Four is a sign of how badly things go wrong when the tone goes in the opposite direction. Though audiences have generally responded well to films that treat superheroes seriously (the most prominent example being Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy), there have been instances where taking a serious tack hasn't always worked for the better. 2013's Man of Steel drew some criticism for taking a colourful and upstanding hero like Superman and subjecting him to the same dark sensibilities that defined Nolan's Batman films, which did not suit Superman as a character. While I admit that Man of Steel was still a somewhat tolerable film in spite of these shortcomings, I can offer no such concessions when it comes to this film's attempts to take the same approach.

As I mentioned in my review for Ant-Man, the origin stories in superhero movies generally tend to be a chore to sit through, especially when the characters have already been adapted to film at least once within recent memory. A major failing that many have found with Fantastic Four (and which I'm inclined to agree with) is that it spends far too much of its relatively brief running time building the origins of its heroes and villain. It starts with a lengthy prologue involving boy genius Reed Richards making a teleportation device in his garage with the help of his rough-edged but kind friend Ben Grimm, which seems more at home in a 1980s family adventure film than in a grim present-day superhero film. After that, the film seems to get going when teenaged Reed (Miles Teller) and Ben (Jamie Bell) are approached by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) to bring their breakthrough technology to the research institute where he works. There, they are introduced to Dr. Storm's children, studious Sue (Kate Mara) and reckless Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) - as well as the ominously monikered Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell), another tech genius with a serious chip on his shoulder. They all team together to create a giant version that's capable of transporting people to another dimension, but when a duplicitous executive (Tim Blake Nelson) reveals an ulterior motive for the technology, that's when most of the young cast decides to take a stand in the name of science...

Long story short, it takes half the film before the group receive their powers and a sufficiently world-ending threat only emerges in the last 30 minutes of the film. As such, the film is horribly paced; while a 150-minute running time would be no guarantee of quality, in that context taking 50 minutes to simply set up the cast of characters and the main conflicts makes some degree of sense. With this 100-minute film, it means that the sort of excitement and spectacle that are normally the main draw in even the weakest of superhero films are conspicuously absent for much of the running time. As if to add insult to injury, the indulges a lot of other annoying narrative clichés that aren't even any fun; once again, much of the conflict is driven by members of the military-industrial complex who want to weaponise not just the transporter but also the heroes' abilities. Even by the comparatively low standards of narrative complexity set by most superhero films, this comes across as especially uninspired and poorly executed to the point where the introduction of an actual supervillain can feel like something of an after-thought.

This lack of inspiration even extends to the characterisation being so flat that not even otherwise decent actors can pull it off. Good examples include Reed being the kind of genius who is constantly being belittled by disbelieving schoolteachers and co-workers or Ben being the good-hearted kid from the wrong side of the tracks with an abusive family (which opens up a whole other can of worms when you learn that "It's clobbering time!" apparently originates from Ben's physically violent older brother). The decision to cast African-American actors to play Johnny and his father may have drawn controversy in certain circles, but Jordan and Cathey (who were both on The Wire, which just damns this film even further) do considerably well considering the weakness of the material. The same applies to just about every other actor in the film, with the possible exception of Teller; though he has given sufficiently solid and complex performances in other films, he just seems seriously miscast as Reed, which comes across in his severe lack of chemistry with Bell as they must try to sell a strong friendship that comes under pressure but don't manage to do so for reasons that have nothing to do with Bell's being buried under a mountain of CGI and voice modulation.

Whether it's the depiction of the alternate-dimension planet that the explorers visit or the attempts to bring the Four's admittedly rather disturbing new changes to life, none of the effects work here feels egregiously awful so much as exceedingly average. There is the occasional moment of flair to take it above its rather low standard, but those are very occasional. There are attempts to reflect the actual body horror involved with the Four and also Dr. Doom himself, which does provide a potentially interesting dark side to these otherwise campy characters but ends up squandering said potential by skipping over most of it in order to chase a PG-13 rating. This same squandering is also true of the villain's telekinetic rampage through a military base, which mixes with my impressions of director Trank's earlier film Chronicle to make me think that he really wants to make a live-action version of Akira - and that's without getting into how superficially derivative the climax involving a massive blue beam of energy stretching into the sky looks.

Though reading up on the film's difficult production makes me wonder if there is a potentially redeeming director's cut on the horizon, as it currently stands Fantastic Four is an extremely difficult film to like even when you're willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Serviceable performers aren't given much of worth to do, what few attempts there are at creating thrilling action sequences do little to compensate for the incredibly dull first half, the attempt to build a story lacks creative spark and is ultimately undone by some remarkably poor narrative structuring...the list goes on. Just as Batman and Robin showcased the worst that "light" superhero movies had to offer, Fantastic Four is a pretty good example of how wrong a "dark" superhero movie can go. The two films differ in that Schumacher's garish goof-off can at least be somewhat enjoyed as an incredibly silly cinematic blunder, while Trank's sombre sojourn is such an inherently boring and joyless affair that it doesn't work even as an object of scornful amusement.

#513 - Stoker
Chan-wook Park, 2013



A mysterious man moves in with his brother's widow and daughter.

It's amazing what I can be convinced to watch depending on the names attached. Though my only other experiences with Chan-wook Park's work are predictably limited to his thematically connected "Vengeance" trilogy, I was still rather intrigued by how he'd translate his disconcerting yet captivating directorial sensibilities to an English-language film. The trailer for Stoker did make it out to be a sufficiently unsettling work of psychological drama thanks to the uneasy situation that arises in the wake of a family man's accidental death; namely, that his wife (Nicole Kidman) and daughter (Mia Wasikowska) would then have to deal with the unnerving presence of his estranged brother (Matthew Goode). From there, the film starts to channel Hitchcock's classic Shadow of a Doubt as Wasikowska starts to realise that Goode is more than the polite yet eccentric man that he appears to be. This extends to him influencing other rituals of hers such as receiving birthday presents from her father or playing the piano.

Though Park does bring an interesting visual style to the film through some frantic editing and carefully constructed camerawork, it's not enough to compensate for how fundamentally lacklustre the script ends up being. The three leads do their best to elevate the material; Goode once again plays a dapper yet suspicious gentleman, Kidman plays a woman who is gracefully trying to return her situation to normal no matter how abnormal it gets, while Wasikowska arguably gets the most difficult part as she is alternately repelled and intrigued by Goode's character in addition to trying to navigate her own difficult coming of age. This extends to some complicated moments such as Goode's rather perverse fixation on her or the difficulties she encounters at the hands of the male students from her high school (especially when both these factors collide in one of the film's most memorable sequences). Just because the film is sporadically interesting does not make it an especially profound or thrilling drama; scenes are just as likely to be boring as tense, if not more so. It does ramp up towards the end, but that does little to redeem the film as a whole. Interesting visuals and twisty narratives may have served Park well in the past, but even in his hands Stoker feels like a misfire. The confusion over whether or not this film was set in the past or the present persisted well into the film, but that confusion ultimately becomes irrelevant in the face of yet another modern thriller that tries to make explicit what older writers and directors would've effectively left to a viewer's imagination.

#514 - Spring Breakers
Harmony Korine, 2012



Four female college students go to Florida for spring break.

"The trouble with being avant-garde is knowing who's putting on who."
- Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes

That quote sums up the main quandary I have when I try to organise my thoughts about Spring Breakers. It's not like I'm much of a fan of Harmony Korine's films in the first place - he did little to endear me to his sensibilities with the trailer-trash slice-of-life that is Gummo or the incredibly dysfunctional family dramedy of Julien Donkey-Boy. On the surface, Spring Breakers looks like another of Korine's attempts to provide a portrait of a sub-culture without projecting any judgment in the form of explicit condemnation or satirisation. Of course, this results in it appearing to be exactly the kind of vapid celebration of mindless millennial hedonism (as evidenced by the opening montage of alcohol-fuelled nudity with Skrillex playing in the background) that is taken to an incredible extreme by its characters. After setting up its lead quartet of college-aged female students (Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine) and demonstrating their boredom with lectures and classes, the film then depicts three members of the group carrying out an armed robbery at a restaurant in order to acquire the funds necessary to head to spring break. After enough of a party-hearty montage has passed, the group are arrested for some reason and then bailed out by a gangsta rapper (James Franco) who decides to take them under his heavily tattooed wing for the remainder of spring break.

I probably would not have given this film a chance if not for certain sub-sections of cinema fans selling it as some kind of subversive masterpiece that will probably come to provide a definitive portrait of this generation in the same way that films like Rebel Without a Cause or Easy Rider came to define earlier youth cultures. To a certain extent, I can see how this would appear to be the case. The leads of Spring Breakers may be nigh-indistinguishable, but that seems to become irrelevant since the group tends to function as a singular unit that only starts to break down under the influence of Franco, whose access to lots of drugs and guns (plus his weirdly friendly demeanour) definitely makes him an alternately appealing and frightening figure. There's also the natural escalation of the women seeking greater and greater highs - when sex and drugs lose their thrill, where else do you go but to straight-up criminal behaviour such as robbery and murder? That's without taking into account the film's distinctive visual style, which seems to combine influences from both Nicholas Winding Refn and Terrence Malick as it mixes gaudy neon-soaked lighting with free-floating camerawork and ponderous narration. If nothing else, that at least makes the film worth watching as the interplay of different colours and the film's bizarre editing serve to make it distinctive in that regard and are inventive enough to make sure that I don't write off the film completely.

Of course, that doesn't stop the film being as boring and underwritten as hell. Gomez's character is the only one that gets anything remotely resembling an arc and any remotely sufficient definition as the brunette Christian girl who does want to escape her repressive lifestyle but still finds herself discomforted by the actions that her friends take throughout the film. The other three are pretty much interchangeable as they start to embrace not just spring break culture but also the exciting life of crime offered by Franco, whose turn as a rapper/gangster is not nearly as weird or charming as the film would have you think. Ironically, as the film develops more of a plot it seems to become even less engaging. Granted, you could make the case that Spring Breakers is no different to something like The Tree of Life or Drive in how it takes seemingly banal subject matter and grants it serious artistic merit through vivid cinematography, portentous dialogue and narration, unconventional editing choices, and so forth. Unfortunately, all the day-glo colour palettes, slow-motion montages, and free-associating voice-overs aren't enough to seriously redeem just how downright obnoxious the film ends up being. Boldness only goes so far, and even then it doesn't go even halfway towards making this film feel remotely worthwhile. Whether the film is satirising its insipid cast of characters or reveling in their increasingly illegal activities ends up being surprisingly irrelevant. I don't know whether or not expecting this to be a misunderstood gem makes that much of a difference, but I can't imagine it would be a positive one.

#515 - A Fish Called Wanda
Charles Crichton, 1988



A team of thieves pull off a jewel heist but soon end up double-crossing one another or forming uneasy alliances in order to get their hands on the loot.

As a fan of both Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, it's amazing that it took me this long to watch John Cleese's third biggest contribution to comedy. Here, Cleese (who co-wrote the film with director Crichton) stars as a middle-aged English lawyer who becomes wrapped up in the aftermath of a massive jewel heist pulled off by four crooks of both English and American persuasions. An incredibly convoluted yet easy to follow series of developments result in one thief (Tom Georgeson) being arrested, but not before hiding the loot and trusting the key to another thief (Michael Palin), prompting the other two thieves (Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline) to do whatever it takes to recover the loot for themselves. To this end, Curtis tries to seduce the information out of several male characters (including Cleese's unhappily married family man) while Kline often ends up trying to outsmart or outfight every single opponent he encounters. Amidst all this, Cleese (and, to a lesser extent, Palin) must do their best to survive the crazy hijinks that they've been dragged into.

A Fish Called Wanda blends several different types of comedy together and manages to guarantee a constant stream of humour throughout the film. The main ensemble of characters is very well-developed. Cleese naturally channels the same sort of overly cultured and pompous twit that made him a sitcom legend yet with slightly more sympathy. Palin also gets to play a rather Pythonesque character as the perpetually stuttering and put-upon chew-toy of the group whose friendliness towards animals is constantly challenged by the increasingly absurd circumstances he finds himself in (such as being forced to murder a potential witness). Curtis may be somewhat limited as she plays a somewhat standard femme fatale whose own arc is basically tied to her bouncing between the other male characters out of both self-serving greed and genuinely wavering affection, but she sells it reasonably well. Of course, anyone who watches this film will come away remembering Kline above all else. By playing an extremely eccentric and pseudo-intellectual criminal with delusions of grandeur and some very peculiar mannerisms (to say nothing of his constant consternation with English customs in general), he effortlessly steals the show as he provides a non-stop barrage of verbal and physical jokes that understandably won him an Oscar.

The comedy is dark and sociopathic without ever crossing the wrong lines - if anything, it gets to the point where any seemingly genuine sense of sentimentality (such as the sincerely romantic relationship that develops between the very unlikely pairing of Cleese and Curtis) threatens to drag the film down. Of course, it moves along at a very brisk pace to keep up with its complex screwball plotting and relentless jokes. It's paced well enough that it never becomes too incoherent or difficult to follow. Though there are plenty of things that threaten to date the film severely, such as the background score that's full of peppy synthesisers and squealing guitars, for the most part A Fish Called Wanda still has enough staying power to guarantee some gut-busting laughs. It manages to mix up its comedy with a deft hand and has some excellent performers on hand to deliver the material with as much gleefully bizarre gusto as possible. Consider this highly recommended.

#516 - Shampoo
Hal Ashby, 1975



During the 1968 Presidential election, a womanising male hairdresser is made to deal with his errant ways when he becomes attracted to a potential business partner's girlfriend.

This film has a considerable pedigree to it. It's directed by Hal Ashby, whose other films have been ones that I've liked to various degrees, plus it features the impressive screen pairing of Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, whose on-screen chemistry was one of many things that contributed to McCabe and Mrs. Miller becoming one of my favourite movies. Despite this, I found Shampoo to be rather underwhelming. It takes place over the course of roughly 24 hours surrounding the 1968 Presidential election and is largely filtered through the viewpoint of a hairdresser (Beatty) who has multiple casual relationships on the go as a result of his profession. Even so, he is still looking for something more as he tries to go into business for himself, which leads to him trying to team up with an unsuspecting businessman (Jack Warden) whose wife (Lee Grant) is one of his lovers. This gets complicated when it turns out that Warden's mistress (Christie) is an ex-girlfriend.

Though the other Ashby films that I've seen demonstrate a considerable ability to balance comedy with drama, that same quality doesn't translate all that well when it comes to Shampoo. Being set in the not-too-distant past allows it to function as a low-key satire about the hippie movement and sly commentary on the Nixon administration, even if it is just window-dressing for Beatty's story where his plans for the future are undone by his incredibly rash present-day decisions. I'm not sure if the brief window of time between the film's setting and production means that its invoking of dissonant values is meant to be deliberate or not (such as straight characters casually throwing around homophobic slurs, especially when it relates to them calling Beatty and his profession into question). Despite me mentioning the chemistry between Beatty and Christie, it doesn't really seem to be on display here due to the pair being caught in the midst of a rather belligerent dynamic, to say nothing of the inclusion of Goldie Hawn as Beatty's current girlfriend who has dreams of her own. The era-appropriate soundtrack choices are good ones and there's a generally good competence to the film's technical side, but the main plot is generally passable at best, no matter if it's trying for comedy or drama or both. There is the odd good moment (that ending is really something), but I generally find myself feeling indifferent to what is the first (and hopefully last) Ashby film that didn't impress me.

Great review of A Fish Called Wanda.

I've never been a fan of Monty Python, but A Fish Called Wanda is one of my favorite comedies.

#517 - The Way of the Dragon
Bruce Lee, 1972



A young man travels from Hong Kong to Rome in order to help protect a Chinese restaurant from local gangsters.

Bruce Lee is of course a legend in the realm of martial arts and his films usually serve as evidence of just how much of a well-oiled fighting machine he can be with little depth beyond that. The Way of the Dragon does come across as a generally rough film as a result, with its plot depositing Lee's character in Rome under the pretense of helping out with running a Chinese restaurant. As such, the first third of the film plays out like a fish-out-of-water comedy as Lee must adapt to unusual Italian customs (including being unexpectedly seduced by a local woman) and thus it takes a while for the actual fighting to start. The fighting comes about as Lee stumbles into the midst of a conflict where the restaurant's staff are being shaken down by a local mob. With Lee naturally being extremely skilled at fighting, his arrival becomes the turning point in this turf war as he inspires the restaurant staff to fight back against the mob, who then resort to outsourcing to foreign martial artists in order to counter him.

One of the main reasons that I never quite loved watching Lee movies is that the man's prowess, despite being impressive to witness, comes at the expense of the rest of the film. The rather comedic nature of the film's conflict and non-action scenes are rather bare-bones and not all that humourous to watch, making the film feel awfully padded as a result. Of course, it's sufficiently compensated for by the action. All the hallmarks of classic 1970s martial arts are here - the grainy cinematography full of crash-zooms and gliding dolly shots, the chintzy background score, etc. - and Lee always makes for a magnetic presence. The film may take a while to get going, but when it does it's definitely worth watching, especially when the mob gets desperate and starts hiring other martial artists to take on Lee. This provides the film with its most memorable moment, when Lee fights none other than Chuck Norris (whose role as an all-American villain is naturally given a guitar-twanging leitmotif similar to the one that accompanied Henry Fonda's character in Once Upon a Time in the West) within the ruins of the Colosseum. The resulting scene lasts about ten minutes and is definitely enough to sway one's opinion of the film from middling to good. The Way of the Dragon isn't that much of a classic, but it's got just enough good moments to not feel like a waste of time.

I tried watching A Fish Called Wanda not long ago. Ended up shutting if off after like 20 minutes.
I liked Springbreakers and have been meaning to rewatch it.

#518 - The Last Dragon
Michael Schultz, 1985



A young African-American who is training to become a master of martial arts is forced to go up against both an evil white record producer and a villainous gang leader.

The Last Dragon definitely had the potential to be fun. It notably arrived before Big Trouble in Little China wove a bona fide cult classic out of the blending of kung-fu fantasy with typical Hollywood action tropes. The difference is obvious thanks to the fact that the film was produced by Motown mogul Berry Gordy, and so The Last Dragon introduces kung-fu elements to mid-1980s Harlem and soaks the whole thing in an extremely ephemeral MTV aesthetic. It introduces our young hero (Taimak), who is on the way to becoming a martial-arts master when his actions raise the ire of two very different villains. On the one hand, there is the extremely outsized and brilliantly named Shonuff (Julius Carey), the leader of a local kung-fu gang who swears vengeance against Taimak for perceived slights; on the other hand, there is the middle-aged white record producer (Christopher Murney) whose evil plan extends to him trying to kidnap the host (Vanity) of a popular music video show in order to get the videos he produces played on air. Yes, really. The plot then becomes an excuse for Taimak to hone his abilities by fighting off some incredibly tough enemies.

I can definitely grant that the makers' hearts are in the right place as they attempt to do right by their influences. The most obvious target of homages is none other than Bruce Lee, whether it's something as big as a scene taking place in a crowded movie theatre that's screening Enter the Dragon or something as small as Taimak wearing the iconic black-and-yellow jumpsuit from Game of Death, which are all nice touches due to how sincere they feel. To this end, it's also amusing that the true villain of the piece ends up being a white man who can't grasp why nobody will buy into his incredibly hollow attempts to create hit music videos. Some of the humour doesn't fly quite so well, such as the trio of Asian characters who act out a number of black stereotypes in direct contrast to Taimak, even going so far as to mock his appreciation of Asian culture by speaking to him in exaggerated Chinese accents. The same clunkiness extends to Taimak's extremely annoying kid brother. If anything, it says a lot that the normally ancillary and clichéd romantic sub-plot still feels oddly sincere in a film that is built upon comical levels of artifice.

As far as the actual action goes...well, it leaves a little to be desired. The dedication to name-checking Bruce Lee and his abilities (as well as my decision to watch this immediately after seeing The Way of the Dragon) may be a reverent decision, but it also means that any actual action gets shown up pretty severely. The nun-chucks come out, enemies attack the hero one at a time, etc. A major problem seems to be the film's gaudy aesthetic. What made Lee's fighting great was how it was captured fairly simplistically and was always the focus of a viewer's attention. As a result, the attempt to graft on extra touches becomes something of a hindrance; fight scenes become rather muddled due to the presence of too many players fighting it out against some incredibly garish backdrops while some generally mediocre funk songs play in the background (though, to be fair, the main theme is a pretty decent song). The clashing of styles only serves to undercut the film so much so that I can barely remember whether or not any of the fighting was actually any good. As it is, I do reckon that The Last Dragon deserves credit for trying to combine two disparate cinematic worlds into one memorably entertaining movie, but such a bold move only pays off so much. The sheer '80s weirdness ends up leaving an impression that vastly overshadows the actual performance of martial arts, which is definitely a detriment to a film that wants to pay reverent homage to classic martial arts films.