June Films Catch Up 2

10 more films I watched.

1. The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug

Hunted by Azog and his orcs at the end of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the party of dwarves, with Bilbo and Gandalf, take shelter with Beorn, the last of the skinchangers, a great orc hater. Azog is called away and they are able to continue on, reaching the Mirkwood. Gandalf sees some Black Speech, which should not be there. He leaves Bilbo and the dwarves, telling them to stay on the path.

They stray from the path, are captured by spiders. Bilbo manages to get them free with the use of invisibility from the ring he found in the last film. They’re then captured by elves. The elf king offers Thorin a deal, but Thorin recalls that the elves refused help before and turns him down. Then they escape with the help of Bilbo, only to be ambushed by orcs, so that two of the elves, Legolas, son of the king, and Tauriel, the guard captain who Legolas loves, decide to hunt orcs rather than dwarves.

With the help of Bard, a descendant of the rulers of the city of Dale before the dragon Smaug destroyed it, the dwarves and Bibo get into Laketown. One of the dwarves has been poisoned by orc weapons. There’s a certain amount of politics going on, the Master of Laketown is squeezing the inhabitants for wealth, his assistant is conniving and slimy. The dwarves manage to get themselves kitted out in return for a share of the treasure under the mountain, only for orcs to attack, and the elves to arrive in pursuit.

Meanwhile Gandalf goes to check on the tomb of the Nazgûl; they’re not there. Sending Radagast to get help he heads for the ruins of Dol Guldur. Arriving there he’s taken prisoner; the rumoured Necromancer is actually the Dark Lord Sauron, the Lord Of The Rings. He sends an army of orcs to the Lonely Mountain.

With some effort and riddle solving the dwarves get inside the mountain. Bilbo uses the magic ring to try and get the Arkenstone. He wakes the dragon Smaug, who bandies words with him. Smaug claims to know about both the dwarf plan and Sauron’s, treating the first with contempt, the other complacency. There’s a long and complicated fight as Smaug tries to attack the dwarves, who hide and sneak through the smaller passages. They get Smaug to breath fire, which relights the great forges; this they use to melt a huge gold statue and try and trap Smaug with molten gold. It doesn’t work but Smaug flees, leaving us on a cliffhanger.

This film has another fight/chase on shifting terrain; unlike the ridiculous collapsing goblin walkways and caverns this one is in barrels on the river, with orcs and elves shooting and fighting. It feels a bit less themepark and a little more perilous. After all this time and danger Kili, one of the dwarves, actually gets seriously injured.

More than that, he’s emotionally vulnerable, even if it’s just a surface level love triangle with Legolas falling for Tauriel, who his father will not allow him to marry, and Tauriel at the very least intrigued by Kili. And Thorin won’t let go of his pride, almost dooming the expedition. Not willing to compromise with the elves, to offer them something for their aid. Which, he thinks, should be offered freely. Then he’s forced to make a deal with Bard, to his shame and humiliation. There’s some actual film here, and some acting, and characters with divergent objectives at odds with each other.

But it’s only on a scene by scene level, it feels discordant as a whole. Plaintive looks from Tauriel, slapstick dwarf fights and escapes, the menace of Sauron and the enigmatic wordplay of Smaug – what does it add up to? The prologue to the final film I guess.

Watch This: Some fun fantasy action, touching on pride, lies and inability to compromise
Don’t Watch This: Half the party are comic relief dwarves, half the film is slapstick escapes

2. Murder On The Orient Express (1978)

In a prologue we see reports of the 1930 kidnapping of baby Daisy Armstrong, the daughter of wealthy aerial adventurer and British Army Colonel Hamish Armstrong and his wife Sonia, a former actress. Daisy dies, so do Hamish and Sonia and also one of their household servants. The man behind it is never caught.

Famed detective Hercules Poirot (Albert Finney) finds himself in Istanbul in 1935, where unfortunately the food is terrible. His friend, a director of the Orient Express Railway Company, promises to get him a berth so he can leave that evening; on arrival at the station it seems first class is full despite it being the off-season. And not only full, but full with an all-star cast of 1970s actors playing a whole variety of differing characters, including a Russian Princess, a Hungarian Count, an American widow, a Swedish missionary, an English governess, an Italian car salesman, a theatrical agent, an Indian Army Colonel. Also American businessman Sam Ratchett, his secretary and his valet.

Rachett consults Poirot, saying that his life is threatened and wants Poirot to be his bodyguard. Poirot declines; this is uninteresting to him and he has business in London. The train is stopped in Yugoslavia when snow blocks the line. In the night Poirot hears a noise from Ratchett’s compartment, Ratchett calls out to the night porter it was a nightmare. In the morning Ratchett is found dead, stabbed to death.

The train company director asks Poirot to solve the case, preferably before they are freed from the snow and reach the next station where the local Yugoslavian police will stop them all and make it a great fuss and scandal. Poirot accepts.

We move inevitably through the victim (stabbed twelve times at different depths and places), the series of events, and of course the other first class passengers. Poirot finds a number of clues, one of which leads him to conclude that Ratchett is actually the American gangster Lanfranco Cassetti. Cassetti left the country after the Daisy Armstrong murder, which it was believed he had been part of. Who then amongst the passengers had a connection to the Armstrongs to the extent that they would wish to take revenge? The clues point in all directions and more, seeming to suggest that there was an extra person on the train.

And if they did kill Cassetti, who can blame them, the man has the blood of five people on his hands; Daisy herself, Hamish who killed himself as a result, Sonia, who died giving birth to a stillborn child, and Sonia’s maid Paulette who was accused and killed herself before being proved innocent.

A classic Christie, one that draws connections all over the world, of family comradeship and friendship. One that cuts across class and nationality. A villain that deserves his death, yet one that Poirot must solve. He must solve the crime and this has a moral dimension, not a merely deductive one. As indeed all detective work has, here placed at the forefront.

Compared to the 2018 adaption, the railway and setting in general appear, not precisely shabby, but muted. Luxury is not opulent, it’s old-world elegance rather than art-deco newness. Poirot is vain, mannered and fussy but not to the extraordinary extent in the more recent one. The cast stands up well, even if most of them are no longer household names they have a something that catches the eye. A fine, solid, elegant adaption.

Watch This: Classic adaption of a classic detective novel
Don’t Watch This: A man with a ridiculous accent draws unwarranted conclusions from hassling people

3. King Kong Lives

At the end of King Kong (1976) the giant ape “King” Kong falls from the World Trade Centre and appears to die. SPOILERS this film King Kong Lives reveals that in fact King Kong lived. Kept alive in a coma, the Atlantic Institute built a giant computer controlled artificial heart and Dr Amy Franklin (Linda Hamilton) performs the operation. But afterwards he’s failing and needs a blood transfusion, and no known ape’s blood is compatible.

Enter explorer “Mitch” Mitchell, who finds a giant ape on Borneo, a female one, “Lady” “Kong”. The transfusion is a success. Waking up, “King” Kong smells the female and breaks out, the two of them going on the run into the mountains of Georgia. Colonel Nevitt and his men are called in. “Mitch” and Dr Franklin try to get ahead of the army, and the two have a romantic trek through the hills, in which it is revealed that Dr Franklin does not seem to think she needs a bra to track giant apes. After various adventures, the army manage to capture “Lady” “Kong” but “King” “Kong” falls off a cliff and disappears.

“Lady” “Kong” is being kept in a silo, under military guard*. When Dr Franklin and other scientists get to see her she seems to be pining away. She’s not, or maybe she is, but more importantly she’s pregnant. “King” “Kong” isn’t dead, and so begins the final escape sequence.

Somehow giant apes escaping into rural Georgia and being chased by the army isn’t as fun, exciting or spectacular as I hoped. In general the effects are pretty good, the giant bits of ape the humans interact with meshing fairly well with the guys in ape suits. Dr Franklin and “Mitch” are both fairly cardboard figures. A sad disappointment.

Watch This: Giant Ape completists will find this fairly well shot
Don’t Watch This: Giant Apes somehow fail to be interesting

* The colonel is furious about this, thinking his men wasted guarding a giant ape. I don’t know it seems a pretty important thing to me. Is his problem that he wants to do some Cold War stuff? Maybe invade a Central American country or something?

4. Rocky V

Rocky returns from fighting Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and is ambushed at a press conference by George Washington Duke, a flamboyant boxing promoter who wants Rocky to fight his boxer, Union Cane. Rocky turns this down, he’s possibly had a serious injury.

Returning home he discovers that his brother-in-law Paulie signed a power-of-attorney for them with their accountant, who promptly lost all their money on bad housing deals; their home has a mortgage on it, they haven’t paid their taxes, and they’re bankrupt. They have to sell everything (including presumably Paulie’s robot from Rocky IV, though the film prefers to linger on Rocky’s motorbike). Rocky is sad about this, though mostly for Adrien, his wife, and Robert, his son. A few fights might get them out of the situation but the doctors say that he’s taken too much damage.

They move back to Rocky’s old neighbourhood. Rocky goes to look at Mickey’s old gym, which Mickey left to Robert, and he decides to reopen it. Rocky and Paulie meet a young fighter Tommy “The Machine” Gunn, and after some back and forth Rocky agrees to train and manage him, throwing himself into Tommy’s career. Robert gets bullied at school, and tries to figure out how to deal with this. Rocky, distracted by Tommy, doesn’t pay attention to Robert, even when he learns to defend himself, punching his bully; obviously the bully, his sidekick and the girl they hang out with become Robert’s friends. Neglected by Rocky and a little by a distracted Adrien, they get into minor teenage trouble, and talk back a lot.

Tommy does well, though because he’s managed and trained by Rocky, and fights like him, all the papers mention Rocky every time he’s written up. The vacant Heavyweight Championship Of The World is won by George Washington Duke’s fighter Union Cane, but Duke’s dissatisfied. He wants to promote a fight with Rocky*. Unable to do that he recruits Tommy, offering him lots of money, and a shot at the title. Rocky advises him not to, to keep things simple; he and Tommy argue and Tommy leaves. Rocky is deeply upset by this, thinking that Tommy and his career gave him some meaning, but Adrien puts him right; he already has meaning with his family, and he reconciles with Robert.

Tommy gets his shot and knocks out Union Cane in the first round. But at the press conference all anyone can talk about is Rocky; how Cane never beat Rocky so was a paper champion, and when Tommy gives the credit to Duke, they turn on him for neglecting Rocky. Duke convinces him he needs to fight Rocky, so they take a TV News crew and go to Rocky’s neighbourhood, cornering him at his local bar, challenging him. Rocky refuses him, doesn’t rise to insults, tells Tommy he’ll talk to him but not with Duke and the camera. When Paulie confronts Tommy, Tommy punches him and to Duke’s dismay the final fight takes place in the alley outside the bar.

The film tries to recapture some of the texture, the working class street style of the first two Rocky films, that stands in contrast with the glitzy world of championship boxing. But it doesn’t really do it. Every interesting choice is undercut. Rocky seeing a young protegee as a way to reclaim meaning and pride just falls flat with the casting of professional boxer Tommy Morrison, who doesn’t convince. The soundtrack is full of late eighties music, trying to be cool, and that doesn’t seem to fit, making the age of the series obvious. The final fight on the street has annoying flashbacks, which isn’t how previous Rocky films did it; the flashback gives you resolve to get into the ring and fight, not to pick you up when you go down. Perhaps seeing all the films over the course of a few weeks isn’t the way to do it. Maybe I should have left 14 years between Rocky and this one.

Watch This: Rocky gets set back to square one to have another look at the temptations of boxing, in a meatier film than Rocky IV
Don’t Watch This: The attempt to recapture the street-level grit falls flat, leaving some guys fighting and a neglectful father

* Rocky V came out in 1990 and boxing was no longer quite the powerhouse it was when the Rocky series started. In real life there was an air of over-striving to boxing promotion. It’s not that the boxers were worse, or even that they didn’t have star-power, or that the money wasn’t there – if anything there was more money – but the world had moved on. In this context George Washington Duke wanting to bring back Rocky, the hero of the 70s and 80s, is an effort to recapture the magic. Like this film!

5. Carry On Again Doctor

Dr Nookey (Jim Dale) at Long Hampton hospital keeps getting trouble, accidentally going into the women’s washroom and disturbing a paranoid female patient; shortcircuiting the electrical system; and after getting drunk on spiked punch, makes an assignment with his girlfriend in what he thinks is an empty room, instead gets in bed with the paranoid patient, then escapes on a hospital trolley through a window. The chief doctor Dr Carver (Kenneth Williams) is trying to get his rich patient Mrs Moore to pay for a new clinic. She wants a doctor for her medical mission in the remote Beatific Islands; Carver recruits Nookey to take the position to avoid disgrace.

Nookey discovers that the mission is a sham as the locals all go to the medicine man, medical mission orderly Gladstone Screwer (Sid James). It rains nine months of the year, and the rest is hurricane season. Screwer offers him a wife (he has five, named after days of the week), but Nookey turns her down, which Screwer thinks is because she’s fat. She comes back and she’s thin. Nookey realises Screwer has a weight loss serum and returns to England with it.

Carver has been sent out to investigate when there are reports of Nookey failing at doctoring and instead drinking smoking and womanising. He’s trapped there by the hurricane season (and his secretary marries Screwer, becoming Saturday). After some months he returns to England to discover that Nookey and Moore have set up their own weightloss clinic (the Moore-Nookey clinic). Furious at having his patron nabbed he gets Dr Stoppidge (Charles Hawtrey) to dress up as a woman and infiltrate the clinic to steal the serum. Stoppidge flees after his roommate Mrs Moore casually changes and explains that she sleeps “in the raw”.

Meanwhile Screwer, learning that Nookey is making a fortune, has withheld supplies and now arrives in England wanting to be paid. When Nookey tries to put him off he gives a different serum, which causes the women in the clinic to change sex.

A brief, farcical and orientalist element of fabulism strikes the Carry On series! At it’s strongest when being a sitcom about a hospital, the staff members all seeking out their own objectives, while also doing their jobs. Weakest with the interlude in the Beatific Islands, where the set looks like a set, and the plot turns frankly racist.

Watch This: Some silly comedy
Don’t Watch This: A Carry On film with the word Again in the title

6. Dr Crippen (1962)

It’s 1910 and Dr Hawley Crippen (Donald Pleasance) and his lover Ethel le Neve are on trial for the murder of Crippen’s wife, Cora Crippen aka singer Bella Elmore. This really happened. As the case progresses we see events in flashback. Dr Crippen and his wife are unhappily married, her singing career has stuttered to a halt, and she has numerous young men as lodgers who all flirt with her. Dr Crippen studiously takes care of the chores.

At work it becomes clear that Dr Crippen has taken as a lover a secretary in the doctor’s office, Ethel le Neve. He can’t stand to touch his wife, who in return despises and heaps humiliation on him. The film turns this around and about, building on the despair of these relationships, while establishing facts that come up in the trial.

Crippen doses Cora with a drug to lower her libido, but according to the film spills some into the sugar so she overdoses and dies (in real life Crippen was convicted of poisoning her; his defence maintained the body was not Cora and pre-dated their moving into the house). Crippen claims she has returned home to America, hinting she has left him and gone to an admirer. Immediately Ethel begins wearing Cora’s jewellery and appearing with Crippen. At the urging of Cora’s friends the police make a rather lackadaisical investigation. Afraid they will be found out (in the film and in real life Crippen and Ethel maintained that Ethel knew nothing of the events) Crippen and Ethel disguise themselves as father and son, which is seen through immediately by the Captain of the Montrose as they sail across the Atlantic. He uses the wireless to inform London and the police inspector catches a faster ship to arrest them when they arrive in Canada (at the time part of the British Empire so no problem with jurisdiction).

We return to the court where Crippen is found guilty, and Ethel not guilty, as those of us familiar with the case knew would be the verdict. The case was notorious at the time, with Crippen a by-word for poisoners, and made even more famous by the then novel use of wireless telegraphy to capture him. The film sticks to the known facts, though puts Crippen in a slightly better light by making the poisoning accidental. Le Neve is portrayed as entirely innocent, perhaps because she was still alive at the time the film was made. In real life the friend who reported Cora Crippen missing was professional strongwoman Vulcana aka Kate Williams, a sensational touch this rather down to earth film avoids.

Watch This: An undramatic portrait of an unhappy marriage tipping over into tragedy
Don’t Watch This: A gratuitous and tasteless adaption of a gruesome murder that invites us to sympathise with a notorious villain

7. Police Story 3: Supercop

After the events of Police Story and Police Story 2, detective Ka-Kui (Jackie Chan) has a reputation as a “Supercop”. He’s seconded to Interpol, and goes to Mainland China, where he’s briefed on Chaibat, a drug lord. He’s going to go undercover in a prison work camp, where Panther, Chaibat’s lieutenant, is planning an escape. His contact is Chinese police officer Jessica Yang (Michelle Yeoh).

The jailbreak goes off in the farcical kung fu Jackie Chan style we expect, with a spectacular zipslide escape. Panther decides they should lay low in Ka-Kui’s home village, except that’s a cover and he’s never been there. Luckily his superiors are one step ahead and they send a boy to take him to the house, where Yang poses as his sister and “Uncle” Bill, his boss, is posing as his mother. The police go after them and they escape, faking a killing to cement their cover. They’re taken to Chaibat’s luxurious Hong Kong mansion.

Convinced they can be useful Chaibat takes them to the camp of a general who grows opium in Thailand. Other buyers are there and want to cut Chaibat out. Chaibat responds aggressively and there’s a long and violent fight scene. Ka-Kui and Yang manage to survive and Chaibat wins the fight and an opium monopoly.

Unfortunately Chaibat’s wife has been arrested in Malaysia. She has the codes to his Swiss bank accounts and won’t release them unless Chaibat gets her out. Ka-Kui’s girlfriend May is in Kulala Lumpa, working as a tour guide; he’d lied to her claiming he was on a training course, so when she sees him with Yang she tries to confront him, the usual romantic misunderstanding in these films. After some confusion one of Panther’s friends overhears her explaining to a friend; May is kidnapped and Ka-Kui extorted to rescue Chaibat’s wife. This leads to a spectacular train/helicopter final stunt sequence.

Bringing Chan’s detective character outside Hong Kong makes things a little stylised, the setpieces feeling more set up. It’s not malls and firework factories, shanty towns and buses. Instead there’s a jungle army camp exploding, a mountain zipline, a helicopter and train. This doesn’t exactly cheapen the close up fights and stunts, but they feel different in style and precision. The film feels more bitty. Even with all the individual elements as as good as Police Story 1 and 2, the overall effect is dampened.

Watch This: A fine third film, expanding the scope
Don’t Watch This: You didn’t care for the previous Police Story and bigger stunts and more guns and explosives just make it worse

8. Fast X

In Fast Five Dominic Toretto and his crew stole Hernan Reyes fortune in a ridiculous and extraordinary car-heist. Now his son Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) is coming after them. Cipher, the villain from the last film, is attacked, having her crew and technology taken from her; she’s able to escape to Dom’s house to warn him, presumably on the enemy-of-my-enemy rule. Dom’s concerned as the rest of the crew have gone to Rome on a mission from the Agency. When he contacts the Agency he learns there is no such mission.

In Rome the team break into a lorry that they think contains a computer chip; it’s actually a neutron bomb. Dante releases it, letting it roll through the streets of Rome; Dom arrives in time to direct it into the Tiber to avoid the Vatican being destroyed. He and his team are publicly blamed. With Mr Nobody missing, and Little Nobody, their contact in the Agency, injured, the Agency also blames them, and tries to hunt them down.

Dom’s brother Jakob rescues Dom’s son from an attack by Dante’s mercenaries. The team go on the run into London where they have various hijinks and meet a couple members of the Shaw family for their mandatory appearance. Mr Nobdody’s daughter Tess, with the Agency, uses God’s Eye from Furious 7 to first find Dom, then tells him Dante is in Rio. In Rio Dante and Dom race, but it’s a trap and one of Dom’s allies is killed, later Dante is able to steal God’s Eye when Tess turns up.

This all ends on a cliffhanger; Cipher and Letty, Dom’s wife, had both been in an Agency black site in Antarctica, and they end the film making an escape with the aid of another character. Dom’s team are last heard of on a plane that Dante shoots down; Jakob sacrifices himself so Dom and Little B can escape down a dam, while Dante sets of explosives to destroy it. And in a mid-credits sequence Dante threatens Hobbs, the major character who hasn’t turned up yet; he takes this in his stride. Do I object to this? Yes, yes I do. The fake out with the plane crash, Dom and Little B about to be crushed by water and collapsing dam. How long do we have to wait to find out what happens; it was a trick with the plane and Dom drives away, maybe the car surfs, maybe another plane arrives, maybe someone returns from the dead to rescue him. This is a bad and stupid cliffhanger. Which is a pity as this one change highlights the way the film moves through the necessary sequences of a Fast And Furious franchise entry. We have to meet the previous characters, we have to speak of the value of family, we have to have a street race, a street fight, a heist, a prison break, going on the run, ridiculous techno-babble and lip-service to surveillance, it’s all there, and in the end there's not much there. I don’t know, have they finally reached the end of the road?

Watch This: High energy stunts, races, fights
Don’t Watch This: Too caught up in its own cruft and the villain moves jarringly from grim vengeance to affable enjoyment

9. Aliens

At the end of Alien Ellen Ripley and the cat Jones are the only survivors of the xenomorph which got on board the Nostromo; at the start of this film they are woken from hypersleep to discover that fifty seven years have passed and no one believes her story about aliens. No one? Burke, a company rep does. There’s a colony on the planet now and (as is revealed later in the regular film, or earlier in the director’s cut) Burke gets them to send someone to look. When contact with the colony breaks down Burke, Lieutenant Gorman and a ship full of marines convince Ripley to go with them to see what is going on.

The marines are cocky, calling it a bug hunt. Gorman is new to them. There’s an android in the crew and Ripley had a bad experience with the last one. Burke and the company are all double-dealing. Ripley is full of self-doubt and fear of the alien. When they get down there’s again huge mysteriously empty spaces that the marines spend a long time investigating. Eventually they find where the colonists are, only to discover it’s (deliberately or otherwise) a trap.

The 1979 haunted-house/monster-slasher-in-space film shifts genres, to horror-tinged science-fiction action, a brilliant move that has stymied every later entry in the franchise. A problem with horror sequels is that if someone survives a horror film, they’re essentially a (action-)thriller protagonist. (This says more about action-thrillers than anything else). By having Ripley go through the process of recovering from the events of Alien, then re-inventing herself as a kick-ass child-protecting protagonist while the marines are being murdered and betrayed around her, the film embraces it's own inevitable changes in a way that none of the sequels or prequels manage.

Watch This: Classic science fiction action film
Don’t Watch This: You’ve seen the films it influenced and aren’t impressed; also quite scary and a child put in danger

10. The Towering Inferno

Architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) arrives back in San Francisco to attend the opening of his new building, The Glass Tower, 138 stories tall, the tallest building in the world (as of the film’s date 1974). He’s immediately seduced by his fiancée Susan Frankline (Faye Dunaway) who seems to imply this will be the first time people have had sex in the building, which strikes me as unlikely; though not officially open there are several people in furnished apartments and it’s taken months to build and fit out the tower. During testing there are electrical shorts, including one that starts a fire on the 81^st floor in a utility room. Roberts inspects the wiring, finds it is not up to the specifications he had in his plans.

Roberts confronts James Duncan, the developer who blames his son-in-law subcontractor Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain). Roberts crosses town to track down and talk to Simmons, who is on the verge of his marriage breaking up with his wife, Duncan’s daughter, Patty. Simmons says it’s none of his business, it meets the city building codes, and to take it up with Duncan.

By now the guests for the grand opening are arriving, they include the mayor and his wife and a US Senator on the housing committee who Duncan is hoping will take the building as a model. The PR man has all the lights in the tower turned on, which causes more shorts until Roberts has him turn them off.

Everyone is up in the Promenade Room* as smoke is seen on the 81^st floor. Firefighter Chief Michael O’Halloran (Steve McQueen) arrives, complains that anything over ten stories is impossible to fight fires in. They start to fight the fire; it gets out of control.

The mostly-star cast have to contend with things going wrong, they try to evacuate the Promenade Room to find the elevators get blocked. They try to rescue some people trapped in an apartment, and they go on an expedition on the stairs. Everyone who got an introduction earlier gets a scene or character arc. Some people panic, some complain, some rise to the occasion. Roberts and O’Halloran spend their time trying to solve the last problem even as the next develops.

A classic of the 1970s disaster films, clearly setting out what went wrong and why, the fire growing slowly, the problems cascading until the characters have to try risky and heroic actions. Many of the faces are still familiar today, even if most of them don’t have much to do.

Watch This: Superior disaster film thriller
Don’t Watch This: Well past it’s sell-by date, and no longer a common reference or touchstone

* Frankly the names of the building and of the rooms are bad. They should have come up with something better. The film is based on not one, but two novels, you’d hope they might have some ideas; Richard Martin Stern’s The Tower takes place in the World Tower Building in New York with the opening taking place on the 125^th floor “Tower Room”. Thomas M Scortia and Frank M Robinson’s The Glass Inferno has a mere 66 stories in an unnamed city; it’s officially the National Curtainwall Building, known as the Glass House**, and up on the top is the Promenade Room.

** This is better if you know what a Glasshouse is.