September Film Update 3

Ten more films I watched earlier this year

****

1. Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol

Despite lowering the standards for police training (see: Police Academy, Police Academy 3: Back In Training) the police are stretched thin. Commandant Lassard comes up with a plan for a citizen volunteer program,. He brings in the variously zany characters from earlier Police Academy films to train regular citizens to assist the police.

Opposed to this is his deputy, the martinet Captain Harris. He thinks if the program is a failure Lassard will be disgraced and Harris will be in line to become Commandant. He and his idiot sidekick Lieutenant Proctor attempt to sabotage the program.

This then is the majority of the film, several returning comic characters and a handful of new ones go through training exercises, Harris and Proctor attempt to wash them out and in return they play pranks on Harris (swapping deodorant with mace, putting superglue on a loudhailer etc). There’s “House Conklin,” a fat black guy who looks up to Hightower, the tall black guy; the joke is that he’s entirely immovable. There’s Mrs Feldman, a small retired woman, the joke is she loves guns, bonding with Tackleberry. There’s two skateboarders that Mahoney convinced a judge to put in the C.O.P. program rather than go to jail, there’s not really a joke there, they just have to put up with whatever Harris throws at them.

At last the film reaches the climax; when Mrs Feldman interrupts a police sting operation Harris gets the C.O.P. program shut down. Then Proctor is fooled by some prisoners to let them escape from jail while a party of VIPs is touring the station; when the escapees go on the run our trainees and instructors go after them. They’re chased to an air fair, where there are some hot air balloon and biplane stunts.

This is the midpoint of the series and it seems to already be tired. We’ve done training twice before so there’s not a lot new here. They do some rescuing around a pool allowing us to see some boobs through a t-shirt, but even this seems like a step back, and Zed’s weirdness is less surreal, as he’s given a love interest. Steve Guttenberg seemed to think it had gone as far as it could, this is his last appearance in the series.

Watch This: Some good physical bits of slapstick and cascading chaos
Don’t Watch This: Boobs, fat jokes and people being foolish

2. The Taking Of Pelham 1 2 3

Four men hijack a New York subway train. They uncouple the front car and move it into the middle of a tunnel. When the dispatcher Garber (Denzel Washington) calls them, the leader Ryder (John Travolta) demands $10 Million in ransom.

Hostage negotiators try to get Garber off the line but Ryder decides he wants him. As it turns out Garber’s on dispatcher duty because they removed him from his management role pending an investigation into a bribery accusation. Ryder is able to look this up online. (This is a clue as to what’s going on, usually you didn’t have wifi or phone signal in the tunnels in 2009).

Ryder toys with Garber, messes with the cops and the authorities. This is the long central section of the film as the mayor scrambles to get the money and Ryder entertains himself while his plans come to fruition. Both sides make mistakes, Ryder not quite having every angle covered.

So it’s a re-make of the 1970 film. And more than that it’s a hi-tech re-make, with twists. There’s some nods to the original, and Washington is dressed, made up and acting like just some guy, a manager at the Metro control station. Like in 70s films before every actor was good-looking (or at least distinctive and stylish). The hostages in the train car are a mix, as in the original, but they aren’t distinctively dressed to be icons. Tense thriller with a good central performance that in the end adds little to the original.

Watch This: Dark and moody hostage thriller
Don’t Watch This: The twist is no longer hi-tech for this Die Hard On A Train film

3. Casino Royale (1967)

The heads of the British, American, French and Russian intelligence agencies go to the home of James Bond (David Niven) to try and bring him out of retirement to combat SMERSH. SMERSH have been killing agents, and this might start a war. He refuses and they try and destroy his house with mortar shells, which kills M, the British Intelligence Chief. Bond goes to M’s house in Scotland, which has been taken over by SMERSH; their agents posing as M’s widow and daughters attempt to seduce him. (Bond is an old school, pure spy, half monk half hitman). This doesn’t work, they try to kill him, Agent Mimi, posing as M’s widow, falls in love with Bond, helps him and goes to join a nunnery.

Bond is appointed head of British Intelligence and makes some immediate changes. British agents are getting killed because they are being seduced; Bond will turn the tables by training an agent no woman can resist, but making him able to resist them. This training is shown with a variety of beautiful women (many of their looks riffing off Bond women from the extant books and films) coming up to this agent, Coop, trying to seduce him, then he judo throws them.

Bond’s next move is to confuse the enemy by renaming all agents to James Bond 007, even the girls. After that he takes the offensive, striking at SMERSH’s weak point, Le Chiffre (Orson Welles). Le Chiffre has embezzled SMERSH funds and intends to get it back at a baccarat tournament. Bond recruits Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress) to in turn recruit baccarat expert Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) to play and ruin Le Chiffre, after which he will have to defect from SMERSH to survive.

Meanwhile Bond recruits Mata Bond, his daughter with executed spy Mata Hari (real); she’s sent to Berlin to her mother’s old dancing school/school for spies. There she uncovers Le Chiffre’s art sale that he’s using to finance the baccarat game.

This already weird and confusing spy spoof goes further and further off the rails, anything approaching a plot lost somewhere in the midst of this. A famously difficult filming process, some individual jokes and sequences land, in part because of the strength of the actors (several of whom re-wrote their own parts to improve them). In general a mess, with long unfunny sequences and superfluous characters adding up to little.

Watch This: Zany 60s spy spoof
Don’t Watch This: Many better and more interesting 60s spy spoofs
On The Other Hand: The story behind the making of this film is wild

4. Project A

It’s Hong Kong in the late 19^th century. The Coastguard are great rivals with the Police and have a bar fight, with Sergeant Dragon Ma (Jackie Chan) and Inspector Hong Tin-Tsu leading their respective groups. When the Coastguard are about to set sail to deal with pirates their ships blow up. With no ships the Coastguard are turned over to the Police for re-training.

The police are corrupt; gangsters who work with the pirates are trying to get hold of police rifles. When a wanted gangster is spotted going into the VIP club the police refuse to go in as the manager denies he’s in there. Dragon Ma goes in against orders and drags him into the open; there’s a spectacular kung fu fight. (There have been several already). Dragon quits the police.

Immediately his friend Fei (Sammo Hung) tells him he’s heard about the sale of police rifles. He suggests a deal; Dragon gets the traitor, Fei gets the money. Interrupting the deal Fei gets away with the rifles, hiding them in a log and marking it with a red flag. Bringing the gangsters there the next day, all the logs floating in the pool have red flags; cue some log-rolling stunts.

There’s a confusing middle section of the film, as various people get blamed for the rifles and Jackie Chan has some great stunts and fights involving bicycles and narrow alleys, and also a clock tower. About an hour into this film about pirates, just when it seems it’s a period Hong Kong crime film that won’t go to sea, there’s a scene where a pirate ship attacks another ship taking hostages.

There’s a big meeting of all the important people (police chief, coast guard admiral, governor, various extras in uniforms and suits etc). The police chief proposes an arms-for-hostages deal, giving the rifles to the pirate chief. Dragon has been eavesdropping, and he confronts the governor, arguing that this will just encourage more hostage taking. He convinces the governor to give the Coast Guard another try, and he and his pals head to the pirate base for the finale.

The action is unparalleled, and if the plot is essentially silly, it has plenty of enjoyable bits. Rivalry between police forces, corruption, taking the law into your own hands. It doesn’t have much to say about Hong Kong as a colonial possession – the governor is white, every other character is Chinese – though of course Hong Kong was still a British colony at the time this was filmed, the status quo.

Watch This: Excellent period martial arts adventure
Don’t Watch This: Just a bunch of guys beating each other up and falling off things

5. The Equalizer 3

Robert McCall (former CIA assassin) is in Sicily doing some equalizin’ (bit of vigilante work). At a winery he confronts a gangster and his henchmen, killing them. Finding the gangster’s young grandson outside he tells him to stay in the car, but is shot in the leg by the grandson. He drives away, getting on the ferry to the mainland, but eventually has to stop and passes out. There he’s found by Gio, a Carabiniere (police officer).

McCall wakes to find himself in the house of the town doctor in beautiful coastal town Altamonte. He convalesces, making himself a fixture in the town, a regular in the café, buying from the shops (the tailor sells him an outfit, after which the waitress jokes that he finally managed to sell that hat; it also make McCall look less like McCall, one unspoken reason for his acquiescence), making friends in the American-with-money-in-a-small-European-town manner. He also calls CIA officer Emma Collins to tip her off about some stuff in the winery she might find interesting.

Altamonte is controlled by the Camorra, the local organised crime organisation. The leader Vincent Quaranta has some big plans, to build hotels and make it a resort town, so his brother Marco and the enforcement gang, who ride on motorbikes, start causing trouble when they come to collect protection money, resulting in the firebombing of the fishmongers. Gio knows enough not to talk to his superiors in the local police, so he sends the CCTV footage to the National Police. But the Camorra’s influence is all pervading and they find out and Marco gives him a beating. Then they insist that Gio find them a boat, making him complicit in their crimes.

The tip off has connected several leads for Emma Collins and the CIA; they raid the winery in Sicily and discover drugs that have been smuggled in from Syria. She tracks down McCall in Altamonte where he poses the question, why smuggle drugs to Sicily, with it’s heavily guarded ports. She goes off to try and figure some of this out.

McCall confronts Marco and his gang, warning him off, telling him to leave Altamonte alone. When they refuse, he kills them. Also Syrian-based terrorists bomb a target in Rome; it becomes clear that the drug money has funded their operations, and that Vincent is the buyer of the drugs and maybe supports the terrorists as well (for money, he’s not ideological in that way).

The Naples chief of police goes to Vincent, telling him now is the time to lie low, maybe turn on the terrorists. But the killing of his brother has Vincent throw caution to the wind. He cuts off the police chief’s hand and insists he find his brother’s killer, which seems inefficient to me. He takes his men into the town square of Altamonte where he threatens to shoot Gio unless they hand over whoever killed his brother; McCall comes forward but the townsfolk stand up to Vincent, filming him with their phones. Too public he retreats to his villa in Naples, where McCall, now recovered from his injury, goes to do some equalizin’.

For a grim and violent vigilante film, with gritty terrorism and organised crime matched in brutality by both McCall and the CIA, this is quite good-natured. For a man who has travelled from the United States to Italy to avenge a crime, and considers suicide when immobilised, McCall fits into the fairly easy-going life of a small and picturesque coastal town well. Has he found something to live for, finally, ten years after The Equalizer? Perhaps so, and perhaps we are meant to imagine that after equalizin’ for so many years he’s ready for a change. The film is very good looking, and if that’s mostly the locations, they were chosen for a reason.

Watch This: Excellent action film, whose aging protagonist reluctantly becomes a one man killing machine for one last mission
Don’t Watch This: Sprawling, silly plot interrupted by bloody mutilations
Not To Be Confused With: The TV show starring Queen Latifah as McCall

6. Out Of Darkness

45,000 years ago in Europe, six people find themselves on the edge of a new land, having escaped starvation and ruin. Hunter-gatherers, they explore the terrain. But they have difficulty finding game and as they go on it appears that they may not be alone.

On their way to the mountains to find a cave to camp in they pass some woods. A creature appears and the youngest of them vanishes. Their leader takes them into the woods from where some of them will not come out.

An energetic palaeolithic thriller, with scares and strangeness. The dialogue is in a constructed language. A bold attempt at creating a world with the fears and dangers that stone age people might encounter.

Watch This: Spooky stone age adventure
Don’t Watch This: Desperate people make bloody and gruesome mistakes

7. Royal Warriors

On a plane from Japan to Hong Kong are Michelle Yip (Michelle Yeoh) of the Royal Hong Kong Police, Michael Wong of air security and Yamamoto, once a Japanese police detective, now he has left his job to join his wife and daughter. Also on the flight is a notorious gangster being brought back for trial. When a henchman tries to rescue him and hijack the flight the three of them team up to stop them, the two criminals ending up dead.

Michael wants in on the investigation, and also wants to go on a date with Michelle. The police want to take her off the case. Yamamoto wants to get back with his wife who is dubious that he’s going to stop letting police work take over his life, after all on the flight to see them he got involved with taking down a gangster.

As might be expected the rest of the gang swear revenge on the trio. There’s martial arts, gun fights, death traps, chases and car bombs (Yamamoto’s family are targeted). A gritty kung fu thriller, one lifted by some superior stunt work and Yeoh doing more than expected on the acting side.

Watch This: Violent kung fu crime thriller with a charismatic central trio
Don’t Watch This: Bloody, unpleasant, a child is killed

8. Barbarella

Barbarella is a space traveller, a five-star double-rated Astro-Navigatrix from Earth in a future so peaceful war and armies have been abolished. Unfortunately the scientist Durand Durand has invented a positronic ray that might bring back war. The President has no troops or spies and apparently can’t spare the presidential band so sends Barbarella to the unexplored region of Tau Ceti where Durand Durand has vanished.

She crash-lands, is captured by children, then rescued by the Catchman who captures feral children. He asks Barbarella to make love, which puzzles her as on Earth they no longer have physical intimacy, instead taking pills with compatible partners and meditating until full rapport is achieved. He convinces her to try having sex in his bed, which she enjoys though also noting that it is primitive and distracting.

Barbarella continues on her way encountering strange people and dangers on the planet. Her naïve openness wins her friends, and by having sex with Pygar, a blind angel, he joins her and flies her to the city of Sogos. She fails to spot the villains, the predatory bisexual Black Queen of Sogos and her scheming concierge until they turn on her. They get their power from the Mathmos, which is a liquid, living energy beneath Sogos.

This is a visual feast, and not just because Jane Fonda, Barbarella, is put into and taken out of a new outfit for every new encounter. Easy to dismiss as fluff, the plot is paper-thin, the characters lightweight, new and ever-more ridiculous names and concepts introduced at every turn. Yet somehow compelling, a film that delights on screen and lingers in the memory.

Watch This: Gloriously silly and sensual science fiction film
Don’t Watch This: Just pretty pictures and nudity

9. Penguins Of Madagascar

The comic relief penguins from Madagascar get their own film, apparently; Skipper, Rico, Kowlaski and Private break into Fort Knox to get some Cheesie Dibbles, Private’s favourite snack, for his birthday. The vending machine kidnaps them.

The machine was a disguised Dave, an octopus, who has a grudge against the penguins. He was the star attraction at Central Park Zoo, until penguins came along. They were cute and became the star attractions, relegating him to worse and worse zoos as they got their penguins in some sort of penguin craze. Now Dave has disguised himself as Dr Octavius Brine, a human scientist (?) and has a submarine (?) to kidnap penguins from zoos around the world. Eventually he will use his medusa serum on them so they will stop being cute.

The penguins escape into Venice, pursued by Dave’s octopus lackies. The penguins, who believe themselves to be some sort of military unit (with Private not yet promoted to being a full member) are rescued by North Wind, an actual animal covert operations service, made up of Classified, a wolf, Corporal, a polar bear, Short Fuse, a seal and Eva, an owl (also the love interest of one of the penguins, this doesn’t really go anywhere).

The penguins want to join North Wind in taking down Dave. Classified correctly spots that they are terrible at it and decides to send them to Madagascar. The penguins refuse to go hijacking North Wind’s plane. The rest of the film (an animated children’s spy comedy) is everyone running around and getting in each other’s way.

I haven’t seen any of the Madagascar films, and I certainly didn’t care about these penguins before coming into the film. I’m not sure I did afterwards. They’re often described as cute but they aren’t really, their character design left over from being the comic relief of another film. With no affection for the characters and not seeing the cuteness I guess I’m on the side of Classified who wants these penguins out of his way, or maybe even Dave. What are these penguins doing, stopping my plans, making slapstick escapes? I don’t know.

Watch This: A few good jokes as penguins bumble their way through a super spy plot
Don’t Watch This: A lot of silly nonsense that adds up to little

10. Superman (1978)

On the planet Krypton Jor-El condemns General Zod and his followers into the Phantom Zone in a story that will not be resolved until Superman II. Then he attempts to convince the council that Krypton is doomed. They refuse to let him or his wife to leave the planet, but he does send his son Kal-El to a distant planet, Earth. There the yellow sun will make him more powerful than the inhabitants. (It’s implied that the trip will take thousands of years).

On Earth he’s found by Martha and Jonathan Kent, a childless couple in Smallville, Kansas. There he’s brought up by them as Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve), concealing his strength and other powers, though Jonathan believes he has a special purpose. When Jonathan dies of a heart attack, Clark finds a crystal shard from his spacecraft that leads him north to the arctic where it constructs the Fortress Of Solitude, a Kryptonian-style building with holograms that teach him for twelve years and hone his powers, also warning him not to interfere with human history.

He heads for Metropolis (which explicitly stands in the place of New York City in this film, with shots of Manhattan and the Statue Of Liberty) where he gets a job at the Daily Planet newspaper as mild-mannered slightly clumsy bespectacled Clark Kent. When the star reporter Lois Lane gets in a helicopter accident he rescues her and goes on to save people all over the city in his red and blue suit and cape, unrecognised as Clark. He gives Lois an exclusive interview and she dubs him “Superman” in print.

About an hour into this film a villain and a plot emerge. Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Criminal Mind is in his lair underneath Metropolis, with his accomplices, the bumbling Otis and the glamorous and competent Miss Teschmacher. He realises his plan (to divert two nuclear missiles and activate the San Andreas fault so large parts of the West Coast fall into the sea, making the worthless desert he’s bought valuable beachfront property) might fail if Superman is there to stop him.

He scours Superman’s interview with Lois and discovers several key points; Superman can’t see through lead, and may be vulnerable to Kryptonite, material from the planet Krypton. Proving he is quite smart he figures out that a meteorite that fell in Ethiopia in 1948 is from Krypton and steals it. (Every event gets briefly mentioned in the Daily Planet, usually dismissively. The editor, Perry White, only ever seems interested in the front page story. You’ve got a whole paper to fill!) They have an amusing sequence where Lex and co stop the missile convoys in comedy disguises to reprogram the target computers.

With all the pieces in place we get a long and exciting final sequence. Lois is out in the desert, trying to find out who is buying up all the land. She’s in love with Superman. Clark is in love with her, but doesn’t want to reveal he is also Superman, as that would put her at risk. So when, even with all his abilities, he can’t save her, he does interfere in human history.

I said it takes an hour for the villain and plot to emerge and that’s something to consider. The film is, not exactly languid. But it takes it’s time. It has long shots of enormous Kansas landscapes, with Clark as a loner, an outsider, then briefly showing off his speed and strength. Long sequences as things run out of control in Metropolis, creating unusual freak conditions and dangerous accidents for Superman to rescue people from. Gene Hackman has long rants, interspersed by Miss Teschmacher looking on in a variety of wigs and gorgeous outfits and Otis bumblingly making a mess of things. The film is happy to take it’s time and often this pays off. Despite it taking a long time for Clark to get to Metropolis, there’s also time for him to admire and fall in love with Lois, to emerge as Superman and then Lois to fall in love with him.

This even extends to Superman’s arrival and departure in scenes. Modern flying superheroes accelerate to high speeds instantly, entering and leaving with a bang. It’s a dramatic effect, keeps things moving. This Superman floats down, lands gently. In part this is because it’s a practical effect, Christopher Reeve on wires. They don’t want to through him about. There’s more though. They want to linger on him, so see a flying man. It’s novel in a film. If there’s a few dodgy scenes, for the most part it looks very convincing. You’ll believe a man can fly? Look, here he comes, it’s going to take him ten seconds to cross the screen and land.

A key film in the evolution of superhero films, a light touch in using a lot of effects, broad in characterisation, rather flimsy on plot. Not afraid to take it’s time, to offer moments of wonder and magic between slam back action – or workplace comedy. And Christopher Reeve is excellent as the big blue boy scout, and unmatched as Clark Kent, the transformation being glasses, posture and movements, so good.

Watch This: A superhero film that inspired countless others while being unique in itself
Don’t Watch This: Takes a long time for anything to happen