October Film Update 2

Ten more films I watched earlier this year.

****

1. Superman IV: The Quest For Peace

Superman saves a Soviet space station; despite his efforts both the United States and the USSR are increasing their nuclear stockpiles. Meanwhile the Daily Planet has been taken over by tabloid tycoon David Warfield who installs his daughter Lacy Warfield as publisher. When a small boy writes to Superman asking him to solve war, he puts it on the front page (Superman’s non-reply being reported as “Superman says ‘Drop Dead’ to kid!”)

Superman goes to the UN and addresses the General Assembly, declaring he’s going to end nuclear proliferation. He then goes and throws a bunch of missiles into the sun. Enter Lex Luthor who has escaped from prison with the aid of his annoying nephew Lenny. Lex steals Superman’s hair from Metropolis museum, and uses it to create a genetic matrix. He then does a deal with weapons dealers, has them put the genetic matrix in a missile; Superman obligingly throws it into the sun where it gestates and creates Nuclear Man.

While this is going on Lacy arranges a double date, she with Clark, and Lois with Superman, they’re going to give him dinner and quiz him about the peace program. Clark deals with this difficulty in a tour de force of slapstick, getting carried away on a baggage cart as Lacy gets carried off in the elevator, only returning after Superman has gone.

Superman fights Nuclear Man, gets radiation sickness. Lex Luthor uses him to get control of the arms trade. Nuclear Man then develops a crush on Lacy, and goes rogue, kidnapping her; Superman uses the last energy crystal from Krypton to heal himself for the final fight.

An interesting question is raised, what if Superman ignored the admonishment to not interfere in human history and just insisted on peace. And the answer, that powerful forces would conspire against him is almost good. But only almost, they have to make a guy who is the physical incarnation of nuclear weapons for him to fight, also Lex Luthor’s parody of youth nephew, and making Daily Planet a tabloid, it’s all a bit silly. And not in the fun way that the earlier films were. A rather disappointing final entry for Christopher Reeve as Superman.

Watch This: Superman recognises the system is broken, takes action to fix it
Don’t Watch This: Almost insultingly stupid and much worse to watch than the previous films

2. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Four years after Journey To The Centre Of The Earth Sean Anderson is arrested; his step father Hank (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) gets him off the charges. He had broken into a satellite station to intercept some radio signals which he believed were from his grandfather, who turns out to have also been a Vernian, a believer in the literal truth of the novels of Jules Verne. The signals lead him to his grandfather’s books, specifically The Mysterious Island (Verne), Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stephenson) and Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift)*, whose maps combine to give the co-ordinates, in the Pacific off the Philippines.

In part as a bonding exercise Sean and Hank go to the Philippine where they hire a helicopter tour guide Gabato and his daughter Kailani to fly out there; there’s a storm and they crash. The island, as it turns out, is mysterious; it has mini-elephants, giant butterflies and lizards. They meet Alexander Anderson (Michael Caine), Sean's grandfather, who is also stuck here and the satellite won’t be over for another two weeks.

The island is the home of the lost city of Atlantis which only rises from the water every 70 years**. Alexander is convinced it will remain above water for a number of years but Hank finds water flooding in, leading to a madcap effort to get off the island.

The film sets up Sean, sixteen, to be infatuated with Kailini (Vanessa Hudgens) who is putting off going to college (no money) in a not especially interesting romance. And Sean and Hank, finally starting to hit it off, have a wedge shoved between them by Alexander, who is rude to him for some reason. Meanwhile Gabato is the comic relief. The mysterious island looks better than the Centre of the Earth, perhaps the four years have improved CGI. In an effort to be an inoffensive family film, they’ve made it just that – an inoffensive family film.

Watch This: Child friendly explorer adventure
Don’t Watch This: Just a series of things happen

* So not just a Vernian, but a proponent of the Stephenson-Swift-Verne Synthesis (SSWS from now on)

** So where do the elephants come from and go? This question is unsatisfactorily answered in the end credit sequence

3. Stephen King’s It (1990)

In 1990 Mike Hanlon, the town librarian in Derry, Maine, looks into children going missing. The police and people in town seem apathetic. He phones up his old friends from thirty years ago, reminding them of the promise they made. As he calls up each one they flash back to the events of that summer, contrasting their current, successful but flawed lives with what they did back then.

Bill made his little brother Georgie a paperboat; it went down a drain and Georgie disappeared (he was taken by Pennywise the Clown, who lives down in the sewers). Bill and his friends are one day confronted by Henry Towser and his gang, who are chasing Mike, the only black kid in town. They see them off, though not before Henry calls them the Loser’s Club, a name they take for themselves.

Bill wants to know what happened to his brother. Mike has been investigating the history of the town. There’s been strange disasters every thirty years. Pennywise the clown appears throughout history in pictures. As Mike in the present calls each of the club, they remember and we see their own lives, all of them difficult in various ways. They all answer the call to come back. All except one; after we see the confrontation in the sewers, where the Club are pursued by Henry Towser and his gang, they have to face their fears and confront ‘IT’ – Pennywise – Stan says he doesn’t think he can make it on the phone and hangs up. He then kills himself rather than face ‘IT’ again.

The five remaining ones return to Derry and Mike to find it charmingly barely changed – and then of course threateningly unchanged. Henry Towser was blamed for the missing kids back in 1960 and is now committed. They can’t quite bring themselves to believe that their adventure as kids was real, they’d somehow forgotten, in the same way that the town overlooks when kids are threatened. But ‘IT’ knows they are back and has plans for them.

The kid adventure is better (as it is in the recent adaption) because they’re kids facing an evil clown in the sewers, there’s nostalgia and friendship being made and despite the horrible things that happen (blood that no one else can see, kids vanishing and no one caring, being smothered by family etc) they have hope for the future. In the present (now further in the past than the time gap here, eh) they’ve grown up and become successful if flawed, and are if anything worse equipped to confront the monster. Well done dumbasses, you got older and wiser and less fit to fight ‘IT’. Where this is good is by mixing the flashbacks into the present (more in the first part) it shows the adults slowly recalling what happened and finding their old resolve, their old belief that they can make a difference.

Tim Curry as evil clown, unmatched, what the evil clown turns out to be, nonsense but so what. Kid actors are really good (the most annoying one, ginger joker Richie Tozer, is a young Seth Green). The adult actors are given a more frustrating story, in general they do a fair job.

Watch This: Cool time-separated horror with excellent old America seen through kids and a fantastic villain
Don’t Watch This: It goes on a bit to an unsatisfying ending

4. Keep Your Seats Please (1936)

George Withers (George Formby), a performer, has run out of money, even to the extent of pawning his banjolele (this interrupted by a drunken sailor who weaves in and out of film as both comic relief and a plot device). He can’t pay his rent, so sneaks into his room in the boarding house, not realising it has been let to Florrie and her niece Binkie. This is embarrassing (unmarried couple sharing a room) and  escalates as the Child Welfare people want to take Binkie away (Florrie promised her deceased sister she’d look after her but they think that an itinerant single entertainer is unsuitable).

At this moment he gets invited to the reading of his aunt’s will. The rest of her family spent her last years trying to ingratiate themselves to get her inheritance; George never did. She leaves her fortune to charity and directs that her goods and furniture be sold at auction. She also instructs the lawyer (Alistair Sim) to give George a letter; in that she explains that she has hidden jewellery and bonds in one of the set of dining chairs, and he should buy them to get a good inheritance.

George, of course, doesn’t read the letter right away; having helped Florrie and Binkie escape the Child Welfare people he goes to the auction, only to find that he can’t afford to bid on the chairs. Florrie tries to delay things as he returns to the lawyer in an effort to borrow money. The lawyer burns the letter, intending to get the fortune himself. Perhaps fortunately a salesman the lawyer was trying to get rid of was listening in at the door, and agrees to go into partnership with George, for a scandalously large percentage, George being unable to negotiate. Going back to the auction house the chairs have been sold, but Florrie has got the names and addresses. Unfortunately so has the lawyer so the rest of the film becomes a race as they con their way into various places to search the chairs while the lawyer tries to buy them.

It's a bit dated, and some of the scenes telegraph what’s going to happen so far in advance that by the time the payoff to the joke comes it’s no longer funny. And George reluctantly in his underwear is not an especially entertaining thing at this date; I’d rather he play a song. But the best of it, with madcap attempts to fool people and steal chairs while hiding from them, that’s pretty good.

Watch This: Moderately entertaining 1930s comedy, that manages to capture some of the spirit and detail of the time, almost by accident
Don’t Watch This: Every scene and idea goes on too long, and many jokes weren’t funny even at the time

5. Meg 2: The Trench

Following the events of The Meg, Jonas fights environmental crimes, mostly supported by his brother-in-law Jiaming Zhang. He’s also bringing up Meiying, the teenage daughter of his deceased wife. Zhang’s maritime foundation has the world’s only captive Megalodon, named Haiqi, captured as a pup, which Zhang has, perhaps, managed to train. In addition they are exploring the Mariana Trench where the Megalodons live; they won’t cross the thermocline*, a layer of water where the temperature repels them.

Heading down into the trench in a pair of deep sea submersibles, Meiying sneaks aboard. They’re then pursued by Haiqi who has escaped. Below the thermocline they meet some male Megs who mate with Haiqi. They then discover an illegal deep sea mining operation, being run by a guy who hates Jonas as he caught him doing environmental crimes and sent him to jail.

The Meg split neatly into three sections, and so does this film. The first, most interesting, is again an underwater exploration segment. This is less about tension and more about CGI explosions and submarine escapes. It’s also here that all the plot takes place. The third segment, like in The Meg, takes place at a seaside resort, made marginally more interesting by the villains trying to stop the good guys while various undersea monsters emerge chaotically. The second, shortest section, an innovation compared to the first film, can be summed up as Die Hard on a Deep Sea platform.

This sequel puts in more underwater monsters, explosions and villains with guns. Initially at least they are well equipped to go deep underwater, though as things progress we revert to some of the scrappy, tense, improvisational dangers. This is a grotesquely hostile environment – and it has giant sharks. But it can’t re-create the feeling of the best scenes of the original, only iterate on the lesser scenes. The resort bit is more complex, more full of action, with one or two bits that approach cleverness. That’s overwhelmed by explosions and the new monsters. The Meg never quite managed to be more than the sum of it’s parts, and only one part was especially interesting (where the shark was at a minimum). The Meg 2 manages to uphold that tradition.

Watch This: Fun giant shark film with some scenes of real tension
Don’t Watch This: Loud, ridiculous, overlong final sequence, and you’ve had enough of sharks

* Explanation of a thermocline is beyond the scope of this review, and also this film, though The Meg did make a stab at it.

6. The Canterville Ghost

The American Otis family move into Canterville Chase; tomboy daughter Virginia doesn’t want to be in England. Sir Simon Canterville, dead 300 years, tries to scare them away but they aren’t afraid of ghosts, and even when he teams up with Virginia the younger twins do better pranks and scares. Virginia meets Henry, a neighbour and the Duke Of Cheshire, and they have a strange encounter with a walled garden and a mysterious gardener.

The housekeeper claims there’s no gardener; tells the story of Sir Simon killing his wife, claims there’s a prophecy. Sir Simon denies the murder, admits to the prophecy. There’s an extended section as they settle in and the vicar’s wife tries some ghostbusting, which doesn’t work. Mrs Otis tries some social climbing, plans a party. Sir Simon realises Henry is the descendant of his enemy, who caused his wife’s death and then walled Sir Simon up.

Mrs Otis holds a banquet, with all the posh guests. This goes wrong; the twins try a prank, but then Sir Simon intervenes, setting fire to the hall to try and catch Henry. Then he puts it out to save Virginia. The Otis’s try and get the vicar’s wife to get rid of the ghost, a distraction, as Virginia enters the walled garden where she, Sir Simon, and Henry will have to confront the secrets of the afterlife.

This ending isn’t the one from the Oscar Wilde story, about reconciliation and Christian forgiveness. It’s a fairytale struggle against death, in which innocents must sacrifice and prophecies must be fulfilled. Which I enjoyed, it’s a fun family-friendly spectacular cartoon confrontation, the transformation between (CGI) 3-D and (CGI) cut-out-and-puppet styles being very good. Still, it doesn’t reach for the mystery of the source, or anything else, a slight failure of ambition.

Watch This: Bright, fun, exciting ghost adventure
Don’t Watch This: Rather thin, and the ending could have had a little more to it than trying to navigate fairytale logic

7. Moonraker

A Moonraker space shuttle is stolen from atop a shuttle-carrying plane and vanishes. The British government send James Bond,007 (Roger Moore), to investigate. He goes and annoys the manufacturer, space-obsessed industrialist Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) in his French chateau/spaceplane manufacturing complex/astronaut training facility in California. Drax gets his henchman Chang to try and assassinate him (“Take care of Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him.") Bond survives this, meeting Dr Holly Goodhead, astronaut and NASA scientist, then seduces helicopter pilot Corrine Dufour, discovering some blueprints. Bond survives another assassination attempt, goes to Venice where the blueprints come from. Dufour is killed.

In Venice Bond spots Holly Goodhead at the glass factory mentioned on the blueprints. More assassins try to kill him. Confronting Goodhead, he learns she is also a CIA agent on the same mission. Bond sneaks into the glass factory at night, discovers they’re making nerve agent, accidentally kills everyone in the laboratory. Chang attacks him, Bond kills him. When he returns the next morning with M and the Minister of Defence the laboratory has vanished and Drax is annoyed; Bond has one vial of the nerve agent and a clue: the globes the nerve agent is being loaded into are being sent to Rio De Janeiro.

Needing a new assassin/enforcer Drax hires Jaws (Richard Kiel) from The Spy Who Loved Me and the opening of this film (when he, again, failed to kill Bond). An inspired choice; as I’ve noted before Roger Moore looks much better losing a fight than winning one, and the 7 foot 2 inch metal-fanged Jaws always looks like he has the edge – and defeating him requires Bond to do more than just punch. Bond learns that Drax is moving all his equipment somewhere inland in Brazil, though Dr Goodhead is kidnapped along the way. Analysis of the nerve agent suggests that it derives from an orchid deep in the Amazon Jungle. Travelling there Bond discovers the tour de force secret jungle space launch facility, from which he manages to escape… into space.

It's the one where Bond goes to space! Indeed in many ways the plot mirrors that of The Spy Who Loved Me with space standing in for the ocean. But it’s a lot wackier, and, of course, chasing the science fiction high that followed from the success of Star Wars. Is this any good? Well frankly the space bits aren’t great, once you realise what’s going on in the short zero-G sections it’s unimpressive. The rest is very Roger Moore-era Bond, they’ve figured it out, there’s a boat chase, he goes to Italy for some reason, he has a female counterpart to work with. Drax’s big mistake is trying to kill Bond, he knows he’s on the right track because guys keep trying to kill him, the highlight being a funeral boat in the canals of Venice where the coffin opens and there’s a knife thrower with a fan of knives in the lid. Sadly dispatched with quickly for Bond to have his gadget-laden boat chase.

Watch This: The Spy Who Loved Me with some additional zany bits
Don’t Watch This: The Spy Who Loved Me with some additional zany bits
The Folk Story: Goes like this; smuggled brandy had been hidden in a village pond. The smugglers caught by the revenue men using long rakes to dredge the pond, claimed there was a cheese in the pond they were trying to retrieve; they pointed out the moon’s reflection. Thinking them foolish yokels the revenue men went on their way. Drax, in the novel, has named his very different plot after this as part of his contempt for the British. Here it makes even less sense.

8. Carry On Regardless

A group of Carry On regular actors arrive at the labour exchange, complaining that there aren’t any good jobs, and introducing their characters. Two women decide to go over to the men’s side because the women’s jobs and rubbish to everyone’s minor outrage. This puts them all together when they hear that Bert Handy (Sid James) has started Helping Hands, an agency for helping out; the six job seekers and the guy behind the desk all go over to join.

To start with business is poor, the only customer coming in being Stanley Unwin speaking gobbledygook, and for plot reasons Francis Courtney (Kenneth Williams) a linguist who speaks sixteen languages is never there when he is. The first one then comes in, Delia (Liz Fraser) is hired to try on women’s clothing so a man can surprise his wife; obviously she comes home early leaving Delia hiding in her underwear.

This is the majority of the film; a Helping Hands agent goes out, either encounters an unusual situation and has to deal with it (Francis goes pet walking to discover the pet is a chimpanzee), or encounters a more normal situation and it goes wrong (Lily (Joan Sims) collects invitation cards at a wine tasting evening, is invited in and gets drunk). There’s a big setpiece where the whole team is hired for the Ideal Home Exhibition where they demonstrate various home gadgets and they go wrong.

An actual plot never emerges, nor do any of the characters learn anything, though in the final section they do all pull together when Helping Hands seems likely to have to close. This is still Carry On as sitcom sketch film, settling in on an idea and seeing what amusing things emerge. Except this seems more scattershot, this generic helping hands agency less interesting than the previous ones (the army, a hospital, a school and the police), which had some satirical bite at the institutions they were embedded within. This vaguely has a swipe at the Ideal Home Exhibition but other than that isn’t really interested in commentary. As an early Carry On film smut and innuendo is part of the menu but doesn’t dominate as much as later ones do.

Watch This: Light-hearted black and white 1960s comedy
Don’t Watch This: Even less insight or satirical skewering of institutions than usual for such things

9. Jekyll And Hyde (1990)

Michael Caine is Dr Henry Jekyll, he believes that humankind can be improved through drugs. His rival is Dr Lanyon who does not; their disagreement is also personal as Jekyll was married to Lanyon’s daughter until she died. Lanyon’s other daughter Sara, defends Jekyll, not thinking him responsible for her sister’s death, wanting them to reconcile.

Jekyll of course has an elixir that transforms him into Edward Hyde, a bald, bulbous-faced brute of a man who rents a room in a brothel where the sex workers are afraid of him. He beats and murders people. As well as the police, reporter Utterson is following this case; meanwhile he’s also following the dispute between the two eminent doctors. When Lanyon hears gossip that Sara is having an affair with Jekyll (her husband is in India) he confronts her and she leaves his house; Utterson follows this scandal with his journalistic nose for trouble. Meanwhile Jekyll is having trouble controlling Hyde, including him coming out in his father’s wine cellar and killing him.

There’s not really any surprises for anyone who knows the original story. The period production is excellent with outfits and sets and carriages and crowd scenes and locations all looking very late Victorian. Hyde’s sexual assaults are fairly explicit, and the source of anguish for Jekyll. And this sets the scene for the conclusion of the framing story, whose inevitable horror loses it’s power.

Watch This: Stylish period horror
Don’t Watch This: Loses much of the possible subtext
Some Other: Versions of The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

10. Five Nights At Freddy’s

After Mike Schmidt tackles a parent he thinks is a kidnapper he’s fired as a mall security guard. The job counsellor thinks he’s a loser until he actually reads his name and offers him a night security job. Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria is closed down; it used to have games and arcades and animatronic characters who performed.

Mike’s brother was kidnapped when he was a child. He’s now responsible for his little sister Abby so initially doesn’t want to work nights. His aunt Jane wants to take custody of Abby, for the money. She has a comic relief lawyer with her. Bills are piling up so Mike gets Max, the neighbour babysitter, to stay overnight and takes the job.

On the job in the security room Mike dreams of the kidnapping of his brother, and also five children who witness it. He meets Vanessa, a police officer who is keeping an eye on Freddy’s; she tells him the backstory, how it closed down after five children were murdered there in the 80s. Aunt Jane turns out to have been hiring Max to spy on Mike to get evidence against him; she now hires her and her friends to vandalise Freddy’s so he will be fired. The animatronic animals (and cupcake) come to life and kill them. With no babysitter Mike is forced to bring Abby to work the next night.

The animatronic animals come to life and make friends with Abby, Mike and Vanessa. However on the next night (the fourth) Abby gets hurt so Mike has Aunt Jane babysit her and takes sleeping pills. The dream comes back, and the ghost children offer him a deal; he can stay in the dream if he gives them Abby.

Based on a video game, the film relies a great deal on scary mechanical bits hidden by cute fur. The plot is of course a lot of nonsense, ghosts in furry animals, a serial killer hidden in plain sight, an extra furry animal etc. And I don’t feel the nostalgia, this wasn’t a thing we went to when I was young, kid themed restaurants with arcades etc. Now a film that goes to a dilapidated sports centre or swimming pool with games and vending machines, that might push my buttons. Still it was enjoyable even if it spent a lot of time just sort of hanging around in the middle.

Watch This: Pacy horror with excellent animatronic animal villains
Don’t Watch This: Video game mechanics, dreams, the legacy of serial killers, machine mutilation horror, hauntings, betrayal, all jammed together