My ‘Favorite Flicks of 2018’ is due any day now, but before that, I wanted to clean out my cupboards, so to speak, and rattle through all the flicks I haven’t gotten around to writing about yet this year. I’ve been remiss in keeping up with my viewing schedule, so in the name of getting through the whole list, let’s get cracking.
Sorry to Bother You (2018) – I wanted to love Sorry to Bother You. I expected to love it, in fact. I’m a big fan of writer/director Boots Riley and his band the Coup, the only rap group carrying on the fight-the-power ethos of Public Enemy. The flick has gotten some incredibly great reviews since its release, and it even co-stars Tessa Thompson, who can do no wrong in my book. And I am always down for a scathing indictment of late-era capitalism and racism. So it was with some shock that about halfway through this flick, I caught myself checking the time to see if it was almost over. I really did not care for this movie. It stars Lakeith Stanfield as Cassius Green, a new hire at an Oakland telemarketing company. He struggles with his new job until the day when co-worker Danny Glover gives him an invaluable piece of advice: Use your white voice when making cold calls. Cassius takes the advice to heart, and starts speaking with the voice of David Cross when he’s working. It’s an OK bit of satire that provides some humor from the juxtaposition of Cross’ ultra-white voice coming out of Stanfield’s mouth. The joke wears off pretty fast, though. Soon, Cassius has become a “power caller” and moved upstairs, where the company’s real work is done. The movie makes the company’s actual workings out to be a big mystery for the first half of the film; not even the people working down below know what goes on upstairs. But once Cassius is let in on the secret, the movie seems to forget all about that and suddenly everyone seems to know what’s going on. As Cassius climbs the ladder of success, the inner workings of his company are gradually revealed, leading to a frankly bizarre twist that adds a crazy fantasy/sci-fi element to the film that feels very out of place and random. For me, this is where the flick jumped the rails completely. The flick is at heart a satire of modern capitalism and its effects on the workers caught in its cogs, but this tacked-on fantasy element undercuts the whole thing. It makes the whole story seem pretty silly; it’s impossible to continue to identify with the “reality-based” characters when there’s all this other goofy stuff going on. The flick had already been losing steam with me for some time, but the bizarre twist was the nail in the coffin. Sorry to Bother You would have been just fine as a five- or ten-minute bit on a sketch comedy show, but it seems wafer-thin as a full-length movie. I was counting the minutes for pretty much the whole last half of the flick. Plus, they even wasted Tessa Thompson in a role that’s wildly inconsistent as written. She’s shown to be an ultra-left-wing agitator throughout, but she stays with Cassius for months after she finds out what his company is up to, hanging out in his luxury apartment. It’s flatly unbelievable. And is there anything more lazy than a supposedly funny scene revolving around a “wacky” performance art piece? I think Seinfeld covered that ground twenty years ago. Overall, this is a movie that certainly has its heart in the right place. But good intentions and a handful of flashy camera techniques don’t automatically make your movie any good. Kudos to Boots Riley for taking a big swing for the fences with this wild, over-the-top satire. Sadly, for me, it’s a swing and a big miss.
Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) — There’s no particularly good reason for this flick to exist, except that the murky, poorly shot action of the first one somehow brought in enough money to justify it. You can’t go wrong with giant fighting robots, I guess. (The Transformers series has never featured one moment of competent or engaging filmmaking, yet each new entry rakes in the bucks somehow.) That said, this sequel is way better than the original, with the main improvement being that the robot/monster fights are now shot in sunny daytime, rather than rainy nights, so you can actually see what’s going on. The flick starts off with a quick recap of everything that happened in the first one, so you don’t have to waste your time watching it, which is kind. The script is strictly big-budget Hollywood paint-by-numbers, and you can see every story beat from about ten miles away, but you can’t expect Adaptation when you’re dealing with giant robots fighting monsters. The best part of the movie is Star Wars‘ John Boyega, who delivers a fun lead performance, channeling Denzel’s cocksure movie star presence in a role that doesn’t make too many demands of him. He leads a cast with an ethnic and gender diversity that makes the Fast and Furious flicks seem like a Trump rally, which is one thing I can give these flicks credit for. Sure, the diverse cast is probably just there with an eye toward selling the movies in Asian and South American markets, but you take your progress where you can. As for the movie itself: meh.
Deadpool 2 (2018) – The first Deadpool flick was a fun surprise, a raunchy and ultraviolent visit to the Marvel Universe that actually managed to make Ryan Reynolds fun to watch. It became a huge surprise hit, so of course this sequel got trotted out as soon as possible. This second installment is still plenty of fun, but everything seems slightly less fresh the second time around. One major problem I had with Deadpool 2 is that it starts off with the murder of a key character from the first film. The ensuing twenty minutes or so then treat us to Deadpool in mourning, which is not a lot of fun. Reynolds is a good enough actor that he brings some real pathos to these early scenes. Pathos is not really what anyone wants from a Deadpool movie, though. Once the character moves on with his life and the plot kicks into gear, the movie is much better. It’s very much of a piece with the original, with Reynolds delivering wry commentary as he wrecks bloody havoc on a variety of bad guys. One highlight is a really nifty mid-movie armored car/train break-out and chase that’s inventively staged and truly wild. The breakout character is surely Zazie Beetz’s Domino, a superhero whose only power is “luck.” While other, more traditional heroes fall by the wayside, Domino’s luck finds her dismantling plenty of villains while avoiding certain death in multiple ways. Every action scene with Domino is fantastic, crazily original and beautifully staged. Josh Brolin turns in some good work as Cable, although you can see the twist involving his character from about a mile away. In the end, the flick kind of turns into more of an X-Men flick, as Deadpool is joined by a bevy of b-grade mutants for a raucous battle against the baddies. If you’re a fan of the original flick, you’re sure to enjoy Deadpool 2, just maybe about 18% less.
The Silencers (1966) — One of two Matt Helm flicks I caught on TCM this year. Dean Martin stars as Matt Helm, a boozy, womanizing secret agent who often comes across as the template for Sterling Archer. Don’t get me wrong, though, this half-baked Bond parody isn’t anywhere near as good as a decent Archer episode. And while it fancies itself a parody, The Silencers is really more of a bad Bond knock-off; it’s not over the top enough to really out-do the outrageousness of an actual Bond flick. Dean Martin’s take on a secret agent is pretty much Austin Powers without Mike Myer’s smirking self-satisfaction, as he drunkenly eases his way in and out of the arms of a series of impossibly gorgeous women. There are some pretty bad action scenes here and there, briefly pumping some life into a surprisingly slow-moving affair. The performances are uniformly bad, but the worst of the bunch is Stella Stevens hammy take on a Bond girl. Although she’s not really asked to do much more than show off her boobs in a series of tight outfits, Stevens performance is so bad that you notice it instead of the way she’s falling out of her bikini. Somehow this snooze of a flick was popular enough to merit three sequels, the first of which was…
Murderer’s Row (1966) — And I thought the first Matt Helm flick was bad! The series really takes a nose-dive with this second installment, which leans into the out-of-control boozing and womanizing of the original. There are a lot of leering, sexist “jokes” where Deano ogles and comments on the looks of the much younger women around him. A lot. Martin is visibly drunk in quite a few scenes, chain-smoking through every segment with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I felt bad for the handful of women who had to kiss him during the filming of this flick; his breath must have been horrible. The film treats Helm’s obvious alcoholism as one big joke, as he’s got booze stashed everywhere and literally drinks his way through the entire film. Ann Margret seems way too old to be playing the brain-addled young hipster who helps Helm dig into the 60s’ scene. Karl Malden has some okay moments as a Hank Scorpio-esque supervillian out to destroy the world, including sneering his way through one of my favorite dialogue bits of the year: “There’s a whole new breed of scientist today. They smoke, drink, swear, play around, but they won’t answer one simple little question: How do you destroy Washington DC?” Murderer’s Row is a truly bad film, and works best as a look at a certain mid-60s Don Draper kind of mindset: that of the cocksure, boozy cooze hound who blithely succeeds in whatever he tries, making crude comments to everyone around him as he does so. Yuck.
Ode to Gallantry (1982) — Amazon Prime added a bunch of new Shaw Brothers flicks during the last half of the year, including this poorly titled Chang Cheh effort. It’s one of his last films featuring the Venoms, his band of wildly talented former Peking Opera performers who starred in almost twenty flicks together after breaking out in 1978’s Five Deadly Venoms. It’s also one of the weakest Venoms flicks I’ve seen. It’s a convoluted tale of mistaken identities and kung-fu, as some vagabond gets imbued with superpowers by the myterious Black Iron Token. Whoever holds the Token is owed one wish from the powerful wizard who runs things in the area. Or something. Like I said, it’s not the best. The first half is especially slow, with things gradually picking up steam as the flick builds to the inevitable final dust-up. As you would expect, the climactic seven-minute melee is a thing of beauty, but the build-up to it is pretty rough sledding in parts. It’s a little too lightweight and played for laughs for my taste. Do yourself a favor and check out Five Deadly Venoms or Crippled Avengers instead.
Executioners from Shaolin (1977) — Another Shaw Brothers flick I hadn’t seen yet, and I must say that the title is a tad misleading, in that there are no executioners from shaolin in the film at all. Instead, it’s more of a family drama about a child raised by a pair of kung-fu refugees, traveling in secret as a theater troop to avoid the government officials who want to kill them. His mother knows crane style, while his father knows tiger style. And you know he’ll need both to defeat the evil warlord who betrayed their shaolin brothers! The story, of course, is just the backdrop to a series of fight scenes, and it’s here that Executioners from Shaolin really delivers. An early scene with Gordon Liu fighting off an army of soldiers showcases some amazing choreography as Liu takes on multiple bad guys in long, moving camera shots that capture the action flawlessly. Later on, there’s a truly great fight on a giant staircase, as our hero battles a small army of sword- and nunchuck-wielding foes. All in all, though, this isn’t one of the best Shaw Brothers flicks, largely due to the time spent on family hijinx and romantic escapades. There is way, way more heartwarming family drama in this film than you would ever expect in something called Executioners from Shaolin.
The Sword Stained With Royal Blood (1981) — Now we’re talking. This crazy Shaw Brothers flick teams director Chang Cheh with the talented Venoms for one of their very best outings together. The story revolves around a man whose father was murdered by a corrupt official, then got adopted by a master swordsman (as happens). A quick “17 years later” caption, and we’re catapulted into the proper story, in which this same guy and his mute buddy stumble onto a hidden tomb, complete with secret sword, lost kung-fu style, and treasure map. He leads quite an eventful life, which only gets more crazy as the movie goes on. It takes a good twenty minutes for a decent fight scene to erupt, but from there the flick gradually picks up steam as it rolls toward a wild finale. The concluding fight sequences are some of the best in the Shaw Brothers catalog, with some incredibly insane, unbelievably fast battles between guys wielding swords, poles, and a few other handy implements. One of the best kung-fu flicks I’ve seen in a while!
The Meg (2018) — Jason Statham battles a giant prehistoric shark. Not a lot more to say about this one. I found it to be enjoyably dumb fun, despite the filmmakers’ complete inability to decide how big they want to make the shark. Sometimes it looks like it’s 50 feet long, while at other times it must be 200 feet at least. It’s also another one of those flicks where “the best man for the job” happens to be a burnout drunk who hasn’t worked a job like this in years. (See Pacific Rim: Uprising for another example.) It’s fast-paced and moves from event to event briskly and without a lot of fuss. Basically, if you’re the kind of person who thinks you might enjoy watching Jason Statham battle a prehistoric shark, you will like this movie. If you think that sounds stupid, you probably won’t. Watch at your own discretion.
Taken 3 (2014) — The third and worst installment of Liam Neeson’s middle-aged badass action series, Taken 3 boasts some of the laziest, clumsiest writing you’ll see in a big-budget Hollywood flick. And that’s saying something. This whole film is basically just Neeson trying to track down his ex-wife’s killers while staying one step ahead of Forest Whitaker’s brooding FBI agent/philosophical sounding board. It’s not all that engaging to begin with, and when the action sequences and car chases finally kick in, they’re all shot in a hyper-kinetic, blurred shaky-cam style that renders everything as a series of colorful streaks and smears. Why show something in one clear shot when you can show it in fifteen blurred subliminal-speed bits? It’s a dopey cat and mouse game that meanders its way to a predictable ending, but takes way longer getting there than I had patience for. Pass on this one.
Murder on the Orient Express (2017) — Director Kenneth Branagh stars as Agatha Christie’s super sleuth Hercule Poirot in this latest adaptation of the classic story. He does a pretty good job, most notably by inflating Poirot’s legendary “moustaches” to a size and length that makes it believable that they are spoken of throughout the world. Branagh assembles an old-school “star-studded cast” for this, with everyone from Michelle Pfieffer and Johnny Depp to Penelope Cruz and Judi Dench on hand for the mysterious proceedings. The flick is a well-crafted nod to classic Hollywood mysteries, and managed to keep me entertained even though I knew how the whole thing was going to come out. Branagh leaves the ending open to a sequel, which I doubt will happen, because the flick didn’t do so well at the box office. Too bad, because his take on Poirot is about the best I’ve seen.
Tomb Raider (2018) — Alicia Vikander turns in a more physically demanding, less t-shirt-focused performance than Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in this unnecessary reboot of the franchise. I’m not going to devote too much time to this one, it’s an ok action flick that hits all the familiar story and delivers some so-so CGI thrills. There’s nothing too impressive here, other than the amount of damage that Vikander subjects her body to in pursuit of her particular MacGuffin. I would like to point out that this is yet another “origin story” meant to set up a franchise, so it has one of those Marvel-style non-endings that is meant to lead into the neat movie. Lame. Just make a movie. If it’s good, you can always think of a way to make a sequel. Trust me. Every movie doesn’t need to just be a set-up for the next, particularly when the movie is as pointless and mediocre as Tomb Raider.
The Getaway (1972) — I have to stop watching Sam Peckinpah flicks. They’re just not good. Clearly, he was the Tarantino of his time, making violent genre flicks that are just artsy and overwritten enough to trick people into thinking they’re something more. The Getaway sucks. It’s much more of a slow-moving 70s character study than an action or heist flick. The only “getting away” doesn’t occur until about the last fifteen minutes, and there’s not really a decent car chase to be had in the course of this boring travelogue. A much better title would be “Following Some Sleazebags Around the Southwest.” It would at least be accurate. Just about every character here is a complete creep, including Steve McQueen’s uptight, wife-beating ex-con. A quick example of where this flick’s head is at: McQueen sends his wife Ali MacGraw to see a sleazy parole board member and tells her to do whatever he asks in order to get McQueen out of jail. She sleeps with the gross creep, McQueen is sprung from jail, and then he turns on MacGraw and beats her for sleeping with the guy. We then get to spend some time watching as he adjusts to the mental hardship he’s going through, while she cowers and apologizes. This flick is just pure lame 70s machismo, with a smattering of shots of McQueen brooding and looking into the middle distance that are meant to establish depth. So crappy.
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