Jack the Giant Killer (1962) – Review

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then special effects master Ray Harryhausen should have felt very flattered when producer Edward Small released his fantasy film Jack the Giant Killer back in 1962 – a film that not only borrowed elements from Harryhausen’s 1958 film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, but also its director and two of its primary cast members – and what makes the whole thing even funnier, is that Harryhausen had approached Small back in 1957 to help produce The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, but Harryhausen couldn’t even get past Small’s secretary. It was the success of Harryhausen’s Sinbad film that spurred Edward Small to make his own fantasy adventure tale – using the same stop-motion techniques found in Harryhausen’s film – and that it had a less than successful impact on the box office should be a surprise to no one.

 

Though it did have a pretty great poster.

The movie begins with an opening that should be familiar to Disney fans – a big bejeweled storybook setting up the tale we are about to experience – from which we learn of an evil sorcerer named Pendragon, who rules over an army of giants, witches and hobgoblins, and whose reign of terror was stopped by the great wizard Herla. The Black Prince (Pendragon’s nom de plume) and his minions were then exiled to a land beyond the known world — I'm guessing Ireland — a place where Pendragon could scheme and wait for his eventual return to power in Cornwall.

 

“Once upon a time there was a well-dressed sorcerer.”

Myth Note: The Cornish folklore of “Jack the Giant Killer” regales us with tales of a young farmer named Jack whose exploits under the rule of King Arthur pitted him against a variety of giants, and after killing many of them – to the point that the species must have been on the brink of extinction – Jack was given a seat at the famous Round Table.

Now in the case of Edward Small’s Jack the Giant Killer, we are introduced to Jack as he kills a giant – saving a lovely princess in the process – but that is the only giant he kills in the film’s 94 minute running time; we do get a second giant, but it's killed by a sea monster and not Jack.  Even though this makes the film's title technically accurate – as he does kill a giant – it’s a little bit of a letdown in that area, nonetheless. Another strange choice was in giving the villain the name Pendragon, as that name is most commonly associated with King Arthur’s lineage, but as Pendragon is a title given to an ancient British or Welsh prince — one holding or claiming supreme power — we can understand our “Black Prince” taking that name.

 

The Black Prince seen here kicking it back in his crib.

The movie of Jack the Giant Killer – directed by Nathan Juran, who also directed The 7th Voyage of Sinbad – follows the adventures of a dashing farmer named Jack (Kerwin Mathews), who upon saving the lovely Princess Elaine (Judi Meredith), promptly falls in love with her. He soon finds himself battling the many minions of Pendragon (Torin Thatcher) for the fair lady's hand. The Black Prince's plan is to rule Cornwall with the Princess as his puppet — forcing her father to abdicate to ensure her safety — and this makes Pendragon a perfect example of the type of villain who tends to make overly elaborate plans, ones that seem doomed from the outset. His first attempt at a hostile takeover involved posing as a visiting prince at Princess Elaine’s birthday — where he gifts her with a magical music box — and said music box happens to contain a small anthropomorphic jester that would, later that night, release its contents and transform into a giant that would then make off with the Princess.

 

Ingenious plan, but it relies on a woman letting that thing in her bedroom.

This is when the film really starts to dip into the familiar waters of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, as not only is Jack being played by the same actor who played Sinbad, and the wizard Pendragon is being played by the actor who played the magician Sokurah in that film, but the first giant we encounter is a blatant rip-off of the cyclops from Ray Harryhausen’s film.

 

The giant from Jack the Giant Slayer.

 

The giant cyclops from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

What is worse is that not only was it a pale imitation of the creature Harryhausen created for his film, but it also had none of the personality you'd get from one of Ray's creations. The models in this film — sculpted by effects man Wah Chang  — using cannibalized armatures designed by the great Marcel Delgado, are rubberl-ike and goofy looking, and they never come close to looking like anything other than what they are, table top toys. Stop-motion animators Tom Holland and Jim Danforth did their best with what the sculpts would allow — which wasn’t much — but it’s clear that the producers were looking for more kid-friendly monsters, ones that wouldn't freak out the younger audience members. However, on the complete flip side of this, we meet several frightening ghosts, hobgoblins and witches that appear throughout the film that are batshit crazy, and I’m talking truly horrifying creatures. None of them even remotely family friendly.

 

Pure nightmare fuel.

When Elaine is kidnapped a second time – by glowing spectral ghosts that look borrowed from Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People – our hero Jack teams up with a young cabin boy (Roger Mobley) and a Viking named Sigurd (Barry Kelley), who just so happens to have an Imp (Don Beddoe) in a bottle — a leprechaun with three remaining magic coins that can grant wishes — and with their aid, Jack storms Pendragon’s island fortress to save his princess. Once again, fans of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad will recognize this wish-giving imp as a blatant lift of the genie who aided Sinbad in his fight against the magic of the evil Sokurah. The outright theft on display here is staggering – that Harryhausen and Sinbad producer Charles Schneer didn’t sue this production was a testament to their confidence in the superiority of their own film – yet the list of stolen moments don’t end there. The big action packed finale in Jack the Giant Killer pits one of Pendragon’s giants against a sea monster, conjured up by the Imp — though calling either of these creatures a monster is being overly kind — but the similarities to the final fight in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is undeniable.

 

Monster fight in Jack the Giant Killer.

 

Monster fight in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

Though the monster fights in this movie were less than thrilling — and could fairly be called The Battle of the Adorables — there is one stand-out element in Jack the Giant Killer that makes the film quite memorable, and that would be when Pendragon transforms Princess Elaine into “Evil Elaine” – a kind of "witch possession" thing that is never fully explained – but the result was that we the audience were treated to what I call “Hot Evil,” and actress Judi Meredith really rocked the hell out of her witch make-up and serpent contact lenses that they gave her. This scene left me wondering if Ridley Scott was influenced by it when he made his fantasy film Legend, as there is a moment in that film where Darkness (Tim Curry) transforms Princess Lili (Mia Sara) into an evil version of herself. Fun monster moments aside it was these scenes with the treacherous Evil Elaine that stuck with me as a kid.

 

The beauty of evil.

Though this movie is very derivative – even at one point lifting the disembodied torch-carrying arms from Cocteau's La Belle et La Bête – it is still quite an entertaining film, especially if you haven’t seen all the original source material that producer Edward Small stole from. It has a dashing hero, a beautiful princess, colourful monsters and a truly villainous sorcerer, all adding up to a fun fantasy adventure film. If you first saw this movie as a child, sitting in a crowded kiddie matinee on a hot Saturday afternoon, then there will always be a soft spot for Jack the Giant Killer.

 

All hail, Jack the Giant killer, and whatever the hell that thing was.

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) - Review

Most people alive today are familiar with the Grimm fairy tales through their popular Disney incarnations – Uncle Walt having basically made a decades-long career producing animated classic based on those old tales – but in 1962, MGM studios tackled the subject matter with an interesting “biographical” approach: instead of animated versions of the Grimm’s tales, we got a live action biography of the two brothers, one that worked as framework for three of their lesser known tales i.e. ones not done by Disney.

Produced by the legendary George Pal – known for such classics as When Worlds Collide and The Time Machine – this esteemed filmmaker took a vacation from the worlds of science fiction and entered the realm of fantasy with The Wonderful Word of Brothers Grimm, a movie that worked as both a fairy tale and a biographical picture. Directed by Henry Kevin – with Pal himself directing the fairy tale sequences – this film gave us a rather whimsical version of how the Grimm Brothers, Wilhelm (Laurence Harvey) and Jacob (Karlheinz Böhm), became known far and wide as collectors and purveyors of some of the most beloved fairy tales known to man. It would be fair to say that any historical accuracy this film has – as pertaining to the real Brothers Grimm – is purely accidental.

 

"Jacob, I hope one day to be played by Matt Damon."

The film’s structure has Jacob and Wilhelm trying to make ends meet while working for The Duke (Oskar Homolka) – a man eager to have them write a family history that would make him look good in the eyes of the King – and in between these moments of economic strife, we are treated to three fairy tales, that we either see Wilhelm tell his own children or ones he overhears from a kindly old woman. As I stated earlier, the biographical aspect of The Wonderful World of Brothers Grim is about as realistic as the fairy tales themselves, but a movie about court librarians doing endless hours of research wasn’t going to appeal to children – they came to see fantastical tales of far off places, not people doing homework – and fantastical tales is exactly what George Pal gave them.

 

The Dancing Princess

The first fairy tale deals with a young huntsman (Russ Tamblyn) who wishes to win the hand of the beautiful Princess (Yvette Mimieux). To do so, he must discover how the Princess is wearing out her slippers each and every night – this is apparently driving the King (Jim Backus) to distraction – but if he fails to uncover the secret to this mystery, he will lose his head. Lucky for the huntsman, he knows a kindly gypsy woman (Beulah Bondi) who provides him with a cloak of invisibility, thus allowing him to follow the Princess through a secret passage and smuggle himself aboard her coach, which takes her deep into the countryside where she dances with a caravan of gypsies. With a domino mask – also provided by his gypsy friend – the huntsman joins in on the dance, and wins the heart of the princess. Later the next morning – as he is about to be beheaded for apparently failing to solve the mystery – he shows the King the hidden passageway, and reveals to the Princess that he was her masked dancing partner. And they all lived happily ever after.

 

"Tale as old as time, clichés as old as rhyme."

It is interesting to note that we see Wilhelm almost apoplectic over the fact that some people have heard the story that it was a farmer and not a huntsman, while others state they were told it was a fisherman. This sets him on the path of wanting to see these oral stories written down, yet the strange thing here is that this movie takes a version of the tale that the Brothers Grimm didn’t publish. Their version of the tale was called The Twelve Dancing Princesses – where the princess danced with twelve princes – while the version that dealt with only one princess was from the cultural region of Hesse. This change was most likely due to budgetary constraints – you can save a lot of money by cutting out twenty-two other dancers – and it also streamlined the tale, allowing the running time of the movie to be kept at a reasonable length.

Note: This was one of two feature films that used the wide screen Cinerama three camera process – the other one being How the West Was Won – and we are often subjected to long “exciting” point-of-view shots that I'm sure would have wowed theater-goers back in the day, but they don't work quite as well on a television screen.

 

The Cobbler and the Elves

Of the three fairy tales depicted in The Wonderful World of Brothers Grim, this one is probably the most well-known – having previously been adapted by Tex Avery for his cartoon “The Peachy Cobbler” (1956) and Friz Frekeng’s “Yankee Dood It” for a Looney Tunes cartoon short that came out the very same year – and it also diverges rather far from the Grimm fairy tale. In this cinematic version, we get a poor shoemaker (Laurence Harvey) spending all his time making toys for the children across the street – who live at the local orphanage – completely neglecting his angry paying customers, so it’s up to the elves to do the work while the cobbler sleeps. As this tale now takes place at Christmas – a story point that has never appeared in any other version – the cobbler sneaks the elf-made toys into the orphanage on Christmas Eve so the children can be surprised in the morning. This version seems more like the origin story for Santa Claus than it does the Grimm Fairy Tale it is based upon.

Note: The Elves in this version are toys made by the cobbler – that come to life while he sleeps – so not only do we have the cobbler playing Santa Claus, but the elves are closer to being Pinocchio than they are any type of fairy tale creature.

 

The Singing Bone

In the third and last fairy tale depicted in this movie, we get a fantasy adventure dealing with a cowardly knight (Terry-Thomas) and his loyal servant (Buddy Hackett), as they venture forth to slay a dragon that has been terrorizing the kingdom. The knight sends his servant into the dragon’s lair – armed with nothing but a simple lance – to see if the dragon is at home. There is a lot of bumbling around in the attempt to kill the dragon – hilariously acted by the brilliant comedians Terry Thomas and Buddy Hackett – but when the servant kills the dragon, the knight then murders him so that he can take all the credit, and receive half the kingdom as reward. Seasons go by until one day, a young shepherd picks up what he thinks is a stick — with a bit of a carving, it makes for a nice flute — but that was no stick, it was a bone from the corpse of the servant who was so callously buried under an apple tree. When the shepherd plays the flute, it begins to sing on its own – revealing its true nature and exposing the knight’s foul deed – and once brought before the King (Otto Kruger), the knight is forced to admit his crime and state that he is sorry for his actions. The flute then leaps out of the shepherd’s hand – quickly forming into a complete skeleton – before eventually transforming into the servant, now alive and well. The servant is awarded half the kingdom — which was the standard fairy tale payment for services rendered — and the knight is now doomed to the position of serving his former retainer.

 

Buddy Hackett appears to have lost some weight.

This movie version of the tale is even a greater departure from the original Grimm’s fairy tale, as there was no dragon in the original – it was a large boar that was terrorizing the kingdom – and it was two brothers sent out to kill it, not a knight and his servant. In the Grimm version, the younger of the two brothers — being armed with a spear given to him by a dwarf — was able to track down and kill the boar, but when the older brother learns of this, he murders his sibling so that he can marry the Princess himself. When the shepherd’s bone flute reveals the truth — as it did in this film version — the older brother is executed and the remains of the younger brother are buried in a beautiful graveyard. This is the typical dark ending one expects from a Brothers' Grimm fairy tale. And to be perfectly honest, a fight with a dragon trumps a fight with a boar — no matter awesome that particular boar was supposed to be — so I can readily get behind the changes made here.

Note: The stop-motion animation – used to bring the dragon to life – was created by effects wizard Jim Danforth, and it has a very goofy “Puff the Magic Dragon” feel to it. The design of the dragon is rather fun — in a comical charming sort of way — but it is nowhere near as threatening or as detailed as what you would find in a Ray Harryhausen Sindbad movie.

The film portrays Jacob Grimm as the realist, while his brother Wilhelm spent much of his time with his head in the clouds – when not paying a local flower seller for a fairy tale – but in fact, the two brothers were equally fascinated with the rich history of Germanic folk tales. Sadly, a film has to have conflict – an egomaniacal Duke can only provide so much – and we spend plenty of time with the pragmatic Jacob railing against his fanciful brother. We also spend quite a bit of time with Jacob and his burgeoning love interest Greta Heinrich (Barbara Eden) – another strange choice as the real Jacob Grimm never even got married – and this all adds to the film’s heavy 135 minute running time. Kids today will most likely love the three fairy tale segments – the stories and the effects used to bring them to life are charming and still quite effective – but the biographical elements of the movie will most likely bore kids to tears. So if you come across this film some night on Turner Classic Movies – that’s how I was able to revisit it – check it out, but if you have kids with you, make sure to keep their expectations low.

The Death of Superman (2018) – Review

Looking back over the last twenty-five years, it’s hard to imagine just how big an impact The Death of Superman comic had when it was initially released. Not only were many comic fans shocked, but it became a media circus across the board – which I always found especially weird when you consider that in over eighty years of comics, he’d already died several times and he always came back – so it was almost a given that this story arc would eventually get adapted into a movie. However, it is 2018, and we are now looking at a third attempt at telling this seminal moment in the life of The Man of Steel.

 

Will the third time be the charm?

In 2007, Bruce Timm helmed the direct-to-video animated movie Superman: Doomsday, that didn’t just tell the story arc of The Death of Superman, but for some reason included Lex Luthor creating a clone of Superman (which did not happen in the comics) and completely ditches the Justice League’s involvement, all in a 77 minute running time. The next attempt at an adaptation of The Death of Superman was Zack Snyder’s live action film Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice in 2016, where the fight with Doomsday came across as more of an afterthought than anything pertinent to the two hours preceding it. Once again, the source material was abandoned, and Lex Luthor is still making a clone – this time from the corpse of General Zod and not Superman’s – that becomes the monster Doomsday.

 

Doomsday or Lord of the Rings cave troll cosplayer, you decide.

Co-directed by Jake Castoren and Sam Liu, this third telling of The Death of Superman – once again from Warner Bros. Animation – has been marketed as a film that would be “closer to the source material” and would be spread out over two films, concluding with Reign of the Supermen in 2019. Now, as the original story ran from 1992 to 1993 - with dozens of crossover titles - there is no way even two 88 minute animated films are going to be completely faithful to the comics, but I have to give the filmmakers props for trying. The voice acting is excellent – featuring many actors who have lent their voices to many DC animated projects over the years – and the level of animation and action on display is simply fantastic, but when all is said and done, did they manage to capture the true scope and emotional impact of the original Death of Superman?

 

You will believe a Superman can die.

A lot has happened with DC comics, and their animated counterparts, over the past twenty-five years – The New 52 and the DC Animated Movie Universe have both radically changed past continuity – and those changes pretty much prevent Jake Castoren and Sam Liu from being all that faithful to a comic book that was written twenty-five years ago. The roster of the Justice League is always changing – so no Blue Beetle or Guy Gardner in this movie – and back in 1993, when Doomsday entered the picture, Clark Kent and Lois Lane had already been married for a while. In this version of The Death of Superman, much of the running time focuses on the relationship between Lois (Rebecca Romijn) and Clark (Jerry O'Connell), with the crux of it being the fact that she doesn’t know his secret identity yet – that the eventual big reveal happens at Bippo’s seafood restaurant was a strange choice – and though the romantic banter in this movie works rather well – I particularly enjoyed the “Meet the Parents” scene where Lois has dinner with Martha and Jonathon Kent, and gets some of the dirt on Clark’s past loves – it does lessen the final impact of the movie when you have Superman dying mere moments after telling Lois his big secret.

 

Unlike the last animated version, there is no Fortress of Solitude booty call.

What makes this version really stand out, is that the film’s PG 13 rating allowed the producers to not “pull any punches” as blood does fly, and the collateral damage among the populace gets pretty intense – Note to Self: Don’t go camping in the DC Universe because apparently you will either be killed by a bear or a rampaging monster – and throughout the film’s running time, you never lose the sense that people are dying all around you. But for me, the highlight of the film was in seeing the Justice League basically getting decimated in their battle with Doomsday – each member being taken out in brutal moments – as it makes that final fight with Superman that much more suspenseful. Seeing the Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) and The Flash (Christopher Gorham) getting taken out so fast is shocking, and it quickly illustrates what a true threat Doomsday actually is – the fight between Doomsday and Wonder Woman (Rosario Dawson) was even more epic and beautifully choreographed by the animators – and when the League goes down you just know shit is about to get real.

 

Don't worry, this movie isn't called The Death of Wonder Woman.

The film does make a couple of odd choices – mostly stemming from the lack of Superman's screen time than anything else – with the first one being the opening scene where Intergang attempts to kidnap the Mayor of Metropolis. The crooks are led by Bruno "Ugly" Mannheim (Trevor Devall) – outfitted with high-tech weapons and armor provided by Darkseid – and the street battle between Intergang and the police goes on for a surprisingly long time – with some cops clearly losing their lives – before Superman eventually shows up. So, what took him so long to get there? Was he off-world fighting alien warlords with the Justice League? Could he have been in the middle of a hot date with Lois? Sadly his tardiness is never addressed, and I would have let this whole thing slide if it wasn’t for the fact that in a later scene, a NASA spacecraft his ripped apart by asteroid fragments – caused by the approaching Doomsday, who in this version arrives via meteor – and we get this chilling moment where the shuttle pilot ensures his crew that Superman will save them, “Be calm everyone, he’s on his way, I know it.” — he’d mentioned to them earlier that Superman had saved his life in the past — so he’s positive the Man of Steel will not let him down, but Superman is a no show, and all of them die. That's pretty damn dark. Where was Superman during this tragedy?

 

Was he doing some Netflix and Chill while these folks died?

As fast as Superman is, he clearly can’t be everywhere – though with his ability to reverse time that shouldn’t even matter – but when guys in robot suits are shooting up City Hall, and blowing up cop cars, you’d think that would be something Superman would respond to ASAP, and a space shuttle rescue is almost a signature thing for him, so what are the filmmakers trying to say? Is it pushing some kind of message that the people of the world shouldn’t rely on Superman, that he is a crutch we can’t trust? That is certainly an interesting idea to explore – worthy of its own movie, even – but the issue is never really addressed here. We don’t even get a moment of Superman reflecting on the deaths of the astronauts, as he seems to have never been aware of the incident at all. How is that even possible?  Even stranger is that when Doomsday makes landfall – his asteroid prison having landed in the ocean – Wonder Woman tells him not to cancel his lunch date with Lois, that the rest of the Justice League can handle it.

 

Sure they can.

Worse is that Superman only learns of the Justice League getting their collective asses handed to them when Jimmy phones Lois, to let her know of the battle. Doesn’t Superman have something called Super-Hearing? How is the Daily Planet ahead of Superman on this? Yet it isn’t until Clark overhears the cellphone conversation between her and Jimmy that he takes off to help. So, does this mean that his Super-Hearing is only good for eavesdropping on a person’s phone conversation – a person sitting across the table from him – but it’s not strong enough to pick up the explosions and poundings his teammates were getting at the hands of Doomsday? When the first three League members go down under the monster’s fists, Batman requests back up, but somehow Superman isn’t on the phone tree for this kind of thing.

 

“I would have gotten here sooner, but we had to wait for the bill.”

One of the hardest things for comic book writers to come up with are threats that require the entire Justice League, and not just leave it for Superman to handle. Growing up watching The Super Friends, it was always kind of embarrassing that almost every problem that they'd face, Superman alone could have solved in a heartbeat, which makes the threat of Doomsday – a being that does eventually kill Superman – something that should have been on his radar a little faster. Was the rest of the Justice League trying to prove their worth by not immediately calling him in?
When the movie ended I was left with the conclusion that if Superman had been with the Justice League from the outset, their combined might would have put Doomsday down, without anyone having to die.

Note: Superman gets stabbed by one of Doomsday’s bone spurs after clearly breaking Doomsday’s neck in this shot. I’m not sure how the logistics of that works.

The Death of Superman is certainly a much closer adaptation of the comic book arc than the previous two incarnations – seeing the Justice League battling Doomsday being a key factor here – and the final fight between the two titans is superbly done, but it still fails to capture the scope and emotional impact of the comic book. There are some strange choices made by the writers of the adaptation – like once again Luthor (Rainn Wilson) making a clone of Superman – but overall it’s still a pretty solid movie — probably the best we’re going to get — and I do look forward to next year’s adaptation of the Reign of the Supermen.

 

Superman will return.

Skyscraper (2018) – Review

Blending a disaster movie with a heist plot is nothing new – though the latest one being The Hurricane Heist was god awful – and having it star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is definitely going to put more bums in the seats, but sadly the filmmakers never thought further than the premise of The Towering Inferno meets Die Hard – having a plot was apparently considered inconsequential – and so, we are left with a generic action flick that may help sell popcorn, but it will most likely be forgotten by the end of the year.

Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) lost his leg ten years ago – during a hostage situation that went very badly – and now he is a security consultant that’s been brought to Hong Kong to inspect and give his outside assessment on the integrity of the world's tallest skyscraper, which they call "The Pearl" — a towering structure standing at 3,500 feet high. Unfortunately for Mister Sawyer, a group belonging to a criminal syndicate, led by the villainous Kores Botha (Roland Møller), have their own agenda, one that involves setting the building on fire. There is a ridiculous amount of expository dialogue tossed out to explain what is basically the dumbest plan in the history of dumb plans – Hans Gruber would have slapped these guys silly for even suggesting such an idiotic scheme – but it is all just needless set up so that The Rock can leap from giant cranes, run from explosions, and beat up bad guys.

 

Dwayne Johnson, able to leap glaring plot holes in a single bound.

This is the kind of movie that if you stop to think, even for just one second, the plot will immediately start to unravel. We are introduced to the building’s owner, Zhao (Chin Han), who has incriminating banking information on the syndicates, an ex -FBI agent Ben (Pablo Schreiber), who was once part of Will’s SWAT team and now seems a tad bitter - he's also the one that got Will this job - and finally there is a British dude (Noah Taylor) who couldn’t look more guilty if given an eye patch and a goatee. The criminal’s scheme is ripped right from the pages of the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia – where Watson used a smoke bomb to make femme fatale Irene Adler think the place was on fire, so she would head for the hidden secret panel and retrieve an incriminating photograph – only in this case, the villains set fire to a giant skyscraper so that Zhao will bring out the flash drive they need, and if that doesn’t sound like the most dangerously over-complicated plan to steal something, well it gets worse.

 

The Rock shown here trying to hold the plot together.

The gang also needs to steal a computer tablet that Zhao gave Will – which can access all the building's security measures, and will allow them to shut off the fire suppression systems – but the tablet has facial recognition software, so only Will's face can unlock it. This is a plot point even the movie seems to forget, as the gang had earlier tried to steal it from Will – failing because Will had moved the tablet from his bag to his jacket pocket – but without Will’s face, the tablet would be useless to them. Eventually, Botha’s chief badass assassin, Xia (Hannah Quinlivan), retrieves the tablet from Will – holding his face to it so that it will open – but this leaves us with the question, how did they originally plan to access the building’s security systems if they needed Will’s face to open the tablet in the first place?

 

Xia is incredibly hot, but Irene Adler, she is not.

Of course, this is just a big dumb action film - plot holes are supposed to be overlooked while the hero is thumping the villains and things explode - but as charismatic and fun as Dwayne Johnson is to watch, and he does give his all in this film, it’s not enough to stop one from realizing just how ridiculous the plot is, and how idiotic his opponents are. I have to assume the decision to make Dwayne’s character a partial amputee was just to give the villains a fair shot at winning – Will Sawyer is easily the most handicapable person in the history of film – but the script also gave him a tough-as-nails wife, Sarah (Neve Campbell), the Naval surgeon who saved Will’s life after the opening hostage disaster, and her ability to fight off mercenaries was a nice departure from the standard damsel-in-distress that you tend to find in these movies. This just adds another thing to the plus column for our hero. By the end of the film, you are almost feeling sorry for the bad guys.

 

“I’d be pitiable if I wasn’t so generic and boring.”

As a typical summer action flick – one that is not going to be around during awards season – there are certainly a lot worse examples out there, and if you liked Dwayne Johnson in his disaster film San Andreas, or the ridiculous video game adaptation Rampage, then you will most likely get a kick out of this film. Skyscraper in no way compares well to either The Towering Inferno or Die Hard, but I don’t think writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber had any allusions that it would, and if you go into the theater to see this film, with the right frame of mind, you will probably have a good time.

Stray Thoughts:

• Will gives a briefing on the building's security measures to a room full of people who would all be completely aware of how the building works.
• At one point Kores Botha states he needs Zhao alive – if dead, the syndicate’s secrets automatically get sent to the authorities – but mere minutes later Botha is seen firing his machine gun at Zhao. Does he have the memory of a goldfish?
• The jumbotron – that the spectators watching the fire are viewing – must get its footage from magical cameras, as it’s constantly getting impossibly great shots of The Rock climbing on the building.
• The Chinese police inexplicably bring Will’s wife to where they believe the villains will be rendezvousing.
• The final fight takes place in a digital hall of mirrors, a neat homage to Enter the Dragon.
• The Rock doesn’t kill anybody with his prosthetic leg.  What’s up with that?
• Sarah and her kids are surprisingly immune to heat and smoke.

 

Even fire knows not to mess with The Rock’s family.

Proud Mary (2018) – Review

In 1969, the song “Proud Mary” was written by John Fogerty - for his band Clearance Clearwater Revival - but aside from the title character of this movie being named Mary, there isn’t much else they have in common. The original song was about a woman who worked as a maid for rich people - Fogerty has stated in interviews about the song that, "She gets off the bus every morning and goes to work and holds their lives together and then she has to go home" - later, Stu Cook introduced the riverboat element to the song, and thus “Proud Mary” went from being about a maid to being about a boat. Now, in 2018, we have a movie called Proud Mary - that is neither about a maid nor a boat - but it does include the song, so I guess that’s something.

Mary (Taraji P. Henson) is a hit woman who works for an organized crime family in Boston - led by her mentor/father figure Benny (Danny Glover) and his son Tom (Billy Brown), who has a romantic history with Mary - and the crux of the movie is that Mary is one of those “Killers with a heart of gold” who eventually takes in a young kid named Danny (Jahi Di'Allo Winston), who was orphaned by Mary when she killed his father on orders from Benny. Killers with a conscience are certainly nothing new in movies; Leon: The Professional, The Bourne Identity and La Femme Nikita just to name a few, but with Proud Mary - whose guilt over orphaning a kid leads to her decision to abandon her life of crime to become a mother - fails to work, as the writers of this movie hadn't bothered to actually give us a character with more than one dimension.

 

"I'm here for my Foxy Brown audition."

The plot kicks into gear when Mary kills a rival gang member (Xander Berkeley), who young Danny had become an abused ward of after being orphaned by Mary. The killing of this particular asshole - and several of his Russian goons - sets off a gang war between Benny’s organization and the Russian’s led by Luka (Rade Serbedzija), and so for the first half of the movie we get Mary trying to keep Danny safe - while also hiding the fact that she was the one that started this whole mess by killing some Russian asshats. Then things shift into the common territory with the cliché of our hero wanting to get out of the mob business, and the "family" not allowing this to happen.

 

"I'm still too old for this shit."

Proud Mary has some decent action sequences - a hot woman with a gun is always a good selling point - but for the most part, I never found myself emotionally invested in any of it. Taraji P. Henson had already proven she could play the badass assassin type in the movie Smokin’ Aces, but here she is almost too reluctant and lethargic for me to buy her as a top level killer for the mob. This failure has nothing to do with Henson’s acting ability - what the script gives her she delivers with aplomb - but the writing she is given is simply terrible, with such scintillating dialog as, “Newsflash, asshole! I am the mothering type!” This seems more like a cheap punchline than any kind of earned dramatic moment. The forced mother/son bonding between Mary and Danny is never really believable - weakening what was already a cliché ridden plot - and sure, we don’t always need fresh and original ideas in our action movies, but if your three act structure is going to be something that the average film goer is going to see coming a mile away, well than you better amp up the action sequences to make up for your lack in story.  Yet as stated above, the action moments in this film, though fairly decent, are just nothing to brag about.

Couple of stray thoughts:

• Mary kills a bookie on orders from Benny only to immediately discover that the man had a son, and this upsets her. Had all her previous hits been on people without wives, husbands, or children? If you’re a hired killer you'd have to know there will be some kind of fallout from what you do for a living.
• Mary and Tom raid a country estate to take on a couple dozen Russian gangsters. How understaffed is Benny’s organization that he only sends two people two take out an unknown number of enemies, in a building that could easily hold a hundred gun toting assholes. Jason Bourne and Rambo do this shit alone because they are "on their own" but there is no reason for Benny not to send more of his soldiers to help Mary and Tom.

 

"We're good as long as these assholes continue to be terrible shots."

I didn’t expect a Tarantinoesque blacksploitation type film from Proud Mary - with it being directed by the guy who brought us the craptacular London Has Fallen, that was a given - yet I was still hoping to get an adrenaline fueled action ride with a badass black heroine. Instead what we got was a hackneyed script that wasted a very talented cast. Proud Mary is mostly guilty of being instantly forgettable - I would have rather watched a movie about a hard working maid, one who maybe had a river boat named after her - so I advise you to pop in the song and give this movie a pass.

Housebound (2014) – Review

Whenever I’m watching a haunted house movie at some point I’ll invariably ask, “What the hell are you people still doing in that bloody house?” Call me crazy but when walls begin to bleed – or spectral voices are crying “GET OUT!” – I’d be changing my zip code as fast as humanly possible. I don’t see the point in waiting around to see if a spirit is of the Casper the Friendly Ghost variety or the revenge type phantoms found in films like The Ring. In the 2014 horror movie Housebound New Zealand director Gerard Johnstone posits the question, “What if you couldn't leave, that you were under house arrest in a haunted house?”

The protagonist of Housebound is one Kylie Bucknell (Morgana O'Reilly), a young woman with serious anger issues, who – after a spectacularly failed robbery of an ATM – is sentenced to eight months house arrest in the one place she would least like to be…home sweet home. She is put under the watchful eye of her mother, Miriam (Rima Te Wiata), a woman who thinks that there is a very good chance her house is haunted – objects disappearing and strange noises abound being her chief evidence of this – and to say that Kylie and Miriam don’t “get on” would be a vast understatement. Kylie is quick to mock her mother’s belief in the supernatural – after hearing her call-in to a local radio program to discuss her haunting experiences – but when a disembodied hand grabs Kylie's ankle – while investigating noises in the basement – she starts to give her mother’s idea a little more credence. Unfortunately Dennis (Cameron Rhodes), her court appointed clinical psychologist, accuses Kylie and Miriam of both being delusional.

 

Note: Dennis is an unobservant twit.

Lucky for Kylie she does have one authority figure in her corner – the local police being about as useful as tits on a bull – and that would be Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), the security contractor who keeps track of her movements via her ankle monitor. When she tells Amos of the strange goings on in their home he doesn’t scoff at all – in fact his first instinct is to try and contact the spirits – and the two slowly become friends as they work together to solve the mystery. Could the fact that the place Kylie calls home was once a halfway house for juvenile delinquents be a factor? And what of the girl murdered 14 years ago in the very room Kylie now sleeps in? Could a vengeful spirit be stalking the halls of Kylie’s home, or is something more bizarre and sinister going on? And how does the creepy neighbour, who skins a lot of possums, figure into all of this?

 

Step aside Nancy Drew we have new heroes in town.

What sets Housebound apart from many of its brethren would be the comedic aspect – noble and paranormal loving Amos providing many of the laughs – but the humor never gets too broad, always keeping the film and its characters grounded. There are quite a few good horror/comedies out there – from Young Frankenstein to Shaun of the Dead – and though Gerard Johnstone doesn’t go for the big laughs found in those films he manages to infuse enough humor to elevate Housebound above many of its contemporaries. The only real negative thing I can mention is that though mystery itself is quite clever – and I don’t want to get into spoilers here – but at times it does stretch credulity a tad.  With Housebound we once again find that New Zealand can produce really solid horror films – especially if they include a dash of dark humor – and thus I highly recommend fans of the genre checking this one out.

The Nanny (2017) – Review

In horror films, if you hire a babysitter or nanny, there is a good chance they will turn out to be evil – whether they be a woman seeking revenge, as in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, or something more supernatural, like William Friedkin’s The Guardian – but regardless of the nature of the film’s childcare services, we know things will most likely not go well for the family. Today, we will look at Joel Novoa’s 2017 horror film The Nanny - which has a little bit of the revenge plot as well as supernatural elements to it – and we will see how effective one can be on a low budget.

The film’s protagonist is a young girl named Noa (Jadin Harris), who is quite protective of her little brother Michael (Christian Ganiere). When Noa and Michael’s overworked mother, Anna (Schuyler Fisk) hires a nanny to take care of them, it is up to Noa to prove that Leonor (Jaime Murray) – the seemingly ideal nanny – is not who, or even what, she seems to be.

 

A dark Mary Poppins?

With a brief running time of 80 minutes, it is quite clear from the outset that this movie had bitten off more than it could chew – giving us a cold open prologue that never gets properly explained is one of many examples of this – but the film fails mostly from cramming in too many moments of expository dialogue that never feels organic, as well as seeming rushed. We are told that Michael is hearing voices – ones that tell him to do horrible things – but after the school informs Anna of this, as well as showing her Michael’s disturbingly bloody drawings, her only response is to hire a nanny. Doesn’t this town have a child psychologist? This kid probably needs some serious mental therapy, but instead of seeking professional help, the mom ops for a live-in babysitter.

Note: Anna is a single parent who has to work double shifts to make ends meet – Question: How is she affording a live-in nanny?

The mysterious Leonor is able to use some sort of “mental whammy” on Anna to secure her position as the kid’s nanny – and even mentally messes with Frank (Nick Gomez), the deputy sheriff, to further divert suspicion – but Leonor taking over the household is too rushed, even if the explanation is as lame as, “A wizard did it.” We get cryptic clues throughout the film as to what Leonor’s true nature is – a creature of the Fae who wants her children back – but all of the film’s hinting of a “larger world” leaves the viewer wishing to see a bit more of that world, and not just the half-dozen people that seem to be the town’s only residents. When the film re-introduces the character of David (Nicholas Brendon), who in the prologue we saw lose his daughter to some creature in the woods, we think the story is going to possibly show David saving his missing daughter, but instead it took a delightfully dark turn that I did not expect. The Nanny really had me on board for awhile - the basic premise was quite intriguing - but unfortunately, director Joel Novoa had no time to properly explore any of the characters he sets up, and thus none of them come across as relatable or even believable. For example, Noa inexplicably goes out into the night to meet up with David, a man she doesn't know from Adam. I know kids can be stupid at times, but this moment was ludicrous.

 

Apparently Noa was never given the “Stranger Danger” talk.

The mythology of the Faerie Courts is just rife with possibilities – if you’ve seen Guillermo del Toro Pan’s Labyrinth, you know what I mean – but with what was basically a direct-to-video budget, that’s a harder thing to pull off. Jaime Murray does a decent job as the mysterious nanny – giving creepy stares whenever required – but when we see her glued on wings, it takes us right out of the moment, and the film never quite wins us back.

 

They're not quite Papier Mâché wings but almost as bad.

The film’s twists and turns take the “Evil Nanny” genre in what could have been an interesting direction – once again, if time and money hadn’t been a factor – but what we are left with is something that looks a little bit like a pilot episode for a new show on the WB, resulting in a film that is rather forgettable. There are some positive aspects to this movie – both Jaimie Murray and Jadin Harris are quite good – but the whole production is hamstrung by squandered possibilities. The Nanny is not a terrible example of the genre, it does have a couple nice moments with the fae, but clearly the subject matter was somewhat beyond the reach of the filmmaker’s abilities and or budget.

 

Meet this film’s $1.99 version of Swamp Thing.

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) – Review

In 2015, Marvel’s Ant-Man could easily have come across as a low-rent Iron Man – both featuring high-tech costumed heroes – but instead, the studio doubled down on the comedy and we got an incredibly fun caper flick that surprised many a viewer. Now, with 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, we get the answer to the much asked question, “What was Scott Lang doing during the events of Avengers: Infinity War?”  (Note: Still no revelation as to what Clint Barton/Hawkeye was doing), the answer is that he was under house arrest. Seriously, the fate of the universe is hanging in the balance, and one of the most versatile heroes is sidelined by an ankle monitor?

 

"Tell the universe I'm busy."

Once again directed by Peyton Reed, Ant-Man and the Wasp follows the events of Captain America: Civil War – where breaking the Sokovia Accords in Berlin landed Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) in jail – and now he has just three days left of house arrest. How his being locked up in The Raft (A high security prison maintained by S.H.I.E.L.D) during Civil War was commuted to house arrest in this film is never explained — Lang must have the best lawyer in the universe. Scott has since been spending his time trying to keep his daughter amused – in a way any kid would die for – and running a personal security firm for ex-cons with his pal Luis (Michael Peña). It’s when Scott is hit with a dream/vision of the Quantum Realm that could be coming from Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), who’s been trapped inside for decades, that the movie’s plot is sent into hyper-drive.

 

The team-up we’ve all been waiting for.

Of course, popping into the Quantum Realm isn’t like going down to the corner store for a bag of crisps – Scott Lang being the only person to have ever returned – and the dangerous science behind this rescue isn’t even the major problem; aside from the fact that both Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) are still mad at Scott for running off to Berlin with one of the Ant-Man suits – putting both of them on the FBI’s most wanted list – he also has to deal with black market tech dealer Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), a team of Federal Agents led by Agent Woo (Randall Park), and the mysterious Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a masked opponent who wants to get her hands on Pym’s quantum tech for her own, and very personal, reasons.

 

Ghost is another in the ever increasing list of excellent Marvel villains.

With director Peyton Reed having to juggle multiple opponents – all with their own agendas – it’s not surprising to find that the tonal shifts the movie makes do not always work – the switching between dramatic moments like a mother missing for decades in a mysterious microverse to Lang’s goofy ex-con buddies could be considered a tad jarring – but the movie’s amazing action set-pieces will keep even the most jaded viewer enthralled. The use of switching sizes mid-combat – turning themselves and vehicles from big to small at the drop of a hat – makes these fight sequences totally insane and completely original, and then when you add in the Ghost’s ability to quantum shift – which allows her to phase in and out of attacks – you get some of the best superhero combat and chase sequences ever put to film.

Note: The Ant-Man films still stay fairly separate from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and can be enjoyed by people who haven’t seen any other Marvel movies.

Where the original Ant-Man movie focused on comedy – with Michael Peña stealing many a scene – this entry is more plot and action driven, with the biggest danger it faces is in getting in it's own way.

Stray Thoughts:

• Marvel’s actor de-aging software is getting better and better.
• Bobby Cannavale returns as the husband of Lang’s ex-wife, and his character bucks the trend of asshole movie stepdads.
• The movie could have used a bit more Wasp action, what we got was fantastic, I just wanted more.
• Having enlarged ants as laboratory assistants was bloody brilliant
• That Janet Van Dyne managed to stay sane while being trapped for 30 years in the Quantum Realm is quite impressive
• It’s a shame that Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne) never offers Scott Lang the Blue Pill.
• I’m not sure how the contents of Hank Pym’s shrunken building survive all the jostling they experience during the movie’s “Great Keep-Away” chase Sequence.

 

Maybe it has some kind of internal stability field?

The Ant-Man movies are sort of in the same vein as the Guardians of the Galaxy films – both relying heavily on the comedic aspects of their characters – but unlike the Guardians’ movies, Ant-Man and the Wasp continue to keep their adventures on a less cosmic scale, barely having an effect on even a global level, which I find kind of refreshing. Ant-Man and the Wasp may not be reinventing the wheel with this entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – though it does take combat tactics to a whole new level – but the result is still a remarkably fun film, with an engaging cast of characters and a new fully developed antagonist who is even more sympathetic than Michael B. Jordan’s character from Black Panther. If you want thrills, laughs and super-heroics, you could do a lot worse than Ant-Man and the Wasp.

 

See this on the big screen if you can.