"The Paper Tigers" Rule

Having not yet seen "Shang-Chi" or "Snake Eyes," I can't say for sure that "The Paper Tigers" is the best martial arts film of the year, but I can't imagine how it wouldn't be. This is a low budget indie action comedy, helmed by newcomer Tran Quoc Bao. It got a limited theatrical release and most people have seen it via VOD rentals. I had not heard of a single one of the featured actors before their appearances here, but now I adore them all.


Danny (Alain Uy), Hing (Ron Yuan), and Jim (Mykel Shannon Jenkins) were once The Three Tigers, a trio of young, promising martial artists under the tutelage of their beloved Sifu Cheung (Roger Yuan). Now they're middle aged, Danny and Hing are woefully out of shape, and no one's lives have turned out well. At Sifu Cheung's funeral, they learn that their master may have been murdered, and set out on a quest to avenge him and regain their honor. This proves to be an uphill battle, especially for Danny, a divorced father who is kind of a jerk to everyone, even his own son, Ed (Joziah Lagonoy). Getting Danny back in shape requires mental and spiritual renewal as much as it does physical training.


But more importantly, the movie is wonderfully funny. Every single time these guys square off against a new enemy, they end up injured or humiliated in some way. Just the sight of these schlubby suburbanites trying to posture like Bruce Lee wannabes is a riot. There's constant sending up of common kung-fu movie tropes, and some great buddy comedy banter. Also, the film embraces the inherent silliness of these martial artists fighting for status and honor, while also being normal American guys with jobs and obligations. I love the moments of absurdity, like Danny turning himself into a human paddleball as a training exercise, or a fight being delayed because of a childcare emergency.


Though the film doesn't put too fine a point on it, there's a lot of exploration of the Asian-American experience here. Two of the three leads are Asian-American, and the third is African-American. The one major Caucasian character is the Three Tigers' lifelong rival Carter (Matthew Page), who is one of those unfortunate souls who is way too committed to living an authentic kung-fu lifestyle and being more Chinese than the Chinese characters. There's a running gag where he keeps delivering flowery aphorisms in Chinese that Danny and Hing don't understand, because they don't speak Chinese as well as the white guy.


You can tell how much affection and nostalgia the filmmakers have for the martial arts genre. When the film needs to play it straight in the last act, as the trio confront a truly dangerous enemy, Wing (Yuji Okumoto), it has no problem delivering all the tension and thrills it needs to. The action is consistently good, especially the rendering of various special skills and physical ailments. There are some truly impressive feats of martial arts on display here, but I appreciate that the bulk of the fighting is kept more realistic and painful than we see in most films like this.


This is one of those films that could only have been properly made independently, because it features minority leads, because it's more interested in the culture of Kung-fu than the spectacle, and because it has a low tech charm to it that would have been ruined by a glossy Hollywood production. And it has the freedom to both skewer and occasionally indulge in all the old tropes of the kung-fu genre, acknowledging the complicated relationship that Asian-Americans have had with these movies.



In short, this is a rare treat and a great introduction to all the talent involved. More, please!

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Reaching the Golden Age

For the past several years I've been watching films for a personal Top Ten list project, with the goal of having watched at least fifty titles for every calendar year, as far back in time that I can go.  This is both to give myself more context for the classics I've already seen, and to encourage myself to explore older films.  I managed to finish the '50s earlier this year and then took a long break.  Now, I'm gingerly starting to pick through the titles for the 1930s and 1940s.  

It's going to be a long time before I hit my goal of watching fifty films for any of these individual years, because I've only seen twenty at most for any of them, and then only the most famous ones.  Instead of making long lists of films to watch for specific years, I'm just picking whatever comes my way.  There are a ton of old classics that I'd never seen and have been happy to catch up on at last - "Anchors Aweigh," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "National Velvet," and more.  I've finally watched all the Academy Award Best Picture winners, and they're probably going to be the subject of a new feature for this blog after I'm done with the remaining Top Ten posts in the queue.  

After a month watching these films, I wanted to put down some preliminary thoughts.  First and foremost, I'd previously lumped the whole era together in my head as a sort of nebulous early Hollywood mishmash of MGM musicals, screwball romantic comedies, and Jimmy Stewart delivering stirring speeches.  The '30s and the '40s are very distinct eras, technologically, stylistically, and culturally.  The '30s had the Pre-Code era, and were still using many recognizable elements of silent filmmaking well into the second half of the decade.  The studio star system really became dominant here as the big moguls consolidated their operations and took more creative control.  The late '30s and the '40s is where everything became glossier, and had more of a prefab, assembly line quality.  For instance, I watched both the 1931 and 1941 versions of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."  Despite the '41 version having bigger stars and fancier effects, the Pre-Code version has the better performances and the more memorable moments of horror.            

I didn't expect to find any actors active during this period who are still working today, and was astonished to find some - Angela Lansbury made her screen debut with the 1944 version of "Gaslight" and "National Velvet," while Russ Tamblyn was Saul in "Samson and Delilah."  And the annoying little kid in "Anchors Aweigh" turned out to be Dean Stockwell.  My best surprise so far was finding out the Irish maid in "Dragonwyck" was Jessica Tandy.  I'd never seen her as a younger actress in anything.  But his was the era when all the stars I think of as the classic movie stars were young and in their prime - Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Bogart and Bacall, Rogers and Astaire, Hepburn and Tracy - they really should not have cast Spencer Tracy as Dr. Jekyll in the '41 remake, but it was wonderful to see him all the same.      

I expected the racist and misogynist content to be more pronounced and more uncomfortable than ever, but so far there hasn't been much that's too objectionable.  Maybe it's the films I've been picking, but minorities are absent more than anything else.  African-American actors appear as service workers, if at all.  Other minority characters are portrayed by Caucasian actors, and not trying particularly hard to disguise the fact.  On the other hand, I did see "The Bitter Tea of General Yen," which features a wildly over-the-top caricature of a Chinese man, played by Swedish actor Nils Asther in yellowface makeup.  The performance is so weird and so alien, it comes off as more bizarre than anything else.  I know there's a lot more blackface and yellowface lurking here, just out of my line of sight.

 

So I know to tread carefully, and I suspect that my rosy view of this era isn't going to last, as I work through the more popular films and get down to the mediocrities nobody talks about anymore.  However, I'm looking forward to turning up more old gems too.  There hasn't been a year yet where I haven't found a film worth the trouble of doing some digging to find.

Happy watching.   

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Trailers! Trailers! Winter of 2021 Edition!

Shang-Chi has given some reason to hope that the theaters aren't doomed yet.  We've seen the release of  another round of teasers and trailers for some of the last few would-be blockbusters of 2021, along with a slew of Oscar contenders.  So here we go!

Spider-Man: No Way Home - There was so much drama around the release of this teaser because there was rampant speculation that the film might be pushed back, and the marketing campaign is getting off the ground relatively late for a film this size.  I like that Dr. Strange is apparently going to be playing a big part here - he's been more fun as a supporting character than a lead so far.  Also, the Doc Ock reveal is great, even though we all knew it was coming.  

The Last Duel - I've been hearing so much about Adam Driver, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon in this film that I completely overlooked Jodie Comer.  She's positioned as a pivotal figure here, which is even more fascinating when you learn that the film's narrative is evenly split between the two knights and the lady, and each of those POV is being handled by a different writer - Affleck, Damon, and Nicole Holofcener.  Ridley Scott can still orchestrate some great spectacle, so I'm looking forward to the finished product.

King Richard - The fundamental criticism of this film, sight unseen, is that it's telling the story of Venus and Serena Williams from the perspective of a man, their father Richard.  While I understand the criticism, part of me is very interested in what the filmmakers are going to do with this premise.  I like seeing Will Smith taking on a meaty dramatic role after a few years of uninspired blockbuster fluff.  And I like movies celebrating fatherhood, which Smith has already proved he can do well. 

Cry Macho - This is the best trailer I've seen this year.  You put Clint Eastwood in a cowboy hat and have him talk about masculinity, and somehow it never fails to immediately get me invested.  "Cry Macho" is a project with a long development history that has almost been made a few times, most recently with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead, and I was surprised to see Eastwood pick it up again.  However, after that trailer, there's really nobody else I can think of who could pull this off. 

The Matrix Resurrections - Okay, fine.  I'm in for Carrie-Ann Moss.

Belfast - Kenneth Branagh's back!  And he's not trying to be Laurence Olivier this week!  I'm a little wary of how the trailer is pairing upbeat music with some pretty heavy material, but I guess a black and white film about a kid living through the Troubles needs all the help that it can get.  The cast looks great, the cinematography is gorgeous, and I can only hope the comparisons to "Roma" coming out of Telluride hold true.  I expect to see this one in contention in a few months.    

Spencer - Kristen Stewart playing Princess Diana is a good fit visually,  Unfortunately, the film only gives us a single line of her dialogue, so we can't say anything about the performance yet.  With Pablo Larrain's involvement, I expect that this is going to look a lot like 2016's "Jackie," but hopefully less depressive.  "The Crown" will eventually get around to covering these events with Elizabeth Debicki, probably from a less intimate POV, so it'll be nice to get both approaches.  

Mass - This is one of my most anticipated titles from Sundance, a very small scale drama written and directed by former Joss Whedonverse regular Fran Kranz.  It's four actors - Reed Birney, Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, and Jason Isaacs - playing four parents after a horrible tragedy, trying to deal with their grief and pain.  I'm looking forward to something intense, cathartic, difficult and hopefully very moving.  

Don't Look Up - I'm trying to figure out what the vibe I'm getting off this trailer is.  There's something very Soderbergh and maybe a little Shane Black, with the wry humor, the big ensemble, and DiCaprio playing an anxiety-riddled schlub.  The comet being the big crisis looks a little quaint in 2021 - and is Meryl supposed to be a Hillary stand-in? - but I'm sufficiently convinced that this will be a good time.

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My Top Ten Films of 1954

This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog. The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.

Hobson's Choice - This is my favorite David Lean film.  It's a small, spry domestic comedy-drama starring that takes place mostly in a boot shop and stars Charles Laughton, John Mills, and Brenda De Banzie - all at the top of their game.  It manages to constantly defy expectations, combining a comedy about a tyrant father pitted against his sharp-minded daughter, and a sweet "Pygmalion" story that develops real weight by the end.

It Should Happen to You - I adore Judy Holliday.  When she got going, she was the most wonderful, funny, vivacious screen presence.  Paired with Jack Lemmon in his first leading man role, she's an absolute delight.  Holliday plays a fame-hungry young woman who finds unlikely success through sheer obstinance, and has to choose between her new career and her new guy.  But she wants both, and she wants both vehemently.

La Strada - A fable-like Fellini masterpiece that gives us a good snapshot of his worldview.  His characters are tropes, but so humanely crafted - the brutish strongman, the thoughtful fool, and of course the simple-minded innocent, Gelsomina, played perfectly by Giulietta Masina.  Their connections are tenuous and their happiness is brief, limited to their time on the road as travelling performers.  And, alas, it's all too brief.

Late Chrysanthemums - Mikio Naruse made several films about the modernization of Japanese society, and the struggles of women in particular to adjust to the changing times.  "Late Chrysanthemums" is about a quartet of middle aged geisha, who are barely scraping by due to their low status and limited options.  The lead is played by Haruko Sugimura, a reliable character actress in so many other Japanese cinema classics.  

Rear Window - Alfred Hitchcock had a wonderful habit of coming up with these wildly ambitious productions, just to try something new and different.  "Rear Window" involved the construction of an entire, gigantic courtyard set, all diegetic music, and having the leading man stuck in a wheelchair for nearly the entire running time.  As Hitchcock thrillers go, this is one of the most entertaining and the most influential.        

Sabrina - Frankly, I don't like Audrey Hepburn paired with either of her leading men in this movie, but she is at her most winning as the chauffeur's daughter who is in love with the wrong person.  This was her follow-up to "Roman Holiday," and cemented her status as a star.  Meanwhile, Billy Wilder was in the middle of his legendary 1950s streak, and Linus Larrabee has my vote for the last truly great Humphrey Bogart performance.     

Senso - The wow factor of "Senso" cannot be overstated.  This was Luchino Visconti's first historical drama, and his first stab at really capturing the grandeur of the Italian aristocracy.  As the title alludes, the film is full of sensory pleasures, especially in the visuals.  It has such richness to its textures and colors, and the scope of the production is breathtaking.  The opera sequence is one of the greatest things Visconti ever did.

Seven Samurai - It is very difficult to try and summarize the immense success that is Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai."  It's easily the most beloved Japanese film ever made, a perfect action picture that feels shorter than it is, that has been remade and remixed a hundred different ways, and that still somehow plays as well as it did decades ago.  I think it's safe to say that if you love movies, you probably love "Seven Samurai."

Twenty-Four Eyes - Teaching as a profession is endlessly romanticized on film, because it has such dramatic potential.  What starts out as a sweet little film about a first grade teacher and her twelve pupils transforms into a tearful WWII melodrama as we learn what happens to everyone over the next eighteen years.  What makes it so interesting is that it embraces the quieter moments, staying far away from the action, but not the drama.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Kirk Douglas sings!  James Mason menaces!  If I go by my usual rules of saving a place on every yearly list for the film with the most pure entertainment power, this is it.  This was the big Disney produced blockbuster action picture of the year, with an all star cast, and a big special-effects laden ending.  That giant squid showed up as a clip in Disney branded media for decades.  How could I not love this?  

Honorable Mention:

Track of the Cat

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The First Five Episodes of "Revenge"

After a few too many dire prestige miniseries this past year, I needed some trash television.  Trash television has many categories and levels of quality, and when I want trash I want the good trash.  And there is perhaps nothing as expertly engineered to deliver cheap melodrama like the prime time network soap opera.  Hence, ABC's "Revenge," which is "The Count of Monte Cristo" by way of the Hamptons, with Emily Van Camp in a killer wardrobe standing in for Edmond Dantes.  It's been on my "To Watch" list for a long time.

It's been a while since I've watched much network television, and it took a while for me to adjust to the very different rhythms of the writing.  Characters are constantly recapping their actions and re-explaining their relationships to each other to bring the slower and more inattentive viewers up to speed.  All the performances are very broad, very campy, and totally unrealistic.  Of course, this is the point.  We want to watch Van Camp's Emily Thorne infiltrate and take down the wealthy Grayson family, who framed and ruined her innocent father (James Tupper).  We want to watch her and Madeline Stowe's queen bee, Victoria Grayson, glower at each other in every episode as they maneuver and machinate to get what they want.  

While I have little interest in Emily's love triangle with Victoria's son Daniel (Josh Bowman), and the struggling blue collar everyman, Jack (Nick Wechsler), or the even more maudlin puppy love that develops between Daniel and Jack's siblings, poor little rich girl Charlotte (Christa B. Allen) and hotheaded Declan (Conner Paolo) - "Revenge" still offers me plenty.  There's the catty girl talk between Emily and her party planner gal pal Ashley (Ashley Madekwe).  There's Emily's tentative alliance with the suspicious tech genius billionaire Nolan Ross (Gabriel Mann, who is styled like a young James Spader).  There's Victoria's evil bestie Lydia (Amber Valetta), who turns out to have been having an affair with Victoria's husband Conrad (Henry Czerny), and becomes another figure seeking sweet revenge.

The show is so shameless about its melodramatic aims, I'm obliged to let certain things slide, like Victoria and her daughter being made up to look practically the same age, Nolan essentially having tech nerd superpowers, and a certain dog who definitely ought to be dead by now.  Nobody in this show talks remotely like a human being, constantly rattling off exposition and repeating the really important information multiple times.  To distract from this, there's so much obscene eye candy in the show.  The Graysons are constantly throwing or planning fancy parties and nobody ever wears the same outfit twice.  There are spats over expensive boats, cars, and real estate.  Jewelry frequently carries important symbolism.  Even Jack's struggling bar looks picture perfect.       

And, of course, there are the affairs, the betrayals, the horrible accidents, the cover-ups, the dramatic falling outs, and the disgusting privileged behavior of people with way too much money.  There's the will-they-won't-they of the relationships, the old dark secrets, and the constant waiting for the other shoe to drop.  This is a network show, so there are twenty-plus episodes a season to fill, and the big revelations come pretty slow.  "Revenge" has been pretty good about managing its filler so far, but we're nowhere close to circling back to the opening scene of the first episode, where a shocking murder appears to take place at Emily and Daniel's engagement party.  Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't actually get a resolution to that until the second season.

"Revenge" is so easy to watch, I find myself bingeing it almost by accident.  This is not a show that I'd bother following every week, but it is absolutely fantastic for filling a chunk of time - especially since it's an older program where I can skip over credits and recaps, zap the commercials, and even fast forward through the boring parts without guilt.  I'm glad I waited until now to watch, because the biggest laughs I've gotten so far are from the occasional ten year-old pop culture reference and the fact that everybody is using Blackberry products.  

Once I'm done with this show, I'm kind of curious about some of the others in the same genre, like "Scandal" and "How to Get Away With Murder."  I feel I've been taking my media too seriously lately, and it wouldn't be so bad to indulge in more trash.       

       

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The 2020-2021 Television I Didn't Watch

In advance of my 2020-2021 television top ten list, it's time to do some housecleaning.  

Below, find eight shows from the 2020-2021 television year that I regret not seeing, but ultimately didn't have the time or the inclination to, with some thoughts about my reasoning.  I reserve the right to eventually come around on them in the future, but I haven't seen anything from last year's list yet.

Bridgerton - I'm so delighted that Shonda Rimes has her first big hit on Netflix, and I happily acknowledge that Regé-Jean Page is a beautiful man.  However, I've never been much for gossipy soap operas, and that's clearly what "Bridgerton" is.  It's an alternate universe, racially integrated Regency era soap opera - which is great! - but this is the sort of thing that I can only take in small doses - a two hour movie, for instance.   If my tastes ever change, however, this will be the first one on the list.  The short episode count is definitely in its favor.     

Shadow and Bone - I'm all for more YA fantasy.  It was actually kind of disappointing that the trend has sputtered out in film.  I've heard very mixed reactions about this one - apparently the worldbuilding is great, but the narrative spends too much time on the requisite love triangle.  I like that the show has a Chinese-English lead, Alice Mei Li, and that the series is based on a finished trilogy of books.  However, Netflix doesn't have the best track record with this kind of thing - see "The Witcher" - so my gut says to wait and see if they stick the ending.

Perry Mason - I mean, it's not even a "Perry Mason" reboot.  It's a Perry Mason prequel, starring Matthew Rhys.  He's a private investigator in this version, not an attorney.  I like the cast, and the ratings were solid enough that this has already been renewed for a second season.  I might have given this a shot if it weren't for the big season-long case involving a murdered baby and passel of religious fanatics.  Tatiana Maslanay plays an evangelical preacher, of all things.  "Elmer Gantry" has put me off that kind of material for a while, thank you.       

The Good Lord Bird - Oh look, a critically well-received period miniseries starring Ethan Hawke as the beloved abolitionist leader John Brown.  This isn't as dire as it sounds, because the project is categorized as a dark comedy as well as a historical drama, and is reportedly punctuated by plenty of subversive humor.  The prospect of Hawke chewing scenery as a nutty zealot certainly has some appeal.  However,  

"Good Lord Bird" is one of the shows on the list that is hardest to access, and I can't think of a good reason to go out of my way to see this.  

Ratched - This one sounded so good on paper.  Let's give one of the greatest screen villainesses of all time, Nurse Ratched from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," her own origin story.  Sarah Paulson is so well cast too.  However, in the hands of Ryan Murphy, the results were apparently less than stellar.  The style is campy and over the top, and there's plenty of melodrama and thrills in the script, but this one premiered back in September and promptly disappeared.  All that generated much interest were the complicated production deals required to get it made.    

Made For Love - Middling and mediocre reviews were responsible for turning me off of this science-fiction bad relationship comedy series, about the wife of a tech mogul who escapes the virtual reality world where she's been living, and tries to rebuild.  Apparently the first episode is great, but it all goes downhill from there.  The cast features Cristin Milioti, Billy Magnussen, and Ray Romano.  If this were a 100 minute film, I'd have given it a shot, but an eight episode series is too much commitment.  Sorry, "Made for Love," it's not you, it's me.    

It's a Sin - I keep passing on Russell T. Davies' miniseries, and feeling bad about it.  Last time around it was "Years and Years," and this time it's an HIV/AIDS drama set during the '80s.  It's a pretty star studded affair too, with Neil Patrick Harris and Stephen Fry making appearances.  But boy, I'm burned out on pandemic media, social justice media, and '80s media in general.  The euphoric reactions to the show have guilted me into keeping this on my "to watch" list for months, but in all likelihood I'm never going to be in the mood for this one.    

We Are Who We Are - I'm avoiding this for the same reason that I avoided "Euphoria," even though it's from Luca Guadagnino, the director of "Call Me By Your Name," among other things.  Angsty bildungsroman stories hold little appeal for me, especially if they're told in this kind of extended format.  The series features LGBT characters and issues, with a transgender teenager front and center.  The reviews were great, but also made it clear that the show is slow and moody and lyrical.  And that's definitely not what I wanted to watch this year.    

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A Trip on "The Underground Railroad"

 Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

"The Underground Railroad" is Barry Jenkins' first major project since "If Beale Street Could Talk," and it's a big one.  Based on the novel by Colson Whitehead, this is a ten hour miniseries about an alternate universe version of the antebellum South, where the Underground Railroad is in operation.  However, this Underground Railroad has real trains and railroad tracks, as well as conductors, engineers, and stations.  Make no mistake, however, that these fanciful notions don't mean that we're going to see a portrayal of life in the slave states that is any less brutal or distressing than it was in reality.  The first episode alone features brutal whippings and a runaway slave is executed via immolation.  

The series is set up as an anthology of sorts, following the major characters as they travel from state to state, and dangerous situation to dangerous situation, with occasional digressions and flashbacks.  Our heroine is a young woman named Cora Randall (Thuso Mbedu), a plantation slave who flees Georgia with another slave, Caesar (Aaron Pierre).  They're pursued by a stubborn slave catcher, Ridgeway (Joel Edgerton), and his assistant Homer (Chase W. Dillon), a small black boy.  As Cora travels through the country in search of freedom, she meets many more characters, including those played by  Mychal-Bella Bowman, Lily Rabe, Marcus "MJ" Gladney Jr., Sam Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Amber Gray, and Chukwudi Iwuji.  Peter Mullan and Sheila Atim play Rideway's father and Cora's mother in flashbacks.

Like Jenkins' other work so far, "The Underground Railroad" is a character drama through and through, very moody and internal.  It took a lot of patience for me to get through some of the episodes, because the pace is often so slow and contemplative.  There's a wonderful sense of place and time achieved by the production, and the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous throughout.  I found myself appreciating the careful construction of the period houses and cabins, everything inside them, the beautifully framed shots of nature, and the subtly heightened instances of magical realism.  I love the inclusion of these little moments out of time, where the narrative will sometimes pause to let the camera sweep over a tableaux of figures in slow motion.  However, I had to turn the closed captions on to decipher much of the heavily accented and low volume dialogue. 

As good as the show is, and as strong as many of the performances are - Joel Edgerton in particular is a treat - "The Underground Railroad" is the kind of angry cri de coeur against the white patriarchy and the lie of American Exceptionalism that requires way too much endurance to be approachable for most viewers.  The miserabilism of the African-American struggle is so draining to watch, and our heroes are traumatized and disillusioned over and over again to the point where it's numbing.   The whole series often feels like an exceptionally well shot horror film playing out in frustrating slow motion.  I think some of this could have been balanced out with a stronger lead, but Cora is awfully subdued or shell-shocked for an awful lot of her screen time.  Not that I blame her, considering the circumstances.  

Then again, I watched the whole series over the course of three days, and that was probably not the intended method of consumption, even though it was released on Amazon Prime all at once.  Some of the episodes really need time to digest and absorb.  This is a show that I am very glad exists because of how well it's executed, and because it's tackling familiar subject matter in a novel way.  Jenkins uses the variable episode length especially well, with some episodes essentially functioning like individual films.  However, it's also an intense emotional ordeal on the level of watching something like "Shoah" or "Come and See," and I wasn't remotely prepared for that.  With that in mind, if the trip sounds like it's for you, it's worth taking.            

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