Howard Shore – People Talking

Quick Thoughts – August Round-Up

Across 110th Street (1972)

Anyone who’s seen Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown is familiar with this title, as the Bobby Womack single of the same name (which appears on the soundtrack album but not in the actual movie?) plays at both the beginning and end of that film.

It gets lumped in with the Blaxploitation genre, but after seeing it, it’s clear that Across 110th Street doesn’t belong there. For one thing, the tone is too serious (there’s nothing really tongue-in-cheek about it), and there’s no strong, Black protagonist, because there’s no protagonist of any kind (we’ll come back to that).

Let’s back up for a second. Across 100th Street begins with the violent theft of a large sum of Italian mob money by three Black robbers. From there, it’s a race against time between the mobsters and the cops to find out who did it; the cops wanting justice for their gunned-down brethren, and the mob wanting to set an example to those who would try to steal from them.

This is where things get problematic for me, because the movie constantly cuts around between the three concerned parties (thieves, mobsters, cops), which is fine in theory, but in practice it doesn’t really allow you to connect with any character in particular, good, bad, or otherwise, and thus you never really connect with the movie as a whole.

This is not to say Across 110th Street is terrible. As well as having some entertaining moments, the movie addresses serious issues in a mature fashion, which is admirable. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so cold and flat from a stylistic standpoint. It’s one thing to go that route for a based-on-a-true-story movie (like Tora! Tora! Tora!), or a this-is-what-could-happen movie (like Contagion), but for a fictional police procedural I don’t think it’s the best idea.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

eXistenZ (1999)

If you made a cocktail out of Videodrome, The Matrix, and Inception, you’d have eXistenZ.

I was a bit nervous about seeing this one, given David Cronenberg’s infamy for gross-out material, but eXistenZ is surprisingly measured in the body horror department (even the “Chinese Restaurant” scene didn’t really bother me, although whether or not a lot of this stuff upsets you comes down to individual tastes and fears).

The movie takes a hard look at the concept of virtual reality, and, while it may not be an action movie, it feels appropriately dream-like (without question one of the movie’s strongest aspects). There’s also some commentary on videogames which gamers past and present will understand and appreciate.

Performance-wise, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law put in solid shifts, but I think I find the supporting roles more interesting (Ian Holm and definitely Willem Dafoe in particular).

Overall, eXistenZ may feel somewhat dated, give that it’s a late-90s vision of the future, but the way it questions our ability to unplug from the machine is as relevant now as ever. Kudos to David Cronenberg for that.

Rating: ★★★½

Red Mob aka Chtoby vyzhit (1993)

Information on this movie is sketchy at best, but if you understand Russian, you can enjoy the whole film on YouTube.

The boys at Vinegar Syndrome are putting together a Blu-ray release of Red Mob and I can’t wait for it to go on sale. It’s not on the same level of hidden gem as, say, Ninja Busters, but it is the right mix of incomprehensible and funny-bad that makes for a “magnum opus” of low-budget cinema (not to mention lots of guns and explosions).

I’m not going to bother to explain the plot, given that it took me until about forty minutes into the film to figure out who everyone was and what was going on, but I can tell you that it involves the Russian Mafia (obviously), weapons smuggling, former Soviet soldiers, kidnapping, and, if you can hold out til the end, some of the best helicopter flying I’ve ever seen committed to film.

One thing I know for sure about Red Mob is that it was shot in the former Soviet Union, maybe a couple of years after the Berlin Wall came down, and it makes use of a fairly wide variety of locations. The only one I recognized outright is what I assume to be Moscow, but I’m guessing they also filmed quite a bit in one or more of the Central Asian states.

Anyway, like I said, I can’t wait for the Blu-ray release. Definitely a bonkers kind of movie to be enjoyed with a group of friends.

Rating: ★★★½

(Update 05/26/17 – The Blu-ray is finally on sale: https://vinegarsyndrome.com/shop/red-mob-ltd/)

The Lost Boys (1987)

Before True Blood or Twilight or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there was The Lost Boys.

I can’t say with absolute certainty if it’s the first ever presentation of contemporary teenage vampires, but it seems to get the most credit as such. Regardless, it’s years ahead of its time from that standpoint

And yet, it’s also very much of its own time, not just in terms of music and fashion and all that (not to mention the first ever pairing of “The Two Coreys”), but because, for whatever reason, the 1980s were the heyday of the horror comedy (Gremlins and Ghost Busters come to mind), although there has been something of a resurgence of such films in the 2000s, but we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys.

He takes a lot of crap for Batman & Robin, which is fair (at least he owns up to it and doesn’t point fingers elsewhere), but I disagree with the popular notion that Joel Schumacher is a “bad director.” In addition to Lost Boys, he’s also directed Falling Down and the very much underrated 8MM. as well as other successful projects, but again, we’re not talking about those; we’re talking about The Lost Boys here.

The movie is a fairly classic type of story: a family moves to a new place and discovers things are not all as they seem But, in addition, the look of the film still holds up pretty well (I appreciate how they handled “flying” on a budget), there’s some great set design, the cast is pretty solid all around, and, most importantly, the tone is such that you can seamlessly move between horror and comedy.

If you’ve never seen it, especially with Halloween season coming up, I definitely recommend this stylish flick.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Movie Review: ‘The Hobbit’ – An Unnecessary Trilogy

The Hobbit
Directed by Peter Jackson
Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Guillermo del Toro, based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien
Cast: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Ken Stott, William Kircher, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Mark Hadlow, Graham McTavish, Dean O’Gorman, Peter Hambleton, Aidan Turner, Jed Brophy, John Callen, Adam Brown, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee, Bret McKenzie, Sylvester McCoy, Lee Pace, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lilly, Luke Evans, Stephen Fry, John Bell, Craig Hall, Benedict Cumberbatch, Billy Connolly, Thomas Robins, Antony Sher, Manu Bennett, Andy Serkis, Barry Humphries, Kiran Shah, Elijah Wood, Ian Holm, Dan Hennah
Soundtrack: Howard Shore

Oh, my head.

Yesterday, I made the decision, perhaps foolish, to see all three Hobbit films in one sitting (at my old favorite, the Alamo Drafthouse Theater in Yonkers, NY).

I had not seen the previous two Hobbit films at all, frankly, because I wasn’t really interested in seeing another three movies about Hobbits and Dwarves and whatnot in Middle Earth, but, ultimately, the opportunity to see a complete trilogy, with fresh eyes, in a theater with plenty of food and drink at hand, was too enticing to pass up, even if I did have to take time off from work to do so.

Was it worth it? In the end, I suppose so, if for nothing else than it gives me something to talk about. It’s not often that I get to write about a movie (or series of movies) before most people get to see it, so here goes.

Now, when I first heard that J.R.R. Tolkien’s [roughly] 300-page novel, The Hobbit, was going to be adapted into not just one film, but a whole trilogy of films, I said to myself, “It’s going to be the Star Wars Prequels all over again,” in that a later-produced trilogy that takes place before the events of the original trilogy could not possibly live up to the original, and might even leave a black mark on the whole franchise.

Now, is Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit anywhere near as bad as Star Wars: Episodes I-III?

No, of course not.

Unlike the Prequels, which are almost completely irredeemable as films, there are many enjoyable aspects of The Hobbit movies, but there are a few themes, somewhat reminiscent of Episodes I-III, that run throughout these films and make it difficult for me to recommend them as presently constituted.

What am I talking about?

1. The Characters (aka “Who’s the protagonist?)

This is, in fact, a very minor complaint, and I don’t actually mind movies straying away from traditional storytelling and featuring multiple leads, but for what is essentially a nearly eight-hour long motion picture called The Hobbit, there are an awful lot of long stretches where the title character isn’t around, or, if he is, the story is not from his perspective. I get that Peter Jackson essentially raided the Tolkien library for any other unadapted source material related to Middle Earth to pad out the running time (which is the proper way to do so; add more STORY…we’ll come back to padding later), but, at times, it’s just a little tough to reconcile how much of The Hobbit is told without him, and how often it feels like the Dwarf or Wizard show.

2. Tone (aka “You’re making a movie for children, right?”)

One issue with the Star Wars Prequels, and it’s echoed almost perfectly by The Hobbit, is that the movies get darker and darker as the trilogy progresses, as if the filmmakers think they need to compensate for something. Now with the Prequels I think this was entirely intentional, as a response to the negative audience reaction to Jar Jar Binks and other such attempts at “comedy.” With The Hobbit one could argue that it’s part of the natural progression of the story, and at the end of the day I don’t specifically have a problem with Peter Jackson wanting to make an adaption for mature audiences, but at the same time he’s making an adaptation of a children’s novel, complete with lots of kid-friendly moments (like dwarves doing annoying dwarf things). Do we really need to also see decapitations and people burning and dead children? Again, who are these movies really for?

Which leads me to my next point.

3. Excess (aka “I may have gone too far in a few places.”)

Peter Jackson is a huge Tolkien fan.

He’s also arguably the most excessive director working today, and has been going all the way back to his schlock horror days with movies such as Dead Alive (aka Braindead) and Meet the Feebles. Now, excess can be good when properly channeled (think Quentin Tarantino), but a three-hour long King Kong movie that nobody wanted or needed, and fails to justify its own existence (unlike certain other ape-themed movies which are fantastic), is not what I had in mind.

The core problem with these movies isn’t just how long they are, it’s WHY they’re as long as they are; and while there are other Tolkien works folded into the story, the excessive running times are ultimately due to excessive action scenes, some of which look fine, and others of which look like cutscenes from videogames (and I don’t mean no PS4; I’m talking XBOX 360 at best). In fact, a great deal of tension is lost from our heroes actually physically behaving like videogame characters; with such speed, strength, and agility that they basically become unbelievable within their own fantasy universe.

You see, Peter Jackson and George Lucas both failed to realize that even in this amazing age of digital technology, just because you can dream something, and just because you can create it in a computer, does not outright mean you should commit it to film. And it also seems like both of them are in favor of pushing technology in the wrong direction: Lucas, to further his own laziness, and Jackson, well, I guess to make 48fps telenovelas about Middle Earth.

Anyway, I could more easily accept a Hobbit trilogy if it was three 100-120 minute films, or like a 6-8 part TV miniseries; but three two-and-a-half to three-hour long films is just insane, and I’m not just saying that because I saw all three in a row. Remember, this whole thing is essentially based on one 300-page children’s novel. The Rankin/Bass animated version from the late-1970s clocks in at a crisp 77 minutes, and while it does leave some story elements out, does Peter Jackson’s version really need to be over six times as long? I argue no.

Now I’ve spent nearly a thousand words hammering what I don’t like, and why I don’t recommend this trilogy as it stands, but I don’t want to end on a totally down note, because I don’t actually hate these movies. In fact, you could say I really want to like them, but overwhelming factors prevent me from doing so.

If you’ve already seen Journey and Smaug, going #OneLastTime to see Five Armies can’t hurt, but if you haven’t seen any of them before, I say don’t bother with them.

I hope there will come a day, after Five Armies is released on home format, that someone in the fan-edit community will take all the footage available and compile together a reasonable-length version of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, because as I said before, there are plenty of gems to find: good performances; emotional moments; all the wonders of a fantasy world.

Right now, it’s just not worth 8 hours (474 minutes, to be precise) of your time.

But we can always dream.

Overall Rating: ★★½ (out of five)