Alert the Amphibious Squadron!
After last week’s unrelenting barrage of political satire, sleazy metaphors and full frontal nudity, I needed a break from the sturm und drang and spent the week watching a few lighter movies. No cinema visits this week.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
For the record, this was the unrated version. One of the most amusing commentary track experiences I’ve had recently is listening to the creatives involved in this movie moaning about not having enough money to make the film the way they wanted to. The budget for this movie was $110 million. In what way is that not enough money to make a no-think action comedy with half a dozen action sequences? This is why they call Hollywood La-La Land because the rules of reality no longer apply.
Enter the Dragon (1973)
Meanwhile, 32 years earlier, for under a million dollars you had this. Apart from seeing campy clips in other circumstances, this was probably my first experience of a genuine Hong Kong action flick from the 1970s. Except of course it isn’t quite that, because it was made by an American crew with American money. But they did have access to those astonishing audio whooshes and simulated limb and bone cracks that Hong Kong cinema audio mavens had been dreaming up for decades. And they had Bruce Lee, who, I’ll be damned, is every bit as astonishing as he’s always been hyped up as. The guy was a real action hero, and he puts the Van Dammes and Seagals of this world to shame. And to die so young by accident… Sigh.
Addams Family Values (1993)
The rare example of a sequel being so much better than the original that the original still hasn’t been released on DVD in the UK. But if Paramount hadn’t released this sequel, an angry mob would have tracked them down and burnt them at the stake. And as much as they tried to share out the mayhem amongst the cast, the standout is Christina Ricci, who delivers one of the most brilliant comedic performances of the 1990s as the deadpan, death-obsessed Wednesday Addams. It takes a special kind of film to pull out the best from Ms Ricci, The Opposite of Sex (1998) being another example, so I am very much looking forward to Black Snake Moan (2006).
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Although I pride myself on holding positions on certain movies at direct contradiction to received wisdom or majority opinion, there are some films where I fall in line with everyone else. And this is one of them. It is the best one of the six. Lucky Irvin Kershner. He didn’t have to spend any time introducing characters or working on the plot, he just had to go shot by shot making sure each one had a cool piece of character emotion or humour, and glue it all together later. I also think that the 1997 Special Edition is better than the original. Of course, it’s now the 2004 Special Edition since there was a little more fiddling before the box set came out. That they were able to go back to the original elements and recomposite all the individual pieces of the special effects shots so they worked more perfectly in the digital realm than they ever could through the optical printer, just shows how damned good the work was in the first place. There are very few digital additions to Episode V; it doesn’t need them. One more thing, watch the closing credits of this film and you will see an astounding number of crew people who have defined Hollywood special effects and movie making for the last 27 years.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Has its time come yet? Are people ready to admit liking it after all? This is what you would have got if you made Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940) with a $40 million budget in 1940. I guess it’s one of those things where you either go with the look of the thing or you don’t. Along with a well-thumbed visual appeal, it also has a terrific, aggressive soundtrack that will, as they say, really give your subwoofer a workout.