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There’s One Reason to Get Caught in Shyamalan’s TRAP
“This individual we’re searching for won’t panic.”
Although it had all the elements to be more than it ended up being, M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap fell victim to the same pitfalls that have accompanied many of the director’s previous efforts. Everyone familiar with Shyamalsn’s work should have seen this coming. But there was something incredibly titillating about the premise of a father (Josh Hartnett) who takes his daughter (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert only to discover the whole event has been staged by the FBI to capture a serial killer, who just so happens to be him.
It’s a great starting point, the perfect canvas with which to paint plenty of creative twists and moments of white-knuckled suspense. Unfortunately, Trap goes off the rails in the third act, stretching credibility (even by Shyamalan’s standards), and prompting many to wonder what about the movie appealed to them in the first place.
Trap may well be the biggest missed opportunity of the writer/director’s career. But it’s got one noteworthy feature that makes it somewhat worth remembering: Hayley Mills. Yes, that Hayley Mills turns up in a supporting role as the head of the FBI task force trying to take Hartnett’s killer down. The actress’ turn here proves that even when featured in a dire film such as Trap, a Hayley Mills performance is always worth enjoying.
Many know Mills from her days as Disney’s leading actress with a roster of films from the 1960s that have endured such as classics like Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, The Moon-Spinners, and That Darn Cat!, among others. Her post-Disney days saw the actress become a staple in the British independent film wave of the 1970s and 80s before trying her hand at live theater in revivals of projects such as Noel Coward’s Fallen Angels and The King and I. In the past few years, the Oscar-winner has continued to alternate between the stage (her 2018 turn in the off-Broadway comedy Party Face brought her good reviews) and on British TV, most recently in season five of the Masterpiece mystery series Unforgotten all while continuing to cement her standing as a Disney icon for many generations.
The casting of Mills in a Shyamalan thriller may seem a bit off-the-wall, but not really when you consider that the director actually has a penchant for giving roles to actors many never expected would fit into his universe. When it comes down to it, Mills is just the latest in a notable line of performers no one could have guessed they’d see show up in any of the director’s creations. In the wake of Trap‘s recent home video release and the reminder that Mills is still a welcome presence on the screen, I thought a look back on some other surprise Shyamalan castings was in order.
Donnie Wahlberg- The Sixth Sense
Many would not have expected the former bad boy New Kid to be cast in such a pivotal role in what would become Shyamalan’s most acclaimed film. Yet the former boy bander-turned-actor surprised everyone with a turn that proved pivotal to the rest of the film, including and especially that iconic twist. Wahlberg went to great physical and emotional lengths to embody his disturbed character, proving to everyone that he was more than just another musician who found his way onto a movie set.
Patricia Kalember- Signs
Those who watched NBC on Saturday nights in the 90s at some point encountered Kalember in the hit drama series Sisters. While co-stars Sela Ward and Swoosie Kurtz may have had more name recognition, Kalember warmed hearts as middle sister Georgie, quickly becoming a fan favorite and eventually a staple in the TV movie realm. Her casting as Mel Gibson’s wife in Signs was random, but welcome. In one of the film’s most crucial scenes, Kalember brings a warm, grounded quality to the alien drama, managing to even bring out emotions from her famous leading man no one thought capable of displaying.
Judy Greer- The Village
Greer has always been that girl from that thing, at least according to her book’s title. The character actress has usually been called on to play zany, comedic characters that oftentimes serve as the foil for whichever actor is serving as the straight man in front of her. Her casting as a young woman whose town is being plagued by monsters in The Village has her credibly expressing the kind of dread and fear we hadn’t really seen from her before and wouldn’t see again until her fantastic turn in 2018’s Halloween.
Bob Balaban- Lady in the Water
Many have looked at Balaban’s character from 2006’s Lady in the Water as Shyamalan seeking revenge. The well-respected character actor plays a movie critic who moves into an apartment complex that happens to have magical creatures roaming around. Known more as a staple in the comedic worlds of Christopher Guest and Wes Anderson, Balaban brings his trademark dry wit to Lady in the Water, providing some unexpected laughs as a man who approaches and critiques every situation as if he were in his own movie.
Betty Buckley- The Happening, Split
The one-two punch of Brian DePalma’s Carrie and TV’s Eight is Enough made Buckley well-known in the 70s, providing her with two influential calling cards that any actress would dream of. The roles of a high school coach and a 70s matriarch showed a range, which Shyamalan put to good use twice. First, he cast Buckley as a paranoid recluse in 2004’s The Happening where she emerged as the only bright spot of that appalling movie. A decade later, Buckley turned up again as a psychologist trying to understand a terrifying James McAvoy in Split.
Kathryn Hahn- The Visit
Known almost exclusively as a comedic actress, Hahn proved herself a laugh-filled force in roles for James L. Brooks, and Peter Bogdanovich, and especially in her scene-stealing turn in Parks and Recreation. Anyone following her career couldn’t have been more surprised to see her turn up in The Visit. Playing a woman trying to reconcile with her past, Hahn’s scenes have a beautiful melancholy to them as she injects emotion and heart into a character trying to build herself back from a former life that nearly destroyed her.
Hayley Mills- Trap
Mills hadn’t been on American movie screens in decades when she took on the role of a former FBI profiler who came out of retirement to help bring down Hartnett’s serial killer in Trap. Because Mills can’t help but inject sunniness into her roles, it’s surprising to see her channel some definite frostiness here, which she pulls off credibly. Always lingering in the shadows as she dives into the cat-and-mouse game with the prey she’s chasing, Mills pulls off the character of a woman whose entire professional life has come down to capturing one of the most dangerous individuals she’s ever encountered.
Even though Trap ended up being another Shyamalan fiasco, Mills’ participation at least makes it a notable venture for some. It’s clear that the director loves actors, regardless of their public image or box-office popularity. He’s someone who knows what the right performers can bring to his movies, how they can elevate them, and bring the characters he created to life in ways he never envisioned. It’s hard not to be excited by a filmmaker who possesses this kind of sensibility. If the intrigue that exists within every idea he has doesn’t always pan out, it’s hardly anything to be surprised by at this point. Still, with an imagination such as his, it’s hard to write a director of Shyamalan’s imagination and bravado off.
Trap is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.
Action, Betty Buckley, Blu-ray, Bob Balaban, Brian DePalma, Carrie, Christopher Guest, Crime, Donnie Wahlberg, Eight is Enough, Halloween, Hayley Mills, Home Video, James L. Brooks, James Mcavoy, Josh Hartnett, Judy Greer, Kathryn Hahn, Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan, Mel Gibson, Movies, New Kids On the Block, Parks And Recreation, Patricia Kalember, Peter Bogdanovich, Pollyanna, Sela Ward, Signs, Sisters, Split, Swoosie Kurtz, That Darn Cat!, The Happening, The King and I, The Moon-Spinners, The Parent Trap, The Sixth Sense, the Village, The Visit, Thriller, Trap, Wes Anderson -
Venturing Into THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
“You’re one of the only people who knows how to suffer without making others feel guilty about it.”
Earlier this summer, I got to revisit All About My Mother, director Pedro Amoldovar’s 1999 Oscar-winning masterpiece, with my other half and a friend of ours who had recently lost her father. It was an emotional outing made even more so by the brilliance and beauty of Amoldovar’s film which held up in every regard, especially in the deep human emotion that poured out of its characters. It proved a cathartic experience for our friend and reinforced how mesmerizing a filmmaker Amoldovar could be in 1999. Twenty-five years later the filmmaker is still Spain’s most compelling voice when it comes to film. His latest, the drama The Room Next Door, marks his English-language debut and was given quite the launch when Amoldovar took home the top prize for it at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Despite a lack of buzz surrounding the film in the wake of its win, The Room Next Door has emerged as both one of the year’s best titles as well as a bona fide Amoldovar classic.
In The Room Next Door, successful New York author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) reconnects with old friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a former journalist now battling cancer. As their friendship becomes renewed, Ingrid’s condition worsens, leading her to decide to take her own life. Not wanting to be alone when the time comes, she convinces Ingrid to be with her for her final days. Martha gives very little details about when she plans to die but tells Ingrid that when the time has come, her bedroom door will be closed.
As previously mentioned, The Room Next Door has already gotten its fair share of attention for being its legendary director’s English-language debut. Given this fact, it would only be natural to wonder how the director’s style and sensibilities as a storyteller would transfer when finding himself away from home. The result is a film that feels freshly familiar with many of the classic Amoldovar touches finding a place within the new landscape. The chemistry between his leading ladies and the characters they play feels like they wouldn’t belong anywhere else but in a world crafted by the director himself. Watching the way Martha and Ingrid interact and relate to each other feels totally Amoldovar, showing him to once again be a director fascinated and beguiled by the intricacies of women. Like other Amoldovar films, The Room Next Door plunges its audience straight into a human drama that inch by inch becomes more captivating in ways you wouldn’t expect. The film’s bright color palate, music, staging, set design, and overall story flow are also characteristically Amoldovar and serve as proof that his filmmaker instincts cannot help but come to the surface, no matter what country he finds himself in.
Like several past Amoldovar films, The Room Next Door is primarily concerned with the bond between its characters. The movie’s comment on friendship is really what drives the film rather than the act Martha is intent on committing. Both characters start somewhat reserved in their first scene together after not having been in each other’s lives for some time. The tone quickly changes, however, and the two are soon seen slipping into a familiarity, showing how that natural shorthand two people can share never truly leaves. When Martha asks Ingrid to accompany her for her final days, new elements are inserted into their friendship. There’s the presence of regrets, which one character is plagued by and the other tries to dodge, not to mention the topic of death. It’s this subject that proves the only potential divider between the two women with Martha embracing it as a tool and Ingrid fearful of its presence as it lurks around her. As is his custom, Amoldovar poses some genuinely thought-provoking questions through his narrative. This time around the questions are heavier than normal, not to mention incredibly personal: How close are you to someone that you could ask them to be there for you were you to take your own life? How close are you to that person that you could tell them yes? Wisely, Amoldovar depends on his audience to answer these questions themselves.
Few better actresses could have been called upon to help usher in Amoldovar’s English feature debut. Moore and Swinton are so right for their roles and have each employed their trademark acting styles to bring to life two women at opposite ends of the spectrum who are inexorably linked in the middle. Watching the pair is half the joy of a film like The Room Next Door. Both give performances full of curiosity, wonder, melancholy, and poignancy while remaining in respectful awe of one another as they bring their characters’ bond to beautiful life. It’s sadly still such a rarity that we should get a film from a high-profile director featuring two such indelible actresses of the same generation. The Room Next Door is a sterling example of just what a gift such a pairing can be.
There’s very little fault to find with The Room Next Door. Apart from an exhausting mini-rant by John Turturro (playing a former lover of both characters) that temporarily brings this film about death down, Amoldovar’s latest is near perfect and almost playful. The filmmaker has some fun with the audience by having his characters take a break from the situation in front of them to engage with several cultural references. There’s a discussion between Martha and Ingrid about surrealist author Leonora Carrington, a pensive moment showing the two discovering an Edward Hopper painting (which they proceed to recreate), and a movie night that lasts into the next morning with the two opting to watch the likes of John Huston’s The Dead and Max Ophuls’ Letter From an Unknown Woman. For Amoldovar, these touches are a treat and a lesson on how he so eloquently straddles the line between the literary and grounded as he remains a true maestro whose fluency in cinema is as strong as ever.
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NICKEL BOYS Is One of 2024’s Best Films
Nickel Boys is haunting. At times it plays like a ghost story, about the people that we cross paths with for just a short time in our lives, yet they stay with us forever. It’s a tragedy of unbelievable depths. There are moments of joy that bring momentary relief while also emphasizing the despair the characters are mired in. It’s beautiful. It’s lyrical. It’s staggering.
Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Nickel Boys, the film largely takes place in the Jim Crow south of the 1960s and follows the story of Elwood (Ethan Herisse), a teenage boy who is wrongly convicted of a crime and sent to reform school Nickel Academy. Elwood is a bright student with dreams of being part of the Civil Rights movement. Nickel is where he meets Turner (Brandon Wilson), and the two become close as they navigate their time at the academy.
The aspect of the film that makes it unique, and may prove to be divisive with viewers, is the way it’s shot. Director RaMell Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray go for a first person POV that makes the camera feel like another actor. They successfully blend the imagery with the performances, putting the audience right alongside Elwood. It’s a choice that would prove ostentatious were it not executed so well. It compliments the performances in a way that feels revelatory. It’s one thing to watch actors playing off each other, but another to look those actors in the face and have it feel like they’re playing off you.
Just when you think you’ve settled into the film’s rhythms, Ross throws in a curveball that heightens the POV gambit. As Nickel Boys moves along, the perspective shifts between Elwood and Turner. The narrative also starts to jump in time to the adult version of Elwood (Daveed Diggs). These moves widen the film’s scope, bringing the story’s larger ambitions to the fore. There is a balance between the personal journeys of Elwood and Turner and the societal and institutional racism and injustice that allowed for places like Nickel (based on the Dozier School in Florida) to destroy lives for generations.
What Ross and his co-writer Joslyn Barnes have done in adapting Colson’s novel is deeply impressive. They’ve taken an acclaimed work and found a way to put their own imprint on it while staying true to its spirit and themes. The result is a film that feels like a living, breathing work. Nickel Boys is a singular film, something that feels increasingly rare. In my estimation, it’s the best film of 2024.
Nickel Boys is currently in limited release and expands in January 2025
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THE ROOM NEXT DOOR is Top Tier Pedro Almodóvar
Over the last decade or so Pedro Almodóvar has become one of my absolute favorite filmmakers. It started when I caught a late night screening of the remarkable Julieta after running late and missing the movie I originally planned to see. I had enjoyed the Almodóvar movies I had seen to that point, but Julieta was a revelation. Each subsequent new film, plus viewings of older ones, proved exponentially rewarding. That leads me to Almodóvar’s English language feature The Room Next Door, based on Sigrid Nunez’s novel “What Are You Going Through.”
Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore star as Martha and Ingrid, two old friends reconnecting later in life. That time apart hasn’t dulled their connection. They fall into their old report pretty quickly. Both have successful careers as writers, Martha as a war reporter and Ingrid as a novelist. The twist, such as it were, is that Martha is sick and has decided for a self-euthanasia ending and wants Ingrid to be there with her.
What follows is a meditative story about friendship, life, and death. The film is contemplative it way many of the late-era Almodóvar films have been. Nothing has been lost in translation going from Spanish to English. At its core, this is quintessential Almodóvar: working in melodramatic, emotionally fraught territory with expectional actresses. The Room Next Door is anchored by two tremendous performances from Swinton and Moore. The greatness of all three is well-established, but it’s invigorating to see them continuing to find ways to surprise viewers.
As the year wraps up and many of the awards players are working their way through theaters, here’s a shout to find time to catch The Room Next Door when you can. This is a movie that doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of living and dying. It’s also a movie that looks for the things to appreciate in those moments. The more I sit with the film, the more it feels like a major work.
The Room Next Door is currently in limited release and expands wider in January 2025
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SNACK SHACK Serves Up Profane Laughs and Lots of Fun
Snack Shack is one of 2024’s under the radar gems. In a different time it could’ve been a crowd pleaser that built word of mouth into a solid theatrical run before becoming a staple of home viewing. Basically, it could’ve been a hit along the lines of Superbad. Definitely not as huge as Superbad, but Snack Shack operates in a similar vein. It’s a fun, profane throwback with enough heart to make it stick.
Set in the early 90s, the film follows the antics of best friends A.J. (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle) over a summer. A.J. And Moose are hustlers, always on the hunt for their next score. They bet on horses, brew their own beer, play cards, whatever they can think of. They’re brash and cocky in that way you can only truly be when you don’t know anything about the real world yet. That leads them to blowing a chunk of A.J.’s college fund to rent the titular snack shack at the local pool for the summer.
Snack Shack is a coming of age movie, so you already know the beats the movie is going to hit before the script gets to them. The care-free partying will give way to responsibilities, girl drama, drama drama, and (some) maturation. Writer-director Adam Carter Rehmeier knows that the audience knows what these kind of movies entail, and he dutifully delivers. The thing that elevates the movie is performances. Sherry and LaBelle have tremendous chemistry, and they bring a level of gleefulness to the dialogue that proves endearing. They carry the film, with plenty of support from the rest of the cast. That includes Mika Abdalla, Nick Robinson, David Costabile, and Gillian Vigman.
Abdalla plays Brooke, A.J.’s neighbor and love interest. Brooke is kind of a thankless character, but Abdalla gives her life. Same goes for Robinson as Shane, an older friend of A.J.’s and an Army vet. Both characters are there to further the development not A.J. But, the performances are good enough to make the characters feel three dimensional. Costabile and Vigman play A.J.’s parents, On paper the roles feel perfunctory, but, again, the performances elevate the material.
Rehmeier clearly has an affection for the genre and that comes through in the storytelling. It delivers plenty of laughs and enough heartfelt moments to set it alongside the better teen movies of recent times. Snack Shack is one of the most purely fun and entertaining movies to come along in 2024.
Snack Shack is currently streaming on Amazon Prime
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Scoot McNairy and Kit Harrington Stir Up Trouble in BLOOD FOR DUST
Blood for Dust is as sturdy as an old pair of work boots. It’s the quintessential crime drama that used to be a cable staple, not that any of the characters in the film would know it. It delivers a steady supply of surprising violence and comes with a sense of despair so thick it hangs over the story like a second sky. All that to say, Blood for Dust is the kind of movie where you know if it’s your cup of tea off the title alone.
Genre stalwart Scoot McNairy plays Cliff, a traveling salesman who hustles whatever product will get him paid at any given moment. Once upon a time, Cliff may have dealt with questionable products and dubious people, but he’s been living a straight life for a minute now. But the straight life ain’t doing much for Cliff. A lonesome, peaceful burger and beer at some dive in the middle of Montana, or is it Wyoming? Maybe it’s Idaho. Wherever it is, it’s not a place far enough to help Cliff outrun his past, but it just may be able to salvage his future.
A Montana strip club is where that past shows up in the form of Ricky (Kit Harrington). With the promise of a sizable payday, Ricky lures Cliff back in for some gun and drug trafficking. It won’t surprise you to hear that things don’t go smoothly for Cliff. What is pleasantly surprising about Blood for Dust is how successfully it hits the crime movie beats. Cliff is so weary from constant traveling and scraping by that it’s part of his personality. McNairy gives Cliff a calm, sturdy exterior, while keeping Cliff’s desperation just under the surface. The stress of living a straight life is nearly as bad for Cliff as the things he used to do.
Ricky, on the other hand, is loyal only to money he’s after. He’s a dirtbag and makes no bones about it. Harrington is clearly having a blast slumming it as Ricky. Equipped with greasy hair and mustache, Harrington provides the few light notes the movie makes room for. Cliff and Ricky’s history is what binds them together and their relationship is like a rubber band being stretched out. Each man is at one end of the band as the movie stretches them farther apart. The snapback is inevitable and the slow burn to get there is well executed.
David Ebeltoft’s script is lean and mean. Blood for Dust is a slow-motion car crash for these characters and the writing is deliberate in laying everything at stake for them. The dialogue is tough and the action is even tougher. Rod Blackhurst’s direction constantly reinforces the bleakness of Cliff’s situation. Lonely shots in bars and motel rooms and breathtaking mountain vistas as Cliff drives on empty roads remind viewers of Cliff’s isolation. Blackhurst draws out the tension in nearly every encounter Cliff has along the way.
Blood for Dust is a finely crafted crime thriller. It’s not doing anything groundbreaking, but everything it does, it does well. McNairy carries the film and Harrington is a deliciously scuzzy foil. Stephen Dorff, Josh Lucas, Nora Zehetner, and Ethan Suplee fill out the supporting cast, all of them making the most of their scenes. If you’re into down and dirty crime movies, make time for Blood for Dust.
Blood for Dust is currently streaming on Hulu
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Sammo Hung’s Men On A Mission Magnum Opus EASTERN CONDORS Comes To Criterion Collection [Blu-ray Review]
![Sammo Hung’s Men On A Mission Magnum Opus EASTERN CONDORS Comes To Criterion Collection [Blu-ray Review]](https://i0.wp.com/cinapse.co/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Face-Off-Sammo-Vs-Yuen-Eastern-Condors.jpg?resize=1140%2C472&ssl=1)
The Criterion Collection Like many of my generation, I was introduced to the glories of the Hong Kong film industry through a variety of means, but primarily due to Jackie Chan’s mid to late 1990s output making its way to US theaters, and his (along with John Woo’s) subsequent move to America and their creation of English language fare. I’m not sure when I became familiar with Sammo Hung, the legendary contemporary of these bastions of the industry. Many in the United States would have gotten to know the stout and often humorous Hung from his starring role in the Martial Law tv series, along with Arsenio Hall, or perhaps his brief but memorable (and youthful) appearance in Bruce Lee’s Enter The Dragon. But the man is far from a “lesser” success than Chan and Woo. Indeed, Sammo Hung is one of those triple/quadruple/quintuple threat talents who directs, stars, does his own stunts, floats like a butterfly on his famously portly frame, has a strong command of English, and can do villainy to comedy and everything in between. All that said, there was never a world where I lost any sleep dreaming or hoping that Sammo Hung’s Eastern Condors would one day come to the Criterion Collection. And yet, here we are. And we’re much better for it.
As deep and potent as my love for Hong Kong cinema is, Sammo Hung has a vast output and I haven’t seen all of it. But Eastern Condors was a known quantity to me prior to its Criterion announcement, a jewel in Hung’s crown that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to expound upon here as it debuts in the prestigious Criterion Collection, where it most definitely belongs. Quite distinctive from so many other martial arts classics and contemporary heroic bloodshed titles, Eastern Condors sends a motley crew of Hong Kong action legends to the jungles of post-war Vietnam on a mission to destroy a stockpile of hidden US weapons that were abandoned amidst our defeat and withdrawal from the region. Only this classically ragtag group of ruffians can infiltrate, locate the cache, and save the day against the Commies. It feels more like the set up for a Clint Eastwood flick than for a Golden Harvest picture.
And as much as the vibe of Eastern Condors stands out from so much other Hong Kong industry output, what it crafts is the dream scenario of exactly what you’d want if you mixed, say, The Dirty Dozen and First Blood: Part II with… Drunken Master II. There are guns and grenades and assaults on hidden jungle bases, sure. But damn if Sammo and co-lead (nay, co-legend) Yuen Biao aren’t landing dozens of acrobatic spin kicks and never-seen-before physical stunts to elevate potboiler jungle assaults with that Chinese opera flair for the broadly physical. It’s the greatest melding of these two traditions and styles that you could possibly hope for, resulting in an entertainment value that launches into the got-damn stratosphere if you’re a fan of the traditions that inform this gem… which I am. Imagine a Stallone stealth kill montage in the jungle, only Rambo is catapulting himself through the air on trampolines to drop kick a Vietcong soldier in the face with a flying spin kick and you get the [glorious] idea.
Hung assembles a cracking cast of ne’er do wells here, many of whom are famous in and of themselves. I have to single out the primary female lead Joyce Godenzi (Mr. Nice Guy, She Shoots Straight), who later married Hung and remains his spouse today. Here Godenzi is a tough as nails guerilla fighter dishing out just as much acrobatic punishment as any of the guys and looking better while doing it. Hung, of course, gives himself plenty of action highlights and a starring turn as the film’s primary hero, but he shares a bit of a co-lead with the aforementioned Biao (Wheels On Meals, My Lucky Stars). Also along for the mission are the legendary action choreographers and directors in their own right Corey Yuen (Director, No Retreat, No Surrender, The Transporter, here always with a cigarette in his mouth… even underwater!), and Yuen Woo Ping (action choreographer for The Matrix, Kill Bill). Their ultimate adversary is the iconic Yuen Wah (Supercop, Kung Fu Hustle), laughing his way through his villainy. I’m sure the cast features other legends worth singling out, but those are the cast I am personally familiar with and consider notable above and beyond their contributions to Eastern Condors.
Beyond the cast, so much else stands out to make Eastern Condors exceptional. As I write I am enjoying the catchy and deeply 1980s score to the film, something that wasn’t always particularly prioritized (or even legally cleared) in Hong Kong cinema of the era. But this score rips. The action set pieces also must be highlighted. My biggest memory of the film overall will always be the montage in which Biao and Hung head into the jungle for a kill spree filled with creative and acrobatic attempts to even the odds for their group against the VCs that outnumber them. Sammo uses these leaves (yes, leaves) to craft neck-piercing darts and devastates a few bad guys. Meanwhile, Yuen Biao is vine-jumping off of trees to snap some necks, and spin kicking guns out of soldiers’ hands in slow motion. It’s a “guns versus guts” montage that has to be seen to be believed. Hung also handles big gun-focused sequences well, with a massive bridge assault sequence that feels inspired by John Woo’s heroic bloodshed style of slow motion and brotherly sacrifice.
I’m not sure what calculus goes into the inclusion of a film in the Criterion Collection, ultimately. But if I had to guess, I’d say Eastern Condors is more than worthy because it’s exemplary work from the legendary Sammo Hung. It demonstrates peak acrobatic and stylistic talent from a golden era of Hong Kong filmmaking and captures many stars at the peak of their physical prowess. It also takes a gimmick of transporting a troop of Hong Kong talent into the jungles of Vietnam for a Hong Kong take on the “men on a mission” genre, and infuses it with a zeitgeist heretofore unseen in that genre. And it emerges from the (Philippine subbing for Vietnamese) jungle as a best case scenario of eye-popping entertainment that can be appreciated by Eastern and Western audiences alike.
The Package
Over the last several years the Cinapse team has covered a whole lot of the massive Shaw Brothers box sets Arrow Video has been releasing, and film critic and Hong Kong film historian Tony Rayns is ALL over those sets with video interviews and audio commentaries. I’ve become a big fan of this man’s endless knowledge of the industry. So I was thrilled to check out his commentary track here on Eastern Condors and was not disappointed. Rayns has expertise that illuminates the context of the film, a wry sense of humor, and dynamic delivery. His commentary is the highlight of this release for me, aside from the beautiful 2K restoration of the film, ensuring it looks fantastic.
Along with the look and commentary there are several Sammo Hung interviews (in English!) and an interview with the villain of the piece, actor Yuen Wah. Maybe the most bizarre special feature is an 80s era on stage musical number recreating some of Eastern Condors as, like, a musical? Wild stuff.
This is a lovely package for a movie I certainly never imagined would get the Criterion Collection treatment, but I’ll be forever grateful that it did.
And I’m Out.
Eastern Condors hit Criterion Collection Blu-ray December 17th, 2024
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GHOST STORIES: The VERY Inappropriate Dub on a Dated Yokai Anime that might fill that DANDADAN sized hole in your Heart
Dandadan season one may be over, but if you’re missing that irreverent comedy, ghosts and Yokais, I have something that might just hold you over as we wait for season 2 – the US dub of Ghost Stories. Published by Kodansha in 1990, the source manga like Dandadan used a lot of (and some of the same) traditional Japanese ghosts for its more contemporary (at the time) takes on these supernatural stories. In 1994 due to the success of the manga an anime series was greenlit and this is where it gets interesting. While the original Japanese airings were played straight adaptations of the manga, when the show was licensed in 2005 to be localized to the US, ADV films were given only 3 rules: “don’t change the character names (including the ghosts); don’t change the way the ghosts are dispatched (a reference to Japanese folklore) and, finally, don’t change the core meaning of each episode”.
What writers Steven Foster and Lucan Duran decided to do is infuse the script with plenty of politically incorrect jokes that are paired with pop culture references, while also commenting on the show’s overuse of common genre tropes. It’s something that’s only amplified by the fact the world was a much different place in 2005, trust me it shows here. All the character archetypes and stereotypes are amplified to 11, the nerd, the perv and schoolgirl are joined here in the dub by a right wing Evangelical Christian (My personal favorite!) and a wisecracking demon possessed cat who round out this madness (Sound familiar?). It’s a lot of fun and at times hard to believe its real, and something that given the similar themes and sense of humor will tide you over till Summer.
Ghost Stories is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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Robert Eggers’s Provocative, Subversive NOSFERATU Will Enthrall Most, Perplex Others
Bram Stoker’s horror novel, Dracula, wasn’t the first or even the second work of fiction to center its narrative on the vampire figure drawn from European folklore, but as a trope-setting and convention-creator, it redefined the genre and sparked the popular imagination like nothing else before or arguably since its publication more than a century ago. Not surprisingly, adaptations in adjacent media followed, including a stage play written by Irish playwright Hamilton Deane and revised by John L. Balderston in 1924 and 1927 respectively, and filmmaker F.W. Murnau’s (City Girl, Sunrise: A Tale of Two Humans, Faust) exemplar of German Expressionism, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror.
Released in 1922, Murnau’s Silent Era masterpiece almost completely vanished from public view, the result of a lawsuit brought by Stoker’s estate for copyright infringement. (Murnau failed to secure the rights before beginning production on Nosferatu.) Despite a court order to destroy extant copies of Nosferatu, a few prints of Murnau’s adaptation managed to survive unscathed. Apart from Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake, however, Nosferatu has stood on its own, influencing practically every adaptation since, but never directly remade or retold, giving writer-director Robert Eggers (The Northman, The Lighthouse, The Witch), a lifelong Nosferatu super-fan, the opening to bring his preoccupations and obsessions to a singularly idiosyncratic, brilliantly realized reinterpretation of Murnau’s seminal horror film.
Where, however, Murnau and his screenwriter, Henry Galeen (The Student of Prague, Waxworks, The Golem), treated Stoker’s novel as a template for their adaptation, removing scenes, condensing characters, eliminating plot points as needed both for budgetary reasons and plausible deniability in case Stoker’s estate sued, Eggers ably subverts both Stoker’s novel and Murnau’s subsequent adaptation. Eggers reframes the central conflict from Stoker’s xenophobic tale of vampirism, plague, and infestation to a proto-feminist narrative foregrounding Ellen’s agency, autonomy, and desire, each one in turn frustrated, stifled, or repressed by the men around her and the patriarchal institutions they represent.
Eggers tips his hand – and his narrative focus – from the first moment when a supplicant Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp, delivering a finely wrought, hyper-stylized performance), praying to an unseen force, for guidance and deliverance, receives an unexpected reply from thousands of miles away, Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård, unrecognizable as a rotting corpse), newly awakened from a centuries-old slumber. Seducing the naïve, desperately lonely Ellen telepathically, Orlok offers her erotic fulfillment otherwise unavailable to her. He becomes her demon-lover, but her behavior marks her as an outsider and pariah in a socially and culturally repressive 1830s Germany, specifically the (fictional) town of Wisborg.
Roughly analogous to a modern-day online relationship, their connection ends abruptly. Orlok, refusing to accept Ellen’s rejection, becomes a stalker of the supernatural kind. Several years later, a seemingly “recovered” Ellen has found a measure of domesticated bliss as the wife to Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), a newly minted real estate agent with more ambition than means outside of a lifelong friendship with Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the heir to a successful shipping company. Ellen and Harding’s wife, Anna Harding (Emma Corrin), are even closer emotionally. When Thomas’s boss, calls on him to deliver documents, including a deed, to an eccentric count in Romania, Ellen stays with the Harding as their houseguest. Social norms in 1830s Germany dictate that women, whether married or not, shouldn’t – or to be blunter, can’t – live alone or risk the social consequences (e.g., judgment, ostracism, banishment).
Well before Thomas approaches Orlok’s isolated castle deep in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania, Ellen’s emotional stability, already fragile due to Thomas’s absence and the return of the nocturnal visions that troubled her earlier life, begins to crumble. Emotional anguish leads to increasingly violent seizures and the seizures in turn lead to the intervention of Harding’s confidant, medical doctor, and sanitarium administrator, Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson). Sievers prescribes treatments typical for the time, up to and including bloodletting, sleep-inducing anesthetics, and an ever more restrictive corset (metaphor alert). Individually and collectively, they represent the repressive tools of a patriarchal institution that diagnosed heterodox women with generic terms like “melancholy” and “hysteria.”
As Ellen fights for an agency repeatedly denied to her gender by 1830s German society, Thomas learns the awful price for his haute-bourgeois ambitions: In a phantasmagoric, reality-breaking sequence magnificently shot by Eggers’s frequent collaborator, Jarin Blaschke (The Lighthouse, The Witch), Thomas witnesses a bizarre Romani ritual involving a naked woman on a horse, an unearthed, if not quite fully dead, corpse, and an iron stake, rides in a driverless carriage to Orlok’s caste, meets his elusive, demonic host, and inadvertently signs away his life, if not his soul, in the bargain. Their repeated encounters over several hazy, hallucinogenic nights leave Thomas physically drained, mentally confused, and imprisoned in Orlok’s castle.
Ellen’s faltering health convinces Sievers to call upon an old mentor, Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe, a welcome, darkly comic, scenery-chewing presence), for assistance with Ellen’s case. Once a well-respected instructor and scholar, von Franz’s obsession with alchemy and the occult led to the end of his academic career and self-exile in Wisborg. There, he chose the life of a hermit, surrounded by stacks of dusty books, free-roaming cats, and whatever odd, stray thoughts entered his head. After some reluctance, he joins Sievers and Harding to investigate the source of Ellen’s deteriorating health and a recent influx of plague rats brought to Wisborg aboard a familiarly doomed ship.
Count Orlok – like Stoker’s aristocratic vampire count before him (minus the overtly seductive or romantic aspects) – represents pre-Enlightenment folklore turned rotted, stinking flesh. He also embodies the conflict between superstition and rationality, between tradition and modernity, and at least in one reading, the conflict between a destabilizing incursion of a disease-carrying foreigner and the inhabitants of an unsuspecting Western European country. Orlok’s ravenous appetites doom practically everyone who crosses his path. His appetite for Ellen, the woman who accepted and rejected him, remains unquenchable, at least until Nosferatu’s final jarring moments (Eros and Thanatos joined in unholy matrimony).
Ultimately, Nosferatu comes full circle, ending where it began, with Ellen and the choices she makes. Ellen expresses her agency and autonomy through an act of redemptive self-sacrifice. With every other alternative unavailable to her, Ellen makes the only choice possible: An act of self-abnegation likely to result in her own annihilation. In its purest form, it’s also an act of love, love both for Thomas, imperfect, flawed, undone by ambition, and for the townspeople she doesn’t know and who, in other circumstances, would likely accuse her of witchcraft and seal her fate at the end of a hangman’s noose or burned at the stake.
Nosferatu opens theatrically on Wednesday, December 25th, via Focus Features.
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BETTER MAN Gives a Global Superstar a Proper Tribute
“As my soul heals the shame, I will grow through this pain.”
As a lifelong Robbie Williams fan, it’s hard to describe just how much of a cultural phenomenon he is everywhere in the world… except in America. When the label launched his debut album back in 1999, I could see why he wouldn’t take off. As a personality, Williams was sarcastic and favored cheeky antics, while his lyrics revealed a soulfulness and vulnerability that left some confused. His melding of different sounds, including brit pop, rock, and even cabaret, made him hard to package to a Backstreet-loving market. As an artist, Williams is both universal and singular; he’s hard to pin down and even harder to sell, despite possessing a talent few have ever questioned. But if America ignored Robbie then, those who see Better Man will surely remember him afterward.
Directed by Michael Gracey, Better Man traces the humble beginnings and stratospheric ascent Robbie Williams (Jonno Davies and Robbie Williams) took in transforming from a working-class boy to an international music superstar. Along the way, Robbie experiences the gamut of the pitfalls that come with fame, including instant success, addiction, and crippling doubt.
Gracey, whose most recent feature-directing outing, The Greatest Showman, was a musical extravaganza, brings the same buoyancy here. Better Man is filled with one dazzling number after another, each one centered around a classic Robbie Williams track. The filmmakers certainly had a treasure chest to choose from as Williams has amassed more hits than he can count at this point. Gracey and company transform each one into a series of dizzying sequences featuring dancers, effects, and an altogether new perspective on the collection of songs that have lived in the memories of legions of fans for decades. It also helps that, as a lyricist, Williams has never shied away from wearing his heart on his sleeve whenever he wrote, making his catalog of songs just perfect for this specific medium. Of the many featured here, it’s “Rock DJ,” “She’s the One,” and of course, “Angels” (Williams’ signature song) prove to be the standouts. Finally, the re-recording of the classic tracks Williams did for the film can’t help but bring out the kind of reflective quality found in only the most rewarding of musical biopics.
I suppose it is time to talk about the monkey in the room. Yes, the monkey being Robbie Williams. As the trailers have already shown, Better Man tells the story of its main subject through the use of a CG monkey. Played in perfect mocap fashion by both Davies and Williams, we see Robbie go through every scene, number, and character moment as a monkey. To say this was an unexpected choice would be correct, even for longtime Robbie fans such as myself (although a song on his 2002 album Escapology was titled “Me and My Monkey.”) Seeing everyone react to a monkey as the main character in a musical biopic does take some getting used to, but the effects work is so stellar, that after a while it becomes easy to believe that this is the Robbie fans have known all along. The device also allows Williams to portray himself and, in doing so, gives Better Man a deeper authenticity that, as strange as it sounds, just wouldn’t have been possible without the real-life singer’s furry movie counterpart.
The supporting cast of British character actors all do their part to show their respective character’s influence on the burgeoning pop star’s life, including Alison Steadman as Robbie’s grandmother, Kate Mulvany as his mother, and Steve Pemberton as the father with whom he had a complicated relationship with. But it’s in the performances of both Davies and Williams himself that Better Man shines most. While the former excellently brings to life the younger Robbie’s journey, the older real-life Williams gives a performance that sees him engage with his past and himself in a touching and cathartic way.
Better Man‘s story beats will be familiar even to those who haven’t been treated to the seemingly endless amounts of musical biopics from the last few years. There’s nothing new here in terms of what Robbie experiences since the pitfalls of fame are, sadly, par for the course when it comes to most musician’s stories. But the movie’s retreading of plot points isn’t worth going into. Suffice it to say, you’ll see the bust-ups, the break-ups, the deaths, and the healing. Ultimately, the movie shows how it ultimately matters very little whether or not you’ve seen something done before. What matters is how you’re seeing it done now. I’m betting no one has ever seen anything quite like Better Man.
