This Week in Cinema, I Learned…May 19-25 2024
Written by Cameron Geiser
Welcome to This Week in Cinema, a yearlong film criticism project wherein I will be watching a new film that I haven't seen every single day.
Well folks, this week was better than the last few weeks of May, but only slightly. The highlights of the week were a campy John Carpenter flick that isn't really a comedy (but who cares, it made me cackle with laughter so I think it counts), and the most 1980s styled Kung Fu movie possible. The camp and insane action of these two films helped carry me through the rest of this week's
subpar films. Three middling to good Kung Fu flicks round out the majority of the Kung Fu films left in the late Shaw Brothers era with Martial Arts of Shaolin, Ten Tigers of Kwangtung, and The Bare-footed Kid. The Bare-footed Kid was a nice surprise though, and the best traditional Wuxia Kung Fu of the three selected this week. The two comedies rounding out the week were Don Knotts' The Shakiest Gun in The West and Robin Williams' Cadillac Man, both of which were pretty bad, and not in the entertaining way. Did I learn anything this week? Well, truly the most overpowering aspect of the week was how horribly miscast Robin Williams was in Cadillac Man. Casting is so important to filmmaking and I feel as though this is an obvious factor in the process, but just because you have the ability to cast a big name Actor in a movie doesn't mean you should. Even in the incredibly talented hands of Robin Williams, this character just wasn't a good fit for him, and the film suffered because of it. I have other issues with the film as well, but that was the lasting impact it had on me.
May 19th
Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (1980)
2.5/5
Ten Tigers of Kwangtung is sort of a mess. With a film production stopped for over two years and then resumed, I appreciate the commitment to finish the film, but wow is the story incredibly convoluted. There is an interesting opening scene that works as an enticing mystery to engage the audience as we follow two characters into a casino and watch them orchestrate a brutal murder. It's not until much later that we realize we were watching the bad guys kill off one of the legitimately good guys in the film. However by then you may have forgotten about the opening scene because you've been trying to keep track of the flashbacks within flashbacks, not to mention the huge number of characters within the narrative. It mostly revolves around the government trying to get two schools of Martial Arts to kill each other off, which feels a bit rote and overdone by this point in the studio's output of films. Luckily there's an overabundance of mostly entertaining Kung Fu fight scenes spread throughout the runtime, too bad it was just muddled and confusing narratively speaking.
May 20th
Ghosts of Mars (2001)
3.5/5
Camp as a tonal approach to a film can be incredibly difficult to pull off successfully. Some of the finer examples being Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors, Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films, Flash Gordon, or some of the crazier slasher films in either Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees' franchises. John Carpenter is also an experienced filmmaker when it comes to good depictions of camp. By this time in his career Carpenter had already made a few truly excellent campy films most notably Big Trouble in Little China, Escape From L.A., and They Live. Ghosts of Mars firmly fits into this arena of atmosphere as a sci-fi mashup of Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape From New York. Sporting a pretty good cast including Jason Statham, Ice Cube, and Pam Grier the film follows police agents Ballard (Natasha Henstridge), Butler (Jason Statham), and Braddock (Pam Grier) hunting down a wanted fugitive called Desolation (Ice Cube). However, once the cat and mouse game enters the mining facilities on Mars the fugitives and the cops are forced to work together to kill the attacking Miners, possessed by the evil spirits of Mars who are attempting to expel 'the invaders' off the planet. John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is a highly entertaining B-Movie full of camp, incredible violence, and very self aware dialogue that hits all the right notes of cheese.
May 21st
Mercenaries from Hong Kong (1982)
4.5/5
This was one hell of a surprise. Mercenaries from Hong Kong immediately differentiates itself from the rest of these Kung Fu films by being set in modern day (the 1980s) and by soaking every single frame in 80s overstimulated style. If you're looking for originality in narrative, depth in characters, or ethical morality- this is not the film for you. This is an action movie with a pacing that feels fueled by cocaine alone and shamelessly wears its Western influences on its sleeve. The setup is a wealthy businesswoman in Hong Kong who hires a Vietnam Vet, now a working mercenary, to gather a team together to track down and return the assassin that killed her father, and absconded to Cambodia, back to Hong Kong. There's a surprising amount of work done to differentiate each of the new members of the team and their motivations for joining the operation. Nearly every other scene is one that reminds you that you're watching an Action movie- with a capital A! If you're at all familiar with the tone, atmosphere, and attitude of Schwarzenegger and Stallone's movies of the era, you'll recognize a lot of that style here too. From hilariously Corporate Bad Guys to the heavy Synth score, and the fact that the film never gives its characters a moment to relax, Mercenaries From Hong Kong is, in my opinion, the perfect encapsulation of what a B-Movie should look and sound like. Gleeful carnage awaits you if you give this one a chance!
May 22nd
Martial Arts of Shaolin (1986)
Well hey would you look at that, it's Jet Li! I didn't expect to see a familiar face with these films, but here we are! Unfortunately, despite a few really good action set-pieces and some great locations for the camera and the audience's visual nourishment, this is a mostly familiar revenge tale. There's a fight scene on The Great Wall, a fight scene on a large boat in the last act, and a Kung Fu tournament of challenges. It's all moderately entertaining, but it never rises above the trappings of the studio and genre. Plus some of the comedy is just your regular twentieth century cross dressing, if that works for you then I'm sure you'll enjoy this one. The Villain does have the most mustache twirling evil laugh I've seen yet, so that was something. Another middling Kung Fu flick with some memorable moments. Put it up on the board!
May 23rd
The Bare-footed Kid (1993)
3.5/5
Directed by Johnnie To and starring Maggie Cheung, The Bare-footed Kid was a step up in production and direction over previous films related to the Shaw Brothers. A penniless teenager in bare feet wanders towards the Four Seasons dye and weaving institution. After the death of his father our titular bare-footed kid was directed to seek out his fathers old friend who works at the Four Seasons. Another dye and wool company in town takes umbrage with the high quality of product the Four Seasons is capable of crafting and sets it ablaze with the naive and skillful Barefoot kid taking it upon himself to get vengeance. There's some interesting things going on with this one. The pacing, blocking, and direction were all superior to your average Shaw Brothers flick. I only knew Johnnie To from Throw Down, The Heroic Trio, and its sequel The Executioners. With the bar set that high, I was surprised to find that The Bare-footed Kid reaches that threshold. It may not surpass those films, but it can stand among them as quality films. I also appreciated that this character far better encapsulates the title of being a kid than The Kid with The Golden Arm. If you're not going to tell a story about a child prodigy of Kung Fu, casting a younger actor with big Doe eyes and intentionally depicting that character with an optimistic naivete goes a long way in favor of the title.
May 24th
The Shakiest Gun in The West (1968)
2.5/5
This Don Knotts Western Comedy sure was made in simpler times, huh? A Dentist in Philadelphia graduates and decides to go West where the competition for Dentistry isn't as tough. Well, the plot here exists only to put Don Knotts in “wacky” situations where he can riff and perform physical slapstick comedy. Does any of it work? Sometimes, yes, but the humor is just as likely to fall flat. The whole concept is that the Don Knotts character is forcefully married to a pardoned stagecoach robber who's secretly tracking down illegal gun runners for the government. There's some fairly old and not exactly accurate portrayals of Native Americans and not all of the comedy has aged well, but there were a few scenes and beats where it got the better of me and produced a laugh or two. I don't really recommend this one, but it wasn't horrible.
May 25th
Cadillac Man (1990)
2/5
This is the worst movie I've ever seen starring Robin Williams. Though I do not place any blame on his shoulders, no here the suffering is due to the writing and directing. Robin Williams stars as Joey O'Brien, a fast talking car salesman whose belief in his own ability to sell anybody any car fuels his nihilist and brash approach. He's the kind of salesman who would try to sell a new car to the wife of a dead man in a funeral procession when the hearse in question breaks down. There's some voiceover narration from Joey about his sordid sexual affairs and how he's always broke because he can't help but spend all his money on women and… yada yada yada. Honestly, the character was miscast. It's not that Robin Williams isn't great (He's my favorite actor of all time), it's just that he wasn't right for this character at all. That and my main issue with the film is that the first half of the film sets you up for a zany car selling comedy along the lines of Glengarry Glen Ross, but then the film explodes into a one location hostage thriller as the husband of one of the women working there blazes in with a shotgun and claims he's going to kill everyone, maybe even himself.
Larry (Tim Robbins), rightfully, suspects his wife to be in an affair with one of the salesmen and he wants answers. If this sequence had been only a portion of the story then I would have been curious about where it would go but not left wondering what halted the momentum and who was the cause of this whiplash. But no, the rest of the film is this hostage situation that never gets interesting, it's just a bunch of characters shouting at each other at the top of their lungs. I would have preferred that we got the initial setup from the first half of the film instead of a dead stop and waltz into another movie entirely. What a terrible waste of Robin Williams' talent.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.