This Week in Cinema, I Learned…Jul 14-20 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.
This was a bit of a mid-level week of Summer titles if I'm being honest. It's not all bad, in fact two films this week were pretty great! Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and The Abyss were equally surprising at times with the execution of their stories. Wildly different films, but those were the best of the week. The other films range from good, earnest, storytelling to disappointing or merely watchable movies. One of the lower scoring but still entertaining movies was Surf Ninjas from 1993 with Leslie Nielsen as a cartoonishly evil villain that basically operates like some Fusion Dance gone wrong between Raiden from Mortal Kombat and Mr. Magoo, which was far more entertaining than expected even though the movie isn’t exactly good.
Meatballs, A Hard Day’s Night, and Smokey and The Bandit were all moderately entertaining and breezy summertime movies to pass the time on a rainy afternoon, but none of them were all that impressive either. The worst film of the week however was Journey to The Center of The Earth starring Brendan Fraser. Truthfully, Fraser himself earned most of the points for that film, it was just such a disappointment. This week in Cinema I learned that a good actor can anchor any film and improve an otherwise bland premise as with Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. I also learned that exact same lesson with Leslie Nielsen in Surf Ninjas and Brendan Fraser in Journey to The Center of The Earth. Casting is important folks!
July 14th
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
4/5
When I realized that there was a dark comedy crime thriller directed by Werner Herzog and starring Nicolas Cage in the lead role, well, I had to investigate. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a bizarrely entertaining police procedural where Nic Cage stars as Terence McDonagh, a corrupt Cop in New Orleans. We follow his investigation into the death of an immigrant family from Senegal in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. McDonagh, and his partner played by Val Kilmer, track down local criminals related to the drug game in New Orleans and generally push, pry, and bully people into getting information and multitudes of drugs for McDonagh’s personal use. Cage’s McDonagh is an irritable, unstable, clever, and simultaneously both charming and feral investigator. He uses every type of manipulation possible to get what he wants but ultimately does do the right thing. His performance reminded me of the Noir Detectives of Cinema’s past in that they often operated in similarly gray moral zones and often pushed risky behavior on a good hunch much in the same way. Plus there's a fun odd story beat where McDonagh is receiving exposition but Herzog places the camera’s focus on an iguana in the same room. Need to punch up your boring exposition scene? Put an Iguana in that bitch and slap some blues over it, it worked for Werner Herzog it can work for you!
July 15th
Smokey and The Bandit (1977)
3.5/5
As I have been occasionally knocking out Burt Reynolds starring vehicles, I knew I'd eventually get around to his iconic film franchise Smokey and The Bandit. I broadly knew it was essentially a car chase film, but I didn't know it was just on a bet to see if Bandit (Reynolds) and Snowman (Jerry Reed) could transport 400 cases of beer (Coors, those poor unfortunate souls) from East Texas to Atlanta, Georgia in 28 hours while avoiding the law as it was still illegal to transport some alcohol across state lines. Snowman drives the semi hauling the beer while Bandit tears ahead towards the upcoming towns and counties to distract and disorient the local police so they don't notice the semi rolling through town at breakneck speeds. It's a decently fun picture, but one that is definitely buoyed by the performance of Jackie Gleason as the antagonist Texas Sheriff Buford T. Justice. Buford pursues Snowman and The Bandit across State lines but he's really after the runaway bride (Sally Field) of his dimwitt son who had jumped into Bandit's Trans Am early on in the journey. Smokey and The Bandit has its moments. There's some good car chase sequences, some decent comedy, and it's generally a good time, but it can feel as if the film itself was too drunk and too horny for its own good.
July 16th
The Abyss (1989)
4/5
James Cameron's precursor to elements of Terminator 2:Judgement Day, Titanic, and Avatar The Way of Water came about in 1989's The Abyss. Which is a strange merger between the two halves of James Cameron's career, as The Abyss also shares the visual identity of Aliens with the high tension of the original Terminator. I did not know how wild this film would get. I knew it concerned a deep ocean journey, I did not expect the layers upon layers of intrigue. When a US submarine hauling Nukes crashes near the “Deep Core”, an experimental, privately-owned deep sea drilling platform, the US Government sends a SEAL team to “Deep Core” to work with the team there to investigate the crashed sub and retrieve or deactivate the nuclear weapons. They must accomplish all of this as a massive Hurricane barrels towards the crash site, not to mention several sightings of strange lights once under the waves. The biggest surprise? I did not expect this to be an underwater version of Close Encounters of The Third Kind, but boy did I enjoy that unexpected twist.
July 17th
Surf Ninjas (1993)
2.5/5
Okay, so if you ever wanted to know what the vibe of early 1990's media for children was like, this is pretty much it. With a paper thin plot and surface level cardboard characterization- this one is purely for the cheese lovers out there. Or Children. Which is fine, but just know that Surf Ninjas is essentially a Disney Channel direct-to-VHS Power Rangers style movie. The two leads are Johnny (Ernie Reyes Jr.) and Adam (Nicolas Cowan), heirs to the throne of Patusan (a fake country created by Author Joseph Conrad). Though they currently reside in Sunny California alongside their friend Iggy in a hilariously miscast role for a teenage actor played by a nearly thirty year old Rob Schneider at the time. However, the real reason to watch is Leslie Nielsen as the villainous Colonel Chi. Imagine a villain composed both of Nielsen's Mr. Magoo and the lead character from his Naked Gun series with a sprinkling of a Samurai color palette. My friends and I ended up calling him “Dark Magoo” every time he appeared onscreen, and that alone was worth the hour and a half. Your entertainment may vary.
July 18th
Meatballs (1979)
3.5/5
Directed by Ivan Reitman, Meatballs is an entertaining Summer Camp Comedy starring Bill Murray as one of the main Counselors of Camp North Star. Besides the usual Summer Camp story tropes of Summer romances, a general sense of adventure, and victory through perseverance, there's also a longstanding rivalry between Camp North Star and Camp Mohawk. Camp Mohawk, the camp for rich kids, has won the annual Olympiad twelve years in a row but this time around Camp North Star finally got their act together. They work it out at the campfire through a hearty chant of “It just doesn't matter!” after a long day of failures at the start. Overall the film is charming, but some of the dialogue and behavior feels a bit predatory in nature when looking back through the lens of time. I also didn't realize until later that this one was Reitman's first real success as a director and Murray's first lead role in a film, so that was pretty neat. Better than Stripes!
July 19th
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
3.5/5
When I was on vacation in Traverse City this summer I caught this one at the State Theater, mainly because I always catch a movie there when in town. It is my favorite Movie Theater after all. Anyways, A Hard Day's Night is a breezy mockumentary that follows The Beatles roaming around London while on tour. It's mostly just an excuse to see the iconic bandmates trounce around town while running away from screaming fans and wrangling Sir Paul McCartney's Grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell) out of trouble as they prepare for a Live TV Show performance. They have a few performances of their early hits and it was quite charming overall. A real summer delight!
July 20th
Journey to The Center of The Earth (2008)
2.5/5
If it weren't for Brendan Fraser, Journey to The Center of The Earth would have been an absolute disaster. As it stands, it's just a bad movie. That feels harsh for a generic adventure movie with an inherently ridiculous premise, but there are equally silly movies and ideas out there that don't look and feel as bad as this. When the cast is on real sets and using tangible props it can have moments of immersion, but it isn't long before we are shown a panorama shot of badly realized CGI, or at least poorly-aged CGI, that isn't anywhere as “Magical” as the movie wants you to believe it is. The logic that the movie uses falls flat in believability at nearly every turn, and none of it makes any sense, but hey, at least Brendan Fraser really is trying to carry this one to the credits, and he does, he carries this entire movie. I don't really recommend Journey to The Center of The Earth, but if you’re looking for an adventure to mysterious worlds, I would actually recommend the admittedly dumb, but extremely entertaining, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire from earlier this year.
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.