J.D. Hansel

Four Stars

Ladyhawke Review

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One of the personal projects I’ve been meaning to start working on recently is writing an analysis of a sub-genre of fantasy.  I call it the “Eighties Fantasy Quest”, and it’s basically a genre for films that feel very much like ’80s movies, yet focus on an adventure through a world full of mythological characters, fairy tale creatures, “high fantasy” concepts, or new things that feel like they spring from one of these three territories.  Think of The NeverEnding Story, The Dark Crystal, Willow, Time Bandits, Return to Oz, Legend, Conan the Barbarian, and any other films from the ’80s that don’t just have a fantasy element but in fact seem to drown the viewer in magic, mythology, darkness, and dragons.  Obviously, this is a very diverse group of films, so I’ve been trying to find a way to map them out – separating the little girls from the big brutes and the films from Pythoners from the serious adventure thrillers.  To help me with this, I decided to watch a film that seems related to this genre and that’s considered an ’80s classic: Big Trouble in Little China.

I thought Big Trouble was fun and all, but I don’t think it was quite what I had in mind.  It fits into the genre, but for the most part, I didn’t feel like I was “taken away” to another world – and even Masters of the Universe, which largely takes place in our world, managed to give me that feeling.  As much as I enjoyed how immensely ’80s it is, I needed something with more magic, whimsy, and fairy tale-like qualities.  It also has a protagonist that’s more on the “barbarian” end of the spectrum of the EFQ genre – the place where hyper-masculinity is sold to the male viewers, although I couldn’t tell if the film was sincere about it.  Big Trouble has an odd tonal inconsistency in that Jack Burton is sometimes a joke – an American stereotype who thinks he’s invincible, unbeatable, and irresistible, but is actually an ignorant clown – and sometimes he’s genuinely cool.  Regardless, I needed something a little less macho and a little more “classical.”

Enter Ladyhawke, the high-fructose corn syrup to sugar’s Princess Bride – I know it’s not really quite as good, but at times it’s surprisingly very satisfying.  The Princess Bride certainly has the more memorable scenes, quotes, and characters, but Ladyhawke has a lot in its corner as well.  Conceptually, this is the kind of story one wants from a fantasy romance – something more than the usual “long-lost lover rescues damsel in distress from evil royal person” bit – offering a clever set-up for romantic tension and a unique reason for the audience to be concerned with the characters.  This movie doesn’t have as many fairy tale tropes as Princess Bride, or even Labyrinth, but the high concept at its core (which I refuse to spoil for those who haven’t seen the film yet) puts a distinctly “fairy tale” kind of magic at the heart of the story, making the film feel like a fairy tale storybook for adults.  I think with the benefit of a few trolls, wizards, giants, dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, goblins, or dragons, it would be just the kind of fantasy story I adore.

With that said, if we shift the focus away from what the film does not do and towards what the film does do, it doesn’t do anything too badly.  It’s playful with the “hero’s journey” arc, giving two (or perhaps three) characters the role of the hero against a villain whom the audience really wants to see killed.  Matthew Broderick’s accent is hilariously inconsistent, but that actually seems to add to the charm of his character, who has some very good dialogue and a cleverly-written ongoing chat with God.  The romance is completely believable, and the movie’s closing has just the right amount of heart in just the right way.  What really sells the story, however, is the score by Alan Parsons, whose band has recorded some of my favorite songs.  The music Parsons brings to the film makes excellent use of the ’80s synthesizer, giving the film that special quality of being both very timeless and very dated in the best way possible.  When all of its odd ingredients are put together, the result is an ’80s classic that will probably hit the spot for anyone in the mood for a truly magical love story.

The Seven Year Itch Review

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This film is absolutely mad – or at the very least its protagonist is.  It had been a long time since it had last seen a Billy Wilder comedy, but after seeing Double Indemnity this past Autumn, I was naturally interested in seeing if his comedies could be as intelligent as his dramas.  I was not disappointed, but I was surprised by just how far this story dives into madness, creating a crazy comedy about romance instead of a romantic comedy.  I think this is where the film’s intelligence is found: it recognizes with brilliant observation just how absurd the human imagination is when fueled by fear, lust, and images from fictions, almost making it a criticism of its own medium.  Admittedly, the screenplay is clever, but not quite as funny as it could be, and Marilyn is sexy, but not quite at her best as a performer, so I watched it in parts over time to prevent boredom.  In spite of this, it’s definitely the must-see comedy movie of its era because it taps into the anxieties of the adult, straight, American male on a level few films have apart from The Graduate (and because I cannot believe it was approved by the code).  This makes it a perfect introduction to the inner-workings of the male mind, and it has the benefits of stylistic charms and hearty laughs to make it a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

When Harry Met Sally Review

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For those of us who didn’t grow up in the 1980s, it can be very difficult to imagine a time when Billy Crystal was young, handsome, and a viable romantic lead.  He seems like such a comic figure that it would be impossible for him to play a character with a lot of heart, and yet he’s perfectly cast in this film.  He fits into the character type of the street-wise all-American wise-cracker who never knows when to quit and who lives for the tickle of the feathers he ruffles.  Meg Ryan, by contrast, is the Bert to his Ernie – the straight man who lives a very orderly and particular life and must see to it that everything is precisely as it ought to be.  The idea of taking this kind of duo and watching it develop into a romance may not be entirely original to When Harry Met Sally, but this film does it especially well.

Perhaps the better pairing in the film, however, is not a couple of characters, but a duo behind the camera – Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner.  By this point in his career, Reiner had demonstrated that he could do comedies that were fairly brutal (This Is Spinal Tap) and love stories that had just the right amount of heart in just the right places (The Princess Bride).  Ephron, on the other hand, seemed to be best at making films in this particular genre with this particular sentiment, saturating her scripts in nostalgia and seeking out a way to keep the magic of Classical Hollywood believable in an age of cynicism.  Consequently, the two forces put together inevitably resulted in a film that has lots of laughs and lots of heart, never going too far with either.  Roger Ebert rightly noted that it has a resemblance to Woody Allen films, which largely has to do with the excellent choices of old jazz standards.  The structure of the film is rather unconventional and artistic in a way, which I attribute to the clever craftsmanship of these two creative forces.

I’ll concede that it took me a long time to finish the movie – I frequently took breaks from it for days and I rarely felt the compulsion to find out what happened next (which I blame on the story’s predictability) – but it was worth it to finish it.  It’s simply a pretty package of pure charm.

Rogue One Review

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MINOR SPOILER WARNING

By the end of 2016, it seemed as though everyone on the Internet was in the mood to rant about how every movie Hollywood makes is a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, or in-universe story.  This, of course, is not true – just watch the previews before one of the big hit dramas out in theaters today or check the homepage of Rotten Tomatoes.  Still, there is definitely a movement in cinema right now towards returning to the many stories it has told and trying to find something new here, to varying degrees of success.  Instead of relying just on the genre system that guided Classical Hollywood, which was essentially a means for the studios to make money by telling the same story over and over again, the ’80s have given us a blockbuster and franchise system, which is now moving further from focusing on original stories and towards revisiting familiar stories.  Perhaps the various modern twists on fairy tales are responsible for this obsession with re-visitation, and maybe Wicked is to blame for that trend, but regardless of the cause, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.  This just means that audiences have to learn to approach stories differently, particularly when dealing with in-universe stories that aren’t focused on the main characters from the original franchise.  This didn’t seem to be a problem for most people who saw Fantastic Beasts, but surprisingly, it has made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story a very divisive film.

I think it’s safe to say that there are very few other films in history that have been designed specifically to both contextualize and by contextualized by another film on the level that Rogue One is.  This is very new for cinema, but it isn’t for Star Wars – they’ve had TV shows in this universe that were inspired by a single (almost insignificant) line of dialogue from New Hope, so this shouldn’t seem that strange to people.  Yet, somehow, the lack of an opening crawl is too much for some people to handle.  For me, it doesn’t matter whether or not it feels like a Star Wars movie, or even a Star Wars story, so long as I believe that it’s in the same universe as Star Wars and its story makes me look at the main films with greater understanding and appreciation of their context.  This is all true for me, so any reservations I might have have been appeased, allowing me to focus just on enjoying the story.

So is it a good story?  Well, at the very least it feels like an original story.  This is one quality that other films in the franchise have not had, much to their detriment.  The villains and side-characters are all great, but the two leads are fairly uninteresting.  I will say that I understood the protagonist’s perspective throughout, rooted for her, and could tell that she was not one to be trifled with – she was fierce.  Each of the characters serves his/her purpose, the drama is intense, the humor is hilarious, the action is more awesome and impactful that most of the action scenes I’ve ever seen, and the story plays with elements of the Star Wars universe well.  (Also, Vader is amazing, his first appearance sending chills down my spine, and his second blowing me away.)

With all this in mind, I have a difficult time understanding why so many people I know have been so disappointed.  This movie has the perfect balance of serious war themes and fun excitement.  Just imagine if a good fan project was given a huge load of money and told to go crazy.  That’s the feeling of this movie.  Because of how much it seems like a fanatic’s passion project, it really feels like a victory for the fans.  This is enough to make it satisfactory, but with the added bonuses of clever references to other characters and an amazing ending, it’s very pleasing.  Sure some of the CGI is terrible, but I still see this as a film that is paving the way to great things in cinema’s future, and for that I greatly appreciate it.

Key Largo Review

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This film is essentially “Film Noir’s Greatest Hits.”  It has Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in leading roles, sharing the spotlight with a wealthy mob boss played in the most Edward-G.-Robinsony way possible by none other than Edward G. Robinson.  In a supporting role is Claire Trevor of Murder, My Sweet and Raw Deal, and one of Robinson’s main gangsters is played by Dan Seymour, whom some may remember as Capitaine Renard from To Have and Have Not.  Character actor Marc Lawrence – Cobby in The Asphalt Jungle – also makes an enjoyable appearance, so the gang’s all here.  The film is as claustrophobic, dramatic, and violent as anyone could want from a film noir, with a satisfying sense of witty cynicism.  That being said, there are a few ways in which this stands out from the usual film noir stereotypes.

Most films noirs – and most films in general – change locations, but this story is about people who are stuck in one building for the whole movie.  The particular location the film chooses is particularly odd: it’s in a hotel on the beach in Key Largo, which is radically different from the general consensus that film noir concerns urban settings.  The movie cleverly uses this to its advantage, employing a hurricane to amp up the usual noir trope of heightening drama with rain by making the rain more intense and to take out the building’s electricity.  The power outage serves as both another way to create anxiety among the cast, which feels very noir, and as a great excuse for making the lighting more extreme.  The result is a lighting style that is more expressionistic than any shadows I’ve seen in any film noir since Stranger on the Third Floor, and it’s absolutely delightful.  It’s also very different for a film noir to avoid themes of male anxieties about women completely (or, in other words, to avoid a femme fatale or similar type), and Lauren Bacall seems almost out-of-place in her “loving, devoted wife” role.

While I think some parts of the film, such as the Bogart-Bacall romance, could have been more interesting than they are, I do think this is one of the greatest films noirs I have ever seen, and perhaps one of the greatest films I’ve seen at all.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover Review

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I’ve been meaning to see this film for a long time – unlike most people my age, it’s been on my radar for years, and I have often joked about its incredibly long title.  Upon seeing it, I’ve found that it’s approximately what I thought it would be, only better.

It’s very much an artsy movie that seems to focus on visuals, themes, and cinematic experiments than entertaining, but it actually gets rather captivating and exciting in the second half.  The characters are, to my surprise, very interesting, with many characters I root for and one character who reminds me (and reminded the professor who was showing the film when I saw it) of a certain bushy-haired billionaire who’s been in the news lately.  The fear of “The Thief” intensifies as the film progresses, making for an intense and chilling third act.  All of this, of course, gets elevated and enhanced by the excellent soundtrack, and of course by some of the greatest visuals in cinema history.  Director Peter Greenaway seems to care very little for making a film that feels like real life, instead preferring a theatrical atmosphere, an unbelievable ending, and at least one subtle moment that is physically impossible (specifically the moment when a the wife’s dress changes colors instantly to match her surroundings).  While I must confess that some of it feels somewhat slow and boring, and there is definitely an aura of pseudo-intellectualism coupled with needless violence throughout, the film basically works because of its ironic conclusion, which is just as dramatic and chilling as it is ridiculously absurd.

It’s a bit awkward and grim for my tastes, but at least it’s fresh and well-done.