All posts by Rod Lott

Action

Death Wish (2018)

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In today’s times, people aren’t exactly in the mood for a story about a vigilante with a penchant for gun violence, even if his targets really, really deserve it. Now, in the 1970s, absolutely, which is why the Charles Bronson-starring Death Wish clicked with audiences in 1974 and why the Bruce Willis-starring Death Wish of 2018 did not.

Career-upgraded from Bronson’s architect, Willis’ Paul Kersey is an emergency-room surgeon whose hands are utilized for saving lives, not taking them. That changes, as things are wont to do when a home invasion by a group of masked thugs shatters his picture-perfect suburban life, sending his college-bound daughter (newcomer Camila Morrone) into a coma and his loving wife (Elisabeth Shue, Piranha 3D) to the morgue.

Kersey’s switch from family man to grieving retaliator is rather abrupt and, as Willis plays him, near-indeterminable, as his joyless demeanor gives way to a joyless demeanor, but now with a hoodie. Because the film is directed by Eli Roth (The Green Inferno), Kersey’s kills do not stay as mere point-and-shoot affairs, but setups rather elaborate for its real-world grounding. While inching into Hostel territory, they seem to be two complexity notches too short for inclusion in a Final Destination sequel.

Paul Kersey was Bronson’s signature role, and still would be even if its many sequels did not exist; surgeon Paul Kersey will be a footnote in Willis’ eventual obit, even if a follow-up improbably comes to fruition, partly because he’s barely trying beyond showing up. (Compare that to The Magnificent Seven’s Vincent D’Onofrio, who, in a thankless and underwritten role as Kersey’s brother, clearly is chomping at the bit for a Real Part.) Yet that is not to say the remake is a bad film — just a remarkably average one. The disowned screenplay by Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces) offers no main villain, which makes the climax feel like none at all. Similarly, potential for satire is squandered when a subplot about a guns-and-ammo superstore is dropped as soon as it’s introduced.

As a result, the new Death Wish has none of the original’s power — just its “pow.” For that not-so-peaceful, uneasy feeling, your better bet is another picture also based on a Brian Garfield novel — just not the same one: the 2007 Kevin Bacon vehicle Death Sentence, from The Conjuring conjurer James Wan. —Rod Lott

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Martial Arts

The Dragon Lives Again (1977)

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One wonders if Bruce Lee might have laid off the painkillers, if only he could have known how sullied his good name would be by the Bruceploitation wave that took hold soon after his untimely passing in 1973.

Take The Dragon Lives Again, for example. It’s one thing for a film to dedicate itself to “millions who love Bruce Lee,” but it’s another thing entirely for that film’s first scene to depict their hero (played by Bruce Leong, The Clones of Bruce Lee) burning in hell and lying dead while sporting a massive boner. To review this supremely silly quasi-parody scoop o’ chopsocky — directed by The Crippled Masters’ Lo Ke, which this film is anything but — is simply to share what happens.

Bruce is awakened by the King of the Underworld (Tong Ching, Bat Without Wings) and told he’ll have to fight his way back to earth and his beloved spouse. So Bruce goes about his way and makes allies with the One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Li, Dragon on Fire), Kane (as in David Carradine’s character in the TV series Kung Fu, but here played by an actual Asian) and Popeye the Sailor Man (Eric Tsang, Infernal Affairs). Meanwhile, the king bides his time chasing his topless wives around the bathtub: “Ooh, what a lovely pair of breasts you have!”

At a noodle restaurant — hey, even the deceased get hungry — Bruce meets two of his opponents: James Bond (played by The Mighty Peking Man’s Alexander Grand, a chubby Jewish guy with lamb-chop sideburns) and Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name (The Tattoo Connection’s Bobby Cannavaro, clad in cowboy hat and poncho while chewing a thin cigar). They’re backed up by a team of goons in full-bodied skeleton outfits and all part of an evil squad whose members includes such ’70s film icons as Emmanuelle, the Exorcist and the Godfather (Shin Il Lung, To Kill with Intrigue).

The Exorcist wants to take over the underworld, so he gets Emmanuelle (played by a braless American woman named Jenny — that’s it, just “Jenny”) to try to fuck the king to death. “I’m such a silly pussy,” she seductively coos upon meeting him. As she attempts her fatal screw — fairly explicit for a kung-fu film — Bruce interrupts them and spills the beans on Emmanuelle’s devious plans. Shocked, the king replies, “Her pussy’s in this plot, too? She tried to use it to murder me!”

Out in the countryside, Bruce engages in an extended fight with Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman (Wong Kar Hung, The Oily Maniac). Each of their moves is helpfully denoted with a super; Zatoichi’s techniques include “Blind Dog Pisses,” while all of Bruce’s are named after actual Bruce Lee films. Later, Bruce returns to the outdoor site after donning his Kato get-up from TV’s The Green Hornet in order to do battle with Dracula (Hsi Chang, Mad Monkey Kung Fu).

Then the king causes an earthquake by shaking a pillar and creates an army of mummies to take on Bruce. Our hero is nearly defeated until Popeye conveniently finds a can of spinach half-buried in the dirt and busts out his good shit. Finally, Bruce gets to go home and flies into the sky, all while you’re left to rub your eyes and pinch yourself to make sure what you’ve just watched is real.

It is. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Pressing On: The Letterpress Film (2016)

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Not terribly long ago, vinyl was considered a dead medium. Then hipsters discovered it and made it viable again. The same could happen (or at least should) to letterpress printing — that is, the near-lost art of pressing inked blocks of metal type onto paper. Created by Gutenberg (not Steve), this process — the Xerox of centuries long ago — may be archaic in these days of instant gratification, but it remains achingly beautiful.

So, too, initially, is Pressing On: The Letterpress Film, an indie documentary that serves as a clarion call for the technique’s continued life. Clearly letterpress fanatics themselves, first-time feature directors Erin Beckloff and Andrew P. Quinn do a fine job of conveying its enduring appeal, with an emphasis on its tactile pleasures, from selecting the type and slotting their blocks together like a puzzle to rolling out the finished product on a gloriously textured sheet of paper. The process can be slow and tedious, but so is cooking, with the end result of both satisfying multiple senses of the human body — in this case, touch, sight and, yes, smell.

With a history lesson and a mechanics tutorial, the doc covers the bases of backstory, but the emphasis is on the personalities and places (and even college programs) keeping letterpress alive, most notably Nashville’s famed Hatch Show Print. Lovingly told, Pressing On could be better organized and more concise; the main points are repeatedly hammer-struck, but Beckloff and Quinn are so kindhearted, I cannot imagine anyone wishing the film ill will.

I also cannot imagine anyone not already attracted to typography and design seeking it out. Like the proverbial pastor preaching to the choir, Pressing On is made — and Kickstarter-backed — by a passionate community speaking to a passionate community, with considerable overlap. Hopefully, its goodwill can engender a few more members. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

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After all the carnage and tragedy that befell so many humans in the events of 2015’s Jurassic World, not to mention three previous adventures, one would think the last thing those survivors would do is go back to that island. Yet that is exactly what they do in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, for a reason returning screenwriters Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly do not work hard enough to sell credibly: because 11 species of dinosaurs need to be saved from extinction before an about-to-blow volcano covers Isla Nebula with a thick sheen of lava.

So off go former theme-park exec Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard, Spider-Man 3) and velociraptor whisperer Owen (Chris Pratt, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2), back to the island that very nearly — and often! — served as their gravesite. This time, Claire brings two millennials from her new PETA-esque dino-protection nonprofit: a sassy “paleoveterinarian” (Daniella Pineda, TV’s The Detour) and a systems analyst (Justice Smith, Paper Towns) whose scaredy-cat act gets really old really fast.

Escorting them is a military team whose crusty leader, Wheatley (Ted Levine, The Silence of the Lambs), wields a pair of pliers to extract a tooth from each dinosaur they capture, so you know how that’s gonna turn out. His well-armed crew is tasked with shipping the prehistoric creatures to the palatial estate of infirm philanthropist Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell, Species II) for safekeeping, but Wheatley and Lockwood’s right-hand man (a wonderfully slimy Rafe Spall, Prometheus) have other, more personally lucrative ideas.

Although the back half of Fallen Kingdom taking place within the Lockwood mansion is unique to the five-film franchise, Jurassic-newbie director J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage) fails to spatially orientate the grounds to a level of layout that could foster and support suspense among audiences. Where and from what distance predator and prey exist is any viewer’s guess, yet also inconsequential, because any time Claire and Owen back themselves in a corner – metaphorical or otherwise — and face certain doom, Trevorrow and Connolly simply pilfer their cop-out climax from the previous sequel … and Bayona lets them, each and every time. It’s a lazy play on the page, and even more so on the screen.

Sloppy, choppy and as tired as the tranquilizers shot throughout, Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom simply goes through the motions, never fully engaging. Toward the end, the film grows as silly as Godzilla on Monster Island, then concludes with a frustrating cocktease of a coda that all but guarantees the worst minute of the next Jurassic movie will be of greater quality than this one’s best. As it stands (read: without tumble gymnastics), Fallen Kingdom is a virtual remake of 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, no longer the lone disappointment in the Steven Spielberg-produced series — a feat that took 21 years, give or take 65 million. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Black Panther (2018)

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As the titular superhero of Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman becomes to a generation of children what Christopher Reeve’s revelatory performance as/in Superman became to mine: an instant icon. Making this one all the more remarkable is that while the red-caped son of Krypton already had embodied truth, justice and the American way through decades of comic books, serials, TV shows and the like, Black Panther prowled about the pages of Marvel Comics in relative obscurity.

No more! This cool cat has been unleashed.

Inheriting the role of king of the African nation Wakanda, T’Challa (Boseman, Gods of Egypt) also inherits his late father’s secret identity as his people’s masked protector. Wakanda is masked as well — a village whose advanced technology and vast riches of vibranium (you know, that metal that powers a fellow Avenger’s shield) are hidden under a literal veil that, to an outsider’s naked eye, makes it appear Third World.

Such wonderful toys equip and enable T’Challa to be more than mere superhero — he’s the 007 of the Eastern Hemisphere! With his kid sister (scene-stealing Letitia Wright, Ready Player One) as his personal Q, T’Challa needs all the help he can get as a figure from his unknowing past (Michael B. Jordan, 2015’s less-than-Fantastic Four) attempts to take over the throne, by any means necessary.

While Black Panther’s rapturous success with audiences and critics is not at all surprising, the movie is overpraised. That’s hardly a knock on the film, because it’s still rousing entertainment for most of its two-plus hours. Much as he resuscitated the ailing Rocky franchise with the Oscar-nominated Creed, director Ryan Coogler usurps expectations by leaning heavily into James Bond’s territory. The movie belongs as much to the gadget-gotten spy genre as it does to the sci-fi adventure brand of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, standing on its own while making a snug fit into the MCU’s pre-existing serialized world.

The movie’s mere MCU-ness causes the most problems, with the usual overstuffed finale of foregone conclusions. Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole, however, have a greater hold on their ensemble cast, giving so many talented people — Sterling K. Brown, Martin Freeman, Lupita Nyong’o, Andy Serkis, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker — a chance to act, rather than simply collect a nice paycheck. Special praise is reserved for Danai Gurira (My Soul to Take) and Florence Kasumba (Wonder Woman) as T’Challa’s spear-armed bodyguards; they roar and resonate so loudly, they deserve a vehicle all their own. —Rod Lott

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