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Monday, October 28, 2024

Pacific liner: a review.

There is a film about a deadly virus originating from China that forces anyone infected to be locked in isolation from those not infected. No, it is not about COVID. Pacific Liner moves fast though the drama does not fully come up to where it could have gone.

The S.S. Arcturus is sailing from Shanghai to San Francisco. Chief Engineer McKay (Victor McLaglen) is firm but beloved by the crew. Not as well-known is the ship's new doctor, Tony Craig (Chester Morris). He sees the Arcturus as both a way to get to San Francisco and to his former sweetheart, nurse Ann Grayson (Wendy Barrie). McKay is also attracted to Ann, but he is a bumbler when it comes to her. Ann for her part, has a tangled romantic past with Craig.

Things seem to be going well until McKay spots a stowaway, a Chinese peasant. McKay is more irritated than concerned when the stowaway dies. Craig realizes that the stowaway has an infectious disease, treatable but dangerous. He pushes that the men working the boilers, all who had contact with the stowaway or someone with the stowaway, must be quarantined. 

Soon, the quarantined men are falling ill. While the passengers dance above them unaware, the crew faces a great crisis. Will the crew launch a mutiny after they are bolted shut to stop them from going above? Will McKay or Craig win Ann's heart?

It is interesting that Pacific Liner has eerie similarities to the past few years' great health crisis, physical and mental. The early section of Pacific Liner seems to play almost like comedy. This is particularly true with the love triangle of McKay, Craig and Grayson. McLaglen has a wry manner to his acting here, particularly when discussing things with his silent parrot. His stumbling manner with Ann, his blustery manner with the crew, they indicate a more humorous film. Once the plague starts spreading, Pacific Liner takes a more serious, almost menacing turn.

Of particular note is Barry Fitzgerald as Britches, the first crewman to meet his end. He is surprisingly effective as the crewman who at first is not taking the crisis seriously until it is too late. 

As mentioned, McLaglen is good as McKay, someone who inspires loyalty and contempt in equal measure. Morris has an almost crazed intensity as Dr. Craig, one that appears more crazed when we see his eyes all but burst out of his head. Barrie had very little to do apart from being the love interest, though in fairness she does well when using her feminine charms to get McKay to comply with something Craig needs.

Pacific Liner also has some wonderful visual moments, such as when the crew has to burn the material found inside a victim's locker. The film is a brisk 76 minutes, which to my mind suggests that Pacific Liner is meant as a B-picture, one that did not get as much as the premise might have allowed. I think that is again because of John Twist's screenplay which to my mind spent too much time on the romantic aspects versus the growing crisis.

However, director Lew Landers kept things going and the performances are respectable if not spectacular. On the whole, Pacific Liner might be worth revisiting in a remake. Granted, it might hit too close to current events, but that is something Pacific Liner cannot control. 

DECISION: C+

Sunday, October 27, 2024

The mummy (2017): a review.

In the annals of contemporary Hollywood, there are few actors whose name alone can open a film. Maybe Tom Hanks. Maybe Denzel Washington. One name, though, towers above them despite his short stature. Few names still have cache with the public in terms of sheer stardom more than Tom Cruise. Cruise is also one of the shrewdest actors around, aware of both his image and what makes a hit film. Therefore, one looks upon The Mummy , the first of a planned cinematic universe, with puzzlement on how Tom Cruise and everyone involved in The Mummy failed so spectacularly with this film on every level imaginable. 

Long ago, a group of Crusaders bury a knight with a special ruby. This jewel was from the Nile, or rather ancient Egypt. It was part of a dagger used against Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who was set to ascend the Pharoah's throne until a male half-brother was born. She kills her father, the baby mama and the infant, then was about to slice a lover to allow the god Set to take human form when she herself is killed.

Moving on to present-day London and Iraq, you have two sections that eventually blend. The Crusader tomb is found while building a new part of the London Underground. This section is taken over by mysterious figure Dr. Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe). In Iraq, renegade Sergeant Nick Morton (Cruise) and his little buddy Corporal Vail (Jake Johnson) are out treasure hunting versus fighting Iraqi insurgents. Fortunately for them, they do bumble their way into an unknown and elaborate Egyptian tomb.

Unfortunately for them, it is that of Ahmanet. British archeologist and Nick's fling Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) is more intrigued with the tomb than with whatever treasures may be found. Nick and Vail care only for gold but know enough to get out of a dangerous tomb. Vail is bitten by a spider that causes him to fall under Ahmanet's power. He goes on a killing spree and is sadly killed off by Nick.

Is this the end of Vail? Far from it, for he now warns Nick of Ahmanet's power. Ahmanet wants to use Nick to bring Set back and enact her plans for world dominations. Dr. Jekyll and his alter ego now must stop her. The lives and afterlives of everyone are in danger, and it will take Nick becoming a hero to save the world.

The Mummy was intended to kick off a whole new franchise dubbed the Dark Universe, a pun on the Universal Studio name as well as a cinematic universe. The idea was to bring back the classic Universal Studios monsters (the Mummy, the Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde) into a series of connected films for a long-running film series. The Mummy could not have been a more disastrous launch for such an enterprise. It is to where I jokingly wonder if screenwriters David Koepp, Dylan Kussman and Christopher McQuarrie along with director Alex Kurtzman were paid off by rival studios to deliberately sabotage the Dark Universe. 

The Mummy never took the time to genuinely set things up. Part of the problem is that The Mummy has essentially two starts. We start with the Crusader burial in 1127 England, then we get Crowe's voiceover telling us of Ahmanet. You know that these stories are eventually going to meld, but it does seem rather convoluted to have so much stuffed before the opening credits. Add to that the rather distasteful part of having Ahmanet kill an infant, and you are playing with fire. 

The Mummy is spreading itself too thin with its set up, but then despite its almost two-hour runtime seems desperate to rush though things. So much time is spent on an action sequence in Mesopotamia (which the film helpfully reminds the audience is now Iraq) that people who walked in late might have thought they had walked into the newest Mission: Impossible film by mistake. We never get a proper introduction to Nick, or Vail, or Jenny. Having already barely gotten a vague introduction to Ahmanet and not getting much if any introduction for Crowe or his Dr. Jekyll (here almost always called "Henry"), audiences can't latch on to who these characters are.

I think The Mummy was too obsessed with being wall-to-wall action to bother trying to make the characters interesting. The film certainly gave what it thought were exciting action sequences, such as a crashing airplane. However, that led to more questions than answers. Jenny tells the soldiers taking Ahmanet's sarcophagus back to Britain not to shoot Vail because the plane is pressurized, but shortly afterwards Nick shoots Vail three times. The plane does crash, but the debris seems to be spread over an excessively wide area. If The Mummy is to be believed, the various corpses, including a still remarkably fit then-55-year-old Cruise, could be recovered but the sarcophagus is still being sought at the crash site. 

The film desperately tries to be exciting, with constant action sequences and Brian Tyler's bombastic score pounding out the menace and danger of it all. Neither helped: the action sequences were shockingly boring and lifeless, the music overblown and almost incessant. 

The Mummy also seems unaware of what it actually wants to be. Whenever Jake Johnson appears, it almost seems to want to be a comedy. His postmortem scenes look like a rip-off of An American Werewolf in London. Vail, for reasons I'm not sure anyone can explain, prattles on to Nick about how he repeated shot Vail. He's a corpse that only Nick can see, so that would make him a ghost. However, I think he is also a literal corpse. I say this because at the end, Vail is fully human, Nick using his powers to bring him back to life (and setting him up for future Dark Universe films). I figure Vail was going to be the comic relief in this hoped-for franchise, but it did not pan out.

As a side note, Jake Johnson, who did the best he could with what he was given, may have the rare distinction of being one of the few people who manages to look shorter than Tom Cruise on screen.

I think Cruise went into The Mummy with high hopes of creating another franchise. He took a stab at comedy with Nick, who was meant to be a quippy type of fellow. In his first scene, he rebukes Vail for suggesting that he is a grave robber. He tells Vail that they are "liberators of precious antiquities". Nick did not come across as a daring man of action with a way with women and weapons. He came across as an idiot. It does not help when it looks like at one point that Tom Cruise is close to getting raped by a corpse. 

Wallis' Jenny was so blank that she is hardly worth mentioning. To be fair, Jenny was a poorly written character: she was not particularly smart, not interesting and wavered between being a potential love interest and being irritated by Nick. Crowe thought that underplaying Henry (again, the use of Jekyll is curious), he could make Jekyll come across as mysterious. It had the opposite effect of making us not take any of this seriously, but not in a good way.

There is nothing in The Mummy that is good. It is not fun. It is not scary. It is not interesting. It is just there. 

If The Mummy was created to be the first of many monster films, it failed in spades. The Dark Universe franchise died with The Mummy . Perhaps it is fitting that this living corpse of a film killed off yet another film series that I think few people wanted. 

DECISION: F

The Mummy Retrospective: An Introduction

The Mummy (1932)

The Mummy (1959)

The Mummy (1999)

The Mummy Retrospective: The Conclusions

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Conclave: a review.

Thursday, October 24, 2024

The freshman (1925): a review (review #1885).

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Los tallos amargos (the bitter stems): a review.

Monday, October 21, 2024

Skippy: a review.

One should know that what was once insanely popular in one generation is pretty much forgotten in the next. Such is the case with both the source material and film adaption of Skippy . Innocent, sweet and charming, Skippy is a delight.

Little Skippy Skinner (Jackie Cooper) is at heart a good kid, though prone to get into trouble. Though he is the son of wealthy Doctor Skinner (Willard Robertson), Skippy likes to slum it on the literal wrong side of the tracks, which he considers more fun. In Shantytown, Skippy is unofficial leader of a tween gang and soon bonds with a local boy, Sooky (Robert Coogan). Sooky's whole life is his dog, Penny, though the dog is technically illegal as Sooky's family is too poor to afford the $3 license.

Skippy does his best to scheme his way to get those $3. His efforts at getting at his savings flop, so he organizes a benefit, where Eloise Sanders (Mitzi Green), the girl who is sweet on Skippy, will be the openly hammy star. It is all for naught, as the evil dogcatcher Mr. Nubbles (Jack Rube Clifford) uses the money raised to repair the windshield Skippy and Sooky had accidentally damaged. It does not help that Mr. Nubbles is father to Harley Nubbles (Donald Haines), the Shantytown tween bully. More complications come when Skippy learns that his father believes the best thing to do is shut Shantytown down and has the power to do so. Will Skippy succeed in his efforts to save Penny and Shantytown?

What makes Skippy so successful is that we get this story from the kids' point of view. Skippy does not pretend to be highbrow. Instead, it is very open about how these kids, in their own world, operate. There are little touches that give us this perspective which make Skippy so sweet and delightful. At the benefit show, there is an offer for what they bill as a "cachurs gluv" for 31 cents. The use of the phonetic spelling shows the first commitment to making Skippy as real as possible.

The simplicity and directness in Skippy become more amusing when these kids attempt to take adult situations. Skippy's best friend and Eloise's brother Sydney (Jackie Searl) tells Skippy that he cannot fight anyone, even the smaller Sooky. "I'm nervous and I'm strung high", he tells Skippy. Later, Skippy asks Sooky, "What does your father do?". Sooky replies, "He just stays where he is. He's dead". It is said so matter-of-factly in a thoroughly innocent and guileless way that it makes it all the more hilarious.

A perhaps less-noted aspect in Skippy is how the kids are quite free of prejudice. There is one black member of Skippy's Shantytown gang, the perhaps ironically named Snowflake. None of the kids ever exclude him from the goings-on. His race is never mentioned or noted. He even participates in the benefit show when he is part of the sawing in half act. The fact that Sooky, who is supposed to be the one being sawed in half, has a white head but black feet make the scene sweeter. 

Director Norman Taurog, who won Best Director for Skippy and was the youngest Best Director winner for decades until Damien Chazelle won for La La Land , should be credited for being able to get solid performances from his mostly child cast. Granted, the story of how Taurog got his nephew Cooper to cry by threatening to shoot his dog is cruel.

Minus that, the performances from everyone in Skippy are delightful. Jackie Cooper received a Best Actor nomination for the title role, making him at age nine the youngest nominee in this category. He more than earned that nomination. Skippy is sweet and well-meaning even when disobeying. Sydney bemoans how he and Skippy went to Shantytown despite Skippy's promise to his father that he would not go over the railroad tracks. Skippy replies that he kept his word to Doctor Skinner in that he did not cross over the railroad tracks. They went under them. 

We first see Skippy calling out to his mother that he is getting dressed even though he is still in bed. Once he hears his father calling, one never saw a kid jump out of bed that fast. Cooper had the comic bits down well. However, Cooper was able to move your heart and bring you to tears. Late in the film, Skippy is praying for Sooky, devastated by the loss of Penny. Skippy's sincerity and compassion gets to you. Few child actors were able to cry as effectively as Jackie Cooper, his sweet face and genuine acting performance moving the viewer.

The other child cast members were equally strong.  Robert Coogan was delightful as Sooky, so much so that he got his own film in a sequel. To be fair, Coogan was not on Cooper's level, but as he was much younger one can cut him some slack. Coogan has a wonderful moment where he applies a certain logic on how Penny is more thoroughbred than genuine thoroughbreds. It is an amusing moment where Coogan draws attention away from Cooper, not an easy task.

Searl and Greene were amusing as Skippy's wealthy friends, forever getting roped or roping themselves into Skippy's newest ventures. Haines' Harley Nubbins balanced being the bully with being himself bullied by his father. 

In one scene, Harley was actually sympathetic. In their efforts to get money to bail Penny out, Skippy and Sooky see that Harley had bought himself an ice cream cone. Both of them do want the money but also a taste of Harley's ice cream. For once, Harley is the innocent party as his frenemies attempt to hoodwink him out of money and ice cream. 

Skippy is a genuine cinematic treat: sweet, innocent and appealing to mass audiences. I think both the film and the comic book series it is based on have mostly been forgotten. If anything, more than likely if Skippy is mentioned, it will be the peanut butter that comes to mind, not the Academy Award-winning film. That is a real shame, for Skippy is a wonderful film, taking the child's perspective and giving us a nice glimpse on their unique brand of logic. A simple story told and acted well, Skippy charms. 

DECISION: A-

Sunday, October 20, 2024

The mummy (1999): a review.

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