We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Dancing, divorce, and underwhelming action.
BREAKIN' (1984)
As someone whose earliest memories are from the 1980s, I can assure you that breakdancing was a big deal for a period time - but you don't need to take my word for it, when you have proof like the 1984 dance movie Breakin', which opened at #1 and landed on the list of the 20 top-grossing films of the year. The sight of people breakdancing is really all this movie has to offer, so that's how popular breakdancing was in '84.
The lead actors are entertaining to watch in the movie. They are Lucinda Dickey, who has a naturally endearing screen presence as Kelly Bennett, a young woman who dreams of having a dance career, and Adolfo "Shabba Doo" Quinones and Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers as Ozone and Turbo, the street dancers who introduce Kelly to the concept of breakdancing. When Ozone and Turbo are shown up by dance rivals Electro Rock when Bruno "Pop N' Taco" Falcon and Timothy "Popin' Pete" Solomon reveal that they're now a dance trio, as they've been joined by female dancer Ana "Lollipop" Sanchez, Kelly suggests that they could beat Electro Rock by adding her to their team. Kelly learns how to breakdance, earning the nickname "Special K" along the way, and it starts to become clear that breakdancing with Ozone and Turbo could be her ticket to a dancing career as well. Even if her creepy dance instructor Franco (Ben Lokey) thinks breakdancing is trash.
Rushed into production in an effort to cash in on the breakdancing sensation before another studio could, Breakin' was brought to the world by the mad geniuses at Cannon Films and is so simple and straightforward that it wraps up in just 83 minutes, and only manages to be 78 minutes before the end credits because it's topped off with a brief rap music video that revisits moments from the movie we've just been watching. And there was so much confidence that this was going to be a hit that the rap tells the viewer "Wait 'til part 2!", then text appears on the screen to double down on the sequel promise, letting us know that a follow-up called "Electric Boogaloo" would be coming soon. It was very soon; the sequel was in theatres just seven months after Breakin' was released.
If you need a strong dose of '80s nostalgia and want to see a lot of dancing, Breakin' is a fun movie to go back to. It's also notable for being the film debut of Ice-T, who plays an MC, and for featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme as a spectator in a dance scene. He's hanging out in the background, he wouldn't be able to really show off his own sweet dance moves until Kickboxer.
INFINITE (2021)
When author D. Eric Maikranz self-published his debut novel The Reincarnationist Papers back in 2009, he made it very clear that he was hoping his novel would get turned into a feature film. In fact, according to Wikipedia he offered a reward of 10% of any advance to anyone who could get his book into the hands of a film producer who would option the movie rights. The reward offer panned out, and The Reincarnationist Papers has served as the inspiration for the film Infinite. It would be interesting to hear what Maikranz thinks of Incarnate, because - while I haven't read The Reincarnationist Papers myself - it doesn't seem like the movie has much to do with his story. The novel is about a 21-year-old with memories from two past lives joining a small group of others who have memories from their past lives and getting involved with an art heist. The movie has 50-year-old Mark Wahlberg (apparently playing 35) discovering there are hundreds of people who remember their past lives, people known as Infinites, and they're split into two warring groups called Believers and Nihilists. Now he needs to help stop the Nihilists from jump starting the apocalypse.
So what director Antoine Fuqua and writers Ian Shorr and Todd Stein have done here is to take the basic concept from Maikranz's novel and use it as the foundation for a movie that is clearly, desperately trying to follow in the footsteps of and live up to blockbusters like superhero comic book adaptations and The Matrix. With all the world building Infinite attempts to do, and since Wahlberg's character is a regular guy who gets recruited into a secret war because he's believed to unwittingly be the most special Infinite there is, I was especially reminded of The Matrix. This movie feels so desperate to play on that level, it kind of makes you feel pity for it. You want to pat it on the head and say, "Oh, you poor thing."
Mark Wahlberg plays Evan McCauley, a man who has been struggling with mental illness since being diagnosed as schizophrenic when he was a teenager. He has spent a lot of time in psychiatric wards, his dreams feel like memories, and sometimes he's surprised to see his own face in the mirror. He has natural skills that he never learned, like he knows how to forge samurai swords even though he was never taught how. He sells those swords to a drug dealer in exchange for anti-psychotic medication, and this illegal drug trade is how he ends up in police custody, where he crosses paths with the villain of the film, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Bathurst.
Bathurst is the leader of the Nihilists, a group of Infinites who feel that this ability to remember past lives is a curse, because they're aware that they just keep living over and over and there's no end to it. So they're going to end the loop by destroying the entire world with a hi-tech device called The Egg. Problem is, they don't know where The Egg is. McCauley took that information to the grave with him in his past life, when he was named Heinrich Treadway and played by Dylan O'Brien. Since that information is buried somewhere in McCauley's mind, Bathurst needs him - and the Believers, the Infinites who want to use their memories to contribute to the protection and advancement of humanity, need to keep him away from Bathurst. So fellow Infinite Nora Brightman (Sophie Cookson) saves McCauley and takes him to the Believers hideout called The Hub, where he is notified that he's not schizophrenic, he just has centuries of memories in his head, and the Believers need to access those memories through a training montage.
Here's where I have to admit that I don't generally find Mark Wahlberg to be very interesting as a leading man. For me, he has still never been better than he was in Boogie Nights as Dirk Diggler, a character who was essentially brain dead, and it's tough for me to see most of his characters as much more competent than Dirk. So I think it's to the benefit of Infinite that Wahlberg was asked to play bewildered and out of his element for much of the film, as that stretch works better than when McCauley is able to access his heroic abilities. Fuqua did give Wahlberg a solid supporting cast to play off of, casting Liz Carr, Johannes Haukur Johannesson, and Jason Mantzoukas as some of the other Infinites - with Mantzoukas really standing out as a character who specializes in debauchery and brain surgery. But the most valuable player in this film is, by far, Ejiofor.
Ejiofor steals the show as the villain who is maddeningly weary of the world and goes to extreme measures in an attempt to get God to show him His face and assure him that there's any meaning to all of this. It is a delight to watch Ejiofor play the madness of Bathurst, and the best scene in the movie comes when he utilizes honey as a torture method against a Believer named Porter and played by Toby Jones. Honey pouring off his chin, Jones is given a moment to go just as big with his performance as Ejiofor goes with his, and in that one moment of them facing off, Infinite achieves greatness.
Unfortunately, for many other moments Infinite feels like a slog to get through. It only has a running time of 106 minutes, but it felt so long that I would have believed that it was 146 minutes. The villain and some side characters are interesting, but the lead is not, and the action is aiming high but turns out to be underwhelming. It's like all of Infinite is reaching for a rung on the ladder that the film just can't quite grasp.
If a Mark Wahlberg movie that aspires to be the next Matrix sounds up your alley, Infinite provides some minor entertainment. Even if you're not a Wahlberg fan, the movie might be worth watching just for Ejiofor, and for an amusing moment involving the steel plate McCauley has in his head.
The review of Infinite originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979)
In recent years, Dustin Hoffman has been accused of having a history of bad behavior, and while his persona seemed to have softened by the time I first became aware of him (I grew up watching the Hoffman of Rain Man, Dick Tracy, and Hook), these stories aren't that surprising to me, because I do find something to be inherently unlikeable about Hoffman in some of his younger roles. Kramer vs. Kramer, for example. His co-star Meryl Streep has said that he treated her terribly on the set of this movie, and I can believe it. In this movie, he seems like he has the potential for some seriously douchery. Hoffman has said that he was messing with Streep to make sure she would give an emotional performance, but smashing a real glass beside a woman's head and taunting her with the name of her recently deceased fiancé is going way too far.
My allegiance is with Streep in reality, but not within the world of this movie. Written and directed by Robert Benton and based on a novel by Avery Corman, Kramer vs. Kramer begins with Joanna Kramer (Streep) walking out of her marriage to Ted Kramer (Hoffman) one day, saying she doesn't love him anymore and that he "married the wrong person", and leaving their young son Billy (Justin Henry) behind because she says she's "no good" for the kid. And she disappears. For more than a year. Now Ted, whose main focus in life had been work up to this point, is a single father, and it takes him a while to adjust to this domestic life stuff. He and Billy hit some major bumps along the way, and there's a moment where Billy yells "I hate you!" at his father and Ted replies, "I hate you back, you little shit!" This is a moment that Kevin Smith lifted for his movie Jersey Girl, where the "I hate you" exchange is very intense and impactful despite the fact that he got it from another movie.
Eventually things between Ted and Billy settle down and they're able to have a peaceful, loving existence. And just when they've gotten there, almost at the exact to-the-second halfway point of the film's 105 minutes, Joanna shows back up, saying she has been lurking around and watching Billy from a distance for a couple months, and now she's in a mindset where she feels she can take care of the kid. So her approach is to take Ted to court so she can gain legal custody of Billy fifteen months after abandoning him. She's a real nightmare of a person. I may find '70s Hoffman tough to root for, but this movie manages to put me solidly on his side.
This movie also appealed to the members of the Academy in a major way. Hoffman and Streep both won Oscars for their roles, Benton won Best Director and Adapted Screenplay, and the movie was named Best Picture (beating Apocalypse Now). There were nominations in four other categories: Henry was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, Nestor Almendros for Best Cinematography, Gerald B. Greenberg for Best Editing, and Jane Alexander - who has a small role as a friend of both Ted and Joanna's - was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. I don't know if I would have given it all those awards and nominations if it were my pick, but it does hold up as a really good, emotionally engaging drama more than 40 years after its release.
I first saw Kramer vs. Kramer on cable when I was an adolescent, and I didn't get so wrapped up in the drama at that time. My main focus then was the quick appearance by JoBeth Williams, the mom from Poltergeist, as a woman Ted sleeps with after Joanna leaves him.
NEMESI5 (2017)
Dustin Ferguson has racked up over 100 directing credits over the last 11 years, which is really mind-blowing when you look at the numbers. When you watch one of his movies, it's easier to understand how so much can be done so quickly. From what I've seen, "quantity over quality" is a fitting description, as these movies aren't exactly meticulously crafted and polished. Ferguson has been given some amazing opportunities, though, including getting the chance to make a sequel to Albert Pyun's Nemesis franchise.
After a 20 year break from acting, Sue Price reprises the role of Nemesis 2, 3, and 4 heroine Alex in Ferguson's Nemesi5 (a.k.a. Nemesis 5: The New Model), which begins at a time when she's still working as an assassin, like she was in the fourth movie. When the ongoing war between humans and cyborgs claims the lives of young Ari Frost's parents, Alex takes the girl under her wing and spends the next 12 years training her. And then they come up with an idea for how they might be able to stop this war that has been dragging on for decades. At the core of the war is a battle between the LAPD and a terrorist group called the Red Army Hammerheads. The police had nearly defeated the terrorists in 2084, but then the terrorists took over the news networks and started filling the airwaves with propaganda, turning citizens to their side. Alex and Ari (played as an adult by Schuylar Craig) decide that the best way to handle this is to send Ari back in time to 2077 so she can prevent the media takeover from ever happening.
So there's the set-up, and it doesn't matter how much or how little sense it makes within the Nemesis franchise, because the previous movies didn't make complete sense anyway. What matters is how it plays out... and Nemesi5 isn't all that exciting, even if you can get past the cheap look and bad sound. There is a lot of filler packed into this 71 minute movie, which means a lot of dialogue exchanged between characters it's difficult to care about and way too much time spent in a bar location. When action does break out, the fight choreography isn't much more advanced than kids play-fighting during recess.
The idea of Alex training a new character played by Schuylar Craig and sending her on a mission to end the human/cyborg war works fine as the basis of a Nemesis 5, but I'm not sure how much entertainment Nemesis fans will get out of the part 5 that Ferguson and his Horndogs Beach Party writer Mike Reeb delivered. The movie didn't work for me, but I did appreciate the fact that it contains nods to all of Alex's previous adventures, and offers an explanation for why she was getting in so deep with the cyborgs in part 4. It is clear that Ferguson and Reeb studied the other Nemesis movies before attempting to make their own.
No comments:
Post a Comment