1991

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June 22, 2009

Fight Back to School

Posted by Jordan Richardson under 1991, action, comedy, crime, entertainment, foreign, movies, trailers | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
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fight back to school

As a superstar of Hong Kong entertainment, Stephen Chow is the master of mo-lei-tau comedy. Mo-lei-tau can be translated to mean “with no source” or “makes no sense.” Chow, typical for mo-lei-tau comedy, uses a lot of double entendres, puns, and nonsensical parodies and contrasts in his films. If you’ve seen Kung Fu Hustle or Shaolin Soccer, you have a rough idea as to what mo lei tau can be.

But for a real sense of Chow using mo-lei-tau to a more understanding target audience, you need to dig back further in Chow’s career. That’s where 1991’s Fight Back to School comes in. A nonsense comedy in just about every sense of the word, Fight Back to School can be a little tricky at first. In Hong Kong, however, it was extremely popular and spawned two sequels and a spin-off.

Directed by Gordon Chan, Fight Back to School is one of Chow’s more successful films. He stars as Star Chow, a cop about to be kicked off the force. Luckily the police commissioner (Barry Wong) gives him one last chance after he loses his gun. The clues to the gun’s whereabouts lead to the Edinburgh High School in Hong Kong, so it’s up to Star Chow to go undercover as a student to find the thing.

Star is partnered with Uncle Tat (Ng Man-Tat), an aging police detective already stationed at the school. The mission is further complicated by the usual trappings of high school, but luckily Star Chow makes a friend in Turtle Wong (Gabriel Wong) and falls in love with the school’s guidance counsellor Miss Ho (Sharla Cheung). Once a gang involved in arms-dealing is discovered in the school, it’s up to Star Chow and Uncle Tat to spring into action.

The slapstick is really the top selling point for Fight Back to School. There’s not much point in ruminating about the plot or its details, nor is there any real character development or great script to speak of. Fight Back to School is simply a very zany comedy, done up Hong Kong-style with a little touch of action and gunplay to help wrap up the plot’s loose ends (somewhat) during the final frames.

Chow is entertaining as Star Chow, as you’d probably expect. His command of slapstick is very amusing, from battling with flying chalk erasers to attempting to play hero during the movie’s final action sequence. Chow as Chow is convincing, too, and his facial expressions help give us a sense of who he is without unnecessary monologues or “why me?” speeches. Instead, Chow’s proof is in the pudding and his interactions with the other characters tell us all we need to know.

Fans of Hong Kong cinema, especially some of Jackie Chan’s stuff, will catch a lot of the parodies in Fight Back to School. The opening sequence is lifted from Chan’s bizarre Sammo Hung-directed Heart of Dragon, while another scene owes a lot to Police Story. The entire premise of the picture is based somewhat on 1987’s Hiding Out, a comedy about a stock broker hiding out in a high school.

For a real sense of mo-lei-tau and a great look at the master of the nonsense comedy genre in Hong Kong, Fight Back to School is the best place to start. It is fast-paced, hilarious, oft-perplexing, and out-and-out silly like a Looney Tunes cartoon. It’s a great precursor to the hilariously awesome Kung Fu Hustle, too, and demonstrates why Stephen Chow is so popular in Hong Kong.

7.6/10

Trailer: (sorry, no subtitles):

 

December 6, 2007

Fried Green Tomatoes

Posted by Jordan Richardson under 1991, comedy, drama, entertainment, trailers | Tags: , , , , , , |
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Fried Green Tomatoes

Jon Avnet’s first theatrical release as a director was 1991’s Fried Green Tomatoes, a gentle drama based on the novel “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe”. When Avnet’s film was released in the United Kingdom, it was released under the full title of Fannie Flagg’s novel. The film was written by Flagg and Carol Sobieski. It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress for Jessica Tandy and for Best Writing – Screenplay Based on Another Medium for Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski. Fried Green Tomatoes did well at the box office, too, and continues to be a popular favourite among people on DVD and home viewing.

Fried Green Tomatoes follows the life of Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates). Evelyn is turning a corner in her life and is attempting to improve things at every corner, taking classes to improve her marriage’s sexual relationship and trying new things around the home. One day during a visit to the hospital, Evelyn meets an elderly woman named Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy). Ninny sits with Evelyn and begins to share stories from a now-abandoned town of Whistle Stop, Alabama. The story mostly revolves around the growing relationship between Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker), two women who ran the Whistle Stop Cafe. As the story unfolds through Ninny’s retelling, Evelyn begins to find strength through the characters and makes various improvements in her own life, befriending Ninny along the way.

The film’s flashback segments, through the story told by Ninny, represent the foundation of Fried Green Tomatoes as it is through these stories that Evelyn finds strength in her modern time of existence. Idgie and Ruth develop a relationship that, according to the novel, is a lesbian relationship. Avnet’s film chooses to underplay this significantly and there are only the slightest of overtones as the the “reality” of their relationship. Whether or not this plays out better or worse on screen is in the eye of the beholder, I guess, but what I didn’t know at the time of viewing certainly didn’t subtract from what seemed to be an honest and open relationship based on friendship and companionship. To enter into some sort of loving relationship between two women as lesbians on screen would have seemed tacked on, in my opinion.

The real substance of the story, to me, was within Evelyn’s narrative as she attempts to catch up with what it means to be a “modern woman” and begins to express herself in various ways. The novel took a decidedly more dark turn on the character of Evelyn, whereas the film choose to portray Bates as more of a feminist hero of sorts as she grew into herself and grew into her Mary Kay. Bates’ Evelyn is a gentle spirit with a kind soul, not the suicidal dark individual from Flagg’s novel. Both characters surely have their places in the annals of this tale, mind you, but I felt that Bates’ portrayal was somewhat more affecting and inviting in terms of providing a film characterization.

A lot of times, these sorts of flashbacks-told-by-a-character-in-the-present tales fail as films. Overall, it becomes taxing to watch as the older character telling the story in the present is, surprise surprise, one of the characters from the past. Fried Green Tomatoes suffers this slump in terms of filmmaking, however, by contributing a vibrant character as the listener to the story in Bates’ Evelyn. Having Evelyn as a listener to what is, essentially, a story about tolerance among the intolerant back at Whistle Stop, makes the story more vibrant and gives it a sort of practical application about seizing each day and ensuring that the intolerance from the past does not survive. Within this context, Evelyn’s intolerance is that of her husband’s and that of the battles of weight and ageism that she fights with the world around her. How she survives these battles is a treat to watch, thanks to Bates’ performance.

Fried Green Tomatoes works because it deals with stories that most people growing up in different times know how to relate to. It remains as a meditation to times past, to battles won, and to intolerances overcome. With the light-to-obvious lesbian overtones remaining in the film and the reactions to many of the less-inclined townsfolk to the racial issues within the film, it becomes clear that the message here is moving forward through history and not moving back to times of less moral significance. Fried Green Tomatoes presents what is a fairly normative point in this, as several films have conquered these issues with more entertainment value and more poignancy. Yet, it is Kathy Bates’ Evelyn taking comfort and gaining power through it all that lifts Fried Green Tomatoes up as a film and makes it an applicable and practical study for all of us today.

7/10

Trailer:

 

November 28, 2007

Bugsy

Posted by Jordan Richardson under 1991, biography, crime, drama, entertainment | Tags: , , , , , |
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Bugsy

Barry Levinson’s 1991 film Bugsy is about Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and his designs on starting business in Las Vegas in the form of a casino. The film was nominated for a slew of Academy Awards, including Best Art Direction (which it won), Best Costume Design (which it also won), Best Actor for Warren Beatty, Best Supporting Actor for Harvey Keitel and Best Supporting Actor for Ben Kingsley, Best Director, Best Music, Best Picture, and Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. The Silence of the Lambs would win most of the awards that Bugsy didn’t win that year, for the record.

Warren Beatty stars as Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, bringing a glossy portrayal on the screen to fill the shoes of the notorious gangster. Siegel, as we discover when the film begins, works for the mob on the East Coast and is sent to California to look after some mob business. When he arrives, he falls in love with the lifestyle and with a woman, Virginia Hill (Annette Bening), despite his marriage relationship back home. Siegel buys a house and starts a life in California. He takes a trip to Nevada and discovers a business potential there, so he works with some local gangsters to finance his business venture and opens the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.

I did not enjoy Bugsy. First of all, I found the film to be overall glossy, vitreous and slick. Beatty’s Bugsy is a romantic hero of sorts, given the red carpet treatment as though we are to forgive his abuses because, according to the end credits crawl, he was the catalyst for Vegas generating an awful lot of money. Beatty draws on this gloss and this sex appeal as he plays Bugsy, bringing out the best in the character and downgrading to these odd flashes of rage which are supposed to feel like sudden little destructions of character but, instead, feel like lines on a script. Beatty shows no range, only a classy exterior that we are supposed to love and respect. Bugsy is drawn up as a hero here, which isn’t necessarily wrong in and of itself, but its efficacy as a film suffers as a result of this unbalanced and uneven portrayal.

To elaborate, the coruscating feel gave Bugsy a lack of actual texture. Instead of being a film that can be experienced, it feels simply like a sort of watered down Ocean’s Eleven gangster film minus a few Brat Pack members. Keitel and Kingsley are good, but they aren’t good enough to help the film rise above its fairly low self-esteem. It aims to create interest through its look, it seems, as Levinson sets his shots based around the backdrops instead of the performances. Unfortunately, the direction by Levinson and the glitz doesn’t add up to a good film here and Bugsy stumbles out of the gate.

It’s also, sadly, very bland. See, gloss in and of itself is not all bad. American Gangster used a decent amount of gloss as Denzel Washington brought Frank Lucas to the screen, but his Lucas had an earthy gloss. You could feel where he came from. With Bugsy, it doesn’t matter where Siegel came from and that makes for some bromidic storytelling. We’re supposed to be interested in how Bugsy “set up” Las Vegas, yet for some reason Levinson’s film doesn’t convey that interest through the performances or the failing script. Instead, we get “bark like the dog you wish you could be” type rhetoric whenever it’s time for Bugsy to act “mean” and we get glitz and glamour the rest of the time. It all feels so tepid and perfunctory.

To that end, it became very difficult to effectively hold an interest over the relationships on screen. The real life fireworks that erupted out of Beatty and Bening after the film aren’t evident on screen, as the chemistry between the two is sorely lacking. Instead, lines feel read verbatim from the page or prompter and the passion in even the most intense scenes feels, at times, laughable. The film’s dialogue has a very goofy feel, in fact, and this reflects on the relationships the film attempts to formulate through its characters. At the same time, you have Warren Beatty trying to be cool and it all just erupts into an ostentatious mess.

Bugsy is a lightweight film on every level it attempts to capture. As a character study, it falls short because the character of Bugsy Siegel as told through Beatty’s performance fails to capture any interest. As a gangster film, it flounders because of its lack of indomitability and passion. And as a film in general, of any genre or archetype, it fizzles because it’s just not entertaining.

2/10

 

May 21, 2007

Delicatessen

Posted by Jordan Richardson under 1991, comedy, drama, entertainment, foreign, romance | Tags: , , |
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Delicatessen

1991’s Delicatessen is a visually stunning, gripping and engaging French black comedy from Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. The film is an inventive and creative look at the relationships and situations between members of an apartment building with a delicatessen on the bottom floor. Of course, it’s not really that simple.

Delicatessen is set in an unspecified time and place, but a quick gander at the surroundings and the overall mood of the film and we could place it in some sort of post-apocalyptic time frame that feels somewhat like 1950s France. In this world, food is in short supply and almost all of the animals have been hunted to near-extinction. Grain is used as a commodity now, as people trade with corn and small gadgets which are used as currency. It appears that everyone in the apartment building, save the butcher, is in the business of making useless novelty diversions.

The story revolves around the tenants in this apartment complex that is owned by the butcher. The butcher takes money from his tenants in exchange for rent and “food”. The food is human flesh, however, and the tenants and the butcher are always on the lookout for “fresh meat.” The butcher typically murders and serves the workers he hires to do odd jobs around the apartment complex. The tenants and the butcher have some sort of system worked out to prevent the butcher from murdering any of the tenants, as “rules” are explained and referenced in a few of the conversations.

Eventually, the latest worker arrives at the apartment complex and the tenants start salivating. The latest worker is a former circus clown, Louison, and he falls in love with the butcher’s daughter. A relationship develops and the butcher’s daughter tries to help Louison survive the multiple attempts to turn him into food. Eventually, Louison is helped to escape the complex with the help of an underground vegetarian terrorist organization.

Delicatessen is obviously very imaginative and bold, but it never feels offensive or forced. The love story is always played off as being very sweet and delicate, as the scenes between Louison and the butcher’s daughter have such intimate grace that the romantic tenderness between the two of them become the focal point of the tale. The film could have easily presented the plot in a dark, seedy narrative and headed in many conventional directions with the material. Instead, Caro and Jeunet elect to create a sort of glee to the material and draw on the use of color and comedic set-ups to drive the plot.

Delicatessen is effective as a black comedy and also as a tender romance, consistently straddling the line between being tender and dark. The film’s tone is highlighted by its use of brown and green, along with the constant haze, to draw upon the delicate nature of the plot and the simplistic creation of this whole other world without ever showing too much. It is a vision of the future, in a sense, without relying on the trappings that so many modern films divert to when there is no plot to speak of. Instead, Delicatessen draws on its intelligent script and its creative, bold characters to create its own vision of the future without spelling it out for the audience. This is a rare treat.

What works for Delicatessen is its off-beat humor, tender romantic interludes, strong and creative characterizations, witty script and its magical cinematography. It is a complete film in every sense of the world, leaving nothing and everything to the imagination all at once. It is a joy to watch and a miracle for the screen, causing eyes to widen and jaws to drop at the sheer audacity and beauty of the work of Jeunet and Caro. The film also won Caro and Jeunet the César in France for Best First Work.

8/10