CS Film Club II

Since we all crushed this last round and Neverending wants us to get to Round 250 by October I'm posting the new one now.  

Round 241

Doomsday assign to PhantomKnight
PhantomKnight assign to Dracula
Dracula assign to PG Cooper
PG Cooper assign to Neverending
Neverending assign to Doomsday

Does time mean anything anymore?  I guess for the sake of tradition we can go with September 1st as a due date.

PhantomKnight

Harakiri (1962)
The Day of the Jackal
Sorcerer
High and Low
Ace in the Hole

I suppose it's time I finally watch Funny Games.

Honestly everything Dooms is throwing you is a banger.

Doomsday


LISA FRANKENSTEIN (2024) — Peacock




DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS (2024) — Peacock




LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024) — HBO Max




GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (2024) — Netflix




MONKEY MAN (2024) — Peacock




ABIGAIL (2024) — Peacock




CHALLENGERS (2024) — MGM+




IF (2024) — MGM+




JAY AND SILENT BOB REBOOT (2019)

tubitv.com/movies/100020554/jay-and-silent-bob-reboot




SNAKE IN THE EAGLE’S SHADOW (1978)

tubitv.com/movies/688932/snake-in-the-eagle-s-shadow




DRUNKEN MASTER (1978)

pluto.tv/us/on-demand/movies/645d8452eead4c001b06ce7d




LADYHAWKE (1985)

tubitv.com/movies/100017007/ladyhawke




DEATHSTALKER II (1987)

tubitv.com/movies/463723/deathstalker-ii




LEO (2023)

Where art thou PhantomKnight?

Ladyhawke

The 80s were an interesting time for fantasy films.  I grew up on Willow and as a young kid I loved the spectacle, the characters, the creature effects, the whole works.  Yeah, it rips off Lord of the Rings but I didn't know that at the time, big deal.  There were other films like Princess Bride, The Neverending Story, Labyrinth and the like and while I enjoyed some more than others it's fun looking back and seeing movies made in this fashion, movies that still heavily relied on practical effects, models, puppetry and almost everything done in camera and would be straight CG and boring if made today.  Richard Donner's Ladyhawk rolls up under the banner of 80s fantasy film and has a romantic, fairy tale synopsis that should reel a viewer in.  While the idea is there though, I don't think Ladyhawke takes advantage enough of its story or genre to completely stick the landing.

First off, the theme during the opening credits is a total 80s Alan Parsons banger.  In fact the entire score is bananas in that it's this 80s synth music playing over a medieval setting.  Again, nothing uncommon for an 80s flick but here it really, really stands out.  I imagine it put people off at the time (or today) but I think there's a certain charm to it.  It opens with Matthew Brodericks' Phillipe, also known as The Mouse, escaping from an impossible to escape dungeon and heads for the hills.  Before long he's apprehended by soldiers but is quickly saved by Navarre (Rutger Hauer, hell yeah), a disgraced and exiled knight who has a hawk as a companion.  Phillipe and Navarre travel together for some reason, mainly because the script tells them to, and we soon discover that Navarre is cursed to turn into a wolf at night and his love, Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer), is the hawk by day.  Together they all must confront the evil Bishop, the fiend who cast this wicked spell, in order to break the curse so the two lovers can be joined once more.

Like I said, there's a pretty fun story to Ladyhawke.  An audience would usually gravitate towards the plight of two characters in love who must overcome all odds to be together, in this case changing into wild animals.  I think the problem though is that the movie never really goes for it.  It's an 80 minute movie stretched over 2 hours and much of that two hours is following Phillipe and Navarre around as Navarre and Isabeau keep changing back and forth.  The rules aren't really established either and are kind of ignored willy nilly.  They change into animals and supposedly have no memory of what happens when they aren't human but then why do they keep following each other around?  Why would the movie make that rule to begin with?  Wouldn't it be better to let us assume that they are still following each other and have some semblance of human cognition?  It doesn't really make sense otherwise.  It's also a difficult mountain to climb when you try to create a romantic narrative around who characters who aren't on screen at all until the very last scene of the movie.  Character interactions, drama and all the little trappings as small as smiles and glances that make you care about this relationship are gone when one of them is a falcon most of the time.  It does its best though which and you begin to look forward to when Pfeiffer will be on screen next.  Also, this made me ask myself 'How did Matthew Broderick happen?'  This movie was pre-Ferris Bueller and his character is part comedic element/part story crutch/all bad English accent.  It made me wonder what his overall contribution to cinema has been over his career.  Is he that good?  A question for another day.  Ultimately, I'm struggling with Ladyhawke.  There's not a lot that really blew me away but there wasn't a ton that I disliked.  It mostly feels like it's a movie that settles for being 'just okay' from the jump and had it taken some bigger swings maybe we would talk about it in the same vein as the movies I listed up top. 

C+ so says Doomsday

Maybe I’ll watch Monkey Man to help even it out.

Honestly I was thinking to myself that they could actually remake this pretty successfully with a good cast and if it leaned more into the fantasy aspect.  Like I said, I enjoyed the story, I just found some parts of the execution lacking.

Open Range

I may not have made it out to theaters to support Kevin Costner's massive Western epic but I did find an old DVD of his quieter old-fashioned tribute to the genre at a thrift store. And wouldn't you know it, Open Range is quite good. A cowboy movie about proper cowboys, the plot follows a collection of cattleman, led by Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) and his right hand man Charley (Costner) who run afoul of corrupt rancher Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon). It's a familiar collection of Western tropes which predictably build to a shootout through a small town but Costner gains a lot from simply stewing in the setting and tone. There's a comfort in the traditionalist style, especially since there's still some complexity to the themes and characters. We don't learn a ton about Spearman or Charley but Duvall and Costner both convey a lot through their performances and their quiet, masculine friendship is a firm bedrock for the film to rest on. Most importantly though, the climactic shootout Open Range builds to is excellent, an exciting burst of action couched in a certain degree of realism, viscerally exciting and while also paying off key bits of narrative and character set-ups. Costner's Dances with Wolves may be the far more famous and acclaimed Western, but for my money this simpler, more traditional Western is the greater achievement, and far more well-suited to Costner's sensibilities.

B+

Good recommendation Doomsday. Your Dad energy served me well. Time to see how Dracula's European art-house energies serve me.