The Hunt for Red October

The Hunt for Red October (John McTiernan, 1989) We're grudging fans of Alec Baldwin in the BXC household, so every so often it's nice to go back and see "serious actor" Baldwin before he stretched his comic chops (an opportunity made common by this film's seeming omnipresence on cable channels these days). "The Hunt for Red October" was a dry-as-a-bone Tom Clancy novel based on a long-rumored incident involving a Russian nuclear submarine accident that Clancy turned into a cat-and-mouse game between a defecting Russian sub commander, and the American and Russian fleets in the North Atlantic. In the book, the action was sometimes intriguing, but the characters were non-existent, right down to the motivations of Captain Ramius, and the novel's Clancy-stand-in-hero Jack Ryan.

Producer Mace Neufeld (who must have had the patience of a saint given his long-term producing relationship with the late Clancy) turned it into a first-class film of intrigue top-heavy with male actors (by my count the only females are two stewardesses, Gates —Star Trek's "Dr. Crusher"—McFadden as Mrs. Ryan, and the kid who plays Ryan's daughter). So, here's the run-down: Baldwin, Sam Neill, James Earl Jones, Scott Glenn, Courtney B. Vance (making the most of a great part), Richard Jordan, Joss Ackland, Stellan Skarsgard, Peter Firth, Jeffrey Jones, Tim Curry, Fred Thompson, plus comedian Rick Ducommun and I swear I see Michael Biehn in the helicopter scene. And as the man everybody talks about, Sean Connery as the Scottishly-accented Lithuaninan Comdr. Ramius.*

It all works, as a spy/adventure story, as a detective story, a military exercise, and a submarine movie...and a character piece. Nobody comes out and says anything about their feelings, but actions define the characters, and with all the sub-time, there's a lot of celluloid of people standing around talking..and for the most part it's good functional talk that propels the movie along. Plus, you'll come away with a gloss of submarine tactics, of sonar capacities, the strategies of "arming" torpedoes, and a healthy respect for the difficulties of landing a jet-aircraft on a carrier during bad weather.** 

Respect also for Baldwin, who managed to make a human being out of the cypher of Jack Ryan through the force of his own personality--his Ryan is something of a geek, like Ben Affleck's later interpretation--and proved himself an adept for actor imitations (nice skewering of Thompson and Connery there, Alec) Plus, a crisp snap to the brim for suggesting and making good on the overhead shot of Ryan cutting his tether from a helicopter to gain entry to an American sub during a violent storm, and looking UP at the camera to make sure we all know it's actually him (pre-CGI) doing the stunt.

There was minimal CGI involved—and in fact, due to budget constraints, the filming of the underwater scenes were as low-tech as you could get—suspended model shots of subs were puppeteered through underwater landscapes filmed in a dry warehouse filled with smoke. Crude particle and wave generation was all that was needed to complete the image. But it's indicative of the back-to-basics approach to The Hunt for Red October--an old-fashioned sea-hunt that satisfies.

* The script, by Donald E. Stewart and Larry Ferguson (who also wrote himself a good part in it) is augmented by dialog commissioned by Connery from one of his favorite writers at the time, John Milius, his director in The Wind and the Lion, and Milius provided him some lovely chewable dialog throughout the thing, as in...this scene. 

** But my favorite moment in the movie is a brilliant stroke--the smooth transition in dialog from Russian to English as Firth's Political Officer reads a passage from a bible owned by Ramius' late wife: the camera moves in on Firth reading the passage--Revelation 16:15-17--(in Russian) and stops on one commonly-pronounced word--"Armageddon"--and when the camera begins to pull back, he continues...in English. It's a neat trick, perfectly strategized and played...like so much of the movie.

Isle of Dogs (2018)

No Future on Trash Island
or
"Sheesh, Igor, I Think He Chewed Your Ear Off"

The Japanese city of Megasaki is in crisis. It is determined that the city is suffering from the effects of "canine saturation" and a resulting public health crisis from a dog-flu epidemic called "Snout Fever." To ward off the risk, Megasaki's mayor, Kobayashi (voiced by Konichi Nomura—it's animated, they're all "voiced")—hiding the centuries-long grudge his family has held against dogs—institutes a plan to banish all bowsers from the city to a small archipelago called "Trash Island." To show the populace his own good will and that he, himself, will suffer from the decision, the first dog to be sent into exile is "Spots" (Liev Schreiber—yes, the dogs talk, in English), the service animal of Kobayashi's orphaned nephew Atari (Koyu Rankin, who speaks in Japanese). "Spots" is left alone and abandoned on Trash Island, but he will not be alone for long.

Soon, every dog from Megasaki is on Trash Island and it's a dog-eat-dog existence. Well, actually, no...dogs haven't resorted to cannibalism, but there is a rumor that one group did...well, let's not get into this. 99% of the population does not resort to cannibalism, as Megasaki provides a steady steam of trash for the various packs to fight over. It is not a good life on Trash Island, but at least it is somewhat sustainable.

"Is this worth fighting over?" "Yes, it is"

Isle of Dogs concentrates on one particular loose-knit pack: King (voiced by Bob Balaban); Duke (voiced by Jeff Goldblum); Boss (voiced by Bill Murray), and Rex (voiced by Edward Norton); into their midst comes an outlier named Chief (voiced by Bryan Cranston), who is far more independent than the others, probably because of their backgrounds and history, and despite his more decisive demeanor, there is a certain reluctance to take his advice on anything...despite the other four's inability to plot a course of action.  Even in a dog-pack, there can be inherent prejudice.

King, Duke, Boss, and Rex....and...Chief.

Their differences can best be explained in these lines of dialogue making the demarcation known.

Rex: I used to sleep on a lamb's wool beanbag next to an electric space heater. That's my territory, I'm an "indoor" dog.

King: I starred in twenty-two consecutive Doggy Chow commercials. Look at me now, I couldn't land an audition.

Boss: I was the lead mascot for an undefeated high school baseball team. I lost all my spirit, I'm depressing.

Duke: I only ask for what I've always had, a balanced diet, regular grooming, and a general physical once a year.

Chief: You're talking like a bunch of housebroken... pets.

Rex: You don't understand. Uh, how could you, I mean you're a...

Chief: Go ahead say it. I'm a stray, yeah.

Yeah. He's a stray. Go ahead. Make something of it.

Things change for the pack with the arrival of a mini-airplane  that has a slight accident and crashes onto a Trash Island beach. The pilot is none other than Kobayashi's nephew, Atari, who has come in search of his lost dog, Spots. The pack (who do not speak Japanese—they speak English standing in for canine) bands together to find Atari's lost guard=dog and begin an odyssey of sorts on Trash Island to find the boy's ditched dog. The trek allows Atari to bond with Chief—they are, after all, both unattached strays—a relationship that benefits both parties.  

Isle of Dogs is the product of director-co-writer Wes Anderson, who basically did a full story-board breakdown for stop-motion animators to emulate—as he did in Fantastic Mr. Fox—has stated that the film is influenced by the films of Kurosawa and the Rankin/Bass television specials of the 1960's. Sure, it's very possible. But, an awful lot of Anderson's work can be seen to be based on the stop-motion animation work he saw as a kid. But, it's also unmistakably Anderson's style, with images that have a strict one-point perspective, a rather strict symmetry and camera movements leaning on the lateral (with the occasional direct zoom that makes sure not to move the center-point). Watching one of Anderson's stop-motion movies is like watching Stanley Kubrick make a "Lego" movie.

In between Fox and this film, Anderson made the live action The Grand Budapest Hotel, which pushed the 'feel' of the live-action film into a more animated sensibility, even employing a similar stop-motion sequence to illustrate the Hotel's vertiginous tram. He continues the strict one-point perspective that he has been increasingly been using throughout his career. You can also see a major up-tick in the design of the film, far above that displayed in Fox, creating vast spaces that extend to the horizon. You also see him employing a mixed-media approach, combining the live-action with animation (particularly in television transmissions that are featured).

It's a great leap in form for Anderson, who creates a fun little adventure story with an increased sophistication that's quite fun to see.

The "Fearful Symmetry" of Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs

Terminator Genisys

For Sale on Craigslist: "Vintage" Android: Recycled Parts, Slightly Worn and Rusty, Old Programming, Not Very Expressive—Would Make a Credible Republican Presidential Candidate.
or
Artificial Un-intelligence

As if one needed another reason not to visit San Francisco this movie summer, Terminator Genisys tears up the Golden City that has been already been flattened by the Mother of All Earthquakes, invasions by apes, Godzilla and kaiju, dropping star ships, and everything from A (an atom bomb in A View to a Kill) to X (X-men: Last Stand). 

This time the threat that San Francisco faces is from a movie that seems hell-bent on imploding itself out of existence through that most feared Weapon of Mass Destruction to movie-geeks: continuity errors.

We know the story already, as they've told it every—single—movie:*  a miltary-designed artificial intelligence named "Skynet" goes a little "off-program" and takes the "deterrent-idea" a little too far by destroying the one thing that causes all the wars in the first place—us pesky humans. "Skynet" launches a planet-wide nuclear attack, and after the conflagration of "Judgment Day," hunts the non-crispy humans into extinction. The humans' only hope is their rebel leader John Connor (he's been played by Edward Furlong as a kid and Michael Edwards, Nick Stahl, and Christian Bale as an adult), who, after the machines invent a way to time-travel, sends one of his operatives Kyle Reese (used to be: Michael Biehn, now is: Jai Courtney) back in time to protect Connor's mother, Sarah (then: Linda Hamilton; now Emilia Clarke) who is under threat from a "Terminator" (the once and future Arnold Schwarzenegger) missioned to kill Connor before he is even conceived. Ironically (HEDGED SPOILER) the plan ensures that John Connor is born, despite the death of Reese while defending Sarah. Silly robots.

Good Idea for a Movie. Bad Idea for a sequel, which are variations of the same theme as Skynet sends ever better, sleeker and less Austrian robots to do the job, and the rebels send their own increasingly aging "terminators" to stop them. Surprisingly the films were not called "Try, Try Again" and "The Robots Don't Realize if You Do the Same Thing Over and Over Expecting a Different Outcome, You Have a Screw Loose," or even "Another Waste of Time-Travel." But, if Skynet is dumb, the humans are even dumber: every time they fix it so that Skynet doesn't come about, it still manages to come about.

As it does here. We go over the same Skynet story for the fourth time, and then, again, Kyle Reese is sent back in time by John Connor to save his mother...again. We even get a reprise of the first film where "The Terminator" (a CGI-zenegger) confronts the same 1984 vintage heavy-metalers and tells them he "vahnts" their clothes. Then something different actually happens: he is confronted by a figure in a hoodie carrying a gun. Low and behold it's an old Arnold Schwarzenegger, who blasts away at his earlier version, and they get into a knock-down-dragged-on fight between "new" terminator and "old" terminator, with the grayer version getting the worst of it, until he/it is rescued by...Sarah Connor?  Huh?

With Terminator: Genysis, Arnold Schwarzenegger again announces he'll be back (and it's never sounded more like a threat). The former California Governor—who can't credibly run for President as a Republican because The Terminator always enters this country illegally—is looking a little worse for wear. It seems he's been around for a bit longer than the movie-going audience has previously suspected....approximately since 1973 as he's seen rescuing Sarah as a child in a flashback (the whole thing is a flashback, really, if your perspective is from the movie's starting point). And ever since, has been giving her a crash-course in bad-assery. So, things have actually changed from the original "Terminator" movie. Why, Sarah Connor never even goes through the "big hair" period of the first film.

So far, so odd. Let us file away the original movie's notion that time-travel is limited in the future and that if Skynet is ultimately defeated, who or what sent this "Olde Arnold" back to the past (earlier than the ones already sent) should be a mystery, if not an impossibility. Skynet wouldn't have the ability to send it as their precious time-travel gear has been captured, and the rebels would have no reason to because the war is over. File this, because it will become irrelevant and minor compared with the whoppers to come.

Eventually, Reese hooks up with Connor and "Olde Arnold" just in time to defeat another blast from the future—one of the liquid metal terminators from T2 (played by Byung-hun Lee) that seemed unstoppable in that film but is pretty much dispatched fairly early here. At which point, "Olde Arnold"—called "The Protector" or as Sarah Connor calls him "Pops" (yeesh!)—reveals that he has also built a time-machine in 1987 (evidently because he was too busy in the other movies to think of creating one then). Reese and Connor decide to hop forward in time—which, mind you, doesn't exist yet—to right before "Judgment Day" to stop Skynet from launching its missiles. "Pops" says he can't travel in time, only meat-people can (Oh, yeah? How'd he get there in the first place?), but he'll just live for the 30 years or so to catch up with them.**

They jump in time to 2017 and make plans to destroy Skynet, which is now called "Genysis"—and it's no longer a military brain-hive, it's an inter-connectivity system for cell-phones, tablets, and the next thing in your junk-drawer. And...funny thing...one of the technical developers for Genysis is...John Connor. Yup, seems that John Connor went back in ti-.......

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!

Wait, wait, wait. Rewind. Remember, the original Terminator movie? (I'm not talking to you kids—you haven't seen it because there's no CGI in it and the FX look "stoopid"). The whole thing about it was that it had that delicious irony that by sending a terminator back in time to kill John Connor's mother ultimately led to John Connor being born. Reese and Connor have the inevitable "fleeing-unstoppable-killing-machines-makes-us-really-horny-moment" and, as a result, John Connor, rebel leader, is conceived. 

Unless, I missed something (and I have to admit, this movie made me want to nod off several places), there was no FUKMMURH moment in this movie, and so as a result, the conception of John Connor in 1987 did not occur. At which point (for anyone who has seen the original) this movie...should be over. O-ver.

"I'm John Connor. These are not scars. These are gaps in logic."

No John Connor. So, then no war with the machines (because as this movie would have it, no Genisys). No resistance. No time-travel. No Connor sending Kyle Reese back in time. Nothing. There's no John Connor, so what the hell is he doing in 2017 (SPOILER ONLY IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE TRAILERS), having been sent back in time as a killer-cyborg/technical engineer? The movie sets him up as the bad guy, but if the movie were to follow this timeline, he shouldn't even exist...because he'd never been conceived. Never been born. End of movie, right?

Yeah, and this couldn't happen, either...

But, no, it keeps plodding along, not imagining that the very reason for its existence never happened. Unless there's been a second Immaculate Conception, which I don't think James Cameron believes in (and I know for damn sure Schwarzenegger doesn't), the movie should just stop dead in the projector with the forward time-jump, followed by the ushers with the brooms and rolling garbage receptacle. And see, they've managed to completely eliminate the whole franchise in this one dumb movie. It's one thing to change the space-time continuum in a re-boot (Hello, Star Trek), but make sure that you don't eliminate a character that sets the thing in motion—and no, I'm not talking Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor—from the start. Massively, unequivocably...dumb. Blame screenwriters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier and director Alan Taylor, who couldn't have an explanation other than "shit happens." 

Shit does indeed happen.  And this movie is the proof.

Rest in pieces

* Not that the original was...wholly original: It's part of record that Harlan Ellison was paid a bunch of money (which he can't disclose) and a special credit tele-cine'd on prints of the film ("...gratefully acknowledge his work.") because he threatened to sue Hemdale and Orion Pictures when he saw an early screening of the film and saw that the opening sequence had a lot of similarity to "Soldier," an episode of "The Outer Limits" that he wrote in the early 1960's.  Cameron wasn't happy about it, but didn't want to be sued by the corporations if they lost, so it was all settled out of court.  It's claimed on the internets that there's a similarity to "Demon with a Glass Hand," another episode of "OT" written by Ellison, but it is a little more far afield...until this movie.

** Fulfilling the original premise of Harlan Ellison's "Demon with a Glass Hand," one of the "Outer Limits" episodes mentioned above.