Birds of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn)

Revvin' Up Yer Ol' Harley
or
Pow! BAM! ZAP! Biff!  Plop!

Suicide Squad is destined to be remembered as not "one of the good" DCEU movies, probably because the film-makers were a bit confused about what kind of comic-book movie people wanted to see—the geniuses at Warner Brothers figured that Christopher Nolan's Batman movies worked so well that the movies should be dark, take themselves seriously and never wink at the audience. No primary colors, only leather costumes, and "deconstructed" to show how superheroes would be operating in the "real world."

The answer, apparently, is "not very well."

But, the most unlikely of the movies—the ones that were delayed as potential box-office poison (Wonder Woman) or an industry joke (Aquaman)—showed that "grim n' gritty" won't make a comic book movie respectable. Working very hard to make a good comic book movie entertaining does.

What everybody remembers from Suicide Squad (and probably the reason they went in the first place) was the character of Harley Quinn. The character was introduced in the "Batman: The Animated Series" cartoon in 1992 and, frankly, one of the few "recent" additions to the Batman "Rogues Gallery" to have stuck around to become popular. A lot of actresses could have played Quinn and done well with it, so it actually didn't have to be the latest "it" girl, Margot Robbie. But, Robbie is smart enough to know that her character work will supply longevity and she is "player" enough to push a Harley Quinn movie through development, even before a Squad sequel could be made.

The result—Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)* The title suggests something larky, a suggestion that isn't quite fulfilled unless Robbie's Harley is on the screen. Without that character's giddy sociopathy, the film would be just an unpleasant gangster movie, no matter how many bright primary colors are thrown into the mix. The movie is all her, and, sure, there are more of the DC female vigilante's thrown into the mix, but they're there to have the main character have someone to bounce off, like Margaret Dumont to Groucho Marx and the female empowerment story isn't strong enough unless Quinn's anarchy is there to light the fuse while hap-hazardly threatening to stamp it out.

The film gets off to a roaring start by doing the most important thing right off the bludgeoning bat—blowing up the most toxic relationship in all of comics. Harley Quinn may be a favorite of fan-boys, but there's always been something icky about the character—her complete and total devotion to being a doormat for The Joker (who does not appear, as Jared Leto who had the role in Suicide Squad was unavailable and Joaquin Phoenix is too busy picking up trophies**). Harley plays unreliable narrator to an animated story of her life—for those who came in late—and explains that she and the Joker have had an unamicable break-up that *good news* she has managed to survive! Despite her past skills as a psychologist—and because she is bat-shit crazy—she finds a dive apartment above a Gotham City Chinese restaurant, chops off her hair, drinks heavily, and joins the roller derby to work off some of the aggression that she can't shake by throwing knives at a picture of the Joker hanging on her wall. 

She gets a pet, a hyena she calls "Bruce," (a Superman-sized wink on that), moons over the "perfect egg sandwich", and hits the bars at night, particularly The Black Mask Club, run by the gangster Roman Sionis (Ewan McGregor). Even though she's a perpetual train-wreck in the place, Sionis turns a blind eye because she's the Joker's squeeze and that affords her a certain amount of protection, even when she cripples Sionis' driver. But, pretty soon pride wins out and she announces the break-up to the world by driving an oil tanker truck into "their place," the Ace Chemical Factory, which explodes in a celebratory light-show.

This alerts the Gotham City Police that Harley is fair game for arrest for (well) a lot of property damage, and Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez) of the GCPD is determined to bring her in, despite the presence of a serial killer, dubbed "The Crossbow Killer," who has been winnowing out a lot of Gotham's underworld. 

Plus, there's Sionis, who is trying to find something called "the Bertinelli diamond" which has etched in its facets the codes to all the accounts of the Bertinelli crime family, who were wiped out in an assassination years before. Sionis is after the diamond and uses his henchman Victor Szasz (Chris Messina—the character also appeared in Batman Begins) to extract information from sources by cutting their faces off (yeah, not so much fun, huh?)

Cut (very poor choice of words) to the McGuffin—it is that Bertinelli diamond and everybody wants it. Sionis wants it and he wants Harley to get it. "The Crossbow Killer" wants it. Montoya wants it and she wants Sionis' new driver Dinah Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell)—who performs at his club as a singer with a special octave range—to tell her where it is. Szasz used to have it but it was pick-pocketed by a street-urchin named Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) who Harley takes pity on and takes under her wing. It is complicated, and it isn't helped by the fact that Harley is the film's narrator and...she skips parts and has to rewind to fill those parts in.

On top of that, the film has to have some sort of action every ten minutes or so, and fortunately director Cathy Yan manages to perform the plate-spinning act of keeping the film active with all that exposition and back-story—and the back and forth story-telling actually keeps it from flagging. She's also good at action, even when it's a group-fight among quite a few number of people. There is the temptation, given that the last fight takes place in a Burton-esque fun-house called "The Booby-Trap"*** and with a color-palette suggestive of Schumacher's Batman and Robin that Yan might be harkening back to the old "Batman"-TV series—only with better stunts and no OOF! graphics.

The acting is across the map: Robbie and McGregor are putting as much theatricality into it as they can, verging on going over the top. Rosie Perez is playing it straight and bad-ass. Smollett-Bell's Lance/Canary feels a little restrained when her character's conflicted, but once she becomes a part of the "Birds" group of Montoya/Canary/Huntress, she's great. The most interesting performance is by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who is usually terrific, but her playing of the character "The Huntress" is in a style I'd call full-on-Tig Notaro (not that there's anything wrong with that—Notaro is a personal favorite), but, admittedly, the character she plays is...a bit bizarre—not in the comic-book world, but definitely a bit grimmer than everybody else. Combine her with Robbie's odd-ball and the others semi-playing it straight, there was really nowhere for her to go—the character is underwritten, despite having a 'presence" in the film—except to take the kinda straight/kinda "weird" approach that she does.

So, it's not the sure-fire "Hey, yer gonna have a GREAT time" kind of movie all the Robbie-promotion promises—it's just that it's is the most enjoyable and exploitable part of it. One is tempted to say that all the best parts are in the trailer, but that simply isn't true. It's merely that the "sizzle" aspect is all centered on one character, and unless one wanted to do a Comedy of Errors in Gotham City type of movie (which, actually, might not be a bad idea, given the grimness of the place, historically), there's going to be the risk of a burn-out factor and the risk of the character of Harley Quinn out-wearing her welcome if something isn't counter-balancing her. There's got to be a little arsenic in the sugar bowl or you might as well start budgeting for the BIFF! POW! ZAM! graphics that have been what the comics industry has been trying to get away from for decades.

* Owing to poor opening weekend receipts the title has subsequently been alternately displayed as Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (maybe because some folks might think Harley Quinn's not in it).

** Can you imagine the disconnect if you paired Robbie's Harley Quinn with Joaquin Phoenix's Joker? The idea makes one's skin crawl, so we'll just assume that his Joker lives in alternate dimension, on Earth-Scorsese.

*** Some examples of production design: 

Death Proof

Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007) Part of the "Grindhouse" doube-bill imagined by Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino in 2007. Rodriguez's feature Planet Terror was such an object of loathing on my part that I was in no hurry to see Tarantino's half, not being a fan of Tarantino's body of work, but liking a couple of his films.

Goes to show you. Don't take anything for granted.Death Proof is such a luxurious exercise in emulating "bad girl" exploitation movies that it manages to rise above the material and actually prove a well-constructed, well-considered and deliriously fine thrill-ride. It's so good, that it fails miserably at its intention of posing as a B-movie.

This is a problem?

Directed and photographed by Tarantino (and very well, as he gets shots that look extremely dangerous to achieve), the flick tells the story of Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) who targets girls in cars for murderous collisions. Done in long, long disciplined takes the girl-packs are followed through their paces by the audience and stalking Mike: first, a bevy of Austin, Texas girl-friends of morning DJ Jungle Jill (Sydney Poitier) who proceed to get wasted and meet up Mike on a dark street; then, a clutch of movie-crew women in Tennessee led by hair-stylist Kim (Rosario Dawson), and a couple of stunt women. This scenario is in marked contrast to the first, which ended in an orgiastic car-crash, this second is a white-knuckle chase.

It could be seen as a "Don't Drink and Drive" warning. It could be a "girl-power" statement (it certainly is that). It could be a flipped digit to those all-powerful-stalker movies. But whatever it is, Tarantino pulls out all the action stops, creating some of the most reckless sequences put on film (the stunt Union must love him), with techniques borrowed from a number of acknowledged directors in the credits.

It could also be a love letter to stunt-woman Zoe Bell (the credits say "Zoë Bell as Herself"). Bell, who was the stunt double for "Xena: Warrior Princess" and did the elaborate "Bride" stunt sequences for Kill Bill does some extremely agitating work in Death-Proof, as an Australian stunt-woman who is in the unfortunate position of riding the hood of a car when the women encounter Stuntman Mike on a lonely (and seemingly endless) stretch of dirt road. No, you haven't seen anything like it.

Now, there are some irritating things: a couple of the actresses (Rose McGowan and Tracie Thoms) don't know sub-tle acting techniques—and neither does Tarantino in another of his grand-standing cameos—but Bell, Russell and Dawson compensate mightily doing great work. There's a breaking of the fourth wall that's a little too cute and creepy. Tarantino overdoes the false scratches and imperfections to try and achieve an old movie effect (at one point, an entire reel is in black and white), a bit of dialogue is repeated in a bad edit (anyone who could make a film this good wouldn't make that mistake). But these are minor considerations in great work.

In my laceration of Planet Terror, I wrote about the aspirations of artists trying to recreate the "crap of their youth," which they enjoyed, in an attempt to recreate the experience for a new generation:

I know what they were going for in "Grindhouse." They were trying to go back to the "C"-movie days of double-bill films that tried to eke out a profit by appealing to the lowest common denominator--the kids-and-cretins-circuit—something that Dimension Films,"Grindhouse's" distributor, routinely does, as well. Some of the greatest directors of movies—some of the brightest—honed their craft in the AIP's and worse. But once they got their chops, they stopped making crap. They aspired. They wanted more. Only someone of limited creativity (or a moron...or a deeply cynical artist) would knowingly aspire to garbage, and so reluctantly, I'm bestowing that label to Robert Rodriguez--the "deeply cynical artist" one, as he's very creative, and certainly not a moron. Left to his own devices, Rodriguez can do some entertaining work--the El Mariachi films, the "Spy Kids" films, and they're made with an economy that's something short of miraculous--but team him with his mentor, Quentin Tarantino and it all turns to shit (QT has a mercifully brief role in "Planet Terror," as an over-acting rapist, where he proves, once again, that he's the male equivalent of Pia Zadora). The guy's got the chops, no doubt about it. But he has one thing missing in his many talents--taste. They don't teach that at film school, and you can't get it at the video store. "Taste" is what you get when you aspire, and it can even be with the schlockiest material known to man (Touch of Evil, Psycho, The Godfather...I can go on and on about artists who reached to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear), but to revel in schlock, to aspire to it...and have the results be so ...marginal, so ...bad, and not even in a funny way, but pitiable, well, you start to wonder what it is you saw in these guys before.

Tarantino saw the schlock, loved it, and in his attempt to recreate it, surpassed it, improved it, and passed along his love to the audience, validating it. He got the formula exactly right.

Bravo.

Bravo and "wow." *

Good Will Hunting.
Kurt Russell breaks a lot of things in Death-Proof including the "Fourth Wall."

* Yeah, yeah—loved it, sure. But, lest you go rushing out expecting a masterpiece of art, this caveat: It's an exploitation film. That means there's going to be something that offends...well, just about everybody (including folks who get off on exploitation films!) It's just part of the Grand Scheme of "Death Proof."

(Wilhelm alert @ 00:51:23)

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

"Getting a Life"

Finally. A comedy that's ambitious, funny, and definitely not "coasting." If anything, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World might be working too hard for its laughs by violating every rule in the book: episodic, fast, edited in a deliberately outre style with images crashing into each other, stepping on and crushing dialogue, seamlessly merging, not unlike "The Archers," reality and fantasy. Indeed, you're never sure if what you're seeing is reality, or merely the Red Bull fueled fantasies of its lead character, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera, appearing "scruffy," thin and even more chinless than usual) young adult, but in name only. And the movie manages to sustain the breathless pace its entire length, without losing its inventiveness or attitude.

That's something of a surprise as director Edgar Wright's previous films, like Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz, outwore their welcomes at the 2/3 mark but kept on going. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World starts out of the gate fast and only lets up at its resolution (appropriately), in a melange of styles and techniques, while also shifting the narrative into over-drive with cartoony and comics graphics touches that invade and overlay photo-reality. Fight Club and Stranger Than Fiction did the same with a formalist style, but "Pilgrim" suffuses it with an energetic slacker zeal, as if these things were appearing off the top of its protagonist's head (which, in the narrative, it probably is). A movie hasn't been this anarchistically fun to watch tearing apart movie-sensibilities since...oh...Fight Club, Moulin Rouge!, or, hell, Citizen Kane.* Film-making rules are bent almost in two, but never break the narrative flow. This is good stuff.**

I've stayed away from reading any reviews (which is my M.O.), but a scan of headlines leads one to think that the film has turned off its "Gamer" audience.

I can see where the argument would come: it's really not about gaming (not in the electronic sense) and whimsically lampoons the culture using its tropes and excesses against it. On a deeper level, however, it manages to take the insular mind-set and short-term rewards and gratification of gaming and place it in context into the real world. And finds it wanting in the course of a life. At the same time, it manages to make the sensibilities of gaming concepts—the nexus-choices of "Continue?," "Adding a life," and "Game Over," and draw parallels to painful life-lessons—real ones—that legitimize the story-line, gaming structure and the very reason for making the movie. Very, very smart.

Now, this is a lot of "deep thought" for a teen-relationship (kinda) movie, and I run the risk of gilding the lily, and worse, building high anticipation which might kill the appreciation for what is there in the theater.*** But, more light-bulbs went off for me in this one, about how to use the craft to tell a story, and, in context, of achieving something more than the instant gratification that permeates our society (and the damage it can create) than anything I've seen in awhile.

It also managed to save, for me, what has been a rather disappointing movie Summer. It's also the kind of high-concept circus act that the director can only pull off once—another movie in this style would lay him open to suggestions that he's a "one-trick pony." But, if he can bring this kind of sensibility to this project, imagine where that mind could go in the future. It makes one anticipate, and excited for, what can happen in the future.  As for now, Wright's taken things to a whole new level.

* Okay, lest this be taken out of context ("He's comparing 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World' to 'Citizen Kane?'!) and I'm accused of Kael-esque hyperbole, I found the same sense of film-making brio in this one that I've found in the others.  I always find this exciting, whoever does it, even if the results are ultimately to a less than satisfying experience.  I'm all for pushing the envelope, but the results have to be more than a good-looking envelope.  There's got to be a good message inside it, too.

 ** And, there's another layer—the sound design.  This one may be my winner for "Best Use of Sound" for the year, tossing in music and effects in a giddy montage that's constantly inventive and supportive.  I've tried to do this sort of stuff in my work—specifically for the old "Bill Nye the Science Guy" show—but, I could only aspire to the level that "Scott Pilgrim" does. Bravo. (Clapclapclap)

*** Notice, please, that I haven't done a plot synopsis, quoted good lines (which there are, a-plenty) or said anything about the movie other than a basic wash-and-rinse of the film-going experience.  There are too many surprises, and too fine a resolution, to go about spoiling one's viewing.  I want to keep your preconceptions of this movie (which I hope you'll do) as spoiler-free as possible.  Go in expecting nothing, and this will be a better film—for you—for it.

Now I've Seen Every "Thing" Dept.

"Who Goes There?" by Don Stuart (a pseudonym for sci-fi pioneer John W. Campbell) is one of the acknowledged "great" stories in speculative fiction.

Part science-fiction, part horror and part psychological thriller, it tells of an isolated Antarctic research facility that discovers a flying saucer long buried in the ice.  Investigation leads to finding the saucer's sole inhabitant not too far away and taking the BEM-sicle back to the Ice Station for analysis.

Of course, it escapes and this particular ET has a special talent—it can "pretend" to be anyone it has killed and "absorbed." Hiding in plain sight, the "Thing" starts picking off the scientists one by one, while the humans among them start to worry which of their (dwindling) number could be the wolf in sheep's clothing.

Paranoia strikes deep, but "The Thing" strikes deeper, able to replicate the men down to their blood-cells, which provides them with a nifty test to see who's genuine and who's a "Thing"-a-ma-job—take a blood-sample and dip a hot wire into it, and the alien-cells react and start to metamorphose, while the human hemoglobin merely sizzles.

Eventually, the alien is trapped by the scientists, while it is constructing an anti-grav ship to escape, forcing it outside into the cold, where it is torched by the scientists. Humanity triumphs that the alien has been thwarted from fleeing or spreading itself to another outpost. All's right with the world, especially considering that no other visit has occurred since the first ship crashed twenty million years before. No other invasion is expected anytime soon. The end.

From its origins in the August 1938 issue of "Astounding Stories," the tight, compact story was first adapted for the screen by Charles Lederer (with assists from Ben Hecht) and the film's producer, one of the great directors of American film, who put such a personal stamp on it that, to this day, there is debate about just how much work on it the listed director of record actually did.  And that man's influence has taken over the DNA of his film's clones, so powerful is his influence and legacy.

The researchers take a measurement of the saucer.
Hawksian team-work in The Thing (from Another World)

 

 

😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀👽😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

The Thing (From Another World) (Christian Nyby, 1951).  Yes, it says "Christian Nyby" in the credits, but the film is such a prime example of Executive Producer Howard Hawks' style that folks just assume he had a hand in directing it as well.  He almost certainly re-wrote the script, as it crackles with wit, banter, and includes the requisite "Hawks woman" who's tough enough to play with "the boys."  In fact, the dialogue and human interplay are better than the film deserves and is more entertaining than the "monster movie" that is at its frozen core. 

Hawks puts it in the arctic, then tossed out Campbell's psychological element—his military/scientific crew are Hawksian professionals and suspicions about each other would drive a wedge into that mix (it's enough that one scientist want to emphasize research over self-preservation to cause some heated exchanges*), fraying the team-spirit necessary to get through the crisis and the simple goal of staying alive. Nope. It's simple. The "Thing" is bad. "It" wants to kill us. We kill "it" before "it" kills us. Research? That's what autopsies are for!

So, The Thing (From Another World) is much more of a monster movie than the study of paranoia the story is. Teamwork towards a common goal is emphasized—you can say that a lot of Hawks' films are analogies to the disparate gypsy-camp of film-makers working together to create a single film—and it boils down to survival. Besides the interplay of the characters, the film also boasts some iconic scenes: the Air Force officers and scientists spreading out on the ice to determine the size of the saucer; the sight of "the creature" (explained in simple unscientific jargon by one of the researchers as "an intellectual carrot") silhouetted in light as it kinetically bursts open the door of the room hiding the crew; the truly eerie scene of growing blood-sucking creature-clones like they were lethal daisies.

The Thing (From Another World) is a tough, no-nonsense monster movie with sides clearly drawn: us against them. But the only hint of the original tale's paranoia comes from the film's final line: "Watch the skies!"

Braised carrots are on the menu at the arctic station tonight.
James Arness (in a role he hated) gets fried in The Thing (From Another World)

😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀👽😀👽😀👽😀👽😀👽😀👽😀👽😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) Director Carpenter has long been a disciple of Howard Hawks (his Assault on Precinct 13 is an urban remake of Rio Bravo, and Halloween is merely The Thing in costume), so it was only natural that he would take on the sole horror movie in Hawks' CV.

Bill Lancaster's script hews a little closer to Campbell's story, re-introducing the character conflicts and the assimilating alien (and eliminating Hawks' lone female character, making the station very much a "boys' club," comprised of Carpenter's "go-to" top-liner Kurt Russell—as chopper pilot McReady—and a "who's who" of veteran '80's character actors, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Donald Moffat, Keith David, and Richard Masur).

In the Hawks version it was "us against them;" with Carpenter, it's back to "we have met the enemy, and he could be one of us."

Kurt Russell as MacReady in Carpenter's version

The tone is decidedly different, too. Carpenter's film is dark and brooding and creepy, punctuated by sequences of crazily unnerving violence concocted by make-up wizard Rob Bottin's creative realizations of the creature's ability to turn any part of a human's anatomy into a potential source of weapon or defense. It's icky and gooey and strangely goofy to see heads sprouting spider legs and skittering through the facility, or to see the detached head of one of the researchers pull itself along by whipping its tongue around a table leg and pulling itself out of harm's way.

Rob Bottin's creature creations for The Thing (1982) emphasize
a strange versatility when utilizing its human hosts.

Ultimately, though, for all the anarchic lunacy of the monster sequences, the movie boils down to a claustrophobic, paranoid fight between the men amongst themselves in their search for who is the monster among them, and Carpenter ends the film on a decidedly down note as the survivors of the carnage eye each other, each suspecting the other of being a creature, while they await certain death from the freezing elements, their previously secure station decimated by the events of the previous hours, providing no safety, no sanctuary or any warmth. There are no winners in the decidedly small intergalactic battle zone. 

And, though we're left with no ending and only a stalemate, we can be assured there will be no survivors, either. Any victory is hollow, and one is left pondering if any "thing" human came out of it.

😲😲😲😲😲😲😲☹️☹️☹️☹️😬😬😬👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽😬😬😬☹️☹️☹️☹️😲😲😲😲😲😲


The Thing (Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., 2011) A direct prequel to Carpenter's film,** but basically the same plot. Spaceship found. Creature in the ice. Thaws out. Starts absorbing people.

What's interesting is that van Heijningen also pays tribute to Hawks, by turning the sex-tables on the story, making paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead from Scott Pilgrim, who looks unnervingly like Zooey Deschanel and can rock a mean flame-thrower) the "guy-in-charge" after the official authority structure breaks down. Just as Hawks up-ended The Front Page by casting Rosalind Russell in one of the men's roles for His Girl Friday, van Heijningen provides an interesting dynamic by putting a woman in control of a station full of panicking men.

One doesn't have to have seen the Carpenter version to appreciate what is going on in the film, but if one has there are touchstones that one can appreciate (and check off if one is a "completist" or continuity-obsessive) along the way—especially at the end once the credits have started rolling—there's the merged double-creature that is briefly seen in the earlier film, the axe in the door, the suicide, the fleeing dog pursued by snipers. But, the giddy, manic quality of the creature-creations has been muted for straight-out horror effects—van Heijningen even has a cheap-shot "Boo" effect early on that still makes one jump—but Carpenter's (and Campbell's) blood-test sequence is neatly sabotaged for a simpler, more organic, and slightly creepier, test that anticipates a potential attack every time someone opens their mouth.

It does its job well, but one is left feeling it really wasn't necessary to make this entry, as it its only function seems to be to ride the coat-tails of its predecessor and fill in some blanks of an already competent version that left some audience-members behind (in the same way that 2010 did for 2001).

Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) rocks a flame-thrower.

* And we all know how disastrous heated exchanges can be at an ice-station!

** The film literally ends where Carpenter's begins, with a Norwegian helicopter  and gunman chasing a dog over the Antarctic wastes.