Review #6 THE LAST EMPEROR (1987, Bernardo Bertolucci)

 

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Biopic about the life of Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the 11th and final Emperor of China.

Starring  John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O’Toole, Ying Ruocheng, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun

Written by  Mark Peploe, Bernardo Bertolucci

Produced by  Jeremy Thomas   

Duration  163 minutes   

Could THE LAST EMPEROR be the ultimate Oscar ‘prestige’ film? It certainly ticks all the boxes:

– Bum-numbing runtime.

– Foreign setting (where everyone speaks English with an accent, so there’s no need for subtitles).

– Foreign director (from a different foreign country), who is also a ‘name’.

– True-life story.

– Sweeping cinematography.

– Lots of impressive costumes and sets.

– Bombastic score.

– ‘Important’, in some way.

And, holy shit: the thing won nine Academy Awards in 1987. Everything it was up for! And it did so THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING style, with nothing troubling the acting categories (see also TITANIC, although that did get Actress/Supporting Actress nominations).

What else was in the running for the big prize that year? You had BROADCAST NEWS, FATAL ATTRACTION, MOONSTRUCK, and HOPE AND GLORY. No clear winner among those, with that last one probably having the best chance since it was another historical drama.

So what swung the vote for LAST EMPEROR? Most likely it was the final point on my above tick list.

Being known as an important film rings alarm bells, as far as I’m concerned. That can be worse than style over substance: worthiness over substance. But then, maybe worthiness is substance? If so, only politically, not artistically. And from where did this worthiness actually originate? Was it the filmmakers’ intention, or was it manufactured later on by the marketing team? You know what I mean: "This is the movie we need right now", "A significant film for our times" – that sort of bollocks. Do directors hope to make a film that resonates specifically at the particular time of its release? Does a screenwriter sit down and think, OK, what's the most important thing I could possibly write my story about?

As a film, LAST EMPEROR seems to have been completely forgotten. It’s never mentioned in best-of lists, or cited as a worthy or unworthy Oscar winner. Its only discernible cultural impact was getting The Simpsons’ parody treatment, in the Stonecutters episode. And is there anyone who has ever sat at home and said, "Ooh, you know what, come on, let’s fire up THE LAST EMPEROR!" " … But I thought we were going clubbing?" "I said give me 10 CCs of LAST EMPEROR, stat!"

Also getting those alarm bells ringing for me was the critical consensus on LAST EMPEROR: phrases banded about like ‘visually breathtaking’, ‘astonishing use of locations’ and ‘stunning opulence’. Was I about to spend nearly three hours staring at a travelogue, as nice-looking but uninvolving as slowly leafing through a pile of holiday brochures?

Personally, I don’t care about nice scenery. I don’t care about historical accuracy. I don’t care if Bertolucci was the first director allowed to film in China's Forbidden City. Alright, that's harsh: I care a little bit, in passing, but not enough to sustain me through 163 minutes. I need more. I need story, characters, incident. I need it to be worth the time spent with this emperor – as a human being, not as a symbol or icon, no matter now pretty his clothes and surroundings may be.

So, did THE LAST EMPEROR give me what I need? Not really, I’m afraid. I’d call it the most boring Best Picture winner ever, but then THE ENGLISH PATIENT came along a decade later to tick those boxes all over again.

After opening on our emperor chap towards the end of his life in 1950, in what had by then become the People's Republic of China (and to which point the narrative will switch back intermittently), we start at the beginning, when he is coronated as a mere toddler. He’s petulant and sulky and rude to his servants, including Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (LICENCE TO KILL, RISING SUN, Shang Tsung in 1995's MORTAL KOMBAT).

This earliest period is mercifully brief, and we soon skip ahead to the teenaged emperor; although he’s still pretty bratty, revelling in the fact he can ‘do anything I want’. You could call this the coming of age segment, except that he doesn’t learn anything and is too irritating and arrogant for us to invest in his journey. When he learns that China outside the Forbidden Kingdom now has a president and so he ain’t the emperor of nowt no more, we think, Good, maybe now you'll learn some humility, ya spoilt little twerp.

From then on, we jump through the rest of his life, as he becomes gradually less insufferable, but no more interesting. He’s tutored by Peter O’Toole, who I think was sober during his scenes, but there’s no guarantee that his drinking buddies Ollie Reed and Richard Harris weren’t visiting the set and getting him plastered between takes. There are some tense moments when an optician tells our man he needs glasses, but his entourage insists that ‘the emperor does not wear spectacles!’ He marries Joan Chen and has a second wife as well, kind of. He cuts off his ceremonial ponytail, checks out of the Forbidden City and becomes a self-proclaimed ‘playboy’ in the outside world. Sometimes there’s a voiceover, sometimes there isn’t. Eunuchs are mentioned frequently. People loll around zonked out on opium. I try to stay awake.

Probably the highlight for me came during the opening credits, when I learned that there were in fact three collaborations in the ’80s between Dennis Dun and Victor Wong, beyond the John Carpenter classics BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and PRINCE OF DARKNESS. They’re even credited together! But sadly, they don’t share any scenes, let alone face down ancient sorcerers or cylinders hidden under monasteries that contain the liquid embodiment of Satan.

I don’t think I ever got over that disappointment, and LAST EMPEROR never provided anything that adequately compensated. At least I managed to get through this whole review without once using the word ‘epic’ ... shit.

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  As far as China was concerned, absolutely. See other individual countries for current status of emperor-ness.

What would a movie called THE FIRST EMPEROR be about?  Qin Shi Huang was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China. His era of 259 BC was quite a while ago, so details for a biopic are likely to be pretty sketchy.

Previously:  PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH

Next time:  INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #5 PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH (2022, Joel Crawford)

 

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Hard-living adventurer Puss in Boots has squandered eight of his nine lives, so sets off on a quest for the mythical Last Wish in the hope of reversing some of the old mileage.

Starring  Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Harvey Guillén, Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone

Written by  Paul Fisher, Tommy Swerdlow

Produced by  Mark Swift   

Duration  102 minutes

 

The PUSS IN BOOTS films are all about immortalising Antonio Banderas. Someone in the DreamWorks hierarchy decided that if Banderas isn’t going to make live action appearances as El Mariachi or Zorro anymore, then audiences will have to settle for him in cartoon cat form. And it’s probably the best decision the studio’s notoriously patchy animation division has ever made.

Rarely has there been such a direct animated avatar for an established star. TOY STORY’S Woody may somewhat resemble Tom Hanks, but it’s still clearly an actor playing a part. When it comes to Puss, he is Banderas – or, rather, the particular kind of action hero that Banderas so refreshingly unleashed upon the world in the late ’90s.

This like-for-likeness had not been seen so blatantly since Woody Allen as literally Woody Allen in DreamWorks’ ANTZ, and the trend reached its peak (I mean, nadir) with the same studio's SHARK TALE, which gave us fish Will Smith and shark De Niro and Scorsese. There are more examples, but let’s suffice it to say that a reliance on celebrity voices and lookalikes is a hallmark of DreamWorks’ contribution to the field of animation, for good or for ill (mostly for ill.)

The jewel in DreamWorks' crown – animated or otherwise – is, of course, SHREK. The original movie burst onto the scene with a mission to target Disney in the snarkiest ways possible, from the titular ogre literally wiping his arse with pages from a fairy tale, to the even less subtle move of calling the villain ‘Lord Farquaad’ and making him resemble former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with whom DreamWorks co-supremo Jeffrey Katzenberg fell out back when they were both at the Mouse House. It’s also the most 2001 movie ever, with its MATRIX parody, Shrek fighting knights WWE-style and overuse of Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’ (the definition of ‘over’ here being ‘any more than never’.)

SHREK made a ton of money and looked like being a genuinely fresh alternative to the Disney/Pixar monopoly. That impression lasted for about five minutes, it becoming apparent that SHREK was actually not all that subversive after all and was, in fact, happy to become a lazy franchise that followed tired tropes and relied on those celebrity voices/character models, stale pop culture references and climatic dance parties. Frequently, the films fall back on the dubious appeal of Eddie Murphy on autopilot (with family filter on) and Mike Myers delivering the Scottish accent he'd been trying to get into every project since SO I MARRIED AN AXE MURDERER.

However, as the SHREK films blundered through instalments like their green hero looking for more toilet paper, there was one shining light that shone through and eventually broke out.

Puss in Boots was introduced in a minor role in SHREK 2, before becoming more prominent in the third and fourth ones (and, by the way, a fifth is coming, in case your day was lacking some good news). The character’s popularity was such that Puss bagged himself a spin-off origin story in 2011 and now we have a sequel, THE LAST WISH.

From the start, the Banderas love is strong. The Goddamn thing opens just like DESPERADO, with our hero playing music in a cantina while battling villains. Since I would like to hope that the core audience’s familiarity with the oeuvre of Robert Rodriguez doesn’t extend beyond the SPY KIDS saga, WE CAN BE HEROES and that fucking one with Lava Girl or something, this is a targeted reference for the tag-along adults and is much appreciated.

And it doesn’t let up! Puss meets a grim reaper wolf whose ominous whistling to announce his arrival is a dead ringer for Charles Bronson’s chilling harmonica trill in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. The final standoff plays tribute to another Sergio Leone classic, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE. In between, Puss experiences the malaise of a short-lived retirement in a home for over-the-hill kitties by zoning out to ‘The End’ by The Doors, emulating Martin Sheen in APOCALYPSE NOW; right after, he goes through his daily routine by way of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM-style hip hop montages.

And this is all before he teams up with the returning Kitty Softpaws, played by one-time Mrs Mariachi, Salma Hayek.

Picking out the mature movie references certainly helps sustain one’s interest in a children’s film, but that alone is not enough. Fortunately, THE LAST WISH is one of those rare beasts: a treat for all ages. The plot is propulsive and doesn’t lag too much into moralistic messaging; the supporting characters, like Harvey Guillén’s sincere puppy Perrito, manage to be endearing rather than annoying; it’s visually thrilling, even if it appears to succumb to that awful AVATAR 2 increased frame rate business during the most frantic scenes.

It even survives some woeful Cockney stereotyping. Goldilocks and her trio of bear companions are seeking the same wish-granting star, and push the cor-blimey-guvnor stuff with such commitment and verve that it goes all the way round again and actually becomes hilarious. Well, the naturally posh Olivia Colman and Florence Pugh had to commit, at least – Ray Winstone may very well have recorded his lines in his normal voice down the phone while watching the West Ham result come in on Final Score with his TV muted.

THE LAST WISH’S box office has been strong, so I’m all for the inevitable follow-up, and for keeping Hollywood’s greatest Latino leading man (sorry, Javier and Oscar) swashing buckles for as long as his voice can handle it.

Four stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  Part of the message here is that you already have what you wish for, if you pay attention to how lucky you are.

What would a movie called THE FIRST WISH be about? Probably something simple, like a fresh litter tray or one of those catnip mice to play with.

Previously:  THE LAST DUEL

Next time:  THE LAST EMPEROR

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #4 THE LAST DUEL (2021, Ridley Scott)

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Two knight-type chaps have themselves a fight to the death after the wife of one accuses the other of rape; we're shown three different perspectives of what happened.

Starring  Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Ben Affleck 

Written by  Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon

Produced by  Ridley Scott, Kevin J Walsh, Jennifer Fox, Nicole Holofcener, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck

Duration  152 minutes

Ridley does RASHOMON ...

Look, I’m just going to come out and say it: Ridley Scott is the most overrated director in the history of motion pictures.

So the three that everyone goes on about are:

– ALIEN: A great film, obviously, but I like it less each time someone erroneously tells me that it’s superior to ALIENS.

– BLADE RUNNER: But, but… it looks so nice! Oh, wow, yes it looks nice. And it has atmosphere! Mmm, atmosphere, right. Beyond that… not much to latch onto really, especially considering the source material is one of Philip K Dick’s very best.

– GLADIATOR: I remember thinking that this Russell Crowe from LA CONFIDENTIAL and THE INSIDER is now a proper movie star. Never for a moment did I imagine that the film itself, a fun but insubstantial swords-and-sandals romp, would be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, let alone win the bloody thing.

The rest of Scott's films fall into one of the following categories:

– Intriguing premises that don't turn into engaging films: ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD, HOUSE OF GUCCI, ROBIN HOOD.

– Dull and pretentious: HANNIBAL, THE DUELLISTS, PROMETHEUS, ALIEN: COVENANT.

– Fun genre exercises, minus the fun: LEGEND, BLACK RAIN, BODY OF LIES, THE COUNSELLOR.

– Boring ‘epics’: EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE.

– Totally forgettable and now totally forgotten: WHITE SQUALL, GI JANE, A GOOD YEAR, AMERICAN GANGSTER, SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME.

To be fair, you can’t go wrong with THELMA & LOUISE, although that succeeds due to the strength of the screenplay and performances; ditto MATCHSTICK MEN. And even I can't deny that BLACK HAWK DOWN is a top-notch modern warfare flick. And THE MARTIAN is OK.

But overall, the scales are heavily tilted in one direction. The main problem is that Scott clearly doesn’t care much about the screenplays that land on his desk, beyond their aesthetic possibilities and figuring out how he's gonna move the people on screen from one flashy sequence to the next. It’s like he’s been given a script written in a language that he doesn’t speak and just goes through the pages shooting it anyway. Maybe it’s a former ad director thing: David Fincher has said that he’s not interested in what's being said, only the images, and that the words could be anything.

So alright then, what about THE LAST DUEL?

Well … it’s good! I mean, by Ridley’s standards anyway. I wasn’t sure about Adam Driver as an irresistible ladies’ man and Matt Damon lets his beard do most of the acting. But Ben Affleck is fun, dropping C-bombs in a crowd-pleasing performance reminiscent of his enjoyably vainglorious turn in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Jodie Comer rounds out the cast with a sensitive and engrossing turn, eclipsing her bigger-name co-stars.

The GOOD WILL HUNTING buddies collaborated on the script with Nicole Holofcener, each tackling one third of its same-event-from-a-different-perspective structure. And since he makes this one of the rare occasions where he prioritises the writing, rather than lingering on big impressive sets or sword-flinging battles while forgetting about tiny elements like ‘drama’ and ‘narrative’, Ridders manages to deliver something that holds the attention for its two-and-a-half-hours.

I was particularly impressed at how the movie touches upon a lot of contemporary questions about consent, gender equality and male entitlement without being anachronistic or overly political. I guess you could say that it completes Sir Ridley’s feminist trilogy, after THELMA & LOUISE and GI JANE.

Not bad for an 84-year-old codger from South Shields. Still a pity about the batting average, though.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  The whole thing is based on a true story, and the duel in question was apparently the last officially recognised one in France, so good job on the old historical accuracy everyone. Maybe more came later in other countries, but I guess there isn’t an IMDb for duels, so who knows. (Also: who cares.)

What would a movie called THE FIRST DUEL be about?  These little tiffs tended to be over ‘matters of honour’, so it would probably just be two blokes squabbling because one copied the other’s chainmail pattern or something. Calling Sir Ridders, we need your tedious touch! 

Previously:  THE LAST AIRBENDER

Next time:  PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

Review #3 THE LAST AIRBENDER (2010, M Night Shyamalan)

 

*

The latest in a long line of Avatars must master all four elements and stop the Fire Nation from enslaving the other ones.

Starring  Dev Patel, Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Toub, Cliff Curtis

Written by  M Night Shyamalan

Produced by  M Night Shyamalan, Sam Mercer, Frank Marshall   

Duration  103 minutes

Oh boy. I was dreading this one. Sure, because I knew its dire reputation, but even if it was supposed to be good, I still would have struggled.

I just can’t take this fantasy stuff seriously. Mostly because it tends to take itself so seriously, with all the tedious world-building and mythology and ‘lore’, not to mention the conversations between characters who sound like robots whose vocabulary comes from assimilating The Complete Works of Chaucer.

But hey, maybe for me with my lowest of low expectations it might end up being alright? Or at least so bad it’s good?

Er ...

Let’s start with the positives, shall we? Well, everyone seems to have learned their lines. It’s in focus. The guys in post clearly patiently waited out the time it took for all the CGI to render. The boom never sneaks into frame (although with this many special effect shots they probably ADR’d the entire thing). Um ... it's nice to see Dev Patel coming so far since Skins? Cliff Curtis is in it?

Meanwhile, the film’s issues are well documented: tin-eared dialogue; rushed and muddled storytelling; wooden acting; controversial casting; a dreary solemn tone; excessive narration; little adherence to the source material, too many sub-plots scrapping for attention; a bizarre disconnect between what people are saying and doing and what is going on around them; shoddy 3D from a hasty post-conversion.

But for me, the trouble can be summed up with two words: ‘exposition overload’. LAST AIRBENDER is to exposition what ROCKY IV is to montages. Every scene is someone explaining what has, is or will happen. I kept expecting exposition about the scene that just ended – and hey, maybe that did happen, since I lost track of what was going on after about 10 minutes.

More transportive for me than any of the otherworldly vistas or supernatural happenings was the constant use of the word ‘bender’. Here, it refers to someone who can telekinetically manipulate one of the four elements (fire, water, earth, air). But I kept having aural flashbacks to its use as a juvenile insult thrown around in the South London playgrounds of my childhood, alongside the likes of ‘arsewipe’, ‘derr-brain’, ‘window-licker’ and ‘your mum’s had more 1-ups than Mario’.

It seems harsh to judge young actors too stringently, but hey, they’re playing an adult's game, probably getting paid adult wages, too. And there is a scale: at the top, you have Anna Paquin in THE PIANO, Jodie Foster in TAXI DRIVER, that kid from KRAMER VS KRAMER. At the bottom, you have the lead boy in LAST AIRBENDER.

Poor Noah Ringer sounds like he grew up with THE PHANTOM MENACE’S Jake Lloyd as his acting role model. Marlon Brando could get away with reading from offscreen cue-cards in THE GODFATHER because he was Marlon Brando; here, it sounds like Ringer is having his dialogue read into an earpiece by someone with limited literacy. Some scenes consist of him shot in uncomfortably tight close-ups spouting stilted lines at an older boy and the girl who went on to marry Brooklyn Beckham, with the latter two sporting fixed wide-eyed expressions that suggest sheer disbelief at the drivel infecting their ears.

LAST AIRBENDER is adapted from an apparently popular TV show that had ‘Avatar’ in its title, but they had to drop the word to avoid confusion with Jim Cameron’s mega-hit. Turns out it could have really done with some crumbs from that $1 billion pie, even if they only came by virtue of The Asylum-style accidental viewings (SNAKES ON A TRAIN, TRANSMORPHERS, PARANORMAL ENTITY, etc.)

Look, I’m not an M Night hater; if anything, I’m an M Night apologist... to a degree. That degree includes THE HAPPENING, OLD and THE VILLAGE, the criticisms about which I accept, but I nevertheless still enjoy those titles on their own bonkers terms. But this generosity does not extend as far as LADY IN THE WATER, AFTER EARTH and, now, this hot mess.

Bend yourself in whatever direction necessary to avoid watching, even if you risk snapping something off.

One star out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  He’s certainly the latest airbender, but if somewhere in all that exposition it was clarified that others will not be following, I must have missed it.

What would a movie called THE FIRST AIRBENDER be about?  There’s an Avatar Wiki (of course there is), which helpfully tells us that it was a flying bison. Seems obvious, now.

Previously:  GOON: LAST OF THE ENFORCERS  

Next time:  THE LAST DUEL

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com