redfiona99

The case for the prosecution: The Three Musketeers edition of my "Sword Fighting Films" posts is about 5 paragraphs away from beig done, but the flaws of this film will make an appearance.

It fails one of my two criteria for being a good Musketeer film - the Cardinal is out and out evil. Tim Curry would have made an excellent Cardinal in a different film.

Rebecca de Mornay may have made a good Milady in another film, but this film totally misunderstands Milady.

Kiefer Sutherland might have made a good Athos 10 years later, and when he wasn't in one of his "anything is better than acting" moods.

None of the problems are due to Chris O'Donnell, Charlie Sheen or Oliver Platt, who is a credible Porthos, but this is the sort of film that has Milady looking for forgiveness and randomly has Paul McGann playing two different characters.

I hold this film responsible for more recent adaptations killing off D'Artagnan's father and Porthos being a pirate/thief/criminal.

As a whole, the film just doesn't work.

The scene itself:

So, for background, in this version, the Musketeers have been disbanded on pain of death. Our 3 + 1 Musketeers have found out the Cardinal is planning to kill the King and have rushed to save him. They know this means almost certain death but have tried to send a message to the other Musketeers. As of the start of the scene, they have no idea if the message has got through or if anyone will come, but you know, they swore an oath to protect the King so they are going to try.

The full scene can be seen here in Italian - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4SBoWrT8II

The scene in English, missing the bit explaining why Athos, Porthos and Aramis are rushing forward, can be found here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR6GOVntrlU

Why the scene is so good:

It's the "yes, we're dead if we fail but we swore an oath", it's the fact that of course the other Musketeers, every last one, came. It's that they wore the uniforms under their cloaks. It's the music. It's every ridiculous bombastic OTT moment.

One for all and all for one, my friends.

(I am hopeless)

A link to the Fin-gore trope on TVtropes. Which annoyingly doesn't include this scene. This may be rectified later.

Slightly off the usual format.

As well as spoilers for Mission Impossible 2, there are also spoilers for Thunderball and North by North West.

The case for the prosecution:

MI2 is a mess. Overblown, forever getting in its own way. I have never actually managed to watch it all the way to the end. If *I* think your fight scenes are too stylised, you have achieved the practically impossible. Boring me with a motorcycle chase may be even more difficult, but the film manages this as well.

The best thing aboout this film is that the production over-ran so we got Hugh Jackman as Wolverine!

The scene itself:



One of the qualifying criteria for a scene in this series is that, if I see that the film is on TV, I try to figure out how far through it is, and whether its past *the* scene I'm interested in, and if it's not, I think the scene is worth trying to catch, no matter how bad the rest of the film is.

This is definitely one of those.

Why the scene is so good: I don't know. It's frustrating. I cannot figure out why I like this scene.

Possibly because they play off a couple of spy thriller archetypes. The sexless villain's sidekick is a tradition, at least as far back as Thunderball, and Vargas, "Vargas does not drink, does not smoke, does not make love. What do you *do*, Vargas?".

The villain's sidekick who is pining for him, also a tradition, again, at least as far back as North By North West, and of course, in North by North West part of the reason the villain doesn't believe Leonard when he says Eve is up to something is that he thinks it's jealousy. Because it is partly, mostly, but he's also right.

And Hugh Stamp combines both of those, plus competence and ruthlessness (and is played by Richard Roxburgh, which ... listen, I know).

Meanwhile, Sean Ambrose is horrible and violent and on to Nyah (which is the the twist to the traditional way this plot works) even if he's not on to all of what Nyah is up to, and Dougray Scott can play the hell out of villains.

It's a scene that does a lot of setting up, that Ambrose is every bit as dangerous as we've been led to believe by the opening plane stunt, that he is good enough at what he does to get one over on both Stamp and Nyah, that he knows about Nyah and is planning on using her if necessary (even if she then does something he couldn't forsee because Sean Ambrose does not understand selflessness), and is a violent sociopath who chops the tops of people's fingers off (setting up the ending, which I know parts of despite never having seen it all the way through).

And that for some reason, Stamp is devoted enough to 1) get really jealous, 2) not mind the finger slicing, 3) be completely right about Nyah and not walk out on Ambrose despite the opportunity.

And yes, I have other no-good bad reasons for liking the scene which we will put under "not all my kinks are narrative", but this is one of 3 good scenes in the film (Rade Serbedzija is in the other two, Richard Roxburgh is in all of them, in their defences Dougray Scott and Tom Cruise are in the other two).

The case for the prosecution:

They tried to be clever with Wilde.

Quite frankly, I don't have eyebrows that arch enough to convey quite exactly how foolish I think that is. Don't try to be clever with Wilde, the clever is already in there.

Friend L, who likes this more than I do (not difficult), points out that at least one of the bits they've added was in their originally but Wilde cut it before the play was performed. Now far be it from me to suggest that Oscar Wilde knew what he was doing when he was writing stuff, but, you know, it might have been cut for a reason. I suspect that reason is tonal dissonance.

As for what they do with Lady Bracknell ... I know what they were trying to do, they were trying to play up the satire and hypocrisy, except it's already there and all this does is undercut it with something we know is not realistic. Who here thinks that an army general in, let us be generous and say the 1850s, who got a dancing girl pregnant would marry her? Anyone? No. I don't either. It just doesn't work.

The scene itself:



Why the scene is so good:

The scene is a complete invention but at least ties back into Algernon's musical interests.

And is funny. I am very forgiving for funny. (Possibly that was the problem with the other inventions, they weren't funny or witty or amusing.)

It's a mixture of things: the staff carrying the piano around the house. The plaintive singing. Gwendoline and Cecily's responses. The look on the footman's face of "my employer is an idiot". It's enjoyable and silly in the way the Importance of Being Earnest is supposed to be and in the way this version isn't often enough.

(End note: yes, I did see the Michael Redgrave version at a vulnerable age, and yes, I remain utterly saddened that no man has yet lived up to Algernon. A great many of my problems probably come from imprinting on Algernon.)

(End note part 2: Yes, I have also seen it staged far too often. This remains the least good version I've seen, and that includes a cracking Am Dram version by the local theatre group, which had an amazing Lane. St Helens's Am Dram group when I was growing up were remarkably good as a whole, including producing what remains my favourite version of The Merry Widow.)

Spoilers throughout.

The case for the prosecution:

Batman vs Superman is a film that doesn't seem to know who at least 3 of it's characters are. When one of the three is your co-headliner, that's a problem. This is no diss on Henry Cavill, who is excellent whenever he gets to play Clark Kent, the big blue Boy Scout we know and love. But there isn't enough of that.

They also don't seem to know who Lex Luthor is. Again, nothing against Jesse Eisenberg who does his thing well (Luthor vs Senator played by Sally Field is a more intriguing clash than the headline fight), but Lex has a role, and it is not as Darkseid's herald!

I'm not even going to talk about what they do to Jimmy Olsen, because it's so pointless and mean-spirited.

It's also too obviously trying to intro the Justice League rather than being its own film (see also, the full title's post-colon bit). Those scenes work, especially the ones with Wonder Woman, but it does make the film feel a bit throwaway. I don't know if that's why the deus ex nomina with Martha is so laughably stupid but ... it could be. Because boy, that bit is stupid!

I have philosophical differences with where I think the film is trying to lead me. I think I'm supposed to think that Bruce is wrong to be paranoid and to be preparing a defence against Superman, but I don't. The thing he made, repurposed, was how they defeated the bad guy. Also, just because Clark is lovely, it doesn't mean every other child of Krypton will be, and it pays to be prepared. For those who don't know, I am a Batfan, and I play defensively in every sport I take part in. I have a type Bat personality ;)

The scene itself:

Full length version of the scene, if you wish to join me in mocking bad SFX. Seriously, you had how many millions and it still looked that bad?! =

Important bit starts 11 minutes in.

Why the scene is so good:

I think my pro-Bat bias has been thoroughly announced. And yes, all my favourite bits of Batman vs Superman feature Batman, including the scene where Alfred basically goes "give me Bat-grandchildren!", but this one is my favourite. Because this is Bruce! Outside the outfit, the gadgets, the money, everything, outside all that, Bruce protects. And that is why I love him so!

The film gave me Bruce Wayne back, and I am sad that we're not going to get 9 Batfleck films because Ben Affleck is so good as Bruce Wayne.

(Note, I have no problem with Rob Pattinson playing him, I was just hoping he was going to be Terry McGinnis when he was announced.)

This is the first of two "100 Great Scenes In Not So Great Films" that are slightly out-of-format. You will see why shortly.

There are spoilers for the entire film throughout this one, because it's impossible to avoid them when talking about the end of it. There are also spoilers for Yojimbo for thematic reasons.

Case for the Prosecution:

War is a rather dour Yojimbo rehash. As is the way of these things, bad things happen to good people, worse things happen to bad people. It turns out it's actually difficult to do Yojimbo well.

The scene itself:
Cheating because it's several scenes.
( Spoilers )

Why the scene is so good:
( Spoilers )

Case for the Prosecution: No, I don't mean that one, or that one, but the 2006 flimsy excuse for women wandering around in very little.

And that's the thing, everyone knows the game for two things only ... or rather various sets of two things, so I'm not sure that fans of the game can complain about any changes that were made.

The main problem is that the film is dull. The fights, the attempts at T&A, the utter failure of a plot.
The cry that I feel that way because I am not the target audience is rebutted by two facts. 1 - I knew the target audience and they felt the same way and 2 - in what way am I not the target audience for a fight movie directed by Corey Yuen?

The scene itself:



Why the scene is so good:

Into this land of bland wander the two best parts of DOA, Holly Valance playing Christie Allen and Jaime Pressly playing Tina Armstrong. Holly Valance treats the whole thing with the sense of humour it requires, and Jaime Pressly is almost as much fun. They are both in this bit.

Also in this scene playing Bass Armstrong is Kevin Nash, who has already been involved in another film on this list. Dude is either decent at this acting lark or needs to pick better films to be in.

While I am fully aware of the many bad things about the "mistaken for gay" trope, this is one of my favourite takes on it (another option is Victor/Victoria, which does it completely differently), because Tina's Dad is just so supportive.

In the tournament in the film, the fighters are allowed to fight each other the minute the fight is declared, and some of the other fighters have taken advantage of this previously, but because his darling daughter has a "special" friend, Bass Armstrong going to leave it till the morning. So adorable.

Christie meanwhile is having all the fun tormenting Tina, which fits in with her character in the film.

It's a scene where every character has a personality, and does things that fit with it. It's pretty much the only scene in the film where this is true. That everything is adorable is why it's a good scene.

The case for the prosecution:

Crystal Skull (as it will be called throughout) is not a bad film. It's just not as good as an Indiana Jones film should be. Now, part of that might be nostalgia, but I think the first three films still hold up nowadays.

Part of the problem is the overuse of CGI. I know I say this a lot but practical effects > CGI. Used sparingly, CGI works great, but when it's used rather a lot, in every bit of action that you see, you lose a level of thrill. (Before anyone says anything, I do not intend extra peril for our geriatric hero, this is what Mutt is for.)

Irina Spalko is not a particular effective villain. Which is annoying - you have Cate Blanchett and her natural reverb setting; she should make an excellent villain. It's not that she's not threatening, she's significantly more of a physical threat than Belloq was but there's not that moment where she does something specifically hateful to our heroes on screen so we can hate her (Belloq stealling the original statue by skullduggery, Toht threating Marion and getting burnt, Moler Ram in general, Vogel kidnapping Indy's father).

I think the main problem though, is what they do to Indy's character. Here we have a guy who spent large parts of the last film justifiably complaining about how emotionally absent his father had been through his whole life ... and then he turns round and is the most deadbeat Dad ever. We'd like our heroes not to be like that (discussion point, some of the disatisfaction with the Last Jedi is how useless Luke has been in the interim).

I think I'd probably have redone it with Mutt being a rebel son who'd gone off to work with Ox, and then Ox gets kidnapped. (Ox, has, of course, secretly been mailing Marion with updates so she knows Mutt is safe). Story still works, I don't want to smack Indy, win - win.

The scene itself:

Is not available because everyone insists on being wrong.

It's the scene where Indy is in a rage because he's been made to take an indefinite leave of absence and then Stanforth the Dean, ably played by Jim Broadbent, comes in to comiserate. And Indy's having none of it because why didn't the Dean stand up for him more and then wham! it turns out the only way the Dean could save Indy's job (because leave of absence is still employed) was by resigning himself.

The rest of the scene continues the wham, because we find out that Henry Jones senior and Marcus Brody have died, and there's a really good sense of the times, they are a-changing.

Why the scene is so good:

Harrison Ford can act, it's one of those things that's easy to forget, and the wham! of the shame he feels when he realises how much his friend has sacrificed for him, it hits the audience. It sets the tone for the rest of the scene, when we see that time has passed and who we have lost.

Jim Broadbent is the second half of this two-hander and he's exceptional. Admittedly, give Jim Broadbent something to do and it will be good but wow! I think it's the bit where Indy asks him how his wife is taking it and he answers "How does any wife take such things? The look on her face is a combination of pride and panic." And with a few words he tells you 30 years of married life, and how she's been the force and the rock and she writes home to her mother every Sunday and ... we don't see her until the wedding at the end, but when she appears she looks exactly how we imagined her and that's a skill and a half.

There's a realism, and a sense of age and time, in this scene. I get that you couldn't do a whole film like this, it would be depressing for one thing, and it wouldn't make for a good Indiana Jones film, but it's a note that the film could have done with more of.

The Case For The Prosecution:

First the prosecution must admit to a lack of knowledge. I have never read a single Thomas Pynchon book. I, therefore, cannot tell if my problem with the film is an inherited vice inherent from the book. I have a suspicion it might be, because my Dad had a collection of Pynchon and he had a terrible fondness for post-modern.

Whatever the reason, the best way I can describe the film is that it feels like Garth Marenghi decided to branch out into 60s-set neo-noir, and then they did it as a proper film with some very good actors wasting their time on this nonsense.

The dialogue was god-awful. We're talking proper 'no human in the history of the world has ever spoken like this' awful. I think that might have been a stylistic thing but it doesn't quite work, for any of the characters. Like they either needed to tone it down slight or ramp it up to maximum, and just go full Lebowski.

A lot of my issues could probably be summed up by that last bit. Because it wasn't just the dialogue, it was the action as well. It seemed like it couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be.

The scene itself: - spoilers underneath

Is not available on Youtube.

Basically, the plot has clarified itself as much as it ever does, and it becomes clear that Bigfoot, the detective, has been following our hero, Doc Sportello, and getting him out of a variety of scrapes because he's been using Sportello as a sort of canary down the mine to find out who killed his partner, a case he has thoroughly banned from investigating (because the villains and the people in power are deeply interlinked).

After this revelation, and the explanation of who did what to who and why, Doc accidentally gets Bigfoot's revenge for him. Bigfoot double-crosses him, sort of, and Sportello gets his way out of that, just, so Sportello rings him up to give him a piece of his mind.

That phone call is the scene I'm going to talk about.

Why the scene is so good:

It's this tiny cameo of a much better movie.

Josh Brolin does that thing he is so good at, where he conveys a lot of information about a character without changing expression. Bigfoot is a frustrated man, hen-pecked, forced into a life he doesn't particularly want, has frustrated dreams of stardom and dearly loved his deceased partner (the film thinks its being clever, funny and subtle in its attempts at making it clear that he's a closet case, but as with everything else in the film, it is none of the three).

I can tell you more about him and *who* he is than any other character in the film, because everyone else is a cartoonish cipher, part of why the film is so frustrating, and Brolin is doing all the heavy lifting, because goodness knows, the script gives no one any help.

Needless to say, I mean the Paul Bettany vampire-hunting warrior priest one, not the Linus Roache one.

The case for the prosecution:

Dear film, you are about vampire-hunting warrior priests, how are you so boring? No, really.

There is so much potential, like, I'm fascinated by the world building and it has Paul Bettany and vampires. I should love this film. And yet, it's boring.

Some of that is the script, which is leaden in places, and some of that is Cam Gigandet. I try not to rag on actors, but in scenes where we're supposed to believe he is terrified of what's happened to his lady love, he manages about as much fear and worry as when I think I've forgotten to put the milk back into the fridge.

The scene itself:

Is frustratingly in the gap between these two scenes.





Why the scene is so good:

Basically the Priestess has been moping after the Priest for the entire film. She adores him, but he's still in love with the girl he had to leave when he got press-ganged into the Priests (also, you know, they're both priests).

She's just pulled off the mad awesome stunt you see in the first clip, and everyone is recombobulating themselves afterwards, and the Priest realises what he's lost and saved and for the first time in the film he looks at her and actually *sees* her. It's just a marvellous bit of work. Also, you know, Priest x Priestess forever.

I think the reason I chose this, despite the fact that it's a little throwaway scene is that when I think of Priest, it's the thing I think of, the look on the Priest's face, not the explosions, or the stunts, or the fightscenes, just that look.

The case for the prosecution:

You'll note how I am particular in my description of which film I am complaining about. The first set of Fantastic Four films were average cake. You can't hate average cake, because it's cake, but that doesn't make it good. There were things I liked about them - Michael Chiklis's Ben Grimm*, Julian McMahon's Doom -, there were things that I didn't like, the emptiness of the denouements mostly, and things I will never understand, like how badly they wrote Johnny Storm. Seriously, I <3 me some Human Torch**, so you are doing something very wrong if I like Reed Richards more than him.

So I was looking forward to the reboots. There was room for them to be better. I knew nothing of Miles Teller, but Kate Mara is decent, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell are more than decent and one of these days Toby Kebell is going to be in something good, and worthy of his talents.***

The trailer looked excellent. I cackled with glee when I saw Doom. I was looking forward to seeing it.

It was terrible.

I mean, when Victor von Doom is the most sympathetic character, you are doing something very wrong.

Johnny Storm is reasonably solid, but they don't give Sue Storm or Ben Grimm anything to do. Reed Richards, played by a terribly mis-cast Miles Teller, meanwhile, is whiney, paranoid and goes "why does no-one recognise my genius?!" which is Doom's job.

That is how badly the characterisation is.

The writing of the plot and dialogue is somehow even worse than that.

Let me assure that this is a terribad film.

The scene itself:



Sorry about the terrible quality.

Why the scene is so good:

Can be best explained by a convo I had with L. L was watching the film when it came on UK TV.

Quoth L, "Also, this is much more intense than I was expecting cf Jonny's burning body."

Me: "The transformation scene is genius body horror."

L: "It's not what I was expecting of the genre...not in a good way."

Which is where we disagreed. He disliked the visceral body horror of the transformations - he is, in general, less fond of viscera than I am. I like the pseudo-realism, that the transformation is horrible. It is such a step away from the rest of the film which is tepid, reheated leftovers of every other superhero film - poorly reheated leftovers at that. It's something different, unique, interesting. It's the only time when the film uses its budget to full effect and does its own thing.

If the rest of the film had shown even half of the same invention, it would have been good.

*Ben Grimm is my favourite. I <3 him the best and Michael Chiklis is a fan too and you can tell.

**Johnny understands that I <3 Ben the most.

*** Seriously, I almost watched the Kebbell and Jack Houston Ben Hur because I love them both. The only reason I didn't was because it washed out of the cinemas before I had the chance.