Silver Emulsion Film Reviews

China Gate (1957)

Starring Gene Barry, Angie Dickinson, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Paul Dubov, Lee Van Cleef, George Givot, Gerald Milton, Neyle Morrow, Marcel Dalio, Maurice Marsac, Warren Hsieh, Paul Busch, James Hong

Directed by Samuel Fuller

Expectations: High. Sam Fuller.

It’s been about seven months since I did a Sam Fuller movie, so once again I find myself slacking off immensely on my review journey through his filmography. And every time after I finish a film I think, “Why did it take me so long to watch this?” I love Sam Fuller’s films more than I know how to communicate, and for some reason when I get infatuated with a filmmaker I have an in-born desire to stretch out seeing all of their movies for fear that one day there won’t be any more new ones to see. This is exactly the reason I haven’t seen every Kurosawa film, for example. It’s an irrational fear because when you get through them all, then you have the fun of re-watching them! But I resolve that in 2013 I will do my best to finish the series! Anyway, my personal neuroses aside, China Gate is a fantastic, underseen gem in the Fuller catalog, exhibiting just about everything fans have come to expect from the director.

Set during the end of the First Indochina War in Vietnam, China Gate is an action/adventure tale about a group of men on a mission to destroy an ammo depot. That’s the yarn in the broad sense, but the real tale is the story of Angie Dickinson and the lengths to which she’ll go for her child. She agrees to lead the men through enemy territory as she has developed a good rapport and reputation with the enemy forces through smuggling and prostitution. As I said, she’s a single mom willing to do anything necessary to provide for her child. The lead male of the group is her ex-husband Brock, a racist who left her upon seeing their son’s Asian eyes after he was born. Herein lies the true journey of China Gate, and while modern viewers will probably find it too exaggerated and heavy-handed, for the time it is yet another bold picture confronting hypocrisy and racism from Fuller.

Top 10 of 2012 (so far…)

I am notoriously slow about seeing recent movies, so I haven’t seen many of this year’s biggest and supposedly greatest films. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make an arbitrary list based on the ones I did see! And my list will probably have stuff you won’t see on other lists because those people actually saw more 2012 movies! So take this list for what you will, I enjoyed every one of these movies a bunch when I saw them, and I’d imagine the movies in the top half of the list will still make the grade even after I’ve seen some of the other 2012 films. Anyway, here goes!

#10 The Grey (2012)
Directed by Joe Carnahan
Reviewed June 25, 2012

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Initially, The Grey was a movie I brushed off as being “some stupid Liam Neeson vs. wolves” movie. But over time as the positive public opinion of the film surfaced, I decided I’d give it a go. I thought, “Well, it’s Liam Neeson vs. wolves, so it’ll at least be entertaining.” What I got was far more than anything I had expected, as The Grey manages to excite both visually and philosophically. I don’t think it’s especially brilliant or anything, but it’s definitely worth seeing if you’re not scared of spending your evening in some extremely bleak territory. Liam Neeson is great, as always, and he does indeed go toe-to-paw with a pack of wolves. Good stuff.

#9 The Expendables 2 (2012)
Directed by Simon West
Reviewed September 3, 2012
Also reviewed by Stephen

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The Expendables 2 isn’t a great movie, and it’s definitely a worse movie than The Grey. But the sheer star power, pulling at every nostalgic memory of my youth, sucked me back in time to when I used to sit on the couch holding a plastic tommy gun and watch these same musclebound men take care of business. It was a surreal experience, and one that was designed specifically for me and the members of my generation. I don’t expect anyone else to understand or care, but The Expendables 2 was everything I had wanted the first Expendables film to be. And it had JCVD. Winning.

Top 10 Film Discoveries of 2012

This isn’t a traditional end-of-the-year list, it’s one that takes a look back at all the old stuff I watched for the first time this year. The only caveat was that in order to make this list, the film could not be a recent release. So anything that came out in the last couple of years or so was immediately disqualified because that’s more me being lazy about catching up with stuff than actually discovering anything. But never fear, I saw tons of great movies this year, and cutting this list back to 10 was absolutely excruciating. But here goes!

#10 Eraserhead (1977)
Directed by David Lynch
Reviewed August 27, 2012

David Lynch is a director I’ve never been able to get into, so when I was tasked with reviewing his first film for The Lamb’s Review Tournament excitement was not my top emotion. But despite all signs pointing to me potentially hating it, Eraserhead came out swingin’ and compelled me to like it. It’s not a film for everyone, and it is rather hard to sit through at times, but the sheer power of the filmmaking talent on display and the raw, powerful images continue to stick with me to this day. The film has never been far from my mind since I watched it, and I imagine I’ll like it even more on a re-watch (not that I really plan to re-watch it!). Definitely check it out if you’re into surrealism, or if you want to see one of the strangest tales ever made about the horrors of parenthood.

#9 The Stuff (1985)
Directed by Larry Cohen
Reviewed October 13, 2012

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The Stuff is one of those ’80s horror movies I had heard so much about, but never got around to seeing until now. Not only does it hold up extremely well, I think I actually did myself a favor by waiting, as I don’t think I would’ve picked up on all the biting satire in my youth. But that’s the beauty of The Stuff, it works as both a satirical piece AND a horror comedy tribute to ’50s monster movies. I was introduced to the work of Larry Cohen a few years ago when I saw Maniac Cop, and now The Stuff reminds me that I need to delve a little deeper still.

Django Unchained (2012)

Starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, Don Johnson, Laura Cayouette

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Expectations: Very high. Tarantino is a big western fan, so there’s no way this can’t be great, right?

In a single word, Django Unchained is excessive. Excessive in every possible way. Some movies that trade in excess get by because the excess is fun, or in some way in service of the story, but in Django it’s neither (not that an unflinching slavery movie should be fun). Instead it feels more like Tarantino is simply throwing everything he has at the audience when he should be carefully crafting a tale worth telling. I’ve always had something of a love/hate relationship with Tarantino and his films, but coming off of the expertly crafted Inglourious Basterds I thought for sure he would deliver something truly memorable. And Django is memorable… for all the wrong reasons. Where the script for Basterds was honed over something like 10 years, Django Unchained was written in a few months and thrown into production soon after. This may be a three-hour “epic,” but it definitely feels a lot closer to Death Proof than I would have liked, at least in terms of the quality of the writing.

As the film opens, a couple of slave traders transport a small group of slaves across the rocky hills and the frozen fields “somewhere in Texas.” They are stopped by a jovial man named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), who is specifically looking for a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) in hopes that he can help him find a trio of wanted men. Thus begins the tale of Django, a freed slave on his way to becoming a fearsome bounty hunter. Or really, that should read: Thus begins the tale of King Schultz and how he frees Django, but not really.

Futures Passed — Connecting the Dots

future2 Because I’m mildly insane, and because I have a great love for trying to connect fictional worlds that should never connect, I thought it would be fun to attempt to assemble a cohesive timeline connecting the films reviewed during this series. It don’t know that it’ll work, but I’m willing to try. I should also note that we didn’t think about this at all while selecting the films, we simply picked whatever sounded fun to review, so any similarities in plot are purely coincidental and lucky.

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Now.

The texts detailing our past are sketchy and not much help in uncovering what happened to the Earth all those years ago. I have examined the colored discs the ancients left behind, in hopes of better understanding their ways and cultures. If my assumptions are correct, this is pretty close to an accurate version of our history from 1994–2013.

The first specimen was something called Escape From New York, and it is our baseline. Crime had apparently risen astronomically, and the great city of New York was turned into a prison. The story tells of one man’s desperate attempt to rescue the corrupt president of the United States, an event that would later shape the course of the country.

Meanwhile a couple of years later in 1999, the Japanese police force was also having trouble keeping their people in line, and had employed giant robots as their patrol labor. They thwarted a dastardly attempt at injecting a malware into the country’s AI, an early example of the tech-based threats we now live with on a day-to-day basis.

Back in the US, Snake’s rescue apparently inspired the nation. Tales of gladiatorial combat and his ability to kill without a second thought must have spread like wildfire, as in the year 2000 the great American pastime had become the Annual Transcontinental Death Race. It ran from the East Coast all the way to what was then known as New Los Angeles. Colorful characters drove equally flamboyant cars to satiate the country’s wild desires and bloodlust. This couldn’t have been good for the state of the world…

Escape from L.A. (1996)

Starring Kurt Russell, Georges Corraface, Steve Buscemi, A.J. Langer, Stacy Keach, Michelle Forbes, Cliff Robertson, Peter Fonda, , Valeria Golino, Pam Grier, Bruce Campbell

Directed by John Carpenter

Expectations: Moderate. I remember not liking and liking this one.

I’ve never watched the two Escape films in such close proximity before, and I think this is why I never really got what Escape from L.A. was going for. I always found it a chaotic, spastic piece of fun, but all of its nuances were completely lost on me. Coming at it with a full head of Escape from New York definitely helped the film, and it made for a much more enjoyable experience than I remember it being the last time, but it still doesn’t make up for all the flaws that this one holds. It’s unfortunate in this way, because when this film is good, it’s really good fun.

1998
In the late 20th Century, hostile forces inside the United States grow strong. The city of Los Angeles is ravaged by crime and immorality. To protect and defend its citizens, the United States Police Force is formed. A presidential candidate predicts a millennium earthquake will destroy L.A. in divine retribution.

“Like the mighty fist of God, Armageddon will descend upon the city of Los Angeles, the city of sin, the city of Gomorrah, the city of Sodom, and waters will arise and separate this sinful, sinful city from out country.”

The Postman (1997)

Starring Kevin Costner, Will Patton, Larenz Tate, Olivia Williams, James Russo, Daniel von Bargen, Tom Petty, Scott Bairstow, Giovanni Ribisi, Roberta Maxwell, Joe Santos, Ron McLarty, Peggy Lipton

Directed by Kevin Costner

Expectations: Low, but as a fan of Dances with Wolves I’m hopeful.

2013
The Great Salt Flats of Utah

The last of the great cities died when my father was a child, victims of yet another war. He told of the plagues that followed and how the living hid themselves, scattered in tiny hamlets in hopes of surviving whatever new madness conspired to rob them of the little that remained. In those days, he walked alone, a solitary witness to the chaos that reigned. The earth itself had fallen victim to the insanity. He told stories of the three-year winter and how the dirty snow never stopped falling. He saw the ocean, barren, poisoned, near death. And how they watched the sky for 16 long years, praying for the great lungs to start working again. He said it was as if the ocean had breathed a great sigh of relief.

The Postman tells the story of a lone drifter, walking through the desert with only a few supplies and a burro to keep him company. He dreams of watching Monday Night Football and admires the sunset from the roof of an old Unocal 76 station. The post-apocalyptic setting is complete, but unfortunately star/director Kevin Costner decides to leave all of this iconic imagery quickly behind as he tells us a tale of a western, Civil War-inspired version of the future. I don’t imagine that if the world ended I’d move into the nearest ghost town, but that seems to be exactly what the survivors of the plagues and the wars did in their world.