News You Can Bruise for 2021 December 3

Fri Dec 03 2021 21:54 November Film Roundup:

• Harischandra Factory (2009): A light dramedy about the origin of India's film industry and the making of the country's first feature film. It's one of those situations where the question of "first" depends heavily on the WHERE clause of your SQL statement. Official government credit (and first choice of the dramedy biopics) goes to Dhundiraj Phalke rather than Ramchandra Torne because... Torne sent his film overseas to have it developed? If you did that now, would your film cease to be an Indian film? Torne's film wasn't long enough? What does it mean for a film from 1912 to be a "feature", given the different context for film showings? I'm skeptical.

  Anyway, this was pretty entertaining and we both got strong "Sumana's dad" vibes from the main character. Bonus: Phalke was inspired by an Alice Guy-Blaché film! Probably this one.

• Zoolander (2001): One of those comedies that leaves it all on the field, with mixed results. You'll be enjoying the ride and be abruptly jarred out of the experience by something horribly offensive, like blackface or Donald Trump. The research I did for Bamboozled indicates that Zoolander was the last mainstream Hollywood movie to do first-order blackface gags (as opposed to meta-jokes about how blackface is offensive, which had a brief vogue around 2008). There are two different blackface gags in here, and they're relatively tame, the end of an era, like those final Roman emperors who can't consolidate power and get overthrown three months later.

  This film spawned a couple of memes ("a center for ants" always makes me laugh) but I agree with Sumana that there's a lot of meme material in here that never got mined because it came out right at the beginning of meme culture. It's also interesting that Zoolander came out of a series of skits done for a VH1 award show. Reminded me of how Ted Lasso started as a skit done for a sports promo. Are promos the secret low-stakes breeding ground for comedy? Seems like it fills a similar conceptual niche to the SNL skit.

• Love Hard (2021): Was kind of expecting an Edgar Wright thing given the concept of this Netflix holiday rom-com, and the director has obviously seen Edgar Wright movies, but the material's just not in the screenplay. I'm just going to have to wait for my "Hot Fuzz of rom-coms..." or write the script myself.

  It was fun overall, and Sumana and I both loved the centerpiece of this film: a very funny filk of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" that turns the problematic standard into a consent-fest. ("Say, what's in this drink?" / "It's just lemon LaCroix.")

• Baywatch (2017): In this tragedy, a public safety organization gradually takes on more and more of the characteristics of the city's dysfunctional police, culminating in an extrajudicial execution. Funny and deliberately stupid. An interminable dick joke early on effectively conveys "this is a hard R, but not the kind you were hoping for with a Baywatch movie."

  I would have made the villains a gang of dolphins who synthesize flakka in their underwater lair, Breaking Bad style. Just an idea for the sequel... or an unrelated movie.

• Catch Me if you Can (2002): Editing this in as I forgot to review it initially, but I don't have much to say about this. A fun period piece with lots of heisty details. It kept me entertained for 140 minutes, a rare quality of movies that shouldn't be underestimated.
• The Mummy (1999): High cheese factor, and Brendan Fraser is likeable enough, but it felt like an expensive MST3K film and the plot beats were more predictable than usual. On the bright side: film debut of Oded Fehr, who I first met as Admiral Vance on Star Trek: Discovery. Probably the most competent Starfleet admiral we didn't first see at a lower rank. (Update: forgot about Admiral Ross! He was quite competent.)
• For British Your Eyes Only (1981): The festival of "Leonard acquiesces to watching a Bond film" continues with this down-to-earth entry. I liked the ski chalet in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and enjoyed its return with an Olympic-fever twist. I'd love to see this tradition keep going: maybe the next Bond film can have a set piece in Salt Lake City or Lake Placid.

  Kind of funny that the filmmakers went all-in on full-frontal caricatures of Margaret Thatcher and her husband, but were too afraid of a lawsuit to show Blofeld's face.