Furious on Film 03.01.07: Issue 78

Posted by Arnold Furious on 03.01.2007

And now for something completely different

The aim of this ongoing column was simple. I've been watching films for a long, long time but along the way I've somehow found myself watching some absolute crap on a regular basis. I've seen every episode of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Halloween. Is there any real need for that? Should I have seen Police Academy: Mission to Moscow? The Blair Witch spoof movie that was just a bunch of Blair Witch spoofs hung together by a terrible TV show called The Woods? It's Pat? I'm appalled at my own decisions. So I'm now on a crusade to try and be more adult about my film watching. It's time to spread my wings and watch a wider range of films. The biggest problem I've encountered when taking on this challenge is my choices of viewing material aren't always at the level I'd hope for. There are times when I abandon my high and mighty campaign and instead watch whatever my brain decides I need. This can happen at any time but I'll still try to keep up a turnover of films that are challenging in some way.

Warning – could well contain minor spoilers throughout. Films are rated on a ***** scale. This week we have…

Novocaine, Fist of Fury, Matchstick Men

But before that it's time to get seriously sidetracked. Ever since I saw the Donner cut of Superman II it's been playing on my mind and I wanted to talk about it. Plus I have a bit of a new Top by decade feature to start into. Oh and with the whole Oscars thing…the following is how to accept an award.



It almost makes up for how bad Catwoman was.

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut

EXPECTATIONS – The original Superman II was released in 1980. Dick Donner was the original director attached to Superman II. He also directed the original Superman at the tail end of the 70's, but trouble started for the production when Marlon Brando sued the producers of the first film for a cut of a profits. They decided that they couldn't risk the same thing happening with Superman II and had him booted out of the production. Oddly enough the lawsuit resulted in Brando getting a cut from Superman II anyway so the Salkind's wrecked their own film for no reason. Donner took exception to Brando's removal and also got the boot. Margot Kidder was the next to protest and as a result was reduced to a minor roll in Superman III. Clearly the Salkind's were vindictive and petty people. Donner had shot enough footage of Superman II that when he was replaced by Richard Lester as director there was sufficient existing footage for an actual cut to be made almost entirely of Donner footage. In fact Lester never even shot a single scene with Gene Hackman, one of the films main stars.

I won't be using the usual review format with this one but rather look at the differences between Superman II and the Donner Cut and see whether I approve of the changes or not.

1. The most obvious plot hole in Superman II was the way in which Superman regains his powers after returning to his Fortress of Solitude. Powerless after being beaten in a brawl with a trucker he was unable to get his powers back due to the nature of the way in which he'd had them removed. In the Donner Cut this is explained with a strong scene between Superman and his father, played by the removed Marlon Brando. It's Brando's Jor-El who gives up his remaining lifeforce so that Superman can regain his powers. It's a powerful scene made even better by Brando's performance.

2. The beginning is slightly different with a credits sequence that's closer to the original Superman. It creates a slightly better vibe going into the film. That's 2/2.

3. Lois notices how much Clark Kent looks like Superman and after drawing a pair of glasses on Superman's picture thinks they look very alike. "Very amusing, Lois" mutters Kent. Lois is convinced and dives out the window knowing Superman will never let her die. This is rather similar to the scene at Niagra Falls where Lois jumps into the river. Christopher Reeve is completely brilliant in terms of playing the character and doing prat falls into the river in that cut but the Donner version makes more sense. Lois finds out in Lester's cut after Kent makes a stupid mistake. It's the kind of thing that Superman shouldn't be doing, picking the glasses out of the fire. I don't know why but it never quite felt right. Having seen the Donner cut I can see why. The spacing between incidents is better. Lois tests Clark once but her failure takes a while to settle in. It's only after she realises that Superman could have saved her the way he did that she tries for it again. And the appearance at Niagra Falls of Superman triggers her to do test him again. 3/3

4. The Eiffel Tower sequence is gone. I actually liked the scene. I thought Margot Kidder was really good and it showed what a sneak she was and how far she'd go to get the story. Of course it doesn't really help the flow of the story but I liked it as a lead in. I'd have kept it but Donner didn't shoot it and probably like it so it went. I'd have liked to have seen that stay. ¾

5. The Luthor in prison scene where he passes a rumour about another inmate being a bed wetter only for Otis to pass it to the prisoner in question. I don't really see what it adds. I'd have left that out. 3/5

6. Luthor and Eve arriving at the Fortress of Solitude. Includes a toilet gag. The extended footage has different jokes and more Marlon Brando. 4/6

7. One of the big additions is a scene where Lois exposes Clark as Superman by shooting him…with blanks. I really liked the scene as Lois actually has to work on something smarter to get Kent to drop his guard. She figures this is the only way. Clark falls for it and it's Lois' intelligence that gets him to do so rather than Clark's stupidity as it went in the original cut. Although I still quite like the original scene and it actually has a far warmer dynamic between Clark & Lois to set up their romance. I'm torn as a result. I can't really say I prefer one over the other but it's two interesting ways to do the same thing. Odd that Lois never figured it out afterwards in III but that would be down to Richard Lester taking over permanently.

8. Some of the Idaho town stuff has been taken out like the Ursa arm wrestling scene. Generally throughout the Donner cut some of the goofier stuff has gone. I'm not sure that's entirely a good thing but it maintains a slightly more dignified feel while Lester resorted to a lot of prat falls for cheap laughs. I could have lived with the arm wrestling scene staying in though. I was a fan. 4/7.

9. The Washington Monument gets it instead of Mount Rushmore. While it makes more sense as the villians are headed for the White House, it's less visually impressive. Again, it's the more serious scene to do to stress the seriousness of the situation, which is something Lester never really did. Again, I'm torn because Donner's makes more sense but I always thought the Mount Rushmore scene was a good throwaway gag as to how disrespectful, skillful and insanely powerful the trio were. Knocking over a building isn't quite the same.

10. There's a new scene where Jor-El warns Superman about the dangers of falling in love. It has some pretty heavy religious overtones and is much better than the same maternal scene in the original Superman II cut. 5/8.

11. Kent no longer complains of a bad back after driving to the restaurant. That kind of annoyed me because it was a nice tip of the hat as to how human he'd become. 5/9

12. The villians attack the Daily Planet offices and Perry White gets bashed in the head. This is a slightly better scene than the one Lester re-shot. It also has some cutaways during the following battle between the criminals and Superman. I could have lived without the cutaways as they didn't do much for the pacing. 5/10

13. The giant cellophane S is gone. Hooray! That suck-diddly-ucked. 6/11

14. Superman destroys the Fortress of Solitude as he'll no longer be needing it. 7/12

15. Superman & Lois then agree to end their relationship for the greater good. See, this I don't like. Why all the risk? Why build that up if it's not strong enough to follow through on? I know they're gunning for the "with great power comes great responsibility" thing but even Jesus nailed Mary of Magdelene. 7/13.

16. Superman uses the same flying around the planet gimmick that ended Superman I to make Lois forget his identity and basically erase everything that happened. So why not do that when he got his powers back and just send the criminals back into the Phantom Zone that way? Well, I guess they could try and stop him. I didn't think of that. But it's still lame to do the same ending to the second film as the first one. Plus everything he's achieved during the course of the film is gone. It irked me that Donner couldn't come up with something better. I suspect he actually did but wasn't allowed to film it. It leaves a real sour taste in the mouth. 7/14

17. Superman returns to the diner to teach the bully a lesson, which makes no sense because he turned back time so their original fight never happened. So his comment of "I've been working out" just makes no sense. This was really stupid. Would have been better to just leave it out altogether. 7/15.

Overall –

I liked some aspects of the cut and Superman II probably would have been a better film if Donner had been allowed to shoot the whole film his way. As it stands some of Lester's jokey set pieces are better off dumped (like the guy on the rollerskates when the villians blow everyone down the street and the guy on the pay phone). I'm happy to see a more serious tone throughout. The problem with doing the cut is Donner had to use a lot of Lester's footage to finish the film so it makes it a little uneven and the flow throughout is weird as often either Superman or the three villians get long blocks of time without ever checking in on the other. It's an interesting experience but given the cobbling together of footage Superman II as released cinematically is a slightly better film. Shame they didn't just let Donner do it. Lester's performance went completely off the rails during III showing us exactly how skilled a director he really was. Donner can take solace in the original Superman film being intact and a masterpiece as well as the modern films following on from his double whammy at the helm rather than the failed III & IV pictures that someone else took over.

Sidenote – I actually wrote this before George Sirois's Scene Anatomy this week.

Novocaine (2001)

EXPECTATIONS – Two concerns right off the bat. 1. Director David Atkins is in charge for the first time. He's not made a film since. Of course Frank Darabont waited five years to follow up the Shawshank Redemption and several other major directors waited before taking on second projects. But most of them had successful first films. Novocaine did nothing. It wasn't popular with the critics (37% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) nor did it make any money at the box office ($2M from a $6M budget). That worries me. 2. Steve Martin in a drama? Off the top of my head I can't remember Martin doing anything but comedy. Don't get me wrong though. I like Steve Martin. The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Man with Two Brains, Three Amigos, Planes Trains and Automobiles and even Roxanne were all good. I even like LA Story and Housesitter. Recently he's done nothing I've enjoyed and was particularly horrible attempting to recreate the genius of Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther.

TRAILER –

Sorry it's not embedded but it's not on You Tube. Not really a shock considering how little impact the film made.

PLOT – Dentist Frank Sangster (Martin) is living out his dream life with his dream fiance (Laura Dern) until his life goes to crap one day. He falls for a drug abusing con woman (Helena Bonham-Carter) while his drunkard brother (Elias Koteas) moves into his house without asking.

OPINION – I can see why this film failed. It's almost impossible to pigeonhole. It's not funny enough to be a comedy and yet it tries almost desperately hard to keep a lightness to it that is wholy inappropriate considering the subject matter. Martin prat falling off the roof isn't using his best talents. And yet Novocaine isn't dark enough to qualify as a thriller or even a dark comedy. Martin's irritating voice over just makes matters worse. I really wanted to like this because I like almost everyone in the cast (ignoring Scott Caan, cast as Helena's brother, finding it hard to distinguish himself from the wood of the sets) but the tone the film goes after changes almost by the scene. It can't decide what kind of film it's going to be. The outcome is hideous as a result. Almost every scene is worse than the one that proceeds it as the film digs itself a deeper and deeper hole. Half the cast operate on autopilot (well, actually everyone bar Steve Martin does) and it shows. Helena, who's normally great in everything, seems to have her mind on the next film she's going to shoot. Luckily for Martin she's good enough to cover it up. The most worrying thing is that Novocaine tries really, really hard to mimic film noir and Alfred Hitchcock. They aimed a little high. Martin's voice over frequently makes note of various dental procedures and tries to turn them into metaphors for what's happening in the film. This is ok to start with and I thought it was quite clever the first time. But with every subsequent mention the effect lessened until we reached the conclusion and I was almost dreading Martin's voice over kicking in again. And there it was, right on cue to tell me something highly predictable about teeth decaying having something to do with morality decaying. By this point I'd already had my interest beaten down by film noir cliches.

BEST BIT – Helena Bonham-Carter scatter brained, drug addled modern day femme fatale trying to pick up Martin while he works on her teeth.

RATING - *1/2. An ambitious attempt to crossover from comedy into thriller from Martin but sadly he kept falling back on bad comedy material to cover up the gaps in his acting range. It's like watching Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid only instead of it being in black & white and tongue in cheek it's in colour and played straight. Well, as straight as Steve can manage before another prat fall gets thrown in there. Disappointing.

Fist of Fury (1972) aka The Chinese Connection

EXPECTATIONS – Following on from his earlier success with Wei Lo on the Big Boss (aka Fists of Fury) Bruce Lee once again teamed up with the director for Fist of Fury. It was soon afterwards that Bruce became a household name with Enter the Dragon in 1973, the same year he died of a cerebral edema.

TRAILER –



PLOT – After the suspicious death of his master in Shanghai a returning Chen (Bruce Lee) vows revenge on those responsible. This leads to a gang war between his school and a rival martial arts school run by the Japanese.

OPINION – In terms of acting this is probably Bruce Lee's best film. He has a lot to work with and delivers a strong performance as a result. Usually Bruce doesn't do much in the way of acting. Enter the Dragon is mostly kung-fu and Way of the Dragon is quite silly by comparison. Chuck Norris scrap aside. In Fist of Fury he gets to display a range of emotions including anger, remorse and love. Lee comes off as a likeable hero trying to do his best to right wrongs. His stubborness leads him into several major fights while his comrades at the school are content to not fight and let matters resolve themselves. While Lee has never been the greatest actor he does quite well with what he's given in Fist of Fury. Naturally most of the best scenes come from martial arts rather than traditional acting. I started watching it with the dubbing on and this was a mistake. I hated the dub so much it took about 2 minutes before I'd changed to Chinese with subtitles. It's rare that a film gets a good dub but stuff from the 70's tends to be the worst. This is no exception. Horrible dub. I was also somewhat concerned about the depiction of the Japanese in Fist of Fury. It came off a lot like any Western film that features evil Asians. They were all mustache and aggression. I used to read a lot of Tintin and the characters in Fist of Fury looked like they fell out of the Blue Lotus. That really isn't a complement. Bruce Lee aside there are really no entertaining characters in Fist of Fury. It's very one-dimensional. But luckily for the film the one dimension is the excellent fights. As you'd expect from Lee they're all very solid especially the brawl between him and the entire Japanese dojo where he takes on twenty guys single handed. There are some fine nun-chuks moments in there as Lee schools the ignorant opponents in his style of kung-fu. I liked his intent to make the two Japanese bullies eat the infamous "Sick Man of Asia" sign. "Next time it'll be the glass" threatens a totally badass Lee. The fact he kills people with his bare hands throughout the film makes him moreso.

BEST BIT – the scrap between Lee and the dojo of Japanese. They surround him and attack only to get knocked out one after another until they are sat in a learning circle around him, respect beaten into them.

RATING - ***1/2. A solid and entertaining kung-fu film with a satisfying conclusion. Lee would make better films before his death but would never turn in such a strong performance as an actor. Worth a look.

Top Ten by Decade

Following on from something on the forums where one of the posters gave his top ten films by decade (from the 40's up to the 00's) I thought I'd present my own here for your entertainment. It'll be a weekly feature starting this week with the 1940's. Here's my list. When I compiled it I specifically left off Casablanca and Citizen Kane because everyone knows about them. I thought it'd be nice to list 10 films that you probably should see. And I would think you'd already seen those two. At least you should have.

1. Double Indemnity
2. It's a Wonderful Life
3. The Maltese Falcon
4. Rome, Open City
5. The Great Dictator
6. The Philadelphia Story
7. The Big Sleep
8. Rope
9. Kind Hearts and Coronets
10. Notorious

And that's it for this week. I feel very ill so I'll have to curtail the column. Apologies for lack of links and the review of Matchstick Men, which I quite enjoyed ****. I should return to form next week.