SCREENING LOG - 8/20-8/26, 2001

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I tried my damnedest to avoid watching movies this past week as I was visiting family, working on a script, and attending a wedding. Nonetheless, I saw Legend of Drunken Master (Drunken Master II), Save the Last Dance, Charlie Chan and the Wax Museum, and The Deep End. In order of preference:

Legend of Drunken Master/Drunken Master II (1992, Lar kar Leung, Jackie Chan)

I think I still prefer the original Drunken Master directed by the formidable Yuen Wo Ping, because it had a more consistently fun-loving spirit to go with the great fight scenes. Things start light here but also lame - it takes a good hour for the film to figure out what it's about, and when it finally does it does with a vengeance. There's enough pop anti-colonial agit-prop to make Braveheart blush. The enemy are those damned Westerners stealing valuable Chinese relics from the motherland (how many people picked up on this during the American theatrical release?) -- but fears over freedom-stompin' Communist China's takeover of Hong Kong can be read between the lines as well. Yeah, it's a thematic ripoff to Once Upon a Time in China, but the climactic last half hour alone catapults the film into the highest echelon of kung fu cinema. Quite possibly the best kung fu fight scene ever committed to celluloid, with amazing real stunts, use of wire kept to a minimum. It even keeps to the anti-colonial theme, with a menacing Indiana Jones type (after all, he too was a colonialist pillager!) as the enemy. But lamentably, the real ending of the film (in which we see the after-effects of the industrial strength alcohol Chan uses in his final fight) is omitted from the American version -- if anything, wouldn't they want to send a moralizing message to the kids? Like the character he plays, Chan was never quite the same after this film, his final masterpiece before he became twice as famous in Hollywood while trying half as hard.

The Deep End (2001, Scott McGehee and Don Siegel)

At first I didn't like where the film was taking me, but by the end I was oddly moved in a way that surprised me. This film, about a woman who goes to ridiculous lengths to protect her son from what she thinks is a murder he committed, seems as outwardly gimmicky as Memento and yet more satisfying and thought-provoking; Memento is streamlined, coldly calculating and utterly disposable -- this film is sloppy, melodramatic, and all the more interesting for it. I don't think the directors had much of a handle on things, for one thing they didn't really seem to elicit performances from their actors that aspired beyond soap opera. But maybe that's the point. Even if it were, it still wouldn't amount to much if not for the totally committed performance of Tilda Swinton as the mother. She makes the melodramatic flourishes of the film (including her character falling in love with a man who tries to extort her) chillingly convincing, because she manages to tie her performance into something very maternally feminine and emotionally true. Logically the story makes no sense, but when Swinton allows us to see the events through the reason of her emotions, the movie really starts to hum. Ring up an Oscar nom for this lady.

Save the Last Dance (2001, Thomas Carter)

My brother and I wanted to see this, mostly for Julia Stiles. What is it about this young lady? A sense of maturity beyond her years, that gives her otherwise odd-looking moon face a glimmer of intrigue? Shaking your bootie only gets you so far -- she has genuine acting talent, enough to make this otherwise tepid interracial romance with heavy borrowings from Flashdance mostly watchable. It starts off promisingly enough with a extremely well-edited opening sequence, but veers into the MTV generic swiftly thereafter.

Charlie Chan and the Wax Museum (1940, Lynn Shores)

I wanted to like this one, but even as camp it was lame. Sidney Toler isn't terribly offensive playing a Chinaman, and his character is treated quite respectfully and amicably by all, but as if to make up for that, Sen Yung as Number 2 son is an outright buffoon, bug eyes and all. The plot is too preposterous to even bother describing, though one redeeming facet was the intriguing use of cutaways that generated an odd sense of mystery, even terror.

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