The Great-Bad Hall of Fame: Rocky IV

Oh! Hi there!

For years, I've been saying that there should be a hall of fame for movies that are so bad they're good. Then I realized I have a blog! I can be proactive and make this happen! So with that, I am going to write about Rocky IV. If you don't know which Rocky that is from the title, let me summarize it for you: Rocky ends the fucking Cold War -nay, the very USSR itself- via boxing.

The thing that makes Rocky IV stand out as a great bad movie, for me, is that it's the continuation of a film series that began with a great film. It's a perversion of all the things that made the first one great. The Hollywood rule for sequels is "like the last one, but more of it!" Much like a game of Jenga, though, the base erodes until it is unstable as you add sequel after sequel. So, eventually, you get a series of events that reads like this:

Rocky: Rocky, a fighter around 30, is drafted to fight the Heavyweight Champion, an undefeated Ali-esque character. He doesn't win, but his ability to stand toe-to-toe with the champ inspires the nation.
Rocky IV: Rocky, a multimillionaire who must be nearing 40 now, must avenge the death of his best friend who was killed in a boxing match against a hulking Soviet, a probable steroid user with double the punching power of an average professional boxer. He wins against the Russian, and also inspires the all-Russian audience to look at themselves and realize their government is wrong. The audience includes the government.

Of course, Rocky wins the fight. That's fine. This movie was produced in America, after all. But who would have guessed that Rocky would end the movie with a rousing speech about about, well:

During this fight, I've seen a lot of changing, in the way you feel about me, and in the way I feel about you. In here, there were two guys killing each other, but I guess that's better than twenty million. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!

Because when it comes down to it, wasn't the Cold War just a bunch of pansy-ass "feelings?" The thing is, this speech barely makes sense in the script's dramatic continuity as "change" appears as a theme multiple times. Apollo and Rocky talk about "changing," with Creed claiming that he and Rock are always fighters and will never change. Meanwhile, Rocky says things can never be the way they were before. Later, Rocky insists that he can't change, which is why he has to fight Drago. Which makes him a hypocrite. But then Rocky wins - as a fighter, without changing his core nature - and insists that the entire USSR can just switch over and we'll find world peace. Even on its emotional axis, it's an astounding, hilarious failure.

Speaking of emotional axes, how about that Adrian? In every movie, she goes from "Rocky, you can't fight!" to "Go get 'em, tiger!" Except in this one, it literally happens over the course of two laughably perfunctory scenes.

Really, it's an abomination against everything that was good about the original movie. From the opening shot in this movie - an American flag-decorated glove punching a Soviet flag-marked glove and EXPLODING - you can tell something's amiss (and not just the fact that the Russian glove falls down before the explosion happens. Or was that symbolism?). At 91 minutes, it's the shortest Rocky movie. Let's look at that running time a little more closely, though.

• After the gloves go off, the movie spends the duration of "Eye of the Tiger" summarizing Rocky III. Then, we see the last scene of Rocky III in whole. So it's probably about seven minutes until we get to the actual movie.
  
• Later, Apollo Creed fights Drago, and his entrance is an entire James Brown song and performance ("Living in America," the "Batdance" of the James Brown discography). That takes up another six minutes.
  
• After Creed dies, Rocky drives in his car to reflect on life and friendship, or love, or something. The movie switches here to another montage. This one summarizes the entire Rocky series up to that point. And when I say "up to that point," I mean from the original Rocky to the the events of Rocky IV as of a minute ago. This also includes Rocky III, which you just saw in a montage that started this movie.

So this movie is actually less than 80 minutes long, which is the perfect length for a good bad movie. Then you have the obligatory training montage, where Drago trains with the latest technological advances (and implied steroids). Because using technology is cheating, and if you're going to use computerized gym equipment, you might as well be on steroids to boot. Meanwhile, Rocky is outrunning a KGB car and running up a mountain in the snow. Because all Americans need is some elbow grease and good old-fashioned (and revenge-driven!) determination. It's an impossibly heavy-handed moment that winds up being hilarious. Again, if you keep stacking the odds, you're gonna get Jenga'd. And Jenga is at its most fun when the thing falls down.



Can I just mention that this movie also has a robot? In 1985? And it has some advanced AI, even by today's standards? Did you ever notice that Rocky's kid watches the fight (the one with a high likelihood of his father dying live on international TV on Christmas) from home, and in the background, the Robot is in a Santa outfit, with beard? Just thought I'd mention it.

So yes, Rocky IV is the first entry of the Great-Bad Hall of Fame. I can't think of another sequel that does so much to piss all over a great film. Even the Rambo sequels have the benefit of First Blood being only okay. What's one more thing that's definitive about Rocky? The theme. You know it. This one scraps that for pop songs. So fuck you if you liked the original. The thing is, I love the original. When I worked at Hollywood Video, before opening the store, I'd pop it in while I counted the money and did all the opening duties. Damn near every week, I'd half-watch and listen to it. So this movie holds a special place in my heart as the most wrong-headed sequel possible, even compared to the much-maligned Rocky V, which is just a depressing mess. No, this one is deserving of being in the Good-Bad Hall of Fame.

Chaplin: A King in New York (and very nice guy)

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It's probably fortunate that Charlie Chaplin's A King in New York did not get released in the USA until 1973 because of accusations that its maker was a communist. It wouldn't have been well-received at the time, anyway, with a key character being a child (played by Chaplin's son) who's unusually well-versed in Anarchist and Communist teachings. As it is, it's cult item for enthusiasts of the silent film greats, who, at this point, are probably a pretty small group. It's not even given much respect as a DVD: In the The Chaplin Collection Vol. 2 box set, it's packaged together with A Woman of Paris, while the rest of the movies in the set are given the double-disc treatment. Once you get past the feeling that Chaplin then looks like Mel Brooks five years ago, though, it's a worthy addition to the man's canon, especially among his underrated later works.

The vibe that I get most from A King in New York is that Chaplin must have been a really, really nice guy. Here's a guy who is exiled from a country without trial, based on rumors (truthful or not). He's making a movie about a foreigner who finds himself lost in America, culturally. Yet the movie doesn't strike me as bitter at all; everything is taken with the same light, comedic tone of his more famous works, parodying American film, music and especially commercialism. But, all of the gags are light teasing, rather than barbed swipes. Or maybe not. Offhand, I can't think of anything comparable from the time period with a similar anti-advertising bent.

The majority of it follows a pattern one would expect from a director whose work began in the silent film era. There isn't much of a plot to speak of; the king needs money and winds up doing commercials. This leads to the episodic structure that Chaplin did so well in his prime, and  even during his last starring role, showed a great amount of inventive spark. A scene featuring the king with a heinous amount of plastic surgery goes off perfectly: he attends a comedy show, unable to laugh in order to avoid "stretching it too much." The show he observes is an homage to his own silent comedies, and Chaplin's lone face, struggling not to smile amid a sea of laughter, is hysterical.

Then Chaplin's character, King Shadow, meets a young boy, Rupert at a school (long story). Shadow tries to engage in a conversation with Rupert, who fires off on a long tirade about the futility of all forms of government. The gag is that kids off-screen fool with the king, flinging soup at him while he tries to offer a rebuttal to the kid. It's not a great joke, but it shows a conscious decision to stand up to the accusations that banned him from America. Rupert also gets another showcase later in the movie, and troubles with his parents (staunch Communists) become the emotional center of the movie. Most telling, though, is when Rupert declares himself a communist after previously being an anarchist. Shadow asks him why; Rupert replies: "I'm so sick of people asking me if I'm this, if I'm that! So if it pleases everybody, I'm a Communist!" That's the sound of Chaplin throwing his hands up, and likely his reason for summarizing Marxist screeds in his comedy film about America that he made from Europe.

These moments really deaden the momentum of the movie, and they'd be a confusing choice without knowing the director's personal issues. At the same time, so much of the movie is joyfully sublime. The king performing the angriest "To be or not to be" speech in recorded history is a standout. Similarly, a (surprisingly spry!) 68 year-old Chaplin and his assistant peeping through a keyhole to see a woman bathing is some inspired silliness. Also, while many sometimes deride Chaplin for being mawkishly sentimental, this is probably the least sentimental movie I've seen with his name attached (except maybe Monsieur Verdoux, but I need to rewatch that to remember it better). It seems like he found freedom in his exile, to poke fun at his contemporaries (jokes specifically referencing Ed Wood and the declining western genre). Its energy buoys is well, and it's not nearly as slight as I'd expected. It's a little slower than City Lights and not a Great Film, but if you ever wonder if man who was once The Tramp ever lost it, this movie answers "No."

Whisper of the Heart: The Least Anime Anime

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Yoshifumi Kondo's Whisper of the Heart, and it has to be the least "anime" anime I have seen. I mean this in the sense that little of this movie needed to be done in animation. What makes it jarring: its screenplay was penned by Hayao Miyazaki, auteur of the fantastical (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Porco Rosso), but it's an humble, earth-bound story. It's not like the box (or Netflix envelope summary) or any description elsewhere ever promised me another exemplary tale of strange creatures and worlds that can only be done in an animated medium; I apparently have a Pavlov dog-like effect whenever Miyazaki's Studio Gibli logo shows up in front of me: Yes! Ghosts and myths and imaginative creations! Wonder!

So imagine my surprise when the movie unfolded and spent almost all of its time focusing on a simple story of first love before shifting into a tale of maturation-via-writing. This approach isn't refreshing, or novel; for much of the first half I found it slow (the second half was probably the same pace, but my head adjusted). "Pleasant," I think, is the most apt word to describe Whisper of the Heart. There aren't any antagonists, per se, nor is its central conflict presented in a grandly dramatic way. It's never cutesy, nor funny, like a romantic comedy. Despite all the things it doesn't have or do, thought, it's still incredibly warm. So... "pleasant."

The movie concerns Shizuku Tsukishima, a girl in middle school taking exams to get into a good high school. She's an avid reader and lyricist who one day notices that one guy has checked out all of her library books immediately before her. Based on this, she develops a crush on him, and of course, they meet. There's also subplot about her friend receiving an anonymous love letter while having a crush on a school athlete. The movie sits in its place and plays with these elements for its first two acts. Along the way, there's a small shop run by a grandfather, a bossy older sister, busy loving parents and teasing voyeuristic classmates. All of these characters populate the world without adding any conflict; just a warm supporting cast.

It takes a dramatic shift late in development, though. The boy leaves to take up a two-week apprenticeship in Italy, making Shizuku feels inadequate and unprepared for her future. During his absence, she focuses her energy on writing her first story to prove herself to herself. When all this happens (somewhat rapidly), it feels like things just started. In reality, it only has twenty minutes to go. It's a testament that the film breezes by so effortlessly up to that point, but it creates a strange momentum. The emotional crescendo is only a high relative to what came before it. At this point, too, it stops being an observational story about schoolkid crushes and sets its sights wholly on Shizuku developing as a story writer.

This shift is sudden and unnatural, and it brings with it the movie's only fantasy elements. Shizuku's story concerns a cat baron who's lost his love and a young girl he brings to his world. We see some of this story - with floating planetoids, caves that glow, people with cat ears - as she's writing, but it's a tease. According to Wikipedia (master of all knowledge for unpaid bloggers), these fantasy elements were the seeds that eventually became The Cat Returns. In Whisper of the Heart, though, these segments are seconds long. Structurally, it feels like this cat world will parallel Shizuku's real life, and both stories will come to a parallel resolution. Except that doesn't happen. Instead, the story-within-the-story winds up being yet a distraction, albeit a fun one.

So little happens - the struggles and victories are so internal - it almost seems incomplete, somehow, but it's not. Despite this, there are a subtleties here in its emotional tone and relationships that make its protagonist worth watching as she develop in tiny ways. The movie is genial; it's fun to watch. Pleasant.

Burden of Dreams and Avatar: For the Love of Jungle

Burden of Dreams, Les Blank's documentary about the filming of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, is shocking in its hardships and its compassion for Herzog's vision. It's a testament to either Herzog's brilliance or his stubbornness in this project. The film's narrative - of a man determined to beat great forces far out of his reach to accomplish a seemingly benign goal - parallels the story of Fitzcarraldo itself. But with hindsight, it also sharply contrasts with James Cameron's Avatar, its drippy nature-worship still fresh in my memory from less than a week ago.

Going in, I knew the Fitzcarraldo shoot was difficult. Jason Robards and Mick Jagger, original stars in the picture, had to leave with the film 40% completed. Robards was replaced by probable lunatic Klaus Kinski. Herzog insisted that the film's centerpiece, a boat being dragged over a mountain, be a real boat. Couple those factors with filming in the dense Amazonian jungle, and you have the recipe for a turbulent ride.

It's a surprise, then, that the film barely focuses on most of these things. Instead, most of Burden of Dreams is mostly concerned with the Native extras and their relationship to the film. The personnel issues with this film boggle my mind. There's political issues, propaganda and forces the crew to relocate. A few extras get shot with arrows, and everyone involved risks their lives bringing the boat over the mountain.

Bringing the steamship over the mountain is the issue that makes the film blur the line between fiction and reality. Herzog's insistence - several years into this project already - that the boat must overcome a 45 degree slope is absurd (his engineer prefers they flatten it to 30 degrees; Herzog insists this would ruin the power of his film's "central metaphor."). This is even after the film crew clears some forestation and discovers that the ground is feet-deep with watery mud. Their bulldozer, a luxury the film's protagonist doesn't have, is a second-hand purchase that breaks down frequently. It requires that fuel must be flown into the forest and shipped down river, and it burns more gas because it cannot get traction on the mud.

Before seeing Burden of Dreams, I was already lukewarm on Avatar (and I still am; new perspective doesn't affect the good things about it). Its central message is that nature is to be revered, like a god or goddess. It's slammed into our heads in the following ways:

• in order for blue people to enter adulthood and fly dragons,they must create a bond
• an impassioned speech about how killing a creature in self defense is "a sad thing"
• a montage of its protagonist learning to become one with nature
  
• another impassioned speech: Sigourney Weaver about why shooting missiles at a big tree is bad
  
• another montage: people crying at a big tree that has been shot with missiles
  

So James Cameron wants you to know: nature is a beautiful thing to be revered and loved. Also, it might be a good idea to build your civilization around it.

Except Cameron's "nature," is mostly computer generated, shot in LA and New Zealand. The message rings false on the surface to anyone who's so much as had a dog growl at them, but then begins to slide into heinous idiocy when you have real-life examples of films that actually have to film in nature (the storied production of Apocalypse Now being another example). All coverage of the creation of Avatar focuses on its computer generated effects (check Wikipedia), and its resulting film is a ham-fisted screed about the wonders and beauty of plant life.

In some ways, it is an absolute wonder that technology to do this exists at all. Burden of Dreams features a scene showing the crew filming, over and again, a large group of Native Americans canoeing toward the protagonist's ship. Sometimes, one of the extras would be in a wrong position; often they had only two hours a day (golden hour!) to film this sequence. It took days. The resulting footage in the final film is astonishing, but brief compared to the time it took to get it right. Avatar's computer-generated nature is just plain easier. But "easier" doesn't require the same kinds of sacrifice as the old approach to film making.

At one point, Herzog shares his impression of the jungle (edited):

Kinski always says it's full of erotic elements. I don't see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just - Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and... growing and... just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they - they sing. They just screech in pain. [...] But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.

Notably in the film, this monologue is intercut with shots of the creatures around him. The death of a bird feeding the bugs, a frog breathing rhythmically on a tree, etc. It shows the true natural world, and in its way, is beautiful in its continual cycles. When he says that "[he loves] nature... but against [his] better judgement," it shows a level of self reflection impossible for a director whose greatest successes are in the realm of big-money special effects demos (which is not meant as an insult to James Cameron; his films require an entire skillset Herzog doesn't have).

The main takeaway I got from Burden of Dreams was probably unforeseeable by its subjects and creators. There was an entire era of film making that has been lost with the advent of CGI effects that look so realistic you can almost imagine they're real. I don't demand that every film's production is the equivalent of pulling a plastic spork through the palm of your hand, but there is something great to be said about the arts and entertainments that are completed despite setbacks that are seemiingly impossible. And that's also not to imply that CGI special effects work is not fraught with its own challenges (though I doubt anyone at ILM has ever been shot with a freaking arrow), and I definitely don't mean to imply that challenging on-location filming is dead (The Hurt Locker, for one). But there's a point now where a film's very production and its methods for coming into existence can clash fully with its deliberate. Or when the a focus on special effects can lead to a director completely missing the point of a film's source material (as Ebert points out in his review of The Lovely Bones). It's all a matter of hard-earned self-awareness, something Burden of Dreams illustrates fantastically.

Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar

I've said it before: Manson is generally better when he's not trying to be the boogie man. So, I've not much of a proponent of Antichrist Superstar, which unabashedly baits for controversy with its title and music. At seventeen songs, it's way too long. Every song seems to be built around the same 90s industrial grind, but it lacks Nine Inch Nails' taste for atmosphere while turning the theatrics up to 11. The big hit, "The Beautiful People," is the best thing on here. The strangest thing is that, for an album that's almost entirely driven by aggressive guitars, nothing sounds as heavy as it should, which lessens the impact. Manson got better over his next few releases.

Metallica - Metallica (The Black Album)

Probably realizing that "faster and more complex!" as a mission statement for every album is a cul-de-sac, Metallica chose to slow things down significantly for their self-titled album. It has more of their biggest hits than any of their other albums, with "Enter Sandman," "Sad But True," "The Unforgiven," "Nothing Else Matters" peppered throughout the tracklist. It also has some duds, though: "Holier Than Though" is a bit on the nose, and "Don't Tread On Me" is more slogan than song. It's not that the hits are the only good things on here ("My Friend of Misery" is excellent), but here's my theory: by scaling down their sound, Metallica made shorter songs. So, to fill up an album, they had to make more songs. So more of their songs felt forgettable. So the overall quality of Metallica dipped.

Morrissey - Years of Refusal

In this decade, Morrissey's settled into a relatively predictable pattern. His solo albums build on his considerable strengths: a deep and affecting baritone, a wit for poignant lyrics, and, above all, a taste for the theatrical (which generally translates to gloriously overblown hooks). Years of Refusal closes Morrissey's decade in the same way, generally favoring his harder guitar approach and layering some light strings ("That's How People Grow Up") and new elements (Latin-sounding horns on "When Last I Spoke to Carol") over that. Highlights: "That's How People Grow Up," "Throwing My Arms Around Paris," "Something is Squeezing My Skull," "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore." He's still got a knack for being a compelling sad sack, and he never dips into the bluntness of its predecessor (2006's Ringleader of the Tormenters). In short, this one's a winner.