Tam Cam: The Untold Story. A Review

TAM CAM: THE UNTOLD STORY

An aspect of Tam Cam: The Untold Story that attracted my attention was the fact that this Vietnamese action film was directed by a woman: Veronica Ngo (or Ngo Thanh Van).  It is sadly still rare to see a female director, let alone a female director of action/fantasy films.  Tam Cam: The Untold Story (or to use the Vietnamese version, Tam Cam: Chuyen Chua Ke) will find some people familiar with aspects of the story as this is the Vietnamese version of Cinderella.

Whether non-Vietnamese ever considered Cinderella to have monsters and reincarnations in the story I leave to viewers.

Tam Cam is all based on the Vietnamese fairy tale, but to my Western eyes, it almost seems two films in one.  The first part is the traditional version of a Cinderella story.  The kind and noble peasant girl Tam (Ha Vi Pham in a debut performance) meets the noble Prince (Isaac, whom I understand is a pop star in Vietnam along with other cast-members from the group 365).  Both are instantly smitten with each other, but Tam has a wicked stepmother (Ngo) along with a snotty stepsister, Cam (Ninh Duong Lan Ngoc), who both work her brutally.  There is an announcement from the Palace of a festival where all eligible maidens, from princesses to peasants, are invited.

Tam comes close to going, but her stepmother manages to stop her.  With a little help from Tam's somewhat cranky and fey Fairy Godfather, she has a beautiful ensemble and a horse to take her.  The Prince isn't too keen on this parade of beauties and not-so-beauties, more concerned about his dying father and impending war, and not happy he has little say in matters of the heart.  Rushing out, he is persuaded to return, though not before one of his servants, Luc, finds a beautiful shoe.  The Prince, declaring that he will marry whomever the shoe fits.  Obviously, it will fit one girl, who happened to have lost her shoe as she rode towards the Palace.

Had the film ended there, most non-Vietnamese unaware of the culture or of the legend of Tam Cam would have thought would be the end of it.  As the saying goes, 'but wait, there's more'.

Tam and the Prince are deeply and passionately in love, but at the prompting of the wicked Magistrate, Tam's stepmother murders her by chopping down the tree where she has gone to pick berries for her late father's memorial.  The Prince, devastated by the death, finds himself now with Cam, a poor substitute for his beloved Tam.  True love, however, will not be denied: as Tam returns at various times as a bird, a tree, and as herself much later on.

There is treachery all around him.  There's Cam, and then the Magistrate, whom we learn is not even human.  He is some kind of monster who must swallow an amulet at a specific time after having collected 49 souls for his demonic rituals, and once in full human form he can take the throne from the Prince.  The Prince is betrayed by almost all save the loyal Luc, and with a little help from more Fairy Godfathers/Mothers, Luc, and Tam, the Prince does battle with the Magistrate in an epic battle where all things end up happily.

Tam Cam: The Untold Story as I said is essentially two movies wrapped in one.  That shouldn't be a surprise given that there are five credited writers on the film.  That also shouldn't be seen as a slam against it, because if anything Tam Cam does give two types of audiences what they want.

The first part of Tam Cam revolves around the romance between Tam and the Prince.  The second revolves around the Prince's war with a neighboring state instigated as part of the Magistrate's scheme.  It's the perfect date movie: those who like sweeping love stories can enjoy the first part, while their boy/girlfriends who do not can stay for the massive battles and monsters.

In short, there is enough to satisfy everyone, if you don't mind reading subtitles.

Ngo, who was not only the director and one of the producers but also one of the five writers, did quadruple duty as the wicked stepmother.  In her performance, she made her stepmother wicked without being comical, not an easy task.  I think as good as her performance was, Ngo's real skill was in her directing.  She balanced the epic feel of the action and the lavish sets and costumes without sacrificing the love story.  Ngo even managed to sneak in some moments of comedy.

The Fairy Godfather was a bit crabby and short with our heroine, at one point asking her if she ever got tired of crying.  There is a junior official who is also quite comical in his snobbishness and snappish manner, though perhaps his somewhat effeminate manner might be questionable.

As Ngo directed, wrote, and produced as well as costars in, her role as the Wicked Stepmother was limited, but in terms of directing she has proved herself quite effective.  She drew wonderful performances out of her cast, both major and minor characters.  Newcomer Ha Vi Pham was touching as Tam, though I agree with her Fairy Godfather: a bit too much crying for a person her age.  Isaac held his own in the action scenes, and did well in the romance, though at times the impassioned nature of their romance might get on the nerves of the non-romantic.  Ngoc as Cam balanced being mean with being frightened.

Tam Cam: The Untold Story is a true smorgasbord of a film.  It has fantasy (the special effects on the whole quite good, almost Harryhausen-like, though sometimes looking unreal), it has action (some of the battle scenes quite impressive and epic), it has comedy (at one point, the Fairy Godfather comments that Tam's stepmother & sister are like 'the Energizer Bunny', a most curiously anachronistic but amusing touch), it has fantasy (the evil Magistrate being so obviously evil I was surprised he didn't twirl his mustache and beard) and heaping helpings of romance.  It has so much that it might overwhelm audiences, but on the whole it proves itself highly entertaining. 

The bigger the happiness, the bigger the trial, the Fairy Godfather warns.  Many a true word indeed.

DECISION: B-

Victoria and Abdul: A Review (Review #953)

VICTORIA & ABDUL

Dame Judi Dench became an 'overnight' sensation at age 63 when she received her first Oscar nomination for playing Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown.  She went on to win Best Supporting Actress for playing another Queen, Elizabeth I, in Shakespeare in Love. She was on screen for eight minutes, which to my mind makes it more a cameo appearance than an actual performance, and I think most think her win here was as compensation for her losing for Mrs. Brown.  Well, Dame Judi has come full circle, returning to the role that first won her worldwide recognition in a sequel of sorts to Mrs. Brown.

Victoria & Abdul follows Her Majesty's second longstanding relationship with another servant whom her circle considered just as objectionable as John Brown from Mrs. Brown.  Actually, this relationship is even more scandalous, as one person notes in comparing this new friendship with that of the late John Brown.  "He's the brown John Brown," she quips as The Empress of India delights in her newest companion.  Victoria & Abdul aims to be a light comedy but somewhere along the way it wanders off into attempting drama then trying to find its way back.

Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal) is a clerk at an Indian jail during the British Raj.  Pretty content with his life, he is surprised to find himself being sent to Britain for the Queen's Golden Jubilee marking her 50th year on the throne.  His primary qualification is his height: he's the tallest Indian they have. Off to Britain he goes with Mohammed (Adeel Akhtar), who is much shorter, being a last-minute replacement for another man who had 'an accident with an elephant'.

In Britain, Mohammed is permanently grumpy, homesick, and desperate to get away from these barbarians, but Abdul looks at all with wide-eyed wonder.  They are to present a coin to Her Majesty Queen Victoria (Dench) at a dinner, with firm instructions not to look at her.  Mohammed has no interest in all this, but Abdul does, and he dares to look upon her face.  The next day, Her Majesty comments that the tall one was quite handsome, and they are tasked to present the Queen with a strange object: jelly.  At this garden party, Abdul not only looks upon the Queen but kisses her feet, delighting her and shocking everyone else.

The staff and courtiers are shocked continuously as Her Majesty continues to be taken by her Indian.  After correcting a few misconceptions about himself, such as that he isn't Hindu despite being called that, Karim begins instructing an eager Queen such things as Urdu and the Koran.  She is so delighted with Karim that she doesn't even object that he has dared to touch the Royal Personage on the knee when attempting to sound out an Urdu word with a 'knee' sound.

As Karim becomes the Queen's favorite, this irritates and infuriates her senior staff: her Private Secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby (Tim Pigott-Smith) and her physician, Dr. Reid (Paul Higgins).  Also displeased are the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury (Michael Gambon) and especially her son and heir, Bertie, Prince of Wales (Eddie Izzard), who must have gotten an awful sense of deja vu with this 'brown John Brown'.

The friendship between Karim and the Queen is deep but not without troubles.  She is shocked and angry to learn that, contrary to what her 'Munshi' (Urdu for 'teacher') told her, Muslims were involved in the Indian Mutiny and were not helpful in crushing it.  She isn't too thrilled to learn he has a wife either, but the fact he has gonorrhea is almost unimportant.  The Queen orders Dr. Reid to treat him for it, leading him to scream behind her back that he didn't go to Edinburgh University for seven years to look at Indian dicks.

While Her Majesty sees the cabal against Karim for what it was (racialists as she calls them), she manages to outflank the critics by using her soft power.  Time, however, is not on her side, and she sees that Karim's position is precarious once she dies.  As it happened with John Brown, once Bertie finally takes the throne as King Edward VII he orders everything connecting his mother with Karim destroyed and throws him out of the country.  Karim returns to India, where he cares for the statue of the first Empress of India, which stands in the shadow of the Taj Mahal.

Like the mango that the Empress procures from India but which Karim objects to, I find that there is something 'off' with Victoria & Abdul.  At times the film plays like a riotous comedy: the sight of Queen Victoria belting out I'm Called Little Buttercup from Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore is pretty astonishing.  It's almost as shocking as seeing the current Queen Elizabeth II burst out into a can-can.

As a side note, one can imagine the current Prince of Wales having a similar reaction to then Prince of Wales Bertie when told to accompany his mother on the piano to her impromptu recital.

At other times, it goes for being a serious drama about the evils of racism.  When the unholy three of Ponsonby, Reid, and Bertie suggest that Karim is using his position for his own gain, the Queen snaps at them as to how that is any different from them.

To me, it's as if Victoria & Abdul never fully settled on how it was going to handle this subject, whether to make their relationship a sincere one of mother and son or play it as a culture clash comedy.  It also was a bit opaque in how Abdul actually was meant to be thought of.

Part of the time, it felt like Victoria & Abdul made him into this almost wide-eyed innocent, eager to do nothing more than please his monarch, even if it meant dismissing his fellow servant Mohammed's objections over the British 'barbarism' and occupation of his country.  At other times, one gets the sense that there is something calculated in the Munshi's manners.  His insistence on the superiority of Urdu over Hindi or his claims of Muslim loyalty during the Mutiny are curious, to my mind.

Victoria & Abdul, to me, simply didn't want to take on who Karim really was or what his motives really were: fierce loyalty and love for the Empress or shrewd management.  Part of that probably comes from Lee Hall's adaptation of Shrabani Basu's book.  Part of that comes from Fazal's performance.  At times, he appears to be so endearing and eager to be serving at the feet of his Queen and Empress (when not kissing them).

At others, he appears perfectly willing to allow himself to be knighted, a suggestion that so horrifies the Royal Household that they threaten to resign en masse if he becomes Sir Abdul Karim.  We never see or hear him object to such a high honor, or demur if anything is presented to him, or counsel against pushing acceptance of him to the future King-Emperor.  He seems to almost join in the fun of mocking the shocked British when the Queen builds the Durbar Room or in mounting tableaus where the nobility is forced to kneel before him.

When Karim visits the Queen in her train car, he is almost uninterested that the 57-year-old Prince of Wales has to share a toilet with his mother while he, the Munshi, has his own.  Whether this marks him as an innocent or a manipulator is up to the audience.

I blame director Stephen Frears more than I do Faizal when it comes to this inability to settle on things.  I do applaud him for drawing strong performances out his cast.  Dench again shows herself to be a wonder as our slightly dotty old Vicky.  She shows Her Majesty as a truly lonely old woman, in need of a friend, mourning that for all her power those she loved are long dead and gone while she continues.  Her death scene is intensely moving.

Izzard too is a revelation as Bertie, almost unrecognizable as the put-upon Bertie.  Izzard as Bertie is someone who has mastered biding his time, waiting for the right moment to puncture and take down his opponents.  In his eye rolls, his quiet agitation, he makes Bertie funny without being ridiculous.

A good part of the laughs in Victoria & Abdul, at least judging from the audience (some of whom probably do remember the Victorian era), comes from the ridiculing the British aristocracy and nobility, with their odd habits in eating and entertainment.  The theater roared with laughter whenever one of the courtiers was shocked by something the Queen and her Munshi did, right down to Dr. Reid running off after getting a look at Karim's penis.

Never knew the clap was so hilarious.

Victoria & Abdul is like The Queen and The Munshi: eager to please and be loved.  It has a nice score, lovely costumes and sets, though I could not shake the idea that it was done a bit on the cheap.  It has the benefit of Judi Dench's excellent performance and strong work by Izzard, Piggot-Smith (in his final role) and Higgins.  Faizal was good and any deficiencies I put to the role, not the actor.

I still think Victoria & Abdul could have been deeper or frothier, instead of trying to be both. In the end, while Victoria & Abdul is entertaining, something about it is still 'off', like the mango.

Queen Victoria: 1819-1901
Abdul Karim: 1863-1909

DECISION: C+ 

Duel in the Sun: A Review

DUEL IN THE SUN

Though never confirmed, it is generally thought that The Bad and the Beautiful, a scathing look at Hollywood, was based on real life.  In particular, the central character of Harry Shields, played by Kirk Douglas, was allegedly based on Gone With the Wind producer David O. Selznick.  After seeing Duel in the Sun, I can see the comparisons can be valid.

At its release, this 'epic' was nicknamed "Lust in the Dust" and has not found much favor with current audiences.  Now, with over seventy years separating us from it, Duel in the Sun is as tawdry and camp a spectacle as we can find, making Johnny Guitar seem restrained.

Fiery 'half-breed' Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones) finds herself an orphan after her father, notorious gambler Scott Chavez (Herbert Marshall), murders her Native American mother.

The fact that Mrs. Chavez was dancing provocatively on the stage at the same gambling joint Scott was having a bad run in in full view of her husband is one of those odd pesky little details that gets lost in all this.

Scott is hanged, but before he dies he tells his half-breed daughter to go take refuge at the home of his old flame, the beautiful and gentle Laura Belle.  Laura Belle is now married to the short-tempered land baron Senator Jackson McCanles (Lionel Barrymore), so cantankerous that everyone, even his wife and sons, call him 'Senator'.

Pearl is received and sheltered, though not without remarks about his disgraceful presence (Senator makes quips about calling her 'Pocahontas' or 'Minnie Ha-Ha').  Our fiery temptress now gets the attention of the two McCanles Brothers: gentlemanly Jesse (Joseph Cotten) and villainous Lewton or Lewt (Gregory Peck).

As is her want, she plays hot and cold with both of them, shifting wildly between being 'a good girl' and being a tart.  She loves Jesse one moment, then falls for the abusive Lewt the next.  She pushes Lewt one moment, horrified that he catches her nude in the swimming hole, the next she all but rapes him at same swimming hole.

The wedge grows between Lewt and Jesse, but not just over Pearl.  The railroad is heading towards Spanish Bit, the McCalnes' vast territory.  The Senator will not have that Iron Horse going through his land and is prepared to shoot anyone bringing it in.  Jesse, however, sides with the railroads, incurring his father's wrath and a warning to stay away from Spanish Bit as long as the Senator lives.

Given his riding skills, that isn't a long wait, as the fool managed to get himself thrown off and dragged by his horse less than a minute after this oath.

Eventually, the war between the McClanes boys ends with Lewt shooting Jesse, though the latter survives.  Pearl, forever switching between them, suffers when Laura Belle dies and in the tawdriest of endings, kills Lewt up in his hideout...while declaring her undying love for that varmint.

Sometimes, there can be too much of too much, and Duel in the Sun has too much of too much.  Let's start with the opening to this sordid variation of the Cain and Abel story.  Duel in the Sun treats us to both a 'Prelude' and an 'Overture' before we get to the opening credits.  That means a suffering audience has to sit through approximately 13 minutes, 45 seconds before we get to the opening scene.

Prelude is around 9 minutes, Overture at around 2, and another 2 minutes of credits.

Coupled with that, we get extremely pompous narration about Duel in the Sun during the overture, about how it was 'two years in the making' and how grand it's all going to be.  By the time we finally get around to actually starting the damn thing, all these bits all but goad us into hating the film before we even start it. 

Then we get all this long backstory about Pearl Chavez and her family tree before we get the main narrative started.  Looking back at it, I think Selznick, who has screenplay credit on this turkey, was simply too much in love with the subject and its leading lady...who happened to be his wife, to serve as a real producer.

All that backstory, down to Pearl's voice-over narration, something that never came up again, could have been covered with dialogue.  Selznick could have trimmed or cut around 28 minutes out of this two-hour-15 minute spectacle without it affecting the overall story.

We also get some really awful decisions by director King Vidor (whom one suspects was not in full charge of this two years in the making production). It's already bad enough that Jennifer Jones is in all likelihood the least plausible Native American in film history: Burt Lancaster as Jim Thorpe is more believable.

Why she is not routinely listed as among the biggest ethnic miscastings in film history alongside Mickey Rooney's Japanese perv in Breakfast at Tiffany's or Charlton Heston's strained Mexican in Touch of Evil I'll never know.

It isn't bad enough that Jones looks silly trying to pass herself off as even half-Native American.  It's not even the wilder idea that she was a 'Chavez' from her Creole father.  I suspect that she had the surname 'Chavez' to emphasize her 'exotic' or 'foreign' roots, but Duel in the Sun makes clear she is Native American, not Mexican, and even if she were Mexican, there aren't a lot of Mexicans named 'Scott' (unless you count former NHL player Scott Gomez).  It's in her overwrought performance, forever shifting between 'innocent' and 'tramp', sometimes in the same scene.

In one scene alone, she goes from holding a gun to shoot Lewt for having murdered Sam Pierce (Charles Bickford), the shy ranch-hand who genuinely loves her, to begging to essentially be raped by Lewt, then literally being dragged by the same Lewt who makes clear he wants her only for sex.

Pearl Chavez has to be among the dumbest characters in film history.

Again, Jones is so overwrought in her role, rarely playing Pearl as a rational person.  Even when she attempts to be 'good', she is posing and thrusting herself with excessive eroticism.  It seemed to me that whenever she tried to be 'seductive', she only came across as tense.

Duel in the Sun is a good example of when good actors are allowed to play things for camp.  Barrymore was camping it up as our foul-tempered Senator to where when he falls off his horse and is dragged (having been tied to the horse so as to allow our wheelchair-bound Senator to stay on the horse), one is reminded of when C. Montgomery Burns faced a similar situation in his own biopic epic directed by Señor Spielbergo, A Burns for All Seasons.  I wouldn't be surprised if The Simpsons were inspired by Duel in the Sun when they made this scene.

Gregory Peck played against type as the villainous Lewt, and one feels he enjoyed being the ultimate 'bad boy'.  I don't know whether or not it was intended, but it was so obviously clear he was 'evil' one wonders why it wasn't just literally written on his face.  While not a terrible performance, it was like s many others in this film: unintentionally camp.

One thinks that Walter Huston as 'The Sinkiller', a wild-eyed preacher come to counsel our Indian temptress, was intentionally camp.  If not, then he would win the award for 'Hammiest Performance in a Film Full of Hammy Performances'. Lillian Gish, veteran of many silent films, perhaps thought she was making another silent film: her death scene is equally unintentionally hilarious, made more so by the use of Beautiful Dreamer to play her off to her final reward.

I think only Cotten was trying to be serious in a film that reeks of wild histrionics and camp hilarity.  Well, maybe also Butterfly McQueen as the McClanen's servant, Vashti, whom I figure was Prissy's granddaughter.

Duel in the Sun is so convinced of its epic nature that everything seems overblown to hilarious results: the acting, the endless 'sweeping vistas', Dimitri Tiomkin's score.  If it is to be watched, it should be to marvel at the lunacy of it all, the delight in camp attempting so desperately to pass itself off as grand epic. 

In the end, perhaps Lust in the Dust isn't the best alternate title for Duel in the Sun.  I offer my own suggestion: Kitsch in the Ditch.

DECISION: C-

Spyder: A Review

SPYDER

In the time since I started enjoying whatever Tollywood features find their way to my hometown of El Paso, I've grown fond of Mahesh Babu, probably because he's the only Tollywood superstar I've been exposed to on a repeated basis.  Ever since I plunged in with Dookudu and onward, I have found myself enjoying his films despite not speaking a single word of Telugu.

The last Babu film I saw was the intensely disappointing SVCV, a film so disliked that even the Telugu-speaking Indian students from UTEP howled at it (as they could follow along without subtitles and knew the stars, I deferred to them, though I had my own American non-Telugu-speaking issues with it).  Perhaps that is why, in terms of Indian cinema, the local theater has opted for Bollywood films with Hrithik Roshan.

Well, it's time for a comeback, and Superstar has returned to my screens with Spyder.  In terms of cinema, Spyder is quite good, though it probably will come as a shock to those not used to Tollywood films to have something as serious, even frightening, as a gritty story of a totally unhinged serial killer mixed with elaborate song-and-dance numbers.  There are moments of unintended hilarity within the film, but one could genuinely see it remade for Western audiences as a straight thriller.

Shiva (Babu) works at an intelligence agency that listens in on telephone conversations without warrants, what they call 'call tapping' and what I think is called in the U.S. 'wire tapping'.  The legality of these efforts is hazy, but let's say that it is technically illegal but tolerated.  Shiva is listening in to see if anyone is in danger, and he is pretty good about stopping crime before it takes place, a real-life Minority Report with a dash of The Lives of Others.

Then come a pair of calls that alter his life forever.  The first one comes from sweet but not too bright Charlie (Rakul Preet Singh), a University student who finds herself distracted after watching some porn and who is pretty open about wanting to recreate it...which makes Shiva do a variation on a spit-take.  For once, he takes advantage and does a bit of stalking (again, legalities being a bit hazy). Charlie finds herself smitten by this stranger who pops in often, and soon fall in love (despite their mutual protests otherwise).

The other call is one he overhears of a young girl who calls a friend, commenting how her house is the only one in the neighborhood where the power went out and that she hears 'ghosts' in there while she's alone.  Concerned but not overly alarmed, Shiva calls a friend who is also a police woman and asks her to look in on this house.

The next day, we learn that both the young girl and the female officer were brutally murdered, and not just murdered, but dismembered in a savage way.  To make things more horrifying, the killer mixed their limbs in a sadistic jigsaw puzzle.  Devastated by his inability to stop this crime, Shiva resigns, until his father convinces him that not only was he not responsible for their deaths, but that this is not the first time this person has killed, and if Shiva does not go back, it won't be the last time.

With that, Shiva returns and begins his investigation, which involves looking through CCTV video (again, did I mention all this is done sans warrants or other legal details?) and through his wit and work, finds a suspect.  It is a man known as Bairaduvu (S.J. Surya), and his tale is one that is shocking, and I imagine quite shocking for Indian audiences.

He was born in a cemetery, where his father worked as an undertaker.  As his first sounds were those of people wailing, he grew up deriving pleasure from the pain of others.  When people didn't die, he was actually sad.  It wasn't long before this child decided to take matters into his own hands, by literally killing people.  Only his younger brother, in no position to stop him, knew, but no matter: the townspeople burn his parents house down, with them inside.  Bairaduvu and his brother see this, and soon wander off, where they begin perfecting their macabre hobby. 

As adults, they continue the madness, and after a battle on a roller coaster (yes, a roller coaster), Shiva realizes he's captured the brother, who is as much a sadist as Bairaduvu.  Bairaduvu reveals himself in a gruesome video where he confesses to having killed a person for every column of a major railway line and burying them inside each one.  At the literal end of the line, Shiva, concealed by lights, taunts Bairaduvu to come out, and shoots the brother in the head.

Now it's a battle of wills between the noble Batman-like Shiva and the evil Joker-like Bairaduvu.  At one point, Bairaduvu comes close to killing Shiva's mother and brother, and even manages to stop Shiva by causing an accident that literally impales Shiva.

If you thought Shiva wasn't going to survive crashing into a metal rod, you obviously didn't realize it was Mahesh Babu.  Of course he was going to survive!  Not only was he going to survive, but Shiva manages to shoot Bairaduvu enough to injure him.

Now, with the aid of housewives watching an Indian soap opera specifically targeted to where Bairaduvu is hiding out, he is finally captured, but our mad murderer has one or two more tricks up his sleeve, culminating in a final battle in the ruins of a hospital.

In between all this murder and mayhem, you get colorful, almost Katy Perry-like musical numbers where the more aggressive Charlie pursues a more reluctant Shiva.

It is a bit reminiscent of how Audrey Hepburn is doing the pursuing of the much older and more hesitant Cary Grant in Charade, and not just because Charlie is chasing Shiva and not vice-versa.  It's in that Mahesh Babu is 42 and Rakul Preet Singh is 26.  A bit of dialogue confirms that she is still in University while he is already an adult with a legally dubious job (but like all good unmarried Indian boys, still lives at home, or at least that's what I think all good unmarried Indian boys do, I've no way of confirming that).   Making things more scandalous, while Singh herself is 26, her character Charlie is supposed to be 21, and while we don't know Shiva's age, it does make Shiva almost old enough to be Charlie's father!

As youthful and athletic and even as age-defying as Superstar is, he still looks older than his paramour, and part of me wondered if we were slipping a bit into Lolita territory here.  Even the age difference between the male and female lead was not as big an issue for me as the fact that how he got to know her was, if not flat-out illegal, at least morally questionable.  Near the end, I think Charlie discovers this fact but it's never brought up again.

If we think about it, Spyder (having the root word 'spy' in it, down to being spelled out as part of the lyrics to the opening song), is touching on issues of domestic espionage versus public safety.  Shiva and his men are not recording private conversations or deliberately listening in on calls or social media.  However, we do get into dicey territory with the overall plot.

We also get into surprisingly gruesome details within the action and dances.  You watch in horror as Shiva is impaled, and while his mother and brother are spared death thanks to a really clever twist (and the villain's penchant for monologuing first detailed in The Incredibles), the suggestion itself is surprising, as is the cold-blooded shooting of Bairaduvu's brother.

In terms of performance, the clear standout is Surya as our unhinged, psychopathic killer, a mix of Heath Ledger's The Joker and the real-life Night Stalker.  I hope Surya gets a chance to do a comedy, if only to show that he isn't going to be relegated into really frightening portrayals.  He was intense, cold, intensely frightening without ever going full-on camp.  Every time he's on the screen, he really commands it in Bairaduvu's indifference to humanity.

Mahesh Babu continues to show a greater range than perhaps I have not given him credit for.  When the script calls for drama and shock, Superstar does deliver.  He excels in these action roles when he plays a good guy, nominally an officer of the law.  I think the only time he ever played against this type was in The Business Man, yet I digress.  In the action scenes and in the dramatic moments, he did a commendable job.

In terms of his dancing, I noticed something with how he moves.   His dancing consists of extremely sharp, quick moves.  He is not like a Fred Astaire, who moved gracefully and smoothly.  Babu, instead, moves in bursts, and sometimes has no problem standing still.  Whether this quick, sharp movement is typical of Tollywood films or just something Babu does I cannot say.  At least he didn't pull his pant leg as part of the dance numbers.

It's a pity that Singh was not in the film long enough to make an impression, but she handled her comedy bits well.

I can remember only three dance numbers, two between Shiva and Charlie and one that introduces our Shiva.  Out of them, I think the best one is the first one, Boom Boom, where we learn about how great Shiva is.  The melody stays with you after the movie ends (in part because they use it when Spyder ends), but also because the lyrics do some interesting shout-outs.  As part of the lyrics, we get nods to Marvel Comics and Hogwarts, saying that Marvel Comics would have had to create someone like Shiva.

The first of the duets between Shiva and Charlie, Ciciliya Ciciliya, also threw in some contemporary nods, referencing itself as being a bit like a La La Land song.   It was colorful, almost candy-like in its execution, and a nice respite from the murder and madness of the dark story.  The third one, Haali Haali, might have been the item number, where we see our lovers expressing their love again.

I will mark that Babu was saddled in some awful costumes in some of the musical numbers.

Oddly, there were no musical numbers involving Bairaduvu...

Writer/director AR Murugadoss had some unintentionally hilarious moments: the roller coaster fight that is downright insane, the curious ode to stalking Achcham Telugandham with some really silly English lyrics (rhyming 'mysterious' with 'Confucius'), and a finale with a boulder that is more comical than anything else. 

On the whole, with an intense performance by Surya as our criminally murderous mastermind, a couple of good musical numbers, and the compelling Mahesh Babu, Spyder is an interesting and entertaining, albeit quite dark, story.

Only in a Tollywood film could one get away with lavish musical numbers in a film about a serial killer.

DECISION: B-

Gotham: The Fear Reaper Review

GOTHAM: THE FEAR REAPER

The Fear Reaper should serve as notice that despite claims to the contrary, Gotham will be featuring a Batman origins story.  Apart from perhaps an odd manner of defeating a villain, The Fear Reaper has good performances, a pretty strong balancing between the three stories, and the beginnings of the rise of our Dark Knight.

Having provided a plausible albeit odd explanation for having been caught in a robbery by claiming to have been searching for Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova), our young Master Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) finds himself feeling more alive with his going out as a secret vigilante.  His manservant Alfred (Sean Pertwee) does get him out of scrapes despite Bruce's enthusiasm, and now they have an unexpected ally: Lucius Fox (Chris Chalk), who is too smart to fall for the stories Bruce and Alfred have come up with to explain Bruce's injuries.  In fact, Lucius gives Bruce a gift: a suit that allows for climbing and is even bulletproof...should such things be needed.  Bruce tries it out, and finds himself delighted.

The main story involves Detective Gordon (Ben McKenzie) once again finding himself at odds with not just Oswald Cobblepot aka Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor), but with the GCPD.  The latter is pretty happy with the former's 'crime regulation', where the criminals of Gotham go to Penguin for a crime 'license' that will make them informally immune from the law...for a price to be paid to Pengy.  Gordon being Gordon cannot stomach the idea of letting crime go unpunished, let alone regulated on that, or any, level.  The major nuisance now is one Jonathan Crane, who has submerged himself into his persona of Scarecrow (Charlie Tahan).

Scarecrow has returned to Arkham Asylum to build himself his army to which to enact revenge, and has infected them with his fear toxin that will make them crazier.  Penguin goads Gordon for his inability to bring Scarecrow in (the same Scarecrow whose toxin humiliated Pengy in front of the press).  Gordon decides to go after Scarecrow, but for once he has to go alone, for not even acting Captain Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) is willing to break ranks with his men and women on this mission.

At Arkham, Scarecrow is delighted to find himself at war with Gordon, the cop who killed his father Dr. Gerald Crane.  As Gordon does battle with Scarecrow's minions, at one point he sprays Gordon with the fear toxin.  It is here where Gordon faces his greatest fear: Dr. Leslie 'Lee' Thompkins (Morena Baccarin) killing herself and blaming him for the destruction he creates.  However, unlike the others, Gordon finds it within himself to face and overcome his fears, which only infuriates Jonathan even more.  Gordon continues to do battle with the inmates, until he finds that water washes away the toxin.

Armed with that, he causes the sprinklers to erupt, washing away the effects.

Finally, we find that Bonkers Babs (Erin Richards) is back, much to the consternation of her frenemy Tabitha Galavan (Jessica Lucas) and the secret delight of Selina.  Babs is eerily calm upon her return, where she is setting up shop as an arms dealer.  Penguin gets wind of this, and says he'll take a cut from her profits, to which a frighteningly calm Babs agrees.  She even agrees to have her hand cut off by Tabitha if that's what it takes to get them to join her.  Tabitha can't do it in the end, but agrees to join forces.

The one being left out is Ivy Pepper (Maggie Geha), Penguin's girl Friday who finds herself dismissed by both Pengy and Tabitha.  Enraged by being tossed aside and not taken seriously, she gets special herbs and drinks them, consequences be damned.

There are things to wonder if not flat-out criticize about The Fear Reaper.  At the top of the list is the resolution to the toxin.  Even by Gotham standards, where people have an odd ability to come back from the dead more often than Rory 'Pond' Williams on Doctor Who, the discovery that water will wipe away the toxin seems so outlandish and almost ridiculous.

Part of me thinks even McKenzie, having to act this resolution out, in his performance thought it was all silly.  Granted, it was a difficult situation to resolve, but water?

Another aspect is the return of our much-loved Bonkers Babs.  It isn't that Richards gave a bad performance.  Far from it: her extremely calm, soft-voiced Barbara Kean was actually more frightening than her formerly raving loon because she was so placid.

Rather, it is the fact that her return from what looked like certain death is either going to be explained later or not explained at all...pretty much also like Doctor Who, which specializes in never explaining or giving logical reasons for its goings-on.

I also wonder whether this version of Scarecrow might be too frightening for children.  While The Fear Reaper is surprisingly restrained in the violence department, the images of what causes fear, along with the false suicide of Dr. Thompkins and near-suicide of Gordon is, I think, far too intense, especially for network television.

I find this version of Scarecrow at least on the same level if not a bit more intense than the one found in Batman Begins, from which it hearkens back to.

Still, there is still a lot to praise in The Fear Reaper.  At the top of the list is the Wayne storyline, which appears to be taking Gotham down the road which I thought it would not go down: to seeing the early rise of Batman himself.  Granted, I don't think they've shown any actual bats, but with his costume and vigilantism, along with having now both Alfred and Lucius working with our teen hero, the show does answer those who were griping about how Bruce was not a major player.

Mazouz really has become a Bruce Wayne to be matched against those who have played the role.  He continues to command the screen, but also allows vulnerability, such as when the gang he's been following captures him. I also have to give credit to Tehan, who has the burden of having to act while masked and muffled.  At times it appears he's going a bit overboard, but I cut him some slack given he isn't in his right state of mind.   

His role is limited, but RLT continues to make the most of his time, even if here too, like Tahan, he comes close to going full-on bonkers.  Only Babs is allowed to be full-on bonkers, and Richard's performance is so eerily calm.

Finally, I think the cinematography on Gotham continues to be a remarkable piece of work.  The scenes at Arkham give The Fear Reaper an eerie, Gothic horror feel.

At one point, the Phantom Lee tells Gordon that (you) 'destroy everything you touch'.  Whether or not the writers of The Fear Reaper had this in mind when they wrote that line I cannot say.  I can say that The Fear Reaper, minus the 'water cures the toxin' business has more pluses than minuses, and that this line brought this to mind...

7/10

Next Episode: Those Who Hide Behind Masks

No Time for Sergeants: 1955 vs. 1958

NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS: 

THE TELEVISION PLAY (1955) 

VS. THE FILM (1958)

On this edition, we are looking at a rare moment when we have in No Time for Sergeants a television production matching up against the film version.  Moreover, we are looking at a production where most of the cast remains from one to another, or at least from the television or Broadway production moving on to the theatrical version.

Given that I have not seen the theatrical version of No Time for Sergeants, let alone the original production, it is a bit hard to make full comparisons.  As such, I will use only the television and theatrical versions.

BEST WILL STOCKDALE

Andy Griffith (1955)
Andy Griffith (1958)

It seems downright bizarre to select one over the other given that Griffith originated the role of Private Will Stockdale on television, then moved it onto Broadway, before finishing up in the film version.  As such, he'd played Stockdale for so long he knew the role backwards and forwards.  Under those circumstances, you'd think there wouldn't be a need to select one.

I disagree.  In the 1955 version, Griffith made his Will Stockdale this naive innocent, well-meaning but essentially clueless about things.  In the 1958 version, his Stockdale did come across as more of an idiot, totally unaware of things.  Part of the problem, I think, is that first Griffith's role was expanded in the film.  In the television play, he truly didn't mean any harm whenever he did something that would inevitably end up causing Sergeant King headaches.  In the film version, he seemed oddly more aggressive, almost unwilling to understand how things worked.  The limited running time of the play didn't allow us to see Stockdale continuously make a mess of things, while the running time of the film did.

Another problem is that Griffith was 32 by the time the film version was made.  He looked a bit too old to be as naive as Stockdale was.  In 1955, he looked slightly younger than his 28-29 years, so it was plausible that Stockdale was a naive country boy.  By the time we got the film, he was looking much older than his 32 years, making the hick act look more implausible.

Finally, this might be a case where experience played a negative.  In 1955, Griffith was a near-total newcomer to the stage.  He had no real acting experience, having spent years as a monologist in nightclubs with his down-home style of comedy.  As such, he was fresh and eager, and that enthusiasm carried over into his characterization.  By 1958, he was an experienced actor, not just in No Time for Sergeants, but in the searing A Face in the Crowd, where he played against type as the villainous, power-mad/hungry 'Lonesome' Rhodes, under the experienced direction of Elia Kazan.  I could not shake the idea that some of the bitterness, the anger, the hypocrisy of Rhodes seeped a little into his metaphorical cousin, Stockdale.

BEST SERGEANT KING

Harry Clark
Myron McCormick

It's interesting that McCormick, like Griffith, was recreating his stage performance for the big screen. As such, I figure McCormick's recorded performance was exactly like the one he performed on Broadway.  If that's the case, then I'll stick to Clark's version of our much put-upon Sergeant.  In Clark's version, there is a genuine growing sense of fear, anxiety, and horror as Stockdale made a mess of things, leaving poor Sergeant King holding the bag.  At the time, I thought it was a bit exaggerated, but at least it had life to it.

McCormick's version seemed almost catatonic, less shocked and horrified by Stockdale's well-meaning but embarrassing behavior and actions and more almost resigned to it.

A good example as to why Clark's version is better than McCormick's is when Sergeant King rhetorically asks why he gets all the idiots.  Clark's King makes this a declaration of hysteria, of panic, of pained disbelief at his bad fortune.  McCormick's King makes this a declaration of frustration, or resignation, of someone who is weary more than shocked.  It's as if McCormick's King has come across many Stockdales, while Clark's King has never met anyone like Stockdale.

BEST BEN WHITLEDGE

Eddie LeRoy
Nick Adams

The good thing about Adams' version of Whitledge is that one wouldn't think someone like Nick Adams would be able to pull it off.  Adams was known for more tough-guy roles, particularly on the television series The Rebel.  It's a credit to Adams' versatility that he could be this meek little man.

The bad thing about Adams' version of Whitledge is that his version came off as a whiner, forever complaining about one thing or another.  It made him less sympathetic and almost an antagonist to Stockdale, an original frenemy.  LeRoy's version, on the other, made Ben into his friend and partner in crime, less whiny and more innocent (though not as naive or clueless as Stockdale).  They formed a great double-act, with one helping the other.

This is a sharp contrast to the Griffith/Adams team-up, where they appeared to be at odds more than they were joined.  I thought it was to build up drama, but I didn't think it necessary.

BEST DIRECTOR

Alex Segal
Mervin LeRoy

It's almost a shame that LeRoy, a good director, was undone by some poor decisions in No Time for Sergeants.  There were the endless scenes, the forced attempts at humor that veered towards farce, and the general disinterest the film elicited.  Segal, on the other hand, had to work with a limited time frame, so he kept things flowing.  He guided the characters into being real without being ridiculous.  LeRoy never made his characters real, but he did make them ridiculous.

Compare the psychiatrist scene between how Segal paces it and LeRoy paces it.  Segal's version is quick, rapid-fire, letting things build one on top of the other.  LeRoy is slower, as if knowing there are 'punchlines' and expecting to turn to the audiences for the expected laughter.

BEST VERSION

1955
1958

To me, there is no comparison.  The television version moves quickly, has a sweetness to it, and has Andy Griffith's character an innocent lost in a strange world and doing his best to make it homey.  The film version moves slowly, has a touch of harshness in it, and has Andy Griffith's character a dimwit making chaos and generally uninterested if it bothers anyone.

Something got lost between television and theatrical screens, and my recommendation is to stay with the kinescope version of No Time for Sergeants.  At one hour, it will move faster and be funnier than the nearly two hour film version, which seemed to drag and add things to make it drag more.

So B. It: A Review (Review #950)

SO B. IT

So B. It is a children's book, though if the film adaptation is close to the book I can now see why it might trouble more than some adults. We have illegitimacy, disabilities, abandoned children, and essentially unsupervised children.  However, So B. It handles these tricky and delicate situations with strong grace, some humor, and the end result is a moving picture with strong performances.

Heidi It (Talitha Bateman) has spent her life in two apartments essentially melded into one.  Her mother, who calls herself So B. It (Jessica Collins) is severely autistic, unable to handle loud noises and with an extremely limited vocabulary.  They are cared for by Bernadette, better known as Bernie (Alfre Woodard). Bernie has her own issues: she's agoraphobic and has not left those rooms in years.

Things would have remained as they are if not for a broken vacuum cleaner.  It's so old that the parts are hard to come by.  Neither Bernie or So B. are able to physically go out even after they manage to find a replacement part, with So B. and Heidi's effort to get it ending in disaster.  However, as time goes on Heidi is beginning to wonder about a lot of things.

One of them is the word 'soof' which even for So B. is strange.  Heidi is no longer satisfied by her origin story of how Bernie of how she saw them next door, with So B. in an extreme state of distraught and how Bernie managed to fashion an entrance between their closet and hers and take care of them.  Heidi now wants to find out about her past, her family, how they manage to live.

Through her determined work, Heidi finds a clue from photos she managed to have developed: Liberty, New York.  It's a long way from where they are in Reno, but Heidi is determined to get to Liberty when endless calls from Bernie prove fruitless.  As it happens, Heidi has an incredible ability to get money out of slot machines, and it looks like Reno isn't particular about letting children dressed as Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany's walk around and gamble.  Earning enough to take the bus, Heidi makes a cross-country journey, meeting and being aided by a variety of people.

Among those is Alice Wilinsky (Cloris Leachman), on her way to a family reunion.  She gives Heidi food and company, even a bit of an alibi on the first leg of the journey, but Alice realizes Heidi is not what she says she is.  Eventually, Heidi makes it to Liberty, where she meets stiff resistance in her search by Thurman Hill (John Heard in one of his final performances).  Heidi's mere presence fills him with anger, but fortunately for Heidi she finds shelter with childless couple Ruby (Jacinda Barrett), a nurse at Mr. Hill's Hill House for Special Needs Patients, and her husband Roy (Dash Mihok), a cop.

At last, the mystery and truth about Heidi It and her mother So B. It becomes untangled.  She learns about her past, about the connection between her and Mr. Hill's autistic son Elliott (Michael Arden), who also speaks the mysterious word 'soof', and those bonds of family: biological and emotional.

Talitha Bateman is simply a revelation as Heidi. If the Academy still doled out Juvenile Academy Awards I'd imagine Bateman would get one, for her performance is simply among the best I've seen, especially by a child.  Though she's been working for a few years, So B. It (and as way of explanation, it is Heidi's mother's stumbling of her name, Sophia) should be her calling card. Bateman makes Heidi a girl who yearns for the simple truth and finds herself blocked repeatedly by adults, some well-intentioned, some not.  At one point in frustration at again being shunted off she tells the adults that they are making things complicated, and she's right.

Bateman doesn't make Heidi into a cloying cutesy kid nor the know-it-all far about the adults.  She makes Heidi into a bright girl who also is afraid, confused, even angry.  When she finally allows herself to grieve for her mother it tears into you.

With good direction, good scripts, good guidance and good sense, Talitha Bateman will have a long and prosperous career in the style of an Anna Paquin, Dakota Fanning or Abigail Breslin.

In my world, Alfre Woodard can do no wrong, and So B. It shows that we simply need her to be in more movies.  This could have been a throwaway role under another actress which could have become almost comical.  Instead, with Woodard as Bernie, she made the character loving but strict and made her agoraphobia the serious issue it is versus falling into a trap into making it comical.

The scene where she attempts to leave the apartment and metaphorically ends up 'drowning' is so well-acted even if in the end it's not the end-result one would have liked to have seen.

Director Stephen Gyllenhaal got wonderful performances even from the smallest roles.  Seeing the late Heard here as the hard man with ties to Heidi will make one aware that this was a fine farewell performance (though he did complete other work before his passing).  Heard doesn't try to make Thurman sympathetic but he does make him believable: a flawed man who finds that he cannot fully erase the truth.

So B. It should also serve as strong displays of the ranges of Barrett and Mihok, two actors who should work more.  Of particular note is Mihok, whom I remember as a villainous character from Gotham, so to see him being so tender and gentle as the man who became a cop to save people shows a range yet untapped.

The issue of autism, especially the type shown in So B. It, is something that should be handled with delicacy.  Here is where Gyllenhaal's directing and the performances of both Collins and Arden come into play.  To their credit they didn't go overboard in making the character's autism into caricatures.  I cannot say how close or far it is to people who do have that type of autism or whether it is wrong to have non-autistic people play these parts.  I can say that it was well-handled.

If we can get to some issues that might be hard, it is in perhaps how Leachman, as good as she was as the slightly scatterbrained but ultimately wise Alice pretty much disappeared from the film.  Granted, she was not going Heidi's way, but to give her no real farewell scene is a bit jarring.  I also wonder whether So B. It, with its portrayal of autism and hard questions about parentage, emotional traumas, children travelling unsupervised and death, would be suitable for them.

At times it does make one wonder who this movie is for: it might be too much for young children but the child-centric story might put off adults.  If you do have children, even if they've read the book, I would caution to see the film first to see if they could handle the visuals of some pretty tense moments.  Seeing a child going into a casino, even under those circumstances, might also make one question logic.  The idea that this child has almost magical powers with machines and games of chance might be a stretch, but that comes not from Gary Williams' script but from Sarah Weeks' novel.  Therefore, if all that seems outlandish, the fault lies not with his adaptation but from the source material.

Those issues, while not taking away from the positives in So B. It, should be considered when deciding to see it.  The film is extremely moving, with a powerful performance by Talitha Bateman, who manages to hold her own against true acting powerhouses like Leachman and Woodard.

So B. It is a deeply emotional film that has a positive ending, even if it isn't how one would think it would go.  We could all use a little soof.

DECISION: B+