Safety Last (1923)

Directed by: Fred C Newmeyer & Sam Taylor
Written by: Hal Roach, Sam Taylor
Starring: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother

In my writing on Buster Keaton's movies, I mentioned how the stunts are so thrilling because of the single shot camera, and apparent lack of safety. In modern cinema, it is highly impressive that Tom Cruise pulls off all these death defying stunts for the Mission: Impossible franchise, but we do know that there are wires that are edited out, and other mechanisms keeping him safe. The stunts are still exhilarating, but there's a bit of a disconnect.

I felt the opposite when Harold Lloyd starts to climb the department store building in the featured set-piece of Safety Last. I think part of it is that even though his character has no skill whatsoever in such a feat, I know the actor is famous for his stunts, and so watching him climb clear handholds floor after floor left me a bit cold.

I started feeling differently during the infamous clock scene. Lloyd is hanging from the minute hand of a giant storefront clock as it has opened up. He's dangling floors up from the ground. It's spectacular.

After reaching the top of the building Lloyd is hit on the head and drunkenly staggers on the ledge of the roof. I held my breath. Obviously such acting would be meticulously worked out and rehearsed, but the actual performance raised my blood pressure. Only one thing needs to go wrong. Perhaps there's a safety net, perhaps the roof is actually a set built on a studio lot not far from the ground, but these thoughts did not cross my mind. We watched Lloyd struggle through climbing each floor of the building and he's built up the goodwill that this rooftop is legitimate.

That's not even the final stunt. Lloyd wraps his foot up in a flagpole rope and when he finally does topple over the edge, he's swinging from the roof of the building. This is the catharsis point. I burst out laughing and breathed a sigh of relief. Lloyd is reunited with his sweetheart and all is well.

The film is full of clever sight gags and moments of tension (the sequence where Lloyd is lying to Mildred about his position at the department store had me cringing. My feeling is that after all that lying and the feelings of inadequacy that caused it, the building climb is the redemption arc of Harold Lloyd. Not only because he receives $1000 for his stunt (I do wonder how much he'll give his friend seeing all the friend did during the whole feat was unsuccessfully try to ditch one policeman), but because he overcame a great struggle. They have the money to get married. At least in the time we spend with these two characters, we don't get to see the repercussions of Mildred finding out she was lied to.

Personal enjoyment: ★★★

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Directed by: Anthony & Joe Russo
Written by: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo

The opening scene of Infinity War sets Thanos up as a threat. Not only does he smack The Hulk around, but he kills both Heimdall and Loki before destroying the Asguardian ship. And this is before he starts collecting the Infinity Stones. One question I had is why it's taken him so long to start searching for them. Thanos has been a looming threat since the first Avengers, and all of a sudden he proactively hunts down the stones. He's always been a threat, and he's always been formidable, but it seems that this accelerated timeline is just for the sake of Thanos finally getting off his throne and showing us what these films have been building him up to be. I think it only half works.

The draw of Infinity War is seeing all of the Marvel characters finally come together and play off one another. To see the Guardians of the Galaxy trade quips with Thor and Tony Stark, to see Dr. Strange trade quips with Tony Stark. Stark is kind of the centerpiece of the movie. I don't know if I'm projecting my own lack of enjoyment but it feels that the characters don't seem like themselves. There's so much of James Gunn in the Guardians, and after Taiki Watiti leading Thor in a new direction, the characterization feels flat. Mind you, there's a lot going on in this film so the characters aren't given the time they need to be themselves, but even their base motivations and one-liners, seem off.

Let's discuss Thanos' motivation. Seeing that he ends this first of a two part movie victorious, it would make sense for the audience to understand where he's coming from. The prime conflict of the movie is one life verses the lives of the many. It's illustrated through Dr. Strange telling Tony Stark and Peter Parker that if it comes to it, he will sacrifice their lives to protect the time stone, for no single life is as important as half the lives of the universe. Later he sacrifices the time stone to save Tony's life. Before he disappears himself, Dr. Strange mentions that it had to be this way. Earlier he used the time stone to see all the permutations of the future to find a way through. This suggests to me that he found out that not only was saving Tony Stark's life important, but letting Thanos enact his plan as well. This is a comic book movie after all. It wouldn't be too difficult to bring back everyone killed through the power of the stones.

Thanos believes that only by destroying half the life in the universe can it be saved. He saw his own planet destroyed through over population and decided that he had the will to enact genocide on a grand scale to stop this happening to others. It's kind of a silly plan because it only prolongs that which he's trying to prevent. Given enough time, the populations will reach breaking point again, and such an act would need to be repeated. Because Thanos believes that no life is ultimately important, he is able to sacrifice his daughter Gamora to retrieve the soulstone. It hurts him, but he continues on his quest. I thought perhaps that great a sacrifice might lead him to have doubts on inflicting the pain he feels on so many others, but that is not explored. In the end he wipes out half the life in the universe, including many of the heroes before the movie ends.

I wonder if my dislike of the film will be changed once part 2 comes out. Viewed as a whole, Infinity War might resonate more, but after that first sequence it was all downhill for me. I was engaged superficially as the plot kept moving forward but sadly the film wasn't able to make me care. I wasn't emotionally invested.

Personal enjoyment: ★★★

Our Hospitality (1923)

Directed by: John G Blystone & Buster Keaton
Written by: Jean C Havez & Clyde Bruckman
Starring: Buster Keaton, Natalie Talmadge, Joe Keaton

Our Hospitality was quite different from Sherlock Jr. That film mostly dealt with a fantasy, where Keaton's character was a clever man who used his ingenuity and tenacity to outwit the villains. In Our Hospitality, Keaton's character is a young man thrust into a bad situation. Unbeknownst to him, he's the youngest member of one of two families in a blood feud. Returning to the town of his birth to take over his father's estate, he runs afoul of the Canfields who try their hardest to kill him while not breaking the rules of hospitality. You see, the Canfield's daughter Virginia has fallen for our hero, and invites him to dinner. Once he's outside the property however, the rules of hospitality no longer apply, and a death defying chase ensues.

This final chase scene is the centerpiece of the movie. Keaton scales down a cliff, and saves Virginia from going over a waterfall by swinging from a rope attached to a rickety log at its edge. Some of the cliff stunts looked like they may have been filmed on a sound stage, especially since the landscape behind the cliff does have a painted backdrop quality to it, but that could be the quality of the film. It wouldn't surprise me if all the stunts were filmed on location. And yet, nothing that Keaton accomplishes here made my jaw drop like certain sequences from Sherlock Jr. I think it might be the film's tone. While there were plenty of little chuckles to be had in Our Hospitality (the train ride to the town, and when the dam gets blown up and hides Keaton from the Canfields comes to mind), there's a grim spectre lurking behind the comedy. The blood feud. That these men are willing to kill a young man they don't know because of the family he's from. It's a grim premise to base a comedy on.

At least it has a happy ending. Willie (Keaton) and Virginia are married as the Canfields are about to kill him. A priest is in the room. He witnessed Willie saving Virgina, the two are in love and now they're family. For one final gag, when they accept Willie, he takes out all their missing guns from his belt, implying that if the blood feud had continued, he might have had the upper hand. Willie McKay is at least as resourceful as Sherlock Jr, even if his victories amount to dumb luck for comedic purposes. Here, Keaton didn't get to escape into fantasy while things worked themselves out. The victory was more hard fought and perhaps should be all the sweeter because of it, but I'd rather go back and watch Sherlock Jr.

Personal enjoyment: ★★

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

Directed by: Christopher McQuarrie
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie & Bruce Geller
Starring: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames

Henry Cavill can't be this bad an actor on purpose. In the opening scenes where we're introduced to Walker, his repartee with Ethan Hunt is so stilted and badly delivered, it seemed inevitable that he would be the movie's villain. There was no warmth or good nature in their exchange, no undercurrent of "we're going to end the movie the best of friends". I wonder if that's where the film went off the rails, because except for the bathroom fight sequence and the rooftop chase, I was disconnected throughout the movie. The movie didn't give me any reason to care about characters I have cared for previously, and maybe it's because there was no tension in the majority of these action sequences. Even though the stakes of the final sequence was the detonation of two nuclear weapons, the only tension I felt was that there was a brief moment where I thought Benji was going to die, and the visceral reaction to how Walker finally met his end.

People in the cinema were openly laughing at the helicopters on the side of the cliff. There's this shot of them trapped in this tight crevasse before they fall further to the final plateau. As I saw this shot, part of my brain was telling me "That's a really cool shot. I should be loving this", but I wasn't. Maybe the disengagement came even earlier than Walker's introduction. I was expecting the movie to open with action. Instead it opened with a wedding that was actually a nightmare, before a business exchange goes wrong. The wedding scene lays out what the film is after and it runs counter to why I enjoyed Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation. My expectations for these movies is to watch high tension action setpieces where I marvel at the skill involved (especially with the actor's performing their own stunts). This film was interested in continuing a story from a series where each film has largely stood on its own. I should have seen it coming from the title of the movie. Yes, the plot is largely about nuclear weapons, but the word 'fallout' is screaming that consequences from earlier actions are going to play out.

I'm wondering why the tension of Rogue Nation's final sequence in the restaurant worked so well while the final sequence of Fallout in Kashmir had little to no effect. Is it the stakes? Rogue Nation's finale was personal. Benji's life, as well as the lives of the surrounding block are at risk. There is an action scene afterwards, but the important part is Ethan outplaying Lane and winning their duel. The final knife fight, chase, and capture is a cathartic reward after enjoying the villain being out-maneuvered. In Fallout, the stakes are high (a third of the world's population will likely suffer and die if these bombs go off), but aside from our heroes being caught in the blast radius, there is no outplaying the villain. In fact, it almost feels like luck saves the day as the bombs are deactivated with only a second left. Ethan and his team have no plan going into this finale except how to stop the bombs. Everything is improvised. In the back of my head, I know they're going to win, so watching them go to such ludicrous lengths to save the day feels flat compared to when Ethan and his team were in control.

Personal enjoyment: ★★