Month: September 2020

Released: October 2001

Director: Stuart Gordon

Rated R

Run Time: 98 Minutes

Distributor: Vestron Video via Lionsgate Studios

Genre: Horror/Fantasy

Cast:
Ezra Godden: Paul Marsh
Francisco Rabal: Ezequiel
Raquel Merono: Barbara
Macarena Gomez: Uxia Cambarro
Brendan Price: Howard
Birgit Bofarull: Vicki

Adapting a movie from a literary source can be a very tricky proposition for many different reasons.  First of all, you’re trying to adapt something that’s more than 400 pages into a 2-hour film.  In order for something like that to happen, you would need to cut out a lot of fat in order to maintain the story’s narrative.  Let’s face it, books have a tendency to really meander in a lot of areas, but they can afford to do that because there’s no time limit on when a reader finishes the book.  Movies, on the other hand, need to have a time limit in order to keep the audience engaged, which means keeping the run-time down to a reasonable level.  On top of that, you want to try and get the fans of the book on your side, which means you have to strike a balance between what gets adapted and what gets cut.  Cut out too much from the source material, and you run the risk of alienating the readers, keep too much in and you will bore the audience.  It’s a balancing act that very few movies get right.  Lord of the Rings was adapted not once, but twice: Ralph Bakshi’s animated film and Peter Jackson’s three-picture epic.  A perfect example of alienating readers is Starship Troopers.  Both the source material and film were awesome, in my opinion, but they were so vastly different that readers of Heinlein’s book dismissed the film as a cheap and gory cash-in.  There is one author whose works have been notoriously difficult to adapt to the big screen: H.P. Lovecraft.  There are a number of reasons why that is, but I’m going to save that for another day.  That said, there are some of his works that have been well-adapted: From Beyond, Re-Animator, and most recently, Color Out of Space.  So, where does Stuart Gordon’s Dagon fit into all this?

Dagon follows Paul Marsh and Barbara, a young couple taking a vacation off the coast of Spain with their friends Howard and Vicki.  While they’re on the boat, a freak storm suddenly appears and crashes their boat into the rocks, trapping Vicki in the cabin.  With the storm gaining strength, Barbara and Paul take a small boat to a sea-side village that they noticed earlier, Imboca.  When they arrive at the village, they try and get a local priest to help them.  Offering to take Paul back to their boat, Barbara elects to stay behind.  Discovering that Howard and Vicki seem to have vanished, Paul returns to the village only to find that Barbara herself has gone missing.  Exploring the village trying to find her, Paul discovers that the villagers may not be as human as they thought.  After encountering Ezequiel, the town’s only “normal” resident, Paul realizes that there is something truly sinister lying beneath the town driving the events there.  The story in Dagon is actually based on The Shadow over Innsmouth rather than it’s namesake.  Lovecraft never scares his audience by jumping out of the shadows and making a loud noise.  Oh, no.  What Lovecraft does is build an atmosphere of dread and foreboding.  His method of affecting his audience is to make their skin crawl.  For the most part, Dagon succeeds.  There are some issues that bring the film down however.

Let’s talk about what works here.  The film’s atmosphere and set designs are dripping with dread.  Literally.  This film is incredibly damp.  It looks and feels slimy, like fish, because the town is populated by fish-people.  You can feel the decay.  It’s not just the village that’s grim.  The denizens of Imboca are as equally twisted, having been turned into half-human, and half-fish creatures by the ancient sea god, Dagon.  The make-up effects are absolutely fantastic.  The webbed hands and gills that you on these folks is wild.  The character of Uxia from the waist up is a gorgeous woman, but from the waste down, she’s got squid-like tentacles.  A lot of the other characters in the film don’t even come across as human, because of their design.  There is one character, Ezequiel, who is the village’s only “normal” resident.  This guy was played by Francisco Rabal and he’s awesome.  The character is old enough to remember when the village used to be normal, but became corrupted because they made a deal with Dagon to save their village.  Unfortunately, that deal involved in kidnapping tourists and sacrificing the women to be consorts for Dagon, while the men were skinned alive.  Also, the gal that played Uxia made it suitably crazy, while being strangely alluring at the same time.  I liked how she brought her twisted character to life.  This is a film that isn’t afraid to get gory when it needs to be.  The gore is done practically and it adds another layer to the film.  The pacing of the movie is pretty frenetic, and it goes by pretty quickly.

Now, we need to discuss the stuff that DIDN’T work.  The acting is uniformly not good.  With the exception of Francisco Rabal, the performances in the film just aren’t convincing enough.  The characters are thinly written and we aren’t given enough to really care about what happens to them.  For example, the two lead characters, Barbara and Paul are supposed to be in love with each other, but Paul comes across as a spoiled little twerp who is more concerned about his money than his girl.  At no time during the film was I ever convinced that he actually cared.  The same thing goes for Barbara as she’s a bit irritating.  She just seems to be there to look pretty and be the damsel in distress.  It’s an age-old cliché that really shouldn’t be used anymore.  When it comes to visual effects, I’m going to try and cut this movie some slack because it’s a direct-to-video release from 2001.   The practical effects are outstanding, there’s no arguing that point.  However, when CGI is brought into the mix, it’s PAINFULLY obvious.  Some of the CGI tentacles are poorly animated and Dagon himself when he shows is absolutely atrocious, and not in the right way.  Dagon is supposed to be this huge and ancient god, but he looks like a cheap video-game monster.  Granted, Lovecraft never really described what these creatures looked like or why and how they affected people.  In fact, he went out of his way to avoid doing that.  That was probably the point.  So, I do have to give credit to the film-makers to try and give a form to this monster, even if it didn’t necessarily work all the time.

Dagon is a strange beast.  On the one hand, it’s a movie that really shouldn’t work as well it does, and that’s due to the great Stuart Gordon.  At the same time, it doesn’t quite hold up to some of the other movies like From Beyond that nailed the source material.  When it comes to H.P. Lovecraft’s work, you really need an interpreter of sorts in order to really get around his prose and understand what he was trying to go for.  There aren’t a whole lot of directors and writers out there that can successfully do that.  Stuart Gordon was one of them and Richard Stanley is another.  At the end of the day, I would argue that Dagon, while not perfect, is still a pretty good horror movie in it’s own right.  If have even the slightest interest in Lovecraftian horror, this one is worth checking out.

My Final Recommendation: Waking up the ancient gods of the deep is not really a good idea, especially since they can turn you into fish-people.  8/10

Released: September 2020

Director: Niki Caro

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 115 Minutes

Distributor: Disney

Genre: Action/Adventure/Fantasy

Cast:
Yifei Liu: Hua Mulan
Donnie Yen: Commander Tung
Li Gong: Xianniang
Jet Li: Emperor
Jason Scott Lee: Bori Khan
Yoson An: Honghui
Tzi Ma: Zhou

In these dark times, it’s really important to find distractions, if only to keep the real world at bay for even an hour or so.  Movies are another distraction, but they are an important one.  Yet, not even movies can avoid the damage that can be caused by a global pandemic.  The film and movie theater industries have been brutalized by the ongoing Covid-19 situation.  Movie theaters have been closed for months, while some across the world have been shuttered permanently.  This has forced movie studios to push back the release of some of their films by months and sometimes up to a year.  The situation has unfortunately caused some movie studios to strongly consider releasing some of their new releases on VOD platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney Plus.  While there are film-makers like Christopher Nolan who insist on releasing their films in theaters, the reality is that not everybody is willing to go back to theaters until it is safe for people to do so.  Some theaters have been slowly opening back up with restrictions and safety measures in place, but the reality is that 2020 is going to be the worst year for movies and studios in decades.  Even Disney has decided to try and do the VOD thing with the latest live-action remake of Mulan.

Mulan tells the story of the legendary Hua Mulan, a woman who took up her ailing father’s sword and armor to defend her family and country against an invading army from the north.  As simple as that description is, there’s a lot to unpack from this story.  Yeah, this film is a live-action adaptation of the 1998 animated film of Mulan, but the actual story has its origins in 6th century China as The Ballad of Mulan.  It’s been re-adapted and translated again and again over the centuries, but the core elements of the story tend to remain the same: An invading army from the north threatens the empire, so the emperor decrees that one man from every family has to serve.  Mulan’s father is too sick to serve, so she takes his place knowing full well the consequences of what could happen if people find out who she really is.  The story is good enough on its own that it doesn’t need a talking dragon, musical numbers or supernatural elements to make it epic.  While I don’t think that throwing a witch into the story is a deal-breaker, it doesn’t really add anything either.  If they were trying to be as accurate to the original story as possible, I don’t think they succeeded.

For fans of Asian cinema, there is some serious star-power here.  For one, you’ve got Donnie Yen as Commander Tung.  I’ve been a huge fan of Donnie’s for years.  He’s an amazing martial artist and a really good actor to boot.  His performance in the recent Enter The Fat Dragon is one that should be seen.  He’s hilarious in that movie.  He does have a real commanding presence in this film.  Yifei Liu, however, is merely passable as Mulan.  She doesn’t strike me as a terrible actress, but her performance here comes across as pretty wooden.  Gong Li plays the witch, and she certainly looks the part, but she definitely has the ability to play a villain.  Jason Scott Lee plays Khan, who is out for revenge for the death of his father at the hands of the emperor.  Jason certainly looks intimidating, even though we don’t really see him get a ton of action.  Not only am I fan of Donnie Yen, I’m also a huge fan of Jet Li.  This is where I start having problems with the movie.  Jet Li plays the emperor, but he’s pretty much out of the picture for the majority of the film, and when he’s on screen, that’s not Li’s voice we are hearing.  At least, I don’t think it is.  On top of that, the entire movie was filmed in English and not in Cantonese or Mandarin.  This was a huge problem with the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel, and it’s even more obvious now.  A martial arts epic like this needs to take advantage of the culture that it’s trying to portray, which means NO ENGLISH!  You could get away with that in an animated film, but a live-action epic?  The feel of the film would feel a bit different if it were in Chinese.

This is clearly a martial arts epic, so one would expect to see some high-flying martial arts battles, right?  Not quite.  In the years since the release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, western cinema has tried to duplicate the success of that film with varying success.  Mulan is yet another Western attempt at a wuxia film, but the people behind this movie don’t seem to understand why movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and The House of Flying Daggers were so successful.  Crouching Tiger had an east-meets-west vibe in terms of film-making quality, but it still felt like something out of China.  It had that degree of authenticity that’s sorely lacking here.  The editing, the slow-motion, and the camera-work in this film are an issue with Western film-making.  It’s not necessarily bad thing, if you’re making a film in the west, but when you’re making a film about a Chinese folk-hero, you need to have people that understand the genre and what it takes to make that genre successful.  The fight choreography is also pretty weak.  I don’t think that Niki Caro really understands why wuxia films stand apart from all others.  The story is important, but if the film-making is sloppy, then what’s the point?  Don’t get me wrong, the cinematography in Mulan at times, is incredible, but there other moments when CGI and other visual effects stick out like a sore thumb.  The set and costume designs are outstanding, though.

Let’s address the elephant in the room:  The Disney Plus release.  Because of everything that’s been happening around the world, some movie studios have decided to put some of their newest movies on streaming platforms.  Mulan was originally slated to hit theaters by today, but because of the pandemic, they opted to skip the theatrical release and go for prime access on Disney Plus.  That means, in addition to having a Disney Plus account, you have to spend extra money to see this new release.  In this case, it’s about $30 bucks.  It’s a business model that I don’t think is going to work in the long run.  Here’s the problem, though:  There’s a lot of people out there who aren’t willing to spend that kind of money on a digital-only release of a movie that needed to go to theaters.  The thing is, is that once you purchase the film, it’s yours as long as you keep your Disney Plus account.  However, if you’re willing to wait a couple of months, the movie will be free to watch on Disney Plus, at least, that’s the idea.  Why would you spend 30 bucks now when you can wait and not pay extra?  I spent the money, because I’m a film enthusiast and critic, and I was looking forward to it, because it seemed like it was not going to be like the other live-action Disney re-makes.  It only marginally succeeds, because it’s PG-13 and is not a musical.  At the same time, however, the decisions that were made during the making of the film were not the best decisions.

At the end of the day, Mulan is not a terrible movie.  I can’t even say that I hated it, but there enough issues here that force me to warn people against spending the extra 30 bucks.  It’s not worth it.  It’s a wuxia movie that doesn’t feel like it and some of the acting really isn’t that great.  Donnie Yen’s awesome, Gong Li is…well…Gong Li, but Jet Li clearly didn’t want to be here.  My recommendation is this: Wait for December, then check it out.  Other-wise I would recommend you stick with the animated film, or better yet, check out the OTHER live-action adaptation, Mulan: Rise of a Warrior.  Either of those films have more of an emotional impact than this.  This is another by-the-numbers Disney re-make and while it isn’t the worst of the bunch, it’s not going to change the minds of people who don’t like these re-makes.  This was one that I was somewhat excited for, so the disappointment kind of hurts.

My Final Recommendation: 5/10.  It’s not awful, but it’s not that great, either.