Wonder Woman

When she stalks across a battlefield through whizzing bullets, implacable and unstoppable, you want to cheer and when she punches out a tank—she punches out a tank—you actually do.

Read the rest of the review of the totally not-crappy Wonder Woman at Vegas Seven.

Jupiter Ascending

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a pre-teen girl who was just coming out of her Disney Princess phase was forced to watch Flash Gordon, Brazil, Dune, Predator and a dash of Scientology mythos and then regurgitate them all into one mega-budget mess o' sci-fi nonsense?

Yeah, i haven't either but, if such a thing were to happen, the result would be Jupiter Ascending. Yet another film that proves that you can have plenty of money, talent and creativity and still produce absolute shit. Apparently due to some kind of studio shuffle, the Wachowskis made Jupiter Ascending with a big budget and little oversight--something that will not happen again, not after this. Well, and Cloud Atlas. And Speed Racer.

She does this falling and screaming thing at least a dozen times....

Here we have the perennially serviceable Mila Kunis as Jupiter, a young Russian immigrant cleaning lady who is actually the Queen of the Universe. No, fucking really.

This film is art-directed to the point of paralysis, but they gave someone 

with gold-leaf bathroom walls the kind of cheap white plastic toilet seat you get for $15 at Lowe's.

So, we open with our heroine's Cinderella drudgery, breaking into a Hallmark Channel romance-style flashback of her parents, punctuated by what might be mobsters or aliens or government agents or rival astronomers killing dad. (This, like many things in the film, is never quite explained.) Back to the present, it seems Jupiter's brother has talked her into donating her eggs for cash and giving him most of the money, because apparently cleaning other people's piss and/or shit isn't submissive and degrading enough. She bops on down to the clinic, but while she is unconscious, spread-eagled and having her ladyparts  probed (because helpless and because female), suddenly the doctors turn into weird aliens and announce that they're going to kill her.

Fortunately, Channing Tatum shows up on rocket skates to rescue her--a phrase that appears in the Jupiter Ascending script at least a dozen times. Yeah, there's some bullshit about how she is the genetic duplicate of some previous Queen of the House of Abraxas and, thus, owner of the Earth, but that's not really what this movie is about. What this movie is really about is Jupiter gets kidnapped by bad aliens in flashy outfits/falls through some really great computer animation/is rescued by Dogboy.
 

Yeah.  Charming Potato is a good-guy super-soldier space mercenary who's also part dog or wolf or something. Wait a second... half-man, half-dog in space? I know this one!

Anyway, we are treated to the first of many chase scenes. Jupiter Ascending is just over 2 hours--45 minutes of expository dialogue, 45 minutes of space-chase-fight scenes, 10 minutes of admiring Jupiter's costume changes, 10 minutes of CGI landscape beauty shots, 5 minutes of closeups of cool shit and 5 minutes of character development and plot.

Shitty hometown you don't want to go to, lame relatives you never see...

Our chief villain of the House of Abrasax is played by Eddie Redmayne in Cleopatra/Captain Hook drag, delivering all of his dialogue in a whisper that's supposed to be menacing but sounds more like his tonsils are sore from gobbling crystal meth and cock for 48 straight hours. It's perhaps the greatest post-Academy Award comedown since Halle Berry in Catwoman.

...consider this penance for stealing Michael Keaton's Oscar, you twee bastard.

He sends assorted creepy aliens and fabulously attired mercenary squads after Jupiter, thus adding to the legion of intricately designed and utterly unwritten characters that pass through Jupiter Ascending. It's like the filmmakers spent two weeks creating individual hairdos and tattoos for each one, but didn't even bother to give any of them a name.

Wait, Sean Bean? You're here too? Dang.

So after Dogboy stands around shirtless in a field of wildflowers for a good ten minutes--and you thought i was exaggerating the pre-teen Disney princess angle--Jupiter gets hauled off to the first of a number of space palaces, gets a new outfit and listens to some exposition from her "sister"--or is it "daughter," i dunno. We're basically just here for the pretty dresses and to watch this chick Bathory-bathe in the life force of humans and come out young. And get an ass shot.

Dogboy shows up and rescues Jupiter, she asks for a change of costume. (This is literally the only initiative we will seen taken or order we will seen given by the alleged Queen of the Universe.) Then we go into the terrible, obvious Brazil ripoff where we spend 10 minutes watching Jupiter and Dogboy follow some Space Twink around to various space bureaucracies to do the paperwork to establish her Earth rights. The tone is completely different than the rest of the film and it's painfully unfunny. But the worst part is this...

That's right. Terry Gilliam cameo. Terry Gilliam has to beg to get 1/100th of the budget wasted on derivative shitshows like Jupiter Ascending and is usually refused even that. But here he is, contributing to the stealing of his own schtick....

But, wait! Kidnapped again! This time she is whisked off to meet Prince Charming, who lays some crap on her about how he's a good guy and she can help him blah blah blah... it hasn't taken long for the space lords to figure out that it's pretty easy to handle the Queen of the Universe: Give her a pretty new dress, use a bunch of big words, light some candles and she'll agree to whatever you say.

Don't get me wrong. I am a full believer in the power of a good frock. But this is ridiculous. So, Prince Charming--who is actually evil--wants to marry the Queen of the Universe and Dogboy must stop the wedding... after we've had a good, long look at the gown, hair and makeup. Just like a hundred fairytales including Flash Gordon. I mean, it is such a direct Flash Gordon jack that someone should sue...

Dogboy takes Jupiter back home, only to find that the Cock Whisperer has kidnapped her (stereotypical) family, so she is immediately carried off again with Dogboy again in hot pursuit on rocket skates. Blah blah, sign over the rights the the Universe or I kill your family blah blah....

 You must pay the rent! 

I can't pay the rent! 

You must pay the rent! 

Seriously, i just want him to tie her to some train tracks already....

Dogboy to the rescue!

(Again.)

At the end, Jupiter doesn't want to be Queen of the Universe. No, she just wants to go back to Earth and scrub toilets and live with a family who doesn't appreciate her. This sort of "the only true happiness a woman can know is by having her entire identity wrapped up in her family" bullshit barely got by in the fifties: Now it's just ridiculous. Not even the endings of Mahogany and Made in Paris involved this level of abandonment of achievement for a life of domesticity.

Even more ridiculous when you compare it with a movie like Bound, where the women flipped everyone's script and came out on top. I dunno what happened with the Warchowskis, but Larry and Andy gave us The Matrix's Trinity, who was fierce and invincible and saved Keanu's punk ass countless times, as well as the aforementioned killer team of Corky and Violet.  Lana and Lilly give us Jupiter, who basically just changes outfits and waits for Dogboy to turn up and help her out of whatever mess she has wandered blindly into.They have every right to their own vision of femininity, i just wished they'd kept it a little more kickass...

Modesty Blaise

Fabulous cast, highly regarded director, beloved source material, eye-popping design: What could go wrong?

In the case of Modesty Blaise, apparently a lot, though it's hard to put your finger on exactly what--probably for all of those reasons listed above.

So, we have the sensational Monica Vitti as super-spy Modesty, done up in a succession of stunning mod 60s outfits and wigs. When they put her in the catsuit and dark beehive, she does truly look like the heroine from the comics. Terence Stamp is most appealing as her sidekick; Dirk Bogarde does a fine, queeny turn as the arch-villain--and his pop-art Mediterranean villa is to die for.

If there's anyone I might look askance at in this matter, it's the director: Joseph Losey--better-known for dark psychological dramas such as The Servant and Eva. Modesty Blaise opens with our heroine in her all-white rotating penthouse, on her round bed, getting mercenary assignments and horoscopes (she's a Scorpio) from a houseboy in white tie and tails.... promising enough, but them the theme song kicks in: It sounds like Up With People in tone, if not content, and it presages a movie full of almost and not quite...

Anyway, a Sheik has a bunch of diamonds stolen, Modesty is hired to get them back by a committee of stuffy British tropes. Thus begins the rather silly and pointless plot. Dirk Bogarde chills around his lair with his organist and his lackeys and his dominatrix buddy who tortures mimes, occasionally sending a henchman or two off in an attempt to stop Modesty, who does not seem to be trying all that hard to do anything but look gorgeous and bemused.

There's only one big explosion--right at the opening--and very little in the way of the elaborate schemes and getaways or fancy lethal gadgets usually found in spy movies. We do get some lovely international locales--London, Paris, that fabulous Mediterranean villa--but that and the sensational outfits are about all we have from the high-gloss world of international espionage we all know so well from the movies. But apparently Losey admitted he had seen virtually nothing of the genre he was supposed to be parodying. That is not a good sign.

The movie ends with a romantic duet amidst gunfire and Arabs on jet-skis. It's meant to be exciting and amusing: It winds up being more dull and dumb. Frankly, Monica Vitti kicks more ass as the suicidal perfume heiress in The Scarlet Lady.

There were plenty of spy film spoofs during the 60s--Danger: Diabolik, Casino Royale, Dean Martin's Matt Helm films. None were entirely successful, but they all had their finer points. Mostly, when Modesty Blaise tries to be silly, it simply winds up being stupid. Still, this movie is a nice piece of eye candy and if you put it on in the background with Serge Gainsbourg or Stereo Total on the sound system, it should work quite nicely.

The Wild World of Batwoman

What do you get when you combine go-go-girls, seances, "happy" pills, hearing aids, bare midriffs, lecherous middle-aged men, "Oriental languages," chocolate milk, the Watusi, mad scientists, pool parties and government surveillance?

The Wild World of Batwoman, that's what!

Another flick that operates on an Ed Wood-level of competence, The Wild World of Batwoman is an odd hodgepodge of leftover plot points and cheap sets. It makes the 60s Batman television series look like Game of Thrones..

There's an odd opener of two blondes (one of whom looks a lot like Amy Schumer) and a brunette in baby doll nighties blathering about strawberry yogurt and vampires--apparently this bit was tacked on when the producers were sued for copyright infringement (Who knows why they wouldn't want their intellectual property associated with such a fine work of art as this?) and the movie had to be retitled She Was a Hippy Vampire, although this is all we will hear of vampires. Picking up scraps is part of the the aesthetic of The Wild World of Batwoman--the monster shots are cut in from another movie, there's also street footage of what might be Sweden.

Batwoman is played by une femme d'un certain age with a cockade of Siouxsie Sioux hair, a bustier and a Batman symbol drawn on her cleavage--with eyebrow pencil, I'm guessing. The Batgirls seem to be a random assortment of go-go dancers and cocktail waitresses who recite a lot of Girl Scout-like oaths and "fight evil with all sincerity." We see a guy get mugged, a Batgirl get roofied and kidnapped--the Batgirls' crime-fighting skills seem to be limited to the Frug, the Pony and calling for help. Compared to them, Yvonne Craig's Batgirl is Imperator Furiosa.

So, one of the Batgirls is kidnapped by a couple of motley henchmen and an inept mad scientist with the standard creepy deformed assistant. It turns out they are in the service of Batwoman's arch-enemy, Rat Fink--no idea if he's related to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth's Rat Fink or the Rat Pfink of Rat Pfink a Boo-Boo. Apparently he is trying to get hold of some magical hearing aid that can eavesdrop on anyone, anywhere. And it's also an atomic bomb. Or something.

You know the Ajax company that occasionally pops up in the Disney universe, employers of incompetent ghost exterminators and spluttering ducks? They are too high-end for The Wild World of Batwoman, hence they use the knockoff, factory seconds version...

So, there's much rushing back and forth and escaping and getting kidnapped. The mad scientist keeps dispensing happy pills to everyone, because somehow there's not enough footage of Batgirls (and the occasional hunchbacked assistant) endlessly go-go dancing in midriff tops. That's what the happy pills make you do: Gyrate like it's inpatient talent night on American Bandstand.

Then our plot takes another bizarre turn as suddenly Batwoman needs to contact the spirit world (by holding hands around a table, these folks being too cheap to spring for a Ouija board) to tell her where the bad guys' lair is. Which is odd, because Batwoman has already been to said lair, but "it was dark" and she just can't find it now. Huh? Is it in one of those subdivisions where all the streets are named for types of cacti and all of the houses look alike? Which is actually entirely possible--like the "torture chamber" of Olga's Girls was obviously someone's basement full of random stuff, the "lab" in The Wild World of Batwoman is clearly a garage down to the shelves of cardboard boxes and side door entrance.

The Wild World of Batwoman is dopey and illogical but amusing nonetheless. It's girl power at its goofiest--actually, Amy Schumer's next movie should be a low-budget piece of superchick schlock with Neil Sedaka's "Bad Blood" as a theme song. All the girls will be non-supermodels--Melissa McCarthy, Margaret Cho, Kristen Schaal, Niecy Nash, Jinkx Monsoon, Fran Liebowitz, holographic LaWanda Page. They can let Jennifer Lawrence be their Lena Dunham, maybe bring John Waters out of retirement...