Ghost Ship opens with a shipload of people getting bisected and ends with a profoundly unsatisfying explosion/sinking sequence that shows that five years of technological advancements was not enough to bridge the gap between a $20 million movie and James Cameron’s ten times more expensive Titanic. And, you know, right now, where I’m at in my life, that’s enough. Steve Beck wasn’t trying to be the next James Cameron, he just a guy who liked naked lady ghosts.
The 13 Ghosts remake, playfully titled Thir13en Ghosts, is a challenging movie to rate. It’s a tight 90-minutes of campy, extremely 2000s filmmaking. It’s also a horror movie that’s not scary at all, with an objectively dreadful script. So what should I do with that? I guess it’s really all in that title: a silly leetspeak rendering of a cult classic gimmick movie. At the time, I could understand critics ripping into 13 Ghosts. But now? Now it’s a nostalgic link to the days when I would have maybe rented something like this for a sleepover.
If you want to know what “blank check” filmmaking is like, look no further than Robert Zemeckis in 1999. In the middle of shooting the cursed Cast Away, they decided to take a long hiatus so that Tom Hanks could lose a bunch of weight and grow his hair and beard all crazy. I don’t know how you’re supposed to spend your break away from a technically-innovative, $90 million-dollar A-list project shot on location on an island in Fiji, but Zemeckis decided to take his crew and shoot another $100 million-dollar movie with even more A-listers. What Lies Beneath is a profoundly Hitchcock-influenced thriller starring Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold, and Harrison Ford, that grumpy old. Was Zemeckis biting off more than he could chew? You know, I’m not sure.
It’s August now, which means Colin, John, and I have completed a total of 10 Criterion Months over nine years. Is this an occasion worth celebrating? Well, after the first time I ran our stats in 2021, I always knew I wanted to do an even more robust breakdown someday. You tell me, when is the best time to crunch these numbers again? This year, upon the completion of our tenth Criterion Month? Next year, to mark a decade of Criterion Months? Maybe 2027, when we will have done one full calendar year’s worth of Criterion Months (but just shy of 365 reviews)? I don’t know, I just chose the one I got to write soonest. Let’s look at the charts!
It’s a cliche at this point but, if you don’t mind indulging me, Infernal Affairs III makes Infernal Affairs II look like Infernal Affairs. Released just a year after the first movie, Infernal Affairs III exists to show fools like me that I had no idea what was *really* going on back when I enjoyed the story that would one day become The Departed. Is dumping this much lore on top of an already dense story a good idea? As a Star Wars fan, I feel confident in saying: eh, sometimes, I guess, but usually no!
These last few years I’ve been jumping around the World of Wong Kar-wai so I think a little bit of context helps for Happy Together. In 1994, while working on the epic Ashes of Time, Wong took a break and made Chungking Express to clear his head and fall in love with filmmaking again and it ended up being a huge hit and made him an international darling. The next year, he followed that up with the stylistically similar Fallen Angels, which further earned him widespread recognition. Both movies were heavily influenced by the looming handover of Hong Kong to China, so when his next film, Happy Together, was slated to be released just weeks before the handover, everyone expected this would be what it was about. And they were sort of right, it’s just almost entirely set in Buenos Aires.
Merely seven months after their first adventure, the heroic trio of Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Michelle Yeoh return Executioners. And if you thought things were bleak before, let me tell you, this one starts with a bang! Nuclear war has poisoned the world and the survivors are forced to grovel at the feet of anyone who can provide clean water. Hong Kong’s president (Kwan Shan) is desperately trying to keep the government on top while a masked, disfigured maniac (Anthony Wong) pulls the strings from the shadows. This is a world that needs heroes more than ever before, so where are they?
