China Seas

(It’s from the Hazel Flagg collection.)

Romance is in the air…

See?

There’s a lot of stuff going on in this movie — a lot! There’s (at least) two love interests, somebody is going to steal some gold, there’s double-crossing, there’s a coward officer, there’s a typhoon, pirates, and several people are run over by a steamroller! It’s one of those movies where they’re throwing in everything they have…

… and it’s pretty entertaining.

(Even if it’s unexpectedly brutal.)

Dastardly Asians!!!

It’s pretty good. I mean:

Irving Thalberg had worked on the film since 1930 when he assigned three different writers to come up with three different treatments. By 1931 Thalberg had decided on the one storyline and spent the next four years working on a script with two dozen writers, half a dozen dir/and three supervisors.

It certainly feels like it’s been through dozen of script doctors who had added stuff, but it does work — it’s an entertaining movie.

But it’s a bit creaky.

China Seas. Tay Garnett. 1935. ⚃

Superman

Yay! We’re not starting with an origin story? Origin stories are the way Surf Dracula reproduces.

On the other hand, this is James Gunn, so it’s all kinda gross?

Cute CGI dog, though.

Eh… This looks kinda bad? I mean, the compositing? And of course the colour grading is all “let’s make everything grey” which I find really offputting.

I have to give it to Gunn — he’s gotten us into this movie extremely efficiently — nothing boring or dull, but it doesn’t feel too hectic, either.

Yes, that’s what all boardrooms look like. They have to save on energy.

Whatsisname is perfect as Lex Luthor — some of the other casting so far has been eh. Good Lois Lane, too.

Oh yeah, I read about this scene. It is indeed kinda boring, and Gunn’s hyperactive editing style doesn’t help.

Heh heh.

There’s a lot of pretty amusing gags here — they just keep on coming. I’m still slightly bored, though? I mean, it’s better than virtually all other super-hero movies, ever, but that’s a very low bar.

I liked it. Gunn’s a wise-ass, but his heart is in the right place. And he manages to do CGI-filled action scenes that still feel exciting — many a director fails trying to do that.

And it’s not that it felt too long? It probably could have done with being edited down a bit, but it’s an amiable movie.

So I’m gonna give it this, on a super-hero movie score scale:

Superman. James Gunn. 2025. ⚄

It’s so lenticular.

JCVD

It’s a pretty good little movie? If you’re planning on watching it, don’t read this blog post. It’s better to go in without knowing anything.

Oh, I get it.

I understand what they’re after with this colour grading, but it is brutally ugly, which is wearying after a while. And it’s shot on early digital video, which makes it doubly horrible.

Well… the structure of this movie works against it. The first part was fast-paced and initially confusing, but then we figured everything out. And immediately after we’ve figured everything out…

They show us everything that’s already happened from a different point of view, and this doesn’t really do much than tell us what we’ve already guessed.

(But it does add a lot of jokes. Pretty good gags.)

Oh, and now they’re going to do it all again and perhaps surprise us this time around?

No, that was just a fake-out.

Well… it’s a pretty good movie — there’s some original stuff in here. But it did feel a bit padded, and I rather lost interest after a while.

JCVD. Mabrouk El Mechri. 2008. ⚃