Finally a quality movie!!!

See?

I’m not quite sure why I bought this film… uhm… oh yeah — I was watching a movie doc about 80s special effects, and somebody there said that this movie had the best practical creature effects ever? Or something? I may be misremembering this totally…

Wow… is that matte painting? Surely that can’t be a real set — it’s huge.

Evil-Lyn!

I’ve never seen the cartoon this is based on, but I’m fascinated by the names already.

I think it’s a real, huge set! Wow. So much MDF.

But it’s really oddly shot. You’d think they’d want to show it off better than this — do some epic shots of people posing here, instead of shooting Dolph from the back half the time. Hm…

Oh, this is Goddard’s first and last directing job. He went on to design amusement park rides!

This film, along with Superman IV, led to Cannon and Golan/Globus eventually going bankrupt.

Now kiss.

Yes, yes, I know this is meant for children, but even as a movie for ten-year-olds, it’s kinda badly made? And boring? I had no hopes whatsoever for this being watchable — I mean, it’s a He-Man movie by Cannon! But it’s so much worse than you could reasonably expect.

It’s like they have no idea how to place people in a shot.

Oh the snark.

Accurate.

How do you spell “blocking” anyway?

It’s basically filmed like a no budget 50s film — but the thing is that this had a pretty decent budget — $17M, which wasn’t peanuts for Cannon. And they apparently spent all that money on the sound stage and moisturiser for Dolph, leaving no money to hire a crew that knows how to point a camera towards actors. Or perhaps the director just wouldn’t let them do their jobs?

Masters of the Universe. Gary Goddard. 1987. ⚀

“A film found in a skip.”

I thought I’d seen all of Godard’s 60s films, so I assumed that this was a more recent one. But nope.

I guess he’s both against artificial lighting and using a reflector now?

This is quite different from his earlier movies? Not as immediately likeable; more chaotic.

Godard did two other films the same year: La Chinoise and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. That’s pretty astounding.

Damn straight!

It’s… it’s a comedy, but the gag is that everybody’s terrible, and everybody shouts all the time. I’m just half an hour in, and I’m already exhausted.

Oh, there’s that guy…

Man, they had a huge budget for car wrecks for this film…

This has all of Godard’s 60s ticks and schticks, but it just seems to scattered and self-indulgent. That is, it looks like everybody involved enjoyed themselves, filming one silly scene after another. But it just doesn’t seem to cohere into anything interesting.

It might just be me — there’s something about late-60s “absurd” comedy that rubs me the wrong way. I couldn’t stand The Bed Sitting Room either, for instance. (It’s all LOOK HOW ABSURD WERE ARE BEING!!! WE”RE BEING TOTALLY SOCIALLY CRITIC AL AND STUFF!!!.) But everybody else loves this movie, so I’m probably just wrong.

Because I don’t think this works. At all.

It’s mostly tedious, but it looks good, so:

Weekend. Jean-Luc Godard. 1967. ⚂

So this is a straight-up documentary? I like it — most documentaries suck, but this is not the normal TV kind of documentary, with sound-bites from a bunch of talking heads. Instead it’s longer takes, with people just talking normally to each other (and not to the camera).

And then music and perfomances, and again, longer takes. I love that.

I’ve seen Grace Jones only twice — last time last year, and she was awesome! She gave it all; she was funny; she totally had her voice still; and it was a bit scary.

Oh! This movie from 2017, so I thought it was about er stuff from 2017. But it’s about the recording of the Hurricane album, which was released in 2008. Did this movie languish for a decade before it was released?

We’re getting complete songs from the album, live. I love that. This movie doesn’t even make any pretence towards catering to an audience that aren’t already hypnotised by Grace Jones — there’s no contextualisation, no recap of her life; we’re just dropped into the recording of the album and the press she’s doing and her visiting her family.

Yum yum yum

I admire the insistence of not giving any context — no voiceovers, no explanatory texts — but it leaves some of the drama totally mystifying.

You just imagine Grace Jones flying around with a full crew of people taking care of everything. Instead she’s doing her own makeup, she’s shucking the oysters herself, and she’s taking care of business herself. She’s such a nerd!

I love this film. But it’s so bewildering! I didn’t know you were allowed to make films like this any more! Perhaps you aren’t? Is that why it took that long to release this film? I don’t think I’ve seen a documentary made during the last five decades that’s this obsessed with not explaining what it’s about; that’s withholding this much information. (Even documentaries that try to hide the film crew ask leading questions like “tell us where you are” and then just edit it so that the response seems natural, but nope.) So on one hand, I love watching this, but on the other hand, I can barely stop my fingers from trying to google what’s going on here.

Right:

The documentary is fascinating and enjoyable but it still only gives us half a picture of its subject. Again and again, we clamour for more information. You’ll need to go elsewhere to get hold of any of the everyday details about Jones, her life, career and many collaborators.

But it’s great; I could have watched four more hours of this.

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami. Sophie Fiennes. 2017. ⚄