Saw II (2005)
I was really impressed by the first Saw, but something about the sequels always warned me off. Well, I finally got around to watching this and I’ve got to say it’s very skippable. The first red flag was 10 minutes in when the detective realized the name of the metalworks manufacturer was right on the side of the first deathtrap… so they bust through that door with a SWAT team. That’s how police respond to clues? Now I know where our tax dollars are going.
A lot of the enjoyment in the first film came from trying to figure out what was going on, and watching the protagonists try to work out the clues. They basically seemed like good, normal people in a horrible conundrum. But here, I didn’t like any of them at all except Jonas. I didn’t really have any empathy for them, since they're just treated as meatbags, not real people with depth. We do learn a little about Det. Mathews, but even so, none of these characters really show admirable qualities that make you root for them. The most likable person in the story is Jigsaw! At least he shows some style and cleverness. Although, honestly, the house setting plays out pretty boringly, and the “traps” are pretty mundane.
Now that The Walking Dead is out and there’s decent horror on TV every week, this kind of story just doesn’t hold up. On TWD, you really see the limits pushed for what people have to go through to survive. Their wills are tested, and their personal stories are compelling. I got none of that from Saw II. There are some good ideas in the script, but the execution of them just did nothing for me.
Took a break from scary movies to celebrate All Saint's Day (Nov. 1st) with
Joan of Arc (1948)
The above video actually is some pretty cool behind-the-scenes stuff. Man, people burn this story again and again, but it just never dies. Look how many of these things there are:
https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=joan-of-arc
This was the last directorial effort of
Victor Fleming, who had done Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. I didn't realize but apparently it was a huge flop, which really disappointed him. Audiences stayed away from the film when
Ingrid Bergman's affair with director
Roberto Rossellini was revealed while the movie was in release, because they considered it blasphemous for an adulterous woman to be playing a saint. Bergman is very pretty, of course, but she looked far too old for the part! What had worked on stage was more obvious on film, where it's clear she was 33 playing 19. Well, okay, she could've passed for late 20s, but still.
This is one of those old movies that drives me crazy... everyone is French, but of course they're not going to cast all French-speaking actors. But they make zero attempt to reduce the broad American accents of the French townspeople. Then a lot of the royalty has these posh British accents. I can only imagine how a French person at the time would've felt seeing one of their great national stories this way. The film leans hard on the drama (too hard in the end) but does have one great battle scene....until the point when Joan realizes her army is retreating and (injured) charges forward to rally them again...it's so successful that Joan rallies an injured horse to get up and fight!
Although the film was not really a commercial success upon release, it was partly due to RKO's poor publicity campaign (which producer
Walter Wanger blamed on then-RKO president
Howard Hughes). It did get 7 Academy Award nominations, and was a pretty big spectacle of a film. However due to its initial poor performance, Hughes' studio cut 45 minutes from the film and re-released it, to no avail, which was the default version until 1998. I watched the full 2 1/2 hour version, in which the Christian proselytizing is quite strong, and the drama and debate over Joan's holiness really takes center stage ... it gets quite tiresome in the dragged-out final act. It also leans rather heavily on apocryphal stories, but not in the most fun way. It's a mixed bag, and I still greatly prefer The Messenger, but it was really unfairly maligned. Worth a watch for fans of that period's films.