Every month, Establishing Shot brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited.
To hear more about this month’s picks, be sure to join us for the live portion of this round-up, which will be presented as a virtual event tomorrow, December 13. Register now!
Aja Essex, contributor | Drunken Master II, aka The Legend of Drunken Master (1994)
It’s up for debate as to what the greatest final setpiece in an action film is. Stagecoach, The General, Whiplash, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Matrix, The Raid 2, Speed, SPEED RACER… You could rattle off dozens of titles from the canon and disagree with every person as to what sends the audience out on a high note. To my readers, I humbly propose that Drunken Master II a.k.a. The Legend of Drunken Master may contain one of, if not the greatest finale to any movie of all time. The follow-up to Jackie Chan’s breakout vehicle Drunken Master in 1978 directed by legendary fight choreographer Yuen Woo Ping, Drunken Master II is directed by Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong cinema god Lau Kar Leung. This was Jackie Chan going back to his roots as this was his first traditional martial arts movie since 1983, having made his bread and butter the Hong Kong action thrillers and comedies he helped popularize in the ’80s and ’90s. Jackie stars as the Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung and the deadly hijinks that ensue after Wong gets two boxes mixed up in a brawl.
I have chosen this as my final Establishing Shot Watch Party movie simply because I think for as much as we discuss the themes, cinematography, music, and acting performances from some our favorite films, I think it’s important to appreciate the physicality of cinema and the performers who give life to their characters by the way their bodies move and the interplay between image and movement. I don’t know if there was a modern movie star of the late 20th century that did that better than Jackie Chan, and Drunken Master II may just be the high point of what he aimed to accomplish as a performer.
Drunken Master II is available to rent or buy from Amazon, YouTube, Apple TV, and Google Play.
Laura Ivins, contributor | Watership Down (1978)
I remember a substantial amount of pathos in my childhood. I felt a real sense of danger watching E.T. Experienced profound sadness reading Bridge to Terabithia. I won’t claim that “kids today” don’t experience this — I don’t have enough exposure to kids’ media to compare — but I know others my age who sometimes express surprise that we regularly consumed content with real stakes, real danger, where death was a fact of life.
Watership Down often comes up in conversation. Sometimes a Gen Xer or Elder Millennial will joke that they were traumatized by the film, and even the beginning of Art Garfunkel’s “Bright Eyes” brings a sad lump to the throat.
And yet, we watched Watership Down over and over as children. It broke our hearts. But in a good way. It provided a safe avenue to process the inevitability of loss, and even more than that, showed that the end of a life fulfilled is not tragic. The Black Rabbit was not something scary to Hazel. He was an old friend.
Watership Down is streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy from Amazon, YouTube, Apple TV, and Google Play.
Noni Ford, contributor | Mermaids (1990)
A woman with questionable taste in men, a teenager with a fervent adherence to Catholicism, and a budding professional swimmer might seem like a random jumble of characters, but in Mermaids they make up the Flax family. Although we primarily follow Charlotte Flax (Winona Ryder) throughout the movie, her life is so filled with her family that part of her story is a portrait of them. And this family is anything but conventional, especially in the setting of small-town Massachusetts in 1963. As Charlotte fights to find a path in life separate from her mother (Cher), she struggles with a new romance and her faith. Interspersed with comedic voiceover from our teen heroine this film feels like a diary entry: intimate, embarrassing, dramatic, perceptive. This film isn’t about finding the answer to surviving adolescence or even figuring out how to not become your parents, it’s about accepting your family for all their messiness, quirkiness, and love. Which makes it the perfect holiday movie to me!
Mermaids is available to rent or buy from Amazon, Apple TV, and Vudu.
Jack Miller, contributor | The Ladies Man (1961)
Jerry Lewis created one of his masterpieces with this 1961 comedy, a triumph of artifice in which the idiotic yet totally sincere Humbert H. Heebert (Lewis) swears off dating women for good, only to take a job as errand boy in an all-girls boardinghouse. The massive, dollhouse-like set that Lewis and his technicians constructed for the film, which Jean-Luc Godard paid homage to in the sausage factory that necessitates a workers’ strike in Tout va bien (1972), remains one of the most intricate and beautiful in American cinema, and the spatial integrity of Lewis’s mise-en-scène here seems to anticipate the gloriously unified comic vision of Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967). The film is disquieting in its strangeness, its surreal yet tender tonality, with many of the gags emerging from stark juxtapositions in silence and sound. What emerges is a courageous examination of the self that celebrates total freedom and honesty.
The Ladies Man is available to rent or buy from Amazon, Apple TV, YouTube, Google Play, and Vudu.
Jesse Pasternack, contributor | Klaus (2019)
Klaus is one of the best films that I’ve seen in a long time. It is an animated film that takes what could seem like a tired narrative — the origin story of Santa Claus — and makes it feel vibrant and alive. Its writing is fantastic and contains so many of my favorite elements of storytelling (excellent and steep character arcs, a specific and detailed portrait of a place and the people in it, wonderful moments of emotion) and the film’s visual imagery is beautiful. This film manages to do all of that while being funny and expertly delivering timely and timeless messages about how the importance of helping others can end hatred and division. All of these things make Klaus a film to treasure and one which I will see again and again for years to come.
Klaus is streaming on Netflix.
Michaela Owens, Editor | Indiscreet (1958)
It’s such a shame that Ingrid Bergman didn’t do more comedies. A flawless actress, she could do it all, and Indiscreet is proof that she could handle comedy just as well as she could drama. To make it even more enthralling, Indiscreet is the second (and sadly final) pairing of Bergman and her friend Cary Grant after their searing work in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious twelve years earlier.
Bergman plays a stage actress who, despite a great career and friend-filled life, has become lonely. Something is missing — until Grant shows up at her apartment one evening. Even though he is married, albeit separated from his wife, he and Bergman embark on a passionate affair over many months with the understanding that it would be impossible for him to get a divorce. But is that necessarily the truth?
Completely in tune with one another, Bergman and Grant are comfortable, sweet, and flirtatious, their screen presences as luminous and stunning as ever. Perhaps what is most incredible about Indiscreet is that the middle-aged stars were allowed to play middle-aged people who meet and fall in love. It isn’t often that such a romance is the focus of a comedy, especially during the days of classic Hollywood, and the results are equivalent to sitting next to a warm fire, wrapped in a cashmere blanket with the best cup of cocoa you’ve ever had. With costumes by Dior, an apartment set I would kill for, witty direction by Stanley Donen, and the magic of Ingrid and Cary, it just doesn’t get more delicious than Indiscreet.
Indiscreet is streaming on Kanopy and the Roku Channel, and is available to rent or buy from Amazon, YouTube, Google Play, and Apple TV.
Note: I couldn’t find a decent trailer for this film, so enjoy this incredible clip of an exuberant Cary Grant dancing instead!