Census Bloodbath: I Loathe New York

Year: 1984

Director: Abel Ferrara

Cast: Tom Berenger, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Scalia

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Fear City follows an ex-boxer named Matt Rossi (Tom Berenger), who is haunted by memories of accidentally killing an opponent. He is now a promoter for exotic dancers, and a killer is hunting them down one by one. He attempts to solve the murders while actual detective Al Wheeler (Billy Dee Williams) attempts to find the evidence pinning the crime on Matt. Also Matt wants to get back together with his ex, exotic dancer and drug addict Loretta (Melanie Griffith), who is currently in a relationship with another dancer, Leila (Rae Dawn Chong).

Analysis: Well, this movie sure is star-studded! At least to the degree that the TV movie slashers of the era were, and that's not meant to be damning with faint praise. It's even got a name brand slasher director in Abel Ferrara, who had previously helmed The Driller Killer in 1979. Unfortunately, it's merely content to be a sleazy movie that alternates slayings with long scenes of strip performances and not in the "gee, isn't this artistic and fun" approach that the later Stripped to Kill would take.

And honestly? The slasher elements are pretty shit in this entry. It's much more committed to being a psychological portrait of an ex-boxer than it is to be a movie about murder, and while I suppose that's a fine impulse, it's executed poorly and really saps the energy away from the slasher element. Like many slashers that don't have a killer picking off a group of people one by one in an isolated location, it doesn't give the victims much time to establish themselves with the audience before they're taken out, and the kill scenes are mere flashes that sometimes last no more than three seconds.

I guess I'm not advocating for this already misogynistic film to revel in the mutilation of women, but the allegedly gritty urban stories they choose to prioritize over the murders are a real bummer to sit through. While I can see some cult film audiences finding camp enjoyment in, say, Billy Dee Williams spouting off ethnic slurs like he's entering a bigotry contest, it just didn't deliver anything I really hoped I would be seeing. 

The one saving grace of the movie is the fact that its killer is fucking weird. Between killings, we see brief glimpses of him at home, writing his manifesto and practicing karate moves naked. It sure isn't a film-saving element, but Fear City is in desperate need of anything remotely interesting outside of the vague inherent charms of watching a bunch of actors who know they deserve better bumming around a sleazy movie.

Killer: The Killer (Neil Clifford)

Final Girl: Loretta (Melanie Griffith)

Best Kill: One of the victims gets hit with nunchuks while walking through the park, so that's neat.

Sign of the Times: Loretta's queerness only exists in service of her relationship to Matt and not an actual thing that seems to be coming from within her personality.

Scariest Moment: One of the victims tearfully describes her fingers being snipped with scissors, intercut with shots of the previous night's incident.

Weirdest Moment: Any time the movie cuts to what the killer is up to.

Champion Dialogue: "Bad things have been happening to me. I need some money."

Body Count: 8

1. Silver is stabbed.
2. Mafioso #1 and
3. Mafioso #2 are shot in a drive-by.
4. Leila dies in the hospital.
5. Stripper is nunchuked to death.
6. Cindy is slashed with a sword.
7. Jorge is hanged offscreen.
8. The Killer is boxed to death.

TL;DR: Fear City is a sleazy exploitation movie that doesn't offer enough interesting material to redeem itself.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 627

I Do Believe They Think I Am Some Sort Of God

Year: 1983

Director: Richard Marquand

Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher

Run Time: 2 hours 11 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Capping off a trilogy is a tricky thing. Indiana Jones did it right, redefining the dynamic by roping in Sean Connery as Indy’s father. But so often a trilogy can descend into silly spectacle like Scream 3 or fade into relative anonymity like The Godfather: Part III. And how does one expect to follow two pristine entries like Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back? It’s a challenging proposition, so I don’t blame George Lucas & Co. for not really trying.

Ya burnt! Let’s get into my justification before the people with pitchforks find out where I live.

For the first time in the trilogy, things pick up more or less where they left off. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is still frozen in carbonite, providing the sluglike crime boss Jabba the Hutt’s (Larry Ward) walls with quite the conversation piece. Leia (Carrie Fisher) is still in love with him for no discernible reason. And Luke (Mark Hamill) is still a whiny spacebaby, only now he styles himself as a Jedi Knight, despite never actually having finished his training with the ailing Yoda (Frank Oz). They rescue Han from Jabba’s wretched hive of scum and villainy, and rejoin the Rebellion to aid their mission to stop the Empire from completing work on a brand new Death Star.

Luke’s true test of becoming a Jedi master begins here: will he succumb to his hate and anger and become a pawn of Darth Vader (David Prowse body, James Earl Jones VO) and the wicked Emperor (Ian McDiarmid)? Or will he find the light and hope and crap that will guide him to the right side of the Force? A battle ensues on and in orbit of the forest moon of Endor, with Han, Leia, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) fighting alongside a native tribe of teddy bears called Ewoks (Warwick Davis and a bunch of other people) to shut down the shield surrounding the star and Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) leading the space battle above, because I guess he was the only named character they had left and Obi Wan’s ghost (Alec Guinness) wasn’t gonna do it, as much as his death entirely fails to hamper his presence in the material world.

In another life, George Lucas probably would have been a ghost hunter.

Return of the Jedi has been the subject of much fan derision over the years. “The Ewoks are stupid! It’s just another Death Star!” I have an equally low opinion of the film, but for almost entirely different reasons. Although I agree that the Ewoks are poorly executed with their stiff, unmoving plastic surgery lips, their presence grants us a reprieve from the biggest weakness of Jedi: the human characters.

Luke, Leia, and Han Solo have never had particularly interesting arcs, because they’ve never really been asked to. But all of a sudden, it’s the end of a trilogy. Some kind of arc needs to be fulfilled, so the trio is tossed into a character development blender set to warp speed. Luke especially gets hit full in the face with his so-called emotional journey, squashed into the “inner conflict between light and dark” storyline implied by Empire. His endless, tedious exchanges with Darth Vader and the Emperor would be interesting if we had any insight into his character or the struggles this script pretends he has, but it’s just a mountain of New Age Forcebabble with completely incomprehensible stakes.

Return of the Jedi also lurches from a major gearshift tonally. Where Luke’s half of the story grows more needlessly serious and introspective, the rest of the film descends into the lunatic chaos of a cartoon. Yes, the Ewoks are a symptom of this, but they’re by a wide margin less irritating than Jabba the Hutt’s cabal of snickering evil puppets, which look like rejected goblins from Labyrinth. Or the dastardly calliope score. Or the hyperbolic screams every unnamed character seems to give whenever they’re knocked over.

But I kind of loved those screams, so I won’t dwell on that.

It’s taken me about a week to crank this review out, because I just can’t find it in my heart to give a crap about Return of the Jedi. It’s a thin endcap to a massive franchise, and that’s fine. It does enough to not stomp all over the massive legacy of Star Wars, both as a special effects spectacle (the land speeder chase on Endor is beyond reproach, even if it has some shaky rear projection) and as a blockbuster titan (They may not be up to much this time around, but there mere presence of the returning characters is magnetic enough to overcome that; and John Williams is mostly coasting on old compositions, but what compositions they are!) but it’s really just not that good.

I hate to say it, but it’s true. Return of the Jedi is all over the place, shoving characters into and out of its lopsided narrative at random (poor Boba Fett – I’ve never understood exactly why the bounty hunter who appears in five minutes of Empire is so darn-tootin’ popular, but he deserves better than the Three Stooges demise he’s handed here), lurching through a truncated repeat of the Death Star plot, and ladling a heavy second helping of family lineage intrigue that drowns continuity. It’s still Star Wars, so it’s at least an engaging popcorn space adventure, but Return of the Jedi was the first time the series showed signs that not every entry in the canon was going to be an out-and-out masterpiece.

TL;DR: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi is a tonally imbalanced, childish conclusion to an otherwise terrific trilogy.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 972

Reviews In This Series

Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Edwards, 2016)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (Howard, 2018)

Well Princess, It Looks Like You Managed To Keep Me Here A While Longer

Year: 1980

Director: Irvin Kershner

Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher

Run Time: 2 hours 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Our continued journey into the original Star Wars trilogy has immediately taken us from one of the most incalculably important blockbuster films of all time to the pinnacle of sequeldom: one of the few part 2’s that most cinephiles agree is an improvement on the original. Whether or not I subscribe to that belief will soon be revealed…

Not that it actually matters in the grand scheme of things.

The Empire Strikes Back (or Star Wars: Episode V, as the opening crawl would proudly and befuddlingly proclaim) gets right to the point, now that all the pesky mythmaking has been dispensed of in Star Wars (now retconned with the pointless subtitle Episode IV: A New Hope – Big Brother insists it has always been this way). We join our hero Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) at the Rebel stronghold on the ice planet Hoth. The Empire discovers their whereabouts and the forces flee after a battle that boldly insists that, where Star wars was a dazzling spectacle the likes of which you’d never seen before, this was turning things up to 11.

After the battle, Luke takes droid pal R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) to the swamp planet Dagobah to train to be a Jedi master under the tutelage of Yoda (Frank Oz). Han Solo (Harrison Ford), who wanted to ditch the Rebels long ago, finds himself tasked with evading Imperial forces, towing along Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), and reluctant love interest Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). They eventually converge when it comes time to battle the evil Darth Vader (David Prowse body, James Earl Jones voice).

Watch out, Luke! He’s armed with a light saber and Larry Springer test results!

This is easily the shortest Star Wars plot summary I’ve ever written, and for good reason. There’s really not a hell of a lot of story here, as the film divides most of its time between the swashbuckling radio serial adventures of the Millennium Falcon crew and Luke’s spiritual journey in the swamp. Both of these halves are strong and have their own unique merits, but by the end they fail to cohere into something resembling a distinct storyline. The Empire Strikes Back is the interstitial link between the first and last entries in a trilogy, and it really feels like it.

But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Star Wars movies just don’t have very solid plotting, so this is pretty much par for the course. The real sin in this narrative is committed on Princess Leia, who has had a spine-ectomy in the years between A New Hope and now, converting from a headstrong, silver-tongued firecracker to a cooing damsel in distress opposite Harrison Ford, with whom we’re begged to believe she has chemistry. It might be the result of the performances or just the profound chastity of the Star Wars universe, but the only sparks that are flying here are from Chewbacca repairing the warp drive.

Sorry, guys. I’m sure you can find a nice, cheap pitchfork sharpener on Amazon.

But Star Wars has never been about story. It’s about a universe, and boy does Empire build on what is mostly implied by Star Wars. We explore the meaning of the Force more, yeah yeah whatever (the magic powers are cool, but I’m sick of ancient yogis trying to convince Luke not to use his awesome laser sword to slice the crap out of everything), but we also get to really stretch our limbs and see what majestic planets and mighty creatures it has to offer.

The sheer ambition of Empire is astonishing, but by pushing the envelope even further, it also opened itself up to more effects that didn’t quite age well. Honestly the proportion of stiff puppets of obvious rear projection shots is probably slightly higher than the relatively low budget original, but on that same token its successes are much more resounding. The cloud city of Bespen, the asteroid cluster, the swamps of Dagobah, and the chilly wasteland of Hoth are realized in grand Space Opera fashion.

And now that George Lucas has stepped down from his wobbly director’s chair, boy does the action sing. From the get-go there’s much more movement clarity and geographical precision in the flying battles: You can actually tell who’s in which ship, what exactly they’re doing, and what direction the lasers are firing (from which cannon), which is invaluable fuel to get your heart pumping. And when the film’s climactic light saber battle arrives, all caution is thrown to the wind. It’s a glorious sequence, a broadly expansive bit of light-show combat through the steam-filled underbelly of Bespen that is the single most visually striking scene in the entire trilogy, making expert use of color, light, and the camera in addition to its groundbreaking effects, something the films so frequently forget to do.

Behold.

So, there you have it. The Empire Strikes Back polishes the gem that was Star Wars into a dazzling sparkle of adventure cinema. It builds on that already iconic universe (as does John Williams with his score, heaping even more bombastic themes into the mix) and bestows it with actual filmmaking skill in addition to fine technical craftsmanship.

Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of the already weak characters. They drift aimlessly though the beautifully environs of this movie, hardly even trying to glom onto a morsel of an arc or – heaven forbid – a sustained conflict. And Mark Hamill slips to the back of the acting pack with an explosive overreaction in an iconic moment. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Luckily Yoda is a solid clean-up hitter, bringing an indelible Frank Oz energy that makes the Hamill scenes not only watchable but incredibly fun.

So, is Empire Strikes Back better than Star Wars? In many quadrants, it’s an unequivocal improvement. But in just as many, it doesn’t capture quite the same scrappy magic. For me personally, it’s still a toss-up, but a good one. Both are incredible works of blockbuster filmmaking that I’m grateful have brought so much joy to so many people around the world.

TL;DR: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is a bigger, not necessarily better, but equally impressive sequel.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1062

Reviews In This Series

Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Edwards, 2016)
Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (Howard, 2018)