I am an elder millennial, so I grew up largely with Joel, Mike, and the ‘Bots in Mystery Science 3000 which now automatically makes me an expert in bad cinema. Unfortunately, Hollywood produces a number of bad films or shall rather say very poor films with all my personal pointers red flags for a bad film. That said though, suppose you catch Escape from Germany with a person who has witnessed the horrors of The Giant Gila Monster (or Escape from L.A. for that matter), then expect plenty of elbows and winks, seen because this film violates nearly all the rules of creative story telling.
Sparks fly as Pamela creates a one woman show and brings together all the characters from her second book including Angela, Fumiko, Max, and Rayan. Pamela has brought out their flaws that made them real and more relatable than any other characters drawn from previous Hollywood romances. All the writers claim that it was impossible to adapt the book into a book or make a good movie and you could see the issues clearly from the script which has more holes than Swiss cheese. Watching the complete movie feels like a 3 hour long heavy sermon watched back to back without anything interesting worth remembering. Even biggest fans of author’s work would face hurdles as they feel like they were thrown back in time with no advancement, while the plot felt static and unsettled. Would Pamela’s adaptation succeed? Well, maybe? Probably not. The same can be said for James Bond actors surprisingly switching accents around, it just doesn’t work out with a specified genre.
Escape from Germany poses a very interesting question, “Well, what if those same people were mostly stuck in Nazi Germany?” This circumstance, as it turns out, is just as fascinating as my LDS buddies trying to schedule a visit to the DMV. And if this film is to be believed, the same stakes involved. Possibly, the stakes for the DMV are higher, since doing nothing has a price, but in this miserable movie, the heroes seem almost like puppets who follow orders from their leaders who have some apprehensive and hazy views about Germany in 1939 (the leaders, because the characters have zero initiative apart from the occasional prayer during the action of last major tense scenes).
The film focuses on attempts to rescue the Mormon missionaries in Germany in the year 1939. As the rotten fascist bootheel slithers towards Europe, the President of the Mission possibly receives a revelation (or perhaps not, the movie portrays both God and Spies in that scene) that Germany will proceed to invade Poland and shut its borders for good. Due to the absence of modern telecommunications technology, the Mission President has around a dozen young un evacuated missionaries so he sends a young one called Anderson to go and bring the remaining few.
I’m still partway through We Were the Lucky Ones and World War 2 in Color and I loved them both, so maybe I’m in the mood to be harsh with any movies that display even the slightest sympathy for the Reich well, harsh is putting it mildly. Escape from Germany is not Triumph of the Will and that’s the point. An observer during the continuing American civil turmoil noted that racism seldom appears like someone wearing a Klan dress it more often appears like a medium track news editors disparaging the personalities of Black and brown children killed by the police. Escape from Germany is in the same category we, the spectators, understand that the Nazis are the antagonists because they hurl and scream at Jews who are trying to escape to Denmark. Most of the major action sequences in this excruciatingly dull movie focused the Jewish family that is featured. It doesn’t take a PhD to declare that the Jewish inhabitants of the Reich could not travel where and when they pleased. Likewise, the best we get from real life Gestapo-officers are shots of them looking upset for some reason and stealing cash from chubby white guys.
And, just to emphasize that there are good people on both sides, one of the conscripted Wehrmacht soldiers is a good Mormon boy too! Yeah, this whole film is filled with such strange turns of emotion that detract from any possibility of the film being interpreted as an outright indictment of fascism or Nazi policies.
This film did bring me a very new feeling. I happen to be a brain tumor survivor who was diagnosed with my first tumor age 17 which means my whole life has been as a minority who passes easily I know I am just one claim rejection away from being dead. Since this film’s allergic to anything negative about the Nazis, never are the Nazis ever shown doing anything heinous like violent acts. One of the protagonists goes to Germany for a book burning wherein a Bad German props her up and burning The Book of Mormon, (or one of its variants, I guess, from the situation). That’s in fact the last Nazi violence depicted in the film. After it the Nazis are made the laughable ones. You might recall Jews having it slightly rough during that time and era, from perspective, you might be surprised that the most horrible on screen violence against the poor background Jewish family is having their things lying in disarray around them.
Which is both callous and distasteful, but is, alas, no more threatening than “8 year old in the principal’s office.” Later in the film, there is a scene in which centurion Wehrmacht troops are shown shooting at a group of Mormon refugees but they are so inhumanely incompetent that the hero, an old man carrying two large suitcases, somehow dodges the bullets in front of the camera. The most showed himself Nazis did not shoot, stab or launch missiles on the screen, they only stared angrily at the heroes and tried to rob them, stealing their money. In this film, the part played by the Menzies affording himself the USSR’s attack, I said suffered infliction, then and even, so fact UK Librarian, attractive one, can up even on test scale. I felt, after watching 90 h of footage, members searching for missing missionaries, lots of them, what can do in this country one may know dreadful things is happening to those not in the group and the worst that can happen to them is losing one’s cellphone. Which is awful, but in a way, not as awful as life in Dachau. Also, it is very important to note that although the Mormons would sooner or later find themselves in a Nazi death camp this has never been said of the movie, still.
One very easy solution to get this film for a good viewing experience would be to make one of the characters, during one of the tedious scenes of office clerking (which come too often and usually, I wish writers would get this into their heads that if you have a scene as useless as the ‘He’s got all the missionaries’ scene, you have way too many scenes in your film, and you need a professional script editor), find out about Dachau. As it stands; such characters are just going through what the majority of tourists going to foreign countries have to put up with: useless and corrupt locals, unpleasant customs/border guards, and baksheesh. That’s material fit for a travel article, not a full length feature film lasting more than an hour and half. I fully understand that Navigating Difficult Customs Agents is a title of a movie no one wishes to watch, but that is a phrase that summarizes the film perfectly.
This film can, however, be called in contrast coyly devout, in a ‘wow the world is weird’ kind of way. I know for a fact that the contemporary outlook of Christianity has evolved from how it is portrayed in all of those scary depictions like this one however when I was four a Lassen pastor somehow thought it was warranted to tell me that I would be going to hell if I didn’t become a self obsessed conservative nut job like them. I can say for sure that it was because of a good offense that when Jesus was thrown into the general picture it was right after the vile Christians, and that was pretty much interchangeable, clean good. Before then about their hypocrisy, where for all real world purposes JEBUS’ name was used like salt when preaching, screaming for its followers to just obey the rules, there is little doubt. Christians have already surrounded me once so its comical they ask me multiple times for prayers I assume for something more rational like charity, so in this case, it wouldn’t work either. I literally need help from everyone, especially since my existence is unbearable.
The ever-enthusiastic Cheepy Christians quickly joined heads and started praying at that very moment. What they recited sounded a lot like 6th Graders panicking because they forgot to submit their oral assessment. “The Panicked 6th Grader’s Prayer Free Verse Submission Irrespective of How Indecent It Might be”. Call it what you want, it was god awful and so cringe. My friends, who were Mormons, on the other hand, made sure they came in at a dedicated time to pray for me and informed me that prayer is not a replacement for medicine but rather shows that the whole of the community, or ideally, God, would be backing me in my endeavors. That was genuinely a nice feeling. There was no need to depict the two examples above as bearing any resemblance to Latter Day Saints, the same religion that most of the neighbors practice with notable divergence of time bear. This film is, nonetheless, quite atypical in this regard as LDS missionaries do not pray the Jebu’s prayer in public very often. Of course, I do appreciate that the film is attempting to depict the LDS Church positively but instead of watching the missionaries PAUSE TO PRAY AT THE CAMERA which took 8 seconds I would prefer to watch the process of the scouts reviewing lists.
It is just uncomfortable, unpleasant. And once again, Mormons live next to me and I, for one, have never noticed them praying in open view (which I do thank you guys for). It’s weird too that such people go on promoting ‘our is the one true religion’ attitude and yet they appear as if you don’t want to bump into them even on the road.
It also behind quite a lot of excitement watching the whole tired and monotonous shambles of a film to be able to discern a film’s subtext from the perspective of the crypto fascist or religious beliefs concentration. Did I once again mention Outline MST3K enemies? Blended into my teenage brain the artistic masterpiece of Arizona Werewolf in conjunction with This Island Earth formed in me certain diagnostic features of good horror (at least) movies all the way from repulsively nasty disasters that were Circle of Iron and Cry Wilderness to the ‘It’s amusing in a strange way,’ like Road House (yes that Road House that is so obnoxiously, and consistently terrible that it deserves every single Oscar available). And the terrific scene is once again in the picture two burly fellows of indifferent appearance trying to figure out how exactly will they perform either one of those boring household chores, and yes you guessed it, the camera will then cut to the heroes performing those chores. Nowadays, if you wish, you can literally plan out household chores with the characters and a number of other work related processes.
This example is relevant for me because the protagonists get engaged in an incredible amount of clerical work, and talk about their clerical work as well. To be fair, ‘Trying to keep track of around thirty absent missionaries’ will necessitate phonetic listings and making a few calls, but that occupies 5 minutes or 5 regards of this film in total. It does not even warm up to why such writing efforts were written in this manner, as one of the (female) secretaries who appears quite astonished, before going on to speed read the film, was able to read the contents of the document very quickly. With regard to any other woman contributing to this facet of the drama, I could not care less (in all honesty, the cast is virtually identical to a pack of marsh mallows with some blonde women thrown in for variety). I am however concerned about the list making and keeping regarding the plot itself. If this narrative was any good, perhaps I could sell it to the producers as a pseudo pro Christian retake of Schindler’s List, where the audience is composed of the very religious easily offended.
The film is packed with remarkable interludes and sub-plots, but it nevertheless carries an overarching theme. It is quite entertaining when the viewers see the makers putting up each country’s Church praising Moses and the Promised Land. But there is a point and place for such humor. What was quite shocking was their apologetic centeredness on them. There was also just no need for some dramatic reenactment centered around the Church. To their crazily irrational belief, all of the local LDS leadership’s prophecies regarding Germany and the Church were futuristic to a great degree. This was most especially seen in regards to the Law of Joseph and the relationship it had with the local community each time they placed Israel’s flag above the church at the center. And to top it all, Einstein, who represents everything the Nazis loathe, was someone they treated so affectionately. Talk about history being a ‘choose your own adventure.
There’s this uncle I have that’s a die-hard fan of The Donald, absolutely hates black people, and swears that there are Jewish people working together to kill all Christians (and no, I’m not talking about the kind that says AIPAC is behind the US foreign policy). We do not talk about him at all. Because who needs the tsuris? Still, why a Mormon cinematographer director would deliberately seek to connect lads ideals to the Hitler whom he clearly hates is quite strange and abhorrent to me as well.
Aside from the deep tragedy that I actually paid to watch this film, and worse, I was wide awake and aware of my surroundings, the real tragedy of this film is that it seems the film was instead made on a very interesting and exciting topic that would have warranted such a film, but not this one.
The Great Escape it is far from being our protagonists, but Steve McQueen does not have it easy in this no nonsense film as his actions yield consequences and that is enough pain. But at the same time, this film is a classic for America’s twentieth century films.
Escape from New York The film is largely considered the epitome of John Carpenter and Kurt Russel in their respective Carpenter Dom and Russell ness. And it is also a kind of gentle satire on White Flight and on crime concern most heavily politicized by Nixon. The opening sequence should be viewed with caution, as it is a little freakish and a capsule of White America’s anxiety towards the urban infrastructure of the nation.
Escape from L.A. This is the part two of the above film, and as mentioned above, it is quite a franchise. “Escape from New York but with a SYFY twist,” that’s how I would encapsulate it. There is a slight upward trend towards absurdity with this film, however, this is where the movie comes across as brilliantly stupid. Unlike the preceding film, this film is not boring.
No Escape This is a film in which a future Ray Liotta serves time just as time starts moving forward in a penal colony located on a ragged island in the middle of nowhere? Mysterious question mark goes here for this film or rather the first scene of this film which is mainly watchable only in pieces has a glimpse of space travel and yet the US Government is sending its convicts to Molokai. Roger Ebert calls it a movie about Hawaiian scenery; ‘Mad Max Goes Hawaiian’, one could look at it that way too. However, it does have Dennis Hopper who spends most of the movie while most of the absolutely beautiful tropical scenery, which is still better than in the film Escape from Germany.
Escape from Planet of the Apes I have not seen this film, this is very true, however, I would bet a dollar that it is full of people in bad costumes portraying apes. In my personal calculus and as recommended by both of my parents, “Actors in cheap monkey outfits do literally anything in the world,” as a comparison to, “Actors in cheap suits do absolutely nothing at all except stand at train stations doing nothing for 90 minutes,” is somehow a better logic to follow. Unless of course, the purpose of the monkeys is to plan the removal of the head of the statue of liberty on a limited budget. That would be a better film.
Escape to Witch Mountain My age back then was probably 9 or 10 years, and Escape to Witch Mountain could easily contain content that could be considered much worse than Escape to Germany, but my focus on that movie was more about a rich tycoon who for reasons unknown to me, attempts to use the Magic Twins to scout and exploit the lands in search of Uranium. Unless the Magic Twins did the entire film going through maps and going uh, “There’s Uranium in these here hills,” then it is probably a good movie.
Escape from Mogadishu I have not seen this Korean film, but since I know it is now on actofbalance.com, I could in theory, without wearing pants and merry all, watch this, which is the concept that Escape from Germany set the level. To be brutal, are there any images of Egypt equally sorry, that would be equivalent to that of EG which may have probably set the bar at ‘literally any task, into which i do not have to commit any efforts or time to is better than this awful movie.’
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