The Cutting Edge (Paul Michael Glaser, 1992)

Kate Moseley (Moira Kelly) is an Olympic-level figure skater in pairs. The 1992 games are fast approaching, and she needs a partner.

After an injury ends his hockey career, Doug Dorsey (D. B. Sweeney) is brought in as her partner.

Having burned through everyone else, Doug is Kate's last chance at Olympic gold.

As the pair struggle to train and work together, they begin to fall in love.

Kind of.

How to sum up this movie?

The Cutting Edge is not good but it is almost great. It fails to fully function at what it wants to be, but it gets close - and if it had succeeded I think it would have been awesome.

Does that count as an overall thought?

I was put onto this movie by the Bad Romance podcast (hosted by Jourdain Searles and Bronwyn Isaac). Before I continue, I reccomend listening to that podcast - they review bad romantic comedies and they are terrific - the hosts are insightful and funny, and they really delve into the subtexts of the films, the genre and broader issues of gender and sexual politics. In other words, way more insightful than this review!

I am a fan of movies which do not quite succeed at what they are aiming for, and the hosts’ critiques intrigued me. I tracked down a copy, watched it, and liked it so much I watched it two more times.

Part of the reason is that, while it does not work, there is something about the mechanics of the genres The Cutting Edge is combining that always work on me:

• The opposites attract and fall in love

• A team of underdogs learn how to work together and win at some kind of sporting competition

  
  

While they can be predictable, these kinds of stories are inherently dramatic. You want to see people fall in love; you want to see the underdog sports team win. We know how these stories end but that is part of the appeal. 

The other part of what makes it fascinating is seeing the ways in which the film fails to properly execute the story steps of either genre. 

In the end The Cutting Edge feels halfway between being a successful underdog sports movie and a romantic drama.

Thanks to a combination of script, casting and directorial choices, it fumbles at both. However, hat makes the movie fascinating is that it feels close to working.

As a premise, it sounds great: a hockey player and a figure skater have to work out their differences in order to get to the Olympics. It is a classic clash of opposites.

And it is also where the movie’s problems begin.

The relationship dynamic is an obvious riff on Taming of the Shrew, but the movie does not do much to fully flesh out these initial characterisations: Kate Mosley is presented as an entitled, bad-tempered rich heiress, Doug Dorsey is a macho salt of the earth from middle America.

What this movie is missing is context and a bit of nuance that would make its central pair feel like characters, and feel like a couple that makes sense. The movie also feels weighted toward Doug as both the protagonist in the pair’s conflict, and as the catalyst for bringing Kate down to earth.

For a variety of reasons, this balance between the leads does not work.

While the film is more concerned with showing how Kate’s wealth has made her a shitty person, the movie does not fully reckon with the pressures she is under to perform. Kate is introduced being verbally castigated by her longtime coach; a few scenes later we see an empty glass case that her father reveals is intended for Olympic gold.  These are important moments intended to show why Kate is the way she is.

But the movie has little empathy for her - she is still an entitled madam who must be taken down a peg.

The film appears to think that Doug is the more sympathetic of the film’s leads, but the casting (and the script) do not help his case.

The hosts of Bad Romance highlighted D. B. Sweeney as miscasting, and I completely agree. As a former hockey player with a chip on his shoulder, he is totally believable. As the romantic lead of a movie? Nope.

Every time he looks at Moira Kelly, I feel uneasy. He never comes off as charming or empathetic. When he makes sexual inferences in their early scenes, he feels like a creep. When he dunks on Kate, it feels like a jock’s bullying tactics. What chemistry they do have feels more like lust - a one night stand they will both regret. 

Sweeney is a fine actor, but he does not fit this movie.

Even though his set up indicates differently, the movie treats Doug as good and right, and not in need of change or growth. The movie thinks all he needs is a different outlet for his passion and to fall in love with somebody rather than sleep around.

Even at that script level, I never feel like we get an evolution in their relationship as a skating pair. There is no sense of compromise or even creation as Doug and Kate learn to work together - we get montages to show time passing but there needs to be an arc of growing collaboration. 

However, there is the tease of something more interesting in the movie which could have given Doug’s character some depth.

Doug is a macho guy who loves hockey, partying and sex (he says so). From early on, he shows discomfort with anything that goes against his (heterosexual) sense of masculinity. 

When he is first shown a pair of figure skates, he shows revulsion. When he is being fitted for the Nationals, he destroys the costume. He wants hair metal rather than classical music for their routine. And when Kate’s former partner shows interest in him, he is uncomfortable. The movie is filled with moments where it seems like Doug’s sense of masculinity and sexuality are being challenged, but the movie side-steps making them anything important.

While the movie wants to be about Doug bringing his world into Kate’s, it seems like the more natural evolution for Doug is for him to rethink himself and his relationship to masculinity. Particularly since this is a romance, and in movies like this you do expect a character who holds in his feelings learns how to express themselves. 

The one time I felt real empathy for Doug is when he goes home and confesses what he has been up to his family and friends. He seems genuinely nervous and unsure how they will react that he is a figure skater.

Maybe this is just me but I did not get the sense from his brother’s earlier introduction that he was stepped in that kind of machismo - he seemed way too mature to oppose Doug’s career choice. He seemed more concerned with Doug hurting himself.

While it is not set up properly for the tension the filmmakers want, I liked this scene because it is the one time where Doug seems genuinely vulnerable.

I wish the movie had fleshed this thread out - it would have helped make Doug a more relatable protagonist. 

It is part of a big issue I have withthe film is that there is never a point where our heroes reveal their vulnerabilities to each other. Doug and Kate always seem to be at loggerheads and I never felt any real shift in their relationship dynamic.

What is most baffling is that I found it almost impossible to track their growing attraction to each other.

As I said earlier, I watched the movie three times before I decided to start writing about it - and it took me three goes to pick out what the filmmakers think are the signposts of our heroes falling in love.

The key one is when Kate sees Doug surrounded by women at the New Year’s party and is unsettled - I was unsettled because I could see what they were trying to do but it does not come off. I never got the sense that the co-stars are into each other, and the script spends too much time on having them tear each other.

While this section is very entertaining (Kate’s put-downs are hilariously cruel), the “lovers” are at such odds it is hard to see how they could come together at the end.

As a sports movie, The Cutting Edge is frustrating - the filmmakers only show glimpses of the pair’s routine, and it is shown in tight close ups which are in blurred slow-motion.

It is especially frustrating during their initial Olympics set, because the announcers describe the set as lacking feeling. It would have been so much better if that disconnect could have been conveyed through the routine.

The filmmakers have an easy out - all the ice-skating scenes take place in shadow so you cannot tell who anyone is. They could have shot the scenes in wide with doubles.  It worked for Flashdance, and that came out a decade earlier.

Weirdly, while I do not buy their romantic chemistry, I do buy Sweeney and Kelly as teammates - the movie might have worked as a straight sports drama, with no love story. There were times I was engrossed in their partnership on that level - I was fooled enough that when Doug tells Kate he loves her it jarred me out of thinking this was just a sports movie.

The Cutting Edge skates on the edge of greatness, but never makes the cut (I’m sorry). It is a movie that is ripe for a remake that can flesh out its central romance into something audiences can get properly invested in, and showcase its characters’ athleticism so we can root for them to win.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Spider-Man 3 (Sam Raimi, 2007)

Spider-Man gets a new suit, learns his uncle was killed by some guy who is now sentient sand, gets his best friend back after he loses his memory trying to murder him, and gets dumped by his girlfriend because he is too obsessed with being Spider-Man.

Spider-Man 3 has a reputation for being bad. While it is the weakest of the Raimi movies, I would put it above both the Garfield movies AND it pays off most of its arcs, unlike Far From Home.

The big problem with the movie is that it is crammed with subplots. There is a busy-ness to the number of plotlines which is exhausting, and it starts right from the beginning.

The film is also filled with embarrassing elements - the Jazz club scene; Peter’s hair change; Eddie’s introduction to Gwen’s dad (while she is hanging from the top of a building); the British reporter monologuing through the climax. 

None of these elements is particularly detrimental on their own. But there is so much going on in this movie that these fumbles start to pile on each other.

To their credit, the filmmakers maintain their intent to give all the characters reasons for their actions, but there are too many storylines. Sandman’s plot is based around a theme of forgiveness that the film does not spend enough time on. 

The one plotline with real juice is Peter’s relationship/conflict with Harry Osborne. And that is because we have spent two movies establishing their relationship and motivations. Ideally the movie would have just focused on the war between Peter and Harry, but I can see why they felt a need to escalate.

According to what I have read, Raimi wanted to include the Sandman and Venom was added by Avi Arad the producer. Ironically, on the page I think Venom and Eddie Brock make more sense in this movie than Flint Marko. 

Marko’s storyline never truly fits - he is introduced as an additional element of Ben’s death, and then he kind of hangs around until Peter forgives him at the end. He has no real impact on the story. 

Meanwhile, Peter dealing with the Venom symbiote is a great idea: Peter is always burdened by responsibilities and has a strong moral code. What would happen if he threw that all away? I do not like the way the storyline is developed, but it could have worked as a counter-melody to Peter’s conflict with Harry..

After the slow-burn of the previous two movies, Harry’s vengeance feels shortchanged - his amnesia is a contrivance to put him out of action while Peter deals with his other antagonists. It feels like at least two different movies talking over each other. Watching the movie often feels like channel surfing, as we jump from one plotline to the next.

I think there are a couple of good movies mixed in here, and I want to give the filmmakers credit for trying to pay attention to all the characters and themes, but there is  too much going on for any of them to cancel each other. 

It is frustrating because there is some potential dramatic meat here:

Peter and Mary Jane’s breakup is based around an understandable faultline - but it is obscured by unnecessary complications.

The need to keep all these storylines going means that there are some really contrived bridges between important shifts - the key one is the butler telling Harry the truth about his father’s death.

A personal gripe with the movie is that this movie feels less tactile than the previous entries. One of the pleasures of this re-watch was noticing how many physical effects there were.

Willem Dafoe and his stuntmen are being flung around on a real glider; Doctor Octopus’s arms are brought to life by puppeteers controlling physical arms. There is plenty of CGI, but the first two Raimi movies show how CGI can be used to augment and clean up tangible production elements. There is a charge to watching these effects because the performers are interacting with something real.

 

This is the first film in the franchise where you can feel the shift from physical production elements to fully CG - Flint Marko running from the cops looks like it was shot against greenscreen backdrops. With all the plotlines, the CGI adds to how ephemeral the movie feels.

Spider-Man 3 catches a lot of flack, but it is better than its reputation. This is a case of too many cooks in the kitchen - the need to force in so many characters while resolving existing plotlines results in a movie that is not terrible but it is exhausting to sit through.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, 2004)

Life in the big city is tough - finding a place to live, finding a job to pay for said place, supporting relatives, finding time for romance and fighting a scientist with mechanical arms.

Spider-Man 2 is a great sequel. If you found the first movie a little ponderous and lacking in its own style, this movie solves those problems. The movie is faster, funnier and - for me - has something the first movie suffered from a lack of: texture.

The original Spider-Man has a big budget and special effects, but the movie feels small. 

At no point during the first movie does it feel like there is a world outside of the camera frame. 

It also feels like Sam Raimi is operating with a hand tied behind his back. Spider-Man 2 benefits from a filmmaker who has the space to show what he does best.

The addition of frequent Raimi collaborators Bill Pope as Director of Photography and Bob Muwarski as sole editor (he co-edited the first film) might have something to do with it.

Raimi is more unleashed -  the hospital sequence is pure Evil Dead - but the direction overall feels looser and more alive.

In certain respects, Spider-Man 2 feels like Batman Returns in that it feels like the filmmaker is not forced into a box. 

There are moments where Raimi’s over-stylization works against key moments - Rosie’s death - played in reflections on the glass which kill her - feels like something out of a slasher movie. 

Aside from the visual fireworks, Raimi is known for his sense of humor.  Aside from a couple of moments, Spider-Man is completely earnest. There are a couple of jokes, but they are mostly softballs. Raimi is known for gags and in the first Spider-Man it feels like he is trying to be as sincere as possible. 

With Spider-Man 2 it feels like Raimi has the confidence to be sillier and weirder.

The character of Mr Ditkovich should not work - he is a live-action cartoon, solely concerned with ’Rent!’ He would have been completely out of place in the first movie, but in the wacky world of Spider-Man 2, he is just one of many denizens in this cartoon version of New York.

It does not entirely work, but to go back to that word texture, elements like the Mr Ditkovich character (and his daughter Yelena) add more character to the world of this series.

I did not bring him up in the first review. But JK Simmons is perfectly cast as J Jonah Jameson. In the first movie he was an oasis of levity - in Spider-Man 2, he feels more of a piece with the movie he is in. His interplay with Ted Raimi, Bill Nunn and Elizabeth Banks is so fast and funny I wished there was more of it in the movie. 

While I enjoy the injection of humor and a more silly sensibility, it never feels at the expense of the drama or stakes.

Melodrama is easy to parody, but this movie manages to thread the needle without the whole enterprise coming off ridiculous.

The characters feel more fleshed out and nuanced than in the first movie. Unlike the Marvel iteration, the Raimi movies take the time to have Peter wrestle with the consequences of his actions. 

This is most obvious in Peter and Mary Jane’s romance. The cliche would be to fast forward to them together, but this movie delays that resolution. Partially it is because he never asks her out, and also because his time is taken up with being Spider-Man. Mary Jane does not exist to be Peter’s girlfriend - not only does she have career goals and struggles, she has relationships. She even tells Peter that he has terrible timing, and is never around. 

When I was a teen watching this movie in the cinema, I found the emotionality of the Raimi Spider-Man films depressing. Age and an 8-movie marathon later, this emphasis on consequence is refreshing. Plus with Mary Jane, it is great to hear a character bluntly state the problems they have with a potential romantic partner. Once again, Kristen Dunst knocks it out of the park.

 This movie also has a sense of class-consciousness that the other iterations of Spider-Man ignore. Peter spends this movie and the next one trying to find steady employment. One thing I like about this movie is that while the romantic subplot is (tentatively) brought to a resolution, Peter’s financial situation is left up in the air.

I almost forgot to bring up the villain.

As a kid I loved Dr Octopus, and so I was really excited when this movie was coming out. 

On this rewatch, I liked Alfred Molina’s performance - there is a simmering rage to his performance that I locked into. I am not sure he is as iconic as Dafoe’s Goblin, but I think his performance might be more fully realized. Dafoe’s Osborne and the Goblin feel like distinct personas, whereas it feels like the qualities that Octavius reflects after his accident already existed in his personality. He has a bluntness and directness in his interactions with people which feel like primers for how he attacks obstacles with the arms. 

He also does not have to worry about a mask.

While I think I prefer his style of performance, outside of the action sequences, I cannot point to a great scene of performance. It might be an effect of the edit and the focus on Peter’s struggle, but after his introduction Otto feels a little two-dimensional.

I like the sequence of Otto with his wife Rosalie (Donna Murphy) but after she dies, it never feels like that loss is reflected in Molina’s performance. I kept expecting him to reference it or break down, but aside from his reaction when she dies, this thread is dropped in favor of his reactor plot.

With his wife dead and the arms urging, perhaps the intention is to show how Otto acts when he is not held in check. It felt like his wife was his connection to human empathy. I feel like more could have been made of this because she feels like a script solution to make Otto Octavious seem more human before his transformation.

The presentation of Dr Octopus is also impressive. The CGI has aged, but it is well-integrated to the film, and I was impressed by how many shots of the arms were real. While computer-generated effects were employed for wide shots and movement, for a lot of the close-quarters sequences Doc Ock’s arms are obviously practical, brought to life by puppeteers. Having those arms represented by real props occupying space and interacting with the performers felt like an extension of the movie’s focus on the dangers Spider-Man faces. 

While I highlighted the movies’ embrace of ridiculousness, the movie also feels more assured in terms of its restraint - one of the most intense scenes in the film is Peter’s confession of his involvement in Uncle Ben’s death. Raimi covers the fallout (Aunt Mary quietly rising from her seat and leaving the room) in a wide shot, letting the audience sit with the moment.

The movie also earns its more rousing moments. While the bridge sequence in the original feels self-conscious and cheesy, the moment of community solidarity on the train feels more organic. The Christ symbolism is obvious, but it fits Peter’s exhaustion after stopping the train. It helps that it is played with little dialogue. The button of the little kids handing Peter his mask is a nice touch. 

Aside from the direction, Spider-Man 2 is easily the best-written of the live-action Spider-Man films.

The focus on Peter’s inner conflict is solid as a rock - the movie is simple and interweaves the various subplots without feeling bloated. In contrast to most sequels, Spider-Man 2 is about the same runtime as its predecessor. 

Watching the first two Raimi movies back to back really clarified why they have never really been my cup of tea.

While the stories work, they feel too simple - like animated episodes. There was a lack of specificity to it - in terms of performance, presentation and even world-building. 

However, these are not weaknesses - the best thing about the Raimi movies is how simple and distilled they are. And Spider-Man 2 is the best example of that simplicity.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.