Pick-Up Flix

Phoenix critics name The Artist best film

2011-12-28T09:27:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, another list.

These things are getting out of hand. We as a people have too manylists. I came to this realization after trudging through Time's list ofeverything last night; I think I officially gave up on the one called"Best Murders" or something like that. There's just something aboutorganizing things into neat tidy little lists that makes us all go bonkers. Butas another writer once wrote before me: people read lists not to see what's onit, but to see what's not on it. It's a lose-lose situation for moviecritics: readers go, "Oh he forgot Transformers 3 ... he's an idiot and this list isstupid." The people who we want to read our lists — the folks who willclip it and Netflix all the items on the list — are in the dwindling minorityof list readers.

But hold on, here's another list. And this one is great because Icontributed to it (in the words of Chris Cooper:"maniacal laugh"). The Phoenix Film Critics Society, of whichI'm a member, announced their annual list of movie awards this week. It's anice selection of movies. I campaigned heavily for several winners, includingElizabeth Olsen from Martha MarcyMay Marlene and Thomas Horn from Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. I also campaigned for The Artist for best picture, thoughI was kinda hoping it would share some of the winnings — it won nine awards,the hoarder.

Below is the full list of winners with clickable photos for eachone. And full warning: I will be posting my own 2011 top ten list by week'send, so save room.

PhoenixFilm Critics Society 2011 Awards

BEST PICTURE

The Artist

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TOP TEN FILMS OF 2011

(in alphabetical order)

The Artist

The Descendants

Drive

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

Moneyball

My Week With Marilyn

Super 8

The Tree of Life

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BEST DIRECTOR

Michel Hazanavicius, TheArtist

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BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

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BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Elizabeth Olsen, MarthaMarcy May Marlene

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BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Albert Brooks, Drive

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BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Berenice Bejo, The Artist

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BEST ENSEMBLE ACTING

Super 8

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BEST SCREENPLAY - ORIGINAL

The Artist

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BEST SCREENPLAY - ADAPTATION

The Help

______________________________________

BEST LIVE ACTION FAMILY FILM

The Muppets

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THE OVERLOOKED FILM OF THE YEAR

A Better Life

______________________________________

BEST ANIMATED FILM

Rango

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BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

The Skin I Live In

______________________________________

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Page One: Inside the NewYork Times

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BEST ORIGINAL SONG

“Life's a Happy Song,” TheMuppets

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BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

The Artist

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BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Tree of Life

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BEST FILM EDITING

The Artist

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BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Hugo

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BEST COSTUME DESIGN

The Artist

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BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Hugo

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BEST STUNTS

Drive

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BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE ON CAMERA

Thomas Horn, Extremely Loudand Incredibly Close

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BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE BEHIND THE CAMERA

Michael Hazanavicius, TheArtist

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BEST PERFORMANCE BY A YOUTH IN A LEAD OR SUPPORTING ROLE – MALE

Thomas Horn, Extremely Loudand Incredibly Close

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BEST PERFORMANCE BY A YOUTH IN A LEAD OR SUPPORTING ROLE – FEMALE

Saoirse Ronan, Hanna

Mini train scenes full of life, humanity

2011-12-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

This week my wife and I had an assignment at the PebbleCreek Model Railroad Club. She was doing a real basic feature on the group and their model trains. I was doing the pictures. Their little headquarters had several big train tables that were interlocked together, on which they had something like 400 train cars crisscrossing around their various scenes, from coal mines and steam plants to small-town Americana and Main Street, USA. I had seen similar model railroads like this before, but I really started looking at the small details. What you see here are unedited and unposed pictures of some of their scenes. What's remarkable is how much life are in these shots of plastic figures. They really went the extra mile in making their scenes feel human and real. In many cases, if it weren't for the little plastic bases on their feet, these might look like actual shots of people ...if you squint a little, that is.

That ring around the lens ... yeah, it's the focus

2011-12-05T08:58:00.001-08:00

Some brief randomness:

First, check out this horrible-terrible-awful publicity still for The Muppets. You might have to click on it to enlarge the beast but you'll notice right quick that it's entirely out of focus. Not just soft, but blurry. This is the oddest of several odd photo choices on Disney's press site for the rather terrific Muppet movie. And another strange thing is that there's no consistency on the file sizes. There are 20 MB files and then there are 4 MB files. Then the Disney hacks upload print versions and online versions as well, which makes browsing the site feel rather redundant. It's one of the more confusing publicity sites.

Secondly, please check out my favorite new photo site, The Kingston Lounge. This guy wander around Brooklyn and thereabouts to document decaying buildings and forgotten structures. I can't help but think of movies like The Road when looking through the eerie photos of crumbling spiral staircases, molding hospital rooms and theaters with sagging plaster molding and broken wood framing. Oh, and the photography is amazing.

And lastly, check out my second favorite new site, If We Don't, Remember Me, or just IWDRM. This site features a variety of movie GIFs and they're perfect little windows into the souls of the movies from which they came. Animated stills from Fargo, M, American Pyscho, The Royal Tenenbaums, Full Metal Jacket and Once Upon A Time in the West (pictured, click to animate) are just a small collection of the many wonderful GIFs. I think I watched the Tron one for like 20 cycles — mesmerizing.

Congrats, dad, it's a bloodsucker

2011-11-17T13:36:00.001-08:00

My punching bag returns.

Oh, it’s fun to hate on Twilight.The atrocious acting. Those pouting, insignificant teens and their boringlives. The dialogue, as wooden as a termite’s lunch. There’s just so muchmaterial to thrash apart, and yet here even I’m bored with the thrashing.

Maybe it helps that TheTwilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1, with its horribly long title, is aslight improvement over previous Twilightfilms, though still far from anything that might be considered classicmoviemaking. If you’re a Twilightfan, you might argue that the film was never made for people like me. It was madefor people like you, fans who read the books.

So be it. I’ll never win that argument, and don’t really care tobecause film and books are independent mediums and thus don’t require eachother even though one might derive from the other. If they wanted you to readthe book, they wouldn’t have made the movie.

This new film has some improvements if only because the plot now has apurpose. See, human Bella and vampire Edward get married. Then they take ahoneymoon and she gets pregnant, but with what? Edward's mighty vampire sperm, that's what. Humans and vampires can’tinterbreed; neither can humans and devils, but that didn’t stop Rosemary fromcarrying the Antichrist to 36 weeks. Certainly what’s in Bella’s belly must besome kind of evil. Therein reclines the film’s plot, though don’t wait aroundfor the conclusion of this story because that only comes after you’ve waiteduntil November 2012 and deposited more money into the Perpetual Movie Machine.

Previous Twilight filmswere gaping abysses filled shallowly with brooding teens. These teens were universallydull as they stared into the forest, ocean or their bedroom walls. They seemedto rejoice in their angst, like they were all in emo scream-core bands when they weren’tcrying into their Nightmare Before Christmas pillows. Women swooned at this, but my only thought wasremoving all the sharp objects from the houses in the film. The plots ultimatelyalways became about Bella choosing dreamy Edward or hunky Jacob. “I love youfor eternity,” Edward would say. “No, I love you for eternity … plus one,” Jacob would negotiate. Iexaggerate only a little, but I’m not far off on this characterization — thesubtext of every piece of dialogue was “I love Bella.”

All that is over. Bella has picked Edward. Close that book. Nowcomes the sex. Yes, Breaking Dawndeals with sex, which apparently is very, very taboo in author Stephanie Meyer’svampire world. Nevermind that vampires drink blood and live forever as ananimated corpse, now they are apparently abstinent and morally responsible. I’mmuch fonder of the hedonistic free-wheeling vampires in HBO’s True Blood — they’re fun at parties. Inany case, Bella and Edward have sex and everyone feels awkward and dirtyafterward, including the audience, who must endure strategic nudity, palecorpse skin and Edward’s orgasm, which demolishes the bedroom. Oh dear. Thankgoodness it’s a rental.

Even after their first time, it’s all kind of weird. He worrieshe’ll hurt her, but she craves it. They settle this dilemma with games of chess. Hewins, they go hiking; she wins, they have sex. Edward is good at chess, whichmeans Bella spends the middle section of the movie very desperate. Remember when Maxvon Sydow played chess to save his eternal life? Neither does this audience.

The subtext of these scenes is profane, but it must be mentioned: throbbing vampire cocks cause pain, and devil babies. There I said it. The movie skirts around this issue so delicately it comes off humorously pathetic. Consider that they never even mention the word "sex." He just does that dead-eye thing, and she asks if he's ready, and bam! — vampire-on-human sex. But the camera cuts away before anything titillating can be seen. The whole movie rotates around this theme, but the fact that it's never explicitly stated does a disservice to its audience, who, judging by the way the film treats them, must be like 10 years old. I would have preferred the subject not be so taboo so the film could address the central theme of the story, which is this: for Edward to love Bella he will inevitably have to cause her pain, be it from sex or her transformation into a vampire.

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, the movie’s Bella andEdward, are given slightly more to do in this film (besides PG-13 sex), and ithelps tell a more cohesive story. Both seem to be better actors than thedialogue would suggest. Some of their lines are painful, especially when youconsider they’re all variations on the sentence, “I’ll love you forever.” Andthey’re always framed in alternating close-ups, which the film uses so muchthat I started counting eyelashes (Bella has some sort of eyelash deficiency). There’sa silver lining in these roles, though: the Twilightmovies have landed these actors bigger jobs — Pattinson in Water For Elephants, and Stewart in Welcome to the Rileys — that have allowed them to showcase their truetalents.

Then there’s Taylor Lautner, who plays werewolf Jacob. There’s nohelping that one. I’ve seen better performances at the high school level. He’sthe weakest link in the series, especially here as he plays the terminal thirdwheel skulking and moping around the vampires’ IKEA lair tucked up in the hillsand trees like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Occasionally he’s a CGI wolf,which actually helps add some humanism to the forlorn character of Jacob, whospends much of the movie on vampire fetus guard duty as he stares into spacedoing his “troubled teen” look like his life depended on it.

Women adore this stuff. I’m not faulting them. Men typically loveaction films. No harm there. But what I can’t seem to figure out is why womenrefuse to view Twilight as the trashysoap opera it is. No, they say, it’s high art of the most profound order. Mencan willfully acknowledge that Rambo 4was ridiculously over-the-top and horrible in all the ways a movie can be. Butthey loved it, so there. They don’t need validation. Can a Twilight fan, man or woman, do that? My guess is no, but remember Ididn’t read the books.

The movie’s violence is also noteworthy. It’s fairly gruesome. Atone point Bella has an O-negative Slurpee that coats her teeth and drips downher chin, a ringing endorsement for vampirism. When Bella goes into labor, Ihalf expected that little infant to explode out of her belly Alien-style. Instead a bouncy vampirebaby comes out drenched in gore and chunks of meat. Yikes! I'm just glad she didn't have twins — they would have murdered each other in utero.

Should you see BreakingDawn? You should know the answer already at this point and blood smoothiesand vampire babies are unlikely to sway you.

The Tenenbaums in Pictures

2011-10-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

A movie's worth can be gauged in several ways, but here's one: Are we still talking about it 10 years later?

In the case of The Royal Tenenbaums, the answer is a most enthusiastic yes. But rather than spew the exact same praise as everyone else as we mark 10 years of Wes Anderson's hit second film, I'd rather just look at still of the film. Each frame is terrific. Here are some of my favorites.

I get the feeling this movie's been kissed a lot

2011-10-14T14:01:00.000-07:00

Filmmakers who remake classics confuse me. They adore the originalworks so much that they feel an inescapable urge to do them better? What?!? I call that misplaced love.

It produces a lose-lose situation: If the remake is bad, thenthey’ve shamed the original. If it’s good then they’ve made the original look pointlessand obsolete, or maybe just dated and foolish. If they truly respected thesefilms they’d leave their legacies alone instead of tinkering with themendlessly like George Lucas and his obsessive compulsive tics called Star Wars.

And now here’s Footloose,a remake of the 1984 Footloose, abouta town where dancing is illegal and the preacher’s daughter must be rescuedfrom herself by Kevin Bacon with spazzy hair and skinny ties. It was a popularmovie, and I remember it fondly.

The remake is a nearly shot-by-shot retelling, but with a moderntwist. The rebel teen from up north moves down to Elvis Country — Tony Soprano:“Anywhere there are no Jews or Italians” — where he’s chided by Barney Fife andthe rest of Rick Perry America for playing his stereo too loud. This is Ren(here played by Kenny Wormald) and he can dance, which he frequently does incowboy bars, drive-in theaters, cotton gins and abandoned factories. He needs adance studio, or maybe just a tetanus shot. He quickly falls for Ariel(Julianne Hough), the preacher’s daughter who is facing a steep reduction of moralsby dating Chuck Cranston, the local meathead. That Chuck is clearly nearing 30and dating a perky high school girl is of no interest to the plot, nor toDeputy Doofus and his tactical team of stereo invaders.

Yes, this all sounds familiar, right? That’s because it’s thesame exact movie. Not just the same story, but the same movie: the dialogue isoften the same, as are the actual camera shots and scenes, the gags and all thevisual Footloose cues, like thedancing feet in the opening credits. (For some odd reason, though, theyreplaced the game of chicken with tractors with a school bus demolition derby.)Remember that witless shot-by-shot remake of Psycho back in the ’90s? This is not quite that literal a remaking,but it’s pretty close. Yes, the songs are sometimes poppier, but even those areremakes from the original movie.

My favorite part about the 1984 film was the preacher, thenplayed by the brilliant John Lithgow, who glowed with that crazy evangelicalnuttiness. Rev. Moore was a troubling man, but his intentions were always noble.And his fears toward the town and its irascible youth sometimes exposed other deep-seatedissues, like his resentment of women and their place in society. At God’sdinner table, there was no setting for women because who else would cookdinner. Lithgow played into this with a fiery zeal. Here in the remake we getDennis Quaid in the reverend role, and he doesn’t come across a third asinteresting, or as emotionally and spiritually wounded as the Lithgow version.Quaid has reached that point in his career where the daringness has all recededto bland banality.

Wormald is a commendable Ren, though. And the actor who playsWilliard (Miles Teller) is no replacement for the late Chris Penn, though he isvery funny. As for Hough, she does a noteworthy high school trampimpersonation, except her character feels more one-dimensional than Lori Singer’sversion, which ached with loss and regret. I always felt that Singer’s Arielwas hiding some serious sin, not just the ones she bellowed to her father inthose scenes in the church — “I’m not even a virgin!” Hough’s version is cutesyand more tart, but it feels like it’s there for sex appeal and nothing more.

I’m beating up on Footloosea little, and it deserves it simply because it remade a movie that some people— myself included — found sweet and silly in all the right amounts. I’m morefrustrated at the idea of remakes, which is why I’m venting a little with Ren2.0. Overall, I found Footloose to bea spirited remake with some of the charm of the original and some that it’sconcocted from its own brew.

I do like how the film improved on some issues, like by includingmore black students at Ren’s school — though the only dances they can do are booty-shakingkrumping. (I’ll admit, I don’t quite know if this is a crude stereotype,though, it felt unnecessary.) I also appreciated how the film wasn’t toneddown: it is loaded with a shit-ton of swearing, features that odd “take-my-joint-to-make-you-feel-better”scene, and still casts Ariel as the panty-dropping slutmonster that she must befor the subplot with her good reverend father to work.

Footloose, you scamp,you served your purpose, though I wish there was no need improve on theoriginal.

Here's the thing about prequels ...

2011-10-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

The thing about The Thingremake is that the Thing is not like the original Thing and some Things shouldbe left alone, among other things.

But right there I started with a mistake: The Thing is not really a remake, but a poorly conceived prequel toJohn Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic TheThing. (Before I go any further, yes, that Thing was a remake of Howard Hawks’ 1951 film The Thing From Another World, which was itself based on the book Who Goes There? by John Campbell Jr. — these things are going to getconfusing.)

If you recall, at the beginning of Carpenter’s Thing, out in the endless snow of Antarctica we briefly meet some Norwegian scientiststrying to kill the Thing, which had morphed into the form of a sled dog. TheNorwegians make some poor decisions and ultimately die from grenade clumsinessand a rather unfortunate linguistic misunderstanding, in that order. Then thestory quickly focuses on the Americans, including Kurt Russell and Keith David,who are later stranded in the slowest game of metaphorical chess everconceived, a game we can assume is still going on down there on that coldAntarctic plane.

This Thing goes back intime about a week from the onset of the earlier movie. We meet some scientists,they discover something creepy, and then they dig it up, though they mindlesslyforget to duplicate the famous shot of all the scientists standing in a circleover the frozen ice containing the flying saucer that stranded the Thing onEarth. For heaven’s sake, it was even in the earlier film; we watched avideotape of these characters actually doing it. This clumsy overlooked detailillustrates this film’s many failed prequel-original mergers.

Amid all these grisled Norwegians, with their ale-soaked beardsand kind spirits, is someone more foreign than the alien thing: a young America woman.She’s played like an icy Terminator by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who does thesexy scientist routine until she’s required to be calculating and tough. And she's no Ripley. Thisis a troubling and inconceivable character written, no doubt, by a marketingexpert who said that the movie would make 4 percent more at the box office ifthere was woman in it, 4.5 percent more if she were attractive. I’m all forwomen in tough, manly roles, but not when they have to be wedged in to balancea marketing analyst’s pie chart.

Anyway, the Thing escapes from the ice — I wish I could teach meat to unthaw that way — and begins tosystematically devour and clone all the scientists. The only way to tell ifthey’re the Thing or the real person is to check for crowns, fillings or metalplates on bones because the Thing can’t digest inorganic material. “You’re going tokill me because I floss,” one character complains when everyone thinks he’s the Thing. This scene looks an awful lot like the Kurt Russell scene from theoriginal, when he meticulously drew blood and scorched Petri dishes with a hotwire. The Thing couldn’t be killed then because of a malfunctioningflamethrower, which is exactly what happens here. Funny thing, flamethrowers.

Eventually it’s revealed that the Thing is in several people atonce, which leads me to almost call them Thing 1 and Thing 2, with manyapologies to Dr. Seuss, but I will refrain. As the alien Thing starts to infectmore and more people this is where the internal logic of this new Thing goes haywire. In the original, itwas revealed that a person would burst out of their clothes when absorbed bythe monster. But here characters are absorbed by the Thing in minutes only toreturn to the film wearing the same clothes. Hey, screenwriters: We’ve alreadybeen taught that this can’t be possible because the first film was meticulousabout this detail.

The actual Thing, is a hodge podge of grotesquery and gooeynessthat is more often a digital effect than a physical one. Carpenter’s Thing waspuppets, animatronics, matting and plate effects, stop-motion animation andmany other physical devices; today the film is still terrifying and gruesome.This film though looks like it was created under harsh florescent lighting in aserver farm by people who have never once put red dye in corn syrup.

In the end, all you’ll care about this Thing is how it interacts with Carpenter’s Thing. The answer: very little. To make the connection between thetwo pictures this film needed a helicopter, a dog, two Norwegians and some handgrenades. It ends with none of them, as if director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.forgot he was making a prequel. Only in the end credits due the pieces start toline up, and hastily so.

And no, there’s not a Kurt Russell cameo. That’s one thing youcan stop looking forward to, though I can always suggest another thing.

Clooney goes very dark in Ides of March

2011-10-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

(Many apologies for the long delay in posting new reviews. I had a good excuse: I got married! So now that the wedding is over, I will once again start reviewing films again, maybe even with Mrs. Movie Critic.)

The Ides of March is sobleak and despairing that I don’t think voters are ready to stomach it. Itsmain character begins the film with many values, and ends it with nonewhatsoever. The film arrives to that appalling conclusion because that’s thereality of modern politics.

I knew this film was venturing down a gloomy road when it beganwith Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again,” a song that was last heard on film beforenuclear bombs lit up Doomsday in Dr.Strangelove. That’s a dire warning indeed.

This isn’t one of those feel-good movies that will “get out thevote.” Recall Swing Vote from 2008,that quirky satire about “every vote counts”? That was a picnic in the parkcompared to this parade of political supervillains and their many underlings.No, here your vote is worthless because, the film suggests, an election battleis waged long before the voting booth ever opens. How true that is I will letyou decide, but I don’t think you’ll be looking forward to next year’spresidential election after witnessing this dark wonder.

The film follows presidential candidate Mike Morris, an ambitiousgovernor fighting with a prickly foe in the Ohio democratic primary. Every movement ofthe Morris campaign is planned by the calculating, though sheepishly worrisome,Paul Zara (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and his overzealous staffer Stephen Myers(Ryan Gosling). I liked some of the film’s smaller details, like how thestaffers don’t ever watch news events of their candidate simply because they’replanning the next speech during the current one. Or how the offices are crammedwith enough political history and props that they’ll make the pause button veryuseful for the DVD release.

The plot mainly focuses on Stephen, who is handsome anddetermined, though also naïve about the risks of sinking your life intopolitics. Stephen is a dangerous opponent on the campaign trail, so dangerous thatthe other candidate tries to poach him from Team Morris. It doesn’t work, butthe meeting sends reverberations through both campaigns.

I didn’t entirely believe the importance of this meeting, but themovie throws an awful lot of weight behind it. Apparently, it’s wrong for two high-levelstaffers from opposing teams to meet and discuss the campaign. Baseball teamsdo it, so I don’t really see the problem. Later it comes up that maybe Stephenwasn’t loyal to his candidate, but I would counter that Stephen didn’t take thejob offer so he was loyal after all. In any case, this single meeting factorsinto the plot in ways that aren’t totally sound. It’s a minor annoyance, butone the film continuously revisits. The scene does involve the great PaulGiamatti at his most flatulent and egocentric, which is always a plus.

Later, after a reporter gets wind of a damaging story, Stephenhas to defend his actions to the press as well as to his bosses, who are quickto throw him under the campaign bus and speed out to the next primary state. Atthis point, Gov. Morris (George Clooney) is an honorable candidate, someonemost voters would respect if not vote for. But what Stephen does is theunthinkable: he brings a good candidate to the very edge of treachery and thenpushes him in.

Stephen does this when he finds out that the good governor hassome buried secrets. That is Stephen’s backdoor entrance back into the Morriscampaign. In the real world they would call that blackmail, but in politicsit’s called leverage. Of course, there’s more to it that I’m not including:bureaucratic horse-trading, shady cabinet appointments, leaked media stories,dirty politics and questionable money donations. The film really hits most ofthe highlights when it comes to political ethics on the campaign trail.

Clooney stars in, but also directs, Ides of March, which is a reference to the assassination of JuliusCesar. Clooney finds the movie’s theme in the failure of Morris’ principles. Politiciansby themselves are mostly honest men and women, but put them in an electionsurrounded by a staff that will do anything to win and it will bring out theworst in a candidate. It provides a scary scenario: there’s no such thing as agood president because they all had to campaign to get the title.

Now, a word on the political leanings of this movie: Clooney, aprominent democrat and supporter of President Obama, could have easily madethis film about the GOP, which would rather nominate Mayor McCheese than standbehind one of its rotating frontrunners. But he didn’t do that. He let thesepoliticians be democrats — as they were in FarragutNorth, the Beau Willimon play that the movie is based upon — and by doingso he’s allowed Ides to be a messagemovie as opposed to a public bashing on the other guys. It must have stungClooney to beat up on his own party so close to an election, but he does itbecause he thinks the message — campaigning drains the soul from a candidate —is of vital importance.

I was mighty impressed with Idesof March, but I’ll admit it terrified me, especially when you startthinking about these kinds of games being played right now in the race for theWhite House. Even if the movie is making up 80 percent of it, that’s still 20percent rooted in truth. Scary stuff.

The film is marvelously acted, with great performances byGosling, Hoffman and Evan Rachel Wood, who plays a low-level staffer with lineafter line of witty and seductive dialogue. The movie also employs some ratherneat, but very simple, camera tricks, including one involving an SUV and afired campaign manager, and then another with a vibrating cell phone thatproduces some chills in this political thriller. Above all, though, it’sClooney as director who knocks this one out of the park. He understood thematerial and had fun exploiting all the nuances of the script.

By the time the Gosling character steps into the darkness — likeAnakin turning into Darth Vader — Clooney has embraced the political horror enoughto give us a payoff worthy of material this dark.

Marvel, get your hand out of my wallet

2011-07-22T17:23:00.000-07:00

Marvel is not doing itself any favors by releasing the same three movies every summer. Yes, they have different names — like Iron Man, Thor and now Captain America — even though the films are fuzzy clones of each other.

Oh, am I a stick in the mud? Raining on your parade? Sorry, dear reader, but I must. Last week I received an email with words I can’t reprint from a reader who was upset that I didn’t praise Transformers: Dark of the Moon — because, you know, I was the only person in the world who hated it. I imagine Captain America fans know some better words that are also unfit for publication. So before you fire off a cowardly anonymous email, let me reassure you with this: Captain America: The First Avenger was a spirited romp amid all the proto-typical comic clichés. It’s not the greatest comic adaptation, and it’s not the worst. It’s slightly and cheerfully above average.

So there.

I save most of the vitriol and frustration to the movie economy that allows films like Captain America to continue to propagate, and for Marvel, the comic company that has triggered the moral decay of creativity at the cinema. What was once a trickle of comic films has now turned into an inescapable flash-flood at the movie theater, a place that funnels audiences from one auditorium to another, all of them playing the same banal feature attraction: unlikely hero emerges with superpowers, hero fights bad guys, hero returns for sequel. I’ve oversimplified it for sure, but where am I wrong?

Captain America follows this formula like it’s pre-programmed in its DNA — because it is. We’re given fresh-faced Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a 4F weakling who wants to enlist to fight the Nazis and their occult division HYDRA, which means stormtroopers get to say, “Heil HYDRA.” Roger’s is too short, so he steps into a machine belonging to Iron Man’s father. The machine’s purpose is to apparently make abs glisten, and to turn Rogers into super soldier Captain America, who then rips through a steampunk version of World War II to fight a villain so boring his name is flatly Red Skull. The villain's henchman look like leather fetishists with clunky respirators and they wear these sleeve guns that probably contributed to their defeat. The movie has everything the formula dictates: a girl to fall in love with, a gruff character who barks orders (a scene-stealing Tommy Lee Jones), lots of cheesy German accents, a close friend who will undoubtedly perish, explosions and gunfights, and a big climax with even more explosions and gunfights. Like a good Marvel conformist, all the pieces of the formula are in Captain America.

But I’m done pretending that I’ve not seen this movie a dozen times before. And I’m done justifying that a purely mediocre movie is somehow “pretty good for a comic movie,” as if the entire genre had a golf handicap. The bar has been raised by better comic films, like the Shakespearean drama of The Dark Knight or by the rich and fantastical Hellboy films. To best those pictures Marvel will have to change its formula, and stop presuming that audiences will tolerate clones of the same films longer than me. Besides, how many comic films can one person sustain before growing bored? My guess is we’re reaching that limit; I know I have.

There’s a bit in the film where Captain America, drenched in a layer of patriotism so thick it encumbers his movement — like the GOP, zing! — talks about defending the underdogs of the world from those big bullies who stomp around the schoolyard. It’s a chivalrous idea, but coming from a Marvel Comics creation it’s a little disingenuous. Don’t be misled: Marvel is the bully. It stomps through theaters and shoves better films out of the way, devours box office records, clones its movie formula over each of its brands, and then pretends that what it’s doing is in the best interests of the cinema. I’m sorry but the cinema needs less Captain Americas and more films like Terri, a movie you haven’t heard of because it’s more sophisticated, more thoughtful and more intelligent than anything Marvel could set on fire for 120 minutes.

Marvel’s best interests are bottom lines, which is why Spider-Man is being remade less than five years since the last one was released, and why the Incredible Hulk has been rebooted three times, and why X-Men begat only more X-Men and why Thor, Iron-Man and Captain America are all teasers for next summer’s all-star macho-fest The Avengers. Marvel wants your money really bad, and Stan Lee and his geeks are prepared to resurrect every comic in its archive all the way down to Banana Peeling Man to get you to remove cash from your wallet and deposit it in theirs. If that means making the same movie a thousand times then so be it.

Indeed, movies are supposed to make money. But they are also supposed to inspire us, make us think, touch us and empower our spirits. Marvel is fonder of thumping viewers on their skulls, red or otherwise. Captain America is a great example of that with its dumbed-down version of WWII, absurd highlight reels of action effects, that laughable costume (with boomerang shield) and its serialized ending that only teases at the real ending to come next summer after you plunk down another $9 on yet another ticket. (I did enjoy the rather brilliant war bonds sequence with Captain America funding the war via song and dance.)

So what is Captain America? It’s a decent film that is awash in Marvel’s cynical Hollywood commercialism. With its green-screened phoniness and digital superstructure it is not half the adventure of another film directed by Joe Johnston, The Rocketeer, a movie with characters and special effects that feel wholesome and pure compared to the clinical, fluorescent and germ-free world of Captain America. It also reminds me a lot of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, a wonderful film that does everything Captain America does, but with a key distinction — no man in tights.

Hackers started a revolution on dial-up

2011-07-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

When Hackers was released in theaters in 1995 most people didn’t have Internet in their homes. Now they have Internet in their pockets, cars, on refrigerator doors, in every conceivable space in their house (ah, the joys Wi-Fi) and, yes, even in the movie theater just in case there’s a need for quick browsing before the popcorn and previews.

The world has changed a lot since 1995, although not the world within Hackers, a film about teens in cyberspace that was quickly forgotten when it was released only to re-emerge now as a prescient piece of ’90s pop culture — or maybe it never left. As it turns out Hackers wasn’t just a hokey and ridiculous computer adventure, but a cultural milestone so far ahead of it’s time — 15 years, which in computer years is more like 50 — that it still holds up in this age of wireless Internet, smart phones and 3G. Or is it 4G now?

Of course, some of the details are little screwy today — the “28.8 BPS modem,” laptops as big Oxford dictionaries and pay phones — which is expected from a movie that predates the iPhone, iPad and anything else even remotely iSimilar. Still, though, the basic premise of the film is rock solid in today’s computer-driven society. Its themes are computer hacking, Internet freedom, digital anonymity and corporate takedown. Need proof these are still relevant? Just pick up a newspaper: “Phone hacking at News of the World,” “Playstation Network hacked, data stolen,” “Citigroup customer data hacked,” “24,000 files stolen from Pentagon contractor,” “Hacker group defaces CIA home page” … the headlines could form a line around the block.

The film takes place in 1994, which inspires one of the better lines: "[George Orwell’s] 1984 was a typo, man.” It’s set in New York City within a cataclysmic crash of two subcultures: computer hackers and the ’90s Club Kid phenomenon. It’s within this soup a small group of teen hackers unite to stage elaborate pranks using their computers and dial-up modems. At one point, two characters hack a broadcaster to simply change what’s on the public access channel. We’re treated to a shot of two robotic arms fighting over a tape of The Outer Limits.

The hero here is Dade (Johnny Lee Miller), which sounds strange without “county” and “Florida” being said after it. His hacker handle is Crash Override. After a very public hacking conviction — in which he’s ordered to not use a computer or touch-tone telephone until his 18th birthday— Dade moves to Manhattan, where we see him turn 18 and once again plug into the net where his skills are unmatched as a hacker.

Later he meets other colorful hacking characters including Cereal Killer, Phantom Phreak and a spritely Acid Burn, played by a young Angelina Jolie in a pixie haircut. If nothing else, Hackers does introduce us to Angelina, which is its own kind of milestone. All of them together are framed by a more devious computer hacker, The Plague (Fisher Stevens, Oscar winning producer of The Cove), who worries they may have stumbled onto his plans for a digital theft. The Plague gets the Secret Service involved (yep, that’s Marc Anthony and The Bunk, aka Wendell Pierce) to hunt down Dade and his crew, who descend into an underground of neon-glam and wacky outfits to attack the system and clear their names.

Besides being a crisp, well-made film with strong characters and perceptive dialogue, Hackers brought a distinctive computer literacy to the screen. Much of it is oversimplified — with swirling hallucinations representing computer code and Tron-like superhighways that standing in for mainframes — yet it works because it helps tell the story visually. It’s unlikely that anyone could hack a television network and manually change the show, but it’s the idea that big things can be done via computer that Hackers should be recognized for. That and the mainstreaming of the many house, trance and electronic artists who appear on the soundtrack.

Regarding the film’s ethical authenticity, it’s notable to illuminate that Dade’s quasi-criminal actions are viewed sympathetically within the film. In some sequences, hacking is staged as downright noble, akin to delivering babies or volunteering at a soup kitchen. The film uses some misplaced justifications that many hackers probably still use today: that system vulnerabilities are there to be exploited, authority must be decentralized and the classic excuse that data should be free and accessible as opposed to locked behind firewalls. Nevermind that what they are doing amounts to theft, espionage or just regular ol' vandalism.

It’s easy to buy into the sub-sonic pop entertainment of Hackers, and even its ethical ideology, but then you read in any national newspaper how hackers are routinely using their tricks to steal bank account information or defraud a system, neither of which are noble endeavors. The film posits that hackers have principles, when in reality modern hacking seems to be as greedy as the companies they so often infiltrate. It’s not Hackers’ fault, it’s just that Hackers considers an ideal world that is simply not possible or plausible. Computer hackers are not investigative journalists, and probably never will be. (Though, I would like to admit, all ethical dilemmas aside, I'd love for a hacking group to infiltrate Rupert Murdoch's email to poke around.)

So the film was wrong about the "hackers are the voice of the voiceless" part, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t noteworthy hacker groups. Anonymous seemingly invented the word “hacktivism,” and their choice of targets and reasons for targeting them would illicit cheers from most web surfers. For instance, when WikiLeaks took flak for some of its blockbuster record releases, Anonymous made it a priority to retaliate against those who opposed the open range of information that WikiLeaks was permitting. They’ve also fought YouTube for content restrictions and Australia for policing the Internet. Such motivations don’t validate criminal mischief, but they at least frame them in a better context.

Hackers is by no means an endearing classic in the vein of Casablanca, Citizen Kane or The Godfather. But yet it survives because the future it peddled in its hyper-kinetic style is no longer the future. That future is now the present.

Harry Potter bids farewell from the screen

2011-07-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

And so the end comes.

It’s not like we hadn’t been warned. Ten years and eight movies ago it was very clear this moment — the moment Harry Potter bid farewell to us from a movie screen — would come with a swift thrust, but it always seemed so far away. “Oh, there’s still so many more movies,” fans told themselves. And now there are no more movies left and the curtains are rapidly closing.

I must admit, in my review of the first Harry Potter film I doubted that children would still care about the boy wizard by the time the final film rolled around. Children have hyperactive attention spans, and with so many franchises vying for their little eyeballs (Twilight, for example), it seemed unlikely Harry and his friends would last. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The world loves Harry Potter. And it’ll only love him more after his final adventure in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2.

Few franchises this side of Lord of the Rings end on such a grand scale. All the pieces that have floated around in J.K. Rowling’s sprawling saga are united here in this glorious finale, which is suddenly very coherent and fluid compared to other adventures in the franchise. Each new film had grown more dense, more complex and more bewildering, but this one has a simplicity to it: villain Voldemort has risen to power, the armies of good and bad have assembled, and the battle begins. Smack dab in the middle is Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), the boy who has been prophesied to destroy Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) and return peace to the magical kingdom. He must find objects called Horcruxes, common items into which Voldemort has downloaded his twisted soul. The plot is simple so we can watch, listen and experience the enormity of the war’s last battle.

Soaking it all in, though, that’s part of the fun. These are Harry’s last adventures and director David Yates — the skilled helmsman of Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince — does not waste the opportunity to show all the elements that made the franchise popular, be it the boyish heroism of Harry, the sparking love connection between Ron and Hermione, that splendid magical castle called Hogwarts, the gothic intrigue of Snape, or the perplexing strategies of the late Albus Dumbledore. Oh, and the magic, there’s more than enough to go around, which is appropriate since Harry and his friends have been going to school for seven years to learn these tricks. I especially liked the wand effects that looked like bioluminescent lava spewing from those little wooden sticks.

The action is spread out all around the film’s universe, including a dragon fight in an underground vault with multiplying Tupperware, but is mostly contained at Hogwart’s where the final battle is waged with lots of high-flying broom rides, explosive wand artillery, magical spells and death, death, death. Yes, characters die in the Deathly Hallows, so many that parents might want to reconsider taking their tiniest Potter fans. The action is for grown-ups simply because the youngsters who lined up for the first film in 2001 are now old enough to vote, or buy themselves a drink. Naturally, the violence has progressed, which is obvious when Voldemort slays a law firm, or lays waste to Hogwarts’ vaulted spaces, or sends his snake to nibble on poor Alan Rickman.

Deathly Hallows 2’s finest quality is that it understands the immensity of what is happening. The franchise has spent an agonizing amount of time building to these points: Harry returns to Hogwarts, Ron and Hermione’s kiss, the big reveal of Snape’s motivations, and the heroic last moments. The film recognizes the occasion with all the appropriate fanfare, from the swelling musical score, careful editing, precise dialogue and Yates, who removes all the clutter on the periphery so we can witness these last chapters play out without interruption. Notice the scenes when Harry returns proudly to Hogwarts. He knows he might die, but there he is walking the hallways and greeting his admirers as they prepare for what is sure to be a bloodbath. It was a moving sequence, one that drew audience members around the theater to tears.

Of course, there are some finer points that could have been cleared up, like why Voldemort’s wand’s previous owners were so important, or why Hagrid spent the entire movie as a prisoner of an army that doesn’t take prisoners. And what about that business with the disappearing/reappearing sword? Maybe the books cleared this up, but the films can be a vacuum when it comes to such information. I still don’t understand why, if Voldemort was so powerful, he wouldn’t keep the Horcruxes on him. Apparently his robes don’t have pockets.

I hold a major grudge against the franchise for turning the final installment into a 3-D extravaganza, which is what critics were forced to watch. As always the picture was dark, too dark at times to even see what was going on. Please, see the movie in 2-D so you can witness all of Harry Potter’s conclusion without having to wear those dopey 3-D sunglasses.

Aside from that, though, I have nothing but nice things to say about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2. I’m tempted to talk more about the last 25 minutes — they are perfect moments — but I fear that it will spoil your experience, which would be a Class 1 felony to a movie this wonderful. I will say this, though: it is my sincere hope that the Harry-Ron-Hermione trio —Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson — go on to have long and splendid careers in entertainment. They have done these three characters great justice. And they anchored the whole franchise. They should be proud of these films.

No doubt the world is proud of them and their contributions to Harry Potter, the boy wizard who now has a new title — retired movie star.

From the Vault: Deathly Hallows Part 1

2011-07-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

Here are my original reviews of all the movies in the Harry Potter series. My review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 will publish here Thursday.

After six cookie-cutter films about wizardry and its many perils, Harry Potter and Co. is giving a new kind of storyline a whirl. It’s a risky — though commendable — device to change up the formula this late in the game, but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 handles it with a degree of class, and also tedium.

The previous Potter films were full of that wide-eyed splendor that makes children’s fantasy films plucky and fun. They were just too frequently clones of the one that came before it, so much so that a watch could be set to all the plot elements: Harry catches a train, Harry gets the typical hazing at Hogwarts, Harry meets the new celebrity-cameo teacher, Harry learns a new magic spell and then has the common sense to recall that spell during the momentous finale in a dungeon/maze/forest/castle/cave. You could pretty much count on this formula like you could count on factual inaccuracies in a Sarah Palin tweet.

Certainly there are some of these elements in the new film, but J.K. Rowling also deviates very much from the formula she taxed to death in the six previous films/books. For starters, the Hogwarts school, so central to previous adventures, is never even seen. And all those pesky other students — who had to be given mandatory screen time in the other films — most of them have been jettisoned into a single all-encompassing cameo early in the film and then another one later on the Hogwarts train. And if the many character deaths in the first 30 minutes weren’t proof enough, it would seem that the franchise is really trying to ditch some weight to build speed and end it all with a bang next summer in Part 2. Altering the story structure helps to accomplish this, and it allows us a fresh plot.

Essentially, this Potter outing is about Harry (Daniel Racliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) doing their own Frodo-Sam journey as the rest of the magic kingdom quickly descends into a wand-wiggling civil war. After the shocker death of Dumbledore in the sixth film, Voldemort, He Who Is Without Nose, has uncloaked his legion of meanies and they openly hunt Harry and his many pals, which is why Harry spends the entire film on the run and sleeping in a tent that Coleman has yet to duplicate.

The three stars hold up the film and its lengthy plot, but you can see their acting — or lack thereof — shining through. It’s a testament to these three actors’ growth that they can keep this film afloat; two films ago it would have hardly been possible for them to carry the whole show.

Harry is resolute and somewhat detached from the action. Maybe that’s how Harry was written, but he seems mildly tranquilized by Radcliffe’s wooden performance. Ron is given bigger scenes, and a hero pose, but he’s still being played far too young and too immature by Grint, who seems to think Ron is perpetually 7 years old — every look he gives is like, “Gee wiz, did I do that?” Hermione, of course, is still the most interesting character. In her first scene she must erase herself from her parents’ memories in fear they become victims of Voldemort’s wrath.

Unlike the Twilight films, which are filled with sexually ambiguous characters who apparently have never noticed their private parts before, the three leads in Harry Potter are slowly coming of age in all the ways that implies, especially Watson, who plays Hermione with a modest sexuality. Not only are they attracted to each other, there seems to be real sexual tension in the air, and in another movie they might likely tear their clothes off and rumble around. The film wisely acknowledges all this without making it awkward for families, although there is one scene of Harry and Hermione striking an Adam and Eve pose that will surely get some giggles.

When the characters aren’t making kissy faces at each other, they spend much of the movie moping around the forest trying to decide what to do next. They’re the slowest scenes in Deathly Hallows, but they’re buoyed up by three spectacular action scenes that are highwater marks for the series.

One is a chase sequence with Hagrid on a motorcycle and Harry in the sidecar, a scene that proves motorcycle sidecars can never be overused in films. Another involves Harry, Ron and Hermione assuming new identities to break into the Ministry of Magic, where they must steal a gemstone that contains part of Voldemort’s soul. The final action battle, involving that doofus Draco Malfoy, had a character in it played by John Hurt and all I could think of was, “Hey, when did John Hurt join this franchise?” (Apparently, it was back in the first movie, which is further proof that these casts are way too big.)

While these scenes are electric, the slower, more esoteric middle sequences are jarringly slow. And they only lead to missed moments, like when a real mystery develops regarding the whereabouts of a mystical sword only to have the film deliver it by an unexplained blue light, which drops it in a random pond — mystery solved … blah.

Deathly Hallows should also be chided for not preparing the viewer better for the plot. Surely diehard fans don’t need a recap, but it’s a courtesy to at least mention some of the basics. It also gives the film a beginning. Deathly Hallows begins with absolutely no explanation of anything. If you haven’t read all of Rowling’s writing then all the raised eyebrows, magical spells, budding relationships and, oh yeah the death of freakin’ Dumbledore, will be lost to you.

It sounds like I’m complaining here, but I’m sure Part 1 will play better when it’s viewed with Part 2. At that point, Part 1’s slow middle will only seem like a warm-up to Part 2’s all-out wizard Armageddon.

It’s just unfortunate that your money was desired so much that it warranted the splitting of the movie. And don’t tell me, “But there was too much in the book to make it one movie.” Maybe, but surely this movie could have been condensed and added onto its other half and released as one film. It would have been over three hours long, but if Lord of the Rings taught us anything it’s that audiences will sit through it and appreciate that the franchise wasn’t wasting their time and money.

From the Vault: Half-Blood Prince

2011-07-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

Here are my original reviews of all the movies in the Harry Potter series. My review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 will publish here Thursday.

As confusing as all the spells and magic formulas are in these Harry Potter flicks I doubt the children who flock to them in drooling packs will be as perplexed by the Horcrux spell or dragon’s blood potions as they’ll be by all the snogging in this, the sixth Potter film.

Yes, there’s lots of snogging in Half-Blood Prince, enough so that I can begin a review with it. Snogging is the cheeky British word for making out, although it sounds like it requires a cigarette afterward. Ginny Weasley snogs with Dean Thomas. Ron Weasley snogs with Lavender Brown. Hermione wishes to be snogging with Ron while Harry Potter longs to be snogging with Ginny, even as he makes tactical moves to snog with a cute waitress and then a batty Luna Lovegood. At one point Ron takes a love potion and nearly snogs nice and hard with Harry, who is clearly not so keen to snog back. And then there’s emo-king Severus Snape, who’s wound so tight he needs a good snog just to lighten up.

That’s a lot of names to hit you with so soon (and a lot of snogging, too), but by now some of those names have entered into the pop-culture lexicon and need no introduction. Han Solo, Fozzie Bear, Donald Duck, Vito Corleone, Harry Potter … some names just speak for themselves.

Aside from all the rump-slappin’ love that’s floating through the cast of characters, all the usual J.K. Rowling fantasy elements are present and accounted for: a train ride through the country to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Quidditch matches, paintings that come alive from the walls, Hagrid and his creepy pets, and a wacky new teacher, this time it’s Professor Slughorn (Jim Broadbent). Thankfully, one thing's not returrning — all the floppy homeless-looking haircuts.

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), still reeling from the calamity of the last movie,Order of the Phoenix, is taking orders directly from an increasingly worrisome Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). Voldemort and his many black-cloaked minions are still in an undeclared war with Dumbledore and Hogwarts. Many of Voldemort’s tactics are guerrilla incursions — espionage, abductions, random terrorizing, mischief. By the end of the film, war will be officially declared with a salvo that strikes at the heart of Hogwarts. I am, of course, referring to the spoiler — "______ kills ______" — those meanies (read: heroes) from the YouTube video yelled at the group of kids who had just purchased the minutes-old sixth book.

The plots, as fiendishly inventive as they are, have never really been the high points of Potter films; this one is a mystery (they all are) with Harry trying to mine the brain of Slughorn, who taught a young Voldemort at Hogwarts. What I admire over the plots are all the characters, and all the things that create the atmosphere of Potter’s world: the lavish sets, the hundreds of little magic props, those wonderful costumes and all the special effects, magic tricks of a different variety — movie magic. Many of the effects are disposable sights sprinkled into the film just because they’re so delightful, like one of a little penguin skiing in the icing on a cake.

Really, though, Harry Potter films work because the core trio — Hermione (Emma Watson), Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Harry Potter — can carry a film all on their own. I truly hope these three young actors all find important roles in other films when the series ends in 2011 after a two-part Deathly Hollows, although I can’t imagine Grint as anything else but a Weasley. And I pray that Watson, now that her eighteenth birthday has passed, can escape the Internet perverts and skirt-invading paparazzi (one word Emma: "Panties") so she can concentrate on the acting talent she seems to have.

I draw attention to the trio, but it helps that the they are surrounded by a talented ensemble including Gambon as wizard Gandalf the Gray … er, Dumbledore the Gay, and Snape, played by Alan Rickman, who is my own personal cult-figure superhero. Even the extras are interesting; you’ll know Elarica Gallagher when you see her. And then there’s Potter friend Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch), who’s so spaced out you have to wonder if she’s naturally this silly or just stoned. I could watch a whole movie of her brushing her teeth or mowing a lawn or something even more mundane.

I must also comment on Tom Felton, the apparent long-lost son of Hulk Hogan who plays miserable little twerp Draco Malfoy. I can't remember the last time a character was so vile and venemous just by existing as a static peice of flesh in time and space. This poor kid; he'd even scowl at a wet snogging. As over-the-top as the character is — and how cruel for Felton, who perfectly delivers the same lines over and over again — I love Draco Malfoy. You gotta applaud him because his contempt for everything is refreshing.

Half-Blood Prince is not the best of the Harry Potter films, but it’s in a six-way tie with all the rest. Am I a coward for not picking a favorite? Maybe. But they’re all so fantastical and charming — and they’re all so consistently well made — that picking one favorite would betray all the other favorites.

From the Vault: Order of the Phoenix

2011-07-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

Here are my original reviews of all the movies in the Harry Potter series. My review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 will publish here by Thursday.

In his previous films Harry Potter was growing up. Now he matures. There’s a difference, you know. And it can be seen as clear as a dragon’s sneeze in a lightless cave here in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by far the best of the Potter film series to date.

Before Order of the Phoenix Harry Potter wasn’t really a character. He was a cause and everyone else was an effect. And even characters on the peripheral had more interesting things to do and say. Hermione was the studious nerd, Ron Weasely was the dopey well-meaning friend, dark horse Draco Malfoy was the villain-in-the-making school bully — Potter was the cup of vanilla to their chocolate-dipped rainbow sherbet. He was no leader, no expert magician, no free-thinking hero on a landscape of evil. He was just there, occupying space and riding the coattails of better magicians.

All that ends now. In Order of the Phoenix he becomes the great magician we have been told for five movies he would become. Better yet, he performs magic. He doesn’t just recite lines from a book, either; he is a magician. And not just in theory. Yep, that’s Potter fighting side by side with Sirius Black against the forces of evil, that’s him blasting sonic waves from his wand, that’s him cauterizing some serious spells across the faces of Voldemort’s minions. And I saved the best for last: somewhere between Goblet of Fire and now, Potter found a barber and chopped off that silly do. Look, he has ears!

After Goblet’s bloodletting on poor ol’ Cedric Diggory, Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardy with a low-pressure system hanging ominously over his head. The other students are convinced he was involved in Diggory’s death thanks to some yellow journalism at the magician rag The Daily Prophet, which also claims Lord Voldemort’s rumored return is a big hoax perpetrated by Potter and Hogwarts’ headmaster Albus Dumbledore. To top it all off, the Ministry of Magic is mounting a case against Harry for his justified use of magic in the presence of non-wizards (Muggles) after two Death-like creatures try to suck his soul from his nostrils (clinical name: soulectomy). In other words, the world is growing dark for Harry and his fellow young magicians. Fear is in the air, double-crossers are lurking in all the shadows, and word of Voldemort’s increasing power is driving everyone batty.

The mood may be oh-so-gothic, but it has its advantages: for the first time in the series, the major pieces of the Potter saga are being situated for the ultimate checkmate that will come two movies from now. The darker, tenser mood is only going to ratchet up and up through Half-Blood Prince (due next year) and Deathly Hallows (the book is due this month), but it starts here and now with Order of the Phoenix, which is a marvelously paced Potter yarn.

But this movie is more important that the sum of its moods, tones and tempos. For the first time in the series I found myself pulling for Harry, maybe because he’s given more to do. After the Ministry of Magic begins controlling Hogwarts curriculum (no magic, they say), Harry goes off on his own to teach those closest to him the magic the school refuses to teach. This provides an important image: Harry as teacher and leader. It also provides him a lot of interaction with the characters, including teaching Neville Longbottom how to disarm an opponent — “It’s all in the wrist,” Potter says. He also shares a long-overdue kiss with one of the characters. So often these on-screen kisses between teens aren’t necessary, but this one felt warranted and it was paced just right. It’s proof Harry is maturing into his role as teen, even while he comes to fully understand — in a scene set in a library of snow globes — his role as magic’s ultimate savior.

But savior comes much later. Here Harry’s still getting his feet wet, and with quite the cast of characters, too. Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) returns with a vengeance, as does Mad-Eye Moody (Brendan Gleeson), who has one of those joke eyeballs as a real eye — the movie never shows how he uses binoculars or a telescope, but that image is priceless. Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) is back, his hair more blond and evil than ever. Potter staple Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) also returns darker and more gothic than ever. I’ll go out on a limb and commit this to record: surpassing Edward Scissorhands, Marilyn Manson and Jack Skellington, Snape is the new godfather of Goth. And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Rickman needs to do more movies. Also returning, but in abbreviated performances: Michael Gambon as Dumbledore, Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid (the “weirdo with the beardo”), Maggie Smith as McGonagall and Emma Thompson as an optically challenged seer.

The one character fans will be buzzing about, though, is Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), who takes over Hogwarts with a pink-gloved fist. She does away with magic, creates bizarre rules that she frames in a great hall, turns student against student, and basically wreaks havoc on Harry’s underground wizard classes. Umbridge is so controlling, so manipulative, so inexplicably cruel that a Christmas card from Nurse Ratched would probably say, “Chill out, you’re scaring even me.” She dresses as if she was on Leave it Beaver, but in color, and her office is decorated with creepy commemorative plates of kittens. In the Harry Potter tradition, the plates are all animated as if real kittens lived in the porcelain, so when students are punished in her office, a chorus of cats meow their approval.

I haven’t really mentioned the special effects yet, and I think it’s because the story trumps them for once. Not that they’re bad, it’s just that Harry’s development as a wizard has become more interesting than the magic. The effects are wonderful, though. Centaurs, simple-minded giants, skeleton flying horses … they all collide in Phoenix’s rich tapestry of computer animation. A lesson involving the “expecto patronum” chant involves creatures that emerge from blue mist, the happy feelings of the spell’s giver. When Potter goes to visit the Ministry of Magic he shares an elevator with paper airplanes — memos on the fly. The final battle is a wizard’s duel that is surprisingly fast-paced and violent, and the fireball effects blast away everything that’s left of the screen. And there, in the sand vortex, stands Lord Voldemort in the flesh.

I’m mighty impressed with the Order of the Phoenix, so much so that I’m tempted for the first time to make a good attempt at the books. And what great timing too, because the seventh and final one is ready to drop from J.K. Rowling’s diamond-coated grill. Rowling’s fans don’t need to read these words — they’ve probably already seen the movie by now … twice — but here they are anyway: Harry Potter No. 5 is terrific.

From the Vault: Goblet of Fire

2011-07-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

Here are my original reviews of all the movies in the Harry Potter series. My review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 will publish here by Thursday.

Harry Potter can conquer almost anything at this point: Hungarian Horntail Dragons, the Golden Snitch, Dementors of Azkaban, the Serpent Basilisk and, apparently, puberty.

No longer wide-eyed children, Harry Potter and his rightfully monopolizing actor Daniel Radcliffe have gone and grown up. When Ron Howard’s voice dropped an octave and his chin started sprouting whiskers on The Andy Griffith Show, the show’s demise was not too far off. With Harry Potter, though, his growth and maturity is only closing the gap on his ultimate showdown with Lord Voldemort, the evil wizard who killed his parents and branded a scar on his forehead. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, we actually see the dark lord for the first time as his true self, a reptilian man with no nose and a fiery urge to exterminate the Potter name, but more on him later.

Like the previous Harry Potter films, Goblet is brimming with fascinating new beasts, magical spells, mythical curses, wizard trials and even some unexpected treats, like love — between which characters I will let you discover. The film picks up in the magic world with little-to-no introduction of the previous films or even who Potter is. The producers seem to snicker: “If you haven’t seen the other movies or read the books, then tough!”

Boy wonder Potter is beginning his fourth year at the Hogwart’s School, where young children learn wizard’s ways. This year, the school is hosting the Tri-Wizard’s Cup, which consists of three magical tasks. Harry, of course, joins three other students in the contest. Guessing who wins isn’t difficult, but the suspense comes in how this person wins. What ensues is a visual feast, one that surpasses all the other Potter films. Harry fights a fire-breathing dragon from the center of an arena to the tops of a castle, with lots of soaring in between. He descends into a lake, where trident-wielding sea crabs snap at his arms. He wanders through a hedge maze that attempts to swallow him whole.

The wizard trials all lead up to a rumble with Voldemort, who is still astonished at Potter’s strength — notice the way white-hot lava spews from their magic wands. There are still three movies to follow this one, so solid conclusions are going to be hard to find, but it plays wonderfully to its moments, one of them being Potter’s first magical confrontation with his archenemy.

Radcliffe is good, but others are great, including Emma Watson (as Hermione, who’s growing up to be a babe in the young wizards’ eyes) and Brendan Gleeson (as a googly-eyed professor). And, as wonderful Michael Gambon is as Albus Dumbledore, seeing his snapping portrayal of the school’s headmaster makes me long for the late Richard Harris even more.

It’s safe to say that Goblet of Fire is the best Harry Potter yet, and it excels at a lot: riveting action, its development of Harry, the budding romance between Harry and his friends, and the spirit of J.K. Rowling’s enchanting books. Each movie has been better than the one before it, which makes me wish more for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

From the Vault: Prisoner of Azkaban

2011-07-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

Here are my original reviews of all the movies in the Harry Potter series. My review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 will publish here by Thursday.

Harry Potter went and got himself a gothic makeover. Teenagers!

Just when you thought he was on the straight and narrow, he goes and gets all creepy. Next thing you know, he’ll be stage diving at Marilyn Manson shows in fishnet stockings and black nail polish. Don’t blame Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe; it’s not 100 percent his fault. Blame his father figure, director Alfonso Cuarón, whose last film (Y Tu Mama También) had more unnecessary nudity than Web-streamed video from Rush Limbaugh’s showercam. I'd love to know at what point producers thought Cuarón, a fine director, would make a perfect fit for a film about youngsters. And were they drinking?

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is dark … too dark for most little children. It’s downright scary at times. Not that this is a bad thing, but be warned: the movie has matured with the stars, and your little ones might not appreciate execution scenes, child-eating werewolves, evil soul-sucking Grim Reapers and more doom and gloom (and shades of gray) than an average Tim Burton film. Like a child who overturns rocks to glance at pill bugs and scorpions, Cuarón flips the Potter series over just to see author J.K. Rowling’s darker creations squirm about and attack each other.

In this third tale, Potter returns to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn how to become a master magician. Of course getting there is half the journey: One of the best scenes of the movie is when Potter boards a triple-decker bus that weaves through London traffic at Mach 5. When he does return to school, the semester is interrupted early with the news of an escaped convict, Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), a madman killer who wants what all villains in these movies want — Harry Potter dead. Sirius may have been involved in the death of Harry’s parents years before, so naturally Harry takes it upon himself to do the investigating. Geez, don't they have a wizard police or something?

Of course, during his investigation, he’s befriended by a new teacher (David Thewlis), taunted by Carpathian surfboy Draco Malfoy, hassled without prejudice by Professor Snape (the great Alan Rickman) and schooled in philosophy by Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon tries to replace the late Richard Harris). There’s also new monsters: a hawk-horse combo, a shapeshifting entity that warps into onlookers’ worst fears, and the Dementors, the Grim Reaper ghouls.

This is a very different Potter film, and not so much with its story or characters. It’s Cuarón’s directing that gives it its dull edge. What was a richly filmed kids film shot with heart by Chris Columbus is now a gloomy, muddled mish-mash of depression filmed with no respect to continuity. Compared to the first two films, this one just doesn’t work. It’s the ugly duckling — a rogue with a temper.

On its own level, though, it’s different, which is a daring step to take with a series so popular. Dark or not, Azkaban may keep the series from falling into an annoying vortex of over-simplified kiddie gunk. At least with this setup, there’s room for maturing.

From the Vault: Chamber of Secrets

2011-07-11T12:45:00.000-07:00

Here are my original reviews of all the movies in the Harry Potter series. My review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 will publish here by Thursday.

What took George Lucas four films, or one prequel, to do — drain the heart out of a story in favor of limitless special effects — Chris Columbus has done in two.

To the credit of Lucas, whose trilogy of Star Wars films were wholly complete until the dreaded Episode I came along in 1999, at least he put some years between the goodness and the badness. Columbus though, has used the momentum from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to ram its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, head-first into a concrete wall. A wall that no amount of magic could render invisible.

Then again, that opinion comes from a muggle, a non-wizard, so take it with as much salt as needed. At least fans of author J.K. Rowling’s bespectacled young wizard like their food salty. The Chamber of Secrets isn’t bad; it’s just not great, at least not like the first one, which had the young wizard-in-training enrolling at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and beginning is saga. The sequel is flat and cold, a poor tribute to Rowling’s warm writing style.

After spending a wretched summer with his muggle relatives, including the smarmy Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, Potter (again Daniel Radcliffe) returns for his sophomore year at Hogwarts. He’s met with some ominous foreshadowing, though: a blocked passageway on Platform 9 ¾, from where he’s supposed to board a train to Hogwarts; an attacking tree that ensnares his flying Ford and a suicidal house-elf named Dobby. Like Yoda before him, Dobby only speaks in the third-person: “Dobby like Harry Potter. Dobby don’t want to see Harry Potter hurt. Dobby thinks Harry Potter should not go to school.” It’s annoying in mere seconds.

Potter ignores the warnings though, and heads to school where he encounters the usual Potter fodder: the moving staircases, wandering ghosts (one played by John Cleese), talking oil paintings and an ornery rival tribe led by a wretched boy named after a particularly vile Carpathian. Yes, Draco Malfoy is back, this time as lecherous as ever. The movie is all business: lots of plot and expository dialogue. Even Potter’s friends seem rather bored. Ron (Rupert Grint with Greg Brady voice cracks) and Hermione (Emma Watson) often times just stand there in stunned silences like set dressing.

Someone, or some thing, at Hogwarts is petrifying students into comatose logs of flesh. They’re easily cured, but still the culprit has to be caught before someone is killed. And since everyone, including the all-star wizard team led by Albus Dumbledore (the late Richard Harris), is ignorant to the most basic sleuthing techniques, Harry Potter is the only one that can solve the Chamber of Secrets, which turns out to be a snake pit in the little girls room.

Plotwise, very little is different with the sequel as compared to the original. Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) still randomly shows up and helps the not-so-young Harry Potter and his dimwitted friends. There’s another Quidditch match (basically rugby on kitchen brooms), this time with more treachery and unsportsmanlike conduct. There’s lots of creatures and spooks, too: a whining specter in the bathroom, a snake that slithers through the ventilation system and a giant spider and its army of babies, which, in just five minutes, managed to look a thousand times better than the entire movie Eight Legged Freaks. There’s even a new character, the narcissistic new Hogwart teacher Gilderoy Lockheart, played with superb arrogance by Kenneth Branagh.

Through all this the Chamber of Secrets uses magic, yet fails to be magical on this 161-minute exhibition of visual hocus-pocus. It’s as cold and dreary as Hogwart’s castled hallways. The enchantment is gone. In it’s place are yards of emotionless special effects and digital tripe, designed to swoop in to gracefully transport Harry Potter from Rowling’s pages to the movie screen. Too bad they mangled the pages in transport.

From the Vault: Sorcerer's Stone

2011-07-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

Here are my original reviews of all the movies in the Harry Potter series. My review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2 will publish here by Thursday.

If you’re not a child or a parent of a child under 15, then just steer clear of movie theaters for the next month or so — they’re booked solid.

The long-awaited movie version of J.K. Rowling’s mega-popular children’s novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, is finally in theaters and with a fight to pick (and win) with any films that dare try to stand in its path. So rather than mince words about the voracity of young viewers, or adapted children's books, let's just get on with it: Harry Potter dazzles.

From the mesmerizing visual effects and wonderful set decorations to the huggable heroes and kickable villains, Potter holds up as not just a great film, but also as a gem for youngsters. Yes, the same youngsters who have shocked their parents into comas by actually reading books instead of watching TV, playing one through a video game or freebasing Pokémon characters (or whatever else you do with them).

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), the orphaned son of a slain wizard and a witch, is dumped off onto his rotten uncle, aunt and spoiled cousin. They’re clearly perturbed when Harry begins receiving elegantly penned letters by the thousand notifying him of his acceptance to an elite school. The postage must have been a nightmare. Admission is not without its hiccups: Mean Uncle and Auntie won’t let Harry leave his under-the-stairs room (dungeon) to go to the school, which is why Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), a gruff errand runner, shows up to whisk Harry away to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. At the school, Harry toils through a university-like institution to learn the ABCs of potions, magic, wand-waving, broom-riding and troll-slaying.

The movie is filled with wonderful visual effects and lavish fantasy sets, many of which alter mid-scene (twisting staircases, reincarnated paintings), but the internal structure — the backbone — is an intriguing plot of deception and sorcery woven into the fantasy by the mystical figure that killed Harry’s folks and now hunts him. Those who have read the book will know every twist and turn and may miss out on the surprises, but even still, Potter turns Rowling’s witty pages with a light, but brisk touch. We aren’t overburdened by the story, yet we’re given enough of the plot to make the story understandable even without reading the book.

Overall, Potter is so much grander and more delicious than anything else that has come out this year. And to think, it’s a kids’ movie!

There’s still something that’s bothering me, though. It's Harry's sudden popularity. As kids empty quiet libraries and Potter reading rooms to fill theaters to lay awe on their bespectacled hero as he clashes with villainy brandishing his magic wand and Charles Manson beauty mark (a lighting bolt scar on his forehead), I’m still left puzzled at how the young Harry Potter has pulled TV-obsessed youngsters away from the tube and into books. I can see the level of articulation that Rowling aimed at in the books — albeit a bit glossed over in the film — and I can see the fantasy elements that have made other films (Star Wars, Willow, Labyrinth) just as majestic, but I still can’t see the sudden gush of enthusiasm for Harry Potter.

In the grand scheme of things, Harry Potter’s just picking up where Pokémon, Barney and Sesame Street left off. Will it last for the other six movies? It's hard to tell now, but my guess is that the series will slowly drift away.

Curtains for Transformers!

2011-06-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Political comedian Lewis Black famously quipped that without Dubya in the White House to kick around he could effectively retire from comedy. Movie critics are in a similar situation this weekend without the prospect of another Transformers movie.

Yes, the beast that is Transformers is finally being concluded or put out of its misery, whichever depends on how many Hasbro toys are sitting within a 10-foot radius of your computer. You’ve probably already guessed: I have none. The first film I hated. The second one I really hated. And here’s the third, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, that’s terrible but not nearly as loud and obnoxious as Part 2, Revenge of the Fallen. I still hated it, though, which would make a great quote for the poster: “Slightly less grating than the others!”

I reserve much of my frustration specifically for Michael Bay, the director of all three films. He less directs and more manipulates his characters for maximum damage, like a child setting up his toys and then seeing how they all scatter when stuff is thrown at them. Here his toys are set up in downtown Chicago, where a tantrum-prone Bay throws every piece of shit conceivable their direction.

The movie begins with the historical lead-up to Apollo 11 — and what might be the worst impersonation and/or CGI buffoonery of JFK ever committed to film — and culminates with the astronauts making their giant leaps for mankind from the lunar module into the gaping maw of a giant Transformer ship parked nearly right next to the American flag. Later in the film the actual Buzz Aldrin shows up because something every American icon needs to do — he was the second man to step foot on the moon for heaven’s sake — is talk to giant green-screened robots for a director who wouldn’t know a narrative structure if it burrowed into his eye and laid eggs there. Planning a birthday party for your 10-year-old? Book Buzz Aldrin; he has too much time on his hands. Michael Bay could shoot the video … if he were qualified.

Anyway, turns out the moon ship contains a Cybertronian device that will reverse the tide of the agonizing Transformer war that has spilled onto Earth. The device is a teleporter of some kind, which makes no sense because Transformers were transporting around the globe in the last film, but nevermind. The teleportation device is controlled by a Transformer with a mechanical beard, which makes even less sense, but nevermind again. So the transporter will be used against hero Optimus Prime by — get this! — transporting an entire planet to Earth. What about the two planets’ gravity fields destroying each other? Nevermind, nevermind, nevermind, for real this time. Making sense of this plot is like making sense of baby gibberish or Charlie Sheen’s twitter feed.

This is a good example of how the franchise invents new devices that serve the story at that exact second. Unfortunately, the writers never consider the longer impact. For instance, the Transformers have selective immunity to bullets. Sometimes bullets hurt them and other times it might as well be string cheese thrown at them from pre-schoolers. The only time guns do work is when the plot requires it, like when a character needs to be killed, which happens quite frequently during a lingering and cluttery sequence in Chicago. Consider another scene in Chicago, where Optimus Prime, the main Transformer, destroys robots as big as skyscrapers yet finds himself stuck in crane cables. The cables aren’t really an obstruction to this intelligent war machine, but the plot required him out of the picture for 15 minutes, which is the only reason he got stuck to begin with. This is how the whole plot runs, and it was old during the first movie.

Other tricks that are returning to the franchise are the spinning camera effects, the low-angle up-the-nose camera shots, the incessant product placement (mostly GM, Cisco and Lenovo), the incomprehensible action sequences and Michael Bay’s continued objectification of women. The first shot of a woman is a close-up of her underwear-clad butt as she offers sex to a man. The rest of the movie she is spent waiting for rescue or more sex, and there’s the camera always hovering like a dirty old man over her legs, breasts or lips. Michael Bay could probably make a great porno.

The woman here is Victoria Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who was hired for her measurements (34-25-35) as opposed to her acting ability, which often involves her staring into the void with this vapid look on her face. Actually that part she's pretty good at. She joins Shia LaBeouf, whose smart-alecky attitude is growing old and stale. I noticed something about his Sam Witwicky character that I’ve never noticed before: Sam needs some therapy. He’s detached from events around him, he blows up at the tiniest issues and he has a raging God Complex that festers more with each new outburst. There’s a scene where he yells at some military guards that’s downright embarrassing. At one point I expected him to start flopping on the ground like a whiny little fish. Man up!

Transformers has always rubbed me wrong, but Dark of the Moon does something I wasn’t expecting: it offended me. Not to be overly sensitive, but I have a problem with any film that allows a character to shoot a gun point-blank at the head of the Abraham Lincoln’s monument. A villain does it in a disposable scene smack dab in the middle of Moon. It’s insensitive for a film — especially one that is purely pop entertainment — to replicate the Lincoln assassination just for kicks in a movie designed for children. And then later it blows up a space shuttle in a scene that might as well have been footage of the Challenger disaster. Did anyone on the set study history? Or do they just have fun trampling all over it?

Sam joins his Transformer buddies as they once again swat away Megatron, a mechanical monster that wears a cloth hood — apparently the robot is modest, or maybe he has a sun allergy. The action is once again preposterous. There’s a lengthy sequence with soldiers in skydiving wingsuits, a stunt that Bay inflates to the breaking point and well beyond. Another sequence takes place inside a tilted skyscraper and it might be the best part of the film simply because it makes sense logically and visually, a rare feat in any Transformer movie.

Michael Bay is probably capable of making wonderful movies, but his films contain the most basic ideas — women, cars, action, explosions — exaggerated exponentially until they are parodies of themselves. Rather than developing anything serious, he just smashes these undiluted parody ideas right into your face with little consideration for what effect that might cause. It’s like drinking frozen concentrated orange juice without the water. And I’m not entirely convinced that Bay even cares about his plots or characters. They are afterthoughts to the overarching style of his movies. He seems to focus on what makes films “cool” as opposed to what makes film “great.”

Transformers might be cool to some, but it’s as far as possible from being great. Hopefully this is the last time I have to justify this belief.

Cars 2 promo art … and lots of it

2011-06-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

I'll admit I'm very skeptical of Cars 2. The original Cars was the first Pixar movie that seemed to fall short of the high expectations the animation studio was setting for itself. I'm hardly alone when I say that it creeped me out a little with those plasticy human faces on the front of automobiles.

The second one drifts into theaters next week. Check out some of the film's concept art. It's all hand painted in soft hues and delicate strokes, and it kinda makes me want to see a film that looks like these paintings, which of course Cars 2 does not. All photos are clickable.

Now check out these rather nifty fake travel posters:

As if all that wasn't enough, here is the combined three-panel poster that has been hanging in theaters lately. Damn, these Pixar folks are clever.

Truth, dreams collide in indie drama Beginners

2011-06-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

After the release of Thor last month — the headline contained the word “Thorible” — I was quizzed by a reader: “If you hate Thor so much, what do you recommend I see?”

My answer was Beginners, which wasn’t even open yet after its Arizona release was bumped several times, even as glowing reviews poured in from New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. But Beginners isn’t just the anti-Thor: it’s a deeply personal and genuine film all on its own merits. And now it has a solid Arizona release date — this Friday.

It stars Ewan McGregor as a fortyish single man whose mother dies and a week later his father comes out that he’s gay. “She knew,” the father says. He’s played by the amazing Christopher Plummer, who has channeled Leo Tolstoy, Mike Wallace and Sherlock Holmes, but never a gay man. He’s remarkable.

But there’s more to Beginners than just its gay themes. It also has tender romance (gay and straight), a profound personal journey of the McGregor character, the lovely Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds), a subtitled Jack Russell terrier, literal graffiti, comedy, and these nostalgic, dream-like storytelling devices that are refreshingly unique. They begin with McGregor narrating his character’s memories. I call them the “This Is What It’s Like” scenes. Photos flick onto the screen as if from a slide projector. “This is what the stars looked like in 1955 … the sun … These are my parents … This is where they were married.” The trick is poetic and wonderful.

The scenes were some of many clever ideas by the film’s writer and director, Mike Mills (Thumbsucker), who’s also an accomplished graphic designer and artist. Mills was traveling with Beginners on a national tour when I interviewed him last month.

Flix: Beginners is very good, which makes me wonder why you have to travel with it and publicize like you are.

Mike Mills: Well, I’ve learned that movies are sold in two ways: by word of mouth or by big-budget marketing campaigns. This movie isn’t going to get a bunch of marketing simply because it’s small and the story, about a 75-year-old gay man who’s dying. It doesn’t have that kind of big story — it’s not Iron Man. So I’m touring with this movie for the next month or so. These small movies get sold by shoe leather, which is basically me going door to door. It’s kind of magical. You meet some wonderful people, which doesn’t happen all the time — a director a meeting their audience.

Flix: What has the response been from the gay and lesbian community?

MM: To be honest I haven’t read anything from anybody. The movie is so personal that I haven’t really sought out opinions from writers … gay or straight. My general feeling is that the response has been positive. Every once and awhile an older gay man will come up to me and say something really sweet about how the film mirrored their life, or touched them in some way. It feels good to hear things like that, especially since the film is told through a straight person’s eyes.

Flix: I know the film is semi-autobiographical, but how much of it is true?

MM: It’s very autobiographical, but it’s also, in a way, my dream, which are represented in some of the sequences. What is true, though, is that my parents were married in 1985. My dad was gay, my mom knew it. My mother died and my dad came out of the closet when he was 75. Then he passed away almost five years later. That’s all in the movie and it’s all very true. There’s a part of the movie where my mom was kicked off the swimming team in 1938 for being half-Jewish. That’s true as well. There are also a number of photos in the film that accurate, like the one of the location of my parents’ wedding, which was down the street from where Allen Ginsberg did some of his writing.

Flix: The “This Is What It’s Like” scenes are very memorable. Are those dreams?

MM: In a way they are, but they are also very factual to me. Really, they are all facts. This is what the stars looked like, this is what the sun looks like. Those are actual pictures of the sun and stars in 1955. It gets very dreamy. I love that conflation. It really hits at how dreamy facts are, and how factual dreams are. I was using a documentarian-like approach, but the end result is very lyrical.

Flix: Those are my favorite parts of the movie. I especially liked how you showed a quarter on the screen when it’s told to the father that he has a tumor the size of the quarter. First you show the quarter, then two dimes and a nickel, then five nickels, then nickels and pennies, then finally all pennies. It’s an interesting visualization. The film vilifies the quarter — something most people have in their pocket at any given time — and it also shows the spread of cancer.

MM: I’m glad you liked that scene. If you only knew how hard it was to convince people to do that. They were just like, “Really?!?” It’s just the way I think. I went to art school; I didn’t go to film school. There are a lot of artists who do similar kinds of work that inspired me. I feel very lucky that I had the nerve to show these elements as I naturally view them.

Flix: Was it hard securing your cast?

MM: It was, but not once I met them. Once I met them it became incredibly easy. Making movies like this is like swimming your way upstream. It’s also like running for president: You have to meet all these people and basically convince them that you are the right guy to make this movie. And you really have to campaign for yourself and the actors you want in it. As soon as Ewan and Christopher read the script they loved it, and they loved it for all the right reasons. Ewan and I had coffee together very early, and I kept thinking he was going to like it but be unable to do it because he was busy, or he was shooting another movie, or whatever. Or I also worried that he was going to be an ass, like someone I could never relate to. But then he shows up and he’s like the most down-to-earth dude I’ve met in a long time. He spoke of the movie using the right tone and you could tell he was there with the movie’s good intentions at heart.

Flix: I just reread Easy Rider, Raging Bulls, about New Hollywood’s transformation of cinema in the late ’60s and ’70s. In it, there are directors who want to become famous to make big movies, people like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and there are directors in it who want to become famous to make small movies, people like Francis Ford Coppola. Which group do you put yourself into?

MM: Oh, no doubt, I want to make smaller films. I want to make more personal films, films with stories. The smaller/bigger movie thing is kind of a trick though, too. Consider Little Miss Sunshine, a small movie that made a ton of money. Lost in Translation was a small movie that found a large audience. So, in a way, I don’t want to self-ghettoize myself by saying I make small movies. I just see my movies about people getting in touch with who they are. And making those kinds of movies is so hard. It takes so long to get it all right. I feel like I lose a limb after each one.

Flix: There are many directors working now, though, who have made their bones on a small, well-reviewed independent movies and then inevitably start making movies like Thor or Green Lantern or Iron Man, movies that don’t have a fifth of the soul of movies like Little Miss Sunshine, Lost in Translation or Beginners.

MM: I think it’s a real struggle. I mentioned earlier that you have to swim upstream, and it’s really tough and it wears you down. Eventually you just tell yourself, “I want to go with the stream for once. I want to be supported.” I can see why directors would turn to these movies that are bigger and louder. I’m too old to switch gears. And I really don’t want to switch gears. Being a writer-director is the best job in the world. It’s the same job that Woody Allen has, the same job that John Cassavetes had. If I get to make movies that are anything like that I feel profoundly lucky and happy.

From the Vault: Cars, Pixar's first so-so film

2011-06-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of the upcoming Cars sequel, here is my review of the original Cars from June 9, 2006. As a note, my newspaper reviews have star ratings: five is the best, one is the worst.

Four stars is the lowest rating I’ve ever given a Pixar film. It’s also the second highest rating a movie can get on my scale. You can make your own deductions from there but if one of them resembles this — “Cars is a superb movie that does not equal Pixar’s much-more-superb predecessors,” said by me — then you’re on the right track.

Cars is beautiful. No, Cars is gorgeous. It’s the kind of movie that makes you forget that all other movie mediums exist. Hand-drawn, live action, Claymation … what are they again? I’m now firmly convinced that Pixar workers even dream in computer renderings, and that those visions are the main inspiration for their movies. How else could such mesmerizing images make it to a movie screen? Magic, perhaps, which is where Disney comes in.

This new one takes place in a world where cars are people. They have their own minds, desires, personalities and dreams. When a racing event is held, cars are driven around a track while other cars watch from the bleachers. And when its time for the wave, instead of standing up they flash their high beams. The cars act and think very much like people, except that all their motivations are related to automobiles: their food is gasoline (different grades being different flavors), their shoes are tires (Lightyears, a reference to a certain Buzz) and their bugs are tiny winged VWs. Also, their personalities are akin to the make of the car: a Porsche is a hot young lady, a rusty tow truck is a twangy-voiced redneck, a Ferrari is an Italian racing stud, the lowrider is a gangster, the psychedelic minibuss is a hippie that blares Hendrix during the morning reveille … and so on. Pixar must have made great use of their Auto Trader Magazine because Cars is like a mall parking lot, each space is a different make, model, color with its own unique dents, dings or paintjob.

The movie’s central hero is a slick stock-car named Lightning McQueen, which must be a nod to wheeled daredevil Steve McQueen (IMDb says different). McQueen is a hotshot rookie driver racing for the Piston Cup, a NASCAR-like oval racing league. After a three-way tie during the last race of the season, race officials agree to a tiebreaker a week later in another city. As McQueen travels, the big rig (his name’s Mack) pulling his trailer falls asleep and dumps McQueen in Radiator Springs, a sad little town on Route 66. In a panic, McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) tears up the street and is apprehended for speeding. Car jail, by the way, is a tire boot and an impound yard. The next morning the judge (voiced by avid race fan and driver Paul Newman) administers a punishment: Lightning must pull Betty, a road paver that spurts hot tar and asphalt and seems to have come from the depths of Hell.

All Pixar movies have a deep relationship to their central themes and Cars is no different. There’s a lesson here — I’ll let you discover how it’s administered — that suggests all cars feel sadness when they get old and are passed over by other greater models. The movie made me think of my own first car, a Hyundai hatchback. I wondered what kind of personality it must have had. Would it speak Korean? And where is it now? Is it happy? Hopefully some other high school student is using it as their first car and its seeing the road again. These are thoughts that race through your head when you get cozy in this flick.

Cars is filled with wonderful characters, or caracters. Radiator Springs especially is filled with the most delightful makes and models. The crowd’s favorite will be Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy), a tow truck who’s short on friends but full of heart. In his down time he goes tractor tipping until he’s chased off by a mean combine. When he hears of the Piston Cup, he replies, “He did what in your cup?” The Porsche, Sally Carrera (Bonnie Hunt), owns a hotel where the rooms are garages built around giant parking cones. My favorites were Guido and Luigi, two tiny Italian autos who share many a Europeans’ views on racing: NASCAR isn’t racing, Formula 1 is. The first thing they ask McQueen is if he knows any Ferraris. Then, at the end of the film, Formula 1 champ Michael Schumacher (as a Ferrari, of course) wants a set of tires and the little cars sputter, stall and pass out.

More than anything else, though, Pixar has taken animation to the absolute extreme next level. The animation crew seems to have made more innovations since the last picture than ever before. It seems special attention has been paid to lighting and the illusion of depth. The cars look a little cartoony, or maybe eerily too similar to Thomas the Tank Engine, but the world they inhabit is spectacular. In previous Pixar movies the created world seemed to end outside the scene, like a set that’s too expensive to expand out. In Cars, the horizon can be seen miles away, and when we look down a long, hot road, the asphalt sweats and distorts each mile after it. This is a massive world that has been created for these cars to play on, and they sure do have fun.

So why the lower rating? It’s hard to put my finger on. The premise is hard to swallow. Cars as humans is a little strange, especially those grill smiles and windshield eyes. In the other Pixar movies, the worlds were created around humans: bugs were living in a world we also inhabited, toys were moving around when we weren’t looking, monsters were coming out of our closets while we slept, and fish were swimming in an ocean we were exploring. Cars, though, is void of people and it doesn’t have the same dynamic as say Finding Nemo or Toy Story. Cars is a great picture, don’t get me wrong, but with the absence of humans I think audiences might have some questions: Who makes the cars? Are all movie theaters drive-ins? Is the Ford Taurus the slow, nerdy kid that no one wants to hang around? And even if you don't have questions, it's just kinda creepy.

Or consider this: no humans means no car salesmen. Now that’s a utopia, or maybe autopia.

Rambunctious teens are the stars in Super 8

2011-06-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

Popcorn has never tasted this good. Not real popcorn, mind you, but the popcorn-movie variety. The genre has been increasingly stale in recent summers. Not this time.

Super 8 is a perfect summer movie. It comes from the guy who invented the summer movie — Steven Spielberg — which means that Super 8 comes from a stately pedigree: Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws. It’s a mixture of all those, and also the kid-classic The Goonies, from which Super 8 mines its spontaneous energy and wonder.

We can talk comparisons all day, but really this is a wholly original movie, a fantastically nostalgic romp with some pre-teens as they discover their own voices and the alien that terrorizes their small Ohio town. Set inside the framework of Super 8 is a movie within a movie, which is where our young stars make their entrance.

The year is 1979 and Joe (Joel Courtney) is the makeup man on an 8mm movie project called The Case, a zombie film written and directed by his best friend Charles, a lovable tyrant of a director who might be a Francis Ford Coppola facsimile. Cary, with a wild smile full of braces, is the film’s special effects wiz and pyromaniac. Martin, who throws up whenever he’s nervous, is the zombie flick’s star. The boys are in high school — based on their plucky attitudes, probably freshman.

These youngsters are authentic boys in every way: they like baseball and model kits, they ride their bikes everywhere, they bicker and argue in rowdy overlapping bursts, and they swear like little pirates. The big F word is mostly off limits; just the nickel-and-dime swears — shit, hell, damn — the ones that every kid in

America

knows and uses because it’s rebellious and fun. Remember when Elliott said "penis breath" in E.T.? It didn't inflict any damage on my young mind, and neither will these swear words so don't be afraid to take your children.

Swearing or not, I loved these kids. They make the movie. Each has their own quirks and interests, which gives them personality and spunk. I liked the Charles kid, who lives in one of those big houses with a gaggle of brothers and sisters who terrorize their parents at every dinner table gathering — in every shot someone is getting walloped repeatedly with a plastic bat. It reminded me of Ned Beatty’s house in 1941, the one with the kids who bounce off the walls as Beatty’s ack-ack gun is driven through the living room.

While Joe and the rest of the film crew shoot a late-night scene at a train station, they witness a horrific train crash that turns loose a captured alien, a massive beast that disappears into the brush and quietly escalates a campaign of terror on the town: Electricity flickers. The local dogs flee for neighboring communities. Engines from cars at a car dealership are stolen: “How do I explain this to my insurance company?” the lot owner screeches. Joe’s dad, the town’s ranking deputy after the sheriff turns up missing or eaten, tries to piece everything together to no avail. The deputy is played by Kyle Chandler, who was in another perfect popcorn movie about a monster and a movie within a movie — Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake.

There’s only one female character, Alice, played by Elle Fanning (Somewhere), Dakota’s little sister. She’s taller and slightly more developed than the boys because that’s the way it is; girls mature faster than boys. She has several great scenes, including one where she wows the film crew with her acting. Her careful performance provides a tender contrast to the film’s other sides: the action-heavy bombast, the witty banter with the boys, and the sci-fi thrills.

With the thrills, there are many. And they aren’t just gotcha moments, where the soundtrack volume jumps to illicit cheap shocks. Super 8 works — and works hard — for its electric jolts. I liked one scene with an electrician who hears strange noises while suspended high up above a utility truck. He goes higher and higher until the bucket he’s riding in tops out at the perfect chomping height for space aliens.

Action and thrills are prominent in Super 8, but the film never panders to the lowest common denominator. It’s fun and exciting, but also incredibly intuitive about filmgoers’ tastes. There’s a generally accepted misconception that some audiences want “mindless entertainment” — that they “don’t want to think, but just enjoy a movie.” (I get emails like this every time I pan a blockbuster movie.) This idea perpetuates movies by Michael Bay and others who feel obligated to create explosion after explosion for no other reasons than just because. Or it “looks cool.” Considering the horribleness of the last Transformers movie, this film philosophy doesn’t hold much water.

Here’s a test: go on YouTube and watch videos of building demolitions. Time yourself. If you can do this for more than two hours then you’re in a rather small minority I would not admit to in public. Most people want substance, whether they realize it or not. They want the plot, and the characters within it, to make sense. Here’s a movie that combines all the popcorny elements — gunfights, explosions, aliens, chases — into a coherent plot that will impress the hell out of you with its keen eye for detail, sharp sense of humor and its irreverent journey into the life of boys.

What begins as an adventure, quickly veers into science-fiction, mystery, action and lots of human dramas, including a half-expected romance and a painful revelation about Joe's deceased mother who may have had something to do with Alice's dad and why he's such a grump. The military also makes an appearance, as does a barking colonel who turns the Ohio town into a warzone as soldiers criss-cross the streets searching for their escaped extraterrestrial. The movie excels with each new addition to the plot. Each new layer adds to the whole, and the young actors adapt with ease. I fear that some will find the finale implausible and silly, but I saw it as a natural progression to its end. (Speaking of ends, stay for the credits to watch The Case in its entirety.)

It’s no surprise that Steven Spielberg is producing this film. He was a boy himself when he began filming his own Super 8 movies. I’ve mentioned Spielberg several times before this, but he’s not the director. J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, TV’s Alias) has that job, and he does it well. I just see more of Spielberg in this than of Abrams. Super 8 feels like a splendid mixture of E.T. and Goonies, two classic Spielberg projects that understood what it meant to be young and to seek out that one great adventure before a boy became a man, uncoiled from his imagination and entered adulthood. This is one of those rare movies that makes me want to be a kid again.

Po returns in beautifully animated kung fu epic

2011-05-27T11:56:00.000-07:00

Here’s my mini review:

Praise the panda. Prattling Po — plushy, perfectly plump and plagued with precociousness — ponders private parentage problems and protects his peaceful, panic-prone people in a peppy post-prequel packed with punkish pyrotechnics, pleasant protagonists, polished plots, persistent perkiness and prickly pirates in Panda Part 2. Partake the picture perhaps? I proudly proclaim in the positive.

Now the full review, which is good because I was running out of context-appropriate “P” words.

I am quite fond of the first Kung Fu Panda, which was all kinds of silly. Now here’s Kung Fu Panda 2, a sequel that begs to be so much more than the first one simply because it doesn’t deviate from the original’s charm.

Panda 2 is mostly more of what made the first film so delightful: Jack Black’s goofy humor, realistic kung fu, and an animation style that is quite simply beautiful with its deep textures and rich colors. The sequel goes beyond the first film, though, if only because it adds layers to the star, a lovable panda named Po, who still has learning and growing to undertake before he can be the great champion he was prophesied to become. The sequel also solves that lingering dilemma from the first film, which was how a goose could father a panda — yes, panda Po was adopted, to the thankfulness of Mrs. Goose (and the jealous-prone Mr. Goose for that matter).

Po is still in that lush valley with the Furious Five — Monkey, Snake, Tigress, Mantis and Crane, all-voiced by big-name talent — as they hone their martial arts skills and protect the cute little bunnies, pigs and ducks from roaming invaders and plunderers. In an early fight sequence, wolves rappel into the valley to steal everyone’s metal for a reason that’s sure to be nefarious. Po and his five friends dispatch the mangy beasts with their unmatched fighting skills, some of which are a little far-fetched, but fun nevertheless. For instance, dangle a tiger, panda and monkey from a snake and you’re likely to end up with two snakes.

It’s all quite implausible, even for an animated film, but the fighting styles are rooted in actual kung fu styles and movies. Po’s acrobatic spinning and fluttery flipping can be seen in any of the recent live-action classics: Once Upon a Time in China, Hero, Iron Monkey or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Much of the animated stunt work seems to be a specific homage to the films of Jackie Chan, who also does the voice of Monkey. In his prime, you could give Chan a shopping cart, pinball machine, metal ladder or just a bamboo pole and he could create inventive kung fu moves that were physically magnificent and tinted in delicate comedy. Kung Fu Panda 2 benefits from Chan’s lighter fighting style, and applies it to all kinds of high-flying animated battles. A chase sequence with rickshaws really stands out.

When the film isn’t dropping visual references to kung fu movies it seems to be miming some great gags from silent films, including a fight sequence where a musical bunny is shifted around a battle like a chess piece, and another in which Po tries to get an ox and crocodile out of a jail cell using a revolving cell door. The movie is very funny, and the voice acting is fantastic, but much of it plays out visually, in brilliantly choreographed routines.

It turns out the wolves are stealing metal to create a kung fu killer: massive cannons in the shape of Chinese dragons. The main villain is a nutty peacock voiced by — who else? — Gary Oldman. The peacock also has something to do with Po’s past, which creates a delay in Po’s kung fu. Tigress (Angelina Jolie) is developed much more in this film as she comes to understand Po’s increasing internal toil. Also returning is the great James Hong, who voices Po’s goose dad. Crouching Tiger alumnus Michelle Yeoh joins the cast to help Po as a soothsaying goat who frequently chews on the peacocks silk robes.

I was wildly entertained throughout Kung Fu Panda 2, but I was especially impressed with the film’s many animation styles. Facial expressions, fighting stances, stunning landscapes … it all looked amazing. But there’s more: the opening credits, end credits, flashbacks, dreams and premonitions within the film are all shown in different animated styles. Some look like paper puppets, others are more akin to Japanese animation, and others more closely resemble traditional Disney hand-drawn animation. And each looks stunning.

It should be noted that the Panda franchise — expect a third one by the looks of the last scene — is a project by Dreamworks, not Pixar. Dreamworks’ animation is getting continuously better at digital animation. It’s unlikely that Pixar throne’s going to be toppled anytime soon, but panda Po represents a blossoming new dynasty in the animated kingdom.

And that’s positively pleasing.

To read my review of the original Kung Fu Panda, click here.

New Pirates suffers from old problems

2011-05-20T00:15:00.000-07:00

It’s widely agreed that there were vast problems with the last two Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and the reason they couldn’t be fixed was because both films — each following the same storyline — were shot at the same time. Try dropping anchor on that behemoth and you’re likely to capsize the ship.

Now here we are with a new Pirates, a fresh plot and more wiggle room to make a film that doesn’t have to cater to the story demands of a sequel. With more freedom Captain Jack Sparrow will soar again, right? Wrong.

All the agonizing issues with Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End have returned. It seems that spark from the first film, Curse of the Black Pearl, is forever gone, doused by the ocean’s mist I reckon.

Not to say that Pirates 4 — officially it’s called Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides — is a bad film, because it’s not terrible. It’s just mediocre. Considering its potential, and its inflated budget, it should be so much better, especially since it had the opportunity to pop out of that rut created by the last films. Not helping the whole situation is the 3-D, which should have never been applied to a film this dark. Night scenes, dungeons, candlelit bars, underwater scenes, caves, underwater caves … these scenes would be dim even without the 3-D sunglasses. Please, see this movie in 2-D; if we avoid the 3-D versions, they’ll eventually just go away.

Returning are Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), saucy as ever, and the recently peg-legged Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), who can’t decide if he’s a hero or a villain. Throughout Tides Jack and Barbossa routinely rotate allegiances with each other and with the other factions — England, Spain and the pirate Blackbeard aboard his treacherous ship Queen Anne’s Revenge — as they seek out the Fountain of Youth, a legendary mystery that Jack solves by using a magic compass. The film bypasses all the mystery and adventure of the fountain’s discovery with that stupid compass from the earlier films; too often it’s used to add more momentum to the plot by cheating. Certainly a treasure map would be a cliché, but also much more interesting.

Along the way, Jack encounters some new characters, including Angelica (Penélope Cruz), a sexy Spaniard who he had a fling with many years before. Jack still has a crush on her, though he can’t admit it — “If you had a sister and a dog, I would choose the dog,” he tells her. Angelica is the daughter of Blackbeard, a fearsome pirate who wants the Fountain of Youth to frighten off his executioner, who has been prophesied to be Barbossa. Jack’s dad, played by Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards, returns again and he still looks to be about 120 years old. Jack asks if he knows where the fountain is. Jack’s dad: “Does this face look like it’s seen the Fountain of Youth?”

Much of the dialogue is arbitrary and meaningless, but the actors seem to be having fun, especially Depp, who has found some kind of twitchy nirvana playing a boozy pirate dressed in his leathery layers and clanking accessories. Depp is a very physical comedian, and it shows in all his little gestures and tipsy nuances. I’m glad the franchise kept him aboard and made Orlando Bloom walk that plank.

As rip-roaring fun as Depp is, the plot has all the mechanical failures of the last films: too many side-quests, too many villains, too many double-crosses and side switchers, and way too many rules. The fountain requires a mermaid’s tear that requires a mermaid that requires a map that requires a compass that requires two silver chalices that requires a boat that requires a key that requires a … on and on into infinite. On Stranger Tides doesn’t feel like an adventure, it feels like a checklist at the grocery store. The film is never propelling itself forward on its own energy; it just sort of coasts on autopilot. And like every film before it, this one devotes much of the plot to Jack Sparrow as he tries to get a ship of his own. Apparently just starting the film with Sparrow on a ship is too much to ask.

The action is exciting and technically impressive. One chase sequence through London with burning coals has a wacky ending. A scene of a man being consumed by the Fountain of Youth is mighty cool; it reminded me of ol' popcorn face at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Some of the action seems to copy the earlier films with swordfights in rafters, lots of swinging off things, and Jack and Barbossa fencing in a cave, which is exactly how Black Pearl ended. Then, as if to copy Twilight’s fading fame, the film introduces vampire mermaids who can shoot Spider-Man webs from their hands (?!?!).

On Stranger Tides is probably the second best Pirates movie, which might be faint praise, but praise nonetheless. It could do better, especially with its messy plot. What’s so odd to me is why its producers don’t require better. They have all the pieces right in front of them, but they continuously bungle the delivery. They need to streamline the story, take out all the different opposing factions and just let Jack be Jack in an adventure without so many moving parts.

From the Vault: At World's End

2011-05-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the opening of the fourth Pirates movies — Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides — here is my original review of the third movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. My review of the new movie will be posted Friday morning.

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And so the trilogy implodes. It’s happened to the best of many series — Spider-Man, Aliens, Shrek, The Matrix — and here it has happened to our beloved Pirates of the Caribbean, an franchise so rich in humor and adventure the first time around that it seemed invincible to even the mightiest cannons. Here, though, a single musket could sink it into the sea. And does.

I would have never thought an entire film could be sustained on hostage negotiations and Mexican standoffs alone, but, alas, here it is with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. The film — every bloated minute of it — consists of armed and unarmed negotiation, all of it with endless explanation with in-story footnotes, annotations on the footnotes, and footnotes on the annotations. For a movie about the freedom of the ocean there sure is a great number of rules to follow: nine pirates to a summit, majority vote gets to be king pirate, Flying Dutchman requires a captain, his heart the down payment, and don’t forget parlay. At World’s End creates a world that requires too many plot points to function without constant babysitting.

Meanwhile, the pirates just want to get to it, be it plundering, pillaging or the occasional skirt lifting (“ahlow, poppet”). Arrr! The life of a pirate requires much plot. Too much plot for At World’s End to really show off its creative underbelly of computer effects. In the opening scenes we’re given a beautiful ice world with icebergs and glacier flows. But then nothing happens to it; it was an expensive set decoration. As soon as the film does start to move around and gain momentum: “Whoa there, let’s negotiate this in a tedious below-deck stalemate in which we betray everyone who’s not present.” To my readers: If you can follow the plot to any degree of certainty then please write to the producers to ask for the scriptwriters’ jobs.

This third entry, At World’s End, picks up right where Dead Man’s Chest ended: Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is in the belly of a beast, Will and Elizabeth (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley) are without a ship and tentacle-faced Davey Jones (Bill Nighy) stalks the ocean with his barnacled crew. Davey Jones and his ship, the Flying Dutchman, are being manipulated into a war by the East Indian Trading Company, which is led by one of film’s most unhappy villains, Lord Beckett. Even victory would disappoint the wig-wearing Brit, who is so glum he should cut away the excess glumness and begin exporting it to overly happy peoples around the globe.

Disney has asked me politely (“we respectfully ask …” is the exact wording) not to reveal any of plot resolutions. They are asking not because it would ruin the film, but because if I dished the details you’d be unlikely to care. Or think I was bluffing. Truth is, not much happens. I can’t even imagine what’s not worth giving away. Will and Elizabeth get married? We saw that coming. Could it be that Jack isn’t really dead? Unlikely, because Jack’s on the movie’s poster. Or what about the death of a villain? Now that should be left out of reviews, but only because describing it would require more words than the film’s script.

Like another disastrous “threequel,” the overly-theorized Matrix Revolutions, At World’s End tried to make the story as meaty as the action. In the end, though, it created too much exposition for a story already bloated on exposition. I just wanted Jack Sparrow to be a pirate; I think that’s a reasonable request. And fret not about resolution: all the loose ends are tied up at the end, but that’s only because they’re all knotted on each other 80 minutes before the credits started rolling. Seriously, did we need six different betrayals by Will? Or three from Jack? Or a dozen “look at me, I’m a pretty girl pirate” moments from Elizabeth? What we needed was a swordfight from a windmill, or treasure hunt with a blood-soaked map, the sacking of a Cajun port, a gun battle on a ship’s mast or the plundering of a Spanish fleet. What do we get? Five open-ocean ship battles, a handful of swordfights and two hours spent talking. Woo-hoo! (Now whistle and twirl your finger in the air.)

I will give At World’s End credit, though, for its boat sequences. When the characters finally stop talking and begin sailing, they look amazing in their beautiful ships. Big, clipper-type ships look breathtaking on the big screen and they’re used too infrequently (pretty please with sugar on top see Master & Commander for a far better movie). At World’s End uses a wide variety of clipper ships, pirate frigates, Chinese sampans and British war vessels. They’re crewed by vulgar pirates and super-polite British sailors, the only difference between them is their dental plans. Occasionally these characters man cannons or muskets and take to oceanic warfare. At one point Jack Sparrow swings to a ship’s mast to grapple with a character who has the face of a octopus, the hand of a lobster and the legs of a crab — more than enough for a buffet at the Red Lobster. The scene is stunning for its vast and believable computer animation that supports it.

The writing might go off the deep end, but the whole movie looks great. As do the stars. Depp isn’t given very much to do, but he makes do with what he’s given. In one scene he hallucinates a vision that multiplies himself dozens of times, creates rock-like crabs that can move great object and sails his ship on a wave of sand. The Depp act doesn’t feel as genuine as it did the first time, but his Sparrow is still very much a lovable character, even if it’s increasingly more prone to parody. Also, Sparrow is given a history this time around: he meets his pops, a seedy pirate played by Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards, which is bound to be the cameo of the year whether he snorted his father or not.

Bloom and Knightley are given more starring roles, but they spend so much time on opposite sides it’s easy to forget that a romance is buried in all the pirate politics. They needed more screen time together to make the ending more sustainable (by the way: stay through the credits for an extra scene). The side characters are the best, though, including a one-eyed pirate and his bald buddy, two blundering British soldiers, first mate Gibbs (Kevin McNally), a salty sea dog and his parrot, a monkey, and a small person, who fires a cannon so big it throws him backward into a pit. And Geoffrey Rush, as Captain Barbossa, is terrific if also clutter on an already crowded landscape.

I’m very disappointed in this last entry of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The first film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, was brilliantly funny and endlessly clever. The second film was a sequence of missed notes, and the third film is a symphony of missed notes. And it was on the right track for fun summer flick: the sum of all the set design, makeup, costumes, computer effects and lavish settings is production overkill but it makes for splendid visuals. If only there was a plot, at least one that we could grasp onto like the handle of a cutlass. Instead, we grab and grab and grab and come up with a big stinky piece of seaweed that is apparently the story.

From the Vault: Dead Man's Chest

2011-05-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the opening of the fourth Pirates movies — Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides — here is my original review of the second movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. My review of the new movie will be posted Friday morning.

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When does marketing lead to mutiny? When you sell half a movie as a whole one and then make your customers wait for the ending until May 2007. That’s how you make the summer’s most beloved sequel into something to grumble at.

I blame the marketing of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest because the commercials are selling the movie as one complete entity. That’s the wrong approach to use on the most anticipated movie of the summer, especially when it ends … well, the way it does — I’m not going to give it away. Kill Bill broke itself into volumes; Pirates needs the same treatment. Or just call it a prequel to No. 3, at least then we know we’re only seeing the beginning of a story.

Ignoring the deceptive cliffhanger lurking toward the end of Dead Man’s Chest, this new Pirates movie plays a lot like the old one: swashbuckling, yadda yadda yadda, canon fire, blah blah blah, Johnny Depp playing Captain Jack Sparrow as a cartoon. No, actually a cartoon drawing of parody of a caricature made from a mascara sketch on a napkin. Depp has taken his drunk captain to the outer limits of reason and the movie suffers for it. What was refreshing and invigorating in the first movie, is simply obnoxious overacting in this one. Luckily Jack and Johnny are given lots to do and their superegos are given breaks during all the swashbuckling.

The new movie concerns a buried pirate’s chest (of course!) which does not contain gold doubloons or Spanish gemstones, but the beating heart of a cursed man who rules the sea, or is ruled by the sea — one of them. Whoever controls the heart controls the man. And since the man has a crew of undead sailors and a giant sea serpent at his disposal he is a valuable asset to control on the high seas.

The man is Davey Jones, a cursed pirate bound by love who roams the seas attacking ships at random. Hundreds of years before we catch up with him, Jones gave himself to the sea as a normal man, but after so long underwater his head is an octopus, his arm a crab claw and barnacles and mussels grow freely on his limbs. His crew, imprisoned for 100 years by their cursed captain, have undergone other hideous transformations; their bodies have taken on so many different kinds of ocean life they are no longer men but sampler platters.

For a variety of reasons, too many to list here, Captain Jack and young Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) head out on the open ocean to retrieve the beating heart before Davey Jones gets wise to the plan and before the East Indian Trading Company can get to it first. I liked the premise, but became more agitated with the plot as the movie unfolded. The movie was a kaleidoscope of redundancy: in two separate scenes giant round things go rolling through the jungle, there are two lengthy sea monster battles that are identical to each other and the motivating factor for every action is the same for all the characters. Everyone wants something and they’re willing to trade anything to get it: Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) for Will, Will for Jack, Jack for a key, the key for Elizabeth, Elizabeth for Elizabeth. Some movies have one exchange sequence, or Mexican standoff, but Pirates is made with them.

Although there is way too much bartering and trading among the characters, not to mention plot holes big enough to sail armadas through — How does Jack become chief of a cannibal village? — Dead Man’s Chest has its high points. They may be clones of each other, but the rolling sequences are fun: one is in a cage made of bones, the other is a sword fight on top of a water wheel. Jack Sparrow’s entrance doesn’t top his entry method in The Curse of the Black Pearl, but it comes mighty close. And some slapstick gags with Jack on a roasting kabob are enjoyable.

Everyone will have their favorite parts. Mine were the character effects of Davey Jones (no mention of his locker) and his crew, one of them being Will Turner’s dead father, Bootstrap Bill (Stellan Skarsgård). At first glance they look like menacing zombies with their guts hanging out of their torsos, but look closer — they are made up entirely of ocean life. One sailor has a live eel protruding from his belly; whether it is a stowaway or actually his stomach is hard to determine. Another character has hermit crabs that take up residence in all the wrong places. Several sailors use swordfish and saw fish as — what else? — real weapons. And I thought the seafood at Sizzler was bad.

All this good stuff aside, though, I couldn’t shake the feeling of disappointment when the movie ended. I wanted a resolution and all I was given was a teaser for a movie next summer. That’s called a rip-off in most parts. In the Caribbean it’s called pirating.

From the Vault: The Curse of the Black Pearl

2011-05-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the opening of the fourth Pirates movies — Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides — here is my original review of the first movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. My review of the new movie will be posted Friday morning.

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Shiver me timbers, Pirates is good.

With Johnny Depp as the engagingly goofy pirate lead it couldn’t possibly be bad.

Depp plays a salty sea dog with gold teeth and a drunk swagger in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Disney’s second film based on attractions at its theme parks. The first was the worthless Country Bears; the third will be the Eddie Murphy vehicle The Haunted Mansion. I can't wait until they do a movie-version of that bitchin' Monorail.

The press kit doesn’t refer to the movie as an interpretation of the Disneyland ride of the same name, a slow-moving boat ride among Cajun and Creole pirates as they loot and plunder the Big Easy; it’s an “homage,” the material says. Well, whatever it is, it weaves a swashbuckling adventure across the high seas, where bald men with earrings, naked lady tattoos and bad teeth can set sail in a yarn as wild as they get. And when someone gets in their way: Ar, they send’em down to Davey Jones’ locker in a rain of cannonball fire, or they make’em walk da plank. And thar be a sailor’s death, ye matie.

Depp plays Captain Jack Sparrow, an unlucky pirate recruited by Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), the eager young blacksmith who must rescue his true love from cursed, more-evil pirates. Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), the meanest pirate since One-Eyed Willie or Blackbeard, kidnaps Will’s young lass after she’s discovered with a missing piece of Aztec gold.

Barbossa and his vile crew on the Black Pearl, a mythical ship with coal-colored sails and a gray mist that follows behind it, unleashed a Spaniard curse when they stole the gold coins years before. Under the moonlight, their skin rots away leaving walking skeletons unable to feel, taste or smell. The only way they can break the curse is to return all the pieces of gold and sacrifice an innocent with the last coin.

The adventures in Pirates are numerous and far-reaching — sword battles in blacksmith shops, rope-swinging trickery on cluttered docks and crowded harbors, gun fights, cannon battles and full-on wars in which British soldiers grapple with pirate skeletons. This is the kind of fodder summer movies were made to exploit.

Depp really makes this flick enjoyable, especially since he’s been mistaken as a pirate in real life. A rogue on his own merit, Depp is introduced here as a befuddled, yet rebellious, pirate who can’t seem to find his buccaneer groove. Jack’s Sparrow’s introduction into Black Pearl is unforgettable and it utilizes Depp’s natural comedic touch. Sparrow sails into port on a sinking boat, unfazed by his ship’s buoyancy.

Pirates of the Caribbean, directed by the same guy that did the creepy horror The Ring (Gore Verbinski), is Disney’s first PG-13 movie ever, and it should be. It’s a little too violent for the little ones, especially once the skeletons start attacking folks with meat hooks and cleavers.

Don’t get the wrong idea though, this is a Disney dazzler, one tough sea cracker (on land: cookie) that never takes itself too serious. And unlike too many movies out now, there’s plenty to see. At no time during this two-hour adventure is it not delivering on all cylinders. Ahoy, this be fun.

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride

2011-05-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

So Judd Apatow doesn’t hate women. Many knew this already, but here it is in Bridesmaids, an Apatow comedy with all the foulness and frank humor of any male-themed gross-out comedy.

It isn’t that Apatow hated women; he just preferred to point his cameras at men, probably because he understands them better since, oh, you know … he’s a man. Everyone seems to forget, though, that Apatow has filmed great female parts, including Katherine Heigl and Leslie Mann in Knocked Up, and the wonderful Catherine Keener performance in 40-Year-Old Virgin, but nevermind.

Enough about Apatow; he only produced Bridemaids. Let me instead direct praise toward director Paul Feig, a prominent TV director who understands film just as well, and also writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, who bring three-dimensional female characters to the foreground in a male-dominated genre. And look, no Will Ferrell or Seth Rogen anywhere in this!

Underrated Saturday Night Live writer Kristen Wiig stars in the film as the down-on-her-luck bridesmaid. She’s Annie, a plucky woman in her late 30s who hasn’t found fulfillment out of life. Her bakery closed, she’s single, she floats from bad relationship to bad relationship, and her car is a hunk of junk. She lives with an English brother and sister who have a rather odd relationship for siblings.

Annie’s childhood best friend Lillian (SNL alum Maya Rudolph) gets engaged and picks Annie to be the maid of honor. Trouble starts early when Annie meets one of the other bridesmaids, Helen (Rose Byrn), who is richer and snootier than Annie can tolerate. You've heard of the phenomenon of Bridezilla? Helen is bridezilla's evil sidekick. At one point Helen throws a Lillian a party: the invitations come with live butterflies, guests are taken to the party on horses, there’s a chocolate fountain of immense proportions and the party favors are yellow lab puppies. Helen is clearly spoiled beyond belief and it rubs Annie in all the wrong ways.

Wiig plays into all this with a very subtle, and seething, jealous rage. Her tart caricatures from SNL are gone, and instead we’re getting a personal and realistic performance of a woman drawn away from her best friend by jealousy, an emotion that women have mastered in Bridesmaids. The film seems to hint that women enjoy their female friends, but beneath the friendship there is a river of competition that flows like a torrent. Notice the early sequence at the engagement party as Annie and Helen one-up their dueling toasts to their friend. It’s painful and desperate, but to women it’s business as usual, albeit to an exaggerated degree.

By talking about the underlying themes I’m making the film sound less like a comedy so let me end that now: Bridesmaids is a hilarious exercise in role reversals. You’ve seen men behave badly in movies like The Hangover; well, here’s women doing embarrassing things in the name of comedy. If you’ve seen only a handful of comedies then you’ve seen the man-with-diarrhea scene. Well, here’s one with women that’s better. And it’s in a bridal boutique with its white carpets, white dresses and couture luxury.

Wiig has some great physical scenes, including one where she’s drugged on an airplane and another in a car as she tries to get a cop’s attention. "Hey, arrest me, I'm driving topless," she screams at the cop as she zings past. She’s supported in these scenes by some very funny co-stars, especially Melissa McCarthy, who is the Zach Galifianakis oddity of the bunch. She’s silly and raw, and it will likely be a performance that will prove her worth in future comedies.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bridesmaids for all its obvious and not-so-obvious elements: the comedy and the deeper relationships women have with each other. They play against, and also with, each other in ways that are refreshing. Wiig has always been a force to be reckoned with, but here she proves she can play with the boys and beat them at their own game.

War film fizzles amid beautiful photography

2011-05-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

When Roland Joffé’s name gets mentioned by a film studio it always comes immediately before or after his best film, The Killing Fields.

But there are two sides to Joffé: the director that made The Killing Fields, a marvelous picture about the brutality of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the director who made Super Mario Bros. and the more recent torture-porn Captivity.

His new film seems to have introduced yet another Joffé, one that falls right between the others. In There Be Dragons, he maintains the superb visual style of his best work but with the scatterbrained mediocrity of his worst. The film seems to have so much potential, but it never takes off because it languishes in boring backstory, overlapping narration and flashbacks within flashbacks, no doubt an unintended Inception homage.

Dragons begins with a reporter, his ailing father and a trip to Spain, where flashbacks and narration guide us as we meet the father’s long-buried demons — “There be dragons … in my past,” he tells the son. The father is Manolo, a turncoat in the Spanish revolution. He plays both sides against each other — occasionally over a woman — while periodically encountering a childhood friend, Father Josemaría Escrivá, who has since been sainted for his works, which include the creation of Opus Dei, the Catholic institution.

The film flip-flops between the two contrasting characters as it meanders through the Spanish Civil War, a brutal conflict that turned brother against brother, and everyone against Spain’s many faithful priests. Manolo, who is the film’s catalyst and ultimate villain, is also the main character even though his eternal redemption seems to confound everyone including the priest he so begrudgingly hates. Manolo is played by Wes Bentley, the weed dealer from American Beauty, an actor who seems torn between the Manolo’s despicable and contemplative sides. Escrivá is played warmly by Charlie Cox, though in too much of the film he’s got this babe-in-the-woods “awe shucks” gaze.

Costars include Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko and Rodrigo Santoro, who aren’t given nearly as many bad lines or as much obnoxious brooding as the Manolo character. Dougray Scott has a minor role as the reporter son and he’s given some heavy-handed dialogue that smacks like overwritten trite: “And that is how I went searching for a saint and found my father instead,” or “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” It never quite surpasses the film’s first spoken line, though: “I was a war baby.”

Some of the scenes are quite good, including one where Escrivá is hiding within an apartment’s walls and the soldiers come knocking. In another a man must execute a woman who was framed for espionage. He fires a gun, but not at the person you expect. This all takes place amid some truly wonderful photography. Cinematographer Gabriel Beristain outdoes himself in every scene.

The acting is sub-par and boring, which only makes the long plot so much longer. Occasionally it loses its focus, which I think is Escrivá, though you can’t quite tell when Manolo’s sneering face dominates every shot. Overall, the film is epic in scope, but never in delivery.

Marvel mines its junk bins for Thor-ible film

2011-05-06T00:15:00.000-07:00

Talk about starting the summer movie season with a bang — a bang to the side of the head. Some movies give you a good time; Thor just assaults you then gloats over your unconscious body.

Oh, it gets worse: it’s all in 3-D because two dimensions of torture just aren’t enough. Call me a contrarian stooge for not liking this beloved comic movie. Call me an elitist snob for not appreciating the dense comic mythology. Call me a jerk for blasting a movie you’ve been dying to see. Just don’t call me when Thor gives you a raging headache from its paralyzing 3-D effects.

Here is Thor, a blond bruiser with a bad attitude. The film begins on Earth but jumps to another planet, Asgard — mind the pronunciation — where Thor and his buddies, all of them wrapped in similar football padding, prance around beating up bad guys on ice planet Jotunheim. Asgard, Jotunheim, Mjolnir, Volstagg … the names will only make sense if you’re a Nordic raider, or have somehow braved ridicule by reading Thor comics when everyone else was reading X-Men and Superman. (Seriously, Thor?!? Is Marvel out of comics to adapt? What’s next Dolphin Boy?)

Thor is steeped in mythology. He ain’t no simple Spider-Man, who can be summed up in three sentences: “Spider bites boy. Boy gets super powers. Boy uses super powers to fight crime.” Thor’s origin story, which pains the entire first half of the movie, is more complicated. He’s the son of Odin, a wise and great god-king in Asgard, a land that has a railway of lightning that can traverse the cosmos, though Thor rides to the lightning machine on a horse. Odin must choose the next god-king, which comes down to Thor and his weasely little brother Loki. I knew Loki was the villain in the first shot because he had slicked-back hair — it’s almost always a dead giveaway, more so than the “No. 1 Villain” T-shirt.

A power struggle erupts and Thor is cast to earth without his powers, of which there are many: flight, lightning punches, sonic booms kicks, and the wielding of a boomerang hammer. In an earlier scene, Odin tells Thor that his hammer is a “weapon to destroy, or a tool to build.” Guess what Thor uses it for? I kept wishing that IQ-deficient Thor spoke like Hulk: “Me Thor. Me crush with hammer.” No one expects Thor to fly down to the South and start repairing tornado damage, or zip on across to Japan to rebuild from the tsunami, but that line is insulting. Marvel would rather inject Drano into its eyeballs than feature a superhero who builds something. Name me one fat comic fan that would sit through a movie about Superman repairing levees or Batman doing homeless outreach to crackheads.

Much of the film takes place on Asgard, the realm of Thor, and these scenes are horrible in nearly every way. The dialogue is laughable, the effects are weak, and all the mythology is just silly. And there are more funny hats than the royal wedding. The Earth scenes are slightly better, including the one where Thor walks into a diner and says, “This mortal form has grown weak. I require sustenance.” He orders more coffee by throwing his mug on the floor and yelling, “Another!” You’ll laugh, as I did, but only because Thor’s the dimmest of Marvel’s bulbs. Oddly enough, Thor’s staging of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men would be quite moving.

Thor is played by Chris Hemsworth, a relative newcomer. He’s a perfect Thor if only because he plays right into the title character’s oafish goofiness, which only contradicts the film’s later heroic posing. Hemsworth is surrounded by some major talent, including two Oscar winners — Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins — though the characters can’t seem to get a foothold on the material. They spend too much time blubbering in convoluted prose and endlessly explaining Odin’s many faults to ever recover from the film’s melodramatic undertones. When the action elements finally wrestle the plot away from the Asgardian windbags, it’s too late and Thor is mired in too much story, too many cruddy 3-D effects and all those silly outfits.

Thor’s director, Kenneth Branagh, a fine Shakespearean actor and director, was working with too many elements here. The dialogue is atrocious. The pacing is unbalanced. There are too many characters. And generally he makes some critical missteps. For instance, actor Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from The Wire) is cast in a role that requires him to wear a ridiculous costume, walk in a clunky robotic gait and speak in a chunky monotone. Why bury a fine actor in a meaningless role? The movies seems bored with its characters, which is probably why it later resorts to outright kidnapping when Thor faces off against, I kid you not, the robot Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

That doggone extra dimension of movie doesn’t help any of this. Much of the film is shot in that hyper-cut style of editing. I find that fad difficult to watch in 2-D, but here it is in 3-D painstakingly slamming itself against your frontal lobe trying to batter out a seizure or two. With action pieced together from dozens of angles and then sped up in a flurry of images, the 3-D effect is useless and counterproductive. By the time your eyes convince your brain that what you’re seeing is a three-dimensional image the shot changes and the whole process starts over again — we’re talking nanoseconds here, but they add up. And since elements within each shot are constantly shifting from foreground to background, and back again, the film constantly plays tricks with your eyes. As if to make matters worse, every camera angle, even ones as simple as basic close-ups on talking heads, are tilted, as if Branagh left his Shakespeare collection under one leg of the camera tripod. At best the 3-D won’t work; at worst you’ll get a headache or feel dizzy.

In the end, though, the joke is on the audience: Thor will get people to pay money to sit indoors and wear sunglasses.

Furiously stupid, yet oddly enjoyable

2011-04-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

Stupid and preposterous.

Did you expect something else with Fast Five? If so then, then open your glove box and gently slam your hand in it. That pain you’re feeling is your re-entry back to Planet Earth. If that doesn't work, have someone back over your foot.

The movie, the fifth in the Fast and Furious franchise, is also a little fun — guiltily so — but only because it’s so stupid and preposterous. The things that happen in this movie don’t happen in comic-book movies, where the heroes are mutants and the villains are space aliens and the plots take place on planets with less gravity, no physics and a wanton disregard for Newton's Laws. To tolerate the film you must suspend disbelief; to enjoy it you must walk disbelief out to a firing squad and light it a cigarette.

If you've seen the other films, then you've seen this: it's more action, mayhem and crime by way of automobile. Although, this one reunites a bunch of the old actors, basically joining the two sagas of the franchise — they can be categorized as the movies with Vin Diesel and the movies without Vin Diesel — it mostly centers on the two stars. Diesel is the meathead Dominic Toretto, whose love of fast cars keeps getting him busted. Paul Walker plays his foil/buddy, ex-FBI agent Brian O'Conner, who busts him out of jail so they can perform more dangerous car stunts.

Dom and Brian head off to Brazil, where they get entangled with a kingpin who has an empire of crooked cops at his disposal. We know the film is in Rio de Janeiro because every scene is shot in a favela, or Brazilian slum, and director Justin Lin constantly reminds us of that by including the word favela in every sentence. We also know we're in Rio because Lin shows us the Christ the Redeemer statue, which deserves some kind of cameo credit. In this setting — beautiful beaches, the vibrant downtown district and sprawling shantytowns — Brian and Dom lay waste to Brazil, plowing their cars into every national treasure except that statue, which is luckily next to no roadways.

The film runs on a mixture of ethanol and cliché, and it uses every one in the book: the One Last Job trick, the lover's quarrel that ends with the outburst "I'm pregnant," the "I'll give you 24 hours before I hunt you down" clause, the Villain Joins the Hero ploy, and lots of recycled, cheap one-liners. If you've seen just five movies in your lifetime, then you've already seen nearly every trick Fast Five will dish out.

Car chases abound, as do high-octane heists and brutal shoot-outs. These, of course, are all implausible on an obscene level. In one sequence, the stars plunge into a deep gorge with nothing but water to break their fall. No one told the director that water, when entering it at Mach 3, might as well be concrete. In another scene, a bus rolls over after apparently tripping on a dime on the highway. The final sequence involves two cars pulling a massive steel vault the size of a boxcar through the entire city. It would be like a toddler pulling a John Deere tractor from a dead stop, but never mind realism.

Joining all this ludicrous bombast is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who has facial hair more intricately manicured than the gardens of Versailles. He’s so bad it’s comical. The film gives him some hokey dialogue ("We'll catch'em. Not a phone call more and not a bullet less." "Put on your thunderwear.") and he's often shown cleaning his gun, as if we would think he were a pansy if he weren't stroking gun steel, sharpening knives or lumberjacking the entire Northwest. No one really thinks he's the next Schwarzenegger anymore; no one except maybe Johnson himself.

The film builds and builds and builds right up to its ultimate destiny: the two sweaty meatheads — Diesel and Johnson — brawling in an extended fight sequence. The movie could have been called Bald Guys With No Necks Punch Each Other and it would have worked. This sequence, which is actually the false bottom on the film’s finale — oh, there's more — is the male equivalent of women mud wrestling in bikinis. And Fast Five milks every sweaty second of the fight. By the end of the mutual pummeling there's nothing really left for The Rock to do, so he inexplicably joins the team he's trying to apprehend.

Diesel, though, give the guy a hand: He's taken one performance — 2001's The Fast and the Furious — and turned it into a gearhead's magnum opus. He holds court over cars, imparts vehicular wisdom, says grace, swigs a beer, and generally seems to glow in this Zen-like state of perpetual car bliss. His acting is laughable, but his presence on the screen is unforgettable as he soaks up the film's wild cornball energy.

The women of Fast Five don't come out as lucky as the men, though. Jordana Brewster, with her sharp features and waifish shape spends much of the movie as the sympathetic shoulder to cry on for the men. Then she gets pregnant, which means she's out of action so she can shelter Baby Brian in various half-shirts and booty-riding shorts. The other woman, played by Gal Gadot, seems to be a legitimate member of the team, a team that doesn't assign duties to its members based on gender ... oh wait, she uses her ass to secure the kingpin's fingerprints.

Then there's the case of poor Elsa Pataky, who plays an honest policia in Rio. See, she's a widow; her husband, a cop, was gunned down after he refused to take a bribe. After his death, she joined the force to be a crusader to his cause. When she's not being rescued by all the big strong men, the film paints her as this delicate and passionate woman who mourns her husband while trying to undo the corruption in Brazil's wacky system. That doesn't last. I should have known something would have gone awry with this character when The Rock's rock began bulging in his pants when he saw her dossier. "I chose you because of your smile," he says. Then Fast Five asks this crusading cop to shoot at other cops, rob the police station and destroy downtown Rio — where are her principles now? By the end of the film, the widower has been hastily thrown into Dom's arms, where she ditches her modest wardrobe and noble plight so she can be — wait for it — some hoochie-mama on a beach with a bunch of criminals. This movie's understanding of women is better than, say, Sucker Punch — in which all women are rape fantasies and sperm receptacles — but still it's desperately short of understanding women on any level deeper than,"Hot women sell movie tickets."

Fast Five, of course, also fetishizes the car in a soft-core kind of way. People who adore automobiles will be thoroughly titillated as the film frames cars in all kinds of glorious angles. It doesn’t give these cars many interesting things to do, nor does it reinvent the car chase by any means, but it does try so hard. Most of the action is visually comprehensible, though it is edited into a clustery mess. And, for the life of me, I could not figure out which cars were traveling what direction and with which drivers in the last action scene.

One thing that should be unforgivable: Dodge's super-heavy product placement. I kept waiting for Morgan Spurlock to jump out of the backseat as some kind of commentary on the nature of product placement, to which Fast Five sacrifices its soul to the Dodge Charger, a car that is as much a character in this film as Superman is to his. Chargers are in chases, shoot-outs, perilous games of chicken, used as vehicular retribution, cursed at, spit upon, and unnecessarily glorified in an extended sequence where they drag that massive vault through Rio. Curse these obvious product placements.

The film is stupid and bad, but it's also precisely up to par for a summer starter. Call me a Fast/Furious apologist. Most people turned their movie brains off in December. Before quality can be appreciated again, they need a jolt to the system. And Fast Five will probably do the trick. I knew the movie was stupid, but somehow I admired it for being every kind of stupid in just the right mixture.

Brush up on your western trivia in Rango

2011-03-07T08:28:00.000-08:00

Rango exists in a strange paradox: It’s animated, so children will naturally be interested, but it’s themed for adults with very mature references. Get a sitter or take the kids? Here’s a third option: take the sitter. They’ll appreciate Rango’s humor more than the kids.

And if you do take the little ones, expect them to ask questions after the movie. Like why did the doctor put on a rubber glove and stick his finger up in the air when the other character mentioned a sore prostate? “What’s a prostate? Tell us, daddy, please.” You’ll never hear the end of it from the backseat. Tell them what it is, in all the scary details, and you’ll never get them to the pediatrician again. You don’t tell them, and next thing you know they’re Googling “finger in prostate” — young eyes can’t un-see that.

Prostates don’t belong in films for children. Is that me coddling the children of the 21st Century? Maybe, but that’s not all that’s out of place in Rango, Gore Verbinski’s ode to westerns: swearin’, murderin’, tobaccy, cee-gars, references to other western films and the water-infused plot, which draws so heavily from Roman Polanski’s Chinatown that Robert Towne deserves a screenwriting credit. Adults will be amused; their children might be missing half the jokes.

Rango begins with an aquarium-based chameleon who fancies himself a master thespian. During a move, the little lizard (voiced with whimsy by Johnny Depp) is bumped from his aquarium and tossed into the Mojave Desert, where the local wildlife acts like they’re stars on an episode of Deadwood. The lizard adopts the name Rango — short for Durango, the name on a food label — and struts into town looking for water, the currency of the desert. He meets all kinds of grizzled beasts — bearded mice, spectacled tarantulas, wrinkly chickens, toothless horny toads — who fulfill all the western roles: shopkeeper, bartender, gunslinger, town drunk and bandits. A mariachi band of burrowing owls act as the film’s Greek chorus.

The character design and animation are terrific. The film has a one-of-a-kind look to it; the style is a mixture of photo-realistic textures with oddball animal caricatures. It's not as cartoony and vibrant as a Pixar; the animation is dirty and dusty like the Old West. The characters are harshly lit under the Nevada sun, creating dense shadows under hat brims and overexposed vistas over their shoulders. Indoors, the shadows dance around sunlight that falls through the windows and those swinging saloon doors. The look of Rango is that of a real western, which adds an authentic pop.

As Rango stumbles around town a mystery begins to unfold: a greedy turtle serving as the mayor — suspenders holding his shell up — may be hording the town’s water in some kind of nefarious plot to hike up the water rates. Rango takes out a posse (on riding roadrunners) to investigate, which results in double-crosses, a rattlesnake showdown, a chase with a covered wagon and a sequence with moles riding bats like they’re the air cavalry.

The voice casting is fun, though I tire tremendously of Johnny Depp doing Johnny Depp impersonations. Isla Fisher does a remarkable western shtick, as does Harry Dean Stanton and Alfred Molina. Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name makes a cameo, though he’s voiced by Timothy Olyphant doing a noteworthy Eastwood impression. If Slim Pickens were alive, he would have found himself right at home with all the crusty western talk. I really enjoyed Fisher's character, called Beans, who delivers a rapid-fire bumpkin speak: "Git yer fee-langes offa dem dare bottles."

I especially enjoyed the placement of music and sound effects throughout the film. “Ave Maria” as Rango falls from his aquarium is clever. A mariachi-tinted version of the Raising Arizona soundtrack (the song with the yodeling) plays during an enthusiastic hawk chase. “Ride of the Valkyries,” a parody of a similar scene in Apocalypse Now, plays during the bat air-assault. It’s overused in aerial sequences, but Wagner’s famous song somehow never gets old. And if you listen real carefully you’ll hear that famous windmill squeak from the opening of Once Upon a Time in the West.

I enjoyed most of Rango, especially its western look, but it ran out of things to do just after the halfway mark. And it didn’t balance the humor through the entire film. Was it for adults or children? I’m still confused. A Pixar film would aim between the two, but Rango’s aim was a little high. Not that all films have to be Pixar films; it's just that Pixar has mastered its audience. Rango not sure who its audience is.