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Taken 2

October 9, 2012 by

Luc Besson brings back the ultimate 60-year-old preventer, Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), last seen gunning through Paris hunting down the sex-trafficking Albanians that kidnapped his teenage daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace). He saved her of course, but because Bryan killed so many men, the families belonging to the pile of dead bodies want revenge.  So much so that they are willing to dispatch more of their cold-blooded killer family members to go after Bryan, Maggie, and Bryan’s ex-wife, Lenny (Famke Janssen) while on vacation in Instabul.

Bryan may fend off more Albanians for the Luc Besson-produced cash-grab sequel Taken 2, but the film ignores the whole ticking-clock kidnapping angle that made the first film suspenseful.  Taken was no masterpiece, but it was wholly effective.  Taken 2 approaches the idea of a follow-up in a semi-interesting way—rather than rehashing his daughter’s kidnapping—Mills must fight vengeful pursuers that abduct him and his ex-wife, while his daughter’s safety also hangs over hot coals.  There’s no 4-day deadline.  The problem?  The change doesn’t work.

By the midway point, Taken 2 is a painful slog to watch.  Keep in mind, this is only a 90-minute movie.  The filmmakers simply have no idea what to do with the narrative.  Mills and Lenny get kidnapped.  Kim—believe it—must rescue her parents.  Then Mills must leave his wife behind to save his daughter.  Then Mills has to return and save his wife.  The villains exist to be villains.  The chases exist for chasing’s sake.  The gunplay and fistfights occur because they are expected to.  The filmmakers throw in obstacles—such as the slight slitting of Lenore’s throat and her being hung upside down with only 30 minutes to live—in an attempt to give the film its predecessor’s sense of urgency.  But the obstacles are quickly resolved.

Rather than Mills having the singular forward momentum of the previous film, he runs around Instabul in a strained back-and-forth pursuit.  The editing doesn’t help matters either.  Director Olivier Megaton is notorious for having an obnoxiously sloppy visual style.  You can’t understand any of the action’s choreography—and it looks about as atrocious as his previous efforts Colombiana and Transporter 3.  Mr. Megaton, I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what you want.  But if you come back for Taken 3, I will not see it.  I will not rent it.  I will not catch it on cable TV.

While this sequel had the opportunity to not be a simple retread by embracing the villain revenge angle, Taken 2 can’t overcome the dumping ground storytelling, directing, and editing.  Poor Liam Neeson is about as engaging and convincing as he was the last time out, but this time even he can’t save us.

[Rating:2/5]

 

Filed Under: Action Tagged With: , , , ,

Trouble with the Curve

September 24, 2012 by

Clint Eastwood is a man who has earned the right to do what he wants. Having starred in movies like Dirty Harry, A Fistful of Dollars, and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, his acting career in Hollywood spans more than 50 years and is replete with more iconic characters than most actors could ever hope to play.  He has also directed more than 30 feature films as well as several episodes of TV shows, and despite his recent oddball speech at the Republican National Convention he commands respect among his peers like virtually no one else.  After 2008’s Gran Torino Eastwood decided to trade his acting chops for a director’s chair, making movies like Invictus and J Edgar.  But recently, because Clint Eastwood does what Clint Eastwood wants, he took another turn in front of the camera for the baseball movie Trouble with the Curve. While the film is certainly not going to win awards for originality it is an enjoyable and well-told tale of family, friendship, and what happens when time simply passes one by.

Eastwood plays Gus Lobel, a scout for the Atlanta Braves who knows baseball backwards and forwards but couldn’t fix a broken relationship if he had instructions that were written in crayon. The ever-charming Amy Adams is daughter Mickey (named after the great Yankees switch hitter) is a workaholic lawyer (is there any other kind in Hollywood movies?) who can’t find time in her life for anything resembling a relationship, thus her interactions with dear ol’ dad are relegated to the occasional dinner at a local pub while checking text messages on her blackberry.  Gus is so old that his ancient art of baseball scouting has been all but replaced by soulless computers, and has long since given up trying to have a real relationship with Mickey. And then there’s Johnny (Justin Tiberlake, basically playing himself), the plucky upstart scout from the Red Sox who follows Gus around as they scour high school games for up-and-coming talent. Ticking off other boxes on the character checklist are Pete Klein (John Goodman), Gus’s old friend who has been with him in the baseball business through thick and thin, and Philip Sanderson (Matthew Lillard), the young upstart Braves scout  who finds players based on spreadsheet data, not gut instinct.  Gus mouns the fact that the great game of baseball has changed, and young punks like Sanderson only see numbers and not real players.  Mickey is this close to making partner at her law firm, but might lose it all thanks to a conniving coworker who also wants the open spot. And Johnny just wants to be the best gosh-darned baseball scout he can be, and maybe score a date with Mickey while he’s at it.

So what’s Clint Eastwood doing in a by-the-numbers dramadey like this? Who cares! Trouble with the Curve is as predictable as they come, but Eastwood’s grizzled old man is second to none–particulary when paired with Adams’ pitch-perfect sweetness.  We’re not so much watching a movie as we are enjoying some solid performances from a few great actors. It’s fun to watch because Eastwood is so pitch-perfect for his role–who else could get a theater full of people to laugh with a line like “Get out of here before I have a heart attack trying to kill you!” as he threatens a bar patron who won’t take no for an answer after striking out with Mickey.  Adams does her best to portray a stressed-out lawyer trying to reconnect with her dad, but she’s not fooling anyone: this is the same girl sang her way into audience hearts as the gleefully innocent Gisele in Disney’s gem Enchanted.  Timberlake…well, no one is ever going to watch him in a movie for his acting chops but he’s clearly enjoying the role and having fun playing the third wheel to Gus and Mickey.  There’s no surprises here, and no cheap deaths for the sake of baiting the Academy.  What you expect is what you get, and when you want two hours of solid if not-exactly-groundbreaking entertainment, you could do a lot worse than this movie.

Rating:[Rating:3/5]

 

Filed Under: Comedy, Drama Tagged With: , , ,

Red Tails

August 30, 2012 by

Producer George Lucas took on an ambitious project when he set out to make Red Tails. He had to finance it mostly himself because, as he later said in an interview, studios didn’t want to make the picture because there weren’t enough rolls for white people. (Check out this link at 5:00.) Interesting that liberal Hollywood tried to stop a film with an all-black cast. Political commentator Alfonzo Rachel would later say that Hollywood did so because they don’t want young blacks to start wanting to learn about the Tuskegee Airmen (our protagonists, the first black squadron to see combat in WWII), because if they do, they’ll learn that most of them, like most blacks of the time, were Republicans. While there might be something to this theory, I tend to think Hollywood’s reluctance has less to do with the racial politics of the ‘40s than with those of today. Certain stigmas on the portrayal of blacks in film can make it really hard to make a good movie with too many black characters. Red Tails bears the marks of these stigmas – not as deeply as some movies, but they’re there nonetheless. Consequently, a movie that could have been another Memphis Belle had to settle for being just another Flyboys. It has some good action and a few good lines along the way. It also contains one of the funniest performances I’ve seen in awhile, as Cuba Gooding Jr. trying to play the grizzled, old Major Stance. He spends the whole movie sucking on a pipe, doing his best General MacArthur impression. Hilarious. Terrence Howard does considerably better as Colonel Bullard. Red Tails works fine as a popcorn flick, but gets annoying at times because it thinks it’s in the same league as Saving Private Ryan. It isn’t.

The first reason for this is its total lack of intensity. For all the action, the squadron suffers two dead, one wounded and one captured through the whole movie. The text at the end says that the historical Tuskegee Airmen lost 66 men with more wounded, but you sure wouldn’t know it from the film. This is because, even as Red Tails seeks to tell a story disproving racist claims of the past, as I said above, it bears the marks of the racism of today. Hollywood continues to be afraid to portray black characters as having any flaws, needing to learn anything, or failing at anything they do. Consequently, we see ridiculous things in this movie. In addition to the lack of casualties, we actually see Lightning (David Oyelowo), the squadron hot shot, blow up a destroyer with machine gun fire. This is slightly more realistic than the destruction of the destroyer in Mega Piranha. Slightly.

You can see from Red Tails why it’s so hard to make good movies about black people. This movie never breaks a sweat. We know the Red Tails can’t lose, and can hardly suffer a setback, so there’s never any suspense or sense of danger. The movie tries to build up some tension with ominous talk of the new jet fighters the Germans are developing, but when it comes down to it at the climactic battle, even the most cutting-edge technology is no match for the coolness of Hollywood-packaged black guys.

When I saw The Memphis Belle, I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through. I desperately wanted the bomber crew to make it home, and I wasn’t sure that they would. With Red Tails, I never worried.

What’s more, the film suffers from a drive to inflate the contribution its heroes made to the war. The film opens with a scene of white fighter pilots abandoning the bombers they are supposed to escort, and the line by a man on a bomber, “Damn those glory-grabbing bastards, again!” The bomber squadron is then cut to ribbons by the Germans. Later, a general tells Bullard that “We need to change the way we fight,” and he is giving the Red Tails a chance because he needs fighters that will stay with the bombers. The first time the Red Tails rendezvous with a bomb squadron, the pilots of the lead bomber are disappointed when they see that their escort is black. (Humorously, the black pilot they are looking at is several hundred feet away, and obscured by two canopies, and his whole body is covered, except for his eyes. How can they even tell?) Then, when the Red Tails refuse to chase a German “decoy squadron,” the bombers are shocked. “They’re giving up glory to save our asses!” Toward the end of the movie, a white squadron who is supposed to relieve the Red Tails fails to even show up. All this is, frankly, a loogie to the face of every non-black man who risked or sacrificed his life to save the world from Hitler and Tojo. Throughout the war, every flier on all sides knew that the job of the fighters was to protect the bombers, and non-black fighter pilots consistently did so. What is portrayed in Red Tails is nothing more than fiction concocted to make the Tuskegee Airmen seem revolutionary. The historical Red Tails fought with courage and dedication, but they did not turn the war around.

Can you tell which of these pilots is black? Here’s a better question: can you tell which of them is a brave American defending his home?

A lot of commentators have complained about a lack of interest in movies that focus on black people, and have blamed racism for it. But what racism is actually doing is taking the life out of such movies as they get made. Great war movies put us in the reality of the moment, to get some sense of the fear and the pain of war (if only through a glass, darkly). They have us wrestle with the questions the men wrestled with and make us understand the moral uncertainties that come even when you believe in what you’re fighting for. There is a moment in The Memphis Belle I will never forget, during the protagonists’ final mission. The copilot of the Belle is angry that he has spent the whole war in the cockpit, and doesn’t want to go home without being able to say he shot some Nazis. Before the last mission, he slips the tail gunner a pack of cigarettes to let him take over shooting for part of the mission. When the moment comes, he slips into the turret and begins blasting away. Before long, he knocks out a high-flying German fighter. He whoops with delight as the fighter plummets … Straight into an American Bomber. The bomber is cut in half, and the copilot listens, over the radio, to the pitiful wails of the men aboard as they plummet to their deaths. Obviously, words fail me. But I remember The Memphis Belle because the characters were real, not supermen. I jumped every time a bullet came through the wall of the plane. I felt with the plane medic as he struggled to save a wounded crew member, then wrestled with the urge to drop him out of the plane with a chute, hoping the Germans would take him to a hospital.

Something that’s interesting to note about Saving Private Ryan: Steven Spielberg, a Jew, included a Jewish character in the story, named Mellish. For some reason, he made Mellish one of the least likable characters in the movie, and ultimately had him lose to (of all people) a Nazi in face to face combat. I have no idea why Spielberg chose to do this, but, whatever his reason, it shows a certain contemplative humility that either white guilt or black narcissism just won’t allow into films like Red Tails. If the makers of black cinema want to see a wider interest in their films, they need to start putting their characters in a realistic light.

[Rating:3/5]

Filed Under: Action, Drama, Movies, Opinion Articles, War Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Expendables 2

August 30, 2012 by

I enjoyed the first Expendables, but felt like it was missing a little something. It had all the elements of a great action film, but the end result was a tad hollow and left me wanting more. Enter Sylvester Stallone and his crew of misfits for another round of violence, mayhem, and bloodshed in Expendables 2.  It is, in every way, a far more over-the-top version of its predecessor and, in fact, nearly every action movie before it. The plot, such as it is, serves merely as a thin foundation upon which director Simon West builds a gigantic celluloid edifice in tribute to the glorious excesses of the 80’s, and then blows it to smithereens. This film a flurry of bullets and one-liners, delivered with such gleeful tongue-in-cheek earnestness that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud during the late-night screening (along with most of the audience too). In the first movie, Barney Ross (Stallone) and Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) led the titular gang of mercenaries on a mission to overthrow an evil dictator in the South American island of Vilena.  It was a great way to reunite virtually every great action star from the days of yore, but too much exposition and narrative twists bogged down what could have been a nice nostalgic romp. Fortunately, all that is gone in the sequel and what we are left with is the basic elements of a great ‘splode-fest with none of the window dressing.  It’s straight-up good guys vs. bad guys here, and of course the latter outnumber the former by at least twenty-to-one which, as one might expect, means a whole lot of cannon fodder for the good guys.

The movie opens with Ross and his crew infiltrating (read: demolishing and incinerating) a secret compound in order to retrieve a valuable hostage. Turns out there are two individuals worth rescuing: a Chinese billionaire and Trench (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Stallone’s rival from the first film. Upon their rescue, Trench searches for a big weapon and asks Ross’s team member Cesar (Terry Crews, no doubt lathered up in Old Spice) if he can have his. Cesar agrees, and lets Trench know that if he damages the weapon he will be “Terminated.” Cue cheering and applause from the theater audience, and an almost-visible wink from Schwarzenegger.  Yes, director Simon West is assuring us here, we are in for two raucous hours of craziness.  And it’s going to be a fun ride.

No subtlety or nuance here. Just big dudes with big guns.

New to the Expendables team this time around is sniper Billy the Kid (Liam Hemsworth, giving the girlfriends who got dragged to this movie something to look at), fresh out of the Army but reluctant to sign off on a life of unpredictable globetrotting with the rest of the team. He agrees to go with the crew on one more job, handed to them by the quazi-secretive Church (Bruce Willis) who wants a rather valuable package retrieved from a plane crash. Along the way they run into Villain (Jean-Claude Van Damme, slipping into this caricatured role like a comfy pair of old jeans), the leader of another band of mercenaries who takes the cargo the Expendables were sent to rescue.  I can’t give away too much here, but suffice it to say that after the mission is over, The Expendables have a much more personal reason to get the package back and kill Villain even if it means destroying half of Europe in the process.

Let’s not kid ourselves here, though: the main reason to see Expendables 2 is not the plot, the visuals, or the even action: it’s all about the actors: we’re here to watch Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Statham, Couture, Lundgren, and Li take on the bad guys and leave no man standing. The movie works only because it is these individuals, the titans of the genre, doing the fighting and spouting off one-liners like “I now pronounce you…man and knife” while dispatching evildoers with aplomb. When the team asks Booker (Chuck Norris) what happened after an encounter with a cobra snake, he replies with one of the infamous Chuck Norris Facts: “After five days of agonizing pain…the cobra died.” Schwarzenegger and Willis trade barbs near the end of the film, poking fun at each other’s “I’ll be back” and “Yippie-ki-yay” lines from Terminator and Die Hard while practically cheering along with the audience in the process. Clearly this is not a movie meant to be taken seriously, and it’s all the more fun because of it.

In the 1985 Schwarzenegger classic Commando, there’s a scene in which Arnold racks up over 50 bodies in 3 minutes. It’s ridiculous, ludicrous, illogical–and thoroughly entertaining. Scenes like this allow us to root for an unstoppable here who will do whatever it takes to right the wrongs in this cruel world. The Expendables 2 is an extension of that mentality: there’s no double-crossing, no love story, no shady political backhanded maneuvers, no inner conflict, and no need to dodge bullets (we all know such puny projectiles have no effect on action heroes).  Instead we have a binary world where good is good, bad is bad, and heroes who simply take care of business.  In a summer full of brooding billionaires and squabbling superheroes, Expendables 2 is a reminder of that sometimes all we want is just a rock-solid back-to-the-basics action flick. And boy, does it deliver.

Rating:[Rating:5/5]

Filed Under: Action

Machine Gun Preacher

July 23, 2012 by

This is one film that has already had an impact in the real world, if only because it has suddenly made it cool again for Facebookers to lament the actions of child killer Joseph Kony, and send around anti-Kony Slogans that you are supposed to “like” and “share.” Machine Gun Preacher is a movie laden with violence, swearing and some sensuality, so kids shouldn’t see it, but, to be fair, it’s actually rather mild compared to the way it could have been. It portrays southern Sudan and northern Uganda in a realistic light. It confronts the politically incorrect, but very real fact that African Christians, and other non-muslims, are being persecuted and killed by Muslim jihadis, and have been for a long time.  But it focuses primarily on the menace of Kony, who leads his cult under a weird mix of Islam, Christianity and witchcraft, and kidnaps children, forcing them to kill for his army or be killed by it.

But we get another story first. In Pennsylvania, Sam Childers (Gerard Butler) is being released from prison. Childers has spent his life on the street, learning to use, deal, and fight. He has made his living as hired muscle for drug runners, and has hurt and killed more people than the law will ever uncover. Butler was an excellent choice to portray Childers. He’s taller and slimmer than the man he plays, but otherwise looks very similar. He has the build for the action part of the roll, and his acting in this picture is tour-de-force. Incidentally, he did this film for one thirtieth of his normal rate. Childers’ wife, Lynn, (Michelle Monaghan) picks him up and drives him home. Believing that she is still working as a stripper, he asks her what time she has to work that night. She tells him that she has given that up because it “isn’t right in the eyes of God.” He derisively asks “Oh, you found God?” She replies “He found me. And He helped me change.” At first Sam is angry that she’s left a profitable job, but he soon starts to realize that his old habits are coming back with a vengeance, and that he is on a fast track to be back in prison or dead. One day, Lynn catches him in the bathroom, trying to wash blood off of himself. All he can say is “help me.”

From left: Marco, unknown, Childers, Deng.

The following Sunday, Sam goes with Lynn and their daughter Paige to church. This movie was played in theaters all over America. I rejoiced when I saw that, not only was the portrayal of a Christian church fair and respectful, but that the gospel of Jesus Christ was accurately communicated. At the end of the service, Childers answers the pastor’s call to get wet in the baptismal font. A lot of serious Christians have legitimately argued that spur-of-the-moment alter calls such as the one depicted send more people to Hell than they save from it. But history does show us that Childers, at least, was a changed man afterword, and when watching a Hollywood movie, I don’t see any point in getting greedy. So there you have it: a conversion story from Hollywood. A rushed and watered-down conversion story to be sure, but a conversion story nonetheless.

Childers and Butler at the premier.

Childers eventually travels to Uganda as a construction worker, to help a mission. He hears about Kony and the so-called “Lord’s Resistance Army,” and sees a woman who’s face has been mutilated by them. Knowing that he can take care of himself, he leaves the beaten path and sees the aftermath of an LRA attack on a village. The last shot is of him howling in grief over a dead child. He returns home and eventually tells his wife God has told him to build two things: the last thing America needs (one more church building) and the first thing the Sudan needs (one more orphanage, only this one will be near Kony’s territory).

In reality, this orphanage is now the largest in Southern Sudan and has fed and housed over 1,000 children. Today, more than 200 children are being raised and educated there. Most of the staff is composed of orphans that grew up there themselves. And while this is never mentioned in the movie, Lynn works closely with Sam on the ministry, and they have a group called Angles of East Africa that they founded together.

The two “rescue vehicles” of Childer’s mission.

The strange thing is, you would usually expect a movie that is based on a true story to sensationalize and make it bigger. From what I’ve read, this movie seems to do the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of action, but the story seems blunted, almost as if the director doesn’t really want us to see Childers as a hero. A lot of things are never explained. For example, we never see how Childers came to be giving orders to the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, but after a few scenes he’s leading a team of five men, including Deng (Souleymane Savane) and

The newly saved Lynn waits for her murderer husband to emerge from prison.

Marco (Mdudzi Mabaso), into life-or-death missions. We’re left to assume he simply inspired a few of them to follow him and do something about Kony. After a while, Childers starts treating his family like dirt. The movie eventually leads up to one of the most abrupt and unsatisfying non-endings I have ever seen. Perhaps worst of all, the last bit of spiritual dialogue we hear in the movie is Childers lashing  out at God for not saving some kids. I didn’t have a problem with it being there. After all, what Christian hasn’t wrestled with feelings like this? But I see no reason to finish the movie on that note, especially when the real Sam Childers doesn’t have that attitude today.

All in all, this movie brings plenty to the table: good visceral action, some hard questions to wrestle with, and a story that remained untold for far too long. Most of the problems it does have can be attributed to trying to tell an absolutely massive story, on two continents, in just over two hours. It’s far from being a perfect movie, or a perfect spiritual message. But it’s a darn good movie, and even as a spiritual message it has something to offer. This is a movie that needed to be made, and that you need to see.

[Rating:4/5]

Filed Under: Action, Drama, Movies Tagged With: , ,

The Dark Knight Rises

July 19, 2012 by

It’s been four years since Christopher Nolan’s superhero masterpiece, The Dark Knight, came flying onto the big screen grossing over $1 billion in box office revenue. To say the The Dark Knight set the bar high for the superhero movie genre would be a bit of an understatement.  Not only did The Dark Knight leave comic book fanboys in awe, Nolan’s film achieved storytelling feats no other superhero movie to date has been able to do. The Dark Knight became far more than just your average popcorn flick about a man in a cape smashing and blowing things up. It explored themes as heady as the institutional corruption of the modern American city, the nature and utility of law and order, and the ethical and moral dilemmas encountered when pure evil rears its ugly head and the good guys seemingly have no good answers.

With all that in the rear view mirror (not too mention the late Heath Ledger’s stellar performance as the Joker), a follow-up film seemed destined to crack under the weight of the franchise’s own success and expectations. When Nolan announced he would indeed direct a third film to complete his Batman trilogy, fans everywhere were thrilled and uneasy of what would come. Sure, Nolan teamed with his brother Jonathan and writer David Goyer hadn’t let audiences down yet. But how long could they keep that streak going? Failure, or at least, mediocrity (which may be worse) appeared ready to cap off one of the most successful and critically respected superhero franchises in history. Fortunately, The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t disappoint.

Jumping ahead eight years following Batman’s epic confrontation with the Joker, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) finds himself still grief stricken following the death of love interest Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and has donned the reputation of a reclusive eccentric. Wayne Enterprises is financially crumbling both due to inattention on the part of Wayne and the failure of a fusion reactor project undertaken by Wayne Enterprises and the company held by Wayne Enterprises board member Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard). Wayne has also retired from his days as the Caped Crusader as a result of taking the blame for Harvey Dent’s death as well as physical injuries that have left him decrepit.

While Batman is gone, Gotham City now finds itself largely in a state of peace due to the implementation of the Dent Act. Passed out of reverence for the late district attorney turned Two-Face, the Dent Act’s series of new police powers have allowed Commissioner Gordon to essentially wipe out organized and violent crime in the city. While Wayne and Gordon’s plan has worked to save Gotham from its rampant crime problem, both men find themselves living under the crushing weight of perpetuating the lie of Dent’s innocence and heroism and storm clouds appear almost as quickly as the movie begins.

While Gotham City seems safe and sound, a confrontation between an infamous cat burglar named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) and Bruce Wayne leads Wayne to suspect something sinister is on the prowl, drawing him out to again wear his famous black suit while, at the same time, an investigation begun by a Gotham City police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) into the death of a teenager brings Commissioner Gordon face to face with the movie’s main villain, Bane. Almost as quickly as the movie begins, the fireworks start to blow leaving Batman and Gotham’s finest struggling to understand just what the psychotic Bane wants with the city of Gotham and how just to survive his seemingly unstoppable strength and cunning. As the movie heads towards its finale, the twists and turns will leave you guessing just where Nolan is going to take you.

While The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t quite live up to The Dark Knight’s high brow pondering nor the film’s carefully crafted, almost symphonic delivery, it compensates with a thrilling pacing that completely engrosses you as quickly as you sat down in your seat. If you were someone who felt The Dark Knight took itself a little too seriously, Nolan tones things down just enough to find a sweet spot for you in the trilogy’s finale. Still, this is well-polished and substantive cinema at its best.

The acting this time around is extremely good. Bale, Caine, Freeman, and Oldman all offer great performances on par with their earlier work. Anne Hathaway’s performance as Selina Kyle/Catwoman avoids all the cheese and kitsch of former manifestations while adding, along with Freeman’s Lucius Fox, just the right amount of comic relief to keep the film from traveling too far down the darker side of things. Marion Cotillard, as usual, plays her role as Miranda Tate with a poise and class rarely seen from today’s actresses. Tom Hardy plays his role as Bane with a frightening ferocity that leaves the viewer truly questioning whether the good guys can really come out on top. But the best performance comes from Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s John Blake who plays a once orphaned street kid turned Gotham City police officer. Gordon-Levitt deftly gives audiences a character they can relate to: a heroic everyman whose thirst for justice leaves him asking just what is the right thing to do inside a calloused and corrupt society.

All in all, this is simply the best movie of the summer. While The Avengers was good fun all the way around, The Dark Knight Rises gives audiences the perfect balance between sweet and substance. The acting and directing are first rate, and the story gives a satisfying end to the Nolan Batman trilogy. While I’m sure Warner Bros. won’t let the Batman cash cow sit for long, Nolan gives audiences a movie that completes his vision and will long be celebrated for its artistic vision. Hats off, Christopher Nolan and company. Well done.

Rating:[Rating:5/5]

 

 

 

Filed Under: Action, Drama, Movies

The Amazing Spider-Man

July 14, 2012 by

Everyone seems to agree that a reboot of the Spider-Man series after a mere five years since the final installment of Sam Raimi’s big-budget trilogy is entirely unnecessary.  It is.  The revamped incarnation swinging into theaters exists only because of a failed attempt from Sam Raimi and his collaborators to lift Spider-Man 4 and 5 beyond the pre-production stages.  Tobey Maguire was back for the two-picture lock and everything seemed to be in place even though Spider-Man 3 left a sour taste in the mouths of fans.  Raimi refused to compromise on the story he wanted to tell which hurt Part 3 immensely, and eventually the director walked away entirely.  What was the studio to do?  Risk losing the rights to a multi-billion dollar franchise?  I think not.  Next stop: reboot train.

All joking aside, even though Amazing Spider-Man is a pure cash grab, the studio has given the reigns to a talented filmmaker who actually handles this $220 million opus with a deft grip on the material.  Marc Webb gave audiences 500 Days of Summer, one of my favorite films from 2009 and a highly entertaining and fresh romantic-dramedy.  My hope was that Webb would incorporate the richly drawn characters of that film and allow the same amount of emotional weight to encompass the story of Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone).

This Spider-Man origin story treads much of the same waters as Raimi’s original film.  Peter Parker, an outcast high school brainiac/photographer, gets bitten by a genetically-altered spider in the Ocscorp lab only to be transformed into a crawling human arachnid with elevated senses and superhuman strength.  His Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) gets gunned down by a corner store thug that Parker fails to stop ahead of time.  Guilt permeates Parker and drives him to hunt down criminals on the New York city streets hoping to find the man responsible for his uncle’s murder.  In his spare time, the vengeful superhero investigates the disappearance of his parents involving Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a one-armed geneticist at Oscorp working on human and animal gene splicing.

When he’s not tracking criminals and delving deeper into Connors’ secrets, Peter romances Gwen Stacey, a spunky intellectual classmate and intern working for Connors who also is the daughter of the city’s captain of police (Denis Leary).  Unfortunately for Parker, Capt. Stacey seems more interested in capturing the menacing masked vigilante, Spider-Man and bringing him to justice than he is finding other criminals.  Peter must prove to the father of his newfound love that Spider-Man is a hero, not a villain.

I don’t think much could be done in the way of making a new Spider-Man feel ‘fresh,’ but the best thing about this reboot is the casting of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone in the lead roles.  They bring a certain gravity to the characters that Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst never managed to in the previous films.  Maguire’s Parker was a textbook Hollywood-engineered nerd.  Garfield plays him as less a nerd and more of a brilliant outcast that would rather delve into research and his parents’ mysterious disappearance than run around a football field.  His transformation into Spider-Man makes him far more believable as he swings around the city fighting crime—out of a more personal vendetta.

The sparks fly between Garfield and Stone as well.  I wasn’t surprised to find that the romance between the two was much more layered and interesting than what Maguire and Dunst previously brought to the table.  Stone’s Gwen Stacey is resourceful, brilliant, and immediately caught up in her beau’s alter-ego.  She and Garfield’s characters operate on the same wavelength, making their romance the highlight of the film.

The web-slinging action never disappoints either.  When much of the hero-villain dueling reduces to standard brawling, as Rhys Ifans’ transformation into the giant crawling Lizard is completely standard-issue, the 3D action is nevertheless alarmingly good.  Forget about the questionable first-person viewpoints that looked like a tired video-game shown throughout some of the trailers.  These instances come briefly and effectively.  For the most part, Marc Webb knows what he’s doing with his characters, the big special effects, and the 3D usage.  The adversary and suspense may be lacking, but this Amazing Spider-Man is at least fully competent and ready for a bigger, better sequel as long as Garfield and Stone stick with the franchise.  Where does this one rank among other Spider-Mans?  Close to—but not quite as good as—Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, however, more enjoyable than Spider-Man and the ultra-lazy Spider-Man 3.

[Rating:3.5/5]

Filed Under: Action, Romance, Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Brave

July 5, 2012 by

This movie rocks. Everything about it. The story, the colorful characters, the laughs, the scares, the gorgeous scenery rendered in flawless CGI, and the haunting Celtic soundtrack that wafts through the theater as you sit transfixed. Pixar has done it again, serving up a feast for the eyes and ears, without sacrificing a good story, thought provoking messages, and something for every age, gender and background to relate to.

At the start, we meet Merida (Kelly McDonald), princess of a Scottish kingdom, and Daughter of King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson). Elinor works overtime, trying to teach Merida to be a princess, which generally involves being lady-like. Merida loves to ride horses, shoot arrows and climb mountains, much to her mother’s chagrin, and father’s chuckling pleasure. The best scene in the movie is an early one in which Merida, and her horse, Angus, gallop through a shimmering emerald forest, Merida firing arrows into passing targets while Gaelic siren Julie Fowlis weaves a haunting yarn over fiddles and Celtic flutes. I’d probably buy the DVD just for that scene.

For awhile, it looks like Brave might turn out to be a microwaved version of Aladdin. Merida is horrified when she learns that her mother has invited three other kingdoms to submit contestants for her hand in marriage, and three princes are coming to compete for her in the Highland Games. A series of arguments follows, in which Merida doesn’t want to get married, least of all to someone she’s never met, and her mother tries to remind her of her duty to the kingdom and the importance of stable government. The big day arrives, and the three princes fire arrows at targets to determine who will win her hand. Suddenly, in what initially appears to be the ultimate cliche, a cloaked figure approaches the archery range. Merida throws off the cloak (big surprise, right?) and declares, “I’ll be shooting for my own hand!” As her mother protests, she fires arrows dead center into each target, winning the competition.

Of course, for your average modern fairy tale, this would probably be the climactic scene. Our strong, free spirited heroine throws off the shackles of patriarchal oppression, beats the men at their own game (using weapons, of course), and establishes herself as an independent woman, or at least chooses her own man. It would have been easy, and politically safe, to throw something like that together, but of course, easy doesn’t cut it for Pixar. We still have a lot of movie to go and, while Merida doesn’t exactly end up as a tamed shrew, she soon realizes she has a lot to learn about life in medieval Scotland, not the least of which is putting family and country above her own desires.

Pixar’s talent for story telling especially comes through in the fact that this story relies for its context on a back-story from eons past. This back-story is mentioned only in two very short, and rather washed-out flashbacks, but it still makes perfect sense (within the context of the movie, that is). Using the art of brief, visual story telling Pixar wove the two stories seamlessly together.

That’s probably as much as I should say. Pixar wisely left some major plot points out of the trailers, and it’s better for you to be surprised. It’s no fun reviewing great movies; I can’t say much or I’ll ruin it. I should note that the main reason I’m not giving Brave five stars is that I’ve only watched it once. But I intend to remedy that when it’s out on DVD.

[Rating:4.5/5]

Filed Under: Action, Animation, Comedy, Drama, Family, Movies Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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