Iron Man 2

If “Entourage” were a superhero movie, it would be this one. “Iron Man 2” loves knowing that it has a cocky, self-centered character everyone loves and an actor that is not only convincing at playing it but whom everyone loves even more. It hypes up the pretty boy lifestyle to the point of being silly and on the verge of absurdity.

If everyone loved the original “Iron Man” because the Tony Stark secret identity was not a cookie cutter hero, dweeb or lone wolf, then reasonably no one should be amused by Robert Downey Jr.’s now extreme version of a cookie cutter narcissist. But maybe like many episodes of “Entourage,” it’s hard not to be amused. I found it odd how little Stark was impressed by his own ability to discover and create a brand new element in the short time frame of one montage. I wondered why he didn’t blink at the thought of drinking coffee in a diner with an eye patch wearing Samuel L. Jackson as he sat in full Iron Man uniform. I can’t say any of it was out of character, and I can’t say it was an inappropriate direction in terms of entertainment value. Continue reading “Iron Man 2”

Thor

As if superhero movies weren’t overblown enough, here’s the bombastically overacted and extravagant “Thor,” starring none other than the Norse God of Thunder. If you thought Robert Downey Jr.’s ego was big as Iron Man, wait until you see the one on the hulking and indestructible alien that helms this movie.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is the prince of a sparkling land in another area of the cosmos called Asgard. For eons, they’ve protected the galaxy and maintained order, leading the Scandinavian humans back in ancient times to revere them as deities. Now the throne must pass from the King Odin (Anthony Hopkins) to Thor, but when he tries to wage war on their sworn enemies, the frost giants, he is rightly banished to Earth.

Allow me to describe Asgard, a shimmering, God-like planet of rainbow colors blessed with the features of a glistening waterfall spilling endlessly into the depths of space, floating rock staircases, a golden portal capable of summoning lightning storms and an enormous palace of bronze pipes that would put whatever the Royal wedding cost to shame. The existence of this place and the CGI that depict it are self serving, looking good only as an excuse to look extravagant, because the people that live and act on it are the same cocky, privileged, one-dimensional characters we would find on Earth. They even ride horses.

Yet nothing that happens on Asgard has any bearing to what happens on Earth, and I had no reason to care about the spectacular mayhem that could ensue there. “Thor” wastes more time on this fantasy world and its mythology than I care to count. Continue reading “Thor”

Rapid Response: The Thin Red Line

Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line” is one of the most beautiful war films ever made. Whereas most directors making an anti-war film would photograph in dim light and with a chaotic queasy cam, “The Thin Red Line” is a lush, colorful, sweeping film from start to finish. When it is not in the midst of a battle, it finds more than enough times to be quiet, elegiac, and although it sounds like an oxymoron in a war film, peaceful.

A World War II epic released in 1998, I watched it in preparation for Malick’s upcoming “The Tree of Life,” and it is a stunning, modern, timeless film of relentless emotion and vivid cinematography. Few other war films have a moving, soaring camera during action sequences the way “The Thin Red Line” does, and Malick’s graceful jib shots made for an eye-opening war experience unlike any I had seen on film.

And yet some of the film’s most memorable shots seem very nearly out of place. One of the best is a quick glimpse of a mangled bird struggling to inch its way out of a tree. Malick populates his entire film with rich natural imagery. Nearly all of the battle sequences take place on a verdant hill with tall grasses that were reminiscent of the glorious wheat fields in “Days of Heaven.” And his whole reason for calling our attention to the wonderful looking things around this desolate war zone is to draw the dichotomy between hopeful beauty and pitiful bleakness.

The cast is star studded with past, present and future Oscar winners. Here is just a short list of names you will no doubt recognize: Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, James Caviezel, Elias Koteas, John Cusack, Adrien Brody, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson, Jared Leto, John Travolta and George Clooney (who is literally in one scene about 150 minutes into this 170 minute epic, but you can’t miss him).

All of them give wonderful performances, and yet all were forgotten that year at the Oscars, despite the fact the film was nominated for seven awards. It lost all of its honors, including the much deserving Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography by John Toll and Best Score by Hans Zimmer to “Shakespeare in Love” and “Saving Private Ryan” (although “Life is Beautiful” took Best Score).

It’s regrettable, because”The Thin Red Line” has yet to be included in the canon of great war films, and ironically Steven Spielberg’s other World War II epic from the same year certainly is. Malick’s film is at least as good, if not better than “Saving Private Ryan.”

I’m looking forward to seeing “The New World” and “Badlands” to finish out all five of Malick’s films.

Fast Five

Over the last few summers, there have been too many absurd superhero and sci-fi fantasies that take themselves way too seriously and not enough real world heist and car chase movies that don’t in the slightest.

“Fast Five” will crash through that void at top speeds.

Long has the “Fast and the Furious” franchise been the butt of everyone’s jokes, not even being good enough to pass as trash. The street racing and high speed drifting on souped-up nitro engines got old fast (and furious), and while here there are still more slick cars than you can shake a dip stick at, Director Justin Lin has traded in much of that for a silly but riotous and well calculated heist thriller. Continue reading “Fast Five”

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Why has Wes Anderson not been making movies like “Fantastic Mr. Fox” his entire career? This charmingly stop motion animated kids movie is as perfectly in Anderson’s style as any film he’s ever made, and his colorful and peculiar quirks fit in beautifully with Roald Dahl’s lovingly crafted story. Continue reading “Fantastic Mr. Fox”

The Darjeeling Limited

I find it almost pointless to attempt to describe and review “The Darjeeling Limited” because the best way to describe any element of the film would be by saying it is a Wes Anderson movie. What does it look like? It looks like Wes Anderson shot it. Is it funny? That would depend on whether you thought Wes Anderson movies were funny. What’s it about? I have no idea.

Does it sound like I don’t like this movie? Film criticism is about describing the reaction you personally had as a viewer and about how you changed upon coming out of it. I can sadly report however that I had little to no reaction to it. The seemingly pointless irreverence of the film is well made, quirky and atmospheric, but it bounced off me as though there were nothing to gain from the experience.

It tells the story of three oddball brothers who come together for the first time in a year since their father’s funeral to ride the Darjeeling Limited train and explore India for an enlightening experience. Continue reading “The Darjeeling Limited”

Rapid Response: Rushmore

When Wes Anderson made “Rushmore,” his second film, he desperately tried to get it screened for the film critic Pauline Kael long after she had retired and was close to her death. I’m not sure if her reaction was good, but I imagine the reason he tried to screen it for her was because his film was simply so different. Being released in 1998, it’s not so much ahead of its time because it kicked off this style of film making for the next decade, but it feels very much like a 2000s movie.

How should Anderson have reacted if he had a feeling he was ushering in the next generation of the movies?

I’ve seen five of six of Anderson’s films, all of them in a peculiar order. “Rushmore” is the movie that put him on the map, along with the film’s co-screenwriter Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman (very young here) and would solidify the sorts of low-key older man roles Bill Murray would take until today.

But my first outing with the director was with “The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou,” a film that is equally odd and clearly identifiable in Anderson’s colorful yet distant visual style, but features Murray in the lead and seems more “classically” funny. Unlike “Rushmore,” it has what you would call “jokes.”

That’s not to say “Rushmore” isn’t funny; it’s hilarious. It’s to say “Rushmore’s” comedy is very much centered around attitude and absurd attention to detail in a quirky screenplay.

But in fact, all of Anderson’s films play and look in this fashion. That’s what makes him striking as a director. It is impossible to watch even a few moments of one of his movies and not recognize it as such.

The fans he established with “Rushmore” would say he fine-tuned his craft to perfection in “The Royal Tenenbaums,” a film I’ll have to revisit but others have heralded as a cult masterpiece. Then he worked with Noah Baumbach (another disciple of his) on “Life Aquatic” and allowed that quirky attitude to meet situational comedy. And Anderson soon got to the point at which his “The Darjeeling Limited” was overstuffed in Anderson’s style that it felt like nothing more than a vehicle for Anderson’s quirks. Finally is “Fantastic Mr. Fox” what I feel is his finest film. That stop-motion animated picture felt so much like an Anderson movie without sacrificing any of its childlike charm that you wonder why he hadn’t made stop-motion animated films his entire career.

Watching “Rushmore,” it did become obvious that his movies have always felt like cartoons of sorts. “Rushmore” is hardly “about” anything, its characters fit into no reasonable human mold, its scenarios are largely absurd and overblown, yet the characters and the world in which they live are so richly “drawn” that it casts a spell nonetheless.

I’m glad I finally got around to seeing “Rushmore,” as I finally understand Anderson’s significance as a modern auteur of film.

The Conspirator

Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” poses questions of American values in a time of uncertainty for our country. It conveniently even applies to the recent death of Osama bin Laden, pondering if an unprecedented villain is entitled to his human rights. But could the reiteration of those values appear any more trite than they are here?

Through some extensive and deep research by his screenwriter James Solomon, Redford re-enacts the time following President Lincoln’s assassination through the eyes of Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), a captain for the Union Army in the Civil War and now a lawyer working for the Southern senator Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson). His job is to defend Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), a keeper of a boarding house charged with sheltering, aiding and conspiring in the murder of President Lincoln with John Wilkes Booth.

Aiken is nearly certain of her guilt, as is the rest of the country looking for answers and revenge, but Johnson convinces him that the Constitution entitles her to the same fair trial as anyone else, and the trial made up of a jury of Northern war officers and a biased Attorney General is not it.

This becomes more than clear as it does in almost all courtroom dramas. A judge is always bitter and unfair, the prosecutor is always ruthless and smarmy, the surprise witnesses are always unpredictable bombshells and the pitiful client will always sit silently and stoically until the climactic moment when an outburst in the courtroom threatens to place them in contempt.

I grew tired of “The Conspirator’s” drawn out portrayal of yet another courtroom drama with hints of conflicting American values not so subtly poking their heads into the proceedings. Continue reading “The Conspirator”

Helvetica

Graphic designers talk about typefaces the way I talk about film.

To them, a typeface has a rich history, it expresses feelings and emotions, and it symbolizes simplicity, cleanliness, modernization and even conformity.

So I learned in the documentary “Helvetica,” a film that definitively proves there is a documentary for anyone, about anything.

This is a film that explores the origins and the significance of the font Helvetica, the most ubiquitous font used in ads, signage and computers for the last 50 years. Continue reading “Helvetica”

Summer Movie Preview: 35 films worth talking about

“The Tree of Life,” “Hesher,” “Submarine,” “Crazy, Stupid Love” and “The Beaver” are amongst the most anticipated films of Summer 2011.

I didn’t really get much of an opportunity to throw in my two cents on movies in what turned out to be my last issue of the IDS WEEKEND on summer movies. But the typical problem I have with summer movie previews is the necessity to write at length about things I’m only speculating about (I have no inside sources as an amateur critic), and further to write about them objectively as though I’m genuinely interested in “Friends With Benefits.”

But this is my blog, so I’m going to ramble on about anything and everything I feel like. And I thought a creative way to do that would be to break up every movie I have thoughts about (not necessarily “interested” in) into rankings and subheads.

What this means is that this list is not extensive to every movie being released this summer. I will cover 35 of over 100 being released, so there are a bunch of films that I simply know nothing about at this stage. Either I haven’t seen trailers for them, they’re Sundance darlings without much more buzz than that or they’re movies that don’t fit in at any extreme on my spectrum, and be they good or bad, I’ll have to withhold my judgment.

Top 5 Movies I’m Genuinely Interested in this Summer

1. The Tree of Life – May 27

Terrence Malick has only made five films in his career stretching back to 1973 with his first film “Badlands.” And following what turned out to be a surprise contender for Best Movie of the Decade according to some critics with “The New World,” he’s been in production on “The Tree of Life,” which just got accepted into Cannes, for years. It stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and the newcomer Jessica Chastain in a family drama period piece blended with sci-fi elements, a first for Malick. Pitt plays a father to a boy back in the ’50s and Penn plays the grown up child in modern day. For anyone who’s seen “Days of Heaven,” which is one of the best looking films ever made, you can rest assured that this film will be visually stunning. It is a sure contender for Oscars at the end of the year and destined to live up to all expectations.

2. Hesher – May 13

“Hesher” is a stoner drama starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Natalie Portman and Rainn Wilson in what looks like one of the oddest but grittiest and most awesome movies of the year. JGL plays the off-the-wall title character helping a young, straight arrow teen who is depressed with his family and life. Portman, who also produces the film, is sporting some thick rimmed glasses and I’m unsure of her role in the film just yet. I’m not familiar with the director, but it’s written by David Michod, who also wrote and directed the very good and gritty “Animal Kingdom.”

3. Submarine – June 3

A simple explanation would be it’s Wes Anderson in Britain, but this super quirky comedy starring British comedian Craig Roberts and Sally Hawkins looks lovely. It’s about a teen desperately trying to lose his virginity while dealing with a step-dad that has recently come into his life. Ben Stiller produces.

4. Crazy, Stupid, Love. – July 29

In the first post-“Office” role for Steve Carell, Carell plays a recently divorced man looking to womanize again. After his wife played by Julianne Moore leaves him, he meets Ryan Gosling as a lady-killer straight man to Carell’s comic foil. At the same time, Gosling also begins falling in love with Emma Stone (isn’t she a little young, 23, for the somewhat older Gosling, 30?). The concept sounds tired, but the trailer looks really good, and the cast also includes Marisa Tomei and Kevin Bacon, so there’s a lot to look forward to.

5. The Beaver – May 6

I still think this looks like “Mr. Hat: The Herbert Garrison Story,” but Mel Gibson actually went Method for this film, actually walking around with the beaver and talking to people (which is actually low on the list of crazy Mel Gibson stuff) to prepare for Jodie Foster’s film. This is her third feature but her first in 16 years, and the cast also includes Foster, Anton Yelchin (“Star Trek”) and Jennifer Lawrence (“Winter’s Bone”). Continue reading “Summer Movie Preview: 35 films worth talking about”