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PUNCH-OUT!

May 7th 2012 21:50
There seem to be two general approaches to making a comic book movie: the Marvel Way and the Other Way. Films made the Marvel Way have had an astounding box office track record since the first X-MEN movie: for every one that bombs or fizzles, at least two succeed. The Other Way may spawn the occasional blockbuster franchise (the most recent being Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight series, which will wrap up this summer) or one-hit wonder (THE MASK) but for the most part it yields disappointment, critical and financial.

Starting with IRON MAN, Marvel Studios decided to try something unprecedented: the super-comic book franchise, based on the notion that the numerous characters inhabit the same universe. Marvel film installments would hint, usually at the movie's coda, that something grander and more ambitious was waiting in the wings.

What was waiting was MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, in which all the loose ends left hanging in the previous films are tied together in the ultimate dust-up between Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and the Hulk, with Black Widow and Hawkeye also lending support. And once they've finished dressing each other down (and punching each other out), they have to face an extradimensional threat that seeks to subjugate mankind.

With script and direction supplied by cult film and television writer/god Joss Whedon (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, FIREFLY, SERENITY), the results deliver what fans have come to expect--nay, demand--of Marvel films: respect for the characters. It's become a hallmark of your average Marvel superhero that at heart he's isolated and tormented. Some of the heroes in THE AVENGERS wear their torment more plainly than others, because we've already gotten acquainted with them and their neuroses in earlier installments. Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.)--wealthy, arrogant, conceited--brings together charisma and genius that feeds an appetite for self-destruction. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is a god who struggles to stay in touch with his humanity after getting a major dose of humility in a previous conflict with his adopted brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) is literally a man out of time, a might-means-right patriot displaced seven decades from one war into a battle and an America he hardly recognizes. And Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) must fight to tamp down a monster that is his rage personified--not an easy thing to do when he's got a lot to be angry for.

Meanwhile, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) are perfect assassins that must deal with the consequences of their career choices on a psychological if not always physical level. There is not as much emphasis on them and their characters as their super-powered compatriots, but Whedon does not leave them out.

Finally, keeping this dysfunctional family together, by hook and by crook, is the cool and collected Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the director of the shadowy government organization that recruits--though shanghais might be a more proper term in some cases--the Avengers.

The instigator for this metahuman confab is Loki, last seen plummeting into a cosmic abyss in THOR. In the interim, he's allied himself to a race of alien marauders that promise to make him Earth's monarch if he can open a gateway to our world using the tesseract, an ancient Asgardian weapon that figured prominently in CAPTAIN AMERICA. Hiddleston, who made a memorable villain in THOR, amps up his performance several notches. No longer just a resentful adopted child, Loki has developed a major case of megalomania. It's fun to watch him cut loose.

In addition to Loki, special mention must be made of Bruce Banner, a role Ruffalo inherited from Edward Norton in the enjoyable but slight THE INCREDIBLE HULK, who in turn inherited it from Eric Bana in Ang Lee's ponderous HULK. Ruffalo is proof that the third time's the charm, and now they've got Banner--and his alter-ego--done right.

There are some things to quibble about, mainly a climactic battle in Manhattan where the Avengers face down flying, laser-spewing extraterrestrial hordes that goes on too long, but unlike your average Michael Bay movie, it's coherent. And no blockbuster franchise inaugurator is complete without the setup for a sequel.

It's been a long wait, and even movies made the Marvel Way can go disastrously awry (witness DAREDEVIL and its companion piece ELEKTRA), but MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS is a successful experiment continuing the best of the Marvel tradition. It's an auspicious way to usher in the summer movie season, and will be hard to beat.

Alex Schor

The Psychocinemapath!
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NOT QUITE MESSIAHS, BUT STILL VERY NAUGHTY BOYS

April 10th 2012 17:46
By luck and happenstance, I caught most, but not all, of HOLY FLYING CIRCUS on the Ovation Channel late Saturday night. HOLY FLYING CIRCUS is a purposefully distorted but often hysterical meditation on the controversy that erupted over MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN, the legendary sextet’s comedy of Biblical proportions, which is now acknowledged as a classic, possibly the group’s masterpiece.

Of course, BRIAN being a nudge (nudge) in the ribs of the Gospels, it did ruffle some feathers, especially in England, where the Pythons and many people associated with the film received death threats, hate letters, and poo in the post, among other things. There were demonstrations, calls to ban the film’s release, and other incidents that served to fan the flames of religious outrage. HOLY FLYING CIRCUS is an attempt to put an irreverent spin on the sheer ridiculous of the affair, and how the Pythons dealt with it.

The film is quite successful at evoking the anarchic spirit of the Pythons and their sketch show, including surreal asides, references to modern-day persons and events, fantasy sequences, women played by men in drag, and so on. However, this approach, while entertaining, creates a stylized reality where anything is up for grabs. This may make it difficult for viewers to get a purchase on the seriousness of the subject matter, when just about everything is not being taken seriously.

This is especially evident in the depiction of the deeply religious Christians who are offended by BRIAN. They’re primarily represented by a group of pathetic, socially maladroit nutters, and it’s amazing, between their stammering and Tourette’s-like outbursts, that they can mobilize into any cohesive unit. If they’re meant to be a stand-in for all religious types, then the makers of this film are being too one-sided.

HOLY FLYING CIRCUS concentrates on two Pythons—John Cleese and Michael Palin—in particular, using them as the often contentious mouthpieces for the others. Events culminate in them pitted against two formidable bully boys of so-called decency, Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark, on television. As the film would have it, nothing less than the future of comedy is at stake.

The Python impersonations are pretty much spot-on, with Cleese and Palin played, respectively, by Darren Boyd and Charles Edwards. Whereas Cleese is portrayed as hot-tempered, argumentative, and difficult to get along with just about the entire human race, Palin is The Nicest Man in the World. They’re polar opposites, but they’re still loyal to the rest of the troupe, despite incessant bickering.

The other Pythons are less rounded as characters, perhaps because the filmmakers realized fleshing them all out threatened to turn HOLY FLYING CIRCUS into a miniseries. Still, the performances resonate, with the exception of the actor playing American expatriate and Python animator Terry Gilliam. He barely comes across.

I doubt HOLY FLYING CIRCUS will do much to convert anyone who’s never heard of or cared about Monty Python, or the comedians they paved the way for. It’s preaching to the choir. To someone like me, who has collected most of their films and can quote entire sketches at length (and who still does, in the watches of the night), it’s hilarious. But it’s still only a partial triumph.

Alex Schor

The Psychocinemapath!
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THE BARSOOMIAN HOP

March 12th 2012 16:37
As a self-avowed geek, reading the Martian tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs was something of a rite of passage that I reflect on more or less fondly. I say more or less because, a quarter century after I read them, I recall getting disenchanted around the eighth or ninth volume as the action was becoming repetitive. It fit into an easy formula: Captain John Carter, formerly of Earth, would travel Mars, or Barsoom as its inhabitants called it, hacking or shooting his way through hordes of monsters or Martian thugs in his quest to rescue some fair maiden, usually Princess Dejah Thoris of Helium, from some power-mad despot or priest. He’d have the advantage of enhanced strength in Mars’s low gravity, able to sprint and jump great distances. It was pulp fiction at its most pulpy, and I suspected that were it ever translated to film it would receive the blockbuster treatment, which is usually how Hollywood treats pulp fiction these days.

Well, my prediction eventually came true, with Disney producing the first of Burroughs’s Martian novels, A Princess of Mars, as JOHN CARTER, a $250 million (more like north of $300 million, if you count the promotional push) extravaganza that more or less delivers. And again, I say more or less because it’s got a fair share of flaws, some of which can be traced to the source material, and others which are likely the product of the blockbuster mentality—make it big, make it long, and throw in as many special effects as you can. Oh, yeah, and convert it to 3D.

What JOHN CARTER has in its favor is director Andrew Stanton, a Pixar veteran whose credits include FINDING NEMO and WALL-E, and who knows a thing or two about story and character. It has breathtaking visuals and design that accent its epic proportions. It has a game cast headlined by Taylor Kitsch, who does a more than decent job of portraying John Carter—and that’s no mean feat, considering he’s surrounded by digital characters most of the time. Of course, he has to fight not to be overshadowed by the large cast of Martians, which come in three principal groups: the Green Men (or Tharks), the Gray Men (or Therns), and the Red Men (represented by the barbaric hordes of Zodanga and the enlightened city-state of Helium).

Carter spends the bulk of the movie in the company of the four-armed, 12-foot-tall Green Men, led by Tars Tarkas (voiced by Willem Dafoe), and of all the various Martians populating the film, the Green Men have the most character and display the most nuanced individual personalities. This extends to their pets, particularly Woola, a multi-limbed Barsoomian watchdog that becomes Carter’s devoted companion. Less character is afforded to the Red Men, with only a few cast members representative of them, most notably, and perhaps necessarily, Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris. I remember the original tale’s Dejah Thoris as something of an ornament, but here she’s a scientist and a fierce warrior in her own right.

The bad guys are repped by dastardly Zodangan warlord Sab Than (Dominic West), who’s cleaved a path of destruction all over Mars thanks to advanced technology given by the enigmatic, shape-shifting Therns, led by Matai Shang (Mark Strong). Meanwhile, there’s trouble brewing among the Green Men, with Tars Tarkas’s rule questioned, especially after he appoints Carter his right-hand man. I counted at least three plot threads in his film, winding into various knots that ultimately detract from the entertainment. Eliminating a few side trips, plot turns, and expository scenes could have shaved a good half hour off the movie’s running time and leave it none the worse for wear.

I had high hopes for the writing, given that one of the screenplay’s contributors is Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. But on that score JOHN CARTER is merely…adequate. Still, the dialogue is much more tolerable than that of other efforts in the same genre, such as the STAR WARS prequels. And the science of Barsoom, while dazzling to look at, doesn’t make much sense, with people spouting gobbledegook about “ninth energy rays” and flying in solar-powered airships that also travel well when the sun’s down, despite the lack of a power source. But this kind of movie isn’t built for hard science anyway, so why nitpick?

JOHN CARTER works best as a travelogue and as a retro boy’s adventure. But already critics are comparing it to costly flops like WATERWORLD. I liked it for the most part, so I wouldn’t go that far. But I speculate that it’ll have a hard time scoring big with today’s audiences, since it’s a throwback—made with craft and imagination to spare, certainly—to a kind of pulp fantasy whose time and innocence may be over.

Edgar Rice Burroughs would probably have enjoyed this movie, and that may be both the root of its appeal and its biggest challenge.

Alex Schor

The Psychocinemapath!
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FERRET AND MOLE

January 12th 2012 17:58
Several people have informed me that the film adaptation of John Le Carre’s novel TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY, directed by Tomas Alfredson (LET THE RIGHT ONE IN), cannot be properly assessed without also viewing the 1980 miniseries based on the same book, starring the illustrious Alec Guinness as avuncular MI6 spymaster George Smiley.

To give the earlier version its due, this review will be split into two installments: this one, in which I review the Alfredson film, and a later entry once I’ve seen the miniseries—which, judging from the line of people ahead of me in the Netflix queue, should happen sometime next fall. Thank you ahead of time for bearing with me


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THE HORSE AND HIS SOLDIER-BOY

December 28th 2011 17:17
Few commercial filmmakers today possess sufficient command of the form to stretch our heartstrings without snapping them. Maybe that’s why so-called romantic comedies, dramedies, and many children’s films don’t appeal to me. In most films of this ilk, the underlying emotions are false, just there to move the plot along, and they leave a gamy aftertaste. Upon such foundations are built Danielle Steele movies-of-the-week and wedding comedies starring Katherine Heigl masquerading as “adult” entertainment.

Spielberg is one of the few acknowledged masters of shamelessly gaming our emotions. Such mastery has not been realized without a few slip-ups (ALWAYS, HOOK), but overall he’s the gold standard. He’s the one we feel most comfortable with when it comes to manipulation of audience feeling. And one of the most reliable strategies he employs to ensure few dry eyes in the house is mining a seemingly endless vein of nostalgia—sometimes of times past, but more often of films past


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MADNESS TO THE METHOD

December 22nd 2011 13:59
In his early films, David Cronenberg was labeled the "King of Venereal Horror" as he viscerally and clinically explored the many ways the human body could be warped and perverted. But almost always there was a strong psychological undercurrent, which made his movies a step up from grade-B schlock. Over time he has eschewed physical mutations for more mind-twisting scenarios and everyday horrors, such as the killer instinct (A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE) and the exploitation of the innocent by the corrupt and powerful (EASTERN PROMISES). His latest film, A DANGEROUS METHOD, shows him in restrained mode as far as violence is concerned, but continuing to plumb the depths of the psyche by going right to the source, with an intriguing drama about the relationship between two pioneers of psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and the rift that eventually severs their friendship.

This rupture arrives in the screeching, seizing form of Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), a young Russian admitted to a mental institution to be treated by Jung (Michael Fassbender). In between her hysterical episodes, Jung determines through the "talking cure"--an unusual (for its time) Freudian form of therapy--that she has masochistic tendencies stemming from childhood. He continues treatment, and Sabina improves. In the meantime, he strikes up a relationship with Freud (Viggo Mortensen), who comes to admire and see in Jung a student and possible heir to his philosophies


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AN EXUBERANT RUN THROUGH THE CLOCKWORK OF DREAMS

November 29th 2011 18:07
I’m sure many people were skeptical when Martin Scorsese announced that he would be making a kid’s movie, in 3D no less. But HUGO, based on Brian Selznick’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, is a triumph. Both an engrossing story as well an homage to the early days of filmmaking, the movie never talks down to its audience, never caters to the lowest common denominator, and is not hamstrung by false sentiment. Every laugh, gasp, and teardrop is earned the old-fashioned way: through trust in the moviegoer.

After losing his father and being adopted by his reprobate uncle, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) lives mostly in the walls of a sprawling Paris train station, keeping its clocks running and stealing to survive. He is ever alert to the omnipresent, orphan-hunting (but pratfall-prone) station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his tenacious Doberman. Keeping Hugo’s spirits buoyant despite his threadbare existence is the hope that he can fix an enigmatic automaton that his father was attempting to repair before his passing


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I'VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN

October 29th 2011 14:59
Even in his comedies, Pedro Almodovar seems to have an affinity for the perverse, and he embraces it fully in THE SKIN I LIVE IN, a horror-drama that mixes gender-blurring, dangerous obsession, revenge, and passion in a heady brew that I imbibed near Halloween, appropriately enough.

Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) once ran a clinic, but now he has retired and dedicated to servicing only one patient: Vera (Elena Anaya). At least he claims she's his patient, but he keeps her behind locked doors and under camera surveillance. Vera spends her days practicing yoga and constructing Louise Bourgeois-type sculptures, and for the majority of the time wears a unitard because Ledgard is replacing her skin, bit by bit, patch by patch, with a material designed to be indestructible. No one else is privy to his experiments apart from his devoted housekeeper (Marisa Paredes


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EVERY JEDI HAS HIS BREAKING POINT

September 4th 2011 18:36
So I'm goofing off at home, perusing the 10 or so websites I habit, when I come across a screaming headline on Ain't It Cool News that George Lucas has once again "corrected" certain scenes in the STAR WARS films for their upcoming Blu-ray release. I can't say I'm surprised, as he's continually gone back to enhance, augment, and otherwise tweak those movies to his satisfaction, usually to fans' chagrin.

The latest change, however, has fans outraged and shrieking in high dudgeon, at least more than usual. This time, collective fandom says, he has crossed the line


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RED, WHITE & TRUE

August 11th 2011 17:40
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER recalls a time when being a patriot was universally acknowledged as a virtue in this country—before events such as Vietnam and 9/11 changed the meaning of the word and goons such as Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh hijacked the term for their own nefarious ends, running roughshod over civil liberties and common sense, and leaving this country furiously polarized. The film couldn’t be timelier, seeing as we’re in desperate need of a symbol immune from co-opting by extremists because it represents an unshakable, incorruptible ideal.

This is my high-handed (or heavy-handed, if you want) way of telling you that the film is good. And the producers wisely decided to have it take place during World War II, when the character was born, instead of in the modern era. It gives the story a resonance that could not be afforded by a contemporary timeline


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