That little indie film called The Avengers

For those who stuck it out until after the credits of Iron Man, many of us shat a brick when a one-eyed Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury presented himself to Tony Stark to talk about a little program called the Avengers Initiative.  Four years and four movies later (Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America), every comic book fanboy's wet dream has come and it's time for the heroes to unite in the most epically-scaled movie possibly ever.  Really, just the fact that this movie exists is an accomplishment. As far as I know, no other movie series has done this - taking a bunch of characters from their own universes and bringing them together for one superhero supergroup.  The fact that Joss Whedon (Firefly, Buffy) was at the helm really made me less weary about this; if anyone would be able to pull of this ridiculously difficult balancing act of integrating all of these heroes together it would be him.

So how did it turn out?  The consensus from everybody on the planet seems to be that it "kicked ass."  Now, I would agree with that in some aspects, but I truly felt a little disappointed in the film.  I know I'm in the extreme minority on this one.  First off what I liked: the action and how it was handled.  With maybe 7 characters that needed their moments (including Iron Man, Hulk, Cap', Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the villain Loki) I think all of them have at least one great scene.  Some are given more time than others, but what do you expect?  Considering what he had to do, I don't think Whedon could have done much better.  I loved the fact that these wildly different characters are interacting, and in interesting ways.  The action is extremely well handled, and the way the camera moves from hero to hero in the 20-30 minute battle scene at the end (spoiled endlessly in the trailer) is top notch.

Of all the heroes in the movie, and I was not expecting this, the Hulk is probably the best.  Mark Ruffalo plays it really well and in a subdued performance as Bruce Banner.  The Hulk actually resembles Ruffalo as well, and is by far the most fun to watch during the final New York battle scene.  As opposed to her non-character in Iron Man 2, Black Widow is also given a lot of cool moments in the film, and really is more fleshed out.  I thought Tom Hiddleston as Thor's brother Loki was a great villain, and he should given an honorary award at the Oscars for Best Evil Grin.  The only two major parts lacking I thought were Jeremy Renner as the bow-and-arrow wielding Hawkeye and Sam Jackson as the aforementioned Nick Fury.  Although he is smushed into the main team of the Avengers, Hawkeye was the only character that didn't have much personality other than being BA (that's "bad ass" in hip teen lingo).  And even though Samuel L. Jackson is an amazing actor (Pulp Fiction is one of my all-time favorite films), as soon as he enters a "big" role like Nick Fury or Mace Windu from Star Wars, for whatever reason he's just not the Sam Jackson.

For all it had going for it though, I just couldn't dig it, sorry.  The characters all work and their interactions are awesome, but what they are fighting for I couldn't give a rat's ass about.  Much like a lot of recent summer blockbusters, the plot is almost an excuse for the action.  The beginning of the film is a real slog.  It takes a while for things to pick up.  Basically Loki steals a glowing blue cube of destruction known as the Terreract and there is a brief escape scene involving Loki.  When he manages to skirt away, Sam Jackson says some line and THE AVENGERS plays on the screen.  That opening title moment should have given me goosebumps, but I just felt let down - I just thought 'This is the beginning of the movie?' The entire plot boils down to the heroes trying to stop Loki and get back the cube.  I love movies like Spider-Man and Batman because I genuinely care about what happens and feel a personal connection to the story, but chasing after a cosmic cube is so disinteresting to me I kind of got bored at parts of this.

Everyone keeps toting on about how great Whedon's dialogue is and how funny the film is.  I don't know what it is, but I just didn't find this as funny as everyone else (maybe I'm just a stickler or something).  I honestly thought the almost universally-hated Iron Man 2 was much funnier than this.  I found the same problem with The Cabin in the Woods, maybe me and Whedon just have different sensibilities.  Everyone seemed to laugh at this one line Thor makes about his brother being adopted...I for the life of me can't see how that deserves anything more than a chuckle, but when people hear it's Whedon, all hands on deck, we've got a genius here.

I hope I'm not sounding contradictory here, but my feelings about The Avengers are pulling at me both ways.  On one hand it was a logical culmination of four radically different-toned films and it pretty much covered all bases in terms of incorporating big action set pieces, individual character moments and interactions, but when it comes down to it, I couldn't care.  I think The Avengers would have worked better as a TV series; that way all of the interconnections could be given a proper amount of time and more interesting themes could pop up.  As it stands, it's solid enough popcorn entertainment that's sure to entertain nearly everyone in the theater, and given the challenges this movie faced before it even started, that's a minor miracle compared to the clusterfuck that could have been (DC, take note if a Justice League movie ever arises).  It still suffers from the genre, the mythology, and the previous films that laid the groundwork, but for superhero/Whedon/action fans I think this is a must-see anyway.

Rating: B-

I was originally going to give this a C+, but after having some time to let the movie simmer in my head (and after thinking about me being massacred for giving it such a low grade), I actually really want to see it again and have since had a sudden surge in interest in comic books and want to get into them more.

Also, come on Dark Knight Rises...I know this Avengers thing has made a lot of money, but we can beat it.

What I've Been Watching (4/28/12)

Hey guys, instead of writing full reviews I'm just going to post a short blog on the last few movies I've seen.

A couple weeks ago I saw the documentary Bully, which follows a handful of bully victims and their families.  The movie was pretty well handled, but with very little relief from the hard emotional subject matter it was tough to sit through and without any interviews with the bullies themselves it felt unbalanced at times; it would've been interesting to hear their perspective.  It's a solid doc though, and I felt my hands clenching when I had to listen to some of the school officials on the matter.  Next I saw the latest from Aardman Animation (the team behind Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run), The Pirates! Band of Misfits.  The film was witty at times and the animation was remarkably detailed, but the story was pretty slight and there was far less swashbuckling than I would have anticipated.  Lastly I caught a screening of Sound of My Voice, from first-time director Zal Batmanglij and starring Another Earth's Brit Marling as a cult leader supposedly from the future.  It's one of those vague movies where the answers are never given to you, sometimes infuriatingly so.  Specific scenes can be full of suspense, and multiple genres are balanced throughout the film (...or are they?  We never really know what the genre is) which is a feat considering its micro-budget.

Sorry for the slight review(s), if you can even call them that. I'll probably write a bigger one for The Avengers since I know a lot of people are psyched for that.  Thanks for reading, bye bye.

  Bully                                     The Pirates!                          Sound of My Voice

Rating: B

Rating: B-                              Rating: B

Three Stooges and Cabin in the Woods

The Three Stooges:

Sigh... and I was so pumped for a truly great Three Stooges comeback.  Originally, the Farrelly Brothers' Stooge pic was, in a too-good-to-be-true fashion, set to star Jim Carrey, Benicio Del Toro, and Sean Penn as Curly, Moe, and Larry, respectively.  But nope, instead we have Will Sasso as Curly and two other guys I've never heard of playing Moe and Larry.  If you just look up the development of this movie you can see how bonkers it's been just to get this on the screen.  For nearly a decade the Farrellys have been trying to get this made - you'd think this comedy tribute that has been festering in their minds for so long would've aged like a fine wine.  Instead it aged like a malignant tumor.

This movie felt like a complete rushed mess.  Even the basic structure of the film makes no sense.  It's separated into 3 chapters in an effort to recreate the Three Stooges shorts of the 40's.  The problem with this is that it's all one continuous story line, so really I don't know why they even included that; there wasn't 3 distinctly different shorts.  It's that kind of odd gotta-shoehorn-this-in mentality that makes this a painful experience.  First of all, it takes about 15 minutes just to get to the actual stooges; in that 15 minutes we have to watch their "younger years," portrayed by three child actors who might be charming to show off at a cocktail party, but come off as pretty annoying here.

The story follows the three boys as they grow up in an orphanage together, with Larry David, Jane Lynch, and Jennifer Hudson all playing nuns.  None of these people add any humor to the movie (even though I am a huge fan of Larry David and Jane Lynch). Larry David needs to stick with Curb Your Enthusiasm - he pulls off one of the most annoying cross-gender performances I've ever seen (then again I haven't seen Jack and Jill).  The actual adult three stooges (once we get to them) were OK, but I never felt that their characters were anything beyond mimicry of the original stooges - in other words, I didn't feel the soul of the original characters.  It's as good a stooge portrayal as say, Frank Caliendo's impression of John Madden; while it's a good impression but I wouldn't hire him to play in his biopic.

Sure the movie has some laughs in it, but most of them were lifted out of the old shorts; the "original" ideas in this film are basically a series of progressively terrible puns and annoyingly outdated slapstick.  If you want to update a classic style of comedy to a new generation, don't go the lazy route and force in iPhone and Jersey Shore jokes.  With Dumb and Dumber being my favorite comedy of all time, this really makes me concerned for the recently announced D&D2.  The Three Stooges didn't even feel like a movie, it felt like a rushed SNL skit or something; the budget was clearly low and the script was likely a disaster.  Maybe some day we'll see that magical Stooge revival with Carrey and Co, but for now we have a steaming pile of cow dung, figuratively speaking.

Rating: D

The Cabin in the Woods:

(The Cabin in the Woods is a little difficult to talk about without spoilers, so sorry if the review is too vague).

It would be an understatement for me to say I'm a fan of horror movies.  I love the genre oh-so very much, but nowadays there's really not much happening with it.  There are endless remakes, sequels, prequels, pre-makes, you name it, it exists.  While watching The Cabin in the Woods, it's clear that director Drew Goddard and co-writer Joss Whedon are fans of the genre and know all of the pitfalls.  In a very Scream fashion, this really picks apart the "cabin in the woods" flick and gives it a twist.  I don't know how spoilery this is, but essentially this is The Hunger Games in a way, where the horror movie "variables" are semi-controlled by overseers, but it's ultimately up to the victims to play out their own story.  Things start to ramp up and get crazy though, and by the end let's just say that the horror nerd in me was getting a lot of what I like to see.

I'm not the biggest Scream fan in the world, and as interesting and different a concept this movie puts forward, I found it a little too...wink-at-the-camera.  The meta aspects make the movie what it is, but also make the film lose a little impact, I think.  Tonally this movie is all over the map, but it does work somehow.  It's dark and moody one second, funny the next, and horrifically brutal the next.  It also didn't spell things out for the audience without losing their interest which is refreshing.  I liked the slow and steady explanation for the workings of this "game," although some of the answers weren't exactly what I was hoping for (kind of like how Lost towards the end featured a certain urine-cave...Lost fans will know what I'm talking about).  I'll probably have to watch this one again just to get my bearings on it, but I thought it was a solid examination and twist on a genre near and dear to my heart.  Personally these meta-movies can get a little tiresome, so excuse the somewhat low rating, but for what it is, it's a sometimes clever, unique flick and the last twenty minutes or so is bat-shit awesome.

Rating: B-

The Raid: Redemption MOVIE REVIEW

The Raid ("Redemption" was added for the US release) is a martial arts movie from Indonesia that has been getting a lot of buzz lately, with some critics touting it as one of the best action films in years.  The story is really simple; basically there is this SWAT team (or whatever the Indonesian equivalent of our SWAT team is) and they are tasked with killing a ruthless drug lord named Tama.  He's situated in a [I want to say 15-floor] apartment building which he uses as his criminal drug headquarters.  The whole movie is pretty much the SWAT team going floor by floor fighting bad guys and there is a ton of bloodshed and amazing action.  Gareth Evans, the director in love with the Indonesian martial art known as Silat, gives the fighting style its full impact in The Raid.  This movie is a ridiculously over-the-top violent adrenaline rush.  What it lacks in story it makes up for in balls-to-the-wall fight sequences.  I can't think of a movie that has done this better since The Matrix (and maybe The Matrix Reloaded, which love-it or hate-it, did have some spectacular fights).

The pace is so quick you'll forget about the bland plot.  The constantly pulsing musical score really helps with that, arranged by Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park.  The score really helps to add shape to the fights, which can sometimes take a long time.  There are a lot of talented ass-kickers on showcase here, but my favorite had to be this guy named Yayan Ruhian.  He plays this guy called Mad Dog and he has two major fight scenes that were impossible to look away from.  He, along with the lead actor (played by Iko Uwais, a go-to actor for Evans), kick way too much ass for one movie.  I sat in a packed theater and people were audibly reacting with ow's and fuck's on a regular basis.  Some viewers might be repulsed by the amount of hitting, punching, kicking, neck-twisting, and blood-splattering, but for those certain fucked up individuals (like me) this is the cinematic equivalent of crack.  The story is completely stripped down to the most basic action plot and the rest is just relentless insanity.  If you like these kinds of flicks, try to see this film!

Rating: B (but the action gets an A)

Double Review: Televised Child Killings and Two Bumbling Cops

Hey guys, sorry if my reviews have been dwindling in quality lately, I've just been rushing through them to get my initial thoughts out there.  If anybody reads these, tell me if you'd rather see longer, more thought out reviews or summarized, quick reviews.  Or if they are perfect as is.  Or if you don't give a shit and want me to stop making them.  Or if you just want to sit back and not comment.  Whatever you want.  


The Hunger Games:

For those who don't know, originally The Hunger Games was the first of three books written by Suzanne Collins.  Essentially the story is a sanitized, teen-friendly version of Battle Royale, where a number of children are randomly picked out of 12 districts to fight to the death in an annual nation-wide televised event called "The Hunger Games" (duh).  I read the first two books (and gave up partway through the third) so obviously my opinions would not be the same as those going in fresh, but in terms of an adaptation I thought it was very well handled.

While certain, not ultra-significant things were changed from the book, most of the main plot has stayed intact.  I was worried going in that the proper back story would be rushed through in order to get to the actual games but the pacing was just right and had the same exact "flow" I remember from reading it.  Jennifer Lawrence, playing the bow and arrow-wielding Katniss Everdeen of District 12, was great in her role, displaying the right level of intensity and emotion that the character deserved.  I also loved the many recognizable faces of the adults "behind" the game; I was happy the role of the drunkard coach Haymitch went to Woody Harrelson, and Stanley Tucci was pretty spot on as the TV host/audience guide Caesar Flickermann.  Elizabeth Banks was inappropriately funny as Effie Trinket, Donald Sutherland and Wes Bentley (aka the American Beauty bag-in-the-wind kid) were appropriately sinister, and Lenny Kravitz was doing the same kind of supporting figure thing we saw him do in Precious.  I wasn't a huge fan of the two main male characters, Peeta and Gale, but they were still better than I expected because based on the way they looked in the stills that were released before the film, I was honestly expecting Twilight-level buffoons.

I do have to say though, this isn't even close to the same level as the other hugely popular young adult book-to-movie series, Harry Potter.  The lower budget really shows through here; whenever extensive CGI was needed it was kind of painful to watch (especially when there was fire - which is featured throughout the film).  The Capitol was also a bit underwhelming - it kind of looked to me like a scrapped idea for a planet in The Phantom Menace or something - not at all like the wondrous first look we got as we entered Hogwarts for the first time in The Sorcerer's Stone.  Also, sometimes the camera was doing the annoying nausea-inducing shaky-cam thing during the action scenes; it's hard to blame them though because for one thing you can't really show some of the stuff that's happening and get away with a PG-13.  For the age bracket I actually think this was a little bit on the edge, pushing into R territory.

The intensity of the games and the character stuff was all good (and that's ultimately more important), but in the end I think the budget might have gotten in the way of its scope.  I don't want to make the review too long and I could delve into a whole bunch of other topics, but the movie was really good; it's filled with political undertones and will appeal to a wide age group, both genders will get something out of it, there's action, romance, drama, and maybe a sprinkle or two of humor (not too much of that though).  Just see it, everyone else already has.

Rating: B+


21 Jump Street:

21 Jump Street: a property that nobody even remotely cared to see remade into a mainstream comedy, even less one starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.  The cards were stacked against this film going into it, but it actually turned out to be a great comedy.  Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the writer/directors of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and written by the screenwriter for Scott Pilgrim vs the World, 21 Jump Street benefits from some great talent behind the scenes. But wait - there are some great performances in front of the lens too.  I'm no Channing Tatum expert, but from what I've seen of his work he's never been better (which is not that difficult seeing as his acting prowess doesn't exceed that of a block of wood) and Jonah Hill hasn't lost his funniness along with his weight.  Plus there are guest stars and cameos galore, of which I will not spoil at all.

I don't laugh too often at comedies nowadays but this one regularly had me chuckling.  It has some great gags and surprisingly I actually cared about the characters.  The script may not be an amazing breakthrough in screenwriting, but the basic building blocks of what makes a good story were there.  With plenty of gags throughout, if you think this movie may fall under your brand of comedy (aka anyone who enjoyed The Hangover or Bridesmaids) I guarantee at least one titter out of you by the time it's over.  It satirizes both buddy cop movies and high school flicks really well (I'll go out on a limb and say nearly as well as Hot Fuzz), and if you're "with it" at all and get the in-jokes, you'll probably get your money's worth.

Rating: B+

John Carter MOVIE REVIEW

John Carter (originally supposed to be titled 'John Carter of Mars') is the first live-action film from one of my favorite names at Pixar: Andrew Stanton.  Stanton directed both Finding Nemo and WALL-E, which are not only two of the best all-time animated movies, but I'd consider them among the all-around best movies (at least in the past 10-15 years).  So when I first heard about this project I was super-excited to see what this guy was going to do with a live-action adaptation of a classic Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi story that was the original inspiration for movies like Star Wars and Avatar... and then the trailers came out.  The acting looked totally lifeless, the CGI seemed dull and uninspired, and there wasn't really anything to latch any hopes onto.  It looked like garbage and despite Disney's overhaul of advertisements I don't think anybody was hugely interested.  I still believed in Stanton though, and I was still trying to reassure myself that the man who prides himself on delivering quality stories over anything else would deliver in the end.  But I was wrong.

John Carter may not be the worst movie of all time, but as the trailers foretold, it was just sadly lacking.  I kept trying to grasp onto anything positive, but I just could not connect with this movie at all.  The plot is confusing, the characters really don't have much personality (except maybe for this weird dog/dinosaur thing), and it just seemed totally muddled and cheesy on a level that stands toe-to-toe with Clash of the Titans.  The story is basically about this military captain from the late 1800's who by chance is transported to Mars (which is called "Barsoom" by the natives).  He learns that due to gravity differences that he has a Superman-like ability to jump really high and has increased strength.  He is captured by tall green martians with big horns protruding from their face and eventually John finds himself in the middle of a war where there are a lot of shitty side characters that I didn't really care about.  There was also a sexy love interest played by Lynn Collins who plays the Princess of Mars.

Every once in a while the movie presented a cool idea, like when John first learns how to use his "power," but between the really campy costumes and dialog, and the uninteresting and boring action, this film was a huge disappointment.  Considering how well fellow animator Brad Bird made his transition to live-action with the very entertaining Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, it's a bummer that for whatever reason Stanton just dropped the ball on this one.  It may depend on how much money this makes, but I think this may be the last time we see him work on a non-animated feature, at least for a good amount of time.

Rating: D

Silent House MOVIE REVIEW

Silent House, the latest horror remake to hit the big screen, stars Martha Marcy May Marlene star (and Oscar-snub) Elizabeth Olsen as a girl moving into a summer house (or something like that) and finds herself trapped inside with a killer.  That's kind of it. The film takes the same route as Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and is supposedly shot using one take (there are some cuts, that is the desired effect at least).  I haven't yet seen the original, but I thought the premise was really interesting and I loved Olsen in that other movie, so I went in expecting a nice scary time.  Well, I couldn't have been more wrong.  This was a big pile of crap, even bigger than The Woman in Black.

Nothing about this film is good except for Olsen's performance and the technical skill it must have taken to employ the long takes.  Other than that the story is awful, all the secondary characters are terribly acted, the story makes no sense, and worst of all: it's boring!  At least with most horror movies I can manage to keep myself in the moment but man, this was a real slog.  Maybe it was the fact that I was in a shitty theater and I could clearly hear the musical numbers from The Lorax playing on the other side of the wall, or maybe it was the fact that people all around me were muttering to their friends 'this is awful.'  I tried to give this a chance but I have to agree with the audience, this was just terrible, and also has one of the more perplexing, strangely off-putting endings I've seen in a while.  The only redeeming value this film has is Elizabeth Olsen's rack, which in an obvious way always seems to be a prominent element on the screen at all times (I don't think that was incidental).

Rating: D-