Day 132: Brave

"I want my freedom!" "But are you willing to pay the price your freedom will cost?"

Pixar has a pretty impeccable track record. Their films have a level of anticipation surrounding them that can be unfair to the films themselves, but the most impressive thing about the studio is how (up until last year's Cars 2) they are always able to squash those that doubt their abilities.

Their latest effort is Brave, and it falls firmly in the middle of their repertoire. It's not their best film, but it's hardly their worst. If it is one thing, though, it is most assuredly their first "Disney" film.
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Brave is the story of a young princess, Merida (Kelly MacDonald), the eldest child of King Fergus (the always delightful Billy Connolly) & Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson). Because she is, for a time, the only child of a great warrior, her father raises her to be good with a sword and, particularly, a bow and arrow.

The film opens with a terrifying sequence where a bear attacks the young Merida, taking her father's leg in the process, and it set the tone for what promised to be a rollicking adventure. Retrospectively, it feels a bit like a bait-and-switch as the film settles in and becomes a bit of a chamber piece, at least as much as an animated film set in the Scottish Highlands can be.

Merida is a defiant teenager, and as she comes of age, she finds out that she is to be betrothed to one of three suitors from the other clans in their kingdom. The other lords, Dingwall (Robbie Coltrane), MacIntosh (Craig Ferguson) and the delightfully named MacGuffin (Kevin McKidd) travel to Fergus' castle with their clans & their eldest sons to compete for Merida's hand.

Merida wants much more than this provincial life, however. She doesn't like the idea of her parents deciding her destiny for her, so she runs off to seek her own way. Now, Pixar has marketed the film in an incredibly savvy way, in as much as they have not revealed anything about the plot beyond this point in the story in any of their advertising. It would be a cheat for me to go any further in my plot discussion, as this is such a rare occurrence in modern cinema, that I must bow to their wishes and not divulge any more of the plot.

What I can tell you, however, is that for as good as the film is, and it is very good, it is nothing you haven't seen before, and that is its biggest weakness. My daughters frequently ask me who my favorite Disney princess is, and I always tell them that it's Belle. Belle is focused, determined and literate, not something you can say about many of the others. She's got faults of her own (not the least of which is her daddy complex), but I like Belle because she doesn't seek validation from others.

Merida is a lot like Belle. Thankfully, Pixar was smart enough not to shoehorn in an unnecessary courtship, but Merida's stubbornness gets the best of her, and leads her to make some poor choices that she spends the rest of the film trying to reconcile. There is absolute growth on her part as a person and a character (and from her mother as well) and that's a breath of fresh air in the animated princess realm.

Ultimately though, Brave is sadly nothing more than a conventional Disney princess film dressed up in the clothes of a much smarter and savvier film than it truly is. The princess films always put absurd time restrictions on their characters to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and that's the biggest mistake that first-time Pixar directors Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman make.

The ticking clock is hardly a new plot device, and when used well (the Beast's rose for example) it can work marvelously. However, the time restraints placed on the characters here make the turnaround that everyone must do unbelievable. No child (or adult even) can come to realize that what their parents have been trying to get them to understand their entire lives in an instant. It just can't happen, and I know it's a fairy tale, but the 180 that Merida does just prior to the film's climax is forced and ultimately works against the film.

I won't say any more lest I risk spoiling the plot, but I was more upset about this while watching the film, and slightly less so in retrospect. I guess I wanted a strong heroin who would grow and change over time, not be forced to realize the error of her ways in 48 hours because there's dire consequences if she doesn't.

The voice acting is wonderful across the board. The film looks gorgeous, but I would highly recommend NOT seeing it in 3D. The 3D was superfluous at best and downright unnecessary at worst. There is very little to provide depth of field. More than half of the film is indoors, and even the scenes outdoors are confined to the woods, and there was no real reason for it to be in 3D. I think it would have looked better had I not seen it in 3D.

Overall I think that if the film is a disappointment at all, it's because Pixar has proven that they are fallible. Cars 2 was such a huge misstep that they couldn't help but make a much better film by comparison, but as I said before, Brave is just a very good Disney princess film. One of the trailers before the film was for Wreck-It Ralph which seems more like a Pixar movie than even Pixar is making these days, and I guess that's what's disappointing. Disney is beating them at their own game.

If there's any recommendation I have, it's to lower your expectations. Sky high expectations can only hurt a movie like this, and end up being unfair. This is a must-see for young girls and their mothers, and I'm sure that boys will find something to glean from it all. It features an admirable and strong role model for young girls, and the relationship between Merida and her mother will be a joy for mothers and daughters of all ages.

PopGO Rating: 3/5


As a side note, the short before the film "La Luna" was amazing. It's one of my favorite Pixar shorts, and looked better in 3D than Brave did. Make sure you get there in time to see this, it's brilliant and beautiful.
[Photos via BoxOfficeMojo]

Day 131: Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted

"These pillows are filled with baby birds."

I need to start this review by saying I'm not a huge fan of this series. Much like the Ice Age films, I'm not entirely sure, beyond obvious monetary reasons, how this became a series. These weren't necessarily characters that I felt could sustain a single film, let alone the multitude of films & spin-offs they've been in.
With all that being said, this is a thoroughly entertaining film, mainly because it's bizarre, surreal & off-key with reality. More floundering animated film series should be as ballsy as this one has turned out to be...


The film follows the quartet of characters from the first two films, Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) & Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett-Smith). They are still on their perpetual quest to return to their home at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, but the end of the last film found them stranded in Africa, which is where they start this film.

Their quest takes them first to Monte Carlo, where they are going to track down the penguins & monkeys who left them in Africa, and force them to fly them home. They run afoul of a French animal control officer, Captain DuBois (Frances McDormand, in full-on Marlene Dietrich mode) who wants their heads for her sizable trophy room. In an attempt to escape, they fake being circus animals to gain the trust of a traveling circus where they can stowaway. The monkeys use their winnings from Monte Carlo to purchase the circus, and thus the main plot is set in motion.

The circus has its fair share of "characters" like the none-too-bright Stefano the sea lion (Martin Short), the sweet Gia the jaguar (Jessica Chastain) & the non-trusting alpha male Vitaly the tiger (Bryan Cranston). The zoo animals try to win over the circus animals, whose upcoming show in London holds the key to getting them home to New York, all the while trying to evade DuBois.

The film has tons of surreal side stories, such as King Julien the lemur (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his love affair with a mute circus bear that has them visiting Vatican City and stealing a ring from the Pope, all set to "Por Ti Volare." Then there's the scene where DuBois rallies her men from a slumber in the hospital by singing "Je ne non regrette rien." It's bizarre, but pays off pretty great for a film that could have easily been another cheap cash-in the way the previous sequel was.

A lot of the credit for this has to go to co-writer Noah Baumbach. Not exactly known for his family-friendly scripts (with the possible exception of the similarly delirious Fantastic Mr. Fox,) he brings just enough oddity to the proceedings to make the film both entertaining & give it a reason to exist beyond brand recognition. The backstory for the circus characters is suitably bizarre, and will likely fly right over the heads of younger viewers, but parents will likely be tickled to death by some of the details.

Dreamworks animation has always lived in the shadow of both Pixar and the first Shrek film. Their films spent the better part of a decade floundering, and a case could be made that How to Train Your Dragon was the first film to come out of the studio since Shrek that lived up to its full potential. Their films since that time, including the fourth Shrek film, Megamind, and Puss in Boots have been thoroughly entertaining and strangely not as derivative as virtually all their films in between (Over the Hedge being the exception for me).

The Madagascar series didn't necessarily need to reach three films, but I'm glad that whomever greenlit the film had the good sense to just let the filmmakers go hog wild and do all manner of crazy things to keep it fresh. If you don't have kids, I wouldn't rush right out to see this, but I do have to say that the 3D was fairly awesome (the opening dream sequence and a chase through the streets of Monaco in particular), and there's a good amount of truly humorous things happening at any given moment, that I would actually say it's worth your money to go see, even without the built-in excuse of kids.

If you are a parent, I sincerely hope you take your kids to see this, because even if there is no dominant redemptive theme to talk with your kids about afterwards, it's pretty awesome for mindless mid-summer fare. Don't let your potential dislike of the franchise keep you away, this is not the same film series it was just four years ago. It feels new, fresh, and is a definite step in the right direction for Dreamworks. Here's hoping they continue the trend.

[Pics via Box Office Mojo]

Day 130: The Pirates! Band of Misfits

"Fire all things that go BANG!"

Aardman Animation Studio made a name for itself in the 1990s with their effortlessly charming Wallace & Gromit stop-motion shorts. When they branched out into feature territory, they played it safe at first, with a W&G feature, but in 2006 they took a leap into computer animation with Flushed Away. Sadly that film is now remembered best as a financial disaster, but it's every bit as good as the rest of the work they did. The main reason for not doing stop-motion on that feature was the large amount of water involved, which did not stop them from creating this year's The Pirates! Band of Misfits, which ends up being a pretty seamless blend of stop-motion and cg animation, while also retaining all of that handmade Aardman charm.



The "band of misfits" at the heart of this picture is a wayward bunch of pirates that don't do a whole lot of pillaging or looting, but know how to make the most of a good "ham night" once a week. Lead by The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant), they're a lovable bunch of rogues that aren't at the top of their pirating game, but are most certainly a family. When The Captain gets wind that they're accepting entries for this year's "Pirate of the Year" award, he sets sail for Blood Island to throw his name in the hat, yet finds himself mercilessly mocked by the more savage pirates in attendance.

Looking to make his name, The Captain and his crew take ship after ship to no avail, finally seeming to strike gold when they happen upon a scientific vessel called The Beagle, which is home to one Charles Darwin (David Tennant). When Darwin realizes that The Captain's parrot is not in fact a parrot, but a rare, extinct dodo bird, he convinces the pirates to accompany him to London for the Scientist of the Year awards to present their findings. This will unfortunately place them right under the nose of the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), but several plot twists later find The Captain becoming the toast of London.

 

This seems to be a recurring theme this year at the movies, but the trailers are thoroughly misleading for this film as well. It posits the film as a high seas adventure, but truth be told, not much time is spent on water at all, and the trailers show only material from about the first third of the film. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, just don't be surprised if your little ones aren't enthralled by all the time spent at science fairs and in royal courts. That's not to say it's not for kids, my five year old had a blast, she just remarked on the way out that they didn't really do a whole lot of pirate stuff in the movie.

Aardman has always been interested in circular plotting, where things get set up in act one and paid off by act three, and that's no different here. They're geniuses at laying in subtle humor for the adults, and plenty of colorful characters and action sequences for the kids, and this is much in that vein. The voice cast is fantastic, from the aforementioned cast members, to some of the crew voiced by Martin Freeman, Brendan Gleeson, Anton Yelchin, and a very funny cameo from Brian Blessed as The Pirate King. Grant is a stand-out as always, right in his element as a noodle-spined braggart, talking a big game and ducking out before the heat gets cranked up.



The film is directed by Peter Lord who did all of the W&G films, and he's a master at packing the frame with hilarious details, but keeping things moving so that the film almost demands repeat viewings to pick up on all its nuances. It's a very breezy 88 minutes, that only sags a bit towards the end of Act 2, but picking up again for a high seas showdown with Queen Victoria and a bunch of World Leaders that are up to no good.

The indifference with which the film was greeted here in the US speaks more to the tastes of American audiences than it does the quality of the film itself. This is the kind of film that parents complain aren't being made, yet they don't take their kids to see a good movie when it actually does come along, and that never fails to baffle me. This Spring produced at least two great family films in this and Mirror, Mirror and yet the vastly inferior and over-rated Lorax made a killing at the box office because it was all bright colors and celebrity voices, yet so hollow in its center that it would have made Dr. Seuss ill had he seen it himself. I'll just never understand how certain things become popular. 



If you're a parent, you definitely must take your kids, five and older, to see The Pirates! and even if you're not, yet you're a fan of Aardman and its ilk, I would definitely recommend it. It's certainly not the best movie out there right now, but it is better than most of what's playing. I know I'm a little late to the party with this review, as I know it's been out for a bit, but you can still catch it at most multiplexes, and it's even showing up at the discount theaters here in Illinois, so keep your eyes peeled.

PopGO Rating: 3/5


[All pictures via Box Office Mojo]

Day 129: The Dictator

"Tell me, are you having a boy or are you having an abortion?"
Sacha Baron Cohen has carved out a niche for himself in his marriage of social taboos with uncomfortable comedy. It worked like gangbusters on his brilliant television show Da Ali G Show, and has worked to varying degrees in his four feature films, Ali G Indahouse, Borat, Bruno and now, The Dictator. Where his first feature failed by taking one of the characters from his show and putting him in a fictional narrative, he stuck to what he does best with his next two features, putting real people in uncomfortable situations, having to talk to someone they normally wouldn't associate with. When it was first announced, The Dictator was said to be an adaptation of Saddam Hussein's novel Zabibah and the King, but Baron Cohen and frequent collaborator/director Larry Charles have jettisoned most of that material and gone for something a little more comfortable...
Baron Cohen plays General Aladeen, the ruler of the fictional North African nation of Wadiya. The film opens with a Frontline-style news brief about Aladeen's history and how his leadership has now pushed the country to the brink of enriching weapon's grade uranium. When The United Nations threatens Aladeen with sanctions and inspections, he must go to America and present his case to the UN, but a funny thing happens on the way to the UN.
Aladeen's closest adviser and jealous Uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley) plots to have Aladeen replaced with a double (an uneducated goat farmer, also played hysterically by Baron Cohen), who will deliver a speech to the UN proclaiming that democracy will come to Wadiya. This will allow Tamir to sell off the nation's oil reserves to various foreign interests which will give him a lot of money. Aladeen is to be tortured and killed, but in a series of mishaps, he escapes, albeit without his trademark beard, and is forced to fight his way back to power and expose his uncle.
Aladeen takes up with an old ally living in New York, Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas) as well as falling in with a vegan feminist Zoe (Anna Faris) who gives Aladeen a job working in her organic co-op market in Brooklyn. The plot is almost an afterthought, as it is mainly a series of funny bits strung together, only returning to the main plot when they fear the audience may have forgotten about it. Of course, Aladeen finds himself falling for a woman who stands for basically everything he's against, and that will give him the change of heart he needs to make his third act conversion complete.
The film is full of hilarious bit players, some of whom are woefully underused. Among the great supporting cast are John C. Reilly, Garry Shandling, Fred Armisen, J.B. Smoove, Kevin Corrigan, Chris Elliott, Bobby Lee, Kathryn Hahn, & two hilarious cameos I won't spoil. The problem is that most of them, with the possible exception of Reilly & Lee, are given very little to do, and outtakes during the credits hint at some of the larger bits they were involved in that wound up being cut.
Charles keeps the film moving, and it breezes by in only about 80 minutes, just enough time to hit all the major beats and not overstay its welcome. Thankfully, the trailers and commercials have only shown bits that reside in the first half of the film, so there is a lot of material that they've kept under wraps, but I guess my biggest issue was that so many of the film's targets are pretty low-hanging fruit. Granted, a comedian of Baron Cohen's stature has never tackled taboos about terrorism & Middle Eastern Xenophobia in a major motion picture, but it's relatively easy stuff. It played great to the crowd full of (mostly) white teenagers and twenty-somethings in my Suburban Illinois theater this evening, but I doubt any of them really laughed because they were challenged by their own prejudices in the way Borat & Bruno did.
I could nitpick, but at the end of the day, it's still a damn funny movie. The helicopter scene from the trailer is expanded and works gloriously well, as does a bit set in a funeral home, but some bits overstay their welcome like the child birthing scene and the seemingly endless gag of him making up fake names based on the signs he sees around him. The supporting cast is great, but Mantzoukas is the stand-out here. Anyone familiar with his work from The League or the awesome podcast "How Did This Get Made" will have a level of familiarity with him, but hopefully this will open him up to the larger audience he deserves. Baron Cohen is solid, but it's funny, I thought he actually excelled in the role of Aladeen's double more than he did as Aladeen himself. Maybe because it was something different, which I always love, but he really infused that character with a ton of pathos.
At the end of the day, you'll know whether or not you'll want to see the film and, most likely, whether or not you'll enjoy it, based on your love (or lack thereof) for what Baron Cohen and Charles do as a team. I enjoyed this about as much as I did Borat, which I thought was brilliant, but I am an unabashed admirer of Bruno, and I think that's his best work. Bruno held a mirror up to a homophobic society at its most homophobic, and really made people confront what they were willing to tolerate, and it's a great litmus test for how "tolerant" people claim to be. Watch it with someone who says that they're "fine" with gays and see how quickly they're willing to squash it.
But I digress... The Dictator is very funny, and has lots of laugh out loud moments that you'll be laughing about long after the film is over. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself wishing there had been just a little more to it. Baron Cohen is a brilliant social satirist, and I wish he had bared his fangs slightly more, and really let some groups have it that truly deserve it. But I guess I'll have to settle for a baby step in the right direction.

PopGO Rating: 3.5/5

[Photos via Box Office Mojo]

day 128: Dark Shadows

"Our family has always had the biggest and most wonderful balls."

If that line makes you giggle, you'll enjoy about 15% of Tim Burton's latest film, an adaptation of the classic gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. The other 85% of the film is a self-serious, maudlin bore, mired by unnecessary subplots and so many last-minute plot developments, it looks as if they cancelled a sequel halfway through shooting and tried to cram as much as possible into this film. Tim Burton lost his mojo a long time ago, and I'm sad to report, he's not regained it yet...

When the trailers first began showing up for this film a few months ago, I wondered who, exactly, the target audience for this film was. If the audience at my local theater today was any indication, it's middle aged couples who remember the 1966 television program, and a smattering of teenage girls who are there either to fawn over Johnny Depp or looking for confirmation that vampires sparkle in the sunlight (they didn't get the latter, if that's what they were there for).
The film opens with an entire film's worth of exposition and backstory crammed into a ten minute prologue that tells of how a young man named Barnabas Collins (Depp, as an adult) traveled with his family from Liverpool to America in 1752 to make their fortune in the fishing industry. A daughter of one of the family's servants, Angelique (Eva Green, as an adult) is smitten with the young Barnabas, and is appalled when her feelings are not mutual. Roundabout 1776, Barnabas falls in love with Josette (Bella Heathcote), which sends Angelique, who is also a witch, into a fury that finds her casting a spell on Josette which causes her to take her own life, and turning Barnabas into a vampire. When the townsfolk learn that Barnabas is a vampire, they bury him in the middle of the woods, where he lays in wait for the better part of two centuries.
Cut to 1972, the Collins family is in decline, having sold their fishing interests to a company called Angel Baby, run by the immortal Angelique, and a construction crew unearths the coffin Barnabas was buried in, awakening him and sending him into a murderous frenzy. Returning to his family's mansion to survey the state of the family, Barnabas is introduced to his heirs Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), her brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), her daughter Carolyn (Chloe Grace Moretz), and Roger's son David (Gulliver McGrath). Roger's wife died in a tragic accident three years earlier, and David has been unable to let go of his mother, claiming she's still alive, forcing the family to take on both a live-in psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) and a governess, Victoria (also played by Bella Heathcote).

One thing I'll interject here is that the introduction of characters and plot is done with great alacrity. It's not as overwhelming as it seems reading about it (or writing about it for that matter). Barnabas sets out to restore his family and their industry to its former glory, revamping Collinwood Manor, and re-starting the fishing industry, putting him in direct competition with his mortal enemy Angelique. Of course, he becomes smitten with Victoria, who is the spitting image of his old love, and spends a good deal of time trying to woo her, in his antiquated way. Much of this portion of the film is very funny, with Depp excelling at playing the "fish out of water" trope for all it's worth. He casts a spell on the family's housekeeper Willie (Jackie Earle Haley) taking him as his own personal Renfield, and their interactions are quite funny.
Right around the one hour mark, the film starts to put the laughs on the back burner, and while the film doesn't drop its lightheartedness, it certainly wants the audience to think it's got more going on than some cheap laughs. Unfortunately it doesn't. Tonally, the film is all over the map, and even Depp becomes dour and joyless once he seems to have fully adjusted to the 1970s. One of Tim Burton's great gifts as a filmmaker has always been his ability to shine a spotlight on outsiders and imbue them with an empathy that endears them to the audience. Sadly, his attempt to do this with the character of Victoria feels cheap and shameful when we begin to get pieces of her backstory.
There are a lot of filmmakers who suffered a decline with the advent of certain technological advancements in cinema. One could argue that Chaplin's best days were behind him once sound came into play, or that Frank Capra never really entered the era of "color pictures." With the advent of cgi, Tim Burton's films have taken a precipitous drop in quality. His imagination knows no bounds anymore, and he can do anything he wants to. Gone are the days when films like Beetlejuice, Batman & Ed Wood left him confined to the realm of stop-motion animation and matte paintings. Gone too is the heart and soul of an auteur, who can simply click a button on a computer and have whatever he wants. By the time this film gets to its cgi-heavy climax, which features homages to no less than Hitchcock's Rebecca, Murnau's Nosferatu & even Zemeckis' Death Becomes Her, all the air has been let out of the balloon, and it feels like we're just going through the motions before the credits roll.

As I mentioned earlier, Depp is fantastic, and what little good I have to say about this film at all is mostly due to his presence. Much of the supporting cast is either wasted (Pfeiffer, Haley, & Moretz) or woefully miscast (Miller), leading to a dearth of characters worth caring about. Green makes a suitable villain, but when her evil deeds start piling on top of one another, and we find out about all the nefarious doings she's had a hand in (including turning a character into a werewolf as a baby for no good reason), it's just out of control. We should hate her because she stands in the way of the protagonist, not because she's done, literally, dozens of horrible things to everyone in his family. It's just bad plotting, and I hate to say it, but screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith doesn't trust his audience enough to dislike the antagonist, so he adds in all kinds of nasty tidbits about her just to make sure we're happy when she gets her comeuppance.
The last thing I want to bring up is the awful, awful, awful use of music in the film. The soundtrack is populated with songs that almost force you to dwell on the lyrics while watching them. From the opening credits set to The Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin," to Carolyn's playing Donovan's "Season of the Witch," during a dinner scene, to Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" playing while Barnabas walks around downtown Collinsport for the first time in two centuries, it was just plain annoying. The one inspired use of music was The Carpenters' "Top of the World" during a montage, but I think that had more to do with it conjuring up memories of Todd Haynes' Superstar than it did my enjoyment of the scenes it played over.  By the time Alice Cooper shows up for his cameo and lip-syncs two of his own songs, I was pretty much fed up with the soundtrack altogether.
I'm sure there are people out there who will enjoy the film, I just don't know who those people are. Even after surmising who the film's target audience was, I don't see any of them enjoying the film. The only reason I'm scoring the film as high as I am is because of Depp. He's endlessly watchable, no matter how bad the film around him is, and he always brings something new to the table, I just think maybe, just maybe, he and Burton need to take some time apart... try new things... see new people. It couldn't hurt.

PopGO Rating: 1.5/5

[All picture via Box Office Mojo]

Day 127: The Avengers

"You and me, we stay on the ground, keep the fighting here, and Hulk... smash."

Joss Whedon's The Avengers has all the makings of a great movie, independent of its status as a comic book movie, but for my money, it fails to transcend both of these things, and is only a pretty good movie and not the masterpiece we were all hoping it would be. Please extinguish your torches and put down the pitchforks, I'm not about to commit heresy here, but if you would like to listen to a reasoned argument about why The Avengers is merely another in a long line of very good Marvel comic book movies, then I encourage you to read on.

In 2008, there was a scene at the end of Iron Man that pretty perfectly set up The Avengers, and over the course of four years and four more films, we've finally arrived at the end game. Iron Man 2, which I still love in spite of all its faults, spent more time setting up The Avengers than it did continuing Tony Stark's journey to becoming a hero, and most of the seeds for what we saw this past weekend were sown in that film. I also write this review assuming that you've seen the film, so pardon my lack of plot breakdown.

The Avengers is about as good as it could have been, and I guess I'm just disappointed that for all it gave us, it just wasn't a thoroughly satisfying film. It's a perfectly realized comic book on film, and for that, I have to give it due credit, but I realized about an hour or so in that perfectly realizing a comic book on film doesn't necessarily make a film good. It's packed with quippy dialogue, dense backstory, chaotic action, and all the things that comic book lovers such as myself have grown up loving about comics, but as a film, it's pretty hollow.

The villain (not Loki, but the guys he's working for) is a throwaway race of aliens that haven't factored into anything before now, and only pose a threat because we're told about fifty times that they pose a threat. It's a classic case of telling and not showing, and that sort of thing will sink a film instantly. We're given scenes that show the destruction the alien race can cause, but they rely on exposition to do the heavy lifting, so by the time the alien race shows up and starts destroying Manhattan, it's such a foregone conclusion that they will be defeated that the destruction they wreak is almost an unnecessary plot development instead of an actual threat. I never felt in suspense for a moment because it was just a series of mindless, faceless, nameless drones being destroyed by the heroes that we're rooting for by default.

In the midst of all this, however, there was a lot of good stuff. Whedon is the filmmaker that The Hulk has always needed and deserved on film, and thank goodness he used Hulk properly. Mark Ruffalo was an inspired casting choice, and it pays off like gangbusters. The action sequences with Hulk were the best thing about the film, and honestly, are the only reason I'd recommend the film to anyone that's not a diehard fan of The Avengers. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) was treated like an afterthought, and that truly bothered me. He was the only one that could help them get inside the head of Loki, and it seemed like they only kept him around because he could sling his hammer around and cause some destruction. For as great as Whedon handled Hulk, he thoroughly and completely botched Thor.

Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) were used well, but held no surprises. They played right into the things we've come to expect from them, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it was just slightly disappointing that they didn't do anything unexpected. I don't care how hot Scarlett Johannson is, she's absolutely terrible as Black Widow. The role was supposed to be played by Emily Blunt, and I wish that had happened. At least she would have been interesting instead of relying on her tits to do all the work for her. Jeremy Renner was fine as Hawkeye, but the story treated him as a plot device rather than a character. He only exists to give Black Widow something to fight for. Sam Jackson is perfectly acceptable as Nick Fury, but again, he does nothing unexpected and holds no ace up his sleeve now that his dream team is assembled.

My biggest gripe, by far, was killing off poor Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg). His death as rallying point for the team was a cheap, shameless device that made me genuinely angry. The guy had been given short shrift throughout the entire Marvel series, and wasn't really even given the dignity of dying a hero's death. He dies to further the plot, and that's just a lousy reason to kill him off. Lastly, Tom Hiddleston as Loki is great. He's an actor that truly relishes playing a deceptive villain who can't rely on brute strength, so he's forced to rely on his brains, and that makes him truly dangerous. The fact that he was just a pawn of this stupid alien race made me upset that he wasn't more of a self-starter, considering what a great villain he actually is.

The set-up of the sequel midway through the credits gave me nerd-bumps, but it also made me roll my eyes a bit as the entire alien race seemed to be there only to set up the sequel. It's a comic book thing, to be sure, but it doesn't make it a good film decision, and I can only judge it as a film. All in all, The Avengers is just fine, it's about as good as Thor and Captain America and Iron Man 2, but no better in all honesty. If the fan boys dig deep and think about what they really liked about the film, it's nothing they haven't seen before, and just putting all the heroes together in the same frame does not a great film make. I liked The Avengers, but I really wanted to love it…

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Day 126: M*A*S*H

"Well, goddamnit Hot Lips, resign your god damned commission!"

Robert Altman is a director I hadn't tackled yet during my year of movies. I had watched most of McCabe & Mrs. Miller a while back, but didn't review it, and I watched Gosford Park a few nights ago, but again, didn't review it. The other night, I found myself awake, wanting to watch something funny, and I turned to Altman's first big studio film, and one that hasn't aged a day in the 40+ years since its release, 1970's M*A*S*H.

For as revolutionary as it was upon its release, the film still feels like something fresh, new and original. Altman's undeniable contribution to film is the inescapable realism that film can provide an audience. From his famed overlapping dialogue to the focus on background characters doing seemingly nominal things that lend an air of verisimilitude unseen on screen before, Altman was an innovator like no other. The ultimate anti-establishment filmmaker, Altman wasn't happy unless he was ruffling feathers and sticking his middle finger up at a suit somewhere.

After the opening credits, copied almost shot for shot on the vastly inferior television spin-off, we're dropped right in the middle of a brave new world where characters speak at the same time, and one has to actually pay attention to what's being said if they have any hope of keeping up. We're quickly introduced to our ostensible hero Capt. Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland, in arguably the best performance of his career) as he waits by a jeep for a driver. When another Captain, Duke Forrest (Tom Skerritt) arrives, thinking that Hawkeye is his driver, the two steal the jeep and head off to their assignment as surgeons in a MASH unit during the Korean War. It's the first in a long line of acts that show these men as the kind with a blatant disregard for the rules. They're soon introduced to the first of their nemeses, their bunkmate Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall).

By the time Hawkeye and Duke have requested a chest-cutter to make their surgical unit function better, they've already begun unraveling what little sense of order had been established at the camp. When the chest cutter, Trapper John McIntyre (Elliott Gould) shows up, the rulebook has been burned and is being re-written in their chaotic image. The film is essentially a series of vignettes strung together to present the American experience in foreign wars in microcosm. Incidents arise and resolve themselves quickly before moving on to the next one, such as the one that finds camp dentist Capt. "Painless Pole" Waldowski wanting to commit suicide after being unable to get it up during a recent sexual encounter. They stage a fake suicide for him, framed as a mockery of The Last Supper, complete with a faithful recreation of Michaelangelo's tableaux vivant that would make the most self-righteous audience member run for the doors, demanding a refund.

The performances are uniformly fantastic, with Sutherland & Gould anchoring the film, but the various supporting characters owning their small moments in the sun from Sally Kellerman's Hot Lips O'Houlihan to Rene Auberjonois' Father "Dago Red" Mulcahy to Roger Bowen's Col. Blake. It's a stellar ensemble that films would try to ape through the ensuing decades to lesser and lesser degrees of success.

Charges of misogyny plagued the film when it was released, but I feel as though it's Altman's refusal to sugarcoat the way military men truly behave (as boys) that makes these charges ridiculous. In much the same way similar charges have been leveled at the work of Brian DePalma, they are rendered absurd because anyone accusing these filmmakers of such charges is missing the point entirely. They take our most primal urges and desires, and actually have the gumption to portray them honestly on screen, falling victim to the very thing they themselves are condemning.

The Academy presented its Best Picture honors that year on Franklin Schaffner's Patton, a film that felt like a relic the moment it was released, but nobody with a brain in their skull would challenge for a moment that M*A*S*H is the more important, more vital and more groundbreaking work that actually went a long way toward rendering films like Patton as obsolete musings of a bygone era.

You could count on two hands the number of times The Academy has "gotten it right" in its 82 year history, and a Best Picture win for M*A*S*H may have actually gone a long way towards rendering it as an unimportant work. Thankfully it didn't and it isn't, and we can look back at M*A*S*H as the game-changer it truly was and continues to be, for as long as dialogue overlaps and as long as the horrors of war are depicted as being just that, M*A*S*H will insert its relevance in the minds of its viewers.

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Day 125: The Raven

"If I had known that my work would have such a morbid effect on people, I would have devoted more time to creating eroticism."

I make a solemn pledge to you, faithful reader, not to use any bad Edgar Allen Poe puns in my review. The film opens with a specious scrawl that reads something to the effect of: "Edgar Allen Poe was found near death on a park bench on October 7, 1849. The last days of his life and circumstances of his death remain a mystery." It's a footnote of history that the film hangs its entire premise on, and it's just the kind of thing designed to inspire literary nerds to fall all over themselves as they clamor to the box office.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that in a college playwriting course, I too based a short play on a footnote of history involving Poe's Annabel Lee and several ladies claiming to be its inspiration, so I felt like a kindred spirit to this film's screenwriters Hannah Shakespeare & Ben Livingston. I should also note that this film's marketing department should be drawn and quartered in a manner befitting the film's subject. The film is marketed like some sort of steampunk action nonsense, and that's so far from what the film is, I was embarrassed for everyone involved when I re-watched the trailer.
The film is part of the revisionist fad of the last few years, taking a famous person, in this case Poe (John Cusack), and putting them in a story that features some meta-twist on their lives. In this case, someone is re-creating the crimes of Poe's greatest literary works in real life, in some sort of attempt, at best, to coerce Poe into writing again, or at worst, implicating himself in a crime spree of his own design.

The first thirty minutes of the film are its most effective. Director James McTeigue (V For Vendetta, Ninja Assassin) establishes a world where a great artist such as Poe is shunned for his substantial vices, and everyone from the newspaper publisher Maddux (Kevin McNally) to the wealthiest man in town Capt. Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson) have dark secrets and potential motives that may imply them in the crimes unfolding on screen.
As for those crimes, someone is recreating famous deaths from Poe's canon (Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Pit & The Pendulum). When a desperate young detective named Fields (Luke Evans) finds himself at his wit's end with the murders, he enlists the help of the man who may have inspired the killer. Poe has issues of his own however, namely that the woman he loves, Emily (Alice Eve), is the daughter of the aforementioned Capt. Hamilton, who would sooner see Poe dead than with his daughter.

Clues left at the crime scenes lead Fields and Poe to believe that the killer's next crime will mimic the events of The Masque of Red Death, which takes place at a masquerade ball, which Capt. Hamilton is coincidentally planning for his daughter. At the ball, Emily is kidnapped, placing Fields and Poe on a deadline to find the killer and rescue Poe's beloved.
Let me start my critique of the film off by saying that, by and large, the film is better than it has any right to be. The trailers had me hornswoggled into thinking this was going to be an action extravaganza dressed up in ascots and pretension, with no literary sensibility whatsoever. It's actually quite the opposite. With the exception of a few gruesome murders, the film is fairly light on action and more involved with the mystery of who the murderer is, and will our heroes discover that fact in time to save Emily.
This last statement is also my biggest issue with the film. Ever since reading Brad Meltzer's stellar DC Comics limited series "Identity Crisis," I find myself reciting Batman's mantra every time I'm confronted with a mystery... "Who Benefits?"  If you ask yourself this around the forty-five minute mark, you might not necessarily discover the killer's identity, but you'll have narrowed the suspects down to two, and it kind of ruins the fun that the film's creators had clearly hoped to create. The dearth of supporting characters also makes it relatively easy to whittle down suspects.

As far as the performances go, they're good across the board. No true standouts, save perhaps Brendan Gleeson, who's always great. Cusack isn't bad, but I question his casting in the first place. He's an actor who's at his best when his laconic, average guy charm slowly wins you over. Here, he just seems, and pardon the pun, "too old for this shit." He's not phoning in it, per se, but he's not having a whole lot of fun either, and it just makes me sort of question his participation in the entire endeavor.
Evans would likely be, for me, the biggest surprise. He's not an actor that I've seen in anything but nonsense like Clash of the Titans & Immortals, so he won me over pretty quickly, and while the film gives them little to do, he and Cusack make a pretty winning combination. Eve is perfectly suitable as well, always easy on the eyes, and not given much to do beyond the damsel in distress routine, but to play that kind of character without making the character shrill or one-dimensional is actually challenging, and she rises above it laudably.
Overall, I wouldn't run right out and see The Raven unless you're a die-hard Poe fan or a John Cusack completest (I used to live with one). It is a solid movie though, perfect for a fall night when you want to watch something other than the same old horror films. It's a surprisingly literate film, one that made me smile on more than a few occasions at how clever it could be, but one that also made me roll my eyes several times at how obvious it was being. It's a bit of a conundrum, much like Poe the man and Cusack the actor.

Go Rating: 3/5

[All photos via Box Office Mojo]

Day 124: The Innkeepers

"I'm not negative, I'm a realist, there's a difference."

Ti West's 2009 horror film House of the Devil is a mini-masterpiece of genre experimentation. It perfectly replicated the early 80s Satanic Panic films that were a staple of the mom & pop video stores I grew up in. I couldn't say enough good things about it in my review a few months back, and it was with breathless anticipation that I greeted the release of his newest film, 2011's The Innkeepers.
Where House of the Devil was made with loving care to look like a film that was actually made in the early 80s, The Innkeepers is very much a product of the year in which it was made. In fact, the story behind the story is that the hotel the film is set in, The Yankee Peddlar Inn, is where West and his crew stayed while shooting House of the Devil. Make no mistake about it though, West is a filmmaker much more interested in the slow building intensity that provides the true horror that most of us have come to seek in a horror film.
Owing a clear debt to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, without ever trying to recreate that film's inimitable style, The Innkeepers is set on the last weekend in business of The Yankee Peddlar Inn, a real hotel in Connecticut. Claire (Sara Paxton) & Luke (Moby doppleganger Pat Healy) are the last two employees of the hotel, and they are on a quest to discover if there's any truth behind the ghosts that are rumored to be haunting the hotel. Armed with audio and video surveillance equipment, they set out to either capture these ghosts on tape, or dispel their existence (as much as that word can apply to ghosts).

Over the course of the hotel's last days, there are only four official guests on the books. A mother (Alison Bartlett, Gina from Sesame Street) and her son (Jake Schlueter), an aging actress from an old tv show (Kelly McGillis), who claims to have psychic abilities, and an old man (George Riddle) wanting to stay in the room he stayed in on his honeymoon decades ago.
The film ratchets up the intensity to almost unbearable levels, giving minor payoffs along the way through some well-placed jump scares, likely to induce laughter from the audience immediately after they've jumped out of their seats. And make no mistake, these are good old fashioned scares designed to give temporary relief from the building intensity, not cheap scares designed to goad you into being more scared than the film could ever hope to make you on its own.

West is a savvy enough horror master to pay-off on his multiple set-ups (Claire's incessant use of her inhaler after being scared, Luke's macho-facade, the old man's creepy appearance out of thin air on the hotel's last day in business). Breaking the film up into chapters is also another convention that West uses to maximum effect, giving the film an episodic style that befits its homage to The Shining. Just as the last twenty minutes of House of the Devil gives us everything we'd been promised in the previous hour and more, so too does The Innkeepers give in to your desire to see all the various set-ups paid off in the most intense way imaginable.
This is horror filmmaking that rewards patience and perseverance. Audiences raised on the torture-porn excesses of the latter half of the last decade will likely not have the fortitude to make it to the myriad pay-offs this film has in store for them. The popularity of the Paranormal Activity films has given me some hope that audiences have finally tired of the constant one-ups-manship of those films that seemed to dominate horror films of late.

The performances are all wonderful, with Paxton being a true stand-out. Much like Jocelin Donahue in House of the Devil, West has a wonderful knack for casting damsels in distress worth rooting for. Healy is also great as the typical apathetic & aimless thirty-something who's sardonic attitude masks a scared man-child beneath. McGillis is terrific as well, fitting well into the mold of an aging actress without a hint of vanity, much like her predecessor Mary Woronov in West's previous film. There's also a great cameo from indie it-girl of the moment, Lena Dunham, as a chatty barista.
While this film has no singular set-piece as phenomenal as the scene set to The Fixx's "One Thing Leads To Another" in House of the Devil, it's definitively more than the sum of its parts. The payoffs come fast and furious in the last thirty minutes, and it rewards your patience with genuine terror. I hate to say, "If you can make it past the first hour, you'll love it," because the first hour isn't some gauntlet to survive in order to enjoy what the film has to offer. It's all part of the ride, and if you can't hang with the first hour, it's probably not the film for you anyway.

PopGo Rating: 4/5

Day 123: The Cabin in the Woods

"Nemo... you gotta wake up man!"
I am thirty-two years old, and in my lifetime, there have been two horror films that have felt completely and totally revolutionary. You had the feeling when watching them that the horror genre was never going to be the same again. The first one was Scream, which I saw the night it opened to zero hype and fanfare, yet would go on to spawn three lackluster sequels and seem almost like a pale imitator of itself in retrospect.
This morning, I saw the other film, a film I knew nothing about, had seen no trailers for, read no reviews for, and I urge you, with every fiber of my being, to follow suit, and not read the rest of my review until you've seen The Cabin in the Woods for yourself. Please don't read on, lest you risk spoiling yourself to any of the myriad treasures of awesomeness this film has in store for you...

This is your last chance to turn back, I'm not going spoiler heavy in this review, but I sincerely think that knowing absolutely anything about this film ahead of time will ruin your enjoyment of it. The Cabin in the Woods was filmed somewhere around two years ago, and has sat on a shelf for some inexplicable reason. It is absolutely, hands-down, without a doubt, the most radical and imaginary horror movie of the last fifteen years.
The film is heavy on horror mythology, and the more steeped in the genre you are, the more you're going to enjoy the film. It plays on all your expectations, giving you winks and nudges as it doles out the tropes that we've come to rely on. If it wasn't so well written, it would almost seem aggravating in its eagerness to hit all the beats of "teenagers in the middle of nowhere" story you've seen a million times. Okay, this is officially your last chance to turn back and protect your innocence, plot details to follow..

The film opens with two average corporate world joes, expertly played by Bradley Whitford & Richard Jenkins, going about their day, making small talk, and dropping hints that they have some sort of control over a social experiment involving teenagers. We are then introduced to our five teenagers who are unknowingly part of this "experiment," each of which fits a horror stereotype. There's Dana the virgin (Kristen Connolly), Curt the jock (Chris Hemsworth), Jules the whore (Anna Hutichson), Holden the brainy nice guy (Jesse Williams) and Marty the stoner (Fran Kranz, who bears an uncanny resemblance to District 9's Sharlto Copley). They are off to spend a weekend in an isolated cabin that Curt's cousin recently acquired, but they are also being monitored by Jenkins & Whitford, their every move commented on from a control room miles away, as if it has all been set up ahead of time.
The thing that immediately jumps out at you is how well these actors play both sides of the coin in regards to their character. They're very easily recognizable as the familiar character-types, but they also have more going on than the usual "type" in a horror film. Curt, for example, is a Sociology major, who gets angry when he thinks his girlfriend Jules has been reading a text book about Russian finance. Marty is also incredibly observant and has much more insight into the world and situation around them than your typical horror film stoner.

Bit by bit, the audience is clued into the true scenario going on, and it's much more than you could ever expect. There are hints and clues given along the way that make sense in retrospect, but going into the film cold, you'll never be able to figure out what on earth these people in the control room are actually up to. The way that film unfolds is fantastic, shifting your focus between the teens and the guys in the room, and treating the teens predicament as an after-thought at times, in a truly interesting way.
The film breaks ground left and right, setting up pins and knocking them down like crazy. Needless to say, the last twenty minutes or so, leave no stone unturned, and in the most brilliant stroke of all, they leave absolutely zero hope for a sequel. It's a ballsy move, but one that makes me bow to the film's superiority. This will not become another Scream and thank god for that. The world needs fewer sequels, and more originality in it, and it's refreshing to be presented with that attitude in a film like this.
The film was directed by Drew Goddard, who co-wrote the script with geek god Joss Whedon, and while the film has Whedon's witty stamp all over it, it's Goddard's film top to bottom. No one will mistake this for a Joss Whedon film, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I love what he does, but it's nice to see him give someone with similar sensibilities a chance to create something wholly new and original.
The acting is great, across the board. All the teens are awesome, particularly Kranz & Hemsworth, but the film truly belongs to Jenkins and Whitford. They are actors that know how to make the most of roles like these, and they are ridiculously good in the film. I was shocked by how comedic the film was, and these two bring most of the funny. There's also a geek-tastic cameo at the end that will make you smile with delight, even though this person is underused at best.
I could wax rhapsodic about this film all night, and I would love to just sit and dissect this film with people who've seen it. I think word of mouth is going to make this film a solid hit for the rest of the month of April, as this was far and away the most diverse audience I've seen in ages. There were young people, old people, men, women, blacks, whites, Asians, every imaginable demographic was represented, and everyone was having a blast, laughing, shouting at the screen, and enjoying a truly fun, communal movie-going experience. That's a rare commodity in this day and age, and I can only hope this film gets the audience it deserves.
So, now that you've seen the film, let's talk... what did you think?
GO Rating: 5/5

[All Photos via Box Office Mojo]