REVIEW: Snow White and the Huntsman

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012): Dir. Rupert Sanders. Written by: Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini. Based on Snow White by the Brothers Grimm. Starring: Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin and Sam Spruell. Rated PG-13 (Some scary creatures). Running time: 127 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

In Snow White and the Huntsman, the evil Queen’s mirror slides off the wall in a metallic ooze and takes on the shape of a cloaked figure. Later, we see a majestic forest where a white elk stands beneath a tree filled with nymphs. During the climactic battle, our heroes fight warriors made of black glass shards that shatter on contact and reform instantly. The visuals in this film are bold and stunning and they mean absolutely nothing.

Snow White would seem to be a sturdy enough classic for another pointlessly gorgeous reimagining but when the quality of storytelling is this lazy, the barrage of dazzling effects feels like an exercise in extravagance or, worse, like a crutch.

The tale is a familiar one though perhaps told a shade darker than usual. A deceptive beauty named Ravenna (Charlize Theron) weds a widowed king and, after murdering him on their wedding bed, claims the throne. She has a grab bag of magical powers that include eternal youth, great strength and, I’m pretty sure, a few telekinetic abilities. The one condition of her sorcery is that she must be the fairest woman in the land. So she rules her kingdom with tyrannical vanity, literally sucking the life out of all the pretty girls. Assisting her is her brother Finn (Sam Spruell), a wormy creep who steals the occasional incestuous glance at his sister.

Ravenna’s rule is threatened when one day her talking mirror delivers some bad news: She is no longer the fairest of them all. That title belongs to the recently matured Snow White (Kristen Stewart), the King’s only daughter and rightful heir, who has been locked away in a tower since the Queen’s takeover years earlier. (One of the biggest suspensions of disbelief the film asks of us is accepting that the pouty Kristen Stewart is fairer than Charlize Theron.)

The rivalry between Snow White and the Queen is never absorbing though, largely because of the performances of Ms. Stewart and Ms. Theron. This incarnation of Snow White, with a vaguely weepy expression permanently fixed on her face, is a lousy heroine. She has no spunk or life; she wanders around without agency, letting other people make her decisions for her. Ms. Theron, meanwhile, turns the dial to eleven too often, too quickly, never giving the wretched Queen a chance to earn her reputation as a feared villain. She is loud and shrill but not menacing.

Actors take a backseat to everything else in this movie though. Snow White escapes into the Dark Forest, which gives the film’s art directors and set designers another opportunity to flex their creative muscles. Look out, Snow White! That tree branch is really a snake! Get down! A troll is heading right for you! One after another, the movie throws its ideas at us but they do not add up to anything; the filmmakers fail to build a cohesive world where all these different parts could fit together.

The only two men brave enough to face the digitized terrors of the Dark Forest and find Snow White are a huntsman named Eric (Chris Hemsworth), who the Queen hires by dangling before him the prospect of reviving his dead wife, and William (Sam Claflin), a childhood friend of Snow White’s. Eric and Snow White engage in the standard squabbling between movie tough guys and distressed damsels but wait! Did they just share an extended, melancholic stare? Yep, they must be in love. They are, after all, the film’s top-billed stars so a romance between them is a foregone conclusion. Add the old friend William and we have ourselves a love triangle. (Never mind that William is a total bore.)

Some dwarves show up too (seven of them) and they take turns being quaint, wise and off-color. Like everything else in the film, however, they are cogs in a beautiful machine that has no purpose or function. The final battle is predictably well shot and edited but also dull and forgettable.

Snow White and the Huntsman is also hurt by a clunky script full of groaners spoken in faux-Victorian language. Movies like this tend to fall back on flowery dialogue in an attempt to cover up how vacuous the characters’ conversations are but all this really does is force us to decode the language before we realize just how dumb it is. “The forest gains strength from your weakness,” explains Eric. All right. Whatever that means. Later, when giving Snow White advice on how to kill a man, he instructs her not to remove her dagger until she sees her victim’s soul. What? This guy is a master hunter and that’s the best tip he can give?

The movie assumes we will take its hokey, underdeveloped mythology wholesale and without question. There is magic but we never get a sense of its limits or its rules. The spells and curses and fluttering fairies only exist to justify the top shelf set pieces. Snow White and the Huntsman tries to be epic and profound but all it is is sleepy and dopey.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/4/12

REVIEW: The Avengers

The Avengers (2012): Written and directed by Joss Whedon. Story by: Zak Penn and Joss Whedon. Based on The Avengers comic books by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, and Samuel L. Jackson. Rated PG-13 (Crash, bang, boom). Running time: 143 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

In The Avengers, we finally learn what happens when Thor’s mighty hammer comes crashing down on the impenetrable shield of Captain America. (Spoiler alert!) There is an explosion.

This is just one of many spectacles The Avengers offers, including an aircraft carrier soaring into the sky, a massive metal space worm demolishing Manhattan and the heaving bosom of Scarlett Johansson. If the idea of seeing Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor and Captain America sharing the screen excites you beyond belief, then The Avengers is not just the best movie of the summer, or even the year; it is the greatest movie ever made.

Earth is once again in trouble and the head of the top-secret organization S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), at last has an opportunity to assemble the team of superheroes he has been recruiting over the course of five movies. There is the tech-savvy playboy Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.); Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), the scientist who turns into the not-so-jolly green giant The Hulk when enraged; the extraterrestrial Norse god Thor (Chris Hemsworth); and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), the cryogenically preserved WWII patriot Captain America.

Not that their personalities matter much in this film; the heroes only appear in diluted form in The Avengers. After all, with so many exciting things happening here, can you blame the film for skimping on something as inconsequential as characters? Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the greasy-haired estranged brother of Thor, has procured a magical blue cube that he will use to open a portal to a distant corner of the universe where a few of his alien cronies wait. He plans to enlist their help to decimate, and presumably take over, our planet.

As you can imagine, The Avengers will need all the help they can get, so Nick Fury has signed up a few more recruits for the forces of good. Jeremy Renner plays Hawkeye, an assassin whose marksmanship with a bow and arrow gives Katniss Everdeen a run for her money. Another invaluable member of the team is the sultry Russian agent, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). Ms. Johansson, who excels at playing coy and aloof, need not worry here about her limited range as an actress. As it turns out, her body excels at wearing leather, and it is this skill that is called upon in The Avengers.

The clash of these titans of comic book lore is presented in several plodding action sequences, including an especially mechanical one on the aforementioned aircraft carrier-turned-aircraft. Another takes place on the streets of Manhattan, where product placement conveniently doubles as the mise en scène of billboards and taxicab ads. Just as Thor did, The Avengers gives itself up to corporate uncreativity; it is loud, flashy and fleetingly entertaining but ultimately hollow and pointless. The special effects are absolutely spectacular and utterly soulless.

The film was written and directed by Joss Whedon, who is considered a demigod in some nerd circles (with all due respect to Thor and his Asgardian brethren). Those expecting something witty or cheeky, however, such as Mr. Whedon’s recent horror movie mash-up The Cabin in the Woods, will be disappointed. Any semblance of cleverness in The Avengers is limited to what material Mr. Whedon supplies Robert Downey Jr., who struts around in a Black Sabbath tee shirt, spitting out snarky comments and poking fun at the other heroes. These spare kidding moments are all but drowned out by the deafening assault of the film’s pursuit of blockbuster colossality. Even Samuel L. Jackson’s usual verve feels muted by his busy surroundings.

What a shame, since many of the movie’s jokes are genuinely funny. The very concept of this movie is totally absurd, so why not embrace that silliness and allow the humor to carry over into more than a handful of one-liners?

The movie is also surprisingly boring at times. The first third, which is bogged down with an excess of incomprehensible exposition, is particularly dull. We are expected to wait patiently though, because a lot of cool stuff will surely follow all this tedious jabbering. It must be said though that Mr. Whedon does handle some of this cool stuff pretty well. When the camera whizzes around the streets of New York in a computer-animated frenzy, capturing all our heroes in a single, unbroken shot, it is hard not to momentarily get caught up in the movie’s love of awesomeness for the sake of awesomeness.

Joss Whedon does not include anything unexpected in The Avengers but, to make up for that, he includes a wealth of things we fully expect, and even demand, to see: superheroes smashing superheroes, superheroes smashing supervillains, monologues delivered in monotone, Earth in peril and (spoiler alert!) Earth saved. To try to do anything else would be to risk the film’s status as the greatest ever made.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/7/12

REVIEW: The Cabin in the Woods

The Cabin in the Woods (2012): Dir. Drew Goddard. Written by Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon. Starring: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford. Rated R (Blood and breasts). Running time: 95 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Two jocks, a floozy, a stoner and a naive sweetheart walk into a cabin in the woods. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

But maybe you haven’t. The Cabin in the Woods is a horror film that, as its title suggests, takes on one of the genre’s most elemental formulas. Horny teenagers and deranged slashers have been sharing campgrounds for decades now but co-writers Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard (who also directed the film) are interested in delivering more than your standard bloody, wooded excursion. They seek to turn a familiar premise – and, with it, just about every other horror movie convention – on its head and offer up a complete genre deconstruction.

A horror movie’s success often hinges on its ability to surprise. Audiences demand a sudden scare, an unexpected twist or, sometimes, considering how formulaic these movies tend to be, the surprise may be as slight as the order in which the characters are killed.

The Cabin in the Woods certainly has its share of surprises. The movie toys with our expectations and subverts them, letting us think we know where it is going, only to yank the rug out from under its own clichés. This makes for plenty of unexpected moments but also means the movie too often feels like an exercise in meta cleverness.

Among the doomed kids is David (Chris Hemsworth), a cocky football player who gets the cabin on loan from his cousin. Joining him for the weekend are his girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison), her best friend Dana (Kristen Connolly), his teammate Holden (Jesse Williams) and their pothead pal Marty (Fran Kranz). Each fits a familiar slasher movie archetype, though the movie hints there may be more to their two-dimensional personalities than we first expect.

Before we even meet any of the vacationing teens, we are introduced to two curiously cavalier lab technicians, Richard (the always wonderful Richard Jenkins) and Steve (Bradley Whitford). They are employees in an sleek, underground facility that has remote access via video surveillance and more to the cabin. Of their role in what happens next, I will say no more except that they are the catalysts of a series of twists that continue to escalate through the film’s finale.

Perhaps because the scenes with the two lab techs break fresh, new territory, they are by far more interesting than what is going on in the cabin. (The witty repartee between Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Whitford helps too.) The cabin scenes are not without their moments but it’s hard to get too attached to, or root for, characters that are only stand-ins for self-referential commentary. Part of what makes trashy horror movies fun is the way they encourage us to cheer on some characters and wish death for others. The Cabin in the Woods is too self-aware for that. As soon as audience sympathies begin to form for a character, attention is called to that very sympathy, which is of course one of the ways Mr. Whedon and Mr. Goddard play with the formula, but it also takes the wind out of a few scenes. The movie wants to keep us at a distance.

In its final third, The Cabin in the Woods becomes an all-out funhouse of a movie and there is an inspired sequence that is the ultimate horror movie mash-up. It is a scene horror fans never knew they wanted but, now that it exists, is a must-see if only for its sheer audacity.

By the end, The Cabin in the Woods gives us plenty to smile at but no real scares or jolts. That was never its intention though. The movie is a smart critique of horror films without actually being an entry in the genre, a choice of approach that is as novel as it is limiting.

- Steve Avigliano, 4/24/12

REVIEW: Thor

Thor (2011): Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Written by: Ashley Edward Miller, Zach Stentz and Don Payne. Story by: J. Michael Straczynski and Mark Protosevich. Based on the comics by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby. Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins and Stellan Skarsgård. Rated PG-13 (sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence). Running time: 114 minutes. 

2 stars (out of four)

Thor, the latest superhero flick to enjoy the Marvel Studios branding, is a slick and efficient product designed for summer consumption. Many of the Marvel movies in recent years have succeeded because, in spite of their big-budget excesses, they felt like labors of love, made by people with a real appreciation of the films’ characters and mythologies. Thor unfortunately appears to have been made more with product placement and the eventual Avengers tie-in in mind. The result is not a bad film but certainly a disposable one that does little to convince non-fans why the Norse god needed to be brought to screens.

Turns out Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is not actually Norwegian at all but an extraterrestrial being from the mythical world of Asgard where a monarchy is led by the wise King Odin (an eye-patch donning Anthony Hopkins). As the firstborn and rightful heir to the throne, Thor is anxious to begin his reign. Meanwhile, his younger brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) steals jealous glances at the heir apparent. Naturally, no one takes heed of Loki’s less than subtle glowering until it is too late.

Another danger looms outside the kingdom – the age-old enemies of the Asgardians, the Frost Giants, who were long ago defeated by Odin and his army. When a few Frost Giants break into Odin’s palace to steal an ancient relic, Thor insists the formally vanquished enemies are gearing up for another fight. Eager to reignite war with the icy foes, Thor gathers a team of his warrior buddies to pay the villains a visit in spite of his father’s warnings not to. Odin punishes Thor for this disrespect by banishing him to a planet populated by wee mortals – Earth.

Shakespeare veteran Kenneth Branagh directs the film, an apt choice for this story of jealous heirs and regicide. Unfortunately, Branagh’s directorial talent cannot illuminate a dull and uninspired script. What pleasure there might have been in a twisted tale of royal family troubles is drained away by dialogue that relies on faux-fancy talk and characters over-explaining their thoughts and motivations. There are few details of the story that are not belabored in exposition-heavy dialogue.

Thor is not entirely without its entertaining moments though. Back on Earth a young astrophysicist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) finds the exiled Thor in the New Mexico desert with a fellow scientist (Stellan Skarsgård) and their assistant (Kat Dennings). There are some amusing scenes of Thor adjusting to life on Earth providing some much-need comic relief from the stiffness of the antiquated speech found on Asgard. The film’s occasional sense of humor though rarely pokes fun the hamminess of Thor’s somber mythology. When Thor wields his hammer late in the film and Portman marvels, “Oh my God,” the irony of the line is lost.

The lack of self-awareness is a shame because the film’s extravagant visual design might have lent itself to camp. The costumes have a made-for-TV silliness about them, looking distinctly plastic when they are meant to resemble armor.

As a character, Thor is likable hero. He is a showman and a little cocky, and Chris Hemsworth, a relative newcomer from Australia, plays him well. In fight scenes, we catch him smiling at his own strength and he is amused by the quaint ways of the mortals he meets on Earth. Still, compared with the leads in more character-driven Marvel movies such as Spider-Man and Iron Man, Thor feels two-dimensional. Was this really a character that needed his own film? When he flies with his red cape billowing behind him, can anyone not think he of him as little more than a second-rate Superman?

Thor receives little help from his supporting cast, a wonderful batch of actors all given lifeless roles. Portman, cashing in her last big paycheck before she has a baby, has little to do. Her supposed romance with the hunky god is limited to a handful of flirtatious scenes but nothing that will get anyone’s heart rate up.

The ensemble of warriors that fight by Thor’s side, all of whom are interchangeable and easily discarded, is particularly troublesome. There is mention early on of Jaimie Alexander’s honored place as a woman in the army, but this hardly a consolation for a cardboard cutout character who serves no purpose in the story. And why, if everyone on Asgard talks in a British accent, is the only Asian (Tadanobu Asano) on the planet relegated to speaking monosyllabic Engrish? Similarly, Idris Elba, a black actor, spends the whole movie grunting and snarling. That these characters are included at all only serves as a reminder that all the heroics in the film are carried out by our dashing, blonde-haired, blue-eyed star.

Thor is not an especially bad movie but it makes no effort to surprise us. I have no problem with a movie of this kind featuring a formulaic or familiar story, but when the motions of the plot can be seen from the opening scenes the result is tedium. Escapism entertainment is one thing, but one feels trapped by Thor’s predetermined plotline.

No doubt the film will do well at the box office; saturation marketing ensures that much. But how much longer can studios expect audiences to plop down cash to see these costumed heroes without offering anything new? When I sit down to watch a movie, I’d like to be told a story, not sold a product.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/8/11