REVIEW: The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises (2012): Dir. Christopher Nolan. Written by: Christopher and Jonathan Nolan. Story by: David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan. Based on characters created by: Bob Kane. Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Morgan Freeman. Rated PG-13 (Gloomy brooding and brawling). Running time: 165 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

Eight years have passed in Gotham City since the events of The Dark Knight, when the Joker plagued the city, turned Harvey Dent into Two-Face and raked in hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Gotham is a safer place now: the streets have been rid of organized crime and there is no need for the Batman, that masked vigilante the police mistakenly accused of murdering Harvey Dent.

On the streets, however, there is still belief in the Bat. The streets of Gotham also, for the first time in the series, actually feel part of a real city, one with food vendors and school playgrounds, suited investment bankers and cabbies. And director Christopher Nolan populates his city with some intriguing, well-developed characters.

Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is back, a tired man who’s probably getting too old for this sort of thing but just believes in it too much to quit. Gotham is in “peace time,” as one officer puts it, but Gordon has seen it at war and remains wary. It is his diehard commitment to justice that caused his wife to take off with the kids, leaving him alone to defend a city that does not currently need him but could at any moment.

Perhaps he is not alone though. John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young and ambitious officer, appears to be on hand to pick up the Commissioner’s torch of idealism. As an orphan, Blake looked up to Bruce Wayne, the parentless billionaire, but even more so, he idolized Batman. He has since lost faith in Wayne but still believes in Batman.

Speaking of Batman, where is he? He mysteriously vanished from Gotham following Dent’s death, we are told. (He also mysteriously vanishes for sizable chunks of this movie.) The man behind the suit, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), is still alive, living in self-imposed exile in Wayne Manor. Tending to him as always is the Wayne family butler, Michael Caine. Er, I mean, Alfred.

There is also Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a leather-clad femme fatale with hair so silky smooth you’d think she was strutting through a Pantene commercial. Selina is a cat burglar. She robs jewelry off the wealthy and while the movie is sneaky in the way it avoids flat-out calling her Catwoman, we know better by that sly, twinkling Hans Zimmer theme that accompanies her on the score in several scenes.

Coy though the movie is about her, she is one of the best parts of it. Ms. Hathaway is a nimble actress, both physically in combat scenes but even more so when playing the role of seductress, and she is a lot of fun to watch. She is the only glimmer of the wisecracking playfulness that was once (long ago) a hallmark of the superhero genre.

The rest of that freewheeling fun is buried deep under a heap of rubble by Bane (Tom Hardy), the joyless antagonist of The Dark Knight Rises. Bane is a terrorist who was excommunicated from the League of Shadows, that nefarious organization Batman worked so hard to defeat in Batman Begins. Bane, like Batman, wears a mask, except his only covers his mouth and distorts his British accent into a hissing Darth Vader-esque growl. This makes for an intimidating presence but also obscures roughly half the actor’s lines so that he sounds as though he is talking through a washing machine.

Bane seeks to burn Gotham to the ground and punish its citizens for their decadence. In turn, Christopher Nolan punishes us with an overlong and supremely decadent second half, which disappointingly goes on autopilot. The Dark Knight Rises is undoubtedly Mr. Nolan’s sloppiest script (he co-wrote it with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, from a story by David S. Goyer). It labors early on with expository backstory and neglects to surprise in its final act. The absence of surprise is the most lamentable aspect of this cheerless movie. Mr. Nolan is usually so good at keeping us on our toes; here he bores us by plodding through every plot point his characters have promised us will happen.

Much has been made of the dark tone Christopher Nolan adopts in his Batman films. That somber mood does play a crucial role in the success of the first two movies but even more important is the grandeur Mr. Nolan lends them. He treats these comic book stories as though they are classical myths.

But there is a fine line between grandeur and pretentiousness and The Dark Knight Rises hurtles right over it. Aside from Gordon and Blake (Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are Mr. Nolan’s two most valuable and underused assets), the movie is dominated not by people but by symbolic avatars used to bludgeon us over the head with the film’s thematic intent. Bane stands for anarchy. Batman stands for some vague notion of justice.

What made 2008’s The Dark Knight so much fun was its identity as a thrilling comic book movie elevated to the level of a crime epic. The Dark Knight Rises is all elevation and no entertainment. During that dreary slog of a second half, Christopher Nolan wants us to sit and be impressed by his movie, to be overcome with awe. I sat. I was impressed. Awe? Eh.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/20/12

REVIEW: Savages

Savages (2012): Dir. Oliver Stone. Written by: Shane Salerno, Don Winslow and Oliver Stone. Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, John Travolta, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir. Rated R (Brutal and bloody violence, cursing in English and Spanish, and a dash of sex and drugs). Running time: 131 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Lado Arroyo, played with vicious intensity by Benicio del Toro, prowls around like a rabid animal in Savages, Oliver Stone’s searing new thriller about the intersections between a Mexican drug cartel and the marijuana business in Southern California.

An enforcer for an infamous crime lord (Salma Hayek), Lado is an electrical rod, giving the film a jolt of energy whenever it starts to falter. Mr. del Toro’s performance might even embody the movie’s wild, multifaceted personality in miniature. Lado is brutally violent and misogynistic, and Benicio del Toro plays him with a cavalier demeanor that could be cold and calculating. Or it could be the menacing quiet of an absolute psychopath. When he interrogates people and gives them his calm, leering stare, it is hard to tell whether he has a plan or is making it up as he goes along.

The same may be said of director Oliver Stone, who also shares writing credit here with Shane Salerno and Don Winslow (who wrote the novel from which this film has been adapted). There are moments when Savages comes just shy of the grandeur of Martin Scorsese’s mob movies. But even the most frenetically stylized work from Scorsese bears an unmistakable mark of the director’s command over his material. Oliver Stone’s style is looser, relying on handheld cameras and quick editing. It can create an intoxicating effect but has its limitations too. Certain sequences in Savages have a woozy power but just as often the film feels as though it could spiral out of control.

Through the narration of a Laguna surfer girl named Ophelia (Blake Lively), we are introduced to Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch), who run a highly profitable business growing and selling the best weed in the world. Ben is the brains of the operation, though he would probably prefer to be called the spirit and soul of it. He is a longhaired and peace-loving young man, a Buddhist who has just returned from a humanitarian trip in Indonesia.

Chon, on the other hand, is the muscle of the business. An ex-Navy SEAL, he does the dirty work for his best pal – the usual busting down doors and collecting owed money from clients – and he carries with him a fair amount of mental baggage from the war.

Ophelia (“O,” as she goes by) has given her heart to both men, and all three seem pretty happy about that arrangement. She spends some nights with Ben, others with Chon and, on at least one stoned evening, both at once.

But their blissful paradise – an impressive villa overlooking the beach – can only last so long. A representative from the aforementioned Mexican drug cartel (Demián Bichir) visits them (having first sent a rather intimidating video of decapitated heads). He explains that his boss would like to go into business with them. Ben and Chon will teach the cartel’s workers the secrets of the trade and over the course of several years, then they will hand over the business entirely for a considerable payout. The deal is really more of a command though; Ben and Chon have little choice in the matter.

Things get complicated, however, as situations like this often do. There are kidnappings and ransoms, heated negotiations, infighting among the cartel, and a DEA agent (John Travolta) who has his hands in just about every piece of the pie imaginable. Whipping it all together in a frenzy that occasionally flirts with incoherence, Oliver Stone delivers an exhilarating genre picture that only touches peripherally on political issues that are often at the forefront of his movies.

The film also has a wicked sense of humor and a willingness to poke fun at itself. When a character says the movie’s title once, it’s tacky. When three different characters say the title over the course of the movie, the filmmakers are clearly having fun.

But Savages never quite finds its footing; it’s too busy running headlong into its next crazy idea. Portions of the movie are so frantic and energized that when the movie does slow down, we start to lose interest.

Still, Savages has plenty of good scenes and a handful of great ones that redeem its shortcomings. Not the least of these come from a superb cast. Benicio del Toro is a compulsively watchable force, as is Salma Hayek as Elena Sánchez, the woman pulling all the strings. In one of the best scenes, she unleashes a bilingual tirade on a few of her henchmen, swearing only in subtitled Spanish. Ms. Hayek balances the over-the-top with the understated, revealing occasional glimmers of tenderness in the fiery cartel boss.

John Travolta reminds audiences what a commanding presence he has, going toe to toe with Benicio del Toro in one crackling scene, another highlight of the film. With so much scene-stealing talent it would be easy to miss strong work from the three young leads. The best of them may be Taylor Kitsch, who pretty much only has one gear, angry, but he makes it compelling.

The ending, unfortunately, is a letdown. At first it seems lazy, then it tries to do too much and ultimately peters out with a trite voiceover from Blake Lively. (When a movie has a character reciting a Webster’s definition of the title, it’s a sign the filmmakers don’t know how to end it.) But this only briefly dampens the impact of the movie’s audacious heights, which burn on in spite of its flaws.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/16/12

REVIEW: To Rome With Love

To Rome With Love (2012): Written and directed by: Woody Allen. Starring: Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Alessandra Mastronardi, Ellen Page and Alessandro Tiberi. Rated R (Various infidelities). Running time: 121 minutes.

 2 stars (out of four)

Woody Allen’s tour of Europe continues with To Rome With Love, a collection of vignettes about tourists and locals in Rome that feels less like a love letter to the city than a justification for Woody’s traveling. The film, though not without its amusing moments, is an awkward jumble of comic sketches that fail to add up to a cohesive whole.

We meet Hayley (Alison Pill), a New Yorker on holiday for the summer, who asks for directions from Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti), a dashing Roman. After no time at all (more specifically, after a brief sight-seeing montage), the two are engaged and arrange a meeting of the future in-laws. Mr. Allen himself returns to acting playing his usual crotchety self and delivering some stale one-liners as Jerry, Hayley’s father.

Jerry is a retired classical music producer and when he overhears Michelangelo’s father (opera singer Fabio Armiliato) belting in the shower, he insists the man has a gift that must be shared with the world. This idea is met with sarcastic scorn from Jerry’s wife (Judy Davis) who shrewdly observes Jerry is simply bored and looking for an opportunity to relive the glory days. This storyline eventually peters out into a one-joke bit that is worth a chuckle the first time you see it but quickly gets old.

A characteristically animated Roberto Benigni stars in a similarly one-note story as an everyday joe who inexplicably becomes a national celebrity overnight. Paparazzi mob him outside his home: “What did you eat for breakfast?” they ask him in an excited commotion. “Do you take your bread toasted or untoasted?” And so on, and so on.

In another episode, a newlywed couple, Milly (Alessandra Mastronardi) and Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi), get separated and subsequently embark on parallel sexual indiscretions; Milly with a movie star (Antonio Albanese) and Antonio with prostitute (a criminally underused Penélope Cruz). Their stories meander for a while in mildly farcical territory but don’t really go anywhere.

The only narrative that does progress and develop an actual arc features Jesse Eisenberg as Jack, a young architect living in Rome with his girlfriend Sally (a barely seen Greta Gerwig). Sally has invited her best friend Monica (Ellen Page), a notorious seductress, to stay over their place and visit. “Don’t fall in love with her,” she tells Jack, which is really another way of saying, “You’re going to fall in love with her.”

Eavesdropping on the developing love triangle is John (Alec Baldwin), a famed architect Jack recognizes on the street and invites to his apartment. John, as it turns out, once lived on this very block when he was Jack’s age. Indeed, Jack may even be a young incarnation of himself. (Or is John a future incarnation of Jack?) At any rate, Woody Allen has fun letting John stroll in and out of scenes like a one-man Greek chorus in Jack’s mind, warning him of the trouble he is about to get into while also conceding the inevitable. He was young once too and easily tempted by charming girls like Monica.

Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page are well suited to the fast-talking neuroses of Mr. Allen’s characters and though their dialogue is far from Mr. Allen’s best writing, the pair have a way of making their lines sound snappier than they actually are. This is Woody Allen Lite (he has crafted much more subtle and interesting tales of infidelity in the past) but it is still the best offering here.

The title of this movie is curious. Woody Allen’s last film, Midnight in Paris, told an enchanting story set in the City of Lights that also found plenty of time to indulge in the scenery. It evoked the magic of the city (literally) as well as Mr. Allen’s adoration of it. To Rome With Love feels obligatory. Often Woody Allen seems to be padding for time and he overwrites a lot of scenes, beating a joke into the ground or, worse, explaining why it’s funny. I’ve never been to Rome but I imagine it deserves better.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/9/12

REVIEW: The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012): Dir. Marc Webb. Written by: James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves. Story by: James Vanderbilt. Based on the comics by: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen and Sally Field. Rated PG-13 (No worse than a Saturday morning cartoon). Running time: 136 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Could it be the superhero genre is entering a period similar to, say, the western in its heyday, where originality is less important than deft execution of a sturdy formula? The Amazing Spider-Man is a bright and flashy reboot of the franchise, and more or less a remake of Sam Raimi’s 2002 film that kicked off Hollywood’s obsession with spandexed heroes ten summers ago.

In that intervening decade superhero movies have become increasingly bloated and out of hand, and I started to forget what it is I expect from them. The Amazing Spider-Man has a dashing and charming hero, a pretty girl and a bad guy to save her from. The movie is also marked with a cheerful levity; it doesn’t ham it up or anything but keeps in mind just how silly these movies are if you stop to think about them.

And you don’t have to think too much to enjoy The Amazing Spider-Man. The script, written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves, is clunky at times and rushes through a few key moments in the character’s early development. The previous telling of Spider-Man’s origin will be fresh in the minds of many and there are few surprises with regard to the basic story here. The surprises and pleasures of this movie instead come from director Marc Webb’s lightness of touch and the giddily fun moments he creates with his graceful cast.

Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a teenaged brainiac whose parents mysteriously left him in the care of his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) and disappeared when he was a boy. He is a skateboarding loner with a love of photography and who occupies one of the lower rungs of the high school social ladder.

Mr. Garfield plays Peter as a goodhearted showboat, awkward and a little angsty but more than ready to take on the world when the time comes. Even after he dons the suit, Mr. Garfield does not lose the tics and mannerisms of an overexcited adolescent. These particularly come out in Peter’s scenes with Gwen Stacey (the always lively Emma Stone), a girl at his school who he is crushing on big time. They share some awkward flirtation and these scenes are the best in the film.

Marc Webb’s debut was the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, the movie that revealed to America just how adorable Zooey Deschanel is, and he has a keen sensibility for the tone of these scenes. He gives his actors room to play, trusting that their onscreen chemistry will create a sweetly romantic atmosphere. Ms. Stone, a wonderfully subtle and immensely likable actress, understands her role – she is on hand to look cute and alternately cheer, gasp and smooch – and is no less appealing than usual, though she may be a bit underused.

Gwen works as an assistant for Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a scientist who believes the regenerative powers of reptiles holds the key to curing countless injuries, not the least of which is his own severed right arm. And now we have our bad guy. Dr. Connors is that familiar movie scientist; he is noble and wise and working on something momumental, the power of which he does not yet fully grasp. Perhaps inevitably, he becomes (spoiler alert!) a giant lizard.

Dr. Connors is of particular interest to Peter, whose father once worked alongside Connors on some rather sensational projects. One of these involves genetically altered spiders that shoot webs with the strength of industrial cables. I don’t need to tell you one of these little guys bites Peter while he’s poking around in Dr. Connors’s lab.

Before long, Peter has designed a tight-fitting red-and-blue suit and a mechanism that shoots webs (both introduced in the requisite training montages), and becomes a masked vigilante. This draws the ire of Gwen’s father, Captain George Stacey (Denis Leary), who naturally sets the entire police force on a manhunt to catch Spider-Man.

There is something almost classical about this film’s approach, as though it were paying tribute to the 2002 film. This is, of course, ridiculous. The original Spider-Man is hardly old and, yes, a franchise reboot is totally unnecessary but the gluttonous studioheads have demanded it into existence and, like it or not, here it is. This is a gleeful, dopey, discardable bit of summer entertainment but something about it kept me hooked.

Like the best Hollywood formulas, the superhero movie is designed to entertain. In The Amazing Spider-Man, all the pieces are in place and it works. With no end in sight for the genre’s box office domination, these movies will continue to be produced for at least another decade if not longer. Some of them will be awful, others will hopefully be great. This is a good one.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/7/12

REVIEW: Ted

Ted (2012): Dir. Seth MacFarlane. Written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild. Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel McHale and featuring the voice of Seth MacFarlane. Rated R (Drugs, booze, boobs and bad words). Running time: 106 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Immature manboys have all but taken over Hollywood comedies these days (though the occasional bridesmaid has been known to encroach on their territory). Part of the joke of Ted is that the overgrown child at the center of it spends all his time with a none-too-subtle symbol of his unflagging adolescence: a walking, talking, pot-smoking teddy bear.

Once upon a Christmas, a young boy named John wishes on a shooting star for his Teddy to come to life (he’s had no luck making friends with the neighborhood boys in the Boston suburbs). Sure enough, the next morning Teddy is alive, speaking freely in the high-pitched squeak of a Tickle-Me-Elmo, and he quickly becomes a media sensation.

Though all boys must grow up and every celebrity’s fame fades eventually, the bond between a boy and his bear is eternal and we catch up with John and Ted in the present day. Young John has filled into the bulky body of Mark Wahlberg and though Ted remains the same cuddly size, his voice has deepened into that of Seth MacFarlane’s. (Mr. MacFarlane, who created and provides voice work for Family Guy, directed and wrote this movie with ­­­­Family Guy writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild).

John works for a rental car company where his boss tells him he is a shoo-in for the soon to be vacated branch manager position. But responsibility isn’t nearly as appealing as lighting a bong with his plush pal.

John also lives with Lori (Mila Kunis), his girlfriend of four years. Lori is a woman of remarkable patience and understanding but can you blame her for wondering when John will actually grow up? Ms. Kunis is a good sport too. She’s a talented comedic actress and Seth MacFarlane presumably knows this, having brought her over from Family Guy. If he truly liked her though, he’d throw her a funny line once in a while. Lori is that familiar Freudian blend of hot girlfriend and doting mother figure that is a fixture in comedies like this. The plot requires her to push our lovable lug out of his juvenile rut and into the frightening world of adulthood.

But the looming threat of a bromance break-up is not the only thing facing John and Ted. A wildly over-the-tip Giovanni Ribisi shows up to steal a few scenes as a grade-A supercreep who wants to buy Ted, and Joel McHale makes an appearance as Lori’s smarmy boss. Now, I like Joel McHale on The Soup and Community but, boy, does he have a way of sucking the wind out of a joke. Some comedians’ humor just doesn’t translate to the big screen.

He most noticeably pales next to Mark Wahlberg. Mr. Wahlberg’s comedic timing is spot-on and he takes the dramatic portions of the script dead serious, which is, of course, hilarious. He looks genuinely torn between the love of his life and his best friend and without that dogged commitment to the role, I’m not sure how much of the film would work.

Ted himself is also convincing. Where computer animation stops and animatronics begin, I couldn’t say. He has an expressive, animated face and his movements are clumsy the way you would expect of a stuffed animal with stubby legs.

It has been well noted that the humor of Family Guy relies heavily on regurgitating nearly forgotten bits of pop culture from the last three decades or so. The great irony of that show is that it is now syndicated on every channel imaginable and has become saturated into the very pop cultural landscape it recycles for jokes. Perhaps predictably then, Seth MacFarlane winds up recycling bits from Family Guy here.

In addition to plenty of cutaway gags and “Remember this?” pop trivia, Ted features big band jazz during transitions and a prolonged and brutal fight scene, all of which are Family Guy staples. (Regrettably, there is no musical number.) When Ted remarks at a party, “Come on, I don’t sound that much like Peter Griffin,” the line gets a laugh. For Seth MacFarlane, I imagine there is no greater barometer of success than becoming his own reference.

This being his first feature film, Mr. MacFarlane goes all-out. Just because there have already been two celebrity cameos does not mean there’s no room for a third (plus an unexpected narrator). Ted is as vulgar, racist and homophobic as any recent R-rated comedy, delivering all its gags in equally tactless measure. A few fall flat because, well, because they’re not funny. A joke made in poor taste is not automatically a good joke and Mr. MacFarlane sometimes forgets that. He also takes potshots at easy targets and he’s shameless about it. (Really, do you need to take a jab at Justin Bieber or Katy Perry? As someone who appears on a lot of Comedy Central roasts, Seth MacFarlane can do much better than this.)

Ted has the makings of a hit and Seth MacFarlane will no doubt make another movie. But if he wants to stay a relevant figure in comedy, he’ll have to stray further outside his comfort zone next time. Otherwise he may become the victim of one of his own cruel jokes (“Seth MacFarlane, remember him?”). Until then, he scores some easy laughs.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/2/2012

REVIEW: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012): Written and directed by: Lorene Scafaria. Starring: Steve Carrell, Keira Knightley and Martin Sheen. Rated R (Drugs, language and some shocking violence). Running time: 101 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

A massive asteroid is on a collision course for Earth and humanity has only three weeks left in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which sort of reimagines The Road as a mainstream road trip comedy, an idea that is far more successful than may initially sound.

In the opening scene, Dodge Peterson (Steve Carrell) learns mankind’s last hope of destroying the asteroid has failed and that the countdown is now official: In three weeks, Earth will be reduced to rubble. Upon hearing the news, his wife doesn’t hesitate. She bolts, leaving behind an unhappy marriage and Dodge, now single and alone as he faces a strange new world.

Life on Earth, needless to say, goes berserk. Cell phone towers shut down, commercial airliners stop flying and most people who haven’t already killed themselves make a mad dash to cross everything off their bucket list. There are riots and orgies and ample opportunities to try all the hard drugs you were always curious about.

But Dodge can’t quite get into the spirit of the insanity. He wants to spend his final days with the love of his life, a title that apparently no longer (and probably never did) describe his wife. He meets Penny (Keira Knightley), a twentysomething Brit who lives in his apartment building. They strike up a friendship because they seem to each other like kindhearted, reasonable people in a world that has suddenly become the opposite.

They learn they have something in common. Dodge wants to reconnect with his high school sweetheart – he has always regretted not marrying her when he had the chance – but he hasn’t a clue where to find her. Penny desperately wishes she could be with her family in London – she always ditched them in favor of spending time with whatever schmuck she was dating at the time – but she missed the last plane out of the United States. They will both be alone when the asteroid hits.

When riots break into their building, Dodge hatches a plan. He knows someone with a plane who can take her to her family. She has a car and can drive him to the childhood home of his old flame where he hopes to learn more about her present whereabouts. If she takes him to the house, he’ll take her to the plane. And so they embark on a trip through New Jersey, picking up a dog alone the way (a needless but undeniably adorable inclusion).

Occasionally, the movie takes a narrative shortcut – they conveniently pass through the neighborhood of an old friend who supplies a working car, access to a satellite phone, etc. – for which it may be forgiven; the end is nigh after all and time is short.

The script focuses more on character development, allowing the friendship between Dodge and Penny to gradually blossom. Typically, when two big stars of opposite sexes share marquee billing in a film, it is assumed their characters will fall in love. A few contrived obstacles might stall them but we understand that these are tedious delays of the inevitable. This is not quite the case in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. The possibility of a romance floats in the air but the movie doesn’t force it. They might fall for each other, they might not. Mostly, Dodge and Penny have bigger concerns and we spend the majority of the film getting to know them as they get to know each other.

Steve Carrell and Keira Knightley create a believable relationship. Mr. Carrell in particular has proven himself to be an actor of surprising range. He often plays everyday types we feel we know – an incompetent but well-intentioned boss, a comic-book collecting social-phobe – but he is capable of broader comedy as well. Here he plays a sedate and melancholic man who, aside from the occasional swig of a cough syrup and vodka cocktail, is keeping a good sense of humor given the situation. Ms. Knightley is convincing and charming as a flighty spirit who sees her fickle and indecisive lifestyle with new perspective in light of humanity’s impending doom.

Writer/director Lorene Scafaria nimbly walks a tightrope with regard to the film’s tone. The early portions are dressed in some very funny, darkly comic gags but by the end, the movie reveals its ooey-gooey sentimentality. When we get there though, the film has earned the right to be sentimental because we are invested in the characters and care about them. A divergent scene between Dodge and his father (Martin Sheen) feels a bit hollow, as though it was cobbled together from father-son conversations in other movies, but the misstep is brief.

Watching the film, I was reminded of last year’s 50/50 about a young man grappling with cancer, another life-affirming movie that finds a warm and inviting tone in grim subject matter. 50/50 is hardly the most emotionally raw film made about cancer but it is certainly one of the funniest and most enjoyable, and achieves this without sacrificing authenticity. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World does something similar for the end of days.

The characters in Seeking a Friend alternately riot, party, pray, weep and love in reaction to news of the world’s demise and today’s filmmakers appear to be taking similarly varied approaches to the subject. Some craft bleak and beautiful tragedies, others make overblown action blockbusters. Lorene Scafaria has made a charming and clever romantic comedy. I suppose the apocalypse is what you make it.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/25/12

REVIEW: Brave

Brave (2012): Directed by: Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman and Steve Purcell. Written by: Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brenda Chapman and Irene Mecchi. Featuring the voices of: Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly and Emma Thompson. Rated PG (Mild bear slaying). Running time: 93 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Disney/Pixar’s Brave features a princess, a castle and a witch’s spell but lacks the majesty needed to place it in the ranks of classic Disney fairytales. Neither is the film one of Pixar’s best, having little of the emotional depth or narrative subtlety we have come to expect from the studio’s finest works. Instead, Brave settles for being a lively and energetic, though mostly unoriginal, piece of kids’ entertainment.

The princess is Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald), a spunky tomboy who has inherited a love of archery from her father, a medieval Scottish king. She bounds about the woods on horseback shooting practice targets and boasting an impressive marksmanship, her red curls bouncing and billowing behind her. Her mother (Emma Thompson), however, has no patience for such unladylike shenanigans. As a future queen, Merida should be preparing for marriage not prancing around, pretending to be a warrior.

The King (Billy Connolly) encourages his daughter. He is a towering, barrel-chested brute of a man with one wooden leg in place of the one he lost in battle with a great bear. He is known in his kingdom as the Bear King, having a special knack for slaying the beasts (except, of course, the one that got away with his leg). Perhaps he sees something of himself in Merida – his only other children are his three sons, an impish trio of toddlers still too young for warfare – and he hesitates before inviting the Three Clans to the castle so that his daughter may select a husband from the first-born sons of the Clans’ leaders, as is tradition.

The Clans are a motley bunch and their sons aren’t much to choose from. At any rate, Merida rejects the idea of a forced marriage and sets out to change her fate. Enter the witch and the spell, the latter of which Merida hopes will change her mother’s adamant stance on marriage. What follows are some unfortunate misunderstandings and a few human-to-bear transformations, a plot development that should be whimsical and enchanting but is mostly silly more than anything else. The movie plays this magical turn for laughs; the big reveal occurs in a slapstick sequence that goes on far too long.

Around this point, you can feel the movie grasping for ideas. There is potential here for a grand tale, one that carries some real emotional heft, and to see the movie opt for an easier route is a bit disappointing. The development of the mother-daughter conflict (and their subsequent bonding and reconciliation) follows obvious and familiar paths; more than one scene seems primed for Brave-themed Mother’s Day cards.

The characters also have a tendency to over-explain themes and plot points. Pixar films are usually more trusting of their audience; the best of them expect us to get what’s going on without announcing (and repeating) it.

This is still a Pixar film though and the earmarks of their high standards for animation are all here. The landscapes are vividly depicted in sweeping wide shots and the characters’ faces are subtle and expressive in ways few animated films achieve.

But the arc of the story never matches the ambition of the visuals or the grace with which Pixar’s animators render them. Brave rests comfortably in that lower tier of Pixar films alongside the Cars movies and the latter portions of Up (the opening sequence of that film remains something of a self-contained masterpiece), which is to say that it is solid family entertainment on par with or exceeding the output of other animation studios. It is bright and cheerful and full of clever moments in spite of the loudly grinding gears of its predictable plot. That the film might have been better makes its modest success more than a little underwhelming.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/22/12

REVIEW: Prometheus

Prometheus (2012): Dir. Ridley Scott. Written by: Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof. Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green and Charlize Theron. Rated R (Graphic violence and the appropriate swearing for such occasions). Running time: 124 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

In Prometheus, scientists land on a breathtaking world many millions of miles from Earth and, as is often the case, some pretty horrible things are waiting for them there.

A kind-of-sort-of prequel to the Alien films, Prometheus reveals its relation to those movies only loosely at first, mostly by borrowing their imagery and visual style, and builds a new mythology meant to coexist with the already established franchise. Knowledge of how all these parts from various films fit together is inessential to enjoying this one though and, at any rate, the mythology may or may not be too important. This is a straightforward sci-fi thriller wrapped in lofty ideas and a complex plot but its pleasures are relatively simple.

Onscreen text informs us the year is 2093 and that a crew of seventeen is onboard the spaceship Prometheus heading toward an undisclosed location. If you’ve seen movies like this before, not the least of which being the Alien films, you will recognize that seventeen is a large number of characters and that something bad will surely happen to at least a few (and quite probably many more) of them before the movie is over. Your intuitive suspicions will be reinforced when you learn that only a handful of these characters get substantial scenes and more than one of the supporting players are outright jerks. I trust you see where this is going.

Among the main characters are Elizabeth (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green), archaeologists who discover a pattern in several otherwise unrelated cave paintings across the Earth. The pattern points to a distant galaxy where, they believe, they will find the intelligent beings that created humans some millennia ago. An aged billionaire (Guy Pearce underneath a lot of makeup) agrees to fund a mission that will send them and a crew of technicians and scientists to that galaxy (specifically one moon in that galaxy) to see if they can make contact. Leading them is an icy corporate overseer, Meredith (Charlize Theron).

Also onboard is David (Michael Fassbender), an artificial intelligence robot. While the crew slept in a cryogenic stasis for two years en route to their destination, David was awake, studying human culture (old movies, mostly) and learning ancient languages so that he may hopefully translate an alien-human conversation should there be one.

Noomi Rapace, the original girl with the dragon tattoo, is an intensely focused and amazingly resourceful heroine and Charlize Theron’s cold, calculating performance is a welcome reprieve from all the shouting she did in Snow White (I swear I could hear her in the theater next door). Logan Marshall-Green is a likable actor, though I don’t buy the character’s flippancy in the face of such monumental discoveries (or maybe Mr. Marshall-Green is just too ruggedly handsome to convincingly play a scientist). As the ship’s gruff captain, Idris Elba is a delightfully charismatic presence. It says something about a person when, after being cryogenically frozen for two years, the first thing he does is smoke a cigarette.

Michael Fassbender, however, steals the show. His tone of voice and facial tics always seem on the verge of showing emotions aside from the polite conviviality David has been programmed to convey. In a subtle way then, Mr. Fassbender’s performance gives depth to ideas the script only dances around regarding the extent of David’s humanity. We watch his reactions closely: Was that menace in his voice, or just the unsympathetic reasoning of a computer?

The script, written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, introduces a lot of enticing mysteries, including David, who seems to know something the other don’t. There is also the far grander question which Elizabeth and Charlie intend to ask when they meet their makers-in-question: If aliens created humans, for what purpose did they do it? And why leave clues in the cave paintings? The film gets a lot of mileage out of dangling these mysteries in front of us, though I am not sure they all get resolved in satisfying ways. Prometheus cares about its existential intrigue only so far and then it cares about the more obvious joy of watching humans get murdered by creepy-crawlies.

The score by Marc Streitenfeld creates a majestic mood as the scientists explore the alien moon and its runes, rightly characterizing their discoveries as the greatest in mankind’s history. But the characters don’t always see it this way. They’re too busy endangering their lives in all sorts of reckless ways. In their version of Earth circa 2093 are there no horror movies to teach them that they should never reach out and touch, much less taunt, an unidentified tentacle?

Prometheus is not without its sophistications, however. It is marvelous to look out and boasts one of the best production designs in a movie in perhaps years. Director Ridley Scott, who also made the first Alien, adds splashes of color to his earlier film’s rusty palette; consoles in the ship’s sleek interior light up yellow and purple.

There is also a wonderful attention to detail. Hours after waking from their two-year slumber the crew dons their spacesuits for the first time and their movements are understandably clumsy. When they try to cram into a small rover, their large helmets bump up against each other. Not many movies include moments like that.

Prometheus is tense and exciting enough that you do not mind that it neglects to answer every question it raises (or even most of them), at least not until you are well on your way out of the theater and discussing it. The elaborate backstory ends up being a little beside the point and I wonder why it was included if it was to be left undeveloped. There will probably be a second film that addresses the unsolved mysteries but am I the only one who wishes movies would just stand on their own without always setting themselves up for a sequel?

- Steve Avigliano, 6/11/12

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: Men in Black 3

Men in Black 3 (2012): Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld. Written by: Etan Cohen. Based on the graphic The Men in Black, written by Lowell Cunningham. Starring: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Michael Stuhlbarg and Emma Thompson. Rated PG-13 (Blue, green and orange blood). Running time: 106 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Sure, the world didn’t need a Men in Black 3 but it exists and, hey, look at that: it’s not bad. It’s not as good as the first Men in Black, an entertaining movie that featured Will Smith at the peak of his charm and likability and had a clever, original concept (always the best thing going for it). I can recall almost nothing about Men in Black II except that I was excited entering the theater and disappointed exiting the theater. I was twelve at the time with much lower standards and expectations than I have today, so that’s saying something. I imagine my twelve-year-old self would have been much happier leaving Men in Black 3, a slight but enjoyable sequel.

The movie opens with a jailbreak from LunarMax (you know, the secret prison we built in one of the Moon’s craters to house alien prisoners). The escapee is Boris the Animal (though he prefers just Boris), a burly Boglodite with a biker beard and a nasty overbite (an unrecognizable Jemaine Clement chewing the scenery). Boris has been imprisoned for more than forty years after the Men in Black, top-secret government protectors of Earth and all-around super-agents, prevented him from destroying the planet in 1969.

Our very own Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) was the one who put him away so naturally Boris’s first plan of action is to exact revenge. But he doesn’t just want to kill K. Boris also lost his left arm in his scuffle with K and he plans to get it back by time-traveling to 1969 and killing K before the arm is severed. (Now seems as good a time as any to say that Boris’s right hand opens up and is home to spider that shoots deadly spikes. If you get a kick out of that sort of thing in moves – I know I did when I was twelve – it’s pretty neat.)

Meanwhile, Boris’s Boglodite buddies in the present seek to finish what they started years earlier: to demolish Earth. This leaves K’s partner, Agent J (Will Smith), to go back in time too and kill both present day-Boris and 1969-Boris to ensure that this whole messy affair never happens at all. If you find yourself already struggling to keep track of everything, worry not. Men in Black 3 does not take its temporal tampering very seriously and the pressing dramatic question boils down to the usual: Can J defeat the bad guy in time to save the day?

An essential ingredient in the previous Men in Black movies was the comedic chemistry between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, with Mr. Jones playing straight man to Mr. Smith’s fast-talking wisecracking. Though Mr. Jones is mostly absent in this film, replacing him is Josh Brolin, who plays the young Agent K and does a fine Tommy Lee Jones impression. His presence helps to freshen up a stale formula and give Will Smith (whose shtick has long ago gotten old) someone new to play off of.

Most of the early gags fall flat on their face – the jokes during a visit to a Chinese restaurant are at best corny and at worst racist – but the movie picks up as it goes along, finding its stride in the 1960’s scenes. The retro MIB headquarters is filled with chattering typists with bob haircuts and aliens wearing big bubble helmets that recall the sci-fi imagery of the era. And there are some clever bits regarding MIB technology still in development. (An early version of the pocket-sized neuralyzer memory-eraser fills an entire room.) I also particularly enjoyed Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), a fifth-dimensional being capable of seeing all possible realities before the real one plays out.

The studio was no doubt trying to get this movie made for years and one gets the impression that a dozen or more scripts floated past the desks of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones before they settled on one that was good enough. And indeed, Men in Black 3 is just that: good enough. I find it hard to imagine this working a fourth time around but, then again, that’s exactly what I was saying about this movie a few months ago, so I suppose you never know.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/2/12