The Hype Monster vs. The Great and Powerful Backlash

Hype is tough to avoid. The dutiful moviegoer and friend that I am, I like to recommend a good movie when I see it. Plus, if a good film does well at the box office, there may be more of its kind down the road and less garbage wasting screens at my local theater. There’s a difference though between a recommendation and hype. A recommendation says, “See this, I liked it and you will too.” Hype builds the anticipation to levels a film could never possibly satisfy. As a result, people who didn’t see the movie the opening weekend and aren’t riding the hype train feel underwhelmed when they finally do get to the movies. Thus, backlash ensues.

This happens with movies of all kinds from summer blockbusters to the Oscar-nominated. It happened with Avatar last year, The Dark Knight two years ago and it’s starting again with Inception right now. All of the above are critically acclaimed and the first two have become megahits with the latter likely to follow suit. I enjoyed all of them too, but it’s important to keep things in perspective.

Critics and moviegoers alike were hailing Avatar as a game-changer. Movies would never be the same, they said. Six months later, Avatar hasn’t had nearly the cultural impact of Star Wars, which the film was repeatedly compared to, or even Cameron’s own Terminator films. For better or worse Avatar has popularized 3D and proved it to be a profitable investment for studios. Yet I’m at a loss to quote a single good line from the movie and I can only think of one memorable scene off the top of my head. (I rather like the scene when he first gets into the avatar and feels the dirt under his feet.) For me, Avatar remains in my mind what it was when I first saw it theaters: A visually stunning and creative but poorly written sci-fi action movie.

When The Dark Knight came out two years ago, there didn’t seem to be any other movie out that summer and were people so wrong to treat it as such? The Dark Knight is the best superhero movie yet (though Spiderman 2 is a close second for me) and I admire the way director Christopher Nolan gave his film the tone, structure and grandeur of a crime epic. Is it a great film though, in the Citizen Kane, Godfather or Fargo sense of the word? Probably not. That didn’t stop me from championing it as such at the time, of course, but I have to be honest and look at the film in perspective. Heath Ledger deserved every bit of hype he got, but Christian Bale’s grunt can be a bit much and I wish the movie didn’t end with such an obvious sequel set-up. (That last shot of Batman on his motorcycle was cool at the time, but it’s more frustrating than anything else now.) Still, I look forward to one day showing Nolan’s Batman movies to my kids the way my father showed me Richard Donner’s Superman movies. As a piece of pop culture, The Dark Knight is a classic. But remember, that’s pop as in popcorn.

Now Nolan is at it again with Inception, a movie that everyone and their grandma have been calling a “mindfuck.” I’m still not sure what that means and how the word qualifies as a recommendation but I think I understand the intentions. Personally, I prefer the way a Charlie Kaufman movie makes sweet love to my mind and doesn’t just leave the next morning but to each their own, I suppose.

Since Inception’s release, some critics have laid out reasonable critiques of the film, mostly arguing that the movie’s action sequences and set pieces lack the mystical and amorphous qualities of real dreaming. This is true. I admire all of the above-linked reviews, particularly the A.O. Scott one, but I think some of these critics are missing the point. Christopher Nolan set out to make an action movie sprinkled with thoughtful ideas, not the other way around. If he did, he would’ve made it more Waking Life than The Matrix. Those are two more movies I like, but for very different reasons.

Movies operate on a sliding scale of ambition and Nolan has succeeded wonderfully in making a brilliant action movie. That little trick about how ten seconds in one dream equates to twenty minutes in another and an hour in a third is ingenious and I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s an inventive little cheat to give our heroes more time and who cares if it doesn’t hold up to anything resembling logic in the real world?

Those proudly waving the flag of backlash are shouting that the movie is not a visionary masterpiece. Who said it was? Certainly not Nolan. Ah yes, that snow-balling monster of hype did, giving a perfectly entertaining action blockbuster labels it never wanted.

When I searched for a synonym for "hype" in my computer’s thesaurus, I got "ballyhoo" as an option. I like that word more because I think it captures the ridiculousness of people's tendency to overrate. See Inception and see it again but please, let’s try and keep the ballyhoo in check.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/19/10

REVIEW: Inception

Inception (2010): Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy and Michael Caine. Rated PG-13 (sequences of violence and action throughout). Running time: 148 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

If you had something to hide – a secret, personal demons – to what length would you go to protect it? In Inception, the new mind-bending thriller from The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, there’s a guy who keeps a vault inside an arctic fortress protected by soldiers armed with sniper rifles and grenade launchers. And those are just for his daddy issues.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an “extractor.” He has the ability to enter people’s minds through their dreams and once inside, steal whatever secrets they may be hiding. For each theft, an “architect” develops a blueprint dream world, one that the dreamer fills in with personal details and populates with projections of people from his own memory. Much like a dream, not until waking up does the person realize it’s all an illusion, if he realizes at all. Whether Cobb is the developer of the technique or simply an independent contractor isn’t entirely clear in the film, but we know he’s the best at what he does.

A businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) approaches him with a special job. He wants to convince a competitor’s son (Cillian Murphy) to make some ill-advised business decisions in the wake of his father’s death. In order to do this, Saito enlists Cobb and his men on an “inception” job, which you may have guessed from the change in prefix is the opposite of extraction. Rather than stealing something, he wants Cobb to plant an idea inside the young entrepreneur’s head and convince him that that idea is his own. To perform inception without the person realizing is a task many say is impossible, but Cobb takes on the job regardless because, well, he’s the best.

Filling out the rest of the team are Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobb’s right hand man, Ellen Page as a promising young student who becomes the team’s new architect, and Tom Hardy as the brawns with brains of the operation. Michael Caine shows up too for a cameo as Cobb’s father, but this isn’t an actor’s movie. Everyone is fine for his or her part though, particularly DiCaprio who has a way of bringing emotional credibility to roles you wouldn’t think needed it.

The inception job proves to be rather complicated; there’s a dream within a dream within a dream and there’s more after that but what would be the point of explaining it all here? The team also runs into trouble when they find that their victim’s mind has been trained for this very moment. Apparently it’s possible to turn your subconscious into a sort of cerebral militia.

This is a film that demands a fair amount of mental energy if you want to keep everything straight but Nolan, who also wrote the screenplay, structures the film in a digestible way, keeping its mysteries intriguing rather than frustrating. Late in the movie, when he cuts between three layers of consciousness within more than one person’s mind, we wonder how anyone could have thought The Matrix was difficult to follow. And yet we’re always entertained. There are the occasional lines of bland expository dialogue, but they’re necessary to clarify the complex plot.

Though the premise is high science fiction, the film is essentially a heist movie where the endgame is leaving something behind rather than burglary. Nolan understands this and even if you don’t follow every bit of scientific jargon, he gives us plenty of exciting sequences and moments of CGI wonder.

The film is also more thoughtful than most summer sci-fi or action flicks, meditating on the human consequences of experimenting with the dream world. These people spend as much time in dreams as they do the real world and they’re constantly suspicious that their mind is deceiving them, spinning tops and rolling loaded die to ensure that gravity is functioning as it should. The emotional side of the equation is also treated when haunting memories of Cobb’s wife jeopardize the mission. The film explores in some surprising ways how the mind handles feelings of guilt and denial.

Thoughtful and smart as it may be, Inception, like Nolan’s Batman films, is still a summer blockbuster. Just when we start wondering how the subconscious projections of a man who has probably never held a gun are able to fire submachine guns with impressive accuracy, something cool happens to distract us.

The ending is deliberately ambiguous, leaving you wanting to see the film again, but even without that there is enough here to warrant a second viewing. Christopher Nolan is the rare big-budget auteur that consistently delivers, reminding us that Hollywood hasn’t run out of original ideas. It just needs a few more people like Nolan to sneak in and plant those ideas.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/16/10

REVIEW: Predators

Predators (2010): Dir. Nimród Antal. Written by Michael Finch and Alex Litvak, based on characters created by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. Starring: Adrian Brody, Laurence Fishburne, Topher Grace, Alice Braga and Danny Trejo. Rated R (strong creature violence and gore, and pervasive language). Running time: 107 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

I’ve never seen Predator or Predator 2. I’m not sure how these pop culture gems slipped past me all these years – perhaps I spent too much time watching the Alien and Terminator movies instead – but I think I can infer enough from their titles and trailers to know everything I need to approach this film, which thankfully ignores the embarrassing Alien vs. Predator crossover movies in hopes to breathe new life into the franchise.

New hope means new blood and Predators begins by introducing a not-so-merry band of murderers and trained killers, led by an American mercenary (Adrian Brody) and an Israeli military woman (Alice Braga), who the camera sometimes catches looking at Brody long enough to suggest attraction, but there’s no time for romance when there are aliens to be killed, and these few shots are all we get of that subplot. The rest of the crew is filled out by a checklist of requisite minorities including a big Russian, a bigger Mexican, a samurai-slinging Asian, and an African who has a habit of starting his sentences with, “In my culture.” I won’t spoil who dies first.

The movie categorizes these characters by race and killing specialty, keeping them one-dimensional because ethnicities are more fun in action movies when a personality doesn’t get in the way of delivering cool lines in broken English. When Topher Grace shows up too in the jungle, they ask him who he is. He responds, “I’m a doctor.” Of course, the funny doctor. Yeah, we could use him too.

There’s a lot of grunting and threatening each other with guns, but the humans eventually realize their commonality: they’re all killers. But why were they dropped into the middle of a jungle? After cycling through a few seasons’-worth of LOST theories in under minute (This is an experiment! This is a dream! This is Hell!), they arrive at the conclusion that they have been brought here for the purpose of being hunted by the More Dangerous Game – those dreadlocked aliens known only as the Predators.

Everything up to this point is pretty tedious and carried out with dialogue that consists of either clichés or inane questions (“Who are you?” “Where are we?” or my personal favorite, “Wanna see something fucked up?”), but it’s just obligatory exposition before the action kicks in. Unfortunately, even the action feels as if it’s going through the motions. We get a lot faux-tension from gun reloading drama – don’t characters realize that when a spiky alien dog is running at them, they’ll always have enough time to reload before shooting it mid-jump? – followed by some post-battle pondering about whether it’d be better to find cover or search for high ground.

While these are hardly transgressions in an action movie, they become too much to bear without a single relatable character in the bunch. The aforementioned killers all have their cool moments, but they’re too flat to generate anything in the way of audience sympathy. When one dies, we shrug it off and get excited for the next action sequence the survivors will find themselves in. Worst of all is Brody’s character, the supposed protagonist who dismisses each death with such callousness we soon despise him when we should be cheering for him. The film seems to expect that we’ll champion his cold heart simply because he’s the first character we meet, but when a character is this morally devoid, I’d just as soon root for the Predators.

There is a glimmer of hope with the introduction of Laurence Fishburne as a military man who, after holding out on the planet for “ten hunting seasons,” has developed some clever survival tactics as well a split personality. His performance is a reminder of the actor’s charisma and in his limited screen time he brings some much-needed humor and intrigue to the movie.

Predators isn’t terribly interested in either, however, preferring to stack the movie with aimless action sequences. The characters are trying to survive and maybe even make it back to Earth, but we never get any idea of how many Predators they’re fighting against, so there’s no sense of their progress. With great difficulty, a few Predators get killed, but the death toll for humans is twice that and the aliens are barely trying. Finally, after all the shooting and stabbing and exploding, the film doesn’t even have the courtesy to end its narrative with a satisfying conclusion. Yes, the ending is a sequel set-up, but judging by who’s left at the end, I can’t say I’m all that interested in investing more time in their struggle for survival.

Somewhere in this film there’s an interesting parable about the inhumanity of violence, and you wouldn’t have to lose any of the action to turn it into one. When Adrian Brody solemnly decides to sacrifice the weaker men in the pack, director Nimród Antal expects us to nod in agreement. He’s just telling it like it is. But when our lead man has no discernible humanity, maybe we are better off rooting for the aliens. If in the mind of Predators, the last mud-slathered man standing is right and all his preceding decisions are irrelevant, then what the hell was the point?

- Steve Avigliano, 7/11/10

Do We Need 3D?

I don’t fully understand the technical reasons why watching a movie in 3D is worse than a normal viewing, but I do know these things: 1) The picture is dimmer in a 3D movie. 2) The 3D effect is distracting. 3) It adds a surcharge to an already expensive ticket.

There are technical reasons why 3D gives us a dimmer picture, but you don’t need to be an expert on film projection to notice the difference. Should you see Toy Story 3 in 3D, consider for a moment past Pixar movies. The studio’s films have always been vibrant and colorful and yet here (and when Up came out in 3D last year), everything is a shade too dim, as though the entire film were taking place at dusk. Why is this? Something about the 3D process makes the image dimmer, but those glasses don’t make it any better. Granted, they’re a marked improvement from those red/blue glasses that used to be the standard, but they’re still a discomfort. And if you already wear glasses, they’re even worse, having to awkwardly place them over your prescription lenses.

But this gets more into my second problem with 3D – that it’s a distraction. When Avatar came out, the buzzword everybody used was “immersive.” James Cameron’s innovations in 3D technology were supposed to pull the viewer in and make them a part of the experience. For many, the effect worked. For me, it was frequently distracting. Yes, those sweeping shots of oceans and flying mountains looked pretty spectacular in 3D (though I suspect they’d have been just as memorable without it), but what about the dramatic scenes in between the sweeping effects shots and action sequences? Did you notice the way the image blurs a little when two people are just sitting and talking to each other, or walking? Some call the effect “ghosting” and it was all over the place when I saw Avatar. The 3D blends nicely in action scenes, but for those quieter moments, it became very noticeable that I was watching a 3D movie, pulling me out of the experience rather than into it.

3D is being touted as the next great innovation in movies, as if 2D movies are suddenly inferior and outdated. Even using the term 2D is a misnomer. Were you ever unsatisfied with how “flat” movies used to be? No, of course not. That’s because since birth, our eyes and brain have worked together to interpret pictures and film as representations of depth and movement. Adding the artificial third dimension only calls attention to the fact that we’re watching a movie.

And then there’s the price. We’re paying extra money for an inferior product. I’m dazzled enough by Pixar’s animation, or the latest CG effects, why do we need 3D? The simple answer is that we don’t. Studios like it because they can make money off it, and they are. Avatar is the highest-grossing movie of all-time, largely thanks to the 3D surcharges. Then there’s the IMAX surcharge that, in an AMC theater, charges you for putting a faux-IMAX screen in front of the regular screen.

These scams will exist as long as people are paying for them. Christopher Nolan spoke out recently against 3D in response to questions about how the third Batman will be filmed. He explains that the choice is not up to him. Audience members speak through ticket sales and studios listen by looking at box office receipts.

So ask yourself: Do you need to see Toy Story 3 in 3D? Or Harry Potter? Or (God help us) the new Jackass movie? You can voice your opinion one way or the other with a ticket purchase.

Further reading: Roger Ebert’s “Why I Hate 3D (And You Should Too)”

- Steve Avigliano, 7/01/10

REVIEW: Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 (2010): Dir. Lee Unkrich. Written by Michael Arndt. Featuring the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, and Michael Keaton. Rated G. Running time: 103 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

We all outgrow our toys eventually, but the wonderful thing about great films, and this is especially true of great children’s films, is that they grow with us. I was 6 years old when the first Toy Story came out and 10 when I saw the second in theaters, and in revisiting the films I found they’ve not only lost none of their charm, but in fact resonate with me more than ever. Toy Story 3, arriving nearly 11 years after the first sequel, is the most sophisticated of the series, in both its animation and its message, ending the series on a poignant and wholly satisfying note.

Toy Story 3 finds Woody and Co. in a dark place – and not just in the literal sense of their placement in the forgotten toy box. Toy population in Andy’s room has shrunk after years of yard sales and garbage days, leaving only a handful of sentimental favorites left – both an economical decision by the filmmakers to not overcrowd the film with unnecessary side characters and also a heartbreaking reminder of the toys’ impermanence. As Andy packs for college, he must decide whether to hold on to these mementos of his childhood, donate them to a local daycare or forsake them to the dump. Andy, the sentimentalist he is, elects to store them in the attic with the exception of Woody, who gets an honored placement in the college box. When Andy’s mother mistakenly brings them out to the curb – a reasonable misunderstanding considering Andy packs them in a black garbage bag – the toys decide they’d rather be donated than trashed and they hitch a ride to the Sunnyside Daycare Center.

Sunnyside, in typical Pixar inventiveness, is an exciting new world filled with vibrant colors and the promise of being played with by children all day long. It seems to them Toy Heaven, an eternal life of playtime. When children grow up at Sunnyside, explains a stuffed bear and leader of Sunnyside named Lots-O’-Huggin’-Bear (Lotso for short), a new generation of kids replaces them. You’ll never need to feel the heartbreak of your owner outgrowing you because there will always be another child ready to play with you.

Woody, who has accompanied his friends this far, refuses the invitation to this seeming utopia and, in spite of his friends’ behest, embarks on a journey back to Andy’s. His failed escape, another of the thrilling toy’s-eye-view action sequences we’ve come to expect from the series, ends when a little girl, Bonnie, snatches him off the ground and brings him home. Bonnie’s room proves to be another temptation for Woody, a place where he can get all the loving, one-on-one playtime he no longer receives from Andy.

Woody’s dilemma is rendered temporarily moot, however, when he learns from Chuckles, a less-than-cheerful clown and Sunnyside veteran, that Lotso is in fact running a totalitarian regime under the guise of a toy’s paradise. The flashback sequence detailing Lotso’s past and the subsequent breakout plan that Woody hatches have more excitement than most contemporary crime films and serve as a reminder of why Pixar is still tops in animation. The studio crafts complex stories that don’t insult a child’s (or an adult’s for that matter) intelligence, and thrives on visual and narrative inventiveness.

And this is only the main narrative thread. The film is peppered with clever details and inspired tangents that come together nicely by the climax. Watch how the film shows Mrs. Potato’s ability to see in two places at once, after she leaves her detachable left eye in Andy’s room, or how the “men” of the Sunnyside toys gamble in their spare time. There’s also an ingenious subplot involving Barbie’s seduction by fashion of a Ken doll, a comedic highpoint of the film. There are a few recycled ideas – as an antagonist, Lotso recalls Toy Story 2’s Prospector in both his voice and cane-assisted walk, and when Buzz is set to “demo mode” it's a bit of a retread of his encounter with a fresh-off-the-shelves Lightyear model from Al’s Toy Barn – but even these familiar elements improve upon the original ideas enough that they remain fresh.

Toy Story 3 is every bit as imaginative and funny as the first two installments (without getting too joke-y, something the previous were even at their best), but has an emotional core that elevates and enriches its predecessors. The film, and the series on a whole, teaches acceptance of life’s changes and shows how this leap of faith is often rewarded with joys previously unknown. In the first film, Woody doesn’t want to accept that Andy might have found a new favorite toy in Buzz, but he ultimately forges an indelible friendship with the space ranger. In 2, Woody and the gang begin to accept that their owner will one day grow up, an acceptance that becomes fully realized in this film. This theme is echoed throughout the film and we see how Lotso’s reluctance to accept his own abandonment has corroded him.

The opening scene of Toy Story 3 recalls that of the first film, with Andy as a child acting out an imagined battle between Woody and Mr. Potato Head. But while the first film allowed us to observe a child playing with his toys, this one invites us inside his imagination and we see the action play out with all the dazzle Pixar’s animation team can afford. Andy’s experience is not one that we watch from a distance, but is in fact representative of what we all go through in our adolescence… and beyond.

The final shot, of white clouds on a blue sky, is a direct reference to the first image of Andy’s wallpaper at the start Toy Story. As Andy leaves his room and his toys for college, we realize that he is not abandoning that old room, but rather moving on to a larger arena, that of the real world. The room is a training ground, preparing Andy for life until he is ready to go out on his own. The films, now a completed story, offer us a similar training, showing the value in letting go and moving on to better things. And that’s something I’ll never get too old for.

** NOTE: I saw this film in Disney Digital 3D for an extra $3 and it added little to the film experience for me except a dimmer picture. More on 3D next week though.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/18/10

REVIEW: Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek (2010): Dir. Nicholas Stoller. Written by: Nicholas Stoller (based on characters created by Jason Segel). Starring: Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean "Diddy" Combs. Rated R (strong sexual content and drug use throughout, and pervasive language). Running time: 109 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

Aldous Snow, the scene-stealing British rocker from 2008’s Judd Apatow-produced film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (also directed by Nicholas Stoller), returns in a loose spin-off of that film that builds off comedian Russell Brand’s wonderful parody of the womanizing frontman and delves deeper – sort of – into the life of the fictional rockstar.

Get Him to the Greek finds Aldous Snow at a low-point in his career after a misguided foray in political music yields the offensive bomb of a single, “African Child (Trapped in Me).” Snow’s failure, however, provides Aaron Green, an intern for Pinnacle Records and longtime fan of Snow’s music, with an opportunity to resurrect his favorite artist’s career. Green (played by Jonah Hill) pitches the idea of a comeback concert for Snow to his boss (Sean “Diddy” Combs) so that the record label can commemorate the ten-year anniversary of Snow’s famous concert at the Greek Theatre and cash in on the CD re-releases of Snow’s back catalog. The label agrees and gives Green 72 hours to fly to London and get Snow back to L.A. for the show.

The set-up is a little forced, as though it were constructed to be neatly summarized in a 3-minute trailer – or perhaps a poster’s tagline – but once the proceedings get going, the film delivers good on its high-concept promise. As Green struggles to get Snow on time to the concert, we’re treated to a series of inspired party montages that breathe new life into sex and vomit gags… I mean that as a genuine compliment. For all its crudeness though, Get Him to the Greek also has an unfortunate reliance on sentimental sitcom-quality drama. Green’s storyline is a tired moving-away-from-home-for-his-girlfriend’s-career conflict and even rocker Aldous Snow can’t escape the film’s tendency towards trite drama. When Snow reconnects with his child near the end of the film, the tone is unclear and we’re unsure if the moment is meant to be a funny or a genuine one. Where other Apatow-produced affairs deftly blend comedy with heartfelt emotion, Get Him to the Greek isn’t as good a fit for that treatment. The film’s dramatic moments fail because Snow is too much of a caricature to show any real emotion and the cheating Green is too skeevy to muster any audience sympathy.

All these issues are rendered irrelevant, however, when the film lets Russell Brand loose in a fine comedic performance. Brand captures the air-headed rockstar persona, but his character’s insistent affection for that drug-addled lifestyle of meaningless hook-ups keeps the character an endearing nitwit and less like some of his more unlikable real-life counterparts. His confession to Green about why he continues his drug addiction (“I don’t have to worry about anything except drugs,” he says.) manages to be quite funny and maybe even a little poignant coming out of Brand’s mouth. Brand’s scenes are such breaths of fresh air, you wish the film had cut down on Jonah Hill’s character if only to give Brand more time for one-liners. Hill does fine in supporting roles (such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall), but he can’t quite hold his own when sharing the spotlight with Brand. There are some good supporting players though, such as Sean “Diddy” Combs’s quick-to-anger record label manager. Combs struggles in his first few scenes, but ultimately succeeds in his portrayal of an exaggerated music executive that stays just shy of the extreme territory tread by Tom Cruise’s Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder.

Brand’s excellent performance is complemented by a soundtrack of faux songs by Snow’s fictional band, Infant Sorrow. The songs – written by Brand, Sarah Marshall screenwriter Jason Segel, and a host of real musicians including Jarvis Cocker and Libertines-frontman Carl Barat – are skilled parodies of Killers-esque arena-rock anthems. One song, “Bangers, Beans & Mash,” is so convincing, it might be mistaken for an Oasis b-side in a different context. Another, entitled “Going Up,” features emphatically delivered lines such as, “Like a dog who’s gone insane, you’re putting me down, down down,” and “African Child” is a wonderful send-up of the rockstar-gone-political. We even get the Lady Gaga-imitation pop icon, Jackie Q, whose vulgar dance lyrics are less than subtle. Still, these songs aren’t as strong as the ingenious Dracula puppet-opera from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and they pale too in comparison to another Apatow-produced film, Walk Hard, whose songs were so well written, they almost held their own against the Johnny Cash originals they parodied.

There’s plenty of ripe material for a satire on the music industry, but Get Him to the Greek never points its gun at the fans who worship morons like Snow or the media that propagates them, preferring instead to use the extravagant rockstar lifestyle as a launching pad for raunchy comedy. More might have been done with the Snow character, but the film is an earnest comedy and you can’t fault a film for setting its sights low when it hits its target fine.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/10/10

REVIEW: Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 (2010): Dir. Jon Favreau. Written by: Justin Theroux. Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, and Samuel L. Jackson. Rated PG-13 (sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, and some language). Running time: 124 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Iron Man 2 is a sequel that takes everything that made the first enjoyable and, with freewheeling fun, revels in its own cartoonishness. This is a film where characters ask for music before they fight and Samuel L. Jackson is given an extended eye-patched cameo. Director Jon Favreau pushes the Iron Man universe into over-the-top territory, but we stay with him every step of the way because he does so with the cool confidence of Tony Stark himself.

The film picks up where the first left off, with Tony Stark revealing himself to the public as Iron Man and enjoying the increased media attention. News clippings in the opening titles inform us that Stark has used his Iron Man suit to end war in the Middle East, becoming an international icon. Stark hoards the suit for himself, however, resisting the U.S. government’s insistence that he turn over the technology, though his decision to do so seems to be as motivated by boastfulness as it is by political caution. These scenes are used more as plot devices than anything else, and the film largely abandons the first film’s tongue-in-cheek depiction of Stark’s all-American pro-gun stance. Still, Robert Downey Jr.’s charismatic performance owns the film. Even after learning that the chemicals that power his suit are slowly killing him, Stark is his usual cocky self, throwing himself a birthday bash and drunkenly using his suit for some pretty exciting party tricks.

Stark’s self-confidence comes into question when Ivan Vanko, a burly Russian played by Mickey Rourke, proves capable of recreating the arc reactor technology that makes the Iron Man suit so powerful. Vanko, whose father was an unsung co-developer of the arc reactor, seeks to take down the Stark family name by picking a fight with Stark at the Monaco Grand Prix car race, the first and most exciting action scene in the film. Vanko’s backstory and scheme are less important, however, than his size and attitude, and Rourke has a lot of fun grunting his way through his lines in a thick Russian accent, doing more grimacing than speaking.

Sam Rockwell, who plays the film’s secondary villain, a fast-talking rival weapons manufacturer named Justin Hammer, continues to prove himself one of Hollywood’s finest character actors, bringing his usual quirkiness and humor to the role. Hammer recruits Vanko to help build an Iron Man suit of his own, and the interplay between Rockwell and Rourke recall the strange relationship between Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare’s characters in Fargo. Favreau uses their scenes to emphasize the film’s lighthearted tone, but remains focused on Stark, utilizing Rourke and Rockwell as colorful side characters.

The remaining characters in the film, however, lack the zest and charm of the main players. Gwyneth Paltrow is charming enough as Pepper Potts, but her character’s origins remain a disconcerting mystery to me. I was willing to accept her in the first film as the Moneypenny to Stark’s Bond, existing to serve the dual purpose of helping the hero and providing some sexual tension, but this becomes difficult to believe when Stark appoints her CEO of the company. She makes a fine assistant to be sure, but where are her business credentials? Don Cheadle is a serviceable replacement for Terrence Howard as sidekick James Rhodes, but there is little Cheadle can do though to change what was, and remains, a dull supporting character.

While many recent superhero films have pretensions of grand drama, Iron Man 2 succeeds because it embraces its comic book origins and allows itself to go over-the-top with larger-than-life characters, plenty of pyrotechnics and a self-aware wit. Late in the film, Stark remarks to Rhodes, “I thought you were out of one-liners,” poking fun at the film while sneaking in another laugh. Then there’s Samuel L. Jackson as the mysterious Nick Fury, whose role is apparently just a setup for the Avengers crossover movie that’s coming out in 2012. The tie-in might have come off as an annoying marketing scheme if Jackson wasn’t so much fun in the role. He brings his typical relish to his lines and almost veers into self-parody (one scene in a donut shop seems a deliberate reference to Pulp Fiction), but he manages to keep the audience in on the fun. Scarlett Johansson shows up too as Stark’s new assistant and undercover agent, Black Widow, who Wikipedia informs me, is another tie-in to the upcoming Avengers film. Johansson’s role here confirms my suspicions about her as an actress. Most of her scenes consist of Stark ogling her until the end when she gets to do some sexy fighting, but nothing in the way of real acting.

Iron Man 2, much like Stark himself, is all about style. There are plenty of inventive action sequences and explosions to fit the summer blockbuster bill, but enough winking at the camera to remind everyone that it’s all in the name of fun. Like its predecessor, the rather complicated plot gets reduced in the end to an action scene, which is the norm for most superhero movies, but keeps Iron Man from reaching the bar Christopher Nolan set with the new Batman films. Still, this is a worthy sequel that, by celebrating the over-the-top nature of its comic book origins, becomes every bit as entertaining as the first.

- Steve Avigliano, 5/12/10

Oscar Reactions

Well, I was 15 for 24 which puts me at 62.5%, and 7 for 8 on the major categories. Could have been worse but I need to step up my guessing game on the Shorts. To wrap up the night, I'll give out a few of my own awards for tonight's ceremony.

Biggest Surprise:

Not a lot of big ones, but I wasn't expecting Precious to take Best Adapted Screenplay. I thought there'd be a chance Quentin Tarantino would take home Best Original Screenplay (and frankly, I would have rather heard his acceptance speech than anyone else's), but Up in the Air seemed a safe bet for Adapted Screenplay.

Best Acceptance Speech:

I kind of liked Jeff Bridges's rambling list of "thank you's" and occasional bursts of laughter for no apparent reason, but my favorite was the French guy, Nicolas Schmerkin, who won for Best Animated Short. A couple weird jokes about being in America and taking 6 years to make a 15 minute film and that was it. Nice and short. Though, Sandy Powell's brief acceptance for Best Costume Design was welcome too.

Worst Acceptance Speech:

This one easily goes to Best Documentary Short where Roger Ross Williams got the Kanye treatment by his co-winner, Elinor Burkett. Not sure why they didn't both go up together, but you can relive the awkwardness here.

Easiest Way to Cut Down the Overlong Telecast:

I'm tempted to say that long dance number for Best Original Score (why were they doing "the robot" to music from The Hurt Locker?), but this award has to go to those self-indulgent speeches for every Best Actor and Actress nominee. These people don't need to hear any more about how great they are, and I certainly don't want to listen.

Other than that, the Oscars were what they always are: the Oscars... drawn-out and full of pompous self-importance. I liked Ben Stiller's Na'vi and a few of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin's jokes (though even those weren't much to speak of), but I'm happiest to see that at the end of the day, The Hurt Locker took home the big prize it deserves and even a few of the technical awards I thought Avatar would scoop up. Congrats, Ms. Bigelow.

- Steve Avigliano, 3/08/10

Oscar Predictions!

Well, tonight is the Oscars ceremony and what kind of movie blog would this be without an entry on the biggest movie awards show? To be honest, I’ve found it difficult to muster up much enthusiasm for the Oscars in recent years. The Academy Awards are political and the winners are rarely representative of the year’s true best. Still, they’re better than the Golden Globes – the Academy Awards at least have a certain level of prestige. Like it or not, the Oscars hold a lot of influence over a movie’s exposure, and I can hardly dismiss them as irrelevant.

This year is a special one for the Oscars because the Academy has decided to bump up the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten, the first time since 1944 they’ve done so. When I first heard about the change, I chalked it up to an attempt to get better ratings for the telecast. Ratings have been down the last few years, and many people believed the reason was because viewers simply weren’t familiar with the movies nominated. And so with the extra nominees this year, a few more popular movies got a nod that probably wouldn’t have otherwise (The Blind Side, District 9, Up) and the name recognition of these movies might lure a few people to turn on their TVs. Will having twice as many nominees for Best Picture really change much though? I don’t think so. Had there only been the usual five, the nominees would have likely fallen in line with the nominees for Best Director (Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, Up in the Air) – though nominated, the other five don’t stand a chance of winning. Still, being able to put “Nominated for Best Picture” on your DVD case is a big deal, and I’m happy to see District 9, one of my favorites of the summer, get the formal recognition.

The real race this year is between James Cameron’s behemoth, Avatar, and Kathryn Bigelow’s, The Hurt Locker. Avatar has been the favorite to win for weeks and as the highest grossing movie of all time, it’s the one most people watching at home will be rooting for. But The Hurt Locker got the most critical attention this year – and if you ask me, it’s the year’s best film. Adding to the fun of the race is the fact that the two directors were once married – something you can be sure hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin will be making plenty of jokes about.

So who take home those little golden trophies this year? My fearless predictions are below. We’ll see tonight how close I came.

BEST PICTURE

Nominees: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air

My Prediction: The Hurt Locker. Every week that passes, Avatar loses a little steam, and in the end, I think voters will recognize that The Hurt Locker is the better film. Avatar is a remarkable achievement and it’ll take many of the technical awards, but The Hurt Locker is the year’s most important film, encapsulating the Iraq War better than any previous film on the subject has. Avatar may still take the grand prize, but none of the other nominees stand a chance against these two.

BEST DIRECTOR

Nominees: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), James Cameron (Avatar), Lee Daniels (Precious), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)

My Prediction: Kathryn Bigelow. Avatar might take Best Picture, but this one’s all Bigelow’s. There’s a fair amount of anti-Cameron sentiments floating around, and the man has already won for Titanic. Also working in Bigelow’s favor is the fact that she would be the first woman to ever win the award (she’s only the fourth to be nominated). Not to mention, she completely deserves it.

BEST ACTOR

Nominees: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), George Clooney (Up in the Air), Colin Firth (A Single Man), Morgan Freeman (Invictus), Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

My prediction: Jeff Bridges. Bridges has been “That Guy” in Hollywood for years, making strong supporting appearances in smaller films but never a major leading role. This is the performance that has been getting the most buzz, and none of the other nominees would be as meaningful of a win as this one.

BEST ACTRESS

Nominees: Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side), Helen Mirren (The Last Station), Casey Mulligan (An Education), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

My Prediction: Sandra Bullock. People love Sandra Bullock. It’s the only way to explain how The Proposal grossed over $300 million. At this point Meryl Streep’s nomination is practically obligatory and not enough people are familiar enough with An Education for Casey Mulligan to trump Bullock (though she did win the BAFTA award for which Bullock wasn’t even nominated).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Nominees: Matt Damon (Invictus), Woody Harrelson (The Messenger), Christopher Plummer (The Last Station), Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones), Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

My Prediction: Christoph Waltz. More than any other nominee in the whole damn ceremony, Waltz has this in the bag. Quentin Tarantino may never win an Oscar for directing, but he gets great performances out of his actors and they will continue to win in his place. Waltz’s cutthroat and excitable Nazi was one of the best parts of an already wildly entertaining film, and I couldn’t be happier with all the recognition he’s getting.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Nominees: Penélope Cruz (Nine), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart), Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), Mo’Nique (Precious)

My Prediction: Mo’Nique. The Oscars love intensity, and there’s plenty of that here. After Waltz, Mo’Nique is one of the safest bets in the race. For smaller films such as Precious, the Academy often recognizes the whole film in one category, and that will be the case here. I loved Farmiga and Kendrick in Up in the Air, but they’ll have to wait for a different year.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Nominees: The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, The Messenger, A Serious Man, Up

My Prediction: The Hurt Locker. This is a solid lineup, but The Hurt Locker will trump here. It’s a smart movie that’s as much an examination of masculinity as it is an action film. Bigelow may get most of the credit for this movie, but without the authentic details and episodic structure of the script, the movie would not be as memorable. The Coen Brothers could surprise with A Serious Man, but I wouldn’t bet on it. And as much as I love Basterds, it’s too eccentric and violent for the Academy.

BEST ADAPTED SCREEPLAY

Nominees: District 9, An Education, In the Loop, Precious, Up in the Air

My Prediction: Up in the Air. Up in the Air manages to pull of comedy and genuine emotion while also reflecting on the place of humanity in an increasingly technology-dependent world. It’s a wonderful script and I’ll be happy to see it win.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Nominees: Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog, The Secret of Kells, Up

My Prediction: Up. Pixar can rest safely once again. And while it’d be nice to see Wes Anderson’s clay-mation Mr. Fox win, the Best Picture nomination for Up is a pretty clear sign where people’s sentiments are here.

BEST FOREIGN FILM
Nominees: Ajami (Israel), El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina), The Milk of Sorrow (Peru), Un Prophète (France), The White Ribbon (Germany)

My Prediction: The White Ribbon. This is category that’s always tough to call. After Germany’s The Lives of Others upset Pan’s Labyrinth a few years ago, however, German cinema has been becoming increasingly prominent, so my bet is with this German-language film from Michael Haneke.

And my predictions for the rest of the nominees…

Art Direction: Avatar

Cinematography: The Hurt Locker

Costume Design: Coco Before Chanel

Documentary: Burma VJ

Film Editing: The Hurt Locker

Makeup: Star Trek

Original Score: Up

Original Song: “The Weary Kind” (Crazy Heart)

Sound Editing: The Hurt Locker

Sound Mixing: Avatar

Visual Effects: Avatar

And as is tradition, three complete guesses on the nominees for the shorts based entirely on their names (thankfully, Academy members have to see these in a special screening before they can vote for them)…

Documentary Short: The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner

Live Action Short: Instead of Abracadabra

Animated Short: A Matter of Loaf and Death

That’s all of them. We’ll see tonight at 8:30pm how many I got right, and I’ll check in tomorrow with some general thoughts about the evening.

- Steve Avigliano, 3/07/10

BEST OF THE DECADE - Final Thoughts

Having now revealed my list for the Best Films of the Decade, I’d like to take a moment to say a few last things about the films on it as well as address some general comments from readers regarding the list.

One detail a few readers took issue with was my placement of both Kill Bill films and all three Lord of the Rings films on the list. These people have argued that this is “cheating,” and I should pick one film from each series for inclusion on the list. While I do concede that there are differences in tone and plot for both halves of Kill Bill and each film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I do not believe the differences are stark enough to warrant separation on a list such as this one. Both Kill Bill and Lord of the Rings were conceived as single projects and filmed together. In the years to come, they will be remembered together, not separately. Without its companion film to complement it, neither Kill Bill film is as strong as the whole, and Lord of the Rings similarly works best when approached as one three-part epic.

Regarding Adaptation, I have a few reasons for giving it the top spot aside from the arguments I make in the review. More so than any other film on the list, Adaptation embodies a self-awareness that is very much a product of our time. Thanks to the popularity of behind-the-scenes DVD features and widespread availability of the Internet, moviegoers are becoming increasingly aware of the filmmaking process. Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze allow their film to adopt this self-consciousness and then they have fun with it. From a more personal perspective, Adaptation was the film that turned my interest in movies into an unabashed love of movies. It is the one film I continue to return to, always finding something new to appreciate in it, and that is the mark of a truly great film.

Keep in mind that these are only my personal choices and not an objective study of the last decade in cinema. Feel free to post a comment below including your choices for the decade’s best, or any other comments/gripes about my own list. Below is an aesthetically pleasing list of my choices from one to ten. Comment away!

1) Adaptation

2) The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

3) No Country For Old Men

4) The Departed

5) There Will Be Blood

6) A History of Violence

7) Requiem For a Dream

8) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

9) 25^th Hour

10) Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2

- Steve Avigliano, 2/16/10