REVIEW: Green Lantern

Green Lantern (2011): Dir. Martin Campbell. Screenplay by: Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg. Story by: Greg Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim. Based on the comics by: John Broome and Gil Kane. Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action). Running time: 114 minutes.

1 star (out of four)

Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) has the power to create anything he wants to fight his enemies with. Let that sink in for a moment. Anything. When called upon to use this power, he creates a chainsaw, a machine gun, a really big fist. If you were given the ability to create anything at all out of nothing, wouldn’t you feel obligated to be a little more creative than that?

Green Lantern is an uninspired bore; its script seems to have been written by someone who saw Spider-Man once and was asked to copy the structure of its superhero origin story from memory. Hal Jordan, a cocky Air Force pilot, is the unlikely recipient of a green ring that bears with it great responsibility. Jordan has been chosen by the ring’s magical powers to become a Green Lantern – a Guardian of the Universe – and we all know that you can’t argue with a magic ring’s decision.

In many recent superhero movies, there has been a touch of much-needed self-awareness. Audiences cannot be expected to sit through film after film of increasingly silly heroes without those films acknowledging that maybe these stories are a little silly. There are moments when Green Lantern tries this but more often these scenes come across as lazy writing. When Jordan is given the ring by an alien who crash-lands on Earth, he immediately calls his friend to the crash site and the following exchange occurs:

“Is that a spaceship?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it real?”

“Yeah.”

There is no sense of wonder or excitement in Green Lantern, just the obligatory motions of a story that is being told… Why? To ensure that the ever-profitable mines of superhero lore have been thoroughly exhausted?

After receiving the ring, Jordan travels to the planet Oa where he meets the thousands of other Lanterns whose appearances range from fishy humanoids to burly trolls. Their leader, Sinestro (Mark Strong) looks almost completely human except that he has reddish purple skin, pointy ears and even pointier eyebrows. The Lanterns are currently plagued by the evil Parallax, a former Guardian of the Universe turned giant cloudy beast. He seeks to destroy Oa using the yellow power of Fear (as opposed to the green power of Will) but for reasons I have forgotten, must first devour Earth. This is where Jordan comes in.

There is another villain back on Earth named Dr. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard wearing a spectacular receding hairline and moustache), a science professor who is given the opportunity to study the body of the alien who crashed on Earth. Unbeknownst to him (but knownst to us), he is exposed to a trace of Parallax’s yellow DNA and its evil powers soon overcome him.

Dr. Hammond is a sorry excuse for a villain. The DNA of Parallax allows him unspeakable powers but he wastes them in a pathetic fit of jealousy over Jordan’s love interest, the improbably beautiful Air Force pilot Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). Dr. Hammond is so absorbed by his crush on Ferris that he is oblivious to Parallax’s plan for world devouring. Neither he nor Jordan have much of an understanding of what is going on and neither can think of anything better to do with their cool, new powers but use them against one another in a handful of dull, insipid fight scenes.

With the exception of the ghastly Parallax, the special effects in Green Lantern have a cartoonish silliness that might have been better suited to a children’s film. Come to think of it, Green Lantern on a whole might have been better off as a kids’ movie. The story’s simplicity might have been charming in a low-stakes PG outing but when blown-up to blockbuster proportions, one can only think about how little one cares about any of the characters onscreen.

I cannot say whether Green Lantern stays true to its comic book origins or not. I have had virtually no contact with the character or the world he is a part of prior to this movie. I do know, however, that the filmmakers behind Green Lantern could have made anything. Anything at all. And this is what they chose.

- Steven Avigliano, 6/29/11

REVIEW: Cars 2

Cars 2 (2011): Dir. John Lasseter and Brad Lewis (co-director). Written by: Ben Queen. Story by: John Lasseter, Brad Lewis and Don Fogelman. Featuring the voices of: Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer. Rated G. Running time: 113 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

No animation studio – or any other group of filmmakers for that matter – has a track record as impeccable as Pixar's. They produce delightful films of imagination and heart with such consistency and regularity that one can hardly help but wonder when a blemish will appear on that record. When the first Cars film was released in 2006, it seemed to be the first Pixar film to fall short of the high standards they had set for themselves. Indeed, it is still the only film of theirs to dip below a 90% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (I have not yet seen where Cars 2 will fall in critical reception).

To fault a very good children’s film for not being a masterpiece seems a little silly though, doesn’t it? Cars was enjoyable – if not terribly ambitious – entertainment for kids and Cars 2 is even better. That it does not reach the emotional depths of Finding Nemo or the narrative sophistication of WALL-E is not important. Cars 2 is solid family entertainment, beautifully animated and lovingly told.

The movie kicks off with a thrilling espionage mission, following the British spy car Finn McMissile (voiced by none other than Michael Caine) investigating some shady dealings on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean. The scene that follows features talking cars chasing and shooting at other talking cars and it is still better than anything offered in the last Bond movie.

But never mind all that just yet. The film returns to Radiator Springs, the small town off Route 66 from the first Cars, where the charmingly daft tow-truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) helps the rusted locals when they break down on the side of the road. The racecar Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) returns after winning another championship but is quickly called to race again when a flashy Italian formula car Francesco Bernoulli (John Turturro) challenges McQueen. The millionaire Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard) is hosting a World Grand Prix in Japan, Italy and England to promote his new alternative fuel, Allinol, requiring all racers to use the new product during the tournament.

Mater, who naturally joins his pal on the trip abroad, meanwhile gets mistaken for an American spy in Tokyo and becomes a part of the secret mission with McMissile and the sleek Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer). Similar to how The Incredibles had fun with the superhero genre and then became a rather good superhero film, or how WALL-E was one of the best science-fiction films in recent years, there are scenes in Cars 2 that are as fun as any spy movie. The story does not embrace its genre as wholeheartedly as those films did though, instead using the espionage plot to punch up the film with action and jokes, all of which are well executed.

I continue to be impressed by how well a Pixar film can pull me into its story, even when that story is set in a world of talking cars. How quickly I forget the strangeness of cars with windshields as eyes and front bumpers that form lips, and notice only the characters and what happens to them. For that, much credit should be given to the animators who are not only adept at creating believable and expressive faces for the vehicular population of Cars 2 but also the digital sets on which they drive that are both expansive and intricately detailed.

Acknowledgement must also be given to composer Michael Giacchino who, despite winning an Oscar for his score in Up, remains underappreciated as one of today’s best working movie theme composers. He has a knack for crafting lasting melodies and his spy theme in Cars 2 is a clever play on Bond soundtracks that I caught myself bobbing along to a few times. With his work also accompanying Super 8 in theaters now and an impressive resume of TV and film scores already behind him, he is on his way to becoming a household name.

By now, the Pixar brand carries with it high expectations. Cars 2, their twelfth film, cannot compete with the studio’s best but it does not need to. This is great fun that is inventive, clever and features spectacular animation which puts it ahead of the majority of children’s films. In my book, the Pixar record remains impeccable.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/26/11

REVIEW: Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris (2011): Written and directed by Woody Allen. Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Carla Bruni, Corey Stoll, Tom Hiddleston, Kathy Bates and Marion Cotillard. Rated PG-13 (some sexual references). Running time: 100 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

Woody Allen loves Paris. And the Parisians love him right back. That he has taken this long to shoot a film there is something of a wonder. Recently, however, Woody Allen’s films have departed from his hometown of Manhattan and the auteur so beloved by Europeans has gone on something of a world tour of the major European cities.

There was London in the devastatingly understated noir Match Point and Barcelona in the sizzling romantic comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona. There were other lesser films in between and since those but as any Woody Allen fan will tell you (myself included), when a filmmaker of this magnitude still produces a movie a year – this is his 41^st since his debut in 1966 – we are willing to overlook the mediocre efforts in favor of the really good ones.

Midnight in Paris falls perhaps just a shade below the two aforementioned films, standouts of latter-day Woody Allen. This is a comic fantasy akin to the director’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, where a movie star walks off screen and falls in love with a loyal moviegoer. The plot of Midnight in Paris was a surprise to me (I avoided the early reviews from Cannes) and some critics have made a point of not spoiling its story. I am not sure the secrecy is necessary; the film is a delight whether you know what it’s about or not. Still, those looking to see the film fresh can stop here and continue reading after seeing it.

The film opens with Gil (Owen Wilson), a somewhat neurotic Hollywood screenwriter looking to restart his career as a literary novelist, professing his love of Paris in the rain. He would give anything to live in Paris in the Twenties, when the city was a cultural hub of bohemian artists and writers. His fiancé Inez (Rachel McAdams) is not as enthused. There is nothing fun about getting wet, she says. The two are accompanying her parents on a business trip in the City of Light when they bump into an old friend of Inez’s, Paul (Michael Sheen), an insufferably stuffy scholar who is in town to give a lecture on Monet.

Gil needs to get away. Alone, he goes on a late night drunken stroll down the cobblestone streets and, of course, gets lost. At the stroke of midnight, a car stops for him and some lavishly dressed Parisians invite him to a party.

And what a party it is. Elegant partygoers smoke from cigarette holders. There is a pianist playing Cole Porter songs. Gil is in heaven. But when a fellow American, Zelda, introduces him to her husband, Scott Fitzgerald, Gil realizes where he is. Those cigarette holders are not nostalgic kitsch – they’re the real deal. That’s not a well-trained impersonator on the piano – it’s Cole Porter. Somehow Gil has been transported back to Paris in the Golden Age. But just when he’s been invited to Gertrude Stein’s place for a critique of his novel, he’s back in the twenty-first century.

From here, the movie whisks us back and forth between past and present-day Paris. In addition to the Fitzgeralds (played by Alison Pill and Tom Hiddleston), we meet comic caricatures of all the big names that drifted in and out of Parisian cafés and bars in the Twenties including Hemingway (the exceptionally funny Corey Stoll), Stein (Kathy Bates), Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo), Dali (Adrien Brody) and more.

Woody Allen has never been shy about expressing his opinions in his films and he is not subtle in showing his adoration for Paris in both eras. Allen, now 75, has recently taken to casting younger actors to play the parts he might have once written for himself. Owen Wilson is given the Woody Allen shtick here and the choice is a perfect fit. Wilson knows just how to deliver those stammering witticisms without ever coming across as imitating his director. McAdams fulfills the role of Gil’s disenchanted wife, a familiar character in Allen films, and Sheen is excellent as the biting academic. The rest of Allen’s typically strong supporting cast includes the French First Lady Carla Bruni as a museum tour guide and Marion Cotillard as a beauty from the past.

Midnight in Paris is a delightful movie that serves as a love letter to the city and its culture but also provides some wonderful insight late in the film into the ways in which we romanticize and idealize the past. This is probably not the film that will convert a non-fan of Allen (for that I would recommend Match Point and Barcelona or earlier classics such as Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors) but it reaffirms my own love of Allen as all his best films do. It’s no wonder the Parisians love him.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/23/11

REVIEW: Super 8

Super 8 (2011): Written and directed by J.J. Abrams. Starring: Joel Courtney, Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning, Ron Eldard and Riley Griffiths. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, some language and some drug use) Running time: 112 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

At a time when most big-budget summer movies are slick, commercialized products, here is one with an actual story and populated by characters we care about. In Super 8, a Spielbergian take on monster movies from writer/director J.J. Abrams, the characters’ actions provide the foundation for the special effects and not the other way around. I am reminded how much fun a good explosion can be when those running away from the pyrotechnics are as realistically rendered as the film’s computer animation.
 

Set largely in the summer of 1979 in a small Ohio town, Super 8 follows the 13-year-old Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) whose mother died the past winter in a factory accident. Joe’s father (Kyle Chandler) feels that a summer spent at baseball camp would be good for his son. As the town’s deputy, his work has not allowed him proper time to grieve and he needs a few months apart from his son.

Joe, however, does not have time for baseball camp. He needs to help his buddy Charles (Riley Griffiths) finish the zombie movie they have been shooting in time to enter a local film festival. An aspiring auteur, Charles is one of the film’s many pleasures. He shoots on the titular 8mm Kodak camera and while his friends double as cast and crew.

On a technical level, their film is surprisingly accomplished (they have no doubt perfected their zombie death scenes over many past summers) but Charles is unsatisfied. The film is missing something. It needs human interest. A story to make the audience care whether or not the characters’ brains are eaten by the undead. For this, they cast a girl from their school, Alice (Elle Fanning), as the love interest. This complicates matters for Joe, whose father has a past with Alice’s deadbeat dad (Ron Eldard).

The film must go on though and in one of the Super 8’s finest scenes, the sci-fi intrigue is introduced. During a late night shoot at a local train station, the kids scramble to film their scene while a train rushes past (“Production value!” exclaims Charles). What the kids wind up catching on camera is more incredible than they could have imagined. A car rushes onto the tracks to derail the train and we are treated to the first of several well-choreographed scenes of the aforementioned explosions.

What exactly the train is holding and why it is derailed I will not go into. The remainder of Super 8 follows the kids as they seek to uncover just that. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force comes into town to hide whatever it was that happened from the local authorities including Joe’s father.

J.J. Abrams has clearly taken a page (or more) from Spielberg’s book here (Spielberg also produced the film). The bobbing flashlights of government officials and overhead shots of quiet suburban sprawl are direct nods to E.T., and the charmingly ragtag band of young teens is reminiscent of the Spielberg-produced movie, The Goonies. Even as the mystery monster starts snatching up the locals, Super 8 remains focused on its young protagonists as they desperately ride through town on bikes and borrowed cars from their parents.

Spielbergian touches aside, this is also a J.J. Abrams movie. And Abrams likes to blow things up real good. After producing the 2008 shaky-cam hit Cloverfield, where a Godzilla-sized sea monster beheaded the Statue of Liberty, Abrams has again delivered a killer monster mash that reinvigorates the genre.

While Cloverfield was content to simply destroy Manhattan and nothing more, Abrams adds some of that human interest the young Charles seeks to include in his own movie. Some of that human interest is a little heavy-handed – the sentimental themes of fatherly love and overcoming grief are not subtle – and the script is hardly flawless. There are some clunky expository lines and a few minor characters are picked up and dropped at the plot’s convenience, but these flaws have a certain charm to them. I was relieved to see that only one person – J.J. Abrams – wrote the film and not the team of writers that is usually a sign of many studio rewrites. The storytelling weaknesses in Super 8 are weaknesses in their own right and not the result of story being neglected in favor of special effects.

The script may not be terribly sophisticated in its exploration of how parents and children cope with grief (Spielberg himself has handled this much better in his own films) but Abrams gives Super 8 some charming touches that set it aside from less personal summer movies. He fills the town with colorful side characters, local inhabitants wrapped up in their own lives, unaware that a monster movie is happening around them and that they are not the stars.

Super 8 is prime summer entertainment and a sign that good genre movies are far from dead. This is a film with genuine heart whose sci-fi elements stem from a love of genre flicks as opposed to a love of box office. The best advice Super 8 takes from the great Spielberg blockbusters is to embrace its appreciation for B-movie fun and to hook the audience in by offering characters that we will remember vividly long after we forget how exactly that monster looked.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/20/11

REVIEW: The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (2011): Written and directed by Terrence Malick. Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken and Laramie Eppler. Rated PG-13 (some thematic material). Running time: 138 minutes. 

4 stars (out of four)

The Tree of Life, the latest from writer/director Terrence Malick and winner of this year’s top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, seeks to explore nothing less than the existence of God and life itself. The film makes no attempt to hide its artistic pretensions or theological overtones, but it also surprises us in its emotional directness as it follows an American family in 1950s suburbia. This is an ambitious film with great heart to complement its philosophical pondering.

In the opening scenes, we learn about the death of one of the family’s three sons. He was a soldier and has died in battle. Filled with grief, his mother (Jessica Chastain) prays and asks the ever-vexing question, “Why, Lord?”

In an attempt to answer that question, the film takes us back to the beginning of time and we witness the origins of life. As Malick shows us celestial wonders and the development of the first single cell organisms, one might be reminded of the gradual pacing of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. Indeed, the structure and approach of Malick’s film resembles 2001 in several ways. Both films begin their narratives in prehistoric times and end on decidedly abstract notes. Much like 2001, The Tree of Life contemplates the cosmos in an attempt to understand man’s place in the infinitude.

This portion of the film may get too abstract for some, but the patient viewer will find a wealth of genuinely human moments on the other side of the film’s ambitious prologue. Malick always returns to the humanity of his characters, symbolic though they may be. We see the fragmented memories of an infant, Jack, who grows into an adolescent (Hunter McCracken) and later an adult (Sean Penn) in the present day. As Jack ages, the film’s scenes become longer and gradually, a narrative forms. We learn about Jack’s contempt for his strict and authoritarian father (Brad Pitt), and the jealousy he feels toward his artistically gifted younger brother (Laramie Eppler). These relationships are not revealed in grand, dramatic scenes but through more intimate, familial moments – a conversation at the dinner table, a trip into town.

There is more, but the narrative defies summarization, itself trying to summarize the total experience of life. The film is fascinated by the impossibly large as it meditates on life, the universe and everything, but also takes the time to focus in on the smallest of details.

Each of these details are captured beautifully by Malick and his director of photography, Emmanuel Lubezki. Malick and Lubezki highlight the beauty of the natural world and find similar marvels in our man-made surroundings. The sun peeks through countless shots as the camera continuously moves upward, sky bound. Like the film’s characters, the camera is always looking to the heavens for an answer.

Structurally, the film does not unfold in scenes as much as interwoven moments that are connected by images and ideas rather than plot. Select shots remind us of others that came earlier and Malick invites us to consider all of the previous moments as new ones occur. Pulling these separate moments together, Malick creates a tapestry of life that occasionally drifts through dreams and fantasies with poetic vigor.

The performances in Tree of Life are uniformly strong which is impressive since Malick’s primary focus here is not on acting. Pitt, Chastain, and first-time actors McCracken and Eppler give their characters depth, conveying a great deal through subtle expressions and mannerisms. Many of the film’s major turning points hinge on nuances in the actors’ performances and yet the film never calls attention to the acting. Malick creates the illusion of dropping in on private moments.

At one point in the film, Jack does the same, watching a domestic quarrel through the window of a neighbor’s house, a self-referential moment that provides a key to understanding the film. We catch intimate glimpses of this one family only to find details that recall our own lives. The film captures people during the self-discovery of their humanity and watches as they find those discoveries alternately thrilling and terrifying.

The Tree of Life is a lyrical film that has the ambition and emotional richness of a great novel. It asks the Big Questions: How can God allow for suffering to exist alongside life’s beauties? To what degree should love and faith guide our lives? For what purpose were we created? In short, “Why, Lord?”

- Steve Avigliano, 6/15/11

REVIEW: X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class (2011): Dir. Matthew Vaughn. Written by: Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn. Story by: Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer. Based on characters created by: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Chris Claremont. Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Oliver Platt and Kevin Bacon. Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of action and violence, some sexual content including brief partial nudity and language). Running time: 132 minutes.

1 ½ stars (out of four)

X-Men: First Class commits the cardinal sin of movie prequels. The film is all exposition, belaboring how the characters in previous films got to be who they are and why they believe what they believe. There are answers to questions I never particularly cared about – So that’s how Professor Xavier became paralyzed! – while others remain frustratingly unclear. The X-Men mythology has always suggested a great depth of storytelling possibilities but First Class is instead a by-the-numbers superhero flick, flat and forgettable.

As is typical for an X-Men film, First Class is crowded with storylines, some more satisfying than others. We meet Erik Lehnsherr (Bill Milner as the young Erik, and Michael Fassbender as the all grown-up version) in a concentration camp in 1944. Lehnsherr is a young boy when a German named Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) takes particular interest in his strange powers and separates him from his family. Shaw tortures the boy with cruel experiments that, years later, fuel an older Lehnsherr’s quest for revenge. We see how Lehnsherr’s tortured past leads him to become the nefarious Magneto and we are reminded of the old Yoda maxim about how hatred leads to suffering.

We jump ahead to 1962, where a college-aged Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is charming young women at the pub. There, a CIA agent (Rose Byrne) offers him a proposition. She has reason to believe some particularly nasty mutants led by none other than Sebastian Shaw may be behind a nuclear threat in Cuba and she enlists Xavier’s help. Xavier, in turn, begins recruiting some young mutants to join his team.

Between First Class’s dual protagonists and the several asides and tangents the film takes with its secondary characters, there is more than enough to fill one movie. Erik’s Nazi-revenge narrative offers some of the more entertaining scenes, capturing some of the gleeful violence that Tarantino tapped into for his Inglourious Basterds (which also featured Fassbender). Here, Fassbender is exceptional as the young Magneto. He sketches out his own dark and brooding take on the character while keeping in mind how the immortal Ian McKellen made Magneto the kind of villain we secretly root for. As the Nazi-turned-Soviet Shaw, Kevin Bacon is appropriately cartoonish, though he plays the role a few shades below Gary Oldman territory (the gold standard for over-the-top villainy).

Xavier’s storyline is less satisfying because it is bogged down in exposition that lays the groundwork for what we already know. As the wise mentor to the young mutants, McAvoy has clearly studied Patrick Stewart’s eloquent diction and knowing smile. Unfortunately, the script restricts him to establishing Stewart’s take on Xavier and unlike Fassbender, McAvoy does not have sufficient room to stretch out and make the role his own.

The alternate history is a letdown too. I usually enjoy this sort of history-twisting but First Class does not make the most of its Cuban Mutant Crisis, which neglects to explore the implications of its fictionalized version of the famous event. This is largely the fault of a dramatically clumsy script that often inserts scenes for mechanical plot purposes without adequately setting them up.

I must admit that I am not an expert on X-Men mythology, though I have always been intrigued by it. The second X-Men film, X2: X-Men United, does a wonderful job of exploring the X-Men universe, revealing the many fascinating ways in which mutants interact with humankind. After watching snippets of that film on TV again recently (the channel FX has been playing the earlier films ad nauseam in preparation for First Class), I was excited to see the new film, which I hoped would continue to flesh out the complex history of human/mutant relations.

Such subtleties are not to be found here. Aside from our two leads, each mutant is reduced to their respective power, dutifully performing their supernatural feats when the action demands they do so. Occasionally, they take on traits that roughly resemble character but only when convenient for the plot.

Am I alone in wanting to learn more about the world of X-Men? Why, for example, are some of the mutants’ powers extraordinary while others are little more than party tricks? How can so many different powers be unified as a single genetic trend?

There is another problem with X-Men: First Class that is indicative of a larger trend in today’s blockbusters. All of the important characters are without exception white men. Around the movie’s midpoint, however, a black mutant named Darwin (Edi Gathegi) is introduced. When another character describes how humans mistreat mutants, the camera cuts to Darwin on the word “enslavement,” as if his only purpose in the film is to underscore the parallels between the plight of mutants and real-life historical prejudices. He gets only two brief scenes prior to this and as the token black character in the movie, his fate can be guessed.

Then there is a very strange sexist joke late in the film involving Rose Byrne’s CIA agent. The line, which is laugh-out-loud funny if only because of its jarring placement in the film, reminds us how one-dimensional the women in First Class are. One of the mutants, Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), has potential to be a fully developed character but the film spends more time emphasizing the physical developments of her scaly, blue body as she vies for the desires of up to three different men.

In today’s age, these glaring choices cannot be dismissed as incidental, and for such blatant discriminatory casting and writing I deducted a half star from my rating. Director Matthew Vaughn and his writers (listed above) should be ashamed of themselves. After last month’s Thor, which similarly degraded its token Asian character, and now this film, my mind drifts to the yet-to-be-released Green Lantern whose filmmakers opted for a white incarnation of the title character. For studios to be too timid to green-light anything but a sequel or a by-the-numbers superhero movie is one thing. That those same studios have become so afraid of damaging a film’s marketing potential that a role of substance cannot be played by anyone but a white male is, frankly, sad.

There is much to love about the world of X-Men and its mutated heroes, but First Class makes no effort to do anything new with that world. The film is a wasted opportunity to reinvigorate a flagging franchise and falls instead among the ranks of uninspired superhero outings.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/6/11

REVIEW: Thor

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

2 stars (out of four)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Steve Avigliano, 5/8/11

REVIEW: Source Code

Source Code (2011): Dir. Duncan Jones. Written by: Ben Ripley. Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright. Rated PG-13 (some violence including disturbing images, and language). Running time: 93 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

Source Code is a superb thriller that presents a simple premise, delivers fully what it promises and then, amazingly, keeps going into unexpected but entirely satisfying territory.

That simple premise is of course explained in a lot of sci-fi mumbo jumbo that is not as complicated as it sounds. A U.S. solider, Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), wakes on a train to find that he is not himself. The woman across from him (Michelle Monaghan) knows him as a friend from work despite his insistence that they have never met. After eight minutes of understandable confusion, the train explodes and he wakes once more, this time strapped into a cold, steel box filled with wires and computer monitors.

With the help of a fellow military captain (Vera Farmiga) who communicates with him through one of these monitors, he realizes he is part of a special mission. He must investigate a train bombing that has already happened, and he does so by entering the body of one of the train’s passengers. A military scientist (Jeffrey Wright) has found a way to recreate the last eight minutes of a person’s life so that a soldier may enter that body and interact with the world as it was during that time.

What follows is a sort of fast-paced take on Groundhog Day. Stevens must relive those eight minutes until he is able to find the bomber. As though he needs the pressure, he is told he must do so before a second attack is made later that day. In the mean time, Stevens is free to interact with the recreated passengers on the train, altering the course of those eight minutes until, as always, the train explodes.

Don’t examine the film’s inner sci-fi workings too closely. In its brief 93 minutes, Source Code grazes over a number of technical details but thankfully uses its time to pursue of more interesting things. The implications of this technology are explored in a number of fascinating ways. How real is this alternate reality? If Stevens successfully stops the bomb and saves the passengers onboard, will the simulation continue beyond eight minutes?

This is the second feature from director Duncan Jones, whose wonderful Moon (which he also wrote) asserted him as a new talent, bringing the smarts and science back into science fiction. Working from a script by Ben Ripley this time, Jones again delivers a thriller that is both big on ideas and terrifically entertaining. The script, equally indebted to Hitchcock and Phillip K. Dick, is brainy but finds a nice balance between its metaphysical ponderings and its explosions. Source Code has its share of action but these scenes are out of necessity of the plot; the story dictates the action here, not the other way around.

The cast is strong too. Jake Gyllenhaal has become a reliable leading man in recent years and does solid work here as a thinking man’s action hero. Like the heroes of Hitchcock who are unaware of what they are getting into until they are already well into it, Gyllenhaal gains the audience’s sympathies early on and keeps us on his side as he figures out what is going on. Farmiga and Wright have the tough job of hinting at the film’s secrets (and there are a few) without giving them away. Neither character is terribly complex or deep, but both actors give strong, nuanced performances.

When more often than not, today’s action movies prefer to numb our minds rather than stimulate them, Source Code is a welcome break from the noise. The film as is thrilling as it is thoughtful, and its cerebral finale turns out to be even more tense and exciting than the excellent action that precedes it. What more could you ask for?

- Steve Avigliano, 4/04/11

REVIEW: Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch (2011): Dir. Zack Snyder. Written by: Zack Snyder and Steve Shibuya. Story by: Zack Snyder. Starring: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Oscar Isaac, Carla Gugino, Jon Hamm, Scott Glenn and Gerard Plunkett. Rated PG-13 (thematic material involving sexuality, violence and combat sequences, and for language). Running time: 126 minutes.

1 star (out of four)

The world of Sucker Punch is like the idyllic fantasy of a teenage boy who knows nothing of the outside world that hasn’t been presented to him in a video game. It is a world where the women are multidimensional only in their figures, where hackneyed one-liners pass as wisdom, and where gunfights occur not for any purpose but to fulfill the CGI quota. Writer-director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) has committed such cinematic offenses before but never in such quick succession and with so little in the way of justifiable context (also known as story). If Sucker Punch does have one thing going for it, it’s that the film is unapologetically childish, indulging in its “babes with guns” narrative just because.

In a prologue free of dialogue but heavy on slow motion, we learn that our pigtailed heroine (Emily Browning) – who gets no name other than Baby Doll – has just lost her mother, leaving her and her sister alone with their evil stepfather (Gerard Plunkett). He steals some creepy glances at them at the funeral and when he sexually assaults the sister, Baby Doll takes action. Unfortunately, her shot misses its target and she kills her sister instead, a mistake that lands her in an institution for the criminally insane.

Talk about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire; the whole institution appears to be run by slimy perverts who take turns ogling the all-female patients. Leading the pack is an orderly named Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) who asserts considerable authority in the asylum. He strikes a deal with the stepfather to ensure that Baby Doll is lobotomized before the police have a chance to question her and learn about any extenuating circumstances surrounding her crime. Why Blue would do such a terrible thing is baffling, though I suppose there is an unspoken understanding amongst movie pervs in situations like this.

From here the movie muddies up reality and the institution becomes a high-class brothel where Baby Doll and her fellow inmate babes learn to dance from the on-staff therapist, Dr. Vera Gorsky (Carla Gugino). Under the supervision of Blue, Dr. Gorsky prepares her patients for regular performances where they dance and service high-paying clients. Needless to say, the girls want to escape.

Baby Doll turns out to be a mesmerizing dancer, but we never actually see her moves. Whenever she starts to dance, the film transports us to computer-animated set pieces where she battles all sorts of foes. Outside a snowy dojo, she fights giant, mechanical samurai. In the trenches of WWI, she and the other girls slaughter German cyborgs. Next, they break into a castle to kill a dragon. Then they must stop a runaway train that holds a bomb guarded by futuristic robots. A mysterious man (Scott Glenn) acts like the Charlie to their Angels, appearing every time we enter the fantasy realm to explain what they need to do. In each case, Baby Doll must procure a tool that will aid her and her friends in their escape: a map, fire, a knife, a key.

The action scenes, exquisitely rendered though they may be, are all superfluous. The girls go through a lot of trouble to obtain the items in the fantasy worlds but they also have to find them in reality, which more or less nullifies the need for the elaborate action. The action itself often plays out like self-parody – absurd but not quite campy – in a feeble attempt to emulate every style of action present in the post-Matrix, post-Kill Bill cinematic landscape.

Though the movie borrows elements from a number of its contemporaries, this is the first entirely original feature from Zack Snyder, who previously remade Dawn of the Dead and adapted the graphic novels 300 and Watchmen. With Sucker Punch, he tries too hard to assert himself as the new fanboy auteur.

Mr. Snyder is not an untalented director and, for better or worse, he has a style he can call his own, but he could benefit from exercising a little restraint. To emphasize his film’s uncertain hold on reality, he underlines every scene with lyrically resonant songs (“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” “Where Is My Mind?”, “White Rabbit”). His overuse of slow motion and color saturation quickly grow tiresome. He overcompensates for a lack of substance with an excess of style.

One also wonders, with all the girl-power ass kicking his heroines deal out, if Mr. Snyder believes he has made a feminist film. For those wondering: he has not. Every woman in Sucker Punch is sexualized with scanty clothes and when they’re not firing automatic weapons, they’re giggling and fawning over each other in the dressing room. Mr. Snyder also proves himself adept at creating phallic imagery. The swords, the guns, the knife, the half-burnt cigar, the slit dragon’s neck, the train. Yes, yes, we get it!

There are a few moments, however, when the movie breaks from its self-imposed seriousness and provides some much-needed self-awareness. When asked by Dr. Gorka to rehearse a scene featuring a girl in a mental asylum, a patient named Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) objects. She gets why she’s dressed up like a schoolgirl and she understands how being drugged up might be a turn-on. But lobotomized vegetable? That’s too much. That Mr. Snyder is aware of what he’s doing to his actresses, however, only makes his degradation of them worse.

Maybe there is a way to view Sucker Punch from a feminist angle though. Let the sadistic orderly Blue Jones stand in for Mr. Snyder; the patients, symbols for the very actresses in the film. Now the movie becomes something of a tragedy where performing women sacrifice themselves to escape the prying eyes of an audience who demands to see their fantasies played out before them. That film might be a little heavy-handed, but it would no doubt be better than this mess.

- Steve Avigliano, 3/26/11

REVIEW: Limitless

Limitless (2011): Dir. Neil Burger. Written by: Leslie Dixon, based on the novel, The Dark Fields, by Alan Glynn. Starring: Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Robert DeNiro, Andrew Howard, Johnny Whitworth and Tomas Arana. Rated PG-13 (thematic material involving a drug, violence including disturbing images, sexuality and language). Running time: 105 minutes.

2 ½ stars (out of four)

You know how they say we only use twenty percent of our brains? A new, experimental drug called NZT-48 offers you the ability to access all one hundred percent, explains a character in Limitless. All those little bits of half-forgotten information that float through our subconscious are suddenly accessible. You can become fluent in entire languages just by giving a cursory listen to an instructional tape.

According to Wikipedia, that bit about our brains is a myth, but regardless, this is the conceit Limitless, the new thriller starring Bradley Cooper, rests on. The film is clever about its phony science though, and invites viewers not think too much about its plot, even while its hero is thinking overtime.

Cooper plays Eddie Morra, a science fiction writer whose life is in shambles. His girlfriend (Abbie Cornish) dumps him because he can’t get it together. The deadline for his novel is fast approaching and he hasn’t written a word. When his former brother-in-law (Johnny Whitworth) tells him about a pill that will cure his writer’s block, he gives it a shot. What does he have to lose?

The pill works like an extreme Adderall, giving him the focus to finish his novel in four days. But its power doesn’t stop there. On the drug, he has the capability to absorb information at lightning speeds. After one day of studying stock exchange trends, he becomes a Wall Street superstar. And how else should he use his newfound brainpower but for the pursuit of sensual pleasures? One day he’s loafing around his dirty apartment, the next he’s cliff diving and mingling with the cultural elite. No wonder his girlfriend takes a new interest him.

Naturally, Eddie’s sudden success catches a few people’s eyes. There’s an influential business tycoon (Robert De Niro in a now-typical supporting role for the actor), a Russian loan shark (Andrew Howard) and a mysterious stalker (Tomas Arana). We also learn that there is a darker side to taking the pill, which gives the film a dash of Hitchcockian flair. The story twists and turns more than one might expect and the film mostly remembers to tie up all the loose ends. When the credits roll there are a few unanswered questions and if the ending isn’t quite a cheat, it’s certainly lazy.

Still, Limitless moves by at a brisk pace and offers its share of pleasures. As the wily Russian, Andrew Howard is a delight, appearing when we least expect him and chewing up the scenery real good. The film is often also quite funny and is clever in its presentation of the miracle drug. When Eddie is called upon to fight some thugs in the subway, we see how dusty memories of Bruce Lee movies emerge from the recesses of his mind to teach him martial arts. That this particular scene isn’t nearly as goofy as it sounds is a testament to the film’s style, which is as flashy as Eddie’s new lifestyle. Director Neil Burger gives the movie a number of clever, visual touches to bring us inside his hero’s drug-induced super-mind.

Bradley Cooper is great aid to the film and a strong choice for the lead. He’s charismatic enough to stay likable in the character’s most arrogant moments, but he has an inherent everyman quality that makes him relatable as well. Cooper is believable as an ill-groomed slacker in the film’s early scenes and equally convincing as a self-assured playboy after the pill’s effects take hold.

Unfortunately, Limitless isn’t quite as brilliant as its protagonist. The unnecessary voice-over narration, funny though it is at times, tends to over explain the plot. There are also a few wasted opportunities for strong supporting characters. Abbie Cornish isn’t given much to do as the beautiful girlfriend and despite Robert De Niro’s presence as the powerful entrepreneur, there is little memorable about the character or his performance.

The implications of a pill that can make you a genius are vast and there are a number of ways in which the plot of Limitless could have gone. Eddie mentions in the voice-over that he wants to change the world with his powers. Exactly how, he never says. Mostly he seems to be enjoying the good life and the film indulges in his fantasies, making Limitless an exciting, if decidedly limited, piece of entertainment.

- Steve Avigliano, 3/25/11