REVIEW: Captain America: The First Avenger

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011): Dir. Joe Johnston. Written by: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Based on the comics by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Starring: Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Stanley Tucci and Dominic Cooper. Rated PG-13 (Mostly bloodless action). Running time: 124 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Captain America: The First Avenger knows exactly what it wants to be and has a lot of fun being it. That it should be several things at once – a winkingly self-aware superhero origin story, a history-free WWII action film and a better Indiana Jones movie than the last Indiana Jones movie – is part of its fun.

Captain America is not among the A-list of heroes every moviegoer is familiar with but unlike recent lower-tier superhero movies – I’m looking at you, Thor and Green Lantern – this shiny, new, multi-million dollar brand investment – that is to say, this movie – actually offers a likable screen character. You know the kind. The ones we are surprised to find ourselves rooting for and actually wouldn’t mind seeing in a sequel or two or four.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a scrawny kid from Brooklyn desperate to enlist in the armed forces and serve his nation at a time, 1942, when such desires carried a dreamy, youthful idealism, or at least they do in twenty-first century hindsight. In spite of persistent applications, however, the recruitment offices reject Rogers on the grounds of his numerous physical ailments. When asked why he wants to fight, Rogers responds that he doesn’t like bullies. In the present day that answer might sound naive but in the sepia-tinged 1940s of Captain America, its innocence feels genuine. He wants to deploy overseas and defeat the biggest bully of all, Adolf Hitler, not for political reasons but because he knows what it feels like to get pushed around.

We see him get pummeled in a back alley fight where punch after punch he gets back up for another. It’s the getting back up part that attracts the eye of Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who believes Rogers is the ideal candidate for a special procedure that will transform an ordinary recruit into a physically enhanced super-soldier. Heading the experiment are Col. Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones), government scientist Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) and officer Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell).

The project is in response to looming threats from Johann Schmidt a.k.a. Red Skull (Hugo Weaving). Schmidt is the leader of HYDRA, a Nazi organization that appears to be a subsection of the intelligence team Hitler once asked to search for the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Schmidt and his team seek an ancient relic that will, naturally, help Schmidt take over the world. Weaving, a veteran of movie villainy, knows just how to play this sort of role. He goes far enough over-the-top that he comes back around to the bottom and is rather convincing delivering silly dialogue.

Captain America works because it acknowledges the campiness of its material then and uses this self-awareness to confidently march into the realm of comic book absurdities. The film knows that in order for its titular character to work in a 2011 Hollywood blockbuster, it must embrace and poke fun of the character’s wide-eyed patriotism. In the movie, Captain America becomes a national celebrity that the military parades around; he signs comic books for kids and performs with can-can dancers at USO shows. Too many recent superhero movies have their leather-clad crusaders saving the world in secrecy, which takes some of the fun out their derring-do and I appreciated that Captain America explored the public image of its hero.

The film’s only major misstep comes in its final two minutes. In the interest of remaining spoiler-free, I will not go into detail other than that the ending is an awkwardly inserted tie-in for next summer’s Avengers movie, which will feature a smorgasbord of Marvel characters including Thor, Iron Man, Hulk and now Captain America. The tie-in is a commercially motivated blunder that intrudes on the story and jams an annoying cliffhanger into the movie to ensure that audiences will buy a ticket to next summer’s big attraction.

But more on that gripe another time. Prior to its final moments, Captain America: The First Avenger is an entertaining standalone adventure and a reminder of how entertaining superhero movies can be when done right. The Marvel Studios marketing machine is already working on a sequel but for the first time in a while, here is a movie that deserves one.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/30/11

REVIEW: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011): Dir. David Yates. Written by: Steve Kloves. Based on the novel by J.K. Rowling. Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes and Alan Rickman. Rated PG-13 (Dark curses are cast and lives are lost). Running time: 131 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

You want an epic finale? You sure as heck get one in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, the eighth and final film in the franchise. The movie is packed with action, only pausing a handful of times to breathe before the last half hour, which gets metaphysical and sentimental in that order. This is a movie designed for supreme audience satisfaction. Fans will find few alterations from the book to squabble about and all moviegoers – dedicated readers and casual watchers alike – would have difficulty saying in good faith that the film does not offer enough magical bang for your 10+ bucks.

Beginning where Part 1 ended (there is a brief recap if you forgot what happened in the last scene), Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) continue their search for the remaining horcruxes, pieces of Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes) soul trapped in hidden objects that must be destroyed before our heroes can hope to kill the Dark Lord. In the opening scenes, the characters are kind enough to give some explanatory exposition for forgetful viewers but this is not a film that stands on its own to be enjoyed by the uninitiated. It assumes – rightfully so – that its viewers are familiar with the wizarding world of Harry Potter and perhaps have even been to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, Florida.

I will resist commenting that the choice to divide The Deathly Hallows into two films was financially motivated. Though the studio heads were no doubt pleased with the prospect of double the box office, I believe the filmmakers genuinely wanted the additional running time to adapt the novel as best they could. True, the film has time for scenes that might have been cut in a single Deathly Hallows movie (Part 1 in particular benefited from the lack of time constraints) but as a viewer, diving into a movie already half underway does not quite make for a narratively satisfying experience either.

My mind drifts now to Return of the King, the final Lord of the Rings film, which was wholly satisfying in part because of its lengthy running time. Return of the King stands on its own narratively and the final battle functions as the climax of both the individual film and the series on a whole. TDH Part 2, however, is all epic battle, a separate unit from the rest of the series and not really a narrative in its own right.

But to criticize the final Harry Potter film for being non-stop climax seems rather silly and more than a little futile too. There are moments of big-budget grandeur on display here that can only be afforded when you are making the eighth movie of a multi-billion dollar franchise. The sheer size of the film and its relentlessly epic tone are effective; it’s hard not to get caught up in this film.

This is also the most beautifully photographed Harry Potter film and equal credit should be given to director David Yates, cinematographer Eduardo Serra and production designer Stuart Craig for crafting a true spectacle. There are sweeping wide shots of the castle under fire and expressive close-ups of our heroes in battle, assembled together with a virtuoso artistry by editor Mark Day.

Of course, no one doubted the technical proficiency of this film and its visuals, impressive though they are, are not its main attractors. Fans have invested a great deal of time and money on these characters and the filmmakers do not forget the actors in the sea of lavish sets and computer animation. Alan Rickman’s Severus Snape, mostly unseen in the last film, gets more screen time and Rickman gets to show off his eloquent snarl one last time before quietly capturing the character’s poignant conclusion to his series-long arc. As Voldemort, Ralph Fiennes enunciates his words in hushed, sinister tones. He commands the frame whenever he is onscreen.

The story is faithfully told according to J.K. Rowling’s novel, which means the film also adopts a few of the novel’s shortcomings. There are moments of Great Drama that occasionally come off a little clumsy; characters are prone to giving speeches atop rubble about the truths of love and friendship and bravery. I don’t mean to sound cynical; one of the charms of Rowling’s writing has always been its willingness to embrace these sentimental themes with unabashed innocence. The Potter films have subsequently adopted this openness of emotion though the characters’ tearjerking declarations work better on page than they do cinematically.

I do not imagine this film will disappoint many people. It delivers on fans’ expectations for a grand finale. Might it have worked even better as an undivided whole, as a nearly four-hour epic audiences would likely have seen (and paid for only once) without complaint? Maybe, but there are future DVD marathons (or rereads of the books, I suppose) for that. At the moment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 exists as undeniably grand pop cultural event that concludes the series with no shortage of stylistic wizardry.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/23/11

REVIEW: Project Nim

Project Nim (2011): Directed by James Marsh. Rated PG-13 (Some words are used that you probably shouldn't teach a chimp). Running time: 93 min.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

There is still so little that man knows about the world around him and the multitude of species that inhabitant it, and yet the most perplexing and elusive of those creatures may just be himself. Project Nim, a new documentary from James Marsh, follows a group of scientists’ attempt to teach a chimpanzee sign language in the 1970s but the film is as much about the many eccentric individuals who were attached to the project as it is the chimp.

The founder of the project, Professor Herbert Terrace, sought to explore the linguistic capabilities of primates by raising a newborn chimp named Nim as though he were human. The project would put to test many of the “Nature vs. Nurture” ideas that were on the cutting edge at the time. If Nim were taught American Sign Language from an early age, would he be able to adopt communicative language and grammar the way a human child does?

Nim’s pseudo-mother and first teacher was Stephanie LaFarge, a former hippie who signed onto the project despite her lack of experience raising a chimp. As her daughter, Jenny Lee, explains with a laugh, “It was the 70s.” Stephanie took to heart Prof. Terrace’s request to raise Nim as if he were human and Nim lived and interacted with her family as though he were a part of it. She breast-fed him, exposed him to alcohol and marijuana, and allowed him to play freely in the yard all day with little to no attempt at scientific control. She rejected Prof. Terrace’s unnatural attempts to organize or regiment the chimp’s life.

Believing Nim’s bohemian life with Stephanie was not conducive to the scientific aims of the project, Terrace removed Nim from her house and placed him in the care of the first of many new teachers. Nim’s sign language curriculum was picked up Laura-Ann Pettito, an attractive young grad student whose affair with Terrace, Terrace explains, had no effect on the integrity of the project.

Among Nim’s other caretakers was Bob Ingersoll, an aging Deadhead who recalls fondly his time with Nim as the best of his life. One of the last to join Project Nim, Ingersoll was perhaps the only researcher who truly cared about the animal; his attachment to Nim seems genuine and he fights for ethical treatment of the chimp long after the project is over.

At the center of all of these people is Nim himself who is described by several of the film’s interviewees as a creature of endless charm. These comments are made in spite of Nim’s tendency to bite and even hospitalize nearly everyone on the project. Nim’s constant exposure to people leant him an uncannily humanlike personality but in his heart he remained a wild and dangerous animal.

Director James Marsh’s last film, the Academy Award winning documentary Man on Wire (one of my favorite films of 2008) was about a daredevil who walked along a hire-wire between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. With Project Nim, he again finds a fascinating story about the strange things people will do to leave their mark on the world. He seamlessly integrates dramatizations with archival footage to tell the story of Nim’s life, which nearly ends in a medical testing facility for hepatitis vaccines. Marsh’s shot selection is evocative; each clip is carefully chosen to convey the complex relationships between Nim and his human companions.

The language aspect of Project Nim is said by Terrace himself to have failed and the project’s results remain inconclusive. Was Nim using language or simply memorizing signs? The difference is irrelevant to several of the project’s participants who, to this day, marvel that they were able to successfully communicate with an animal. The science of the project was doomed from the start – Stephanie LaFarge’s insistence on raising the chimp without the intrusion of scientific records ensured as much – and with each new participant, the project’s results were skewed by the biases and emotions of its researchers.

The failings of the project, however, provide a fascinating if unintentional study of humans that James Marsh brings to life in Project Nim. He examines the emotional attachments people formed with Nim and their inevitable heartbreak when they are reminded that he is just a chimpanzee and not a member of that strange species known as humans.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/17/11

REVIEW: Horrible Bosses

Horrible Bosses (2011): Dir. Seth Gordon. Written by: Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Story by: Michael Markowitz. Starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx. Rated R (Sexual harassment in the workplace and all the cussing and violence that comes with a murder plan). Running time: 98 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Horrible Bosses takes a simple premise and has fun with it. Three friends set out to murder the superiors who make their lives miserable but – as movie murder plots often do – their plans go awry. The premise is a familiar but reliable one and Horrible Bosses twists its plot in a number of clever and very funny directions. Part of the film’s fun is in watching the scheme unravel and tangle up again in some rather ingenious ways. The rest of its fun comes from its leads – the murderous employees – whose ensemble effort lends the film an earnest charm.

Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman) has been paying his dues on the corporate ladder for years and he is only one rung away from the cushy Vice President’s office. His boss, Dave Harkin (Kevin Spacey), has been hinting at a promotion but when the time comes for Harkin to announce the new VP, Nick finds that Harkin had been toying with him. The false promise of the promotion, Harkin explains, was motivation for Nick to work harder.

As a dental assistant for the lascivious Dr. Harris (Jennifer Aniston), Dale Arbus (Charlie Day) has a very different problem with his boss. He is happily engaged to his fiancée (Lindsay Sloane) but Dr. Harris is hell-bent on seducing him before the marriage becomes official. Believing as much in fidelity as he does workplace manners, Dale politely turns down an offer for a romp on top of an unconscious patient.

Then there is Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis), an accountant for a chemical plant during the day and a ladies’ man after the whistle blows. Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell), the insufferable son of Kurt’s boss (Donald Sutherland), snorts coke in the bathroom and stomps around the office like a bratty child. Naturally, an unfortunate accident befalls Kurt’s boss, leaving Bobby to run the company and completing the trifecta of horrible.

The three friends do not need to kill their bosses but the alternatives are rather grim. They can’t quit in the current job market but swallowing their dignity another day seems impossible. So they set out to fulfill the fantasies of employees everywhere (themselves included) by killing their bosses.

Horrible Bosses has a wonderful self-awareness to it and features an abundance of references to other movies. Even the way the guys approach their scheme is informed by the countless movies they have seen. When they schedule a meeting with a hit man, Kurt answers the door in a deep, gruff voice because, well, isn’t that how people answer the door when they’re expecting a contract killer? Many of the jokes in the film are subtle and I particularly enjoyed a brief shot where we see Nick comparing the backs of two different brands of rat poison. I imagine that if I ever found myself in a similar situation, I too would be a smart consumer about that purchase.

Much of the film’s subtleties come from the performances of Bateman, Day and Sudeikis. Bateman has become something of Hollywood’s most dependable straight man recently and he and Sudeikis play off each other nicely in a pair of low-key roles. Charlie Day is the wild card in the bunch and the character of Dale bears more than a slight resemblance to Day’s hyper and anxious role on TV’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He transitions fine to the big screen, however, and his comic persona proves to be surprisingly flexible. (He is just as convincing playing a loving fiancé as he is an unbalanced bartender on It’s Always Sunny.)

Each of the bosses is well acted as well but the understated performances of Bateman, Day and Sudeikis often upstage their more over-the-top counterparts. A coke addict running an office is as funny on paper as it is onscreen (that is to say, pretty funny) and Colin Farrell doesn’t need to do much to sell those jokes. The three friends, however, have the considerably more difficult task of making normal guys seem funny and here the movie taps into a fundamental comic truth.

Absurd situations like many of the ones in Horrible Bosses have a degree of inherent humor to them but an ordinary and believable response to their absurdity is even funnier and actually strengthens the comedy of the original situation. When Jennifer Aniston molests a patient under the gas, the scene is funny not because of its crudeness but because of Charlie Day’s flustered and sputtering response that maybe this isn’t the most appropriate way to act in the workplace.

Too many cinematic comedies today try and outdo their peers by seeking new lows in the gross and profane, as if a joke is only funny if it is more disgusting than the last joke you heard. Horrible Bosses has an appreciation for the crude and vulgar but at its core understands that the best comedies are situational comedies involving real people who act in surprising (and surprisingly honest) ways and that attitude is a refreshing one.

- Steve Avigliano,  7/11/11

REVIEW: Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011): Dir. Michael Bay. Written by: Ehren Kruger. Starring: Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Tyrese Gibson, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, John Malkovich and Frances McDormand. Rated PG-13 (Robots smash each other up real good and some humans get vaporized). Running time: 157 minutes.

1 ½ stars (out of four)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a colossal mess of a movie. As the third in the series, this much should come as no surprise. Each Transformers movie seeks to be the Biggest and Loudest Thing you have ever seen. This is their primary goal; narrative cohesion is secondary if it factors in at all. The second Transformers feature, Revenge of the Fallen, may still have the honor of being the Biggest and Loudest Thing, though Dark of the Moon sure does make a convincing case for the title.

Dark of the Moon is hardly the incomprehensible behemoth Revenge of the Fallen was but the plot still defies summarization. There are good robots called Autobots who work with the U.S. government on covert missions and there are bad robots called Decepticons. You can usually tell them apart because the Autobots are colorful and the Decepticons are steely gray and black, but there are times when even these simple distinguishing characteristics fail the vigilant viewer.

The two robo-factions were once at war for their mechanized home world of Cybertron and for a third time, they have brought their battle to Earth. The Decepticons’ plan gets awfully complicated and I respect anyone who can successfully navigate the many intricacies of this convoluted plot which essentially boils down to this: the Decepticons want to take over the world and the Autobots want to save humanity if possible. Although the same has happened twice before, I am again astonished by how thoroughly director Michael Bay and Dark of the Moon’s screenwriter Ehren Kruger can obscure such a simple premise.

As baffling as this nearly $200 million train wreck gets, one has to sit back and appreciate the hugeness of it. No one can spend a budget that big quite like Michael Bay does. There are scenes when Decepticons flip cars and smash the sidewalk with the purposelessness of drunken teenagers who will break anything and everything in sight just for the fun of it. The action is so pervasive, so gratuitous, what else can one do but succumb to the film’s hedonistic love of destruction?

But the Transformers movies just don’t know when to end. Like each of its predecessors, Dark of the Moon overstays its welcome with a running time of 157 minutes that will test the patience of even the most devout fans of Michael Bay’s brand of sensory bombardment. I enjoyed the movie’s defiant recklessness to a point, but the last leg of the movie drags on so long that it numbs us to the action. Like a prolonged finale in a summer fireworks display there comes a point when enough is enough and we check our watches, wondering how much longer it could possibly go on for.

There are humans in Dark of the Moon too; did I forget to mention them? Shia LaBeouf continues to carry the burden of playing the franchise’s only interesting character, the young protagonist Sam Witwicky. LeBeouf is comfortable in this sort of mammoth-sized entertainment and he is oddly convincing when he shouts out, “OPTIMUS!” from a skyscraper rooftop. Also returning are the one-dimensional super soldiers played by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson, as well as John Turturro’s batty Agent Seymour Simmons. Apparently these guys are contractually obligated to show their faces whenever the Decepticons do.

Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a Victoria’s Secret model, steps in for Megan Fox as Carly, the babe LaBeouf gets to alternately save and smooch. Her ability to look as calm and seductive as a Vogue cover model in the midst of Earth’s darkest hour is more impressive than any of Optimus Prime’s powers.

Making surprise appearances are John Malkovich as Witwicky’s eccentric new boss and Frances McDormand as the calculating, all-business National Intelligence Director. The largest contribution from this pair of Oscar-caliber actors, however, is their unexpected presence and once the initial shock of their being in the film wears off, they disappear into the sea of ultimately useless side characters. Patrick Dempsey plays Carly's deviously good-looking boss and talented comedic actors, Ken Jeong and Alan Tudyk, show up too but their comic relief mostly fails to do anything but add worthless scenes to an already long movie.

The first Transformers movie was fun because it never took itself too seriously. By comparison, Revenge of the Fallen was unbearably solemn even in its most absurd moments. Dark of the Moon has the opposite problem. If anything, the film doesn’t take itself seriously enough. Characters are prone to wild fits of screaming and flailing that are intended to be funny but just take the wind out of a scene. And while a part of me respects the audacity of including impersonations of no less than three Presidents (Kennedy, Nixon and Obama) plus a cameo from the real-life Buzz Aldrin, the gimmicks don’t add up to anything. The movie is a barrage of explosions occasionally interrupted by strange, fleeting gags.

Will you enjoy this film? That is hard to say. If you were entertained by either of the previous movies, this one should be equally satisfying. It is big, loud, dumb and utterly absurd, a formula that worked best the first time around. (For what it’s worth though, Dark of the Moon is not as ungodly terrible as the second film.)

The Transformers franchise continues to epitomize the twenty-first century blockbuster and in a weird way, I have to respect the films’ unflagging commitment to all things Big and Loud. Whether or not the movies are any good is beside the point. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is indeed the Biggest and Loudest Thing you’ll find in theatres this summer. Depending on your personal taste, let that statement serve as a recommendation or a warning.

- Steve Avigliano, 7/1/11

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