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

REVIEW: Rango

Rango (2011): Dir. Gore Verbinski. Written by John Logan. Featuring the voices of Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Ned Beatty and Bill Nighy. Rated PG (rude humor, action, language and smoking). Running time: 107 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

In the crowded market of computer-animated films, Rango comes as a delightful relief. A clever homage to classic westerns with enough wit and charm for two movies, this is one of the best animated comedies in recent years.

Johnny Depp voices the Chameleon With No Name, a pet who unwittingly ends up in the Mojave Desert after his terrarium falls off the back of a truck. He soon finds the town of Dirt, a relic of the Old West populated by an assortment of reptiles and rodents. The locals at the town saloon quickly size him up as an outsider, but our hero sees this as an opportunity to reinvent himself. He has a penchant for the dramatic – in the opening scene, we see him acting out Shakespeare with his tank accessories – so he invents a persona: the infamous Rango. That he should be called upon to prove his skills with a six-shooter does not initially cross his mind, but of course his big talk is soon put to the test. When he inadvertently saves the town from a hawk, he is promoted to sheriff.

Meanwhile, the town faces a drought. This is particularly troublesome considering the town’s water-based economy. Inside the bank’s safe is a blue water cooler that’s getting dangerously low. A plucky iguana named Beans (voiced by Isla Fisher), however, knows about a pipe where water is being mysteriously dumped into the desert. She suspects the corrupt mayor (a tortoise voiced by Ned Beatty) may be behind the town’s ill fortunes and turns to Rango, the town’s new hero, for help.

Fans of westerns – or Chinatown – know where the film is heading and that’s part of the fun. Rango borrows liberally from a number of films – in particular, the central conflict is directly lifted from that Roman Polanski classic – but never feels stale or familiar. The film wears its influences proudly; its plot is a pastiche of scenes and storylines from the great westerns and Rango takes great pleasure in reinventing these genre conventions. The references to other films aren’t merely in-jokes for the parents in the audience to chuckle at. They infuse the story with energy and humor.

The film is also exceptionally smart. Most of today’s animated fare (not bearing the Pixar brand) is too eager to cater to young audiences by dumbing down the story. Even the good ones have a tendency to move the plot along at breakneck speeds, as if the slightest dip in energy will lose a child’s interest. Rango takes time to develop its characters and allows the plot to twist and take unexpected detours. Admittedly, the film loses a little steam in its midsection, though it quickly picks up again.

The script is immensely clever. There are plenty of one-liners and the film boasts a big vocabulary (this is the wordiest animated film since Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox), but the film is not trapped by its cleverness. Rather than providing slapstick jokes for the kids and innuendos for the adults to catch, Rango’s jokes have universal appeal. This is an animated comedy that is simply very funny.

Johnny Depp’s voice acting is a great aid to the film. I’m often hesitant to embrace big name stars in animated films, but Depp is a strong choice for this sort of piteous everyman character. The actor has played a lot of larger-than-life characters in recent years and Rango reminds us how well he fits quieter roles, even if he only lends his voice here.

Industrial Light & Magic animated the film (a first for the special effects company), and the computer animation looks fantastic. Dirt is a richly detailed town with vibrant character. Its inhabitants have a woebegone charm as they scowl and hobble their way down the town’s main street. One character has an arrow stuck in his eye that pokes out the back of his head but he doesn’t seem to mind.

Director Gore Verbinski, who previously helmed the three Pirates films, appears to have had no trouble venturing into animation. He was also behind the unjustly unloved The Weather Man, and I wonder if his real talent is for comedies and not blockbuster epics.

In the avalanche of computer animated movies continually vying for audiences’ attentions, Rango stands a head above the rest. It offers an inventive story and strong characters over tired retreads and sequels, and intellect and humor over 3D glasses.

- Steve Avigliano, 3/5/11

Oscar Reactions 2011

Strange that year after year I watch the Academy Awards – I even get a little excited for them – expecting… Well, I don’t expect much but maybe there’s some hope in me that this year will be less boring than last. Or at least shorter. I understand of course that the Academy has a very passionate sense of self-importance to maintain, but would a two hour telecast really dampen any of the prestige? Would it kill them to cut the filler and streamline the thing? At one point, Anne Hathaway introduced Hilary Swank who introduced Kathryn Bigelow who then announced the nominees for Best Director. Was that necessary?

Hathaway and co-host James Franco had some funny moments but like many other hosts in recent years, they disappeared for stretches of time and had me wondering why the Academy even bothers with hosts if all they do is reintroduce the ceremony after a commercial break? Why not cut every other piece of fluff in the show and allow the hosts to let loose and act like real MCs? Still, I liked that they poked fun at their “younger demographic” appeal and they seemed to be having fun.

The acceptance speeches are another problem. The Academy apparently asks the nominees each year to refrain from long-winded “Thank you” speeches, a piece of advice that is continually ignored. David Seidler, who won Best Original Screenplay for The King’s Speech, was an exception, if only because he appeared to have put thought and effort into his speech.

Looking back at my predictions from last month, I guessed a pitiful 12 out of 24 correct. Over the last few weeks I conceded that my initial projection of The Social Network taking the top prizes was not going to pan out, but I missed a lot more categories than those. I was happy though to see Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s unconventional and affecting score for The Social Network win.

For me, The King’s Speech was not the year’s best film, but I rather liked Steven Spielberg’s gentle reminder before announcing the winner that many a great film failed to score the most votes in their respective year.

So that’s that. The movie industry can return to business as usual until next winter. Though if studios and journalists didn’t build up an unreasonable level excitement for the Oscars months prior to the ceremony, I can’t imagine how I’d ever be able to sit through the damn thing.

- Steve Avigliano, 2/28/11

And They're Off!: Predictions for the 2011 Oscar Race

Last week I spent a fair amount of digital space dismissing the Academy Awards and arguing that the winners are rarely representative of the year’s best. Today I’m going spend even space more doing much the opposite. Oscar nominations were announced yesterday morning, setting off the month-long period of guessing and trying to predict the winners and I’m joining the noise too because… well, because it’s fun. What follows are my early predictions for the winners in addition to my choices for who I would vote for in the major categories if I had a ballot.

Last year I got 15 out of 24 by guessing the morning of the Oscars. Let’s see how I do predicting the winners a month in advance.

BEST PICTURE

The nominees: Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter’s Bone

My Prediction: The Social Network. Now that the nominees have been announced, The King’s Speech is front-and-center with the most nominations, but my money is that the story of Facebook will stay strong through Oscar night. The movie has everything going for it. Impressive on a technical level and an absorbing human story too. Plus, this is the year everyone started talking about Facebook. The film’s good fortune of being so topical should work in its favor.

My Vote: Black Swan. On my own Top 10 list, Toy Story 3 was my sentimental favorite and Pixar will easily scoop up their umpteenth award for Best Animated Film. If I had a ballot to fill out though, Darren Aronofsky’s surreal, sexual nightmare would get my vote. The film is a virtuosic achievement and in many ways, was the film that most impressed me this year.

BEST DIRECTOR

The nominees: Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), David O. Russell (The Fighter), Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech), David Fincher (The Social Network), Joel and Ethan Coen (True Grit)

My Prediction: David Fincher. Even if The King’s Speech manages to nab Best Picture, Fincher will still win this. So much of the film’s success relies on what he does with the material. No one could have told this story the way Fincher does and this year the Academy will recognize his distinctive voice.

My Vote: David Fincher. I choose Fincher for all of the aforementioned reasons plus, with a slew of unrecognized (but great) films behind him (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac), he deserves this.

BEST ACTOR

The nominees: Javier Bardem (Biutiful), Jeff Bridges (True Grit), Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), Colin Firth (The King’s Speech), James Franco (127 Hours)

My Prediction: Colin Firth. Exactly the kind of performance the Academy loves. Plus, The King’s Speech’s greatest strength is its actors and even if it falls short of Best Picture, this is a safe bet.

My Vote: Colin Firth. Hey, he’s going to win for a reason. This is a strong batch of performances but Firth is deservedly at the top.

BEST ACTRESS

The nominees: Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right), Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine)

My Prediction: Natalie Portman. The race is between Portman and Bening, but since actors make up the largest group of voting members, these awards can sometimes be a bit of a popularity contest. The newly engaged, newly pregnant Portman is as likable as they come. She also had to prepare extensively for the role, which always helps.

My Vote: Annette Bening. I loved Portman in Black Swan and she deserves her win, but I’m going to play devil’s advocate a little here and choose her main contender. My favorite performance this year is a tie between Bening and Julianne Moore as the married mothers at the center of The Kids Are All Right. For some reason, Moore hasn’t been recognized for her work the way Bening has, but in their portrayal of a troubled marriage, the interplay between the two is essential. So my vote is for Bening with a write-in for Moore. This is a fantasy anyways, so I can do what I want.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

The nominees: Christian Bale (The Fighter), John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone), Jeremy Renner (The Town), Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right), Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech)

My Prediction: Christian Bale. No one is giving him much competition here except maybe Rush, who has won before. I can’t wait to hear Bale’s acceptance speech too.

My Vote: Christian Bale. One could make the argument that a spotlight-stealing performance such as this one goes against what a “supporting role” should do in a film. Still, Bale’s drug-addled, self-absorbed, and ultimately well-meaning brother to Mark Wahlberg’s Micky is the heart of this film. The movie wouldn’t be as good as it is without him.

On a side note, no Armie Hammer for his dual role as the Winklevoss twins from The Social Network here? For shame.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

The nominees: Amy Adams (The Fighter), Helena Bonham Carter (The King’s Speech), Melissa Leo (The Fighter), Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit), Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)

My Prediction: Melissa Leo. Leo is an actress that has gone underappreciated for a long time, and my feeling is that she will finally get recognition from her peers here. This isn’t a lock, however, and if Adams splits support for The Fighter’s actors, the young Steinfeld may swoop in. My bet is still on Leo, though.

My Vote: Hailee Steinfeld. For such a young actress to carry a film is impressive. She’s only in the “supporting” category because of inexplicable Academy logic. I was thoroughly impressed by her restraint and conviction in the part, and holding your own against Jeff Bridges is no easy task.

Another side gripe: Had Mila Kunis been nominated here for Black Swan, I’d have voted for her.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The nominees: 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter’s Bone

My Prediction: The Social Network. The year’s two favorites (Network and Speech) are divided in the screenplay categories, which should mean they will both get their honors here before duking it out for Best Picture.

My Vote: The Social Network. Two hours of discussing computer programming and copyright laws shouldn’t have been as absorbing as Aaron Sorkin made them. He took the story of a website’s creation and made it a fascinating (if also largely fabricated) character study and human drama.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The nominees: Another Year, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech

My Prediction: The King’s Speech. See above reason.

My Vote: The Kids Are All Right. Director Lisa Cholodenko along with her co-writer Stuart Blumberg capture every nuance of their characters’ quirks and speech. The movie is alternately hilarious and heartbreaking and we have a great script to thank for that.

My foolhardy predictions for the rest of the nominees, including some wild guessing on the shorts:

Animated Film: Toy Story 3

Art Direction: The King’s Speech

Cinematography: The Social Network

Costume Design: The King’s Speech

Documentary Feature: Restrepo

Film Editing: Black Swan

Foreign Language Film: Biutiful

Makeup: The Wolfman

Music (Original Score): The Social Network

Music (Original Song): “If I Rise,” 127 Hours

Sound Editing: Inception

Sound Mixing: The Social Network

Visual Effects: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

Documentary Short: Strangers No More

Animated Short: Day & Night

Live Action Short: God of Love

I’ll return in a month to see how wrong I was.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/26/11

REVIEW: No Strings Attached

No Strings Attached (2011): Dir. Ivan Reitman. Written by Elizabeth Merriwether. Starring Ashton Kutcher, Natalie Portman, Kevin Kline, Jake Johnson, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges and Lake Bell. Rated R (sexual content, language and some drug material). Running time: 110 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

I wonder, how did the script of No Strings Attached describe its leads? “Enter Adam, an attractive young man who looks and acts exactly like Ashton Kutcher.” Or maybe: “Emma is a beautiful young woman who, if we’re lucky, looks and acts exactly like Natalie Portman.” The movie seems to have been constructed around the knowledge that two likable stars would fill these roles, which allows the filmmakers to forgo the arduous process of creating interesting and believable characters. We come to the movie already prepared to like these people because the trailers and posters have informed us who plays them, a trick that works for No Strings Attached more than it should.

Adam (Kutcher) and Emma (Portman) are not quite friends at the beginning of the film. They have had a few awkward encounters in their youths, including a humorous failed seduction by Adam at summer camp and a chance reunion at a college party years later. From the start, Adam clearly likes her. And who wouldn’t? She shows up to a pajama-themed frat party wearing long johns and still manages to look good.

Emma decides to follow up this second encounter by inviting Adam to her father’s funeral the next morning. The funeral scene, the last of a brief prologue, opens the door for a decidedly darker sense of humor than the movie continues with afterward. Think for a moment though about what kind of girl would party the night before her father is buried and then invite a more-or-less stranger to the services. That girl probably wouldn’t look or act anything like Natalie Portman. But never mind that. The opening scenes lay down the groundwork for characterization that the rest of the film largely ignores. Never again do we see these morbid tendencies from Emma, nor does Adam ever resemble anything close to the goofy frat guy he is in the movie’s second scene.

In the present day, they meet once more and possibly feel a spark so they exchange numbers. Adam soon breaks up with his current girlfriend and has a bad night of drunken phones calls that leads him to Emma’s apartment the next morning. From here they decide to embark on a relationship their friends tell them is impossible: to have casual sex without ever allowing romance to enter the equation.

To pad this rather weak premise, No Strings Attached is filled with supporting performances, perhaps even crowded with them. Adam’s buddies (Jake Johnson and Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges) give him the requisite “guy advice” and Emma’s apartment-mates (The Office’s Mindy Kaling, Greta Gerwig and Guy Branum) take their turns ogling Adam and envying her new fling. The best of these actors is Jake Johnson, who has enough charm to make an otherwise forgettable role funny. Ludacris too gets some chuckles, though the strangeness of him even being in this movie might have a lot to do with that.

Then there is Adam’s father (played by Kevin Kline), a one-time TV celebrity who starts sleeping with Adam’s ex (Ophelia Lovibond). These scenes strive for comedy but consistently fail, though fault does not lie with Kline or Lovibond. Too often, these goofy scenes try to hang real emotions on their characters, resulting in an uneven tone.

Despite the overabundance of side characters, attention never strays from Adam and Emma for very long. Unfortunately, their characters are almost entirely defined by their relationship. Adam hopes for romance and so he is painted as the emotional and considerate Nice Guy. Emma prefers to keep her distance from such intimacy and is an Independent Woman. Their jobs are typical for a movie of this kind and serve little purpose other than to supply potential romantic rivals. Emma works at a hospital where an improbably rugged doctor-in-training (Ben Lawson) shows some interest in her, and Adam is a production assistant for a Glee-type show with aspirations of becoming a writer. Also on the set of Adam’s show is Lake Bell, whose foul-mouthed turn as a neurotic co-worker obsessed with Adam deserves more screen time than she gets.

The comedy in No Strings Attached is hit or miss and the movie is better at crafting cute moments than it is funny ones. The movie elicits a fair amount of smiles but no real laughs. This is really only a problem in Kline’s scenes as the father, which go for the laughs and fall short. For the most part, however, the movie is content to be a middle-of-the-road romantic comedy made up of recycled parts. That Ivan Reitman, who once upon a time made Ghostbusters, directed this movie is a little disconcerting, but as an entry in the romantic comedy genre, there has been much worse than No Strings Attached.

Strip away the side characters and meager plot, and you have the one element that every romantic comedy lives or dies on: the chemistry between its leads. The chemistry between Kutcher and Portman is hardly sizzling, but they were cast for a reason. More often than the movie deserves, the likeability of its actors keeps the production afloat. Their characters' relationship doesn’t have enough substance to get us really rooting for them, but there is a certain comfort in seeing two nice, attractive people get together on screen. For a movie with such modest ambitions as No Strings Attached, that seems to be enough.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/23/11

Awards, Lists & Prestige: A Look at the Year-End Awards Craze and the Top 10 of 2010

Now mid-January, we find ourselves in the thick of movie awards season. The critics have published their Best of the Year lists, and just about every other weekend you can catch a glimpse of the Hollywood elite sipping on drinks and wearing their designers’ finest on any number of award broadcasts. But what are we supposed to take away from this frenzy? What does winning Best Picture mean? Or topping a Top 10 list? The cynic in me is tempted to dismiss it all. “There’s no way to determine an objective best film in a given year,” he says. And he’d be right to say so.

On the other hand, the realist in me (a close cousin to the cynic) understands that, for better or worse, the end of the year hubbub that builds up to the Academy Awards is an unavoidable part of the movie industry, so there’s no sense in bemoaning its existence. Despite what one might think seeing the annual onslaught of big-budget blockbuster hopefuls each summer, studios aren’t solely interested in box office receipts. Those glittering statuettes – whatever shape they may be – offer a chance to accumulate that other type of wealth (the non-monetary kind): prestige. The fight for prestige is not limited to studios either. Who wouldn’t want those three wondrous words (“Academy Award Winner”) attached to their name in trailers for the rest of their career?

The problem is that the winners are not always deserving of their new titles. Often, the Oscars generate a lot of (ultimately fleeting) enthusiasm around undeserving films and so the list of Best Picture winners becomes riddled with forgotten movies that, in their year, were deemed the best of the best. The Academy Awards are also painfully predictable. Nominations have yet to be announced, but I can already confidently say that The Social Network will win Best Picture.

Hold on a moment, though. The cynic in me is taking control again. Sure, the Academy Awards are a fallible cultural game that cannot accurately predict which films will be remembered 10, 20, or 50 years later, but they’re hardly worthless. They help to highlight movies that the general public might not have paid attention to otherwise.

A few weeks back, for example, I saw The King’s Speech at my local theater. The movie had been getting a lot of critical attention and the Oscar prognosticators had begun to beat their drums, so I was excited to see it. I wasn’t the only one either. The movie played to a sold-out theater and ended up being a crowd-pleaser. Exiting the theater around me as the credits rolled were excited moviegoers chatting about their favorite parts. Oscar buzz led us into the theater, but the film’s humor and heart sent us home, wanting to recommend it to a friend. The film overcame the daunting expectations that are placed on an Award Winning Film and was able to sway the many subjective opinions in its audience.

Which leads me to critics’ lists. Like the Academy Awards, they do not offer a definitive statement of the year’s best films, but instead provide insight into a critic’s personal tastes. Seeing which critics chose which films as their favorites says something that the blinding glitz and glamour of the red carpet cannot. Of course, a critic’s list can be just as susceptible to end-of-the-year hype as an awards show. In my own experience, I often look back at my choices for the year’s best and scratch my head. In 2007, I wrote that Juno was the year’s best, with No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Zodiac all taking a backseat to that cutesy-quirky romantic comedy. Three years later, Juno is still a funny movie, but each of those other films has appreciated better, rewarding multiple viewings in a way that Juno’s one-liners cannot.

Predicting which films will be remembered years from now can be a tricky thing. So with that limitation in mind, I craft my Top 10 of 2010 list. There were no movies this year that I found truly great in the four-star sense of the word (last year I saw at least four: The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, A Serious Man and Up in the Air), but there were still some very fine movies that may yet become great in time.

The numbered order is subjective almost to the point of arbitrariness, but when organizing the list, I kept in mind the following: To what degree was the film a wholly satisfying experience? How have these films appreciated in the short time since I left the theater (or ejected the DVD as the case may be)? Organizing the list in this way led to some surprising results for me, but I think the list is an honest one. What follows are the ten films that most affected me in their various ways.

10) True Grit

Of course a Coen Bros. western would be heavier on talking than shooting. The prolific writer/directors seem to be able to take their style in just about any direction they please, and their adaptation of the novel that also inspired the 1969 classic is a witty and often violent trip out West. Add a grumbling, drunken Jeff Bridges in the John Wayne role and the promising young talent of Hailee Steinfeld and you have a very entertaining film.

9) The King’s Speech

Sometimes the best historical dramas are the ones with the narrowest focus. The King’s Speech centers on King George VI’s stammer in the burgeoning years of the Radio Age. This may not sound like much of a subject for a drama, but the story is a surprisingly touching and inspirational one. Colin Firth as the titular King and Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist are thrill to watch play off each other too.

8) The Kids Are All Right

No other movie I saw this year has as keen an understanding of how people interact as The Kids Are All Right. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as lesbian mothers who struggle with their children’s desire to connect with their sperm donor father (Mark Ruffalo). This is wonderful comedy that occasionally flirts with melodrama but even then remains an honest a depiction of family dynamics. That the family is an unconventional one dampens none of its universality.

7) A Prophet

This fascinating French film follows a young man’s years in prison as he navigates the multicultural politics of organized crime on the inside. Though only a handful of scenes take place outside the prison walls, the film is as expansive and grand as a crime epic. Absorbing from beginning to end.

6) The Ghost Writer

A political thriller about a biographer (Ewan McGregor) who agrees to write the memoirs of former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) after Lang’s former ghost writer mysteriously committed suicide. Director Roman Polanski hasn’t lost any of his knack for crafting great thrillers, and this one is one of the most rich and involving mysteries in recent years. It has a phenomenal ending too.

5) The Social Network

How much is fact and how much was made up? Does it matter? Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin take the story of Facebook’s creation and turn it into the stuff of Greek drama. Jesse Eisenberg is wonderful as the borderline misanthropic Mark Zuckerberg and is surrounded by a strong supporting cast. Often dark, sometimes funny, and always engrossing.

4) Inception

Christopher Nolan is a marvelous craftsman and he outdoes himself here. He builds, then solves his own puzzle, playing by the rules he invents for himself. The result is one of the most dazzling and inventive action movies since The Matrix. Like that earlier film, Inception toys with metaphysical ideas just long enough to hold you over until the action scenes, all of which are exceptional.

3) 127 Hours

Only Danny Boyle could take the true story of Aron Ralston, who was trapped in a rock crevice for over five days, and turn it into one of the most entertaining movies of the year. Despite the seeming physical limitations of Ralston’s story, Boyle’s film is a kinetic and exhilarating ride. 127 Hours has all the tension of an action movie and its protagonist doesn’t even move for most of the film. Credit must also be given to James Franco for carrying the film in a career-best performance.

2) Black Swan

The best horror movie in years. Darren Aronofsky’s tour de force about a ballerina losing her mind is an eerie, paranoid thriller with top-shelf performances from Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Vincent Cassel. There are a number of twists and turns along the way, but the movie wisely does not trap itself into any one version of reality. The movie exists within Nina’s mind, so the question of what is or isn’t real is irrelevant. To her, everything is real, and I’m only all too happy to get caught up in her surreal nightmare.

1) Toy Story 3

Each of the previous Toy Story movies followed a basic formula: The toys leave the house, have an adventure, and eventually find their way home. In between, we’re treated to some exceptionally clever gags and top-notch animation. The third film delivers all of this plus a pitch-perfect, heart-breaking coda. Rarely does a sequel work as hard as Toy Story 3 to thematically unite its predecessors, but Pixar rises to the occasion and ends a wonderful series in a wholly satisfying way. Not even the unnecessary 3D could bring this movie down.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/17/11