Monday at the Movies - July 2, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-Four of “Monday at the Movies,” in which I tie up a few loose ends on movie series whose final installments haven’t been reviewed yet on this site.

Hulk (2003) – If I’m not yet on record as saying that Mark Ruffalo is the definitive Hulk actor, quote me on that because I’ve just rewatched Ang Lee’s Hulk, starring Eric Bana as the jade giant and don’t have a lot of good things to say about it.  For one, the plot is overfilled with antagonists with competing interests; consequently, none of them (save, maybe, Nick Nolte as Bruce Banner’s evil father) becomes terribly compelling – not Josh Lucas as a cutthroat corporate scientist, nor Sam Elliott as General “Thunderbolt” Ross.  What we do get is the curious directorial choice to drain the film of any positive emotion; all the characters are either broken or emotionless (or both), which allows some of the acting to walk the line between nuance and flatness.  Unfortunately, Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross is the worst offender here; at moments, her affection for Bruce is touching, but at others she looks like she’s staring at cue cards written in a foreign language.  But the film’s worst offense isn’t its emotional flatness or sense of bleak despair, but rather it tampers with Bruce Banner’s canonical origin in a way that fundamentally alters the character.  I can pardon the 2008 film’s link to the Captain America super-soldier serum as an exercise in world-building, but the connection to the father is purely imagined and ultimately unfulfilling since it never quite makes sense – especially at the end when a deus ex militia ends a major fight that, once again, is more about which can be out-angst the other than it is about superheroic adventuring.  I wanted to like this, but it fell flat and ranks below the Norton interpretation.  Long live Ruffalo.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) – It’s no secret to readers of this blog that I’m a huge fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and for my money the series goes four for four with this soft reboot, which finds Captains Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) in a quest to find the Fountain of Youth – or at least prevent the dread pirate Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and his shifty daughter Angelica (Penélope Cruz) from reaching it.  The film is instantly accessible, building a new world without relying on or scrapping entirely the preceding trilogy.  Instead, the series goes off in an exciting new direction, promising a healthy spirit of competition between Jack and Barbossa for future films.  One of the highlights of At World’s End was seeing Depp and Rush out-pirate each other, a plot element that recurs here to great success.  What’s more, personal favorite McShane is delightfully menacing, unequivocally embracing his character and reveling in his mischief; think of the unswerving evil and odd syntax Al Swearengen of Deadwood, but with an enormous smoldering beard and far fewer F-bombs.  And Cruz’s Angelica brings a fun new character to the franchise, carrying on impressive repartee and even occasionally matching Depp, who brings his A-game as always.  Indeed, if I have complaints, it’s that Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack is more recycled than original, and Judi Dench has far too small a cameo role as a royal lady wooed by Captain Jack.  Though it didn’t receive much critical love, On Stranger Tides is more than satisfying, and its box-office receipts thankfully made a fifth film (allegedly in the works) a viable prospect.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) – While the fourth Pirates film proved the franchise still had steam, Superman IV took a critical drubbing and continues to be hammered by superhero fans who regard its very name as shorthand for the worst in the genre.  But when I finally watched it this week, to my surprise there’s actually a lot in the film that works, making me wish that had been given a bigger budget and a better script editor.  Christopher Reeve is back for his last outing as the Man of Steel, facing Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor and evil clone Nuclear (“Nucular”) Man.  The film is incredibly brief, meaning that the story is overly compressed, with characterization shortchanged for protracted and uninspiring action pieces which often cut away from the action (the film’s only explosion happens off-screen).  The screenplay, too, is weak in places, with Superman manifesting bizarre new powers and breaking his own rules several times; the secondary villains, moguls who buy the Daily Planet, are overdrawn and poorly performed, and the filmmakers apparently forgot that humans can’t breathe in space.  But there’s a good amount of the film that does succeed; Reeve and Hackman in particular are fantastic (even if the latter is saddled with Jon Cryer for a sidekick), their performances feeding off each other and nailing the heart of their character’s relationship with expressive frowns and shrugs.  Additionally, Jackie Cooper gets a terrific character arc as Perry White, who refuses to compromise his values in the face of the changing landscape of journalism.  Though the script is excessively preachy about the woes of nuclear weaponry, I’m surprised to say that I enjoyed it more than I thought it would – at least, more than the unfortunate Superman III.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!