Monday at the Movies - January 27, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.” Everyone else is talking about Target’s “stealth release” of a new Justice League movie, so why not us too?

JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time (2014) – This film is a bit of a strange beast, but it’s ultimately not an unsuccessful outing for DC’s premiere superhero team-up.  The plot finds Lex Luthor awakened in the 30th century after a world-conquest scheme goes awry; with the power over time itself, Luthor sends his Legion of Doom to prevent Superman from being raised on Earth.  While Trapped in Time mostly features a New 52-era Justice League – including Aquaman and Cyborg in positions of prominence – it also includes two Legion of Super-Heroes applicants, Dawnstar and Karate Kid.  Surprisingly, though the Justice League mostly takes a backseat to these two, the film still works as an engaging team story, enjoyable for those of us who love these characters almost as much as people we actually know.  Newcomers, though, probably won’t find much to appreciate here, and indeed Trapped in Time isn’t the best animated feature with these characters (offhand, I’d give that honor to Justice League: The New Frontier).  But what’s refreshing is that Trapped in Time doesn’t take itself too seriously.  In fact, the best scene in the film finds the Justice League and the Legion of Doom playing football with baby Superman, a hilarious bit of physical comedy that actually gets funnier.  It’s the kind of absurdly lighthearted play with the material that you won’t find in the uber-reverent DCAU series, which usually takes the cake in terms of quality adaptation.  Kudos to Diedrich Bader for returning to the role of Batman after his Brave and the Bold cartoon ended; he’s the most prominent in the voice cast that does its work well without exceptionally distinguishing itself.  The cliffhanger suggests there might be more to come from this production house, and I say bring it on.  Trapped in Time is reliable and entertaining without the burden of past success; looks like a fun future from here.

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

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Is Chris Pine the king of the rebooters?  After helming a very profitable new take on Star Trek, Pine’s been tapped to lead a post-9/11 reboot of Tom Clancy’s “Jack Ryan” espionage/thriller franchise.  Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, the first in what I can only assume is a series, is quite successful and engaging, even if it doesn’t forge new ground in the genre.

The film follows fresh-faced Jack Ryan (Pine), just off a tour of duty in Afghanistan as a Marine.  After undergoing extensive physical therapy and wooing his therapist Cathy (Keira Knightley), Ryan is recruited by Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner) to join the CIA.  Ten years later, Ryan’s undercover work on Wall Street exposes a plot to undermine the US economy, a conspiracy directed by Russian capitalist Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh).

Branagh pulls double-duty as villain and director here, and I would like to pause for a moment and ask the second question in this review:  when did Kenneth Branagh become a sterling action film director?  Short answer:  Thor.  But Jack Ryan proves that wasn’t a one-time fluke, a suitable hybrid of superhero throwdown with Branagh’s more comfortable Shakespearean swagger.  Jack Ryan proves Branagh a solid director of action sequences, culminating in an immensely suspenseful final hour or so of the film.

As the villain, Branagh refrains from noshing on the scenery and instead opts for cold and unpredictable; it’s a refreshing alternative to the bloviating Bond villain caricature we could have gotten.  Pine is credible as a first-time operative, particularly gifted in a key scene after his first kill, and Costner is a reliable choice for the stern senior agent.  Knightley’s beautiful as ever, though her American accent is a little too on-the-nose valley girl to be entirely believable.

I’ve praised the action scenes in the film, and boy do they deliver.  From a car chase with the threat of gruesome torture ahead to an intense close-quarters bathroom fight, Branagh turns in a film so capable that I’m eager to see him return for a Jack Ryan sequel to see what else he can do at play in the genre.  What I’d like to see more, though, is a little bit of innovation.  As successful as it is, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is very much a paint-by-numbers spy thriller.  The classic beats are all there.  Post 9/11 film?  9/11 motivates character to serve his country.  Female character?  Hostage.  And even though the economic plot is a bit creative for a spy action film, it all amounts in the end to blowing something up.

One glaring weakness in the film is Ryan’s downright lack of a personality.  It’s easy enough to vicariously enjoy the film through him, but we never really get a reason to care about him beyond the unsuccessful pathos of a quick bout of physical therapy.  Pine plays a less cocky Captain Kirk here, devoid of the personality that made Star Trek a worthwhile hero’s-quest narrative.  There’s nothing really unique about his methods, nothing that sets him apart other than us knowing that Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford played him before.  Hopefully the sequel rectifies that and clears up Ryan’s place in the espionage pantheon.

It remains to be seen, then, what kind of a spy Jack Ryan will become.  The economic angle is promisingly creative, but even if the writers fall back on a spy sans personality, Branagh’s capable hand at the directorial till delivers an engaging (if not cerebral) suspense film full of the good old eyeball kicks.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is rated PG-13 “for sequences of violence and intense action, and brief strong language.”  The violence is certainly more intense than bloody, and much of it deals more with the threat of menace than with actual spurts of the red stuff.  An F-bomb or two gets dropped, but it’s pretty tame in terms of language.

Lone Survivor (2014)

The box office receipts from this weekend indicate that Lone Survivor is a highly lucrative film, and it’s been compared to Saving Private Ryan.  While I’m not sure it’s as important a film as Spielberg’s take on World War II, it’s a compelling film that renders a true story in riveting detail, even if some of the storytelling itself is a little thin.

Mark Wahlberg stars as Marcus Luttrell, part of a four-man team (comprised also of Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, and Ben Foster) in pursuit of a terrorist in Afghanistan.  On the outskirts of an Afghani village, the mission goes horribly awry, putting the lives of the Navy SEALs in danger.

I’ll begin by saying that writer/director Peter Berg obviously has an immense respect for the work of servicemen like the ones portrayed in the film, and it’s refreshing to see a film this reverential; his last terrorism-themed movie, 2007’s The Kingdom, had a note of moral equivalency that still doesn’t taste right, but Lone Survivor just exudes a sense of unflinching admiration that might even turn off some cynical viewers.  But, as Phil Coulson says, “People might just need a little old-fashioned.”

Berg’s evident respect for the subject material and for Luttrell, who cameos as a SEAL in a few scenes, means that the combat sequences of the film are realistic and harrowing, highly effective at allowing the audience to feel some of the palpable terror that must come of being in such a situation – ambushed and outnumbered, staring down death.  Consequently, Lone Survivor is one of the more gripping films, and had the ending not been “spoiled” (see the title of the film and Luttrell’s presence on the PR circuits) it might have as suspenseful as Gravity because of how expertly directed both films were.

But Berg’s deft hand at the shootout scenes isn’t limited to just the one note.  Berg also knows when to punctuate the film with moments of levity, opportune placement of lines to elicit a smile or relieve the tension.  (Standout moments include a well-timed duck and a villager’s two-word summary of his opinion of the Taliban.)

What the film doesn’t manage to do very well is characterization.  On one level, portraying the SEALs as everymen allows the audience to put themselves in the soldiers’ shoes, heightening the anxiety of the situation as the danger escalates.  But on the other hand, the film feels a bit distanced when we don’t know much about the men or their personalities (it doesn’t help that some of them look very similar).  It’s not that the performances are bad – Wahlberg manages to suppress his Boston tough-guy persona enough to play up the real-life heroics of war – but the screenplay’s greater strengths lie in the violent action sequences and not in breathing much life into the characters themselves.

I wonder, though, if that’s not intentional.  Berg’s project here is clearly to valorize the real-life men who died during Operation Red Wings, so much so that he ends the film with an extended “in memoriam” montage that plays on the most basic heartstrings in the audience.  (Mine applauded at the end.)  There’s ultimately something missing from the film as a whole, but what we’re presented with is compelling enough and smartly put-together that it almost deserves better than a ghettoized mid-January release.

Lone Survivor is rated R “for strong bloody war violence and pervasive language.”  The violence is really quite brutal and often unpleasant to watch, frequently unrelenting after the first twenty minutes.  F-bombs pervade, as one would expect in a combat zone.

Octopussy (1983)

As we enter a new year, Roger Moore’s tenure on Bond is winding down (only one more entry left after this one), and it sure shows.  I’ve had my complaints about Moore’s outings as Bond – Moonraker was mystifyingly bad, while For Your Eyes Only was a forgettable step in the right direction – but Octopussy really takes the cake as, no contest, the dullest Bond yet.

James Bond (Roger Moore) is back in action after 009 dies uncovering a fake jewelry trafficking ring in East Berlin.  Bond smokes out smuggler Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) at an auction house and follows Khan to India, where he meets Octopussy (Maud Adams) and her gang of female assassins.  While dodging Kamal Khan’s attempts to kill him, Bond works to uncover a plot between Khan and the villainous Russian General Orlov (Steven Berkoff, practically choking on the scenery as a villain without a mustache to twirl).

The best thing I can say about Octopussy is that John Barry’s soundtrack is first-rate as ever, the kind of definitive Bond score that deserves a much better film.  I’m a huge believer in the idea that a soundtrack can do much of the lifting in a film if the other elements don’t quite hit it, and John Barry’s iconic work scoring Bond films automatically sets any entry apart from the ones where Barry is absent.  If you were to listen to the score and imagine a Bond movie in your head, it’d be a hit.

The execution on Octopussy, though, is execrable.  I’m really not sure whether this or Moonraker is worse; Moonraker has the “advantage” of veering so far off the rails that it’s an unmitigated catastrophe, but at least it had about an hour of somewhat engaging material.  In Octopussy, there’s honestly only one scene that didn’t bore me; like Moonraker, I’d actually tried to watch Octopussy once before but gave up.  And I can’t remember where I gave up because nothing in Octopussy is memorable.  Honestly, I took notes during the film because I knew it’d drop from my memory quickly and I had a hard enough time paying attention because of how tragically boring the film is.

A big part of the problem is that Roger Moore has overstayed his welcome.  Throughout his five previous films, I’ve noted that there is a glimmer of Bond inside of him that often seems smothered by the distinctly not-Bond films in which he’s starring, but in Octopussy we can’t help but notice that (at 55) Moore looks and moves like an old man.  Indeed, much of the film’s glacial pace is exacerbated by the fact that Bond never really moves quickly, even in moments of peril.  His action scenes are dimmed by his immobility, and his love scenes are unconvincing in their placidity.  (Compare to Diamonds Are Forever, in which Sean Connery looked quite old but still managed to capture that wry 007 glint in his eye.)

The plot doesn’t pick up any of the slack from Moore, either.  Some of the initial set pieces are based on Ian Fleming’s short stories, and the problem with adapting these stories to film is that nothing really happens in them.  It’s incredibly boring to watch Bond observe an auction on film because we don’t have his internal narration to follow (and besides, Moore looks old enough that he might fall asleep in his seat).  Furthermore, stringing these stories together results in an incredibly disjointed film experience that sees the plot veer sharply between storylines that never quite hang together; consequently, the viewer really needs to be paying attention to the tenuous links holding the plots together (I’m still a little murky on when exactly the film switched from jewel heist to mutually assured destruction).

As for that one scene that’s mildly compelling?  It’s right at the end of the film, when Louis Jourdan finally becomes the villain the film deserves, converting his disdain for Bond into actual hatred rather than just mere annoyance; simultaneously, Bond struggles to maintain his grip on a small aircraft midflight.  It’s the kind of stunt that the film needed more of – not the embarrassing clown costume, the cringeworthy Tarzan yell, the grotesque stereotypes of India that are actually offensive (you’d think the whole nation was one poverty-stricken slum through which white men literally throw money around as a diversion).

The worst thing of all is that Octopussy is not so exuberantly bad that it’s watchable.  Octopussy never musters up the energy to be anything other than uninteresting.  In fact, the most exciting moment is when the film actually ends and you can finally go to sleep.

Octopussy is rated PG.  A woman is seen fully nude emerging from a swimming pool, albeit at a great distance.  There are a few fistfights, shootouts, and seductions, but all with the naughty bits kept out of frame.  The only blood in the film is seen when Bond removes a leech from his chest.

James Bond and The Cinema King – and Sean Connery! – will return in a review of Never Say Never Again (1983) on February 7, 2014!

Monday at the Movies - January 6, 2014

Welcome to the first edition of “Monday at the Movies” in 2014.  We’re going into our third year with this feature; can you believe it?

Seven Psychopaths (2012) – In Bruges was a delightful surprise, marketed as a gangster comedy but actually a contemplative take on guilt with a stellar script.  With Seven Psychopaths, Martin McDonagh is at it again with another thoughtful film, though its slow burn might not appeal to everyone.  Colin Farrell stars as a screenwriter suffering from a creative block, while Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken play dognappers who cross gangster Woody Harrelson by abducting his Shih Tzu.  The marketing bills this movie as a wacky slapstick action comedy, but the result is something much more sincere, a metafictional take on stories and endings.  But along the way, McDonagh doesn’t forget to let his cast have fun; Walken proves himself the king of the stammered non sequitur with many hilarious lines and outbursts, while no one does increasingly unhinged like Sam Rockwell.  I’m inclined to label the movie “smart” because of the way it’s structured, calling back to previous scenes and letting the audience figure certain plot details out without spoonfeeding them, but then there’s a legitimate problem with the film’s female characters.  There aren’t many of them, and all of them either take their clothes off or get killed (or both); the film seems aware of this when Farrell’s character is chastised for the poor quality of the female characters in his screenplay – another moment of clever metafictional play – but I’m not sure that self-awareness lets one off the hook, and indeed it might even exacerbate a problem by calling attention to it without attempting to rectify it.  But compelling if problematic, Seven Psychopaths manages to entertain, which in the final analysis is really all I ask of a film.

Happy New Year!  That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month (and boy is it a doozy)!