Cinemutants - Deadpool 2 (2018)

At a time when superhero movies are starting to lose their stranglehold on pop culture, there are really only two options: go back and watch old movies, or kill off an entire cinematic universe in spectacular fashion. This July, Marvel’s taking the latter approach with Deadpool & Wolverine, which seems primed to seal off the 20th Century Fox film universe. And while director Shawn Levy promises, “This movie is built [...] with no obligation to come prepared with prior research,” skipping the research has never really been my strong suit when it comes to franchises. It’s a perfect excuse, then, to go through the last 24 years (and 13 movies) with everyone’s favorite mutants, the X-Men.
 

This week, from 2018, it’s Deadpool 2. After a personal tragedy, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) finally enlists with the X-Men before running afoul of the time traveler Cable (Josh Brolin), who has come from the future to stop a killer before he murders Cable’s family. With his methods meeting the disapproval of Colossus (Stefan Kapičić), Deadpool decides to form his own team – the X-Force.

1. F#@% Wolverine. Deadpool 2 opens with a music box reenacting Wolverine’s death at the end of Logan, and watching the two movies nearly back-to-back was especially entertaining. If this Deadpool is aware that (a) Wolverine has died, it’ll be intriguing to see how he reacts to working with another Logan from another world. And where the first Deadpool film poked gentle fun at Hugh Jackman, Deadpool 2 primes their inevitable team-up with a post-credits gag in the Super Duper Extended Cut. In the theatrical cut, Deadpool shoots the Wade Wilson from X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but the extended cut gives him more dialogue: “Look, eventually, you’re going to hang up the claws, and it’s gonna make a lot of people very sad. But one day, your old pal Wade’s gonna ask you to get back in the saddle again. And when he does, say yes.” Oddly prescient? Or just throwing down the gauntlet? In the way that the first film’s post-credits name-checked Cable, this one feels like Deadpool marking his territory (a pun I’m sure he would appreciate).
2. Just cleaning up the timelines. After swiping and repairing Cable’s time-travel device, Deadpool goes around time-hopping (or, as they call it in the comics, “body-sliding”), saving Vanessa’s life while killing Ryan Reynolds circa 2011. (In the Super Duper cut, he also pays a visit to baby Hitler.) With the TVA playing a role in the trailers, I can’t believe this flagrant continuity manipulation won’t be an issue for them. On the flip side, we reunite with two mutants in the post-Days of Future Past timeline – Yukio (Shioli Kutsana) and the Juggernaut (an uncredited and CGI-assisted Ryan Reynolds). Before this rewatch, I’d entirely forgotten that this is our second franchise Yukio, and in fairness it’s entirely possible this is a different Yukio from The Wolverine’s Rila Fukushima. (This one has an electrified whip, not precognition.) Still, it might be fun to see both Yukios on screen in a few weeks. Meanwhile, this Juggernaut is a fair case of “less is more”; rather than spout dated internet memes, this Juggernaut is a marked improvement, all force and demolition just for the hell of it. 
3. Our group will be forward-thinking. One of Deadpool 2’s best jokes is even funnier given how much the trailers played up the existence of X-Force. Domino, Bedlam, Shatterstar, Zeitgeist, Vanisher – the trailer made it look like these C-listers would be headlining the film, and in a world where Groot made a billion dollars, it wasn’t inconceivable. So to watch nearly all of them die horrible, grisly deaths to the spiraling guitar licks of “Thunderstruck” is still outrageously funny. It’s unlikely Marvel will get around to many (if any) of these characters; though the surviving Domino (Zazie Beetz) hasn’t been announced yet for Deadpool & Wolverine, I’d be amazed if she’s not involved. While the film teases that the whole thing was franchise bait for Josh Brolin’s multi-film contract, I do recall some buzz about a proper X-Force film before Disney bought the store. (Meanwhile, Deadpool cracks a joke that both anticipates and deflates a major beat from next week’s film. Like and subscribe to make sure you don’t miss that post.)
4. Essex House. Another film, another Mister Sinister tease that never materialized. The crux of the film centers around the violent mutant rehabilitation at the Essex House, run by Eddie Marsan’s sadistic and nameless Headmaster. Marsan isn’t playing Sinister, whose real name is Nathaniel Essex, but his gene therapy/torture at a home for wayward mutants is exactly the kind of scheme that might embroil Marvel’s leading eugenicist. This Sinister tease also plants the seeds for a deeper interconnectedness that never came to pass; having already seen Essex goons steal Wolverine’s DNA, and with one more Sinister tease yet to come (but left, as I recall, on the cutting room floor), this film posits the Essex House as a kind of anti-Xavier’s academy, with Domino realizing that she was raised in this selfsame orphanage. (There’s even a pointed cameo from Luke Roessler, who plays the young David Haller on Legion, implying a backdoor connection with the TV series.) Was Mister Sinister poised to be the next big baddie of the X-Men franchise, with a fertile story reason to introduce, oh, perhaps some “new mutants’?
5. Zip it, Thanos! As I watched Josh Brolin play Cable (perfect casting, really, even as the movie hangs a lantern on the difference in stature), I flashed back to all the doubling and recasts we’ve seen in the MCU so far. Gemma Chan, Alfre Woodard, Patton Oswalt, Michelle Yeoh... and that’s not even counting folks like Tara Strong who’ve voiced multiple roles. Is it inconceivable that Brolin – notorious for playing franchise archvillain Thanos – might reprise the part of Cable once the mutants make the jump to Marvel proper? Deadpool’s already made “the” joke, and Thanos being fully CGI probably helps; plus, the older Cable gets, the more the character works in opposition to meeting his parents in his past (spoilers, he’s Nathan Summers, the son of Cyclops and a clone of Jean Grey). You could even have some fun with the fact that he’s a refugee from a dead timeline; his present no longer exists, especially if the Fox timeline is walled off, destroyed, or pruned at the end of Deadpool & Wolverine. At the very least, it’d be a shame not to see him one last time, given that he’s heretofore unaware that Deadpool repaired (and abused) his technology. 

Sound off in the comments, true believers: what’s a Deadpool to do when the TVA turns up at his door? Up next, the phoenix rises one more time for an X-sunset, a metaphor that’s holding together about as well as the rest of Dark Phoenix.

Dune (2021)

There’s a moment in Denis Villeneuve’s long-anticipated Dune that will take your breath away. However, I can’t tell you what that moment is – not because it’d be a spoiler to do so, but because there are so many of these moments in Dune that it’s impossible to predict which one will do it for you. It isn’t likely to be the next Star Wars as its marketing declares, but Dune is majestic in its enormity, and even with its simultaneous release on HBO Max it demands to be seen in the largest, loudest auditorium available. 

Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) reckons with his destiny as an ersatz “chosen one” when his father, Duke Leto of House Atreides (Oscar Isaac), is assigned custody of the unforgiving desert world Arrakis – a planet populated by colossal sandworms, the native Fremen people, and the hallucinogenic drug known as spice. While Paul and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) study his prophetic dreams, the corpulent Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) schemes against House Atreides in his quest to retake Arrakis. 

 

These are only some of the things that happen in Dune, and there are so many more characters who don’t fit into a brief plot synopsis. The scope of the film is compounded by the fact that Villeneuve is consciously adapting only half of Frank Herbert’s dense 600-page novel, with a fairly logical if abrupt breaking point midway through the story. I say “abrupt” only because by that point Dune is so resolutely in its groove and the audience is well and truly vibing with the film that any stopping point would feel jarring; put another way, I would have been just as content to see another two hours and thirty-six minutes. It’s not that the movie is unsatisfying, but rather that it’s too satisfying to stop, like a theme park dark ride you don’t want to get off.

 

Perhaps appropriate for a movie set largely on a desert planet, Denis Villeneuve is on a real hot streak. I haven’t seen his 2013 Enemy yet, but every other film since that year – Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049 – has been a winner. Particularly in the latter two, both science fiction films, Villeneuve is finding his niche: speculative futures of overwhelmingly immense scale, where humanity is both dwarfed and magnified in the shadow of the profound. Amy Adams had to reckon with an expanding sense of the cosmos in Arrival, while Blade Runner 2049 was Ryan Gosling’s confrontation with his own ebbing humanity in a foreboding neon cityscape. Here, in the year 10191, everything is enormous – the worms, the spacecraft, the political maneuvering, and the veritable heft of destiny (manufactured or genuine) – and no filmmaker is better equipped than Villeneuve to carry those weights.

 

An IMAX screen so perfectly befits the size of Dune, but its speaker system is perhaps even better suited for the task. Throughout the film your bones will rattle, thanks to Hans Zimmer, who turns in the Hans Zimmer-iest score imaginable. (Equally Zimmer is the sprawling release of the score, which spans three albums and nearly five hours of orchestration.) It’s atonal, lingering, and eclectic, perhaps the only film score in recent memory to include both an electric guitar, bagpipes, and a didgeridoo. The bass shakes to the point where it’s unclear whether you’re hearing a spaceship in flight or Hans Zimmer in action; either way, the sound design is so meticulous and acute that it becomes a character in and of itself. See also the moments when Paul and his mother use “the voice,” a kind of Jedi mind trick that erases free will; the first time we heard “the voice,” its bass shattering eardrums before the words make it to our auditory canals, everyone in my theater sat up a little straighter.

 

I think diehard fans of the novel will enjoy what Villeneuve has built, and it seems that more casual filmgoers are digging it, too. I came to Dune from the unique position of having just read the book – or, at least, half of it; I had wanted to finish the novel entire before seeing the movie, but as it stood I got within twenty pages of the film’s chosen ending. (I promise I’ll finish before Dune Part II, the sequel which seems inevitable now.) In the process of translation, some of the characters got flattened, particularly and disappointingly the Duke himself. Duke Leto is a terrific character in the novel, torn between his duty, political machinations beyond his control, and his personal loyalty to his bloodline; he’s heroic, chivalric, and gracious, but the film seems content to let Oscar Isaac’s natural charisma do most of the character work. Conversely, Timothée Chalamet’s Paul is more human and accessible than the novel’s distant and aloof protagonist, perhaps because of his increased self-consciousness of his place as the manufactured messiah of Arrakis. 

 

Instead of diving deep into the characters, it seems that Villeneuve has gone the more unconventional route of letting his visual design do the character work. There are some lines about backstory, and there’s a clever narrative device in the form of Paul’s talking schoolbooks, but largely Villeneuve lets the images do the talking. It’s a mode of storytelling that seems to have fallen out of favor of late, trusting your set designers and cinematographer to do their job well. The Harkonnens are the villains because of their unfathomable ugliness, their unlit home and grotesque bodies belying the depravity of their souls; save for his distinctive voice, it’s almost impossible to recognize Stellan Skarsgård beneath the mass of flesh that is Baron Vladimir. Likewise, the Atreides are the heroes because of how gosh-darn pretty they are, warm and human. They’re also the only ones who seem to be having any fun, especially Jason Momoa as the swashbuckling (and brilliantly named) Duncan Idaho, about whom I would surely watch a miniseries or two. 

 

Dune is a movie into which you can easily sink, like a hot bath or a deep hill of shifting sand (both of which figure prominently in striking images within the film). It’s as much an atmosphere as a narrative, like the moodier bits of Blade Runner 2049 dialed up to eleven. Most importantly, Dune is like a dream, as in the best cinema can be, from which one does not want to awaken. Maybe it’s a little obtuse, maybe it’s bigger and more ambitious than it ought to be, but Denis Villeneuve has earned the right to make idiosyncratic science fiction. Dune is an event, a kind of heraldic “welcome back” moment for moviegoers who may have forgotten (as indeed I did) what kind of narrative spectacle best belongs in the cinema. 

 

Dune is rated PG-13 for “sequences of strong violence, some disturbing images, and suggestive material.” Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth. Based on the novel by Frank Herbert. Starring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)

After a surprise encounter with Sicario a few months back, I was delighted to learn of an imminent sequel, even without the presence of Emily Blunt and director Denis Villeneuve (the latter of whom gave us Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 in the interim, which I’d say is a fair trade indeed). Here we have Sicario: Day of the Soldado, which many critics are calling an “unexpected” or “unlikely” franchise – though in the age of shared universes, can we really be surprised? And while Villeneuve’s absence is felt, to Soldado’s detriment, it’s only a detriment that exists in hindsight, as Soldado continues to be that curious kind of action film that relies successfully on overtones of dread.

When the United States government (represented by Catherine Keener and Matthew Modine) suspects that Mexican cartels are aiding Islamic terrorists in illegal border crossings, DOJ operative Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) cooks up a scheme with attorney-turned-hitman Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) to turn the cartels against each other. The plan, as most of Graver’s are, is all sorts of morally ambiguous, leading to violence on both sides of the border when a cartel princess (Isabela Moner) is kidnapped.

The first thing one notices about Soldado in comparison to Sicario is likely the result of Dariusz Wolski replacing Roger Deakins as cinematographer. Deakins, first among his profession, gave us a Sicario with lush color-washed landscapes and dusty interiors. Wolski is capable, though his images are much more washed-out and dusty to the point of being sandy. It is, I would say, the difference between Deakins on Blade Runner 2049 and Wolski on the Pirates of the Caribbean films – one a sprawling epic and the other a poppy genre flick; both engaging and visually appearing in their craft, but one with infinitely more depth (and the other with infinitely more Depp).

This is not to say that Soldado is shallower than Sicario, though it is perhaps less overwhelmingly potent. With the absence of Blunt’s Kate Macer as a moral compass, Brolin and del Toro are untethered, though incoming director Stefano Sollima smartly places that morality debate squarely in the audience’s hands; where Kate Macer might have been on screen to interrogate the wisdom of crossing lines, Sollima and returning scripter Taylor Sheridan find room for those questions between the silences. I think most of us came away from Sicario wanting to see more of what these two men could do, how far they were willing to go, and on that count Soldado is a hearty success. While there is perhaps nothing as shocking as Alejandro’s last-reel dinner incursion in Sicario, there are a number of opportunities when a more unwavering hero would have balked at the choices presented. Moreover, there is a fascinating arc about the relationship between Graver and Alejandro, one that these two silent men of stone would never acknowledge but one which undeniably affects the way they conduct their business.

If there is a difference between Sicario and Soldado which underscores the latter’s inferiority in the face of a latter-day American classic, it’s that Soldado ends with much less finality than its predecessor, punting a fuller conclusion for a Sicario 3 (a real pet peeve of mine). Where Sicario ended with Kate Macer confronted with a full understanding of Alejandro and a simultaneous inability to reckon with the horror of that knowledge, Soldado concludes by revisiting and deepening our sense of just what this man can do, and in that task del Toro is brutally terrifying, cold and dispassionate in pursuit of his own unique goal. That the film expects its audience to remember the translation of “sicario” (hint: “hitman”) to fully grasp the ending may be more my shortcoming than the film’s, but it is almost Empire Strikes Back-ian in its promise that there is at least one more story to be told with these characters.

If I didn’t enjoy Soldado as much as I did up to that point, it might have rankled me more than it actually does. But as compelling as the preceding two hours were, I found myself charmed by the promise of a Sicario 3. Likely none of us expected a Soldado, let alone a third, but this “unlikely” franchise carves a place for itself by filling its world with uncompromisingly gray characters in impossible situations, which escalate into dreadful stakes until the blood runs like a staccato rainfall. You’d think it’d get old, that we’d be numb to the dread and the shock of death, but Soldado finds a rhythm where that danger never fades. For two different directors, absent collaboration, to achieve that same Hitchcockian anticipation of the bang, the franchise that might not have needed to be ends up finding a very good identity for itself in the midst of blockbuster shared universes of much larger scale. (Never mind that Brolin figures prominently into at least three, counting this one.)

Sicario: Day of the Soldado is rated R for “strong violence, bloody images, and language.” Directed by Stefano Sollima. Written by Taylor Sheridan. Starring Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner, Jeffrey Donovan, and Catherine Keener.

Deadpool 2 (2018)

From its opening salvo on Logan to postcredits potshots at movies I guarantee you’ve probably forgotten, Deadpool 2 wastes not a moment in reminding us that it’s the “bad boy” of the superhero genre, the riotous class clown not afraid to point out the absurdities and shortcomings that our favorite genre often exhibits. And yet Deadpool 2 manages to find a heart amid all its chaos – even if, as Deadpool’s love chides him, it looks like it’s in the wrong place.

Ryan Reynolds returns to the red spandex as Deadpool, hitman for hire, whose domestic bliss with Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) is interrupted by his own murder sprees and the appearance of a time-traveling badass named Cable (Josh Brolin). Between an ersatz internship as an X-Man (with Stefan Kapičić and Brianna Hildebrand returning as Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, respectively) and forming his own X-Force team, Deadpool starts to learn that “family” isn’t just an F-word.

My immediate reaction to Deadpool 2 is that I like it better than the first, though I contend part of that difference is the absolute glut of trailers for the first film compared to a relative (and to a large degree self-imposed) drought for the second. There are lots of surprises in Deadpool 2, from metatextual references to surprise appearances from the source material. Ray Donovan fans might even be surprised to see Eddie Marsan crop up as one of the film’s antagonists. The real surprise, though, is that Deadpool 2 doesn’t just retread and overplay the successes of the first Deadpool film. Instead, it finds a way to expand the Deadpool world by bringing in a few new characters and ideas without losing sight of that irreverent brand of self-reflexive humor. If the next film is, as we’ve been led to expect, an X-Force outing, fans will be thrilled to see more of newcomers Cable and Domino (Zazie Beetz), who fit into their characters comfortably and with great cinematic flair.

What’s particularly interesting about Deadpool 2 is its pervading air of the unexpected and the postmodern fun Deadpool has with that novelty. In a scene that feels like an extended metaphor, Deadpool careens around the X-Mansion, playing with familiar props and wrecking the scenery, as if to bring life to the notion that he’s the franchise wild child, and Reynolds is delightful as this unrestrained super-id. He’s clearly having a ball with the part, which translates to uproarious laughs from the audience. But one senses also that Reynolds is frankly stunned at how successful the first film was, a sentiment that carries over into moments like the one early on, in which a stunned Deadpool notes that he’s the star of a film that’s literally spoken about in the same sentence as Jesus Christ (Deadpool famously jousted with Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ for R-rated box office records). It’s a great gag but also a bemused “how’d this happen” moment that no one could have predicted.

Speaking of unpredictable, I was astonished to see the sheer number of characters packed into the film, particularly the ones of whom I’ve never even heard. I’m pretty deep into this stuff, but there are quite a few figures from the X-Universe unfamiliar to anyone who’s not a diehard X-Fan of the 1980s and early ’90s. (For good measure, Deadpool tosses in a joke about the art style of the last generation’s X-comics.) The film cleverly manages not to overpack itself, recognizing which characters to develop and which to throw away on a well-timed gag. And boy, are those gags expertly deployed, introduced in an offhanded way that doesn’t foreshadow their reoccurrence but which do manage to get funnier each time they’re echoed. On top of the jokes that are developed over the course of this movie, there are a staggering number of jokes built on moments from the first film – par for the course for a densely referential character like Deadpool, yes, but a true testament to the way that the filmmakers trust the audience to keep up. One could imagine a lazier version of this film that telegraphs each callback by having Deadpool remark on it, but instead Deadpool 2 plops them in, assuming you’ll remember the gags but recontextualizing them well enough for those who don’t pore over these movies like sacred religious texts. (Which, y’know, I do.)

There’s really only one joke in the film that runs on too long, but it’s near the end (no spoilers) and the joke ends up becoming about how long the joke is going on. It’s a gag that wallops another superhero movie in the best National Lampoon tradition of parody, and it’s one of the only times in recent memory that I can recall being successfully pummeled into submission by a single punchline. I recognized immediately that it was also simultaneously a callback to one of the first jokes in the film, and so I wasn’t terribly surprised to see the film go there, but what did end up surprising me was the fact that the film manages to land a truly heartfelt emotional beat on the heels of a tired-til-it’s-funny gag-o-rama. In a film that’s never afraid to deploy lazy writing and then hang a lantern on it, in a film that never fails to pratfall over a punchline, it was a real thrill to see Deadpool 2 stick the emotional landing in a way that manages to humanize a character who’s all too easy to reduce to a manic pixie one-liner. Deadpool 2 is one of that rare breed of sequels that manages to surprise – and perhaps even outdo its predecessor – by keeping sight of the old yet accessing something new about a character with a striking number of narrative layers.

Deadpool 2 is rated for “strong violence and language throughout, sexual references, and brief drug material.” Directed by David Leitch. Written by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds. Based on the Marvel Comics by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld. Starring Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, T.J. Miller, and Brianna Hildebrand.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Avengers, assemble – Avengers: Infinity War brings together ten years and eighteen movies’ worth of stories to pit Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against the strength of Thanos (Josh Brolin) as he gathers the six Infinity Stones in order to impose his will on the universe. From Wakanda to Scotland, from New York to the moons of Jupiter, the Marvel Universe has never seen a threat quite like this one, and so it will take the gathered forces of the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and more to repel Thanos and his forces to save all of existence.

I don’t know if it’s possible to give a full review of Avengers: Infinity War without spoiling at least something (I’ll certainly try), but I do want to take a moment to applaud the “spoiler culture” of 2018, which has done a fairly remarkable job of not ruining the film. It’s a critic’s burden that a film this big carries with it the necessity of preserving at all costs the sanctity of narrative surprise; then again, I do have a sense that my main audience here will have already seen the film at least twice. Mum is, however, the word here; I can’t, for example, talk about my only major critique of the film because it’s a mammoth spoiler. Reserving a fuller take for later, I’ll say only that I think the absolute ending of the film doesn’t quite accomplish what it sets out to do, both for reasons that are extratextual and because the film doesn’t quite position the last character we see on screen as the film’s protagonist in a way that would make that figure’s journey the center of the film. (It does, however, stick the emotional landing, in an extraordinary way.)

What Avengers: Infinity War manages to accomplish very deftly – and very quickly, I’d say, within the first ten minutes – is establish the stakes of the film with remarkable precision and weight. For a film that assembles eighteen other films and umpteen million cast members, this is a film that feels amazing well-balanced, and it rises to the gravity of the occasion by presenting a story where it truly feels that anything can happen: not just that X favorite character will meet up with unlikely ally Y, but that any important character could die before this is all said and done, that this story will matter more than we might have been led to expect. At one point, Thor says something like, “It feels like it’s going to stick this time.” Despite all the fakeouts, both within this film and within the Marvel Cinematic Universe at large, Infinity War achieves what I call the “Indiana Jones in peril” moment, where – despite knowing that Indiana Jones won’t actually die – we gasp in shock as his car fritters near the edge of a canyon; only in Infinity War, that car might veer off the road and take a hero or two out with it.

As a film that is more a collision of stories than a singular narrative – Iron Man’s addiction to his technology, Captain America as a man out of time, Black Panther opening his kingdom to the world, etc. – the film very nearly buckles under the sheer weight of what it’s called upon to do. And yet the only characters who don’t get a fair shake are the ones who don’t appear at all; everyone else is placed in subplots that use them to their full range, bouncing them against unlikely but pitch-perfect foils. I wasn’t left wanting more of any one character; I was just left wanting more, period. In this way, Infinity War is almost a new ur-blockbuster, mashing together a decade’s worth of blockbusters to create a super-film that was, as early as Sunday morning, already the biggest opening of all time.

Infinity War is such a roaring success because it understands both its core audience and the audience who may not have caught all the preceding films. We don’t necessarily need to have seen Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, for example – though Star-Lord fills us in, just in case – because the film is much more invested in its characters than in their continuity. That’s the reason that each character’s arrival (and in at least one particularly electric case, a re-arrival) is such a crowdpleasing moment; regardless of where we left Captain America in Civil War, we’re just so glad to see him again because the Marvel folks have put the “care” back in “character.” From major players like Rocket Raccoon and Spider-Man to supporting cast like Wong and Okoye, Infinity War remembers why we love these characters and wisely keeps them to their strengths while nudging them out of their comfort zones. To review the performances in the film would require a scorecard – and maybe that’s a feature for another time, once the spoiler-warning reins have loosened – but suffice it to say that no one phones it in, treating each scene like just one more installment in their own films. Part of the electricity of the film, then, is the unforeseen chemistry between characters who might otherwise be poles apart (though, once more, it’d be terribly rotten to give all that away just yet), and on this count the filmmakers have continued to do the largely admirable work of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Aside from the popular appeal this film is likely to have, the ultimate “good time” popcorn flick, it represents the apotheosis of the very idea of the franchise – we now know that the largest film franchise can spawn the largest film of all time (dethroning The Force Awakens, which is really saying something in terms of hype), but what next? Avengers 4 seems poised to remind us one last time why we started down this journey back in 2008 and why we kept coming back for more, but it seems equally likely that it’ll set up the next ten years. If you don’t believe me, turn to the Marvel Zombie in your life after you see the post-credits sequence. The fullness of the universe is a major theme of this film, but the film is equally a reminder of the fullness of the Marvel Universe – and not just the Cinematic one. There’s always more, as the “_________ will return” credit acknowledges, and so too will the audience – return, that is, for the as-yet-untitled Avengers 4, for the two films (Ant-Man and the Wasp this year, and Captain Marvel the next) in the interim, for another viewing of Infinity War, and for whatever your personal favorite Marvel movie has been (for me, it’s still the masterful Winter Soldier). The Infinity Stones have been with us since the dawn of creation, and the success of Infinity War seems to promise that Marvel will be with us until the end of it.

Avengers: Infinity War is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, language and some crude references.” Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Jim Starlin. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillen, Pom Klementieff, Zoe Saldana, with Josh Brolin, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, and Chris Pratt.

Monday at the Movies - March 12, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Today’s installment is one of those “how’d he miss that?” reviews.

Sicario (2015) – If Denis Villeneuve isn’t already one of my favorite working directors, Sicario ought to cement that reputation. I’ve loved Prisoners and Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, so Sicario fills in a gap with a movie that combines the seat-edge tension of Prisoners with, well, Blade Runner 2049’s fascination with dust. Emily Blunt plays an FBI agent whose safehouse raid goes wrong, leading her to take a new role in the war on drugs alongside two Department of Justice operatives (Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro) who redefine playing their cards close to the chest by keeping her in the dark about their ambiguous, ultra-violent mission. From the film’s opening scene, which takes several brutally unexpected turns, Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (he of Hell or High Water) keep the audience guessing as Blunt’s Kate Macer tries to find her own footing in a plot that is never quite transparent about its goals. Indeed, for a film that doles out its cards so slowly, it’s almost alchemical how Villeneuve keeps the audience on his side for the duration of the film; he’s helped ably, one should note, by cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has been the cinematographer for many of the most gorgeous films of the last twenty years (favorites: Skyfall and No Country for Old Men, whose visual influence is acute here). Points also to Benicio del Toro, who gives a riveting, largely silent performance as Alejandro, the man who “If he says to do somethin’, just do it” – and you buy it from del Toro’s quiet intensity. Hours after watching Sicario, I was elated to learn that there’s a sequel, Soldado, due in June of this year. And as a moviegoer, I don’t know if there’s a better feeling than discovering a delight you’d missed along your way, only to be told that there’s more coming just around the corner.

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

The Grand Marvel Rewatch: Guardians of the Galaxy

Face front, true believers! Welcome to the next astonishing addition to “The Grand Marvel Rewatch,” designed to get us all sufficiently amped up for Captain America: Civil War, which comes out May 6, 2016. Each Wednesday, The Cinema King casts his eye back upon the twelve films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and offers five salient observations about the caliber of the films and the way they might play into Marvel’s latest installment in America’s favorite franchise.

Today’s fantastic feature film takes us to 2014 for Guardians of the Galaxy, at once exterior to the MCU and yet somehow vitally integral.

1. Guardians of this galaxy? Director James Gunn has been pretty unambiguous in saying that tying Guardians to the larger MCU is very low on his list of priorities. But at the same time, we know #ItsAllConnected, and this week saw confirmation that at least Star-Lord will appear in Infinity War. It’ll almost certainly be Thanos that brings the Guardians and the Avengers together, but it’s going to feel like a collision of worlds if handled improperly because Guardians has a quirky aesthetic – can you imagine Drax standing side-by-side with Pepper Potts? At any rate, going from space to earth and back to space without losing that in-universe feeling is a tough act to pull off.
2. A few hypotheticals. Watching Guardians with a keener eye on points of connection, I have a weird feeling that the Guardians are going to get along best with Captain America. Cap and Star-Lord are both men out of time, disoriented by the ways earth has changed in their absence. Falcon will probably recommend a bunch of new music for the next Awesome Mix. Black Widow and Gamora can roll their eyes at the antics of the lads before promptly thrashing their enemies. And Rocket Raccoon is certainly going to scheme to get Bucky’s robotic arm. (Drax, meanwhile, will have too much in common with Thor to notice.) And at this point, Cap’s seen way too much to be fazed by a talking tree.
3. Thanos, the family man. The greatest point of contact for Guardians to the MCU proper is, of course, Thanos himself. Josh Brolin imbues him with a wonderful sense of menace – “I will bathe the starways with your blood” – even if he doesn’t do much beyond sitting and standing. What is intriguing, though, is the notion that Thanos has two (adopted) daughters, Gamora and Nebula, neither of whom seems particularly fond of him. With both confirmed for Guardians 2 (though Thanos, apparently, will not to appear), we’ll have time to understand this curious bond a little more before one – or both – take part in Infinity War. One wonders, though, how they fit into Thanos’s endgame of collecting the Infinity Stones.
4. Speaking of Stones... We get a major infodump on the Infinity Stones in an monologue of exposition courtesy of The Collector (last seen midcredits in Thor: The Dark World), who we know is also hoarding the Stones. The Collector informs us that the six Stones possess great power molded by ancient beings, that the Orb in this film holds the Power Stone, and that these things are incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands (e.g. The Collector’s destroyed base – speaking of, does that mean the Aether is loose?). If one Stone could level The Collector’s home and unleash Howard the Duck on the galaxy, how much more might six do?
5. Mysteries aplenty. As much as Guardians feels like a foray away from the MCU, it raises some big questions about the future, even setting aside the whole Infinity Stone business. Now that we know there’s a Nova Corps out there, will one make his way to earth? Is alien abductee Peter Quill a famous ‘missing persons’ case on our planet? And what about the mystery of his father, described as “an angel . . . a being of pure light”? James Gunn has said it’s not J’son of Spartax, as in the comics, and we know Kurt Russell is playing him. But if he’s something the Nova Corps have never seen before, might he be more important to the MCU than just to answer a question of paternity?

There’s so much more to be said about Guardians of the Galaxy, so be sure to check out my original review. Join me in the Grand Marvel Rewatch over the coming weeks, and hit the comments to share your thoughts about the MCU. And don’t forget to tune in next Wednesday for the next installment, in which we take a closer look at 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. Excelsior!

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Hail, Caesar! tickles a lot of my moviegoing fancies: it’s a dark comedy farce courtesy of the Coen Brothers, in which an all-star cast of buffoons blunders their way through old Hollywood while the plot twists and turns like a postmodern poodle chasing its own tail. That may not be everyone’s cup of tea, recalling the plotless meandering of The Big Sleep and its successors, but for me it’s the most fun I’ve had at a movie in a long while (yes, maybe even more fun than Deadpool).

Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) has the unenviable job of being the chief “fixer” for Capitol Pictures; when something goes amuck, it’s Eddie’s task to make sure the motion picture shows go on. The latest catastrophe he’s tasked with suppressing is the abduction of Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), Capitol’s number-one star, though somewhat of a lush and a dim bulb. Of course, the Capitol lot is busy with numerous other crises, including a disgruntled mermaid (Scarlett Johansson), a highstrung director (Ralph Fiennes) and his twanging lead actor (Alden Ehrenreich), twin newspaper columnists (Tilda Swinton and Tilda Swinton), and a chipper musical star (Channing Tatum).

I’m reviewing Hail, Caesar! as someone who has very much partaken of the Coen kool-aid, so if The Big Lebowski was never your cup of tea or if Burn After Reading left you feeling parched, this is really more of the same, and you’d be better off watching something else. I say “more of the same” not as a negative, because I’m personally delighted to see more of the madcap mania the Coens have turned into a personal brand because it’s not something I get anywhere else at the cinema. No one does horseplay like Joel and Ethan Coen.

As for the plotlessness of Hail, Caesar!, the film is akin to an indoor amusement ride in which the audience shuffles from film set to film set to peek in on a day (27 hours, to be precise) in the life of 1950s Hollywood, and each of these individual setpieces is an exercise in the line between straight-face and satire. The Coens are masters at straddling this line, allowing the characters’ idiocy to penetrate to the foreground without the need to resort to caricature or signposting. On the surface, there’s nothing intrinsically funny about Tatum’s song-and-dance routine, but there’s something about the deadset sincerity, coupled with the amazingly insightful small nods to clichés of the era (such as taking the bartender’s dish rag and polishing his bald dome with it), leave the audience rolling with laughter – a continuous giggle punctuated by bursts of glee. Which is not to say there aren’t jokes; the moment when an Eastern Orthodox priest dismisses a chariot stunt as “fakey” is as funny as anything in a comedy special, and the moment when Hobie finds it difficult to drop his accent when saying “Would that it twere so simple” gets funnier the longer the gag goes on.

Then there’s the ever-present Coen delight of seeing a team of A-listers perambulating through the spectacle. Brolin is engaging as the over-hardboiled fixer, gritting his way through exaggerated Catholic guilt, and his interactions with the other cast members carry the film on his tensed shoulders. As ever, it’s a delight to see George Clooney playing the quintessential Coen idiot, who here scratches his head at his own kidnapping while being naively dazzled when his captors introduce him to the writings of Karl Marx. Even Coen mainstay (and spouse) Frances McDormand pops in for a vignette as a film editor whose scarves get caught in the projection reels. Delightfully madcap cameos like this one make Hail, Caesar! a standout.

At the conclusion of Hail, Caesar! everything wraps up fairly quickly and tidily. Whether this is a ending far too pat for the demands of realism, or whether I simply didn’t want the film to end, is up for debate; or is it, as the film suggests, a commentary on the function of films in society, as illusory dreams constrained by their own rules, entirely divorced from reality? It’s the final indication that Hail, Caesar! is something much smarter than it might initially present. The joke is on the characters, not on the audience, and the steadfast refusal of the Coens to pander is a tremendous credit to us and to them. Hail, Caesar! indeed!

Hail, Caesar! is rated PG-13 for “some suggestive content and smoking.” There’s a quick mention of an unwed pregnancy and one unelaborated mention of sodomy.

Heads up, True Believers – we’ll continue to Make Yours Marvel this Wednesday with another installment in “The Grand Marvel Rewatch,” so check back then for 2010’s Iron Man 2. Or subscribe above, and receive those missives right in your inbox. Nuff said!

Inherent Vice (2014)

Since the debut of the Thomas Pynchon book on which the film is based, Inherent Vice has invited the admittedly somewhat clever pun “Incoherent Vice.”  What this appellation suggests, however, is that incoherence itself is incapable of being a virtue, a distinction I don’t think is fair to a film like this.  While I can’t yet vouch for the rewatch value, I found myself more than spellbound for the ride, regardless of its coherence.

Joaquin Phoenix stars as Doc Sportello, a drug-addled private detective out to thwart his ex-girlfriend’s lover’s wife’s lover’s kidnapping plot.  Only it might not be a kidnapping at all?  It might be a real estate scheme, a government brainwashing trip, a narcotics underworld power grab, or maybe – just maybe – all in Doc’s head.

For those who don’t know Pynchon, Inherent Vice feels very much like The Big Lebowski, which is quite a high compliment coming from someone who’s only a mouse-click away from ordaining himself in the Church of Dudeism.  Taking a page from the slacker noir gospel of the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson gives us that same bewildering sense that grand mysterious proceedings are afoot, if only our narrative guide were sober enough to perceive them. Indeed, Doc Sportello spends significant moments in stoned unconsciousness or blunt trauma-induced comas, trudging through the case compelled more by genre than by duty.

Throughout, a stellar ensemble cast drifts in orbit around Doc.  Where Anderson had recently proven himself with small-cast character studies like the riveting The Master and the incomparable There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice demonstrates his dexterity with multiple moving parts.  A-listers like Josh Brolin, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio del Toro are here, as are comparative newcomers like Katherine Waterston as Doc’s ex.  Brolin in particular, in a role somewhat analogous to John Goodman’s in Lebowski, plays the heck out of a blustering cop with aspirations to act amid his own crisis of masculinity – the “motto panukeiku” scene, eliciting laughs as it does, also layers on a deep understanding of the character when Brolin reveals he comes to that particular restaurant “for the respect.”

For those familiar with Pynchon, though, Anderson captures quintessentially the novelist’s depiction of the experience of incomprehensibility, the disorienting sensory overload in postmodern America and the struggle to find meaning therein.  Viewers who report themselves feeling alienated may, I feel, have missed the point.  Inherent Vice is not the sort of film in which you can find yourself in one of the characters; this is a film not to be experienced but to be perceived, to be (dare I say it?) overwhelmed by.

Inherent Vice is delightfully overwhelming, if a bit overlong near the end of the film, but Anderson is a filmmaker who’s proven himself well enough to earn my playing-along for 148 minutes.  It is not the kind of film that will be embraced by everyone, but those of us who enjoy a bit of quirky surrealism starring some top-notch performers are in for something of a treat.

Inherent Vice is rated R for “drug use throughout, sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some violence.”  Nearly every scene involves at least one illegal substance being abused, as well as dialogue littered with obscene dialogue of one variety or the other.  In one extended scene, a woman is seen fully nude while delivering what might be important expository dialogue, while a few other sequences involve fistfights and gunfire.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

Eh.

Oh, you wanted a full review?  Okay, here goes:

When Oliver Twist asked, “Please, sir, I want some more,” he didn’t have to wait nine years for a second pot of food.  As I recall, he didn’t get any at all, so maybe we should be grateful that we even have Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, a pre/sequel to 2005’s Sin City.  “Gratitude” isn’t, however, the word I would use to describe Robert Rodriguez’s second adaptation of Frank Miller’s hardboiled comics; the proper word is somewhere between “bored” and “disappointed.”

As before, four interlocking narratives give us another look at Basin City, where the tough guys are tough and the women are all prostitutes of one kind or another.  Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin) is pulled back into a spiderweb woven by his femme fatale ex Ava Lord (Eva Green), while lucky gambler Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finds himself across the poker table from the evil Senator Roark (Powers Boothe).  However, Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) also has her sights on Roark, while Marv (Mickey Rourke) lumbers around punching things.

Here’s the thing about this film:  you’ve already seen it.  Aside from the numerous films that have taken cues from the first Sin City, particularly vis-à-vis spot color and neo-hardboiled ethos, there is very little in the sequel that wasn’t already in the first film.  To name a few (veiled spoilers follow):  a cop’s suicide, shooting a woman mid-kiss, and Marv breaking into fortified compounds – which actually happens a couple of times in this movie alone.

The points deducted for originality really sting because Sin City was, on its initial arrival, heralded for its innovative approach to adapting comics to the screen.  Nine years later, though, Rodriguez has changed nothing, and the result feels quite stale, almost dated beyond the way that film noir usually harks back to a previous era.  This, for my money, is among the worst sins a film can commit.  For those that own Sin City on DVD, it’ll be cheaper to go back to the original.

If you’re playing the home game and can remember Machete Kills, you’ll recall that Rodriguez is now oh-for-two on sequels, and I’m wondering if the director has lost his edge (or if, a decade later, I’ve perceptibly matured as a moviegoer).  As in Machete Kills, Dame is overfull of very good actors, Gordon-Levitt and Boothe among them.  Post-Deadwood, I’m especially glad to see Powers Boothe get an expanded role here, since his particular brand of scenery-chewing is always a delight.  But where Rodriguez seems to be phoning it in lately, the cast too aren’t at their best.  Alba is trying, you can tell, and so is Brolin; even Green, seemingly inspired casting as the vamping Ava Lord, seems to be overplaying the part – I suspect, though, based on her performance in Dark Shadows that that’s deliberate (Ava Lord is essentially Angelique Bouchard sans clothing), but I might be giving her the benefit of the doubt.  One wonders if all that green-screen filming is getting to them, because the visuals appear to be doing most of the heavy lifting.

For all the disappointment that A Dame to Kill For engenders, it’s never patently bad, which is almost worse.  Making a genuinely bad film is in some respects more of an achievement because it elicits a reaction; an uninspired outing like this one can be reviewed with an unenthusiastic shrug.  I wanted to be swept away by this one like I was with the first, but instead it seems like a relic.  The gender politics are horridly outdated despite the film’s attempt to “empower” its female characters, and the Day-Glo blood sprays are no longer visceral enough.  Instead, the whole film plods out blandly, the cinematic equivalent of Josh Brolin gritting his teeth for two hours.  When he says “Don’t let the monster out,” we’re shouting back, “Please let the monster out and do something creative!”

Instead, the film pulls its punches and plays it safe.  If you enjoyed the first film but wanted more of the same without that feeling of freshness, you’ll have a great time here, but I suspect that this sequel will not be well remembered, if indeed it is remembered at all.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is rated R for “strong brutal stylized violence throughout, sexual content, nudity, and brief drug use.”  Stylized is the key word with the violence, because a lot of the time it looks like someone pouring out white paint; a few severed limbs and heads are seen, and usually the blood there is more red.  The middle segment of the film features all of the nudity, a man’s bottom and a frequently topless woman with her lower regions obscured in shadow; other scenes show strippers and prostitutes who keep their skimpy clothes on.  Surprisingly, the language is pretty tidy, with only one F-bomb in the batch.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

By now, we’re all familiar with the Marvel formula and its somewhat unique brand of adapting comic book properties into blockbuster fun.  Guardians of the Galaxy reads almost like a challenge to themselves – can the Marvel method work on characters the mainstream audience has almost certainly never heard of?  It worked at the beginning with Iron Man, and as we approach the second Avengers film, Guardians proves that Marvel is unstoppable, taking everything that worked about their earth-bound adventures and applying that to space.

Intergalactic outlaw Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) wants to live up to his self-applied moniker of Star-Lord, but what he gets instead is a bounty on his head, pursued by Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and Groot (Vin Diesel), a machine-gun-toting raccoon and his talking tree partner.  After the trio is arrested, they align themselves with fellow inmates Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Drax (Dave Bautista) to escape prison before preventing a mad warlord (Lee Pace, as Ronan the Accuser) from destroying the galaxy.

Has anyone called Harrison Ford to congratulate him on the buckets of money that Guardians has made thus far?  I ask this because Guardians feels like the love child of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, very heavily inflected by the cavalier confidence of Ford’s characterization of Han Solo and Indiana Jones.  It’s especially evident during the opening credits sequence, in which Peter Quill steals a precious artifact from a temple, only to incur the wrath of its protectors.  (The film’s conclusion, with one scene set in the Nova Corps vault, seems to echo Raiders as well.)  Indeed, from the start, there is question of who Peter’s father is, and I wonder – now that Disney owns Lucasfilm as well – if Han Solo might be up for paternity.

That aside, on its own merits, Guardians is enthusiastically engaging, taking the “band of misfits” conceit and injecting it into the space opera genre in a way that seems effortless.  Comics devotees will be amazed at the breadth of concepts introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe – the Celestials, the Nova Corps, the Kree – and for those who don’t know what those words mean, fear not, because Guardians delivers them with a deft expositional hand.  In short, Guardians works better than one might suspect because it immerses you in the fantastical world(s), explains quickly and capably what you need to know, and leaves you to wonder in slack-jawed awe at the rest. 

What Guardians does best, though, is characterization, especially through humor.  The movie is uproariously funny, even in places you might not expect.  All of it serves to give us characters that are astonishingly well-crafted, a double blessing for those of us who know next to nothing about them.  But where most of the characters’ personalities emerge through humor, as when we discover that Drax is incapable of understanding metaphor, director and co-writer James Gunn is careful to balance these gags with genuine moments where we sympathize with the characters.  Take for example the moment when a drunken Rocket Raccoon declares how he really feels about being the only one of his kind; it’s a surprisingly moving moment in the middle of a film where you wouldn’t expect it.  As fun as Thor: The Dark World was, I don’t remember feeling touched by it.

As much as the film links up to the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe, with its talk of Thanos (played well in a cameo by Josh Brolin, who is perfect in the part) and the Infinity Stones, I’m glad to hear that there’s already a sequel in the works, helmed once more by Gunn.  I’m glad, because here is a film that does many unexpected and wonderful things, a film which establishes its own identity without relying on anything more than the “Marvel” brand name.  The rumored appearance by Robert Downey Jr. does not occur, nor should it, because Guardians deserves to be its own thing before it lines up with The Avengers (as it inevitably will).  As fun as it would be to see Iron Man walk on screen, it might take the audience out of the mesmeric spectacle Gunn & Co. have crafted.  Come for the CGI walking talking foliage; stay for the heart and wit of a fresh direction and voice in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Guardians of the Galaxy is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.”  Honestly, the action in it is roughly equivalent to most of the Star Wars films, with laser guns and explosions more than visceral gore; some bodies are pierced or thrown around, but even in one shot where a body is seriously maimed, it’s more limbs akimbo than bloody geysers.  There are a few defecatory profanities, one middle finger, and the occasional insult; overall, the grit is tempered by the wit.

We’re at ten Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, which sounds suspiciously like something ripe for organizing in ascending order of approval... could something like that be in your future?  Check back with us at the “Top” of next week to find out, and don’t forget that Thursday is the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month!

Gangster Squad (2013)

Gangster Squad, a movie about assembling a team for a top-secret mission, is a film whose story resembles its own structure, in that the film is as much an assembly of component parts from other prominent films in the genre.  Whether this collage method hurts the film is up for debate (though I contend that the comparisons do violence to the film), but the final product before us is a stylish and reliably enjoyable experience.

Los Angeles, 1949, is the playground of mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), who lives beyond the reach of the corrupt law force until Chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) establishes an extralegal “gangster squad” to take down Cohen without the sanction of their badges.  Among others, “Sarge” John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) recruits smooth-talking Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) to join the squad, unaware that Wooters has been romancing Cohen’s girl Grace (Emma Stone).

When I initially described the movie as a cross between the plot of The Untouchables and the look of L.A. Confidential, I tried to do so without derision, recognizing almost immediately that Gangster Squad is not of the same A-list caliber as those two instant classics.  In fact, my chief complaint about Gangster Squad – that it doesn’t do anything particularly new with the genre – stems from my familiarity with the other two films to the point of absorption; knowing The Untouchables as well as I do made the similarities apparent to the point of prediction and distraction.

What Gangster Squad does not do, then, is break new ground.  But does it have to?  On one level, probably, because who wants to see remake after remake, but on the other hand my proclivity for writing favorable reviews stems from my chief intention when going to the movies:  I want to have a good time.  And Gangster Squad allowed me to do just that.  I admit the film isn’t perfect – the Manichean worldview with accompanying narration is a bit heavyhanded, and we never really find out Grace’s angle – but what works in the film is the atmosphere of old Hollywood mixed with the contemporary aesthetic and sense of humor.

Brolin and Gosling turn in reliably engaging performances, and the other members of the squad – though likely not authentic – possess a modern sensibility and delightful self-awareness, particularly Robert Patrick’s Wild West throwback.  The biggest surprise is not Stone finally playing a postwar vamp (a type, incidentally, into which she fits quite well) but rather Penn’s performance as Cohen.  Obscured behind Dick Tracy makeup, Penn never plays too cool for the room nor hides behind his Oscar cred (or otherwise irksome off-screen persona); instead, he gets right into the spirit of the movie and embraces the hammy characterization required of his villainous role.  While Gosling is clearly a rising star (if he’s not there already), it’s hard not to say that Penn steals the show even more than De Niro did in The Untouchables.

Gangster Squad exists somewhere in the gray zone between modern mobster movie (i.e., The Departed) and retro gangster chic (i.e., Boardwalk Empire).  But the blending of the two modes works for the film because of how unapologetically stylized it is; nothing seems accidental, and the film seems aware of its own indulgences, particularly the video game-esque shootout sequences.  I’m usually opposed to movies that play the “video game card,” but Gangster Squad knows itself well enough to ramp up the visuals in order to compensate for that potential distance from the audience.

It isn’t an instant classic, to be sure, but I suspect that the people who will be drawn to Gangster Squad are exactly the kinds of people for whom the film was made – those who will find themselves entertained by the time the credits roll.  Count me among them.

Gangster Squad is rated R “for strong violence and language.”  The film is surprisingly bloody, almost Tarantino-lite, and the language is standard “R” fare, with a few implied sexual encounters for good measure.

On Thursday, our road to the Oscars continues with Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty.  Stay tuned!

Men in Black III (2012)

I’m going to jump right in and say that Men in Black III is much better than it ought to be, although it’s still a long way from being the best MIB flick in the trilogy (I’d have to go back and reassess the first two, though I’m reasonably certain the first is still king).

In this third MIB film, the “aliens among us” premise is mostly jettisoned in favor of a more character-driven exploration of the relationship between Agent J (Will Smith) and his gruff senior partner Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones).  After the nefarious Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) escapes from a lunar prison and time-travels to murder K, J – the only one who remembers his partner – timejumps back to 1969 and pairs with a young K (a pitch-perfect Josh Brolin) to prevent Boris’s plan from succeeding.

When the threequel was announced, I remember rolling my eyes with some skepticism at the apparent lack of originality running through Hollywood that they would dust off a property more than a decade older.  But thanks to my recent addiction to Doctor Who and Grant Morrison comics, the time travel conceit sounded promising.  And after being oh so wrong about a certain casting choice in a certain blockbuster Batman film, I’ve adopted a “cautiously optimistic” stance toward most Hollywood ventures.

“Cautious optimism” pays off here, because Men in Black III is entertaining and a good bit of light-hearted fun.  Forgive the comparison, but it’s no Avengers in terms of summer blockbuster greats, but it’s better than most threequels (see this week’s “Monday at the Movies” feature for more) and takes the franchise in an intriguing new direction.

Although Will Smith’s performance seems a little dated, Josh Brolin ably steps in for Tommy Lee Jones and does a more than convincing job of playing the younger version (with a few “city miles” to account for the apparent lack of sufficient age discrepancy).  Rather than a straight impersonation, Brolin is charged with creating a peppier Agent K, to boot, and it’s something he does successfully, creating a character that is at once familiar and unexpected.  If for no other reason, then, the film is worth seeing for Brolin’s performance.

Also in the “good performances” catalog – Jemaine Clement, late of Flight of the Conchords, as antagonist Boris the Animal.  After musical partner Bret McKenzie won an Oscar for his work on The Muppets, Clement also takes the comedy route but dials up the menace significantly.  Gratefully, Clement doesn’t turn Boris into a caricature of a villain but embraces the character’s nature and revels in it.  Boris isn’t a villain we laugh at but rather can genuinely fear.

While the performances make the film worth the price of admission, I can’t help wishing the script was a little stronger.  The script was apparently cobbled together from several drafts and left a bit unfinished; consequently, there are a few narrative plot threads that never quite come to fruition.  Maybe I’m just reading too deeply into the movie, or maybe I’m falling for the alternate timelines which at least one character posits are in existence..  (And here it’ll be impossible to discuss the film without at least spoiling what doesn’t happen.)

The beginning of the film seems to intimate that K is dying; he’s more depressed than usual, even before he learns that Boris has escaped and is gunning for him.  He’s clearly keeping a secret from J, although the alleged payoff doesn’t quite measure up to the teases we get (nor do we know why now of all times the secret is bothering him).  Narrative problems surround K; we’re promised that we’ll learn why the happy-go-lucky K of the 60s transformed into the crotchety oldster we know and love, yet the continual hints of “It hasn’t happened yet” remain ephemeral evaporations at the end.  It ultimately has nothing to do with Cape Canaveral, nor with his relationship with Agent O (another thread that never pays off) – at worst, the writers are teasing it for Men in Black IV, a sign of poor writing.

Worse, up until the last minute, it seems that the writers are going to kill J.  Repeatedly he’s asked how far he’ll go to save K; we’re told that he’s “been there” before; the rules of time travel apparently stipulate that a death must be replaced by another death; and it’d make perfect sense for K to be bitter that his partner’s death saved his own life.  Ultimately, though, the writers seem unwilling to pull the trigger (no pun intended) on J.  The inclination to sustain the franchise is understandable, but copping out on the ending results in a film which signifies nothing.

But in the words of Captain Jack Sparrow, “It’s not the destination so much as the journey.”  Men in Black III is a fun ride and a satisfactory summer popcorn flick, so long as there’s a bit of disbelief suspended.

Men in Black III is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi action violence, and brief suggestive content.”  Aliens menace our heroes and each other; one shoots spikes out of his hand and impales several characters, while most others are vaporized in colorful bursts of energy.  Boris has a weird henchwoman who’s wearing a slightly revealing outfit when she makes out with his elongated tongue, and police guards comment briefly on her attire.