Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)

It’s a bit weird to reflect on the idea that, three years ago, there had been speculation that Guardians of the Galaxy, starring a talking raccoon and a walking tree, might be Marvel’s first box office bomb. In 2017, though, we are Groot; put another way, it’s Star-Lord’s galaxy, and we all just go to the movies in it. As for Vol. 2, it’s a real delight, often more of the same but in a way that feels like qualitatively more.

Having saved the galaxy once before, the Guardians have inflated their prices and their egos to match. In disparate plotlines that coalesce in surprising ways, Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) meets the omnipotent Ego (Kurt Russell), his long-lost father; Gamora (Zoe Saldana) takes up anew her feud with wicked sister Nebula (Karen Gillan); and Rocket and Baby Groot (voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, respectively) find themselves caught up in a war between Yondu (Michael Rooker) and his mutinous band of Ravagers. And then there’s Drax (Dave Bautista), the metaphor-less marauder, who’s happy just to slice and dice as needed.

I’ve got a soft critique of the film, though it’s more a bit of a backhanded compliment, and it’s that the film is wearingly funny. And I don’t mean that Vol. 2 ever becomes unfunny, but around the second act I had this surprising and acute desire for the jokes to take a breather and get back to the character work that made the first film such a rousing success. Indeed, a more cynical moviegoer might lament that the film is undercut by the overabundance of jokes, gags, and giggles, and I certainly feel the balance tipped in favor of humor this go-around.

That is not to say, however, that there isn’t really compelling character work being done, although surprisingly it’s the supporting characters that really get developed over the core five. Ego has a pretty engaging story arc, and writer/director James Gunn was right to make the film less about the mystery of Star-Lord’s paternity and more about what he does with that knowledge. If you’d told me that Yondu was going to be the most interesting member of the cast this go-around, I’d have thought it had something to do with the size of his red fin, but Gunn and Rooker did the pleasantly unexpected and gave Yondu a plot arc that goes over the course of the film and also clarifies a few bits about his role as Star-Lord’s erstwhile stepfather.

It’s the main cast that doesn’t quite make the leap from A to B as they did in the first, discovering their capacity for working together and finding a kind of family. Star-Lord grows, sure, but how could he not, where Gamora’s arc mainly consists in convincing other characters of things; Rocket and Groot are the same lovable violent pair, a kind of Rocketcrantz and Grootenstern for the cosmos. It is – and this should come as no surprise – Groot who steals the film wholesale, from his opening performance of ELO’s “Mister Blue Sky” to the perpetual challenges he faces in expressing himself. These characters are, however, fun enough that it’s still a treat to spend two hours with this particular “bunch of a-holes.”

Gunn continues not to play ball with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, eschewing the usual batch of cameo appearances (though Stan Lee appears, naturally, in what might be a kind of game-changer). There’s nary an Infinity Stone in sight, yet as we dash apace toward Infinity War, there’s something refreshing about that; as much as I love the shared universe, there would have been something inorganic about seeing Iron Man or even Thor wander in. Lest we forget, though, Gunn maintains and exacerbates the central rule of Marvel Studios with not one but five post-credits sequences, which suggest that the shared universe will bend toward the cosmic, if only because there’s more nodded toward than can possibly be encompassed in a Vol. 3. And while I can’t say I’ve ever been a big fan of “Cosmic Marvel” – The Silver Surfer is about as far as I go, and Marvel Studios doesn’t own him (yet) – if Gunn is guiding the Guardians, I’m on board.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi action and violence, language, and brief suggestive content.” Written and directed by James Gunn. Based on the Marvel Comics by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. Starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff, and Kurt Russell.

Deepwater Horizon (2016)

Hands up if you’ve seen a film where Mark Wahlberg plays a middle-class Average Joe who becomes an American hero after being thrust into extraordinary life-threatening circumstances. Hands up if it was based on a true story? Hands up if it was directed by Peter Berg? While statistically we’re only talking about one other movie – Lone Survivor – it sure feels like we’ve seen this one before.

Wahlberg stars as Mike Williams, an engineer aboard the doomed (and retrospectively ominously dubbed) oil rig Deepwater Horizon. Against the advice of supervisor “Mister Jimmy” (Kurt Russell), BP execs (led by a seedy John Malkovich) press on with the drilling operation, sparking catastrophe when the rig ignites.

Deepwater Horizon is competently told, frightening when it needs to be and rousingly admiring of its real-life heroes in the obligatory epilogue in which we see photos of the real-life casualties. That’s the thing about Deepwater Horizon, though; it’s entirely inoffensive because it plays very much by the numbers of how you’d expect this film to bear out. Deepwater Horizon never truly transcends the genre it inhabits.

As a piece of narrative fiction, Deepwater Horizon isn’t particularly thick. Its characters are largely indistinguishable, set apart largely by the fact that they’re played by different recognizable performers who lean heavily on their reputations or, in the case of Malkovich, an accent bordering on the ludicrous. These are largely seasoned veterans, quite comfortable in their cinematic personas. Wahlberg is in top “say hi to your mother for me” mode and looks suitably beleaguered by the harrowing disaster he endures. And Russell is finely stalwart as Mister Jimmy, commanding the respect of his employees in a way that never beggars credulity. But it’s not as though there are any surprises in this one as far as acting goes. Ditto for the story, which ends up being a vehicle for big explosions and opportunities for individual heroism (usually shot against a billowing American flag, which is astonishingly flame-retardant).

When it comes to the spectacle, though, Deepwater Horizon is sufficiently compelling and doesn’t disappoint. Indeed, it calls to mind an oceanic Alien, claustrophobic with no shortage of renegade scenery ready to pop out without a moment’s notice. As with character, the film is unfulfillingly thin on plot, but its special-effects sequences are engaging and amply terrifying, though I’m not sure they have the staying power that make the film strongly memorable.

Trailers before Deepwater Horizon reveal that Berg and Wahlberg are reuniting for Patriots Day, a film about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Whether this is the final installment of a thematic trilogy or the shape of things to come, there isn’t much to suggest that another film won’t be anything but more of the same. This “same” is fine enough, but it’s doubtful that the third time’s going to flip the script. If you’ve enjoyed it before, you’ll like it again, but unlike the depths which its protagonists plumb Deepwater Horizon proves to be a little shallower than filmgoers might appreciate.

Deepwater Horizon is rated PG-13 for “prolonged intense disaster sequences and related disturbing images, and brief strong language.” Directed by Peter Berg. Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand. Based on a true story. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Kurt Russell, and John Malkovich.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

On the occasion of thirty years (and nine days) after its theatrical debut, Big Trouble in Little China marks the first installment in The Cinema King’s “How’d He Miss That?!” series. By virtue of this series existing from a position of “catching up,” it’s assumed that the critical consensus is already pretty positive on these flicks. (Here’s hoping I’ll still have interesting things to say.) And in the case of Big Trouble, I don’t have a surprise for you – I really enjoyed this one.

Kurt Russell stars as Jack Burton, ostensibly the hero of a battle between ancient factions of Chinatown, roped into action by his gambling buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dunn) to save Wang’s fiancée from the primeval villain David Lo Pan (James Hong). With the help of lawyer Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) and sorcerer cum bus driver Egg Shen (Victor Wong), Jack Burton bumbles his way through adventure, but don’t worry, baby – it’s all in the reflexes.

First of all, I have so many thoughts about Jack Burton, who had the effect on me of presenting himself as the surprise father of about five of my best friends and brother or cousin to at least a dozen more. Before this past weekend, Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was my go-to reference when it comes to blundering action comedy, but Jack Burton is truly God’s perfect idiot (Ryan Reynolds, eat your heart out), the first name in action buffoonery. The script does a very clever thing at the beginning when it tells us that Jack Burton is a hero, only for the film proper to reveal that he’s a self-confident figure of swagger and bluster with an empty head and more expository questions than Ellen Page in Inception. It’s inspired casting, then, that Kurt Russell is next to appear as Star-Lord’s father in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, as one could draw a straight line through Jack Burton to Peter Quill.

Jack Burton is a delightful inversion of the “white savior” narrative into which Big Trouble could have easily tripped and fallen, but it’s Jack Burton who does the stumbling, to the delight of this viewer. It reminds me a little of a self-aware Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, turning its gaze inward rather than toward genre films of old. Indy is very much of its time (that is to say, a time gone by), unapologetically throwing back, but Big Trouble is re-visionist in a different way, imagining what Temple of Doom would be like if Indy were wholly out of his element, with neither his whip nor his wits about him – just a plucky can-do attitude and a belief in a cause, even if it’s a world he doesn’t fully understand.

I’m not a big kung-fu/karate movie aficionado – Kill Bill is about the closest I get – but kudos to Big Trouble for tricking me into watching a martial arts movie and then enjoying it. Of director John Carpenter’s work, I’d really only seen Halloween before, but Big Trouble demonstrates he’s as deft with action and comedy as he was with suspense and horror. (I still remember fondly the moment Halloween unironically elicited the cliché, “Oh, no, he’s right behind you!” from me.) After seeing firsthand how versatile Carpenter is, you’ll be seeing more of him around these “How’d He Miss That?!” parts.

At a smidgen more than 90 minutes, Big Trouble is brisk and breezy, with levity that never forgets to let the audience in on the joke. It’s a film that steadfastly refuses to take itself too seriously, and it left me wanting so much more even though the script smartly admits that there’s really nothing more for Jack Burton to do here. I’m exceedingly curious about the recent comic book sequel, to which Carpenter has been contributing, because Big Trouble is the kind of film that introduces you to a bunch of fascinating people you’d like to continue seeing. For one, what’s ahead for Jack Burton and Gracie Law, a Howard Hawks couple by way of the Coen Brothers? And is the kind of movie magic that, like lightning, never strikes the same place twice?

Big Trouble in Little China is big fun, smartly directed and cleverly scripted. I can’t quite say how I missed it, but I’m glad to have caught up with it when I was ready for it.

Big Trouble in Little China is rated PG-13. It’s pretty tame by modern standards, mostly kung-fu action with comedic effluvia, punctuated by a few moments of women wearing wet, semi-translucent clothing.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

The name of the game in Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, The Hateful Eight, is not race relations in America, nor is it the thoughtful interrogation of justice it thinks it is. It’s not a postwar state of the union, a snowbound Twelve Angry Men, or even a claustrophobic Django Unchained. No, the name of the game is exorbitance, an immoderate superfluity indulging in the most colorful – and overfull – version of the story. When the characters on screen play raconteur, it’s charming and engaging, but Tarantino’s intemperance in the same suggests a contempt for his audience which is, frankly, wearisome.

En route to deliver his prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the hangman’s noose, John Ruth (Kurt Russell) finds his carriage occupied by fellow bounty hunter Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and the sheriff (Walton Goggins) of Red Rock, the foursome’s destination. A blizzard, however, detours the carriage to Minnie’s Haberdashery, an insular cabin already populated by four quirky characters – a hangman (Tim Roth), a Confederate general (Bruce Dern), a writer (Michael Madsen), and caretaker Señor Bob (Demián Bichir). As the snow falls, tensions rise when the occupants of Minnie’s find that not all of them are telling the full truth.

That’s a really keen premise. Armond White took the words right out of my mouth when he called The Hateful Eight a cross between Agatha Christie and John Ford (those are, however, the only words we have in common). It’s akin to an adaptation of And Then There Were None as filmed on the set of Bonanza with the profanity filter set to Deadwood. And in the hands of a screenwriter who could restrain himself in the way that he restricts the setting, The Hateful Eight could have been a masterclass in a lot of ways that would make Sidney Lumet smile with admiration.

Tarantino is not, however, that filmmaker. It’s very nearly accurate to refer to The Hateful Eight as his most narcissistic film, as in love with the sound of his own dialogue as he clearly is, but he’s equally enamored of the Wyoming landscape which must look a treat in 70mm (which I didn’t see) but otherwise come off as sideshow decoration, and there are only so many lingering shots of landscape one can bear before the weight of three hours feels a punishing burden. The fact is that The Hateful Eight might have been a much stronger film had it been pruned much more tightly. Of its six chapters, for example, one (the fifth) is entirely negligible, consisting as it does of yet another mindless slaughter whose particulars any thinking audience would rightly have inferred. Rendered in its full Technicolor glory (and gory), however, it’s one more note of excess in a film that is grossly (and I use the term advisedly) bloated.

That’s not to say there isn’t anything to be enjoyed in The Hateful Eight. Jackson is, as ever, charismatic and a joy to watch; there’s a surprising chemistry between Jackson and Russell, poignant at both ends of the spectrum from their lukewarm greeting to the simmering disappointment between them. And there’s a knockout sequence at the beginning of Chapter Four where the tension is at fever pitch, recalling the tensest moments of Inglourious Basterds when the narrator – in a gimmick I usually loathe but here can’t imagine a better deployment – reveals that all is not as it seems because someone knows something the others in the room don’t. As Minnie’s descends into amateur sleuthing and chaotic distrust, we get glimpses of the dynamite that The Hateful Eight could have been.

Instead, we get a film that sags under its own weight. There are good performances in it, memorable moments, but what ought to be the standout feature – Tarantino’s dialogue – is utterly and disappointingly unmemorable. (I defy you to quote a line from it, the way you could after Django or Pulp Fiction.) Tarantino has said that he’s only going to direct two more films, and if that’s the case he may need a new editor (apologies to Fred Raskin, who did a good job on Django but didn’t nay-say enough here). Something’s gotta give, and at three hours with The Hateful Eight, this time it was me.

Is it some kind of perverse pattern that I’m destined not to enjoy fully the first film I review each year?

The Hateful Eight is rated R for “strong bloody violence, a scene of violent sexual content, language and some graphic nudity.” It’s a Tarantino movie, so you’ve got your usual (read: exorbitant) quantity of N-words, F-bombs, and strawberry-colored effluvium. A man is seen fully nude while another man narrates about sexually assaulting him, with colorful prose.

Monday at the Movies - March 30, 2015

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.”  Two of The Cinema King’s favorites in one super bundle – Disney and costumed crusaders.

Sky High (2005) – I don’t know how this movie slipped under my radar for an entire decade, given that it’s in some aspects Disney’s live-action follow-up to The Incredibles.  But where the 2004 Pixar film was an instant classic, subverting genre tropes while simultaneously reveling in them, Sky High carries itself a little too cutely, with only the self-referential winks keeping this one from being just another angsty coming-of-age flick.  Michael Angarano plays Will Stronghold, the powerless son of The Commander and Jetstream (Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston, respectively) who’s deposited in sidekick school until his abilities manifest.  As I said, there’s none of the intelligence of The Incredibles here, other than the high-concept of a superhero high school (which, honestly, we’ve seen before).  Instead, there’s an uncomfortable dissonance between the vibrant colors of the costumes and the frankly cheap special effects that look much less than their $35 million budget; the cast are giving it their all, especially Russell’s gung-ho performance as the exuberantly enthusiastic father of a super-to-be, but I’m inclined to say that Sky High ultimately falls flat.  That said, however, there is nothing in Sky High that is patently bad, for it never offends with ineptitude.  It is, rather, less successful than it wants to be, less intelligent than it needs to be, but there is the somewhat irresistible charm of a movie which is unapologetic about its own “dumb fun” ethos, a movie which is by and large predictable but has no pretensions about its own intelligence.  There is little that separates Sky High from a direct-to-television film, but there is a sizable gap between this and a movie that worsens its audience for having seen it.

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

Monday at the Movies - December 3, 2012

Welcome to Week Forty-Three of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, in anticipation of Django Unchained we’re finishing up the last two Quentin Tarantino movies that haven’t been reviewed on the site; as we did with our Christopher Nolan retrospective, links are provided to the reviews of the other films, in order of release.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Jackie Brown (1997) – I’ve long considered this my least favorite Quentin Tarantino movie, in part because it’s the least flashy in his oeuvre.  But as I get older I’m looking at the film differently, and I think it’s actually one of his better films because of its aesthetic restraint.  Adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel (the only entry in Tarantino’s filmography not based on an original screenplay), Jackie Brown stars Pam Grier as the eponymous stewardess who schemes with bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) and the ATF to take down kingpin Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson).  The three leads are all in fine form – Grier is believable as the kick-ass protagonist, Forster plays romantic but subdued, and Jackson is pitch-perfect as the villain – but the highlight here is how well Tarantino makes his homage to the blaxploitation genre without being consumed by it.  Tarantino has had a difficult relationship with homage, with some “loving references” feeling a lot like plagiarism (the burial of The Bride in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, for example), but here he seems tapped into the feeling of a blaxploitation movie (and even, with Grier and Sid Haig, some of the familiar faces) without sacrificing watchability for self-indulgence.  The film is smart and spirited, witty without being too wild.  The smaller parts from the ensemble cast – which includes Robert DeNiro, Bridget Fonda, and Michael Keaton – make this movie feel quite full, but it’s a fullness that gives the film depth and relevance.  Rather than exist just as an homage, Jackie Brown is one of Tarantino’s more accomplished films, perhaps out of place in an otherwise exhaustively exuberant catalogue, but at the same time perhaps the most mature (in sensibility, not in rating) of his films.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003)

Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004)

Death Proof (2007) – Tarantino recently noted that he wants Death Proof to be regarded as his worst film, which prompted me to revisit it.  Originally part of the double-feature experiment Grindhouse with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, Death Proof stars Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike, a serial murderer who victimizes two groups of women with his invincible stunt car.  The first group (including Sydney Poitier and Vanessa Ferlito) succumbs to Mike’s car and the objectifying male gaze of the camera; this is Tarantino at his most exploitive, and it seems that the lusty way he films these women is less an homage to the genre of female revenge film and more a personal fetish given celluloid life.  Though Russell is better and more badass in this first half, the problematic treatment of women borders on deplorable.  The second half attempts to redeem these sins, with another group of women (including Rosario Dawson, stuntwoman Zoë Bell as herself, and Tracie Thoms, who’s like a cross between Wanda Sykes and Samuel L. Jackson) taking on the task of revenge.  This group is more fun, in part because we spend more time with them and know them better, but that attention leaves Russell by the wayside, giving the film a very uneven feeling.  Tarantino’s dialogue is punchy, but everyone talks like everyone else.  The result is a film that on the surface is peppy and poppy in the “grindhouse” tradition, but if you look deeper the film is fraught with problems – of representation, of balance, of identity.  I enjoyed the film enthusiastically as a high schooler, but age has somewhat cooled me on this movie; if it ends up being the worst Tarantino film, I can live with that.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Be sure to check back later this month for a full review of Django Unchained, but for now that does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  Between finals week and The Dark Knight Rises on DVD tomorrow, I’m gonna be pretty busy, but next Monday we’ll have a look at a few movies that wrestle with sanity (opportune timing for those of us going crazy for finals).