Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

There’s a point in Thor: Love and Thunder when Russell Crowe’s Zeus bemoans his circumstances, lamenting, “When did we become jokes?” I’m fairly certain that director and co-writer Taika Waititi didn’t intend for this line to be prescient – Zeus is meant to be both antagonist and figure of ridicule, to say nothing of Crowe’s outlandish attempt at a “Greek” accent – but it ends up being my chief complaint about Love and Thunder and about the current trend of insincere superhero movies writ large. Love and Thunder is all too disingenuous, at once lampooning the superhero genre while simultaneously begging us to accept its more outlandish trappings.

After defeating Thanos, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been traveling with the Guardians of the Galaxy (gang’s all here), blundering his way through heroic deeds until he learns that Gorr the God-Butcher (Christian Bale) has been slaughtering deities with his fearsome Necrosword. Thor sets off to defeat Gorr with Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) by his side and, most improbably, his old love Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who now wields the hammer Mjolnir as The Mighty Thor.

 

I rewatched Thor: Ragnarok the night before seeing Love and Thunder, even though the latter isn’t a direct sequel, and my estimation of Ragnarok had dropped in the intervening five years. Overly arch and ironic, Ragnarok is still entertaining enough, but it could do with about 25% less whimsy to be really successful. I’m not saying that superhero movies shouldn’t be fun, but the fun shouldn’t be at the expense of the characters, deflating tension or emotional weight with a self-referential one-liner. But Ragnarok made more than $850 million, and so the shackles are off; Waititi does his thing all over Love and Thunder, and now it’s about 65% too silly to be any good.

 

Color me old-fashioned, but I still prefer the straight-faced Shakespearean Thor (blond eyebrows notwithstanding). I’ve never been a big fan of the “himbo Thor” bequeathed to us by Waititi, and I still don’t buy that the character has changed personality so much just because he hangs out with wiseacres like Tony Stark. Indeed, if the upcoming Disney+ series Secret Invasion is to reveal that some familiar faces have been replaced by shape-shifting Skrulls, I vote we consign this Thor to history and get back to something a little more earnest. At least Chris Hemsworth seems to be having fun, even though he’s the butt of most of the jokes (and at one point, quite literally so). Though Thor is now, by default, the ersatz elder statesman of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he’s treated like an abject buffoon, whose every scene might as well be subtitled, “Aren’t I an idiot?”

 

And yet Love and Thunder asks us to invest in the emotional depths of this demigod-child, presenting his long romantic history with Jane in the style of a montage that points a derisive finger at how silly it is to have feelings. “Muscle boy sad!” the film cries with all the grace of a schoolyard bully, yet then it tries to pivot into an unearned third act in which we’re suddenly asked to embrace the tragic pathos of Thor’s broken emotional core. Waititi wants to spoof his cake and eat it too, something that barely worked in Ragnarok before punting that subplot to the Russo Brothers in Avengers: Infinity War. If Thor has an arc in this film, I defy anyone to tell me what it is, because there’s a particular choice he makes at the end of the film that seems to come out of nowhere, teeing up a very bizarre status quo for the Asgardian corner of the MCU.

 

It might seem blasphemous to say, but there’s probably a much better version of this film that includes Hemsworth’s Thor not at all. Christian Bale is earning well-deserved accolades as one of the MCU’s better villains, with a solid backstory and bang-up visual design; one wishes, however, that his Gorr were a bit more ‘show’ and less ‘tell,’ since he doesn’t butcher all that many gods over the course of the film. Meanwhile, Natalie Portman is back after a brief hiatus, and her turn as Jane finally gets her in on the super-action. Her iteration of Thor positively sings, and the sequences reintroducing her are suitably effective, giving us the sense that Waititi can make a proper superhero film if he restrained himself. In fact, it’s a short putt to imagine a better Love and Thunder that only includes these two: Gorr the God-Butcher hunting the newly-minted Mighty Thor while Jane Foster reckons with what it means to be a god. (Keep the original Thor with the Guardians of the Galaxy, and let James Gunn deal with him.)

 

But instead of forging new territory in the heretofore directionless Phase Four of the MCU, Waititi is busy replaying his own greatest hits, dialing the idiocy up to eleven. There’s a reprise of the “Norse pageant” from Ragnarok, even though the joke doesn’t ring the same without a Loki to direct the reenactment; Korg turns up again and again, now lacking the novelty of a rock man with Waititi’s dulcet tones; and poor Tessa Thompson, such a bright light in Ragnarok, is relegated to a thankless turn as Asgard’s king until the movie nigh forgets about her. (Sign her up for a Disney+ series, please!) 

 

I wouldn’t go quite as far as Mark Kermode, who said of the fourth Thor film that it was “genuinely, properly terrible,” but let’s be honest: Marvel’s Phase Four hasn’t exactly shined with the brightness of its predecessors, and Love and Thunder continues a strain of adequate-to-mediocre outings that suggest Marvel may have lost the plot in trying to serve fans and fan-favorites alike. Perhaps a better title would have been Thor: Sound and Fury, because it’s told by (and stars) a band of idiots, ultimately signifying nothing beyond a director’s postmodern self-indulgence. Forgive me, but I think superhero stories ought to be a little bit more than a vanity project that overstays its welcome.

 

Thor: Love and Thunder is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, language, some suggestive material, and partial nudity.” Directed by Taika Waititi. Written by Taika Waititi and Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. Based on the Marvel Comics. Starring Chris Hemsworth, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe, and Natalie Portman.

The Grand Marvel Rewatch: Thor

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 2011 for Thor, taking the MCU to the realm of gods, far away from our earth.

1. Magic = Science? The MCU is three for three with protagonists who are also scientists, and while Thor does have a supporting cast of physicists the focus is very much elsewhere, giving the MCU a depth we didn’t realize it had lacked up until this point. Of course, the film says that magic is basically Asgardian science, but it’s difficult to imagine Thor understanding the physics behind it all. This is definitely the weirdest the MCU has gotten thus far, but it opens up a new corner of storytelling where our adventures don’t necessarily have to be entirely earthbound.
2. Speaking of weird... I have to point out that director Kenneth Branagh loads this film with more Dutch angles than most episodes of Batman ’66. As a directorial quirk, it’s such a strange one because it’s applied to scenes on Earth and on Asgard, to heroes and villains, to the mundane and the fantastic. In short, I don’t know what Branagh is doing, especially because his other films like Hamlet and Cinderella aren’t shot this way. Is he trying to demonstrate cinematographically the weirding of the MCU? Or is he saying that our world is just as strange as Thor’s? More research is needed.
3. Shakespeare’s Loki. It’s no wonder that Marvel’s most charismatic villain yet ends up taking the lead in The Avengers, and Tom Hiddleston really does steal this film from Chris Hemsworth and his mighty abs. Indeed, it’s Loki who has the more compelling character arc – discovering and asserting his birthright, striving for the love of his father, and reveling in his role as the god of mischief. The only misstep in the film’s portrayal of Loki is his haircut, this strange slicked-back look that doesn’t quite capture the internal mania of Loki. This, true believers, is why God invented sequels, and perhaps why Branagh is a strong fit for Thor – there’s something very Shakespearean about Loki.
4. Where have all the humans gone? As we move apace toward The Avengers, I’m looking for points of intersection, and the human cast of Thor – Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgard, and Kat Dennings – are a wonderful complement of normalcy to the foreign Asgardian element, but I can’t help regret that we haven’t seen more of them outside the Thor franchise. As Dr. Selvig, of course, Skarsgard has popped up in both Avengers films, but how have we not seen more of Dennings’s Darcy as some of that continuity glue? And while Portman is understandably a busy star, her absence is acutely felt when the Avengers films try to explain away her nonattendance.
5. We’ll always have Phil. Thor gives us a glimpse at the man, the myth, the legend that is Phil Coulson. After an obligatory cameo in Iron Man 2, we finally get to see Agent Coulson in his element, proving once and for all that this truly was a man who deserved his own spinoff. The Iron Man films did a good job establishing Phil as the audience’s connection point to the shadowy SHIELD, such that his arrival in Albuquerque in Thor lets us know that things are about to get real. After all, you don’t call in a heavyweight like the Son of Coul for nothing.

There’s so much more to be said about Thor, 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 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger. Excelsior!

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)

The road to Episode IV has been paved with disappointment, bogged down as it is by bizarre narrative flights, bad writing, and even worse acting.  By the time we reach Revenge of the Sith, the final prequel, it’s difficult to tell why the film feels like a success – has it truly accomplished what the prequels set out to do, or are we just weary and relieved to see Darth Vader on screen?

As the Clone Wars conclude, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) pursues the villainous cyborg General Grievous while Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) comes under the wing of Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid).  But Palpatine’s intentions are less than noble, and his promise that he can save the life of Anakin’s pregnant wife Padmé (Natalie Portman) leads the young Jedi inexorably toward his dark destiny.

There’s a point in the film, the moment when Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, when it almost feels like this is the prequel we’ve been waiting for – the film totally dispenses with all the cartoon chicanery and gives us, in fairly rapid succession, (spoilers?) the fall of the Jedi order and a climactic lightsaber duel between Vader and Obi-Wan on a volcanic planet, which explains the necessity of the suit.  I’m certain that a large degree of the third act’s success is the John Williams score, which carries us through the emotional trauma of the scene and bludgeons us with “The Imperial March” as the Empire rises.  The action is really quite impressive, as the Vader/Obi-Wan duel is juxtaposed with Yoda’s fight against Palpatine.

Unfortunately, there’s a pervading sense that this is a moment the trilogy has not quite earned.  It’s remarkable as a tonal shift, a third act that really feels quite out of place for a series that began with a cartoon fish-rabbit version of Stepin Fetchit.  And it draws into stark contrast all the things that the trilogy has done wrong – as Darth Vader cuts down all the political conspirators from the previous two films, one feels a sense of frustration that all those machinations had distracted us from what should have been a compelling yet inevitable tragic fall.

It’s even more painful that Revenge of the Sith, rather than focus on this first-rate third act, introduces a whirlwind of new plot elements – including General Grievous – before realizing quite quickly that the trilogy has done next to nothing to set up the Original Trilogy – the pregnancy that will bear Luke and Leia is a passing subplot, and the characters who need to die because they don’t appear in the Original Trilogy are shuffled off with little fanfare.  Notable exception – the Jedi Order itself, killed off during the aforementioned third act during a beautifully grim montage.  It’s not that Grievous and company are uninteresting material, but they’re perhaps better suited in some of the Expanded Universe material.

The greatest pain in the midst of the third act is that it throws into sharp relief just how poor of an actor Hayden Christensen is.  He has his moments, to be fair, though I wonder how much of the work is actually being done by Williams’s score and the special contact lenses Christensen wears.  Revenge of the Sith is really the only prequel where any acting actually gets done; McGregor embraces the showboat nature of Obi-Wan’s character, Portman does a good bit of emoting, and McDiarmid really chews up the scenery as the snarling Palpatine.  But Christensen continues to yell without much emotion, leaving the characterization work in the hands of the other elements of production.

But I don’t want to take away that sense of accomplishment from Revenge of the Sith.  It’s holding 80% over at Rotten Tomatoes, which might be an overestimation.  The third act, however, is fully worth that, if only because it finally takes the audience where it wanted to go all along.  That’s a little bit funny, actually; usually we criticize prequels for merely setting up the original film, but in this case the world built in the Prequel Trilogy is so poorly misjudged that we’re glad finally to be rid of its ill-advised detours and distractions in favor of the more familiar – and more successful – elements of the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi violence and some intense images.”  Two characters are burned alive in surprisingly graphic detail; others, including several children, die bloodless and off-screen deaths (including an implied decapitation).  Palpatine’s transformation into the wrinkly-faced Emperor is a bit disturbing.

We’ll be back in two hours with Star Wars (also known as Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope)!

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)

Compared to The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones is a little more of what I’m looking for from a Star Wars prequel, delving deeper into Anakin Skywalker’s fall from grace into the throes of the Dark Side.  But while Clones rectifies some of its predecessor’s excesses and missteps, it’s not an unequivocally good film, hampered as it is by bad acting and deliberately opaque plotting.

Ten years after the events of the previous film, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) are assigned to protect Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) after an attempt on her life.  The search for the assassin leads Obi-Wan to the bounty hunter Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) and an army of clones, while Anakin and Padmé attempt to avoid the romance burgeoning between them.

I’m not sure if George Lucas or his newfound cowriter Jonathan Hales is to thank, but Attack of the Clones improves on The Phantom Menace in two ways that are guaranteed to facilitate an enjoyable moviegoing experience – less Jar Jar Binks and more action.  Everyone’s least favorite CGI character is virtually absent from this film, and in his place are more action sequences, including a great battle between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan, a gladiator-style arena scene, and an opportunity for Yoda to throw down in a duel with, of all people, Christopher Lee.  As setpieces, these are good fun and quintessential Star Wars, even if the end gets a bit messy with so many lightsabers flying about that the plot becomes somewhat indistinguishable.

As for the plot, Lucas and Hales do commit the cardinal sin of cinema – abandoning mysteries.  In the Star Wars universe, this is especially problematic when the work of addressing plot points is relegated to the Expanded Universe of novels and comics – where, I’m told, the mystery of Sifo-Dyas and the clone army is explained.  But this instance crosses the line between immersive multi-platform storytelling and, honestly, lazy writing.  It’s introduced with some fanfare – this is essentially Obi-Wan’s major plot thread, and he makes some to-do about how the mystery defies reason, but it’s dropped.  (The answer, according to the Internet, is more complex than need be, though I could think of several easier options right off the bat.)

The biggest problem with Clones, though, is Hayden Christensen’s performance as Anakin.  Although the prequel trilogy is supposedly anchored by Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, Christensen’s portrayal is entirely unconvincing.  In the moments when he’s not blatantly underperforming, his scenes of intense anger often come across as a petulant child shouting in order to get what he wants.  That statement, however, does a disservice to child actors, who could actually muster up plausible emotion.  To be fair, much of the romantic dialogue in the film is astoundingly hamfisted, and many of the finest actors might be stymied by lines like “I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me.”  But whether we blame the poor writing, the languid direction, or a simple inability to emote, the film’s emotional center feels somewhat creepy with Portman – who’s trying, you can really tell – inexplicably falling for a man who seems to admit he’s been stalking her.

Christensen is just one example of just how drastically this film lacks any human soul.  Lucas likes to boast about how much of the film is not real, how much is computer-generated – but it’s not something of which to be proud.  Much of Clones feels artificial and sterilized because it’s all so very unreal; while the CGI effects on Yoda and R2-D2 allow the characters to transcend their stodgier incarnations and literally fly around, one senses that it comes at a price, the loss of (if nothing else) a Benjamin-ian aura of authenticity.  It doesn’t help that some of the effects – mainly the ones to do with backgrounds – have not aged quite well and are very apparently the work of green-screen filming.  (You’ll understand Ian McKellen’s lament when you see just how synthetic some of these shots appear.)

But there are things in Clones that work, so I’ll rattle them off briefly.  The John Williams score is, again, top-notch, especially his “Across the Stars” piece that underpins many of the romantic scenes; in fact, put the dialogue on mute, and the score alone could carry the plot better than the acting.  McGregor starts to own Obi-Wan beyond a mere Alec Guinness impression, though he’s still more a slave to the logic of the plot than a full character in control of his decisions.  It’s a real treat to see Samuel L. Jackson swinging a lightsaber (purple, no less), and I’ll never say no to the distinguished pedigree of Christopher Lee, who manages to circumvent the clunky opacity surrounding the mystery of his character’s allegiances.

While Clones is still a far cry from the Star Wars prequels you really want to see, it’s a few steps closer to the right direction, perhaps due to some degree of delegation on the part of George Lucas (it’s no surprise that The Empire Strikes Back, certainly the best of the series, is the film with which he had the least to do).  Its greatest flaw, though, is reducing the greatest villain in the galaxy to a whiny lovestruck 20-something who misses his mommy – played, I might add, rather unsuccessfully.

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones is rated PG for “sustained sequences of sci-fi action/violence.”  The film contains lots of blaster fire (droids against clones), lightsaber battles (including one decapitation and one arm amputation, both bloodless), and a trio of scary beasties, one of whom mauls a character’s back, drawing blood.  Oh, and the occasional kissy-face.

We’ll be back in two hours with the final prequel film, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith!

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

The Star Wars prequels should have been a trilogy to match the scope of the original, heralded as new classics to stand proudly beside the old in telling the story of the fall of Anakin Skywalker as he becomes Darth Vader.  Instead, the trilogy begins with The Phantom Menace, a cartoonish mess of a movie littered with creative missteps, shoddy screenwriting, and an apparent stubborn insistence on annoying the audience.

Here’s what we know, though you’ll have to muddle through some truly murky exposition to get there:  Two Jedi Knights, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), are sent to Naboo to mediate a trade dispute between the Trade Federation and Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman).  When negotiations go sour, the Jedi and the Queen escape to Tatooine, where they meet young Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) while the power of the Dark Side gathers around them...

Perhaps The Phantom Menace was a case of superlative expectations; the promise of the untold story of Darth Vader, arguably the most recognizable character in all of cinema, is a tantalizing one.  Perhaps we asked too much?  Unfortunately, no:  on rewatching the film with my ambitions severely lowered, I still found myself disappointed by The Phantom Menace.  The film is cluttered with dispiriting indications that George Lucas had lost his touch.  To begin, the film has no central protagonist, nor a clear antagonist (we never learn, for example, what “the phantom menace” actually is).  There’s a sense that Darth Sidious, master of the Dark Side of the Force, is the primary villain, though his motives and behavior are baffling.  It seems that his plan is to guarantee that he becomes the Emperor in time for the events of the Original Trilogy, which doesn’t actually make logical sense since these are prequels.

I could stop the review right there, because that sentence tells you everything you need to know about The Phantom Menace.  This film, and indeed the entirety of the Prequel Trilogy, proceeds very much like a paint-by-numbers series of events designed to set the stage for Episode IV, with little to no investment in the narrative itself.  There is no passion, no enthusiasm, no attempt to engage the audience beyond the superficial and frankly alienating special effects.  Little in the film seems real (more on that later), and consequently nothing seems to matter; Darth Maul aside, the film’s villains provide no threat to its heroes, and the whole movie proceeds like a very thinly written cartoon designed to sell toys rather than advance a plot.

If there is any passion in the film, it’s in Lucas’s love affair with his computer.  One senses that Lucas is truly astonished by the technical capabilities available to him – and rightly so.  As foul a character as Jar Jar Binks is, the digital effects used to create him are really quite amazing, even fifteen years after the fact.  He remains, however, the film’s greatest sin, an entirely useless character who exists solely to annoy the audience.  Jar Jar Binks serves no plot function and stumbles through the film via sheer dumb luck; more problematic in a narrative sense, he’s very close to an invisible friend, because most of the characters seem irritated by him and often choose to avoid him.  You could digitally erase him from most scenes and not tell the difference.

There are, to be fair, a few things that The Phantom Menace does defensibly well.  The first of these is the stellar score by John Williams, which I’ll argue throughout the day is the real star of the Prequel Trilogy.  When the film falls flat, as it often does, Williams’s music comes in to give us a sense of humanity, of breathlessness, of the personality the film so desperately lacks.  Williams creates a musical universe with plenty of new elements but with enough leitmotifs from the Original Trilogy to be recognizable.  In fact, that’s the template the entire Prequel Trilogy should have followed.

The film also includes two solid and memorable action sequences – the podrace and the climactic lightsaber battle.  The former shows a successful use of the CGI technology to create an engaging setpiece – which, to be sure, it is, being largely tangential to the plot but finally a relief after all the political posturing that precedes it.  The lightsaber duel is probably the best part of the film, though you’ll have to wade through nearly two hours of plodding politics; it’s exciting, it’s something we hadn’t seen before (Darth Maul with the double-bladed saber especially), and the Williams track “Duel of the Fates” is first-rate.

But a few good pieces aren’t enough to make The Phantom Menace a success.  In fact, it’s really only required viewing for the completist, and at any rate it’s certainly not the Star Wars film with which to introduce the franchise.

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is rated PG for “sci-fi action/violence.”  There are explosions, laser blasts, lightsaber fights (with two deaths, seen clearly but not graphically), and a thrilling chase sequence in which several racers are presumed to die in explosions.  Most of the violence deals with robots.

We’ll be back in two hours with Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones!

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

We’re halfway through Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Iron Man 3 behind us, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy ahead before The Avengers: Age of Ultron), and things are looking pretty good from where I’m sitting, even with creative changes behind the scenes.  With Thor: The Dark World, Alan Taylor picks up the directorial reins and turns in an exceptionally fun fantasy that carves out a filmic identity for the Norse god.

When a cadre of Dark Elves led by the malicious Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) seeks to destroy the entire universe, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) – the god of thunder – returns to Earth to rescue his lady love, scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who’s been awaiting his arrival in the wake of the events of The Avengers.  When Thor discovers that Jane has a strange connection to Malekith’s plan, he reluctantly jailbreaks his trickster brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), with the fate of all existence in the balance.

With a new director at the helm, it’s surprising that Thor: The Dark World feels as familiar as it does, though Taylor and crew take a few steps into new territory that keeps this sequel from feeling stale.  The best comparison I can make is to Star Wars:  like the iconic Star Wars, the Thor franchise seems to be moving in a science-fictional comedy sphere, with spaceships, laser guns, and interplanetary travel decorating the sprawling plot.  Taylor amps up the science fiction angle, stepping away from the hubristic theology of Kenneth Branagh’s work on the first Thor in favor of a more light-hearted space opera.  The comic relief might be overdone for some – Stellan Skarsgård’s Erik Selvig has become a kind of caricature, though it’s not without purpose – but for me it’s a fine counterpart to the Sturm und Drang of Chris Nolan’s DC work.

But don’t mistake an expanded scenery for a reinvention of the wheel.  Thor: The Dark World retains much of what we loved about the first film and gives us more of it.  Those who loved Thor hitting things with Mjolnir (whose absurd nickname also gets a callback) will be satisfied, and even those who found the Thor/Jane love story less than compelling may be pleasantly surprised here.  While these individual films still haven’t quite reckoned with questions like “Where are the other heroes?” Thor: The Dark World sticks the standalone landing by focusing on what makes it unique as a franchise – near-Shakespearean characters in superheroic action.

Best of all, Thor: The Dark World recognizes the strengths of its supporting cast by giving room to the returning faces, even as newcomers like Eccleston give us classically comic-booky performances (in the best kind of way).  As snarky intern Darcy, Kat Dennings gets one of the most expanded roles, sassing her way into the audience’s heart while even getting a small sort of arc of her own.  (It’s a shame Jamie Alexander’s Lady Sif doesn’t get the same treatment; the “love triangle” the trailers promised never really comes to pass.)

Tragically for Hemsworth, though he’s more than capable as the brash yet compassionate protagonist, he’s completely and utterly upstaged by Tom Hiddleston’s Loki.  Indeed, I suspect we’re not too far away from a Loki solo film (at least, if Tumblr has anything to say about it), and it’s entirely due to Hiddleston’s charismatic smirk, dynamic eyebrows, and utterly engrossing duplicity as the god of mischief.  Resisting cookie-cutter villainy at every turn, Loki is the dictionary definition of a scene-stealer, replete deeply ambiguous motivations and an inexplicably engaging contempt for all the other characters – especially his do-gooder brother.  Enough good things really cannot be said about Hiddleston, whose every minute of screentime elicited from me an obnoxiously broad grin and repetitive murmurs of “Damn, he’s good.”

Thor: The Dark World is so full of top performers giving their all (I haven’t even mentioned Anthony Hopkins or Idris Elba) that it almost doesn’t matter that the story doesn’t break much ground.  We’ve seen the “ancient evil seeks to restore chaos” before, but the makers of this Thor sequel have put together such a well-told version of the old archetypal narrative that you’ll be too busy having fun to notice.

In fact, fun is the operative word here – an innocuous scifi/romance/adventure story worthy of the heretofore perfect streak of the Marvel brand.

Thor: The Dark World is rated PG-13 “for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, and some suggestive content.”  There are bunches of creatures shooting lasers and smashing hammers, all bloodlessly with the occasional explosion or debris field flying about.  There are a few references to Thor’s impeccably muscled physique, one obligatory shirtless scene of the buff god, and a few tame kisses.

Monday at the Movies - December 10, 2012

Welcome to Week Forty-Four of “Monday at the Movies.”  This week, we’ll take a look at a few films that grapple with mental illness – perfect timing for those of us enduring the slings and arrows of finals week.

American Psycho (2000) – Either this movie is more fun than it ought to be, or there’s something seriously wrong with me.  Before he was Batman, Christian Bale was Patrick Bateman, yuppie investment banker by day and vicious serial killer by night.  Mary Harron’s infinitesimally gentler adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s downright brutal novel is, simply put, a hoot.  Bateman is insane, no question, and his deeds are despicable, but Bale’s trademark fascinating immersion in the role is riotous to watch, vacillating wildly between pent-up emotionlessness and manic indulgence in his homicidal tendencies.  And as a social satire of 1980s New York, American Psycho is positively brilliant, exposing the excesses and pettiness of such a superficial society without moralizing.  Instead of preaching, the film makes its satire entertaining by encouraging us to laugh at it; the deadpan seriousness with which Bateman examines a business card belies both his internalized rage and the ludicrous attention given to such minutiae.  The standout feature of this film is its ambiguity, which enchants rather than maddens the viewer; a mesmerizing interrogation scene with Willem Dafoe forces the viewer to question who knows what, an uncertainty played to the hilt by Dafoe in three different takes.  By the end, the film pays off on its repetition of the trope of mistaken identity, asking us whether any of these people really “exist” in a tangible form.  What’s not uncertain is how much fun the film manages to be, with an engrossing and star-making performance from its lead, who charms even as he twists the knife.

Black Swan (2010) – Black Swan is in many ways the dark side of American Psycho’s white swan.  Darren Aronofsky’s balance of ballet and mental illness explores in very disturbing and unflinching ways the consequences of the quest for perfection.  Natalie Portman won an Oscar for her role as Nina Sayers, a ballerina whose starring role in Swan Lake is slowly driving her insane; she suspects her understudy Lily (Mila Kunis) of sabotaging her work, though recurrent hallucinations make it difficult for her to discern reality from delusion.  Barbara Hershey has an underappreciated role as Nina’s controlling mother, a former ballerina and perhaps the source of her daughter’s difficulties.  Where American Psycho treated its protagonist’s insanity as exuberantly entertaining, Nina’s descent into madness is distressing and almost uncomfortable to watch; the fast-and-loose representation of reality unsettles the viewer as mirrors misbehave and strangers bear Nina’s face for fleeting frames.  Portman’s Academy Award was well-deserved, as she embodies well Nina’s fears and anxieties by giving the character a full sense of life such that we know her even before we see her dance.  Yet, even though the film is unsettling and uncomfortable, there is something poetically beautiful about it, an aesthetic exquisiteness created by the combination of Aronofsky’s deliberately arranged shots and Clint Mansell’s reworking of Tchaikovsky’s music.  There’s certainly a comparison to be made here with Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, which deals with similar themes, but Black Swan is more metaphorical and more beautiful, one of 2010’s best films, to be sure.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  With the release of The Dark Knight Rises on DVD, look for an Armchair Review sometime in the near future!

Monday at the Movies - February 20, 2012

Welcome to Week Eight of “Monday at the Movies.” Between rewatching the first season of Alias (say what you want about subsequent years, but that was a hell of a freshman season) and reading Samuel Richardson’s 1,500 epistolary novel Clarissa (which, according to Ian Watt, birthed the English-language novel), I haven’t had a chance to watch a single movie this week. Instead, I’ll start something I’ve always been meaning to do – a few reviews to get you ready for the second-most anticipated movie of Summer 2012... The Avengers. Since I’ve already reviewed The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and Iron Man 2 on this site, we’ll look at the two most recent additions to the series.

Thor (2011) – Kenneth Branagh isn’t the first choice for a comic book movie director, but there’s a reason the Internet was disheartened when he announced he wasn’t returning for the sequel. Branagh brings his background in Shakespeare to bear in Thor, which blends perfectly the high theology and overwhelming pride of Asgard and the Norse deities with the restrained and comic scenes on planet Earth. When Thor falls from the heavens, we feel his pain, but angst is not the order of the day; instead, we’re treated to a never-too-ludic “fish out of water” narrative in which Thor finds himself unable to blend into human society. What’s unique here is that almost everyone is a scene-stealer: Tom Hiddleston as the trickster Loki, Anthony Hopkins as paterfamilias Odin, Kat Dennings as Natalie Portman’s sassy assistant Darcy, and Stellan Skarsgård as Swedish (and occasionally intoxicated) scientist Erik Selvig. Even Natalie Portman, who’s sometimes insufferable off-camera, is charming sweet, and intelligent as Jane Foster, Thor’s love interest. It’s a fantastic cast with a powerful story behind it, and it’s all grounded by Chris Hemsworth, whose turn as Thor is undeniably the centerpiece of a story which hangs together on his not-unimpressive shoulders. I’ve never read a Thor comic book, and what’s nice is that the film doesn’t assume you have; instead, there’s plenty of exposition and Norse mythology dabbled in without ever feeling too cumbersome. Even better, the film cues itself for a sequel without feeling unfinished, and the nods toward The Avengers likewise don’t necessitate another film to complete the narrative arc of this delightful movie.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) – The second Avengers film of 2011 takes us all the way back to World War II and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a scrawny shrimp turned super soldier by way of Stanley Tucci’s magic elixir. Rebranded as Captain America, Steve ventures overseas to fight the Nazis and their secret weapon, The Red Skull (Hugo Weaving, who chews a bit of scenery but never fails to remind us why he’s perfectly cast as a villain). This is another Marvel flick with a wonderful cast, including Tommy Lee Jones, Toby Jones, the aforementioned Tucci, and the obligatory but still delightful cameo by Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. I was always a fan of Joe Johnston’s other superhero flick, The Rocketeer, and Johnston channels his WWII nostalgia here, creating a perfectly retro atmosphere without feeling less than modern. Marvel fans may balk at the presence of Chris Evans after his lackluster Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four (the subject, perhaps, for another Monday at the Movies), but his Captain America is respectful and dignified, and I can’t wait to see how he handles the time disjunction that happens when Cap joins The Avengers sixty years after the events of this film. (Don’t worry, the logistics of how that works is covered in this film, although it’s governed by what’s known colloquially as “comic book logic.”) There’s more action in this than in Thor, making it a perfect popcorn pick with an emotional punch at the end.

Come May you’ll see a full review of The Avengers when it’s released, as well as that “most anticipated” movie of 2012 from the Distinguished Competition.

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

The Professional (1994)

In a way, The Professional was exactly the film I was looking for.

The Professional (also known as Leon) was near the top of my "I can't believe I haven't seen these movies yet" list, especially in light of the fact that its writer/director, Luc Besson, wrote Taken, one of my all-time favorite action movies. Followers of this site have already noticed that it's been a while since I rated a film as "to my liking," much less "a great film." The losing streak, dear readers, is broken, because The Professional is both.

Leon (a very subdued Jean Reno) is a hitman, a self-professed "cleaner" who takes in orphan Mathilda (a very young Natalie Portman) after her family is gunned down by drug-addled DEA Agent Nathan Stansfield (a very outrageous Gary Oldman). As Stansfield seeks to tie up the last remaining loose end - namely, Mathilda - in his spiraling descent into drug-fueled madness, Leon struggles with his own paternalistic misgivings about Mathilda's request to be trained to be a cleaner.

The performances are stellar. I've knocked Jean Reno before for being hammy or for simply not trying, but it seems that's a new trend. He's fabulously restrained as Leon. It's a role that could have gone two ways - cold and emotionless or entirely creepy. Somehow, Reno finds a way to create a sympathetic character who's more human than not, a man who never poses a threat to Mathilda, even though the audience may be worried that his intentions with her may be less than pure. Roman Polanski he's not; no one in their right mind could accuse Leon of exploiting Mathilda, whom he comes to regard as a daughter. The key other half of that dynamic is Portman, who proves how talented she really is. She's endearingly gruff, deceptively innocent, and completely in control of her emotional spectrum. Though she's only 12, Mathilda is perhaps the most mature character in the film, and it's because of Portman's gifted acting that the character even succeeds; she's both completely human and a prototype for Kick-Ass's Hit-Girl, a stunning combination. And while we're talking stunning, let's acknowledge Oldman, who's wildly over the top as Stansfield. This is a versatile actor we're talking about; he's played Sid Vicious, Dracula, Stansfield, Lee Harvey Oswald, Commissioner Gordon, and Sirius Black in the same career - and done all in such a way that he's practically defined those characters. Stansfield ranks as one of the best movie villains I've ever seen, downright spooky and at times frightening (especially when he pops his special but unnamed pills) but never cartoonish to the point of improbability.

High praise to Besson for melding a knockout script and dynamite visuals - to him belongs all the credit, since he wrote and directed it all on his own. While he owes a lot to his three fine actors, Besson deserves a hearty pat on the back for a freshly original story (even sixteen years later, it still holds up) which avoids predictability and never falters, even though almost no action occurs between Mathilda's adoption and the final confrontation with Stansfield. For this, we have the directing to thank; Besson is a prince when it comes to inventive camera angles, a master of pacing, and a pro at eliciting good performances out of already solid actors.

One thing I particularly loved about The Professional - aside from the downright stunning gunfight scenes and Jack Bauer-esque escapes - is the way that Besson creates compellingly human characters in Leon and Mathilda while establishing a key divide between them and Stansfield. Leon and Mathilda have backstories which inform their personalities, which in turn inform each other as to why the other one behaves the way he/she does. All of this is done in an entirely clear manner so that the audience never wonders, "Why is Mathilda doing that? Why didn't Leon say this?" Conversely, we have no idea why Stansfield behaves the way he does; he is, like Ledger's Joker, an absolute force of chaos blowing in and out of the movie. He's a DEA agent, sure, but why is he involved in drugs? Is it business or personal? On a scale of one to ten, how crazy is he? The characters that need to be human are, and are entirely, but the villain is more akin to a tornado than a mastermind. The clash of reckless madman and methodical hitman is golden, but it never feels overwrought. Indeed, the real heart of the piece is what is unsaid between Leon and Mathilda.

Simply put, The Professional is one of the best movies of the 1990s. Indeed, if I ever get around to making a "best of the decades" list and The Professional's not on it, call me out, and I'll eat my hat.
The Professional is rated a very hard R "for scenes of strong graphic violence, and for language." It's a movie about a hitman who kills a lot of people in very bloody shoot-outs, and several F-bombs trickle in along the way.

New York, I Love You (2009)

It seems that the older I get, the shorter my attention span becomes. Maybe I'm just a jaded filmgoer, maybe today's flicks have run out of pizzazz, or maybe I'm being overdramatic about the whole getting-bored-quickly thing.

At any rate, the beauty of an anthology film is that you only have to invest about ten minutes in any given story. New York, I Love You represents the second in what is apparently a franchise devoted to vignettes about love in important world cities. I was initially only aware of the first "Cities of Love" film, Paris je t'aime (which really ought to be reviewed herein), a film near and dear to the romantic in me.

Before I go any further, I should preface this review by noting that by definition an anthology of any kind is naturally going to be hit or miss. Even Paris je t'aime has a few duds in the bunch. But unfortunately New York, I Love You is primarily a batch of misses with only a few hits. In honor of the anthology format, I'm going to shake things up and review each short separately and then think globally, with the caveat that New York is much more fluid, with its untitled segments intersecting and mingling much more than in Paris.

Director Jiang Wen has the first segment, which stars Hayden Christensen as a thief who picks Andy Garcia's pocket. After being smitten by passer-by Rachel Bilson, Christensen finds out that his quick con on Garcia isn't as easy as it looks. This vignette starts off as a cliche, and the fact that Christensen can't really act doesn't help. But when Garcia and Christensen share the screen, there's something better afoot, with each trying to one-up the other in a game of wills.

Mira Nair directs a more romantic tale about two salespeople (Natalie Portman and Irrfan Khan) married to other people but who fall in love with each other regardless. This segment is unfulfilling, carried by solid acting but lacking any dramatic resolution beyond a clever use of visual language which suggests that these two will always love each other.

Shunji Iwai gets one of the most romantic parts of the film when he brings musician Orlando Bloom together with receptionist Christina Ricci by using Dostoevsky. Props on that one and on creating an ending to their story which feels neither forced nor hackneyed.

Yvan Attal directs two segments, both of which are marked by narrative twists and compelling dialogue which conceals something important beneath the surface. Both are set outside restaurants with their characters on smoke breaks; in the first of these, Ethan Hawke propositions Maggie Q about the inevitability of their romance based on one chance encounter, while in the second Robin Wright Penn plays a jilted wife looking for a change when she meets Chris Cooper and propositions him. The parallel is less pronounced than it seems.

Brett Ratner's segment is my absolute favorite in the film and really the only portion I'd consider rewatching at least once. After breaking up with Blake Lively, Anton Yelchin (one of my new favorites after Charlie Bartlett) agrees to take pharmacist James Caan's daughter to the prom. There's one catch - the daughter (Olivia Thirlby) is in a wheelchair. Don't be fooled; whimsy ensues, and Yelchin's big wish comes true. This one has a fabulous twist; if you only watch one segment, watch this one.

After appearing in a few interstitials, Bradley Cooper co-stars with Drea de Matteo in Allen Hughes's narrator-heavy story about a regrettable one-night stand. This segment flops because it doesn't quite go anywhere, and the ending is abrupt and inconsistent with all but the title of the film.

In the most puzzling segment in the film, Shekhar Kapur directs Anthony Minghella's screenplay about an opera singer (Julie Christie) who returns to a hotel in New York and has separate encounters with two bellhops (John Hurt and Shia LeBeouf). If anyone can make heads or tails of this segment, please let me know what you've decided, as I can't wrap my head around it.

Natalie Portman steps behind the camera to direct a segment about a father's (Carlos Acosta) day in the park with his daughter (Taylor Geare). This segment is cute and fluffy but ultimately forgettable. Portman does a fine job writing and directing it, to the extent that I'd be curious what she can do with longer material.

Fatih Akin directs an empty segment about a painter (Ugur Yucel) who falls for Chinese herbalist Shu Qi and then dies. Burt Young peeks his head in as Yucel's landlord. Huh? That's about all this segment amounts to.

Joshua Marston writes/directs the final full segment, in which Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman celebrate their 63rd anniversary. The dialogue in this segment is well-played and flows at a leisurely pace, but if you're looking for a conventional narrative you won't find it here. This segment feels very personal and personable, and it's a comfortable way to close the film.

Throughout, Randy Balsmeyer gives transition scenes which feature various characters entering taxicabs together; Emilie Ohana plays a videographer whose role in the film seems only to be to unite the characters. One interstitial in particular, though, is memorable, with Eva Amurri and Justin Bartha quarreling about how they never vacation together.

The DVD includes two deleted vignettes, one of them directed by Scarlett Johannson and starring Kevin Bacon as a New Yorker with a bad case of wanderlust. These deleted scenes, though, have rightfully been omitted, as they are entirely lifeless and protracted. Perhaps Ms. Johannson should stay in front of the camera looking pretty, which she's very good at doing if Iron Man 2 is any indication.

Taken separately, there is a fair amount to like about New York, I Love You, but taken together as a 103 minute film there is a lot of disappointment. The choice to more deliberately blend vignettes - Drea de Matteo visits James Caan's pharmacy, and Chris Cooper meets Maggie Q at a dry cleaner's - makes the film difficult to follow in points; it is often unclear where one story ends and another begins. This trademark of the first film is evident only in the film's most successful segments - Iwai's and especially Ratner's. On the whole, though, Ratner's segment is the only standout feature in an otherwise disappointing follow-up to Paris je t'aime.
New York, I Love You is rated "R for language and sexual content." This being a movie about New York, F-bombs pepper the dialogue; this being a movie about love, sex comes up in conversation and is depicted twice without any nudity to speak of.

V for Vendetta (2006)

Verily, I can only think of a few remakes that have been better than the original - 1941's The Maltese Falcon, 2006's The Departed, and 2007's Hairspray spring immediately to mind. Even sparser, though, are movies better than the source material (books, most voraciously) on which they are based. In fact, only one rests at the forefront of my consciousness.

Here is unveiled V for Vendetta. Director James McTeigue did a valorous job vindicating Alan Moore's eponymous graphic visitation now envisioned as a profoundly first-rate political thriller that vociferates considerably less voraciously than Moore's original vista.

What if Orwell's vision of 1984 vandalized England? That's the vicious venality that 2038 London finds itself enlivening, villified with an iron fist by venal Norsefire High Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt, verminously filling in for Big Brother - and Bush-era America? The vote is yours...). Vivified by sheeple-by-vocation like Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman - more on this casting later), England needs only a victor to shake them out of their stupor. That virtuous vigilante comes in the form of mysterious anarchist V (voiced by Hugo Weaving, of The Matrix fame, verbally expelling a delightful vichyssoise of verbiage), whose visage is cloaked with a vacant Guy Fawkes mask. Victor or villain? This vox populi dares to vindicate the votives of those who seek freedom in England once again.

My vocation being to review filmic visions the very better to aid your volitions, I vow to keep this vade mecum very far from verbose and shall continue to limit my verbiage to a vocabulary less than verbose. A vixen in her own right, Ms. Portman should not find herself the victim of a vicious villification; inded, her performance is virtuous - some might say commendable, though this vexes my otherwise vocabulary-based symmetry. Envision if you will a twenty-something British bon vivant, vitiated by a violating vermin! The verdict is that Keira Knightley ought have played Evey, though one must admire Portman's vitiation of vanity and emotive weeping as her head is shaved. On repeat viewings, one can more fully approve of Portman's vocation as an actress as the initial vice of not casting Knightley is removed from attention.

As an improvement on Moore's work, V for Vendetta unvexes a previously muddled and thinly veiled derivative of 1984, in which the protagonist was vigilant yet unconvincingly vocalized. Though Moore's ambiguous version of Adrian Veidt in his undisputed marvel Watchmen was enviable, V is less than convincing, part vigilante and part villain. Here the vanguard of liberation is given fair shrift, defending his land with vim and vigor. Ambiguity thrives in literature, yet sloppy ambiguation proves most vincible in analysis.

More vindicating than vindictive, McTeigue's version of V for Vendetta vehemently strives for victory in the celluloid realm, and as comic books go this re-envisioning of a predominantly virtueless work of a visionary soars. View it if you can, and remain vigilant. Because "a revolution without dancing is a revolution... not worth having."