Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

Back in June, my write-up of The Flash turned out more sanguine than I had been expecting, partly because the review turned into an elegy for the DCEU. But I had given that sentiment so much space on the page because I had almost entirely forgotten that the dying franchise still had two more in the offing: Blue Beetle (which I could not finish, even at no additional cost on Max) and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, buried so far in the oubliette of the WB release slate that audiences nigh well forgot it existed. (A third film, Batgirl, was obliterated in exchange for a tax write-off.)
 
Since James Gunn announced his takeover of the DC cinematic universe in January 2023, DC and WB released four more movies in what Gunn had already announced to be a dead franchise. It turns out that audiences gave up, with diminishing box office returns for Shazam! Fury of the Gods, The Flash, and Blue Beetle, before this latest Aquaman movie ends the series not with a bang but with a paint-by-numbers whimper, a superhero outing that might have been the best superhero movie of the year, had it been released in 2004.
 
Torn between his duties as a land-dwelling father and as regent of Atlantis, Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) is bristling under the mantle of Aquaman, even as Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) rallies his forces for revenge against the hero who killed his father. His deep-sea excursions have uncovered the Black Trident, an ancient relic connected to unspeakable evil beneath the waves, and only Aquaman’s imprisoned brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) knows where to find him.
 
After some blunt narration that insists vociferously that yes, Aquaman is cool, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom begins with Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” and absolutely zero sense of irony about deploying what might be one of the most overplayed songs in movie history. (Never mind the fact that Aquaman fought an entirely different Steppenwolf in Justice League.) It’s as though the film has forgotten that this Aquaman made more than a billion dollars last time around, and we certainly don’t need to be bludgeoned with insistences that Arthur isn’t a joke. Insincere postmodernism is a deadly sin for the superhero genre, but here the overeager earnestness comes off as a little desperate. 
 
One senses throughout that the corporate editors have been overgenerous with their pruning shears, taking out anything that isn’t rocketing toward the next action setpiece. Case in point, Amber Heard’s Mera, who has been virtually excised from a movie that ought to be about her son, the newborn prince of Atlantis. The first film had a particularly arresting sequence in which Mera used her aquatic powers to weaponize a wine cellar; here, Mera is relegated to waterbending her son’s urine into Aquaman’s open mouth. Her own legal troubles notwithstanding, every time Heard reappears on screen, one has nearly forgotten how her character fits into the plot, and it almost seems like Dolph Lundgren (as her father, King Nereus) has been skinned into the film in her stead. Similarly, it’s been documented that director James Wan shot footage of Ben Affleck’s Batman, then of Michael Keaton’s Batman, only to exclude them both from the final cut, supposedly so as not to confuse audiences. (Never mind that audiences got no fewer than three Batmen and two Wonder Woman cameos this year alone.)
 
Indeed, the only confusion on the part of the audience is why a decade’s worth of movies is ending here, limping toward an untimely grave. After sixteen movies (of which, maybe seven were good-to-great), I stand stymied at how badly the studio bungled things, beginning with the equally overedited Batman v Superman and spiraling from there. Although given the fact that this is the same superhero franchise that released a literal exquisite corpse in the form of Joss Whedon’s nightmarish Justice League, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that its subsequent releases have come in uneven fits and starts.
 
Of those false starts, James Wan’s work felt the closest to the Zack Snyder aesthetic while still remaining its own thing. Wan had a knack for deep and brisk world-building, indulging in those Snyderesque slow-motion shots to turn the cinematic frame into a comic book panel. But between the editorial excisions and the draconian exclusion of all things Snyderverse (including an off-camera death that feels both capricious and superfluous), it is hard to see some of that Wan charm. Where the first Aquaman felt fresh and energetic, Lost Kingdom is only serviceable if almost entirely forgettable. We do feel the unique Aquaman flair with the unapologetic inclusion of seahorse Storm, cephalopod Topo, and a piratical hideout that feels like both Jabba’s Palace and the Mos Eisley Cantina all at once. Ditto the downright gonzo casting choices that give us no less than Martin Short and John Rhys-Davies as grotesque fish monsters.
 
Meanwhile, Momoa seems to be phoning it in, playing himself as much as anything. He’s spent about half of the meager press tour (without so much as a red carpet premiere, in case you hadn’t noticed) conceding that this is very probably his last outing as Aquaman, imploring all the while for someone, anyone, to cast him in James Gunn’s new utopia. Nicole Kidman reappears, contractually obligated and about as enthusiastic as that sentence implies; her appearance in the AMC Theatres promo reel is more expressive, more emotional than her lifeless Queen Atlanna. Patrick Wilson is doing a better job than this movie deserves, while Yahya Abdul-Mateen is underserved by a revenge plot that gets derailed by demonic possession. (His Black Manta, though, still wins a best-in-show prize for a costume design straight out of the comic book pages.)
 
Even at two hours and change, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom feels a little too long for its own good. Its action sequences are efficient and entertaining enough, colorful without the typical CGI dark muddle to obscure things. Yet the superhero genre has come so far that Lost Kingdom feels almost like a throwback; if this were the only superhero movie this year, it might have felt sweeter. As it stands, I lost count of how many times the film dramatically cuts to black, how often the plot spun its wheels to introduce some exposition via narration-heavy flashback, and how frequently urine ends up in Jason Momoa’s mouth. (I stopped at three.) At times the film feels like it is blissfully unaware that it is the ostensible swan song for the DCEU.
 
Then again, at other turns, the film seems hyper-aware that it is the finale for a divisive, often unpopular decade of DC movies that began under the auspices of one idiosyncratic auteur, dethroned and given a second chance while the franchise fell down around us. Staggering toward an inevitable reboot, the film launches this motivational speech at its hero, who might seem to be standing in for Zack Snyder as the torch passes from one king to the next:

You’re not as bad at this as you think. The people of Atlantis are lucky to have you. You were everything I was not. You do the right thing when doing the wrong thing is much easier. You’re willing to ask for help, even from your worst enemy. I know it may not feel like you know what you’re doing sometimes, but keep trusting your instincts. If you lead, Atlantis will follow.

 

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi violence and some language.” Directed by James Wan. Written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, James Wan, Jason Momoa, and Thomas Pa’a Sibbett. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Randall Park, Dolph Lundgren, Temeura Morrison, Martin Short, and Nicole Kidman.

Bat-May: Batman Forever (1995)

In an interesting way, Batman Forever was foundational for me. It was the first Batman film I had seen in theaters and, in 1995, must have been among the first films I saw in theaters. (I was bitten in 1994 with The Lion King.) I had the poster on my wall, the action figures in my toybox, and the comic book adaptation in my collection. I lived and breathed it. It was the greatest thing I’d ever seen in my life.

Time’s gone on, and it hasn’t been kind to Joel Schumacher, who picked up the directorial reins from Tim Burton and put his own avant-garde camp stamp on the franchise. For many years, fans used Schumacher as a punching bag to defend their own aggressively macho, insistently grown-up takes on Batman. Whatever Batman is, the argument went (and I admit I was in that crowd for many years), Batman Forever wasn’t it. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know that Batman can be everything at once – the genius of the character is that he is at once immutable and simultaneously infinitely adaptable. He fits into any genre, and still he persists. And I’m pleased to see that the fans are coming around to this perspective with Batman Forever, which has undergone a kind of cult reclamation such that cries of “Release the Snyder Cut” have, now fulfilled, been followed by “Release the Schumacher Cut,” which promises a longer and darker version of Forever.

 

Only I don’t know that it’s necessary. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll happily watch a three-hour Batman Forever, but I’m not convinced that it’s what Schumacher wanted. My sense of Batman Forever is that Schumacher intended to update the Batman ’66 format with an inflection of the Tim Burton aesthetic, and on that count – even if I don’t love it – I have to admit he made exactly the movie he set out to make. It’s silly, it’s daft, and it’s over-the-top, but it’s also got an undercurrent of psychological complexity that gets lost in the static of Schumacher bashing.

 

Val Kilmer dons the cape and cowl as a Bruce Wayne haunted by the death of his parents and what he sees as a disturbing reprise when acrobat Dick Grayson (Chris O’Donnell) is orphaned by Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones). While Bruce attempts to dissuade his newfound ward from vengeance, Batman is facing a new adversary in the form of The Riddler (Jim Carrey), secretly a disgruntled employee of WayneTech who has developed a mind-control device.

 

Batman Forever begins, rather unfortunately, with a joke that falls very flat. Alfred (the stalwart Michael Gough) offers Batman dinner before his nightly vigil; after a strangely long pause, Batman says, in a reedy squawk, “I’ll get drive-thru.” It’s perhaps an effective table setting – we’re in for a Batman that’s cornier and more prone to one-liners, even if they don’t always work – but I suppose it’s also an indicator of how much worse the film could have been if every scene had this tone, if nothing was taken seriously. It’s also an unfortunate opener because it sells Val Kilmer short; neither the voice nor the mannerisms are quite right in this first scene, but Kilmer gets it right almost immediately thereafter. His Bruce Wayne is psychologically broken, emotionally dead, but he embodies a key interpretative theory of the character – that Bruce Wayne cannot be both happy and Batman. Instead, Kilmer finds a cold middle ground, which might read as disaffected – but isn’t that what the Bruce Wayne persona should be? Isn’t Bruce an airheaded satire on the notion of a billionaire playboy?

 

The only times we start to see the real Bruce Wayne – the damaged orphan boy, stunted by his parents’ murder – is in his scenes with psychologist and lover Dr. Chase Meridian, which is honestly one of the all-time great fictional names ever. Now raise your hand if you’d forgotten that Nicole Kidman was in a Batman film. (I myself forget every so often.) Her performance vamps a little bit – nowhere near what Uma Thurman would do in Batman & Robin two years later – but Kidman is pretty effective as a Jungian femme fatale. Though the film is a bit condescending with her inability to decide whether she loves Batman or Bruce Wayne, this motif of duality plays into the film’s larger investment in Bruce Wayne’s fractured psyche. Michael Keaton’s Batman recognized the disconnect between his own romantic fulfillment and his vow to avenge his parents; Chase Meridian helps Bruce to draw out the fact that he is utterly incapable of functioning as a human being while fighting crime as Batman.

 

Indeed, Bruce Wayne is fundamentally unable to connect with his new ward, Dick Grayson, until he unites his own twin personas, ultimately accepting the young lad as his crimefighting partner, Robin. I have no idea how old this incarnation of Dick Grayson is supposed to be; he must be under 18, for Bruce to take him in as a foster father, but Chris O’Donnell plays him like a brash mid-20s, and there’s something in that performance that doesn’t quite work. He’s hot-headed like the second comics Robin, Jason Todd, and his Dick Grayson has a dated youthful edge that perhaps hasn’t aged well. (The contemporaneous animated series took a similar tack with Robin, but it seemed to work better there.) It might be the weakest performance in the film, because it’s not quite dialed into what this film needs of a Robin; his mood swings and impetuous plans to murder Two-Face never really connect with the audience.

 

Then we come to the villains. I have long maintained that the fundamental problem with Batman Forever is that both Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey are playing their characters as though they were Jack Nicholson’s Joker. I stand by this claim, because it certainly explains what keeps these performances from being truly faithful to the comics, but there are some nuances to draw out. It’s been widely reported that Jones and Carrey didn’t get along during filming, especially because Jones reportedly hated Carrey, telling him at one point, “I cannot sanction your buffoonery.” (True or not, has there been a more Tommy Lee Jones sentence than that?) Though to that point, I would have to ask Jones what he made of his own performance, because it is prancing buffoonery at its finest – again, precisely what the film needs of him, but it is a far cry from the more grounded Harvey Dent given us by Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight. But the cleverness of joining Bruce Wayne’s bifurcated psyche to a plot involving Two-Face is genius, and one wishes the screenplay had borne that out a little more directly. One also wishes that Jones had played his Two-Face a little more seriously; unlike Kilmer, whose first scene is a dud, Jones’s first scene is note-perfect as he monologues to a hostage bank guard about the universal fairness of luck.

As for Jim Carrey’s Riddler, it is a Jim Carrey performance from the mid-90s, largely indistinguishable from the rest (costuming aside). It’s that same manic oscillation, bounding and mugging. There’s a hearty helping of Nicholson in there somewhere, but the performance is perhaps more properly an amalgam of Frank Gorshin and Max Headroom – which may indeed be the Rosetta Stone for Carrey’s whole career. Carrey’s Riddler is overdone, his riddles aren’t great, but at least his chemistry with Two-Face is commendable, particularly if the off-set animosity was as feverish as it seems. His Riddler is gleefully vain, too, applied more to his appearance than to his genius, and there’s something in his envy of Bruce Wayne that gets echoed in Sam Rockwell’s begrudging RDJ-worship in Iron Man 2. These days, though, I’m particularly intrigued to see what Paul Dano brings to the role in The Batman, with his Zodiac-killer take wildly distinct from the gleeful tricksters we’ve seen thus far.

 

Batman Forever is filled with performances and setpieces that are watchable for their spectacle, and I practically inhaled a bowl of popcorn during the film’s bombastic first act. It’s an energy that never really lets up, but the script is full of things that happen only because the movie needs them to happen. Two-Face has no master plan, striving only to kill Batman in a disconnected string of death traps (more shades of Batman ’66), while the Riddler’s mind-control plot is both too outlandish and much too easy to foil. One can easily see why a seven-year-old Cinema King would have been enamored of this cartoon come to life, but there is a kernel of something greater in here that keeps the adult coming back – occasionally against my better judgment, but compelled all the same. There is something very savvy about Batman Forever, and one wishes the film had leaned harder into that aspect of the story rather than the neon pop-art comic book come to life (which was, after all, what Schumacher intended). Perhaps there ought to be a Schumacher Cut, after all.

 

Batman Forever is rated PG-13 for “strong stylized action.” Directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler, and Akiva Goldsman. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Nicole Kidman, and Chris O’Donnell.

For more Bat-May action, the good folks at Collected Editions posted my review of Batman: The Movies, the comic book adaptation of the Batman Quadrilogy. Give them a click - no one reviews comics like Collected Editions!

Aquaman (2018)

I don’t think any of us could have expected that we’d get an Aquaman movie before, say, The Flash or another of DC’s heavy-hitters that hasn’t labored under decades of “talks to fish” jokes. (Thank credited writer Geoff Johns, who spent years recently doing yeoman’s work to boost the profile of Aquaman comics after the character languished following Peter David’s seminal 1990s run.) But here we are, in the wake of a disappointingly passable Justice League and a DC cinematic universe that looks to be more standalone than unified – which is actually smart. Instead of chasing the Marvel method, DC appears to be organizing its universe around its unique and resonant characters, even if they (Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Aquaman) aren’t the ones you’d expect. 

Enter, then, Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry, rightful heir to the Atlantean throne currently held by his half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson), who wants to unite the seven kingdoms of the sea in an offensive against the surface world. Drafted into the conflict by princess Mera (Amber Heard) and royal advisor Vulko (Willem Dafoe), the man who would be Aquaman sets off on a quest to reclaim his birthright and his destiny.

As a piece of big-screen spectacle – placed at Christmastime, it feels a bit out of place, but so too does its land-and-sea protagonist – Aquaman is a real popcorn movie. Looking like an underwater Tron: Legacy, with a narrative that feels like a cross between Thor and Indiana Jones (and a Rupert Gregson-Williams score that’s part Vangelis, part Henry Jackman, and part Junkie XL), there is something contagious about Aquaman’s gee-whiz enthusiasm for bright lights, big setpieces, and wild monstrous creatures. From merpeople to colossal crabs, from talking krakens to zombie fishmen, director James Wan is clearly having a ball inventing and adapting the daftest denizens of the deep. Moreover, the film carries with it a sense that any mad adventure could be just around the corner – par for the course are a tidal wave or jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Don’t worry too much, the film seems to say; just have fun.

And for the most part, Aquaman is quite fun, thanks in large part to Momoa’s seafaring swagger. When we last saw him in Justice League, he was the surfer bro monarch, howling with glee and cackling “My man!” while spearing parademons. Here he’s lost none of that cockiness, overconfident and scrapping for a fight. His headstrong nature is countered by Amber Heard’s steady Mera, always cautious and deductive but a strong hand in a fight as she defies her father (Dolph Lundrgren, astride a seahorse) and his alliance with Orm.

Poor Heard, though, is saddled with scores of expositional dialogue, as are most of the characters in the film. Atlantis and its rival kingdoms are dense in mythology, and there’s a lot of ground/water to cover, but the film does pack in a lot, including Aquaman’s three biggest villains. On that count, despite the film threatening to buckle under its own weight, it is possibly the most straight-faced comics-accurate superhero film in recent memory, with Mera, Orm, and Black Manta (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) looking as if they’ve stepped directly off the printed page without any self-conscious jokes. In fact, it’s easy to overlook a lot of the film’s flaws – choppy exposition, cartoonish filters on the visuals and the audio – because of how earnestly it emulates its source material; when Orm puts on that Ocean Master helmet, it’s like looking into the eyes of an Ivan Reis page. Indeed, from Zack Snyder we sense that James Wan has inherited that widescreen approach to the cinematic frame as a comic book panel, slowing down key action beats to give us a fist-pumping rah-rah pose before revving back up.

There are moments in Aquaman that are difficult to engage, moments that take you out of the film because of how ludic and unserious it can be; for me, it was the moments when some of the dialogue, already leaden with exposition, was muffled by an underwater filter that sounds like a kid in a bathtub (Tom Hardy, eat your heart out). But the film is buoyed by its relentless exuberance and my own predisposition to like this sort of movie when it doesn’t step grotesquely out of line. Between a comics-accurate Black Manta and Nicole Kidman wearing a sequined amphibious skeleton, the geeks have well and truly won.

Aquaman is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language.” Directed by James Wan. Written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, Will Beall, Geoff Johns, and James Wan. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Temuera Morrison, and Nicole Kidman.

Monday at the Movies - August 13, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a pair of movies that are – shall we say – exceedingly British.

Paddington (2014) – Despite my reservations that the titular bear was neither as cute as the Peggy Fortnum illustrations nor voiced by Colin Firth, I found myself captivated by the shameless whimsy and defiant British-ness of Paddington. In the case of the former, the bear looks much better in motion than he does in still photos, charmingly expressive; on the matter of the latter, Ben Whishaw is a fine Paddington, imbuing this unique bear with a roguish innocence that never misses a giggle when he pulls a marmalade sandwich from under his hat. There is something striking about the way writer/director Paul King (no relation; himself helming his first movie, a remarkable moment) manages to capture the madcap logic of a children’s story, in which a renegade shower massage can flood a bathroom while a sinister taxidermist (Nicole Kidman, between proud mouthfuls of scenery) plots to stuff and mount a living creature for a surprisingly well-developed and narratively integrated reason. I was also impressed at how artfully developed many of the film’s gags proved to be; for instance, a mishap with a handheld vacuum cleaner establishes the strength of the device for a pivotal and deft setpiece late in the film. For a character as prominent and marketable as Paddington Bear, it would have been exceptionally easy to make a lazy film that cashes in on the character’s adorable reputation, but it was quite apparent that everyone involved on Paddington cared deeply about the character and his legacy, and it strikes me that they have done right by him.

Victoria and Abdul (2017) – Here’s a film that offers Judi Dench the chance to be alternatingly heartwarming and cantankerous for two hours while breathing life into one of Britain’s most prominent figures (returning to a role, incidentally, for which she was nominated for an Oscar in Mrs. Brown). If that’s not a recipe for a good time at a film, I haven’t found one, because Judi Dench is riveting in this “mostly” true story about Queen Victoria’s friendship with an Indian subject, Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), who becomes a teacher (“munshi”) and a confidante in the regent’s final years. Victoria and Abdul is funnier but no less delightful than I anticipated, taking a wry postcolonial approach to the British Empire, acknowledging its dehumanizing aspects in a sobering scene with Abdul’s friend Mohammed (Adeel Akhtar) but also highlighting Victoria’s efforts to learn more about her subjects, even if her naiveté is somewhat charming (“This mango is off,” she repeats in one notable scene). The cast is rounded out by Tim Pigott-Smith, Michael Gambon, Paul Higgins, and Eddie Izzard, all of whom play their xenophobia rather broadly in a quintessentially British tongue-in-cheek interrogation of prejudice; it’s all Izzard can do not to twirl his mustache as Victoria’s eldest son, horrified that a lowborn subject has his mother’s ear in a way he never has. The film is irrevocably and undeniably Dench’s, though, equally enthralling while asleep at tea or while insisting that her faculties have never been sharper, in a single-take monologue that lays bare in equal measure her insecurities and accomplishments. It’s a powerhouse moment in a potent performance, a real shame that she was snubbed at last year’s Oscars.

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

Monday at the Movies - February 10, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ve got another musical on the docket, but how does it compare to High School Musical 2?

Moulin Rouge (2001) – I’m really not the target audience for this. I’m quite certain of that. Having said that, my reaction to Moulin Rouge is really quite lukewarm. In Moulin Rouge Baz Luhrmann invents the velvet-vomit aesthetic with a rock opera take on fin-de-siècle Paris starring Ewan McGregor as an aspiring playwright and Nicole Kidman as the cabaret courtesan who loves him. The film might have made a bigger impact had I seen it earlier; thirteen years after its release, it feels like a lot of what I’ve already seen, especially in the wake of Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (about which I felt similarly ambivalent). Both films opened with their protagonist/narrator on a typewriter, the words zooming across the screen. As for the central conceit, the gimmicky pastiche of pop tunes and prewar visuals, it’s clever initially, and the use of Elton John’s “Your Song” is actually quite perfect for a romantic film. After a while, though, it gets tedious and at one point – the moment at which Jim Broadbent, otherwise engaging in the movie, is forced to sing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” – quite demoralizing. Throw in John Leguizamo’s brutal caricature of Toulouse-Lautrec and a runtime that feels much longer than its two hours, and Moulin Rouge will have you seeing red. Unless of course you’re into this sort of thing. If you surrender to the chemistry Kidman and McGregor clearly have between themselves and overlook the fact that the film tries to compensate for its lack of substance with an overabundance of style, you’ll have yourself a blast. As for me, I’ll be over here with the more convincing flicks.

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

Monday at the Movies - June 4, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-One of “Monday at the Movies,” another lackluster week in the domain of the Cinema King.

The Beaver (2011) – The Beaver is a cautionary tale, but the warning it carries bears no relationship to the movie you may have seen.  Rather, it’s an advisory not to trust the marketing campaign of a film.  If you’re expecting a kooky comedy in which Mel Gibson sorts through his psychological problems and reunites with his family thanks to the help of a lovable British beaver puppet, you’re out of luck.  The Beaver is extremely depressing, albeit with good performances all around.  Gibson communicates his character’s illness effectively, leading the viewer to feel on edge as he falls further from sanity, while Jodie Foster as his wife (and the film’s director) is appropriately earnest.  Cinema King favorite Anton Yelchin’s hatred of his father seethes off the screen, and his chemistry with valedictorian Jennifer Lawrence is perceptible and plausible (after an initial clichéd first encounter).  And perhaps there’s a very good movie in here somewhere, an honest depiction of mental illness led by an allegedly troubled actor, and perhaps this is merely a case of expectation misaligned with reality; that is, maybe my preconception of the movie got in the way of my appreciation for the film.  What I can say, though, is that The Beaver was a very unpleasant and uncomfortable viewing experience, making me squirm in more than a few places and grimace in others.  If this is what Foster was intending, job well done, because this is a very depressing movie.  But if we’re meant to be inspired by the film, mission not accomplished.

Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012) – Ordinarily TV movies aren’t quite under the purview of the Cinema King, but we have a bit of a Hemingway thing going on here lately.  After being disappointed by the (mis)use of Ernest Hemingway in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, I was gratified to see that HBO was working on a biopic about Hemingway’s tempestuous marriage to Martha Gellhorn.  Even better news:  Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman – a talented cast, mind you – were headlining.  (Recall, I was clamoring loudly for Clive Owen to succeed Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.)  So much for the good news.  The bad news?  The result, Hemingway & Gellhorn, is unorganized and meandering, focusing more on character than on plot.  Ordinarily this would be fine, but the characters here are too static to be interesting.  Owen and Kidman are very compelling and capture the essences of their characters, but they neither do anything very interesting nor evolve in any significant way.  The same is true for other big names who appear briefly – Tony Shalhoub, Robert Duvall, David Strathairn, etc.  Consequently, we have a novelty act that wears off once you realize it’s careening around the globe without purpose.  Worse, the film muddles history by implying that Gellhorn’s divorce from Hemingway caused his suicide years later, a move which seems to contradict the film’s attempts to canonize Gellhorn.  Ironically, the film finds many characters telling Hemingway that a film adaptation of A Farewell to Arms failed to capture his work accurately; similarly, our great Hemingway film, it seems, is yet to be.

The Ides of March (2011) – Continuing the trend of people who should be doing better work, George Clooney (who did so well with Good Night and Good Luck) directs Ryan Gosling (whose work was a surprise gem in Lars and the Real Girl) in this fable about American politics.  Gosling plays an idealistic campaign worker who falls for the American dream pitched by Clooney’s candidate, but Gosling is jaded by a series of revelations about the way the political scene really operates and drops his idealism for cynical throat-cutting and backstabbing.  Again, a fantastic supporting cast – Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, even President Logan – turns in good performances all around (Hoffman especially is, as always, engaging) but is criminally underused in yet another story that goes nowhere.  Literally.  The film ends just as it’s picking up steam, and all we’re left with is yet another film that offers up the trite moral “American politics is a dirty game.”  With so many interesting characters assembled, one wishes the writers had pushed the material at least one step beyond what we already know.  It’s not that The Ides of March is a bad movie; what we have is entertaining enough, but there’s no “pay off.”  It’s a lot of sound and fury, but it signifies nothing, ending as only a tale told by an idiot can.  If I can channel my inner Gene Shalit for a moment, “Beware The Ides of March.”

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!  (And hopefully things turn around before July 20, because that’d be a heck of a dry spell otherwise.)