The Marvels (2023)

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading the nonfiction book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios by Joanna Robinson, et al, and rewatching a few of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s greatest hits (Iron Man, The Winter Soldier) – all while keeping current with the second season of Loki and, yes, even the colorized version of Werewolf by Night on Disney+. And if you’ve been reading my reviews long enough, you’ll have sensed my genuine fatigue with all of this – not in keeping track of the superhero genre but in keeping up. I haven’t reviewed the Marvel shows because it’s too much content to watch and digest; to be honest, most of it elicits an “It’s Fine” shrug from me. There’s just so much of it these days, and very little of it is actually great. It’s beginning to feel a lot like homework.
 
And this weariness is Robinson’s whole point. In MCU, she and her co-authors observe that the low points in the 15-year franchise have been when the movies lose sight of what made Iron Man such a roaring success – not its CGI smash-fests or its breakneck sprint to a bigger picture, but the quiet character moments that “let us experience who they are as people and not legends” (352). In short, let superheroes be fun, let them be human, and make the world-building afterthought, not a forethought. (In other words, stop trying to make Kang happen.)
 
With this whirlwind reminder tour fresh in my head, I plunked down for a ticket to the 33rd MCU film, plugged my ears from the noisome and tiresome culture wars, and just prayed to God and Kevin Feige that The Marvels would be fun. Maybe prayers do get answered, because The Marvels is breezy and bright, weightless in a way against which we’ve been inoculated, and I smiled most of the way through.
 
Thanks to some super-quantum cosmic entanglement, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) finds herself physically switching places with her niece Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and superfan Kamala “Ms. Marvel” Khan (Iman Vellani). The unlikely trio soon learn that their predicament comes at the hands of Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), who is tearing worlds apart in a bid to restore the Kree Empire to its former glory.
 
While in one sense the Marvel Cinematic Universe set an unbeatable bar with Avengers: Endgame, its more recent outings have simultaneously lowered the bar. From the incoherent plotting of Spider-Man: No Way Home to the downright dismal proceedings of Thor: Love & Thunder, right up through four years and ten seasons of television shows, there’s very little of it I want to rewatch – and the very notion of a soup-to-nuts rewatch is so exhausting that I can barely stomach the sentence. In a world of Spider-Verses, who needs more Quantumania? So I went into The Marvels with my expectations fairly lowered, and the hurdle it needed to clear was whether I would begrudge it the time I spent with it.
 
The Marvels is far from perfect. It’s brief and a little thin, and its villain is the very definition of undercooked; Dar-Benn is not unlike her predecessors Ronan or Malekith, and the fact that you are likely rushing to Wikipedia says it all. Marvel has sometimes (often?) struggled to make its one-and-done villains sing, and Dar-Benn is no different. Her motives are clear enough, but the film doesn’t give Ashton much to do beyond scowl and brandish a hammer – a shame, since there is something at the core of this character worth exploring beyond a tepid and compulsory flashback sequence.
 
Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris are fine, too, getting to cut loose a bit more than they had in their respective debuts. The film truly shines, though, on the capable shoulders of Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel. Where her Disney+ miniseries felt bogged down by cosmic nonsense and lifeless enemies, The Marvels wisely plays into Vellani’s unabashed affection for the genre and the giants with whom she shares the screen. When she squeaks with delight, we get it because we too would feel starstruck in the presence of Samuel L. Jackson (whose Nick Fury is so much more entertaining here than in the limp Secret Invasion). And in the film’s final scene, Vellani gets to riff on an iconic MCU moment, so effortlessly cool and nerdy that I literally applauded for how perfect it was for this character, this performer, to reenact that moment.
 
Indeed, the film is aptly titled The Marvels because it is that rare three-hander that gives the team a perfect balance of screen-time and responsibility for the plot. (The fact that it is handily stolen by Vellani is a testament to her dynamism as an actress.) An early action sequence introduces the dizzying effect of the three women swapping places, a unique setpiece that simultaneously moves the plot forward and the quickfire change of setting is brisk and – most importantly – entertaining. Much has been made of the film’s 01:45 runtime (the shortest in MCU history), and I have to say it felt refreshing; there wasn’t much bloat in the film, with very few moments that overstayed their welcome. 
 
When we rank all the Marvel movies, The Marvels isn’t at the bottom, but it’s nearer to the bottom of the middle. There was something alchemical about those early movies, especially the unsurpassed best, The Winter Soldier. No, The Marvels is nearer to something like Thor: The Dark World, meat-and-potatoes superheroics largely unconcerned with the wider tapestry. It’s fine, but it’s fun. It is not a film that I will rush to see again, but if we assess the MCU entries in terms of how long I smiled and how many times I laughed, I suspect The Marvels would register somewhere near the top ten.
 

The Marvels is rated PG-13 for “action/violence and brief language.” Directed by Nia DaCosta. Written by Nia DaCosta, Megan McDonnell, and Elissa Karasik. Based on the Marvel Comics. Starring Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, Iman Vellani, Zawe Ashton, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Captain Marvel (2019)

Twenty-one movies in, the Marvel Cinematic Universe makes winning look effortless. As its original crop of Avengers begins to rotate out (so we assume), Marvel’s been marching toward Avengers: Endgame with the dually unenviable tasks of wrapping up a decade’s worth of stories while seeding another decade’s. With Captain Marvel, the franchise tries so many new things that it’s a wonder the film seems so comfortable, with its star Brie Larson feeling right at home as the hero who’s always already been woven into the Marvel tapestry.

Circa 1995, the Kree warrior Vers (Larson) crashlands on Earth, where she’s met by rising SHIELD agent Nicholas Fury (a de-aged Samuel L. Jackson). Fury is understandably baffled by her stories of intergalactic war and an invading army of Skrull shapeshifters, but it’s Vers who finds herself jumbled by impossible memories of a life on earth. As her commanding officer (Jude Law) sets out to rescue his protégé, the Skrull leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) searches earth for a device that will turn the tide in his peoples’ war against the Kree.

It used to be that the phrase “comic booky” was thrown around derisively, to cast the aspersion that a film emulated the gaudiest, most puerile impulses of the medium. Now, however, I’m comfortable saying that Captain Marvel is the best kind of “comic booky” movie, in the sense that it packs in an expansive mythology, replete with nods forward and backward to the MCU’s continuity (Djimon Hounsou and Lee Pace reprise – or is it preprise? – their roles as Korath and Ronan from Guardians of the Galaxy). It’s also delightfully comic booky in its use of the cinematic screen as a comics frame, with visual images overlapping and echoing in a way that reminds me of how well Zack Snyder mastered the technique in Watchmen; directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck manage to communicate almost exclusively visually, as in the myriad ways they use, for example, the color of blood to indicate chronology, revelation, and memory. 

Moreover, Captain Marvel is exceedingly comic booky for its willingness to reinvent what came before. I won’t spoil any of the film’s big twists, but suffice it to say that the movie’s Captain Marvel does not have the same secret origin as she does in the comics, largely because the comics are as tangled, refracted, and impenetrable as the stereotypes portend. In streamlining and refashioning, though, this Captain Marvel’s origin echoes all the versions from the comics and repurposes the story into something new and potent, something that works for this character and for the trajectory of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With its mid-90s setting, the film does fascinating work fitting into this long-running story, particularly with young agents Nick Fury and Phil Coulson.

But the film is rightfully Brie Larson’s, and she is far and away dynamite as the woman who would be Captain Marvel. Her performance is being compared to Gal Gadot’s in Wonder Woman or to Chadwick Boseman’s in Black Panther, but I think she’s much closer to Chris Evans in Captain America: The Winter Soldier – coming into herself with ease and a grin, effortlessly comfortable with herself and her friends even as her world is changing seismically around her. She’s funny, she’s confident, and she’s able to sell the trust and intimacy that comes with the kind of deep friendship she forms with Fury and others. It’s the kind of performance that can carry a franchise quite readily, and I for one am ready for Captain Marvel 2 (Kree Boogaloo?).

Special shout-out section: Samuel L. Jackson is a blast as a young Nick Fury. We get to see shades of the hardline Director Fury, but his youth and inexperience lets some of the Sam Jackson charm trickle in, and we never tire of seeing him cozy up with Goose the cat. Ben Mendelsohn is buckets of fun as Talos, who’s got more personality than a lot of unmemorable Marvel villains; Mendelsohn’s play with accents and his dexterous hand at manipulating his Skrull prosthetics make me hope that if/when the Skrulls do return, Mendelsohn will pop back into the MCU. Finally, much has been made of the fact that Pinar Toprak is the MCU’s first female composer, and she turns in a pretty exciting score. The music has often been a sticking point for Marvel, who are usually criticized for bland forgettable scores, but I’ve loved most of them and hope to hear more from Toprak in the future. Like Larson, she fits right in.

The Winter Soldier remains the gold standard for me, but Captain Marvel continues very nicely the easy-winning streak of debut films like Doctor Strange and Black Panther. It’s a movie with plenty of surprises, for newcomers and true believers alike, and it clicks into place with the delicate precision of the best comic book “retcons,” asking us to look back at the past and wonder if it really happened the way we think it did. At one point in the credits, we’re promised “Captain Marvel will return” – though where precisely, I shan’t spoil – as if we had any doubt that Marvel’s latest gamble would have a long-running payoff. Marvel has been on a real winning streak, and for a character whose namesake is, in a way, the very studio that’s introducing her, Captain Marvel is another success.

Captain Marvel is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief suggestive language.” Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Written by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Nicole Perlman, and Meg LeFauve. Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Gene Colan, Roy Thomas, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and David López. Starring Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Lashana Lynch, Annette Bening, Clark Gregg, and Jude Law.

Glass (2019)

I was an early believer on Unbreakable – I can still vividly recall the ads in comic books of the time heralding the fact that Alex Ross had created artwork for the DVD release. In that sense, I have always already been the perfectly calibrated audience for Shyamalan’s fascination with superheroes; I’ve been in the trenches of fandom with him this whole time, and I’ve come back to Unbreakable from time to time as I get older and deeper into the genre. Even as Shyamalan’s career has met with less than stellar reception, most of us have wondered when he’d do a sequel to his one superhero movie, especially as the genre became billion-dollar business.

No one expected him to backdoor his way into the terrain through his split-personality abduction horror film Split – spoilers, it’s a sequel to Unbreakable – but if that’s the way we get to Glass, so be it. It’s been nineteen years (much ado is made within the film itself) as David Dunn (Bruce Willis) continues to do the superhero thing, with his vigilante eyes set on serial killer Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy). Meanwhile, Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) languishes in a mental institution under the care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), who believes that “Mister Glass” suffers from psychotic delusions.

As much as I felt weirdly cheated by the fact that Split was a covert sequel to Unbreakable, a misplaced and almost perfunctory twist, there’s an undeniable frisson of delight in seeing Willis, McAvoy, and Jackson on screen together, as if you can hear Shyamalan giggling from behind the camera, “Can you believe they let me get away with this?” And despite the crossover factor being markedly less ambitious than, say, Avengers: Infinity War, Glass manages to scratch that same itch, especially when all three are together. (Shyamalan’s cameo, in which he appears to claim that at least three of his cameos have all been the same man, is perhaps a bridge too far, but even there we find something mildly admirable in his overreach.)

To repeat what I said above, I had an acute sense during Glass that it was a movie designed to target my specific brand of fandom – my intense devotion to the genre and the way it helps us imagine and re-envision ourselves as the heroes we need. It stars three actors who I adore, turning in varying levels of exquisite performance. Willis continues, admittedly, to phone it in a bit, but as David Dunn I have the sense that Willis doesn’t actively resent being in the film (as was apparent in, for one, Cop Out). David has always been a more contemplative, quiet hero type, so it’s fine that Willis leaves the flashier performances to the film’s antagonists – itself a kind of genre-based decision. McAvoy was riveting in Split, but in Glass he revs up his performance by transitioning between personalities without the aid of costume changes. Far and away, though, as the title presages, the film belongs to the magisterial talents of Samuel L. Jackson, who gleefully carves the scenery and boxes up the rest to take home for later. Delivering impassioned monologues with eyes gleaming with fiery madness, Jackson is equally compelling in the moments when he’s not talking, as we try to divine what’s going on behind his silence. At home in both a hospital gown and his more ostentatious purple leather suit, Mister Glass is the kind of villain on which a franchise can properly be hung.

At the same time, and as much as I found myself digging the mythopoetic jazz Shyamalan is laying down with the genre, I understand entirely that the film isn’t for everyone, that Glass’s mixed-to-negative reviews are not quite unfair. As superhero films go, this is one of the talkier ones, and its genre deconstruction isn’t perhaps as revelatory as Shyamalan hopes (though it might have been nineteen years ago). Moreover, Shyamalan’s proclivity for “twists” in his storytelling stacks up in the film’s third act, with nearly as many false endings as the third Lord of the Rings movie, and though not all of these twists land with the mind-blowing effect of The Sixth Sense’s final developments, Shyamalan ultimately arrives at a place where I felt – if not accepting – at least understanding what he had tried to accomplish. Despite the broad ambitions of its morality play, the film’s scale is exceedingly intimate, but in those moments Shyamalan displays that he has lost none of his dexterity with miniature moments of terror, of the bumps-in-the-night scares on which he made his name with The Sixth Sense and Signs (which I recall, on the strengths of its sound mixing alone, being immensely terrifying in a dark room). 

If The Visit was Shyamalan’s low-budget back-to-basics return, with Split edging his way toward his earlier successes, it’s hard not to hope that Glass marks a sort of new beginning for a man whose career langured in critical limbo and popular dismissal. While this may not be the sort of superhero film for everyone, its methodical deliberateness is exactly my cup of tea and a useful counterprogramming if you’re feeling a bit worn by the blockbusters of the genre. Glass is so delightfully idiosyncratic that it’s all too easy to be swept along by the steady, purposeful drive of the story.

Glass is rated PG-13 for “violence including some bloody images, thematic elements, and language.” Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Starring James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Paulson, Spencer Treat Clark, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Incredibles 2 (2018)

Fourteen years is not the longest we’ve had to wait for sequels – Indiana Jones waited eighteen years to find the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while Blade Runner 2049 incorporated its 35-year gap into the narrative – but it’s certainly the longest for Pixar, who have expanded four of their films into franchises while The Incredibles stood alone. Because The Incredibles has had (but did not need) fourteen years to become one of my all-time favorite films, it’s hard for me to say whether Incredibles 2 is better, but it’s certainly a worthy successor to what was, for a good long while, possibly the greatest superhero movie ever made.

Incredibles 2 follows up immediately on the original, as the arrival of the Underminer once more calls the Parr family out of hiding. But patriarch Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) is stunned to learn that the media-savvy Winston Deaver (Bob Odenkirk) and his sister Evelyn (Catherine Keener) believe Elasti-Girl (Holly Hunter) is the key to winning over public perception of re-legalizing superheroes. While Elasti-Girl pursues the case of the villainous Screen-Slaver, Mr. Incredible faces his greatest challenge yet – embracing his role as a stay-at-home dad to adolescent Violet (Sarah Vowell), mathematically-challenged Dash (Huck Milner), and the unpredictably-powered infant Jack-Jack.

As the director of my two favorite Pixar films – The Incredibles, naturally, and Ratatouille – Brad Bird earns a lot of goodwill from me. Despite Tomorrowland being a bit of a flop, there’s been something about it that hasn’t left my mind since I saw it (not counting, of course, Michael Giacchino’s masterful score), which means it’ll make a great “Take Two Tuesday” one of these days. Point being, even when Bird is off his game, he’s still capable of turning in unforgettable work with something to say. For Father’s Day weekend, Incredibles 2  provides a nice reminder that the act of raising a family can indeed be a superheroic feat, that gender roles are just what we make of them, and that the gifted cannot help but seek out their unique purpose in life. Bird’s appreciation for the extraordinary is on full display in Incredibles 2, though he wisely flips the script to show Elasti-Girl’s taste for superheroics; where the first film saw Mr. Incredible revel in his clandestine activities, here we get to see Elasti-Girl have her day in the sun, and the ways she and her husband find peace and fulfillment in their new roles is frankly inspiring for anyone of my generation, staring down the barrel of starting families.

Incredibles 2 does not, however, do much in the way of genre deconstruction after the fashion of the first film. For example, there is a moment when a villain launches into exposition, and in the first film that would have followed up on a winking joke about “monologuing.” Here, though, the superheroics are fairly straight-faced, largely because Bird is less interested in the superhero genre this time and more interested in a story about a family that happens to wear spandex. Put another way, Incredibles 2 is less about reckoning with the past and more about preparing for the future. (Whether that augurs well for a possible Incredibles 3 is anyone’s guess, but I’d wager that the box office receipts will find Bird receiving no shortage of blank checks for a threequel.)

Indeed, the restraint on display is artfully done, refreshing for a sequel that’s been more highly demanded than any other in recent memory. In a production with less integrity, it’s easy to imagine vast subplots dedicated to Edna Mode or even Honey Best, but here they’re part of the narrative world and fit into the story without pandering to an audience that craves so much more of them. Bird also introduces a number of new characters, too many to enumerate, but again they fit into the aesthetic and the world of The Incredibles with that essential hunger to see more. Doors are, of course, left open for further adventures in this world, be they on film, on television, or in comic books, but one is reassured that the film took so long to arrive because its creators are acutely aware of how special the final product needs to be. 

Incredibles 2 feels very special, but it also feels good. At a time when everything seems divisive, when no one can agree on anything from politics to Star Wars, it’s refreshing to go to a film that embodies the purest form of escapism – not escapism from something but escapism to a place where the good guys are unreservedly good, where they have an irrepressible need to help and a visually amazing way of doing so. The film includes a number of sequences that are breathtaking, even as far as a mesmerizing animation of a motel swimming pool, hypnotic in all its simulated eddying glory. Incredibles 2 looks beautiful; its inimitable style is an enviable treat, effortlessly cool yet painstakingly rendered. We want to live there. We want to be these people; at least, I do, because Incredibles 2 reminds us that there is a hero inside of all of us, just waiting for an opportunity to answer the call to do something amazing, even if it’s just changing poopy diapers. From start to finish, Incredibles 2 is a joyride, with heavy emphasis on “joy.”

Incredibles 2 is rated PG for “action sequences and some brief mild language.” Written and directed by Brad Bird. Starring Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Huck Milner, Bob Odenkirk, Catherine Keener, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Bonus review! Incredibles 2 is preceded by Bao, a short film from Domee Shi in which a dumpling comes to life and brightens the life of his ostensible mother. In the best Pixar tradition, the short is bracingly original, emotionally potent, and dialogue-free, allowing the power of the images to speak volumes. After last year’s “Olaf’s Frozen Adventure” overstayed its welcome, Bao is refreshingly brisk, condensed in a way that shows the tight economy of the narrative. I didn’t know quite what to expect from Bao, beyond seeing still images of its adorable protagonist, but I found myself touched by its sincere sentimentality. Bao is a fine return to form for a studio who has done some of its best work in its pre-feature shorts.

The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)

When I started to see the reviews trickle in for The Hitman’s Bodyguard, I began to worry. Was this yet another case of all the good moments finding their way into the trailer, leaving the movie an emptier experience? The good news is that the exact opposite is true – most of the funniest lines in this action comedy were not spoiled by the advertising (largely on the basis of Samuel L. Jackson’s perennially creative love affair with a certain four-letter word). That’s not, however, to say that The Hitman’s Bodyguard is as successful as it ought to be, but it is diverting enough.

Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) is a down-on-his-luck personal protection agent scraping the bottom of the barrel until a call from Interpol agent Amelia Roussel (Elodie Yung), who just happens to be an ex-girlfriend. Agent Roussel asks Bryce to transport the boisterous hitman Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) to The Hague to testify against a war criminal (Gary Oldman) in exchange for a full pardon for Kincaid’s wife (Salma Hayek).

The Hitman’s Bodyguard is, in effect, a murderous Planes, Trains, and Automobiles with Samuel L. Jackson and explosions instead of John Candy and feel-good holiday cheer. And like its late-80s comedic predecessor, The Hitman’s Bodyguard sails on the strength of the chemistry between its two leads. Jackson is essentially playing one more facet of himself, a wisecracking, foul-mouthed badass with an infectious laugh and a violent temper. Ryan Reynolds does yeoman’s work as the straight man, but he’s a straight man with an edge, capable of playing deadpan punchlines like, “I hope they kill him, I really do.” Together, the two are comedy gold, and one senses that the best moments are the ones that developed through improvisation and riffing off each other’s strengths.

The moments that feel the most like the familiar Reynolds/Jackson personas are particularly strong because there are other parts of the film that feel overly scripted. The first act in particular feels like the most perfunctory beginning to a film since the on-the-nose opener for Ant-Man, though like Ant-Man the movie turns around rather effectively once the plot is permitted to progress. The first few scenes of The Hitman’s Bodyguard do the work of introducing the film and its characters, but in a way that baldly displays the mechanics behind the narrative. In the scene introducing Kincaid, for example, Interpol explains his motivation to him as he predicts how their plan will go awry; meanwhile, the villain is introduced while he murders a small child in cold blood.

Speaking of the villain, what was the size of Gary Oldman’s check and – given the brief screen-time allotted to him – was it worth it? From my perspective, Oldman is always worth the price of admission, but the film catastrophically underutilizes him. He’s entirely effective at creating a villain who is instantly loathsome, and in that sense you need an actor of Oldman’s caliber to make quick work of a thin character. It is, however, more than a little distracting to cast Oldman as a villain who spends most of his screen time as a silent defendant in court. Likewise, Salma Hayek is an odd choice for Kincaid’s wife, whose appearances on screen are largely limited to a prison cell and a flashback south of the border. One wonders if she was cast preemptively for a larger role in a potential sequel, because again these strike me as very expensive choices for comparably small roles.

Maybe I’m just getting old in my moviegoing years to be concerned about the budget for a film that otherwise entertained me. The Hitman’s Bodyguard is not as entirely as funny as I’d hoped it would be – at least in terms of quantity – but it did leave me with a good feeling and a few memorable one-liners which would be abjectly criminal to spoil. It has a few unsurprising but crunchy action sequences to pad out the funny bits, and if the plot had been a little less direct to allow more room for Reynolds and Jackson to bicker, it’d be an instant home run. The Hitman’s Bodyguard is good but not great, not a movie which demands to be seen theatrically but for which I am pretty glad to have done so.

The Hitman’s Bodyguard is rated R for “strong violence and language throughout.” Direct by Patrick Hughes. Written by Tom O’Connor. Starring Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Elodie Yung, and Salma Hayek.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

For an early March release starring a giant computer-generated ape and a jukebox soundtrack to make Suicide Squad blush, designed to be the second installment in an ongoing yet untested franchise, Kong: Skull Island is far better than it has any right to be. While far from the second coming of monster movies, it’s worth a look because of its fun use of the adventure horror genre with a cast that is never less than engaging.

What is the secret of Skull Island? In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, a government researcher (John Goodman) assembles a team for an expedition to the mysterious landmass – including a British tracker (Tom Hiddleston), a military escort (Samuel L. Jackson), and a war photographer (Brie Larson). However, not everyone on the team knows that Skull Island is home to the colossal Kong, a mighty ape who’s far from the least of their worries.

I’ve seen a lot of critics lament the belabored point that Kong: Skull Island does not live up to the original 1933 film, to which I have to say – is it supposed to? Isn’t this a bit like complaining that your girlfriend’s recipe for apple pie can’t compare to the one that’s been in your family for generations? And as apple pies go, Kong: Skull Island is a real peach of a pie. I laughed, I held my breath, and I thrilled to the spectacle (and seeing it in an immersive 3D IMAX experience didn’t hurt). It’s popcorn fun at its finest.

Kong: Skull Island is exuberantly fun, enthusiastic about its content, but more importantly it gets the audience on board with that with equal fervor. After an opening scene that ably demonstrates the scope of the action, the film stages several scenes of character development – admittedly, this isn’t War & Peace, and the characters aren’t exactly breaking any molds, but the performers are having so much fun nibbling on the scenery that it’s easy to play along. Once we get to Skull Island, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts stages a number of very engrossing set pieces that I’ve called adventure horror – think Pirates of the Caribbean by way of Alien, Stephen King’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Kong: Skull Island mixes the period piece atmosphere of a comedic adventure film with the sudden onset of terrifying dread as these funny characters find themselves in genuinely perilous situations, and it’s to Vogt-Roberts’s credit that these tonal shifts manage not to feel disjointed.

I’ve said that the character work in Kong: Skull Island won’t dazzle you with originality, but again, in a film that stars King Kong, I’m not sure they need to do so. And the good news is that Kong is really quite stunning, like the recent Planet of the Apes movies on steroids. While I was aware that Kong has been, for lack of a better term, embiggened so that he can eventually go toe-to-toe with Godzilla in a sequel down the pike, I couldn’t help feeling that a larger Kong was what set this one apart and justified another Kong film. (I was surprised, however, to read that we’ve had fewer than ten King Kong films since 1933. That number seems low to me.) That larger Kong motivates our characters to react differently to him; he’s no longer a sideshow attraction to be captured and tamed. He’s a dangerous monster, either an object of fear or a massive target to kill. Tom Hiddleston does broody and British as well as ever, tracking and understanding Kong, while Brie Larson gets to do a fun updated riff on the Fay Wray “damsel” who draws Kong’s eye in a way that feels fresh and more female-friendly than before. While Shea Whigham ends up stealing the show with his blissfully oblivious army captain, it’s Samuel L. Jackson’s eyes themselves who become a star attraction. Frequently shot in intense close-ups that look like something out of a samurai revenge film, Jackson’s eyes play the fury of Preston Packard like Captain Ahab by way of Colonel Kurtz, pitted to perfection against the deftly-animated human-like peepers of our snarling simian star.

To tell you the truth – I never lie, dear reader – I am not all that thrilled with the idea of King Kong vs. Godzilla, which feels a little bit like another studio’s attempt to crib the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s success by building yet one more franchised shared universe. I’m not opposed to the idea in principle, and you’ll probably see a review of Godzilla vs. Kong right here in 2020, if all goes well. But the truth of the matter is that I enjoyed Kong: Skull Island so much as a standalone that I’d rather not look too far forward just yet. Let me enjoy this one for a while, and if there’s more of the same coming down the river, all the better.

Kong: Skull Island is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for brief strong language.” Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts. Written by John Gatins, Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, and Derek Connolly. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, and John C. Reilly.

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.

The Incredibles (2004)

I don’t think it’s fair to qualify The Incredibles as “a great Pixar film” or even “a great superhero film.”  (I do love the joke, however, that it’s the best Fantastic Four movie ever made.)  The Incredibles is, of course, all of those things, but it is for my money a great film, period.  When I informally consider my favorite films of all time (a list I really must put on this page, one of these days), I don’t usually think of The Incredibles on that count, but having rewatched it quite recently I do believe it belongs there.

After superheroes were forced into retirement by a litigious citizenry, Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) struggles to maintain his cover as Bob Parr while his wife Helen, formerly Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), raises their children – speedster Dash and invisible Violet – in a best attempt to fit in.  Bob’s desire to be super leads him into a dangerous new line of work where the sinister Syndrome (Jason Lee) has other plans for the once and future Mr. Incredible.

At the risk of superfluity, The Incredibles attempts to be many things at once, and it is first-rate at all of them.  I’m often very critical of films that try to do too much in the bounded space of one movie, and I’m inclined to be even more so because of how deftly The Incredibles juggles so many narratives in less than two hours.  First, there’s a brilliant deconstruction of the superhero genre, exposing the warts-and-all in several very clever moments that have now themselves become iconic (“No capes!” and the obsession with “monologuing” chief among them).  Taking cues from Watchmen and Robert Mayer’s Superfolks, The Incredibles also manages to do what most deconstruction never even hazards – it reconstructs in the process, offering a narrative that is not about snidely deriding its inspirations but rather about creating an earnest new narrative on that foundation.

In the midst of all the grandeur of masks and superpowers, there’s a deeply personal story about what brings – and holds – a family together, with a very moving sincerity about the proceedings.  The cast (including Spencer Fox and Sarah Vowell as the kids) all work well together, with a kind of natural chemistry that you don’t find even in some real families.  Nelson has that lovable schlubby quality to his voice, and there’s evident deep affection between him and Hunter.  The scene-stealer here, as he always is in any film, is Samuel L. Jackson’s turn as Frozone, the ice-blasting companion with personality and attitude for days.  Indeed, the best scene of the film is his, in which he and his unseen wife quarrel over whether his abilities are actually needed to save the city.

All of this boils down to how sharp the writing is, and Brad Bird (doing double duty, also directing) is a very smart filmmaker, and this is the kind of movie that gives him a lifetime benefit-of-the-doubt on my end.  Lest we forget, he’s also the genius behind Ratatouille, and I can’t wait to see what he does with the mysterious Tomorrowland – a film whose trailer elicited from me the following reaction:  “Oh, the Incredibles guy?  I’ll give anything of his a shot.”  (He’s also the hysterical voice behind the manic Edna Mode, who costumes our superheroes a la Edith Head.)

At the risk of ending on a groaner of a pun, The Incredibles is a movie which wears its review on its sleeve.  It is, in a word, incredible.  And if there’s anyone in the world who hasn’t seen this one yet, it isn’t too late to catch up before the sequel arrives – and praise the Lord, one actually is on the way.

The Incredibles is rated PG for “action violence.” There’s a lot of running, jumping, punching, and exploding, all done in a cartoon manner with little to no blood.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)

I’m really quite surprised that the marketing for Kingsman: The Secret Service didn’t make more of the fact that its central antagonist is named Richmond Valentine, a tycoon with a sinister plot set to culminate on the self-styled “Valentine’s Day.”  It is, I suspect, infinitely more preferable than the other film opening this weekend, 50 Shades of Grey; though vastly more violent and surprisingly more chaste, Kingsman ends up being at once a highly palatable deconstruction and a heroically rousing genuine article.

Repaying the debt he owes the boy’s father, secret agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) springs local hoodlum Eggsy Unwin (Taron Egerton) from lockup and recruits him to be a member of Kingsman, an elite espionage unit in the heart of Britain.  While Eggsy trains to earn a seat at the table, Hart (codename: Galahad) tracks the malicious misdeeds of Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), a blue-chip billionaire with dastardly designs on the planet’s future.

As with Kick-Ass, the previous collaboration between director Matthew Vaughn and comics writer Mark Millar, Kingsman: The Secret Service bears a curious relationship with the eponymous comic book by Millar and Dave Gibbons.  The film is very loosely based on the comic, in  the way that I think all of Millar’s work ought to be; Vaughn has taken the broadest strokes from the source material and done his own riff unfettered by fidelity.  Millar’s work always has a darkly cynical edge to it, refusing to pander to the reader’s expectations and instead shocking him with truly grotesque violence and profanity.  As before, Vaughn’s adaptation is more earnest, more interested in deconstructing and rebuilding a film genre than in disparaging convention.

A point-by-point comparison would be somewhat facile (EW’s done a “top five” if you’re interested – beware spoilers in the comments), but case in point – the book unfolds the mystery of who’s been abducting science-fiction icons.  Sidebar for a fun fact: the book opens with the abduction of Mark Hamill; the film opens with the kidnapping of a climate change scientist played by Hamill.  The film, however, tells us fairly early on that Valentine is the villain, and where the book derided Valentine for being a simpering nerd, Sam Jackson’s antagonist is steeped in deliberate camp because he’s a self-conscious throwback to the James Bond villains of old.

As someone who spent the last two years tearing through the James Bond film franchise, seeing Kingsman’s loving critique of the gentleman spy brought a warmth to my heart, one that overrode my occasional frustration with the film’s more excessive laddish humor (cranked up more than in any of Vaughn’s other work, alas).  The film gives us a very suave Bond-esque figure, promptly dispenses with him, and then gives us something even better in the form of Harry Hart, the role that Colin Firth seems to have been waiting to play.  His entire performance exudes a sense of, “Look, I’ve won the Oscar for playing royalty, thanks very much.  But what I’d really like to do is be James Bond.”  He came close with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (with his costar Mark Strong turning up here as Merlin, the Kingsman agency’s tech guru).  But Kingsman is Firth’s moment to shine, and boy, is he dapper as ever.  Jackson brings plenty of charisma as the villain, though honestly he’s just playing himself with a lisp (“Do I look like I give a ----?” could be either Valentine’s quip or Jackson’s response to a dull interview); Firth, on the other hand, is all class, the kind of man that every male moviegoer ought to want to be.

Throughout it all, though, Vaughn never fails to keep it fun, never sacrificing entertainment value for self-consciousness.  In part, this is because the characters are themselves reveling in the act of nostalgia, fondly recalling the quirks and clichés of James Bond and his similarly initialed comrades (Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer, et al).  But the greater strength is that Vaughn doesn’t lean too heavily on genre, instead giving us resplendently engaging action sequences for which the allusions to monologuing villains and underground lairs are mere (but in the latter case, literal) set decoration.

As I’ve said before, the film does overstep itself every once in a while; there are a few references to real-life figures, the Westboro Baptist Church and Barack Obama among them (though Vaughn is nonsensically backpedaling on the latter), where the satirical eye becomes downright mean.  The “Pomp and Circumstance” sequence, however – which some reviewers have, tsk tsk, spoiled in their write-ups – is perhaps the most lewdly absurd of these tonal digressions, and in these moments it seems Vaughn allows the reins to slip.  Millar’s pointed disdain works amid the overall attitude of his work, but in the film adaptations, Vaughn is at his best when he’s working in a sandbox populated by wry witticisms and gentle self-reflexivity.

At two points in the film, one character cites a spy genre chestnut, only to be met with the response, “This isn’t that kind of movie.”  Honestly, I’m very much okay with that.  This is the kind of film I felt was promised at the end of Skyfall.  The moment when Bond enters the new M’s office – only it’s the same office from Dr. No – felt like an emphatic “And we’re back, only better.”  Kingsman is that next step, celebrating the best of the genre while moving in a decidedly modern direction.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very much excited for Spectre (the next Bond film), but a Kingsman 2 would get my ticket dollar just the same.

Kingsman: The Secret Service is rated R for “sequences of strong violence, language and some sexual content.”  The violence is comprised of several very bloody fight sequences, some providing very unflinching detail with some creative methods of killing; gunshots, knives, slicing metallic limbs, and hand-to-hand combat is all included.  The F-word abounds, in excess of 100 times, and one reference to an unusual sexual act is delivered for comedic effect.

Monday at the Movies - October 13, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  James Bond aside, it’s been two months since we reviewed a superhero film around these parts.  That lapse in judgment is just downright villainous.

Unbreakable (2000) – Before M. Night Shyamalan became a director of diminishing returns, he was a clever auteur with a penchant for puzzle-box movies that didn’t admit to being such until the final reel’s big revelations (we all know how The Sixth Sense ends, yes?).  His second feature, Unbreakable, is an unconventional superhero story, set in “the real world” after David Dunn (Bruce Willis) miraculously survives a locomotive catastrophe.  As he struggles to make sense of his lack of injury, he’s contacted by Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), an art dealer who specializes in comic books; Elijah suspects David is the world’s first superhero.  Unbreakable is a bit of a slow burn, exceptionally broody as David wrestles with the “great responsibility” which we know necessarily comes “with great power.”  But the quiet moments, which might challenge devotees of the cinematic Marvel method, pay off by lending gravity to those moments when David does act, replete with knowing touches on the superhero genre’s mainstays (including a clever approximation of a costume).  The real standout, even for folks who love the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is Jackson’s turn as Elijah, a positively electrifying performance that crackles in his scenes with Willis.  Indeed, Jackson is almost more the star of the film because his Elijah – dubbed “Mr. Glass” because of a brittle bone disability – is a commanding performance, riveting as only Jackson can deliver, even without the assist of a well-timed F-bomb.  So don’t go in looking for the twist-ending approach from The Sixth Sense.  What you get instead is a smart and engaging revisionist superhero tale that begs for a sequel (which, alas, never came).

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

Top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe Films - #10-9

With Guardians of the Galaxy, the Marvel Cinematic Universe enters the double-digits club.  The job of a Top 10 list in this case is especially difficult because I knew precisely which would be #1 and which would be #10, but the rest I don’t have much complaint about.  The Marvel brand has been very reliable, so assigning ranks becomes a somewhat arbitrary game of quibbling and comparing.  That said, I feel fairly confident in assessing “The Top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe Films!”

10.  The Incredible Hulk (2008)

“All that said, there's something... off about this movie. I'm not sure what it is.”

It’s only the second entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so perhaps we can excuse The Incredible Hulk for not finding its feet very well.  It’s not a bad film by most stretches of the imagination, but it isn’t very engaging; the supporting cast is rather unmemorable (though I wouldn’t mind seeing William Hurt’s Thunderbolt Ross show up somewhere else in the MCU), but the biggest disappointment is Edward Norton’s turn as Bruce Banner, a tepid and wiry character who pales in comparison to Mark Ruffalo’s more intriguing portrayal.  There’s a disjunct between Norton and his gamma-sized alter ego, one that makes Hulk and Banner feel more like separate characters.  Perhaps it’s the story, focused around eliminating the Hulk persona – but only insofar as he’s not needed for an obligatory action sequences.  The special effects are gee-whiz, a step up from the Ang Lee film five years earlier, but even with an RDJ cameo this Hulk is not quite incredible.

9.  Iron Man 2 (2010)

“The film thrives because of Downey's personality; he's impeccably cast here in a character who's larger than life.” 

Loyal readers may be surprised by how low on the countdown Iron Man 2 lands, and in spite of how much I’m enamored of Robert Downey Jr. I put Iron Man 2 just above Incredible Hulk mostly on the grounds of narrative unity.  As engaging as RDJ is as Tony Stark, as fun as the movie can be, it feels very much like a friend with an ulterior motive.  As much as I admit to being a Marvel shill, there’s a degree to which I resent how much of Iron Man 2 is devoted to teasing The Avengers.  I love Samuel L. Jackson as much as the next guy, but I can’t help but wonder if an Iron Man 2 sans tie-ins might have been as strong as the first; the glimpses we get of that film – in which Tony Stark wrestles with his legacy while facing a competitor – is fantastically fun, but it feels put on hold whenever the S.H.I.E.L.D. crew stroll in.

Come back Wednesday for the next installment of this sure-to-be-controversial Top 10 list!

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!

Monday at the Movies - April 28, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, animated movies that don’t have the word “Batman” in the title!

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013) – The Flash (Justin Chambers) wakes up in a world he doesn’t recognize, where Aquaman and Wonder Woman are at war, where Thomas Wayne is Batman (Kevin McKidd); suspecting his nemesis Professor Zoom (C. Thomas Howell), Flash sets out to restore his powers and the world he knows before this one destroys itself in war.  While I greatly enjoyed the original comics by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert, I felt a little underwhelmed by the film adaptation for two big reasons: its ambition and its animation.  In terms of ambition, this 80-minute film tries to embrace the scope of the entire comic series, a summer crossover spanning more than sixty single issues.  Add to that the film’s attempt to adapt a Flash-centric comic into a Justice League adventure, and you’re looking at a heavy dose of Easter eggs that don’t really advance the plot.  Having said that, the way that the filmmakers recount the brilliant Batman: Knight of Vengeance (by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso) in about ten seconds is genius, highlighting the clever twist Azzarello brought to the alternate-world story.  My second grievance is the animation style, much looser and anime-inflected than some of the more polished recent entries from the DC Universe Animated Original Movies studio.  While this aesthetic is probably appealing to some, it feels choppy and bargain-bin, far from the caliber I’d expect from the DC studio.  It’s a diverting enough film, told capably if briskly with a few memorable sequences, but it’s so incredibly dark (one character is shot in the head, in extremely graphic detail, more than warranting its PG-13 rating) and so poorly animated that it’s hard to imagine anyone who isn’t a diehard DC devotee lapping this one up.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) – Hard to believe I’ve never reviewed a Star Wars film on here, isn’t it?  This is a bit of an odd place to start, a midquel made three years after Episode III but set before it as a backdoor pilot for a television series of the same name.  A classic gripe about the prequel trilogy is that we never see the much-heralded Clone Wars, which begin in Episode II’s climax and end in Episode III; this film and its progeny attempt to bridge that gap.  In 3D modeling reminiscent of a video game, Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) defend the Republic from the Separatist forces that threaten to tear it apart; amid the chaos of war, Anakin takes on a Padawan, young Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), as they liberate planets and the kidnapped son of Jabba the Hutt.  Though I’ve heard good things about the television show that followed, the fact is that The Clone Wars is not much better than the prequel trilogy that preceded it – but it is better by virtue of stronger dialogue and better characterization, safely away from the pen of George Lucas.  The real gem is the character of Ahsoka; the thought of Anakin taking on an apprentice is not exactly appealing, but Eckstein gives the character a spirited persona with an infectious eagerness to master the Jedi ways.  If I end up watching the show, it’ll largely be to see what comes of her character.  Unfortunately, while The Clone Wars improves on Lucas’s apparent inability to write character with personalities, it suffers from the prequel trilogy’s over-cluttered nature, with way too many subplots, double/triple-crosses, and characters dropped in solely for fan service.  For example, I’ll never really complain about Samuel L. Jackson’s presence, but his voiceover as Mace Windu accomplishes literally nothing.  Ditto for the surprisingly offensive homophobia in the effete character of Ziro the Hutt (think Jabba by way of Truman Capote in garish drag).  If such a thing exists, The Clone Wars is a misstep in the right direction, rectifying a few of the prequel trilogy’s errors but committing a few of its own.

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

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

If Skyfall was the closest to Christopher Nolan’s James Bond we’ll ever get, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the Marvel film that most clearly embraces that Nolan-level realism and its accompanying political significance.  For this reviewer, that’s a good thing – melding the financially successful Marvel method of filmmaking with the style of the most creatively successful comic book films (the “Dark Knight” trilogy) means a film that is considerably darker than Thor: The Dark World or even the retro fun of Captain America: The First Avenger but one that is no less compelling.

The Winter Soldier stars Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, better known as Captain America, the country’s leading super-soldier coming to terms with the world after being thawed out from 70 years on ice.  Captain America is partnered with Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), but he’s growing suspicious of the secrets she and SHIELD are keeping.  After ghost-story assassin The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) attacks SHIELD director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Cap faces life on the run from Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford), a SHIELD exec who’s convinced Cap is keeping secrets of his own.

Taking its cue from Ed Brubaker’s immensely popular run on the character, The Winter Soldier runs in its own direction without adhering slavishly to the source material.  There are a ton of fun shout-outs to the comics, but Winter Soldier continues the Marvel process of realigning classic stories for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Here SHIELD plays a much larger role than in the comics (which, really, I can’t recommend highly enough), opening a gateway to very exciting territory once Avengers: Age of Ultron rolls around.

On that note, one senses that the film suffers just the tiniest bit – as did the first Captain America film – from establishing plotlines for use further down the road, be it in Avengers: Age of Ultron or a third Captain America movie.  The difference between this and Prometheus (still the gold standard for audience frustration), though, is that Winter Soldier gestures toward future installments in the “to be continued” tradition of comics without failing to resolve its own central issues.  There’s one significant plot thread that doesn’t quite wrap up as neatly as it ought to – you’ll know it when you see it, since it’s right at the end – which I think is to the film’s detriment, as it deprives two members of the cast from having a very emotionally charged moment.

That’s all in the film we didn’t get, though (and, I’m sure, in the sequel we will).  The film we did get is anchored by another convincing performance by Evans as the soldier out of time, wrestling with fish-out-of-water issues and the more standard superheroic fare.  Meanwhile, Johansson continues to become a better actress after getting stronger material in The Avengers, and newcomer Anthony Mackie is a welcome addition as The Falcon.  The action sequences stand out as being first-rate, especially in a power-packed franchise like the Marvel Cinematic Universe; driven by Henry Jackman’s killer score, the shoot-em-ups and explosions crackle off the screen, especially in 3D.

I mentioned the tone at the top of this review, because it seems to be what sets Winter Soldier apart from its forerunners.  The humor here is certainly more restrained, surprisingly so considering that directors Anthony and Joe Russo are perhaps best known for their work on sitcoms like Arrested Development and Community.  But rather than paint the comedy broadly as in Thor: The Dark World, Winter Soldier opts for a more restrained tone in line with the conspiracy thriller genre to make a shrewd political point about the tradeoff between security and freedom.  It’s this venture into more substantial terrain that indicates, I hope, a shift in Marvel’s approach.  While some of the other Marvel films have been criticized for being insubstantial or mere teasers for future films – not from me, mind you, I love these things, even Iron Man 2 – Winter Soldier’s willingness to tackle pressing issues in current events might mark a sea change toward greater cultural relevance beyond merely making a literal ton of money.

As long as these movies keep being as entertaining as Captain America: The Winter Soldier, make mine Marvel.  (At least, until Batman vs. Superman lands.)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence, gunplay and action throughout.”  Plenty of gunfire, car chases, explosions, fistfights, et cetera.