“This is the way the world ends/ This is the way the world ends/ This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.” So states T.S. Eliot in “The Hollow Man,” demonstrating that Mr. Eliot was not only a gifted writer but a fortune teller as well, predicting back in 1925 that our world will end just about now. The villain is not Iran or North Korea, not Venezuela or the Taliban, not Al Queda but…wait for director Steven Soderbergh reveals all in the final minute of his new disaster movie “Contagion.” We’re all fascinated by stories of the end of our planet, so long as the culmination of life is on the page of a book or an e-reader or the movie screen. First there was Noah’s Ark, then “Armageddon,” now “Contagion.” The trouble is that while there’s something almost comedic about how Noah’s animals lined up, two by two, always a male and a female however unhip that appears today, “Contagion” is without humor. While Michael Bay’s “Armaggedon” could center on a single asteroid the size of Texas heading for Earth, the source of obvious tension as to where it would land, “Contagion,” which takes place around the world and has Peter Andrews’s camera zipping around everywhere from Hong Kong to Tokyo to Minneapolis, is too diffuse to carry much tautness. There you have it: a film without humor, without tension, but with an all-star cast that the studio hopes will draw in the crowds.
As Soderbergh imitates the six o’clock news, largely foreign but mostly home grown here in the U.S., we watch how a virus spreads from one person-from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow of all people-to twelve million. Paltrow’s character, Beth Emhoff, is married to Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon), but finds herself in Hong Kong sans her husband, having a good time after hearing from a fellow with whom she spent a night at a hotel. But adultery has its punishments: Beth is the first to die, breaking out in a cold sweat, soon winding up examined in a autopsy which spares us in the audience the closeup of her brain but gives us enough of a hint of gore by showing the surgeon peeling back the top of her head. That’s just day 2 of the outbreak: Scott Z. Burns’s script saves day 1 for the final minute.
“Contagion” plays not like a solid narrative, but then not all movies need to use that format. “Traffic” did quite well scurrying about, for example. But “Contagion” comes across throughout like a news broadcast, with all the news from all parts of the world just about the same. A few characters propel the story forward. Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) is the most rock-steady individual, spewing alarm by phone and behind lecterns as number one man at the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard-whom I expect to burst forth with “La vie en rose) serves this time as World Health Organization bigwig, kidnapped for a ransom of vaccine. Elliott Gould furthers his career as one of many scientists groping for a cure, while Kate Winslet as Dr. Erin Mears pushes for a quarantine. Strangest of all, Jude Law operates as freelance journalist Alan Krumwiede, telling us not to believe in what the government is propagating while trying to enrich himself with a fake homeopathic cure for the disease called forsythia.
The obligatory riots break out when crowds hear that the vaccine is available but is being given to government favorites. Looting and murder takes place with the breakdown of society. Ultimately “Contagion” is flawed by its absence of edge-of-seat-disaster tension, its major plus being that the movie is not shown in 3-D.
Ever wonder why no humans have stomped their boots on the moon in nearly 40 years? Well, if you believe the pundits, the answer's simple: Once the race to beat the Soviets to our crater-studded satellite was over, the political will to return (which is to say, the money) evaporated as quickly as tears on a hot griddle.
But that's the official story. And there are a lot of red-blooded Americans who make it their life's work to deride official stories. Now Hollywood is catering to the conspiracy cultists by revealing a hideous secret concerning NASA's Apollo program.
In the latest entry, the new film "Apollo 18" directed by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego, the secret isn't that we faked the lunar landings, although that beyond-bonkers idea is believed by roughly 15 percent of the populace. No, it's that we landed there one time too many! [Top 10 Apollo Hoax Theories]
The ingenious premise of "Apollo 18" (which opened Sept. 2) is that in 1974, shortly after the Apollo program had been cancelled, the space agency sent a trio of astronauts on a clandestine mission to the moon’s south pole. Their ostensible brief was to set up some military radar equipment. The actual purpose was to check out some strange happenings involving alien presence.
The guinea pig astronauts were literally flying blind, as they weren't told about the real reason for their lunar jaunt. Indeed, the fact that they had been sent to the moon at all was kept secret from their families, from the public, and — it seems — from tens of thousands of NASA employees. You might think that this last group, at least, would have a "need to know."
But as the opening credits announce, now all of us can "know" what happened on this incognito foray, thanks to historical footage recently made public and niftily edited together into a feature-length entertainment. [Interview: 'Apollo 18's' Real-Life Flight Director]
The movie maintains this clever storytelling artifice with a visual style that mimics video and 16mm film footage throughout, nearly all of it hand-held and relentlessly festooned with scratches, light streaks, sync dropouts, and gate dirt — all calculated to provide that extra dollop of authenticity. Your dad's old home movies are in better condition.
"Apollo 18" is, at root, a haunted house story, in which a small group of basically nice people — temporarily isolated from the outside world — are confronted with cryptic horrors. The aliens who ruin the astronauts' whole day and whole stay are crabby in every respect, and are particularly adept at wreaking havoc at inopportune moments.
Mind you, even aside from the obvious question of how this species of crater creatures survives on the moon (What do they breathe? More than that, what do they eat?), there's always the question of motive. Why are they there and what’s their game plan?
It doesn’t matter. This film is a combo platter of "Alien" and "Blair Witch Project," both of which could be faulted on logic, but neither of which could be accused of taking your ticket money without delivering the goods.
"Apollo 18” will keep you riveted to your seat (except for those moments when it causes you to rise out of it), even if it does little to further your understanding of planetology or astrobiology. This trip into space is not the friendly, final frontier of "Star Trek," but a tale of horror in which help is a quarter-million miles away.
But there's one thing that's got me wondering. Do you think they made this picture using the same movie set used to fake the moon landings four decades ago? Nah.
Hot coeds and a lake full of hungry sharks, all popping out at ya in 3-D should be an easy win. We loved last year's awesome Piranha 3D, and really wanted this movie to have bite. Something's off though, since it's really not a picture about sharks going all Jaws on its victims at all. Nope, this Night is more about the haves versus the have-nots which in our recession era could be interesting, but it's so not. Plus, with a PG-13 rating, the shark attacks are mostly botched in dark, dim 3-D waters.
The Bigger Picture: Louisiana native Sara (Sara Paxon) wants to show her city classmates a good time with a weekend of fun in the sun. So she's invited them all to stay at her family's island paradise on the lake. Four dudes, three gals. At first, the only pesky thing is no cell phone reception. But things get way worse when star football player Malik (Sinqua Walls) gets his arm torn off...by a shark. Shortly after that, a shark takes a bigger chunk out of his girlfriend Maya (Alyssa Diaz).
A shark? In a lake? How is that even possible? Do you even care? Well, even if you don't, the script is going to stop dead in its tracks to explain it all. And then stop again, to show that the real villains are hillbilly stereotypes.They even named one of them Red, as in redneck. His teeth are razor sharp...like a shark!
If the "poor rednecks are evil" storyline was played for laughs we could have forgiven having to sit though the Southern baddies angle, but it makes the tone of the film mean-spirited and ugly. Idol's McPhee is as sexy as you'd imagine, but having her strip down to her underwear at gun point doesn't feel dramatic, just exploitive.
Ya see, Shark Night 3D is less a horror film—the suspense barely comes from the sharks—and more a made-for-TV drama about Sara's old friends terrorizing her new ones.
Which is strange, because director David R. Ellis has been a great fit for the kind of trashy fun that you'd think a film titled Shark Night would have been. (He's made not one but two Final Destinations.) Maybe that's because the PG-13 rating robs Ellis of his gift for shooting crazed but entertaining kills.
Still, the cast is uniformly solid. Paxon is a sympathetic girl-next-door and the southern baddies convince. Clearly, Ellis was going for something more than just a dumb dead teenager film. He deserved a script that didn't play like warmed-over Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
The 180—a Second Opinion: Donal Logue does what he can as the local sheriff on the lake. Even a part below his talents still manages to give him a few fun scenes as the leader of more than just the local law.
Yes, there’s the saying, “nice guys finish last,” and that’s certainly the case for Our Idiot Brother‘s Ned (Paul Rudd) quite often, but when you’re considering movies, nice movies can get a bit of a boost even when they don’t entirely deserve it. Our Idiot Brother is undoubtedly flawed, but director Jesse Peretz turns up the charm with ease, bringing the best out of his talented cast and some impressively honest, humorous and heartwarming dialogue to overshadow nearly every fault.
Ned is, well, Miranda, Liz and Natalie’s (Elizabeth Banks, Emily Mortimer and Zooey Deschanel) idiot brother. Perhaps the term “idiot” is a bit harsh; Ned is just incredibly peppy and a bit too trusting. Then again, most would call a guy who opts to appease a uniformed cop looking for some weed an idiot. After serving eight months in prison, Ned is released, turned away by his girlfriend and denied ownership of his beloved dog, Willie Nelson.
With no job, no home and a criminal record, Ned turns to his family for support. Everyone welcomes him with open arms, beginning with his mother. However, Ned’s happy-go-lucky ways have the tendency to get him in trouble, forcing each of his sisters to eventually kick him to the curb and send him onto the next.
Our Idiot Brother straddles the line between character piece and ensemble film. The opening scene is absolutely perfect. We meet a friendly, loving and, unfortunately, too understanding Ned who hands over some rhubarb and a bag of weed to an officer who claims to be desperately in need of a high. Sure, it was a dumb move, but the scene solidifies Ned as the victim, earning your sympathy within minutes. Post-title card it’s rubbed in a bit more as Ned heads back home to his biodynamic farm and girlfriend, Janet (Kathryn Hahn), to find that she’s shacking up with another man, Billy (TJ Miller). While these subsequent moments aren’t nearly as tight as the initial introduction, Janet and Billy make for amusing oppositions.
From then on, Our Idiot Brother is an ensemble film and the adjustment can be a bit jarring. This portion of the piece is just as enjoyable, it just takes a little time to switch gears and spread your attention to a group rather than just giving it all to our main man. However, the well-established family dynamic certainly eases the transition.
Each of Ned’s sisters rocks a stereotype; Miranda is the grueling workaholic, Liz the hovering mother and Natalie the more free-spirited of the bunch. Not only do each present engaging solo situations, but the relationship between the three is impressively authentic. Plus, each has a unique connection to Ned. The variety creates a multi-dimensional depiction of the family that really makes you feel like you’re part of the bunch, rather than someone in a theater getting a fleeting peek into their lives. The only one that gets thrown to the wayside is the mother, Ilene (Shirley Knight). While she is the one to catch Ned when he falls just after getting out of jail, once he makes his way to his sisters, Ilene is completely forgotten until well into the film and, even when she is re-introduced, her impact is minimal.
This isn’t much of an issue as Ned’s sisterly trio offers more than enough idiosyncrasies to keep you entertained. There are a handful of particularly amusing moments involving Liz’s son, River (Matthew Mindler), the best of which comes during a private school interview. Banks is superb as the snippy magazine writer desperate for a big scoop, as she manages to earn some sympathy even while resorting to some dishonest tactics. Natalie is probably the least interesting of the three, as her predicament isn’t presented in as profound a fashion as it deserves and partially because she’s slapped together with a tactlessly dressed girlfriend. (Rashida Jones).
Our Idiot Brother also comes with a few believability issues, either because something is just downright impossible or because it’s not backed with enough information. Liz and Dave’s (Steve Coogan) relationship isn’t established well enough to make Dave’s mean streak passable in the least and everyone’s eagerness to just blame Ned becomes a bit too predictable. The film is also lacking in transitions, bopping from sister to sister to Ned and back again with abandon. Oh, and nobody would ever allow a child, let alone a dog, to visit a man in prison.
Sure, when you think about it, these problems could be off-putting, but Our Idiot Brother is so well paced and the humor ever flowing that you won’t have the chance to think twice about anything – at least until after the credits. This is certainly a film about a dysfunctional family, but, even when they’re at their worst, this is a group that’s particularly pleasant to spend time with, especially Ned.
This much-anticipated Guillermo del Toro-penned remake is a project you really want to like. But…
…the end result, as co-scripted by Matthew Robbins and directed by Troy Nixey, eventually wastes all the benefits of all the doubts you may have given it. To be clear, I’m not one who doubted this new Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark from the get-go, who felt it inherently doomed for taking a 1970’s lo-fi classic and giving it a slick CGI-polish for today’s audiences. That would almost be too easy, and certainly would too deeply discount Del Toro’s contributions—anyone recall how he gave new life to the Blade franchise? Indeed, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a property that could have benefited from amplification of some sort, especially the gaslit backstory that helps explain how its ageless little monsters came to reside in the particular house in which we now find them.
As luck would have it, this is exactly where the film really excels: the first few minutes. From the opening shot on, Nixey shows such skill working with the period elements—he crafts scenes that are atmospheric and visceral at the same time—that you’re utterly transported. The horror elements thus come across as original, mysterious, ominous… and yes, therefore powerful.
But then, following the title sequence, all of that power slowly dissipates like an air mattress with a tiny, but ultimately fatal pinprick. Indeed, you might not notice all the deflation until well into the second act—that promising opening, plus the level of talent involved keeps expectations moderately high. In fact, if you’re like me you might almost feel guilty for noticing the things that don’t work. A prime example is the whisperings of the little critters; they’re not only not scary, but actually kind of laughable and then, sadly, even irritating. I kept thinking, “Maybe it’s just me. Maybe others will be creeped out by this kind of stuff.” But, no, let’s be honest... few general audiences are apt to be consistently frightened by this film, and horror audiences are even less likely to be moved. In the end, it probably would have been better to conceive and position this Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark as a PG-13 outing straight down the line: a creature-driven haunted house flick for ten-year-olds but with enough wit, style, and surprises to make happy the grownups who buy the tickets.
Yet instead of sly humor, plot twists, and new takes on old tropes, the filmmakers have played things very conventionally, and the result is a film that takes itself very seriously...but doesn't take the horror fan particularly seriously—not the kind of fan, that is, who's like Del Toro himself, someone who knows the genre inside-out. Thus we get a bathroom sequence that seems poised on the edge of doing something original with this frequently-used horror movie setting… and then doesn’t. We also get an absurdly staged dinner party scene that’s almost cringe-worthy in execution. This same scene, though, could have been neat if the tone being targeted was more in the horror-comedy vein, but a funny bone—even if just to relieve tension—is conspicuously absent in the film. In the end, then, it becomes a bit of a chore just to make it to the closing credits.
Oh, and a final note on the acting, as the cast may be one reason folks have for catching this film. Bailee Madison emerges with her reputation as a talented child actor pretty much intact. Still, it’s not the breakout platform she could have hoped for—her character seems too derivative of the protagonist in Pan’s Labyrinth (which Del Torro actually wrote subsequently), so that the part doesn’t really serve her abilities as well as it might. True, there’s room for some interesting character development, particularly regarding her shift from befriending her malevolent housemates to, well, wanting to avoid them. However, either the script doesn’t sufficiently throw this theme into relief, or Nixey was unable to guide Madison to underscore that through-line in her performance. Either way there’s a missed opportunity. Ditto for Katie Holmes, who’s actually trying very hard here and can be a better actor than people give her credit for. Her role likewise gives early hints of being dimensional but then quickly descends into a variation on the standard trope of the stepmother-trying-to-earn-the-love of-the-stepchild. Worst of all, by far, is the fate suffered by Guy Piece. After reliably solid work in recent films such as The King’s Speech, Animal Kingdom, and The Hurt Locker (not to mention years of interesting starring roles), here he’s reduced to Generic Dad status. You keep thinking as you watch Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark that the film has something up its sleeve, that his character will break out of his blandness any minute—and that that’s when Pierce’s talents will really shine, in those moments of stunning reversal. But he remains generic, despite your waiting for things to kick into another gear and jolt you with innovation, or edginess, or even old-fashioned but effective shocks…
Like a 5 a.m. alarm — loud, insistent, unwelcome — "Conan the Barbarian" warns that the dreamy summer is coming to an end. A re-make of the loopy 1982 sword-and-sandals classic — loosely based on Robert E. Howard's 1930s stories — the new version has poured gold into special effects, not to mention star Jason Momoa.
Virtually his own special effect, the studly Momoa arrives fresh from his turn as Khal Drogo in HBO's "Game of Thrones." He is the 21st Century's go-to guy for monosyllabic wandering warriors.
This plot sends him on a long and fruitless search for a good bit of dialogue. The last Conan's limited usage of English catapulted him into the California governor's mansion, but we've seen how that turned out.
The new version begins with some family bonding. First, Conan's mother dies giving birth to him on a battlefield. Next, 12-year-old Conan impresses his dad by bringing him the heads of several enemies.
Then, evil warlord Khalar Zym (Stepehn Lang) arrives with his warriors to overrun Conan's village and force Pops to kill himself to save his son. Oh, and he also makes off with a magic talisman, the final piece of a mask that will enable him to do something bad, or worse, just not yet.
The rest of the movie swings from one bloodletting to the next, set at three volumes: loud, too loud and painfully loud. Think of "Conan" as an opportunity for a modern double-feature. You can still listen to it while watching another movie in the next hall of the local multiplex.
For all the head-chopping, thumb-screwing, town-sacking, arm-slashing, horse-punching, boulder-rolling and nose-hacking, what this Conan truly eviscerates is a sense of humor. Director Marcus Nispel is best known for the 2003 remake of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." He doesn't do witty.
Fun fact: Arnold Schwarzenegger had to cut back on his lifting and steroids regime for the previous "Conan," because when rehearsals started he was too musclebound to wield a sword. That's why many of his fight scenes focused more on flexing and ponderously raising the weapon.
As a director, Schwarzenegger had batshit but dedicated John Milius, who worked over a story by Edmund Summer and an initial script by Oliver Stone. Milius infused it with his crypto-Nitzschean philosophizing, but also a fractured reality.
Over the years, production designer Ron Cobb has said their goal was to faithfully recreate an imaginary era, with distinct cultures drawn from Romans and Persians and Milius' beloved Mongols.
That Conan's description of what is best in life — "to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women" — is a simplified version of a quote attributed to Genghis Khan in "The Secret History of the Mongols."
The remake has no such pretensions, or aspirations. This Conan says, "I live, I love, I slay and I am content." Script credits are assigned to Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Sean Hood, who wrote with the certainty that computer graphics would distract the audience from their work.
At times, they do. After having inadvertently rescued female monk Tamara, whose blood Zym needs, Conan faces sand-and-gravel warriors conjured by Marique, the evil warlord's evil daughter.
There are glowing Maxfield Parrish-settings for soaring minarets and castles, a long-tentacled watery monster, and the occasional distant procession of extras left over from "The Lord of the Rings."
But there's no image quite as useful of the Wheel of Pain in the first movie, with the young Conan chained to push with other slaves in a scene that shows years passing in moments, until he walks alone, fully and even excessively grown.
With two — count 'em — significant female roles, as well as topless serving wenches and topless tavern dancers, "Conan" also does something to fight unemployment among well-endowed actresses.
As Tamara, TV favorite Rachel Nichols starts out strongly enough, although she's later called upon to do a whole series worth of screaming. Like Momoa and unshaven nomads, when you need an evil daughter, Rose McGowan is your girl, even if she looks like she's been trapped in a "Babylon Five" time warp.
But neither one is Valeria, the sword-fighting thief played by Sandhal Bergman who equaled and even rescued Conan in the 1982 movie. And of course, Lang is no James Earl Jones, the monumental villain of that first production.
My Cimmerian ancestors may not be rolling over in their burial mounds over the state of Conan. Even Howard's pulp fiction has little to do with the origins claimed by the royalty of the Franks, who traced their lineage to King Antenor the Cimmerian, who died in 443 B.C.
But I do think the current version would be better if done by Conan O'Brien. As it is, it already amounts to "Conan the Barbarian, please stop."
As we’re drowning in a flood of big screen remakes, we ask ourselves time and time again; is it worth it? In Fright Night‘s case, yes. As we’re drowning in a flood of 3D features, we ask ourselves time and time again; is it worth it? In Fright Night‘s case, no, but, luckily for director Craig Gillespie, he’s working with some solid source material and an absolutely stellar cast, both with the power to stake that extra dimension right in the heart. If only it’d burn up and evaporate for good.
For anyone familiar with the Tom Holland original, this synopsis is a bit redundant as Gillespie’s Fright Night is quite similar. Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) is your average teen living with his loving mother (Toni Collette) in a quaint little neighborhood – that is until Jerry Dandridge (Colin Farrell) moves in next door and rips out the locals’ throats as he pleases. Why? Because Charley’s new neighbor is a vampire.
Peter Vincent (David Tennant) is still present and accounted for, but now he hosts “Fright Night” the live stage production, chugs Midori and dons skintight leather pants. When Jerry snatches up a couple of Charley’s friends, Charley’s got no choice but to head to the Vegas Strip to get some advice from the showman. Too bad the act is primarily a façade and Vincent lacks the nerve to put his extensive weaponry collection to use. With no one to turn to, Charley’s mother and girlfriend, Amy’s (Imogen Poots), lives are in his hands.
Fright Night’s opening sequence provides an excellent taste of what you’re in for; a vampire film that isn’t particularly scary. Sure, the 1985 movie is a horror comedy and offers a nice amalgamation of the genres, but this updated version definitely highlights its funny bone. While the favoritism makes for a weak opening, Fright Night is amusing enough to carry on as a comedy with a little grit and gore to it.
Christopher Mintz-Plasse is one of the funnier of the bunch as Charley’s ex-best friend, Ed. Ed holds a grudge after Charley ditches their geeky past for cooler friends, but when another buddy, Adam (Will Denton), goes missing, Ed turns to Charley for help in hopes he’ll believe his vampire theory. Sure enough, he doesn’t. Think about that for a moment; Mintz-Plasse as the school nerd attempting to convince someone that vampires are real; the role is made for him and Mintz-Plasse seizes the opportunity. He works wonders with the friendly, but testy banter between Ed and Charley and, later on, has no trouble switching gears to show off his darker side. Tennant also earns some laughs embellishing Vincent’s idiosyncrasies, but he’s held back by his character’s cliché rock star woes – a drinking problem, hard exterior but soft core and childhood troubles.
As for our leading ladies, only one matters, Poots. Collette does a fine job as Charley’s mother, Jane, but the role is particularly menial. Poots, on the other hand, is right by Charley’s side from beginning to end, and thrives on some rather original traits and solid chemistry with Yelchin. Amy isn’t your average teen movie girlfriend; she’s got sass and a mind of her own. Rather than care for the couple because they seem to fit together in idealistic movie land, Charley and Amy work on an impressively authentic and charming level.
Plus, her main man is quite endearing. Yelchin is an ideal Charley Brewster. He’s sweet and loving, yet it’s entirely believable when watching him lock and load to defend the women he loves. Yelchin has an exceptional amount of range when it comes to working with his co-stars. He establishes a solid mother-son relationship with Collette, lets the sparks fly with Poots and turns on the wit when bickering with Mintz-Plasse. But, best of all, he’s got quite the opponent in Farrell. Farrell has an absolute blast as Jerry. It shows and it’s also very appropriate. Part of the reason the new Fright Night works so well with its more comedic twist is because of its unintentionally funny Jerry. Jerry enjoys tormenting his victims in the most outlandish ways. Farrell is a thrill when showing off his supernatural vampire skills and is surprisingly just as compelling when exercising his intellect in a one-on-one conversation.
The acting is top notch and the writing solid enough to earn your interest; the problems are in the visuals. There is absolutely no reason for this movie to be in 3D. As many scenes take place during the night, quite a few are frustratingly dark. Plus, the only time the 3D is even noticeable is when it’s too noticeable, like when Gillespie makes a conscious decision to throw a paint can or cross in your face. But, even if the film lost the extra dimension, it’d still have technical problems. Sure, Fright Night establishes itself as more of a comedy than horror film, but some of the effects are a bit too cartoonish. There’s a car chase scene that feels more like one of those virtual reality rides in an amusement park than multi-million dollar special effects work.
Still, these are only minor distractions in a primarily enjoyable piece. It’s labeled a modern take on the 1985 original and that’s exactly what we’ve got – a hot new location, better makeup design, subpar yet more realistic effects, pop culture references, Twilight namedropping and a contemporary soundtrack. As fantastical as the piece is, it’s oddly relatable and just too much fun to dismiss.
It is a bit tough to write a review of a film that has already been written about extensively much before its Indian release. But that is routine for any film directed by Aparna Sen. Iti Mrinalini is no different. The difference lies in the storyline created by Sen jointly with Ranjan Ghosh. For the first time, she deals with the glamorous world of a top film star of Bengali cinema in the 1970s. This is rather fragile territory for a director who has herself reigned supreme in Bengali mainstream cinema for two decades or more because autobiographical references could get out of control. But Sen being Sen, instead of turning the film into a self-reflexive film-within-a-film, which would have been predictable, she makes it an introspective journey into the past by a fictional actress who decides to end her life.
The film is structured through a suicide note the mellow and ageing Mrinalini (Aparna Sen) begins to write because, “Timing is the first lesson an actress learns in cinema. I had no control over my entry into this world. But I can decide on my exit,” she writes. She picks out pieces of memorabilia from a box to tear and throw them away in the waste bin by her table. Each memorabilia – a faded photograph, posters of old films, broken bangles brings back memories of a life lived in the world of glamour and fame and the power that comes of it, with the pain of betrayal, death of loved ones, and loneliness simmering underneath. Sometimes, she stops from tearing off a photograph. More often, she crumples the paper she has written on and throws it away only to begin on a fresh white sheet and crumple it up and throw it away again. The past telescopes into these sessions of her nostalgic journey through time and space, as we see the young Mrinalini (Konkona Sen Sharma) growing up through college, through a sweet relationship with Abhijeet (Shaheb Bhattacharya), a Naxalite who is shot by the police while trying to escape.
Just before she begins penning this note, we find Mrinalini resuming her career after a 15-year gap as Kunti in an English-language film Born of the Sun, persuaded by the US-trained Indian director Imtiaz Chowdhury (Priyangshu Chatterjee) who also steps into the role of Karna in the film. The two have an affair and Imtiaz promises to cast her once again as the young Nandini in Tagore’s philosophical play Rakta Karabi (Red Oleanders). On the night of the premiere, she is shocked to find Imtiaz cuddling up to a young and up-coming starlet (Ananya Chatterjee) who, the producer announces, will be Nandini. This final culmination of a life filled with lost love, betrayal, grief over her child’s death in an air crash, and the pain born of constant loneliness, invasion into privacy leads to the suicide note.
Sen makes no attempt to rationalize Mrinalini’s adulterous, long-term relationship with Siddhartha Sarkar (Rajat Kapoor) who gave her her first break and also sired her only child. He is a happily married man with two kids, yet keeps up the relationship with false promises of a subsequent marriage. He even goes through the charade of a ‘temple wedding.’ Why it takes an intelligent girl like Mrinalini to wizen up to his double life and that too, by her uneducated dresser Kamala-di underscores not her stupidity but her vulnerability and her longing for love.
What comes across is the top star’s desperate desire to belong, to have a family, to love and be loved though she has left her old mother behind in their old dilapidated rented place in North Calcutta. Her closest bonding based on purely platonic love is with the writer Chintan Nair (Koushik Sen), a South Indian who has studied in Santi Niketan short listed for the Booker for his book Red Earth. He teaches her three most important lessons in love – that love comes in different forms, that not all love need end in marriage and that ideal love is the one that sets you free. He goes back to his crippled wife Meera to Pondicherry but keeps in constant touch through texts and calls on her cell.
Ironically, the most immediate and long-lasting bonding the lonely Mrinalini develops is with her dresser Kamala-di, Moti, the maid and her German Retriever Begum she has taken on probably after her daughter’s death. The film moves smoothly between the past and the present sometimes marking the dividing line with a question, sometimes with uncertainty but almost seamless, thanks to Rabi Ranjan Maitra’s wonderful editorial flourishes. The late Somak Mukherjee’s camera moves across time, space and people with the fluid strokes of an accomplished painter who knows his colour, light and form as well as he knows his subject., Mrinalini, captured mainly in half-light while penning the letter, her pained face held in close-up at different angles expanding to capture the wideness of the beaches and the waves of the sea.
Debajyoti Mishra’s music comprises of three songs, one a Tagore song, amaar mukti aloye aloye sung partly as a duet by the young Mrinalini and her daughter along the beaches of a sea, a Sunil Gangopadhyay poem set to music, and one fast number that forms the title song of Bish Kanya, a mainstream film she has starred in that scans the young star’s coping with the accessories that come with stardom – drinks, cigarettes, joints, etc. It is a brilliantly positioned and picturised sequence. The film captures the ‘look’ of the 1970s Kolkata covering Presidency College when many brilliant students surrendered to the Naxalite movement, scanning over the city as it grew along with Mrinalini, and turns glamorous as she does. This perhaps, is Sen’s most lavishly mounted film till date.
The art direction (not mentioned in the credits) carry the signature marks of an actress’ home – with a sketch of Charlie Chaplin, a huge poster of the Beatles and a much bigger poster of Marlyn Monroe. When she becomes a star, the spaces between these posters are filled with black-and-white photographs of Mrinalini, the star. The premiere show of Born of the Sun has the typical touch of a star-studded do filled with the bright red poster of the film and the razzmatazz of starry presence. The location shooting on the beaches where Siddharth teaches his daughter to shout ‘Cut’ is touching.
Like all Aparna Sen films, Iti Mrinalini is filled with silent images that speak out a thousand words filled with poignant meaning. Siddhartha, who never displayed much interest in Shona, his daughter born of his relationship with Mrinalini, opens his wallet once. In front, we see a picture of his two sons. He digs into the back pocket to bring out another jaded Black-and-White photograph of the little Shona lying in his chest. Mrinalini, about to tear off a picture of Siddhartha and Shona, stops suddenly and keeps it aside. A framed portrait of Chintan rests on the elderly Mrinalini’s writing desk. She picks it up as if to console herself. She clicks on her cell to message Chintan, or to read a message from him.
The scene where the young Mrinalini breaks down on Chintan’s wife Mira’s lap, collapsing into tears spells out the tragedy of her life within those brief moments, the soundtrack filled with her heart-rending sobs. One recalls the scene from Mehboob’s Mother India where Nargis was caught in the studio fire and rescued by Sunil Dutt who played her son in the film. There is a similar scene where the studio fire gets out of control and Imtiaz rescues an unconcsious Mrinalini. Her first word after regaining consciousness is “Kamala-di” and the message is clear – Kamala-di has been engulfed in the flames. The next shot shows Mrinalini coiled up in a narrow, single bed. Later, we notice a slightly faded Black-and-White photograph of Kamala-di hanging on one wall.
The small cameos are wonderfully fleshed out and enacted. Dulal Lahiri as Prasad Sen, the producer who replaces her suddenly and then comes back to her when she is famous, Gargi Roy Chowdhury as Sumitra Devi, a famous star who engineers the replacement, Rita Koiral as Moti, the sensitive maid, Suzanne Bernert as Julia, Mrinalini’s sister-in-law and Locket Chatterjee as Siddharth’s wife Maithili are lovely cameos. The little girl who plays Shona with her heavily accented Bengali is fresh, spontaneous and lovely. Srijit Mukherjee as Ronojoy Mitra is stiff, self-conscious and expression-less. His is perhaps the only mole on a beautiful face.
Among the major performers, the icing and the cake go directly to Konkona Sen Sharma who as the younger Mrinalini, is mind-blowing in a layered performance that maps her slow growth from a naïve, fresh college girl with big dreams to a hesitant newcomer to Tollygunge to a successful star with the airs of stardom she carries with élan, to the love-struck woman longing for a husband and kids, to a slightly wizened young woman educated anew by Chintan. This is another award-worthy performance by Konkona.
Aparna Sen rightly looks a jaded beauty proud of her star status used mainly to hide her pain but her performance is touched with a bit too much of self-pity and a martyrdom one does not expect from her films. Priyangshu is self-conscious at times but perhaps that is how the character is designed. Rajat Kapoor is his suave, sophisticated, arrogant self as Siddhartha enriched by the voice of Anjan Dutt who dubbed his lines. Shaheb as Abhijeet is candid and fresh in a brief cameo and looks the part. Koushik Sen with stubble and an unusual hairstyle, lines spoken with a distinct Southern accent, comes right after Konkona in a controlled performance held completely in reign in every single scene from his entry to his exit.
The few loopholes this critic feels like questioning are – unlike Aparna Sen’s optimistic approach, this one ends on a very pessimistic note. Mrinalini is fleshed out more as a victim and a martyr than as a strong woman who knows her mind. Nothing wrong in that but Sen does it differently every time. Secondly, the closure is a bit melodramatic for the Sen directorial signature to fit into. Thirdly, one wonders when and where Mrinalini had the time and the opportunity to read up so much on W.B. Yeats, Tagore and Chitan’s Booker Prize novel to be able to quote them from memory since we know nothing about her academic background. Only once we see her asleep on the back seat of her car with an open book lying on her chest other than the book-lined walls of her study which is mandatory in every star’s home mostly as part of the décor.
In an action scene from SINGHAM, Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn) jumps and hits a baddie on his forehead with his palm. The guy spins, falls on the ground face first, bounces up a few feet in the air like a ball, and again falls on his back. With scenes like these, SINGHAM is so bad that it's almost good.
The Tamil SINGHAM starring Suriya was a huge hit down South. But the adaptation for the Hindi audience, despite have its share of masala, isn't up to the mark.
Bajirao Singham plays an honest cop from a small village named Shivgad on the Maharashtra-Goa border. Using his own principles, he makes sure that the village remains peaceful and free of any unscrupulous activities. He resolves petite quarrels and doesn't even mind lending his own money to a villager in need.
Things take a horrid turn when he meets a wily criminal and politician Jaykant Shikre (Prakash Raj), who is required to be present in Shivgad for a case. Through his political connections, Jaykant gets Singham transferred to his own backyard, Goa and tries to make his life a living hell. Can he silence the lion Singham and his roar?
Director Rohit Shetty has come up with an insipid film, which fails to deliver on all fronts. It starts as an action drama, takes a romantic interlude and again returns to maar-dhad. Not to mention Rohit's trademark GOLMAAL type humour in many occasions. At one point, when Singham and Jaykant verbally try to outdo each other in terms of the people they can arrange to fight for them, it seems like a fight between two local gangs.
There's hardly any movement in the first half in terms of the story, while the second half has countless unintentionally funny scenes. To be fair, Singham and Jaykant do have some ceete-maar dialogues. However, there are several puerile dialogues mouthed by the various characters on the top of their voices. The action sequences are good, but they get very repetitive and exhausting. You only have blown up cars (Rohit Shetty's favourite) and Singham beating the hell out of the gundas. It's marred by an atrociously slow pace, which is a complete no-no for an action film.
Dudley's cinematography is fine. Ajay and Atul Gogavale's music is totally uninspiring, with Saathiya being the only decent number. Steven H. Bernard's editing is tacky, with many continuity lapses.
Ajay Devgn, who is seen in a complete action film after a long time, looks really fit and acts wonderfully. But there's nothing much he can do beyond that to compensate for the weak script. Prakash Raj (a big name in South) looks promising initially, but his character loses steam and becomes like a joker as the film progresses. Perhaps his character is diluted to enhance Ajay Devgn's role. Kajal Aggarwal, who plays Singham's love interest Kavya, looks pretty. However, she does overact. Sonali Kulkarni is all right. The rest of the characters are strictly okay.
With a lot of noise (read loud) and no substance, SINGHAM brings no khushi and only gham.
Summer in the multiplexes used to be the exclusive domain of kid- and family-friendly G, PG and PG-13 rated movies. That is, until “Wedding Crashers” scored such a surprise hit in the heat of 2005 and pioneered the way for a rash of R-rated counterprogramming in summers since.
Already this summer, moviegoers with a taste for adult-oriented raunchiness or without youngsters to placate have found their guilty R-pleasures in “The Hangover Part II,” “Bridesmaids” and “Bad Teacher.” Now the ante is upped with the zestfully rude and offbeat “Horrible Bosses,” a nutty, naughty “Nine to Five” for working guys who fantasize about taking deadly revenge on abusive employers.
Deftly directed by Seth Gordon (best known for the hilarious cult video-game documentary “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters”), the movie brings together a top-shelf cast with a wildly zany but tightly written script to create a darkly queasy comedy that'll likely make you cringe as often as it makes you laugh. The far-fetched premise is this: Three drinking buddies — Nick, Kurt and Dale (Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day) — like their jobs but hate their horrible bosses.
Kurt's boss, Dave Harkin (Kevin Spacey), is a cruel corporate shark with a murderous streak; Kurt's boss, Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell), is a pretentious tool determined to run the family business into the ground, and Dale's boss, Dr. Julia Harris, D.D.S. (Jennifer Aniston), is a sexual predator keen on luring naive Dale into the sack. Through a series of unlikely comic turns, the working-stiff pals become so harassed and desperate that they enlist the aid of a weirdly tattooed barroom hustler named Mother(bleep!) Jones (Jamie Foxx) and hatch a crazy, “Strangers on a Train” scheme to murder their three horrible bosses.
With chaotic nods to “Ruthless People” and “Throw Momma From the Train,” the convoluted plot spins wildly out of control and leaves our three anti-heroes (who increasingly come to resemble the Three Stooges) frantically struggling to extricate themselves from the bloody mess that ensues.
Despite the story's macabre context (murder for laughs), the male leads score with their mile-a-minute buddy patter and amusing frat-boy chemistry. The writing here is quick, cutting and witty. Day (“It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and Sudeikis (“Saturday Night Live”) carry most of the doofus comic freight, while the likable Bateman (“Arrested Development”) acts as befuddled straight man.
But the real comic firepower comes from the high-profile supporting players: a dark-wigged Aniston playing deviously and seductively against type; a conniving Spacey echoing the cold menace of his “Glengarry Glen Ross” gamesmanship, and Foxx bringing hilarious street-hustler jive to the dicey shenanigans. However, the showstopper performance comes from Farrell, who with pot belly and comb-over seems to be channeling “King of Kong's” real-life Donkey Kong maestro Billy Mitchell in his most vainglorious antics.
As “Horrible Bosses” can attest, while there's nothing funny about workplace harassment, a richly satisfying comic catharsis can arise from fantasizing about our most dire and dastardly revenge on bad bossy bosses.
Movie critics love bad movies, and don't let any one of us tell you differently. Oh sure, no one likes to have to sit through a bad movie, but being able to rip it a new one in a public forum results in a certain cathartic satisfaction.
So you can imagine my giddy anticipation when it came to seeing the assuredly awful "Transformers: Dark of the Moon." I like to think it's a lot like Albert Pujols must feel when some hapless pitcher hangs a curveball over the middle of the plate. So you can see how let down I was when I discovered I was enjoying myself for sizeable stretches of the movie.
Seeing how this is the third "Transformers" movie you can see how my expectations would be pretty well set in stone. I actually enjoyed the first film for the mindless fun that it was because it put me in the same mind-space of being 12 years old and throwing a lit roll of Black Cats behind my little sister's chair. The second "Transformers" movie was so incomprehensibly terrible that it was impossible to enjoy on even the most basic levels.
This time around the third "Transformers" does get back to basics in a sense, but don't let me mislead you into thinking that this film — as a movie — isn't a complete and total failure, because it is. As pure spectacle, however it is a stunning visual achievement that will blow away even the most jaded of cinematic thrill-seekers.
I am going to follow director Michael Bay's lead and not bother you with the plot. Just know that there are good and bad alien robots that disguise themselves as vehicles and they fight. That's about it. Among the movie's flaws is that it is overlong by roughly one hour, clocking in at 153 minutes. When you consider it took Terrence Malick roughly the same amount of time to encapsulate the creation of the entire universe in "Tree of Life," you'd think we could get alien robots to resolve their differences in about an hour and a half.
Returning is Shia LaBeouf as the moderately obnoxious Sam Witwicky, pal to the good-guy Autobots. Gone is Megan Fox; as it turns out, she wasn't as beautiful and unique a snowflake as she thought. She is easily replaced by Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as Sam's impossibly-hot girlfriend. I guess being obscenely attractive and being filmed while running in slow-motion doesn't require a highly-specialized skill set.
There are some strange turns by reasonably respected actors like John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and Patrick Dempsey. John Turturro also returns as the unhinged agent Simmons. I like to think the "Transformers" trilogy exists for the sole purpose of landing the under-appreciated Turturro a huge payday. In a strange way, that helps me sleep a little better at night.
When humans are on the screen, the movie is bizarrely uninteresting and it feels like each actor is playing a character from a completely different, unrelated movie. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that the cast showed up totally hammered every day of production.
But let's be honest, we're not here for the people, we're here for the fighting robots! "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" is the first movie since "Avatar" that I can in good conscious recommend paying the extra money to see in 3D. Bay makes impressive use of a technology Hollywood has pretty much squandered up to this point.
I would also like to point out that this is certainly the most violent of the three movies and parents would be wise to pay heed to the "PG-13" rating unless you want to deal with a lot of killer-robot nightmares. The last hour of the movie, which features the systematic destruction of Chicago, is an unrelenting succession of astounding action set-pieces. A couple of times I actually felt the sensation of being on a roller coaster.
Perhaps that's the best description of "Transformers: Dark of the Moon:" a sensory-assaulting amusement-park ride, devoid of story or emotion that leaves your pulse racing, your stomach queasy and your head light enough to think it would be a good idea to get in line again. "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" is rated PG-13 for intense prolonged sequences of sci-fi action violence, mayhem and destruction, and for language, some sexuality and innuendo.
I love Pixar movies. I think "Wall-E" is one of the best animated movies of all time. In a column I wrote in early December last year, I named "Toy Story 3" the best film of the year. I also heaped praise on "Up" when it came out in 2009. So compared to those topnotch films, "Cars 2" falls well short of what viewers have come to expect from Pixar. Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) is back as a main character, competing in a worldwide Grand Prix that sends him to Japan, Italy and England.
In a curious - and ultimately wrong - decision, Pixar storytellers bumped the silly tow truck character Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy) into a lead role position. Mater was wisely used in the 2006 original film as sporadic comic relief. Here, his role is as large, if not larger, than Lightning McQueen's story, and that ultimately led to this film being so uneven.
While McQueen is competing in the Grand Prix races, Mater gets mixed up in espionage, after an undercover U.S. agent slips him a disc of valuable information. This could have worked out as a fun "James Bond" or "Mission: Impossible" story. However, the silliness of Mater's storyline feels instead made it like Steve Carrell's "Get Smart" or Mike Myers' "Austin Powers" or the cartoon "Inspector Gadget," as Mater continuously, and unintentionally, succeeds at being a spy. Mater's character becomes so silly and absurd, it will make the most patient of parents watching this film with their children roll their eyes. Children will enjoy the silliness much more than adults, which is so unusual for a Pixar film.
Also a major plot point is that all the ‘lemon cars' from over the years of bad automotive mistakes are out to get revenge on all the high-performance cars in the world. I thought some of this was poorly explained and too confusing, and I'm sure much of it went over the heads of the children in the audience.
The highlight of the film, as expected, is the wonderful Pixar graphics. Japan, Italy, Paris and England are spectacular and vivid. The race sequences through the streets of these historic locales are fun and energized.
Some people might complain that the film has too much of a political message, about the need to use green fuels, but I didn't have a problem with the similar themes in "Wall-E," so I have no qualms about the underlying messages here.
"Cars 2" earned $68 million domestically and a total of $110 million worldwide in its debut weekend, and even with mediocre-at-best reviews, it is likely going to gross $500 million worldwide. Critics at Rottentomatoes.com gave it a dismal 33 percent approval rating. Viewers liked the film a lot more than critics nationwide, with 50 percent giving it an ‘A' grade, while another 18 percent gave it a ‘B' grade, at Boxofficemojo.com. However, a full 19 percent gave it an ‘F' grade, a sign that many adults were disappointed. If I could summarize this films problem in one sentence it would be ‘Too much Mater, not enough McQueen.' I think parents will agree.
Answering the question “where is God?” with “everywhere and nowhere” is usually a bit of a let-down, so it’s a sign of just how skilled a film-maker Terrance Malick (The Thin Red Line, Badlands) is that he doesn’t just get away with it in Tree of Life, he makes it seem truly profound. It helps that he crafts some of the more beautiful images seen in film today – there’s a reason why at least one of the posters is comprised of nothing but still images from the film – and, more importantly, it feels like a question he’s actually interested in answering. A lot of arthouse films down the deeper end of the pool dabble in the metaphysical but only succeed in making the meaning of life feel like a hipster pose: Malick has made a film that feels like a man trying to explain what he feels rather than one trying to impress you with how deep he thinks.
That’s not to say he’s not afraid to get heavy: the film opens with a fuzzy shot of glowing light against darkness while a whispered voiceover – and Malick loves his whispered voice-overs, with pretty much everyone getting their chance to muse about the nature of existence and their place in it in hushed tones – asks “Brother. Mother. What are we to you?” It’s the type of ponderous pondering Malick loves, but it’s not just idle speculation: the story proper begins with the delivery of a telegram (it’s the mid 20th century in small town America) announcing the death of one of the sons of Mr O’Brien (Brad Pitt) and his wife (Jessica Chastain).
Wracked with grief, the mother walks the streets. Her son is dead: where is God? The film answers with an extended wordless sequence basically detailing the history of the universe, Earth, and life upon it. Yes, that includes dinosaurs. It’s awe-inspiring in scope, if a little straightforward in subject: Malick doesn’t have a whole lot to say about the development of life on Earth past marvelling at it, but here at least that’s enough.
Eventually we return to small town America, which we eventually figure out is Waco, Texas. It’s a decade or so before the death at the film’s beginning, and the focus is the pre-teen Jack (Hunter McCracken), eldest son of the O’Brien’s. He and his two younger brothers play and explore their world under the guidance of their parents, who’re gradually revealed (Malick doesn’t do anything in a hurry) to have very different takes on the world.
For their mother (and, you might suspect, for Malick), the world is a wondrous, holy place, filled with grace and kindness. For their father, it’s a hard world where everyone will screw you over if they can and weakness is fatal. We see her literally dancing on air; he teaches the boys to fight by ordering them to hit him in the face.
This is the real meat of the film, which comes as a bit of a surprise considering an hour ago we were watching dinosaurs in a river. Half of this film exists in the reality of the past, where life is hard-edged and Jack is increasingly angry for reasons he can’t explain. Then there’s the half that drifts through time and across the surface of the Earth, with a grown up Jack (Sean Penn) wandering through a metaphorical landscape and passing through an empty doorframe to a vision of everyone he’s ever known.
In a lesser director’s hands it’d be all but impossible to reconcile the two, but Malick makes it work. If grace or God or nature or whatever you want to call it is everywhere, then everybody’s story is a story about grace. Despite some excellent performances, Tree of Life is perhaps a little too reserved to be truly moving; it’s a hard to really feel deeply for individual characters when you’re suddenly swept away to witness the end of life on Earth. But it is a beautiful, intelligent film, sharp and insightful about the bond between father and son, thoughtful and amazed at the world that created them.
After a highly effective smutty wink of an ad campaign, one could be forgiven for thinking that the “bad” in “Bad Teacher” refers to a public school educator who fools around with her students. A lot of adolescent males may turn out opening weekend in the hopes of seeing Cameron Diaz stoke their hot-for-teacher fantasies, but that’s not what the movie’s about.
Make no mistake: Diaz’s character, Elizabeth Halsey, is bad, a coarsely self-centered and manipulative gold-digger. The only reason she’s a teacher at John Adams Middle School is that her goal in life is to land $10,000 for breast-enhancement surgery. The basic joke of “Bad Teacher,” which director Jake Kasdan hits the audience with over and over again, is that Elizabeth is the most dislikable character of the year.
Diaz, in smeary make-up, certainly makes ill-tempered shrillness convincing, but there isn’t much spark to her performance, and there’s so little bounce or real shock to the movie’s overly controlled “look how rude we’re being!” black comedy that the audience is left stranded.
Viewers won’t find themselves on Elizabeth’s side or anyone else’s, really. This is a film that tries to pass off misanthropic blunt-wittedness as “edge. Justin Timberlake, as a sexy-nerd substitute, has enough campy sincerity to make viewers wish he’d been allowed an additional note, and Jason Segel, as a romantic phys-ed teacher, lays on the puppy-dog sweetness.
The best actor of the bunch, though, may be Lucy Punch as Elizabeth’s nice-teacher enemy. Looking like an angelic Lady Gaga, she turns this goody two shoes into the world’s most self-actualized valley girl. Even when Lucy Punch’s character is insufferable, audiences will like her — a trick that “Bad Teacher” could have used more of.
Vishal may not have undergone as much physical stress for all his ventures put together as he has for Avan Ivan. Sporting a squint, being effeminate without going overboard and performing the part of the bold and powerful avenger with zeal, Vishal plays a superb knock on the field well-laid out for him by Bala. It must have been a strenuous game for the actor because the cock-eyed look is not make-up wizardry or graphics gimmickry, but a veritable challenge. Vishal looks invincible. Hats off to the actor for an excellent show!
Traversing a light course for the most part, it is only in the last 20 minutes that Avan Ivan (U/A) changes tack, gets serious and transforms into a typical Bala film, with the maker's acumen gushing out in the actions and reactions of the main actors. Suresh Urs' editing enhances the brilliance of the segment. The cuts to the past in the climax that explain the developments in the story are examples.
Aarya is a perfect foil for Vishal — his brash demeanour and genuine affection for his stepbrother come out well in many of the scenes. He deserves appreciation for taking up a role that isn't as heroic as Vishal's and presenting it convincingly.
It's a multi-layered part for G.M. Kumar, as Zamin Thirthapathi. If you empathise with Thirthapathi, the credit goes to Kumar's moving portrayal. It appeals even more because Bala shows him to be a very sensitive person. The brothers look up to him and when he is harmed they aren't going to let the criminal get away.
Ambika goes around with a canaster on her lips, takes a puff or two and talks about downing a drink — so what? The irrelevance irks. Prabha Ramesh, whom you've watched playing heroine in a few films long ago, returns as Aarya's mom. The two women are loud, cantankerous, petty, kind and caring, all at once. Such a combination of attributes is common in the stratum that Bala showcases and hence looks natural.
Heroines Madhushalini and Janani Iyer have little to do. The latter's eyes are her asset. However naïve the girls are, the two falling for guys whose peccadilloes they are aware of isn't logical. In fact, their lovers' thieving habits only make them smile!
RK is a surprise. And the introduction of a hardcore villain at that point in the narration is forced. The character and its actions are contrived — it is as if Bala desperately needs a baddie at that juncture to take the tale forward!
The gentleness and timidity of sub-inspector Chinnandi is new to Tamil cinema — K. Ramaraj does a neat job of the role. Scatological exchanges in the name of comedy in Pithamagan were few. You hear much more of the same in Avan Ivan that they get disgusting — the dialogue is S. Ramakrishnan's. And many a time you are able to guess the twists in the line.
Some of the locations remind you of Bala's earlier films, Pithamagan and Naan Kadavul. ‘Super' Subbarayan warrants mention for the intensity of the stunts. And Yuvan's re-recording is a definite plus, but for the climactic sequence, where Vishal's anguished murmurs are drowned in the din.
The intermission leaves you wondering at the frivolousness and facileness of the story that's very much unlike Bala. Nothing much happens in the first hour or so. Thankfully, he makes amends with a riveting climax.
The trailer for Jim Carrey's new family film, “Mr. Popper's Penguins,” looked awful, leading some to expect the worst. With its impending release, it seems entering with low expectations can be the best way to see a film, because this one is a pleasant surprise.
Carrey plays Mr. Popper, a business man whose work has consumed his life. He's divorced and has lost touch with his two kids. He desperately wants to reconnect with his son and daughter, but they want no part of him. Popper’s life changes when his long-lost dad dies and leaves him six penguins that, needless to say, totally disrupt his life.
Despite his disdain for these birds, his attitude changes when his kids fall in love with them. It's suddenly cool to hang out in dad's fancy, fancy New York apartment. The rest of the plot revolves around Popper rediscovering his softer, gentler side, all due to the penguins. In the process, he becomes a better person, a nice ex-husband and more caring father.
Carrey brings heart and vitality to the role. It's not the crazy, manic Jim Carrey from “The Mask” or “Ace Ventura,” but for what he's called upon to do, he's charming and gets the job done. The birds, a combination of real life penguins and CGI, are quite cute, and the special effects department has done a good job here as well.
The movie is formulaic and audiences will see the gags coming from a mile away. Still, Carrey, along with director Mark Waters, have managed to not make this cloyingly annoying. They’ve injected some sentimentality into the proceedings and somehow it kind of clicks.
This is a family film, and on that level it works. Be warned, it's not the kind of movie that adults should go see by themselves. For those with kids from the ages of seven to 12, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable choice. It's even heartwarming, and parents will have a few laughs along the way, too.
If there’s one thing Australians know how to do, it’s crime. Wait, that should have read, “if there’s one thing Australians know how to do on the big screen, it’s crime”. But this nation’s ability when it comes to cinematic criminality is a two-edged sword for small-scale thrillers like Blame: while crime isn’t a genre that actively scares audiences away (unlike, for example, Australian comedy), it does mean that audiences go in with a certain level of expectation.
For a while at least, it looks like these expectations are going to be met and then some: Blame begins with a music teacher (Damian de Montemas) finishing up work for the day and driving back to his home out in the bush, where he’s set upon by a group of masked (but oddly well-dressed) types who grab him and promptly poison him. Job done, they tidy up and head on their way.
It’s a set-up that poses a lot more questions than it answers, and in a way, whatever followed it was always going to be a bit of a let-down. So when the masks come off (revealing Kestie Morassi, Sophie Lowe, Simon Stone, Mark Leonard Winter and Ashley Zuckerman) and the backstory leading up to the crime is gradually revealed through the groups’ various arguments and demands, it’s hard not to feel a little disappointed at the slackening pace.
When the story sticks to the would-be killers dealing with external threats – let’s just say their scheme doesn’t quite go to plan, and even out in the bush people occasionally decide to just drop in on their neighbours – it works fine as a tight thriller. When the focus shifts to the conflicts between the group – let’s just say not everyone is fully on board with the murder scheme, and those that are have different (and occasionally annoying) motivations for wanting the teacher dead – it highlights some fairly uneven performances from some of the cast.
Usually when this sort of thing happens the blame can be shifted onto poor dialogue or bad writing. But here the story (mostly) works and the dialogue, while occasionally clunky, never wanders too far into the realm of the completely laughable. There are just a handful of scenes where a few cast members don’t seem quite up to what’s asked of them. Whoever’s to blame (sorry), it makes a few developments hard to take seriously and straight-out damages the film as a whole.
Still, this kind of film lives or dies by the twists and turns of its plot, and this one manages to deliver a (not entirely unexpected) development towards the end that keeps things ticking over right up until the final credits. There’s nothing going on here that you haven’t seen done before elsewhere and better, but there’s still enough here that’s fresh – right down to setting it in a peaceful rural setting on a nice sunny day – to make Blame more than just another half-baked stab at a thriller.
J.J. Abrams, a household name in the film industry seems like he has a long list of movie credits, but it's actually a rather small list. I knew J.J. Abrams directed the last Star Trek movie, and was behind the TV show Lost. I figured he had 15 other films that I just couldn’t recall. Nope.
Abrams wrote and directed Super 8 – the first big popcorn movie of the summer, and it's going to be huge. Steven Spielberg had hired Abrams to restore the 8mm films he did as a kid, since they were all falling apart, and has said about Abrams, "We’ve come full circle now."
I just wish Abrams wouldn’t have made a movie that is so reminiscent of Spielberg’s early films. Watching the movie, I thought, there’s Close Encounters. Ah, that’s from E.T. A little bit of Goonies there. Hey... there’s some War of the Worlds, and a little bit of Cloverfield. There’s not an original thing about this movie; luckily, it all still works and Super 8 is fun to watch.
The kids in this Ohio town (circa 1979) are filming their own zombie movie. They aren’t obnoxious or more precocious than they needed to be, and so into their craft that they take their time to get the make-up just right. I thought of Lon Chaney, and him taking parts of eggs and putting them in his eyes to make them look milky. When there are a bunch of 14-year-olds with no budget, they resort to similar techniques. The military tries to cover up information about a train wreck (with the military thug played nicely by Noah Emmerich). I've been told recently that I sometimes give away things in my reviews that I shouldn’t; since the trailer merely showed a train wreck and "something" in the cargo car smashing at the walls, that’s all I’ll say. The train crash is exciting, and so was watching a cherried out Nova smash into the back of a Gremlin. We get to enjoy the $45 million dollars spent on Super 8, with some great special effects.
Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer is based on a bestselling series of children’s books by librarian-turned-author Megan McDonald. I've read none of the books, but over 14 million copies of them have been sold to date, which leads me to believe there must be some fundamental appeal to them. Whatever it is, none of it is to be found in this grating adaptation. For kids, Judy Moody is at best a harmless diversion; for adults, it’s 90 minutes of cinematic purgatory.
The film stars Jordana Beatty as the title character, a precocious nine-year-old whose wildly unkempt hair, hobo-rainbow wardrobe, and zany portmanteaus like “supercalifragilisticexpithrilladelic” are meant to convey creativity and independence, but more persuasively hint at a future of padded cells and four-point restraints. When the school term ends, Judy prepares for three months of unbridled fun, but her plans are derailed when two of her best friends, Rocky (Garrett Ryan) and Amy (Taylar Hender), announce that they are leaving for the summer. Judy’s summer prospects further diminish when her parents decamp to California to tend to an ailing grandfather, leaving behind her eccentric Aunt Opal (Heather Graham, convincingly crazy), a vagabond free spirit with an interest in “guerrilla art,” to supervise in their stead.
If there’s a point to any of this, director John Schultz (Aliens in the Attic) doesn’t articulate it. The film’s oblique narrative revolves around an arbitrary contest of Judy’s design, in which she and her three friends compete for “thrill points” by completing various activities, like riding a roller coaster or walking a tightrope. The exact stakes of the contest, if there are any, are never made clear, giving us little incentive to care about how any of it turns out. Little matter – each activity is really just a catalyst for some lame gag, the culmination of which usually involves unwanted contact with a) feces, b) vomit, or c) an artificial substance of equivalent unpleasantness. Vaudevillian sound design punctuates each tedious punchline, heightening our collective discomfort.
Schultz’s directorial style is one of aggressive whimsy, making abundant use of canted angles, extreme close-ups, acid-trip set design, CG pop-ups, animated interludes, an omnipresent score that all but shouts “mischief afoot,” and Urkel. Judy Moody was clearly made with minimal funding, with the bulk of said funds devoted to achieving its aesthetic of benign creepiness. One can only imagine how much the film might have been improved if a portion of its budget had been allocated to, say, a second draft of the script, or more than one take for each scene. Bummer.
If there was one thing that struck me as I left the cinema after seeing the sublime Bridesmaids, it was "Thank god, finally a film that really depicts female friendship". Finally a film that shows how women interact with one another in real life.
Not "Phew, I guess women are funny after all!" or "That was just as good as The Hangover!". Rather, it was a sense of vindication, after years of confusion at being presented with films that purported to depict female relationships but instead provided nightmarish parades of cliche and caricature where everything could be solved by a last-minute sprint through an airport and any emotion can best be expressed through a montage.
Are those days over now that Bridesmaids exists? Probably not - have you seen the trailer for The Vow? - but my god, what a respite. Annie (Kristen Wiig) is flailing through life: she's single, save for regular hook-ups with an uncaring douche (played with unbridled sleazy glee by Jon Hamm), her small business has gone under, and she lives with a pair of creepy roommates (Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson).
So the chance to be her best friend Lillian's (Maya Rudolph) maid of honour should be a welcome diversion, right? Wrong, and Annie quickly finds herself up the bridal industry shit creek without a paddle. (And, in one of the more memorable additions to the gross-out humour pantheon, with the shits in an uptight bridal salon without a toilet.)
She's joined on this downward spiral by the other bridesmaids: Lillian's unhappily married cousin Rita (Wendy McLendon-Covey), Disney Princess-mad Becca (Ellie Kemper), the groom's sister Meghan (Melissa McCarthy) and, most threatening of all, Lillian's new - and very rich - friend Helen (Rose Byrne).
Annie soon finds herself competing for Lillian's friendship, in the face of ever more extravagant gestures by Helen, as her own world crumbles around her.
As Annie's life becomes more fraught, she lashes out in a way that is regrettable but instantly recognisable to anyone who has every said something they wish they could instantly take back. It's a big risk for Wiig, who must frequently teeter on the bring of unlikeable, but she pulls it off effortlessly.
Unlike so many comedies that are ensemble in name only, Bridesmaids' cast is a powerhouse. Wiig and Rudolph's shared comic past serves their interactions well, though it's Annie and Lillian's more muted moments that allow the two actresses to shine. McCarthy's Megan is a brilliant comic creation (don't be fooled by trailers that paint her as little more than the "gross fat chick"), and Byrne finds the bruised soul of Helen, who makes grand gestures only because she doesn't know how else to make friends (a brief interaction with her step-children, who clearly hate her, is as stinging as it is funny).
The blokes are well-repped, too: Chris O'Dowd (from The I.T. Crowd) is lovely as a hangdog police officer who falls for Annie, and the uncredited Hamm is a hoot as the outrageously awful Ted. (Tim Heidecker maniacally beams his way through a non-speaking role as Lillian's betrothed, Dougie.)
What's especially striking about the film, though, is not the breakneck speed at which it unloads comedy gold, but its heart. You see, Bridesmaids is hysterically funny, but it is also terrifically moving; Paul Feig's deft, sympathetic touch as director meshes beautifully with Wiig and Annie Mumolo's script (with all guided by the godlike hand of producer Judd Apatow, who is a natural heir to The Farrely Brothers' crown as sentimental fools).
A scene in which Megan visits Annie, who has been hiding out at her mother's house after disgracing herself, is particularly poignant, thanks in no small part to McCarthy's appealing performance as the wise, self-assured Megan. Annie, drifting into a self-indulgent maw, bemoans her lack of friends, to which Meghan forthrightly responds, "I'm your friend", snapping her out of it. It's a lovely moment.
Bridesmaids is that rare sort of comedic triumph that is never content to rest on its laurels: the characters are multifaceted, even occasionally unpleasant, which only makes you love them more. It has a breezy quality that makes its moments of emotional depth all the more special. There is no "bad guy" in Bridesmaids; everyone is thrashing around the same as the rest, just trying to work out how to live.
It also made me laugh so much I had a coughing fit and saw stars - and I can't remember the last time a film of any "gender" made me do that.
Remember the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies? Of course you do – they were massive hits the world over. Now here’s a tricky one: remember what actually happened in them? Well, there was a sea monster and some sword fights and a magic compass and a monkey and a hat and – ah, who cares, Johnny Depp wore eyeliner and acted drunk, what more do you want from a film?
With all the boring, normal characters disposed of at the end of the last instalment – basically, everyone who isn’t Johnny Depp or Geoffrey Rush – Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is free to start again (or in Hollywood jargon, “re-boot the franchise”) with a story that actually makes some kind of sense. It’s not a brilliant or complex story, mind you, but just having a beginning, middle and end is a massive step up over the dog’s breakfast that was most of the first three films.
When the location of the not-so-mythical Fountain of Youth surfaces in Spanish hands, the British aren’t just going to sit idly by. Fortunately for them, Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) is currently in London busting old comrades out of prison. Not that they want him to lead the mission – they’ve hired the now one-legged Barbossa (Rush) for that – but they hear he’s planning a trip of his own so presumably he knows where to go. Funny thing is, he isn’t actually planning an expedition to anywhere, as he doesn’t even have a ship. So who’s hiring people in his name?
The rest of the film is taken up in a race to find the Fountain of Youth and the means by which eternal life can be gained. Here’s a clue: it involves a mermaid’s tear, and as mermaids are brutal killers who drag men to their deaths (and in one case are played by Australia’s own Gemma Ward), making one cry isn’t as easy as you might think.
The plot is pretty thin, but it at least makes moderate sense (or at least it’s not blatantly stupid) and leaves plenty of room for action set-pieces. The Pirate films have always managed to be handy with a swordfight, and there are a couple of solid swashbucking scenes here that tick all the right boxes - even managing to include that old classic, swinging from a chandelier. As the story progresses the action tapers off a little, but by that stage the characters are interesting enough to keep things moving along nicely.
Both Depp and Rush know what’s required of them and deliver in spades. Depp does lack a little of the spark he had in the earlier films, but he’s the lead here and he has to put up with the occasional lump of exposition to push things ahead before he can go back to being charmingly offbeat. For a character that’s still really a supporting character, it’s amazing how well they’ve kept his essence while broadening him into someone you can actually build a story around.
The two main additions to the cast this time out are Penelope Cruz as Angelica and Ian McShane as Blackbeard. They both strike the right campy note for pirates without really making that much of an impact, which in McShane’s case is a bit of a surprise but to be fair his character lacks any real meat for him to sink his teeth into. Cruz is a little more fun as Sparrow’s quasi love-interest, but she gets less to do as the story moves on.
There’s also a small nod towards “serious” romance in a relationship that develops between a missionary (Sam Claflin) and a mermaid (Astrid Berges-Frisbey). It’s hardly compelling stuff, but the fact that it’s there at all is both a pleasant surprise and a useful counter-balance to all the hamming it up and scenery-chewing everyone else is doing.
You’ve got to respect a film that keeps its focus firmly on getting the job done. Sure, it could have done it with more flair – there’s no moment here that equals the skeleton sailors walking across the sea bed in the first film – but in the end there’s not a lot here to argue with either. It may not leave you wanting more of the pirate’s life, but when you’ve got cameos from Dame Judi Dench and Keith Richards you must be doing something right.
Tollywood is in no mood to experiment these days, choosing to stick to safe, breezy love stories. And Dasarath's "Mr Perfect" is no different. Already adept at handling such subjects, his last film, "Santosham," being testimony, Dasarath has walked down the same old path in "Mr Perfect" too.
The story goes something like this. Vicky (Prabhas), an expert in gaming software, lives in Australia, never compromises in life. He hates "adjustments" and thinks that one shouldn't sacrifice one's comforts for others. He wants everything in his life to be perfect, even his life partner. His father asks him to get married to his childhood buddy, Priya (Kajal Agarwal), when he comes to India for his sister's marriage. He decides to spend time with Priya for 10 days before he makes his decision.
The two start off on the wrong foot, but inevitably, Priya falls in love with Vicky. When their ecstatic parents are about to announce their engagement, Vicky suddenly declares that he is not going to marry Priya as she decided to sacrifice all her personal preferences for him. He returns to Australia, only to meet Maggie (Taapsee), who he thinks is perfect for him. Meanwhile, a determined Priya follows him back to Australia, giving the story a not-so-new angle.
What is applause-worthy in the movie is Kajal Agarwal's performance. She looks great, expresses well and fits into the role perfectly. Prabhas manages to look nice, but really needs to work on his dialogue delivery. Their on-screen chemistry however, is commendable.
Prakash Raj, Murali Mohan and K Viswanath play the same predictable characters they are famous for. Taapsee is good in her short appearance. For once, her voice isn't dubbed and it isn't too bad as it suited her NRI character. Brahmanandam is wasted in comic capers that don't work. The story is simple and clean, but for all its predictability, it's definitely not a paisa vasool film.
I really was not planning to see this. When I first saw the trailer to "Super," it looked to me like it was going to this geek reference comedy with Rainn Wilson doing his thing from The Office, which had become extremely tired for me (I quit watching The Office a couple of seasons ago). Even knowing that this was written and directed by James Gunn, who has previously made "Slither" which I had a good time with, wasn't enough.
What made me want to see it was the recent review that Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and Christy Lemire gave it on Ebert Presents At The Movies. Their review convinced me that there was more to "Super" than what its trailer gave off, and it certainly intrigued me enough to want to seek this out when it came to St. Louis. Awhile back, I'd posted on a messageboard about one of the original iterations of At The Movies going away, and it was followed by someone talking about the idea that the concept for this show was going the way of the dinosaur thanks to the Internet and the barrage of reviews that you can get through that. I thought that was just kind of sad. Yeah, sure, you can get reviews all over the Internet for everything, but they're faceless, they have no sound or inflection and unless it's someone you trust completely, they're all over the map.
Of course, there's a lot of good reviewers out there on the Internet, who you know you can completely trust just due to their consistency. But with that said, nothing will ever really replace for me the idea of an actual television show devoted to movie reviews. I can't begin to tell you how many movies I was opened up to by actually seeing and hearing intelligent conversation thanks to the various iterations of At The Movies. Sorry for the long digression, but I can't push Ebert Presents At The Movies enough. You may not agree with every review in the end, but the one thing that it does have is a consistency of voice and intent. To me anyway, that's invaluable in deciding what to see.
But back to "Super." This opened here in the St. Louis area this past weekend at one of my favorite theatres in town, the Tivoli. When I heard it was coming, this got fast-tracked for me right away, thanks to the above. I saw this last night, and think it's one of the best movies that I've seen so far this year.
Frank D'Arbo is seemingly just your average ordinary guy who at the start of the film tells you about the only two perfect moments in his life -- marrying his wife Sarah and pointing out to a policeman where a criminal went. Frank's devoted to Sarah, but Sarah's got a past history of substance abuse. That history begins to catch up to her when she gets involved with a slick guy named Jacques. In a matter of days, Jacques leads Sarah back to her old ways, and soon she out-and-out leaves Frank, leaving him hopelessly distraught. Frank's at the end of his rope and doesn't know what to do until a divine vision comes to him. This vision inspires Frank to become a costumed crimefighter named The Crimson Bolt, and from there the inevitable hijinks ensue.
As I said above, writer/director James Gunn is best known for 2006's "Slither." But before that, he had a long association with Troma Studios, known for their low-budget, extremely over-the-top exploitation films. A lot of "Super" is a flat-out salute to those movies, but there's a lot more to this as well. It's really difficult to pin any sort of singular label on this movie. On its surface, it looks like it's going to be a broad comedy, when it's actually an extremely black comedy. With Rainn Wilson's presence, I had the feeling that it was going to be one note, but Wilson goes to some places emotionally that are extremely dark, so this could also carry the label of being a psychological investigation. And then there's the whole super-hero element that initially gets compared to "Kick-Ass," but combined with other factors puts this more on the same plane with what I think "Sucker Punch" was trying to achieve. The difference being that "Super" actually does achieve it. The end result, to me anyway, actually has more in common with "Taxi Driver" than anything else.
Oh, there's certainly some broad comedy, and it's not ineffective. It's also not what this will be known for, as it gets overshadowed by the very dark overall tone and the extreme violence within. The violence is quite graphic and feels "real" and that is certainly something to keep in mind if you decide to see this. That factor alone is something that could be a huge turn-off for someone coming in and expecting this to be like what I'd originally thought it was going to be.
Gunn's Troma roots are certainly on display in the shooting style. The look of the film feels like there was a lot of guerilla filmmaking going on while shooting this, and it definitely works. It's authentic feel makes the evident darkness even more pronounced. Other highlights include a terrific animated opening sequence, a very Troma-esque way in which Frank gets his divine vision, and a great score from composer Tyler Bates. I'd mentioned "Sucker Punch" above. "Sucker Punch" does something with its ending that tries to flip the whole thing, which just doesn't work primarily due to simply not being set-up that well. "Super" does the same sort of thing, but when it happens it's not forced and it does still come back to Frank, making for quite the poignant ending.
The big revelation for me here though was Rainn Wilson. This isn't Dwight Shruite by any means. Frank is off-balanced, to be sure, but he's also highly relatable. He's had his life turned upside-down, with one of his perfect moments tarnished. He externalizes a lot of pain that I know I can certainly relate to. Those scenes might at first seem a touch over-the-top, but I thought they were very honest and certainly made him to be a much more sympathetic character than what I had expected.
Liv Tyler plays Sarah, and Kevin Bacon plays Jacques. At first, the big question looms: How does someone who looks like Liv Tyler get involved with a guy like Frank? Another movie might be very superficial with something like this, but James Gunn actually goes there and tells you how. Tyler shines in these scenes, and again, it feels honest. Kevin Bacon is very slick, and right off the bat you know that Jacques is going to be this sort of scum that everyone has come across in their lives in their own way.
Ellen Page plays Libby, a comic book store employee who helps Frank get on his track and later becomes his "kid" sidekick, Boltie. I tend to think that Ellen Page is one of the best young actresses out there today and seeing her in "Super" further supports that. As unbalanced as Frank is, there's even darker stuff at work for Libby -- she's just not as cognizant of it as Frank is. Page is quite good at subverting that, making this part something that has more in common with the first movie I saw her in, "Hard Candy."
The casting also includes some other nice touches. Veteran actors Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker and Nathan Fillion (all also in "Slither") have key roles here, and play perfectly into Gunn's big picture. Other nice acting touches include William Katt (from TV's The Greatest American Hero as an on-screen police officer and Rob Zombie as the voice of God. Their appearances are really brief, but very nice winks to the intended audience.
"Super" is a terrific movie and just this extremely huge surprise. It's not for everyone. For instance, if you're a parent who's seen the trailer and thinks that this will be something your children will enjoy, you just might want to hold off. Its dark tone and extreme violence could also be very off-putting to some, so I can't give this a blanket recommendation. But if you think you can get into the combination of blacker-than black comedy, psychological unbalance and a very big heart, then you might find something very special with "Super." I know I did.
Sandwiched in the multiplex between his Avengers comrades Iron Man (2) and Captain America, the latest Marvel superhero to take to the big-screen is Thor. Unlike some of his predecessors, in the hands of director Kenneth Branagh and star Chris Hemsworth, Stan Lee's most godly son is a welcome addition to the cinematic superhero pantheon.
Having brought war to the peaceful realm of Asgard, the cocky Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is banished to Midgard (otherwise known as Earth) by his furious father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins), despite the best calming efforts of his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston). In banishing his son, Odin casts a spell upon Thor's hammer, Mjölnir, so that it will only impart its powers on a worthy bearer. In other words, Thor has to go and think long and hard about what he's done.
There's plenty of time to do that on Earth, where he meets - i.e. is nearly run over by - Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), a scientist who has been investigating electrical storms in New Mexico. Soon enough the S.H.I.E.L.D suits (led by Clark Gregg as the perfectly smarmy Agent Coulson from both Iron Man installments) are on his case, too.
As if that wasn't enough for an off-duty Norse god to deal with, Loki assumes the throne in Asgard and creates havoc in both realms. He invites the Frost Giants, hungry for vengeance, across the Bifröst into Asgard, sends The Destroyer (seemingly the love child of a radiant heater and Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still) to Earth, and Thor soon has his work cut out for him.
It's a tidy story arc, as these origin/reboot films tend to be, but Thor never feels underfed, thanks to an impressive cast, a snappy script and thoughtful direction from Kenneth Branagh. When he was announced as director (after Matthew Vaughan dropped out), Shakespeare expert Branagh must have felt like an odd fit in many comic fans' eyes, but in fact he brings a reverence for the source material that is compelling.
After all, what are comic books if not epic mythic narratives? Superhero stories have more in common with the work of The Globe's finest than many would like to admit: tragedy, comedy, pathos. And Thor, blessed additionally with its grounding in the great Norse myths, perhaps has even more in common.
Hemsworth is wonderful as the hero, effortlessly traversing Thor's journey from magical jock douche to someone more worthy of Mjölnir's powers.
Much is made, by Odin and others, of Thor's being little more than a hot-headed "boy", and Hemsworth finds the perfect mix of youthful arrogance and childlike innocence.
Without infantilising him (which, let's face it, would be a fairly stupid actorly choice given his physical appearance), Hemsworth gives Thor a vulnerability that is appealing. When Loki appears at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base to inform his brother of the terms of his banishment, Thor's eyes well with tears and he asks only, "Can I come home?" It's simple and moving.
Hiddleston is terrific as Loki, a slimy, super-powered version of Shakespeare's Edmund. Like that (literal) bastard, Hiddleston's Loki is a curiously sympathetic antagonist, never falling into caricatured evil.
As Jane Foster (a nurse in the comics, updated here to an astrophysicist), Portman is sparky and appealing; her scenes with Stellan Skarsgård (as her colleague, Erik) and Kat Dennings (as the deadpanning intern, Darcy) have a breezy, natural rhythm.
The cast is so uniformly strong that it would take too much space to praise them all individually, but in particular, The Wire's Idris Elba is imposing as gatekeeper Heimdall, Anthony Hopkins underplays (uncharacteristically) as the alternately mournful and hot-blooded Odin, and there's a nifty pre-Avengers cameo for Jeremy Renner as an unnamed Clint Barton/Hawkeye.
Too often there seems to be a desire among filmmakers to look askance at comic book lore, as though they need to cram in as many winking gags as possible to say to the bro dudes in the audience, "Hey, don't worry dudes, we made this for you, not those Poindexters down the comic shop."
To his credit, Branagh avoids this, though not at the expense of fun; indeed, Thor is frequently hilarious, but the humour comes from a genuine affection for the occasionally silly tropes of the comic books, not misguided "irony".
(A sequence in which a parade of local rednecks use Thor's buried hammer as a strength-tester to the tune of Billy Swan's I Can Help is particularly fun.) One of the few weaknesses of the film is the skipping back and forth between Earth and Asgard. Just as the action in either realm gets on a roll, it's back to the other.
At times, the Asgard sequences teeter on the brink of unwatchable, not because they are bad, but because there is so much to see that your eyes begin to short-circuit. The Bifröst by itself? Fine! A shimmering ocean? Cool! Awesome castles? Why not! Throw them all together in 3D and the legendary realm is such a smorgasbord of visual riches it almost cancels itself out. It's a testament to Branagh and his creative team, however, that within that "almost" lie some of the most impressively realised vistas in recent memory.
(The 3D cinematography is used unobtrusively and serves to be more immersive than flashy.)
In many ways, and despite its awe-inspiring visuals, Thor feels like a film out of its time; it almost has more in common in with the rollicking adventures of the 1930s and '40s than the hip superhero reboots of the 21st century.
That mood is reflected in a variety of ways. The frost giants, led by Colm Feore as Laufey, are predominantly played (at least in close-up) by actual actors in makeup, which is a relief - there's something so much more satisfying about a villain who isn't just a computer construct.
Under Branagh's guiding hand, Thor and his band of friends - Sif and the Warriors Three - carry on like Errol Flynn-era heroes, clapping each other on the shoulder in greeting and over-emoting just enough to set them apart from us mere Earthlings. It's charming.
More broadly, though, Thor has a real emotional depth - it's unusually soulful for a superhero film. Yes, Christopher Nolan's Batman efforts had a similar sensitivity, though it came from a darker and, thus, ultimately less interesting place; Thor is more bittersweet. There's a hopefulness to the film, particularly its ending, that verges on elegiac.
The inevitable Avengers film (expected in 2012) has given the most recent individual origin films an episodic quality, but where Iron Man 2 suffered for that - and one suspects the upcoming Captain America will also - Thor avoids feeling like a placeholder. Instead of leaving the cinema irritated, unwilling to wait for his next adventure, you feel buoyed. A winning blend of thrill and feeling, respect and irreverence, Thor lifts Marvel's movie stocks considerably.
