Friday, May 20, 2011
Man on Film: Thor
As I started to assess what lay ahead of me in my attempt to catch up here, I was bowled over by how far behind I've fallen. Some of this is related to baseball. Some the added distraction that my new iPhone has brought to my life. Regardless my attention has been drawn elsewhere over the past month or two.
In my attempt to get back up to speed, I'll start with the easiest film for me to review: Thor.
To sum it up in a word?
Unimpressed.
As is often the case for the first outing in a superhero franchise, much of the first hour is spent setting up that hero's origin. In some instances, like Spider-Man
or Iron Man
, this is the best part of the film, after which the hero is clumsily pitted against his foe who makes an appearance in the first act but whose true, evil nature is merely alluded to through foreshadowing. While the conflict with the villain is actually set up pretty well in this film, Thor's origin story is neither compelling nor entertaining.
The screenplay, credited to three scribes--Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz (the writing partners who brought you Agent Cody Banks
and six episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
), and Don Payne (one of the two credited screenwriters of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer)--starts off with Thor crashing down to the New Mexican desert in the midst of an aurora. After a ten-minute teaser, the film takes a leap back to Thor's home planet, Asgard. For what felt like an hour. All of this time is spent showing the young Norse God to be the equivalent of the dumb fucking jock who wants to crush everything and who everybody hated in high school (unless, of course, you were that dumb fucking jock). Not only is Thor an ill-mannered, spoiled rich jock, but he is gifted with all of the entitlement issues and egotism of J.D. McCoy, the pissant quarterback who unseats Matt Saracen in the third season of Friday Night Lights
.
Not only is the Thor we get to know for the first 90 minutes of the film all of these things, but the set-up of the origin of Thor happens to take place in a place that looks, well, ridiculous. Asgard looked like shit. Take all of the things that you hated about the "sets" in the Star Wars prequels and lump them together. That's Asgard. 45 minutes of film are shot in green screen and the backgrounds are added later. Maybe I'm being excessively purist, but the complete and utter lack of anything real for that long is simply exhausting.
When the audience is finally granted exit from the puerile happenings in Asgard, the next 45 minutes is some amalgamation of Crocodile Dundee
, Project X
, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with a dash of Donnie Darko
-wormholery sprinkled in. By the time Thor has discovered the error of his ways and redemptively reinvented himself, it is hard to believe that a director with as much storytelling skill as Kenneth Branagh was at the helm for this mess of a movie. They shoe-horned a love story into the film while only giving themselves 60% of a film to lay the groundwork for it. Then the audience is supposed to believe that Thor and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman, whose post-Black Swan
releases have really been cashing in on that Oscar that she had to have thought she was going to get) fell in love after having spent part of three days together.
These films aren't supposed to be flawless. If anyone understands that, it's me. It just seems that they got almost nothing correct here. For starters, is there anyone who would have been better suited to play Thor than Alexander Skarsgard? Hell, they even cast his father in the film. Instead, they get some Australian soap star, probably to appeal to the Crocodile Dundee demographic. Then the film is constructed in such a way that it is hard to actually give a damn about the protagonist until the 90 minute mark. Everything that happens in any of the worlds other than Earth looks stupid and will only look worse as more time passes and the effects look more and more ridiculous. And I haven't even touched the anticlimactic climax of the film.
What else is there to say? Thor is a lackluster superhero flick that fails to engage until it is far too late.
To sum it up in a word?
Unimpressed.
As is often the case for the first outing in a superhero franchise, much of the first hour is spent setting up that hero's origin. In some instances, like Spider-Man
or Iron Man, this is the best part of the film, after which the hero is clumsily pitted against his foe who makes an appearance in the first act but whose true, evil nature is merely alluded to through foreshadowing. While the conflict with the villain is actually set up pretty well in this film, Thor's origin story is neither compelling nor entertaining.The screenplay, credited to three scribes--Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz (the writing partners who brought you Agent Cody Banks
and six episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), and Don Payne (one of the two credited screenwriters of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer)--starts off with Thor crashing down to the New Mexican desert in the midst of an aurora. After a ten-minute teaser, the film takes a leap back to Thor's home planet, Asgard. For what felt like an hour. All of this time is spent showing the young Norse God to be the equivalent of the dumb fucking jock who wants to crush everything and who everybody hated in high school (unless, of course, you were that dumb fucking jock). Not only is Thor an ill-mannered, spoiled rich jock, but he is gifted with all of the entitlement issues and egotism of J.D. McCoy, the pissant quarterback who unseats Matt Saracen in the third season of Friday Night Lights.Not only is the Thor we get to know for the first 90 minutes of the film all of these things, but the set-up of the origin of Thor happens to take place in a place that looks, well, ridiculous. Asgard looked like shit. Take all of the things that you hated about the "sets" in the Star Wars prequels and lump them together. That's Asgard. 45 minutes of film are shot in green screen and the backgrounds are added later. Maybe I'm being excessively purist, but the complete and utter lack of anything real for that long is simply exhausting.
When the audience is finally granted exit from the puerile happenings in Asgard, the next 45 minutes is some amalgamation of Crocodile Dundee
, Project X, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with a dash of Donnie Darko-wormholery sprinkled in. By the time Thor has discovered the error of his ways and redemptively reinvented himself, it is hard to believe that a director with as much storytelling skill as Kenneth Branagh was at the helm for this mess of a movie. They shoe-horned a love story into the film while only giving themselves 60% of a film to lay the groundwork for it. Then the audience is supposed to believe that Thor and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman, whose post-Black Swan releases have really been cashing in on that Oscar that she had to have thought she was going to get) fell in love after having spent part of three days together.
These films aren't supposed to be flawless. If anyone understands that, it's me. It just seems that they got almost nothing correct here. For starters, is there anyone who would have been better suited to play Thor than Alexander Skarsgard? Hell, they even cast his father in the film. Instead, they get some Australian soap star, probably to appeal to the Crocodile Dundee demographic. Then the film is constructed in such a way that it is hard to actually give a damn about the protagonist until the 90 minute mark. Everything that happens in any of the worlds other than Earth looks stupid and will only look worse as more time passes and the effects look more and more ridiculous. And I haven't even touched the anticlimactic climax of the film.What else is there to say? Thor is a lackluster superhero flick that fails to engage until it is far too late.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Rediscovering the Past: A Little Bit of Chris Elliott
I think I speak for the world when I say that Cabin Boy may have been the most important film of our times. If you loved that film, here's a little bit of Chris Elliott goodness that you may have missed.
The Swinger - watch more funny videos
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Man on Film: Drive Angry [3D]
Jesus, it's been a long damn time since I actually saw this. I went on opening weekend, keeping my streak of consecutive Nicolas Cage movies seen in the theater alive at nine--a feat that may be my proudest accomplishment.
While my accomplishment is something to behold, Drive Angry
was unfortunately disappointing. Don't get me wrong, this was markedly better than Season of the Witch
, but it failed to go as far as I had hoped it would. It played things just a little too safely, shackling Cage with a script that lack enough imagination and a foil not up to the challenge of giving an opposing 110% in the form of Billy Burke.
With Cage playing it up as only he can, he is complimented quite nicely by William Fichtner, playing The Accountant, whose mission is to bring Milton (Cage's protagonist) back to Hell, from where he had broken out to save his daughter. Fichtner plays it pitch-perfect, calm in destruction, dry in wit.
Adding to the film is eye-candy in the form of the insanely hot Amber Heard and the much less clothed Charlotte Ross. Ross does not look her age to be sure, and Heard, while not prancing about in various stages of undress as she did in The Informers, sure looks good. I can't decide whether her choice of accent works or not, as it's insanely thick and possibly bad but over-the-top is the name of the game here. Any shoddy accent work can probably be excused given the circumstances.
Where the film lives and dies is in its action sequences, and unfortunately this is where it comes up short. While promise is shown in the trailer, the action scenes simply lack the requisite verve to make the film what it should be: a trashy explosion-fest with crazy deaths and balls-to-the-wall energy.
was unfortunately disappointing. Don't get me wrong, this was markedly better than Season of the Witch, but it failed to go as far as I had hoped it would. It played things just a little too safely, shackling Cage with a script that lack enough imagination and a foil not up to the challenge of giving an opposing 110% in the form of Billy Burke.With Cage playing it up as only he can, he is complimented quite nicely by William Fichtner, playing The Accountant, whose mission is to bring Milton (Cage's protagonist) back to Hell, from where he had broken out to save his daughter. Fichtner plays it pitch-perfect, calm in destruction, dry in wit.
Adding to the film is eye-candy in the form of the insanely hot Amber Heard and the much less clothed Charlotte Ross. Ross does not look her age to be sure, and Heard, while not prancing about in various stages of undress as she did in The Informers, sure looks good. I can't decide whether her choice of accent works or not, as it's insanely thick and possibly bad but over-the-top is the name of the game here. Any shoddy accent work can probably be excused given the circumstances.
Where the film lives and dies is in its action sequences, and unfortunately this is where it comes up short. While promise is shown in the trailer, the action scenes simply lack the requisite verve to make the film what it should be: a trashy explosion-fest with crazy deaths and balls-to-the-wall energy.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Reading Rainbow: High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly by Donald Spoto
This may seem like a weird choice if you don't know me well and know why I was reading it. I can't really get into why I was reading it in this space, but whatever. I read it. It happened. |
| High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly |
Not relying solely on his aged notes from 25 years earlier, Spoto interviews seemingly everyone that has ever known Grace Kelly in completing an exhaustively researched biography of the captivating actress. Her spirit seems to have made its way to these pages largely due to Spoto's concern for honoring her memory. He never crosses a line into a tawdry realm. Taste and discretion are always observed if something cannot be corroborated by multiple accounts of events.
Obviously, most of you would only read this if you were interested in Grace Kelly. If you are, this is a damn fine book with effortless prose and passion for his subject.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Man on Film: Biutiful
If you have seen Alejandro González Iñárritu's other three feature-length directorial efforts, you likely understand what you are getting into with Biutiful. If one were to list Amores Perros
, 21 Grams
, and Babel's shared traits, it would be that they are visually arresting, often bleak, and run perhaps a little long. While I happen to like those three films, I wouldn't necessarily cite the third trait as a strength, and the second limits his films' rewatchability.
Biutiful marks the first feature that he has done since his public falling out with scribe Guillermo Arriaga, who got up on his soap box about authorship of films in the ramp-up to the Oscars when Babel was nominated for seven awards. While I happen to love Arriaga's work, both with Iñárritu* and without him, it is a little refreshing to see something different from Iñárritu himself.
*The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
may have been my favorite movie of the past decade.
Citing his father's life as inspiration for this film, this is clearly a very personal film for Iñárritu. More than any of his previous works, there are truly heartwrenching moments in this film. Uxbal, played to perfection by Javier Bardem, is a father of two in Barcelona living on the fringe, hustling to make a dime in morally ambiguous ways, and trying to get his affairs in order as terminal cancer is bearing down on him. As he scrambles to leave something for his two young children while their mother's grip on life loosens at every turn, your heart breaks.
The film is deeply affective, in spite of its length. Bardem alone should get you excited about watching this film, as there are not many in the acting game who are as consistently amazing as he is. Uxbal is far from perfect and isn't above exploitation to serve his own benefit, but Alejandro González Iñárritu's world in film is not one of black and white.
, 21 Grams, and Babel's shared traits, it would be that they are visually arresting, often bleak, and run perhaps a little long. While I happen to like those three films, I wouldn't necessarily cite the third trait as a strength, and the second limits his films' rewatchability.  |
On Blu-ray May 31st |
*The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
may have been my favorite movie of the past decade. Citing his father's life as inspiration for this film, this is clearly a very personal film for Iñárritu. More than any of his previous works, there are truly heartwrenching moments in this film. Uxbal, played to perfection by Javier Bardem, is a father of two in Barcelona living on the fringe, hustling to make a dime in morally ambiguous ways, and trying to get his affairs in order as terminal cancer is bearing down on him. As he scrambles to leave something for his two young children while their mother's grip on life loosens at every turn, your heart breaks.
The film is deeply affective, in spite of its length. Bardem alone should get you excited about watching this film, as there are not many in the acting game who are as consistently amazing as he is. Uxbal is far from perfect and isn't above exploitation to serve his own benefit, but Alejandro González Iñárritu's world in film is not one of black and white.
