Tag: Blake Lively

Green around the Gills.


Another catch-up review: As I alluded to in my post on Thor a few months ago, it was always likely that the Summer of the Comic Book B-list was going to have a clunker in there somewhere. So, when Branagh’s Thor turned out surprisingly ok and and Matthew Vaughn conjured a quality entertainment in X-Men: First Class, that put the statistical pressure on Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern and Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger.

Well, at least for now, Cap can breathe a little easier, because Green Lantern, as I’m sure you’ve heard by now, is a bit of a dud. It’s not nearly as terrible as some of the reviews make it out to be, and I still think there’s potential here for a quality franchise. (Let’s remember, Sam Raimi’s first Spiderman had serious pacing problems and some majorly poor decisions therein as well — I’m looking at you, Willem DeFoe’s static faceplate.) But this Green Lantern is too often a rote, by-the-numbers origin story. It never establishes much of a rhythm, and too often feels like a film made by a committee. In short, a missed opportunity.

The first red flag happens in the opening moments, as Geoffrey Rush tells us in a leaden voiceover about the Green Lantern Corps — a legion of intergalactic cops, organized and headed by the Guardians of Oa, who are dispatched to guard all the sectors of the universe through judicious use of their willpower-driven rings. This sort of stage-setting exposition dump can be done well — most obviously by Cate Blanchett in Fellowship — but here it feels perfunctory and tacked-on, like somebody rushed it to the beginning of the film after a test screening or two.

The good news, tho’, is we’re in space, and here the movie actually shows some early hints of promise. We watch some alien space marines, shipwrecked on a rocky planet, accidentally awaken an trapped malevolence — the former Oan now known as Parallax. Parallax enjoys the Cheneyesque ability of growing stronger by feeding on fear, and he soon escapes this Rura Penthe to exact his revenge on the Green Lantern Corps, and especially the Lantern who put him under — Abin-Sur of Sector 2814. (This, by the way, is exactly the let-your-freak-flag-fly sort of cosmic craziness that should have animated the whole film. But it’s a tease. We ultimately spend far too much time earthbound.)

So Parallax is loose, and he soon manages to fatally wound his old nemesis Abin-Sur, who then has to find a replacement ringbearer as soon as possible. Enter Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a hotshot Air Force pilot who doesn’t play by the rules!™, but whose swagger and bravado conceals lingering doubts about his abilities™ resulting from the untimely death of his father™. (I know, I know: Green Lantern’s origin is Green Lantern’s origin, but the film doesn’t do its source material much credit by playing it so bland.) Does Hal have it in him to take the ring, face down his fears, and defeat the yellow-tinged forces of Parallax? I dunno…let’s watch him mope for forty-five minutes or so to find out!

In the reviews, Ryan Reynolds has been avoiding most of the blame for what’s wrong with Green Lantern, and I think that’s fair. He’s a likable actor with, as least as far as I can tell, not much range — but, since cocky-but-endearing is his wheelhouse, he ends up being a decent-enough fit for Hal Jordan. Blake Lively, on the other hand, has seen a lot of Haterade thrown her way for this flm. But, while she made more of an impression in The Town, she’s perfectly competent here — The problems with Green Lantern aren’t her fault either. Nor are they really Martin Campbell’s — the film feels well-made throughout.

No, the problem here is pretty clearly with the writing — which probably isn’t surprising given that Green Lantern has all of four credited screenwriters (Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim, Michael Goldberg — I hope they saved money on the monogramming.) Most obviously, much more of this adventure should have happened in space. The film only really has a pulse when on Oa or somewhere off-planet, but instead we spend far too much time watching Hal Jordan sulk on Earth. So that was a bad decision. But, even beyond that, the film is just all over the place.

For example, we spend several minutes in the early going being introduced to the Young Nephew Who Idolizes Hal™ — and then he never shows up again. Or to take a problem in the opposite direction, for all the Basil Exposition voiceovering going on, I don’t remember the film ever explaining that the Lanterns’ rings don’t actually work against the color yellow, which is a pretty big plot point to save for a sequel. For that matter, you don’t get the sense that Hal ever uses the ring for anything more than making planes and guns in this flick. Either his or his writers’ imagination seems severely limited.

To take just one instance of the lazy writing here, consider the hamhanded way that the demise of the Big Bad is telegraphed in the middle of the film, when Hal is [spoiler]randomly instructed by a fellow Corps member about the power of gravity. Since we’ve already established that Hal is a hotshot pilot unconcerned with his own safety, why not just have him, in a fit of ring-induced euphoria, fly too close to the sun during training and have to be bailed out by Kilowogg et al? Bam, you have instant foreshadowing and character development, and an Icarus metaphor to boot. This is basically a no-brainer.

So, why do I still hold hope for a Green Lantern sequel, even amid all the general blandness here? Well, for one, the origin story is out of the way, and that’s usually what kills these sorts of movies. For another, Green Lantern is much more fun when it’s in space, so perhaps a sequel could fly in that heady direction instead. And then there’s Mark Strong’s turn as Sinestro, the (wink, wink) ostensible head of the Corps. Peter Sarsgaard is pretty solid here as weaselly dweeb Dr. Hector Hammond (tho’, here’s a game for ya: drink every time he screams like he’s in a Lynch and/or Cronenberg film), but Strong is far and away the best thing about the picture. A space-faring adventure that uses him more could be very fun indeed.

Fruits of the Hallows.

With young Master Potter set to commence his crying jags through the wilderness at midnight, the Deathly Hallows crop of trailers has sprung…

Wicked Heat.


Behind as ever on the movie front — I saw this one two weeks ago — and we’re heading into a particularly chock-full film weekend. So, without further ado: Ben Affleck’s worthwhile crime saga The Town, his similarly Beantown-based follow-up to the promising Gone Baby Gone, is, for all intent and purposes, Heat in the Hub. (Or, put another way, this movie is to Heat what The Departed was to Infernal Affairs — Just add Boston.)

And let’s face it: Between the movies above, and Mystic River, The Boondock Saints, and even going back to the 1994 Jeff Bridges-Tommy Lee Jones mega-stinker Blown Away, white working-class Boston has recently become a bit of a movie cliche as the go-to venue for local color in a cops-and-robbers movie. (And, as in Gone Baby Gone, Affleck perhaps overuses the aerial establishing shots of the Boston skyline here.) But take that for what it is and The Town is definitely a quality entertainment — Well-written, well-made, and with a raft of very good performances, some of them potentially Oscar-caliber, The Town is a smart, adult-minded action movie that delivers what it promises.

For some, I’d expect what The Town mainly promises is “Don Draper and Gossip Girl!” (Having never seen Gossip Girl, and being more of a movie than a TV guy, I was more drawn in by Rebecca Hall and Jeremy Renner. Ok, Jon Hamm too.) But, in fact, and perhaps because Affleck is obviously an actor himself and thus generous with them, The Town is less a star vehicle than an ensemble piece, and it brims over with enjoyable performances. To take just three examples in the margins, Chris Cooper quietly simmers with pent-up rage in the Big House, Pete Postlethwaite gives a sinister edge (and a whiff of cheese) to his turn as an old-school Boston criminal, and Affleck alum Titus Welliver brings his usual swagger to the role of a local cop who knows all-too-well how the old neighborhood works.

I kinda hate to say this, but if there’s a false note struck in the acting department here, it’s probably Affleck himself. He’s a decent enough actor, and he doesn’t upset the movie by any means — From moment to moment, he’s fine in the role. But as the lead — Dougie MacRay, a street-smaht Charlestown bank robber who accidentally falls for the hostage (Hall) of his latest job — Affleck seems miscast, mainly because his choirboy looks and general, aw-shucks demeanor rob the character of a much-needed edge. However much he hit the gym beforehand, Affleck just seems too easygoing to pull off the dangerous blue-collar tough-guy thing. (And so, small plot details, like his saintly character once being an almost-pro-hockey player, which might’ve worked otherwise, seem even more like screenwriterly groaners.)

Now, in the Al Pacino role — the dogged FBI agent hot on our anti-hero’s heels — Jon Hamm is pretty much right in his usual, Drapery wheelhouse. You can’t say he shows us much different here (other than, in one scene, a very funny Boston accent — “You and your boys didn’t just roll a Stah Mahket over in Milton for a bahx of quahters.” It’s right up there with his James Mason.) But the role suits him, and it’s definitely a step up from his brief appearance in the Keanu’ed Day the Earth Stood Still. (Is Superman next? Well, definitely maybe.)

For her part, Blake Lively is a real presence in a relatively small role, and, while, like I said, I’ve never seen Gossip Girl, I doubt her character on TV is the been-’round-the-block Townie mom (a la Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone) that Lively plays here, and she’s quite good. Rebecca Hall, meanwhile, is an actress I’ve sorta crushed on since The Prestige (she’s probably best known for Vicky Christina Barcelona (#15), and most recently popped up in Red Riding), but her part here — the love interest — is a mostly thankless one. (The Town‘s script is generally solid, but at one point in the early going Hall is given a laugh-out-loud terrible anecdote involving tragedies and sunny days that stops the film dead. She musters through as best she can.)

In the end, though, the standout of The Town is Jeremy Renner, continuing his post-Hurt Locker leap to the A-list with another very impressive performance. As Jem, Dougie’s screw-up of a best friend who takes a special relish in crackin’ skulls on the job, Renner takes a Masshole character which could’ve been wayyyy over-the-top in someone else’s hands and sells it with understatement. In, say, 28 Weeks Later, Renner seemed as amiable as Affleck, but here he’s a coiled menace, almost despite himself, and the type of Townie at the end of the bah you do NOT want to mess with.

Renner may have gotten passed over for Jeff Bridges at the Oscars last year (a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award, if not necessarily for Crazy Heart), and if The Social Network is half as good as touted, Andrew Garfield or even JT might end up giving him some run too. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Renner atop the Supporting Actor field for The Town this winter. In a well-made, entertaining heist film through-and-through, he’s the guy who ultimately steals the show.

Wicked Game.

As seen at Inception last night, Beantown bank robber Ben Affleck develops an inconvenient crush on his former hostage, bank manager Rebecca Hall, in the new trailer for The Town, Affleck’s follow-up to Gone Baby Gone. Town also features Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Blake Lively, Pete Postlethwaite, Chris Cooper, and presumably lots of local Boston color. Sure, I could see this.

In brightest day, in blackest night…

I’ve been watching the casting fly-by on this without commenting, and I still kinda wish they’d gone with Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm for Hal Jordan over the getting-overexposed Ryan Reynolds (who already has two other comic properties to his name in Deadpool and Blade III.) Nonetheless, Mark Strong has joined the cast of Martin Campbell’s Green Lantern as Sinestro, the Lantern’s arch-nemesis. He joins Reynolds, Blake Lively (Carol Ferris), Peter Sarsgaard (Hector Hammond), and Tim Robbins (Sen. Hammond, Hector’s pa.)

Well, that’s a pretty solid cast on the villain side. But I fear this is just going to feel like an attempt to cash in on DC’s second-tier (a la Iron Man on the Marvel side)…unless they go really big and space-age with it. Like Green Lantern Corps, Oans, etc.