Tag: Fanboy

Game of Votes.

Still taking a break. Nonetheless, this was too on-the-nose not to share, for election 2012 is dark and full of terrors. Enjoy.

Still Alien After All These Years.


Completing the trifecta of big Xmas previews (with TDKR and The Hobbit — still quiet on The Avengers front), Ridley Scott goes back to LV-426 with Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green, and the ubiquitous Michael Fassbender in this first look at Prometheus. (Note the several nods to the Alien trailer.) I’m in, although I was more excited when it seemed less definitively prequel-ish — I’m not sure I need everything explained about the original space jockey.

Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold.


“Far over the Misty Mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old…” Also materializing online, as of last night, is the first trailer for Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Looks great, although I’m a little wary of the Twilight-style division of the book (presumably, Smaug is in the second film), as well as the “original trilogy” tone — The Hobbit is more whimsical; it shouldn’t just be a prequel to the Lord of the Rings. (Also, “prequel to the original trilogy” is a phrase that deservedly spawns doubt in the hearts of many in the world of men this age.) But, all in all, this looks splendid. One year to go!

Showdown in Gotham.


Resolved: Chris Nolan is a sloppy action director. For the prosecution: film critic Jim Emerson, who dissects the second-act car chase in The Dark Knight to explain his reasoning. For the defense: Torque director Joseph Kahn, who similarly dissects Emerson’s essay: “This is old film school thought. It’s not even oversimplification, it’s wrong. It stems from the technological origin of silent filmmaking.“

All in all, an interesting debate. In terms of the macro-arguments about film, I find myself leaning toward Kahn: After hundred years of film-going, I think audiences are savvier about the basic syntax than Emerson suggests. But I also agree with Emerson that Nolan is not a particularly impressive action director,and that his action sequences do feel choppy and confusing at times. This is great for something like Batman Begins, when Bats is trying to sow confusion, but otherwise not as satisfying as, say, the truck chase in Raiders.

Corner Boys and Aliens.


Y’know, after being underwhelmed by both Super 8 and Cowboys and Aliens these past few months (not to mention completely taking a flier on the presumably terrible Transformers 3), I was starting to wonder if maybe i had just gotten too old and cynical to enjoy a good alien invasion flick these days. But then, last night, I saw Joe Cornish’s thrilling debut Attack the Block, and I realized that that’s just succumbing to the soft bigotry of low expectations. Now this is an alien invasion done right, bruv. Believe it.

In short, Attack the Block is a hoot from start to finish, and it puts those well-heeled Hollywood competitors to shame. At turns funny and frightening, it has the freewheeling, energetic pulse of a Kick-Ass, the unintrusive but real layer of smart sci-fi social commentary that marked District 9, and, in no small part to the sleek Basement Jaxx score, a trip-hop and dub-step cool rivaling that of Hanna or Run Lola Run. Midnight in Paris is probably still my favorite film of 2011 so far, but if there’s any justice, this will be the sleeper hit of the late summer and early fall.

Attack the Block takes place in South London on the evening of Guy Fawkes Day, when fireworks are lighting up the sky and troublemakers are out on the prowl. Trying to get home on this dark night without being harrassed is Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a young nurse new to the high-rise project she now calls home. She doesn’t make it. But before the hooded collection of street toughs who rob her can get away clear, a meteor of some kind suddenly totals a nearby vehicle. (Cue Sio Bibble: This can mean only one thing: Invasion.) While Sam makes a run for it, the gang — really, just a bunch of kids — move to check out what’s left of the car. The obvious ringleader sticks his head deep into the wreckage…

And, a la Harold and Kumar, we now meet our “real” protagonists. Moses (a charismatic John Boyega), the fellow who just entered the car, is not actually Evil Victim #1. Instead, he gets slashed across the face by some kind of space varmint, and so he and the rest of the crew — Pest (Alex Esmail), Jerome (Leeon Davis), Biggz (Simon Howard), and Dennis (Franz Drameh) — hunt down and kill the offending alien. Since nobody knows what it is, they decide to take the corpse to the pad of the local weed dealer (Nick Frost), who’s been known to enjoy stoning out over the National Geographic channel. Problem is, the rest of the very new arrivals to the block don’t take kindly to one of their number being murdered…and they all come a little bit bigger.

That’s basically the set-up, although there are few other characters running around to make things fun: Say, Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter), the Avon Barksdale of this hi-rise, who has atrocious taste in hip-hop. Or Brewis (Luke Treadaway), the loserish grad student who’s just on the block for a resupply. (His funny intro is borrowed from Michael Bolton, except this time it’s to KRS-1’s “Sound of da Police“) Or Probs (Sammy Williams) and Mayhem (Michael Ajao), two gangsta-wannabe nine-year-olds who look up to the older crew. (Memo to Cowboys and Aliens: This is how you do little kids in an alien invasion story. See also: Newt.)

Attack the Block has some very funny moments — “Right now, I feel like going home, locking my door, and playing FIFA!” — and a good bit of stoner humor. But don’t get the wrong impression: This film as a whole is rather dark, and even ruthless at times. (At one point, on his dad’s orders, Dennis takes his cute little dog outdoors to join the team. Spoiler: It lasts about five minutes.) Not knowing much about Attack the Block other than that Nick Frost and the producers of Shaun of the Dead were involved, I expected the film to be jauntier. But it has an edge, alright, and a body count. The monsters here — basically furry gorillas with glow-in-the-dark fangs (or, for those of you in the know, grues) — may be low-fi compared to what we’re used to in these sorts of movies, but they can do some damage, and some rather grisly damage at that.

Which, of course, is part of the fun. As a horror movie, a comedy, and a smart, tightly-plotted thrill ride, Attack the Block succeeds on all fronts. If space aliens and dubstep aren’t your bag, then I guess there’s a chance you might find it all lo-rent and bewildering. Otherwise, this is the purest and most visceral roller-coaster ride of the summer so far, and, barring an absurdly good fall, one of the best films of 2011. Respect.

How the West was Lost.


I know I wasn’t the only movie fan out there rooting for Jon Favreau’s sadly boring Cowboys and Aliens to be the hit of the summer. The cast is a Murderer’s Row of fanboy favorites, from Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford as the headliners to Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine, and Clancy Brown in the margins. Favreau is generally considered to be a good guy, and with Swingers and Iron Man under his belt, he’s built up a lot of goodwill in the genre community (which he didn’t lose with Iron Man 2, since that film is generally considered a rush job.) And I, like many others, was rooting for Ford in particular to break out of a decade-long funk, and it seemed like Favreau might’ve figured out how to get it done.

So, I’m sorry to report, even at this late date, that Cowboys and Aliens is more deadwood than Deadwood. It’s not Wild Wild West bad, I guess, but there’s no narrative urgency to be had here at all. It’s almost sad, really. Some estimable production values are put into service of a total snoozer of a script. And even with all the star power involved — the movie just never finds a spark to get things moving. By 20 minutes in, I had gotten bored with it, and after an hour I was just dutifully waiting for the credits.

So what in blue tarnations happened? Well, laziness abounds here — to take just example, the aliens here are close kin to what we just saw skulking about Super 8. But I expect much of this film’s inertia lies with the fact that, like Green Lantern, Cowboys and Aliens could field an entire pick-up basketball team with its bevy of screenwriters, and the resulting mess shows. Apparently these five (six if you count story credits) souls presumed that, if they just threw enough stock characters at the story, the so-low-its-high concept of cowboys vs. aliens would simply carry the movie. Suffice to say, it doesn’t work out that way.

As the film begins, a man with piercing blue eyes and no memory to speak of (Craig) wakes up in the desert, a photograph of a woman in his hand and a strange metal shackle on his arm. After handily dispatching some would-be bandits, he rides to the nearby watering hole of Absolution, where he soon makes nice with the local preacher (Brown), meets a mysterious and alluring beauty (Olivia Wilde), gets into fisticuffs with the spoiled son (Paul Dano) of local tough guy Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Ford), and discovers from the sheriff (Carradine) that he’s really a ne’er-do-well named Jake Lonergan, and wanted for a stagecoach robbery. Just as this newly-rechristened Lonergan is about to be brought back East in chains to serve hard time, the real trouble begins.

That would be the eponymous aliens, who, out of nowhere, strafe this sleepy Western town and abduct many of its fine, upstanding citizens, including the sheriff, Dolarhyde’s bratty son, and the wife (Ana de la Reguera) of the local saloon proprietor (Rockwell). And so the survivors of this dastardly attack band together to reacquire their kinfolk. Their ace-in-the hole on this mission is Lonergan, whose shackle has a very useful laser cannon within, and who now can kinda sorta remember a previous encounter he and his ladyfriend (Abigail Spencer, a.k.a. Don Draper’s kindergarten squeeze on Mad Men) had with the invaders. But Winning the West back from aliens who enjoy an overwhelming technological superiority is a horse of a different color from fighting indians or poachers. In fact, come to think of it, indians and poachers might come in real handy right about now…

If this synopsis makes it sound like Cowboys and Aliens is a ripping western adventure yarn, well, don’t be fooled, stranger: The result is more than a little dull. It doesn’t help that the movie continually makes lazy Screenwriting 101 (or worse) choices as it goes along. Yes, we do have both a little kid and a dog on this mission, and, yes, the two do form a bond. Yes, Old Man Dolorhyde has some growin’ to do, particularly with regards to his “adopted” Native American son (Adam Beach of Flags of our Fathers), whom he mistreats for no particular reason. So why are the aliens here on Earth in the first place? Er…I dunno…shall we say gold? What’s that you say, Rockwell’s character can’t shoot straight? Hmm, well I sure hope he gets that squared away by the third act!

As I said in the favorite movies post yesterday, Rockwell is probably the best thing about Cowboys and Aliens, and the only person who occasionally spins the proceedings here into gold. (His character actor compadres, Carradine and Brown, aren’t given enough to do) For his part, Craig is…well, ok — He does the steely badass thing well enough. But before I saw this, I was thinking of him as Bond and Layer Cake, i.e. a mark of quality. Only as the film rolled did I remember: Oh, yeah, he’s actually in a lot of crap too, like Road to Perdition and The Jacket.

As for Ford, well he’s not bad either, to be honest, and he does seem engaged in the material. But, there’s something off as well — Like Pacino-as-Pacino, DeNiro-being-DeNiro, and Nicholson-doing-Nicholson, he seems to have reached that age where he can only play himself playing a role. Old actors never sour, I guess. They just go meta. (It reminds me of a recent interview with Andy Serkis on playing Gollum again after ten years, and he said it felt like he was doing an impression of himself the whole time. Ford seems trapped in the same feedback loop.)

And Olivia Wilde — well, I want to like her. She seems smart and funny, she’s easy on the eyes, and she’s the niece of lefty writer Alexander Cockburn. But, lordy, when she first wanders into this movie in her calico print settler’s dress, she’s like an Angel of Boring. I can’t tell if it’s completely her fault, but she and her character, both before after her Big Reveal, definitely contribute to the stultifying air permeating this film. Better luck in the next Tron.

Hogwarts, We Hardly Knew Ye.


So we come to it at last: the great battle of our age (and one of the many reviews I’m behind on.) And yet, while I don’t much enjoy being a hater in this department — The Leaky Cauldron did start ’round these parts, after all — and while the world clearly disagrees with me anyway (the film is now #3 all-time in box office receipts), I found David Yates’ Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Part II to be a bit underwhelming.

Not to overstate the case: This eighth and final film in the Potter series is a quality production, well-made and well-acted throughout, and it’s still a good deal better than Chris Columbus’ flat first two movies. But it just didn’t resonate with me. Even more than the last film, Hallows Part 2 is stuck with dramatizing some of the clunkiest plot elements in the entire series. (Jesus Harry, anyone? And how ’bout that goofy coda?) And by separating out the story into two movies, Hallows Pt. 2 is bereft of much of the connective tissue that makes the Potterverse so engaging. Honestly, if you told me when the book came out that I’d end up preferring the film about the camping half of Hallows, I never would have believed you.

What do I mean by connective tissue? Well, firstly, the killer app of the Harry Potter series, as Laura Miller argued back in the day, was always Hogwarts, and Book 7 sorely missed the rhythms of boarding school life that infused the first six tomes. That was always an obstacle these last two films would have to overcome, and I thought Part One actually did a good job of it. But, as it turns out, the emotional failsafe — especially for the films, where we’ve really seen these kids grow up — was the interactions among the Big Three. And, now that Hallows has been sliced in half, Harry, Ron, and Hermione really don’t have all that much to do with each other here in the back end.

Instead, we have — after a brief adventure in the vaults of Gringotts — the Siege of Hogwarts, which takes up most of the picture. And it’s all very impressive, with its psychic shields, stone soldiers, rampaging ogres and whatnot. But this is all action-fantasy spectacle, and — after Helms Deep, Minas Tirith, and various other besieged redoubts in recent cinema, not particularly engaging spectacle at that. (Also, I guess the idea here is the good guys are buying time for Harry to find the Ravenclaw diadem, but the way the story comes across, all this carnage seems beside the point anyway. Couldn’t all the loss of life have been averted if Snape just took Harry by the pensieve before the Big Battle?)

Speaking of ole Severus, the back half of the film is also burdened by its source material. To be honest, I’d forgotten about many of the things that aggravated me about Deathly Hallows the book, until the story unfolded here once again. I already mentioned the Aslanification of Harry, where he has to now sacrifice himself for Voldemort’s sins to be truly expunged from this world. (See also: Matrix: Revolutions.) Then there’s the conversations with ghosts and the heavenly train depot rendez-vous with Dumbledore (weirdly, also in the third Matrix.)

And then there’s the Snape story, which plays out mostly as expected, but still has the effect of totally cheapening the character of Harry’s real dad. (As it is here, Snape is the unrequited hero, and James Potter is just a bullying prat who happened to marry Lily.) Like I said, a lot of these plot developments seemed to be coming by the end of the series — Severus always seemed like he was deep undercover, and Harry’s lightning scar made sense as the seventh horcrux. But the execution in the book, and subsequently here in the movie, is clumsy.

One more small issue here: Along with Hogwarts itself and the Big Three, the third leg of the stool for the films has been its British Thespian Full Employment program. But, with the exception of Ralph Fiennes’ Serpenthead Voldemort and arguably Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall, the amazing collection of talent in the bullpens here doesn’t get all that much to do either. Estimable actors like John Hurt and Jim Broadbent have only reaction shots, and even big moments like the death of David Thewlis’ Lupin and Natalia Tena’s Tonks are given short shrift. (FWIW, the only big new actorly add in this last installment is Ciaran Hinds as Alberforth Dumbedore, but he’s virtually unrecognizable underneath his Michael Gambon makeup.)

Again, not to be a total hater — This is a competently-made and even sleek production, and it’s hard to see how David Yates could’ve improved the situation given the constraints of the source material. But, there’s no riff as inspired here as Yates’ Brazilian reconception of the Ministry of Magic in the last film, nor any sequence as transporting as the animated origins of the Hallows we saw last November. Like the book series from whence it came, the last chapter of the Harry Potter films ends with a bit of a plunk.