The A-Team

In the final days of the Iraq War, members of an elite commando unit were sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from four maximum security prisons to take revenge on the man who framed them. If you are having a boring summer at the movies, if Sex and the City 2 left a bad taste in your mouth, and if you can find a theater playing it, you need to see The A-Team.

It’s no overstatement to declare that The A-Team is the first great action film of the summer. Say what you will about Iron Man 2, but the degree and multitude of insane sequences in The A-Team trump the more narcissistic Marvel sequel -- at least in that particular category. It is no innovation that a summer blockbuster would employ action as its primary tool for separating you from your cash, but The A-Team does so with an entirely different mindset than most brain-dead popcorn fare.

Instead of assaulting us with nonstop action and then having the audacity to mask itself as being high art, The A-Team embraces just how ludicrous the action sequences are and makes absolutely no apologies for it. That’s not to say, though, the movie has nothing to offer beyond the explosions and midair collisions. In fact, what makes The A-Team such a damn good film is the clever underscore that complements every moment of mesmerizing destruction. Joe Carnahan, along with the other writers, gives us moments that subtly poke fun at the outlandishness of what we’re seeing that not only makes the absurd action forgivable but immediately elevates the material above the typical summer fodder.

Carnahan recognized that, given the tone of both the series and his last film (Smokin' Aces), the action scenes needed to flow uninterrupted, and here it's very streamlined, only pausing briefly to give us hilarious interactions between the larger-than-life characters before diving head-first back into the explosive fray. Until the very end of the film, each plan is carried out before our eyes as it is being hashed out to neutralize any lacking in the pace. It would be easy to then accuse The A-Team of being front-loaded, given the slow build to the final sequence, but I would argue that is merely a nod to the evolution of Face’s character as a leader and that it never really loses steam.

What really sells this film, however, is its cast. Like the original quartet of chaos, each actor brings something fantastic to the table. Bradley Cooper, as Face, has that inescapably charming swagger and confidence we’ve come to expect from him; Liam Neeson, unsurprisingly, is the perfect blend of in-the-trenches badass and cool-as-ice leader. Even Rampage Jackson, in the role made famous by a guy donning the entire payload of Ft. Knox around his neck (that'd be Mr. T), turns in a respectably tough performance with a few moments of decent hubris. But it’s Sharlto Copley who really steals the show as Howlin’ Mad Murdock. True to his character's moniker, Copley cranks up the lunacy and plays Murdock with a hilariously reckless abandon that mirrors the tone of the entire film.

Though not without fault (the less-than-thrilling CG near the end of the film is amateurish at best and many will find the over-the-top action too silly to appreciate), all in all this movie rocks hard. The interplay between our heroes is at the heart of the film's entertainment value and is what you will probably like the most about it. Personally, I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun at the movies. The A-Team is far better than it has any right to be, mainly because it is as much a four-sided character piece as it is a balls-out actioner.

read more...

The Karate Kid

The 1984 underdog classic that introduced such priceless phrases as “Wax on, wax off” and “Sweep the leg!” into the pop-culture lexicon, set me ill at ease. To me the film seemed little more than a high-profile vanity project for child star Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, who for all we know gave him the movie as a Christmas gift, a $40 million stocking-stuffer. Pillage my childhood memories if you must, Hollywood, but damnit, at least show a little respect for the source material.

Much has changed in the update: Daniel Larusso is now Dre Parker; California’s San Fernando Valley is now Beijing, China; Mr. Miyagi is now Mr. Han; and karate is now kung fu. Most of the story beats and thematic elements, however, are essentially the same. After his single mother (Taraji P. Henson) gets a job transfer, 12-year-old Dre (Smith) is forced to move from his native Detroit to the unfamiliar climes of Beijing, where he’s besieged by a local group of pubescent fascists after being caught innocently flirting with a pretty schoolmate.

Dre’s tormentors, all of whom practice a peculiarly sadistic version of kung fu taught at the neighborhood martial arts academy, adhere vigorously to the “No weakness, no pain, no mercy” credo of their autocratic master. As such, they’re not about to let their puny prey off with just one humiliating beatdown. During a subsequent ass-whooping, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the eccentric maintenance man from Dre’s apartment building, comes to the rescue, fending off the ruthless urchins with some pretty fancy fighting moves of his own. After some cajoling, Mr. Han reluctantly agrees to teach the child kung fu, and several life lessons and inspirational montages later, a resurgent Dre finally faces up to his adversaries at a climactic kung fu tournament.

The case for nepotism in this new Karate Kid is not without merit. Though allegedly 11 years old, Smith doesn’t look a day over 10, and appears jarringly undersized for a 12-year-old. Seeing the baby-faced lad (he definitely takes after his mom in the looks department) get repeatedly brutalized by adolescent thugs twice his size gets uncomfortable, as do later scenes of him training shirtless, his torso the size of Chan’s forearm.

But it’s a minor quibble. In truth, Smith surpasses his predecessor Macchio in both acting ability and martial arts proficiency. Whereas Daniel-San’s fighting scenes in the original Karate Kid require a suspension of disbelief that diminishes his eventual triumph at the All-Valley Karate Championships (Even as a kid, I always suspected that the Cobra Kai kids were either sandbagging it, or their sensai was the worst in-game coach since Jim Tressel), Smith’s moves are both more authentic and more athletic. Moreover, he has the good sense not to collapse hysterically into a wailing heap at the slightest touch from an opponent, as Macchio so famously did.

The Karate Kid is every bit an unabashed crowd-pleaser -- which isn’t necessarily such a bad thing in a summer movie season that has thus far given audiences precious little to cheer for. At two-and-a-half hours, it takes far too long to get going and would have benefited from a more assured hand behind the camera. Zwart’s overemphasis on the bullying and fish-out-of-water elements becomes redundant, and the dialogue and culture-clash jokes border on embarrassing at times. But the meat of the story, the bond that forms between an unlikely kung fu teacher and his equally unlikely student, is undeniably affecting.

read more...

Knight and Day

June is going home for her sister’s wedding, toting a mess of car parts from a junkyard in Wichita, apparently the best place in the country for scrap parts. At the airport, she twice bumps into a mysterious fellow with dynamite bangs. Just when she feels she might be falling for him, she returns from the airplane lavatory to find he has killed everyone onboard. What follows is 110 minutes of your life siphoned painfully from you that you can never reclaim.

Knight and Day is the pinnacle of studio laziness: two pretty people forcefully crammed into an empty vessel in the hopes that their celebrity will dupe more than a few rubes into buying a ticket. This movie is lifeless; it has no pulse from beginning to end. I’m not naive. I know why movies like this exist and I know that I am not the target audience. But what really burns me about Knight and Day is that it fails to deliver on the one note on which movies like this typically bank: cheap romance.

The principal design of a film like this is to provide masturbatory fantasies for people who read gossip magazines. When you are making a film in that vein, the only requirement of you is to create chemistry and steaminess between your two leads. Knight and Day managed to fashion a film like that without spending a lick of effort to create sexual tension between the characters. At no point in the film did I feel like they had a relationship -- or that they were even interested in one another -- until I was explicitly told that it was true.

Most of the absence of heat between them is a product of two veteran movie stars who obviously could not care less about the film they are making. If you are a fan of either Tom Cruise or Cameron Diaz, I would highly suggest taking a trip to Madame Tussauds and staring at their wax likenesses because they will offer more skilled performances cast in wax than they did on screen. If Cruise’s performance were any more phoned in, AT&T would’ve sponsored the film. To counterbalance that, Diaz is a complete doorknob. Her “fish out of water” routine more often than not devolves into completely inauthentic stupidity and emotionless non-reactions. And I’m sorry, Tom, but even you have to exert yourself just an iota to be charming.

The plot of the film isn’t just generic, it’s insultingly stupid. Take the actors out of the film -- hell, take away the fact that the film exists -- if you were to recount the plot points of Knight and Day to someone as if it were a story, that person would think you a moron. MacGuffins about batteries, characters identified by their naiveté suddenly becoming fully cognizant of complicated schemes, and being pretty serving as the only criterion for graduating to superspy all expected to be swallowed as fact.

At least it’s an action film, so there are moments of sheer entertainment, right? Wrong! The action scenes are as bland and unsatisfying as the rest of the script and offer little more than sweet retreat from the idiocy of the plot and the inadequacy of its cast. Please do not waste your time, money or brain cells on this unmitigated garbage. If we collectively say no to movies like this, perhaps the next summer vehicle for pretty people will have the good decency to be mediocre.

read more...

Grown Ups

Adam Sandler needs to make new friends. The funnyman/mogul has often used comedies produced under his Happy Madison banner to dole out roles to his less talented ex-SNL chums, many of whom would be forced to find other occupations if it weren’t for his patronage. But such loyalty, while certainly laudable, comes at a price. In the case of Grown Ups, the price is far too steep.

A broad comedy that tests the limits of its PG-13 rating, Grown Ups is set during a Fourth of July holiday in which five former best friends gather at a lake house to commemorate the passing of their beloved grade-school basketball coach. Much has changed for the boys, all of whom are now in their 40s, in the nearly three decades since their fabled championship season. During one wacky weekend in the woods, their divergent fates are laid painfully bare.

Each character brings his own baggage to the reunion: Sandler’s team captain is now a big-shot Hollywood agent (a questionable fit for his good-guy goofball persona) with a high-maintenance trophy wife (Salma Hayek) and two spoiled sons; Rock’s a full-time househusband suffering in the shadow of his successful corporate wife (Maya Rudolph) and her browbeating, flatulent mother; Spade, looking especially weathered, plays an acerbic lothario who refuses to give up his hard-partying ways, no matter how pathetic they now appear; Schneider’s a massage therapist who employs a host of dubious new-age therapies to cope with the all but unbearable fact that he is, well, Rob Schneider; and sitcom émigré Kevin James, drafted to the Happy Madison varsity squad after ably delivering the unfunny in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, plays a family man ashamed of his working-class status.

It’s fitting that Grown Ups is set over the course of a weekend, because that’s probably how long it took to conceive, plan and produce. There’s nothing wrong with brainless humor -- it can be the perfect antidote to the leaden, self-righteous fare that so often litters the multiplex -- but Sandler and company seem to have forgotten that even so-called “dumb” comedies still require competent filmmaking to work effectively.

But work seems to have been the furthest thing from their minds. In Grown Ups, they lazily amble through a series of uninspired gags that wouldn’t have made the Wild Hogs cut, string together a plot structured vaguely around a rematch of a climactic basketball game, and task director Dennis Dugan with capturing the whole sordid affair on his cell phone camera. At least, it looks like it was shot on a cell phone camera.

Sandler’s charisma may well be enough to turn Grown Ups into yet another $100 million hit for the beloved comedian, with audiences perfectly eager to cough up $12 to subsidize his make-work program. But it’s abundantly clear that his friends -- and his brand of comedy -- aren’t aging well.

read more...

Toy Story 3

Animation, particularly when it comes out of the Disney/Pixar stable, is one of those areas of filmmaking that regularly inspires the phrase "They don't make them like they used to." In the case of Toy Story 3, however, it's more accurate to say, "They have never made them like this." It's certainly not unheard of for an animated film to be good, for a Pixar film to be great, or for the third film in a trilogy to be outstanding (though that's the rarest of the three), but in the case of Lee Unkrich's film, the sheer degree at which it exceeds at all three is not just rare, it's unprecedented.

Eleven years have elapsed since Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen) and all of Andy's favorite playthings had their last adventure -- rather, 11 years have elapsed since Andy stopped playing with his toys. Buoyed by Woody's never-failing devotion, the gang is all optimistic that Andy will elect to bring them with him to his first year of college, but as that fateful, empty-nest day approaches, it becomes clearer and clearer that the only toy that will be making the trek to school is Woody. The rest are all, by a series of unfortunate events, consigned to live out their remaining days at Sunnyside daycare. Things are actually looking up for the neglected entertainers until they realize just how careless the ankle-biters are when it comes to playing with toys.

Unfortunately, there is no escape in sight for the lovable personalities Pixar has been refining for over a decade. Lotso Huggin' Bear (Ned Beatty) runs a tight ship at Sunnyside; the new toys are just going to have to be sacrificed to the aggressive toddlers so the old veterans can have a relaxing time with their more mature counterparts. Eventually, Woody catches wind of what kind of life his old pals are being forced to live, and Toy Story 3 quite brilliantly becomes a riff on classic prison escape movies as Woody seeks to breach Lotso's security measures and bring his bunch back to Andy, where they belong. And while this on-the-run chunk of the film is some of the most thrilling material Pixar has ever delivered, it's also some of the most touching.

Unlike most sequels, not a moment of Toy Story 3 feels artificial. There's no sense that Pixar decided to make a third film because it knew that the box office would gladly support another entry; no sense that this is a cash grab (unlike a certain green ogre's most recent trip to the big screen). All of those typical sequel pitfalls are carefully avoided by a swelling sense of finality. Toy Story 3 isn't just another adventure with these characters -- there is, in fact, no doubt that this is their final adventure, their final hoorah together. Director Lee Unkrich and screenwriter Michael Arndt meticulously lead the audience along with bated breath the entire time, culminating in a life-or-death scenario for the toys that is more heartfelt and genuine than most live-action films can ever muster.

It's astonishing how the creative team at Pixar can make you forget that what you're watching is all a bunch of digital wizardry. Maybe it's the 3D this time around, maybe it's that this is the studio's most accomplished technical feat to date (there are single shots at a landfill that pack in richer detail than the entirety of the pioneering first film) that makes Toy Story 3 such an immersive experience. Or maybe it's simply because Pixar treats its property, which is ostensibly for children, with the utmost sincerity. The result is an overwhelming success, the rare kind of film that, were it a human being, would be your best friend.

One could reasonably make the case that Toy Story 3 is the single best animated film ever made. I wouldn't outright agree with such grandiose claims, but it's certainly not a baseless proposition that you'd be laughed at for bringing up. However, with part three now tucked under Pixar's belt, one could present an even better case that Toy Story is the best film trilogy ever made -- a claim I am far more comfortable signing on the dotted line for.

read more...

The Last Airbender

By both critical and commercial measures, live-action anime adaptations boast a record of futility second perhaps only to videogame adaptations. Some essential aspect of the source material is irretrievably lost during the process of translating Japanese cartoon to Hollywood tentpole, something that even the most bloated visual effects budget can’t conceal. Think Dragonball Evolution and Speed Racer.

And yet, Hollywood keeps trying, lured by tantalizing visions of cash-cow franchises fed by loyal, built-in — and most importantly, international — audiences. The latest casualty of this misguided ambition is The Last Airbender, based on the hit Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. To be fair, Avatar isn’t anime in the orthodox sense, in that it was conceived and produced in the States, but its style and soul are almost exclusively anime-inspired. As such, its big-screen fate is similarly sealed.

Who could possibly break such a rueful trend? For some reason, the minds at Paramount thought M. Night Shyamalan, that notorious purveyor of ponderous and increasingly shlocky supernatural thrillers, might succeed where so many other directors had failed. Even worse, they saw fit to hire him to pen the screenplay as well, ensuring that every vital aspect of the film would feel the crushing weight of his heavy hand. With such a hacky burden to bear, it comes as no surprise that The Last Airbender never really takes flight.

The film's story is set in a world divided into four tribes, each aligned to an element: Air, Earth, Water, and Fire. Certain gifted tribe members, known as a “benders,” can manipulate the properties of their assigned element to suit their ends. In order to do so, they must first perform an elaborate and utterly ridiculous kung fu dance, after which a torrent of fire, water, or whatever arises to obey their command.

For the better part of a century, the oppressive and warlike Firebenders have besieged the other nations, gradually thinning their respective ranks. The Air Nomads have faired the worst of the lot, and are presumed to be extinct until Water peeps Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) discover a boy named Aang (Noah Ringer) trapped in a giant ball of ice. Not only is Unfrozen Kung Fu Warrior the last remaining Airbender (thus the title) he is also an Avatar, the only being on the planet capable of wielding all four elements. And only he can bring an end to the Firebenders’ evil reign.

Blessed with an opportunity to reinvent himself in a new genre and with a new demographic, Shyamalan can’t avoid falling back on old habits, most notably his penchant for awkward and cumbersome dialogue. It’s difficult enough for adults to deliver his lines, but it’s absolute hell for The Last Airbender’s youthful protagonists, whose not yet fully-developed temporal lobes can’t hope to adequately process the inanities of Shyamalan-speak. One can almost see the smoke coming from little Noah’s ears as he labors to complete each portentous sentence. Poor kid. Where are the Child Labor people when you need them?

But bad dialogue is only one of a litany of problems that plagues The Last Airbender, which suffers from mediocre CGI, inexplicable casting decisions (caucasians actors, none of whom are especially talented, are tabbed for asian roles when sufficiently mediocre race-appropriate actors were surely available), and a plot comprehensible only to the most ardent fans of the Nickelodeon series. Much as Aang bends the air, Shyamalan tries to bend the laws of quality cinema to his will, but they refuse to yield to the force of his ego. I only wish the execs at Paramount had been as stalwart.

read more...

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Twilight’s contentious “Edward vs. Jacob” debate was finally settled at the close of 2009‘s New Moon, the second episode of Stephenie Meyers’ supernatural teen harlequin saga, when plaintive emo hottie Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) definitively rejected the advances of Taylor Lautner’s musclebound man-wolf in favor of Robert Pattinson’s brooding vampire.

Or so we thought. Twilight’s fateful love triangle is revived in earnest by Eclipse, part three of the series, and this time the implications are serious -- relatively speaking, of course. Taking over the helm from New Moon director Chris Weitz is David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy), who adds a hefty dose of action to Twilight’s trademark mix of soaring romance and manic melodrama, making Eclipse the first film in the saga in which -- get this -- something actually happens.

Indeed, action is a primary theme of Eclipse. Like most high school seniors, Bella wants some; her pasty paramour Edward Cullen, however, remains stubbornly chaste, and not just because the briefest exposure to his unbridled vampire lust would almost certainly kill his all-too-human sweetheart. You see, chivalrous Edward hails “from a different era,” one in which the institution of marriage meant everything and a man took care to mount a proper courtship before marrying a girl nearly a century his junior. (He’s 109 years old.) He asks her to marry him; she agrees, but only if he’ll turn her into a vampire first; he hesitates, pondering the unalterable consequences; the matter is tabled and heavy petting resumes. (This exchange is repeated, ad nauseam, throughout the remainder of the film.)

The constant fawning and unwavering devotion from impossibly beautiful Edward aren’t enough to sate Bella’s thirst -- she needs validation like a vampire needs blood -- and so she uses the flimsiest of pretexts to re-insert herself into the life of Jacob Black, the sensitive werewolf she previously shunned, who dutifully plies her with his own declarations of undying love. (Jacob, to his credit, has developed enough game since we last saw him to qualify as a serious contender for Bella’s affections, and is no longer the devoted doormat we saw in New Moon. He’s still a tool, though.) Game on.

But Edward and Jacob aren’t the only ones with designs on Bella. (Seriously, are there no other hot emo chicks in the greater Pacific Northwest?) A ginger-haired menace (Bryce Dallas Howard) has emerged, one that will require Edward’s vampire clan and Jacob’s wolfpack tribe, longtime enemies forever on the verge of a climactic battle (in which Bella will serve as the jeans-and-hoodie-clad Helen of Troy, no doubt) to put aside their differences and unite against a common enemy. In order to ensure Bella’s safety, Edward and Jacob must form an uneasy tag-team (no, not that kind of tag team, much as it would likely better serve to resolve matters) to keep Bella safe from harm.

With its amped-up action, sharpened wit, and darker, horror flick-inspired atmospherics, Eclipse boasts the broadest appeal of all the Twilight films thus far. But that doesn’t mean it’s good. Director Slade’s grasp of plot development borders on amateurish in this film; Eclipse often feels less like a movie than a weighty discourse on the pros and cons of vampiredom, laid out in lengthy, exhaustingly repetitive chunks of exposition and awkward, campy flashbacks, as just about every character in the film, including Edward, attempts to dissuade Bella from joining the ranks of the bloodsuckers.

But alas, no force, no matter how utterly rational its arguments, will keep Bella from her destiny. Which, obviously, is Edward. Or is it? Eclipse goes to great pains to invent ways to perpetuate the film’s romantic rivalry, inserting scenes like the one in which Bella, on the verge of freezing to death in a tent high up in the mountains, is saved when Jacob arrives to heroically spoon her body temperature back to its proper level. (Eclipse is being hyped as the first “guy-friendly” Twilight flick, but no film which includes a climactic spooning scene can rightly claim such a distinction.) Edward, meanwhile, with his poor vampire circulation, is powerless to help.

Who will win in the end? Will it be abs over eyes? Obviously, it will take two more movies (at least!) to solve this kind of wrenching dilemma.

read more...

Splice

“Dren,” the genetically-engineered spawn of Splice, is a remarkably versatile creature, constantly evolving to suit the ambitions of director Vincenzo Natali, whose provocative sci-fi thriller integrates elements of everything from Frankenstein and The Fly to Lolita and Oedipus Rex into one Costco-sized variety pack of disturbing images and concepts. Whatever makes you squirm, be it physical or metaphysical, you can bet Splice has something for you.

The film is set primarily in the antiseptic, dull-green laboratory of the mad-scientist couple Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), skilled geneticists who probably met while ditching bioethics class at grad school. In the service of a suitably menacing French pharmaceutical firm, they gleefully toil at the forefront of morally dubious research, combining the DNA of different creatures to create appalling new life forms from which their employer intends to extract the next generation of lucrative medications.

The fun abruptly stops for Clive and Elsa, however, when their corporate overseers decide to halt the life-creating stage of their research and shift to the more tedious profit-extracting stage. But their God complexes compel them to disobey the decree, and they continue their experiments illicitly, eventually giving “birth” to Dren, a test-tube Frankenstein’s monster containing bits of genetic code from virtually every species in the animal kingdom -- including good old homo sapiens.

At first a squealing, revolting tub of goo, Dren grows rapidly, developing humanoid features that cause Clive and Elsa to view her (it’s a female) less as a science experiment and more as a pet, and then less as a pet and more as a daughter, and finally less as a daughter and more as disturbingly hot daughter.

A child can challenge the best of relationships, especially when the child is an unholy devil-spawn, and Dren brings out the worst in Clive and Elsa, neither of whom were the most well-adjusted folk to begin with. Soon a kind of creepy love triangle develops between the three, and it's at this point that the tone of Splice crosses the line from merely provocative and unsettling to “Holy sh*t, what the f**k was that?!?” disturbing.

Splice is clearly tailored to appeal to a certain audience -- specifically, those who delight in being made to squirm for the better part of two hours -- and in that sense it more than succeeds. Every detail of the film is crafted to elicit the maximum amount of discomfort, from the dreary hues of its color palette to its stomach-churning sound design, which emphasizes every cringeworthy squeal and squish and gurgle. But Splice is more cerebral than your typical torture-porn trash, and its brand of horror is adept at stimulating more than just the gag reflex.

read more...

Jonah Hex

The first thing you notice about Jonah Hex is the fact that you can make a drinking game out of people saying the words "Jonah Hex." It happens so often, I began to believe that this was simply how people used to greet one another in the Old West. You walk into a room: “Jonah Hex!” “Well, Jonah Hex to you too, buddy!” Take a bottle of whiskey with you into the movie* and take a shot every time someone says his name and you will have an incredible 74 minutes. You might also be dead at the end.

Why does it feel like I’m dedicating half the review to the use of the words "Jonah Hex?" Because half the movie is dedicated to uttering the words "Jonah Hex." Learn to love the sound of it. Josh Brolin sure did.

When our ‘hero’ (and I use that word in the loosest of possible terms) isn’t busy having people remind him of his name, he is riding around killing people or being made fun of for his horribly scarred face. But when a villain from his past – and when I say "past," I mean from 10 minutes earlier in the film – turns out not to be as dead as we were led to believe in the opening monologue, Hex sets out to get the revenge he really wish he could have gotten 15 minutes earlier. And that’s when the movie beings its plunge into logical implausibility. If you can find a single reason to give a rat's *** about anyone in this movie, grip onto it with both hands, brother, and hold on tight – it’s the only way you’re going to care at all about this film.

It’s not the horse with side-mounted Gatling guns that got me, or the silliness of dynamite crossbows; it was just how unlikable everyone was and how it leaned heavily upon cliché to tell a story without understanding how a story like this is supposed to be told. Revenge films are like romantic comedies: They rely entirely on a weak coincidence and delivering a series of emotional money shots that pay off for the audience in a big way. More importantly, these money shots must be delivered in a very specific structure that allows people to forgive any thin or contrived story elements. Where a romantic comedy is "Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy gets Girl Back," revenge films are mostly comprised of "Guy Finds Simple Bliss, Bad Guy Ruins Simple Bliss in a Cruel Manner, Guy Left for Dead, Guy Gets Revenge for All He’s Lost." Very simple stuff. Whether it’s Maximus in Gladitor or Eric Draven in The Crow or Charles Rane in Rolling Thunder, the structure is the same. The key to a good revenge movie is a likable good guy, a reason to care about his life, truly despicable bad guys and a perfectly crafted ending for our hero in particular – often involving his death.

Right from the start, Jonah Hex drops the ball. We open with him tied up and getting wailed on, watching his family get murdered just out of frame and then get left for dead. But we haven’t found anything to care for yet, and more importantly, he immediately admits to having done everything he’s been accused of. This is revenge to begin with. Sure, the movie eventually gets around to trying to explain why he didn’t really deserve it, but only after 45 minutes of us pretty much disliking the guy. He’s mean, unlikable, murderous and his only friend in the world is a prostitute who tells us that she “Don’t play house,” just before begging Jonah to settle down with her. He’s got a great horse and a dog, but doesn’t like them enough to have ever given them a name, and every time someone finally gets around to killing him, magical Native Americans show up to save his bacon AGAIN, for no apparent reason other than his wife was Native American.

The only reason to root for Jonah at all is because he’s the protagonist and his antagonist (played comically by John Malkovich) is on a mission to, I kid you not, destroy America with a semi-magical nation-destroying weapon. Oh, yes, and we’re told the Mexicans call him “Terrorista.” A Terrorist hellbent on destroying America? In the Old West? You’d be hard pressed to find anyone you wouldn’t root for fighting that guy. This had all the hallmarks of being a WWE movie, without the cool logo. If you’re 13 years old and you still believe wrestling is real, this might be the movie for you. Otherwise, it is an exercise in silliness designed to rob you of $10.

read more...

The Kids Are All Right

As the Sundance, TriBeca, SXSW and Cannes Film Festivals wrap up in the first half of every year, a handful of films generate enough positive reviews that we in the entertainment news industry instinctively begin to discuss their respective Oscar prospects. It seems a bit silly – talking about award-worthy movies whilst the studios that produce and/or purchase them are simultaneously throwing their most expensive and often most odious fare at the multiplex. It’s also a futile practice, as even more high-quality motion pictures inevitably hit theaters in the months that follow, rendering many early hopefuls stale by comparison.

Despite loads of buzz and thumbs up from national critics, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right may suffer the aforementioned fate and end up being too little, too soon. The film, which centers on the dilemma that Nic and Jules, a lesbian couple living in California, face when the sperm donor who fathered their children enters their lives at their kids’ request, is enjoyable entertainment for adults and will be easy to digest for most audiences. My problem with the movie is that it was too easy to digest. With material that touches on a hot topic like gay marriage, I feel like I should’ve been questioned or challenged by the narrative. During press interviews, Cholodenko stated that her goal was to craft a personal tale about the strengths, weaknesses and ups and down of being a part of a family and avoid a sociopolitical connotation (she succeeds in this task), but I believe that she missed a golden opportunity to create an important dialogue about identity, marriage, fidelity and the state of homosexuality in America. Without debate, I just couldn’t get emotionally involved in the story.

That’s not to say that I couldn’t get involved in the characters. As Nic and Jules, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore bring caring warmth to their characters that only real-life Moms can. Though they both exhibit unappealing traits (Nic often knocks back one too many and is somewhat forceful with her kids, while Jules has a brush with heterosexuality that nearly ends their relationship) and are, in their own ways, selfish human beings, they mean well and represent an idyllic if alternative pair of parents. The teenagers, or rather the actors who play them, are actually more remarkable than the predicament that they find themselves in. Mia Wasikowska, well known to the masses as the star of Tim Burton’s billion dollar Alice In Wonderland, and Journey to The Center of The Earth’s Josh Hutcherson portray the titular Kids, Joni and Laser, with plenty of personality, but they also know how to convey a sense of vulnerability (that undoubtedly is the result of a fatherless upbringing) that defines them. They each have subplots that expand on their social shortcomings and provide more screen time, but ultimately take the story nowhere.

It’s Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the carefree restaurateur, unknowing father of two and catalyst of the film’s drama, who gets my sympathy. He goes from laid-back bachelor to likable new father to victim of circumstance in under two hours all because of his awkward attraction to Jules. The demonization of man didn’t sit right with me, especially because Paul’s feelings for Jules are not only reciprocated but multiplied by her own eagerness to engage in a risky affair with him. Paul pays the ultimate sacrifice by losing out on his relationship with the children he never knew while Jules gets little more than the silent treatment. He’s ostracized by women who have their own issues to work out and by teenagers who are too young to fully understand the complexity and reality of the situation. That’s what I call the short end of the stick.

The Kids Are All Right wraps up relatively neatly, rewarding moviegoers with a warm dramedy that doesn’t bite as hard as it should. There are plenty of elements in the story that could’ve been focused on in a more contemplative film – the consequences of one’s actions, the composition of the nuclear family in the new millennium, etc. – but instead it’s a personal tale of love falling apart and the act of forgiveness aiding its characters in putting it back together. I enjoyed the picture because of its well-written dialogue, unique brand of humor and down-to-earth performances, but feel that, like the Kids, it’s just All Right. With two critically adored actresses who have seven combined Academy Award nominations between them, the film will certainly attract an audience, but even with an Oscar ceremony that encompasses ten Best Picture nominees, I think it’s too early to tell if it will eventually strike gold.

read more...