Hard at work in New York City, Blake Lively and Leighton Meester paired up for "Gossip Girl" filming duties on Wednesday afternoon (July 14).
The Serena Van der Woodsen actress and her Blair Waldorf co-star seemed to be getting along quite well, which comes contrary to reports that the pair have been feuding.
Of the supposed bickering babes, an insider told Us magazine that Blake and Leighton have “been fighting since last season."
The Us insider continued to erroneously tell, “Their rivalry stems from Leighton feeling left out of wardrobe decisions.”
Saying that this just isn't the case, a close friend of both Leighton and Blake tells Gossip Cop, “There is no truth" to the report, adding that the CW co-stars get along just fine.
The plot of the Duplass’ brothers new film, Cyrus, is not exactly original. The idea of having a son go to war with his mother’s new boyfriend has been seen many times and is, frankly, a tired dynamic. Yet they pull it off anyway. Thanks to wonderful aesthetics, great characters and an ability to capitalize on its own awkwardness, Cyrus makes an old cinematic conflict seem fresh.
John (John C. Reilly) is a self proclaimed lonely guy. Divorced for the last seven years, he has yet to meet anyone else and, instead of trying, stays hold up in his apartment. One night, his ex-wife (Catherine Keener) comes by to deliver some news: she’s getting remarried. Shocked and upset, John allows her to drag him to a party to meet some new people. Despite drinking far too many vodka and Red Bulls, he manages to charm the far-out-of-his-league Molly (Marisa Tomei) and ends up sleeping with her. What he doesn’t know, however, is that Molly has a 21-year-old son named Cyrus (Jonah Hill), who is still living at home. Though John and Cyrus maintain a friendly relationship while in front of Molly, they can’t stand each other, the son declaring that separating the couple has become his personal mission.
Since making their feature debut back in 2005, Mark and Jay Duplass have been labeled the forerunners of the mumblecore movement, a genre defined by low-budgets and dialogue-heavy scripts. Where this movie separates itself is in the use of mainstream actors, but, because of casting choices and how the characters are presented, it preserves its independent feel. Reilly and Hill are not exactly George Clooney and Brad Pitt and Tomei is, purposefully, not at her most dolled up. If this were the first film a person ever saw after hearing stories about Hollywood glitz and glamour, they wouldn’t comprehend that this is a cast with two Oscar nominated actors and one of the biggest comedy stars around. They aren’t beautiful; they just feel like normal people and it’s a quality that does the movie more than a few favors.
Appearances aside, Cyrus is a film about its characters and not only are they fantastic as individuals, but their interactions are what make the movie work. There is more love in John and Molly’s relationship than in any romantic comedy that has come out in the past year and the adversarial nature of John and Cyrus’ association gets by far the most laughs, but it’s the bond between the mother and her son that takes this film to a whole different level. Films like these tend to feature sons that are teenagers or younger, but by making Cyrus a mature twenty-something a whole new can of worms is opened. Also unique is that the dependency works both ways. Molly wants Cyrus in her life and by her side just as much as Cyrus wants to be there. Does it occasionally cross a few bizarre barriers? For sure, but it’s done in the name of humor as opposed to incestuous creepiness (okay, maybe a little of both).
Beyond the romance and the mumblecore, this film is a comedy, so I am required by law to tell you whether or not I found it funny. The film’s script and actors never miss an opportunity to squeeze something hilarious into a scene, be it John drunkenly performing the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me Baby,” Cyrus never losing eye contact with his mother’s new beau while a sample of his self-made techno music, or John reassuring Molly that everything is not going to be all right and will end in disaster while she is crying in bed. The actors sell the simplest stares and eyebrow-raises to great effect.
It’s typically a disappointment to see unoriginal plotlines come from independent films, but Cyrus gets a pass for being so enjoyable. The film is on the shorter side, clocking in at only 92 minutes, which results in some pacing issues, but you’ll likely be too busy laughing to notice. The team of Reilly, Hill and Tomei is superb, hitting every note that their characters require. The Duplass brothers have made a film that looks and feels like it only belongs on the festival circuit, but it deserves so much more.
Yes, The A-Team is based on a deeply silly and repetitive TV show, and it is the rare summer blockbuster that refuses to take itself too seriously. But still, it's a major feature film that cost more money than you or I will ever see, and there are still standards for such things. And no matter how much fun The A-Team can be at times, no matter how blinded you are by Bradley Cooper's shiny teeth or Sharlto Copley's terrible accent, it is not a good movie. Not even close. Instead it's a flashy series of meaningless gags and set pieces, some of which work and some of which don't, none of which add up to a movie that anyone seemed to care about.
It's easy to get away with substituting explosions and jaunty pacing for an actual story, especially when you're based on a TV show that inspires great nostalgia, and especially when you're part of a summer that's one of the worst ever for acceptable escapism. But don't be fooled by The A-Team's manic energy and willingness to blow up nearly everything-- it's nothing more than a bunch of money thrown onto the screen, sometimes enlivened by inspired performances but more often content to just sit there, loud and self-satisfied, waiting for you to catch the in-jokes and go with the flow. You can do that, of course, and at times I found myself laughing along with the movie and reveling in some truly inspired stunts. But that doesn't make it a movie; that makes it a highlight reel.
The movie serves as kind of a prequel to the story we knew in the series, starting with a ridiculous getaway in Mexico that united our four central characters and winding up in a fictional Iraq where the United States Army is pulling out at last. The A-Team, which "specializes in the ridiculous," consists of father figure smartypants Hannibal (Liam Neeson), wiseass pretty boy Face (Bradley Cooper), certified nutjob helicopter pilot Murdock (Sharlto Copley), and human blank slate B.A. Baracus (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson), whose main role in the film is to be afraid of flying. The boys cook up a plan to retrieve a briefcase full of plates that would allow the remaining terrorists to essentially establish their own U.S. mint, but their reward for a successful mission is to be framed for a murder they didn't commit and locked up in jail. They escape, go on the run, try to prove that it was the smarmy Blackwater-- er, I mean Black Forest-- rep Pike (Brian Bloom) who did it, and stay a few steps ahead of the military as represented by Sosa (Jessica Biel), whose role is to look pretty and overwhelmed.
For the most part The A-Team merely asks that we be amused as Hannibal and company execute their latest scheme, some of which work well-- the "flying a tank" bit you've seen in the trailers especially, plus one stunt that involves crashing through windows a la Batman in Hong Kong in The Dark Knight. The script-- cooked up by nearly a dozen writers and credited to Carnahan, Bloom and Skip Woods-- has so little interest in logic or character motivation that it's virtually impossible to tell what the bad guys want, where they are, or who they're trying to kill. The shining exception is Patrick Wilson's mysterious CIA agent Lynch, an unpredictable and fascinating baddie who seems to relish his slick evilness as much as we do. All the other lead performers have their moments-- except for Jackson, who couples bad acting with a complete inability to articulate his lines-- but Wilson seems to understand better than any other that having fun in a silly movie requires a little acting too.
The goofy performances and impressive stunts might have been enough to hold it all together were Carnahan remotely capable of choreographing, filming and editing the action set pieces that are the entire purpose of the movie. Even with Hannibal explaining, in voiceover, the exact circumstances of every plot, it's impossible to tell which member of the A-Team is where during a mission and who they're shooting at. Even when pared down to hand-to-hand combat the film is muddled and incoherent, challenging not just the laws of gravity but how fast our eyes can follow rapid-fire edits. Perhaps in an attempt to get away from the stagy style of the TV show, Carnahan opts for jumpy, Greengrass-inspired camera work in nearly every scene, but he's not at all up to the challenge; even when the sloppy screenplay stumbles upon a good gag or action bit, Carnahan's direction fumbles it. The intended sense of fun manages to slip through from time to time, but it's nothing compared to what a capable director could have brought us.
The A-Team is good enough and definitely entertaining enough to settle for in these hot summer months, if only to watch Patrick Wilson leer and Liam Neeson chomp a cigar. But be honest with yourself as you strap in for the ride-- you know we deserve better.
The fact of the matter is it's been 26 years since the first Karate Kid, and given how many other movies have relied on the exact same formula, a full-fledged remake is pretty fair game. By moving things to China and casting 11-year-old Jaden Smith (as opposed to the 25-year-old Ralph Macchio of the original), Sony successfully put a fresh coat of paint on the rickety old story, and despite a gargantuan running time and paper-thin characters, it's kind of nice to see yet another kid learn the crane pose.
It's hard to know who to credit or blame for the film, since director Harald Zwart was brought in well after things were in development, and the film's likely true authors, Will Smith and the Chinese government that authorized the on-location production, are entirely offscreen. But even though The Karate Kid is a paint-by-numbers remake that exists so Smith can make his kid a star and China can promote itself to the West, it's also exceptionally well shot, frequently funny and touching, and perhaps most importantly, a vehicle for a great Jackie Chan performance. It's not quite enough to justify a two and a half length, but it comes close.
As for the plot, imagine the original Karate Kid with a few language barriers tossed in. Dre (Jaden Smith) and his mom (Taraji P. Henson) leave Detroit for brighter job prospects in Beijing, where Dre quickly tussles with the local group of thugs who also happen to be kung fu masters. Dre starts up a showy flirtation with Meiying (Wenwen Han), who's spoken for by head baddie Cheng (Zhenwei Wang), and soon he's hiding from these kids every day after school. In the middle of one particularly mean fight Dre is rescued by his apartment building's reclusive handyman Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), who reluctantly agrees to teach Dre kung fu but only after taking the arrogant tween down a peg or two. Lessons are learned, poses are struck, a friendship begins to blossom-- cue the training montage.
It actually takes nearly an hour for the training montage to show up, thanks to The Karate Kid's glacial pace and greater interest in Beijing scenery than creating believable characters and letting us spend time with them. Just when Dre's training with Mr. Han picks up narrative steam, we're stuck watching Dre's baby romance with Meiying and constant shots of Beijing landmarks, so much that you can almost hear Chinese officials saying "Include that! It looks great on the postcards!" Cinematographer Roger Pratt captures the city and the surrounding countryside beautifully, but precious little of it serves the film's rote story. We get a great sense of Beijing scenery, sure, but none of how it impacts Dre and his mom, who experience so little actual culture clash they may as well be in Epcot.
It's truly fascinating to watch snotty and rambunctious Dre transform into a confident warrior, and the charismatic Smith and expert Chan build a believably tender and touching surrogate father-son relationship. Unfortunately all of the other characters fall a little flat, from the villainous rival kung fu instructor who glowers like a Mortal Kombat baddie to the pretty and blank Meiying and even Dre's mom, who played by Oscar-nominee Henson feels more like a plot device than an actual human. Direct Zwart does well handling the violence of the fight scenes and the emotional bond between Dre and Mr. Han, but everything else falls victim to his experience with broad children's comedies like Agent Cody Banks.
There's a lot to swallow with this new Karate Kid-- you have to accept that privileged child of Hollywood Jaden Smith is now a movie star, that a remake of a beloved 80s classic isn't automatically a travesty, and that about an hour and a half's worth of good material within a two and a half hour running time is a reasonable ratio. In any other summer, it might not be worth the trip, but summer 2010 is proving to be unusually dismal, and at this point there are worse things than sitting in the air conditioning, marveling at some beautiful cinematography and excellent fight choreography, and witnessing the acting rebirth of Jackie Chan.
Tom Cruise doesn’t make bad movies. A look back at his filmography reveals one of the most consistent resumes in Hollywood outside of Pixar, and even though Knight and Day isn’t very good, he’s done it again. There are two movies happening here. In one Cameron Diaz seems to be in some sort of ill-advised North by Northwest remake. In the other, a lot of which seems to happen off camera, Tom Cruise stars at his most unhinged in the best spy movie since The Bourne Ultimatum. That other movie seems like it must be good, even if Knight and Day is not.
A big part of the problem is the premise, which is as worn out as those babysitting movies The Rock keeps doing. There’s a spy. There’s a normal girl. Normal girl gets dragged into the spy’s world, doesn’t know how to react, they fall in love. We’ve seen this movie too many times before. Knight and Day tries to compensate for this with creativity, by adding its own twist on the genre, unfortunately much of that creativity doesn’t exactly work.
There’s the soundtrack, which alternates between Parisian romance movie theme and ill-fitting alt-rock. Knight and Day plays slow, plucky, romantic music in all the fast moments and then just sort of gives up and lolls around in the slow ones. I assume this is supposed to seem quirky but all it really does is suck all the life out of the action sequences. Exploding cars just aren’t as fun when you’re listening to a string quartet. I get what director James Mangold is going for here, even admire him for trying it. He seems to be attempting a sort of classic, Carey Grant vibe and that’s admirable, it just never quite fits what’s going on in frame.
Speaking of what’s going on up there in front of the camera, it’s kind of a mess. Cameron Diaz is almost unforgivably annoying as normal girl June Havens, she mostly seems to get in the way . Maybe she has fans and maybe they’ll like her performance, to be fair I should probably disclosed that I haven’t found her bearable since 1994 in The Mask. Since she keeps working, I assume someone out there can stand the sight of her.
More important than Diaz’s ongoing failure to be watchable is the way the movie’s structured. Mangold, again attempting to evoke that classic Carey Grant nostalgia, skips over a lot of the movie’s action. He does that through a neat little plot device in which Cruise’s Roy Miller keeps knocking June unconscious every time something incredibly frightening’s about to happen. June passes out and when she wakes up the action’s over and she may or may not be wearing different clothes. This leads to high-comedy and Cruise seems to be having a lot of fun with it, but it also means that most of the movie’s most exciting scenes all happen off camera. Somewhere out there off camera we know Roy Miller has just pulled off the greatest piece of helicopter piloting in the history of mankind, but we’ll never see it. It’s funny once, cute twice, but by the third or fourth time you start to question whether you’re watching a movie or one big tease. Wasn’t there a way to keep the comedy and, you know, show us what’s going on? I’d like to think so.
Still there’s Cruise who, even though we’re never really allowed to see him at his badass best, makes the most of what he has. Miller’s a fantastic character, full of contradictions and strange quirks. He’s at his best in the movie’s first half, when we’re left wondering whether Roy Miller’s actually a spy or simply a man who’s gone completely mad. Cruise makes the ridiculous look easy as he stares down common sense, shoots it in the head, and then flies his motorcycle anyway. Tom seems to know what he’s doing, even when Mangold’s camera doesn’t. Knight & Day often feels hesitant and unsure of itself but in any given scene Cruise, almost as if he’s directing himself, always looks like he knows exactly what to do.
The premise is tired, the tone doesn’t exactly work, and I honestly still have no idea why it’s called Knight and Day. Yet you’ve got to give this movie at least some credit. It tries, and it tries hard. Tasked with making something fresh and original out of an idea that ran out of gas in 2005, it throws everything it can at the wall and tries to make it stick. Most of it doesn’t, but maybe that doesn’t matter when you have Tom Cruise.
I'll take a little bit of the blame for Grown Ups, as someone who was juvenile enough at the time to not just laugh uproariously at Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, but take Rob Schneider and David Spade seriously as comedic actors and revere that era of SNL. On behalf of myself and everyone else who was 12 at some point in the 90s, I'm sorry: we empowered these guys enough that they thought they could take a vacation by the lake, crack jokes at each others expense, and slap it together into a movie called Grown Ups.
The movie isn't just unbearably smug, casting Adam Sandler as a Hollywood type struggling with first-world problems and making vicious fun of anyone old, fat, or not as beautiful as Salma Hayek. It's also incredibly lazy, dispensing entirely with plot and assuming that the five lead actors riffing off one another will be enough for 90 minutes of entertainment. That would have been a tough sell even back in the 90s, but now-- with Spade and Schneider as dead weight, Chris Rock looking vaguely embarrassed to be there, and Kevin James flailing mightily to make up the difference-- it's basically intolerable. Whatever jokes aren't utterly predictable or unfunny to begin with are ruined by Dennis Dugan's flatfooted direction, and the film's hard right turn into plot and emotional lessons in the last 10 minutes merely highlights what a waste of time everything that came before it has been.
The flimsy frame for the story is that the five lead buddies all played on a middle school basketball team together in the 70s, and 30 years later have gathered for their coach's funeral and a Fourth of July weekend on the lake with their families. Hotshot Sandler is joined by improbably gorgeous fashion designer wife Hayek and their two snotty kids; James is also married to a hottie (Maria Bello) and comes with one chubby daughter and one four-year-old who still breastfeeds; Rock is roundly mocked early on for being a house-husband and comes with his pregnant wife (Maya Rudolph) and young kids; Schneider is now a vaguely defined New Age vegan type with an Elvis toupee and an older girlfriend (Joyce Van Patten) who is subject to some of the film's cruelest jokes; Spade is a still-single horndog who's mainly there as a catchall for every joke that isn't about fat or old people.
No one is spared from the movie's idiocy, from Schneider's three daughters (two hot, one goofy looking-- hilarious!) to the dog with his vocal cords removed to the farting and trash-talking grandma to Steve Buscemi, who shows up for the length of two or three pratfalls near the end. At least you'll know what you're in for from the movie's first minutes, when James's character is introduced while falling out of an above-ground pool and we're expected to laugh when Rock's character expresses an interest--ha!-- in cooking and caring for his children. You may still be astonished at how much dumber the movie can get, or how many times it repeats the same fat joke expecting another laugh, but Grown Ups at least does the kindness of telling you from minute one how low to set the bar.
If Grown Ups were a bad movie starring just one of these guys, we might be able to throw it in with each actor's substantial list of clunkers and move on quickly. But presented as this landmark reunion of comedic talents, and deployed into theaters near the Fourth of July holiday as some kind of family outing, all the shoddy and lazy elements of Grown Ups metastasize into unforgivable offenses. It's hard to know what's worse-- that they thought they could get away with something this bad, or that given how loud the audience laughed at my screening, they probably will.
The Last Airbender is a movie of exquisite beauty and, in its best moments, sublime visual clarity. It also contains some of the worst dialogue ever allowed on screen. It’s based on an animated series in the mold of Japanese-influenced anime, and if you’ve ever watched any anime, you know that when it’s dubbed from Japanese the translated dialogue often sounds strange, stilted, and composed mainly of unnecessary exposition. For some unfathomable reason writer/director M. Night Shyamalan has applied that same, awkward speech pattern to what’s supposed to be an English language movie. It’s as if he wrote his script in English, translated it into Japanese, and then translated it back again. Airbender is the kind of movie where characters use twenty or thirty words to say something even when it could probably have been said better with one or two. At times, it’s exhausting.
It’s not just dialogue that’s the problem, it’s the way he’s put the story together too. In theory this is an epic journey across a massive, landscape in an alternate world, but you never really get a sense of what that world’s about or the size of the journey. The movie sort of jumps from one scene to another, as if it doesn’t know how to convey a sense of movement, and when all the time lapsing leaves holes in the plot Night the director is forced to fix the problems of Night the writer by injecting narration to explain what’s going on. That does work to avoid confusion, but it’s a cheap trick and one which wouldn’t have been necessary with a better script. With a few notable exceptions, which we’ll get to later, most of the movie’s characters fare little better. They’re cardboard cutouts there to spout ridiculous sentences in which they repeat portions of the plot which we already know or recite the names of people we’ve already met at least a dozen times before. I can’t think of a better way to describe the writing here than just awful.
So, if you’re someone who thinks great writing is all that matters in a movie, you’ll think The Last Airbender is the worst movie of the year. But I think there’s more to film than words written on a page and in The Last Airbender, while Shyamalan the writer may be at his worst, Shyamalan the director delivers one of his best efforts yet. He does that, in spite of the way he’s been hamstrung by M. Night, the writer. It helps that he didn’t come up with this concept. The blow of his bad writing is blunted by the source material, which has already laid out where this movie must go, preventing M. Night the awful writer from turning it into a story about mildly annoyed house plants. That means no matter how bad his writing is, as a director Shyamalan has something worthwhile here to work with, and work with it he does.
Set in a fantasy world where people have the ability to control the natural elements, The Last Airbender revolves around Aang, just a kid, but also the only person with the ability to control them all. The world has divided itself up by elemental powers. Those who can control the elements are called Benders, and the Fire Benders live in a militaristic place called the Fire Nation, full of smoke belching machines and heat. The Water Nation opposes them with its ability to control all things wet, while the Earth Benders have fallen beneath the Fire Bender boot heel. Air Benders long ago became a group of monks, and it’s from there that Aang, the last Airbender and the only person with the power to control all four elements at once, sprung.
Aang is the Avatar, which is a lot like the Dalai Lama with super powers, and the casting of unknown 13-year-old Noah Ringer to play him was a stroke of genius. It’s more than just the way he manages to make the movie’s awful dialogue seem nearly credible, there’s a calmness that surrounds him, even when he’s at his most direct and intense. A lot of it is in the way he moves. Ringer’s role is a very physical one, but he pulls it all off with an unbelievable sort of grace. There are moments, great moments, in the movie where M. Night’s camera simply stops and lets him move, performing a complicated martial arts dance on screen as if there’s nothing else in the world but him and the blowing wind.
Dev Patel’s Zuko works too, as the movie’s most complex character. A prince abused and cast off by his father, he wanders the world in search of the Avatar, his only means of regaining a place in his father’s household. Guided by a gentle uncle, Zuko wrestles with a desire to do the right thing, and a burning need to regain his place in the world by doing his father’s bidding. Patel, in spite of the horrible dialogue he’s forced to spout, brings a sort of sympathetic anger to the character.
It’s more than just Noah or Patel’s solid performances that make Last Airbender worth seeing. It’s also how much fun M. Night seems to be having with opportunities the movie’s bending powers afford. Water flies around the screen in perfectly propelled blobs or leaps out of the ground in great, tentacled rivers. Flame artfully gouts from a fire bender’s hands, framing the screen and creating a breathtaking image. Put to use in battle those powers are thrilling, yes, but in Night’s hands also heart-wrenchingly gorgeous. It's imaginative and immensely creative. Almost every frame of Night’s movie is a work of art, with perfectly used camera techniques and luscious wide shots that let you see what’s going on even in the film’s most frantic and frenetic moments.
These aren’t just stunning, empty images. The Last Airbender uses its visual prowess to push itself beyond the miserable constraints of its script. We learn almost nothing substantive about Aang from the movie’s misguided, exposition filled dialogue, but his enthusiasm for life oozes out of every frame. It’s in the way he walks or the way he goes down a flight of stairs, taking four steps at a time propelled by tiny bursts of energetic air. Aang feels alive and, visually at least, it all seems to happen effortlessly.
This isn’t an easy movie to praise. The Last Airbender seems as though it’s daring people to hate it. It’s hard to believe anything could be this badly written by accident. In order to get to what’s good in it; you’ll have to endure a lot of M. Night Shyamalan missteps. In the hands of a better writer, this could have been the next Lord of the Rings. The material behind it feels that good. Should someone else take charge of writing the heavily teased sequel for him, I fully expect to give it five stars. The Last Airbender though, is the kind of movie that’s only good in spite of itself. If you’re able to get past Shyamalan’s failings as a writer, this is an achingly beautiful film full of stunning special effects, driven by a powerful score, and based on material so good that even the worst script of the year couldn’t entirely ruin it. It’s worth putting up with M. Night the writer to enjoy the work of M. Night the director.
By now you’d think we’d have this love thing pretty well defined. Shakespeare seemed to have the emotion, in all its many forms, nailed down nearly five hundred years ago. We know that love can be romantic, passionate, and lustful, the way it is when you’ve fallen for someone new. Love can be protective and patient, as it is between a parent and a child. Love can be loyal and true, dependable and kind, the way it is between close friends. After thousands of years as a species there shouldn’t any surprises left inside the heart of mankind, but I think Pixar has discovered something Shakespeare missed.
In Toy Story 3, a story that’s been decades in the making finally comes to completion, and culminates not in a fight scene or a stirring speech, but in what feels like a new kind of love. The Toy Story franchise ends in a few perfect moments, a final goodbye, a last expression of that new, heart-wrenching feeling. What do I call this lump in my throat? Can we really love an inanimate object as truly as Andy seems to love Woody? Can an inanimate object love us back? Toy Story 3 makes a rather convincing case for the affirmative. Does it really matter? It feels like it does.
It matters because it isn’t really the toy we love, but what it represents. Toy Story 3 begins not in Andy’s room but inside Andy’s imagination. Woody’s in a race to save the day, and it’s as if he’s been launched straight into the wild west. There’s a train robbery, a desert cliff, and a race against time. For a few beautiful moments, we see what Andy sees when he plays with Woody, the worlds his cowboy pal unlocks, and the places that takes him. And it’s imagination that Pixar loves, and imagination that we’ve fallen so desperately in love with over the course of these films. Yet it’s even more than that here. Toy Story 3 takes it even further, it’s a movie in love with life, and the memories of life, and all the heartaches, and changes, and beautiful, wonderful, happy times that happen and the ways in which they’ll never be forgotten.
Happiness can’t last forever, if it did, it wouldn’t seem as happy. Andy has grown up and in the process he’s outgrown his toys. Some of them have been lost along the way and the few toys that remain in his all but forgotten toy box are no longer brought out for play. They understand. So as Andy prepares to leave home for college the toys that remain prepare for a retirement to the attic, hoping for a new life some day when they’ll play with Andy’s kids. There’s something effortlessly beautiful in that notion. Woody is determined to be there for Andy, even if being there for him means waiting, and waiting, for decades in an attic. He’ll do it, happily, and never ask for anything in return.
Of course things don’t go as planned and the few toys Andy has left are accidentally donated to a daycare center. Director Lee Unkrich and his team use it as an opportunity to go creatively and wonderfully nuts. The daycare center presents a whole host of opportunities for new toys and new ideas. Dozens and dozens of new characters are introduced and handled perfectly. Chief among them is Lotso, a plush, huggable bear who smells like strawberries and seems to be in charge. His lieutenant is a Ken doll, who denies that he’s a toy for girls and seems to be unaware that he was only made as a complement to Barbie. Wherever Ken goes he’s the star in his own movie, and in the process the most infamously neutered toy of all time becomes Pixar’s funniest character since Mike Wazowski.
In the previous two movies we saw what happened when the toys were separated from Andy: ever loyal they fought to get back. Toy Story 3 introduces something wholly new into the equation though and lets them wonder whether they should go back, when there’s no one to go back to. Now much depleted in numbers, Andy’s toys seem more developed than ever before. Woody’s the movie’s star, but you’ll get to know characters like Hamm and Mrs. Potato Head better than you ever have before. That seems wholly appropriate, in a movie that feels as more like a loving goodbye to something special and magical, than just another new adventure.
What I’m getting at here is that the story of Andy’s toys is as heartfelt and wonderful as ever. Because Pixar has let these characters age, and let their world age, it feels like we’re connected to them, like they’ve been an intimate part of our lives all along. In Toy Story 3 we see them in what appears to be their twilight, and it’s beautiful. It’s too beautiful, too much to encompass in any one film review. We need new words for these emotions, this new kind of love. It’s always been there of course, but it’s never been as clearly defined, as succinctly expressed as it was for a couple of hours in a darkened theater tonight, while a group of people sat together and tried not to look like they were going to cry over the depiction of a few pieces of plastic.
As a rule of thumb any sequel must be bigger than the last one. In Hollywood bigger usually means more stunts, grander stakes, and even more epic locations. For Toy Story bigger has always meant bigger feelings. I walked out of Toy Story 3 feeling as if my heart was too full, as if at any moment it would burst. Pixar has already given us two utterly perfect Toy Story movies, yet this may be the best one yet. I love you Buzz. I love you Woody. You’re more than plastic, to me.
In 1987, in the midst of his heyday, Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in Predator , an action sci-fi mixed genre film that won over both critics and movie-goers. But just like everything successful in Hollywood, the studio system attempted to build it into a franchise. The first sequel, Predator 2, was made in 1990 and both Alien vs. Predator and AVPR: Alien vs. Predator – Requiem arrived in the last six years. A mixed bag commercially, the films received a common line from the critics: a big thumbs down. While containing the same alien species, there was no linear connection between the sequels and the original film (the final two films merely an excuse to get two of cinema’s classic creatures to do battle). With Nimrod Antal’s Predators, the fifth film in the line, that pattern comes to an abrupt and blissful end.
With no opening credits, the film jumps right into the action as Royce, played by Adrian Brody, awakens mid-fall as he is dropped from high in the sky on to the lush, green, forested planet below. After awakening on the ground, barely surviving the fall, he discovers that he is not the only one to arrive in this fashion. Scouring the area, he finds others just like him who have no memory of how they arrived. After settling down, they realize that they all come from a similar background, be it military, FBI’s Most Wanted, or mercenary. In short, they are all killers. But the question persists: why are they there? Quickly, however, they realize that not only aren’t they the deadliest group in the jungle, but that they’re being hunted by those that are.
The film’s greatest asset is its “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. Much like the rest of Schwarzenegger’s filmography, the original was very much part of the muscles-and-guns genre. The storyline was simple: a group of trained commandos head into the jungles of Guatemala and come face to face with the ultimate killer. Sound familiar? That’s because you just read the same plot outline in the previous paragraph, with an alien planet replacing the Central American country and an added sense of mystery. But the strangest thing here is that those seemingly minor elements are enough to prevent the film from feeling stale and repetitive. The movie doesn’t seem like a copycat, it feels like a true fan’s version of what should have followed the first film.
Going in, the wildcard was always going to be Adrian Brody. An Oscar winner for his performance in the Holocaust drama The Pianist, the large-beaked star has spent the bulk of his career establishing himself as a dramatic actor. Even in King Kong his character is pushed aside in favor of a giant ape, but it’s Brody who has the last laugh here. In spite of using a fake, gravely voice he completely sells the character as a selfish ex-military mercenary. Putting on at least 20 pounds of muscle for the role, he’s no Ah-nuld but he certainly looks like a man with a history of ass-kicking and a guy who you’ll believe can go toe-to-toe with a Predator. Not bad for an actor who’s greatest trademark up to this point has been endlessly middle-gazing.
For all the movie’s highs, the movie’s large cast causes problems. Taking a hard-R approach, the Predators needed characters to be the occasional victims, but this leaves many of the stranded human killers feeling ancillary and superfluous. From the very start it’s obvious where the line of demarcation between survivors and victims lays, and while it’s endlessly entertaining to watch the alien hunters do what they do best, it would have been useful to get to know these people before we watched them slaughtered.
What Predators represents is the first true sequel to John McTiernan’s 1987 film. The three films made in the 23 years since never felt authentic, with the word “franchise film” more applicable than “follow-up.” With this new entry, Antal and producer Robert Rodriguez (who has been working on this story since 1994) show what can happen when talent comes to a franchise with a passion for the material in mind rather than cash.
One of the primary problems with the Twilight franchise so far has been how seriously it took all its teen angst and fantasy elements, building two entire movies on Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart staring at each other, and presenting with a straight face vampires who sparkled in sunlight and had bright amber eyes. It's not that the directors should have made fun of Stephenie Meyer's source material or discounted fan passion for the books, but at some point someone needed to acknowledge that this is a story about hormonal teenagers with superpowers, and maybe it could be romantic and a little funny at the same time.
With the third film Eclipse, director David Slade doesn't just bring a much-needed dose of humor to the glum franchise, but cranks up the action to the point that some sections could be considered genuinely exciting. Much of the film is still a slog, of course, and atrocious dialogue and wooden acting abound, but Eclipse is the first Twilight film that works at all on its own, giving us better characters, tense action sequences, and a wry acknowledgement that, yes, this is maybe all a little bit silly.
The wink-wink nods to Twilight mania are pretty brief-- Edward (Pattinson) asks if Jacob (Taylor Lautner) even owns a shirt, Jacob later counters by telling Edward "Admit it, I'm hotter than you"-- and are balanced nicely by some of the first genuine human interactions between the characters. It's amazing that it took us this long to see Edward and Bella (Stewart) smile at each other, or to watch Bella's dad Charlie (Billy Burke) cope, in a very realistic Dad way, with his daughter's all-consuming new relationship. Little moments like these ground the film in a way neither of the first two managed, and while they don't exactly make you care about the characters-- they're all far too thinly drawn and ridiculous for that-- they at least make them a lot more tolerable this time around.
It also helps that Eclipse has much more plot than the previous two films, and though Slade and writer Melissa Rosenberg don't quite make sense of all the vampire logic-- what are the Volturi doing there again?-- things move along swiftly enough that you don't much care. Down in Seattle the newborn vampire Riley (Xavier Samuel) is amassing an army of ultraviolent vampires at the behest of Victoria (now played by Bryce Dallas Howard), who want revenge on the Cullens and Bella for killing her true love James way back in the first film. Knowing they can't fight the newborns on their own, the Cullens reluctantly team up with Jacob and his pack of werewolves, forcing Edward and Jacob to also stop their macho posturing and team up to protect Bella, the woman they both love.
The central trio all have their moments- Pattinson has never seemed more natural or likable in his vampire makeup, Lautner occasionally overcomes Jacob's generally creepy demeanor, and even the simply awful Stewart acts like a real human once or twice-- but when the side characters step up, Eclipse really shines. The flashbacks showing how Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) and Rosalie (Nikki Reed) became vampires are narratively pointless but fun to watch, and though they're both terribly underused, Howard and Dakota Fanning (as evil Volturi Jane) both take advantage of their every moment onscreen. Recent Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick pops up for a bubbly graduation speech, and even the constantly shirtless wolfpack manage to be endearing while also looking straight out of a gay porn. There many moments in Eclipse when you can forget the Twilight series is about a dull girl and her romantic troubles and get wrapped up in the action or the weird magic of the vampires and werewolves. Just try not to let yourself think too hard about how much better the movie might be without Bella at all.
The purpose of Eclipse within the franchise is to solidify Bella's decision to join Edward as a vampire, but aside from a hastily included speech in the final scene, the movie fails entirely to convey that. I'd be happy to blame Stewart only, but the Twilight films have now failed three times to build Bella as a believable lead character, putting her in place as the human window into a supernatural world but giving us no reason to relate to her or care about her struggles. Eclipse works because it gets away from much of that, focusing on Edward and Jacob's poorly contained rivalry and Cullens' conflicted feelings about their immortal status. But Bella is relied on for all of the film's emotional stakes, and because she is such a blank slate, there are none at all. Because of the human crater at their center, the Twilight films have no choice but to be faithful adaptations to please the fans; Eclipse is merely the first of the three to have a few things to offer to the rest of us as well.
Despicable Me falls somewhere in the middle range of animated films targeted at kids, featuring none of the delirious wit of How to Train Your Dragon and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and certainly not the outright Pixar genius, but also absent the mindless pandering and obvious plotting we all fear in children's films. With a smart concept, some clever gags and well-choreographed action it moves along nicely, but it also squanders considerable voice talent and doesn't really take advantage of the twisted world it successfully creates. You get the feeling that a darker and more clever Despicable Me may have existed at some point before the studio, still trying to break into the animated market, defaulted to the safe side.
As Gru, a hunched supervillain conducting all his plots from the suburbs for some reason, Steve Carell uses a constricted German accent to great effect, abandoning his typical Michael Scott comic persona for someone even more insecure and struggling. Gru gets the big idea to steal the moon after new kid in town Vector (Jason Segel) starts upstaging him with dastardly deeds of his own, but Gru's plan is foiled when the Bank of Supervillains (formerly Lehman Brothers) won't float him a loan. Making matters worse, Gru's flashy new rival Vector steals the shrink ray Gru needed to capture the moon, and now all the evening news reports focus on Vector, with poor Gru stuck abusing his freeze ray and popping childrens' balloons for his evil deeds. For pretty flimsy reasons Gru decides that the only way to steal back his shrink ray is to adopt a trio of orphan girls, whom he plans to use as bait and otherwise ignore while locking them in the kitchen and tinkering away in his underground lair.
The girls-- voiced by Disney star Miranda Cosgrove, Elsie Fisher and Dana Gaier-- have other plans, of course, and slowly go about melting Gru's heart even when he'd rather skip the bedtime stories and let them walk to ballet class. Gru's developing relationship with the girls doesn't fit all that well with the supervillain rivalry plot, and the script by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul bounces somewhat haphazardly between family bonding and Gru's scheming in the basement. Each has their moments-- a trip to the amusement park is fun and funny, and a heist at Vector's house is pure well-executed tension-- but you miss the airtight script of a Pixar or DreamWorks Animation film, or even a plot that doesn't feel utterly predictable from moment to moment. It's also a shame to see all kinds of other talent, including Russell Brand as Gru's elderly lab assistant and Kristen Wiig as the meanie orphanage manager, either shoved to the sidelines or forgotten about entirely by the scattered script.
Adding insult to injury, an incomprehensible amount of screen time goes to Gru's minions, those little globular yellow guys in the overalls who scurry around Gru's lab doing all kinds of jobs and bear the brunt of the film's physical comedy. Clearly the studio and directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud think they've come across gold here, but the minions never develop distinct personalities or even meaning within the plot, popping up from time to time to be cute but, like all the other disjointed plots, never amounting to much. The focus on the minions, so disproportionate to their actual quality as characters, speaks again to the disorganization of Despicable Me, a movie with a few good ideas and vocal performances and no idea where to go with them.
