If TROPIC THUNDER has accomplished anything, it’s that in being a fantastic satire it’s a refreshing reminder that certain people’s (*cough* DATE MOVIE guys *cough*) determined efforts otherwise, satirical films can be wacky, inane, and funny without being brain dead. Also, did I mention funny?
For someone who has long loved movies about movies, the Ben Stiller directed film was a veritable feast because it’s a brilliant satire of Hollywood and all its empty lofty aspirations. It works above all else because it’s sharply accurate in its targets of true and recognizable Hollywood archetypes(rapper turned actors, Eddie Murphy like hacks, action stars taking themselves too serious, method actors taking themselves too serious) and how it draws hilarity out of all them. Along the way it throws in hilarious satires of kiss-ass agents, Harvey Weinstein like producers, Hollywood greed, Oscar baiting and – of course – war movies and the making of war movies.
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There were many people – fans and non fans – who questioned the sense of making an X-FILES film six years after the show had whimpered to an end. Who would have suspected that the best argument against the idea would end up being the film itself?
Forsaking objectivity for a moment, and indulging the part of me that was a huge X-Phile until Season Six, perhaps the greatest offense X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE makes – except for a few cute inside jokes for fans – is that that it doesn’t even remotely feel like the “X-Files.” Except for the involvement of an amateur psychic, there’s nothing here that would have even garnered the interest of Fox Mulder on the show, despite the film’s silly and tenuous suggestion it’s because of his feelings over his deceased sister (by that account, he should take on every and any missing persons case involving young women). Admittedly the case does prove to be sort of “X-Files” like, but what’s actually going on is revealed so late in the game that it’s far too late. Throw in the fact that even though Scully via a good Anderson (who is more gorgeous now, if that’s possible) performance is still her usual self, Mulder seems off (as if Duchovny’s heart wasn’t quite in it) as does the relationship between him and Scully. Coupled with the passing of time it’s like Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz were so intent on making this as widely appealable as possible, that they lost their feel for the characters and what made the TV show so good in the first place.
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I am generally apprehensive of stoner comedies. It’s not for any political or judgmental reasons, so much as it seems often like an excuse for lazy, unstructured comedy, and well, I guess it just isn’t my thing in the same way I like peanut butter, but not peanuts because the texture of them give me the willies. That’s why I wasn’t really looking forward to PINEAPPLE EXPRESS.
Thankfully my hesitance was entirely unmerited, something I probably should have anticipated given everyone involved in this film. The joy of the film is watching it subversively mix together all sorts of genre to create a bizarre but effective hybrid of stoner flicks, buddy-cop action movies, gangster and caper sagas and Hitchcock like “wrong man” adventures. It mashes them up together with a manic and irreverent spirit, speed, and energy, which by all accounts shouldn’t work.
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Everything you have heard about THE DARK KNIGHT is true. It’s not just an amazing superhero movie, it’s an amazing movie. Period. It proves what many avid comic book readers have known for a long time. Comics are not just silly adventures involving uninteresting do-gooders in tights, but have the potential to achieve dramatic depth and insight on the level of all fine art.
That being said, THE DARK KNIGHT is most certainly an exciting superhero adventure (albeit, far from a silly one). Batman’s battle with The Joker features no end of finely shot, deliriously orchestrated, expertly choreographed and highly destructive action sequences ranging from Batman’s brutal fist fights to intense car chases. They’re also intoxicatingly exciting, of course. Throw in great characters immersed in a thrilling, twisty plot that increasingly escalates the tension, and fantastic performances from Christian Bale and especially Aaron Eckhart, and you’re in for one hell of a ride.
It’s the nuances and thematic aspirations though that raise the film to an entirely different level, one that is stimulating and smart. So much so that I saw it a second time not only because it was awesome, but because I felt I needed another shot to appreciate the movie’s complexity and nuances. My brain is still running through them, which should - if anything - mean it passes that age-old “A good film has you still thinking about it a week later” test. It proves that THE DARK KNIGHT isn’t so much a superhero film as it is an intelligent crime drama that happens to feature a guy who dresses like a bat, and another who wears clown makeup.
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Despite my best attempts otherwise it’s become inevitable that the older I’ve gotten, the more movies I’ve seen, and the more I’ve watched them in a somewhat critical state of mind, the more jaded I’ve become as a result. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still fully capable of enjoying films that are fun and exciting, but that sense of wonder and joy I had as a child watching movies? That’s been left behind, as I imagine is the case for most of us who have moved past our teens.
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH 3-D brought it back for me.
It’s not that the film - as a film - is actually that great. The story is predictably full of thinly sketched characters, a forced underdeveloped romance, and little more than a “we need to get out of here” plot tying together its scenes of high adventure. There’s also some loose stabs at greater drama with Brendan Fraser and Josh Hutcherson struggling with the disappearance of their brother and father (respectively), and finding the joys of family in each other along the way. It’s not that surprising though because - as one of this sites regular commentators (Linda B.) pointed out a few days ago - when you think about it, this is really just a kids movie aimed to please that specific audience.
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There’s a scene in HANCOCK where the invulnerable reluctant super-hero played by Will Smith stops an oncoming train by standing directly in front of it. The sheer force of a speeding train ramming into an immovable object causes it to not only stop dead in its track but to be crushed, and all the cars behind it completely derail and scatter everywhere, making a huge mess.
It’s a perfect encapsulation of what goes wrong with HANCOCK halfway through the film, and what makes the Peter Berg directed movie the second Will Smith project (after I AM LEGEND) in a row that starts of promisingly and then violently and destructively derails. What’s more, in both films it happens after a very particular turning point that marks an abrupt change in each films’ narrative status quo.
Till that turning point occurs HANCOCK proves to be a somewhat refreshing, maybe even unique, take on the super-hero movie genre, by providing a distinctly anti (super) hero. John Hancock is a petty, alcoholic, abrasive, inept self-involved super. He’ll commit heroic acts, but it’s such an obligatory burden to him that he does it with callous disregard of property (ringing up millions of dollars in damage to the city) and others. As a result people have come to hate him, so he treats them and his surroundings with equal – and perhaps vengeful – distain. Hancock is a welcome spin on the superhero mythology by somewhat subversively suggesting that even if “with great power comes great responsibility,” if that responsibility isn’t accepted with the right intensions – or through only a sense of obligation – it’s perhaps more destructive than not accepting it in the first place.
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Every now and then you come across a film that reminds you exactly why you go to the movies in the first place. Why you time after time invest two hours of your life to be transported to other worlds, hoping that you will become emotionally wrapped up in them. Hoping to find a character whose emotional world you’re so invested in that every step he or she takes feels like your own. Hoping, above all else, for the sheer joy a movie can provide us. With more joy, more emotion in every frame than anything else you will see this year, WALL-E is exactly why we go to the movies.
WALL-E is an advanced garbage compactor, the last of his kind left behind on earth hundreds of years ago to clean up the post-apocalyptic garbage wasteland created by a consumerist society run amok. Day after day WALL-E sees his directive through but not without his own unique touch: a personality. He’s a curious fella, collecting knick-knacks, and tucking them away in his home. It doesn’t take us long to realize though that WALL-E is a lonely little guy, one who longs for the grand romance he finds in the musical numbers of the video of HELLO,DOLLY he watches so often. Sure enough when a much more sophisticated robot, EVE, shows up on Earth to test its habitability, our little hero falls adorably in love, and a chain of events occur that remind us to what lengths that emotion can push us to.
In many ways it seems as if WALL-E was the product of a dare. It’s as if somebody said to Pixar: “Bet you can’t make a great film and character with barely any dialogue.” Well, Pixar accomplished just that. WALL-E is such a phenomenal film because of its central character, whether he can talk or not. He is not only one of Pixar’s most endearing characters, he may just be one of the most enchanting ones I’ve ever come across in a film. I can think of few times where I was so enthralled by a character, so deeply invested in his emotions and goals, and so full of warm fuzzy feelings when they are realized. His journey made me laugh, aw, and even cry (a little).
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There’s something to be said for good old-fashioned guns, bullets, cars, and hot babes converging into a flurry of visually kinetic, pulse-pounding over-the-top action violence. All the more so when it occurs with creative relish and borderline fetishism yet without a single trace of apology. That’s exactly what Timur Bekmambetov’s WANTED does, and it’s precisely why it’s so much superficial fun.
The film starts out innocuously enough. Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is a young man with no backbone. He works in a dead-end job where he gets repeatedly chewed out by his raging boss, suffers from crippling anxiety attacks, and pathetically turns a blind eye to the fact that his supposed best friend is sleeping with his grating girlfriend. Wesley, however, has a spine forcefully shoved into his back when Fox (Angelina Jolie) comes into his life (with a cacophony of guns, bullets, and cars), and informs young Wesley that he has a much greater destiny. He learns his estranged father was not only recently killed, but belonged to a guild of assassins called The Fraternity that take their orders from fate itself. To avenge his father’s death, Wesley must let the Fraternity unleash his inherent potential, and then realize his destiny. (On a side note, comic fans looking for a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel should look elsewhere, but not without hearing a choice word or two from me about the issue).
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Like that old nugget of wisdom, THE GO-GETTER knows that life is in the journey, not the destination. That’s not to say where you’re going isn’t it important, but it is saying that sometimes how you get there is just as significant.
The journey in the THE GO-GETTER is that of young Mercer’s (indie “it” kid, Lou Taylor Pucci). With his mother recently passed away he has become lost in numerous ways, most of all existentially. He is anchorless, purposeless, so he does the only thing that makes sense to him, and that removes him from the familiar: he steals a car, and decides to track down his long lost, deadbeat half-brother and inform him of their mother’s passing.
In the tradition of all existential, coming of age road movies, what ensues are a series of detours and adventures along the way that teach Mercer a little about himself and life. Unlike those typical road movies though, THE GO-GETTER is much more irreverent in its side-steps. As the tagline for Martin Hayes’ work goes, “life doesn’t come with a roadmap” and though that’s a typical cloying line for a film like this, it’s for once accurate. Even though there is a narrative thread here, the pleasure of the movie is that it knows that road-trips and life don’t function with a roadmap, and instead deviate into strange but often entertaining and illuminating areas.
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GET SMART is in many ways your average, typical summer comedy action buddy flick. Story-wise it’s complete fluff, with a paper-thin story featuring loads of underdevelopment and gaping plot holes. That means if you want to emerge from the theatre having been fully entertained, the comedy will have to be good enough to help gloss over those shortcomings, the cast will have to be on-the-ball, and the concept (if not its narrative expansion) has to be involving enough. For the most part it succeeds in that.
In terms of comedy, we’ve got Steve Carell here and that’s more than enough for me. It’s incredibly hard for me to not laugh at anything he does, especially in a film like this where the humor is perfectly tailored to his comedic stylings. Carell is undoubtedly the star of this film and it’s the better for it. In fact, it’s a big reason why it still succeeds to entertain.
He’s not alone though. Though I wasn’t sure she could do it, Anne Hathaway completely blossoms her as a serious, sexy in-charge super agent. It’s nice to see she can expand outside of her pigeonhole, and she contributes a lot here, most notably great comedic and romantic chemistry with Carell. Their characters’ relationships is one of the most underdeveloped parts of the film, but in the moment of their interactions you’d be hard pressed to realize it because the actors’ shorthand makes up for a lot.
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