Now You See Me

Who doesn't love a good magic trick?  Lord knows I do.  I even fancied myself a magician at the age of fourteen.  As my parents have done with all my endeavors, they supported my plan to be the next Chris Angel.  Well, without the press-on tattoos, ear gauges, and douchey persona . . . . They bought me the magic rings and the cigarette in the quarter trick.  All the classics.  My dream to make a go at professional trickery quickly went up in a puff of smoke, so to speak.  In Freshman English, we were supposed to demonstrate a process in front of the class.  Most of the jocks showed how to make a peanut butter sandwich.  Pretty fascinating stuff.  I think I might have been better off showing off my sandwichery, because I totally failed in showing off my magic skills.  I was trying to make a quarter disappear, but my hands shook so badly that the coin dropped to the floor, making an echoing clink clink clink.  I ended my presentation with, "And that's how you do magic."  That was the end of my magic career.

It's really no surprise that I was so enamored of magic, considering my lifelong love of cinema.  In the early 20th century, the films of Thomas Edison and D.W. Griffith played in the same vaudeville theaters where Abracadbra men applied their trade.  Early filmmakers like George Melies used the new motion picture camera to perform never-before-seen magic tricks.  Rocket ships crashed into anthropomorphic satellites.  Moon men disappeared in small colored explosions.  At that time, Melies used a simple cut in action to achieve this effect.  Over the last century, cinematic magic tricks have gotten more elaborate, and it is easy to forget that filmmakers and magicians were once close cousins.

Hollywood has not forgotten its relationship with its magical forebears.  While it is not a very common genre, the Magic films show up every few years.  I love them all.  I probably watched Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions 30 times.  It's a pretty bad movie, but you gotta love a private-eye Scott Bakula fighting demonic magicians.  Cinematic gold.  Then there's the much better and much less gory The Prestige.  Christopher Nolan's tale of dueling illusionists is a great period piece mystery that depicts the obsession behind most of these illusory acts.  The Magic film is really about cinema itself.  It's about drawing an audience in, telling them a story, and showing them something they've never seen before.

The main pitfall of the Magic film genre is that the audience knows they are being misdirected.  This is nowhere more evident than in Louis Leterrier's Now You See Me.  From frame one, we are told that nothing is as it seems.  The heroes of the tale, The Four Horsemen, are a group of hip, funny, intelligent magicians.  They use their great gifts to rob from the rich and give to the poor.  It's Robin Hood meets David Copperfield.  Well, not the Charles Dickens book . . . the magician with the big goggle eyes.  Remember he made that tank disappear like 10 years ago?  Anyway, we know that these four magicians are going to outsmart the authorities, the bad guys, and, ultimately, us.  For viewers it's hard to get comfortable watching a film like this.  In every scene, it feels like one more carpet is pulled out from underneath our feet.  Oh, that guy wasn't dead?  Oh, there was a trap door there?  Nothing is stable in this film; the characters, the motivations, even the narrative.  It is hard to really immerse yourself in a film when the director keeps shaking his finger at you.

Director Louis Leterrier may know how to perform a good trick, but that doesn't make him a great director.  This guy's career has run the gamut from good (Unleashed), to bad (The Transporter 2), to god-awful (Clash of the Titans). Seriously, Clash of the Titans gave me a migraine.  Most of the time, the director toes the mediocrity line.  He's like a French, low-class Ron Howard.  The filmmaking is functional and clean.  Dialogue scenes are cut in the normal way, over-the-shoulder to over-the-shoulder.  The camera floats and swoops around the characters without any real motivation, but at least we see what's going on.  Leterrier has no real directorial flourishes, but at least he knows how to stay out of the way of his actors.

It's clear that directing actors isn't Leterrier's strong suit, but he is served well by an entertaining cast.  All the actors have been cast to play their normal roles.  Jesse Eisenberg plays the fast talking, neurotic male lead.  He's like a young Woody Allen with a deck of cards.  Isla Fisher plays the sexy and snarky heroine.  Woody Harrelson rattles off amusing banter with great ease. And, of course, there's Morgan Freeman as the wise old man.  There's not one remarkable performance in the whole film, but there's nothing too laughable.  There are some pretty terrible lines, but the entire cast sells it.

They all play their parts well, but it's still a bit hammy. The movie feels like a Las Vegas show: gaudy, sexy, and fake.  You can feel the essence of Liberace oozing out of this movie.  This fakeness is the film's main problem.  Except for a few occasions, all the magic in the film is accomplished with computer generated effects.  While digital effects artists are really the great grandchildren of the stage magician, I would have preferred to see some real sleight-of-hand in this film.  There is great opportunity for this in Now You See Me, and the filmmakers missed their chance to make a believable yet thrilling film. In one scene, Dave Franco, James' snarky little bro, goes toe to toe with his cop adversary, Mark Ruffalo.  Using his illusionist skills, Franco throws handcuffs onto characters, disappears into curtains, and reappears behind mirrors.  It's really amazing stuff, and I truly wish there were more of it.  Most of the other magic is so outlandish it could only have been done with some keystrokes.

In the end, it's fun.  I enjoyed myself from the beginning to end and, while it's a poorly made film, it's a nice magic trick.  There's no real replay value to Now You See Me, because once the magician shows you how it's done, you lose interest.  Don't worry, I won't ruin the surprise.  It's not much of a reveal anyway.  This feels as though it should have been a January release, but given the poor quality of the Blockbusters this summer, Now You See Me comes out looking pretty good.  $11.75 is pretty steep for a movie ticket, but I don't feel like I was tricked out my money.

Fast and Furious 6

So, I'm a waiter.  It's good work and I love sleeping in every day. One time an old lady grabbed my butt.  Hey, it happens.  I consider it a work hazard.  One of the most important things I've learned in my years slinging drinks and dropping plates is that people want what they pay for.  If some old dude orders a steak sandwich medium-rare, I probably shouldn't bring him a salmon salad with a low-fat raspberry vinaigrette.  I get it.  When I order a bacon cheeseburger, I don't want seared Ahi tuna.  I want my heart-attack sandwich, and I want it nice and juicy.

I feel the same way about films.  If I'm in the mood to think about my place in the universe, then fall asleep, I'll put on Solaris.  Tarkovsky is the cinematic equivalent of warm milk.  If I'm in the mood to sit on the edge of my seat, choke on my Twizzlers, and applaud at great daring-do, I'll put on a Fast and Furious movie.  I'm not going to lie; I love these movies.  They're the equivalent of that great bacon cheeseburger, and director Justin Lin is the ultimate grill-master.  Over the past three films, Tokyo Drift, Fast and Furious, and Fast 5, Lin has created a sleek, streamlined, exciting environment where big men say what they mean and punch who they hate.  Lin has made this series his own in the same way David Yates did with the last four Harry Potter films.  He and recurring screenwriter Chris Morgan know who these characters are and, better yet, what the audience expects.

Lin and Morgan's winning streak continues with Fast and Furious 6.  Man, what a thrill ride.  I know that's a film review cliché.  Whatever, it's how I feel.  The movie is fast, simple, and clean.  The script doesn't do anything groundbreaking, but that is not a problem here.  The word "formula" has become another naughty "f" word in Hollywood.  So many Hollywood Blockbusters try to break the mold; they end up with messy stories and lame characters.  Justin Lin and Chris Morgan have no such fear of formula.  Fast 6 knows what genre it is in and follows the rules to the letter.  There's a bad guy.  He wants to steal a doomsday device.  The good guys have to stop him.  Stuff blows up.  For more examples, see every action movie made between 1984 and 1995.

The film does not simply go through the motions, however.  With each of his Fast and Furious films, director Lin raises the bar on action.  The explosions are bigger.  The crashes are crazier.  What sets Lin's action scenes apart is the childlike glee with which he directs them.  When I was five, I had a favorite spot for playing with my action figures.  It overlooked our staircase and it was perfect for hanging little plastic guys from pieces of my mom's yarn.  I would often tie toy cars to planes and hang the whole thing over the ledge.  My action figures would climb this big piece of swinging wreckage, fighting the whole time.  With Fast 6, it feels like Justin Lin watched my playroom sessions and storyboarded his film.  Tanks crush sports cars and blow up bridges.  Cars hang from planes by mono-filament cables.  What a great action movie word: mono-filament.  That's what Batman uses in his grappling hook.  Awesome.  Sorry...It's all a bit ridiculous, but it works.

As in the previous films, Lin tries to shoot as many of these action set-pieces on set and in-camera as he can.  He grounds the over-the-top action by cutting down on the use of digital effects.  True, we can see the help of computer graphics during many of the sequences, but the majority of the action is performed by real people in real cars.  I don't care how lifelike and realistic digital effects have become; I can always feel the difference when I watch a film.  The action scenes in Fast 6 are so effective because these are real people performing real death-defying stunts.  Since the beginning of cinema, we have marveled at the lithe movements of actors like Douglas Fairbanks and Jackie Chan as well as unsung stuntmen like Vic Armstrong and Buster Reeves.  You really can't replace the skill it takes to jump between moving cars with a matte painting and computer-generated actors.

Yep, Justin Lin uses real stunt men and real actors.  Well, I might not call Paul Walker an "actor"...more a guy who stands there and looks pretty.  Still, he doesn't get in the way of the real stars of this film: Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson.  I can't help it; these guys are great.  Along with Jason Statham, these are the only actors keeping the spirit of the 80s and 90s action star alive.  Diesel is like a cross between Lee Marvin and Arnold Schwarzenegger, with his gravelly voice and killer bod.  Johnson looks like he just ate a horse and bench-pressed my Toyota Camry.  I swear his biceps are wider than my thighs.  Next to the action, their budding bromance is the highlight of the film.  Take the scene from Predator where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers shake hands, their arms bulging and veins popping out.  Extend that for two hours.  That's Fast 6.  There's so much testosterone dripping off this movie, I think I actually grew more hair on my chest.  It's funny, considering all these guys are bald.

True, most of the character arcs are clichéd, but they really work in this genre.  There's amnesia, double crosses, and all kinds of cheesy dialogue.  Still, it's done with such gusto, you have to buy it.  There's nothing but sincerity as far as the eye the can see.  It would make old Linus proud, sitting in his pumpkin patch.   There are lines like "Show me how you ride and I'll show you who you are."  Wow.  How Vin Diesel said that without laughing is beyond me.  A lot of it feels like a big budget version Walker, Texas Ranger, but you gotta love it.

It's been a very weak start to the summer Blockbuster season.  Films like Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness have shown what happens when a film tries to do too much and accomplishes little.  There's something to be said for a director who knows his strengths and weaknesses.  Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris are there for the comedy.  Vin Diesel is there to perform the greatest head-butt in movie history.  The cars are there to be destroyed and the girls are there to look really sexy. They do. They really, really do.  It's like one big, unhealthy, delicious meal.  Check please.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Growing up, I never really liked Star Trek.  My early childhood was the era of Star Trek: The Next Generation and I didn't have much interest in some bald dude sitting in a chair, giving orders to a tall bearded guy.  I was much more enamored of Jedis dive-bombing giant space stations and lightsaber dueling over windy chasms.  When I reached high school, I felt like it was a little late to hop on the Enterprise bandwagon.  I suppose I was alienated by the size of the Star Trek world.  I didn't know the different classes of Federation vessels.  I didn't know which way the Captain's toilet flushed.  And, I thought Klingon sounded like that one time my brother ate bad tenderloin and blew serious chunks.

One day, Star Trek made sense to me.  After college, a family member was in the hospital, and it was some pretty dark stuff.  Moping at home, I turned on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.  All my Trekkie friends told me this was the worst of the movies, but I thought I could do with a laugh.  Yeah, a chuckling Vulcan is pretty ridiculous. Wait, they're searching for God?  Eesh.  Still, I was surprised to find that I was enjoying myself.  What's more, I was genuinely moved.  Suddenly, crazily, I had made my own relationship with Star Trek.  What got to me?  What melted my heart to the adventures of the Enterprise?  It was the trinity of Kirk, Spock, and Bones.  The love among and between these characters was infectious.  I don't mean they had crabs or anything. . . I mean that I was touched by these three guys . . . wait, that still sounds bad.  For real, their relationship was a light during dark times, and I'll be forever grateful for that.

I continued to ride the Star Trek train with JJ Abrams' first Star Trek film.  I was impressed by his reboot of the franchise and I thought that he balanced well the big-budget action and character development.  The origin story of the Enterprise was exciting, funny, and truly breathtaking.  I'm sorry I cannot say the same for Abrams' follow-up, Star Trek Into Darkness.

For the most part, I like JJ Abrams as a director.  After watching Super 8, I can clearly see that he wants to be the next Steven Spielberg. That's fine with me.  His admiration for the great director serves him well.  Like Spielberg, Abrams has a strong grasp of widescreen filmmaking.  He knows how to fill the screen with detail and movement while still drawing the eye to the important aspects of the frame.  He does go a bit haywire with the Steadicam and lens flares, but he sure can compose a beautiful and effective shot.

Visually, Abrams is in great form with Star Trek Into Darkness.  All of the action scenes are amazing.  There is a long shootout on the Klingon planet that feels like a mix between John Woo and Walter Hill.  It's visceral and fun, with plenty of unique flourishes.  In one scene, Kirk free-falls through space, dodging some rusty space debris.  I'm pretty sure I played that level in Dead Space, but it sure looks cool on the big screen.  All the vistas of alien planets as well as a futuristic San Fransisco are sharp, detailed, and epic.  If I were watching the film as twenty-five separate scenes, I'd have no problems.

Ultimately, the film feels like climax, after climax, after climax.  Kind of like me in the bedroom . . . sorry, that's gross.  There are no narrative through-lines, so it's not clear if we are at the beginning, middle, or end of this story.  It's just big explosive scenes followed by more big explosive scenes. I can't really blame Abrams here.  He was working with screenwriter Damon Lindelof.  In my opinion, this screenwriter is singlehandedly killing off the Classical Hollywood film script.  Gone are the days of clear character objectives.  Say goodbye to the three-act structure.  Who's the villain and what does he want?  Who cares!  Lindelof and many Hollywood screenwriters today are more interested in twist and turns than in logic and motivation.  In Star Trek Into Darkness, the character arcs are five minutes long.  For Lindelof and co-writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, there is no such thing as a slow burn.  One minute Kirk is militaristic and vengeful;  the next he's seeing the error of his ways.  The characters have realizations and catharses, but the film doesn't earn them.  It's insane.  Seriously, I'd love to see Robert McKee in a room with these three screenwriters.  He'd bust them up.

While the actors don't have much to work with, they still give some strong performances.  Zachary Quinto is funny and charming as the cold, calculated, yet lovable Spock.  Chris Pine smiles and winks as he stares death in the face.  Zoe Saldana actually makes Klingon sound sexy and less like my sick brother.  I also love Karl Urban as Bones, even though he doesn't have much to do here.  And, for real, it's great to see Peter Weller back at it.  Robocop as a Starfleet Admiral?  I'm in. I'd watch that guy read the phone book.

The best part of the film is really Benedict Cumberbatch.  This guy just showed up out of nowhere two years ago and now he's a cultural icon.  My Mom's even part of his fan club, the Cumberbitches.  Hey, I get it.  The guy made Sherlock Holmes culturally relevant, and he looks like a boss in a long, black coat.  As John Harrison, the film's villain, he's having a great time.  He goes Statham on a lot of dudes and rattles off some truly menacing dialogue, biting at every consonant.  Even though I'm not sure why he's doing anything, he's fun to watch.  Thanks, man.

In the end, it's all too much.  On one hand, a lot happens. On the other, I couldn't tell you the story if I tried.  Like most Hollywood sequels today, Star Trek Into Darkness follows the motto "More, Bigger, Darker."  This worked for films like The Dark Knight and Skyfall, but they had strong, crisp screenplays.  There sure are more explosions in Star Trek Into Darkness, but much less story and character.  The film really doesn't trek anywhere.  It spins in circles and, eventually, crashes to an end.  Hey, I just wanted to spend two hours with my Enterprise friends.  Oh, well.

The Great Gatsby

When you're 29 and single, you go on a lot of first dates.  Well, a few.  Actually, it's been a while.  God I'm lonely...  Anyway, on these rare dates, the dinner conversations vary in subject but usually involve movies.  You can tell a lot about a girl by what movies she likes.  I've been caught many times scoping out a girl's DVD collection. There was this one zookeeper who had only Disney VHS's and Colin Farrell movies.  Also, did I mention she had four cats and they were all named after Colin Farrell characters?  Yeah, I got out of there fast.  To be fair, I'm sure I've scared off a few women with my large collection of slasher movies.  Their loss.

Still, I've made plenty of connections based on shared love of a director or star.  There was one girl who actually liked Dolph Lundgren movies.  I probably should have married her.  Oh well.  When I ask most of my dates what their favorite film is, I hear a few answers repeated, again and again.  There's the inevitable How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.  I get that one.  McConaughey is 100% beefcake.  Love, Actually?  Great romantic comedy.  Pretty in Pink? Molly Ringwald is my girl.  There is one film, however, that sends me running: Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge.

I saw Moulin Rouge when I was in high school.  At that time, I was involved in a lot of musical theatre, so I went with the flow and did my best to enjoy the film.  Seriously, a musical theater high schooler saying he doesn't like Moulin Rouge is like a film Master's student saying he can't stand the work of Stanley Kubrick.  Don't worry, I love Kubrick.  Now that I'm out of high school and not singing Rodgers and Hammerstein anymore, I can admit how I feel about Moulin Rouge.  It's ugly, garish, and poorly made.  The visuals give me a headache and the popular song mash-ups give me a wicked vertigo attack.  Following up Moulin Rouge with the even worse Australia cemented Baz Luhrmann as my least favorite working director.

I tried my best to go into The Great Gatsby with an open mind.  I suppose that's every critic's challenge— to go see a movie you don't want to see and look at it as objectively as possible.  Well, I'm shocked.  This gaudy gem of excess is Luhrmann's worst film yet.  Who thought to greenlight this film?  Asking Baz Luhrmann to direct The Great Gatsby is like asking Michael Bay to direct Moby Dick.  Although, it would be cool to see The Rock as Captain Ahab and Shia Labeouf as Ishmael.  Wait, never mind.  That's a terrible idea.

As usual, Luhrmann places great emphasis on the visuals.  I won't lie; the guy can achieve some striking, beautiful images.  There is no control to these images, though. The visuals are so sugary, I'm worried I might develop diabetes.  I feel as if I just ate a five-pound bag of Reese's Pieces.  Luhrmann took the Gilded Age a bit too literally, so everything shines and glitters like some priceless metal.  The majority of the film is also shot in soft focus, probably to give it a Classic Hollywood aesthetic.  This effect grows old quickly and makes the eyes heavy.  I didn't fall asleep, I swear.

How could I fall asleep?  The film is so loud.  The images are loud and the music is loud.  Instead of using original musical pieces from the 1920s, Luhrmann's employs more of his beloved mash-ups.  The techno version of the Jitterbug is true cacophony.  The soundtrack is atrocious and filled with contemporary Rap music.  In an attempt to be hip, Luhrmann sabotages his audience's immersion into the film.  These modern songs are so jarring, I felt kicked out of the story.  I declare, watching flapper girls dance the Charleston to Kanye gives me an anachronistic headache.

As in his other films, Luhrmann seems to have more of an interest in sights and sounds than character and narrative.  From the first frame of the film, the acting is stilted and flat.  Tobey Maguire, who can be quite decent when directed well, turns in a poor performance.  His voiceover and narration are laughable and are made all the worse by the fact that he is reading from Fitzgerald's book.  I'd rather hear Kevin James read James Joyce.  Well, maybe not.  Joel Edgerton, an actor of great skill, is wasted in the film.  He barks and drinks and plays a really bad guy.  Even Carey Mulligan is disappointing.  The actress I loved in Never Let Me Go and Drive plays a boring, doe-eyed Daisy.  It's very embarrassing.

Leonardo Dicaprio does his best to fill Gatsby's shoes.  Physically, he looks the part, with seersucker suit and swept back hair.  If the film were silent, it might be believable.  However, once Leo opens his mouth, it all falls apart.  As usual, Dicaprio is very intense, but this doesn't work for Fitzgerald's titular character.  I don't remember Gatsby yelling and crying in the book, but he sure does a lot of both here.  He also finishes every sentence with "Old Sport."  True, this is part of the narrative but it becomes annoying after its fiftieth utterance.  Like Luhrmann, Dicaprio seems to be yelling, "I'm Jay Gatsby!  I live in the 1920s!"  Dicaprio's ham-fisted acting mixed with Luhrmann's ham-fisted directing makes for cinema's first ever ham-handshake.

The director luckily had a brilliant book on which to base his film.  Even when the film is ugly and laughable, it is somewhat easy to shut out the noise and just watch Fitzgerald's evocative tale.  Still, it doesn't feel like the director read the same book that I read in high school.  Luhrmann read the book and saw a tragic romance.  I read it and saw a critical look at American ambition.  The film misses a real opportunity to make the film relevant today.  Financial corruption and misled ambition are daily themes in The Wall Street Journal. However, Luhrmann draws no connection to our contemporary world.  Well, he did put the Rap music in...

There is no connection to contemporary America because Luhrmann's 1920's America isn't real itself.  Luhrmann doesn't make period pieces; he makes Science Fiction.  The amount of computer effects mixed with the over-the-top set and costume design make Gatsby feel like a Steampunk comedy.  Fitzgerald's book is a quiet book with loud ideas.  Luhrmann's film is a loud film with no ideas.   I'm sure some Luhrmann fans will enjoy this film.  I'm just saying that if a girl mentions it on a first date, I'm going to the bathroom...and sneaking out the window.

Iron Man 3

I've been a nerd for as long as I can remember.  Some of my earliest memories are of my brother and me discussing the ins and outs of Wolverine's mutant healing factor and what all Mr. Fantastic can stretch.  Is it just his arms and legs or...you get the point.  I've grown up a lot since then and, well...maybe I haven't.  Anyway, during these conversations, we spent a lot of time casting our dream comic book movies.  During the late 80s and early 90s, we were experiencing a drought of comic book films.  Besides the cinematic exploits of DC big hitters Batman and Superman, the silver screen was empty of tight spandex and masked vigilantes.  Thus, my brother and I had to use our imagination.  I think our best casting was Trent Reznor as Wolverine.  Can you imagine him singing Closer to God and slashing Magneto in the face?  I can.  It's awesome.

Now, times have changed and the drought is over.  Isn't it great?  There are superheroes on every screen; cartoons, video games, tv shows and, of course, in the multiplex. The stories and adventures I plotted with my big brother are now thrilling audiences across the world.  We no longer need our imaginations when Hollywood is pumping billions into big sets, pyrotechnics, and A list performers.  All of a sudden, here I am looking cool.  Superheroes are hip now, so I'm hip by proxy.  When I wore my Spiderman t-shirt in high school, it was just one more way to solidify my virginhood.  Now, old web-head gets girls to buy me a drink.  Seriously.

I can say I'm happy with the turn of events.  While the quality of recent superhero films runs the gamut, it's nice to see my old super friends up on the screen.  My five-year-old self would be very, very excited.  Little Marten and his brother would be very happy with Iron Man 3.  Lots of stuff blows up.  The people say funny lines.  And, there are lots and lots of Iron Man suits.  It's basically how my brother and I would have imagined it.  However, I'm not five anymore.  My ex-girlfriends may say I have the maturity of a five-year-old, but I am almost thirty and my taste in film has changed.  I am still wowed by an army of Iron Man suits battling nano-tech soldiers, but I take notice of things like narrative, dialogue, and editing.  That being said, twenty-nine-year old Marten and five-year-old Marten would mostly agree on Iron Man 3.

Marvel studios made a great decision when they hired Robert Downey Jr. to play the heavy drinking playboy Tony Stark.  Since the original film, Downey has made this part his own, firing off witty dialogue at a machine gun pace and going method for some very soulful moments.  The actor continues his winning streak with Iron Man 3; he is again the strongest part of the film.  Even when the plot goes off the rails at times, Downey is there to anchor the film with his intense and entertaining performance.

Downey is assisted by writer/director Shane Black.  The two worked previously on the amazing Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and it is rumored that the director helped Downey hone his character for the original Iron Man.  It's great to see Black working on a big action film again.  The guy was the king of the 80s and 90s action script.  Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout?  Anybody?  Wow, action gold.  Black brings his gifts for punchy dialogue and great character to this comic book world.  Downey's lines are more hilarious than ever and every side character is unique and memorable.  Child actor Ty Simpkins is especially sweet as Harley, a young inventor who helps Stark on his journey.  Black also inserts some great buddy cop antics, a la Lethal Weapon.  Many of the scenes between Downey and Don Cheadle play out like a classic scene between Riggs and Murtaugh.  There's even a Mr. Joshua-esque evil henchman played with great grit and wit by James Badge Dale.  It's great to see that Black's still got it.

He also coaxes some great performances out of his actors.  Besides Downey, Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley turn in their best performances in years.  These two actors are so often misused that it is nice to be reminded just how talented they really are.  Pearce is amazing as Aldrich Killian, a megalomaniac weapons manufacturer.  His charming smile easily turns to a grimace of hate.  He looks like he's having a great time.  Likewise, Kingsley shows us that he is still the master.  The guy's had a rough last decade.  He played the villain in Thunderbirds.  Yep, Thunderbirds.  Then, he played an evil wizard in Bloodrayne. The excremental Uwe Boll directed that masterpiece.  That film played like a bad acid trip.  I'm still trying to forget it.  In Iron Man 3, Kingsley brings great bravado, malice, and even humor to his performance as The Mandarin, a belligerent international terrorist. The guy's a genius and you have to give credit to Shane Black for writing and directing such a meaty part.

The narrative and general pacing of the script are not so meaty and not so genius.  True, Shane Black writes beautiful dialogue, but he is sorely lacking in the plot department.  The script jumps all over the place, so it feels as if there are five acts, not three.  This isn't Hamlet, it's Hollywood.  Three acts, dude.  The story is also unnecessarily complex.  It looks like Black went to the Damon Lindelof school of screenwriting, where "nuanced" is confused with "convoluted."  Like an episode of Lost, Iron Man 3 is filled with unneeded twists and turns.  These do not add to the mystery of the plot but do add to the mystery of the characters.  Tony Stark's emotional journey seems to be lost in the shuffle.  He changes somewhere between the first frame and the last frame, but I'm not sure how or why.

Still, most of the film does play like a great 80s action film.  Shane Black never got a chance to direct his own Lethal Weapon scripts, but he displays a solid talent for action filmmaking.  Like the dialogue, the fight choreography and editing are frenetic.  Even when Stark is out of the suit, he ducks and dives with impressive skill.  It looks as if he took dance lessons from Jason Bourne.  When Stark is in the suit, Black bests former director Jon Favreau in his depiction of the Iron Man suit and all its whirlygigs.  The metal shell has a mind of his own, and Black utilizes this for some shocking sequences.  The final scene is especially breathtaking.  Iron Man suits fly all over the place, blowing up enhanced soldiers and knocking over cranes.

You know, now that I say that, I think my brother and I dreamed up that scene twenty-five years ago.  Only, I'm pretty sure Trent Reznor was there.  Yeah, that would be awesome.

To the Wonder

I had the misfortune of waiting on a particularly miserable couple the other night.  Being a waiter, I sometimes have to deal with tables that come in angry.  I try to put them in a good mood, but some people are just immune to my Burt Reynolds-esque charm.  I just have to swallow my pride and nod my head at their condescending demeanor and insulting comments.  At one end of the table sat the rude, Joe Don Baker look-a-like husband.  "Hey, weren't you the villain in The Living Daylights?"  He came complete with a Jimmy Buffett concert t-shirt and old man sandals.  On the other end sat his exasperated wife, seemingly embarrassed by her husband's conduct, but too meek to comment.  What a pair.

At first, I was frustrated with the couple and their unreasonable requests.  However, I was suddenly filled with a great sense of pity and sadness for them both.  How did they get to this point in their relationship?  There must have been a time when their relationship was a thing of beauty.  He probably asked her on a date and she excitedly said "yes."  She began to tell all her friends about him; about his kind words and tender touch.  He asked her if she would be his wife and she answered with tears and a loving embrace.  The future held nothing but bright days and contentment for them both.  When did things change?  How did they change?  Did they wake up one morning and find themselves looking at utter strangers?  Did it happen subtly over a long period?  How did two young, happy lovers become just a bitter old couple?

Terrence Malick's new film, To the Wonder, asks these same questions.  How is love found?  How is it lost?  As in the majority of his films, love comes with a capital "L" and is more than a feeling between two lovers; it is a cosmic force.  In The Tree of Life, a young child bends in the cosmic winds of the magnetic forces of nature and grace.  In The New World, John Smith finds himself torn between the beauty of nature and belligerent civilization.  In all Malick's films, the characters are at the mercy of nature and the universe.  Malick's protagonists exhibit free will, but they are still small figures in a large and powerful cosmos.  In To the Wonder, powerful Love comes from the divine and moves through the characters like diverted streams.  But, as Malick shows, streams can go dry.

I love Terrence Malick. Ever since I first saw Badlands, I have been enamored of his talent, heart, and poetic voice.  I really can't count the number of chills I get when watching The Thin Red Line.  They seem to multiply every time I watch the film.  While many audiences walked out of the theater during The Tree of Life, I was glued to my seat.  I have never seen the journey of an innocent soul so beautifully depicted on the screen.  The fact that Malick is so polarizing makes me love him all the more.  I'm a born contrarian and I jump at any chance to go against the grain.  Any time you want to fight about the artistic merit of Terrence Malick, give me a call.

I may not be able to defend To the Wonder too well.  This is easily his weakest film.  It is by no means a bad film, but it is often obvious, preachy, and repetitive.  In his other five films, Malick can be overly poetic and self-indulgent.  However, these other films have a narrative framework to contain the director's esoteric flourishes.  The Thin Red Line has many segments that deal with Love, but they are woven into the exciting and compelling story of Guadalcanal.  The Tree of Life goes off the deep end at some points, looking at the birth of the universe and intelligent life.  Still, the artistic abstractions are held down by the strong story of a boy and his loss of innocence.  In To the Wonder, there is not enough of a story to warrant Malick's poetic wanderings.  Like the many empty houses in the film, To the Wonder feels a little hollow, and all the musings on Love and the soul seem to echo flatly off the undecorated walls.

That being said, the film is still gorgeous.  As always, Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography is breathtaking.  His camera caresses the actors lovingly and chases them through fields of wheat.  Window light plays on bare walls.  The vistas of rural Texas are some of Malick's best and would make John Ford go back to the drawing board.  Every shot is perfectly composed and really makes me want to burn all my student films.  Malick and Lubezki are just frustratingly good.

Lubezki and Malick make the lead actors look beautiful, especially Olga Kurylenko.  Seriously, where did this girl come from?  When people ask me what my type is, I just point at a picture of her.  Wow...Sorry.  Anyway, I find it hard to believe that Ben Affleck's character, however cold and distant, could treat her so poorly.  She's innocent and beautiful and she loves him.  I haven't felt this angry at a Ben Affleck character since Gigli and, well, it's Gigli.  Marry her, dude.  Marry her and the movie's over.

While I found the love story unfulfilling, I did find Malick's view of contemporary America very fascinating.  This is Malick's most "European" film and it clearly takes an outsider's view of our lovely country.  Like Pocahontas in The New World, Kurylenko comes to a foreign land and finds herself lost.  The grandeur and beauty of France are juxtaposed wtih the flat Texas countryside. Instead of tall churches, there are tall power lines.  In America, Kurylenko and Affleck roll their shopping cart through a Wal-Mart.  The gaudy colors and garish packaging are placed in stark contrast to the vaulted majestic ceilings of a French cathedral.  Malick presents an America that has lost its majesty and is built on rotting soil.  Affleck's character works testing the ground for pollutants and makes some depressing discoveries.  The amber waves of grain have been poisoned.  While Malick does find much beauty in the American landscape, he clearly believes we are burning our own foundations.

In the end, it all comes down to Love. Our love for each other.  Our love for God and Country.  And, our love for our Environment.  As Javier Bardem's priest character says in the film, it is all connected.  It is all one Love and, though Malick looks at the dark side, he also presents the chance for redemption.  The end feeling is one of hope and resurrection.  Overall, the film is disappointing, but this sense of redemption is encouraging.  Maybe a bitter old couple can hope for their love to rekindle and, as Bardem preaches, "transform into something higher."  Here's hoping.

The Lords of Salem

When I first saw John Carpenters's Halloween, I didn't sleep for a week.  That is no exaggeration.  I actually turned my bed toward my closet because I knew Michael Myers was hiding behind my corduroy pants and clip-on ties.  I even mapped out my escape were he to enter my room: Through the bathroom, into my parents’ bedroom, through the living room, and out the front door.  Sorry Mom and Dad, you're on your own.  I was only eight when I first became acquainted with Michael Myers and his creator, John Carpenter.  Since then, my strong connection to the classic Halloween has become less fear-based and more one based on respect.  To me, Halloween is the perfect horror film.  Dean Cundey's dynamic lighting mixed with Carpenter's haunting score make for a masterpiece of primal dread.

So, when Rob Zombie announced he would be directing a remake of Halloween, I was both excited and apprehensive.  I had a lukewarm reaction to both The Devil's Rejects and House of a Thousand Corpses.  Some of their gore was stomach-turning, and I did dig their 1970s exploitation aesthetic, but I found the characters to be flat and the directing sloppy.  Zombie's Halloween solidified my opinion of the director and his talent.  He took my most beloved film and subtracted all the nuance and universal fear and replaced it with foul language and annoying characters.  I'm pretty sure the word "nuance" isn't in Zombie's vocabulary. His dictionary probably skips from "nu" to "nub."  I'm not even going to mention Zombie's Halloween 2 and all that horse imagery.  Ugh.

Well, Mr. Zombie, you have outdone yourself.  Zombie's new film The Lords of Salem is his worst yet.  It's bad. Really, really bad.  It's one of those films that is so atrocious I think I may not like movies anymore.  When I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I had to go watch some Hitchcock to remind myself that film can be intelligent and enjoyable.  Right now I'm watching some early John Carpenter to wash the memories of The Lords of Salem out of my mind.  I'm feeling better by the minute.  Wait...I'm okay now.  Movies are good.  I like them.  Okay, good.

It's never a good sign when half of the audience leaves during the first thirty minutes of a movie.  This happened during my screening of The Lords of Salem, and I sorely wanted to join the exodus.  The remaining audience played Angry Birds and chatted on their phones.  I didn't even try to stop them.  In fact, that one couple had some really good opinions on the state of the economy...

The Lords of Salem is just an ugly film.  The actors are ugly.  That's probably a mean thing to say, but the whole cast looks like coupon day at a Big Lots in rural Indiana.  Believe me, I've been there.  It's scary stuff.  It doesn't help that most of the overweight and elderly actors are naked throughout the film.  Take the bathroom scene from The Shining and multiply that by forty-two.  There's a whole lot of skin and a whole lot of varicose veins.  I'm going to leave it there.

The best looking person is the film is Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, but that's not saying much.  I really question his choice to cast her yet again.  With every one of Zombie's films, she gets a bigger role.  Even Ed Wood had the good sense to give his wife a mere bit part in Bride of the Monster.  The first time we see Sheri, she is lying naked on her bed.  It's not a bad scene.  Zombie seems to be saying, "Hey look at my wife!  Isn't she hot?"  She's okay dude, but your movie sucks.

The cinematography isn't doing the actors any favors.  Every light is overexposed and lens flares flash across the screen.  In the beginning, it looks like a serious artistic choice but, by the third scene, it looks like poor film craft.  Every window is blown out, giving the characters distracting halos.  I'm not sure how you make old naked bodies even uglier, but cinematographer Brandon Trost does it.  When the light wasn't blinding me, I was squinting to make out the action.  Half the film is out of focus.  I haven't seen this many blurry images since my Senior film back in college.  I don't want to talk about it.  It's embarrassing.

When I could see clearly what was happening, I was disgusted by what I saw.  Zombie puts some truly shocking images on the screen.  Hey, there's a priest getting a blow job.  There's a little devil that looks like a badly burned Mickey Rooney.  Look over there, it's a Catholic Cardinal masturbating!  I have no problem with disturbing imagery.  I find fault with Zombie's uncontrolled and lazy depiction of the gross stuff.  There is no philosophy to his horror.  It's just grotesque stream-of-consciousness.  I believe that great horror has a beautiful side.  The films of Clive Barker and David Cronenberg show how the frightening can reflect the goodness in the world.  Rob Zombie has no such agenda.  He just wants to gross me out and ruin my day.

Still, I think I'm going to be okay.  This Carpenter movie has really done the trick.  I'm just finishing up some Kurt Russell bad-assery and feeling mighty nice.  It's good to know that for every awful Rob Zombie film there are many more great horror films. And, it’s nice to see that "nuance" is still in some dictionaries.