RED 2; Oblivion

RED 2

I enjoyed RED, the movie about Dame Helen Mirren machine-gunning baddies while wearing a slinky white evening gown.

RED 2 is more of the same, but it suffers from its lack of novelty. There are new baddies and a new evening gown, but the entire film basically exists to showcase older actors shooting younger ones while tossing off one-liners that make us worry more for their mental health than their physical safety. It's still fun, but it's not much of a surprise this time around. You may want to give this one a pass.

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Oblivion

Oblivion is a beautifully crafted, high-concept sci-fi action picture – the kind of thing I usually go for.

In the film, Tom Cruise plays a drone repairman in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. By night, he lives in a beautiful, modern outpost. By day, he braves the wilderness to find downed (alien-hunting) drones, fix them, and sic them on any Morlock-like aliens they should happen to find.

And away we go. As I said, I enjoy this kind of thing. And I enjoyed it well enough, but something about it seemed rote. Cruise ran away from an explosion. Cruise was forced to choose between improbably beautiful, age-inappropriate women. Cruise saved the world and earned a respectful head-nod from a reluctant ally. You know – the usual. The big concept was the metaphor for American drone wars in a part of the world that's basically a pre-industrial hellscape. And that was it.

I'm not saying that Oblivion was bad. Generally speaking, Tom Cruise doesn't make bad movies. It just seemed limp, uninspired. If you're in the mood for a Tom Cruise science fiction film, go see Edge of Tomorrow again. Now, that's a movie!

Short Takes: December 20th, 2013

Monsters University

I loved Monsters University.  It's delightful, funny, beautiful to look at, and heartwarming. It captivated my family, which ranges in age from 7 to 45, and it's the first prequel I've seen in a very long time that doesn't feel like it's just putting the pieces in place for the movie that inspired it.

The Iron Lady

This just in: Meryl Streep is really good at acting. I spent the 90 or so minutes of The Iron Lady feeling like Margaret Thatcher was in the room with me.

Unfortunately, it seemed like she was there only to show me a "greatest hits” reel of her life. The Iron Lady skips along Thatcher's biography like it's in a hurry to get to the end, when I'd have appreciated a deeper examination of one particularly illuminating period of her life. The Iron Lady and the Miner's Strike, for example, or The Iron Lady and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As it was, The Iron Lady gave me a sense of who Thatcher was, but it really didn't tell me how she ticked. That's a film I'd have found much more engrossing.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a perfect movie. It's well-shot, elegantly constructed, finely performed, and satisfying on every level.

It's so well shot that it'd benefit from a scene-by-scene analysis of its use of framing, lighting, and depth of field to tell its story and illuminate its characters. It's so elegantly constructed that every element of the script fits together like an elegant watch. It's so finely performed that you'll believe in the heroes right down to your boots, and you'll come away hating Lee Marvin so much that you'll actually have trouble rooting for him in films where he's the hero. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance works, and it works in every way. If you love movies, you need to see this one.

Looper

Looper is basically The Terminator, with Bruce Willis playing the T-1000, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Kyle Reese, and the wonderful Emily Blunt as Sarah Connor. Looper's twist is that the T-1000 is a later version of Reese.

I'm ok with that. It's a good formula, and Looper executes it well. Bruce Willis is as convincing an action star as ever, the multitalented Gordon-Levitt excels at putting a human face on the most despicable of characters, and I don't think Emily Blunt has ever been bad in anything. Rian Johnson's writing is clever as always, and Looper is a good time at the movies.

Short Takes

Headhunters

This Norwegian thriller pits an full-time corporate recruiter and part-time art thief against a very angry and implacable would-be victim, Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.  It's taught, surprising, and altogether effective - this movie literally had me on the edge of my seat.

The Dictator

There's a comic bit in Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator involving a severed head, a henchman with rather vague loyalties, and remarkably bad taste.  A masterpiece of timing, the bit took me from incredulous disgust to full-throated laughter to intellectual admiration, all in the stretch of about five minutes.  If I lost you at "severed head," so will the movie.  If I piqued your interest, invest ten minutes: that's all you need to decide whether this film is for you.

Moonrise Kingdom

This seems like the film for which the word "charming" was invented.  Moonrise Kingdom is about basically good people trying to behave basically well, and I found myself rooting for everyone.  The production design is pleasingly eye-catching, the locales beautiful (this one was filmed near my current home in Newport, RI), and the story engaging.  I loved it.

The Expendables 2

The Expendables 2: better than the first, with better action choreography and a more comprehensible sense of the battlespace. Filled with 'splosions, gunfire, and bad jokes, this movie won me over when it devoted a good five minutes to what was essentially one long Chuck Norris joke, punctuated by Chuck Norris telling an actual Chuck Norris joke.

Red

RED is a silly, ultraviolent, pulpy action picture that features Dame Helen Mirren in a slinky white evening gown.

I know.  I had you at “Dame Helen Mirren in a slinky white evening gown.”  Now, try this on: “Dame Helen Mirren in a slinky white evening gown, wielding a machine gun.”

Woof.

Here’s the story: Bruce Willis is a retired CIA covert ops guy.  For reasons that will be revealed later, the CIA decides that he and his buddies all need to die, and quickly.  Well, as we’ve learned in The Losers, The Expendables, and The A Team, it’s always a bad idea to try to kill off covert ops guys – they can kill back.

So what?  What differentiates this from the other three “superduper commando teams solve the mystery and kill a bunch of people” movies that came out last year?

Um.  Helen Mirren.  Slinky white evening gown.  Machine gun.

Ok, there’s more to RED than Dame Helen Mirren mowing down hostiles while clothed in a slinky white evening gown.  Bruce Willis is a natural movie star who’s just plain fun to watch.  His team is made entirely of outstanding actors: Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, even James Remar and Mary-Louise Parker.  We also get the Great Ernest Borgnine in a crucial supporting role and Karl Urban and Richard Dreyfuss as villains.  We’re talking about serious wattage here: these people know how to own a movie screen.

And it works.  All that charisma carries RED’s wafer-thin story for a solid hour and a half of gunfire, ‘splosions, and a brand of carefree murder so blasé that we cease to think of the targets as characters and see them as the stuntmen they are.  Red turns out to be silly, fun, anarchic, and a great time at the movies.

I just wish I’d seen it on the big screen.

Live Free or Die Hard

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD is the best "Die Hard" movie since the original.

Yeah, I read all the bellyaching about this being "Die Hard in Name Only." Y'know what? I don't care. I don't care about the sanctity of the John McLane character. I don't care about the formulae used in previous outings. Just tell me a story. And while you're at it, blow some stuff up.

LIVE FREE tells me a story. And it blows lots of stuff up. The scenario is actually one that folks in government worry about a lot: an orchestrated cyber attack on the US that locks up our transportation, shuts down our financial networks, and eliminates communication. Granted, LIVE FREE embellishes the magnititude and drama of such a scenario, but it also features a guy shooting down a helicopter with a car. Not in a car - with a car. So that more than makes up for it. While this is happening, McClane must "get the guy to the place," a reliable quest formula well in keeping with storytelling tradition. Speaking of storytelling traditions, this film departs from previous "Die Hard" movies in that John McLean has gone from the modernist, vulnerable American hero model to the near-invincible Northern European version. He's Beowulf with male pattern baldness, and that's ok. Did I mention that he shoots down another helicopter with hydrant water? There's also some stuff in there about reconciling with his daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, an actress with a long career ahead of her) and helping the Guy He's Got to Get to the Place find his inner hero. Oh, and he leaps from a collapsing structure onto a moving Joint Strike Fighter and essentially surfs the thing all the way to the deck. Awesome.

LIVE FREE seamlessly combines CGI with practical stunts. It has well-choreographed fights and action set-pieces. Justin Long does his schtick, but it hasn't worn out yet. Timothy Olyphant, while no Alan Rickman, makes for a fine villain. The whole zips right along, and, even at 130 minutes, I never once looked at my watch. If you like stuff blowing up real good, and you like the Northern European heroic tradition, and you like the idea of a guy finishing off a deadly villain by crashing an SUV into her in a an elevator shaft, this movie is for you.

It was for me.

Planet Terror

PLANET TERROR, Robert Rodriguez’s half of the GRINDHOUSE experiment, opens with a trailer for a Danny Trejo vehicle called MACHETE. Pay no attention to the fact that there is no actual Danny Trego vehicle named MACHETE. The trailer is enough, and the trailer alone makes PLANET TERROR worth watching. What about the feature? Well, I can tell you everything you need to know about the feature by asking you how you reacted to the posters and trailer for the film. If the image of a woman in a miniskirt with a machine gun / rocket launcher / flamethrower prosthetic leg doesn’t work for you, then PLANET TERROR has nothing to offer. If, however, that’s enough to get you to queue it up, then stand by.

You gotcher zombies. You gotcher sexy nurses. You gotcher gunplay. You gotcher Monster Bruce Willis. Hell, you even gotcher Michael Biehn. If that isn’t enough to satisfy your moviegoing jones, what the hell were you doing renting a movie whose cover featured a woman in a miniskirt with a machine gun / rocket launcher / flamethrower prosthetic leg, anyway?

So, PLANET TERROR. It is what it is, and it’s a whole lotta fun. Try it with barbecue.