Kingsman: Secret Service; Creed; The Judge

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Andrew Ting said it best: Kingsman: The Secret Service is an amusing spy romp with an undertone of unsettling nastiness.  I’m still not sure whether that works for me or not.

Creed

Creed made me lose track of time.  Creed made me cry.  Creed didn’t move me in quite the same way as did the superlative Rocky Balboa, but you can’t blame a good movie for not being a great movie.  I’m ready for Creed II.

The Judge

There’s a scene in The Judge in which protagonist Robert Downey, Jr. tries to make an uncomfortable confession.  “This is going to be rough,” he says to himself.

This one line encapsulates my problem with the film.  At this point, I’ve already been watching for over an hour.  I know what he needs to confess, I know to whom he needs to confess it, and I can guess at the very serious consequences this confession will entail.  And yet, The Judge thinks I’m an idiot so it tells me that yes, this confession will be rough. 

This is just one of many ways The Judge thinks I’m an idiot.  It thinks I’m an idiot because it underlines the film with a score designed to inform me, in very clear terms, when to laugh and when to weep.  It thinks I’m an idiot because it’s compelled to show me, again and again, how unimaginably idyllic Indiana really is.  It thinks I’m an idiot because it expects me to believe that absolutely everyone in its protagonist’s life has been stuck in time, like mosquitos in amber, since the day Downey moved away some thirty years before.  [Interlude]Look.  I come from an idyllic small town.  My wife comes from an idyllic small town.  We each moved away from our respective idyllic small towns roughly thirty years ago.  When we return for the occasional visit, we may run into one or two people who remember us and are happy to see us.  But nobody’s accusing us of having run out, of having turned our backs on our roots.  We’re just nice people who moved away to another idyllic town.  Those old friends are happy to see us and chew the fat for a bit, but they’ve moved on.  That’s how life goes. [/Interlude]  It thinks I’m an idiot because it photographs its heroes in the golden light of hagiography, its villains in the harsh blues of villainy.  Basically, it thinks I’m an idiot.

All of which leads me to inquire: what kind of an idiot reads a script that’s basically My CousinVinny with all the jokes torn out and replaced with heavy handed family dynamics, “coming home”
mythology, and uncomfortable incest subplots, and thinks, “Bingo?”

I’m not sure, but I am sure that I’ll be very careful about investing the time to see said idiots’ next film.  I know they didn’t mean to crash the car, but that doesn’t mean I need to be in a hurry to climb back in.

Avengers: The Age of Ultron

It’s probably not a good sign when you’re sitting in Avengers: Age of Ultron and thinking, “Y’know what was a really good Marvel movie?  Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Where’s Robert Redford when you need him?”

Some background: I took my two older boys, ages 15 & 8, to see this movie.  I really wanted to see Mad Max: Fury Road, but fatherhood isn’t about getting what you want.  So, there we sat, popcorn and soda in hand, ready for some Whedon-y goodness.

[On further reflection, it probably wasn’t a good idea to let my 8-yr-old get the medium root beer, which would be a large in any sane world and contained roughly a metric ton of corn syrup.  After about fifteen minutes, he started to squirm, after 30, he was all over the place.  In thirty minute intervals thereafter, he left the (mostly empty) theater to run to the bathroom – probably more for the running than the actual bathroom.]

In the story, Tony Stark is basically Victor Frankenstein and the android Ultron his mad creation.  Unlike Frankenstein, Ultron doesn’t start out innocent and misunderstood.  It starts out evil, a fanatic who sees mass murder as a perfectly acceptable expedient enroute to utopia.  
And then there’s a lot of punching, plus a guy with a bow and arrow saying, “What am I doing here?  I’m just a guy with a bow and arrow!”  And people get hurt, and innocents get killed, and there’s a lot of angst, and it’s all so miserable that I thought I was in a DC movie.  In fact, it’s so miserable that, at the end of the movie, several characters just quit the team.  

Don’t get me wrong: the effects are great, the leads are likeable, and Linda Cardellini and Paul Bettany both shine in supporting roles.  But after two and a half hours, I wanted a little less recycled Shelly and little more Spider-Man learning to swing, or Star Lord disco-ing through space-ruins, or Robert Redford opening his fridge to find a bottle of Newman’s Own salad dressing on the top shelf.  I wanted some fun.  I wanted some laughs.  I wanted some moustache-twirling.  All I got were meditations on mortality, morality, and the use of denouments as leveraging tools in contract negotiations.

But, hey, my boys liked it.  As for me, I am honestly beginning to suspect that I’m getting too old for this stuff.

Chef

Funny and kind, Chef is a feel-good movie that sent me home with a smile on my face.

In the film, John Favreau plays a workaholic chef. He's divorced. He doesn't spend enough time with his son. He works for a restaurateur who's a businessman first and an epicurean second. He's miserable. When he loses his job and must start anew with a dilapidated food truck, things seem about as bad as they can get.

And then he remembers how much he loves cooking good food for people who appreciate it. Oh, and he bonds with his son, finds happiness, and so forth (That last sentence isn't a spoiler unless you've never been to the movies before.).

Think of Chef as cinematic comfort food, the motion picture equivalent of a grilled-cheese sandwich. Now, a grilled-cheese sandwich can be Velveeta on Wonder Bread hot off the Foreman Grill, or it can be a carefully chosen mix of cheeses on fresh-baked bread and grilled -just so- on a hot skittle with hand-drawn butter. Chef is the latter. It's genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny not just in its acting, but in its composition and editing. It boasts characters of depth and heart, people you'd be happy to call your friends. It photographs food and the process of its preparation with delight. It's just a joy, and it's putting a smile on my face even now, as I write about it days later.

See Chef and be happy.

Recently Seen - 4JUL13

I expect to return to writing more thorough reviews when I go back to the airline in the spring.  'Til then, here's another brief rundown of what I've been watching.

Iron Man 3

Much better than the series' second installment, Iron Man 3 features clever dialogue and unexpectedly wonderful turn by Ben Kingsley, whom I thought was taking an easy paycheck until I actually saw the film.

Lockout

Guy Pearce as Kurt Russell in Escape from Space.  That's actually pretty high praise.

Life of Pi

The best movie I've seen in some time, Life of Pi manages not only to film an unfilmable novel, but to create something magical of its own.  I wish I'd seen this one on the big screen in 3D.

Hour of the Gun

A fine telling of the Wyatt Earp Story.  Picking up moments before the gunfight at the OK Corral, it offers James Garner and Jason Robards as as fine a Wyatt & Doc as you'll ever see.

Jazz on a Summer's Day

I live in Newport.  I love jazz.  I fell asleep during this film.

World War Z

Despite a few extraordinary sequences, this film suffers from inexplicably slow pacing.  Recommended only for zombie completists.

The Visitor

A fine, carefully crafted film featuring a remarkable performance from star Richard Jenkins.  Well worth your time.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows amounts to 129 minutes of missing Steven Moffat, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Martin Freeman.  Where the BBC’s brilliant “Sherlock” series of telefilms offers puzzling plots, delightful verbal interplay, and a sly (and often ribald) sense of humor, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is mostly just loud.  Where “Sherlock” gives us Moriarty as a comic, twisted genius, Game of Shadows lazily offers us Moriarty as just another Bond villain.  Where “Sherlock”’s unique visual style amuses and intrigues us, Game of Shadows only makes us wonder exactly how much cocaine director Guy Ritchie blew through while shooting and editing this film.

Here’s the story: it’s about a year since the events of the first film, Sherlock Holmes.  Holmes and Watson reunite to bring the nefarious Professor Moriarty to justice after the villain tries to have Dr. & Mrs. Watson killed for no apparent reason.  Lots of stuff blows up.  Noomi Rapace appears because she was hot after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire and it seems like a good career move.  More stuff blows up, there are some fistfights, and a bunch of people get shot, all in slow motion.  The Bond villain reveals his Bond villainesque plan, and his henchman reveals a disappointing lack of sterling silver dental work.  More ‘splosions and fights and shooting, and even more slo-mo.  We reflect that Robert Downey, Jr. doesn’t look remotely like an otter.  The film draws to an utterly unsurprising conclusion.  The End.  Next.

Hey, kudos to Guy Ritchie for (a) achieving his unique and singular vision, and (b) finding a studio to underwrite his coke habit.  But Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows just isn’t much fun.  It needs more wit.  It needs more style.  Aww, the heck with it: it needs Moffat, Cumberbatch, and Freeman.  They own the franchise now. 

The Avengers

I suspect that The Avengers is pretty much the best movie about The Avengers that it’s possible to make.  Consider this:

·      There are several Avengers, all of whom we should care about.

·      They need something to avenge, something that we in the audience feel needs avenging.  The audience needs to cry.  Then, it needs to get mad.

·      People liked Iron Man more than they liked The Hulk.  Message: make ‘em laugh; don’t make ‘em think.

·      Lots of stuff had better blow up real good.

Now, consider the following:

·      Joss Whedon is really, really good at screenwriting and directing.  His resume demonstrates an ablity to craft fully realized worlds, populate them with diverse and engaging characters, and give those characters interesting (and funny) things to say.

·      He’s not afraid to blow stuff up real good.

So, Item One: so many Avengers, so little time.  Whedon addresses this by taking characters who had been in bad movies (Captain America, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2) and cutting those film’s weaknesses.  Consequently, he capitalizes on their strengths.  Here’s a rundown:

Robert Downey, Jr.’s comic timing is Iron Man’s whole appeal.  Too much of it, however, and you want him to just shut up already.  The Avengers uses him enough to satisfy the audience’s thirst for its favorite player, but not so much that they hope for Sam Rockwell to show up and give ‘em a break.

Thor’s problem was that the whole movie was about two things: Thor’s magical transformation from dick to hero through the power of Natalie Portman’s smile, and Loki’s descent from someone who, reasonably enough, doesn’t like the dickish Thor to full-blown villain.  Here, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor begins the film understanding justice and humility while Tom Hiddleston’s Loki radiates gleeful malevolence.  Now, I’ve got a good guy I can root for and a bad guy I can boo. 

Edward Norton is a brilliant actor, no doubt about it.  But his Bruce Banner was just plain boring.  Eric Bana’s version, on the other hand, was masterful; but everybody (except for me) hated that movie.  Whedon’s solution?  Assume his audience already knows Banner’s back story and give us a whole new guy to play the character.  Mark Ruffalo plays Banner not as a rope about to snap, but as a decent guy with issues – a guy who can tell a joke.  We sympathized with Norton and Bana, but we like Ruffalo.

Captain America suffered from being just another origin story.  Its villains, extra-evil Nazis calling themselves Hydra, were an insult to every self-respecting actual evil Nazi still hiding out in Argentina.  I mean, c’mon!  How do you top real, historic Nazis for evil?  And Illinois Nazis don’t count.  Further, if you’re Captain America and you’ve already beaten the Nazis, where are you going to go next?  That’s why Loki’s the perfect foil: he’s the villain of Norse mythology, one of the touchstones of German National Socialism.  Further, Whedon leverages the fact that Chris Evans’s Captain America is an actual Army captain, schooled in small unit tactics and experienced in leading capable people under stressful conditions.  Throw in some fish-out-water material (he had to get the character to 2012 somehow), and you are maximizing the potential of this character.

There are other Avengers, like Scarlett Johansson, whom we like because she’s Scarlett Johansson, and Jeremy Renner, whom we like because we remember The Hurt Locker.  And you know what?  It all works.  Whedon takes the best, most entertaining aspects of his characters, cuts the fat, and gives us concurrent arcs in which we can believe.  Success!

Item Two:  Whedon does give them something to avenge, and it works on a personal level.  This isn’t, “Hey, you wiped out a Dunkin’ Donuts, and now we’re really mad.”  It’s, “You have gone too far, and this shall not stand.”  Going in to the details would spoil the film, I think.  But I’m comfortable telling you that Whedon surprised me, saddened me, angered me, and made me hungry for revenge.

Item Three:  The Avengers is funny.  I laughed out loud more often than I did at Bridesmaids.

Item Four:  Lots of stuff does, in fact, blow up real good.

So, there’s all that.  There’s plenty that didn’t work for me, as well.  The “Let’s fight before we team up” stage went on a little long.  I’m convinced that Tony Stark’s true nature is that of an amusingly selfish jerk, sentencing us to film after film in which he learns to not be such a jerk, only so that he can forget those lessons in time for the next outing.  I never have been able to get past the fact that a hovering aircraft carrier is a profoundly stupid idea.  But that’s ok.  By taking the best of the films that preceded it, The Avengers crafts an exciting, spectacular, fun time at the movies.

Movies like this are what popcorn is made for.  Or shawarma.  Whatever.

Iron Man 2

IRON MAN 2 is a great, great movie.  That is, if you love reading Popular Mechanics.  Because if there’s one thing IRON MAN 2 delights in showing us, it’s long sequences of guys welding.  And dragging cables.  And doing, y’know, Metal Shop stuff.

Me, I don’t read Popular Mechanics.  I never took Metal Shop.  Long stretches of IRON MAN 2 bored me out of my mind. 

That’s not to say that Robert Downey, Jr. isn’t fantastic in what will become his signature role.  Or that Scarlett Johansson (as a superduperspy) doesn’t look great in a catsuit.  It doesn’t even mean that stuff doesn’t blow up real good.  It just means that I didn’t care.

I didn’t care about Iron Man’s big fight with his best friend (a role demanding far less gravitas than The Great Don Cheadle brought to bear).  I didn’t care about the Big Villain’s boring revenge story.  And I certainly didn’t care about the intricacies of corporate reorganization.

By the time the Big Villain, who wasn’t nearly as interesting as the Little Villain, unleashed his evil plan, I’d grown so worn out with pseudo-physics, quasi-engineering bull$#!^ that I could only marvel that this film failed to learn the basic lesson of the Star Wars prequels.  To wit, fighting robots are dull.  Their destruction carries no emotional heft, because they’re things.  You might as well have given me twenty minutes of Iron Man unplugging refrigerators.

For all that, however, IRON MAN 2 does offer something to make it worth seeing.  It’s not on the posters and it’s not in the ads, however: it’s a secret weapon named Sam Rockwell, upon whom I now formally grant Can Do No Wrong status.  Rockwell plays the Little Villain, the CEO of Stark Corporation’s primary competitor in the weapons business.  His name is Justin Hammer, and he’s a weasely, sniveling wannabe Tony Stark who absolutely steals every second he’s on screen.  Let me say that again:  Sam Rockwell (CDNW) steals the screen from Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and The Great Don Cheadle.  I didn’t think anyone could upstage any of these actors; but Rockwell’s Justin Hammer is so deliciously slimy, so wily yet such a doofus, that he runs away with this movie.  After GALAXY QUEST, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, CHOKE, MOON, and now IRON MAN 2, I can safely assert that Sam Rockwell has arrived.  This actor, truly, can do no wrong.

So, yeah, IRON MAN 2 has a whole lot working against it.  But its bright spot is very, very bright.  If they make another film in this series, I hope they call it JUSTIN HAMMER.

Sherlock Holmes

I never believed that Robert Downey, Jr. was Sherlock Holmes. I never believed that Jude Law was Dr. Watson. I never believed that Rachel McAdams was anyone other than Rachel McAdams. I never believed. I never believed. I never believed.

Perhaps the movie was spoiled by the previews that came before it. Seeing Robert Downey, Jr. doing his shtick as Iron Man made me realize that the guy’s been playing the same character since the superlative KISS KISS BANG BANG. By the time he came onscreen in the feature, I was already done with him.

Perhaps it was spoiled by its seeming love for Victorian London, surely one of the most depressing combinations of city and era in history. As the film went from one CGI vista to the next, I sensed that it was trying to wow me, or at least draw me in. Instead, I merely thought, “The English exploited the world merely to fund that $#!^hole?”

Perhaps its casting choices killed it. McAdams is roughly ten years too young to be her character. Mark Strong, as the villain, is so much better than everyone else that he made me wonder why he isn’t starring in major motion pictures. And the leads, well, they are who they are and they play who they are.

Then again, the problem may have been the story. There’s all this business about an ominous raven, which we know (since this is a Holmes story) is just so much jerking us around. The pièce de résistance of the villain’s evil scheme is to bring the US back into the empire. Oh, the horror! Soccer! Fish and chips! “Spaced,” “Fawlty Towers,” and “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts”! Give me a break. By the time the movie gets around to flat-out ripping off The Da Vinci Code, I was through.

My wife, on the other hand, enjoyed the heck out of it.  Then again, she'd happily watch Robert Downey, Jr. fold socks, so your mileage may vary. I wanted to like SHERLOCK HOLMES. I was ready to invest in SHERLOCK HOLMES. But I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief.

Tropic Thunder

I didn't so much as smile at any point in TROPIC THUNDER's run time. The whole enterprise felt like a labored, inside baseball comedy for the kind of people who laugh really hard at blooper reels. At no time did I feel like any of the characters were, on any level, actual people, and the child actor who played the villain was such a one-note performer that I found him to be quite distracting.

This film, a film that appeared to want to deflate vanities, felt like a vanity project. I don't ever need to see it again.

Iron Man

There’s a sequence in IRON MAN in which protagonist Tony Stark builds and tests his Mk II fighting suit. It’s 5-10 minutes of a guy turning a screwdriver, doing some tests, and turning a screwdriver some more. The sequence requires an actor of exceptional magnetism and charisma to pull it off, and there are only two contemporary mainstream leading men who could do it.

Which is why I think it was written into the movie after Robert Downey, Jr. signed on.

I’ve been in Downey’s camp since CHAPLIN. The guy has had his ups and downs, but he seems to have hit his stride somewhere around KISS KISS, BANG BANG (touched upon here). In IRON MAN, the guy is so charismatic, so much fun to watch, that we love him when he’s a shallow billionaire and we love him when he gets a conscience. I think it’s because Downey has so much fun with the role, and director Jon Favreau lets him run.

Downey couldn’t cut loose without a strong supporting cast to keep the picture grounded. Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Terrence Howard are every bit as good as you’d expect and, heroes or villains, they keep us believing in what’s transpiring onscreen. By the time IRON MAN becomes a third-act CGI slugfest, I’m sufficiently involved in its world that I forget I’m watching pixels and hearing foley – these are real people onscreen, and I care about what happens to them.

Superhero movies are hard to do. Just ask the people behind KRRISH. But Jon Favreau really nails it with IRON MAN. I can’t wait for the sequel.

Zodiac

ZODIAC is a terrific film, once you get past the fact that it isn't about Zodiac.

Director David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, Panic Room) gives the movie a completely absorbing feel, beginning with '60s -era Paramount and Warner Brothers production logos. He casts it with a veritable all-star roster of character actors (Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, Phillip Baker Hall - hey, where's Jim Beaver?) and stars with the hearts of character actors (Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr.). He shocks us early with the violence of the Zodiac murders, and then pulls back into one of the most interesting takes on the procedural I've ever seen.

I walked into this movie thinking it would be, essentially, Jake Gyllenhaal and the Quest for the Zodiac. Fincher fools us into
believing that would be the case; but he takes long detours into the life of Inspector David Toschi (Ruffalo), a then-famous member of the SFPD who served as the models for both Bullitt and Dirty Harry; and shorter ones into the life of Paul Avery (Downey, turning in another in a long list of memorable performances). Gyllenhall's the obsessive, the guy who's fascinated by the Zodiac killings and just can't let it go, at the expense of his relationship with his wife and children. Toschi's the professional, the guy who does this for a living and, for all his notoriety, comes across as the most balanced individual in the entire enterprise. Downey, well, he's a shipwreck waiting for a shoal, and Zodiac provides that shoal as he lets his own
fascination with the case drag him down.

Most procedurals are about the details of hunting down a given criminal, normally culminating in a car chase or a shootout. This procedural is about those same details, but it's also about the nature of obsession. The main characters deal with it in different ways, and the film itself does a wonderful job letting us dip a vicarious toe into that whirlpool, ourselves. It works - by the third act, I was so thoroughly hooked that I lost track of my surroundings and nearly missed my Metro stop.

After seeing a string of kids' movies and foreign pictures, I was ready for a modern American drama. ZODIAC delivered.

A Scanner Darkly

I didn't read the book, and I'm not much of a Keanu fan, but I rented A SCANNER DARKLY because I respect Linklater and I wanted to see rotoscoping in action.

I now have no desire to read the book, I'm still still not much of a Keanu fan, and I think rotoscoping is pretty cool. So, there's that.

See, here's the problem: A SCANNER DARKLY tells the story of a bunch of people I don't care about, living in conditions I don't care to visit even in my imagination, behaving with varying degrees of despicability. The rotoscoping process makes the proceedings more interesting and gives Linklater the ability to create characters and make visuals pop in a way live action can't, but I couldn't get around the fact that I didn't want to be around these people.

I still do respect Linklater, however. He's doing difficult, innovative things with his medium. Clearly, these characters and situations spoke to him in some way. Had they done the same for me, I might have enjoyed the ride.