Man of Steel

Man of Steel is a solid 90 minutes of story crammed into 144 minutes of running time. The film begins with a half hour - long prologue telling us just why Ma and Pa El put baby Kal in a spaceship and sent him to Earth (Hey, comparative religion nerds: look up “El” on Wikipedia!), and why General Zod is gonna come and get him. This could've been handled with a three-minute montage.

Fast forward to Kansas, which is populated by jerks, bullies, and fat people. Oh, and the improbably attractive Ma & Pa Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane), who teach Baby Kal, now named Clark, that America is full of jerks and bullies, and that he'd better keep his head down.

Now, I know that each storyteller gets to tell the story he wants, but a Superman who wasn't raised on Truth, Justice, and The American Way is just some bodybuilder in blue long johns.

Back to the story: Clark grows up into Henry Cavill and decides to be in a Christopher Nolan movie, one loaded with deep blues, blacks, and grays (with one exception: the caressing, golden light that seems to envelop him whenever he turns his head). He's afraid of intolerant Americans, so he keeps his head down. But look out: here comes Lois Lane (Amy Adams, lit and photographed by people who don't seem to like her), and she's about to blow his cover!

Great. By now, we're an hour and a half into this movie, nothing interesting is happening, and Superman's still just some bodybuilder shopping for blue long johns.

Eventually, Zod shows up and things get interesting. He brings lots of minions, and Superman fights them all, one by one. This is still an ugly movie with a blue and grey palette, but the super-fights between (our hero? I guess. The movie is named after him and there's all that golden lighting.) Kal and the evil Kryptonians do a wonderful job of showing us what single combat between super-beings might look like. They're incredibly fast. They pack walloping punches. When they throw things, those things have weight and do damage. No kidding – these sequences are spectacular, and they raise the film from two to three stars in my estimation.

And then it ends in a surprising twist on the standard “Hero spares villain, but villain tries one last trick that backfires and kills him, thus satisfying audience bloodlust while leaving heroic consciences unsullied.” It shocked my kids, showed some bravery on the part of the production team, and worked.

But a solid last hour in a two-and-a-half hour movie doesn't cut it. Man of Steel is too long, too ugly, and too dour to make for a good Superman movie. I loved those big fights, but I'm still disappointed.

Recently Seen

I'm in the middle of moving from Florida to Rhode Island, so my writing time's rather limited.  Here are some short notes and redirects concerning the films I've seen recently.

Castaway on the Moon

When he was writing for chud.com, my friend Alex Riviello reviewed Castaway on the Moon. He did so well that, rather than write up a new review of my own, I'll just point you to his. Read it, then queue up the movie. I bet you'll be glad you did.

Sir Arne's Treasure

Ed Gonzales of 'Slant Magazine' wrote a nice piece on Sir Arne's Treasure. The film didn't quite work for me, as I found the pacing arduous. Nevertheless, it's one of the great achievements of early Swedish film; it merits an introduction.

Take Shelter

Take Shelter is a film a bout a good man, a family man, slowly coming apart under the assault of mental illness. I found its subject matter so painful and it's execution so slow that I couldn't make it past the 45-minute mark.

Here's setup: Michael Shannon is a skilled laborer with a house in the country, a committed wife (Jessica Chastain), a daughter, a dog, and the trappings of a respectable, middle class country life. Then the dreams kick in: dreams of disasters to come, of pets turning on their masters, of the world falling apart. He begins to react to these dreams, kicking the dog out of the house and getting to work on the cold-war relic fallout shelter in the back yard. His wife is worried. His friends are worried. He's worried.

And that's about where I hit the eject button. I'm a family man, a few rungs up the socioeconomic ladder from Shannon's character, but definitely on that ladder. I found myself empathizing with Shannon's fears and their consequences too much, such that Take Shelter was a painful, vice entertaining, experience.

Perhaps I'd have stuck with the film had it been a faster-paced.  Take Shelter is meditative, however. The net effect was like watching a slow-motion car wreck involving people who were uncomfortably similar to oneself.

Tigerland

Tigerland is your mark one, mod zero movie about a rebellious military draftee sticking it to The Man.  Unlike Catch-22, which has something to say about the arbitrary nature of life and death or M*A*S*H, which is laugh-out-loud funny, Tigerland only succeeds in showcasing a petulant jerk and trying to make a hero of him.

Colin Farrell plays the jerk, a Vietnam-era draftee trying his best to fail out of infantry school.  He’s amused to find himself in the middle of a “platoon movie,” complete with earnest writer, redneck sociopath, doo-wop group, reluctant hero, and even good- and bad-guy sergeants (As with most platoon movies, Tigerland is actually about a squad.  Platoons consist of 36 people, squads 12.  36 characters are just too many for most films to handle.). He intentionally misses targets on the range.  He sabotages equipment.  He undermines his unit’s training at every opportunity.  Of course, he’s a natural soldier and a brilliant leader and could save lives in country if only he’d apply himself.  I was supposed to root for him.  Instead, I spent the film thinking, “I’m sure glad we don’t have a draft any more.”

See, the problem with a draft is that it forces a military organization to deal with people who don’t want to be there.  It’s hard enough to train, motivate, and discipline volunteers.  Once you have to waste time corralling troublemakers you can’t simply release for fear of opening a floodgate of calculated insubordination, you can’t get that time back for teaching your people they skills they need to survive and execute your mission.

So I never bought into the movie.  I didn’t accept its “screw the Army” ethos.  I didn’t believe in its characters any more than it did (The Reluctant Hero actually says, “What do you think I am, the Reluctant Hero?” I rolled my eyes.).  I spent more time ruminating on the draft than I did caught up in the narrative.  Tigerland just did not work for me.