Loose Ends

Man, this whole "job and family thing really gets in the way of blogging.  Here are some short observations about what's been on my screen.

22 Jump  Street 

Don’t make my mistake.  Do not watch 22 Jump Street in a public, yet quiet, place.  I watched it while riding as a passenger in an airplane, and I spent roughly 90 minutes biting my knuckles to keep from guffawing.

This is my kind of comedy.  It’s clever, it’s packed with gags that hit us in rapid succession, and it even blows up a car.  Really, what more could you possibly want?

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Eh.  I’m getting too old for this $#!^.

Noah

Noah drags through its first act, then turns on the juice once the rain starts falling.  If you can get past the fact that everyone’s Caucasian and has British accents, then it’s easy to accept lava monsters and ancient industrialized civilizations.  Soon, you can immerse yourself in Aronofsky’s tale of justice and mercy, prophecy and insanity.  Just don’t make it the last film you see on a 9.5 hour flight.  This is not a movie to see when you're punchy.

Cats & Dogs

What a delightful film.  I’ve seen it, with my kids, I don’t know how many times.  It just never gets old.  

Ted

Ted is a hilarious 10-minute sketch crammed into an excruciating 106-minute movie.

Here's the sketch: a lonely boy wishes that his teddy bear would come to life and be his best friend forever. The wish comes true and the boy and his bear grow into two lazy, irresponsible, couch-bound weed monkeys. The bear says and does lots of vulgar stuff, which is funny coming from a teddy bear. That's about it.

This makes for an amusing first act. Mark Wahlberg is game for just about anything as the grown-up slacker, and the animators who created the bear do phenomenal work. The joke wears thin by the second act, however. By the third, we're checking our watches and wondering if we have any socks that need folding.

What's bad about it? First, Wahlberg is horribly miscast as the aforementioned couch-bound weed monkey. While he's a fine actor who's willing to work for a laugh, the fact is that he looks like a bodybuilder. I submit that it's impossible to be both a lazy, irresponsible, couch-bound weed monkey and a bodybuilder. Bodybuilding requires dedication, discipline, and a work ethic. Every time the movie showed me Wahlberg's character sprawled out on the couch, with a beer to one hand and a bong to the other, all I could think was, “Shenanigans. This guy looks like he spends his time drinking protein shakes and doing hammer curls. I'm just not buying it.”

And the love interest? I felt actively sorry for Mila Kunis in this picture. Not only was she trying to play a character wholly in love with an unlovable man, she looked so thin that I wanted to shout, “Hey, Wahlberg, how about sharing one of your protein shakes with this poor woman? She looks like she's about to collapse!”

The score is boring. The cinematography is boring. The direction is lackluster. While watching this film, I felt that I was making a conscious choice to fritter away my precious time on this earth. Yes, I laughed during the first act, and I think Ted's premise would make for a terrific “Funny or Die” short. But as a feature film? Ted is worse than bad: it's boring. I feel cheap just for taking the time to write about it.

Hamlet

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love Shakespeare, and those have not been properly introduced.

If you fall into the latter category, you may not enjoy the 2009 RSC Hamlet, starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.  As a TV film of a stage production, it’s well, stagey.  The 1990 Zeffirelli Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, is much more cinematic and, in my opinion, a better introduction to the play for non-aficionados  (I love Kenneth Branagh.  I really do.  But his 1996 film struck me as bloated and flat.).

If you’re a member of the former category, however, you’ll love this Hamlet.  The staginess won’t put you off, and you’ll home in on the quality of the direction and performances.  You’ll find that David Tennant, who found fame playing the eponymous Doctor for four seasons of the BBC’s hit show ‘Doctor Who,’ is an actor gifted with range as well as charisma.  He goes big with his Hamlet, and that “bigness” sets off the intimacy of the soliloquies.  Patrick Stewart, as Claudius, demonstrates how even the subtlest of gestures or tics can illuminate a character and generate sympathy in unexpected ways.  With the same motion, he can show us why Gertrude loves him and Hamlet hates him, and he can make us do a little of both.

This production’s biggest surprise, however, is Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius.  Davies, who earned the undying enmity of all people everywhere by appearing in not one, but all three, of the Star Wars prequels (Sio Bibble, governor of Naboo.  Hey, everyone has bills to pay.), steals every scene he’s in.  His Polonius is smart, funny, wily, and beginning to succumb to senility.  His dialogue drips off his tongue just so, and we in the audience light up every time he enters the frame.  In fact, I’d say his is a definitive Polonius: someone worth trusting, worth obeying, worth avenging.

So, there you have it.  Outstanding performances, reasonably well shot in an RSC-for-tv kind of way, and as good as any Hamlet you’re likely to see.  This Hamlet is a winner.

Short Takes

Here are some short responses to some of the films I've managed to see over the last couple of weeks:

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

I’ve never cared about Marilyn Monroe one way or another.  Sure, I enjoyed Some Like it Hot as much as the next guy, but she never lit my fuse like, say, Barbara Stanwyck does.

That said, My Week with Marilyn made me care about Marilyn Monroe quite a lot.  The story reminds one of My Favorite Year: a show-business neophyte befriends a star, to mutual benefit.  Michelle Williams plays Marilyn in the full flower of her stardom, every bit as dazzling and insecure as history remembers her.  Lawrence Olivier (the brilliant Kenneth Branagh) has hired her to come to England to film a movie, and she’s so intimidated she can barely function.  Enter Colin Clarke, the neophyte and audience surrogate, who finds himself in the Star’s confidence.  

Soon enough, I was in.  Through Clarke’s eyes, I came to see Marilyn as an impossibly tough, delicate, and ultimately inscrutable woman entirely worthy of fascination.  So much did this film pique my interest, I’m queuing up the Olivier/Monroe pairing The Prince and the Showgirl.  I want to spend more time with Marilyn.

THE MUPPETS

Hey, you.  Yeah: you.  You like big production numbers?  Silly jokes?  Evil villains?  Boom: here you go, then.  The Muppets is for you.

Here’s the story: Jason Segel and Amy Adams help the Muppets reunite and put on a show.  That’s it.  Have at it.

So, enough about The Muppets.  Let’s talk about Amy Adams.  If ever an actress could lay claim the to the title, “The Next Julie Andrews,” it’s her.  She can sing.  She can dance.  She can act.  She can do all three at the same time, and do them well.  In fact, I’m kind of sorry that she was born too late for the era of the Great Hollywood Musical.  Given the right material, she could have passed in to legend, like Andrews.  She’s young, still, and she has plenty of time.  I loved watching her in The Muppets, I think she’s the real deal, and I hope someone out there is building a musical around her. 

I’d be there.  Opening day.

THE DESCENDANTS

 

The Descendants is one of those films that takes a basically likeable guy, piles a ton of manure on his head, and observes.  George Clooney (CDNW) plays the guy, nearly everyone else plays pilers, and we observe. 

The result?  A rich and rewarding character study of a man going through the hardest period of his life, told with tenderness and care.  The Descendants is worth your time.

BRIDESMAIDS

Bridesmaids revels in the comedy of the uncomfortable.  I found it so writhingly uncomfortable that I couldn’t wait for it to end.

ATTACK THE BLOCK

Attack The Block introduces us to a gang of young thugs in training, exposes them to an alien menace, and tries to get us to root for the thugs as they battle monsters.

I never could bring myself to care about the thugs.  Thus, I felt no tension.  Many of my friends laud this film as an innovative monster movie with a nifty hook, but to me it was just another chore.  Pass.

THE CAPTAINS

William Shatner is a terrific interviewer.  He’s so blithely self-absorbed that he puts his subjects at ease, comfortable in the knowledge that all they need to do for the next hour or so is sit back and hit the softballs he tosses between monologues.  And then they’ll inadvertently say something genuine, reveal a doubt or a weakness, and whammo!  He homes in, relentlessly questioning until he gets at its kernel, and we learn something.

In The Captains, Shatner interviews the actors who’ve played the Captain roles in the five Star Trek TV series, as well as the one who played Kirk in the newest movie.  Of the group, Avery Brooks is the most slippery and Chris Pine the least reflective (I’m not saying he’s callow or dumb, just that he’s not yet at that stage of his life path.).  They come across as a smart bunch, they know how to tell good stories, and Shatner really gets it out of them.

If you love Star Trek or if, like me, you’ve outgrown it but still love the idea of Star Trek, you’ll love The Captains.  As for me, I understand that William Shatner has an interview show on basic cable somewhere.  I’m going to look it up.  The man is really good at this.

Chicken Little

If CHICKEN LITTLE is set in middle America, why does the dad speak with a thick Brooklyn accent? The film establishes that said dad went to the same high school as the eponymous chicken, so ya think the accent might have dulled a bit around the edges, ya know? And here's another question: if you're Disney and you're making a decidedly average movie, do you really want to start it with references to THE LION KING and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK? Those are some pretty challenging points of reference you're putting out there.

Welcome to my inner monologue as I sit on the couch and watch CHICKEN LITTLE with my seven-year-old, who thinks it's hilarious.

Well, I'm not seven, and this movie had nothing to offer me. It had all the subtlety of a 2x4 to the nose, its music was forgettable, and its characterizations were the epitome of "meh." Am I saying that CHICKEN LITTLE is a bad movie? No, not really. I'm just saying that it's remarkably average. Sure, spend an hour and a half on the couch with it and your kids. But bring a magazine.

TMNT

TMNT is too busy to bother with a proper title: an acronym will have to do. Unfortunately, it's also too busy to develop backstory, flesh out characters, or bother to entertain anyone over the age of ten. The result is a horrifically dull action-adventure that will serve the dual temporal purpose of speeding time up for the young 'uns and dragging it out for any parents unlucky enough to wander into this movie.

Here's the setup: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have broken up. Paradoxically, Leonardo has gone off to Central America to learn leadership by working alone. Raphael has stayed home in New York, where he also fights crime alone, but this is somehow bad because, well, the never really explains. The other two, whose names I forget, have regular jobs, and all this is, somehow, very, very bad. When Leonardo returns, he essentially has to get the band back together so they can do battle with (a) a band of Ninja that are led by a white woman with a Chinese accent, (b) a bunch of monsters, (c) the reanimated statues of ancient warriors, and (d) a guy whom I assume to be Tiglath-Pileser I.

This could be fun, except for three movie-killing errors. First, TMNT never sets up the turtles properly. It assumes that its audience is already vested in their unity and well-being, which I was not. Consequently, I found the first act to be plodding and dull - this was the character stuff, and I didn't care about the characters. Things picked up a bit in the second act and actually got interesting for a few minutes near the end, but the climax suffered from the next error: computer-generated martial arts fight scenes just aren't interesting. It's fun to watch stuntmen fight, in the same way it's fun to watch dancers perform. But who wants to sit around and watch a CGI Swan Lake? Lastly, the film's third error laid in its choice of aesthetic: the women are so wasp-waisted that their girdles must make breathing impossible. The men are so top-heavy that they shouldn't be able to balance on two legs. And the world is just not interesting. Sorry. It just isn't.

If I had to sum up TMNT with an acronym, that acronym would be SUCKS. Sorry, no time - you'll have to figure out what it stands for on your own.

X-Men: The Last Stand

X-MEN: THE LAST STAND makes up for its abundance of fireworks by minimizing its sense of fun.

The first two X-Men movies weren't masterpieces, but they rocked along reasonably well. They had some laughs, they had some fights, they had some things to think about. X3 has no laughs, too many fights, and enough things to think about for at least three breathless college essays.

The whole thing just feels like an exercise in action filmmaking, but a film like THE HIDDEN BLADE so eclipses it even in purely action-related terms that it can't fully succed even in that limited arena.

X3 is a mediocrity. I can't muster up much more to say about it than that.