Ytadel Reviews

Shutter Island (2010)

Broadly written but aggressively stylish noir pulp

[7/10 · 2 December 2010]

Shutter Island is the pulpiest film Scorsese's ever done. That's not in any way to say that it's the worst film Scorsese's ever done, simply the pulpiest. Martin Scorsese is a director who generally aims to make great, classic cinema almost every time he steps up to the plate, a tendency that would be annoying as hell if he weren't literally one of the best artists ever to work in any medium through all recorded history, so it's interesting and a bit unexpected to see him unleash his talent after a four-year gap since The Departed onto the first pure, unapologetic popcorn-muncher of his career.

And if you thought that the tough cops and thick Boston accents and blaring Dropkick Murphys music of The Departed lacked subtlety, then Shutter Island is gonna really ruin your day. This is noir pulp drawn in the broadest possible strokes: fog and gloom penetrate everything, the shadows are long and black, the buildings ominous, the cliffs jagged and foreboding, the wind and rain and lightning overpowering and exhausting, and the performances very flashy; all creepy glances and ragged dialogue and intense whispering that would border on overacting were they not in such able directorial hands. It's the cinematic equivalent of a master artist doing his latest painting in primary colors. It's such an immensely stylish movie that it overcomes any narrative shortcomings to stand proud as an impressive thriller.

The movie opens with a U.S. Marshal played by Leo DiCaprio on a boat to the Ashecliff Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island. He and his partner have been brought in to investigate the case of patient, Rachel Solando, who seems to have impossibly escaped from her secure cell. As a hurricane settles over the island the findings of DiCaprio's investigation become less and less explicable and more and more personal and we descend into a psychological nightmare that comes to include secrets, conspiracies, escapes, chases, and at least one explosion. The film's format of exponentially swelling insanity restricted to one fixed location is more than a bit reminiscent of Kubrick's The Shining.

I'll say straight up that I don't think this movie has a particularly great script. Not a bad one, mind you, but the magic here is indisputably on the set and behind the camera, not at the typewriter. You don't have to be even close to as big a cinephile as I am to see exactly where things are going, and the movie adds insult to injury by incorporating an extremely lengthy exposition dump that goes so far as to include a character pulling out an honest-to-god blackboard on which to explain the plot.

So yes, in the hands of a lesser director with lesser aesthetics, Shutter Island could have been raw mediocrity. But man, the aesthetics — I just love the style of this movie, so much that I hope Scorsese does another equally blunt, subtlety-free movie, and soon. Shutter Island generates so much thick tension out of thin air that it's incredible; the nightmare just keeps building, the pacing aggressive and the movie getting more sinister by the minute. The cinematography is gorgeous, a perfect representation of what modern noir can and should be, except for when we cut to DiCaprio's dream sequences filmed in vivid, breathtaking color. Not noir, but still gorgeous.

Speaking of DiCaprio, I think this is probably his third best performance yet outside of Catch Me If You Can and The Departed, overcoming any vestiges of lingering boyishness and giving a driven depiction of the tough cop at the film's center. Ben Kingsley however still ends up dominating as the head doctor of Ashecliff, with some help from Max von Sydow, together forming a duo of unparalleled creepiness. Like most everyone else in the film they aren't playing it low-key, but they'll make your skin crawl and they greatly spice up any and every scene they're in.

I mean it in a good way, more or less, when I say that Shutter Island represents a triumph of style over substance. It probably won't be nominated for Best Picture and I don't think it needs to be, and it actively doesn't deserve any writing awards, but it's simply a really cool and stylish bit of detective pulp with a psychological horror coat of paint on it. I think the teenage male standing in front of me in line for Alice in Wonderland said it best: "I went to see Shutter Island but I ran out and went home as soon as they showed a dick on the screen, because I was afraid I was gonna see another dick."

The Lovely Bones (2009)

Peter Jackson reveals himself a mere mortal

[3/10 · 2 December 2010]

If there's one thing I dislike more than a bad movie it's a bad movie with aspirations of greatness, and few examples shine as putrid as Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. This movie wants to be great. A work of art. Possibly a masterpiece. I have no doubt that Oscars were whispered of at some point during production. But here's the catch: it's no good. It sounded like a few of the blue-haired grannies in my audience were touched, but if all your synapses are still firing properly you won't be joining them. This is one of the most overwrought and mawkish films in years and the more it tries to move you the funnier and more cringe- inducing it becomes. An astounding misfire.

Okay, so a fourteen-year-old girl named Susie Salmon is murdered. Not a spoiler, that's how the movie starts. But oh, it's not over for her yet! We follow Susie on up into heaven where she gets to hang out with other murdered girls and party and everything is magical happiness. It's supposed to be ethereal but just comes off as creepy. She narrates constantly to let us know exactly what we're supposed to feeling at every given moment. The screenwriters leave nothing to chance.

Meanwhile back on earth the movie is going nuts with genres and crazy mood whiplash from scene to scene. Susie's parents, played by the respectively brown and black-haired Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz whose daughters are somehow a pale redhead and a blonde, grieve for Susie in a made-for-TV family melodrama while simultaneously hunting for her killer in a detective movie. Whoa. That's one of the most poorly conceived things I've ever heard of. The tone is manic depressive; at one point the film swerves with neck-snapping force by going from Susie's parents sobbing over their murdered daughter's empty room immediately into a cleaning the house / dance montage scored to upbeat pop rock. It was all I could do to not start convulsing with laughter.

And let's talk about Mark Wahlberg for a second. He sailed to the raggedy edge of overacting in 2006's The Departed but somehow kept hold, turning in one of the most entertaining screen performances of the decade. But apparently M. Night replaced him with a pod because two years later in The Happening he stank up the joint like nothing I've ever seen from a Hollywood leading man and here in The Lovely Bones he's nearly as bad, still cartoonishly widening his eyes and whining in a high pitch to emote and failing spectacularly. The child playing his fourteen-year-old daughter acts circles around him.

So what happened? How could Peter Jackson have screwed this up so badly? Was the problem the script and subject matter, or as a filmmaker is he just better at operating in the broad strokes of good vs. evil and creature design? Either way, Peter, please, run back to Middle- earth and stay there. I'm still stoked for The Hobbit but my enthusiasm for Jackson's next non-Tolkein movie has been blunted into virtual nonexistence. The Lovely Bones is pretty much a lock for my bottom ten of the year.

Robin Hood (2010)

A mythical figure minus the myth is just some guy

[5/10 · 2 December 2010]

Ridley Scott aimed to bring Robin Hood down to earth and in that straightforward respect he was successful. The problem is that he arguably brought Robin Hood CRASHING down to earth, jammed like a square peg in a round hole into a generic semi-epic of medieval warfare and political intrigue. Change the names of Robin, Little John, Marian, and the village of Nottingham and I'd pretty much have no idea that this screenplay was ever written with the intention of being a Robin Hood movie — even the villain, a French spy and marauder named Godfrey, is a brand new creation, with the Sheriff reduced to a piddling, zero-impact supporting character. It ends up feeling like a little bit of Robin Hood mythos accidentally leaked onto a print of Braveheart or Gladiator so they said to hell with it and decided to release it in theaters, albeit with the bloodshed dialed back to PG-13 levels.

That's not to imply that the movie is boring or devoid of action; there's plenty of battles, hundreds dead, and even a spot of comic relief in Little John and Friar Tuck. But when I think of Robin Hood the giant neon sign in my mind flashes the word ADVENTURE, and I would in no way, shape, or form ever describe Scott's Robin Hood as an adventure movie. A medieval war movie perhaps, but not an adventure movie. There's a little bit of travel, sure, but Robin spends at least half if not more of the runtime just chilling in Nottingham, flirting with Marian and tilling the soil. And, sorry to be unimaginative, but I wanna see Robin Hood getting chased, sneaking under the enemy's nose in disguise, picking up new companions on his journey, swashbuckling, and in general feeling like a rogue, none of which this Robin Hood does. It's a bizarrely dry interpretation of one of popular fiction's most infamous scoundrels.

Part of the problem is the badly miscast leads. There's fun to be had in Kevin Durand's Little John, Max von Sydow's Sir Walter Loxley, Sherlock Holmes and Kick-Ass's Mark Strong further cementing his villainous typecasting as Godfrey, and even a bit of scenery-chewing in Oscar Isaac's King John, but however many Academy Awards they may have between them I don't think that Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett were right for Robin and Marian. Fine actors, especially Blanchett, but they have virtually no personalities in this movie and no romantic chemistry whatsoever. Dryness emanates from them; I was worried they would near a spark and catch flame.

It's also kind of bizarre how the film purports to be the beginning of the legend, yet Robin Hood is played by an actor nearing fifty. Don't get me wrong; I'm not one of those morons who needs all my film leads to be whippersnappers — I'm the world's biggest enthusiast of 58-year-old Liam Neeson's newfound career as a pulpy action star — but both Crowe and Blanchett just look too damn old for these parts. I would have rather seen someone like, I don't know, Stardust's Charlie Cox as Robin Hood. Not as good an actor, no, but better for this role. I never thought I'd say this, but even Orlando Bloom would have been better.

As for what the film gets right, if you've seen Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven (which, by the way, in its director's cut form ties with Alien as the best film Scott's ever done) you know that Ridley Scott has a real talent for making these medieval epics look and feel just right. The sets, the costumes, the castles, the villages, the weaponry, the layer of Middle Ages dirt and grime on everything, it all looks great, especially bolstered by beautiful cinematography. I won't go so far as to say it makes you want to be there, but it's authentic and drawn with painterly skill, simply a nice movie to look at whatever near-fatal weaknesses may be found in the storytelling.

Still, I'd only recommend seeing this Robin Hood if you're really, really into medieval warfare and conflict. If not and you want some adventure then just watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves again. That's right, you big baby, you know you like it.

An Education (2009)

A glossy, well-acted lump of nothing

[5/10 · 2 December 2010]

Hype bandwagon, thy name is An Education. One of the most overrated movies of last five years with a ludicrous 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and only eleven brave critics willing to point out that the emperor has no clothes, An Education is a made-for-TV melodrama dressed up with some outdoor location shooting in London and Paris, a few minor movie stars, and an admittedly good leading performance. It's nowhere near as bad as 2008's The Reader, one of the worst films in my lifetime to be nominated for Best Picture, but at least with that one you could see the Academy going glassy-eyed and groaning "Holocaust... masterpiece..." in the same tone with which a zombie goes "braaaaiinnns...", while An Education is just glossy mediocrity, like being served fancily prepared tofu. You can acknowledge the effort, but you're still eating tofu.

Let me see if I can find enough plot to even talk about: Carey Mulligan plays Jenny, a bright 16-year-old schoolgirl in 1961 England who dreams of attending Oxford. She's seduced by a 35-year-old playboy played by Peter Sarsgaard who introduces her to art, films, jazz, nightclubs, and Paris. Jenny, enchanted by all this culture, has to decide whether to stay true to her dreams of Oxford or get married and live life for love and art. And that's damn near it. I've left out of the final fifteen minutes or so out of respect for the spoiler code, but that's a tragically complete synopsis up to that point. We spend untold stretches of time watching Jenny make lovey-dovey eyes at Sarsgaard or being awed by all the culture, and holy yawn. There's a few other characters but they've fled my memory so quickly I'm half-convinced I was zapped by that Men in Black red-light device immediately after watching.

The film contains possibly the most boring virginity loss subplot in the history of on screen teen characters losing their virginities, only saved from the precipice of completely forgettability one of the most awkward and bizarre movie scenes of 2009 in which Peter Sarsgaard gives Jenny a banana and tells her to loosen herself up with it before they have sex for the film time. This is not played for laughs. It just happens. It was so inane I was half- convinced I was having a fever dream, but looking back on it, no, even my darkest subconscious couldn't come up with a scene like that. No one could come up with a scene like that, except, evidently, screenwriter Nick Hornby.

Whatever else the film does wrong (everything), Carey Mulligan is quite charming and charismatic in the lead role and managed to keep me awake through stretches that would have been cinematic warm milk with pretty much any other British actress I can think of young enough to play a teenager. She has a bright career ahead of her. But nonetheless, don't see An Education. If I could talk to any critic championing this film I would love to ask which scene exactly they think will linger in memory (either collective cultural memory or their own) by 2012, because every second of this film is leaking out of my mind like water through wicker.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

One of 2010's bigger disappointments

[5/10 · 2 December 2010]

Seeing the original Iron Man remains one of my most purely exuberant movie-going experiences of the last five years. I laughed, I cheered, I applauded at the end, and I still had a grin plastered on my face hours later. In fact, I loved watching Iron Man in theaters so much that I intentionally haven't rewatched it since and have no plans to do so — I'm sure I'd still enjoy it, but I simply don't want to dilute that fond memory by noticing any deficiencies the movie may actually have. I don't have any immediate plans to rewatch Iron Man 2 either. But not for the same reasons.

When I first saw the full Iron Man 2 trailer, which featured multiple villains, Lt. Colonel Rhodes robot-suiting up, Nick Fury setting up the future Avengers movie, and Scarlett Johansson doing something inexplicable, I thought it looked like a mess. And sometimes the trailer is honest: Iron Man 2 is a mess. A slick, polished, and amusing mess, mind you, with a predictably quirky and awesome leading performance from Robert Downey Jr., but still a mess. It's mystifying to me why so many of the same nerds who were enraged by Spider-Man 3 seem ready to die in defense of Iron Man 2, because the two movies have damn near the exact same problems with crowded story lines and one too many villains.

Iron Man 2 is all over the place, breathlessly trying to tell its own cluttered story while simultaneously shuffling pieces towards the future Avengers flick. To the movie's credit it doesn't pull a Matrix Reloaded or a Dead Man's Chest and end with "to be continued," it's self-contained and can be watched on its own, but in every other respect it's one of the messiest flicks I've seen in years, with nearly every scene seeming to pick up with a completely disparate storyline from the one preceding it.

The trailer actually left out one of the biggest plot threads: Tony Stark is dying, his blood poisoned by the power reactor in his chest. So he hands Stark Industries over to his assistant Pepper Potts and focuses on being Iron Man full-time, but after revealing his identity at the end of the first film the United States government is trying to get him to hand over the Iron Man weapon, an unscrupulous arms manufacturer named Justin Hammer plots to best Tony's designs, a crazy Russian named Ivan Vanko cuts even more to the chase by just planning to build a better suit and kill Tony to death with it, and Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson groom Stark for future opportunities on the superhero team they're putting together. Oh, and Tony feuds with his friend Rhodey. And has some alcohol problems, and copes with daddy issues, and of course has a romantic subplot. Holy overstuffed two hours, Iron Man!

"That's okay," you say to yourself. "It's a summer action flick, I ain't in this for grand storytelling, I'm in this for all the action!" Well, I hate to tell you this, but there are only three action scenes in Iron Man 2's 124-minute runtime. Three, all of them robot suit-on-robot suit battles. The final one is admittedly a lengthy blow-out, but nothing in these fight scenes really begins to compare in vibrance, energy, or creativity with the train scene in Spider-Man 2, the Batmobile chase in the middle of The Dark Knight, or even Stark's escape from imprisonment in the original Iron Man. Robot suit men just punch and shoot at one another. Fun, sure, but nothing remotely spectacular.

But as I said above the movie is still deftly carried in spite of everything else by Robert Downey Jr. What else is there to say? Dude rules. One of the best actors alive. Makes every line entertaining, makes silence captivating, generates chemistry with every other actor on screen no matter how little they may offer him in return. Tony Stark is a more flamboyant and probably more purely entertaining figure than any other on screen superhero we've seen, thanks much more to Downey Jr. than to the script, and I hate to even imagine what the movie would be like without him.

The rest of the cast doesn't fare as well outside of the also awesome Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. Mickey Rourke seems bored as Ivan Vanko, his dialogue agonizingly drawled in a goofball Russian accent, Scarlett Johansson is never good outside of Woody Allen movies, and as sincerely shocking as this is to me, Don Cheadle as Rhodey is a clear downgrade from Terrence Howard in the original film. The critics, confused by the fact that Don Cheadle is usually a wonderful actor, pretended like this wasn't the case, but it is. Howard brought a certain spark to the character; I still remember his reading of the line "Next time, baby" two years later. Don Cheadle just phones it in, dry, flat, and devoid of any personality. Couldn't remember any of his lines a week later.

So should you check out Iron Man 2? If you wanna see some dumb, pulpy fun with some laughs, some robot fights, and an immensely charming leading performance, sure, go for it. It's vastly inferior to the original (and, for that matter, Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes), but harmless enough, and if you see it stay through the end credits, because like the original film there's a secret scene at the end setting up the Avengers. But please, if you're only going to see one superhero movie from 2010, make it the far superior Kick-Ass.

Moon (2009)

The Golden Age of Science Fiction reborn

[9/10 · 2 December 2010]

One of the most enjoyable classes I took in college was a summer course on sci-fi literature. The assigned reading included superb novels (along with a few that were a little stodgy) but what I liked best were those great short stories from the Golden Age of Science Fiction; All You Zombies and The Cold Equations and just about anything by Asimov. Moon reminds me of those classic short stories in the best possible way. It's true hard science fiction — lean, brainy, and creative — and I recommend to any and all genre fans who enjoyed the space opera of Star Trek but found it a little intellectually lightweight. Moon's got ya covered.

The story involves an astronaut played by Sam Rockwell on a three-year solo mining operation on the moon, with only an omnipresent A.I. named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) to keep him company. Everything's going swimmingly until Sam gets into an accident on a standard surface mission and the plot plunges into a dark and fascinating direction, examining humanity, corporations, technology, and ethics through a very, very small cast, a tiny handful of sets, and only the subtlest bit of special effects work.

I dare not reveal anything beyond the movie's fifteen-minute mark for fear of undermining the power of the story, but I will say that I really admire the way Moon handles plot twists. There are several, yes, but in rejection of the popular M. Night Shyamalan method of shoving them at film's end as giant expository wham moments they're worked subtly and organically into the narrative framework. Early on I thought I had guessed the "ending twist," only to have said twist be revealed with little fanfare in the first act, with the protagonist who was actually smart like a real person figuring it out as quickly as the audience and the plot moving on from there. Right then I knew I was watching something kinda special.

Along with the clever screenplay it deserves mention that this, stunningly enough, is the first feature by director Duncan Jones. He's helped along by Clint Mansell's haunting, piano-heavy score and of course Sam Rockwell's one-man-show performance full of high-strung energy that contrasts perfectly with his sterile lunar surroundings, but the eerie tension Jones creates feels less like that of a nervous filmmaking virgin and a lot more like Alien-era Ridley Scott. It's a confident and memorable vision that deserves to go down as a minor classic of hard sci-fi and I look forward to whatever Jones cooks up next.

Speed Racer (2008)

A weak story but bizarre and fascinating visual experience

[6/10 · 2 December 2010]

Speed Racer was a box office disaster, a Treasure Planet-level whoopsie that crashed and burned and lost millions of dollars for WB. Is this a shame? Perhaps. It's definitely not a great movie - it may not even be a good one - but I can honestly say that I was entertained while watching it (call this the Transporter 2 effect), if only because it's one of the only truly visually unique movies I've seen in the last several years. It did not look like ANYTHING else I've seen. Everything popped with a hyper-saturated, tripped-out, color-drowned brilliance, with the whole neon, glowing frame constantly sharp and in focus. It was like being force- fed Starburst through your eyeballs. It was insane but it was original.

The flaw lies in the story, plot, characters, and humor - all migrated directly from Saturday morning cartoon land; wafer-thin, silly, unoriginal, uninspired. When the characters talk it's more or less a waste of time, outside of John Goodman, because John Goodman is cool. But this ain't a drama, and it's in the corny action scenes - the ridiculousness of race cars firing missiles at each other, dodging enemy attacks, jumping over chasms, flipping and spinning - that the meat of the film lies, and whether or not you can enjoy it leans on whether or not it bothers you that this is all basically a cartoon with no regard for physics or reality. My inner child loves that stuff, so I was able to accept it for what it was an have a fun time.

It's your call, but if you decide to watch Speed Racer, make it a Blu-ray on the biggest television you can find. Without its visuals, it's nothing.

Iron Man (2008)

Sublime blockbuster filmmaking

[8/10 · 2 December 2010]

Man, I just flat-out love Iron Man. It's right up there with Raimi's first two Spider-Mans, X2, and The Incredibles on my list of favorite non-Christopher Nolan superhero flicks. To start out with, Robert Downey Jr. is simply one of the single most talented actors working today and has been one of my favorites since Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and he absolutely rocks in this movie. He's alternately awesome and hilarious through the whole runtime, and no one else gives the quirky yet always entertaining line readings Downey Jr. delivers without fail. Also, after nearly a decade of dead-eyed, snooze-inducing performances, I have to say that Gwyneth Paltrow kind of shocked me here with hitherto-unprecedented sparkle and pep and energy. I guess the director promised her a cookie if she acted because she really lit up the scenes she was in and is one of the best superhero love interests I've ever seen on screen.

But more so than love interests, we go to superhero movies for action, at which Iron Man excels. Jon Favreau had a bit of special effects practice in Elf and more in Zathura, but this was his first full-blooded action flick, and I think that might be what makes the action so damn good. He's never "learned" any of the wrong, Michael Bay-esquire action tricks of cameras haphazardly swinging in the fray or ultra-spastic cutting that makes the action hard to watch by awkwardly trying to make you feel like you're in it or something, and as a result the action scenes are gorgeous and entertaining. Iron Man fights dudes, and the camera actually stays on the action in smooth noncutting wide shots that let you see and enjoy everything. Almost every action scene in the flick is like that, shot in a wide, clean way that is so very refreshing. This gets a monumental thumbs up from me.

Beyond that (this is the "checklist of other cool things" paragraph), the special effects are some of the best I've ever seen. There's nothing precisely innovative about them, but it's Industrial Light & Magic at the peak of their powers, and nothing in the whole movie made me think "fake!" at all. The Iron Man character, while I had no knowledge of him before seeing this movie, is really fun and has pretty sweet powers. And the comedy in the film is incredibly strong; this has a lot to do with how funny Downey Jr. is, but the movie has a pretty massive amount of slapstick and one-liners and other hilarity (probably even more than Spider-Man 2) that won huge and consistent laughs from me.

If the movie has any weaknesses, it's the plot and the music. Not that there's anything wrong with the plot at all, it just won't surprise you. It's a pretty basic and utilitarian superhero origin story, with most of the major goings-on in regards to the the villain and the hero's character progression pretty traditional. A montage of the hero honing / practicing his powers, the hero's love interest being threatened by the villain, and all that. It's just done exceptionally and unusually well. And the music, while again having nothing exactly wrong with it, lacks any truly memorable theme for the Iron Man character. Although I suppose it would be hard to make a theme more iconic than the Black Sabbath "Iron Man" riff, so they're excused.

Kung Fu Panda (2008)

DreamWorks done good

[7/10 · 2 December 2010]

Like the rest of the western world, I love Pixar - from Toy Story to The Incredibles to Ratatouille, they've delivered some of the finest, most timeless and age-proof entertainment of the last fifteen years. Even their lesser efforts like A Bug's Life and Cars make the other kids' movies that surround them at the multiplex look leaden and trite. But this casts the harsh, judgmental light of comparison on Dreamworks, and although Shrek was a fun little flick (that has rapidly aged), I haven't been impressed by most of the work they've put out since then, pop culture-infused cookie-cutter kiddie flicks awkwardly constructed around their voice stars (the fish with Will Smith's face will forever haunt my dreams).

But everyone can change and everyone can evolve, and while Kung Fu Panda isn't a pockmark on a timeless piece of art like Pixar's Ratatouille, it's a lovingly constructed, humorous, and more-than-competently made tribute to old kung fu movies and a solid piece of entertainment. I genuinely liked it.

First off, unlike the ilk of Shrek, this movie contains NO pop culture references other than innate stylistic similarities to the kung fu flicks it lightly satirizes and pays tribute to. It stands on its own feet. Secondly, while the titular panda is very much an avatar for Jack Black's standard goofy personality, the movie doesn't make the easy mistake of just taking that and letting it sit there like a limp fish (voiced by Will Smith) - while it mines that particular style for humor all the way through, the character is forced to take responsibility and evolve, and the evolution is pretty much the same standard you would ask for if this movie were the same story starring Jack Black done in live action. Citizen Kane it's not, but there is a character arc. Third, the animation leaves Madagascar and Ice Age choking to death in its dust. No, it's not Wall·E, but the characters are fluid and vibrant and the art and settings have a vaguely dusty, ancient, ethereal, Chinese feel to them that doesn't feel phoned in.

Also, the infinite potential of animation is actually taken advantage of to produce some pretty nifty kung fu / fight scenes. It's obviously all synthetic, being animated and whatnot, but the choreography and ideas actually build on that to do neat things that couldn't be done in live action (at least not easily and without millions of wires). There are old-fashioned kung fu fights with kicks and blocks and punches and jumps, that have a sense of momentum and energy. None of the action blew my mind to pieces but it was all entertaining to watch. As was the comedy, which was pretty much all either slapsticky type mishaps or building on the "Jack Black" personality, but relatively little of it felt juvenile, and I had some laughs.

Of course, it's not perfect by any stretch. The story - fittingly for a kung fu movie - is very simple, straightforward, and doesn't innovate in any way. None of the characters besides Po the panda, his primary mentor Shifu (skillfully voice acted by Dustin Hoffman), and the villain receive any development whatsoever; they are pretty much all paper-flat, and it seems a shame that they have Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, Angelina Jolie, and Jackie Chan voice acting but barely use them for more than a half-dozen lines each. But I don't think the kids this movie was basically made for will care, and not having ten million pop culture references, this movie actually won't painfully age year by year like certain movies starring green ogres played by Mike Myers. So I'd give Kung Fu Panda a thumbs up, not an ecstatic one, but a comfortable one.

I Love You, Man (2009)

Slight but very tasty comedic comfort food

[8/10 · 2 December 2010]

I Love You, Man signals the arrival of a great thing - Paul Rudd, leading man. Yes, there was Role Models, but he was sharing the load and splitting screen time with Seann William Scott in that one, here, it's all Rudd, all the time; he's the focus of virtually every scene and every moment. This is a great thing.

Paul Rudd is the ideal avatar for modern comedy, a nearly perfect average of every character type; droll and sarcastic but not a jerk, awkward and self-deprecating but not a loser, comfortably profane but without seeming like something's missing when he's not swearing, good looking but not insultingly so, and with a line delivery and comic timing that hits every bullseye a script offers him. I was waiting for Judd Apatow to center a project around him but it seems that John Hamburg, who has vindicated himself for the execrable Along Came Polly, beat him to the punch.

Paul Rudd is Peter (the most common protagonist name after Jack?), who is marrying Zooey. But Peter has no male friends and no best man, so he has to step outside his comfort zone of relationships with women and try to meet and befriend a dude. Enter the supernaturally easygoing Sydney, played by Jason Segel doing the exact opposite of his depressed, high- strung Forgetting Sarah Marshall character, and we watch their friendship bloom.

Peter and Zooey's romance is a constant, not really focused on, with the movie as a whole being a twist on the generic romantic comedy, refocusing all the tropes of the genre - the cute initial meeting, the tentative bonding, the blissful montage, the tearful fight, the joyous reunion, and so on - from romance to platonic male friendship. It's simple but it works completely, thanks largely to the brilliant cast. Paul Rudd - the perfect awkward everyman. Jason Segel - hilarious. Rashida Jones as Zooey - hilarious and adorable. With the likes of J.K. Simmons, Andy Samberg, Jaime Pressly, Jon Favreau, and Rob Huebel filling out the edges and smaller characters, this is an A+ comedy role call.

It's definitely a post-Apatow comedy, meaning that it's R-rated, profane, raunchy, and stuffed with frank sexual dialogue, but it does it right, letting the comedy flow naturally from characters that happen to be profane rather than trying to replace humorous interactions with profanity and sex. I thought Zack & Miri Make a Porno was mildly funny, but it was trying so, so hard to be offensive that I actually cringed a couple times at how juvenile it seemed; in contrast I Love You, Man is mellow and easygoing and never has to force the issue that it's funny.

The movie is also impressive for all the cliché romantic comedy things it doesn't do: At no point is there a moronic misunderstanding that would be cleared up if only the characters would speak to one another. No one ever thinks someone is cheating on anyone else. Neither men or women are presented as smarter or dumber or prissier or lazier than the other. Sydney never even faces comeuppance for his brazen sexual hedonism! Sure, there's conflict and characters fight, but none of it is ever cheap or manipulative, the conflicts, while comic and heightened, actually resemble things that, get this, real people might fight about! It's like they made a big list of the things I hate about 97% of romantic comedies and carefully didn't do any of them.

I hate to sound like a gushing Paul Rudd fanboy, but I have embarrassingly little critique to offer to I Love You, Man. It's a very slight movie with a featherweight narrative, there's nothing deep or remotely innovative about the experience and it won't inspire any knockoffs because there's nothing identifiably unique about it to knock off, but it hits all the right notes, never lags, and has a superb cast that to a man (and woman) know their way around a punchline. It's extremely funny comedic comfort food and I recommend it to all non- buzzkills.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)

An amusing, frivolous bit of fantasy fluff

[6/10 · 2 December 2010]

I didn't think that the first Chronicles of Narnia movie was exactly bad, just a little on the bland side. It felt like it was trying really hard to be Lord of the Rings, a tendency which got worse as the film went on and was most prominent in the final battle scene, which captured less the excitement of the climax of The Two Towers and more the Gungans versus the droid army from The Phantom Menace. Tilda Swinton was the only real acting highlight and the effects and artwork and so on did little to impress.

And while The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian comes nowhere close to greatness, I can say I enjoyed it a good bit more than the first film - enough to recommend it to anyone who (like me) is a sucker for fantasy movies. I'd place it about on the same level as the first two Harry Potter films, not a masterpiece by any stretch, but at least worth its weight in celluloid.

First off, the technical aspects - the cinematography, the lighting, the special effects, the weapons, the costumes, the sets, the creature makeup, and so on - all get a pretty significant boost from the first, and feel a lot more in line with Weta Workshop's work on Lord of the Rings. It has a rawer, darker, slightly more lived-in feel to it, and weapons look a little heavier and little deadlier. This may not add to the soul of the movie, but it makes the body a lot more attractive. Pretty much the only thing that still looks awkward is the talking "real world" animals - a talking beaver, a talking mouse, and so on still look a hint off, more cartoon than flesh-and-blood-and-fur beast. The fantasy creatures like minotaurs look great, though.

The movie is also darker than the first. That this movie got a PG rating is another example of how useless the MPAA is, because this movie is really violent. Pretty much every speaking character (including the central children) happily murders many fellow human beings during the movie's many, many battles. In pure percentage of screen time, this movie has damn near as much battling as Return of the King, and for people who enjoy fantasy battling, this may be enough entertainment to justify the film. It's all pretty well done, and I admire how the director actually managed to make the "flow" of the battles make visual sense. You see the larger movement of the armies, the way individual flanks and units engage each other, and always understand where the major players are. In lieu of fantasy films that settle for making their big battles an orgy of visual nonsense (see Eragon for more details), this was satisfying.

As for the movie's weaknesses... well, Ben Barnes who plays Prince Caspian and all of the main Pevensie kids are all really bland actors (except Skandar Keynes a.k.a. Edmund, who I think has potential) who fail to engage you in the characters in the drama. Compared to the Harry Potter gang in screen presence, it's not even a contest. The villains are also really generic and instantly forgettable fantasy villains, who don't inspire a hint of love-to-hate- 'em goodness. And without likable players to root for in the conflict it's hard to get emotionally involved with who lives and who dies, so there isn't really any "drama" here - just spectacle. If spectacle is enough to entertain you, this may be OK, but this film is kind of the fantasy version of empty calories. Fun to watch, but without a lot of depth to necessitate ever rewatching. Also, the climax pretty much redefines the term deus ex machina.

On the other hand of acting though, Peter Dinklage is very entertaining and probably gives the best performance in the film as Trumpkin, and it's always nice to see Warwick Davis (a.k.a. Willow) on the big screen.

So when all is said and done, it's another pretty entertaining fantasy movie. It doesn't have the high, epic drama of Lord of the Rings or the likable creativity of the recent Harry Potter flicks, but it's a damn sight better than Eragon and (in my opinion) the first Narnia film. Fantasy fans probably won't regret checking it out; non-fantasy fans will certainly live if they don't.

Hereafter (2010)

Asking the big questions, getting the dullest possible answers

[4/10 · 2 December 2010]

I found Clint Eastwood's African sports drama Invictus to be stodgy, tedious Oscar bait, so news that his next movie was going to be a "supernatural thriller" starring Matt Damon showed promise and had me thinking that maybe he'd loosen up to recapture some of the spark and personality that made 2008's Gran Torino so much fun. What can I say? We all make mistakes. Hereafter is as much thriller as Schindler's List is a comedy; it's so bloodless and bone-dry that if a spark went off nearby I believe it would catch fire. Between this and Crash and Babel I'm just done watching turgid dramas about the interconnectedness of humanity.

The film follows three primary characters in three mostly independent story lines. First we have Cécile de France as Marie LeLay, a French TV journalist who briefly dies during a tsunami and sees white light and human figures, but is resuscitated and begins a campaign to discover all she can about she afterlife she believes she glimpsed. Next up is Matt Damon as an American psychic named George Lonnegan who can touch people and commune with their deceased loved ones, an ability he once marketed but has left his personal life in disarray. And finally we have a young British kid named Marcus who's trying to contact a dead relative beyond the grave so that he can find peace.

You win absolutely nothing if you noticed the main thread linking these three souls: the afterlife, of course, something which Hereafter unambiguously posits exists seeing as Damon knows things via talking to the dead that he'd have no way of knowing otherwise. And that'd be fine and dandy, same as the straightforwardly-presented afterlife in The Sixth Sense was fine and dandy, except that Eastwood makes things bizarrely political with de France's story by having her initial attempts at researching the afterlife thwarted and defunded by anti- afterlife fanatics who think she's gone mad. I don't know how it is in France but here in the United States something like four out of five people believe in the afterlife, so it's pretty insane to release an American film presenting believers as some kind of persecuted minority fighting the good fight.

But even stepping back from its metaphysical argument Hereafter remains a dull and plodding affair devoid of anyone to connect to. De France does nothing but babble on about the afterlife and the kid Marcus does nothing except sulk, steal money from his foster parents, and visit a series of phony psychics. Matt Damon is the only one of the three who comes close to emerging as an interesting, rounded character (which I don't just say because he's the biggest star) thanks to a thorough examination of the way being forced to speak to the dead has left him lonely and isolated. True, The Sixth Sense examined the exact same thing, but Hereafter does it in a much more dry and realistic way. If ghosts were sex, The Sixth Sense would be a porno; Hereafter would be a gynecological exam video made for med school.