IN THEATERS NOW
In Theaters…
-It’s probably best to categorize these Marvel offerings like Bond films - none are all that bad, some are better than others, all are relatively similar levels of disposability. Thor: The Dark World is probably the dog of the bunch, as far as post-“Iron Man” Marvel films, but that’s really saying that it’s fast, silly, funny, forgettable fluff. Director Alan Taylor makes the effects and widescreen image look like shit, and doesn’t know his way around incorporating CGI into physical space, and the messy ambiguity of the last picture’s Jotunheim genocide is gone, so it’s certainly weaker than it’s predecessor. But Chris Hemsworth is certainly a star; these movies don’t settle down to showcase chemistry between him and Natalie Portman, but she is given enough space as an actor to show that her character finds this weirdly eloquent oaf indefinitely attractive. Maybe it’s not acting - if that’s the case, then it’s probably the only genuine part of this exercise in brand extension, one that fills Thor’s life up with so many soap opera melodramatics that the villain (Chris Eccleston) comes across strictly as a blunt object. Worth sticking around for the absolutely RIDICULOUS post-credits sequence.
-How I Live Now shows you exactly what would happen if the filmmaking team behind “The Hunger Games” had the courage to depict the horrors and themes of the source at an R-rated level. Which is to say, it’s still dreadfully pandering, obnoxious claptrap designed to pamper children and their every whim. Saoirse Ronan stars as an absolutely miserable American teen sent to live with relatives in England who finds it’s basically a small commune for her and a few younger kids. She starts to come out of her shell when she meets a young boy that I think is actually her cousin, and suddenly, she just wants the D all the time. Enter: indistinct post-apocalyptic war that separates all the kids, forcing them to engage in a “Watership Down”-style race back to their home, where fussy adults with guns can’t ruin the day and she can get the D in a farm all she wants. Despite her love affair, Ronan’s character never develops a real relationship with any of the other characters, so when she starts barking orders, I waited for the other kids to ostracize her and leave her behind. Somehow, it never happened, and instead we’re stuck in the woods dealing with rape-threats, rampant gunfire, and other calamities that make this a true ordeal to sit through.
-I suppose there’s a punk rock rush that comes with Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg releasing their sixth (!) directorial effort, The Starving Games two weeks before the newest “The Hunger Games.” Of course, I don’t know why they didn’t go the whole nine yards and put it out on the same date. Will this film be forgotten in two weeks? It’s a vapormovie, designed to leave your memory almost instantly, a looping YouTube reel that clocks out around seventy minutes. Harry Potter, The Avengers and the Expendables will show up, and all will deliver the weakest jokes that result from chaining a bunch of sixth grade boys in a room with a laptop and forcing them to be funny. I suffered through it, but I’ve already forgotten it existed. Soon, so will you. Read my review here.
-I have to say, “Ender’s Game" is maybe the best movie I’ve ever seen from a director who just came off an unwatchable disaster. Gavin Hood last brought us "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," a piece-of-shit by committee that didn’t suggest he could handle the moral ambiguity of Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi novel. And yet, here we are, and "Ender’s Game" is fairly watchable, even sort of intriguing. Young teenage Ender becomes the star pupil in Battle School in a future where we’re at war with… Klendathu?… and soon finds himself a pawn in the genocidal plans of the military industrial complex. It feels like what it is, essentially a $100 million independent film from the folks at small-timers Summit Entertainment, and it doesn’t have all the pressures of dim-witting romances, swooning orchestral breaks and a happy ending. Harrison Ford, admittedly, still doesn’t give a shit, but Ben Kingsley is excellent in a small role that details the ways in which military propaganda can obscure your ultimate message. Simplistic and broad, "Ender’s Game" is nonetheless intriguing fodder for its core audience, for whom these ideas could be considered fresh. Gavin, I forgive you for "Wolverine," maybe the single worst studio blockbuster of the last decade.
-I ain’t got no love for Richard Curtis’ bullshit, so I wasn’t the core audience for “About Time,” where we cheer a time-manipulating schmuck (Domnhall Gleeson) who romances Rachel McAdams, then struggles to have it all oh no! Fuck you, dude, you already have it all, you look like a muppet and McAdams, the most beautiful actress of her generation, is wasted on you. I reviewed this one here.
-I was touched by “The Broken Circle Breakdown" when I saw it at Tribeca earlier this year. This is a bluegrass musical from Belgium (!) about a sexpot dreamgirl and the belligerent beardo who end up making sweet, and then sour music together. The music is great, but the romance takes some unexpected and political turns, and gets pretty tough to watch. This is a really unique experience, the type of film where you run the gamut of emotions: you’ll get choked up, certainly.
-“Casting By" is a superlative doc in theaters now (though soon to air on HBO) about the history of casting agents, and the shift in the sixties and seventies to the East Coast, where more rough-and-tumble personalities started replacing the classically-beautiful California vibe. The film mostly serves as a testament to late casting agent Marion Dougherty, who discovered several bright lights like Robert Redford, James Caan, and dozens more. The interviews are plentiful and candid from all of the biggest stars of yesterday, but of note is the striking amount of footage from early performances by the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall and pretty much every legendary actor you can imagine. Check out my review here.
-“Man of Tai Chi," Keanu Reeves’ directorial debut, is RIDICULOUS kung-fu camp in all the best and worst ways. Time is wasted on a cop subplot that goes nowhere, the lead has little charisma, and the plot pretends the most obvious conclusion in the first act is actually a third act twist. But the fighting and direction are pretty top-notch, and it’s impossible to ignore that Keanu knows his shit. Also, as the villain, Keanu gives the sort of anime-level MEGAACTING performance that should spawn 100 gif’s. Check my review here.
-I wish I could be a fly on the wall for the first screenings for Fox execs regarding “The Counselor,” featuring a one-two punch of director Ridley Scott and first-time screenwriter Cormac McCarthy so enticing that it produced one of the fastest greenlights in recent Hollywood history. This is a maddening film, and it feels like two sensibilities clashing: the overt, fetishistic obviousness of Ridley Scott’s immaculate tableaus and the serpentine poetry of McCarthy, here adopting what feels like a Cliff Notes version of a book that doesn’t exist. Michael Fassbender, all chiseled jaw and shit-eating grin, is a lawyer trying to manipulate a drug running scheme for his own white collar gain, and every other male character plays The Voice Of Cormac McCarthy, telling him that it’s a terrible idea before, during, and after it all goes to shit. This is lovely stuff, that dialogue, and it rolls off the tongues of someone like Brad Pitt (who has cornered the market on these talky, low budget audience-testing genre exercises) or even a latecoming Ruben Blades. In spite of the winding, looping dialogue, this is a simple film with an A-to-B storyline, and there should only be room for three and four characters: did Scott and McCarthy (correctly) anticipate that every actor in Hollywood would want their own monologue in a movie like this? You can read my reviews of this ridiculousness here.
-Oh, to be 1988 again. Not only is that the era where “Escape Plan,” teaming Stallone and Schwarzenegger, would be an event, but it would also be a time where studio filmmakers understood action, pacing, iconography and the general sort of sensibilities that would maximize, and not obscure, the value of two action titans. Granted, it might be impossible to convince the audience that the legitimately elderly “Expendables” duo (who would be perfect for a few low-key late-period Terrence Hill-Bud Spencer teamings at this point) can still hold their own. It’s all shot-reverse-shot tactics and stunt doubles with these guys, who both find themselves trapped in the same prison, struggling to get out. It would be pandering to move mountains in an attempt to make it look like either could throw a punch without having a heart attack, but it’s condescending for halfwit director Mikael Hafstrom to pretend that these aren’t the two biggest stars of a very specific moment in movie history. We shouldn’t have to wait for an hour in to see them sharing the same shot, guys. I wrote another two reviews for this here and here.
-Another golden oldie literally sets sail with “All Is Lost,” the second film from increasingly literal writer-director J.C. Chandor. After “Margin Call,” his baldfaced account of the turmoil that lead to the financial collapse, Chandor goes simpler, stranding Robert Redford at sea, and basically throwing some rocks at him and his ship. It’s interesting and compelling, but I’m not sure if it’s art. Could survival horror be the new big genre, shoving a relatively unremarkable character (like, say, Dr. Stone from “Gravity) into a situation with a low probability of survival? It seems awfully schematic, even if Redford is an able and engaging protagonist, albeit one without a name, backstory, or even personality. When Chandor explained the many ways he hoped his film would convey an appealing ambiguity, I couldn’t help but feel like I opened up a coloring book and only saw blank pages. I reviewed this here.
-I can’t register any disapproval of “Blue Is The Warmest Color” being an object of pure titillation. It’s a moving romance, with scenes where the camera feels invasive within moments of intimacy and heartbreak. And the performances are bone-deep, especially Adele Exarchopoulos’s coming-of-age turn as a hormonal teen who has to fight the dueling desires of her suddenly violently-approaching adulthood and her budding homosexuality. But this feels like a drama second, and an arousing odyssey of sexual exploration first. It’s interesting that critics want to focus on the marathon lesbian sequences, which total a surprising percentage of this three hour film, but they ignore the early, more revealing encounter between Exarchopoulos and a male conquest, a typically acrobatic teenage romp where the mock-accidental appearance of his fully erect cock onscreen is meant to be frankness, and not a symbol of both directorial intent and mutual arousal. All moments of eroticism in this film help build to a quietly devastating third act, suggesting the evolution of pornography into a film like this, that fully capitalizes on the head, the heart, and between the thighs. Calling the film pornography suggests the nudity and sex is gratuitous. So too are our emotions. I wrote a bit about this here.
-How is it that Claire Denis releases a new movie and the global film culture merely shrugs? “Bastards” is the latest, and perhaps darkest, of Denis’ films, further allowing her to place a stamp on the claim of World’s Greatest Filmmaker, a title with only a handful of other contenders (a future discussion post, perhaps?). “Bastards” is an intensely upsetting neo-noir with a fractured set-up that is classic Denis. Yes, the plot is destined to eventually make sense, particularly in the most sickening final few minutes one can imagine. But early on, you only see the images, and you struggle to pick them up. Amusingly, I caught this at the New York Film Festival, where in between screenings, you can see them play a silent minute or two of the next showing for testing purposes, usually from a completely random section of that film. The moment I witnessed was the remains of a car, destroyed, crushed into an asymmetrical ball and being taken away to processing. If Denis knew that was the first image of the film I had seen, I’m certain she would have been tickled. I wrote a little about this here.