Movie Review

(Second viewing, on DVD, June 2009): The world has changed a lot in thirty years, especially in the field of geek entertainment, as so it’s no surprise if Akira doesn’t seem so fresh or eye-popping after three decades of CGI, geek-friendly properties and ever-more-convincing disaster movies. Then there’s the Japanese origins of the film and the adaptation of the story from a much longer manga, both of which don’t help untangle the messy and counter-intuitive story. Still, the amount of imagination on display is awe-inspiring, and there’s no denying that the film still measures up favorably to its contemporaries. While I’ve never been a big fan of some of the back-story (and the end Kaneda/Tetsuo screaming match always makes me giggle for “Canada/Tostitos!” values of immature amusement), the film itself still held my attention throughout, even through the sometimes-lagging pacing and the excessive gore. It’s an important piece of Science Fiction cinema for reference value alone, although viewers coming back to it after a while may find out that they remember scenes and visual images rather than particular plot points.

(In theaters, May 2009) “Wolverine is cool! He’s got claws!” seems to have been the operative memo that launched this film, because there really isn’t more to this film than claws without consistency: The historical details are hysterically wrong, the logic of the film is cribbed with holes and even simple physics takes a beating whenever Wolverine takes out his oh-so-cool claws. (So cool that they bend space and time to allow our hero to slice a rolling vehicle without having his arm snap back at a hundred klicks per hour). Yet science neepery doesn’t do justice to the failings of the movie even as popcorn entertainment: The script lurches from one useless battle to another, laboriously sets up obvious plot twists and dismisses its characters with trite dialogue. For another entry in the generally superior X-Men series, it’s a shocking reminder that most comic-book movies are pretty bad: this one has none of the thematic heft or sheer sense of fun that sustained the three first films in the series. The various contortions that the film goes through in order to justify its “prequel” status are more painful than enlightening, and the result is seriously underwhelming. It doesn’t help than Ryan Reynold is criminally under-used (he was the best thing about Blade III, and his speaking moments are once again a good chunk of what’s good with this film), and that none of the film’s screenwriters know what to do with Logan’s Canadian citizenship. It’s one of the film’s minor fault that it, being shot in New Zealand, is never convincing at portraying the Canadian wilderness, but it’s far more important that, shot as a superhero film, it’s never convincing as anything more than a routine entry in an overcrowded field. From Watchmen to this is a brutal return to the reality of Hollywood.

(On DVD, May 2009) Fans of heavily-plotted genre pieces won’t find much to like at a first glance in this drama about a middle-aged man brooding through a late-life crisis. Nor does the film improve sharply once he discovers intruders in his New York apartment, or when he befriends them just before one is taken prisoner by the US Immigration services. But the film gradually becomes more interesting as our protagonist uncovers the harsh way immigrants can be treated in his country (The Visitor says a lot about the society in which it occurs, unaccountable imprisonment, tortuous immigration processes and all) and comes to reach some kind of fulfillment when he reconnects with life. Richard Jenkins is terrific in the lead role, and the rest of the cast around him also does well. Fans of director Thomas McCarthy’s The Station Agent will here find the same blend of plotlessness, familiarity, tentative relationships and mood pieces. The Visitor ends, frustratingly, in mid-story, but it’s meant to linger in mind like a half-digested meal.

(In theaters, May 2009) I’m the worst type of Star Trek fan: A lapsed one. While Trek formed a good chunk of my formative Science Fiction viewing, the limitations of the series quickly led me to other things once I started reading more widely in the field. So it is that I had practically no baggage of expectations regarding this younger, hipper reboot of the original series to 2009 standards: They could have produced a musical comedy “with Kirk as an ocelot or something” and I still wouldn’t haven’t blinked. And yet this reboot seems exactly what the doctor ordered for a musty old franchise: Fresh, funny and captivating, the film roars past without too many lengths, yet stays true to a bunch of the original series’ strengths. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, mind you: The whole premise of reuniting all characters is a cheat from the get-go, and it begs for exactly the kind of coincidences, contrivances and clumsy plotting than we get throughout the entire film. The bad science is hideous, the misogyny is unacceptable (Uhura as a toy for the boys?) and the cheats required to bring all the characters together would be unforgivable if the rest of the film wasn’t so much compulsive fun. (Who would have believed a Star Trek film featuring the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage”?) What’s more, this Star Trek made me realize two things: First, that I had forgotten how much fun Kirk, Spock and company could be. Second, that despite my protests, I still had enough of an inner Trekkie to be annoyed at some of the more outlandish deviations from the canon. Spaceships being built on the ground? Vulcan destroyed? Uhura/Spock? Meerp? At least we get the single best-looking Orion Girl in the entire Trek filmography so far. As for the rest, well, I’ve got enough issues with the film to fill a full-hour panel at a convention, and that says far too much about me than I care to reveal: I, apparently, am a lapsed fan no more.

(Second viewing, On DVD, May 2009) Now here’s a film that hasn’t aged a bit in nearly twenty-five (!) years. A snappy, energetic, refreshing blend of comedy with a loose science-fiction premise, Back to the Future exemplifies mid-eighties Hollywood film-making at its finest. The script is a well-oiled machine of setups and payoffs, with just enough cleverness to make it rise above the obviousness of its plotting. Michael J. Fox is the rock around which the rest of the film revolves, but there’s more than enough successful elements elsewhere (from Christopher Lloyd’s madcap Doc Brown to a surprisingly restrained turn by Crispin Glover as George Brown) to tie everything up. Perhaps the most interesting undercurrent through the entire film is the naughtiness of the subtext, not only linking the protagonist to his mother, but the suggestion that “the fifties weren’t as wholesome as you may have been told”. And yet the result remains squeaky-clean for the entire family. Sure, some of the SF elements (like the altering picture) make no sense except in script-logic. Yet the entire things feels solid and admirable even decades later: the “eighties” moments now have a historical charm, and the pacing of the result seems as fresh today than it did back then. Catch the film if you haven’t seen it, and re-watch it if it’s been a while: you may be pleasantly surprised.

(Second viewing, On DVD, May 2009) While no disaster, this third entry in the trilogy certainly brings to mind the law of diminishing returns. After the time and reality-hopping of the second film, this entry maroons the characters back in time, overplays many of the same jokes and gives the impression of turning in circles over familiar terrain. There are some wonderful things about this third volume (Mary Steenburgen, obviously), but a lot of it seems overly familiar. One suspects that not everyone will share the same fascination for the Wild West as the filmmakers and the ever-self-referential nature of the gags makes the film of interest chiefly for those who have paid a lot of attention to the first two entries. The linkages with the second part, which was shot at the same time, are more or less successful, although they all come into play fairly cleverly in the film’s extended epilogue. Some of the stuff is fairly clumsy (I was never fond of the whole “Chicken!” subplot), but the final few moments do evoke some of the sense of wonder that was so precious to the end of the first film. All in all, not a bad final chapter, but also a good excuse to end things there.

(Second viewing, On DVD, May 2009) No mere follow-up could recapture the magic of the original, and while this sequel often has moments of interest, it ultimately makes the mistake of hugging its predecessor a bit too closely. The first half takes a welcome trip in the future, even though the situation it develops never completely lives up to the promise left by the last moments of the original film. A more interesting trip through a hellish alternate reality follows, but then the film sticks itself back in familiar territory by going back to the first film. While the concept is promising and rich in irony, the ultimate result seems self-referential to an unhealthy degree: at some point, the film cries out for an escape to someplace new. One thing is sure: this film hasn’t aged nearly as well as the first one. The vision of 2015 may be increasingly ridiculous (a minor sin in a comedy), but a lot of the concepts that seemed challenging or new in 1989 are now part of the assumed background of even unsophisticated SF viewers: Alternate realities are now mainstream, and the circumlocutions of time-travel have been explored many times since then –the various 1955 twists of the film now bring to mind Futurama’s overloaded time-travel storyline. Still, as a piece of self-conscious blockbuster movie-making, Back to the Future II takes a few more chances than strictly necessary and manages to deliver an experience that extends the original. A few good moments complete the film with style.

(In theaters, May 2009) I really liked Dan Brown’s novel in part because of its preposterous eccentricities. But while Angels & Demons as a film does a few interesting things in smoothing out some of the book’s most ludicrous moments, it also loses a lot of what made the book so fascinating. The first and most significant victim is the book’s mixture of rapid pacing and endless exposition: What seemed so interesting on the page now looks contrived and perfunctory on the screen as the heroes race from a Roman checkpoint to another and keep telling themselves things that they are the only one to know and possibly care about. Tom Hanks is fine as Robert Langdon (while Ayelet Zurer’s legs practically deserve an award of some sort) and the cinematography features about the exact type of images you’d expect from a movie set in the Vatican. Fans of the book will notice that a significant portion of the book has been altered, from removing one set of antagonists entirely to changing the jaw-droopingly overdone parachute climax to something far more palatable. Surprisingly, the film is significantly less religious than the book: The alterations to the plot undermine the book’s anti-science subtext, while Langdon himself is allowed to remain atheist throughout the film without a nagging quasi-miracle to change his mind –a rare luxury in the middle of an American media noosphere that default to deniable theism whenever it can. (Of course, some will argue that protestant-dominated America can allow itself to be less than enthusiastic about promoting the Roman Catholic church.) Thematic considerations aside, it all adds to a bit of a misfire; a sometimes-ponderous thriller that doesn’t embarrass itself, but similarly fails to ignite much interest either. While generally better than the even-more-flawed The Da Vinci Code (Langdon is far more active a protagonist, for instance), Angels & Demons remains a bit dull, a bit long and -worst of all- a bit ordinary. Which certainly wasn’t the case for the novel.

(In theaters, April 2009) It has been a long time since the last solid thriller to focus of the world of journalism, and this one acquits itself fairly decently. Russell Crowe is compelling as the crusty veteran that anchors the picture, although more could have been done to resolve the old-paper/new-blog dynamics between him and Rachel McAdams. Handled with competent care, the picture manages to wrestle a complex story that touches upon a number of sizzling contemporary issues. This being said, the picture twists one time too far: While the last plot curve-ball strengthens the lead character’s ethical dilemma about his definition of good journalism, it undermines a lot of the picture’s solid thematic material against private military contracting. But that’s a small last-minute complaint about a thriller that’s quite a bit better than most: There’s a lot going at this intersection between politics, business, romance and truth-seeking, and it’s to the filmmakers’ credit that the result remains intelligible throughout. There’s a refreshing contemporary feel to the picture’s musings about journalism at a time where the very fundamentals of the profession are being questioned from all angles. With a bit of luck, this may become a time capsule of the times, like so many of the seventies’ most competent thrillers.

(On DVD, April 2009) This weakest Michael Moore film yet has little of the wit or ferociousness of his other polemics: It’s not much more than a low-budget video chronicle of his 2004 efforts to motivate college students to vote against Bush. The effort failed, obviously, which takes away from the effort from the get-go. Moore can either be annoying or inspiring, and the limited material quickly wears thin. From time to time (such as when Moore deals with hecklers), the film picks up a bit; otherwise, it’s insipid partisan propaganda even to those who are basically in agreement with Moore’s policies. It doesn’t help that Moore is often his own worst advocate –and by making himself the focus of his own movie, well, he grates early and often. Obviously, this film (freely released as a download on the eve of the 2008 election) aimed to convince another political mini-generation that Obama was worth fighting for. But in retrospect, a more interesting piece may have been to compare 2004 activism versus what happened four years alter –with the added sweet bonus of Obama’s victory at the end of the narrative.

(In theaters, April 2009) Every generation needs its Fatal Attraction remake, so it’s not a stretch to suppose that the current twenty-something audience deserves nothing more than a limp reiteration of the same dramatic situation, except with bad storytelling instincts. The lead male character is dull by design: Despite an intriguing back-story of womanizing, he spends the picture being holier-than-thou, and escapes jeopardy mostly by the intervention of others. But that bad storytelling aspect takes a back-seat to the complete shift in protagonist that occurs during the last ten minutes, as the putative “hero” is sidelined to an SUV commute while another character resolves the main conflict of the picture. It’s dumb, deeply unsatisfying, and telling of the relative star-power of Idris Elba versus Beyoncé Knowles. It’s a very pretty movie with attractive characters, but the script is all wrong, and barely interested in its most interesting aspects. Even Ali Larter, as the designated psycho, gets little to play with as none of her character’s motivations are explored. Obsessed shows how unsatisfying a bad script can be even when most other aspects are handled professionally: there’s nothing left of the “psycho stalker” suspense except the memory of other, better films.

(In theaters, April 2009) There’s far more drama and far less fighting in this picture than you might expect. While most bare-knuckles-fighting movies beef up their action with an insubstantial plot, this film seems like it was first conceived as a hustling drama with fighting scenes penciled in. The tension could have revolved around chess-playing that it wouldn’t have changed much to the overall impact of the film. Alas, this approach leads to perfunctory fighting scenes that barely affect the characters and leave no lasting memories. As it is, Fighting is bit dull, and hardly deserving of any “action” designation. As a drama, it’s definitely centered around New York hustlers, which limits its appeal somewhat: Channing Tatum’s lead character knows how to fight and flirt, while Terrence Howard as his new best friend (and agent) remains steadfastly stuck in his cloying wimp mode. Zulay Henao isn’t too bad as the perfunctory love interest, but the rest of the picture is simply too dull and convenient to warrant much attention. With better filmmakers willing to cut away at the endless “dramatic” scenes, this could have been turned into a far more interesting picture, even it would have erred on the side of exploitation.