I'll admit at the outset that I was really looking forward to Captain America: The First Avenger, but as subjective as the process of reviewing a film can be I sincerely believe that this is a movie that deserves all of the raves it's getting from critics and audiences. Marvel has hit another one out of the park yet again.
The film begins in the present day, with mysterious men, many of whom apparently work for the United States government, uncovering something apparently very significant buried under the ice of the North Pole.
The film's narrative then begins in earnest as it then shifts to Norway in 1942, where a troop of strangely outfitted and equipped Nazis led by Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), break into an old man's house and make off with a strange glowing cube which Marvel Comics readers and viewers of Thor may recognize.
Meanwhile, 90-pound weakling Rogers (Chris Evans) has tried five times to enlist in the U.S. Army, going to the extent of applying in five different American cities and even falsifying his application, but due to a laundry-list of physical defects on top of his very slight stature, he has been turned down every single time. Steve's luck finally changes when, after he has been dragged by his best friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) to a world expo, and while arguing with Bucky over his efforts to enlist, of which Bucky disapproves, he is heard by German scientist and defector Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci with a delightful accent).
Erskine picks Rogers for an experimental treatment which, if successful, will transform Rogers into the ultimate physical specimen, much to the chagrin of Colonel Chester Philips (Tommy Lee Jones in top form), who takes one look at Steve and thinks Erskine is joking. Erskine knows that the treatment amplifies everything about a man, and believes that it is Roger's inner qualities which make him an ideal candidate. British liaison Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) can't help but notice some of that inner strength in Rogers as well.
The treatment works, and Steve grows to be twice his previous size, but due to a sudden and tragic development the experiment cannot be replicated and Steve is the only one of his kind.
The United States senator responsible for overseeing the Super Soldier program takes a keen interest in Steve, but instead of sending him off to fight, puts Steve in red, white and blue tights and sends him traveling across America to sell war bonds with a bevy of leggy chorus girls in tow.
When Cap's tour heads to Europe, however, the G.I.s on the front are less than impressed, but a daring rescue mission to save Bucky, whose unit has been decimated, changes things for Cap and he finds himself in the thick of the fight, taking on the Nazi's "deep science unit" known as HYDRA, which is led by none other than Schmidt, also known as the Red Skull.
The story of Steve Rogers, the skinny army reject with a lion's heart who is transformed into the ultimate he-man by a military experiment is one that comic-book geeks like me know backwards and forwards, but it is to the full credit of director Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park 3, The Rocketeer), screenwriters Christoper Markus and Stephen McFeely, star Chris Evans (Fantastic Four), and the rest of the cast and crew of this film, that it is made almost perfectly accessible to everyone else. Fortunately for us fanboys, however, there are enough references to the Marvel Universe to reward our devotion. I know I'll be going over the DVD of this more than once to see if I can spot all the Easter Eggs.
The decision to set this film in the Second World War rather than updating it was the first thing Marvel did right, and the second was to hire a director and a cast who nailed the tone perfectly. Though I felt trepidation at the casting of Evans as Cap, he allayed my fears with an earnest and ultimately involving performance. Though he anchors the film, he gets ample support from the other actors in the ensemble including Lee Jones, Tucci, Atwell, Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, future dad of Tony Stark of the Iron Man films, Toby Jones as Arnim Zola, and Weaving. It was a pleasure seeing the Howling Commandos in action too, in particular Band of Brothers vet Neal McDonough as Dum Dum Dugan, wearing his trademark bowler hat and handlebar mustache.
What sets this movie apart from just about every other in the Marvel stable is its distinct period feel, which not even the recent X-Men: First Class, supposedly set in 1962, was able to adequately capture. The 1940s setting, complete with such improbable (and goofy) concepts as the "super soldier serum" and "vitarays" could have been the film's greatest stumbling block, but by embracing it wholeheartedly, Joe Johnston and the cast and crew have turned Captain America: The First Avenger into the kind of rip-roaring adventure yarn a lot of audiences haven't seen since the first couple of Indiana Jones movies.
There are a few sobering scenes and set pieces intended to remind the audience of the setting, like one with a depressed Cap sitting with Peggy Carter in a destroyed tavern somewhere in London after one of the bombings that routinely took place during the war, among others. For the most part, however, Johnston and company sidestep the potentially more sensitive aspects of staging the narrative during such a tumultuous period of human history through numerous storytelling tweaks that set Schmidt apart from Hitler and which actually reduce the bloodshed if not the actual body count. No one will ever mistake Johnston for Spielberg, to whom he pays due tribute in the course of the film, but he has a steady hand for directing action, and judging by the outstanding performances turned in by his actors, a genuine feel for effective storytelling in general.
Setting the film in the 1940s also created wonderful opportunities for art director Rick Heinrichs to really cut loose with the period look of the film. Particularly outstanding were the retro-futuristic designs of Hydra's facilities, weapons and vehicles. Interestingly enough, apparently Heinrichs and his crew drew upon the actual designs for unused Nazi prototypes.
Finally, the choice of setting and tone gave composer Alan Silvestri the chance to turn in some of his best work since Forrest Gump, or even the Back to the Future movies. Indeed, the music of this film makes just about every other Marvel music score, even the ones I've enjoyed, as well as comic-book movie music of the last twenty years sound absolutely generic. To my mind it's right up there with John Williams' original Superman fanfare, and the "Captain America March," that plays during the end credits feels distinctly like an homage to the venerable Mr. Williams.
The visual effects are fantastic, even though the seams show here and there, but the one that has everyone talking is the trick of turning six-foot-tall Chris Evans into the scrawny and tiny pre-serum Steve Rogers. The effect was reportedly achieved mainly by actually shrinking Evans' actual body using computer graphics as opposed to merely cutting and pasting his head onto a smaller man's body. It's a remarkable effect, one that is made all the more convincing by Evans' fine performance.
Ironically, perhaps the only truly jarring thing about this movie is its very reason for being, which is to set up next year's superhero ensemble piece The Avengers. The modern-day bookends do nothing to serve the story of the film itself and serve only to set up Joss Whedon's film.
Fortunately, in between all of this is a complete, stand-alone film with handsome visuals, compelling acting, dialogue and directing, and a somewhat poignant ending that comic book fans will recognize and non-comic book fans may appreciate just the same.
This movie is definitely worth seeing, though to get the best value for money it would be best to avoid 3-D, as I did. This is a movie for anyone who feels they don't make action movies like they used to anymore.
4.5/5
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
A Potentially Rich Subgenre: Period-Comic-Book Films
Two decades ago, Walt Disney Pictures and director Joe Johnston gave audiences The Rocketeer, an action movie based on a cult-favorite comic book created by the late Dave Stevens in 1982, set in 1937 Los Angeles. It was a flawed but wonderfully energetic movie that boasted some slick period sets and costumes, some solid performances by Bill Campbell as the title character whose alter ego was down-on-his-luck circus pilot Cliff Secord, Timothy Dalton as his nemesis, a luscious Jennifer Connelly as his love interest and Alan Arkin as his mentor, mechanic and father figure, visual effects by renowned F/X house Industrial Light and Magic and a propulsive music score by future Avatar composer James Horner.
The problem was, apparently the filmmakers hadn't counted on the fact that most of the people who didn't read comic books (and even quite a number of people who did) really didn't care much for Cliff Secord and his adventures, and the movie was a box-office dud. Speaking for myself, I had major problems with its visual effects, particularly the flying ones, which, thirteen years after Richard Donner's Superman first flew into movie theaters, looked grotesquely unconvincing, even when compared to the work of that much older film.
There was, however, a lot about that film that I liked (I have the soundtrack, in fact), not the least of which was the 1930s setting, which the filmmakers wholeheartedly embraced. I felt they were on to something there.
With X-Men: First Class, the first film of the series set in the 1960s, having done decent business at the global box-office, and with Captain America: The First Avenger, also directed by Johnston, set in 1942, and apparently set to do better than decent business, I wonder if the time has come to look into making more of them.
Of course, the problem with Hollywood is that when it comes to making certain kinds of movies, it's kind of like strip-mining; they don't stop until the whole genre has crashed and burned and scarred the public consciousness for years to come. It was like that with disaster movies, with audiences finally saying "no" when Warner Brothers and Wolfgang Petersen remade The Poseidon Adventure in 2006. But the thing about genre filmmaking is that, unlike strip-mining which basically involves exploiting a non-renewable resource, it only takes one good film to get the genre going again, which was what happened when 2000's X-Men revitalized the comic book movie scarcely three years after Batman and Robin nearly killed it.
The thing that makes period-comic-book movies an idea that might be worth considering (especially if Captain America makes decent bank) is that like Captain America and the X-Men, most of the truly well-known comic book characters like the ones whose adventures are published by Marvel or DC comics were actually created back in the 1940s, 50s or 60s. Placing at least some of those characters in period-specific settings would in some cases imbue their stories with the socio-cultural flavor that characterized the first appearances of these characters, and actually give them an internal logic they might not otherwise have.
Of course, I'm glad they updated Iron Man and Spider-Man rather than setting them in the 1960s, but to my mind the X-Men's filmed mythology became that much richer for its throwback to the historical milieu in which the book was created, with the Civil Rights movement only just beginning. I'll have to reserve judgment on Captain America: the First Avenger till after I've seen it, but if the buzz is to be believed, apparently the period setting truly enhanced the storytelling as well.
Period pieces have proven bankable time and again, with the four films of the Indiana Jones series, the setting of which varies from the 1940s to the 1950s, and the four films of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, which take place sometime in the late 18th century or perhaps the early 19th century, all making significant amounts of money most film producers would kill to have their films earn. Even recent period fare, like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, have been eagerly embraced by audiences, which goes to show how marketable period films, even those which aren't dead serious and angling for Oscars, can be.
A lot of comic-book characters, even the ones who've been updated over the years, could arguably benefit from period-specific treatment. Luke Cage, who basically looks like a bouncer masquerading as a superhero these days, walking around in nondescript jeans-and-t-shirt ensemble with a shaved head, is a good case in point. Admittedly, his yellow-shirt-and-tiara setup may be a little hard to carry off on screen, but a film that pays solid tribute to his origins as a product of blaxploitation, complete with period-appropriate music and costumes, could potentially have more narrative heft than a generic, hip-hop, "gangsta" movie which could very easily get lost in the shuffle of movies about dance-offs, rap-offs and drive-by-shootings, many of which go straight to video. It could have an American Gangster vibe to it.
Doctor Strange, long rumored as the first Disney-produced Marvel film (with Patrick Dempsey reportedly chasing the role), actually owes a lot to Steve Ditko's funky, psychedelic visuals, which would feel pretty much at home, I imagine, in a 1960s milieu as well.
The list could go on, really; DC comics' heroes are even older than Marvel's, so there's a bit of potential period goodness to play with right there, not to mention all of the other comic book characters created in the Golden and Silver Ages of comic books or comic strips who sort of fell by the wayside. Maybe if characters like the Shadow and the Phantom had been treated with a little more reverence, their filmed adaptations wouldn't have done as badly as they did.
Heck, if this next version of Superman fails to fly the way Bryan Singer's quasi-sequel failed, maybe they could think of rebooting it again, but this time setting it in 1938. Just a thought.
Personally, I'd love to see more comic-book movies get made, even though most of the big ones I was looking out for have already been done, with only a handful left that I'm really pining for, but in a market where superhero films are starting to feel generic, with audiences and critics claiming "superhero fatigue" maybe a little subverting of the genre is in order.
The problem was, apparently the filmmakers hadn't counted on the fact that most of the people who didn't read comic books (and even quite a number of people who did) really didn't care much for Cliff Secord and his adventures, and the movie was a box-office dud. Speaking for myself, I had major problems with its visual effects, particularly the flying ones, which, thirteen years after Richard Donner's Superman first flew into movie theaters, looked grotesquely unconvincing, even when compared to the work of that much older film.
There was, however, a lot about that film that I liked (I have the soundtrack, in fact), not the least of which was the 1930s setting, which the filmmakers wholeheartedly embraced. I felt they were on to something there.
With X-Men: First Class, the first film of the series set in the 1960s, having done decent business at the global box-office, and with Captain America: The First Avenger, also directed by Johnston, set in 1942, and apparently set to do better than decent business, I wonder if the time has come to look into making more of them.
Of course, the problem with Hollywood is that when it comes to making certain kinds of movies, it's kind of like strip-mining; they don't stop until the whole genre has crashed and burned and scarred the public consciousness for years to come. It was like that with disaster movies, with audiences finally saying "no" when Warner Brothers and Wolfgang Petersen remade The Poseidon Adventure in 2006. But the thing about genre filmmaking is that, unlike strip-mining which basically involves exploiting a non-renewable resource, it only takes one good film to get the genre going again, which was what happened when 2000's X-Men revitalized the comic book movie scarcely three years after Batman and Robin nearly killed it.
The thing that makes period-comic-book movies an idea that might be worth considering (especially if Captain America makes decent bank) is that like Captain America and the X-Men, most of the truly well-known comic book characters like the ones whose adventures are published by Marvel or DC comics were actually created back in the 1940s, 50s or 60s. Placing at least some of those characters in period-specific settings would in some cases imbue their stories with the socio-cultural flavor that characterized the first appearances of these characters, and actually give them an internal logic they might not otherwise have.
Of course, I'm glad they updated Iron Man and Spider-Man rather than setting them in the 1960s, but to my mind the X-Men's filmed mythology became that much richer for its throwback to the historical milieu in which the book was created, with the Civil Rights movement only just beginning. I'll have to reserve judgment on Captain America: the First Avenger till after I've seen it, but if the buzz is to be believed, apparently the period setting truly enhanced the storytelling as well.
Period pieces have proven bankable time and again, with the four films of the Indiana Jones series, the setting of which varies from the 1940s to the 1950s, and the four films of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, which take place sometime in the late 18th century or perhaps the early 19th century, all making significant amounts of money most film producers would kill to have their films earn. Even recent period fare, like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, have been eagerly embraced by audiences, which goes to show how marketable period films, even those which aren't dead serious and angling for Oscars, can be.
A lot of comic-book characters, even the ones who've been updated over the years, could arguably benefit from period-specific treatment. Luke Cage, who basically looks like a bouncer masquerading as a superhero these days, walking around in nondescript jeans-and-t-shirt ensemble with a shaved head, is a good case in point. Admittedly, his yellow-shirt-and-tiara setup may be a little hard to carry off on screen, but a film that pays solid tribute to his origins as a product of blaxploitation, complete with period-appropriate music and costumes, could potentially have more narrative heft than a generic, hip-hop, "gangsta" movie which could very easily get lost in the shuffle of movies about dance-offs, rap-offs and drive-by-shootings, many of which go straight to video. It could have an American Gangster vibe to it.
Doctor Strange, long rumored as the first Disney-produced Marvel film (with Patrick Dempsey reportedly chasing the role), actually owes a lot to Steve Ditko's funky, psychedelic visuals, which would feel pretty much at home, I imagine, in a 1960s milieu as well.
The list could go on, really; DC comics' heroes are even older than Marvel's, so there's a bit of potential period goodness to play with right there, not to mention all of the other comic book characters created in the Golden and Silver Ages of comic books or comic strips who sort of fell by the wayside. Maybe if characters like the Shadow and the Phantom had been treated with a little more reverence, their filmed adaptations wouldn't have done as badly as they did.
Heck, if this next version of Superman fails to fly the way Bryan Singer's quasi-sequel failed, maybe they could think of rebooting it again, but this time setting it in 1938. Just a thought.
Personally, I'd love to see more comic-book movies get made, even though most of the big ones I was looking out for have already been done, with only a handful left that I'm really pining for, but in a market where superhero films are starting to feel generic, with audiences and critics claiming "superhero fatigue" maybe a little subverting of the genre is in order.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
"Accidentally Leaked" My Foot...
There's a very clever movie out on DVD titled Mrs. Henderson Presents which was directed by Stephen Frears and starred Dame Judi Dench as the titular Mrs. Henderson and Bob Hoskins as Vivian Van Damm, the man who helped her run, of all things, a burlesque show in Britain at the height of World War II. The twist was that under English law, girly shows weren't allowed and the only way around the loophole was for the women in Mrs. Henderson's shows to stand perfectly still. So she presented dozens of naked girls on "frozen tableaus" while performers sang before them. In one scene, a naughty college student lets loose a mouse on stage, causing the naked women to recoil in fright. Van Damm rushes the college student and his friends out of the theater, yelling about what a scandal they have caused, only to turn to his assistant shortly afterwards and quietly order him to pay other young men to let loose another mouse on the stage during another performance. All just part of the show.
A couple of days ago, Marvel Studios held a special screening of Captain America: The First Avenger, for the U.S. Military. I had no idea such a screening even took place until someone posted a video on Facebook that had apparently been taken at that screening of what was described as a teaser for Marvel's upcoming movie The Avengers. The video having been taken (supposedly) on the sly and in a darkened room, it was of course of absolutely wretched quality. That particular video has since been removed from the site, but eagle-eyed fanboys looking for the bootleg footage will probably be able to find it scattered here and there for the next 48 hours or so.
Now, this close to its release, there were already reviews all over the place for Marvel Studios' Thor, and even for 20th Century Fox's X-Men: First Class. Three days before its release in the U.S., there has yet to be a single review of Captain America: the First Avenger, on either rottentomatoes.com, metacritic.com, or even "fanboy" havens like aintitcoolnews.com. Instead, Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios have opted to push the film hard with trailers and TV spots, several dozen of which have been bombarding TV and the internet in the last couple of weeks.
Not being a marketing guy I have no idea what the thinking is behind the review embargo, though past experience has revealed that it often is not a good sign. What I really don't get is why Marvel not only screened the movie from someone other than the media but gave them something to leak to the public. How about some glowing reviews instead?
To me, this tactic, coupled with the bombardment of TV ads, feels like Marvel's belated way of responding to the Harry Potter juggernaut; while dozens of average joes like myself who want to see this movie succeed are still scratching our heads as to why Marvel chose to position it just one week after a film touted to be the biggest of the summer instead of pitting it against a similarly untested product as Jon Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens, apparently Marvel's marketing whizzes already have it all figured out. Or maybe they don't, considering the deluge of TV teasers and now this "leaked footage" stunt.
Now, while I'm not quite rooting for this movie the way I was for the first Spider-Man film or even Iron Man, I still want this movie to be good, and to succeed. I can only assume Marvel does too, considering how much is riding on it.
I just wish they wouldn't insult the collective intelligence of their viewers with this "leaked" nonsense, considering that they're making a major play for our hard-earned cash.
A couple of days ago, Marvel Studios held a special screening of Captain America: The First Avenger, for the U.S. Military. I had no idea such a screening even took place until someone posted a video on Facebook that had apparently been taken at that screening of what was described as a teaser for Marvel's upcoming movie The Avengers. The video having been taken (supposedly) on the sly and in a darkened room, it was of course of absolutely wretched quality. That particular video has since been removed from the site, but eagle-eyed fanboys looking for the bootleg footage will probably be able to find it scattered here and there for the next 48 hours or so.
Now, this close to its release, there were already reviews all over the place for Marvel Studios' Thor, and even for 20th Century Fox's X-Men: First Class. Three days before its release in the U.S., there has yet to be a single review of Captain America: the First Avenger, on either rottentomatoes.com, metacritic.com, or even "fanboy" havens like aintitcoolnews.com. Instead, Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios have opted to push the film hard with trailers and TV spots, several dozen of which have been bombarding TV and the internet in the last couple of weeks.
Not being a marketing guy I have no idea what the thinking is behind the review embargo, though past experience has revealed that it often is not a good sign. What I really don't get is why Marvel not only screened the movie from someone other than the media but gave them something to leak to the public. How about some glowing reviews instead?
To me, this tactic, coupled with the bombardment of TV ads, feels like Marvel's belated way of responding to the Harry Potter juggernaut; while dozens of average joes like myself who want to see this movie succeed are still scratching our heads as to why Marvel chose to position it just one week after a film touted to be the biggest of the summer instead of pitting it against a similarly untested product as Jon Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens, apparently Marvel's marketing whizzes already have it all figured out. Or maybe they don't, considering the deluge of TV teasers and now this "leaked footage" stunt.
Now, while I'm not quite rooting for this movie the way I was for the first Spider-Man film or even Iron Man, I still want this movie to be good, and to succeed. I can only assume Marvel does too, considering how much is riding on it.
I just wish they wouldn't insult the collective intelligence of their viewers with this "leaked" nonsense, considering that they're making a major play for our hard-earned cash.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
All Things Must End: A Review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Prior to watching this film I had neither read the book nor seen Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I, so watching this movie definitely felt like walking into the middle of a much longer one, or opening a book in the middle. Fortunately, it didn't take me all that long to get up to speed given the urgency with which the story was told. As I want this review to be spoiler-free, I will discuss precious little of the actual story, given the considerable number of twists and turns the narrative takes before the very end.
All that the viewer needs to know is that this is the end; this is the last Harry Potter movie that will ever be made unless and until some troupe of filmmakers decide to reboot the series some twenty-odd years from now. This is the ultimate throw-down between Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and the wizard once known as Tom Riddle and now known as Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). This one's for all the marbles. People die. Tears are shed. Hard decisions are made, and in the end, only one is left standing.
The nice thing about the Potter movies is that they have tended to improve the closer they get to the conclusion. The first two were by-the-numbers in their fealty to the book and simply did not feel terribly compelling to me. It did not help that they were stacked against rival fantasy franchise The Lord of the Rings, which provided an instant point of comparison, with the films of then-series director Chris Columbus' Potter films ultimately losing the fight.
Of course, as everyone who follows these things knows, three years later and roughly 3 billion dollars later the Tolkien adaptations wrapped up, while the Potter series still had several books yet to be adapted, and after Columbus left the series to squander the goodwill he'd earned by unsuccessfully adapting things like the wildly popular musical Rent and the well-received young adult books Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Potter films got both better and darker as the series progressed.
The series really settled into a nice rhythm when David Yates came on board with the fifth film. There was, from that point onward, a consistency of tone that really served the storytelling well.
Still, as good as the movies got, I never really quite got over the "Tolkien lite" feel that the earlier films conveyed. Maybe it was the urgency of the characters' mission, or something like that, but for some reason I never really quite got the sense of peril that I felt when watching the LOTR characters face off against their enemies, which is ironic considering that all told, the last three Potter films have a higher body count of supporting characters than the LOTR films.
That changed with this film; Yates seriously upped his game. From the music to the effects to the deliciously dark cinematography, Yates dials the sense of menace up to eleven. Certain things like tend to keep levity throughout the film, Helena Bonham-Carter's scenery chewing as Bellatrix LeStrange and Rupert Grint's general goofiness as Ron Weasley are, for the most part, discarded (though Ron and Neville Longbottom still sneak in a chuckle or two), so as not to distract from the fact that this film, as all the marketing material suggests, is all about Harry and Voldemort.
It'll be interesting to see Radcliffe's first mainstream post-Potter role; he may have acted on stage but really, until he gets out there, in a series of mainstream movies, and probably even then, he will always be Harry Potter to the public in the same way Sean Connery, for all of his accolades and even his Oscar, will always be James Bond. Still, the interesting thing to see will be how well he can render a character whose journey does not quite parallel his own the way Harry's did. Sure, he was never a wizard who had to save the world, but just as his character did Radcliffe went from boy to man in the years that the eight movies spanned, starting out tentatively and acquiring experience and confidence as the years and movies passed.
While I'm looking forward to Fiennes' next portrayal of a tortured soul (though not, I must admit to another turn as Hades), I confess I'll look back on his work in this series, and in this film in particular, with some fondness. The Voldemort of this film is decidedly more nuanced than the one who tore up the scenery in the last few he was in; this Voldemort talks about "burying your dead with dignity" and actually comes across as the walking wounded, in stark contrast to Dumbledore who, it is revealed, is far more coldly calculating than we had previously been led to believe. My wife even mentioned to me that one of the biggest revelations of the Deathly Hallows book is just how corrupt Dumbledore really was, something which, while touched upon in the films (though like I said, I haven't seen Part I), is not quite that developed. I wonder how far a bolder filmmaker would have gone with that notion. Still, I have to give Yates and Co. full kudos for that one scene in the third act...
(spoiler alert)
featuring that bloody little Voldemort fetus. That was some seriously creepy stuff that, had it not been handled well, could have earned the movie an 'R' rating, to the obvious detriment of the grosses. Very ballsy stuff.
(end spoiler alert)
It's still not a perfect film, and I cannot discuss my main objections to it because they may involve spoilers, but it was, overall, a well-made film. I'm pretty sure Peter Jackson could have done better with it, but Yates does himself proud.
Definitely a worthy sendoff for one of the most lucrative film franchises of all time.
4.5/5
All that the viewer needs to know is that this is the end; this is the last Harry Potter movie that will ever be made unless and until some troupe of filmmakers decide to reboot the series some twenty-odd years from now. This is the ultimate throw-down between Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and the wizard once known as Tom Riddle and now known as Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). This one's for all the marbles. People die. Tears are shed. Hard decisions are made, and in the end, only one is left standing.
The nice thing about the Potter movies is that they have tended to improve the closer they get to the conclusion. The first two were by-the-numbers in their fealty to the book and simply did not feel terribly compelling to me. It did not help that they were stacked against rival fantasy franchise The Lord of the Rings, which provided an instant point of comparison, with the films of then-series director Chris Columbus' Potter films ultimately losing the fight.
Of course, as everyone who follows these things knows, three years later and roughly 3 billion dollars later the Tolkien adaptations wrapped up, while the Potter series still had several books yet to be adapted, and after Columbus left the series to squander the goodwill he'd earned by unsuccessfully adapting things like the wildly popular musical Rent and the well-received young adult books Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Potter films got both better and darker as the series progressed.
The series really settled into a nice rhythm when David Yates came on board with the fifth film. There was, from that point onward, a consistency of tone that really served the storytelling well.
Still, as good as the movies got, I never really quite got over the "Tolkien lite" feel that the earlier films conveyed. Maybe it was the urgency of the characters' mission, or something like that, but for some reason I never really quite got the sense of peril that I felt when watching the LOTR characters face off against their enemies, which is ironic considering that all told, the last three Potter films have a higher body count of supporting characters than the LOTR films.
That changed with this film; Yates seriously upped his game. From the music to the effects to the deliciously dark cinematography, Yates dials the sense of menace up to eleven. Certain things like tend to keep levity throughout the film, Helena Bonham-Carter's scenery chewing as Bellatrix LeStrange and Rupert Grint's general goofiness as Ron Weasley are, for the most part, discarded (though Ron and Neville Longbottom still sneak in a chuckle or two), so as not to distract from the fact that this film, as all the marketing material suggests, is all about Harry and Voldemort.
It'll be interesting to see Radcliffe's first mainstream post-Potter role; he may have acted on stage but really, until he gets out there, in a series of mainstream movies, and probably even then, he will always be Harry Potter to the public in the same way Sean Connery, for all of his accolades and even his Oscar, will always be James Bond. Still, the interesting thing to see will be how well he can render a character whose journey does not quite parallel his own the way Harry's did. Sure, he was never a wizard who had to save the world, but just as his character did Radcliffe went from boy to man in the years that the eight movies spanned, starting out tentatively and acquiring experience and confidence as the years and movies passed.
While I'm looking forward to Fiennes' next portrayal of a tortured soul (though not, I must admit to another turn as Hades), I confess I'll look back on his work in this series, and in this film in particular, with some fondness. The Voldemort of this film is decidedly more nuanced than the one who tore up the scenery in the last few he was in; this Voldemort talks about "burying your dead with dignity" and actually comes across as the walking wounded, in stark contrast to Dumbledore who, it is revealed, is far more coldly calculating than we had previously been led to believe. My wife even mentioned to me that one of the biggest revelations of the Deathly Hallows book is just how corrupt Dumbledore really was, something which, while touched upon in the films (though like I said, I haven't seen Part I), is not quite that developed. I wonder how far a bolder filmmaker would have gone with that notion. Still, I have to give Yates and Co. full kudos for that one scene in the third act...
(spoiler alert)
featuring that bloody little Voldemort fetus. That was some seriously creepy stuff that, had it not been handled well, could have earned the movie an 'R' rating, to the obvious detriment of the grosses. Very ballsy stuff.
(end spoiler alert)
It's still not a perfect film, and I cannot discuss my main objections to it because they may involve spoilers, but it was, overall, a well-made film. I'm pretty sure Peter Jackson could have done better with it, but Yates does himself proud.
Definitely a worthy sendoff for one of the most lucrative film franchises of all time.
4.5/5
Friday, July 1, 2011
The Movie Almost Nobody Will See This Weekend: A Review of Monte Carlo
I enjoyed films like Norman Jewison's Only You, with Robert Downey Jr. and Marissa Tomei, the late Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon, and Michael Winterbottom's Genova, with Colin Firth, largely because of good scripts and compelling performances by the lead actors, but a huge part of the experience, and I'm sure the filmmakers know this, was the location, which was integral to the story of all three of those movies. All three of these movies were set in idyllic Italian cities, and the vistas really did just take my breath away. Those movies put me there, in the moment, in those glorious European locations. It's the same thing with the better James Bond movies, and would have been the same thing with Iron Man 2 but for the fact that the scenes of the film that took place in Monaco were fleeting.
The promise of a movie that takes place mostly in Monaco, therefore, was reason enough for me to want to see it, and reason enough for me to ignore the fact that the film, a starring vehicle for Disney pop princess Selena Gomez, was basically tween girl fodder.
The story is generic enough; Grace (Gomez), a fresh high school graduate from Texas, goes off to France with the money she's been earning waiting tables and saving for four years. She's accompanied by her best friend Emma (Katie Cassidy), also a waitress, and is forced to go with her stepsister Meg (Leighton Meester) who went to high school with Emma, who apparently didn't bother going to college, and who doesn't think much of her, or of Grace.
The trip turns out to be an unmitigated disaster; the accommodations are terrible, and the trio are saddled with a tour guide intent to sprint them through all of the attractions in Paris. When the girls linger at the Eiffel Tower, they end up getting left behind by the bus and have to make it back to their hotel on foot, something that becomes even harder when they get caught in the rain. They take refuge at what appears to be a very posh hotel, and while they are drying off in the ladies room, with Grace crying in a toilet stall and Meg and Emma standing around the powder area in awkward silence, a young woman who looks exactly like Grace walks in chatting on her cellphone. It seems this young woman, Cordelia Scott (also Gomez) is a filthy rich British heiress who is billeted at the hotel but who has no intentions of hanging around as she has another agenda altogether. When she leaves, Emma, seeing a way out of their hellish holiday, suggests that Grace impersonate Cordelia, which, after a moment of waffling and despite Meg's stern warning, she does, specifically when the hotel staff intercept her in the lobby and present her with a twenty-pound lobster.
As it turns out, Cordelia has a paid trip to Monte Carlo waiting for her, which the girls take while Cordelia is off playing hooky. High jinks, naturally, ensue, involving boys, dancing, fabulous jewelry and clothes, blah, blah, blah teen girls' wet dreams. After an altogether predictable turn of events the girls learn important lessons about self-esteem and social status and all of that and everyone ends up happily ever after.
Now, to be fair, from a storytelling perspective, the movie wasn't a complete waste of time. Gomez shows some earnestness in her portrayal of a young woman who has worked hard and who feels she deserves more than life has given her, before she realizes just how lucky she is. There was a part of me that could relate to someone who felt she deserved more out of life considering what she put into it, and who would embrace, however reluctantly, the chance to live the high life, if only for a moment.
At the end of the day, though, I didn't find her performance compelling enough for me to forget how utterly trite the script was. Worse still, she utterly failed to convince me that she could be a spoiled British heiress.
What really killed the narrative were unintentionally funny things like Katie Cassidy's Southern drawl coming and going, and the really goofy way Leighton Meester, uptight for most of the film, portrayed Meg letting her hair down, so to speak, while enjoying nightlife with an Australian backpacker. I even found myself snickering at little things like a sunbathing scene where Gomez appeared to be wearing a pushup bra. If the direction, script or performances had been any better I'm pretty sure I could have overlooked the little kinks but as I watched one well-worn storytelling trope after another unfold I really couldn't help myself. Ultimately, the biggest laugh I got out of the whole thing was seeing twenty-something straight males singing Gomez's "Who Says" in falsetto when I went to the men's room after the whole thing was done.
The good news, though, is that at the end of the day I got what I came for: some really glorious shots of Monte Carlo, though still not as many as I would have wanted to see from a film titled "Monte Carlo." Ah well. I'm still glad I watched this instead of Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Score: 2/5
The promise of a movie that takes place mostly in Monaco, therefore, was reason enough for me to want to see it, and reason enough for me to ignore the fact that the film, a starring vehicle for Disney pop princess Selena Gomez, was basically tween girl fodder.
The story is generic enough; Grace (Gomez), a fresh high school graduate from Texas, goes off to France with the money she's been earning waiting tables and saving for four years. She's accompanied by her best friend Emma (Katie Cassidy), also a waitress, and is forced to go with her stepsister Meg (Leighton Meester) who went to high school with Emma, who apparently didn't bother going to college, and who doesn't think much of her, or of Grace.
The trip turns out to be an unmitigated disaster; the accommodations are terrible, and the trio are saddled with a tour guide intent to sprint them through all of the attractions in Paris. When the girls linger at the Eiffel Tower, they end up getting left behind by the bus and have to make it back to their hotel on foot, something that becomes even harder when they get caught in the rain. They take refuge at what appears to be a very posh hotel, and while they are drying off in the ladies room, with Grace crying in a toilet stall and Meg and Emma standing around the powder area in awkward silence, a young woman who looks exactly like Grace walks in chatting on her cellphone. It seems this young woman, Cordelia Scott (also Gomez) is a filthy rich British heiress who is billeted at the hotel but who has no intentions of hanging around as she has another agenda altogether. When she leaves, Emma, seeing a way out of their hellish holiday, suggests that Grace impersonate Cordelia, which, after a moment of waffling and despite Meg's stern warning, she does, specifically when the hotel staff intercept her in the lobby and present her with a twenty-pound lobster.
As it turns out, Cordelia has a paid trip to Monte Carlo waiting for her, which the girls take while Cordelia is off playing hooky. High jinks, naturally, ensue, involving boys, dancing, fabulous jewelry and clothes, blah, blah, blah teen girls' wet dreams. After an altogether predictable turn of events the girls learn important lessons about self-esteem and social status and all of that and everyone ends up happily ever after.
Now, to be fair, from a storytelling perspective, the movie wasn't a complete waste of time. Gomez shows some earnestness in her portrayal of a young woman who has worked hard and who feels she deserves more than life has given her, before she realizes just how lucky she is. There was a part of me that could relate to someone who felt she deserved more out of life considering what she put into it, and who would embrace, however reluctantly, the chance to live the high life, if only for a moment.
At the end of the day, though, I didn't find her performance compelling enough for me to forget how utterly trite the script was. Worse still, she utterly failed to convince me that she could be a spoiled British heiress.
What really killed the narrative were unintentionally funny things like Katie Cassidy's Southern drawl coming and going, and the really goofy way Leighton Meester, uptight for most of the film, portrayed Meg letting her hair down, so to speak, while enjoying nightlife with an Australian backpacker. I even found myself snickering at little things like a sunbathing scene where Gomez appeared to be wearing a pushup bra. If the direction, script or performances had been any better I'm pretty sure I could have overlooked the little kinks but as I watched one well-worn storytelling trope after another unfold I really couldn't help myself. Ultimately, the biggest laugh I got out of the whole thing was seeing twenty-something straight males singing Gomez's "Who Says" in falsetto when I went to the men's room after the whole thing was done.
The good news, though, is that at the end of the day I got what I came for: some really glorious shots of Monte Carlo, though still not as many as I would have wanted to see from a film titled "Monte Carlo." Ah well. I'm still glad I watched this instead of Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Score: 2/5
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