In Case You Missed It: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

This is the first of my reviews of recent movies I've caught on DVD.

I was actually willing to wait for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter on cable TV, but my wife actually bought the DVD, apparently mistaking it for Steven Spielberg's biopic Lincoln. Truth be told; I'm glad I saw this movie in all of its uncut, "R" rated glory, as it is a lot of fun.

ALVH is the story of the 16th president of the United States of America, and the only one to see it through a bloody civil war, but with a twist: since his youth he has hunted vampires, mainly using an ax.

The story begins in Lincoln's boyhood, in which he sees his mother attacked by a brutal plantation owner Jack Barts (Marton Csokas), which shortly thereafter results in her death. By the time he has grown into a young man (Benjamin Walker, who plays Lincoln throughout the rest of the film), he has sworn vengeance against Barton. His attempt on his life, however, fails for the simple reason that Barts is a vampire and not the easiest creature to kill. In fact, he almost kills Lincoln, who is saved by a mystery man named Henry Sturges (Dominic Cooper), who offers to mentor Lincoln in the art of vampire hunting, providing that he sets aside his personal quest for vengeance until Sturges says otherwise. Vampires, it seems, are everywhere, and in the course of his clandestine war on vampires, Lincoln learns that they pose a bigger threat to his country than he could ever have imagined.

I haven't had the pleasure of reading Seth Grahame-Smith's well-loved faux biography of Abraham Lincoln, but I definitely enjoyed this adaptation, and perhaps the fact that Grahame Smith helped adapt his own book for the screen helped preserve some of that fascinating revisionist sensibility for the screen. Of course, the plot (which was apparently tailor-fit for the film) is fairly easy to pick apart, but really, if the idea was simply to bring something new and quirky to the screen, I feel director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted), producer Tim Burton, and all their collaborators have succeeded.

In any event, whether Grahame-Smith adapted himself well or not, Bekmambetov definitely brought his bag of tricks to this film, with his highly stylized take on vampires, who in the 3-D presentation of this film no doubt jumped right out at viewers. The Russian director's signature is all over the highly kinetic, rather well-choreographed action sequences, though one could argue there's a dab of Zack Synder in there as well. One thing that elevates this film over anything Bekmambetov has done before is the distinct atmosphere of the film, with light touches of sepia in the lighting and a warmth that evokes something very old yet well-preserved. I suspect he was able to achieve this effect with the help of veteran cinematographer Caleb Deschanel. Composer Henry Jackman also contributes to the "olde America" atmosphere with music which, while not particularly distinct, is easy on the ears just the same.

Of course, this truly outlandish concept would not really take off without a truly solid leading actor, and this film has it in relative newcomer Benjamin Walker. Walker comes across as a young Liam Neeson (and in fact played a younger version of Neeson's character in the 2004 film Kinsey) and given that, for the longest time, Neeson was an odds on favorite for the role of Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's biopic Lincoln, the casting is quite propitious. He really throws himself into this role.

It's a pity this movie was not better received; its ending precludes the possibility of a sequel and it really feels like a rather uniquely entertaining piece of standalone pop-culture.

3.5/5

Wreck-It Ralph

"Development hell" is Hollywood shorthand for a movie that, for various reasons, takes a long time to get made. It can be a bit of a misnomer, given that at times, the extended gestation period can actually benefit the movie's quality exponentially, whether it's because the filmmaking technology catches up to the writers' lofty visions, or whether it's because the general audience's sensibility has aligned itself with what the filmmakers put on the screen.

In the case of the recent animated film Wreck-It Ralph, which has apparently been in one form of development or another at Walt Disney studios since the 1980s, "development hell" has been anything but a four-letter word, considering that the film has opened to glowing reviews and box-office success.

WIR is the story of a video game villain, the title character, Ralph (John C. Reilly) who, after 30 years of being the bad guy is basically suffering an existential crisis. He inhabits a world where video games are basically interconnected worlds, and the characters, when they're not busy during the day living out the games, interact just like regular folk. Ralph even attends a support group for video game villains. Because of his status as a villain, Ralph is treated as something of an outsider in the game he inhabits, "Fix-It-Felix Jr.," while the game's hero, Felix (Jack McBrayer) is regularly feted by the rest of the game inhabitants. Longing to improve his lot in life, Ralph leaves his game and enters another, "Hero's Duty" looking to gain a medal (the prize of that game) and therefore acceptance. Things, however, do not turn out as Ralph plans, and through a series of events beyond his control he ends up in yet another game, the go-kart racing adventure Sugar Rush, where he meets Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) a young racer who, like Ralph, is a bit of an outsider in her game and who seeks to change her fate as well. Not only that, but events have been set in motion that threaten not only the Sugar Rush game, but every single game in the arcade. With the help of Vanellope, Felix and the tough-as-nails protagonist from "Hero's Duty," Sargeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch) Ralph will soon learn what it really means to be a hero.

Cartoon characters with existential crises have been done many times before (the Toy Story films, Ratatouille) as have films centered around the bad guys (Despicable Me, Megamind), but setting the story in a world of video games was a clever twist that opened up a lot of very interesting visual opportunities, which Disney exploited quite cleverly. First, there was the contrast between the old games and the new, and I chuckled at the 80s and 90s references to actual video games, as well as the fact that the "old" game characters were depicted with cruder graphics and animation than their much newer counterparts. Had this film been made when it was first conceived, the 1980s, apart from missing out on such cutting-edge animation technology, it would not have been able to cash in on the sense of nostalgia that pervades the film.

Second, and more significantly, the rendering of the video game landscapes, particularly in the case of "Hero's Duty" and "Sugar Rush" was nothing less than absolutely breathtaking. The "Hero's Duty" scenes are relatively, regrettably brief, but they hint at what a full-length movie based on gritty space combat games like "Starcraft" or "HALO" might look like. The "Sugar Rush" scenes, in contrast, take up a healthy chunk of the movie's running time, but are no less meticulously rendered. The highlights of these magnificent, candy-coated set pieces are, quite easily, the racing scenes, which to my mind are the race scenes that the makers of box-office bomb Speed Racer wish they could have put on the screen. Again, had this movie come out at around the time of the first Tron movie, the only movie of that era to feature video game characters as protagonists, it would most likely have suffered a similar fate at the box-office.

No matter how handsome the presentation, though, this film would not get very far without some good old-fashioned heart, and I'm happy to say that Wreck-It Ralph has plenty of that, along with a thoroughly likeable and even relatable protagonist in the eternally frustrated Ralph, who isn't unlike Tom Hanks' Woody from Toy Story or Craig T. Nelson's Bob Parr in The Incredibles in terms of some very human frailty.

It's not an absolutely perfect film; I wasn't too impressed with the fact that a lot of the banter between Vanellope and Ralph consisted of toilet gags done over and over, and there were some gaps in logic that felt a little jarring at some points. Such, I think, is the nature of creating a world that has its own set of rules, as was the case in the Toy Story films; too often the writers run afoul of their world's internal logic. Why, for example, don't Ralph and Felix have the same jerky movement as the rest of the characters in their game? Still, it's nothing as egregious as Buzz Lightyear believing himself to be alive and yet freezing whenever a human being shows up in the first Toy Story movie. This movie is a magnificent experience, and considering the eye-popping colors on display I'm glad I skipped the 3-D presentation; whatever the extra-dimension had to offer, it would not have been worth losing a bit of those wonderful colors!

Disney Animation has pulled off a bit of an anomaly this year; they've crafted a movie that has garnered better reviews than the product of their esteemed colleagues at Pixar!

4.5/5

50 Years of Being Shaken, Not Stirred: A Review of Skyfall

In a world where film franchises generally rule the box-office roost, the James Bond franchise, which spans 23 films and 50 years, remains truly extraordinary. That it has managed to maintain its relevance despite radical changes in both technology and the global socio-political landscape, both of which were an integral aspect of the storytelling when the series was launched in 1962 with Dr. No, attests to the dogged efforts of second-generation Bond producer Barbara Broccoli to keep things fresh and to enlist the best talent available for the movies. To be sure, there have been a few creative blips in the franchise's half-century of existence, but with the latest installment, Skyfall reaping both critical accolades and box-office gold, Bond is arguably bigger and better than ever.

Skyfall begins, as all Bond films do, with an action-packed prologue, this one set in Istanbul. Bond (Daniel Craig) and fellow MI6 agent Eve (Naomie Harris) are out to recover a stolen list of undercover agents from Patrice, a very slippery freelance operative (Ola Rapace). The retrieval operation fails and as a result of a very marginal call by MI6 boss M (Judi Dench) to have Eve take a shot at the mercenary despite the fact that he and Bond are fighting tooth and nail atop a train, Bond ends up falling from the train and into a river, and thereafter presumed dead.

Months later, a mysterious attack is launched on MI6 headquarters which leaves eight agents dead, and M, who appears to be the target of the unknown enemy's ire, is then dragged over hot coals by the British government. A civilian official, Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) is brought on board to basically help ease M into retirement and to help the government determine if, perhaps, the time has come to close down MI6 altogether.

Bond, very much alive, learns of the attack on MI6 and returns "from the grave" to active duty. A bit of shrapnel from a wound he got from Patrice, which turns out to be rather unique hardware, enables him to follow the mercenary to his latest job in Shanghai, but even after fighting him he is unable to learn for whom the mercenary stole the list of agents.

When three NATO agents are killed because their names as undercover agents were posted on the internet, it becomes clear that time is running out for Bond, M, and perhaps the entire British intelligence operation in general.

Director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, The Road to Perdition) shows a keen eye for wall-to-wall action, in addition to the cerebral drama on which he has built his career. His dramatic skill serves him in good stead here as well as he explores Bond's origins in a way no other filmmaker has done before and manages to come up with a story that is genuinely, tragically moving, even without going overboard on sentimentality. Craig basically inhabits Bond and Mendes brings out the very best from him. I've taken issues with Craig's performance as recently as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but ever since he assumed the mantle of Bond in 2006's Casino Royale, he has never been less than riveting in this role, and this, to my mind, is his best outing to date.

For me, though, the star of the show was Dame Judi Dench as M, who is central to the plot of the movie. There has been much talk about how Javier Bardem's cybersavvy antagonist Silva is one of the most uniquely compelling Bond villains of all time, and to be fair, his insane, effeminate and ultimately brutal antagonist is really something to behold in the time he's on the screen, but Dench owns the show as she portrays M under fire, fighting not only for her own life but the continued existence of the agency she leads. It's been over seven films and 17 years since Dench first took on the role, and she was the only actor from the franchise who took part in its reboot in 2006, and she's really stamped her authority on the character and has made hers a tough act to follow.

Mendes has crafted not only one of the best Bond films I've ever seen, but easily one of the most compelling action films of the year. His collaborators bring their very best to the feature as well, from cinematographer Roger Deakins' moody lighting to composer Thomas Newman's surprisingly vibrant score, including a few very cool riffs on Monty Norman's iconic James Bond theme.

While I can't claim to have seen all of the Bond films dating back to Sean Connery's movies, I can certainly recommend Skyfall as a thoroughly engaging action film, Bond or otherwise.

5/5

A Spy-Thriller Masterpiece: A Review of Argo

In 1979, hundreds of student activists stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran, due to outrage over the fact that the United States was coddling their deposed, murderous dictator. They took hostage the embassy's staff, save for a handful of staff who managed, in the chaos, to sneak out the back door and take refuge at the Canadian Ambassador's house. Director Ben Affleck's Argo is the dramatization of the remarkable true story behind the effort to rescue these individuals from what was, at the time, the most hostile territory on earth, for American citizens.

Having found out about the six escapees from the embassy, the U.S. government works overtime trying to figure out how to get them out of Iran, with their schemes ranging from having the six pose as teachers to the harebrained idea of having them ride bicycles out of the country. When the government brings aboard Tony Mendez (Affleck, in a wonderfully understated performance) an exfiltration expert from the Central Intelligence Agency, on board, he is initially as stumped as everyone else in the room, but when a phone conversation with his ten-year-old son later that night prompts Mendez to switch onto a science fiction movie Mendez seizes upon a scheme which, as the cliche goes, is so crazy it might actually work: Mendez would go to Iran and have the six Americans pose as a Canadian film crew scouting locations for a science fiction film in the vein of Star Wars in Iran.

The ruse requires that an actual production be staged, and for this purpose Mendez recruits Oscar-winning makeup artist John Chambers (John Goodman) who has used his skill with prosthetics many times in the past to help Mendez in his operations, who in turn recruits over-the-hill Hollywood producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), and together, the three of them acquire a forgotten script titled "Argo" and then create a great deal of hype for a production that doesn't actually exist. Mendez's scheme, described as "the best bad idea" among all of the stinkers concocted by the government to rescue the embassy staffers, gets the green light from the C.I.A. and he travels to Iran with six fake passports in the hope of making it work. In the meantime, the revolutionary government is closing in on the six escapees, with sweatshop kids piecing together shredded documents, determining the identities of who actually worked in the embassy.

Mendez meets up with the six refugees at the Canadian ambassador's house, and apart from the chaos just outside the walls of the house he must also grapple with their collective fear at what could happen to them if the escape plan goes south. The clock is ticking.

Atmosphere and period authenticity are everything in this handsomely-crafted thriller, and Affleck and crew crank both of them up to 11 as early as the opening billboard, which features the Warner Brothers logo used in the 1970s as opposed to the current one. It's not the first time such a technique has been used in a period film but it is extremely effective here, especially when followed with a judiciously-edited and narrated sequence of historical events that led to that fateful day in 1979 and an extremely grainy texture that strongly contrasts with the slick digital imagery of most contemporary films.

I purposely avoided reading any historical accounts on what has been dubbed as "the Canadian Caper" before watching the movie because, quite simply, I didn't want to know if all the embassy workers made it out all right, and to my mind it was a good call as it allowed me to live very much in the moment that Affleck, his cast and crew captured. What followed was some genuine, nail-biting tension.

For all of his skill in weaving dramatic tension, though, Affleck's real narrative coup in this film, was juxtaposing the tension in Iran with the glitz of tinseltown; as reel and real Hollywood veterans, Goodman and Arkin clearly enjoy sniping at the hypocrisy of the entertainment world and its hype machine, and they are an absolute delight to watch, particularly Arkin as his Lester Siegel outfoxes a representative of the Writers' Guild of America trying to hustle him for a better offer for the previously ignored "Argo" script. Siegel also has the distinction of coining what is likely to be the film's most quoted phrase: "Argo f**k yourself." The surprisingly rich streak of humor that permeates the film sets this film apart from standard, dead-serious spy fare.

Much as I'd love to hail this film as perfect, though, there are a couple of somewhat "Hollywood" touches (ironically enough) throughout and towards the climax of the movie which felt a little bit jarring. The climactic parts I will not discuss so as not to spoil anything, but throughout the film I couldn't help but notice the shifty-eyed Iranian sitting behind desks skimming through reassembled photographs of the embassy staff, and I was particularly struck by the wild-eyed revolutionary army soldier constantly yelling at the characters during a pivotal scene. These weren't exactly mustache-twirling villains but something about their depiction kind of yelled Hollywood cliche, in contrast to the portrayal of the militants at other points in the film which did a far better job of conveying the Iranian's palpable and arguably justifiable rage against the U.S. In a movie which, for the most part, quite effectively captured the real-life plight of a handful of scared Americans, these caricatures, who feature prominently throughout the film, seemed a tad out of place and do not do its overall credibility too many favors.

All told, though, I think Affleck and crew can definitely hold their heads up high, having woven an utterly compelling if sometimes flawed storytelling tapestry. This is flaws notwithstanding, easily one of the best spy-thrillers I've seen in a while.

4.5/5

Not so Taken: A Review of Taken 2

In 2009, the film Taken proved to be a surprise hit at the box-office, drawing in audiences with its simple premise of a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative Bryan Mills, played by Liam Neeson, ripping up Paris in search of his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace), who has been kidnapped by a human trafficking ring run by a bunch of Albanians.

Using Hollywood logic, therefore, this was a film that was ripe for a sequel, no matter how thin the plot of the first film was.

The sequel, simply titled Taken 2, picks up where its predecessor left off. At the very beginning of the film, Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija) the father of the deceased head of the trafficking operation, vows at the very graves of his son and his dead cohorts to exact revenge on Mills and his loved ones.

Mills invites his daughter Kim and his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) to spend some time with him in Istanbul, where he has a brief job providing security for a Sheik, after he learns that Lenore's somewhat rocky marriage to her new husband has taken a turn for the worse, with him having cancelled a planned trip to China.

The Albanians track the Mills family down to Instanbul while they are on their holiday, and pretty much all hell breaks loose as they seek to exact their revenge.

The first film was a reasonably entertaining experience, but not something I thought would support a sequel. Truth be told the only reason I caught the second was that I'm a sucker for films with exotic locations, and in that aspect this film does not disappoint with its sweeping, panoramic shots of what is arguably one of Eastern Europe's most famous cities. Particularly striking for me were the shots of the world-renowned Hagia Sophia.

In almost every other respect, however, the film, for me, was utterly forgettable. The action choreography, from the fist fights to rooftop chases to car chases, all felt like poor copies of action sequences in other, far superior films. I did enjoy the bits of the film showing Mills' craftiness, letting audiences know he's got as much brains as he does brawn. These are the scenes in which he basically talks Kim through the process of locating him and Lenore, though the fact that this involves throwing live grenades around a populated city just so Mills can hear the explosions is more than a little off-putting. Apart from that, there really wasn't anything about this film that made it look like anything other than the cash grab that it is. As an action film, this has been done, and done much, much better.

Some people have talked about how the first film established Neeson as a "thinking man's action hero." Well, all I see in this film is a poor man's Jason Bourne, and that's even AFTER the Bourne franchise itself has been somewhat impoverished by a lackluster spinoff.

1.5/5

Hotel Transylvania

The idea of monsters being more afraid of people than people are of monsters has already been done in Pixar's 2001 Monsters, Inc., but Sony Pictures Animation revisits the concept with Hotel Transylvania, and the results, while a little mixed, are still reasonably pleasant. This is the studio's first fully-animated film since 2009's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and like that film, it is a pretty rich visual experience.

The titular hotel was created by Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) as a refuge for himself and his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) as well as all other monsters, from the evils of humankind. Dracula is protective of Mavis because her mother, his wife, died when an angry mob of humans torched his castle when she was still a baby. Things go well, with the hotel regularly being visited by guests like Frankenstein (Kevin James), Wayne the Werewolf (Steve Buscemi), their spouses (Fran Drescher and Molly Shannon, respectively), the Mummy (CeeLo Green), and the Invisible Man (David Spade) among many others. Staffed by zombies, witches, and haunted suits of armor, it's a veritable monster paradise. For years, therefore, Dracula is able to keep his friends, and his daughter, close, and therefore shielded from the outside world.

Things go awry for Dracula, however, when Mavis, around the time of her 118th birthday (which makes her a teenager in vampire years) expresses her desire to see the world. Dracula has anticipated this period in her life and has prepared for it; he has an elaborate ruse set up designed to scare Mavis out of her desire to see the outside world. His ruse, involving zombies dressing up as humans and erecting a fake village, works in scaring Mavis back home, but as an unintended consequence, a most unwanted visitor follows the unwitting zombies, several of whom have caught fire, back to the hotel: a human named Jonathan (Andy Samberg).

Dracula, the first to discover Jonathan, is quick to conceal him by disguising him. He is unable to get him out of the hotel for one reason or another, but his real problem begins when Mavis meets the human and is almost instantly attracted to him.

This movie, saddled with narrative cliches and crude humor, is certainly not among the finest animated films I've ever seen, but it had enough going for it, like the interesting visual touch of Genndy Tartakovsky (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Samurai Jack, Dexter's Laboratory) and some pretty funny visual jokes and one-liners, to keep me and my kids entertained for an hour and a half.

The crew's wonderfully stylized ode to Hollywood's classic monsters is certainly worth looking at, and to their credit Sandler and his "bros," James, Buscemi and Spade, are pretty good at transposing their live-action chemistry to their animated film. It's almost a shame they couldn't find a role for Sandler mainstay Rob Schneider.

The Sandler humor, however, is all too evident in some scenes, and often feels out of place in what is basically a family movie. Not only that, but the movie ends as most of Sandler's live-action films do, with realizations about growing up and an overly maudlin resolution.

The difference between a movie like this and a masterpiece like, say, Finding Nemo is all too evident when Dracula gives a long, schmaltzy speech at the end of the movie about children growing up and his having to accept that, which contrasts quite sharply with with minimalist, but infinitely more effective bit of dialogue from Ellen deGeneres' Dory: "You can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him."

Not only that, but there's a pretty fair-sized hole in the film's internal logic, but one which I suspect won't matter much to younger viewers. In any case, I won't spoil it here.

Still, the film definitely has a wonderful sense of whimsy and some truly laugh-out-loud moments, such as the "human attack" on Mavis at the beginning of the film. It's a rather flawed film, but an enjoyable one nonetheless, though I can say that there is nothing about this film that I feel is compelling enough to merit the 3-D premiums, so my advice to the parents taking their kids to see this is to skip the 3-D format altogether.

3/5

200 Floors of Hardcore Brutality: A Review of Dredd

Growing up during the Cold War, I became a fan of many of the post-apocalyptic pop culture works it spawned, like the Mad Max and Terminator films. I often imagined myself moving down to a bomb shelter and living under the Earth for years after a nuclear holocaust (which, now that I think about it, would actually compel me to live underground for the remainder of my natural life).

The new film Dredd, which apart from the British comic book series it adapted bears no relation whatsoever to the 1995 fiasco Judge Dredd starring Sylvester Stallone as the title character, hearkened back to those years and was actually a pretty fun experience for me.

This new film, in which New Zealand-born actor Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings films, Star Trek) dons the helmet and padded uniform of the British pop-culture icon, is set in a dystopian, but not entirely implausible future in which most of humanity lives in Mega Cities littered with high-rise slums and steeped in crime and chaos. In the midst of this chaos the Justice Department is the only source of order, and its agents, known as judges, serve as policemen, juries, judges and executioners all rolled into one. This is not a society that puts much stock in due process of law, in short.

In one such city, Mega City One, of particular concern is the spread of a new narcotic known as Slo-Mo, which causes the user's perception of reality to slow down to 1% of its normal speed. When the drug lord responsible for the manufacture and sale of this drug, former prostitute Madeline Madrigal (Lena Headey), or Ma-Ma for short, orders the brutal execution of three double-crossing pushers,Judge Dredd, the most feared of all judges, is called onto the scene, and he brings with him a judge-in-training, Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby). Anderson has only just failed her exams but the Justice Department is keen on giving her a second chance because of her psychic abilities, and Dredd is given the task of evaluating her. While they're in the area, Dredd and Anderson make a drug bust, with Anderson's abilities detecting the killer Kay (Wood Harris) among the perps. Rather than execute him on the spot, though, Dredd decides to take Kay, who happens to be one of Ma-Ma's top lieutenants, back to the department for questioning.

Because she has eyes and ears almost everywhere in the towering tenement, Ma-Ma, whose entire operation could be compromised if Kay talks, has the entire building shut down by sealing it with blast doors and gives the occupants of the entire building the order to kill the two judges. What ensues is about an hour of unbridled mayhem and gore as Dredd and Anderson fight for their very lives.

Presumably due to the terrible impression left by Stallone's 1995 flop, this movie has failed to light up the box-office in every market it's been released with the exception of Dredd's birthplace, the United Kingdom, and to me that's a shame because as action films go, this one was surprisingly intelligent. Director Pete Travis (Vantage Point), in my opinion, has plenty to be proud of, whatever the final receipts of this film may be.

It does call for a bit of viewer discretion because of the somewhat extreme nature of the violence depicted. The three murder victims in the beginning, for example, are skinned before they are flung to their deaths from near the top of the 200-storey building to the concrete below, and much of the violence is so brutal it's been quite noticeably cut by the distributor, acting presumably at the behest of the local review board. The violence isn't only visually extreme but thematically so as well; to show her resolve to kill the judges, Ma-Ma unleashes two miniguns on an entire row of apartments, showing no hesitation to blow away the innocent residents living there. It has to be said, though, that the violence feels oddly fitting in a story where the world has descended so far into madness that such lofty concepts as presumption of innocence and trial by jury are mere relics consigned to history.

It's in these themes that the film fascinated me most; the satirical, often humorous notion of a world where cops and judges were rolled into one, a world not actually very far removed from our own in terms of rampant criminality, was interesting to see onscreen, especially considering my experience as a lawyer with how slowly the wheels of justice often grind. Of course, none of the excesses of the Cursed Earth (which is how the world is referred to) would be permissible in any truly civilized society, but to those of us who have grown cynical watching powerful people exploit the intricacies of the justice system, watching this drastically simplified version of justice is intriguing in the most escapist sense. I laughed out loud when, before Dredd executed a rather heinous perpetrator after reading aloud the "charges," the perp blew smoke in his face, to which Dredd responded "defense noted." It's little gems like this that make screenwriter Alex Garland's script engaging enough to elevate this beyond standard shoot-'em-up fare.

Of course, Garland's script and Pete Travis' direction would have been for naught if they did not have a solid performance from their lead actor, and Urban, who, notably, never removes his helmet, delivers on this front. He channels Clint Eastwood and sounds a lot more intimidating than Christian Bale did as Batman. It's a pretty difficult performance considering something like sixty percent of his face is obscured, and while I don't see Urban hoisting up any Oscars or Golden Globes because of it, he certainly deserves the accolades reviewers have heaped on him for what he's managed to do. Olivia Thirlby, looking a little less jail-baity here than she did in her breakout movie Juno, brings some much needed humanity to the proceedings and shows pretty clearly that it's not easy to have absolute power over who lives and who dies.

On an artistic level the film's grungy, unrelentingly dark look is a perfect fit for the story, and nods to cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire) and production designer Mark Digby and his crew are definitely in order. Seeing the characters standing in the Peach Trees slum one really feels as if one is among the dregs of humanity.

It must be said, however, that by and large the filmmakers waste the 3-D format in which they reportedly shot the film. Apart from the visualization of the effects of "Slo-Mo" and a couple of scenes involving bullets, broken glass and drops of blood flying around, there is very little benefit offered by the format. The fact that there were plenty of shots of the dizzying heights of the Peach Trees tenement only highlights this shortcoming; there was plenty of opportunity for vertigo-inducing shots involving the building's atrium that could have played with depth perception, but they were quite simply never used. Even the post-production-converted Avengers, which featured an elevator descending, bothered to showcase a depth illusion. One consolation I took was that, at least, there was no unusual darkening of the image due to the 3-D. That much, at least, they got right.

There was also a story gaffe which I feel was never adequately explained; because he is engaged in a firefight with dozens of armed men Dredd finds himself running low on ammunition. The simple question that then arises is: why on earth doesn't Dredd pick up the guns of any of the dozens of men he wipes out in the course of the movie? Anderson picks up and uses a thug's gun late in the movie and this decision doesn't seem to have any ill effect on her. The notion that Dredd would only fight with his standard-issue firearm seems a little silly when weighed against a basic need to survive a highly dangerous situation.

Flaws notwithstanding, this was actually a rather solid movie, though not one I'd recommend spending a premium on for a 3-D screening. I had not actually intended to watch it in any format, but I had time to kill, and the 3-D presentation was the only one available where I was. Good thing, then, that 3-D screenings are a lot cheaper in SM Davao than they are in SM Manila (P250 as opposed to about P300). For anyone with a little time on their hands and a stomach for extreme violence, this is actually worth a look.

4/5

Movie Politics Makes Hilarious Bedfellows: A Review of The Campaign

I have enjoyed watching comedian Will Ferrell make a fool of himself since 1998, when I first saw him and Chris Kattan bobbing their heads to rave music in A Night at the Roxbury. In fact, when I watched Ben Stiller's sendup of male models, Zoolander in 2001, it irked me that Ferrell, the film's bad guy, did not get as much screen time as I would have wanted him to have. As it turns out, I needn't have waited very long for Ferrell's star to take off; two years later he made quite a splash in Old School, and later that year starred in his first bona fide blockbuster, Jon Favreau's Elf.

Nine years later, Will Ferrell has treated moviegoers to dollops of his deliciously irreverent, sometimes borderline distasteful humor in several movies, such as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Blades of Glory, among others, and this year, he's at it again with the political farce The Campaign. This time, he's brought Zach Galifianikis ( of The Hangover movies) along for the ride.

Ferrell plays Cam Brady, the Congressman of a district in North Carolina who has been in office for so long he is about to enter his fifth term unopposed. When he leaves a somewhat salacious phone message intended for his mistress on the wrong answering machine his popularity plummets, prompting corrupt power brokers Glen and Wade Motch (played by John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd) to move to replace him with a new candidate, one they feel they can bend to their will, especially for the purpose of approving legislation involving the illegal sale of the district to China. They end up choosing Marty Huggins (Galifianikis) the effeminate son of one of their associates Raymond Huggins (Brian Cox). Marty runs a tour of his small town and is excited to run for Congress as he feels he has a lot to offer his district, which he describes as "a mess." Unfortunately, however, seasoned politician that Brady is, he is not about to make it easy for Marty. The Motch brothers, to give Marty a bit of an edge, hire a campaign manager every bit as unethical and ruthless as they are named Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott), and the game, as they say, is on.

For me the funniest thing about Will Ferrell movies, especially the R-rated ones, is how the jokes, while they sometimes push the envelope of bad taste, are uniquely outrageous and sometimes totally random, like the unusual sexual request made by one of the characters in a pivotal scene as well as the infamous baby-punching scene which, thanks to the magic of computer-generated imagery, was actually shown. Some scenes are certainly funnier than others, but it's the willingness of Ferrell and his collaborators to go out on a creative limb in the name of their art that makes me willing to reward them time and again. Galifianikis seems to recycle the effeminate, annoying character he played in Todd Phillips' Due Date (alongside Robert Downey, Jr.) here, but he works well with Ferrell and with the comic material he's been given. Film trivia buffs may be interested to know that this film, by the way, marks Ferrell's first collaboration with director Jay Roach since the Austin Powers movies, in which Ferrell had a minor bad guy role.

I was a little disappointed to see comedian Jason Sudeikis, who played Brady's campaign manager, basically playing what is essentially a "straight man" role or a foil to Ferrell's zany Brady, but McDermott's hilariously over-the-top Tim Wattley more than made up for wasting Sudeikis' comic talent. The supporting actors bring a lot to the table, too; I loved Karen Murayama as the Asian housekeeper paid by Raymond Huggins to speak with a Southern accent, and was happy to see Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock in a cameo appearance as the father of the family whose answering machine receives Brady's obscene phone call by mistake.

This isn't quite up there with my favorite Ferrell films Blades of Glory and Old School, but for me it's definitely a worthy addition to his library of outrageously rude comedies.

4/5

Brave

After disappointing critics and audiences with last year's sequel Cars 2 (which holds the dubious distinction of being the only Pixar movie snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when they nominated films for Best Animated Feature earlier this year), Pixar Studios has bounced back nicely with the fairy tale Brave.

Set in medieval Scotland, Brave is the story of Princess Merida (Kelly MacDonald) a free-spirited princess who is doted on by her father King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and kept on a very short leash by her mother Queen Elinore(Emma Thompson). It is Merida's relationship with the latter that primarily drives the story.

The story begins during Merida's childhood, when the King, the Queen, and their very young princess are on a picnic, during which the young Merida encounters a will o' the wisp, and during which a monstrous bear attacks them, leaving King Fergus without one of his legs.

As she grows older, Merida finds herself annoyed by her mother's constant attention to her, which consists mostly of lessons on what a princess should be or do. Considering that pretty much all she wants to do is ride around the countryside and shoot her bow, which she has had since childhood and with which she is quite handy, she is basically in complete opposition to what her mother wants for her. When Queen Elinore arranges for Merida's betrothal to any of the princes of the neighboring Scottish clans, this proves to be the last straw for Merida, and after outshining her various suitors in the archery competition in which they were supposed to win her hand in marriage (by virtue of which she wins "her own hand") she engages in extensive verbal sparring with her mother and runs off into the forest, where she meets a witch who, she comes to believe, holds the answer to her problems.

She then asks the witch to concoct a potion that will change her mother, and what she gets is something completely unlike anything she expected.

Like Merida, I found myself watching something I had not expected.

My curiosity was not particularly piqued by the trailers; the "independent girl" theme they seemed to suggest seemed a little quaint by Pixar standards, especially considering the recent film by rival Dreamworks, How to Train Your Dragon, featured highly empowered female characters. I was willing to forego that, but when the early reviews seemed unusually negative for a Pixar film I feared that they still had not snapped out of the funk they had fallen into with the disastrous Cars 2.

Upon watching the movie, though, I confess I found myself disagreeing with the haters. Apart from a little crude humor involving male nudity that looked more like it belonged in a movie by one of Pixar's rivals than one of theirs, it displayed a good deal of Pixar's signature charm, and the heart that has distinguished Pixar as the gold standard in animated filmmaking today.

Plucky Merida, for example, is as memorable as any of the characters that have trotted out of the studio that John Lasseter and Steve Jobs founded, and it's easy to relate to her, especially when the film turns out to be about how parent-child relationships can often be. Apart from Queen Elinore, though, the supporting characters, while not nearly as engaging as Pixar's cast of characters usually are, such as the fish in the dentist's fish tank in Finding Nemo, or The Incredibles' Edna Mode, were good for a lot of laughs, especially Merida's three younger brothers who might as well have been named Huey, Dewey and Louie.

The visuals, as can be expected from Pixar, are breathtaking, especially with the Scottish Highlands are the film's backdrop. I skipped the 3-D presentation, having been badly burned on my first and only 3-D experience from Pixar (Toy Story 3), but I'm glad to have enjoyed such vibrant colors on the screen. There were also a few missed opportunities, in my opinion, as the magical aspect of the storytelling was limited to the will o' the wisps, and a little witchcraft, though the latter proved to be transformative in more ways than one. Still, the story proceeded at just the right pace.

Though Brave does not rate among my favorite Pixar films, it's memorable in its own right and is a worthy addition to their library. It may have played a little more like a Dreamworks movie than Pixar's usual fare, but it was still something I think I managed to enjoy as much as my kids did, and something I will happily recommend, though by now people will have to wait to catch it on DVD.

4/5

The Bourne Legacy

I would love to tell everyone reading this, especially my fellow Filipinos, that Tony Gilroy's Bourne franchise sequel/spinoff, The Bourne Legacy, the last act of which takes place in Metro Manila, is a worthy addition to the franchise. Unfortunately, that simply isn't the case.

Understand, The Bourne Legacy is not what I consider a terrible movie; it's not even necessarily a bad one, but it comes in the wake of three movies with quality that ranged, in my opinion, from very good to excellent. The Bourne trilogy is one of those rare cinematic animals that got better as it went along, with each new movie in the trilogy getting better reviews and earning bigger box-office bucks, in the United States and everywhere else, as it went along. They were all taut, intelligent thrillers, even though all three of them followed distinctive story beats (several fist-fights, including one with an enhanced agent, at least one car chase, and a final confrontation, all laced with shadowy political intrigue) with The Bourne Ultimatum, in particular, providing such spectacular entertainment that, even today, I can watch it over and over again. Those three movies are among my very favorites in my DVD collection. Not only that, but they ended on an absolutely perfect note, much like the Indiana Jones trilogy before a fourth, entirely superfluous film was tacked onto the franchise. All loose ends were tied up and Matt Damon's Jason Bourne basically came full circle.

Ironically enough it was because the first three Bourne movies worked so well, individually and taken together, as a single, cohesive narrative, that it was actually more sensible to take the story, if it had to continue at all, in a new direction. The spinoff, had it been handled properly, could actually have captured a good deal of what made the trilogy as compelling as it was. From a storytelling point of view, this is actually what director/screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who wrote all three of the first three movies, has attempted, and I must credit him for that, but he seriously fumbles the execution.

The film begins at around the same time the last film ended, with Jason Bourne's expose of the government's enhanced-assassin programs threatening a whole lot of people in high places, prompting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) to pay a visit to Admiral Mark Turso (Stacy Keach) regarding the problem. Turso then approaches Colonel Eric Byer (Edward Norton), who is overseeing the latest iteration of this program, dubbed Outcome, which involves chemically-enhanced agents.

One such agent, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), meanwhile is thousands of kilometers away, at a training ground in the Alaskan wilderness. He is constantly popping green and blue pills which, we later learn, are critical not only to his physical and mental enhancements, but to his ability to function. When he runs low , he looks up another agent in the field, known only as Number Three (Oscar Isaac) and stays for a while in the same cabin where he's holed up.

Meanwhile, the shady government types decide to close down the Outcome program altogether, which involves giving the chemically dependent operatives out in the field a yellow pill that takes them out, sending a drone to dispose of Number Three and Cross (which in the case of the latter doesn't quite take), and killing the scientists responsible for the chemical process of enhancement, one of whom is Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz). Fortunately for Shearing, Cross reaches her in time to save her from the spooks out to kill her. Shearing needs Cross to stay alive, and Cross needs Shearing's expertise, which could be the key to getting him off his "chems" once and for all. Of course, Turso and Byer will do everything in their power to make sure that they do not reach their destination, or any other for that matter.

The film's single biggest problem is its pacing; at two hours and fifteen minutes it feels half an hour too long, especially considering how much of that running time is devoted to some laborious exposition. There are action scenes aplenty, and quite impressively staged at that, but Gilroy simply fails to build tension in the first half of the film, something his predecessors Doug Liman, who directed the first film, and Paul Greengrass, who directed the second and third ones, did quite handily. Gilroy devotes in inordinate amount of time to explaining everything, apparently forgetting one of the cardinal rules of storytelling: show, not tell.

The exchanges between Cross and Number Three, for example, feel like they could have been at least five minutes shorter. There seems a vague attempt on Gilroy's part to suggest tension between the two of them, like they could erupt into a fight to the death at any moment, but to my mind Gilroy simply doesn't pull it off. Cross could have been sitting in Number Three's cabin by himself, looking for the much-needed "chems" and it would have had the same effect.

The most egregious lapses in narrative judgment, however, involve the "command center" moments featuring Turso, Byer and their team. Each and every film in the series has had such "command center" scenes, first involving Chris Cooper's Alexander Conklin, then later involving Joan Allen's Pamela Landy and David Strathairn's Noah Vosen, and all of them involved terrific amounts of tension even if it was basically just people in a room talking. For some reason, even though he's actually recreated scenes from The Bourne Ultimatum, Gilroy is unable to replicate with any real conviction the excitement of these moments. The dialogue about the horrible repercussions of Jason Bourne's actions seems, quite honestly, interminable, and as capable an actor as Edward Norton is, even he can't mask the fact that Gilroy's endlessly expository dialogue slows the film down to a snail's pace. It was astonishing to see how Gilroy could incorporate some of the most exciting scenes from the last film, including the death of a pivotal character, and still come up with something as boring as many of his scenes were to me. I was thoroughly perplexed by the fact that Gilroy made so much of the narrative of this film dependent on the events of the previous films, but was unable to transmit any of the thrills from those films to this one. Not only that, but each and every one of the previous Bourne films could stand on its own as well as being part of a bigger storytelling tapestry. This film is deliberately, infuriatingly written as something incomplete; it requires both a working knowledge of what has come before and leaves a great deal hanging, even after the more than two hours of running time are over.

The painful irony at work here is that one of the few memorable lines from the film, Turso's utterance, "I gave you a Ferrari and you treated it like a lawnmower," is the perfect way to describe Gilroy's script in relation to the rest of the franchise, especially the last film.

The good news is that when the action begins in earnest, it pretty much does not stop. The film's first major action sequence pits Cross against a drone and a wolf, but for me, it's only when he unleashes his fighting skills and smarts against a team of black-ops agents that the action really begins. Accomplished second unit director/stunt guru Dan Bradley and his various stunt crew members truly deliver the goods, especially when the action shifts to Manila. There's a rooftop chase to rival the one that took place in Tangiers in the last film, and a motorcycle chase that's easily on par with any of the other car chases that have featured in the series so far, though it ends on a bit of an anticlimactic note and with some pretty silly-looking computer-generated imagery (CGI).

I should make clear that I don't have any beef with Jeremy Renner taking over this franchise, and to be frank his performance was the only thing that made this film worth watching while I was waiting for the action to actually start. Rachel Weisz makes a welcome addition to the series as well, though now that she's actually performed what was needed of her I can't help but wonder, somewhat cynically, how much longer her character will last in future films, should there be any. Edward Norton does the best he can with a poorly-scripted role, but if nothing else he sets himself up to be a primo bad guy in future installments. Stacy Keach looks imposing, but his Turso isn't nearly as engaging a bad guy as Cooper's Conklin, Brian Cox's Ward Abbott of the second film, or Strathairn's Vosen were.

I should also point out that Metro Manila, in all its overcrowded, grimy glory, is not to blame for Tony Gilroy's shortcomings; to me it is more alive than any of the cities that came before it, where people were, by and large, just part of the background. The Filipino actors led by John Arcilla, Lou Veloso and Cecilia Montes really threw themselves into their brief but fairly substantial roles (Arcilla's in particular) and it filled me with pride to watch them strut their stuff for what I'm sure will be a wider audience than any of them have ever known.

For all of my love for my home country, I cannot for the life of me give this movie the ringing endorsement I would have wanted to because frankly the scenes that do not take place in the Philippines are, by and large, rather laborious to sit through.

Given that he wrote all three of this film's predecessors, Tony Gilroy's huge role in making the first three Bourne movies as riveting as they were cannot be denied, but now that he has occupied the director's chair as well it has become clear to me that the series needs the sure-handed direction of someone who knows when it's time to focus on dialogue and when it's time to focus on adrenaline-pumping action. Now that he's gotten all of the lengthy explanation of the Outcome program out of the way, maybe Gilroy can craft a script that hews more closely to the brilliantly-paced stories of the first three films, and maybe he can hire a decent action director while he's at it. To be honest I wouldn't mind if Dan Bradley took over next time.

3/5

The Best for Last: A Review of The Dark Knight Rises

I was a little worried,walking into The Dark Knight Rises that I would not be able to watch it without thinking, in the back of my mind at least, of the shooting in Colorado that claimed the lives of a dozen people.

As it turns out, while I was not completely able to keep that tragedy out of my mind, I was still able to enjoy a truly compelling film, reportedly the last Batman film Christopher Nolan, the director who has brought the Bat franchise to unprecedented heights, will ever make.

Eight years after Batman (Christian Bale) took the blame for the death of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) the city of Gotham, thanks to legislation known as "the Dent Act" that has apparently removed parole and short-circuited due process, organized crime has been all but eradicated. In that same span of time, Batman has apparently disappeared altogether while his alter-ego, billionaire Bruce Wayne, has turned into a recluse.

That changes, however, when, during an event held at Wayne Manor commemorating Dent's martyrdom, Bruce is burgled by a thief masquerading as one of his maids (Selina Kyle). Never missing a trick, Bruce is able to deduce that what Kyle was after was really his fingerprints, which in fairly short order sets him on the trail of someone far more dangerous than a simple thief, the masked terrorist known as Bane (Tom Hardy), a powerful, terrifying figure with close ties to Bruce's past whose master plan could have explosive consequences for Bruce as well as all of Gotham City. Bruce dons the cape and cowl again for the first time after nearly a decade away, but the challenge ahead of him will be unlike any he has ever faced.

Considering that the movie is loaded with twists and surprise revelations, some of them clever, others not so much, I'll refrain from discussing any more plot points at this point and simply limit myself to a review of the film, which I found absolutely splendid.

The bad-guy-taking-revenge-on-the-hero-for-the-defeat-of-a-previous-bad-guy isn't the freshest storyline around, as plots go, but as I love to say, it's all in the execution, and Nolan and company, with their variation of this particular plot, have done themselves proud here. From the characterizations to the action set pieces this film is uniformly outstanding.

Christian Bale, in his last outing as Batman, turns in a fantastic performance. Sure the "cookie monster" Batman voice is still a little grating, but Nolan actually remedies the situation by having Bale spend more time as Bruce Wayne, a bit of a throwback to Batman Begins. Anne Hathaway is delightful as Selina Kyle, who is actually never referred to in this film as Catwoman. I love how Hathaway really invests herself in her roles; for me she was one of the few bright spots of the otherwise forgettable Alice in Wonderland a couple of years ago, and she shows the same energy and dedication here that she did to that role, and even more, considering she's got more than a few fight scenes here. Notably she also infuses the proceedings with humor it wouldn't otherwise have. Tom Hardy as Bane is a little harder to rate considering he spends almost the entirety of his screen time behind a mask, but a good benchmark would be to rate his performance next to that of Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta, in which that actor had to spend the whole movie masked. Weaving still edges out Hardy in terms of pure performance, but considering that the Australian is a much more experienced actor than the Brit, Hardy's performance is still quite commendable. Finally, among the actors new to the saga the real treat for me was Joseph Gordon-Levitt as young police officer John Blake. I've long enjoyed this guy's work, especially the recent bittersweet romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, and while he doesn't deliver an especially outstanding performance, his optimistic, bright-eyed take on Nolan's clever, dedicated police officer is a pleasure to watch; in a movie that is as deliberately, unrelentingly dark as this one, characters like Hathaway's witty Kyle and Gordon-Levitt's indefatigably optimistic Blake serve as welcome foils. Oscar-winning hottie Marion Cotillard is a bit wasted here; she does not make much of an impression as Miranda Tate, even if she turns out to be more important to the story than the viewer is originally led to believe.

Series veterans Gary Oldman as Commissioner Jim Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth continue to give Batman's crucial supporting case members the heft they deserve, though Fox and Gordon have considerably less to do in this film than in the last two, while Caine's Alfred gets the opportunity to flex some dramatic muscles.

In terms of the action playing out, at nearly three hours the movie did feel a little long to me at some points, but it's hard to fault Nolan for his very deliberate pacing. What I can fault Nolan for, though, is giving me the opportunity to consider plot holes and logical gaffes by stretching out the running time as he did. All Hollywood blockbusters have holes in their plots; this is almost a rule of thumb. The trick has always been keeping things moving too briskly for the viewer to want to pay attention, with the flaws surfacing during the second or third viewings. By making the film as long as he did, though, Nolan gave me plenty of time to wonder why certain things were the way they were, though I won't go into them to avoid spoiling anything.

Not only that, but a lot of his topical references felt a little too heavy-handed and a little simplistic. The "99 percenters" who overran Gotham City at the threat of annihilation (though not quite of the kind that the actual United States is facing) were basically depicted as mindless rabble right out of Charles Dickens' take on the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, complete with a mob mentality and kangaroo courts. The tattered American flags depicted at one point in the story were about as subtle as the giant American flag behind Spider-Man in the last of Sam Raimi's Spider-man movies. One upside of this aspect of the plot, though, was a welcome cameo from Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane.


Flaws notwithstanding, though. Nolan has really ended his tenure on Batman on a high note, and he really deserves a round of applause for this. He had nothing to do with the tragedy that took place in Colorado, and while this film will be indelibly associated with that horrible incident, those who have seen it will always remember its quality, or at least, to my mind, they should.

Score: 4.5/5

Film Or Not, It's Something Special: A Review of "This is Not a Film"

If one can imagine a fish being forced not to swim, or a kangaroo being restrained from hopping, or an eagle being prevented from flying, then perhaps one can imagine the plight of Jafar Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker who was placed under house arrest while making his last movie and who now faces a 20-year-ban on filmmaking. This is Not a Film, an opus that is over an hour long and was captured partly on a digital video camera and partly on an iPhone, is his cry for help to the rest of the world.

The documentary film is a sort of slice-of-life treatment of Panahi's situation; he's under house arrest in his posh Tehran apartment, and about to face trial. He's already been imposed a 20-year-ban on filmmaking, obviously for displeasing the state with his work. He talks to his lawyer, and then shares with his friend, who is effectively directing the movie, his idea for a movie that, Panahi realizes with considerable sorrow, is not likely to be made any time soon. After a little over an hour, Panahi's day winds down and the last person he talks to before the film ends is the building's garbage collector.

There's something distinctly clever about the structure of Panahi's "non-film;" in particular I found myself struck by his conversation with his lawyer, in which, in rather precise terms, the casual viewer comes to understand exactly what Panahi's situation is. As a lawyer, I could not quite believe that she would knowingly do anything that would jeopardize her client's case, like, in this case, help him make a movie against a strict government injunction, but then, one must remember that Panahi is a filmmaker to the bone, and that there are all kinds of tricks to the trade that could be at work here. Was his lawyer completely ignorant of her role in his narrative? Or was it even his lawyer at all he was talking to on the phone?

As Panahi shows footage from a 1997 film of his titled The Mirror, which chronicles a very young girl trying to find her way home from school. At the climax of that film she breaks the fourth wall, takes off her uniform/costume and declares that she doesn't want to act in the film anymore. There's a clever little ambiguity in this scene; there seems to be the suggestion that her onscreen rebellion against the filmmaker is part of a larger narrative tapestry.

Part of me, the lawyer watching this film, pitied Panahi's lawyer, who no doubt had her work cut out for her when this film started doing the rounds and surfaced at the Cannes Film Festival. But the person who has enjoyed the freedom to express himself his whole life through watched this opus and saw a man whose art was as important to him as breathing, and I understood him, no matter how foolish his endeavor was, and how potentially destructive to his court case.

This is filmmaking at its most primal. No budget, no merchandising, no considerations of profit or loss, no...PERMISSION. Just an irrepressible urge to express one's own truth. I could feel the vigor in Panahi's spirit as he attempted to outline the movie he wanted to make for his friend holding the camera. I could feel the frustration in his voice and even his body language. This man is every inch a filmmaker, and probably ten times the filmmaker that most of the drones working in Hollywood are.

The fact that this film was shot surreptitiously and then smuggled into France on a flash drive stuffed in a cake is but a small, albeit rather remarkable part of a truly extraordinary story.

Not being too big on independent film (I'm more of a junk food/blockbuster fan myself most of the time) I had not even heard of this man before this film, er--non-film, but I'm pretty sure I won't ever forget him now.

Panahi's lawyer talked about international pressure on Iran's government possibly having an effect on his case; I hope the government is feeling the heat right now.

Score: 5/5

Rebooted in Glorious 3-D: The Amazing Spider-Man

I'll admit I'm one of the fans of Spider-Man, both the comic book character and the film franchise, that was a bit ambivalent about Sony Pictures' decision to reboot the series after Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 proved to be a critical and commercial disappointment relative to the first two movies. None of the early pre-production announcements, from the casting of then-relatively unknown Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) as Peter Parker to the selection of Marc Webb ((500) Days of Summer) as the film's director, got me particularly excited. Neither, for that matter, did the first few trailers. As the marketing campaign got a bit more aggressive after the release of The Avengers, I started to perk up and take notice. This was a marked departure from Sam Raimi's take on the character that only ended five years ago with the unqualified disaster that was Spider-Man 3, and it appeared that Sony was intent on doing things quite differently this time.

Of course, The Amazing Spider-Man is still the story of high school student Peter Parker (Garfield, in a captivating performance), whose parents (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) have left him, at a very early age, with his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field), and never returned. He grows up to be very bright, like his scientist father, but somewhat introverted and more than a little troubled by the fact that his parents have basically abandoned him. He's not quite the stereotypical nerd; he can stand up to school bully Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka) even if it means getting his butt kicked, and he rides around on a skateboard, but he's still very much an outsider. The one person who appears to bring Peter out of his shell is fellow high school student Gwen Stacy (the delectable Emma Stone). One day while tooling around in the basement, Peter happens on an old briefcase belonging to his father, one that happens to contain a picture of his father, who used to work as a geneticist, with an old colleague of his, and some mysterious documents. Uncle Ben identifies the old colleague as Dr. Curtis Connors (Rhys Ifans), another geneticist who works at Oscorp. Peter sneaks into a tour of the Oscorp facility, where he meets Dr. Connors, an amputee who is missing his right arm and rather keen to remedy the situation. Peter's curiosity gets the better of him during the tour, and as a result he sneaks into a room where the company appears to be breeding several kinds of exotic spiders which are used to manufacture one of its products, the "bio-cable." One spider bites Peter, and his life changes forever. From kicking bullies' butts to skateboard stunts, Peter finds himself having a ball with his new powers.

The void with his father is still very present, though, and, Peter studies the papers he found in a secret compartment of the briefcase, in particular an equation written on them that seems very important to the cross-species genetics work that Dr. Connors was discussing during the tour. Peter goes to Dr. Connors' home and shares the equation with him, little knowing that, under enormous pressure from his superiors to deliver some kind of wonder serum, and wanting very badly to use the reptilian DNA they've been experimenting with to generate a replacement for his own arm, Connors is ready and willing to shoot himself up with his formula.

When someone important to Peter dies, he uses his powers, at first, to go on a vigilante rampage to catch the killer, a crusade that puts him squarely in the crosshairs of the New York Police Department, headed by Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) who happens to be Gwen's dad. When Connors' self-experimentation goes horribly awry though, the newly-christened Spider-Man has to put his manhunt on hold for new mission; to save New York from a monster with a horrible agenda.

Comparisons with the Sam Raimi films are inevitable, so I might as well get them out of the way. This film has established a markedly different direction for the character, but the unfortunate reality is that, this close to the first Sam Raimi movie, most of the things that happen in the first hour of the film still feel all too familiar. There are definite tweaks, but the beats remain the same. The bullying, the awkwardness around the object of his affection, the spider bite and the death of a significant family member, all of which remain integral to the character's mythology all play out, as a result the proceedings feel a tad tedious for a spell.

What makes this particular pill easier to swallow are some well-directed and acted performances by all of the lead actors, and wonderful chemistry between Garfield and the other cast members, particularly his chemistry with romantic lead Stone, which was a lot more engaging to watch than the puppy-love exchanges between erstwhile Peter Parker Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson in the first Spider-Man. It's familiar, but incrementally better in many respects, though unfortunately not all of them. The death of a pivotal character that anyone who knows anything about Spider-Man will certainly know does not play out as well here as it did in Raimi's first film, and that hurts the narrative considerably, as does the exclusion, or confusing paraphrasing, of the previous films' signature phrase, "with great power comes great responsibility."

On its own merits, and the aforementioned storytelling shortfalls aside, this is a rock-solid film which works surprisingly well, even if it doesn't always soar. Gone is the whimsical buoyancy of the first two films, but gone as well as the ridiculous "Power Ranger" style fighting and ridiculous dialogue of the first film (one need only look back on the ridiculous rooftop dialogue between Spider-Man and Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin to see how bad it could get), as well as some of the goofier aspects of the first three films. In its place is storytelling that isn't so much "darker" as many people have claimed as it is moodier. Garfield's Peter is utterly compelling; he doesn't quite wear his angst out on his sleeve but he isn't some super-cool rebel either, and unlike Maguire he perfectly captures the dichotomy of Spider-Man, shy and withdrawn as himself but completely cocksure when in costume. Emma Stone, more attractive as Gwen than Dunst ever was as MJ, is probably the strongest female character ever featured in the cinematic Spideyverse and it's easy to see why Peter would fall for her; it's a most welcome change from tradition that this Spider-Man does not spend the last few minutes of the movie rescuing her from the clutches of the villain. It's interesting to see if the filmmakers will actually follow Stacy's storyarc in the comic books considering what her character's ultimate fate is. Sheen does excellent work as Uncle Ben, Peter's surrogate father, and his performance is easily on par with that of his predecessor, the late Cliff Robertson, even though the script lets him (and everyone else) down at Ben's most pivotal moment in the film. Field brings Aunt May to life a lot more convincingly than her predecessor Rosemary Harris did. She may not quite look the part but I loved watching her interact with Garfield's Peter. It was right out of the pages of the comics, and considering that Peter's on-page relationship with his Aunt is more enduring than any romantic relationship he has ever had this is critical. Rhys Ifans, as Connors, conveys inner conflict and menace well, but it irks me that he didn't bother to put on an American accent, unlike fellow Brit Garfield who not only put on an American accent but who actually tried to go for a vague Queens accent. All together one can see that collective and individual effort of the cast to make this iteration of Spider-Man's universe their own, and something audiences haven't seen before. They don't always succeed, but that's usually more a function of the first film being too recent in my mind than their own inadequacies.

The crew is similarly diligent. Director of photography John Schwartzman's more nuanced lighting helps the characters explore a rather wider range of emotion than Don Burgess' pastel colors did, or even Bill Pope's often over-saturated orange-y sunsets. The visual effects crew of Sony Pictures Imageworks have striven to craft a Spider-Man who seems that much more gravity-bound than his more obviously digital predecessor. This is helped in large part by efforts to create a lot of the swinging and fighting sequences using stunts and practical effects rather than pushing the CGI button almost every time a fight scene came along, the way Raimi used to do. One technical aspect of this film which conspicuously outshines the Raimi films is the music score, with the soaring melodies of James Horner (Avatar) making far more of an impression than Danny Elfman's admittedly effective scoring did. Spider-Man actually has a THEME now, something I can hum, something the band at the Academy Awards show can actually play if this film wins an Oscar or two. Geek note: when Spider-Man 2 won its visual effects Oscar, the only Oscar a Marvel film has won so far, the band played the execrable "Hero" song of Chad Kroeger, which wasn't even in that film but was played at the end of the first film.

I have to give special mention to the 3-D in this film, which is, all hyperbole aside, the best I've seen since James Cameron's Avatar. It utterly puts the last 3-D film I saw, The Avengers, in the shade. The image was never too dark (which was remarkable considering how much of the film took place at night), and the action basically exploded off the screen during the last twenty five minutes or so of the film. Webb and his crew shot this film in 3-D, taking pointers from Cameron himself, and the attention to detail shows. Coupled with SPI's new-and-improved digital web slinger, the 3-D made for easily the most incredible viewing experience I've had since Jake Sully blasted off for Pandora three years ago. Not only is this film good enough to merit a repeat viewing; it's the first film since Avatar that I've wanted to see again in exclusively in 3-D. The difference between this and The Avengers is the difference between shooting a film in 3-D, as was done with this, and converting one to 3-D, as was done with Marvel's mega-smash.

Yes, this film is flawed and yes, as a reboot it feels like it's happening too soon, but considering that the stink left by Spider-Man 3 left Sony with no choice but to do a reboot and considering that the threat of losing the cash-cow franchise to Disney/Marvel forced them to make the reboot sooner rather than later I am able to look past the whole "reboot" gripe and appreciate this film on its own merits, as hard as that may be.

Score: 4/5

It's All on Sony

While there's never such thing as a sure thing, of the current crop of movies there are a couple of films that have been almost predestined to succeed. Disney's The Avengers, for example, with its unique marketing campaign that included five other movies of the individual characters as part of its strategy, was always going to be a hit, even though the eventual magnitude of its success came as a bit of surprise. Warner Bros' The Dark Knight Rises is another preordained success, and even if it doesn't end up the year's top-grossing movie it'll be all right because the franchise is scheduled for a reboot immediately afterwards.

20th Century Fox's Prometheus has long been expected to succeed as it is currently doing, and it'll take some ill fortune for the upcoming Brave to break Pixar's long running streak of movies that have grossed at least half a billion dollars at the global box-office.

For me, though, the biggest question mark of this season remains to be Sony Pictures' reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man, which marks the studio's attempt to revitalize the franchise following the widely perceived failure of the last installment, Spider-Man 3, to live up to the lofty standard laid down by the first two films of the series. The concern that's been raised by a number of online fans (including myself, actually) is that the reboot is coming too soon after the last movie. This is a two-edged sword; it could be too soon in that it's trying too early to supplant the still-beloved first two films, or too soon in that fans are still smarting from how bad the last film in the series was. Either way, reaction on the internet seems to be largely mixed to negative.

To Sony's credit, though, in deciding to reboot the series they've tried to fix what was missing from the first three movies and have added the two crucial "W"s to Peter Parker's arsenal, namely webshooters (mechanical as opposed to his biological ones) and wisecracks. Fans who have grown up with Spider-Man comics know that the webshooters are a key part of the mythology; they're testament to the fact that far from being just another musclebound lunkhead in spandex, Spider-Man is, in fact, brilliant, and one of the smartest people in the Marvel Universe. The wisecracks are similarly integral to Spider-Man's personality and have been since the very beginning. The whole dichotomy of Spider-Man is that when he's Peter Parker, he's shy and unassuming, but when he dons the mask and tights he assumes a confidence that otherwise isn't there. Raimi's first movie in the series featured Spidey mocking the wrestler played by the late Randy Savage, but they never really picked up on it beyond that, which was disappointing. Still, as the saying goes, haters gotta hate.

Between the Marvel fanatics who want Sony to lose their rights to Spidey to Disney/Marvel, the Raimi zombies who revere his original trilogy and want this new direction to fail, and the rabid fans of Christopher Nolan who want any movie that poses even the slightest threat to their beloved Batman to crash and burn, it's not entirely clear which demographic is going to actually go out and see this movie. Having laid relatively low with their advertising earlier in the year, in the wake of the success of The Avengers, Sony is going all out on its advertising campaigns for the web slinger, employing everything from viral videos to b-roll footage online. A few posts ago I questioned the wisdom of Disney's saturation-style advertising for The Avengers but given the breakout success of that film I have to concede it was a wise move and think that Sony is playing it safe by following this lead. They know they've got a lot to live up to, and that TASM has to make a lot of money in the two weeks before Nolan's next Batman movie hits theaters.

The good news for Sony and everyone wanting the new Spider-Man movie to succeed, however, is that as important as the internet has become, things posted on it are far from indicative of how a movie will eventually fare at the box office. In the months and weeks leading up to the release of The Avengers, rare was the internet pundit, whether a box-office analyst or a casual fanboy, who predicted that the film would do significantly better at the box-office than the first Iron Man film. Even boxofficemojo.com, my most trusted site for box-office numbers and forecasts, predicted only a $420 million U.S. gross for the film after its record breaking $207 million opening weekend. For those not in the know, The Avengers is now poised to become only the third film in history to gross $600 million in the United States alone (the only one not directed by James Cameron), and it's already grossed $1.4 billion around the world.

Of course, the bad news for Sony in the wake of the astonishing success of The Avengers is that the bar has now been set ridiculously high. I, for one, am already taking for granted that TASM will not scale the heights reached by Spidey's fellow Marvel heroes, but I'm holding out hope that, with its earnestness towards correcting the mistakes of the past series, this new movie can at least restore respectability to the franchise, the way Batman Begins did for the Batman series back in 2005, and make some money in the process, regardless of whether or not it ends up on top of the box-office charts by year's end.

R-Rated Tentpoles

I haven't done the statistics, but having been a fan of movies (and of their box-office numbers, which are available on several websites) for two decades now I think I can say with some certainty that as a general rule the most lucrative movies are the ones rated PG-13. The rating, which, as I understand it, was first devised in the United States by its film classification board as a way of rating movies that weren't quite suitable small children but which were suitable for young people. For some reason, films that receive this rating are quite often the perfect "four-quadrant" movies, i.e. movies that please men and women, old and young people alike, and therefore make the most money. There are exceptions to this rule but in general a PG-13 rating, whether by design or not, seems integral to the financial success of a commercially inclined movie. The problem is that not all action movies can be told within the parameters of a PG-13 rating. In fact, a lot of them shouldn't be. Ridley Scott's Gladiator, for example, would probably not have been able to adequately capture the peril of the arena had it been constrained by a PG-13 rating. The first Die Hard would not have been nearly as effective in planting the audience right in the nail-biting peril of the situation had it not shown how violent the criminals against whom Bruce Willis' character was facing off were. The PG-13 rated fourth installment of the Die Hard series was not that bad, but it felt distinctly neutered compared to its predecessors. R-rated comedies like The Hangover and American Pie are not uncommon because of how relatively cheap they are to produce and therefore how easy it is for studios to recover their investment, but in general studios seem leery of spending large amounts of money on R movies. It's refreshing, therefore, to see at least one movie studio, 20th Century Fox, infamous for creating a PG-13 Die Hard and for micro-managing their movies, is releasing not just one but TWO "R" rated big-budget action tentpoles this year,namely Prometheus and, in a couple of weeks, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. That Fox was willing to fork over a reported $120 million for Prometheus is particularly remarkable considering how badly their Alien vs. Predator sequel did back in 2007, but it's made even more remarkable by the fact that even though director Ridley Scott himself prepared a "PG-13 cut" for studio heads, Fox went ahead with the gorier, scarier "R" version, despite knowing that this could curtail potential box-office. Sure, I may have had issues with the actual quality of the film, but I have to commend Fox for their willingness to stick their necks out for a change and to spend some real money on what is effectively a bloody horror movie. Speaking of horror movies, it's similarly impressive that Fox has positioned the unabashedly bloody, R-rated Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter as one of its tentpoles for the summer of 2012. I haven't read the book (though I've been meaning to) but the premise and trailers alone promise a thoroughly blood-soaked affair. The gore isn't what's making me keen to see it (the historical fiction aspect is), but again, I find myself applauding a studio that's quite notorious for trimming out "adult content" to keep its movies box-office friendly for its decision to adapt a famously violent work and getting Timur Bekmambetov, a director famous for his violent movies like Wanted and Night Watch, to adapt it. Now I'm not saying violence, profanity, drug references, nudity, sexuality or whatever else qualifies a movie for an "R" rating make for a better film, but sometimes they're necessary for proper storytelling. Tom Hooper's Academy Award winning film The King's Speech, as I understand it, landed an "R" rating solely for the fact that King George, Colin Firth's character, uttered "fuck" and other colorful words several times over to help him conquer his speech impediment. There was no nudity, violence, or even drug reference; just a string of bad words which were integral not only to the story of the film but an actual part of the history on which it was based. So often the rating system (the American one, I should emphasize, which doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of us outside the United States of America), can be pretty stupid. But at the end of the day it's nice to see film executives, even notoriously profit-oriented ones, putting storytelling integrity over the bottom line.

Not Quite There: A Review of Prometheus

Arguably one of the most anticipated genre films of the year, Prometheus marks the return of British director Ridley Scott to the genre that basically launched his mainstream career. The film, set in the year 2093, tells the story of a scientific expedition into deep space to a planet where, it is believed, the origins of life on earth may be found. Leading this expedition, funded by aging tycoon Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) are archaeologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), who have discovered, by studying ancient carvings and murals from lost civilizations all around the world of people worshiping giant, human-like beings pointing to the stars, a map leading to a solar system with a planet that may well be capable of supporting life much like that on earth. There are skeptics among them, like the geologist (Sean Harris) and botanist(Rafe Spall) who form part of the expedition, those simply doing a job like Captain Janek (Idris Elba) and his pilots Chance (Emun Elliot) and Ravel (Benedict Wong), and finally there are those who seem to know a bit more about the expedition than they are willing to let on, like Weyland Corporation executive Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), and android David (a captivating performance by Michael Fassbender). They arrive on the mysterious planet hoping to find some clues as to the origins of mankind, and, as is usually the case with movies of this sort, find something altogether different and infinitely more terrifying. In marketing this film, Twentieth Century Fox was deliberately vague about its narrative connections to the Alien film franchise created by screenwriters Dan o' Bannon and Ronald Shusett, even though this film was initially announced as a "reboot" of that same franchise, and even though there are obvious connections between this film and those that came before it, presumably in order to allow this film to rise or fall on its own merits. The film starts out with a pretty heady brew of ideas, like the questions of creation, and delivers some pretty striking if not necessarily iconic visuals such as the titular ship itself, Prometheus, and the inside of what appears to be a very old complex of some sort, but as it kicks into horror mode, the filmmakers bring us, well, those of us who have seen at least one of the predecessors of this film, into overly familiar territory with not much new to write home about. One can almost predict the order of people dying in this movie (and that's not a spoiler, I assure you), though if it's any consolation, the film quite mercifully eschews the cliche of having the African-American guy (or the Asian guy) die first. Apart from that, however, the film, and apart from its visuals, which still echo the designs of Alien designer H.R. Giger, brings distressingly little to the table that is new. I've seen B-grade sci-fi horror movies on cable TV that take bigger narrative risks than this film did, which is depressing considering that the original Alien all but reinvented the genre thirty-three years ago. Another disappointment is the performance of Noomi Rapace as Shaw. Scott raised a lot of eyebrows with his unconventional choice of a lead in Sigourney Weaver in the original Alien, but ultimately Weaver's acting chops showed she was well-worth whatever risk Scott took in hiring her, and in fact she was able to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress when she reprised the role in the 1986 sequel. Rapace, while arguably delivering a competent performance, is no Weaver, and Scott's first mistake was casting her as an Englishwoman. Time and again she drops the ball on her English accent, and it's extremely distracting. There are plenty of actual Englishwomen who could have essayed the role more effectively, and if Scott had really wanted Rapace he could have easily made a script tweak or two for her to speak with her Swedish accent. Also, while other writers have lavished praise on what they describe as her unusual beauty, all I saw was a slightly younger, better looking-version of Frances McDormand. Sigourney Weaver, with her strong jaw, is admittedly an unconventionally beautiful woman, but with her short stature and constantly vanishing British accent, Rapace's performance comes across as thoroughly unimpressive. Fortunately, however, the film is saved by a rather riveting performance by Michael Fassbender as Weyland's pet android David. It's a fantastic turn; he manages to come across as childlike, extremely intelligent and menacing all at the same time. This isn't a regurgitation of what's come before, or even of Brent Spiner's Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's a wonderfully textured portrayal, with the added bonus that Fassbender has conquered his Irish accent a lot more handily than he did in X-Men: First Class. His acting speaks volumes even when he isn't saying a word; the scene where he activates a hologram of charted space was, for me, the highlight of the film. Fassbender doesn't spoil it by uttering so much as a word of dialogue, and the thought that he's basically acting against absolutely nothing underlines how brilliantly he played the scene. Fassbender's performance, while certainly the most outstanding, isn't the only noteworthy one here. Charlize Theron is pretty effective as a not-exactly-bad bad guy, Idris Elba makes the most out of a somewhat thankless role, giving Captain Janek some emotional heft, and the rest of the cast do a pretty good job of being scared. Guy Pearce is virtually unrecognizable in what is practically a cameo role, but he most certainly makes his presence felt in his limited time on the screen. As stated, the movie doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel, which is disappointing considering the expectations that have been riding on it. It's eye candy, that's for sure, and the earnestness with which the cast approaches the film certainly at least deserves mention, but even as a standalone sci-fi opus Prometheus falls well short of greatness. As part of a film series that features one of my favorite movies of all time, James Cameron's Aliens which featured taut, virtually airtight storytelling, this film is deeply, fundamentally disappointing. As strange as it may sound, I have now seen every film in the Alien series (not counting the ridiculous Alien vs. Predator movies) EXCEPT for the very first movie, Alien, so I have written this review without any intention of comparing Prometheus to its ground-breaking, Scott-directed progenitor. It simply isn't that good a movie. 3/5

Manila Goes Hollywood!

I'm sure if one looked, one could easily find a list of movies made in Hollywood that,in one fashion or another involved the Philippines as a location, whether these films were set or merely shot in the Philippines. Oliver Stone's Vietnam War epics Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July were shot here, though the Philippines doubled for Vietnam. Lately there have been some notable American movies featuring the Philippines as the Philippines, such as John Dahl's The Great Raid, starring Cesar Montano, James Franco and Benjamin Bratt, and John Sayles' Amigo, starring Joel Torre and Chris Cooper, but both of them were basically ignored by mainstream audiences around the world. So by and large, as far as Hollywood productions goes, the Philippines remains basically a double for other countries, or an obscure reference by one character or another. Universal Pictures' upcoming release The Bourne Legacy, however, looks to remedy that unfortunate lack of awareness. This is a movie which will actually be SET, albeit only partially, in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. In keeping with the Bourne series' globetrotting nature, the Philippines will serve as the latest exotic destination for the highly successful film franchise, which has, in the past, given ample exposure to countries which, to a Westerner, would be far off, like India in the second movie and Morocco in the third. It's a shame this installment this film won't star Matt Damon, but with Academy-Award-nominated director Tony Gilroy, screenwriter of all the previous Bourne movies, at the helm, the film is assured of narrative integrity, and with Jeremy Renner (who's been in a couple of major action tentpoles since his breakout role in The Hurt Locker) appearing in the lead, this film is assured of A-list pedigree, a first for a film featuring the Philippines as an integral part of its setting. It's not easy for me, a fan of the Bourne film series, to root for a film with "Bourne" in its title yet without Jason Bourne in it, but seeing the preview, Tony Gilroy's efforts to tie this movie to everything that came before it, and the wonderfully prominent role of Metro Manila, it's a pill that's just become that much easier to swallow.

21 Jump Street

I've been hard-pressed to find a movie that I wanted to see since the entire world got caught up in Avengersmania a month ago. Whether it was the dreary Transformers-at-sea dreck called Battleship or yet the sequel that no one asked for in Men in Black 3, to my mind, there was nothing in theaters that presented a compelling argument for trooping to the mall except, well, The Avengers.

Fortunately for me, that changed when I saw the previews for the remake of the 80s television show 21 Jump Street, starring Jonah (Superbad) Hill and Channing (G.I. Joe) Tatum from directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller whose last work, oddly enough, was the animated cartoon Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a film my family and I enjoyed immensely. The film, marketed as a raunchy action comedy with plenty of violence, swearing, drug use and nudity seemed like a marked departure for guys who had just done a family film (and who will do another one again as they are in the process of making the Cloudy sequel) but the trailers seemed to promise some belly laughs so I went for it, with my wife in tow, but left the kids at home this time. Boy, did we enjoy ourselves. I should clarify at the outset that I was not a fan of the original TV series. I was aware of it, and I may have even caught an episode or two, but I never followed it with any sort of regularity. I knew it was a lot more serious than this movie was, but not much else, so should anyone think to ask me if the film captured the spirit of the old TV show, I'd have to say I have no idea.

What I can say, though, is that this is hands down the funniest film I've seen all year. It's funnier than it has any business being, considering that a great chunk of the humor was extremely, unabashedly crude. High school students Morton Schmidt (Hill) and Greg Jenko (Tatum) couldn't be more different. Schmidt is brainy, shy and not particularly attractive. He is, in popular parlance, a nerd. Jenko, on the other hand, is, as high school students go, at the top of the food chain. He's handsome, a jock, and a complete ladies' man. For different reasons, however, neither of them gets to go to their senior prom. Jenko's grades are too bad, and Schmidt can't find anyone to go with him.

Years later, the two meet up again at the police academy and strike up an unlikely but genuine friendship, with Schmidt's brains helping Jenko hurdle the more cerebral aspects of the training and Jenko's athleticism helping Schmidt get in much-needed shape for the many physical challenge the pair of them must face. When the two of them graduate, however, they end up on bicycles pulling park duty. When they end up messing up an arrest of a drug dealer, however, due to Jenko's failure to read the perp his Miranda Rights, they are shuffled off to an undercover program shepherded by the foul-mouthed Captain Dickson (Ice Cube of Friday and Barbershop fame) in which they will pose as high school students in order to catch a drug dealer supplying a new, lethal synthetic drug to a local high school. Only when they get there, high school is not at all the place they remember it to be.

One of the most striking things about this completely over-the-top movie is how logic is one of its first casualties. Schmidt and Jenko are arguably two of the stupidest fictional policemen, the latter more than the former, I have ever encountered, and it completely mystified me that, after completely screwing the pooch with a simple arrest by failing to read a perp his rights during an arrest, Jenko at the very least wasn't busted to traffic cop duty or some kind of desk job. Why would the police department place a couple of morons like Schmidt and Jenko in a sensitive undercover assignment when their incompetence could well result in their cover being blown? The whole premise of the film makes next to no sense.

But that's one of the endearing things about this movie: by actually throwing logic out the window from the word go, the filmmakers set the stage for one bit of hilarity after another, and truth be told, by the time I realized how ridiculous the plot was I had laughed far too hard to care. Lord and Miller display, in highly stylized and utterly irreverent fashion, why they were the perfect choice for this project given their work on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; the movie actually plays out like a cartoon on amphetamines. Now, as good as they turn out to be, the directors could not have made this farce work without equally talented, and more importantly, game, actors, and in Hill (who helped write the script) and Tatum they have their muses. For Hill this kind of work is basically old hat considering the number of screwball comedies he's starred in practically since his career started, but Tatum is a revelation in his role as the dummy jock Jenko, whose failure to read the drug perp his Miranda rights is the reason the two of them get sent to the Jump Street program in the first place. To be honest, it's always fun to watch matinee-idol types play morons; I enjoyed Tatum's performance as Jenko the same way I enjoyed watching Brad Pitt play a dummy in The Mexican and Burn After Reading. It goes to show these guys know how to laugh at themselves even as they take the rest of us regular schmoes along for the ride.

Together, Hill's Schmidt and Tatum's Jenko are a perfect "odd couple" pairing, and in this film they manage to take the whole "bromance" concept to uncomfortable but nonetheless hilarious new depths. The rest of the cast provides the two ample support, from Dave Franco (James Franco's brother) as the smooth-talking hipster/drug dealer to Rob Riggle as the high school coach, to Ellie Kemper as a chemistry teacher with the hots for Jenko, although Brie Larson, cast as Schmidt's love interest, seems a tad old for a high school student. Fans of the original can look forward to cameos from the original cast as well, including its most prominent member. With the summer movie season in the U.S. beginning in earnest this coming week with films like Prometheus, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and a whole other slew of rather exciting movies coming to theaters I'll be glad to have something other than The Avengers to watch, but in the meantime it certainly was good to have this little confection to keep me occupied.

Score: 4/5