The (Supposedly) Last Middle-Earth Movie: A Review of The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

directed by Peter Jackson
written by Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro

Following the events in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) lays waste to Lake Town, until he is slain by Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans). The people from Lake Town are left without a home, and the lonely mountain is now without a fire breathing dragon to prevent anyone from claiming all of the gold in Erebor. Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), his band of dwarves, and their resident burglar, hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), hole up in the mountain, with the the dwarf king claiming his legacy. Unfortunately, others with a claim on the gold come knocking as well, including the now-destitute people of Laketown, whom he had promised a share of the treasure in exchange for boats and provisions to the mountain and the Woodland Elves led by Thranduil (Lee Pace) who have a claim on several jewels located in the massive treasure trove. The problem is, however, that now that Thorin has his hands on the treasure, he is possessed by uncontrollable greed and has no intention of even letting so much as a single coin of it go. He is, in fact, seized with a new obsession: finding the Arkenstone, a large jewel that will secure his dominion over all of Erebor. Meanwhile, even as the combined forces of Laketown and the elves look to collect their due through force, another enormous army of orcs led by Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett) and his right hand Bolg (John Tui) also marches towards the Lonely Mountain. Will the intervention of Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) be enough to stave off the coming slaughter?

Given that I saw this movie two weeks ago, I'm not really sure why it's taken me so long to finally review it. I suppose one reason is that I wasn't quite sure how I felt about this film. It was a pretty satisfying conclusion to a reasonably entertaining series of films, but the fact that the entire series has felt rather bloated keeps me from singing this film's praises in the same way I used to cheer for the Lord of the Rings films. Of course, the computer-generated visual effects are far and away superior to those that featured in the LOTR movies, but then again, that's to be expected considering the advances in technology since then. The biggest problem of this movie, for me, is that for all the filmmakers' efforts, it still feels like a product.

I have nothing but praise for Richard Armitage, the English actor who plays Thorin who, after Bilbo, is effectively the central character of the saga. I like the way he captures Thorin's emotional journey and inner turmoil, even through a fair bit of prosthetics. Freeman is still a hoot as Bilbo, and of course, the ever-reliable McKellen turns in a solid turn as Gandalf, joined here by Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, Hugo Weaving as Elrond, and Christopher Lee as Sauron, all of whom featured in a pretty impressive action sequence midway through the film.

Some characters, however, cool their fight sequences, repeatedly betray the fact that they serve no real purpose in the story other than to hook otherwise uninterested fans. I am referring, of course, to Orlando Bloom's Legolas, who never appeared in The Hobbit, but who distinctly feels like he was written into these movies as a marketing tool for fans of the LOTR trilogy. The manner in which the script tries to infuse him with some kind of back story is somewhat embarrassing. Does he have mommy issues? Daddy issues? Existential crises? Unrequited love issues? The script hints at all of these but develops none of them. At the end of the day, Legolas serves his purpose as being an utter badass/boss-killer in the fight, but nothing more. Even Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) the female elf created for these movies to both balance out the sausage fest and to provide a rather poorly realized romantic subplot for both Legolas and Kili (Aidan Turner), fares little better, and quite frankly if the two of them had been written out of the entire story the films the narrative impact would be negligible.

In fact, it's padding like the Legolas-Tauriel-Kili love triangle that kind of hits home for me how superfluous so much of this film feels, even if it is a lot of good fun. I was also a bit irked at how Smaug's demise was moved to the beginning of this film rather than made into the climax of the last one, even though it did make sense from a sales perspective. The manner in which Bard dispatches Smaug, though, is appropriately heroic, if a little comical.

I watched this in conventional 3-D rather than the somewhat jarring "high frame rate" 3-D in which I watched The Desolation of Smaug, and truth be told I'm not sorry I made the change. I did try the film in a "4-D" theater, which meant that my seat lurched back and forth and fans blew in my face for key scenes. It was a novel experience, though one which I'm not keen to repeat, much like the creepy HFR.

In closing, I liked the film enough to recommend it, especially if it's reinstated in Philippine theaters after the Metro Manila Film Festival ends next week, but certainly not enough to rank it as a modern classic the way the original trilogy of films was.

6.5/10

Disney's Love Letter to Anime: A Review of Big Hero 6

directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams
written by Robert L. Baird, Dan Gerson and Jordan Roberts

Big Hero 6 has the unenviable task of being Walt Disney Animation's first movie since their runaway blockbuster Frozen.  The good news is that even without showtunes or princesses, it's a thoroughly satisfying time at the movies. The even better news is that anime nerds are in for a real treat; this is probably the best anime tribute ever to come out of Hollywood.

Set in the city of San Fransokyo, Big Hero 6 is the story of Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) a budding teen genius with a knack and love for robotics, who spends most of his time in underground 'bot fighting tournaments. His older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney), who also happens to be his only remaining father figure, knows that Hiro can do more with his life than hustle money from illegal gambling, so he takes him to the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology where he works, where Hiro meets fellow prodigies Gogo Tomago (Jamie Chung), Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez) and Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.), and self-proclaimed "science enthusiast" Fred (TJ Miller). Hiro also meets his own personal hero,  the robotics pioneer Professor Robert Callaghan (James Cromwell). Hiro is dazzled by the technology, and makes a successful bid to enroll in the school. Suddenly, tragedy strikes, leaving Hiro in mourning. Hiro then gets to know Tadashi's pet project, healthcare robot named Baymax (Scott Adsit) a whole lot better, and not a moment too soon; Hiro needs Baymax's help to get to the bottom of a mysterious threat to San Fransokyo. The threat proves too great for the two of them to handle on their own, and Hiro now has to recruit his fellow science nerds. Thus, Big Hero 6 is born.

While this film is actually based on a relatively obscure (and no doubt now highly sought-after) Marvel Comics title from several years ago, from a visual perspective it owes a lot more to the work of Osamu Tezuka than anything else. There are shout-outs to its comic book heritage, such as Hiro's alliterative name and a virtually obligatory cameo that just about every fanboy in the audience will recognize, but it definitely feels much more like a loving homage to the robot anime of the 70s and 80s than yet another comic-book adaptation.  The attention to detail, and the delightful visuals of the mashed-up cityscape are reminiscent of the colorful work of Hayao Miyazaki, as well. After the staid blues of frozen Arendelle last year, it was really a blast to see a full-color adventure like this one.

As dazzling as the visuals and animation are, though, it's heart that makes a Disney movie watchable, and this movie has it in spades. Though Hiro's journey is a soul-crushingly tragic one (he's an orphan who loses his only brother) it is also an uplifting one, and I haven't quite seen a Disney movie that deals with the grief of losing a loved one quite as poignantly as this movie does. Fortunately, Hiro's support system includes a loving Aunt Cass (Maya Rudolph) a younger, "Aunt May" type of character who owns the coffee shop above which Hiro and she live, his nerd friends, and, of course, Baymax. Scott Adsit, whom I remember well from his performances as Pete Hornberger on 30 Rock, infuses the vinyl robot-nurse-turned-combat-machine with a unique and truly memorable personality. He really does live up to the hype as the star of the show, and Adsit's performance is an integral part of that charm. The other voice actors are no slouches either, and most notable for me was how genuine the relationship between Potter's Hiro and Henney's Tadashi felt. It made the turn of events in the film all the more moving. It was nice of Disney to cast actors of actual Asian descent in these roles; even though they speak like Americans it was nice to know they were going for some kind of authenticity.

As nerd fare, the movie is a great deal of fun, though not quite as chock-full of references as Wreck-It-Ralph. The action is very well-staged, and the out-and-out-violence is surprisingly minimal considering this film's comic-book roots; The Incredibles had a much higher body count. People going to see Baymax and the rest of the crew in action will certainly not be disappointed. One downside to the story is that the villain of the piece is nothing to write home about, but clearly, he's just an excuse for the gang to all get together. The onus is now on Disney to provide a more compelling antagonist the next time around.

Overall, the movie is great family fun, even as it panders to the inner twelve-year-old of many of the dads watching, and I, for one, am more than ready for more nerd-service starring this crew of newly-minted superheroes whenever Disney is ready.

8.5/10

Quick Looks: A Review of Gone Girl

directed by David Fincher

screenplay by Gillian Flynn (based on her novel)

It's hard to discuss David Fincher's latest film Gone Girl, in great detail without wading into spoiler territory, because so much of the film revolves around twists in the plot, but to my mind it is a rather extraordinary film, and Fincher's most audacious since his breakout film Se7en. 

Spouses Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) and Amy Elliot (Rosamund Pike), have been married for five years, and the last few have not been pleasant.  Things take a turn for the strange when Nick, who manages a bar, comes home to find his wife having completely disappeared with signs of a struggle. Over the days that follow, Nick's life turns into a living hell as suspicion rises that he killed Amy with the Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) hot on his tail. As Dunne recruits infamous defense attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry), time is not on his side.

There's something gratifying about seeing a mainstream movie, especially one as well crafted as this one, defy convention; while the film would most properly be classified as a "thriller" it really is so much more than that, and it features some truly amazing writing and acting. it is an incredibly engaging film, with an ending that really threw me for a loop.

Affleck sticks to his usual low-key, aw shucks acting, which is, fortunately, consistent with Nick's character, but it's Pike who shines as Amy, for reasons I cannot really discuss lest I spoil plot points.  Tyler Perry was a hoot as Nick's oily defense attorney, and there were a lot of other sterling performances all around from Dickens as Detective Boney and Carrie Coon as Nick's twin sister Margo.

What I loved about the storytelling was how often it turned things on their head, bringing on story tropes and then taking abrupt left turns. Still, I wasn't too fond of the final twist as to my mind it kind of transformed the film into something else, but again, it's not something I can discuss. For all its flaws, this is a film that needs to be experienced (even if, at this point, one will have to wait for it on home video).

David Fincher has turned in some pretty extraordinary work over the years, but this is, to me anyway one of the movies for which he will truly be remembered.

8.7/10

Not Exactly Edward Woodward: A Review of The Equalizer (mild spoilers)

directed by Antoine Fuqua
written by Richard Wenk

After watching the first trailer for Antoine Fuqua's remake of the 1980s television show The Equalizer, which starred Edward Woodward, I found myself quite keen on seeing it. I was mainly interested in seeing Denzel Washington kick ass once again. While I have long been a fan of Washington's performances in general, it is especially gratifying to me when he plays a bad-ass, like the one he first portrayed in 2004's Man on Fire, and the others he played in films like The Book of Eli and Safe House.

Robert McCall (Washington) leads a quiet life as an employee at a Home Mart hardware store in Boston, Massachusetts. He is well-liked by his co-workers and lives comfortably, if somewhat simply. He has trouble sleeping at night, though, at spends the wee hours of the morning reading books at a diner that is open 24 hours, where befriends child prostitute Teri (Chloe Grace Moretz), whom he tells can change her world when she is disconsolate about her lot in life. At one point, Teri, whose real name is Alina, tries to fight back when an abusive customer hits her, and ends up incurring the ire of her pimp, Slavi (David Meunier), who then beats her within an inch of her life to make an example of her to the other girls. After visiting her in the hospital, McCall then displays an extraordinary set of skills that he picked up from his past life as a black ops operative, as he not only punishes Slavi but takes down all of his body guards in the span of half a minute. Unfortunately, it turns out that Slavi is the representative of someone much bigger, a Russian crimelord named Pushkin (Vladimir Kulich), who dispatches his brutal problem solver nicknamed Teddy (Marton Csokas), who, together with a crew of corrupt Boston cops on Pushkin's payroll, may prove too much for even the highly resourceful McCall to handle. Or maybe not.

I feel this was a movie that would have benefited from a much more muted marketing campaign than the one that made its main fighting sequence the centerpiece of the trailer. The narrative seemed, to me anyway, structured so that McCall's lethal skills are supposed to come to the viewer as a complete surprise, but thanks to the trailer with that magnificent fighting scene, it becomes precisely what the viewer looking for action is looking forward to, which is not a good thing because as it turns out, it's all downhill after that.

To be fair, the fight choreography (or the little of it that can be seen) is exceptional, and just as he did in The Book of Eli and Safe House, Washington shows outstanding onscreen fighting skills to complement his nigh-legendary acting talent. The problem is that, after the first fight, which was expertly staged with its judicious use of slow motion and close-ups to "show" the audience how McCall scans his environment just before walking into an explosive situation, followed by some truly hard-hitting fighting moves, every other fight scene that comes afterwards is spoiled by overly dark lighting or too-quick editing. The idea, I suppose, is to show off McCall's cunning over and above his martial arts skills, but truth be told, I felt the movie would have benefited from more Taken or Bourne style fighting sequences than just the one. Instead, for the climax, the filmmakers provided a somewhat ludicrous finale set in the hardware store, which felt like a more brutal version of scenes from another 1980s television show I grew up with, MacGyver.



(spoilers)



It also annoyed me no end that the script went to some lengths to establish Csokas' character Teddy as a truly fearsome villain, narrating his background as a Russian Secret Service agent and showing in one scene just how brutal he could be, and then completely backed out of having him and McCall slug it out at the end. The script clearly called for a "boss battle" between the two, but ultimately McCall's ultimate slugfest was with a decidedly generic bald Russian goon, with Teddy's fate being decided by something other than fists. It was bad enough that the writing felt utterly by the numbers, and even worse that the filmmakers couldn't even be bothered to deliver on one of the few decent payoffs the script clearly teased.



(end spoilers)



As an action film, the movie often feels rote, with even some of the more striking storytelling devices like the aforementioned slow motion environment scanning having been cribbed from other movies like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, but the somewhat earnest efforts of Washington and many members of the supporting cast, particularly Moretz, who trades in her Hit Girl tights for a hooker's miniskirt and push-up bra here, save the film from direct-to-video territory, but only just. Richard Wenk's script isn't much to write home about at all, but Washington makes it work, even as he retreads the impossibly wholesome/unflappable characters from films like the aforementioned Eli and the late Tony Scott's Unstoppable to imbue McCall with a nobility that seems somewhat incongruous with the brutality he displays in killing people.

The film's box-office success has ensured that a sequel will eventually hit movie theaters, and next time I honestly hope the filmmakers fix at least some of this film's more glaring flaws. I wasn't really expecting to be quite as disappointed in this film as I was, especially considering my fondness for most of films starring Denzel Washington that I have watched, but not even my predisposition towards liking Washington's movies could overcome this film's somewhat cookie cutter script, poor pacing, and even worse editing.

One final gripe I had was the complete absence of Stewart Copeland's old instrumental theme for the TV show on which it was based. Even a little homage would have been nice.

5.5/10

Pleasantly Surprised: A Review of The Maze Runner

directed by Wes Ball
screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers and T.S. Nowlin
based on the novel by James Dashner

After spending several days far away from home, one of the last things on my mind was watching a movie. Thanks to heavy rain and traffic between the airport and my house, though, waiting a few extra hours suddenly seemed like a good idea, and to pass the time my wife and I caught a late screening of The Maze Runner. I knew next to nothing about the film and had only seen one trailer, and basically walked in with no expectations whatsoever. This turned out to be a very good thing as I might otherwise have been inclined to dismiss this strange, spiritual retelling of the seminal novel The Lord of the Flies as yet another post-apocalyptic, Hunger Games knock-off, which it certainly is not.

A young man (Dylan O' Brien) wakes up in a rapidly ascending elevator, which brings him to a forest glade populated by several other young men and which is surrounded by high concrete walls. The young man, who at first cannot recall his name, receives guidance from Alby (Aml Ameen), the most senior of the young men who have come to call themselves "Gladers," and learns more about the situation he is in; basically the lot of them are trapped in the Glade, which is surrounded by a gigantic maze which is open during the day but which closes at night. He learns the ropes from Alby, as well as two of the Gladers he befriends, Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Chuck (Blake Cooper). The Gladers live by a few simple rules, one of the most important of which is never to wander into the maze, a rule honored by all save for a select few of the Gladers known as the maze runners. At night, the maze is prowled by the deadly Grievers, monsters that no Glader has ever seen and lived to describe, whose bloodcurdling howls can be heard in the Glade at night.

As the young man's memory comes back in pieces, though, he comes to remember his name, Thomas but little else, at least by way of coherent information. One thing he doesn't need his memory to realize, however, is that he has to get out of there, a growing preoccupation that does not sit well with a few of the Gladers, particularly the hulking Gally (Will Poulter). When all kinds of strange new developments turn up, though, such as the abrupt arrival of the only girl ever to enter the glade, the mysterious Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), and a few other frightening occurrences, it becomes clear that leaving the maze is not simply a matter of personal liberty but of survival.

The film is hardly groundbreaking, but it's got quite a bit going for it. For one thing, even on a shoestring budget it offers some really striking visuals, as not even the Hunger Games films can boast a set piece as striking as the enormous maze that surrounds and menaces the Gladers. More importantly, however, the filmmakers, presumably taking their lead from the novel (which I haven't read), keep their narrative cards quite close to their chest, shrouding almost everything that goes on outside of the Glade and the maze in mystery until the very last few minutes of the film, and even then only giving away just enough to let viewers know that there will be more adventures to come. Such storytelling economy isn't all that common in an era of two-and-a-half-hour blockbusters, a goodly chunk of which is usually spent on considerable exposition, and it is a breath of fresh air. Structurally, though, the film feels a little flimsy, and I'm sure I could pick apart the logical gaffes in the film if I really sat down to think about it. To their credit, though, director Ball and his crew kept things moving along briskly enough for me to surrender myself to this movie and its world for the duration of its running time.

I wouldn't call this a great movie, anyone waiting at a mall for traffic (or rain) to ease up, and thinking of a movie to watch and pass the time could do a lot worse than this.

7/10

Over the Top In the Best Possible Way: A Review of Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends

directed by Keishi Otomo
based on the manga by Nobuhiro Watsuki

Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends picks up immediately where its predecessor, Kyoto Inferno, left off, with Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh), formerly Battousai the killer, having washed up on a beach after jumping off the ship of the villainous, murderous Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara), right where, as fate would have it, his old master Hiko Seijuro (Masaharu Fukuyama). Kenshin realizes that, to defeat Shishio and prevent Japan from plunging into chaos and death, he will need to dig deep and learn a technique he has never mastered before, the Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu. Time is not on his side as Shishio, from his floating fortress of a battleship, is now closing in on the government, despite even the efforts of the likes of Saito Hajime (Yosuke Eguchi) and Kenshin's other allies to stop him.

The stakes are sky-high in this sequel, which really pulls out all the stops in terms of its action sequences, in which, even more than in the first film, the filmmakers proudly embrace their film's anime/manga heritage.

The surprising aspect of this particular film was how long the filmmakers took to arrive at the action sequences, which, basically, are the highlight of the entire affair.  It's forgivable, considering that, the action, when it finally arrives, is for the most part, sublime, but there are parts where the film feels a tad ponderous, even though the intent is clearly for Kenshin to do some soul-searching.It's not so much that the "quiet time" scenes felt unnecessary; it's just that Otomo didn't pace them well enough to keep them from feeling like they were dragging out the running time a bit too much. This movie is supposed to be the payoff of two films, which is why the additional exposition this late in the game feels a tad superfluous.

The good news is that the imagery of the film is very much in keeping with its themes; the first film, in which Kenshin followed Shishio's trail of death and mayhem, was steeped in a lot of gray and black. In this film, the bamboo forest in which Kenshin and his master duel captures the introspective, quieter nature of these scenes as Kenshin looks inside himself for the answers to the challenges facing him. As odd as this may sound, for me, the duelling scenes between Kenshin and his master are the most riveting of the film, even if they're arguably the least flashy. Also, they feel like they carry more narrative weight as they cap off the long exchanges of meaningful (though occasionally ponderous) dialogue between Kenshin and his master.

There's a real satisfaction in the climactic duels that end the film, which I will not spoil though any "Samurai X" fan worth their salt knows the outcome; suffice it to say the battles are well-realized, though the big fight at the end perhaps went a little too far over the top.

All in all, however, it's still a lot of great fun at the theater, and anyone still smarting from having watched the wretched 47 Ronin adaptation earlier this year will be well-served by watching this, which also happens to feature renowned Japanese actor Min Tanaka in a pivotal role.

For fans of the anime that showed on Philippine television for several years before this series of live-action adaptations came out, their cups should pretty much run over.


7.5/10

A Whole New Level of Chop-Sockey: A Review of Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Infermo

Directed by Keishi Otomo
Based on the manga by Nobuhiro Watsuki

I have never been more than a casual fan of the anime called Samurai X which is properly titled Rurouni Kenshin in its native Japan, and is based on a popular manga. I have, however seen enough episodes, including a feature length special that came out on Home Box Office many years ago, to appreciate the story of an ex-assassin with unparalleled swordsmanship skill wandering around 19th century Japan seeking to redeem himself from a life of bloodshed. I missed the first live-action adaptation of this series, which came out two years ago and I was sorry I did, which was why I was only to happy to join the long queue to watch the first of two sequels: Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno.

While Kenshin Himura (Takeru Satoh) is living peacefully after the events of the last film, trouble is brewing in Kyoto as a warlord named Makoto Shishio (Tatsuya Fujiwara) surfaces. Like Himura, Shishio was one of the imperial government's top assassins, whom they attempted to liquidate after winning the Bakumatsu war. He proves to be a royal headache for the government, and when several of their officers fail to take him down, the government turns to Kenshin for help.

This movie, quite honestly, is quite unlike anything I have ever seen before. I have seen comic book adaptations by the boatload, including those told using an Asian sensibility, specifically Bong-Joon Ho's Snowpiercer, and I have enjoyed a great many of them, but I have also noted that with few exceptions, none of them really focused that much on the importance of really gripping fight scenes. A few months ago I was celebrating Captain America: The Winter Soldier for having the best choreographed fight scenes in any comic book-based movie I had ever seen, not quite realizing at the time that just what I was missing.

Basically, the fight scenes in Rurouni Kenshin are a wondrous marriage of everything that's been learned from swordplay and martial arts movies over the last century. There's a mix of the balletic grace of the Hong Kong action film and the Chinese wuxia epic as well as the bone-crunching, rough and tumble feel of films like The Raid. Of course, all of this is still tempered with a comic book sensibility that, from time to time, reminds the audience that this is all fantasy, but that does not detract in any way from the utterly engaging action sequences.

The story isn't really that much to write home about, truth be told. The movie still carries the animated series' somewhat heavy handed, purportedly pacifist message, but is still about a guy who beats up people with the flat part of his sword (though he does a magnificent job of it). I don't speak Japanese, so I can't really say how well people acted, but to my mind the performances were convincing enough, even if the guy who played Sanosuke, one of the more prominent supporting characters in the anime, kind of portrayed him as a buffoon. Apart from him, though, the actors, in so far as recreating the cartoon characters from whom their roles were derived, turned in performances that were pretty much spot on, and that was a treat to watch. Still, I get the sense that someone unfamiliar with this world and the characters that move in it would have a hard time understanding why an ex-samurai with flaming red hair would be walking around Meiji-era Japan, or why he would fight people like a blond goon with hair that's four inches high. In short, this film isn't exactly for anime novices, which could be a little jarring to the casual viewer.

To me, though, it was still a lot of fun, and I am definitely looking forward to the sequel, which will be coming out in a little over a month.

7.5/10

How Robin Williams Died Long Before He Killed Himself

When I found out that actor and comedian Robin Williams took his own life earlier this week I was in no position to post on this blog; I was out of town and hard at work. Even as I write this post, however I find myself grappling with what I want to say.

Two years ago I wrote a blog post  lamenting the fact that Robin Williams career appeared to have been in the toilet well before he took his life two weeks ago. Basically, I was already mourning the fact that the guy's career was, for all intents and purposes, dead. I mean, this man was an Academy Award winner and starred in several movies that grossed well over $100 million at the American box office, back when those numbers actually meant something, and his most high profile role post-2000 was a bit part in a Ben Stiller movie? Ben Stiller would be lucky to even be a fraction of the comedian that Williams was in his heyday, especially considering he could never really expand his roles beyond that of the insecure short guy, though I suppose I should be glad that he at least threw Robin that bone. It was wrong to me on so many levels that audiences could basically turn their back on someone who had brought so much joy to so many people.

For me, the saddest thing is that the role which, it seems now, most closely approximated the loneliness Robin Williams felt inside, that of Sy Parrish, the shy, secretly obsessive photobooth attendant in One Hour Photo, was largely ignored by audiences, even though it was arguably one of his very best. People just didn't want to see a creepy Robin Williams, even if it's a story he clearly really wanted to tell. After that, it was as if they didn't want to see him at all.

The thing that pained me about seeing Robin Williams' career just peter off was the thought that there wasn't any sex scandal or any single movie that really "did him in" (the disastrous 2009 film Old Dogs notwithstanding). It wasn't even that he stopped getting work; iMDB lists him as having projects all the way through the end of 2014. The problem was just that people really didn't pay him that much attention anymore, whether it was the studios giving out roles or the audiences watching them. The guy made studio execs rich and made audiences laugh for years, and in the end they rewarded him with cold indifference while Adam Sandler's negative-I.Q., man-child movies made big money year after year.  Let's see Adam Sandler pull off roles like the ones that Williams did in Awakenings, Dead Poets Society, or Good Will Hunting. Oh wait, that's right, he can't.

I won't launch into a treatise on depression, a topic I am not at all qualified to discuss, or list my "top ten Robin Williams performances" or anything like that.

If people had continued to watch Robin Williams' movies, would it have stopped him from killing himself? Probably not, but he would have arguably have had less to be depressed about near the end. Maybe he was just sad he couldn't make people laugh anymore, at least not with any new material.

I just wish, to be honest, that the Hollywood moneymaking machine hadn't killed Williams' career long before he killed himself, whether or not that was the actual cause of his depression.

I guess the closest thing that can approximate a "moral of the story" is that if audiences cherish their favorite actors, they should keep watching their movies in theaters rather than patronizing garbage like Adam Sandler's movies, or something like that.

Oh well, I did say I was struggling with what I wanted to say...

Space Opera, Marvel Style: A Review of Guardians of the Galaxy

directed by James Gunn
written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman

I'll be honest; I thought that Guardians of the Galaxy would mark the end of Marvel Studios' winning streak at the box-office that began with 2008's Iron Man and which has continued unabated ever since. Sure, some of their movies have been more successful than others, but they had never failed to land a movie at #1 on opening weekend. Given that GOTG was based on a relatively obscure and recent comic book property and therefore didn't enjoy the goodwill that enabled characters like Spider-man and Captain America to connect with audiences, and given that the first few images released by Marvel over a year ago didn't suggest much more than a generic sci-fi adventure in world that has already had fifty years of Star Trek, Star Wars and legions of other science fiction copycats, it was easy to dismiss the film.

While I suppose it was no real surprise that Marvel proved me wrong, considering that they seem to have gotten the art of successfully launching franchises down to a science, what really surprised me was just how much I enjoyed this movie. The trailer had impressed me, but nothing I had seen really prepared me for the enjoyment that the movie eventually delivered.

The story begins on earth, in 1988, where young Peter Quill (Wyatt Oleff) watches his mother succumb to cancer just after she tells him she loves him and gives him a farewell present. Distraught, he runs out of the hospital and into an empty field, only to be zapped up into a mysterious spaceship.  Twenty-six years later, the adult Quill (Chris Pratt), who now calls himself "Star-Lord" travels across space stealing and fencing artifacts and dancing to 70s and 80s tunes while doing it. His latest heist, of a mysterious orb, sees him cross paths with the heavily armed Korath (Djimon Hounsou), a minion of the Kree warrior Ronan (Lee Pace), who plans to use the orb to destroy planet of Xandar.  Ronan dispatches one of his top assassins, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) to retrieve the orb from Quill, while Yondu (Michael Rooker), leader of the Ravagers, or the bounty hunters who kidnapped Quill in the first place, is mad as hell at him for breaking their agreement and getting the orb on his own, and in short order puts out a hefty bounty on his head, which in turn brings him within the crosshairs of bounty hunters Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper) a talking cyber-raccoon, and Groot (Vin Diesel), a walking, talking tree that only says "I am Groot." Things get crazy when Gamora, Rocket and Groot converge on Quill, in a confrontation that manages to land all of them, including the orb in Quill's possession, in prison. While there, they agree that they need each other to break out and to cash in on the score that the orb promises to deliver. To break out, they recruit a tattooed, overly literal homicidal maniac named Drax (Dave Bautista) who has it in for Ronan for killing his family. Soon, they come to realize that there is a lot more to the orb than a payday, and the fate of the galaxy itself may be at stake.

This is, to my mind at least, the best action-comedy I've seen since 1998's The Mask of Zorro, and the best sci-fi action comedy I've seen since...well...forever.

The single best part of this movie is how it feels like Marvel's first "clean slate" since the very first Iron Man. It is possible to walk into this movie without having seen anything that Marvel has produced before it and still enjoy it thoroughly.  Yes, there are Easter Eggs, and references to other Marvel properties, but none of them  requires any knowledge of previous Marvel films to understand what's going on. If anything, they're a little shout-out to the inevitable throngs of Marvel nerds in the audience, who will be rewarded for their loyalty even as the average viewer soaks in the fun while missing all of the winks and nods.

Besides, it's easy for the Marvel references to get lost in the shuffle of the numerous sci-fi references with which director Gunn peppers this film.

To my mind this film is, at the same time, a love letter to the science fiction films of the 1980s and a breath of fresh air much needed by a genre whose standard bearers are either riddled with cliche (e.g. Avatar), or are the merest shadows of the what their forbears were (Star Trek: Into Darkness, and every one of the Star Wars prequels), with a lot of them putting premium in flashy, slick visual effects, often at the expense of good old-fashioned storytelling.  The movie is just so much giddy fun, and it isn't afraid to poke fun at sci-fi story tropes over and over again. Pratt is clearly having a blast as Quill/Star-lord, and his energy and comic timing are infectious. In the hands of a less capable actor, Peter Quill could just as easily have been Han Solo lite, but Pratt's talent elevates Quill past that, at least when it really matters. Sci-fi veteran Saldana, who now has three major sci-fi franchises in her resume, truly kicks ass as Gamora, and to audiences rolling their eyes at the thought that she's only there for the leading man to land in the sack, I'm happy to say there's no lip-locking here and that the only action Gamora gets is the girl-on-girl kind, when she goes toe-to-toe with her equally badass sister Nebula (Karen Gillan) a cybernetic psychopath also working for Ronan, one whom we may well see in future GOTG installments. Dave Bautista, as a man incapable of grasping linguistic nuance, is an unexpected treat, though considering he's already practically a stand-up comedian by virtue of his lengthy tenure as a professional wrestler I suppose there should have been some indication of what he could bring to the role besides his rather imposing physicality.

Of course, much of the talking will be done about the computer-generated characters voiced by A-list movie stars Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, namely, Rocket Raccoon and Groot, respectively. The good news is that neither of them is slumming it for a paycheck; Cooper packs his diminutive onscreen avatar with just as much character and spunk as he has any of his live action portrayals, and Rocket, as strange as this may sound, actually gets some of the more poignant moments in the film. As for Diesel, the towering walking tree that is Groot actually provides him to exact sweet revenge on his critics who have accused him of wooden acting. With a three-word vocabulary, Diesel manages to imbue the character with so much nuance that he actually manages to outshine a lot of the live-action performances in the film.

Acting veterans like Glenn Close and John C. Reilly got some fairly meaty but small roles as Nova Prime and Nova Corpsman Dey, though I sense that some of their scenes may have ended up on the cutting room floor. Given that Xandar, the planet they're from, figures prominently in the cosmic Marvel universe I hope to see them again in future installments.

Getting notably short shrift, however, are Pace's Ronan and Gillan's Nebula, who get the chance to look badass and to hurt people in the film but precious little else. It's not quite as bad as the utterly bland Malekith from last year's Thor: The Dark World, but there's still quite a bit of wasted potential here. Nebula, in particular, could be a potentially iconic villain in the vein of Loki, and I honestly hope to see more of her in the future.  Thanos, the big league Marvel bad guy of whom fans got a peek during the post-credits scene of The Avengers, makes an appearance here, voiced by Josh Brolin , but he's little more than a tease of things to come. So maybe the movie falls a little short in the bad guy department, but for some reason it doesn't feel like that big a loss. It is, first and foremost, about the journey of the Guardians, and it is a doozy.

There are other details I absolutely dug as well, like the meticulously realized galaxy the titular Guardians (who got their name in a moment of sneering contempt) bounced around in, which included a planet that was actually once the head of a giant celestial being. Sure the physics of it probably don't make any sense, but the thought of beings so big that their heads can be miniature planets recalls the sense of wonder that Jack Kirby evoked with his wonderfully weird art back in the 1960s. And yes, fans of the cosmic Marvel Universe can rejoice at the thought that one of Kirby's iconic Celestials does make an appearance on the screen. The visual effects put to work here are incredibly imaginative.

On the other hand, however, I was disappointed by the lack of variety of alien species walking around. Apart from Rocket and Groot, the rest of the alien population seemed limited to humans and people whose skin were pastel colors, like Gamora's green, Ronan's and Nebula's blue, and the pink that a lot of the minor characters sported.  I guess that was where Marvel's budget constraints kicked in, but for my part, I would have wanted to see the kind of unhinged weirdness that Guillermo del Toro poured into films like Pan's Labyrinth or Hellboy: the Golden Army. We're talking about a whole other galaxy, after all, surely there's more to people looking different than just skin color? Maybe Gunn will let his hair down in the inevitable sequel and give us some real visual craziness.

Missteps aside, however, I am a big fan of what Gunn has done here. Guardians of the Galaxy may have a lot of Marvel's virtually patented blend of action and humor, but it is a significant departure from the superhero film that has become their wheelhouse. Marvel have allowed Gunn to present to the audience an honest-to-goodness space opera, and by golly, has he delivered. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the rather cheeky cameo from a somewhat infamous Marvel character right at the end of the credits is as much a salute to this film's real creative influence as it is some good-natured ribbing.

I'm looking forward to blasting off with this film's inevitable sequel in two or three years!

9/10

The Guilty Pleasure That's Back for More: A Review of 22 Jump Street

written by Michael Bacall and Oren Uziel
directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

In 2012, the buddy cop comedy that was very loosely adapted from a popular 1980s police procedural drama called 21 Jump Street took me almost completely by surprise. It was utterly idiotic, and yet so funny in its envelope-pushing crude humor that it was downright intoxicating at some points.

Hollywood being Hollywood, two years later, Sony Pictures and MGM have brought the gang back together for a sequel to that surprisingly lucrative enterprise, this time titled 22 Jump Street.

At the end of the last movie, undercover police officers Morton Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Greg Jenko (Channing Tatum) busted a drug running operation that had been set up in a high school by a teacher and a student. This time around, the film starts with them performing more "conventional" police work (at least, as far as movie police work goes) and failing spectacularly at collaring a notorious smuggler known only as "the Ghost" (Peter Stormare). As a result, they are put back on the Jump Street program, which has, this time moved across the street from the old Korean Church to a Vietnamese Church (hence the change in title). They have more money, but the same mission: to bust up a drug operation that has set up in a local college. This time around, there is no mix-up in their identities, and as a result Jenko (a.k.a. Brad) ends up impressing the local athletic set, among whom may or may not be the pusher, while Schmidt (a.k.a. Doug) starts schmoozing among the "artistic" types with whom the deceased victim whose death sparked the investigation spent much of her time. As in the last film, their different paths pull them apart from each other, but in the end, they will need each other to solve the case.

  Anyone looking for meaningful reflections on the human condition or even mind-blowing displays of computer-generated imagery will be better off saving their money, but people looking for two hours chock-full of gay double entendres, mindless slapstick humor, more metafiction than one can keep track of, and a whole lot of belly laughs, will get exactly what they're looking for in this film, if not even more.

This movie really sings to someone like me, who grew up with the low-budget screwball comedies of the 80s and early 90s. The movie is loaded to the gills with that brand of comedy, but with a distinctly 21st century sensibility. Last time around, the narrative twist was having Tatum's macho Jenko paired up with the nerds by mistake, and the "bromance" angle was only touched on tangentially for a few jokes. This time around, though, it's at the heart of the film, and the filmmakers milk the jokes and double entendres for just about everything they're worth. Also, the various "meta" references that range from the tradition of beefing up the budget of sequels, to Tatum's 2013 box-office dud White House Down, are spot-on. As in the last film, there are a couple of rocking cameos here too, none of which I will spoil, though the less perceptive might want to see if they can recognize the guy who plays Vietnamese Jesus during Jenko's drug trip.

One of my quibbles with this movie was the fact that Hill looked absolutely awful. There's a running joke throughout the film about how old he looks, just as there was in the last movie, only this time they hit the nail right on the head. Either Hill ages unnaturally fast, or he'd better lay off the drugs. Tatum, as before, looks like he's in great shape, and in fact, managed to look even more credible as a college student than Kurt Russell's 27-year-old son Wyatt, who plays the football god that becomes Jenko's BFF throughout the film, much to Schmidt's annoyance. The good news, though, is that Hill's and Tatum's chemistry from the first film is still very much intact.  There's something interesting about how Hill is able to portray compelling onscreen odd-couple pairings with heartthrobs; he was able to achieve similar comedic synergy with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, though not quite on the level of his rapport with Tatum.

 The end credits, which stretch on quite a bit, tend to make an emphatic statement on how the production team feels about making yet another sequel to this film (and in fact, many of them have declared they won't) but considering how this film looks like it will end up making even more money than its predecessor, and the dearth of Sony's bankable franchises (with even their formerly bulletproof Spider-Man series showing signs of serious wear and tear earlier this year) I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with an excuse for Hill and Tatum to strap on their guns at least one more time. If they do, though, they're going to need CGI to keep Hill from looking at least five years too old.

8.5/10

Dreamworks' Most Mature Movie to Date: A Review of How to Train Your Dragon 2

written and directed by Dean DeBlois

The first How to Train Your Dragon movie back in 2010 wasn't quite groundbreaking, what with various plot devices borrowed from other movies from coming-of-age awkwardness to the hero learning the truth about his supposed enemy that has been featured in various movies like Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai and Avatar, but it was definitely entertaining in a way that few animated movies before it had ever been. It was, to my mind as well as to those of many viewers and critics, among Dreamworks Animation Studios' best efforts, and it even compares well to some of the better movies of the studio that set the gold standard in computer-generated animated feature films, Pixar.  That film had a great deal of heart, arguably more than anything that Pixar has produced after Toy Story 3.

What surprised me about this year's sequel, simply titled How to Train Your Dragon 2, was not that it was as good as, if not even slightly better than the first movie, but that the filmmakers were willing to have their story take a slightly dark, if not entirely unpredictable turn this time around.

Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), the hero of the first film, is grown up now and having the time of his life with his pet dragon Toothless; thanks to his flying companion his world has expanded far beyond the boundaries of his small island of Berk, the inhabitants of which have come to embrace the dragons they feared and hated in the last movie, including Hiccup's own father and the village Chief, Stoick (Gerard Butler). Stoick, who is getting on in years, wants Hiccup to succeed him as the chief of Berk, much to Hiccup's displeasure. While off exploring (and escaping his father), Hiccup makes a startling, life-changing discovery that changes everything he thought he knew about his past, and not a moment too soon, for looming on the horizon is a threat that could spell big trouble for Berk, it inhabitants, and its dragons. Berk's dragon riders Hiccup, Astrid (America Ferrara), Snotlout (Jonah Hill), Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and twins Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig) and Tuffnut (T.J. Miller), and their dragons will need every ounce of skill they have to save their community from a menace that is unlike anything they've ever faced before.

Without wading into spoiler territory, I have to say that this film quite easily has the most heart of any Dreamworks movie since Kung Fu Panda, which is possibly down to the fact that the two films share, to a small extent, the theme of unlikely heroes rising to the occasion. This film actually tackles pretty heady themes like responsibility, and reconciling one's desires with one's duty, and while, again, they aren't exactly reinventing the wheel, writer/director Dean DeBlois and his cast and crew manage to turn in a story that is genuine and heartfelt, so much so that when things take a turn for the tragic late in the film, the impact is quite meaningful. Some reviewers have declared this film to The Empire Strikes Back, obviously for its darker tone in relation to the lighter-than-air feel of the first film, and in that sense at least, the movie is groundbreaking in its willingness to leave what is likely its audience's comfort zone to tell a compelling story.

The animation and rendering are, as they were before, simply astonishing, and it was gratifying to see that, with the expansion of Hiccup's world, several new dragon designs were also introduced. I do admit, however, to being vaguely disappointed by the design of one very important new dragon; apart from its size, it simply doesn't come off as imposing as it should be. Still, this didn't detract all that much from the overall narrative effectiveness.

I am happy to report that there's plenty to like here for the young and the young at heart.

8.5/10

The X-Men Movie We've All Been Waiting For: A Review of X-Men: Days of Future Past

directed by Bryan Singer
screenplay by Simon Kinberg

Anyone who has followed Twentieth Century Fox's film franchise adapting the popular X-Men comic books will know that the franchise, which thus far has had five movies and two Wolverine-oriented spinoffs, has seen its ups and downs. After starting off strongly with the first two movies in 2000 and 2003, both directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) the series saw a disheartening dip in quality when Singer left to direct a Superman sequel in 2006, resulting in the awful X-Men: The Last Stand, directed by Brett Ratner, compounded by an even worse Wolverine spinoff in 2009 by Gavin Hood. In 2011, Matthew Vaughn's prequel X-Men: First Class surprised audiences and critics by restoring a pretty high standard of quality to the X-Men franchise. Last year's The Wolverine, directed by James Mangold was not quite in its league but it was a surprisingly decent movie as well.

With X-Men: Days of Future Past, however, Singer finally returns to the franchise he started fourteen years ago, and gives not only the best X-Men movie that has ever been produced, but a movie that easily stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the very best films of the Disney-owned Marvel Studios, like the first Iron Man, the global phenomenon The Avengers, and the recent Captain America sequel.

The film opens in the year 2023, when mutants have been nearly wiped out by an unstoppable army of extremely powerful robots called Sentinels, built specifically to destroy them and their supporters and which, apart from unbelievable firepower, also have the ability to adapt to any threat. As a result, not even the combined abilities of the remaining X-Men, such as the ice powers of Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), teleportation powers of Blink (Fan Bingbing), fire powers of Sunpot (Adan Canto), armor and strength of Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), enhanced senses of Warpath (Booboo Stewart) the weather powers of Storm (Halle Berry) or even the metal-manipulating powers of Erik Lensherr a.k.a. Magneto (Ian McKellen) are able to stop them.

So far, the remaining X-Men have been able to stay alive thanks to the power of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to project the consciousness of Bishop (Omar Sy) into the past to warn the other X-Men of the attacks in time for them to evacuate their location, but time is running out fast. Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) then has the idea to send someone's consciousness back in time, all the way to the single event that led to the launch of the Sentinel program by the governments of the world, the assassination of Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) by Raven, a.k.a. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence). Professor Xavier theorizes that by stopping the assassination, they can change the future. However, to send someone's consciousness that far back in time could kill them, which is why Logan a.k.a. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), with his healing factor, is the only person who could survive the process, and as a result Kitty sends him back to 1973, where he must enlist the aid of a much younger Charles (James McAvoy) and Erik (Michael Fassbender).  It won't be easy; Charles has become addicted to a serum developed by Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) that enables him to walk but has dulled his telepathy, while Erik is incarcerated underneath the Pentagon for supposedly having killed the President of the United States. Logan, Charles and Hank recruit a young man named Peter (Evan Peters) with the mutant gift of super speed in the hope of busting Magneto out of jail, but the challenges that lie ahead are going to be a lot more difficult than that as Trask, initially turned down by the American congress, starts to get too cozy for comfort with the right people in the U.S. government.

As happy as I was to find out that Bryan Singer was returning to the director's chair for the latest X-Men movie after over a decade away from the franchise, I confess my joy was slightly tempered by the notion that he'd be working from a script written by Simon Kinberg, who also wrote the disastrous X-Men: The Last Stand, and whose resume includes other films I really didn't enjoy, like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes adaptation in 2009.  As it turns out, I needn't have worried; Kinberg's script, apart from being surprisingly taut and well-structured, is actually quite reverent to the canon that was established by the previous films, with the exception of the failure to explain why Professor X is in his old body, which got vaporized in The Last Stand while his consciousness was moved into another person's comatose body. The real marvel (pun intended) here is that thanks to the time-travel element, this is easily one of the most complicated stories that has been attempted in any comic-book based movie, and yet with the exception of a few niggles, Kinberg actually pulls it off. If nothing else, such is his and Singer's sleight-of-hand that it's easier to ignore the gaffes, which are inevitable with that kind of storytelling.

Still, even though Kinberg has raised his game, it's still Singer's show, and he extracts electrifying performances from his leads. Jackman's charisma, as expected, is still dialed up to 11 here, but the good news is that he gets to do a lot more than shout and skewer people here; there's some welcome gravitas to his character that was actually hinted at in the last Wolverine solo movie but gets explored a bit more effectively here.  The narrative focus, however, is on the newer cast members, in particular McAvoy's younger Xavier, who is a broken man after the events of First Class. McAvoy gets to do more than wear long hair and bell-bottom pants; he does an exemplary job of portraying the younger Xavier as having fallen from grace, a stark contrast from the hopeful young man he was in his first movie. For me, the film's most powerful scene doesn't involve explosions or energy blasts or fisticuffs; it's the scene where, through the magic of telepathy, young and old Charles meet and converse. Fassbender's Magneto was the breakout star of First Class with his overpowering, feral performance, but this time it is McAvoy's turn to shine. Fassbender's Magneto has traveled quite a bit further into full-on bad guy territory this time, though arguably understandably so, but the good news is that his portrayal is no less nuanced than it was the first time around, and his brutality here feels like a natural progression of what came before. Jennifer Lawrence, meanwhile, gets to show off her martial arts skills (when she's not being swapped out with a stunt double) and some pretty impressive linguistic (or at least phonetic) ability when Mystique carries on an extended conversation in Vietnamese and later throws in a smattering of French. She doesn't get quite as much attention from the script as she did in First Class, even though, ironically, Mystique is more central to the plot this time, but the supremely talented Lawrence is able to make the most out of her slightly diminished role. I also enjoyed seeing Nicholas Hoult return to the role of McCoy, also known as the Beast, as well; there was a lot more of his trademark acrobatic fighting this time, and he had a much better makeup job than he did in First Class.  Dinklage, as the film's bad guy, turns in a solid, if not particularly remarkable performance, though to my mind that was more down to the writing. He certainly wasn't anything like Brian Cox's somewhat flamboyant bad guy William Stryker in X2: X-Men United, a younger version of whom is played here by Josh Helman. Still, Dinklage's performance is entirely creditable, and it was refreshing that, for a change it did not actually touch on his stature.

Finally, the "future" X-Men get to showcase their powers and little else, though Page's role as Kitty Pryde is fairly substantial even though she plays out more like a plot device than an actual character. I must say, though, that Fan Bingbing is absolutely gorgeous as Blink, and I hope to see more of her in future installments.

For me, however, the breakout star of this movie was Evan Peters, who played Peter Maximoff, also known in the comic books as Quicksilver. A bravura sequence in which he puts his super speed on full display is easily the best action set piece of the entire movie, and lays down a serious marker that I suspect was intended for Fox's rivals over at Marvel studios, who through some curious legal development will also be able to feature Quicksilver in their Avengers sequel next year, to be played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whom I actually found to be insufferably bland in the current hit Godzilla. It was also a stroke of genius for Singer to set the scene to the sound of Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" although that has fooled at least one reviewer into thinking that Quicksilver's power is to stop time.  The only thing truly wrong with this iteration of Quicksilver is that he is gone from the movie way, way too soon, and for no good reason, really. I can already see the "How It Should Have Ended" skit on Youtube in which he plays a bigger role and simplifies everyone's problems. Still, even without him around the movie has plenty of highly-impressive action sequences.

It's hard to talk about the specific things I enjoyed about the film without spoiling plot points, but I will say that, apart from enjoying the film on its own merits, I was decidedly struck by how faithful Singer and his crew managed to be to the atmosphere of the original comic book series, which was extremely effective in juxtaposing the bleakness of the future and the tumult of the end of the seventies, even though in the movie Singer has turned back the clock a few years. There's even a highly memorable, if decidedly grim moment involving Storm and a sentinel that feels like it's been ripped right out of the comic book, albeit with more visceral impact here.

For me the honor of top Marvel-based movie of the year still goes to Marvel Studios' Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but this comes a very, very close second and only loses out because of some quibbles I have with the script. I will say that of the two, this is definitely the more ambitious film, comparable even to what Marvel did by putting together The Avengers two years ago. One thing the X-Men franchise definitely has going for it is that it is the longest running comic book film franchise whose makers haven't actually pushed the reboot button, although the time travel story device serves a similar purpose.

I can actually foresee nerds in the future debating what the better Marvel movie was: this, or The Avengers. It's that good.


8.9/10




[mild spoiler warning]




Oh, and I am happy to report that people unhappy with certain plot points of X-Men: The Last Stand will be very happy with this film. That is all.




[end spoiler warning]

Casting for Cash?

About fifteen years or so ago, a little-known Australian actor named Hugh Jackman was cast to play one of Marvel Comics' most famous characters, the mutant superhero known as Wolverine.

For years before and thereafter, that was basically the rule, with few exceptions: cast low key, not-so-well known (or sometimes completely unknown) actors in superhero roles so that the larger-than-life persona that actual movie stars such as Tom Cruise or Leonardo diCaprio would bring would not overshadow the characters themselves. Sure, fairly well-known actors like George Clooney and Val Kilmer played Batman at one point, but it was when the lesser-known character actor Christian Bale played him that the character really shone. Casting Hollywood stars as comic book characters rarely works out well, with probably the most famous exception being Robert Downey, Jr., the one-time up-and-coming prince of Hollywood laid low by drug abuse who belatedly fulfilled his potential superstardom thanks to a red-and-gold suit of armor.

Things are changing, though. Many of the current generation of young actors currently eyed for superhero roles, even the so-called "A-listers" actually grew up on superhero comic books and loved the adventures of the characters they read. Many of these actors, like Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds, as a result, eagerly court roles in the adaptations of these books to the big screen. The latest such actor to chase, and land such a role is white-hot "A-lister" Channing Tatum, who, in 2012 alone, starred in three movies that grossed $100 million at the North American box office, which, inflation notwithstanding remains both a benchmark of a movie's success, and the bankability of its actors.  Tatum had a misstep last year with White House Down, but is still very much regarded as a hot Hollywood property. Arguably as a result of that success, 20th Century Fox and producer Lauren Schuler-Donner have agreed to have Tatum play the mutant Gambit, a popular X-Men character who previously appeared in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as played by Taylor Kitsch.

As far as Tatum's acting talent goes, about the best thing I can say about him is that he isn't a terrible actor or necessarily even a bad one. I can probably think of one of two people I'd rather have in that role.

As far as commercial prospects are concerned, though, I can hardly argue with the logic Fox and behind the decision. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to figure it out; the guy's movies make lots of money. Full stop. Imagine if the Gambit character, by virtue of his X-Men connection, could attract about $240 million worth of fans to the theaters around the world without Channing Tatum. Now add everyone who paid to see Magic Mike who would not be caught dead near a comic-book-based movie, and that's a boost of nearly another $200 million.  Boom.

I actually liked Tatum in 21 Jump Street, and I was basically blown away by X-Men: Days of Future Past (review coming next) so I remain cautiously optimistic that Fox will maintain the standard of quality they have rediscovered in 2011 with X-Men: First Class, and have even improved on with their latest movie.

All Sizzle, (Almost) No Steak: A Review of Godzilla

The last Godzilla movie I walked into with any sense of anticipation was the 1998 big-budget remake by disaster-master Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) which turned out to be an unmitigated catastrophe. As a result, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this new installment, directed by relative newcomer Gareth Edwards, though early buzz and sneak peeks indicated that if nothing else, this would at least be better than the Emmerich-directed fiasco.

Last night, when confronted with a choice between killing time watching the new Godzilla  and wading through several kilometers of heavy traffic, I chose the former. Truth be told, I'm not really sure that was the better decision.

The opening credits feature some archival footage of nuclear testing from the 1950s, glimpses of a mysterious creature and the repeated appearance of the name "Monarch" before the film segues to 1999, when Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his associate Viviene Graham (Sally Hawkins), fly to a remote location in the Philippines, where miners have unearthed what appears to be the bones of a giant creature several feet underground. Startlingly, they also discover what appear to be eggs of enormous creatures, one of which has hatched, with its occupant having cut a swath of destruction out to the sea.

Not long after, in Japan, American engineer Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) who lives in Japan with his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) and their son Ford (CJ Adams) and works at a nuclear power plant, is concerned regarding seismic activity happening right under the plant, but he cannot get his superiors to listen to his theories as to what is happening, until it is too late and a catastrophic meltdown occurs, with particularly terrible consequences for Brody.

Years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), now grown up with a wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and a son (Carson Bolde) of his own, lives in San Francisco and works in the U.S. Navy as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician. For all the time that has passed, however, Joe Brody has never let go of his obsession with finding out what really happened at the nuclear power plant. He gets arrested attempting to enter what has become a quarantined zone, where his old house, and the data disks it contains, are, and Ford has to bail him out of jail. Eventually he prevails on Ford to return to the quarantined zone, where the two of them discover something even more terrifying than Joe could have imagined in his all of his paranoid speculation. Soon a race is on to protect humanity from a threat they have never known before.

I'll be direct; I did not like this movie.

I walked in hoping for a giant creature movie in the vein of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim and Peter Jackson's King Kong, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed, and instead I got a disaster movie with a grand total of, by my estimation, about six or seven minutes of actual screen-time for the title character. To say I felt cheated would be an understatement of monstrous proportions. 

There are things I liked about this movie, to be fair; I loved Bryan Cranston's performance. The only real poignancy in the film came from his story, in particular his relationship with his family. Also, while his histrionics may have seemed over the top at some points, of all the actors assembled, and there were quite a few notable ones, he brought the most conviction to his role; it was from his performance that one got the sense of urgency, that there was something terrible about to happen to all of mankind.  That he was written out of the script as early as he was really robbed the film of some genuine emotional heft.

Instead of Cranston's Joe, a truly tragic figure seeking redemption through the truth, the focus and intended emotional center of the film is his son Ford, played in adulthood by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who basically looked to me like he was sleepwalking through the whole damned movie. Olsen, as his wife Elle, is good at looking scared and running away, and little else. Between the two of them, these two actors don't come anywhere near what Cranston could have brought to the film had they kept him in longer, and yet it is on them that the filmmakers spend most of the film's running time. I get that the idea was to give the story a human core, and to get audiences to care about the people caught in the mayhem of Godzilla's titanic battles, but that only works when the leads are engaging, and neither of the two leads really is.

Also, Watanabe's Serizawa comes across as downright silly; there's something laughable about his belief that Godzilla (or "Gojira" as he correctly calls him) is some kind of benevolent force of nature. He's supposed to be a scientist, after all, and yet there's no evidence to support his theory of Godzilla's inclinations. His view seems more like a matter of religious faith than of actual scientific principle, a notion bolstered by the fact that Graham refers to the giant lizard as "a god."

It's not a total loss; the depiction of Godzilla is utterly magnificent, and allayed my fears that for all the filmmakers' efforts, he would still look like a guy in a rubber suit. No, the sight and sound of this creature are downright awesome, and I know that description may come across as trite, but I can truly not think of a more apt description. I missed seeing this in IMAX but I imagine that must be a special experience. Given, however, that he's barely ever on the screen in a two-hour movie, though, I wouldn't recommend spending the arm and a leg required to watch in IMAX theaters. Still, I applaud the folks at WETA Digital for rising up to the difficult task of visually updating such an iconic character, as well as the folks responsible for designing his distinctive roar.  The creatures he faces off against, the Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms or MUTOS, are similarly imposing, though not nearly as impressive to behold. The time Godzilla and his foes are filling the screen was quite a lot of fun to watch, which made the dearth of his screen time all the more infuriating.

One small touch I appreciated was a fairly novel use for the 3-D format which played around with the audience's point-of-view. Sometimes the mayhem is viewed through Ford Brody's goggles as he skydives, and other times through a car windshield, and other times still through an office window.

For me, the movie fails on two crucial points; it fails in terms of human drama due to actors who, for the most part, turn in utterly tepid, unconvincing performances, and as a monster movie considering that the title character is on the screen for less than ten percent of the total running time. Compared to Pacific Rim and especially King Kong, which were generous both with the development of their human characters and their creature exposure, this movie just fell woefully flat for me.

5/10

Hoping for Spidey's Skyfall (Spoilers)

The year 2002 was when which the Spider-Man film franchise kicked off in fine style, ending the year as the highest grossing film at the expense of such formidable opposition as the second Star Wars prequel, as well as sequels in both the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises. It was also the year in which another popular film franchise continued its downward spiral into virtually terminal schlock. Die Another Day was the twentieth film in the long-running (then 40 years) James Bond film franchise, and the fourth starring Irish actor Pierce Brosnan. After the first, well-regarded film Goldeneye in 1995, the subsequent films starring Brosnan got progressively worse, with Die Another Day representing a creative nadir. It got so bad that the solution was to start all over again from scratch, with a new bond in Daniel Craig, and a new timeline, though it retained Judi Dench from the Brosnan era as "M."  Casino Royale was a commercial and critical success.

It was not all smooth sailing, however; the next installment, Quantum of Solace, notwithstanding the goodwill generated from the Bond reboot, was not as well received as its predecessor and was seen as a creative misfire, notwithstanding the fact that there was clear narrative continuity between Casino Royale and itself. The new Bond series was conceived as a trilogy, but the second part, which was left conspicuously hanging for a third, sagged, leaving doubt as to the viability of the next installment.

So Sony cut their losses and made Skyfall, which had nothing to do with either of the two films that came before it, although they did retain Craig as Bond and Dench as M. They told a new story, unsaddled by previous baggage, and one conceived entirely as its own thing, and the results were dramatic.

Skyfall made a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, nearly twice the grosses of its immediate predecessor, garnered critical acclaim, and won a passel of awards, including two Oscars.

In the span of ten short years, the James Bond went from a creative low with Die Another Day to a creative high with Skyfall.

In that same period, the Spider-Man film franchise, which saw the release of the acclaimed, award-winning blockbuster Spider-Man 2 in 2004, has apparently gone in the opposite direction with this year's release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, quantifiably the worst-received film of that entire series.

Now, when Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man films went the way of Die Another Day with the disastrous Spider-Man 3, Sony correctly decided it was time to start anew, and two years ago produced the flawed but nonetheless highly watchable reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, which wasn't quite Casino Royale to Die Another Day but which nonetheless provided the studio with a much needed clean break from the past.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is arguably the Quantum of Solace of this new series of Spider-Man movies, and even though it's still making money, to my mind the producers really have to start rethinking their approach to the series, which they apparently already have planned out for the next several years, just as the Bond producers did. Their plan is for Spider-Man to face off with the Sinister Six, his fabled team of enemies from the comic books. So confident are they, apparently, that they even have a spinoff planned for the supervillians. The underwhelming grosses and vicious reviews, however, should get them to seriously rethink their long-term plan.

My (admittedly unsolicited) advice for them is to keep things simple; focus on Peter's core relationships, which was one of the things they did well, even, in this widely reviled new installment, and they should never let another whole movie go by without Peter Parker ever mentioning Uncle Ben by name. That was just wrong on every narrative level. They should also make it a point to have his villains and supporting characters played by actors who play them less like cartoon characters and more like human beings.  Jamie Foxx (Electro), Paul Giamatti (Rhino) and Marton Csokas (Dr. Kafka) all went extremely heavy on the camp, and it was extremely distracting to watch. Imagine how horrid Captain America: The Winter Soldier would have been if Robert Redford's character had abruptly started speaking with a German accent.

As Batman and Robin showed back in 1997, all it takes to bury a film franchise is one bad film, but as Skyfall showed back in 2012, the converse is also true: an outstanding film can really turn things around for a franchise in freefall.  I'm still holding out hope that the next Spider-Man film is the latter type of sequel.

Out of Ideas

I was originally planning to write a long, derisive post about Warner Brothers' announcement that they will be making a Justice League movie, immediately after their Superman vs. Batman film, which has yet to even start filming, but someone's comment on the internet summarized what I was thinking in less than ten words: I'll believe it when I see it.

What I can't quite believe, however, is Sony Pictures' announcement that they actually intend to make a Sinister Six spinoff, or, for the uninitiated, a whole movie about six of Spider-Man's deadliest enemies. Basically, Sony is betting that audiences, a large chunk of them families, will pay to see an expensive, two-hour movie about bad guys whose mission in life it is to kill Spider-Man.

I understand Sony's quandary; Spider-Man is the only Marvel property they have left, with the X-Men and Fantastic Four belonging to Twentieth Century Fox, and EVERYTHING else having reverted to Marvel, now owned by the Walt Disney Company. Once upon a time, Sony had rights to as many as THREE Marvel properties, including Spider-Man, but after squandering their resources on two Ghost Rider movies, both critical failures, the second a commercial failure, they let that property go. They were supposed to have a Killraven movie in the pipeline at one point, but that has since fallen through, and all they have left now are Spider-man and related characters.

Of those related characters, only one of them can even be remotely considered a "superhero;" the character Venom, originally conceived as a villain but which took on a life of its own as some sort of twisted anti-hero. Venom was originally the "marriage" of an alien parasite that grafted itself onto Spider-Man, only to be rejected by him, and Eddie Brock, a reporter whose sensationalized stories Spider-Man had unknowingly discredited by catching a criminal and exposing his stories as fraudulent. Marvel has since experimented with the alien costume by giving it a different host; for years it was supervillain Mac Gargan, a.k.a. the Scorpion, but since 2010, the alien has had as its host war hero and double amputee Flash Thompson, a longtime member of Spider-Man's supporting cast who finally joined the ranks of Marvel's superheroes. Whether or not Marvel deliberately took this direction with the character to make him more "movie friendly" or not, the fact of the matter is that "Agent Venom" is now a more viable big-screen hero than the creepy Eddie Brock incarnation of the character would ever have been. One could even imagine the character being featured in a spy-thriller akin to the Bourne movies or even the current Marvel Studios smash hit Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

With the Sinister Six, however, the options are a lot more limited; these guys are straight-up bad guys. They are criminals, basically. Thieves and killers, every one. While this might make the stuff of a great neo-noir movie, like a super-powered version of Reservoir Dogs, the fact of the matter is that a huge part of Spider-Man's target demographic is children, and neither children nor their parents will pay to see a movie about bad guys, so as bad ideas for blockbuster movies go, this one's kind of a doozy.

Avi Arad, who was no longer part of the Marvel Cinematic brain trust by the time Iron Man launched the studio in 2008, has boasted that Sony would only resort to a crossover between Spider-man and the Avengers if they had "run out of ideas."

Time to get on the phone, Avi.

Bloated: A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man 2

directed by Marc Webb
screenplay by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Jeff Pinkner

I will be candid: this review will be quite a bit longer than most of my reviews because of my affection for the Spider-Man character. To my mind, more than any other character in the Marvel pantheon, Spider-Man deserves a perfect movie, or as near as one can get to it, and it saddens me that, this time around, he did not get the masterpiece he deserved.

A lot has been said, much of it bad, about the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man Sony Pictures' 2012 reboot of the cinematic saga of Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man, who once upon a time sat atop the cinematic roost as king of comic book heroes and Marvel-based heroes in particular until he was displaced by the concerted efforts of six of his fellow Marvel heroes in a little movie called The Avengers.  The movie has, so far, gotten worst reviews of any of the films in the series (yes, even including the much-reviled Spider-Man 3) and the cacophony of fanboys calling for the failure of this film is at a fever pitch. Notably, these are no longer even just the DC comics fanboys cheering for their Nolan/Snyder produced "horses" but actual Marvel fanboys wanting Sony Pictures, who have had the rights to make movies on this property for the better part of two decades now, to lose money on this movie so that they will willingly cede the property back to Marvel, who now have their own film studio.

Since the Avengers stopped an alien fleet from destroying the world (or at least New York City), it seems to me that Sony Pictures felt they had to up the ante somehow from the flawed but entertaining first reboot with some really over-the-top flourishes. I can just imagine the meetings: "Let's shoot the whole movie in New York and not having Los Angeles or Toronto double for it!" or "Let's have two or more villains, one of them with the capacity to mess up the whole city!" or "Let's give Peter's parents their own action scene!" or "Let's hire the guys who wrote the Transformers movies!"

As a result of what I strongly suspect is an effort to outdo Marvel studios in the fireworks department, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is at least twenty minutes too long and feels a little bit cluttered at many points.

The movie picks up from where the last film has left off; Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) is about to graduate from high school, while struggling with the secret behind his parents' disappearance as well as his on-again, off-again relationship with girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), mainly due to his promise to Gwen's departed dad, Police Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) to keep her out of Spider-Man's dangerous life. Things get even more complicated for him when Gwen is offered a scholarship into Oxford University...which happens to be in England.  Then, shortly after mentally-unbalanced electrical engineer Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) has a little workplace accident that transforms him into the deadly Electro, and an old friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) returns from an extended visit to Europe to visit his dying dad Norman (Chris Cooper), only to discover somewhat troubling secrets about himself, Spider-Man comes face-to-face with challenges that will change him forever.

The subplot involving Peter's parents was always suspect, even when the new Spider-crew introduced it with the reboot, and here it simply takes up too much screen time and pays off in a revelation that seems meant to be important but feels utterly superfluous. By itself it's already ten minutes of the film that could have been cut right out, leaving the rest of the film none the worse for its removal.

Another misstep the producers took this time was the realization of Jamie Foxx's Max Dillon, a.k.a. Electro. I'll grant that Dillon is painted as a lonely, maltreated, mentally unstable electrical engineer before he transforms, courtesy of a rather silly accident into Electro, but to my mind the transition from disturbed individual to full blown psychopath feels extremely abrupt. The script's approach to Electro, as well as Foxx's portrayal of the nerdy Dillon, feel unnecessarily campy, and as fantastical as the character's origin is, I had a particularly hard time suspending my disbelief here. I groaned in the theater when Max called a colleague of his to shut down the electrical grid where he was working so that he could repair a broken cable, only to be told that this man was calling it a day and could not be bothered to help him. So, Oscorp, a multi-billion dollar company has only one person working its whole power grid, who would rather rush home than help another employee fix a building's broken power cable that could potentially screw up the entire building? That's the kind of contrivance one could expect from a 1960s comic book, but not from a contemporary feature film. The consolation, though, is that once Foxx goes into full-on villain mode, he is quite convincingly menacing, and the effects that go into visualizing him are absolutely top-notch.

My final major gripe is the story arc of this particular version of Harry Osborn, played by Dane DeHaan. Truth be told, I quite enjoyed DeHaan's performance. In fact, of the two new kids on the block, him and Foxx, I have more praise for DeHaan, who takes a decidedly different approach to the Osborn character from that of his predecessor James Franco. There are still the daddy issues, to be sure, but DeHaan's Harry, who learns he is virtually terminally ill, does a good job of conveying desperation on top of the pathos of a neglected child, and DeHaan channels a younger Leonardo diCarpio, not just because of the physical resemblance but on account of more than a few of his mannerisms. Most importantly, however, his screen chemistry with Garfield's Peter is palpable, so that even if their friendship isn't quite as close as it was in the Raimi's films, there's still a genuine sense of tragedy when things inevitably go sour. What I did not at all appreciate, however, was the corporate mutiny plotline that the filmmakers rehashed from the very first Spider-Man movie. It was, in a word, irritating. Surely, I thought, there are other ways to motivate a character other than by taking away his money and power.

I have a minor quibble too, and it is with the presentation of the character eventually known as the Rhino, but without spoiling too much I can categorically say that he has hardly any screen time and therefore hardly any bearing on the story. What I sincerely disliked about the character, though, was Paul Giamatti's over-the-top, utterly hammy performance, which depressed and annoyed me in equal parts considering that Giamatti is one of my very favorite character actors and could have done so much better, no matter how small this role was. Heck, legendary actors like Robert Redford and Anthony Hopkins have taken their supporting roles in comic-book-based movies much more seriously, with Hopkins even having to wear garish costumes and speak flowery English, so Giamatti could have at least tried to act like he was in something other than a Saturday morning cartoon.

Yes, there is a lot that is wrong with this movie, but I will not join the bandwagon of hate against it because to my mind, Sony got the most important things right, starting with the title character. To my mind, Andrew Garfield IS Peter Parker, just as much as Robert Downey, Jr. IS Tony Stark and Tom Hiddleston IS Loki. He made a pretty good argument for his casting in the last movie but basically solidified it here. He has struck the delicate balance between Parker's inner loneliness and sense of guilt and responsibility on the one hand, and the unbridled cockiness and snark he assumes when he puts on the mask on the other, a duality that has been a hallmark of the character for fifty-two years, and which Tobey Maguire never even came close to accomplishing in any of the Sam Raimi movies. I cannot emphasize this point enough; for three movies I put up with Maguire's squeaky voice and misguided, at times borderline-condescending portrayal of Spider-Man. I didn't yearn for better because frankly, that was the hand I, along with all other movie viewers in the world, was dealt.  What Garfield has done with the character, therefore is virtually miraculous; he has made this Spider-Man almost everything that Maguire's was not in the ways that truly count, and when this film is at its most ridiculous he remains its saving grace.

More than just Garfield's portrayal of the character, however, his relationships with his supporting cast also go a long way towards carrying the film. Peter' interactions with characters such as Sally Field's Aunt May, Gwen, and Harry, are defining moments in the film that come across as truly heartfelt stuff, and manage to give the film an emotional center of gravity even when the big-budget craziness threatens (as it does, many, many times) to carry the whole enterprise away like a runaway tornado. Full credit goes to Webb and all of the actors involved for getting this crucial aspect of the film right, but Garfield is at the heart of it all. His chemistry with real-life girlfriend Stone, as embodied in their dialogue and the body language they share, is utterly magical, and again, is far superior to any of the romantic sparks that flew between the Maguire's take on Peter and Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson, his squeeze in the old movie series. Also, I think Field's Aunt May is a lot more convincing than Rosemary Harris' ever was. In terms of the smaller, more intimate moments, this movie offers scenes that are just as good as, if not better than the very best that the Raimi movies had to offer. Every time they have these scenes it feels like a well-scripted independent movie about family and relationships has wandered onto the screen.

Not only that, but clearly a lot of effort has gone into making Spidey more convincing than he's ever looked; digital Spidey is looking slicker than he ever has before, and nearly every gravity-defying action sequence with him in it is utterly breathtaking, especially in 3-D. It helps that the filmmakers have outfitted Garfield and his stuntmen with the best Spider-Man costume that has ever been filmed, which brings back the best aspects of the Raimi-era suit and adds some welcome touches, like the snazzy oversized eyepieces which hearken back to the Spider-Man I grew up with: the McFarlane-era Spidey. Also, as overblown as many of the action sequences are, I genuinely appreciated the fact that one of the most impressively-staged ones involved Spider-Man using his head and his lightning-fast reflexes to save a whole bunch of bystanders from getting both squashed by a flying car and fried by one of Electro's blasts. More than being just an orgy of computer-generated imagery, this scene punctuated something very important about Spider-Man: his sense of responsibility extends to all civilians caught in the crossfire of his titanic battles and he will do everything in his power and skill to save them.

 All told, to my mind the film's biggest problem was that its makers were constantly trying to one-up the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that is Marvel Studios in the slam-bang action department, and so rather than let this film be its own thing, like the Spider-Man films of old used to do, they tried to make almost everything "bigger," from the multiple bad guys to the work of composer/fanboy god Hans Zimmer and his "Magnificent Six."  I appreciated Zimmer's work here, though at some points of the film it struck me that he was repeating his new theme for the character as often as he was in order to drum out of the viewer's head the music that his predecessor James Horner had written for the character. Well, sorry Zimmer, but I for one am still partial to Horner's music, mainly because, like the parts of this film that work, it feels more intimate, and more personal.

In closing, I think that Sony would have done well to learn from Marvel's most recent, acclaimed blockbuster Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which the massive CGI-laden climax was practically a footnote to a film that had already spent the majority of its running time building up its plot and characters. In crafting the sequel that is probably all but a foregone conclusion at this point, I hope Sony remembers a valuable lesson from this film: while good characterization and awesome CGI will always have a place in a Spider-Man movie, bigger isn't always better.

6/10

By the Numbers: A Review of Rio 2

directed by Carlos Saldanha

The fact that the animated sequel Rio 2 is riddled with narrative cliches ranging from bad in-law jokes to "save the forest" tropes is hardly its biggest sin. Filmed storytelling, even the animated kind, has been around so long that repeating stories from older films is almost inevitable, but the perfunctory way the filmmakers toss everything together is nearly unforgivable.

This film departs from the bustling city of Rio de Janeiro (which makes the title a bit of a misnomer) and heads for the jungles of the Amazon, where Tulio, the ornithologist from the first film (Rodrigo Santoro, strangely enough the only Brazilian with a major role in the film) traveling with his wife Linda (Leslie Mann) discovers that there may be more blue macaws in the rainforest, a species of bird previously thought on the verge of extinction. Meanwhile, back in the city, Linda's and Tulio's domesticated Blue Macaws Blu (Jessie Eisenberg) and Jewel (Anne Hathaway), who now have three kids, happen to see their "guardians" on television. Jewel, who came from the Amazon, is ecstatic at the thought that there might be more birds like them, and basically twists Blu's wing into going there with the whole family. Blu tells his friends, yellow canary Nico (Jamie Foxx), red-crested cardinal Pedro (will.i.a.m), toucan Rafael (George Lopez), and bulldog Luis (Tracy Morgan), and they encourage him to take the trip to make his wife happy, though the three birds also accompany them. A surprise awaits Blu and his family in the forest as they encounter not one but a whole tribe of blue macaws led by Jewel's father Eduardo (Andy Garcia) and her childhood friend Roberto (Bruno Mars). Jewel is also welcomed back by her aunt Mimi (Rita Moreno). Things are not hunky dory for everyone; Roberto, a strapping, singing specimen of a bird makes Blu insecure, while Eduardo views the highly domesticated Blu with considerable disdain.

These, however, could be the least of Blu's problems as an illegal logger (Miguel Ferrer), threatened by the thought of his cash cow being declared a wildlife sanctuary, has evil plans for Tulio and Linda, while Nigel (Jemaine Clement), the murderous cockatoo from the first film, who survived a plane crash but is now flightless and working as a sideshow attraction, has evil plans for Blu, plans which involve the venom of a tree frog (Kristen Chenoweth) and a porcupine's quill fired from the snout of an anteater.

I don't quite know what was played out worse, the whole in-law, old-boyfriend-by-whom-the-hero-feels-threatened storyline, or the whole animals get together to save-the-rain-forest story.  The problem wasn't that these stories are cliche (even though they are); it's that I could discern no effort on the part of the filmmakers to present them in a fresh way. Sure, there are lively visuals and livelier musical numbers and the movie is still good for some laughs, but, really, in this day and age lush visuals are practically a dime a dozen; Blue Sky studios gave us similar eye-candy with last year's Epic, and after Frozen, nearly every musical number in this movie feels second rate, especially Jemaine Clement's insipid cover of "I Will Survive." As for the slapstick gags, just about every animated movie has those too, even the low-budget ones. There is very little about this movie that makes it stand out.

For me, the movie's one truly saving grace was the positively manic performance by Kristen Chenoweth as Gabi the poisonous tree frog who is head over heel in love with Nigel, replete with a show-stopping song number and a Shakespearean twist near the end of the film. The whole film is the better for having her in it; she brings an energy and enthusiasm to her role that none of the other actors in this film did. Quite honestly everyone else feels like they're phoning it in (and with an animated film, this possibility feels even more distinct than usual), especially next to Chenoweth.

I really don't know what else to say. Kids will love it, to be fair, especially the very young ones who haven't seen this sort of thing several times before, but the adults who will accompany them to see it really shouldn't expect anything.



5.5/10