I wrote a review of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs when it came out here in January 2010, four months after its release in the United States, on my now-defunct Multiply page. I felt it was fun, visually exciting, but ultimately disposable. I have enjoyed re-watching it on DVD with my kids since then, and as a result we were all looking forward to watching the sequel. We were willing to forgo watching it in 3-D to save some money, but unfortunately it was the only available format where we watched it.
The story of the sequel picks up from where the first film left off, although it retroactively negated the after-credits sequence of the first film which suggested events that followed the destruction of Swallow Falls. This film immediately begins in the aftermath of the destruction of the town, which was caused by a food hurricane generated by a machine invented by Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) which turns water into food.
Here, Flint, his weather-reporter girlfriend Sam (Anna Faris), his dad (James Caan) and various friends are relocated from their island by a think tank known as Live Corp., run by Flint's childhood hero, super-inventor Chester V (Will Forte). Chester hires Flint to work at Live Corp., where Flint has the time of his life, not realizing that the real plan of Chester and his assistant, a talking orangutan named Barb (Kristen Schaal) is to recover his food generating machine, the Flint Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicator (FLDSMDFR) while Flint is distracted. When Chester's extraction teams disappear during their attempts to find the machine, Chester decides to send the expendable Flint over to the island and find his machine. Flint brings along his dad and his friends, and what they find is not at all what they expected.
I love cartoons, whether they are hand-drawn, stop motion or computer-generated. I love their sense of whimsy, and how they basically make me feel like a kid again, especially the silly ones.
The first film had the benefit of being based on a kids' book that my children and I enjoyed, as well as the novelty of giant food falling from the sky. This novelty was always going to wear off, but to the filmmakers' credit they've expanded on an idea that was briefly explored in the first film (e.g. the flying pizzas, fighting chickens and killer gummi bears) and have introduced an entire ecosystem of creatures made of food, including a giant cheeseburger spider, shrimpanzees, tacodiles, and a whole host of outrageous looking concoctions that have come to life. Considering that so many animals are made into food it was visually engaging to see that turned around this movie. Also, as a 3-D experience this film was pretty striking. Chester V's nose poked at us every time he looked into the screen.
In terms of writing, though, the film left quite a bit to be desired. The first film was hardly a masterclass in scripting, but the second film, with its thoroughly forgettable villain who vaguely feels like a cheap shot at the late Steve Jobs (though probably more because of how he looks than anything else) and a hero who seems every bit the idiot he was in the first film, really skimps on the story and characterization here. The writing feels like it developed just enough to justify the various visual gags that punctuate the humor, and that's about it.
It was still a lot of fun for the kids, but the adults should prepare to be patient while sitting through this.
3/5
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Plummeting to One's Death...In 3-D! A Review of Gravity
In the three weeks since its release, critics and audiences the world over have apparently embraced director Alfonso Cuaron's 90-minute thriller Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts in extreme peril. I saw the film myself over two weekends ago but have had little time to churn out a review.
The story is simple; a group of astronauts including Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) and Lt. Matt Kowalski (Clooney), and a number of actors who basically just lend their voices, are on a mission in space installing new hardware on a satellite when they are struck by the falling debris of a Russian satellite that has been destroyed as part of Russia's efforts to clean the skies of its derelict satellites. Chaos and death ensue, and before they know it Stone and Clooney find themselves falling to earth and basically scrambling around for other satellites to board in order to ensure that they can survive their return to earth. They have the benefit of Kowalski's jet pack but not for very long.
I admit that I was not altogether impressed by the trailer. It appeared to be a cast of two people in peril, and I asked myself, right off the bat, how long the filmmakers could possibly sustain such a thin premise?
I will also readily admit that the answer I got to that question was: for 90 nail-biting minutes.
Full credit goes to Cuaron, Bullock, Clooney, the amazing team of visual effects artists, and composer Steven Price for managing to squeeze so much action and tension out of what was basically a reed-thin plot.
It's been a full twenty years and one Academy Award since Bullock played Sylvester Stallone's sidekick in Demolition Man, and apart from looking great for someone pushing fifty, she has really shown some serious acting chops in this film, especially considering that she and Clooney are the only actors who actually appear onscreen. I think it's fair to say that she basically carries this film (with all due respect to Clooney). Consider this Sandra Bullock's Cast Away (the 2000 Robert Zemeckis movie which, for the most part, starred Tom Hanks and a volleyball).
To my mind, the crew, especially the visual effects people and the aforementioned composer, deserve special mention, for creating an utterly believable space environment, no mean feat considering that most of the film's 90 minutes takes place in space, thus creating the very real possibility of the seams in the digital effects showing at one point or another. They never do, at least no as far as I can see. Also, unlike most blockbusters in which the visual effects are needed mainly to prop up the massive action set pieces, this film relies on sterling effects to carry the story, and the crew are up to the task.
It may seem strange that the composer gets such special mention, but there's a reason for it; this is one of the rare Hollywood films (and off the top of my head, I cannot think of any other) in which the filmmakers actually depicted the fact in space, there's no sound. There's no crashing sound as the debris hammers the space shuttle, no exploding sound as one satellite or another disintegrates upon impact with hurtling satellite fragments. Basically, it's all up to composer Price to replace all of the tension that explosions and crashes usually creates, and he does a sterling job.
It's also worth mentioning that this is the best IMAX 3-D experience I've had since Avatar. Granted, it's only the third IMAX 3-D movie I've seen since then (the other two being The Amazing Spider-Man and The Adventures of Tintin), but unlike either of those two, it made the absolute most of the format, just like James Cameron's visual feast.
I've already kind of hopped on the bandwagon of people impressed by this movie, but I will stop short of calling it a masterpiece, as technically impressive as it is. There's something oddly perfunctory about the writing; Stone's back story, which she discusses during the film, feels like an afterthought, which matters, considering that the audience is supposed to care whether these characters live or die. Kowalski's story, apart from one humorous anecdote he repeats throughout the film, is just about nonexistent. It is fortunate that the actors make up for the script's shortcomings with utter conviction in their performances, especially considering that they were probably acting against green screens most of the time.
My favorite astronauts-in-peril movie remains Ron Howard's Apollo 13, but for sheer urgency and visual effects splendor, Gravity has set a new standard. Kudos to everyone involved.
4.5/5
The story is simple; a group of astronauts including Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) and Lt. Matt Kowalski (Clooney), and a number of actors who basically just lend their voices, are on a mission in space installing new hardware on a satellite when they are struck by the falling debris of a Russian satellite that has been destroyed as part of Russia's efforts to clean the skies of its derelict satellites. Chaos and death ensue, and before they know it Stone and Clooney find themselves falling to earth and basically scrambling around for other satellites to board in order to ensure that they can survive their return to earth. They have the benefit of Kowalski's jet pack but not for very long.
I admit that I was not altogether impressed by the trailer. It appeared to be a cast of two people in peril, and I asked myself, right off the bat, how long the filmmakers could possibly sustain such a thin premise?
I will also readily admit that the answer I got to that question was: for 90 nail-biting minutes.
Full credit goes to Cuaron, Bullock, Clooney, the amazing team of visual effects artists, and composer Steven Price for managing to squeeze so much action and tension out of what was basically a reed-thin plot.
It's been a full twenty years and one Academy Award since Bullock played Sylvester Stallone's sidekick in Demolition Man, and apart from looking great for someone pushing fifty, she has really shown some serious acting chops in this film, especially considering that she and Clooney are the only actors who actually appear onscreen. I think it's fair to say that she basically carries this film (with all due respect to Clooney). Consider this Sandra Bullock's Cast Away (the 2000 Robert Zemeckis movie which, for the most part, starred Tom Hanks and a volleyball).
To my mind, the crew, especially the visual effects people and the aforementioned composer, deserve special mention, for creating an utterly believable space environment, no mean feat considering that most of the film's 90 minutes takes place in space, thus creating the very real possibility of the seams in the digital effects showing at one point or another. They never do, at least no as far as I can see. Also, unlike most blockbusters in which the visual effects are needed mainly to prop up the massive action set pieces, this film relies on sterling effects to carry the story, and the crew are up to the task.
It may seem strange that the composer gets such special mention, but there's a reason for it; this is one of the rare Hollywood films (and off the top of my head, I cannot think of any other) in which the filmmakers actually depicted the fact in space, there's no sound. There's no crashing sound as the debris hammers the space shuttle, no exploding sound as one satellite or another disintegrates upon impact with hurtling satellite fragments. Basically, it's all up to composer Price to replace all of the tension that explosions and crashes usually creates, and he does a sterling job.
It's also worth mentioning that this is the best IMAX 3-D experience I've had since Avatar. Granted, it's only the third IMAX 3-D movie I've seen since then (the other two being The Amazing Spider-Man and The Adventures of Tintin), but unlike either of those two, it made the absolute most of the format, just like James Cameron's visual feast.
I've already kind of hopped on the bandwagon of people impressed by this movie, but I will stop short of calling it a masterpiece, as technically impressive as it is. There's something oddly perfunctory about the writing; Stone's back story, which she discusses during the film, feels like an afterthought, which matters, considering that the audience is supposed to care whether these characters live or die. Kowalski's story, apart from one humorous anecdote he repeats throughout the film, is just about nonexistent. It is fortunate that the actors make up for the script's shortcomings with utter conviction in their performances, especially considering that they were probably acting against green screens most of the time.
My favorite astronauts-in-peril movie remains Ron Howard's Apollo 13, but for sheer urgency and visual effects splendor, Gravity has set a new standard. Kudos to everyone involved.
4.5/5
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Self-Discovery at 170mph: A Review of Rush
The 70s have been good to Ron Howard. His starring role in George Lucas' 1974 film American Graffiti turned heads, and his lead role in the popular television series Happy Days, that ran throughout the 70s, made him a household name. One of his most successful and acclaimed films to date, Apollo 13, was based on events that took place in 1970.
It seems fitting, then, that he should revisit the era of bellbottom pants and shaggy haircuts, which also happened to be the setting for one of the most fascinating rivalries in the history of Formula One racing: the 1976 World Driver's Championship, which was contested by Englishman James Hunt of McLaren Racing and Austrian Niki Lauda of Scuderia Ferrari. Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan, in dramatizing this rivalry, have created one of the best movies this year, and one of the best movies involving motor racing in, well, ever.
The story begins at one of the most pivotal points of the '76 season, the beginning of the 1976 German Grand Prix, with Lauda (played brilliantly by German actor Daniel Bruhl) sitting in his Ferrari race car and observing his championship rival Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) across the racing grid, making his preparations. Lauda does a brief voiceover narration, and the story flashes back to six years earlier. Hunt and Lauda meet while racing in Formula 2, in a "feeder series" to Formula One, where their rivalry is instant, and intense. As the story unfolds, it emerges that they have a lot in common, more than just their passion and skills for racing cars. Both of them come from affluent families that do not support their racing dreams, and both of them are colossal egomaniacs. Of the two of them, however, Lauda is somewhat more proactive; he buys his way into the top tier of racing, Formula One, by taking out a loan and buying heavily into a team that is on its last legs. His ability to set up the car and make it go faster endears him to Swiss teammate Clay Regazzoni (Pierfrancesco Favino), a former driver for the world famous Scuderia Ferrari who, when invited to return to the Italian team, takes Lauda along with him. Hunt, meanwhile is able to get into F1 when his friend and backer, Lord Alexander Hesketh (Christian McKay) decides to enter his own team, albeit without corporate sponsorship. It is also at this point that Lauda and Hunt meet women who will prove pivotal to their lives, with Lauda meeting his future wife Marlene Knaus (Alexandra Maria Lara) and Hunt meeting his wife, model Suzy Miller (Olivia Wilde) just before the 1975 season. Their fortunes vary from this point; Lauda wins the F1 championship, while Hunt's team, unable to secure sponsorship, has to pull out, leaving Hunt without a drive for the next year. However, at the last minute Hunt is able to secure a drive with the McLaren team, which has the only car fast enough to beat Lauda's Ferrari, thus setting the stage for one of the most memorable season-long rivalries in the history of motorsport.
Prior to this film, the last full-length feature film that Hollywood had made about Formula One was John Frankenheimer's 1966 film Grand Prix, which I have on DVD. Sylvester Stallone attempted to secure the rights to make an F1-themed film but was turned down by F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, as a result of which, the 2001 film Driven was set against the now-defunct Champ Car series. It was just as well, too; that movie was so bad that it would not have done F1 any favors as a marketing tool. Three years ago, Working Title, the company responsible for producing this film, came up with the documentary Senna. Rush is the first feature film that has been produced about F1 in nearly 50 years, and therefore something of a milestone.
Director Howard, who confessed to not knowing anything about Formula One prior to making this film, may have seemed an odd choice to direct it, but watching the painstaking recreation of the era and the races I would hardly have guessed he was an F1 novice. The racing scenes, are extremely well-presented using a skillful blend of stunt driving and computer-generated imagery, although they do not quite have the balls-to-the-wall verisimilitude that makes Grand Prix a classic among racing fans. I suppose, though, that this is inevitable considering that in 1966 safety concerns, either in the world of racing or film-making, were not as paramount as they are today. What I found remarkable about this film was how incredibly rich it was in terms of character development, something on which Grand Prix basically skimped, with the paper thin plot and characters basically serving as an excuse to string together the bravura racing sequences.
When I heard this movie was getting made I felt a touch of apprehension; how, I wondered, does one capture the drama of an entire F1 season (the 1976 season had 16 races) in a two-hour feature film? I was also a little worried that, with a British writer crafting the screenplay and a Hollywood up-and-comer (Hemsworth) playing Englishman Hunt, that Lauda's character, an Austrian with a funny accent, would be reduced to playing a generic Euro-nasty "villain" next to Hunt's "hero." After all, Senna, a documentary, had been criticized by many for its somewhat one-sided portrayal of rivalry between the late Brazilian firebrand Ayrton Senna and Frenchman Alain Prost in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A feature film, with a script and actors, would be much more vulnerable to slanted storytelling than a documentary.
Upon watching the film, I was happy to learn that my fears were unfounded; Working Title may have used Hemsworth's face on the posters but this movie belonged in equal measure to Hunt and Lauda. In fact, the Lauda role gets meatier as the story progresses, and he even has the distinction of opening and closing the film with a bit of voice-over narration.
It's worth pointing out the difference between Hemsworth's and Bruhl's performances, which feel as different as the approaches to racing of their characters. Hemsworth, whose Hunt is really not all that different from the character for which he is most famous, the superhero Thor, didn't have to alter his acting too much, and about the only major adjustment he had to make in terms of his performance was to drop a few f-bombs and take off his shirt a lot (and sometimes, a bit more than that). Still, he milked his movie-star charisma for everything it was worth in this role; if Thor was a mythological god, Hunt was, in those days, a god of sorts in his own right, and Hemsworth portrayed that to near perfection. He also captured a great deal of Hunt's insecurity and vulnerability as well.
Bruhl's performance, however was simply in a different league from Hemsworth's. I remember him as the genteel, French-speaking Nazi sniper from Inglourious Basterds, which made his transformation into the abrasive Austrian racing legend, even when aided by some pretty convincing prosthetics, all the more striking. Even more striking was how he managed to uncover the humanity in a character who seemed so determined to shed it. Neither Hunt nor Lauda was a particularly likable character in this film, but while Hunt's roguish charm made him the sort of person whom people tend to like even when they shouldn't, Lauda, at least as depicted in the film, was basically the person most people would love to hate in real life. Bruhl, in short, had a taller mountain to climb than Hemsworth in terms of getting the audience to connect with his character, but if I'm any judge, he most certainly managed to reach the very top. I've always sucked at predicting awards or even awards nominations but I seriously hope this guy at least finds himself in contention for some gold later this year and early next year.
Still, as much as this film belongs to the lead actors, this is still Ron Howard's show, and it marks a welcome return to form for him after a few creative missteps over the years. To my mind, this is his best film since Apollo 13. The energy with which he infuses this film, which could so easily have gone wrong in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, is infectious; everyone single one of his collaborators here, from cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to film editors Mike Hill and Dan Hanley to composer Hans Zimmer, is firing on all cylinders. The grainy, 70s-style cinematography puts the viewer right in the moment, as do the incredible, if slightly clipped racing scenes, and the swelling, cello-heavy score is some of the most stirring music that Zimmer has written in years.
Yes, like all historical dramas, the film takes certain liberties with what really happened, but there is nothing here as egregious as the wholly contrived airport chase in last year's Argo (a film I also enjoyed thoroughly), and as far as I can tell, in no instance was the truth completely butchered just to drive along the story. I could be wrong, but considering that a lot of people from the F1 community, including no less than F1 head Ecclestone and even Lauda himself, have given this movie the thumbs-up, I don't think I am.
I'll admit that I wanted to like this movie walking into the theater, but it's quite rare that a movie I have wanted to see as much as I wanted to see this film managed to be everything I was hoping for and more. The best part is that my wife, who could not really give a damn about Formula One but for my personal addiction to it, thoroughly enjoyed this film, as I think many non-F1 fans will.
People may have had to wait nearly five decades for a proper film about Formula One, but Ron Howard and his cast and crew have definitely made Rush worth that wait.
5/5
It seems fitting, then, that he should revisit the era of bellbottom pants and shaggy haircuts, which also happened to be the setting for one of the most fascinating rivalries in the history of Formula One racing: the 1976 World Driver's Championship, which was contested by Englishman James Hunt of McLaren Racing and Austrian Niki Lauda of Scuderia Ferrari. Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan, in dramatizing this rivalry, have created one of the best movies this year, and one of the best movies involving motor racing in, well, ever.
The story begins at one of the most pivotal points of the '76 season, the beginning of the 1976 German Grand Prix, with Lauda (played brilliantly by German actor Daniel Bruhl) sitting in his Ferrari race car and observing his championship rival Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) across the racing grid, making his preparations. Lauda does a brief voiceover narration, and the story flashes back to six years earlier. Hunt and Lauda meet while racing in Formula 2, in a "feeder series" to Formula One, where their rivalry is instant, and intense. As the story unfolds, it emerges that they have a lot in common, more than just their passion and skills for racing cars. Both of them come from affluent families that do not support their racing dreams, and both of them are colossal egomaniacs. Of the two of them, however, Lauda is somewhat more proactive; he buys his way into the top tier of racing, Formula One, by taking out a loan and buying heavily into a team that is on its last legs. His ability to set up the car and make it go faster endears him to Swiss teammate Clay Regazzoni (Pierfrancesco Favino), a former driver for the world famous Scuderia Ferrari who, when invited to return to the Italian team, takes Lauda along with him. Hunt, meanwhile is able to get into F1 when his friend and backer, Lord Alexander Hesketh (Christian McKay) decides to enter his own team, albeit without corporate sponsorship. It is also at this point that Lauda and Hunt meet women who will prove pivotal to their lives, with Lauda meeting his future wife Marlene Knaus (Alexandra Maria Lara) and Hunt meeting his wife, model Suzy Miller (Olivia Wilde) just before the 1975 season. Their fortunes vary from this point; Lauda wins the F1 championship, while Hunt's team, unable to secure sponsorship, has to pull out, leaving Hunt without a drive for the next year. However, at the last minute Hunt is able to secure a drive with the McLaren team, which has the only car fast enough to beat Lauda's Ferrari, thus setting the stage for one of the most memorable season-long rivalries in the history of motorsport.
Prior to this film, the last full-length feature film that Hollywood had made about Formula One was John Frankenheimer's 1966 film Grand Prix, which I have on DVD. Sylvester Stallone attempted to secure the rights to make an F1-themed film but was turned down by F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, as a result of which, the 2001 film Driven was set against the now-defunct Champ Car series. It was just as well, too; that movie was so bad that it would not have done F1 any favors as a marketing tool. Three years ago, Working Title, the company responsible for producing this film, came up with the documentary Senna. Rush is the first feature film that has been produced about F1 in nearly 50 years, and therefore something of a milestone.
Director Howard, who confessed to not knowing anything about Formula One prior to making this film, may have seemed an odd choice to direct it, but watching the painstaking recreation of the era and the races I would hardly have guessed he was an F1 novice. The racing scenes, are extremely well-presented using a skillful blend of stunt driving and computer-generated imagery, although they do not quite have the balls-to-the-wall verisimilitude that makes Grand Prix a classic among racing fans. I suppose, though, that this is inevitable considering that in 1966 safety concerns, either in the world of racing or film-making, were not as paramount as they are today. What I found remarkable about this film was how incredibly rich it was in terms of character development, something on which Grand Prix basically skimped, with the paper thin plot and characters basically serving as an excuse to string together the bravura racing sequences.
When I heard this movie was getting made I felt a touch of apprehension; how, I wondered, does one capture the drama of an entire F1 season (the 1976 season had 16 races) in a two-hour feature film? I was also a little worried that, with a British writer crafting the screenplay and a Hollywood up-and-comer (Hemsworth) playing Englishman Hunt, that Lauda's character, an Austrian with a funny accent, would be reduced to playing a generic Euro-nasty "villain" next to Hunt's "hero." After all, Senna, a documentary, had been criticized by many for its somewhat one-sided portrayal of rivalry between the late Brazilian firebrand Ayrton Senna and Frenchman Alain Prost in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A feature film, with a script and actors, would be much more vulnerable to slanted storytelling than a documentary.
Upon watching the film, I was happy to learn that my fears were unfounded; Working Title may have used Hemsworth's face on the posters but this movie belonged in equal measure to Hunt and Lauda. In fact, the Lauda role gets meatier as the story progresses, and he even has the distinction of opening and closing the film with a bit of voice-over narration.
It's worth pointing out the difference between Hemsworth's and Bruhl's performances, which feel as different as the approaches to racing of their characters. Hemsworth, whose Hunt is really not all that different from the character for which he is most famous, the superhero Thor, didn't have to alter his acting too much, and about the only major adjustment he had to make in terms of his performance was to drop a few f-bombs and take off his shirt a lot (and sometimes, a bit more than that). Still, he milked his movie-star charisma for everything it was worth in this role; if Thor was a mythological god, Hunt was, in those days, a god of sorts in his own right, and Hemsworth portrayed that to near perfection. He also captured a great deal of Hunt's insecurity and vulnerability as well.
Bruhl's performance, however was simply in a different league from Hemsworth's. I remember him as the genteel, French-speaking Nazi sniper from Inglourious Basterds, which made his transformation into the abrasive Austrian racing legend, even when aided by some pretty convincing prosthetics, all the more striking. Even more striking was how he managed to uncover the humanity in a character who seemed so determined to shed it. Neither Hunt nor Lauda was a particularly likable character in this film, but while Hunt's roguish charm made him the sort of person whom people tend to like even when they shouldn't, Lauda, at least as depicted in the film, was basically the person most people would love to hate in real life. Bruhl, in short, had a taller mountain to climb than Hemsworth in terms of getting the audience to connect with his character, but if I'm any judge, he most certainly managed to reach the very top. I've always sucked at predicting awards or even awards nominations but I seriously hope this guy at least finds himself in contention for some gold later this year and early next year.
Still, as much as this film belongs to the lead actors, this is still Ron Howard's show, and it marks a welcome return to form for him after a few creative missteps over the years. To my mind, this is his best film since Apollo 13. The energy with which he infuses this film, which could so easily have gone wrong in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, is infectious; everyone single one of his collaborators here, from cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle to film editors Mike Hill and Dan Hanley to composer Hans Zimmer, is firing on all cylinders. The grainy, 70s-style cinematography puts the viewer right in the moment, as do the incredible, if slightly clipped racing scenes, and the swelling, cello-heavy score is some of the most stirring music that Zimmer has written in years.
Yes, like all historical dramas, the film takes certain liberties with what really happened, but there is nothing here as egregious as the wholly contrived airport chase in last year's Argo (a film I also enjoyed thoroughly), and as far as I can tell, in no instance was the truth completely butchered just to drive along the story. I could be wrong, but considering that a lot of people from the F1 community, including no less than F1 head Ecclestone and even Lauda himself, have given this movie the thumbs-up, I don't think I am.
I'll admit that I wanted to like this movie walking into the theater, but it's quite rare that a movie I have wanted to see as much as I wanted to see this film managed to be everything I was hoping for and more. The best part is that my wife, who could not really give a damn about Formula One but for my personal addiction to it, thoroughly enjoyed this film, as I think many non-F1 fans will.
People may have had to wait nearly five decades for a proper film about Formula One, but Ron Howard and his cast and crew have definitely made Rush worth that wait.
5/5
Friday, September 20, 2013
Surviving "Deep Throat:" A Review of Lovelace
I found myself stuck in Manila last week, with a bit of time to kill to wait out traffic, so I caught a film that I would not normally watch, the biopic Lovelace, directed by Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein and starring Amanda Seyfried, about the young woman who made the legendary pornographic film Deep Throat.
I'm just going to be frank here; given that I had about two hours to kill, a movie about people who made a porno seemed like a good idea, for obvious reasons. What I got was basically a bit of a diatribe on exploitation and domestic abuse, and, unfortunately, not a very good one.
Linda Boreman (Seyfried) is a 21-year-old Catholic girl living with her parents John and Dorothy (Robert Patrick and Sharon Stone) in Florida. While somewhat conservative herself, she is friends with a somewhat more adventurous young woman, Patsy (Juno Temple) who, one night at a roller skating rink, convinces Linda to be a go-go dancer for the band playing at the rink. This gets the attention of Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) with whom Linda eventually gets involved and whom she eventually marries. Chuck is apparently into some shady business, and eventually gets himself and Linda into a spot of financial trouble. Thus begins the series of events that leads Linda to starring in Deep Throat, which, overall turns out to be an extremely unpleasant experience for Linda, who reveals everything in her scathing autobiography years after she has left that life behind.
I get that this movie was not in any way meant to titillate (and just to make absolutely sure, the producers chopped out one or two scenes involving oral sex in order to secure an "R-16" rating from our local classification board), and it certainly doesn't, but as a narrative tapestry it falls short on multiple levels.
The first half of the movie is meant to depict Linda and Chuck as a loving couple, fighting the odds, and even managing to have a good time amid trying times, even when Linda is sucking another guy's cock in front of a camera just to make ends meet for the two of them. The second half is the "grim" portion in which Linda tells the truth behind what happened, replete with Chuck's abuse and Linda's suffering until it all comes to a head.
However, this transition in contrasts is not done nearly as well as it should have been, and I for one could not help but wonder if it was a good idea to attempt it in the first place.
The problem with the narrative flow is that the filmmakers show their hand very early on in the film and make it hard to feel "shock" at what follows. I had no idea what kind of life Goreman lived, but the movie telegraphed its beats very early on.
Probably the worst part of the film was Sarsgaard, who, from the moment his Chuck Traynor appeared onscreen, was never able to convince me that he was anything other than a complete sleazebag, and this failure basically taints the entire film, which supposedly spends its first half depicting a young couple in love, only to peel the veneer of seeming happiness away and reveal the ugly truth just underneath the surface. Thanks to Sarsgaard's projection of Traynor's inner wife-beater early on in the film, it was basically easy to see where things were going, even though I hadn't had the faintest idea of what had really happened to her going into the theater. To be fair to Sarsgaard, the muddled script and direction had a lot to do with the narrative basically going all over the place. It's a pity, because Seyfried turns in a really earnest performance, and for anyone even vaguely interested in seeing her "bits," she goes topless once or twice in the film, though I guarantee that only a genuine sicko could be aroused at one or two of the scenes in which it happens.
Another wasted performance is that of Sharon Stone, who was virtually unrecognizable as Dorothy Boreman and who I didn't even realize was in the movie until I saw the end credits. I loved what she did here, and if she turns in more performances like this could give her career a bit of a second wind. This movie will most likely be forgotten, though.
The film's advocacy, which is basically to condemn exploitation of women and domestic violence, is certainly admirable, but the telling of the story, unfortunately, is not.
1.5/5
I'm just going to be frank here; given that I had about two hours to kill, a movie about people who made a porno seemed like a good idea, for obvious reasons. What I got was basically a bit of a diatribe on exploitation and domestic abuse, and, unfortunately, not a very good one.
Linda Boreman (Seyfried) is a 21-year-old Catholic girl living with her parents John and Dorothy (Robert Patrick and Sharon Stone) in Florida. While somewhat conservative herself, she is friends with a somewhat more adventurous young woman, Patsy (Juno Temple) who, one night at a roller skating rink, convinces Linda to be a go-go dancer for the band playing at the rink. This gets the attention of Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) with whom Linda eventually gets involved and whom she eventually marries. Chuck is apparently into some shady business, and eventually gets himself and Linda into a spot of financial trouble. Thus begins the series of events that leads Linda to starring in Deep Throat, which, overall turns out to be an extremely unpleasant experience for Linda, who reveals everything in her scathing autobiography years after she has left that life behind.
I get that this movie was not in any way meant to titillate (and just to make absolutely sure, the producers chopped out one or two scenes involving oral sex in order to secure an "R-16" rating from our local classification board), and it certainly doesn't, but as a narrative tapestry it falls short on multiple levels.
The first half of the movie is meant to depict Linda and Chuck as a loving couple, fighting the odds, and even managing to have a good time amid trying times, even when Linda is sucking another guy's cock in front of a camera just to make ends meet for the two of them. The second half is the "grim" portion in which Linda tells the truth behind what happened, replete with Chuck's abuse and Linda's suffering until it all comes to a head.
However, this transition in contrasts is not done nearly as well as it should have been, and I for one could not help but wonder if it was a good idea to attempt it in the first place.
The problem with the narrative flow is that the filmmakers show their hand very early on in the film and make it hard to feel "shock" at what follows. I had no idea what kind of life Goreman lived, but the movie telegraphed its beats very early on.
Probably the worst part of the film was Sarsgaard, who, from the moment his Chuck Traynor appeared onscreen, was never able to convince me that he was anything other than a complete sleazebag, and this failure basically taints the entire film, which supposedly spends its first half depicting a young couple in love, only to peel the veneer of seeming happiness away and reveal the ugly truth just underneath the surface. Thanks to Sarsgaard's projection of Traynor's inner wife-beater early on in the film, it was basically easy to see where things were going, even though I hadn't had the faintest idea of what had really happened to her going into the theater. To be fair to Sarsgaard, the muddled script and direction had a lot to do with the narrative basically going all over the place. It's a pity, because Seyfried turns in a really earnest performance, and for anyone even vaguely interested in seeing her "bits," she goes topless once or twice in the film, though I guarantee that only a genuine sicko could be aroused at one or two of the scenes in which it happens.
Another wasted performance is that of Sharon Stone, who was virtually unrecognizable as Dorothy Boreman and who I didn't even realize was in the movie until I saw the end credits. I loved what she did here, and if she turns in more performances like this could give her career a bit of a second wind. This movie will most likely be forgotten, though.
The film's advocacy, which is basically to condemn exploitation of women and domestic violence, is certainly admirable, but the telling of the story, unfortunately, is not.
1.5/5
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Fan Fiction
"I just got off the phone with Bale's agent. For the last time, he says, he won't do it."
"Problem? What problem?"
"Not even for $50 million?"
"Nope."
"What about back-end?"
"Sir, even without Bale this movie will cost us at least half a billion to make and market. I've been crunching the numbers and I can assure you were are not in a position to offer him back-end."
"Well, why the hell won't he do it for $50 mill up front? That's a shitload of money."
"I dunno, something about wanting to move on to new artistic heights or some B.S. like that."
"New artistic heights? Does he think he would have gotten to make his awards bait if it hadn't been for the exposure the Dark Knight movies gave him?"
"Well, that's what he said."
"Screw him, then. There are a whole truckload of buff twenty and thirty-something actors banging on our door who can put on fiberglass muscles and a cookie monster voice. We don't need that pretentious British shit. So let's look at that list of unknowns then."
"Well, that's what he said."
"Screw him, then. There are a whole truckload of buff twenty and thirty-something actors banging on our door who can put on fiberglass muscles and a cookie monster voice. We don't need that pretentious British shit. So let's look at that list of unknowns then."
"I don't think you understand the magnitude of the problem we have here."
"Problem? What problem?"
"Nobody on our list wanted to be the Batman that came after Christian Bale. The guy's basically a god to Batman fanboys. It's like...replacing Connery as Bond!"
"What? Isn't there anyone on our list who wants the job?"
"Umm...basically...nnno."
"Not even the D-listers?"
"The D-listers least of all, sir. No one wants to be the Batman equivalent of Brandon Routh. It wasn't like when we cast Bale, sir. After Batman and Robin killed the franchise nobody gave a shit who we put in the costume; we had carte blanche!"
"Shut up! I'm thinking here..."
"Sir?"
"Okay, here's what we do; we look up the actors who are fanboys, the guys that would basically beg us for the job. You know, people like Reynolds, Snipes, Cage...Cage! What's he doing lately? Doesn't he need money to bail him out of his tax problems?"
"We started getting on the phone with Cage the first time Bale said no, sir. We wanted to hedge our bets."
"And?"
"He's busy sir. Same with Reynolds and Snipes. Cage was actually willing to drop his project to work on this but the people he was working with threatened to sue."
"Shit! Wait...what about that kid who did Argo for us last year?"
"Ben...Affleck, sir?"
"That's the one! The kid from Good Will Hunting! What?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I just...threw up in my mouth a little."
"What are you talking about? He won an Oscar, didn't he?"
"Sir, he won an Oscar for PRODUCING Argo (though people say he should have won one for directing it too), and before that he won an Oscar for co-writing Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon, but he...isn't widely regarded as a particularly good actor..."
"Doesn't matter, we can still put 'two-time Academy Award winner' on all the marketing materials. And besides, didn't he play a superhero already?"
"Yes, sir, he was the title character in Daredevil."
"See? So what's the problem?"
"THAT'S the problem, sir. Daredevil was a quantifiably terrible movie. The only reason it even made any money was that it played like a low-rent Spider-Man and people basically just needed their superhero fix. In fact, if I may venture to say so, the fact that Affleck played the character like a poor man's Batman is probably one of the biggest reasons why he'd be a horrible choice for the role."
"Stop talking like a nerd. It'll be fine. Anyway, fanboys are morons; we can tell them Affleck's an award-winning actor and they won't know the difference. Anyway, even if they don't like it, they'll line up to see the movie no matter how much they bitch online, especially if we can sneak in some writing or producing credit for Christopher Nolan. Get him to fart on this treatment I had some of the boys write so we can give him some 'story by' billing. But that can come later. Get Affleck's agent on the phone first."
"Right away, sir."
"Oh, and after that, get on the phone with whoever has the video rights to Daredevil; let's see if we can get them to pull it off Netflix for a couple of years. And start buying up all the Daredevil DVDs you can find, online or in the stores. And do the same thing for Gigli. No sense in taking unnecessary risks here."
"S-sir?"
"Don't worry about the costs; we can write it off to marketing expenses."
"All, right, sir. Right away."
"Excellent. Now let's make a movie!"
"The D-listers least of all, sir. No one wants to be the Batman equivalent of Brandon Routh. It wasn't like when we cast Bale, sir. After Batman and Robin killed the franchise nobody gave a shit who we put in the costume; we had carte blanche!"
"Shut up! I'm thinking here..."
"Sir?"
"Okay, here's what we do; we look up the actors who are fanboys, the guys that would basically beg us for the job. You know, people like Reynolds, Snipes, Cage...Cage! What's he doing lately? Doesn't he need money to bail him out of his tax problems?"
"We started getting on the phone with Cage the first time Bale said no, sir. We wanted to hedge our bets."
"And?"
"He's busy sir. Same with Reynolds and Snipes. Cage was actually willing to drop his project to work on this but the people he was working with threatened to sue."
"Shit! Wait...what about that kid who did Argo for us last year?"
"Ben...Affleck, sir?"
"That's the one! The kid from Good Will Hunting! What?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I just...threw up in my mouth a little."
"What are you talking about? He won an Oscar, didn't he?"
"Sir, he won an Oscar for PRODUCING Argo (though people say he should have won one for directing it too), and before that he won an Oscar for co-writing Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon, but he...isn't widely regarded as a particularly good actor..."
"Doesn't matter, we can still put 'two-time Academy Award winner' on all the marketing materials. And besides, didn't he play a superhero already?"
"Yes, sir, he was the title character in Daredevil."
"See? So what's the problem?"
"THAT'S the problem, sir. Daredevil was a quantifiably terrible movie. The only reason it even made any money was that it played like a low-rent Spider-Man and people basically just needed their superhero fix. In fact, if I may venture to say so, the fact that Affleck played the character like a poor man's Batman is probably one of the biggest reasons why he'd be a horrible choice for the role."
"Stop talking like a nerd. It'll be fine. Anyway, fanboys are morons; we can tell them Affleck's an award-winning actor and they won't know the difference. Anyway, even if they don't like it, they'll line up to see the movie no matter how much they bitch online, especially if we can sneak in some writing or producing credit for Christopher Nolan. Get him to fart on this treatment I had some of the boys write so we can give him some 'story by' billing. But that can come later. Get Affleck's agent on the phone first."
"Right away, sir."
"Oh, and after that, get on the phone with whoever has the video rights to Daredevil; let's see if we can get them to pull it off Netflix for a couple of years. And start buying up all the Daredevil DVDs you can find, online or in the stores. And do the same thing for Gigli. No sense in taking unnecessary risks here."
"S-sir?"
"Don't worry about the costs; we can write it off to marketing expenses."
"All, right, sir. Right away."
"Excellent. Now let's make a movie!"
Friday, August 16, 2013
2014: The Battle of the Non-Marvel Produced Movies Based on Marvel Characters
Since Marvel Studios decided to start making their own movies some years back without the help of studio backers, things have gone pretty well for them. Every single movie they have made has managed to earn over $250 million at the global box-office, and it was arguably their early success that spurred the Walt Disney Company to buy out Marvel three years back. The gambit paid off in spectacular fashion last year when The Avengers became a box-office phenomenon, grossing $1.5 billion at the global box-office.
This year, they're following though on that success in pretty convincing fashion, with Iron Man 3 being the year's top-grossing film so far (and the top grossing in the Iron Man series) with a $1.2 billion global gross, and Thor: The Dark World arguably poised to exceed the performance of its predecessor.
Next year, though, seems to be a relatively low-key year for the Disney-owned Marvel studios in the run-up the 2015 sequel to The Avengers; in April 2014 they'll be releasing the sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier, before the U.S. summer movie season where they probably hope to make Fast and Furious money, and in August 2014 or basically the "winding down" month of the summer season they'll be releasing The Guardians of the Galaxy, or their first non-sequel in several years.
In short, for the first time since 2009, when they didn't release any films, Marvel will be stepping off the scorching summer battlefield and leave two different protagonists to slug it out with movies made from their characters: Sony Pictures, who will release The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Twentieth Century Fox, who will be releasing X-Men: Days of Future Past, which marks original X-Men director Bryan Singer's return to the mutants that made him a household name. Both films will be released in May of next year, within three weeks of each other, and this will mark the first time since both franchises were launched, X-Men in 2000 and Spider-Man in 2002, that they will have movies in the same year.
I'm genuinely interested to see how this showdown will play out. Personally I'm more partial to Spidey and am quite fond of the first two films in the series. I also welcomed last year's series reboot, which brought mechanical webshooters and a better lead actor to the screen. I am also a fan, however, of Michael Fassender's and James McAvoy's take on the younger Magneto and Professor X, and of the whole period feel of X-Men: First Class. I am also quite fond of Ellen Page, who starred in the often-reviled X-Men: Last Stand before her breakout role in Juno, and am anxious to see her play X-Men mainstay Kitty Pryde in a decent X-Men film for a change.
What's more interesting, though, is the fact that Fox and Sony are the only two studios left holding rights to Marvel characters outside of Disney. Their contracts allow them to continue to hold the rights to these characters for as long as they keep making movies based on them. To be able to continue making these movies, the movies they make have to make money. By effectively going head-to-head by releasing their movies within weeks of each other, they are jeopardizing that proposition because each of the films may well cannibalize off the other's grosses given the proximity, though to be fair Sony had staked its first weekend of May slot long before Fox decided to bump their X-Men flick up to the Memorial Day weekend.
Spider-Man will probably come out on top, considering that the first weekend of May is prime box-office real estate these days, and considering that last year's reboot, which "everyone" supposedly hated, still grossed $750 million at the global box-office, which is something like $250 million more than any X-Men movie since the beginning has made at the global box-office, but for my part, I want both movies to do well, and I sincerely hope they do.
This year, they're following though on that success in pretty convincing fashion, with Iron Man 3 being the year's top-grossing film so far (and the top grossing in the Iron Man series) with a $1.2 billion global gross, and Thor: The Dark World arguably poised to exceed the performance of its predecessor.
Next year, though, seems to be a relatively low-key year for the Disney-owned Marvel studios in the run-up the 2015 sequel to The Avengers; in April 2014 they'll be releasing the sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier, before the U.S. summer movie season where they probably hope to make Fast and Furious money, and in August 2014 or basically the "winding down" month of the summer season they'll be releasing The Guardians of the Galaxy, or their first non-sequel in several years.
In short, for the first time since 2009, when they didn't release any films, Marvel will be stepping off the scorching summer battlefield and leave two different protagonists to slug it out with movies made from their characters: Sony Pictures, who will release The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Twentieth Century Fox, who will be releasing X-Men: Days of Future Past, which marks original X-Men director Bryan Singer's return to the mutants that made him a household name. Both films will be released in May of next year, within three weeks of each other, and this will mark the first time since both franchises were launched, X-Men in 2000 and Spider-Man in 2002, that they will have movies in the same year.
I'm genuinely interested to see how this showdown will play out. Personally I'm more partial to Spidey and am quite fond of the first two films in the series. I also welcomed last year's series reboot, which brought mechanical webshooters and a better lead actor to the screen. I am also a fan, however, of Michael Fassender's and James McAvoy's take on the younger Magneto and Professor X, and of the whole period feel of X-Men: First Class. I am also quite fond of Ellen Page, who starred in the often-reviled X-Men: Last Stand before her breakout role in Juno, and am anxious to see her play X-Men mainstay Kitty Pryde in a decent X-Men film for a change.
What's more interesting, though, is the fact that Fox and Sony are the only two studios left holding rights to Marvel characters outside of Disney. Their contracts allow them to continue to hold the rights to these characters for as long as they keep making movies based on them. To be able to continue making these movies, the movies they make have to make money. By effectively going head-to-head by releasing their movies within weeks of each other, they are jeopardizing that proposition because each of the films may well cannibalize off the other's grosses given the proximity, though to be fair Sony had staked its first weekend of May slot long before Fox decided to bump their X-Men flick up to the Memorial Day weekend.
Spider-Man will probably come out on top, considering that the first weekend of May is prime box-office real estate these days, and considering that last year's reboot, which "everyone" supposedly hated, still grossed $750 million at the global box-office, which is something like $250 million more than any X-Men movie since the beginning has made at the global box-office, but for my part, I want both movies to do well, and I sincerely hope they do.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Now That's More Like It: A Review of The Wolverine
My review of the 2009 film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was obliterated when multiply.com shut down its blogging section, and perhaps it's only fitting that it's gone forever considering how awful I found that movie to be.
Four years later, Twentieth Century Fox, one of the only two studios left aside from Disney that has the rights to make movies based on characters taken from Marvel Comic books, appears to have learned its lesson and has come out with a movie that is substantially better than what came before it, this time simply titled: The Wolverine.
The film opens with a flashback in which the mutant Logan, also known as the Wolverine (played again by Hugh Jackman) is trapped in a prisoner-of-war camp in Nagasaki, moments before the atom bomb is dropped. With the bomb about to drop, Yashida (Ken Yamamura) a young Japanese officer decides to set the prisoners free. Because there is nowhere to run, the Japanese officers commit ritual suicide, but the young officer, Yashida, cannot bring himself to do it as he watches the bomb's catastrophic explosion. In that moment, Logan saves Yashida by throwing him into the hole in which he was imprisoned, which turns out to be the safest place to be, and covers him with a metal plate and his own body. While the blast basically flays Logan, his mutant healing gift restores his skin right before an astonished Yashida's eyes.
Decades later, and after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, Logan lives as a hermit in the Yukon, his only friend apparently a large bear. When some local hunter kills the bear using an illegal poisoned arrow, Logan follows him to the bar and is about to lay waste to him and his companions when a mysterious Japanese girl named Yukio (Rila Fukushima) brandishing a katana and some serious skill intervenes, telling him that an old acquaintance of Logan wants to say goodbye to him in person. That old acquaintance turns out to be a dying Yashida (now played by Haruhiko Yamanouchi), who has, since Logan saved him back in the war, built an empire based on technology, and who basically asks Logan to give him his healing factor. Logan declines, but having set foot on Yashida's premises, with a shady doctor (Svetlana Khodchenkova) and Yashida's power-hungry son (Hiroyuki Sanada) basically just waiting for the old man to expire, Wolverine soon finds out that he is already in over his head. Before he knows it, he is on the run with Yashida's fetching granddaughter Mariko (the statuesque Tao Okamoto) from mysterious forces whose true motivation will shock him (though not necessarily the audience).
While the quality of this film is not exactly on par with other Marvel notables like the first couple of X-Men or Spider-Man movies, the first Iron Man movie or last year's global box-office phenomenon The Avengers, it is a substantial improvement over the first Wolverine movie, which was so unabashedly idiotic that it had the lead villain thinking he could erase Wolverine's memory by shooting him in the head with an adamantium bullet, and even worse, actually being right.
Loosely based on a 1982 mini-series by noted comic-book creators Chris Claremont (X-Men) and Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns), this film explores Wolverine's character more than any of the other films in the X-Men series, even though the majority of them were already arguably Wolvie-centric, but more importantly, actually gives him dimension this time around. Here, he grapples with regret, desire, and later, fear. Sure, he's still Marvel's resident loner, but at least here, there's more to him that growling, howling, and his adamantium claws. Full credit for this turnaround goes to director James Mangold and his screenwriters Mark Bomback and Scott Frank, and, of course, to Hugh Jackman, whose earnestness almost elevated X-Men Origins: Wolverine past the utter schlock that it was. Here, his utter commitment to this role shows again, from his straight-faced line delivery, even when the film jumps off the rails in the third act, to his ridiculously ripped physique.
Fortunately, Jackman isn't on his own here; his supporting cast, made up mostly of Japanese actors, are, as strange as this may sound, more effective in their roles than a lot of the X-Men actors were in their supposed ensemble piece. Supermodel Okamoto, obviously cast so that the 6'2 Jackman wouldn't look too much bigger than his leading lady, surprises in her role as Wolverine's love interest Mariko, especially considering this is her first-ever feature film role. Veteran Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada does well with limited screen time as Mariko's dad Shingen, as do Yamanouchi and Korean-American actor Will Yun Lee with their roles.
For me, though, the real standout was Fukushima as Yukio. Like Okamoto, Fukushima is a model starring in her first feature film, but as a rather plucky action heroine, she's quite a find. I hope she doesn't end up in direct-to-video limbo after this; she deserves a heck of a lot better in my opinion.
A lot of reviewers have complained about how the film collapses in the third act, and truth be told, it does, but to be honest, the overall plot really isn't the movie's strong point, as it was basically designed to end up there in the first place. I will agree with them that Khodchenkova's Viper brings the film dangerously close to some of the low points of the last solo Wolvie pic, but the good news is that the movie has too much else going for it to let some moments of stupidity drag it down. The action set pieces are pretty impressive at times, and Wolverine's battle with Yakuza thugs atop a speeding train is quite easily a highlight. It is worth pointing that not all the fight scenes are all that good, though.
Whatever the film's flaws, though, there was nothing even approaching the stupidity of the memory-erasing bullet from the first Wolverine solo picture, and in any event, I was able to forgive the movie its various flaws after watching the nigh-obligatory, but this time positively tantalizing post-credits scene.
3.5/5
Four years later, Twentieth Century Fox, one of the only two studios left aside from Disney that has the rights to make movies based on characters taken from Marvel Comic books, appears to have learned its lesson and has come out with a movie that is substantially better than what came before it, this time simply titled: The Wolverine.
The film opens with a flashback in which the mutant Logan, also known as the Wolverine (played again by Hugh Jackman) is trapped in a prisoner-of-war camp in Nagasaki, moments before the atom bomb is dropped. With the bomb about to drop, Yashida (Ken Yamamura) a young Japanese officer decides to set the prisoners free. Because there is nowhere to run, the Japanese officers commit ritual suicide, but the young officer, Yashida, cannot bring himself to do it as he watches the bomb's catastrophic explosion. In that moment, Logan saves Yashida by throwing him into the hole in which he was imprisoned, which turns out to be the safest place to be, and covers him with a metal plate and his own body. While the blast basically flays Logan, his mutant healing gift restores his skin right before an astonished Yashida's eyes.
Decades later, and after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, Logan lives as a hermit in the Yukon, his only friend apparently a large bear. When some local hunter kills the bear using an illegal poisoned arrow, Logan follows him to the bar and is about to lay waste to him and his companions when a mysterious Japanese girl named Yukio (Rila Fukushima) brandishing a katana and some serious skill intervenes, telling him that an old acquaintance of Logan wants to say goodbye to him in person. That old acquaintance turns out to be a dying Yashida (now played by Haruhiko Yamanouchi), who has, since Logan saved him back in the war, built an empire based on technology, and who basically asks Logan to give him his healing factor. Logan declines, but having set foot on Yashida's premises, with a shady doctor (Svetlana Khodchenkova) and Yashida's power-hungry son (Hiroyuki Sanada) basically just waiting for the old man to expire, Wolverine soon finds out that he is already in over his head. Before he knows it, he is on the run with Yashida's fetching granddaughter Mariko (the statuesque Tao Okamoto) from mysterious forces whose true motivation will shock him (though not necessarily the audience).
While the quality of this film is not exactly on par with other Marvel notables like the first couple of X-Men or Spider-Man movies, the first Iron Man movie or last year's global box-office phenomenon The Avengers, it is a substantial improvement over the first Wolverine movie, which was so unabashedly idiotic that it had the lead villain thinking he could erase Wolverine's memory by shooting him in the head with an adamantium bullet, and even worse, actually being right.
Loosely based on a 1982 mini-series by noted comic-book creators Chris Claremont (X-Men) and Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns), this film explores Wolverine's character more than any of the other films in the X-Men series, even though the majority of them were already arguably Wolvie-centric, but more importantly, actually gives him dimension this time around. Here, he grapples with regret, desire, and later, fear. Sure, he's still Marvel's resident loner, but at least here, there's more to him that growling, howling, and his adamantium claws. Full credit for this turnaround goes to director James Mangold and his screenwriters Mark Bomback and Scott Frank, and, of course, to Hugh Jackman, whose earnestness almost elevated X-Men Origins: Wolverine past the utter schlock that it was. Here, his utter commitment to this role shows again, from his straight-faced line delivery, even when the film jumps off the rails in the third act, to his ridiculously ripped physique.
Fortunately, Jackman isn't on his own here; his supporting cast, made up mostly of Japanese actors, are, as strange as this may sound, more effective in their roles than a lot of the X-Men actors were in their supposed ensemble piece. Supermodel Okamoto, obviously cast so that the 6'2 Jackman wouldn't look too much bigger than his leading lady, surprises in her role as Wolverine's love interest Mariko, especially considering this is her first-ever feature film role. Veteran Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada does well with limited screen time as Mariko's dad Shingen, as do Yamanouchi and Korean-American actor Will Yun Lee with their roles.
For me, though, the real standout was Fukushima as Yukio. Like Okamoto, Fukushima is a model starring in her first feature film, but as a rather plucky action heroine, she's quite a find. I hope she doesn't end up in direct-to-video limbo after this; she deserves a heck of a lot better in my opinion.
A lot of reviewers have complained about how the film collapses in the third act, and truth be told, it does, but to be honest, the overall plot really isn't the movie's strong point, as it was basically designed to end up there in the first place. I will agree with them that Khodchenkova's Viper brings the film dangerously close to some of the low points of the last solo Wolvie pic, but the good news is that the movie has too much else going for it to let some moments of stupidity drag it down. The action set pieces are pretty impressive at times, and Wolverine's battle with Yakuza thugs atop a speeding train is quite easily a highlight. It is worth pointing that not all the fight scenes are all that good, though.
Whatever the film's flaws, though, there was nothing even approaching the stupidity of the memory-erasing bullet from the first Wolverine solo picture, and in any event, I was able to forgive the movie its various flaws after watching the nigh-obligatory, but this time positively tantalizing post-credits scene.
3.5/5
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