IRON MAN III Movie Review (Minor Spoilers):

I worked very hard not to read any reviews so I wouldn’t know what is going on before seeing this movie and still “heard” rumors, even though I put my hands over my ears and sang the theme song to Cheers in a vain attempt to be completely surprised. 

Well, after seeing this flick, I was STILL surprised… several times!

Iron Man III has so many twists and turns, it is a visual twisty, turny, loopy roller coaster. Even when you can see them coming (which was more often than not), it is still a thrill to watch it unfold, like being able to see the tracks of Viper at Magic Mountain; you know what’s next, but your world still keeps turning upside down.

Visually gorgeous (of course) and exciting; where there aren’t twists and turns, there are chases and explosions enough to keep even the most adrenaline-junkie happy, especially after the first loooong half hour or so of choppy and convoluted back story.  Thankfully, this section ends rather abruptly, almost as if the Real Director showed up with his latte and said, “Move it along kid, Daddy’s home.”

As ever, it is Robert Downey Jr.’s movie from start to finish. Downey masterfully brings the character of Tony Stark to a whole new level, taking the fun of the first Iron Man movie, adding in the angst of the second, less fun Iron Man movie and mashing them up into an even better, deeper and more complex and interesting character that drives the story home. 

Infused with enough humor to make me think that Writer/Director Shane Black is taking note of the best of the best of writer/directors (like Joss Whedon or early Steven Spielberg and George Lucas), the writing is mostly crisp and bright, and the movie generally moves along at a fairly brisk pace, spacing the plot twists far enough apart to keep the whole movie from being too predictable.

Casting notes: Guy Pearce is just creepy. Ben Kingsley was absolutely brilliant, as ever. Dale Dickey was perfectly cast for her tiny role, but it felt like she should have been one more scene… perhaps it was left on the cutting room floor.

A couple of irritants: Happy was rather ill-used, too much of a joke and then practically dropped out of the movie altogether.  Rebecca Hall and William Sadler were totally, ridiculously just boring, no presence as all.  And Tony Stark, what, is he made of steel or something?? There is no way any mortal man – even a brilliant one - would be able to withstand even the tiniest FRACTION of what this movie puts him through outside of that suit. It was more than a little ridiculous, especially in the final climatic scene, even in a super hero movie. And what was with the waaay too long, super talky dénouement, after everything, they are suddenly all alone on the… Dang. I promised no spoilers!

Fun stuff: the kid and skydiving! Watch the credits for the, well, monkey credit!  Of course, stay until the end of the credits for a funny extra scene (obviously directed and written by our Joss Whedon).

The end of the film begs more questions… and I am super excited about what Joss is going to do to continue that story in Avengers II!

My rating: 8.5 out of 10

Just Musing,
Susan

 

Movie Review: THE HOBBIT, AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

(MINOR SPOILERS). I have seen the previous movie and TV incarnations of The Hobbit decades ago – sloppy, horrible messes, and could never figure out why they turned out so bad. The book told a fairly simple and very personal story of one person’s journey into something bigger than himself, in finding reserves and strength he would never have know that he had, of a cleverness and ability to think on this feet, of a hero emerging out of a common man… So why did the previous terrible movies even get made?? One was a silly cartoon, stripped of any deep emotion or sense of dreadful urgency, and that other one that was so filled with horrible special effect battles, and very little else, as it they were the whole story.

So. Now, on to Peter Jackson’s interpretation…

After the grandiose vision presented in LOTR, I expected an epic. I expected gorgeous vistas. I expected great special effects and creepy critters. What I did not expect was the humor, the up close and personal aspects of the book coming alive in very capable actors’ eyes.

Ian McKlellan seemed a less sure wizard, a bit more watchful and uncertain of the outcome. Martin Freeman as Bilbo was spot on in his quizzical and comical reactions to the unfolding events. Time was spent getting to know these characters, and most of them got enough screen time to bring them alive, to see the different personalities emerge. They were engaging and fun, powerfully evil (although… is it just me, or did the pale orc just keep ordering his minions to kill/go after/behead our heroes, even though he was standing right there? Seems kinda cowardly to me), majestically ethereal (Kate Blanchette’s Galadriel was perfect; the costuming, the lighting, everything was simply gorgeous), strange and compelling, outrageously difficult and campy.

At 169 minutes, it drags a little in a few places, but quickly steers back on course. Bilbo’s introduction to Gollum was brilliantly creepy and funny, and felt very important, as we all know it was. The riddle scenes and Gollum's facial expressions were priceless!

The special effects were very nearly perfect; the big critters had mass and weight and various realistic skin conditions, each of them was individual, no cookie cutter CGI monsters here! The battles were well lit so discerning what was happening was much easier than in much of LOTR, which at times seemed to be an endless gore-fest. 

There were some places where the special effects took over the movie (the thunder mountain scene is one) to no real purpose other than to put the band of travelers in jeopardy and show off technical skill.

The size differences of the various main characters were seamlessly executed, and after the first few minutes of the movie, I forgot about them and just immersed myself in the film… although the Bilbo’s (and Frodo’s) big hairy feet still looked like a bad toupee had been stapled to a slab of heavy inflexible plastic with barely carved toes.

It has been decades since I have read the Hobbit and LOTR. I have heard that there were changes in this, the first part of what appears to be a trilogy based on The Hobbit, but the story line seems intact and clear; whatever changes there were did not seem to distract from the movie experience. Except the cloak, I did miss the cloak; it seemed weird that Bilbo could just duck down and suddenly no one notices him anymore.

Engaging, fun, intense, epic and personal, I give The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey an 8.5 out of 10. I am very much looking forward to Part II!

ROBOT & FRANK Movie Review

(minor spoilers): A sweet little movie set in the near future and explores some fairly serious issues of memory loss, senior care, family, love and friendship. Frank Langella gives a masterful and moving performance as an aging ex-“second story man” who is has holes in his memory, is slowly sliding into Alzheimers yet remains high functioning. His family, a son (played with just the right amount of exasperation and love, commitment and guilt by James Marsden) and daughter (Liv Tyler playing a bit of a save-the-world/no time for family and something of a political extremist) drop in on Frank to assuage the guilt of family who is aware that something is not quite right with dad, but are busy with their own lives and need some help. Marsden’s Hunter has made the 5 hour trek to check on and clean up after Dad every weekend for just a little too long, and one weekend, brings a Robot to be his caregiver. This is where the movie really takes off.

Watching the Robot (who is obviously modeled after ASIMO, the Honda Robot that is featured at Disneyland’s Innoventions) and Frank’s relationship develop is where the fun and real story is, but watching Frank flirt with the pretty librarian (Susan Sarandon, who looks amazing and is so kind to this man who sometimes forgets what just happened the day before) is the heart.

The effects were very realistic, and the projection of the future of technology feels just right. I loved the little one person car and the wall phone! Robot was appropriately clever, patient, calculating, therapeutic and completely rational, perfectly suited to care of an elderly patient who needs just a little looking after, and is programmed to encourage a systematic strengthening of his patient’s mental processes through schedules and hobbies. I am sure the programmers did NOT have this particular hobby in mind!!

There are places I thought this movie was going to go, but the story veered off into other more interesting, personal and ultimately heart-breaking directions. The music was a little odd, and rather than underscoring the emotional journey, kept things just slightly off… but then again, maybe that was the point, there was something just not quite right about this man, a much as we wanted to believe in him.

The ending is not quite as satisfying as I would have liked and seemed a bit rushed, but I was ultimately left with the afterimage of sweet story of a strong man incrementally disintegrating into a hollowed out version of himself.

MOVIE RATING: 7 out of 10. THEATER RATING, Laemelle Theater on The BLVD in Lancaster, CA: 9 out of 10… as ever, a FABULOUS and very comfortable movie experience!

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Movie Review (Spoilers):

I waited a bit to see this movie, for although I really like the Batman story (comic books, I mean) and the sheer near-reality of the ‘Verse (science-y gadgets and a mortal hero rather than aliens and radioactivity/gammas rays, etc), I have been less than enchanted by most of the Batman movies, except the first one… I really liked Michael Keaton, and Tim Burton was the quintessential director of a dark but fantastic and super-stylized Gotham.

Jeeze. I am going off track here. Back to THIS movie, The Dark Knight Rises.

Yeah, it’s dark. Yeah, Batman’s in it. Yeah, Catwoman/Selena and Batman have a “thing”.  Yeah, there are lots of crazy gadgets.  Yeah, there are lots of twists and an assumption that you remember absolutely everything from the previous movies.

But there is no heart in this movie at all.

My biggest disappointment is probably what so many younger people liked about it. It is relentless, a hugely dark, heavy-handed myopic tour de force that is so extremely focused on its very thin story thread that everything else fades into the background as unimportant. The world is black and white, except that while the black is truly black, the white is varying shades of dark grey. Heroes are conflicted and with few exceptions, horribly flawed and often simply unlikable. The villains are mere caricatures of Pure Evil, without even the slightest bit of humanity to make them interesting or compelling.

And then there are the Plot Holes. Seriously HUGE plot holes. (WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS COMING)  A couple of these leap to mind: WHY did they continue to feed the trapped cops? HOW did they feed a city the size of Gotham for MONTHS while it was under siege? If anarchy was the rule of the land, WHERE were the mobs, the oppressed masses begging for said food? And WHERE were the piles of garbage and wrecked cars/broken store fronts you know would appear all over the city?? How did Commissioner Gordon go from being flat on his back and so weak he can hardly get out of bed, turn into a leaping, running, jumping onto trucks, all better now WITHOUT a hospital/doctors?  How about Bruce, who “shouldn’t go para-skiing” even BEFORE getting beaten down so thoroughly, manage to heal up so very nicely and perfectly while in the avowed “worst prison in the world” with some push-ups and a rope? And just HOW did Bruce make his way across the world to land in front of Selena in Gotham when he was flat broke and Alfred-less? Oh, and in WHAT insane universe is Alfred going to leave Bruce??? No way.  I do not believe it.

In addition, the use of foreshadowing was so blatantly obvious that the movie should have been named The Dark Cliché Rises.  Alfred’s little fantasy. The introduction of the young, fresh-faced, and very smart cop with mad skills (I guessed that one not even a third of the way through the movie).  A declaration that someone was not going to march down the street in his dress uniform. Talk of the autopilot not working. The gathering of all the serious bat-gadgets into one place…

The assumed villain LOOKED bad enough, especially in the beginning (bad guys always seem to kill off their henchmen to make a point), but over-exposure and uninteresting camera angles deadened his presence to simply a guy in a mask. A really big guy in a weird cross between a scuba regulator and a spider leg mask, but still, just a guy.  And that voice… where is James Earl Jones when you need him??  He was mostly unintelligible and eventually started to sound really whiney.  He started out big, and ended small.  Weird choice.

Character holes:

1.       Way too little with Morgan Freeman (Fox)… he was barely in the movie at all, usually alone, and he seemed to be constantly getting caught with his pants down.  He was portrayed in earlier films as much smarter than that.

2.       Scarecrow as Judge. Pretty cool – that actor has serious stage PRESENCE, but shouldn’t the film have been LITTERED with such nods to previously locked up villains? If not, then why him? It felt like there should have been a little bit more back story; maybe his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.

3.       Foley (Modine). He was totally unlikable; I didn’t care about him at all. His defection/hiding was probably meant to seem like a cowardly betrayal of his badge and oath, so that his return to “march down the street in his dress uniform” would feel like redemption of character… but it didn’t. It just felt contrived.

And the bus full of orphaned kids. *rolls eyes* Really? Sticking this in was an obvious attempt as garnering sympathy and a sense of urgency, but instead came off as, well, an obvious attempt at garnering sympathy. It might have been better if they had actually made it off the bridge, but leaving them there while the cops on the other side shot at Blake was simply heartless. The Terrorists won, and individual ethics or heroism were effectively and completely squelched. Yay team.

I will not go into the other obvious political themes of Capitalism=BAD, Rich=GREEDY, when without the capitalistic infrastructure, the city was supposedly reduced to an extreme of anarchistic mob rule, with only the bad guys prevailing. Giving the city back to the people, indeed. 

Having the villain “tell” the story of why all this was happening at the very end was simply lazy filmmaking/storytelling. Another cliché: bad guys always take time before putting the final piece of their evil plot to Destroy the City into action to sit down with the good guys and explain their motivations, giving the hero more time to stop it. You’d think the bad guys would read the comic books or watch their own movies and would therefore know better.  Just push the button already.

The real villain reveal was the only surprise for me in the movie. In as much as I thought the kid in the hole did not really fit the presumed profile, I did not make that leap.

Things I liked:

I really liked Anne Hathaway’s Selena/The Cat. She was completely believable and a wonderfully sympathetic character, full of layers, pathos, fear and confidence. And I Loved THE night vision glasses that flipped up on her head and looked like cat ears. That was very clever and believably done, no Halloween costume for the Cat, but something that was based on “reality”. Well done. Although, looking at her sloppily applied and bleeding lipstick was disconcerting. Hey Make-Up Artist, they sell lip liner at Walgreens for less than five bucks.

Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon was, as ever, very likeable and believable. I do not blame the ridiculous things his character had to do on him; that is all on the script and direction.

Joseph Gordon-Levit’s fresh-faced and eager Blake was nicely done, a voice of bewildered dissention in a world gone mad, and from his very first scene in a background full of cops, an obvious player in the movie.

Michael Cain (Alfred) dominated his every scene in a way that only an exceptionally seasoned and skilled actor can, and managed to evoke very nearly the only real emotion in the entire film. Too bad he was dropped out of the movie halfway through. Still didn’t like that at all.

There were some very cool scenes (trapped in an alley… HAH!!), and the effects were excellent, although the movie in general felt empty and over-produced.  Am I the only one who longs for the classic sleek and elegant SIMPLICITY of Batman’s “cool toys”? 

The Dark Knight Rises could have used a lot more humanity and humor to break up the near unrelenting break-neck pace.  I just ended up with a bit of a headache and a desire to leave the theater the instant the credits began to roll, which if you know me at all, I NEVER do. Everyone else in the half filled theater seemed to be of the same mind, because there was no applause, no exciting chattering, no waiting to see if there were any little surprises buried in the credits; everyone in the theater just got up and left.

My rating: 5 out of 10

Just Musing,

Susan

THE AVENGERS Movie review

(spoilers)

While waiting in line outside the Cinemark 22 on Friday night, I was struck by the diversity of the crowd. All races, all ages, men women, kids, teens, burly types, skinny guys with glasses, grandparents, straight-from-work dressed, stereotypical fanboys, baggy pants with chains hanging out of their pockets… All smiling and waiting, the atmosphere was all giddy anticipation covered with a veneer of “I’m cool”.

Let us begin.

Comic Book movies should ALWAYS be written and directed by people who love comic books. Joss Whedon’s genuine love for the genre comes through in every frame of this blockbuster. There is something for everybody; it is an over the top, energetic thrill-ride, funny and totally fun movie. Rather than treating the characters with deadly seriousness or turning them into jokes in tights, his respect for the disparate backstories as already told in the preceding movies (Ironman, Thor, and both Hulk attempts), shows though and he somehow manages to bring them together in a totally believable and yet still 100% comic-book way.

He also understands that aside from the absolutely amazing (WOW!!!!) special effects, this is still a character story at heart.

In a less complex director’s hands, you could just have The Avengers all be perfectly reasonable and noble, and have Fury send out lovely engraved but cryptic invitations (which they would all politely accept), sit them all down around a round table and explain that Something Big and Bad is out there and they must, virtuously and selflessly, sacrifice their lives to the Common Good. And they would of course, being heroes, immediately acknowledge their moral Duty and, already being suited up in their cute costumes with capes and leather and tights and armor, begin the Battle for Earth without even stopping for lunch. Of course they win. Heroic Music swells and the credit roll.

That’s the way someone who doesn’t really understand the genre may have approached the film.

Not Joss. Our Heroes come from all over the place and only one is already on board with the Avenger Initiative. The rest have to be… persuaded. So how do you get all these guys in the same room and playing nicely on the same side when one had been brain-hijacked, one doesn’t believe the cover story, one doesn’t even want to be there, one is certain this is simply a personal fight, one has nothing left to lose, and one super-spy-intelligence gatherer is being pulled into an epic war with superior firepower?

Do they all just suit up because Nick Fury tells them to in a deeply rousing and inspiring speech? Nope. They walk away with varying degrees of disbelief and I-Have-My-Own-Problems attitudes and snipe and snarl at each other, bicker and fight like a bunch of siblings in the middle of a Testosterone War (apologies to Black Widow).

And when Superheroes fight... Well. Let’s just say things get broken up a bit. They only begin to work together when everything is falling (literally) apart. I guess falling to earth in a broken…. (insert major spoiler here… nah, not gonna do it!)… will do that to a team. Of course they weren’t ALL on board the *********, but they all did literally succumb to gravity in their own way. Everyone gets knocked on the head a bit, shakes it off and realized they had better Do Something.

Working in pairs at first, then cross teaming, they finally get to the point where Captain America is calling the shots with all the assurance of a broken military general who is finally in his element and completely understands his troops. Only then are they The Avengers.

But they still annoy each other, maybe just a little.

Within the scope of the main Save the World from a Terrible Menace plot, there are smaller interwoven stories, many character reveals, and of course, as this is a Joss Whedon project, completely believable and absolutely hilarious humor sprinkled throughout.

The Big Bad, Loki, is as complex as any other character, and is much more menacing than in the Thor movie; less, dare I say, comic book two dimensional. In Loki’s determined and demented quest to be loved, feared and revered, even he understands on some level that he is manipulating forces that he cannot completely control, but he continues to play his part in the game with a grim determination and certain maniacal glee at the thought of beating his step-brother down. Who cares about the puny humans; they are ants, he is the boot.

There is a lot of fighting, amazingly realistic effects, spectacular settings and many surprises. A few questions are answered and some more are raised. My biggest question has to do with the Hulk, if the end is true, then why the first time?? Hmmmm. I have a theory, but will see the movie again tomorrow to see if it bears out.

Quibbles were few and were drowned out by the completely immersive FUN of the overall experience. And as we learned from the other Marvel movies, stay until the very end of the credits. Something happens, and then later, a small, but funny scene. Just stay. And see if you can count just how many special effects companies were involved!

I saw it in a regular 3D (IMax was sold out… *pouts*) in a nearly sold out theater, and suggest that you see it in 3D, too. I can’t believe that Joss has never filmed in 3D before, it was handled MASTERFULLY.

My rating: 9.9999999 out of 10

Just Musing,
Susan