Category: Movies

In theaters.

Countless action movies feature villains more interesting and compelling than their heroes, and frankly, that’s what I expected from Captain America: The First Avenger. I assumed Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, would be a humorless, goody-goody straight-arrow fighting a nefarious but amusingly snarky bad guy of some sort. I was wrong. Yes, Steve is an upstanding square, but he’s got more charm than I expected, and even if he’s not the jokey type, he seems to appreciate jokes, which keeps him from becoming annoyingly starchy and prim. In this movie, the annoying starchiness is left to the villain: Johann Schmidt, a.k.a. Red Skull, who is almost completely lacking in character motivation besides the basic fact that he is Evil with a capital E.

The truly vibrant color, though, belongs not to Steve or Red Skull but to the supporting players: the affable, insightful mad-scientist-to-the-good-guys Dr. Erskine; the gruff, blunt military man Col. Phillips; and the brilliant, smooth-talking industrialist Howard Stark. Those are the fun characters and—together with the not-as-dull-as-he-could-have-been Steve and Joe Johnston’s surprisingly brisk, forward-pushing direction—they make Captain America a passably entertaining summer blockbuster.

In theaters.

I suppose I’ve come around to David Yates. Director Alfonso Cuarón’s adaptation of Prisoner of Azkaban probably will always be remembered as the most artful Harry Potter movie (and I wouldn’t dispute that), but Yates’s work on the final four films of the series is far from second-rate. Yes, Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and 2 are somewhat uneven, occasionally lurching forward when they should pause and dragging when they should race ahead; they also can set a mood, build a riveting action sequence, and create a perfect, evocative image. They are, in short, cinematic, not just perfunctory dramatizations of the books—which, frankly, is probably all they needed to be to make untold billions of dollars. Yet Yates clearly aspired to more than that, and it shows, even in the weaker moments. I don’t love the movies, but since Yates took over, they’ve consistently been much better than I expect.

In theaters.

Back in college, studying film analysis, I read an essay analyzing the differences between sci-fi and horror. The distinction that most stuck with me was this: In horror scientists are bad guys and military men are good guys, while in sci-fi scientists wear the white hats and military men the black. It’s a vast generalization, of course, but it’s true more often than you’d think. Consider horror’s reckless mad scientist creating a monster the military is then forced to battle, and contrast that with the familiar sci-fi tale of a peaceable alien confronted by a trigger-happy army with a scientist in the background pleading that they hold their fire. The monster and the alien might look exactly the same, but the genre dictates how they behave and how they will be treated.

Super 8 initially looks and feels like a horror movie, with funhouse shocks and wire-tense silences and a menacing creature snatching at extras from the edge of the frame, never clearly visible and all the more frightening for it. But the horror-esque aesthetic is misleading, as the morality of those telltale characters soon makes clear. Ultimately 8 is sci-fi, more interested in exploring and finding connections than in “othering” and obliterating the enemy. Marrying a horror-style aesthetic with a sci-fi sensibility leads to some awkwardness—and the blasé dismissal of a few inconvenient plot points—but both halves, however ill-matched, possess some strength, and the movie’s curious sci-fi heart is disarmingly sweet.

In theaters.

Like most Woody Allen movies, Midnight in Paris has a sort of moral thesis. You can see it coming miles away: a compassionate but unromantic warning about the pitfalls of idealizing the past. But as my brother pointed out to me when I was trying to articulate some of my frustrations with the film, Midnight is actually quite reluctant to accept its own moral. It pays lip service to the idea that such idealization can be isolating even as the movie itself looks backward with rosy, starstruck vision. The present is populated by staggeringly superficial, affected, monochromatic drones, while the past—specifically the expatriate community of 1920s Paris—glitters with brilliant, generous, passionate artists. Not only is that a bit flaky from a thematic perspective, it makes for a wildly uneven film, ricocheting between shrill, heavy-handed scenes and utterly charming scenes. The latter make Midnight in Paris worth seeing, but the former temper the pleasure of it.

In theaters.

After I wrote this, I realized that, technically, there are some vague spoilers throughout. That’s because X-Men: First Class tells an origin story, rebooting a very successful franchise, so I went in knowing more or less how it was going to end, and I wrote this post in the expectation that other people would as well. I still think that’s a fair assumption, but the Rules of the Internet have been drilled into my head to the extent that I still feel the need to issue a spoiler warning: Herein I allude to how the alliances among the characters will shift over the course of the film, but if you’ve ever seen a movie or read a comic in the series, there’s absolutely nothing here you don’t already know.

The best thing about the first two X-Men movies (X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine are not worth consideration) is how complicated the conflicts are. Unlike most summer flicks, which have only a “good” side and a “bad” side, X-Men and X2 both feature at least three different factions and shifting alliances within and among them. Sure, there are still good guys and bad guys, at least relatively speaking, but they sometimes find themselves on the same side, and the bad guys tend to make good arguments and have sympathetic motivations, and that makes the movies interesting.

X-Men: First Class represents a return to form on that front. The movie has its problems, but the central relationship between antagonists-to-be is so evocatively rendered that it elevates the entire production. Throw in the playful flair of the 1960s setting, the dynamic pacing, the unexpectedly affecting climax, and—especially—the terrific lead performances, and First Class becomes the best sort of summer movie: hugely entertaining in the moment and worth talking about on the way home.

In theaters.

The end of a romantic relationship might be more dramatic, the heartbreak more obvious, but the feeling that a once close friendship is fading can be just as painful, in part because there usually isn’t any obvious “break up,” only an unacknowledged growing distance papered over with an extended charade that everything is just as it was, even as it becomes increasingly apparent that everything is not. That hurts when you’re a kid, and it still hurts when you’re an adult, and Bridesmaids dramatizes that as well as any movie I’ve seen. Underneath the considerable hilarity—sometimes ribald, sometimes crude, sometimes simply goofy—is the kind of sadness and truth that marks all great comedy. Bridesmaids is probably too scattered and shaggy to achieve that kind of greatness itself, but its humanity and warmth elevate it nonetheless. Plus, it’s absolutely fucking hilarious—I did mention that, right?

In theaters.

Oh, Thor. What can I say? This latest superhero movie is such a mediocrity that I can’t work up much energy for an opinion—and I’m the sort of person who has an opinion on everything. It’s genial and mildly amusing, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously—it’s pleasant enough—but ultimately, it’s underwhelming. As comic-book heroes go, Thor is more two-dimensional than most, and not a particularly interesting two dimensions at that. The cast is probably above average, but the special effects, the story, and the pacing are only OK. I suppose Thor might be worth watching on TV if it turns up on cable on rainy day, but beyond that … whatever.

In theaters.

You could be forgiven for assuming that the supertitled introduction in the trailer for Hanna—“Once upon a time there was a very special girl who lived in the woods with her father”—was just a conceit of the marketing, but you would be wrong. The odd, dark thriller is packed with fairy tale motifs and themes, from the cottage deep in the woods, to the evil “stepmother,” to the feral predator stalking the naïve young girl. The visuals compound the effect (I’m only surprised that the heroine didn’t at some point don a red hoodie), eventually arriving—quite literally—at the supposed birthplace of the Brothers Grimm, with a closing image so audacious and evocative that I could only shake my head and grin.

The thing is, upon reflection, I’m not entirely sure what to make of Hanna, not completely convinced that all the once-upon-a-timing adds up to much beyond arty window dressing. But director Joe Wright has a lushly kinetic visual style, and the cast is terrifically game for the deranged little fairy tale. Hanna might not live up to whatever Grimm reinvention/deconstruction Wright was attempting, but it’s still a nervy art-pulp trip.

In theaters.

When I think of Western landscapes on film, I think first of Terrence Malick’s ravishingly beautiful Days of Heaven, the expansive prairie glowing with golden “magic hour” light. That luminous quality fits the dreamy tone of the film and its tale of an idyllic but doomed interlude in the lives of its characters. The light in Meek’s Cutoff, by contrast, could never be described as golden or magical. The sun has bleached and burned away virtually all color, leaving everything in its Western landscape a dingy yellow-brown. Parched heat practically radiates from the screen, which holds only an austere beauty, at best.

Nevertheless, Meek’s Cutoff constantly reminded me of Days of Heaven. In both, the cinematography is integral to the spirit of the film, giving texture and depth to a spare plot. The camerawork turns the wide Western plains into a fragile paradise in Heaven and a desiccated hell in Meek’s. Cinematography and storytelling are perfectly entwined.