THE MARVELS: An Immaculate But Way Clunky Mess of a Marvel Movie

Opening at every multiplex in the multiverse:

THE MARVELS (Dir. Nia DaCosta, 2023)

A decade or so ago, the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe was a lot of fun. What with all the interlocking storylines from film to film, and the charisma and humor of leads like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansson (all of whom can be seen shining in the Marvel logo banner than begins every movie), many movie-goers and myself enjoyed quite a few of the ongoing adventures of the AVENGERS, and off-shoots like GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. 

 

But now, after over 30 movies, the whole thing has become a big, bloated franchise that I hear more people dis than praise these days. This new release, serving as a sequel to Captain Marvel and an extension of a show I haven’t seen (Ms. Marvel), tries as it might to offer some difference, and diversity, in its leads being three females – respectively Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, Teyonah Parris as Proton/Monica Rambeau, and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan – but they seem to be winging, rather than helming, their way through this immaculate mess of a Marvel movie.

 

The premise having to do with ancient glowing bracelets (this film’s MacGuffin/Infinity Stones) sought after fiery villain Dar-Benn, played by a crazy-eyed Zawe Ashton, and a couple of our female leads body-switching when they use their powers at the same time, never built any momentum, with action sequence after action sequence piling up with little impact.

 

While she sure can’t sing as can be seen in a strange musical number with her alien prince played by Park Seo-joon, Larson is a fine actress (she well deserved her Oscar for 2015’s ROOM), but she mainly serves as a straight person to her co-stars and the scenery. She does lighten up dancing to hip hop with Parris and Vellani (whose spunk does charm at odd moments) in one scene, but otherwise her stoic demeanor is frankly dull throughout.

 

THE MARVELS looks mahvelous, as Billy Crystal’s SNL character Fernando would say (outdated reference lost on younger readers), with its incredible cinematography by Sean Bobbit (another Academy Award winner), that presents eye-popping visuals of space stations, alien terrains, and cats with tenacles coming from their mouths that can devour whole human beings, and such sights can surely amuse.

 

But the action surrounding that doesn’t excite, and worse, the comedy that should be the saving grace is awkward, and clunky AF. This latest Marvel offering doesn’t improve on the last entry, ANT MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA (Lord, I hate that title!), and makes me weary of considering what’s to come. There’s no way this Marvel machine is gonna stop, but maybe some flops like these will slow it down so some quality control can be instigated. Here’s hoping because even Samuel L. Jackson, here playing Nick Fury for the umpteenth time (15th, I think), can’t even muster much edge for this beyond played out material. 

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Spider-Teen’s European Vacation

Opening today at a Marvel multiplex near us all:

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME
(Dir. Jon Watts, 2019) 

So with this sequel to SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, we’re now at the end of Phase Three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In what’s being called the epilogue to AVENGERS: ENDGAME, we catch up with Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland) eight months after the events of that bloated epic.

Peter, still a high school student despite Holland being 22 when the film was shot, joins his class on a two-week summer field trip to Europe where he finds that various locations including Venice, Prague, and London are being terrorized by ginormous monsters called Elementals.

Our web-slinging protagonist is recruited by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson in his third appearance in a Marvel movie this year) to fight the Elementals with the help of Mysterio, a character from the comics, portrayed by an invested Jake Gyllenhaal wearing Roman centurion-style armor.

Peter often has to sneak away from his classmates, such as the returning Zendaya as MJ (Peter’s love interest), Jacob Batalon as Ned (Peter’s best friend), and Tony Revolori, to get caught up in overblown battles in which there’s much destruction and dizzying bombast. Between these battles, there’s some frothy rom com material where Peter competes for the affection of MJ with the douche Brad (Remy Hii from CRAZY RICH ASIANS who is over 30).

There’s also a bunch of comic moments courtesy of the also returning Martin Starr as Peter’s teacher, Marissa Tomei as Aunt May who is maybe beginning a romances with Tony Stark’s former bodyguard Happy (Jon Favreau), and a new character named Mr. Dell (J.B. Smooth).

These breezy bits of downtime are much more amusing and watchable than the action sequences surrounding them. It’s like a teen comedy that has to cut to big bursts of spectacle every five to ten minutes.

FAR FROM HOME is only intermittently fun, and way less satisfying than HOMECOMING as it has lost much of that film’s fresh feeling. The villain, Mysterio, isn’t fleshed out enough to make much of an impact, and the concept behind the Elementals isn’t very compelling either. 

However it’s a competent summer superhero movie, and a decent entry in the franchise. I just doubt I’ll remember much of it months from now, or less. But that could be said about most of the Marvel movies.

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CAPTAIN MARVEL: Spectacularly Adequate But The Cat Steals The Show

Now playing everywhere:

CAPTAIN MARVEL

(Dirs. Anna Boden & Ryan K. Fleck, 2018) 

The 21st movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe introduces a new character, Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel. Actually, a new old character as she’s been around for 50 years, so she’s new to the MCU, and new to me. I’ve, of course, heard of Captain Marvel, but didn’t know about her back story, or powers, or, well, anything really.

But I’ve been here before. Whenever they put out a new movie featuring characters I wasn’t previously familiar with, I head to Wikipedia and learn the basics so I at least have an inkling of understanding going in.

In this origin story, we are introduced to the lead character played by Brie Larson as Vers, a member of Starforce (that’s Starforce, not Spaceforce) on the planet, Hala, which is inhabited by the alien race, Kree. We also meet Vers’ mentor, Yon Rogg (Jude Law) who is training her to fight the shape-shifting, green-skinned Skrulls, who have been endlessly warring with the Kree.

Larson’s Vers, who is plagued with visions involving Annette Bening as Supreme Intelligence (that’s her actual character name, well, one of her character names here), gets captured by the Skrulls, and escapes in a pod that crash lands in 1995 Los Angeles (through the roof of Blockbuster Video, mind you). From here on out, the movie’s soundtrack is all ‘90s hits – Nirvana’s “Come as You Are,” Salt-N-Pepa’s “Whatta Man,” Elastica’s “Connection,” Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains,” etc. (Larson even wears a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt at one point).

Soon after, S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and Phillip J. Coulson (Clark Gregg), show up on the scene, both digitally de-aged (there’s always gotta be some digital de-aging in these flicks, you know?). Then there is simultaneously a foot chase on the LA Metro, a car chase, and a bunch of furious fist fights. Fury and Vers team up to, you know, save the world from an alien threat, the twist being that the ones we thought were the good guys may not be. Not that that is much of a twist.

Danvers and Fury find one of her old friends, fellow fighter pilot Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), who joins them on the adventure, and Skrull leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), who turns out to be not so bad, also comes along for the ride – oh, and to save his fellow Skrulls. Oh, and the McGuffin is once again the Tesseract (it’s been in around half of these Marvel movies), a cosmic, blue-glowing cube that can control matter and energy.

Vers begins to figure out something that most moviegoers will figure out right off that bat – she was an Airforce fighter pilot named Carol Danvers (the “Vers” come from her dogtag getting fractured in a plane crash that gave her her powers (I’m not going to explain anything more than that).

It’s a zippy adventure that fun to watch, even if you can pretty much guess everything right before it happens. The one element I didn’t expect was a cat named Goose who totally steals the show. 

The cat stows away on the military plane that Danvers and Fury commandeered, and even follows them up into space. That’s where we learn that Goose isn’t a cat, he’s a Flerkin, which are alien creatures that resemble ordinary earth cats except when they shoot masses of tentacles out of their mouths, or swallow whole objects or people.

Goose could be seen as an update of Jonesy from ALIEN - think orange cat on a spaceship – but if Jonesy could annihilate hoards of attackers. Now, Jackson is always really funny, but I’m not sure he’s ever been as funny as he is here talking cute and lovey to Goose.

I like Larson quite a bit, and think she won the Oscar for ROOM for good reason. She puts in a solidly stoical performance in the title role here, but sometimes I felt maybe she was taking it all a bit too seriously. No matter, the character still works despite than when I squint she looks like Supergirl. The plot is no great shakes, story beats can be seen way in advance, and some of the MCU tropes seem a little stale, but it’s still a fun superhero movie with enough cleverness to keep most entertained.

The audience I was in for this film were with it big-time because the regular roster of MCU characters that fill in the margins of the studio logo was replaced with a montage of images of Stan Lee’s many cameos throughout the franchise. It got big applause – the first time I’ve seen a logo get that kind of response. Of course, there was also his obligatory cameo later in the film (he had shot a bunch of cameos for upcoming films before he passed last November).

Except for Goose the Flerkin, CAPTAIN MARVEL is, at best, spectacularly adequate. That still means, like most Marvel movies, it’s well worth the price of ticket. Just make sure that, like always, you stay for the end credits stingers. But, of course, you know that; everybody knows that.

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INCREDIBLES 2: Predictable Plotwise, But Still A Solid Sequel

Opening tonight at a multiplex near everybody:

INCREDIBLES 2 (Dir. Brad Bird, 2018) 

At the screening of this long awaited sequel, there was a mini-featurette before the movie began in which the film’s stars – Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, and Samuel L. Jackson – stress more than once that while it’s been 14 years since the original, this’ll be well worth the wait. For the most part it is.

Mere months after the events of the first installment, we catch up with the crime-fighting Parr family – Bob/Mr. Incredible (Nelson), Helen/Elastigirl (Hunter), Violet (Sarah Vowel), Dashiell/”Dash” (Huck Milner), Violet and Jack-Jack Parr (Eli Fucile) – as they are trying to thwart a bank robbery by the returning supervillain, the Underminer (voiced by Pixar regular John Ratzenberger).

This results in a pretty thrilling, funny and gorgeously animated opening sequence involving the Incredibles, with the help of the icy touch of Lucius Best/Frozone (Jackson), pulling together to stop a ginormous drilling machine from reaching its Metro Bank destination, and the follow-up is off to a great start.

Things settle down a bit when the premise is introduced by a couple of new characters, telecommunications CEO Winston Deavor (a slick Bob Odenkirk), and his tech saavy sister, Evelyn (a more energetic than usual Catherine Keener). The Deavors wants to arrange a campaign that will make the use of super powers legal again, and recruit Elastigirl to go off and fight crime in the dangerous city of New Urbrem, while Bob stays home to take care of the kids to his great disappointment.

But while stranded at home, Bob learns that Jack-Jack has an array of super powers (17, he says at one point) including being able to shoot lasers out of his eyes, teleport through walls, turn himself into fire, and change into a scary red monster (sort of a like a fiery Tazmanian Devil) if he’s denied a cookie.

Since Odenkirk’s Winston is such an unabashed fanboy of the Incredibles who knows the words to all of their individual theme songs, he stands out as a candidate for the film’s secret bad guy, but gladly screenwriter Bird knows that would be too obvious.

As for the film’s up front villain, there’s the Screenslaver, dressed in black with big goggles like a cartoon Kylo Renn, who can hypnotize people through their screens. There’s also the thread that the secret baddie (I won’t Spoil their identity) has devised glasses that control the wearer in order to frame them doing acts of evil.

That’s a pretty predictable plotline that’s been done to death, but the action and laughs come so fast and frenetically in the film’s last third, which is set on runaway ship headed to crash into New Urbrem, that it really doesn’t get in the way of the extreme entertainment factor.

Sure, the overall world of the INCREDIBLES doesn’t feel as fresh as it did in 2004 (still looks really cool though), but despite its formulaic flaws, it’s a joy to spend time with these characters again on another fast paced ride. INCREDIBLES 2 is a solid sequel that should please the many big fans of the first one, as it did a casual fan like me. Thanks for the update, Bird, Pixar, and all the great voice talent – see you in another 14 years!

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Another KING KONG Reboot, Anyone?

Opening today at a big ass multiplex near us all:

KONG: SKULL ISLAND

(Dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)

When I was a kid forty years ago, the winter of 1977, my favorite movie was the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis produced remake of KING KONG. I had seen it when it was released the previous Christmas, and it was probably still in theaters around this time that year. I definitely still had it in my mind when STAR WARS came out that summer, as I wrote about before in this space.

I didn’t see the 1933 original for a few years yet, so the ‘70s one with Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, and the mechanical ape that climbed up the side of the World Trade Center towers was my only KONG. It’s a pretty silly looking movie now, despite that it won an Oscar for visual effects, but still has a place in my movie loving heart.

Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake, which also won for visual effects, wasn’t bad, but when it came to the idea of yet another update, I can’t say I was thrilled. Especially with the news that it’s part of Legendary Picture’s MonsterVerse (that’s right), which kicked off with the GODZILLA reboot of a few years back.

But, dangit, KONG: SKULL ISLAND ain’t half bad. A lot of critics have been saying that it’s got an APOCALYPSE NOW vibe to it, with its Vietnam era setting, helicopters outfitted with speakers blaring music while dropping bombs, and even a variation on the crazy Dennis Hopper character, and, yeah, that does fit.

But if the message of APOCALYPSE NOW is that war is hell, the message of KONG: SKULL ISLAND seems to be: warring with King Kong is hell.

This variation of the 84-year old tale has John Goodman as a government agent Bill Randa recruiting Tom Hiddleston as James Conrad, a former British Special Air Service Captain; and a helicopter squadron led by Samuel L. Jackson as Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard, to explore an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean known as “Skull Island.”

Also along for the ride is Brie Larson, with great looking curly, full bodied ‘70s hair, in the part of the blonde that Kong falls for, but this time the character is a photojournalist and peace activist named Mason Weaver.

The expedition wakes up the gigantic gorilla with their pesky explosives and in the eye-popping spectacle of chaotic CGI, the angry ape destroys most of their helicopters, leaving many casualties of Kong. Split into two groups, the team travel the island to get to the other end where they’ll be met by a resupply team in three days.

Hiddleston’s Conrad and Larson’s Weaver, and their group discover John C. Reilly as an American pilot who’s been stranded on the island since World War II. That’s the variation on the crazy Dennis Hopper part, and Reilly’s Hank Marlow is a hoot, stealing every scene he’s in.

Reilly’s Marlow tells Conrad and Weaver about terrifying creatures that live underground that Kong keeps at bay, and tells them that they are called “Skullcrawlers.” Not getting the response to this that he wanted, Marlow backpedals: “that’s the first time I said that out loud, and it sounds stupid, you can call them anything you want.”

Samuel L. Jackson playing the Samuel L. Jackson role (he even says “hang on to your butts”) steals scenes too with his intensity with wanting revenge for his dead men, while we basically just wait to see how the corrupt Goodman character is killed off.  

KONG: SKULL ISLAND is no masterpiece, but it’s a perfectly serviceable piece of action sci-fi popcorn cinema. It’s a lot stronger than Gareth Edwards’ GODZILLA, and it’s more satisfying than Jackson’s KING KONG redux. It ticks off all the expected boxes (can’t have a Vietnam theme without Creedence’s “Run through the Jungle”), and it possesses a lot of visual power. Mostly though, it’s simply a fun monster movie.

But when seeing the stinger at the end after the credits (following the Marvel business model to a t), and getting the sense of the larger franchise they’re planning, I’m not sure I’m game for a endless series of KONG adventures. 

I should just grin and bear it though. I’ve got to accept that these remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings do great business, and as a hardcore fan and follower of film, I’ve got to remember the words of Hyman Roth, as played by the late, great Lee Strasberg, in one of the best sequels ever: “This is the business we’ve chosen.”

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F*** The Haters, Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT Is F***-in’ Great

THE HATEFUL EIGHT
(Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2015)

Before “The Eighth Film by Quentin Tarantino,” as it’s identified in the opening credits (what other filmmaker does that?) properly begins, there’s a title card reading “Overture” accompanying an image of a silhouette of a stagecoach pulled by a team of horses, with snow-covered mountains in the background.

As composer Ennio Morricone’s intense minor melody slowly built, I found myself staring into the graphic until the shadows on the mountains became more and more ominous. One even started to resemble a lurching figure with a knife drawn, others looked like pools of blood, winding snakes, etc. This perfectly set the sinister tone for the three hour film following.

Tarantino’s Western opus, which is now playing exclusively in a limited Super CinemaScope 70mm Roadshow release (it begins a regular theatrical release in digital on January 8th, 2016), also features a 12-minute intermission, so it’s obvious that the filmmaker is reveling in giving us an old school cinema experience.

But, being Tarantino, it’s still sprinkled with his distinctive post-modernist stylings, meaning that it’s profane as f***, ultra gorey, and brimming with racially-fueled attitude.

Set in Wyoming, several years after the Civil War, THE HATEFUL EIGHT is broken up into a handful of chapters, recalling PULP FICTION except that there’s no prologue or epilogue.

In the first chapter, “Last Stage to Red Rock,” we are introduced to Tarantino regular Samuel L. Jackson as Major Marquis Warren aka “The Bounty Hunter,” Kurt Russell, who previously starred in Tarantino’s GRINDHOUSE half DEATH PROOF, as John Ruth, who is another bounty hunter dubbed “The Hangman” because he doesn’t kill his captures (he prefers to watch them get hanged after handing them over), and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Daisy Domergue aka “The Prisoner,” a wanted fugitive in Ruth’s custody.

Jackson’s Major Warren, who’s transporting the bodies of three of his bounties, hitches a ride with Russell’s Ruth on his stagecoach as it turns out that the two men had met before. Ruth recalls that Warren has a letter from President Lincoln in his possession, and asks to read it again, but Leigh’s uncouth, rednecky Domergue spits on it, causing Warren to slug her and she and Ruth tumble out of the stagecoach as they are handcuffed together.

Chapter Two, “Son of a Gun,” introduces Walton Goggins (The Shield, Justified, DJANGO UNCHAINED) as Chris Mannix of the infamous Mannix Marauders as Ruth tells us, who also hitches a ride with the crew, who claims, to Ruth’s disbelief, that he’s travelling to Red Rock to be appointed the town’s new sheriff. We get more inklings of back stories as the slickly racist Mannix tells Ruth a tale about how, after the war ended, Warren burned down a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in a prison escape (Warren: “The whole place was made of kindling…so I burnt it down”) killing 47 men which caused the South to put a reward on his head.

So there, we have half of the eight, and what Tarantino deems relevant info about their reputations, and Chapter Three, “Minnie's Haberdashery,” rounds out the rest - Demián Bichir as Bob (“The Mexican”), Bruce Dern as General Sandy Smithers (“The Confederate”), and a couple of RESERVOIR DOGS, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen, as Oswald Mobray (“The Little Man”), and Joe Gage (“The Cow Puncher”), respectively. 

Ruth, Warren, Domerque, and Mannix arrive at the chapter’s title stagecoach stop to find that Bichir’s Bob is looking after the place while Minnie is visiting her mother – or so he says.

The rest of the movie takes place in the log cabin interior of Minnie’s with the most elaborate Mexican standoff that Tarantino has ever mounted. When we come back from the intermission, there’s suddenly a narrator (an uncredited Tarantino) who tells us that during the last scene, somebody seen only by Domergue poisons the coffee (Chapter title: “Domergue Has a Secret”), so we’ve got that mystery to chew on (along with the puzzle of who’s in secret cahoots with who), and we get one of the writer/director’s patented time juggling so we get to see what was happening during the same time as the setup.

In a flashback chapter, “The Four Passengers,” that would be too spoilery to describe, we have a few moments with the only other women in this brutal boy’s club: Tarantino’s trusty stuntwoman Zoë Bell, the motherly Dana Gourrier (as Minnie), and the lovely Belinda Owino. This segment also prominently features Channing Tatum, but damn if I’m gonna tell you how his character factors in.

I won’t go into the particulars of the big ass finale, “Black Man, White Hell,” but will say that it sure packs a bloody wallop.

Leigh’s Domergue, who gets her face bashed in so much throughout the film by Russell’s Ruth that she’s a disgusting, blood-soaked mess (with convincingly broken teeth too) way before the end, can be difficult to look at in ginormous, 70mm close-ups, but the actress owns the role with such intensity that I could never look away.

It’s cool that this is the second ultra violent Western that Russell has starred in this year - the great BONE TOMAHAWK being the other. The guy seems at confident ease with this sort of material (having the classic ‘90s Western TOMBSTONE in his background surely helps) and really rocks the thick, gray handlebar mustache. 

And, in his 6th Tarantino film, Jackson stands out yet again. With his sharp, smart delivery, Jackson's Major Warren has many of the film's most amusing lines and moments, and was one of the only characters I cared about getting out of the cabin alive.

It’s fitting that Madsen and Roth are on hand as the Tarantino joint this most echoes is RESERVOIR DOGS with its one-setting, and aforementioned Mexican standoff scenario. I wouldn’t put this in the same class with that outstanding debut or its classic follow-up PULP FICTION, but I enjoyed it more than his last few films, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS and DJANGO UNCHAINED, and I liked those films quite a bit.

It already appears that THE HATEFUL EIGHT may be Tarantino’s most divisive movie yet. I’ve seen critic friends post that they thought it was a cinematic masterpiece, and seen others declare that it’s one of the year’s worst movies.

But I was intensely entertained throughout its three hour running time – I can understand folks thinking that it’s way too long and talky, but I found the dialogue, deliciously laced with evil undercurrent, to be consistently involving (as well as funny as f***), and I devoured how Tarantino through the sharp lens of cinematographer Robert Richardson made the spare scenery so immersive.

I also don’t agree about the charges of misogyny that have been leveled at it. Like almost all the men here, Leigh’s Daisy Domergue is a scary, murderous outlaw, and the actress nailed it in a recent Q & A when she said “She’s a killer. She’s gutsy and her whole identity is, ‘Yeah, give me what you’ve got, it doesn’t mean anything to me. Hit me again, I don’t give a f**king sh*t.’”

So in that spirit, I’ll sum up by saying f*** the haters, Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT is f***-in’ great. See it in 70mm if you can.

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KINGSMAN: A Good Popcorn Picture Until The Popcorn Runs Out

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE

(Dir. Matthew Vaughn, 2014) 

In Matthew Vaughn’s fifth film, an adaptation of a graphic novel series by Dave Gibbons and Mark Millar, the writer/director outfits the world of James Bond in the cartoonish formula of his KICK ASS films. That is to say, there’s a lot of stylized violence with a high body count, a ton of glib one-liners, and constant attempts at meta-commentary.

A suave, dapper Colin Firth (when is he not suave and dapper?) stars as gentleman spy Harry Hart (codename: Galahad), a member of “an independent, international, international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion.” Firth is well cast as the mannered British badass, and at first, especially in a scene where he lays out a bunch of brutal youths in a pub, it's a blast to see him in the part.

The slick scenario concerns Firth’s Hart recruiting Taron Egerton as Eggsy, the son of one of his late colleagues, for the elite squad, but first the young London street-tough has to compete with a bunch of smug, better-bred candidates, and, of course, one friendly female (Sophie Cookson), for the same position.

A lisping Samuel L. Jackson plays the super villain they’re training to defeat, an internet billionaire named Richmond Valentine who’s planning on wiping out most of the world’s population through a mind-controlling cellphone app.

For roughly half of this film’s running time I was going along with its poppy charm, but a scene in which Firth, affected by the villain’s violence-inducing app, goes on a murderous rampage and slaughters a church full of hate-spewing, redneck fundamentalist Christians in Kentucky (clearly modeled on the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas) set to the four-minute guitar solo in Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Free Bird,” really lost me.

The in-your-face unfunniness there sadly set the tone for the rest of the film, which involves the customary infiltration of the enemy’s secret lair (located inside a snow-covered mountain), and much more gratuitous murder in the form of hundreds of heads exploding in the form of rainbow-colored fireworks.

None of this is as witty, clever, or exciting as it wants to be. James Bond satires, homages, or imitations have been around as long as the iconic series itself, and after the likes of Maxwell Smart, Derek Flint, Matt Helm, Johnny English, Austin Powers, and dozens of others have done it to death, KINGSMAN brings nothing new to the table.

Even CARS 2’s secret agent subplot that had Michael Caine voicing an Aston Martin had more Bondian bite than this. Caine is also on hand here as the head of the Kingsman, bringing a little gravitas to the proceedings but not much else. Also along for the ride is Sofia Boutella as Jackson’s henchwoman Gazelle who has CGI-ed bionic blades for legs (one of the few entertaining elements on display), Mark Strong as the Kingman’s gadget and weapons specialist (you know, like Bond’s Q?), and Mark Hamill (yes, that Mark Hamill) as a British climate scientist that Jackson kidnaps early on.

It’s a fine cast, but Vaughn and frequent collaborator Jane Goldman’s screenplay isn’t equipped with enough flashy fun for a whole film. What starts out as a tongue-in-cheek spy comedy romp ends up resembling a rowdy kid just sticking its tongue out at these well worn conventions. And that's about as funny as Jackson's lisp, which sure didn't make me laugh.

KINGSMAN is only a good popcorn picture until the popcorn runs out - the cringe-worthy church scene being where that happened for me.

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CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now that Full Frame is over, I leap back into the world of mainstream movies with what's now the #1 movie at the box office:

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
(Dirs. Anthony Russo & Joe Russo, 2014)

So apparently we’re now well into Phase 2 in the building of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The second phase began strongly last summer with IRON MAN 3, continued with the lackluster THOR: THE DARK WORLD, and now hits its highest point with CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, a sequel which surpasses the 2011 original (CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER).

The iconic comic book character’s latest adventure is now in the hands of Anthony and Joe Russo, who are better known for their television work (Arrested Development, Community) than their film output (WELCOME TO COLINWOOD, YOU, ME & DUPREE). Working from a screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who wrote the first installment, the Russo brothers confidently take control with a soaring action film that actually has a compelling politically driven plot-line.

Chris Evans dons the red, white, and blue uniform and shield for his third appearance as the iconic super hero (fourth if you count his cameo in the THOR sequel last year) in this adventure that is set two years after the events of THE AVENGERS. We catch up with Evan’s Steve Rogers/Captain America working for S.H.I.E.LD. in Washington D.C. and trying to catch up with modern culture (he carries a notebook with a list of things he missed while he was in a cryogenic sleep state for 70 years that includes Moon Landing, Nirvana, Star Trek, Thai food, etc.).

In a stunning opening involving taking on French/Algerian pirates with on a hijacked naval vessel, Captain America catches Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) extracting electronic files from the ship’s computers, which disturbingly means S.H.I.E.L.D. Commander Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) had an ulterior motive for the mission.

Back at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, Fury debriefs Captain America about Project: Insight, which will send into space three huge “Helicarriers,” that are linked to spy satellites and have the capabilities to preemptively take out potential threats.

The project has been spearheaded by a cold calculating Robert Redford as World Security head Alexander Pierce, who it’s no Spoiler to say turns out to be the central villain – an agent of HYDRA, the terrorist organization Captain America fought in the first film.

An incredibly jolting car-chase sequence through the streets of D.C. ends with Fury being gunned down by a shadowy assassin, the Winter Soldier, whose face we can’t see. With Fury presumed dead to the world, our hero is left to protect the film’s MacGuffin, the USB flash drive that contains the encrypted data Johansson previously retrieved.

The ins and outs of the plot get a bit too complicated from here, but with its ginormous set piece scenes of explosive destruction (the mammoth annihilation of Tony Stark’s Malibu fortress in IRON MAN 3 has nothing on the climatic CGI spectacle here), you won’t care about keeping up with the twists.

As Captain America, Evans contributes a sharp stoically charming portrayal, one in which statuesque stiffness is a requirement of the job. Evans’ banter with Johansson is fun to watch, but his easy-going chemistry with charismatic newcomer Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Falcon (an old Marvel character making its first appearance in the franchise), is where his performance pops.

The film is enhanced by expanded roles for Jackson and Johansson, and Frank Grillo as a HYDRA henchman is an effective baddie (another Spoiler?), but Redford, probably ecstatic to have so much exposition after ALL IS LOST, is the real scene stealer. His part obviously pays homage to his role in Sydney Pollack’s 1975 political thriller THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, as does the movie’s dark themes of techno-paranoia, updated for our current climate.

It’s a testament to Markus and McFeely’s tight screenplay that these themes are crucial to the narrative and aren’t treated as background fodder. Its layered depth helps it transcend the standard super hero storyline structure, while still holding on the fun we’ve come to expect from the formula (on-the-nose one-liners, cross references, Stan Lee cameo, etc.).

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER is one of the best Marvel movies, with just the right amount of humor, thrills, and clever character interaction to keep both fans and casual movie-goers highly invested, right through to the signature stinger at the end of the credits.

More later…

Robotic Re-Imagining Cops Out

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

ROBOCOP (Dir. José Padilha, 2014)

I’ve blogged before that sometimes the only worthwhile thing about a remake is that it reminds you of how good the original was. That’s definitely the case with this.

Paul Verhoeven’s ROBOCOP, which I first saw and loved as a teenager in the summer of 1987, was a hard R-rated sci-fi action satire that was as full of laughs as it was thrills. José Padilha’s new remake/re-imagining/re-whatever the hell you call it is only full of itself. It’s as streamlined and mechanical as the Robocop suit itself (now in shiny black!), and it only loosely resembles its way superior source material.

What it’s most lacking is a sense of fun. This is immediately apparent in what first-time screenwriter Joshua Zetumer came up with as a framing device involving segments of Samuel L. Jackson as a loud conservative cable-TV host who debates the ethics of using robots for law enforcement and asks his viewers “Why is America so robophobic?” 

With his obvious talking points and Al Sharpton-esque hair piece, Jackson’s character isn’t even developed enough to carry a 4-minute Saturday Night Live sketch – his only funny moment comes when one of his trademark blurts of “motherfucker” is bleeped.

Then there’s Gary Oldman as Robocop’s compassionate creator, a scientist for OmniCorp (OCP, Omni Consumer Products in the original), who works for a cold conniving Michael Keaton as CEO. Like Jackson, these are great actors, but they’re just talking cogs that take on tons of exposition that we have to wade through before our metallic hero even leaves the lab.

At least Jackie Earle Haley as Robocop’s trainer and Jay Baruchel as OmniCorp’s Head of Marketing have a few almost amusing moments, but still nothing worth quoting.

The virtually unknown Joel Kinnaman (well, I didn’t know who he is) is the new Robocop, who, like Peter Weller in the original, starts off as Detroit Police Officer Alex Murphy who gets killed by sinister forces and begins life anew as the cyborg property of a massive corporation.

Kinnaman is a likable enough presence, but his brand of angst is wrong for the character, but then so is this entire setup which has the unfortunate notion to make the slain cop’s wife (Abbie Cornish) a bigger part of the story. In the original, Weller’s wife and son thought he was dead and moved on, but here Cornish and 12-year old son (John Paul Rutton ) stick around hoping to get some quality time with what’s left (only part of his head, heart, lungs and one hand) of nearly dead dad.

These attempts at giving ROBOCOP more of an emotional element are strained and un-moving, the solving his own murder mystery thread goes down such a routine avenue, and the noisy and badly shot shoot ‘em up scenes contain no excitement.

Except for its seamless CGI and solid cinematography by Lula Carvalho (CITY OF GOD), ROBOCOP is a big formulaic fail on many levels, but if it gets some kid or kids to seek out the original then at least it’s succeeded in something.

It inspired me to re-watch Verhoeven’s ‘80s classic to see if it still held up, and it indeed does – from Weller’s sharply tough performance to choice turns by Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Miguel Ferrer, and especially Kurtwood Smith (best known as the surly dad on That ‘70s Show) as the vicious villain, to the KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE-style commercial parodies throughout. It remains a smart snarky spin on the action movie tropes of the Reagan era with a bit of Troma-type gore splattered throughout. Sure, it was schlock, but it was top notch schlock.

Padilha’s safe PG-13 version has no guts or glory, yet still wants to be taken seriously with all its talk of robot ethics and commentary on commerce. But it simply just doesn’t add up to anything even worth buying for a dollar.

More later...

JURASSIC PARK 3D Doesn't Quite Pop

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

JURASSIC PARK 3D

(Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993)

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, and to create franchise awareness for the big ass IMAX 3D event spectacular JURASSIC PARK IV set for Summer 2014, Steven Spielberg’s action adventure epic has now been outfitted in 3D for a theatrical re-release opening today.

That’s all well and good, but at the advance screening I attended, the image looked faded. The colors were much more vibrant in a revival screening I saw the same week of THE MUPPET MOVIE (part of the Cool Classics series at the Colony Theater in Raleigh), and that was an original 35 mm print 15 years older than JURASSIC PARK! 

I know, I know, it's digital and I can only speak for how it looked at the one screening I saw, so I’ll be curious to know if any other movie-goers experienced such a dim image. When I see TV spots for the film, the color looks over-saturated, as if to make up for the faded picture. But anyway, on to the actual movie.

I could tell from the feel of the packed auditorium (and overhearing some random chatting) that many there had not seen the original JURASSIC PARK before. It has been a long time since I’ve seen it in full, but it has been on television so often that I’m very familiar with large chunks of it.

The Spielberg sense of otherworldly awe, that shined blindingly in such classics as CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND , RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and E.T., takes its last glorious gasp here.

The scene where Richard Attenborough introduces Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and the less famous kids (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello) to the wide landscape of cloned dinosaurs still has jaw-dropping impact, but the 3D-ness present this time is only intermittently effective throughout the film (the shot with the T-rex roaring into the jeep mirror with the disclaimer “Objects may seem closer than they appear” is one effective in-your-face instance). But most of the time, I didn’t even notice it.

The storyline (based on the 1990 novel by Michael Cricton, who co-wrote the screenplay with Spielberg cronie David Koepp) hasn’t really aged well - i.e. billionaire Attenborough brings a team of paleontologists and scientists (Neill, Dern, Goldblum), and a blood-sucking lawyer (Martin Ferrero) to inspect his new cloned dinosaur island theme park, but things go wrong (thanks to the conniving ways of Newman from Seinfeld) and they spend the rest of the movie being chased by CGI dinosaurs - but does it matter with so many genuine thrills on display? No it doesn’t.

It also has a number of entertaining elements such as a pre-PULP FICTION Samuel L. Jackson (“hold on to your butts!”) as the park’s chief engineer, the before mentioned Newman (actually Wayne Knight) providing snotty comic relief (Goldblum provides the more egg-headed kind), and a great suspenseful sequence with the kids trying to escape from a few raptors in the lavish kitchen in the visitor’s center, so the film still largely holds up.

It’s not even that dated - I only noticed Knight drinking a Jolt Cola, and Richards identifying herself as a “hacker” reminded me how new a term that was 20 years ago.

However, over and over I could tell that in this new 3D presentation, the things that got rises from the audience (many of whom were kids) came from Spielberg’s film making drive being in fifth gear, not the 3D enhancement, which, as I said before, didn’t look very good.

If your kids haven’t seen it, or only seen it on TV, a matinee may be in order of Spielberg’s crowd-pleaser, but contrary to Attenborough’s repeated boasts throughout the film, it looks to me like they did spare some expense with this re-tinkering, so brace yourself for a picture that doesn’t quite pop.

Sigh. If only a 2D 20th anniversary re-release was an option at the multiplexes.

More later...

Tarantino's Overlong DJANGO Is Off The Chain

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

DJANGO UNCHAINED (Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2012)

Three years after his revisionist World War II epic INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, Quentin Tarantino is back with this blaxploitation Western, which tackles slavery, revenge, and how many times the “N-word” can be said in a 2 hour and 45 minute movie.

Almost as if he’s atoning for playing an evil Nazi in BASTERDS, Christoph Waltz portrays an abolitionist-minded bounty hunter who frees a slave named Django (Jamie Fox) from his sinister masters (James Remar and James Russo) in the deep south of 1859. 

Waltz recruits Fox to join him in his bounty hunting (“Kill white people and get paid for it? What's not to like?”), and they set off to rescue Fox’s wife (Kerry Washington) from the clutches of Leonardo DiCaprio as a brutal yet charming Mississippi plantation owner.

Tarantino takes his sweet time getting to DiCaprio’s plantation, as Fox and Waltz make their way across the terrain, beautifully shot by cinematographer Robert Richardson. At times the film comes off like a collection of comedy sketches loosely strung together. One scene, in which a Colonel Sanders-looking Don Johnson as another villainous plantation owner named Big Daddy argues with his men about the badly cut slits in their proto Klan hoods, feels like it could’ve been an outtake from BLAZING SADDLES.

Dinner at DiCaprio’s, with his house slave (an intensely invested Samuel L. Jackson), is also leisurely paced. Fox and Waltz, under the guise of slave traders, are trying to pull the wool over DiCaprio’s eyes and liberate Washington, but Jackson sniffs them out. This is one of those slow burning sequences that can only end in bloodshed, but Tarantino drags it out too much, which calls attention to how slim the narrative is.

The Spaghetti Westerns and ‘70s grindhouse movies that Tarantino is forever paying homage to didn’t have very layered storylines either, so that’s not too terrible an issue, but it’s sometimes tedious how he cares more about hanging out with his characters than putting them into challenging scenarios.

From the retro Columbia studios logo to the RZA’s “Ode To Django” that plays during the end credits, DJANGO UNCHAINED feels like a Tarantino movie through and through. It’s a profanity-laced dialogue-driven violent action comedy with well chosen cameos (look for Jonah Hill, The Dukes of Hazzard’s Tom Wopat, Tarantino (you knew he'd show up, right?) and the original Django himself, Franco Nero), set to a hip soundtrack (a mix of Ennio Morricone, hip hop, and even a little Johnny Cash), that could only come from the twisted mind of the 49 year old former video store clerk.

Fox puts in a solidly stoic performance as the title character, interacting superbly with Waltz, both obviously having a blast with Tarantino’s way with words. DiCaprio, sporting a devilish goatee, also appears to be having fun, but he’s not given a very interesting character. DiCaprio doesn’t come off as despicable as he’s supposed to be. It’s Jackson who takes that honor.

And, of course, it's a boy's club, so don't expect much from the women present - Washington, at least, makes her presence known.

DJANGO may be more for Tarantino fanatics than casual movie-goers, so if you don’t have much tolerance for the man’s particular brand of abrasive cinema, you won’t be won over. Fanboys will be picking it apart and poring over the inevitable much longer director’s cut (a four hour version may be released to theaters depending on the box office of this one) for years, but I doubt many of them will think its Tarantino’s best film.

So anyway, it's pretty a pretty ballsy move for the Weinstein Co. to release this movie, maybe containing the most excessive use of the N-word in cinematic history, on Christmas Day. It's a move that proves that, these days, a Tarantino movie, however crude the content, is a tent-pole event.

More later...

THE AVENGERS Starts The Summer Movie Season Off Right

THE AVENGERS (Dir. Joss Whedon, 2012)

After years of baiting fans with cameos, visual nods, and Easter Eggs embedded in their movies, Marvel Studios puts them all together in this masterful smash-up/mash-up assemblage of their major comic book characters, which starts the summer movie season off right.

Joss Whedon's snappy screenplay and energetic direction really delivers the goods, with a cast and special effects crew that never stops trying to entertain, right up to the after-credits bonus material.

For those who haven't been paying attention, we've got returning champ Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), along with Captain America/Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth); both fresh from their summer hero hits last year, Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and The Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo; the only actor here who hasn't previously played their character).

Samuel L. Jackson as S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury, and Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow are also on hand to provide extra fire-power against the film’s villain Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who was also the antagonist in THOR (maybe my least favorite of the Marvel movies), as he’s Thor’s adoptive brother and rival.

Loki, with the help of something called a Tesseract and an alien army, is trying to take over the world (of course), but those pesky Avengers keep getting in the way.

You know the plot isn’t what folks are coming to see here, but this movie’s not just about breathtaking bombast, furious fight-scenes, and spectacular sequences stuffed with eye-popping CGI – although there’s lots of that.

What elevates it is that the film actually cares about how its characters interact and clash with one another. Evan’s Captain America is rubbed wrong by Downey Jr.’s snarky arrogance (Whedon gives Downey Jr. the sharpest funniest lines, as expected), and everyone is on edge about just what Ruffalo’s Hulk will do when his rage famously takes hold.

Ruffalo’s take on Banner is one of many strong elements on display in “The Avengers.” It’s a more nuanced and edgy performance than what Eric Bana and Ed Norton brought in their respective portrayals. Now I’m looking forward to seeing Ruffalo own his own Hulk movie.

Clark Gregg, as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson, finally gets a more substantial role after his glorified cameos in the previous Marvel movies, and he makes the most of it. A surprising yet fitting addition to the ever expanding universe is Cobie Smulders (Robin on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother) as another Avengers ally, Maria Hill. Smulders gets a considerable amount of screen-time, and like everybody else here, she doesn’t waste it.

The New York City battle finale outdoes the fun destruction of just about every other super hero movie ever (take that Superman, Spiderman, X-Men, etc.!), and it's hilarious to boot.

Whedon does a fantastic job juggling this vast array of characters while arranging mighty action set-pieces (particularly the sequence aboard the ginormous S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier).

So there you have it - the must-see super hero movie event of the summer. That is, until THE DARK KNIGHT RISES comes out.

More later...

1408 And A Cry For Quality Cusack

“But you wouldn’t be sleeping with a person. You’d be sleeping with a whole sad single-person culture. It would be like sleeping with Talia Shire in ROCKY if you weren’t Rocky.” * - Rob Gordon (John Cusack) HIGH FIDELITY (Dir. Stephen Frears, 2000) * A friend emailed me this quote not long ago and asked "what does this mean?" I honestly have to say I don't know. I avoided 1408 upon its original run in theaters earlier this year because I suspected that the explanation (or lack of) for the supernatural premise would really piss me off. However I ordered the new release DVD on up from Netflix because my curiosity got the best of me but also because I like John Cusack (see below) and knew he'd at least deliver. So here's my review: 1408 (Dir. Mikael Håfström, 2007) The premise (based on a short story by Stephen King) is simple - John Cusack gets trapped in a hotel room from Hell. He's tortured by apparitions of the many who were killed or killed themselves there and by images of his own deceased daughter (no, she didn't die in the room). The angle is that he's an extremely skeptical writer of anti-ghost books - guides to hotels that are believed to be haunted that he stays in to debunk. So naturally when he hears (by way of a cryptic postcard) about a hotel room in the Dolphin Hotel in New York City that nobody has lasted more than an hour in and that has been closed off to the public, he gets his publisher to cut through some legal red tape and book the room. He first has to listen to a series of lectures from hotel manager Samuel L. Jackson (whose role is essentially an extended cameo) about the history of grisly deaths interspersed with repeated attempts to talk Cusack out of staying in the room. "It's an evil fucking room" Jackson concludes in the grimmest most intense manner he can muster as Cusack cynically and drolly rolls his eyes. This is where the plot description ends and I just bitch about the movie in full.

As for lasting an hour - the first hour of 1408 is pretty good - sharp and genuinely creepy. The second half however is really ludicrous - literally throwing every horror movie cliché at Cusack as he is almost burned, frozen, stabbed by ghosts, drowned, chased by a corpse in a heating duct, and he almost falls to his death hanging from the ledge when he tries to escape to the next room's window which of course disappears.

These are technologically savvy ghosts - they outdo the AMITYVILLE HORROR's screwing with the bedside alarm clock ploy, though they do that too. Yes Siree - these ghosts can manipulate Cusack's lap-top's video messenger screen and broadcast their own satellite cable transmissions on the room's television. They sometimes even tap into surveillance camera and old family camcorder feeds somehow to better scare Cusack. They can also appear in black and white complete with old film scratches or in technicolor depending on when they died craftily enough.

But of course it's not the ghosts but the room itself as the title implies and Jackson said - it's evil and can take control of everything including time, space, bed, bathroom and beyond. How could that be? You can't have a Indian burial ground beneath a rented space in the sky so what gives? Then we have to filter in the estranged wife (Mary McCormack) and dead daughter (Jasmine Jessica Anthony) - who the room and the film use as heartstring pulling psyche-out set-up punches.

It's the kind of movie that boils down to "we've traced the call - it's coming from inside of your brain!" That said, this is an amusing time waster that has a better than the material performance by Cusack who carries pretty much the whole show. Like those movies depicting plane crashes that are banned by airlines, I think this would be a good one to censor from hotel-chain pay-per-view. I doubt I could sleep in a hotel room after watching it - just sayin'.

Postnote : Not that it affects my review but I only saw the unrated version of 1408 which is disc 2 of the Special Ed. DVD. I wasn't aware that there was an alternate ending that is completely different to the theatrical release's. I thought that the unrated version would be everything, you know? As readers of film babble must know I hate when there are alternate endings - cop-outs based on test screening panic for the most part. A Cry For Quality Cusack So how long since the last really good John Cusack movie? Uh, let's go back through the bad ones - MUST LOVE DOGS, which was a real dog, was 2005, before it there was RUNAWAY JURY which was beneath the bottom of the bail and IDENTITY (another failed supernatural thriller like 1408) were both 2003, and SERENDIPITY and AMERICAN SWEETHEARTS which both seriously sucked so the last really good John Cusack movie was HIGH FIDELITY (2000). Wow, 7 years! HIGH FIDELITY is one of my favorite movies (as the Nick Hornby novel it was based on is one of my favorite books) so because of Cusack's top notch work as heartbroken music snob/geek Rob Gordon (named Rob Fleming in the book) in that film as I read somebody say on The Onion The A.V. Club he gets a free pass. However it looks like the pass is going to expire soon unless he takes some action. It looks like there's possibilities ahead for the upcoming films MARTIAN CHILD (by Menno Meyjes who directed Cusack in MAX - which was decent but unmemorable) and the drama GRACE IS GONE (pictured below) so with hope the 7 year itch will be scratched. Now I don't want to write one of those "open letter to..." or any smarmy "here's some career tips Mr. Big Star", I mean how moronic would that be for me - a lowly blogger to even slightly think I know what really goes on with choosing scripts and signing on to projects but damnit I wish Cusack would do 2 things: 1. Work with Stephen Frears again - 2 of Cusack's best films (THE GRIFTERS and HIGH FIDELITY) were with Frears directing and it seems like a good time for them to hook up again. Also Cusack was great in Woody Allen's SHADOWS AND FOG and BULLETS OVER BROADWAY so another collaboration with him would be great too. How about this being a plea for Cusack to work with better directors in general? The last seven years smell of behind the camera hackery. 2. Host Saturday Night Live - That's right, Cusack has never hosted SNL despite the fact that his sister Joan Cusack used to be a cast member. In his friend Tim Robbin's excellent mock poli-doc BOB ROBERTS Cusack played an actor doing a SNL-type show called "Cutting Edge". Just credited as "Cutting Edge Host" Cusack had a great anti-corporation/anti-right wing folk-singing senate candidate Bob Roberts (Robbins) rant. It would be a great actor exercise for him to do a string of different characters all live on SNL and I bet it would refresh his comedic facilities. But like I said who am I to say such things - nobody that's who! As long as Cusack still makes movies with his sister - the very funny above-mentioned Joan Cusack (they've been in 5 movies together and 2 more coming up) and Jeremy Piven (6 films) I'll stop complaining. In fact I bet Joan would made 1408 quite a bit better if she would've appeared as the voice of the hotel phone operator and Piven as the bell hop - man, that would've added a more chilling effect to the proceedings. So in conclusion - I have to do right by HIGH FIDELITY's Rob Gordon and his obsession with top-5 lists and name: The Film Babble Blog Top Five John Cusack Movies 1. HIGH FIDELITY (2000) - No surprise there. 2. SAY ANYTHING (1989) - Excellent Cameron Crowe high school relationship movie. Best known for the boom box blaring Peter Gabriel held to the skies by Cusack's immortal Lloyd Dobbler character - no, I'm not going to post that picture. I'll go with the one with the Clash t-shirt on the left. 3. THE GRIFTERS (1990) - A con man (Cusack) and a few con women (Annette Benning, Angelica Houston) and a dark uncompromising comic tone that never lets up make this essential on my blog. 4. BULLETS OVER BROADWAY (1994) - One of Woody Allen's best screenplays with Cusack spot-on as a troubled neurotic playwright in 1920's New York who has to deal with mafiaso control of his project. A pleasure from start to finish. 5. THE SURE THING (1985) - Very underrated Rob Reiner helmed comedy originally billed as a college-kids-on-the-road-sex-farce but it has better intentions and results. It makes the Top 5 because it was the first full-length that cemented the Cusack persona - he's one of the only guys who can get away with a line like: "How would you like to have a sexual experience so intense it could conceivably change your political views?" Great Tim Robbins cameo to boot. Came close but didn't make the cut : BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (Dir. Spike Jonez, 1999) That's all for now - next time I'll try not to come anywhere near giving celebrities career advice. I'll leave you with this nice montage of Cusack in the rain which sort of says it all. More later...

Keepin' Cool With The AC Breeze & New Release DVDs

"Doing da ying and yang, da flip and flop, da hippy and hoppy (yodels) Yo da lay he hoo! I have today's forecast. (yells) HOT!" - MR.SEÑOR LOVE DADDY (Samuel L. Jackson) DO THE RIGHT THING (Dir. Spike Lee, 1989) He said it! It was been unbearably hot this week so the best thing to do is to get the air cranking, tear open a few Netflix envelopes, and devour some DVDs. Here's some I've seen lately and while for the most part they are a dire lot they did provide some diversion from the sweltering Summer sun. Let's start with : NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (Dir. Shawn Levy, 2006) From the trailers I saw for this last Christmas (sorry Holiday season) it looked to me like yet another Ben Stiller as punching bag enterprise but this time aimed at kids with lots of CGI. Well, that's pretty much what it is but it's better than I expected with more than few really funny moments and a great supporting cast. Abundant back and forths (some improvised) between Stiller as a hapless failed inventor turned security guard and Robin Williams dominates the lively proceedings. Williams plays a life sized Teddy Roosevelt in battle mode mannequin, who as I'm sure you know if you've even glanced in the direction of this movie, comes to life with everything else in the museum at night. Not so life size are the miniatures cowboy Jebediah (Owen Wilson - uncredited for some odd reason) and Roman warrior Octavius (Steve Coogan) who make good with their bit parts - sorry for that lame ass pun. Wait - lame ass puns dominate this movie so I'll leave that in. Anyway Ricky Gervais somehow pulls off some amusing walk-throughs without having a single genuinely funny line while oldtimers Mickey Rooney and Bill Cobbs pull no punches (literally) but the real shining player here? 3 words - Dick. Van. Dyke. Nice to see the man atone for years of bland TV and forgettable cameos by sinking his teeth into his role as Stiller's smooth retiring night guard mentor. Lots of critics have dumped on NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM (it has a 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and I agree with the consensus that the CGI doesn't impress like it used to and that the humor may be way too broad at times but I still think it's a decent family film. Even if that's all that it is. THE NUMBER 23 (Dir. Joel Schumacher, 2007) Sometimes I watch movies that I know are going to be horrible. It’s that I want to know just how and in how many ways they are horrible. I guess the genre here is psychological suspense though there’s nothing either psychological or suspenseful in this convoluted Jim Carrey vehicle. For the first 10 minutes or so Carrey is his usual glide through life wisecracking self until his wife (Virginia Madsen) gives him a book about the supposedly mystical number of the title. He of course becomes obsessed with 23 seeing it everywhere – in his birthday, address, social security #, etc. He cites examples (as does the opening credit sequence does to drive home the meaningless point) like “Ted Bundy was executed on the 23rd of January” * and even writes “9,11, 2001 - 9+11+2+1=23" in pen on his arm. Before long he makes the connection to not only the saxophone (the saxophone has 23 keys!!!) playing detective of the book to some murdered girl and others who have had similar deadly numerical obsessions helping the movie make its red herring quota. Schumacher’s films all have an overly glossy look – something he perfected in the era of high impact rock videos and magazine ads – and this is no exception. Nothing resembling real life here. This time he tried to disguise the stylized emptiness with the contrived “depth” of a cultish pseudo-intellectual theory. Consider it an extremely dumbed down Pi (which cinematographer Mattthew Latique worked on too!). How many ways is this movie horrible? I’m think-ing of a number… * Actually he wasn’t! Bundy was sent to the electric chair on January 24th, 1989. Ah-ha! DISTURBIA (D.J. Caruso, 2007) So I feel old and unhip because it took until his hosting of Saturday Night Light earlier this year for me to take note of Shia Lebeouf. I mean the kid is apparently really hot these days - magazine covers, TRANSFORMERS, and he's even going to be the son of Indiana Jones next Summer. Lebouf was called by Vanity Fair the next Tom Hanks (who was called the next Jimmy Stewart in the 80's) has here what was billed as REAR WINDOW for a new generation. Uh, okay. Well, underneath the teen angst veneer the premise of Hitchcock's classic is just a clothesline to hang cliche after cliche on. Under house arrest instead of being wheelchair bound Lebeouf out of boredom spies on his neighbors - mostly Sarah Roemer - the cliched perfect girl next door until his binoculars wander to the cliched suspicious activities of...oh you know the plot! It's not really so odd how it's not that we can guess everything that happens way before it happens - it's that it seems like the film makers knew we could guess them and still made no attempt to actually trigger true suspense. The house of the serial killer is one of those that only exists in the movies - so full of secret compartments, passageways, shrines, and a well lit sanitized freezer room - he must have gotten the Murder Maniac special at the local real estate office! I shouldn't be so hard on this movie though - it's just another PG-13 thriller throw-away for the weekend multiplex crowd. I'll also admit though that Lebeouf is talented - he rises above this dreck at every unsurprising turn. Now let's just see how he handles that bullwhip. SOME RANDOM BABBLE : Isn't it funny how Eddie Murphy who reportedly walked out of the Academy Awards last March because he didn't get the statue for DREAMGIRLS turned down the sequel to DADDY DAY CARE and actual Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. stepped in to play the same role in DADDY DAY CAMP? Isn't that funny? Isn't It?!!? Oh, nevermind. Don't ask me what's funny about UNDERDOG - because I got nothing. If they ever make one of those VH1 biopics about The Kids In The Hall they really ought get that guy who's supposed to represent Verizon (or is it AT&T? Cingular?) in those damn Alltel commercials to play Dave Foley. I mean the guy - Scott Halberstadt - would nail it I bet. The new celebrity-reality show The Two Coreys featuring the present day antics of former teen movie stars Corey Feldman and Corey Haim is airing now on A&E - The Arts & Entertainment Channel. This is definitely ironic because The Two Coreys is neither art nor entertainment. Discuss... If it seems like the Coen Brothers are overdue for a movie and it sure does to me - their all too brief Buscemi bit in PARIS, JE T'AIME was such a tease - well, soon (November) we've got - NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. It's got Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Kelly McDonald, and Josh Brolin. Despite the fact it has been a while since the Coens have done a film based on their original screenplay this seems promising. More later...