Hancock

What if Superman were an asshole? Not only an asshole, but a drunk as well? I’m sure that was part of the pitch for Hancock, a lackluster entry into the summer blockbuster season. This film, though not incompetent (it looks as bright and shiny as most other films that revolve around vehicles being tossed about like toys) fails to work as an exciting superhero thriller, as well as a meditation on the nature of immortality, which seems to be have impressed some critics.

Will Smith is the title character, a boozing malcontent who lives in a trailer and quite often sleeps on city benches, hungover and pissed off. He helps out the citizens of Los Angeles, but inevitably does so much damage (he drops an SUV full of machine gun-toting thugs on to the spire of the Capital Records building) that people wonder whether his efforts are worth it.

When Hancock ends up saving the life of a PR guy, Jason Bateman, he is thanked with a home-cooked meal. Bateman’s wife, Charlize Theron is naturally suspicious of the effect of the dipsomaniacal Hancock on her young son, but Bateman smells an opportunity. All Hancock needs is good publicity.

Yes, the first half of this film is all about the exciting world of public relations. I hope all of you can handle the rollercoaster ride! Bateman convinces Hancock to voluntary allow himself to be incarcerated, and then when crime goes up the city will turn to him to rescue them. Sounds like a pretty half-baked plan, but this being a dumb summer movie, it works like a charm.

Then the film takes a sharp turn, and becomes something else entirely. I won’t spoil it, but even with the humdrum nature of the first half, this turn is not welcome and really it’s downright silly. The film has no internal logic and has rules that seem to exist simply to accommodate the story twists. I suppose the climax of the film is supposed to be some big emotional pay-off, but all I could manage was a yawn.

There’s lots of blame to go around. Primarily it’s the script, which has all sorts of holes in logic and no particular point of view. The direction, by Peter Berg, is in the Michael Bay school of shit blowing up, and like Michael Bay, has no subtlety, originality or individuality. And as for Will Smith, well, a lot of people find him charming, but I am not one of them. An actor of incredibly limited range, he’s not particularly convincing as a cretin in the first half, or particularly likeable when he’s supposed to have changed. I just didn’t care anything about his character.

The end of the film suggests a sequel is possible, depending on the audience reaction. To which I say, to use a Smith catch-phrase, “Aw, hell no!”

Opening in Chicago, Weekend of 07/04

A slow week, with nothing I care much about, so despite some complaints, I’ll do alpha order again.

Diminished Capacity (trailer)
Director: Terry Kinney
Again with the Matthew Broderick. Why won’t this guy just stop already? This is the third low-budget film with him in it to open in the last couple months. So here’s my proposal to solve the problems with the indie glut: STOP PUTTING MATTHEW BRODERICK SHIT IN THEATRES!
MC/RT: 51/19

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (trailer)
Director: Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side)
Gibney’s other two feature docs were both meticulously researched, well assembled pieces of journalism. As such, I have a great deal of respect for his work. However, Hunter Thompson doesn’t seem like the ideal subject for a documentary; what’s there to offer that we don’t already know? I might go see this anyway, but the trailer seems to reinforce the perceptions of Thomspon that everyone already has.
MC/RT: 76/85

Hancock (trailer)
Director: Peter Berg (Very Bad Things, The Rundown, Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom)
I’ll probably see this, but it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm about it. Berg has emerged from the absolutely hateful Very Bad Things - one of my least favorite movies ever - to become a capable if underwhelming studio hand. I don’t expect this to suck as much as I just expect it to be … well, capable if underwhelming.
MC/RT: 49/36

Heartbeat Detector (trailer)
Director: Nicolas Klotz
From the IMDb: “A psychologist discovers troubling links between Nazism and modern-day big business.” Hmm, that actually sounds interesting. Starring Mathieu Amalric, from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
MC/RT: 68/76

The Mother of Tears (trailer)
Director: Dario Argento (Suspiria, Inferno, Trauma, The Card Player)
Latest from Dario Argento, whose work I am unfamiliar with and, I think, unlikely to really understand. I’ve never been big on the horror genre, and have little use for high levels of gore. I don’t mean to be dismissive if this is your thing; it’s just not really something that interests me a great deal.
MC/RT: 52/50

In Review: First Half of 2008

I was going to do a Top Ten for the year so far, but a funny thing happened when I tried to do this. While I was reviewing the eligible 2008 releases (43 so far), I couldn’t come up with even five movies that I felt deserving, much less ten. It has not been a very good year so far in terms of new releases. So instead, I want to touch on the highs and lows of the year so far, along with a mention of other titles that were noteworthy, if not necessarily deserving of Best Of status.

The best new release I’ve seen thus far is Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories. The film stars Michael Shannon as the oldest of three adult brothers whose father abandoned them years ago and began a new family, with four sons. The two sets of half-brothers grew up as bitter rivals, and emotions come to a head after the father dies. Shannon may be the most creepily intense actor in movies today; see William Friedkin’s Bug if you don’t believe me. Among the more interesting insights the film has to offer is that most of the characters seem to know full well that their actions are irrational and unproductive, but their hatred is self-sustaining and out of their control.

Incidentally, Shotgun Stories was released yesterday on DVD.

Another overlooked independent film is The Fall, directed by Tarsem. Already a film of legend before it opened, Tarsem spent years in production while filming all over the world, and relying on his own money for funding. The result is a spectacularly imaginitive film about a little girl who befriends a suicidal man in a hospital. He tells her stories about a mysterious masked bandit and his fight against an evil tyrant, and we see the stories come alive in her imagination.

If you’ve seen The Cell, also by Tarsem, you know he is an unparalleled visual artist. The Fall matches and perhaps exceeds the visuals in the earlier film, while thankfully stepping up the storytelling as well. It doesn’t have the depth of the somewhat similar Pan’s Labyrinth, but it’s a pleasure to watch and a good yarn in the best sense of the term.

The best major studio release so far has been, without question, Pixar’s WALL·E. Jackrabbit Slim wrote a review for this site, and my comments can be found in that thread. It’s not a perfect film, but Pixar’s consistent high level of creativity and quality - and in a genre that typically brings out the worst in studio instincts - can only qualify as miraculous at this point. 

Speaking of studios, a trend I’ve noticed this year is that the big summer releases are being drastically overrated. ‘Good’ is being turned into ‘great,’ and completely average films are being enthusiastically greeted. As examples, I offer up Jon Favreau’s Iron Man (review by Jackrabbit Slim), which earned a 79 Metacritic rating, and Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk (review by Jackrabbit Slim), which earned a 61 Metacritic rating. Both were serviceable entertainments, but little more than that, and the high volume of praise for both (near-unanimous in the case of Iron Man) puzzles me. I certainly allow that other people just feel differently than I do, and I also allow that both represent a big step up from the Roland Emmerich debacles of summers past. But I can’t help but believe that if these had been released several years ago, before terrible summer movies became a given, those ratings would be lower than they are now. I guess what I’m saying is that it feels like the world is grading on a curve.

On the other hand, maybe the world is just crazy, because the worst film I’ve seen this year is Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which scored a mind-numbing 65 on the Metacritic site. I reviewed the film for this site, and I think history is already on the way to vindicating me on this point, but the intial enthusiasm for this one reminded me of the initial response to The Phantom Menace. If anything, it’s even more unfounded in this case.

Another one I hated, but in a different way, was David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels. The film tracks two loosely intersecting stories, the first of a marriage on the rocks (featuring Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell), and the second of a high school romance (Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby). The storyline concerning the high schoolers didn’t bother me too much, but the Beckinsale-Rockwell storyline disgusted me with Green’s relentless insistence on stacking the deck against the Beckinsale character. In the course of the film, she has to deal with a cheap affair with a friend’s husband, the Rockwell character’s obvious mental illness, and the dramatically pointless death of her young daughter. That’s a lot to ask of an audience, and I felt that Green approaches all of this with a very heavy and manipulative hand. And it all leads to a Tragic Ending, which is one of the most cruel - to the characters and the audience - in recent memory.

Speaking of movies that are cruel to the audience, no year-in-review piece can be complete without a mention of the most polarizing film of the first six months, Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (my review here). The film caused a minor earthquake upon its release in March (at least critically, if not in terms of box office) due to its relentless violence and seeming nihilism. I found value in it, though, and if nothing else it helps to illustrate the moral callousness of a film like Snow Angels, by emphasizing the inherent manipulativeness of onscreen violence.

Finally, a few honorable mentions, as it were - I didn’t like them enough to warrant a formal Best Of list, but they’re good films to seek out on DVD if you missed them. In no particular order:

Redbelt, David Mamet (review by Jackrabbit Slim)
Reprise, Joachim Trier
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Nicholas Stoller (review by Jackrabbit Slim)
The Visitor, Thomas McCarthy (review by Jackrabbit Slim)
Summer Palace, Lou Ye
Chop Shop, Ramin Bahrani
The Bank Job, Roger Donaldson
Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant
In Bruges, Martin McDonagh (review by Jackrabbit Slim)

Real world musical

This is a few months old, but one of the funniest things that I’ve seen in a while: Improv Everywhere stages an impromptu musical at a Los Angeles area mall.

Marilyn, the Reader

Love the cover of the new issue of Poets and Writers, in which Marilyn Monroe is seen reading Ulysses (and she’s made it all the way to the end, too! “I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”)

It would be easy to make wisecracks about the world’s most famous “dumb blonde” reading one of the world’s most difficult books, but Monroe did strive to educate herself, especially around the time she was married to Arthur Miller. Can’t vouch that she actually did read Ulysses all the way through, though.

I’m not a full member of the Marilyn Monroe cult. I think she’s certainly one of the best examples of a “movie star,” and she is an icon that represents all sorts of things. But I’m troubled about how many young women I’ve come across (including a lot of nude models and the like) who idolize her. The woman came to a very sad end, I would think she should be a cautionary tale, not someone to look up to.

Get Smart (2008)

When movies are based on a well-known TV series, the two criteria they have to fill out are whether they satisfy fans of the series and satisfy those who’ve never seen the TV series and accept it on its own terms.

In the case of ‘Get Smart’, as a major fan of the original TV series (which has had enduring appeal over the years in Australia) I was able to judge it on both counts. The TV series was a satirical spoof of the plethora of the spy movies of its era; it’s underlying premise concerned the ‘good guys’ at CONTROL led by bumbling agent Maxwell Smart (played by Don Adams in the TV series, Steve Carell in the movie) and his faithful female sidekick Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon on TV, Anne Hathaway in the movie) attempting to stop the dastardly evil doings of KAOS. The film more or less recreates this basic plot structure, although in the detail there are significant differences.

On the positive side, GS is reasonably successful as a comedy. That’s in part to the script which while being no classic by any stretch, does have its moments of wit and at times generally carries the right light-hearted tone.

But its comic success is largely attributable to the central performance of Steve Carell; if he hadn’t worked the film would’ve been a disaster but he manages to salvage it with a dead-on performance. The descriptions I’ve read that he’s half-impersonating Adams and half-doing his own thing are pretty apt; he shows due reverence to the original character but does enough to make it his own and most importantly (like Adams) is able to create humour from very little by underplaying situations where most would overact. He’s a fine talent.

Also, one criticism of the film that I can’t really fathom is that Carell’s version of Maxwell Smart is more intelligent then Adams’ version. In an era where movie ‘heroes’ are so often obnoxious morons, I think it’s refreshing that the filmmakers didn’t go down the path of turning Max into a semi-Neanderthal.

The supporting cast is a mixed bag. Anne Hathaway and Dwayne Johnson are solid in their key supporting roles but Alan Arkin as the Chief doesn’t really hit the mark. David Koechner is as one-note as he’s been in every film I’ve seen him in and Terry Crews is prominently billed, but does absolutely nothing of note.

Whatever strengths the film has, I don’t think much credit can be taken by director Peter Segal. I’ve never been a fan of his work and only a few comic set pieces (a ‘dance off’ between Max and 99, Smart trying to eavesdrop on a conversation in a toilet, Smart trying to avoid laser beams) really hit the spot. But his great weaknesses are his uninteresting and incoherent handling of the action scenes and the misguided way he handles the plot. As fans of the TV series would know, the plots on the original would be full of absurd comedy and satirical elements but none of that is present here. Instead its treated in a far too serious and heavy-handed fashion (and isn’t that interesting to begin with); when the plot and action took over I lost interest.

And that misguided style filters down to the central villain, Siegfried. In the TV series he was played to the hilt by Bernie Kopell (who has a brief cameo here) as a comic buffoon. In this film, he’s played with boring earnestness by Terence Stamp (echoes of Malcolm McDowell’s endless array of ‘bad guy’ performances in recent years) and it falls completely flat.

Its this tone that prevents me from fully liking the film. I would’ve been able to forgive its patchy comedy if it had a likable, light and jaunty style like the series; instead it’s too often bombastic and excessive (as if it was justifying its budget) as is the case with so many modern-day mainstream Hollywood films. If they make a sequel (which it’s clearly set itself up for) then hopefully they use a better director.

Despite many opportunities being missed, this is marginally above average and better than I expected. And at least it’s better than ‘The Nude Bomb’.

Superman Reboots with ‘Wanted’ Writer, A-List director?

It appears that Bryan Singer’s short tenure as Superman director might be nearing its’ end.

Writer Mark Millar (Wanted, Matthew Vaughn’s upcoming Kick Ass) reports that he and an unnamed A-list director are pitching a Superman reboot to Warner Brothers:

Source
“Since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to reinvent Superman for the 21st century…I’ve been planning this my entire life. I’ve got my director and producer set up, and it’ll be 2011. This is how far ahead you have to think.”

Millar also discusses the news at his official site.  While he hopes that an announcement can be made by this Christmas, he also stresses that development is in it’s very early stages.  Regardless, it’s hard to imagine that Warner Brothers wouldn’t seriously look at the writer’s concept after Wanted’s opening weekend.

Obviously this isn’t terribly surprising.  Bryan Singer’s proposed sequel, which was originally scheduled for release in 2009, has seemingly stalled in the very early stages of development.  The last major news to break from the production was that Singer’s Superman Returns writers had been let go, with no replacements named to date.  Add in the fact that WB nearly greenlit a rival Superman-starring project this year (in the form of George Miller’s Justice League: Silly Subtitle I Can’t Remember) and it’s pretty clear that they’re exploring their options.

No word on who the director is at this point, although some believe it’s Wolfgang Peterson.  Peterson matches all the criteria laid out by Millar and had previously been developing a Batman vs. Superman feature earlier in the decade.

Also of note: Millar confirms that Superman Returns lost over 200 million dollars for the studio.

The Random Thread of July

Because the last one got very long.

AGEBOC 1 July 4-6

Predict the #1 film for the weekend of July 4-6 2008.

Remember, this means discounting the box-office grosses of Wednesday and Thursday.

Deadline is Tuesday 1th of July, at 6 pm (blog time).

For rules and updates on how the competition has fared so far, go to the main AGEBOC1-thread.

Current standings

filmman - 17p
Brian - 15p
James - 14p
Jeanine - 6p
Nick - 4p
Joe Webb - 4p
Jackrabbit Slim - 0p

Alex Ross’ Obama Campaign Shirt

Renowned comic book artist Alex Ross has designed a top-notch Obama for America t-shirt:

It’s currently available for purchase at Graphitti Design’s website.

Second greatest news of 08?

Eddie Murphy to NBC/Universal’s Extra:

I have close to fifty movies and it’s like, why am I in the movies?” he said, adding, “I’ve done that part now. I’ll go back to the stage and do standup.

Previously: Greatest news of 2008?

Oldman reveals next Batman villain?

Movieweb has an excerpt from an interview with Christopher Nolan and Gary Oldman on a panel for the upcoming The Dark Knight. Oldman was asked if he thought, considering Ledger’s death, whether the Joker might return. His response revealed not only his opinion on the matter, but also the potential identity of the next big Batman villain in the (inevitable) third film.

WALL-E

Well, Pixar has done it again. The animation studio has, in this person’s view, had an amazing streak of quality films that appeal to both children and adults. I thought only one was a clunker, and that was Cars, and it hindsight it probably suffers in comparison to classics like The Incredibles and Toy Story 2 and is still better than most animated films. Now Pixar and director Andrew Stanton have given us a science-fiction love story that is also a cautionary tale about the environment and corporations run amok.

It is the year 2775. Earth is so choked with garbage that the human race has abandoned the planet. All that’s left are robots who compact the refuse into cubes and stack it. These are labeled WALL-E, or Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth class. We only meet one of them, so I’m not sure if he is the only one, but he’s a lonely little mechanical fellow. His only friend is a cockroach (if you thought if was tough to make rats cuddly in Ratatouille, be amazed as you warm to this six-legged vermin). WALL-E has a personality, though, and likes to collect things that he finds among the junk. He has a de facto museum of humanity in his domicile, where he likes to watch a video of Hello, Dolly. In a way he’s the cinematic heir to the silent slapstick kings like Chaplin and Keaton, as he frequently is at physical odds with his surroundings.

Then one day he gets a visitor. Or rather, Earth does. It’s a sleek, ovoid-shaped robot with a feminine voice. After determining WALL-E is harmless, she doesn’t blast him to bits and eventually they communicate. She’s called Eve, and her directive is classified. WALL-E shows her his place and the lovestruck robot woos her, but once she finds he has a scraggly plant growing in a boot full of dirt, she zooms back to her point of origin.

Turns out she’s a probe from the “cruise liner” where mankind has been living for seven-hundred years. The suspiciously Wal-Mart like corporation that has taken over the world have taken on people in what was supposed to a five-year trip until the Earth was cleaned up, but things got a little behind schedule. Humans are now coddled so much they are grossly obese and don’t even walk, instead gliding around in hoverchairs and looking only at computer screens in front of their face. How procreation and elimination are handled are left to the imagination.

So it turns out that the plant is a very important thing, and the rest of the movie is spent with WALL-E and Eve trying to keep it safe. This is all suspenseful, funny and touching. Though the two robots have a very limited vocabulary (mostly they just say each other’s names) the relationship feels real. Legendary sound man Ben Burtt supplies the voice of WALL-E.

Of course there are all sorts of subtexts here. One is the environmental message, and it’s a bit daring for a Walt Disney picture to start off a kid’s animated film with a bleak vision of the future. Then there’s the slap at Wal-Mart, which is clearly the model for Buy ‘n’ Large, the superstore that has taken over the world (Fred Willard plays their CEO, and he’s not animated). Finally, there is the depiction of the overfed and infantilized humans. Some have seen this as an insult of middle-America of some sort, but this is op-ed bloviating. It only stands to reason that a civilization waited on hand and foot and discouraged from exercising would become this way, and it would be an all-around bad thing. Is that a shocking point of view?

It’s a given that the animation is brilliant. I was especially captivated by the details in WALL-E’s lair of the trinkets and gewgaws he’s collected, from a plastic spork to a Rubik’s Cube. As those of us who appreciate good cinema sit around and grouse about how movies are going to shit, driven by studios who just want to cater to the tastes of teenage boys, we can take comfort that in the arena of animation, Pixar has been churning out one classic after another, rivaling (and dare I say surpassing) the golden age of Disney.

Daniel Craig as Ian Fleming’s James Bond in the Teaser Trailer for Marc Forster’s Quantum of Solace

Opening in Chicago, 06/27

Some reperatory news this week, the Facets Cinémathèque is running a series called Miloš Forman: The Formative Years. They’re running Competition, Black Peter, Loves of a Blonde, and The Fireman’s Ball. Unfortunately, I probably won’t get to the first two, and I’ve seen The Fireman’s Ball, but I’m really looking forward to Loves of a Blonde.

Also up this week is Otto Preminger’s Laura, which I haven’t seen, and one other special week-long run that’s listed below.

Alphabetically:

Brick Lane (trailer)
Director: Sarah Gavron
A young Bangladeshi woman emigrates to London for an arranged marriage. As is usually the case with these things, the trailer plays up the melodrama, making it look like a feature-length soap opera.
MC/RT: 60/62

Finding Amanda (trailer)
Director: Peter Tolan
Uh-oh, another Matthew Broderick sighting. Playing (according to the IMDb) “a television producer with a penchant for drinking and gambling … sent to Las Vegas.” There’s no way that can be good.
MC/RT: 56/37

Monsieur Verdoux
Director: Charles Chaplin (The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator)
Chaplin’s 1947 thriller has gotten a new release. He stars as a man who marries rich women only to murder them, and originally was slated to be directed by Orson Welles before Chaplin had second thoughts. I’ve never completely warmed up to Chaplin’s Little Tramp, but I also haven’t seen any of his non-Tramp films, so I’m looking forward to this with very keen interest.
MC/RT: not listed/96

My Winnipeg (trailer)
Director: Guy Maddin (Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, Cowards Bend the Knee or The Blue Hands, The Saddest Music in the World, Brand upon the Brain!)
I’ve not seen a Guy Maddin film before, though I don’t know why I missed The Saddest Music in the World; I remember seeing the trailer several times so it must have played in Dallas. Anyway, this is his recreation of his childhood in Winnipeg, hiring actors to play his family. You know what, just watch the trailer, no point in me trying to say what it’s about. Obviously a must-see.
MC/RT: 85/95

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (trailer)
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
The ads say it’s France’s answer to James Bond, although it’s in spoof form. It actually looks moderately amusing, but in a busy week like this one it will be hard to find time to see it.
MC/RT: 61/74

WALL-E (trailer)
Director: Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo)
Hooray! A Pixar movie. I’ve been trying to get a picture of the L trains that are decked out in Wall-E ads, because I think it’s cool, but have been unsuccessful thus far. If I happen to get one, I’ll share.
MC/RT: 91/98

Wanted (trailer)
Director: Timur Bekmambetov (Day Watch, Night Watch)
Oh man, someone gave the director of Night Watch a Hollywood film and Angelina Jolie. And judging by the trailer, he’s proceeded to make an obvious Matrix ripoff while using Angelina Jolie in the least imaginative way imaginable. Not sure I can take it.
MC/RT: 64/74