Spider-Man: Far From Home (5/5 Stars)

“EDITH, is this real?” asks Peter Parker in the denouement of the penultimate scene. Spider-Man has just seemingly vanquished an enemy that was made up of intricate and complex technological illusions, something not unlike what you would see in a Marvel movie. But unlike all those other Marvel movies with spectacular otherworldly dangers, this one was not really there? Or was it? Peter Parker can’t immediately tell. This is a line that could not have existed fifty years or maybe even fifteen years ago. It is very 2019. When the movies can do anything, when video and photography can be so intricately manipulated, how can you tell what is real anymore? We usually say, “I’ll believe it when I see it?” What do we do when we can’t rely on that.

The villainous plot that befalls Peter Parker (played by Tom Holland) on his school trip is way over his head. All he wanted to do with go on a school trip to Europe with his friends. He wanted to buy a gift for his secret crush MJ (played by Zendaya) and give it to her on the Eifel Tower. He really deserves such a trip too. Put aside that he is superhero doing superhero things around his friendly neighborhood of Queens. Peter Parker along with half of his high school class were victims of what is being called the Blip, the five years between Infinity War and Endgame where half the life in the neighborhood vanished and then reappeared. The weight of this happening is deftly lifted within the parody of a high-school news program wherein Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow are shown in montage to the tune of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”. A particularly interesting development is that the high school has essentially been held back five years and are now sharing classrooms with kids that used to be five years younger. One of the new kids in the class is a guy named Brad Davis (played by Remy Davis) who seems to have used up all his puberty overnight and is now a competitor in love for the affections of Parker’s girl MJ.

This ability to utilize otherworldy and extraordinary events in the service of minor jokes is the hallmark of two of my favorite writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers returning from Spider-Man: Homecoming. (They are also responsible for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and several of the best episodes of the TV show Community). What these two very much excel at is finding a heart of the story amidst special effects sequences and making sure that it isn’t being shunted aside or treated as Story B. Spider-Man: Far From Home has two goals here: Save the Planet and Tell MJ How I Feel. The second story is always as equally important as the first.

It is such a relief that Peter Parker does not have a crush on the head cheerleader at his high school. MJ looks like a normal person. She has a personality, albeit a little dark and sarcastic, but it is her own. It is a credit to Peter Parker that he would like her. And it is a credit to MJ that she would be willing to drop her sarcasm for a moment to become vulnerable enough to like Peter back. I have a running critique of high-school movies where I simply do not believe that the put-upon nerd male protagonist is good enough for the hottest girl in the school. This is not that at all. I found both Peter and MJ endearing as fuck and their entire storyline was really sweet.

Our villain of the week is Mr. Quentin Beck aka Mysterio. He is played by Jake Gyllenhaal, an actor who is one of the best at walking the line between affable and super creepy. Mr. Quentin Beck is from another dimension. He does not seem to be aware of the recent Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, but he could have explained the situation by referencing that movie. Mr. Beck says that a powerful natural force called Elementals are afoot and he is attempting to stop it here before it destroys more Earths. Peter Parker is party correct in thinking that he is not qualified enough for this particular mission. He tries to get out of it but the storyline keeps drawing him back in.

Meanwhile because of all the outside forces revolving around Spider-Man, the school trip gets routinely upset by extraordinary events. In this respect, the continuing Marvel saga shows its utility by bringing in many old characters that do not need to be reintroduced. Among them are agents of S.H.E.I.L.D Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) that had large roles in the Captain America movies. There is Happy Hogan (played by Jon Favreau) from the Iron Man franchise. And then there is Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), side-kick Ned Leeds (Jacob Batolon), and Mr. Harrington (Martin Starr). One of the more pleasurable aspects of this movie is watching Mr. Harrington and the newly introduced Mr. Dell (J.B. Smoove) get increasingly frazzled when more and more crazy shit happens on a trip they are ostensibly responsible for all the young lives on.

The one thing to talk about left is EDITH. I was not under the impression that STARK enterprises had this type of technology (basically armed space drones) and that the whole point of Captain America: Winter Soldier was that this type of capability was UnAmerican. Why does a corporation have it now? Why would you will its capabilities to a kid? This isn’t the responsible and democratic Tony Stark I got behind in Captain America: Civil War. Someone should do something about this whole EDITH thing. Maybe break the glasses.

Captain Marvel (3/5 Stars)

I guess it would be impossible to churn out great movies forever. Phase Three of the interminable Marvel continiuum of movies saw it hit peak Marvel with four great movies come out in a row: Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor Ragnarok, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War. (I liked Ant-Man and the Wasp too). Captain Marvel, merely a good movie, is a bit of a comedown. It is another prime example of the notion that the more powerful a superhero is, the more boring they become. Captain Marvel has something akin to Superman powers. At one point she is flying through space and shooting photon blasts from her knuckles. In a situation such as this, the other powers of the universe can only retreat, which they end up doing once they slowly realize they are outmatched. When a superhero's powers get so strong that they make all fights boring and predictable, there needs to be some human drama that will spice up the storyline and create suspense.

If you can recall, Marvel had the exact same problem with Thor. The first two Thor movies were orverwrought and boring and presently scrape the bottom of the barrel of Marvel's 20+ movies. Then Marvel realized that Chris Hemsworth was a talented comedian, and instead of taking this God of Thunder so seriously, completely reworked Thor: Ragnarok too take advantage Hemsworth ability to play the clown. Here Captain Marvel is played by Brie Larson, who is no doubt a talented dramatic actress (Oscar Winnning!), but I'm not sure she can play funny. If she could, the way this movie frames her and her character severely hampers any ability to do so. You see, Captain Marvel is a woman and Marvel really really wants you to know that they are sufficiently progressive for modern times. It's their first superhero to be played by a woman after (that is if we exclude Black Widow and Scarlett Witch or any of the female X-Men, which I think we are). This liberal guilt complex at times can be a bit too obvious. The use of the word "cockpit" comes to mind or the repeated advice that Captain Marvel needs to control her emotions.

There is a line when a movie makes choices that seems less to do with story and character than politics. One of my favorite examples occurs in a little movie from 1997 called Titanic. Rose, played by Kate Winslett, is taking a guided tour of the upper decks of the boat and she comes to this realization. Why, she says, I've counted all the life boats and it does not seem you have enough for everyone. Now, the movie needs to establish to the audience that there aren't enough lifeboats, but they have chosen to have Rose, a young woman, make this calculation off the top of her head. Not some employee, or some engineer, or some other guy who has been on the ship for longer than a couple of days. This woman brings it up without prompting. Not only that but she understands the importance of Picasso, and can drink a beer, and well, what can't she do? Meanwhile, in stark contrast, what hubris and arrogance of all the other men except, of course, the one who falls in love with her at first sight and would die for her within a week's time. (Titanic, I'm giving a pass too because at the end of the day it is not about real people. It is a utterly shameless 200% pro woman fantasy. The extent of its commitment to that fantasy and the expertise to which it is brought to pass is among its great pleasures. I do admit the movie is great.) But let's be honest. Rose wouldn't know how many fucking lifeboats the boat needed. That scene is preaching to the choir. Playing to the base as they say.

Historically, women are greatly oppressed. But again there is line when it comes to storytelling. Other great movies that feature women as action heroes don't seem to come close to it: think anything with Sigourney Weaver, Jodie Foster, or Noomi Rapace. Or this can be brought up with subtle humor to great effect: Wonder Woman did a very good job at that. The pitfall to going past that line is not a political one. It has to do with unintentionally creating a one-note character, someone whose purpose seems to be to only exist in opposition to something or somebody else. That is, an antagonist in the role of a protagonist. Captain Marvel would likely work better as an evil villain. Anyway, we shall see if Captain Marvel gets more interesting in later installments. Here she starts off cool, remains cool, recovers her memory and realizes she was always cool, and then becomes even cooler. But hey, she's a woman. Points, please!

Captain Marvel otherwise contains a leap forward in special effects. For the past twenty years, movies have been making stop-and-start progress on creating artificial humans from digital effects. Robert Zemeckis did a rather poor job of it Beowolf. David Fincher tried to bring Brad Pitt back to his most handsomeness in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He didn't quite make it and the scene is much helped by a dimly lit room. But now we have Samuel L. Jackson's performance in Captain Marvel. Samuel L. Jackson plays agent Nicholas Fury, who you have seen in many Marvel movies in a supporting role. But Captain Marvel takes place in the 1990s and Samuel L. Jackson necessarily needs to lose about twenty five years. This cannot be done with makeup. So Marvel has done it with digital effects. The job they do is so complete that it is hardly noticeable. It's incredible really. Sam Jackson does not look exactly like he did in the 1990s. Presumably Marvel wasn't trying to make a mirror image of him, but he looks like a person. There is no uncanny valley. I'm not sure where we can go with this, except I think someone at some point is going to start bringing back old movie stars and start inserting them into movies with Andy Serkis doing the acting. Or actresses known for their hotness are going to start remaining perpetually young. We shall see.

Goose is cool. I like Goose.

The Incredibles 2 (5/5 Stars)

 A benefit of animation is the ability to stop time. Bart Simpson has been the same age since 1989. Here, the time between original movie and sequel was a full fourteen years. However, thanks to the wonders of technology, The Incredibles 2 starts immediately after the first film ended. Now, you will know exactly what happened when the villain Underminer (looks like a mole) burrowed beneath the city with a big drill to rob several banks. The human actors certainly look older but all they lend here are their voices and those are the same. Actually, there was a casualty. The young boy who voiced Dash in the earlier movie had to be be replaced by a different young boy. Still everyone else is back. Craig T. Nelson voices Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible, Holly Hunter voices Helen Parr/Elastigirl, Samuel L. Jackson voices Lucius Best/Frozone, Sarah Vowell voices Violet Parr (the author Sarah Vowell did not turn the ingenious bit of casting that landed her this part, and her first role in a movie, fourteen years ago into a voice career, The Incredibles 2 is her second role), and the Director Brad Bird again voices Edna Mode that tribute to old Hollywood costume design.

The Incredibles 2 is above all an action film. The superheroes fight villains and do so at regular intervals. At the beginning of the movie, they fight the Underminer together. The collateral damage from this fight has superheroes banned again (the bank after all was insured, so if the Incredibles had done nothing, things would have turned out better). As the government program is terminated, a billionaire philanthropist steps into the void. This man is voiced by the incorrigible excitement of Bob Odenkirk, perfect. The billionaire believes that superheroes have an image problem. He proposes that they wear cameras on their clothes and present their best sides first. By that he means, only Elastigirl and not Mr. Incredible because she wrecks less things while saving them. Mr. Incredible comically fights to hold onto his dignity and Elastigirl goes on to save runaway trains and fight villains every twenty minutes or so in spectacular display.

Meanwhile, Mr. Incredible is relegated to taking care of his family. Never has such a task been presented in such a heroic light. Those who are old enough will remember when American education “changed math” much to the chagrin of old men trying to help their sons with their homework. And can you really help a teenage girl deal with anything? The most pressing problem however is the toddler Jack Jack who is budding with new random and frightening superpowers. The movie’s best moment has to be when Jack Jack fights a raccoon, who starts the fight with way too much confidence and is continually surprised by the toddler’s more and more dangerous capabilities. Jack Jack is taken at one point to Edna Mode who goes crazy with the creative possibilities of a super-suit for such a superbaby.

The Incredibles franchise is notable in its slightly conservative tone. The first movie took swipes at bureaucracy and personal injury attorneys. The Incredibles 2 continues on this thread. This can be seen first in the billionaire’s modern liberal idea to present superheroes in a more favorable light by not highlighting the white man (I say that this discrimination is from a conservative point of view because it presupposes that the movie’s world would find a woman to be more acceptable than the white man. We all tend to see ourselves as the victim). That poor white man, it really hurts to not be wanted. At another point, the villain of the story, the Screenslaver, presents a very compelling reason for why it wants superheroes to remain illegal. Screenslaver posits that when there are superheroes around, normal people become complacent about their place and situation. Why should they try to better themselves or fight back when they can just call on superheroes to save the day? Superheroes, this villain reasons, make people weak. This is essentially an argument against patriarchal, i.e. big, government. The movie is not completely about this point. It is very funny and action-packed, but it is notable that a kid’s movie would so articulately make this point (even if, you know, the villain is ultimately vanquished). Pixar is a company that contains a multitude of voices.

Pixar has unfortunately gotten so successful they feel compelled to make sequels for their best films, i.e. most of them. If they were a less successful company, this movie may have been made ten years ago. (Instead it had to first wait for sequels of Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Toy Story, and Cars (twice) to be made). The Incredibles 2 is notable in that it is better than the first one. It is as funny and action-packed (perhaps more so) but also has a better villain and a better point to it. After fourteen years, and a stupid amount of other super-hero movies produced in the meantime by other studios, this sequel had much more to say about the genre than it had before. Give Pixar another Oscar. I most likely won’t see a better animated movie this year.

p.s. Samuel L. Jackson currently has the record for most box office receipts for movies he has acted in, $5.589 billion dollars to be exact as of now. He just reswiped this record from Harrison Ford, $4.963 billion dollars. How did he do it? Well, apart from being a reliable work-a-holic, he is also a big team player. He added substantially to his record this year with supporting roles, first in Avengers: Infinity War and now as Frozone in Incredibles 2.

The Hateful Eight (3/5 Stars)

Given the huge deal Quentin Tarantino, the writer/director of The Hateful Eight, made about his once-in-a-lifetime roadshow, particular aspects are decidedly underwhelming. Take for instance the promise of the movie being shot in Panavision Super 70 mm filmstock. Tarantino gushed about how it was the largest widescreen format that ever existed and that it had not been in use since the 1950’s and 1960’s for such epics like “Ben Hur” and “Cleopatra.” Well, that is wonderful if the vast majority of The Hateful Eight’s three hour run time had not taken place within a single room. This movie is no epic. So I guess its cool that he used that obsolete film stock but he sure did not need to. Or take for instance the presence of additional footage in the movie. Given that the movie is almost entirely composed of people talking in rooms, I’m not sure this movie needed more of that. In fact it probably would have been better with less. It had a new Ennio Morricone score and that’s cool because Morricone made the best Western scores of the 1960s, but this score is not as good as those old scores. The program was pretty cool except that the movie was not a timeless masterpiece so I doubt it will be a piece of memorabilia in great demand.

“The Hateful Eight” for all its grandiose presentation is decidedly a small movie. A bounty hunter named John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is taking a prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to hang in the near town of Red Rock. His carriage picks up two more passengers, another bounty hunter named the Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and the supposed new sheriff of Red Rock, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). There is a blizzard that will intercept them on their journey so they decide to wait it out at Minnie’s Haberdashery. They do not find Minnie at the Haberdashery. Instead they find Senor Bob (Demian Bichir) looking after the place, Oswaldo Mobray the supposed hangman (Tim Roth), General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern) an ex-Confederate officer searching for his son, and Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) who is in town to visit his mother. John Ruth makes the splendid observation that one of these men is not who they say they are. Minnie’s Haberdashery is composed of a bar, a kitchen, a general store, several beds and a place to sit by the fire, but it is all one room. The blizzard sets in and everybody waits for shit to start happening.

It takes awhile. By my count it takes about an hour and a half, which in my humble opinion is too long. Most of that time is exposition, that is to say it is people talking about what other people have done in the past. Something along the lines of one character saying to another, “Don’t you know who this so-and-so is, they did some crazy shit during the war.” I wrote about this sort of thing earlier in my “Steve Jobs” review. Movies are a show not tell medium. Lots of scenes where people talk about what happened in the past are more appropriate in the play medium where it is necessitated by the lack of ability to go all over the place but rendered harmless by the immediacy of the action. “The Hateful Eight” would probably make a great play. Very little would have to be changed. As a movie it can be, from time to time, <ahem> boring. There I said it. Boring, especially during the first half. It also does not help that Tarantino, though admittedly funny and cool, is not as funny and cool as he thinks he is. Some of the look at me funny and cool lines fell flat because the movie had not yet become cool or funny enough for them.

In the meantime and through to the end there is plenty of use of the word nigger and a lot of punching the woman in the face. We can take these one at a time because Tarantino does interesting things with the first one and not so interesting things with the second.

It is fair to say that the cinematic relationship between Samuel L. Jackson and Quentin Tarantino is a special one that does something more than simply transcend the race line. For other white writer/directors it is simply enough to make a sympathetic black character that has a rounded personality and isn’t merely an appendage to the white people. Jackson and Tarantino do more than that. They create black characters in the midst of terrible racism that are also complicated to the point of being bad men themselves. It is tough to be a despicable black character when everybody else in the movie is calling nigger. In this movie, we are drawn preternaturally to Major Marquis Warren’s side because he is the ultimate underdog, the one black guy in Wyoming. We judge the goodness and badness of the other characters by how they treat him. If they have respect for him, like John Ruth, he is a good guy. If they do not, like everybody else, they are not good guys. The most interesting thing about this movie is that by the mid way point, the audience may start wondering whether Major Marquis Warren is somebody to cheer for at all. Samuel L. Jackson has I believe only been nominated for one Oscar (Pulp Fiction). I believed he should have won for Django Unchained. If he is nominated for this movie, it can be said it was deserved. He is the reason why the movie should be watched at all.

Now for the gratuitous violence done towards the woman in the story, Daisy Domergue. She is a course rude bitch with a mouth on her. In the past she has murdered people and she deserves to be hanged. For as much insight Tarantino has had about the history of race relations, he shows a general lack of knowledge about the history of women. I have not yet heard of a 19^th century (or before) story about a woman like Daisy Domergue. Nor am I likely too because no such woman or very few of them have ever existed. Tarantino has this false notion that feminism in movies consists of giving a woman a weapon (gun or sword or kung fu) and having them kick ass. It does not work that way. You see women are physically weaker than men. At some point it does not matter how good at kung fu they are. They will generally lose battles to guys who have 50 or 100 pounds on them. The astute feminist screenwriter will then give their female characters what historical women have always had, shrewdness and wiles. They will not simply make them another man. When Tarantino made “Django Unchained” he paid attention to the psychology of a slave. Jamie Foxx did not just start out badass and plucky. He had to be rehabilitated from a society that would inflict physical and psychological harm on him if he did anything out of line. When making a historical period piece about a woman it should be required that their respective psychology is taken into account because women were subject to societal pressures as well. Tarantino ignores this and his reason for doing so is to make it okay for this particular woman to be punched in the face a bunch. That is to say he has made this particular woman more of a rotten bitch than she historically has any sense in being and he did it in order to make it okay for terrible things to be done to her.

I remember there was a time when Tarantino’s movies were violent but not as violent as people thought they were. When I watched the DVD extras of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, a big deal was made by how the violence merely felt gratuitously violent because of superior moviemaking. Like in Reservoir Dogs you don’t actually see the ear being cut off, or in Pulp Fiction the samurai cut is below the screen. Contrast that with Tarantino’s last several films where the blood being spilt is generally more extreme than what it would be in real life. One could reasonably question whether if say someone blew off someone else’s head three or four feet away from Jennifer Jason Leigh would she really be splattered with that much blood and brains? I doubt it and I’m pretty sure it is in there less for realism and more because Tarantino wanted to see a woman’s face splattered with blood and brains. It sure makes one question about early Tarantino’s professions of not being as violent as people said he was. As soon as he got a decent budget to splatter blood all over the screen he went whole hog.

Django Unchained (5/5 Stars)

Adult Supervision is Required

Somewhere in Texas. 1958. A Craggly Ridge of Large Bare Rocks. And then a women’s chorus of tenor voices: DJANGO! and then the low baritone of some old crooner DJANGO! And then up on the screen in bold red print, the words DJANGO UNCHAINED. The camera pans down to find a row of slaves in chains shuffling through the wilderness led by two slave traders on horses. The crooner continues his bouyant country ballad, about this man named Django, his lost love, and striving on. And with that first thirty seconds, writer/director Quentin Tarantino announces that you are going to see something you have never seen before.

Well perhaps you have seen parts of it before in different places. Perhaps you have seen solemn dramas about slavery like Roots, or Amistad, or Beloved. Or perhaps you have seen a Spaghetti Western, maybe an unserious action flick starring a stoic man-with-no-name in the company of bad men, fast women, and violent humor.

But I doubt you have seen both, a movie that portrays slavery without being racist or insensitive and at the same time is a helluva lot of fun to watch. Slavery is this nation’s great shame, a national embarrassment of epic proportions. The movies as culture or cultural reflection have had a terrible time talking about it. Early masterpieces of cinema were explicitly racist. The first blockbuster, 1915’s Birth of a Nation, claimed that ex-slaves provoked by northern carpetbaggers bullied and disenfranchised southern whites until the Ku Klux Klan saved the day. Other great American movies that took place during slavery like 1939’s Gone With the Wind white-washed slavery omitting anything but the tamest versions of it. More recent movies about the antebellum South, being race-conscious, sometimes omit black people all together. Think Cold Mountain. When it is talked about, there is a tendency for some pundits to claim the discussion would actually cause racial violence. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing premiered to claims that it would start race riots in 1989. Then, pathetically, you have Fox News and its insistence that a black guy in a black panther cap standing outside a polling booth is somehow intimidating to white people, in 2012 for chrissakes! (By the way that news story eerily parallels a scene in Birth of a Nation). It is my hope that Django Unchained represents a sort of The Producers watershed moment in our culture that allows us to shed our century long cowardly approach to slavery in movies. 

Do you know what I mean by a The Producers moment? I don’t mean the recent movie or the broadway revival. I mean Mel Brook’s original 1967 movie about two Jewish play producers who purposely put on a sure-fire flop, Springtime for Hitler, in order to cheat little old lady investors. Think about that date: 1967. That’s twenty-two years after World War II and a genocide that murdered 6 million Jews. It must have taken a lot of chutzpah to make that movie, which purposely made light of WWII and portrayed Hitler as a kind of gay flower-loving hippy. But it was the correct thing to do both culturally and comedically because it took this huge evil and made it okay to laugh at. That’s important because one of the main tools of assholes in general and these assholes in particular was fear. Good people do not stand up before it is too late because of fear. (Btw I’m not counting Charlie Chaplin’s The Dictator because it was made before the Final Solution was fully known). But when you flood your culture with Hitler jokes the fear dissipates. We aren’t afraid of Nazis anymore. Hell, they make for great entertainment. They are Hollywood’s best villains and most frequent losers. They haven’t won in a movie since Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.

It is to Tarantino’s great credit that he has pulled a Mel Brooks’ and exploited a long dormant treasure trove of national psychosis and fear that is just screaming to be tamed and used for entertainment purposes. So what are we afraid of that this movie is making us confront and not just confront but also enjoy confronting. Well, counter-intuitively, it is most likely our fear of black people. America, unlike say Nazi Germany, is a winner of history (at least so far). Now it is much easier to make fun of a power structure like the Nazis when they are already defeated, but there has not been a race revolution in this country in which white people were deposed. White guys are actually still in charge around here (for the most part). And because we are still in charge, we tend to be rather defensive (or at least as silent as possible) about whom we inherited the power, even if some were downright evil, lest….well, what? Just what do you think is going to happen if we stop being defensive about our past?

What this movie can hopefully do is show just how absurd those fears are by taking them head on. Django, played by Jamie Foxx, is bought by a German immigrant/dentist/bounty hunter named Dr. King Schulz, played by Christoph Waltz. Dr. Schulz does not believe in slavery but needs Django because he is trailing some wanted fugitives named the Brittle Brothers. Dr. Schulz does not know what they look like but Django does because he was a field slave at the latest plantation the Brittle Brothers ran. Django tried to run away with his wife, Broomhilda, but was unsuccessful. Both were whipped and sold separately. Schulz makes a deal with Django. If Django helps him find the Brittle Brothers, Schulz will set Django free. After showing his worth as a fellow bounty hunter, Schulz has another proposition for Django. Continue on with him, as his partner for a year and Schulz will then help Django find and free his wife. This takes them to the Plantation of one Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo Dicaprio, who is a repulsive indulgent Francophile that does not speak French and is a connoisseur of Mandingo fighting. Mandingo fighting consists of making black slaves fight against each other to the death and punishing them with death if they refuse to do so, both of which we see in this movie. Things come to head at the Candieland plantation after unsuccessful negotiations of buying Broomhilda fall through. Django kills a lot of white slaveowners.

Tarantino has unsuccessfully mixed the right amount of dialogue and action in his movies before (Kill Bill too little substantive talk, Inglourious Basterd way too much talk) but he hits exactly the right notes here. Django Unchained is an almost three hour movie, feels like an hour and a half, could have gone longer and I would not have cared. The dialogue is deliciously revolting and actually reminded me of some great Shakespeare villains like Richard II or Iago. Rarely is evil so articulate. Take one scene with Calvin Candie: After he learns from his house slave Stephen, played by Samuel L. Jackson, that he is being tricked by Schulz and Django, he decides to turn the tables with a basic class in racist phrenology. The psychology of why he chooses to do this is pretty perverted. His black house slave has just educated him that Django, another black man, has tricked him. So Candie produces a skull of a former house slave named Ben, saws a portion of it off, and points out the subservient dimples. Basically he is using pseudoscience to explain why he is in charge even though it has just been objectively proven he is the stupidest person in the room. But the psychological twistedness of Candie pales in comparison to that of the house slave, Stephen, and this is where Django Unchained starts to enter into the realm of masterpiece. The character that Samuel L. Jackson plays is a literate educated wise old man who raised Candie and probably runs the plantation whenever Candie is gone. An obviously capable person, he instead spends all his time hobbling, shuffling, shucking, and jiving. And you won’t find any other person on the plantation willing to treat the other slaves worse than Stephen. He is so totally aware that his power derives solely from his ability to stroke egos, stamp out dissent, and pretend he is not smart enough to know what he’s doing. I believe the term is HNIC. There can only be one, Django be warned. When I think of the regular Samuel L Jackson character type I think of a strong, authoritative, wise person. I can’t think of another role that could be so against this type and at the same time be so right. If you wanted a great example of how slavery strips away all the nobility in a person, think of how you have seen Sam Jackson in any other movie and then watch him in this one. I can imagine him heading off stage and washing his mouth out with soap after every take. The ridiculous thing though is that even while you are watching the performance of subservient stupidity in Jackson’s performance you still get a sense of how subversively smart Stephen really is. To pull that off, I believe is top-notch acting and I think if anyone we’re nominated for an Oscar from this movie, it should be Sam Jackson.

Now going back: To be afraid of this movie, you would have to hold onto two absurd notions. One: you would have to believe that slavery was somehow justifiable. Perhaps if you just saw Gone with the Wind you wouldn’t understand the big deal. But here we have most of it: You have the absolute poverty of slaves (Django starts the movie shuffling through a wilderness with no shoes, shackles scraping up his ankles, no shirt or coat); you have the cruel and unusual violence inflicted upon slaves without due process (whippings, mandingo fighting, hotboxes, being torn apart by dogs, etc.), and you have the utterly disrespectful attitude of slave-owners that treats slaves as disposable property at worst and children at best. Are we not at a point in this country where all the above is universally rejected? Surely it is enjoyable to everyone, regardless of race, when the hero of the story (Django obviously) rescues his lost love and the villains (the slave-owners obviously) get their comeuppance.

Two: you would have to believe that black people today might resort to racial violence against white people. This is probably the bigger problem. The reason why it is offensive for Fox News to show that one black panther guy at the polling booth is that it infers black people cannot tell the difference between antebellum slave-owners and modern day white Americans, a lack of trust between fellow citizens that can be nothing but insulting. I believe you could show Django Unchained in most anywhere in America and audiences everywhere would have basically the same reactions. They would laugh at the same spots, they would cringe at the same spots, and they would applause at the same spots. Our attitudes toward this subject matter are the same and I’m glad this movie can come along to prove it.

I just want to mention one more thing and that is Tarantino’s cameo and the epilogue to this movie. Tarantino is no fool I’m sure. He knows that audiences will be able to recognize him when he gets on the screen. For this very reason Hitchcock put his cameo towards the front of his movies in his later career. He noticed that when everyone saw him they were distracted from the story. But Tarantino is incredibly noticeable in his cameo so I have to suspect he knows he is noticeable, in a say deux ex machina sort of way. The epilogue of Django Unchained is the most unbelievable part of the movie and Tarantino’s appearance and the way his character (An Australian?) enables the epilogue to happen is an admission that the movie’s end is less about practical realism and more about fantastical indulgence. As a critic, I have a pretty simple rule about this sort of thing. If I liked the movie, go ahead. If I didn’t like the movie, you are an egotistical indulgent sonofabitch who is insulting my intelligence. That at least is how I felt about the last line of Inglourious Basterds. I, however, loved this movie. So this ending is just fine with me. The movie earned it and I would not have it any other way.

I’m sure there will be many movies imitating Django Unchained pretty soon. I suggest you see it while it is still original. 

The Other Guys (4/5 Stars) August 12, 2010

The most recent collaboration between comedian Will Ferrell and writer/director Adam McKay (Talladega Nights, Anchorman, and Step Brothers) is a stereotypical action adventure movie about an odd couple of N.Y.P.D cops. One is a take charge tough guy played by Mark Wahlberg, and the other is a nerdy desk mammal played by Will Ferrell. They are known as the Other Guys as opposed to The Popular Guys who are played by Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Those Guys specialize in the types of car chases and action packed machismo you see in run of the mill superhero/cops movies. Wahlberg, relegated to being Ferrell’s partner because he accidentally shot Derek Jeter, bemoans his sorry existence and takes it out on his partner. He calls Ferrell a “fake cop,” kidnaps him at gunpoint, hijacks his Prius and they both head out into the world to fight crime like The Popular Guys. Can Will Ferrell man-up and stop being such a pussy? Watch and find out!

The most recent collaboration between comedian Will Ferrell and writer/director Adam McKay is a sly social commentary that isn’t as much a parody of regular cop movies as it is a veiled insult to the entire demographic the earlier paragraph (and this movie’s marketing campaign) would appeal to. Out on the beat fighting petty crime, Ferrel and Wahlberg stumble assbackward into something much bigger. The only problem is that they have no idea what it is. It involves a sleazy Wall Street type played by Steve Coogan (Hamlet 2) and a huge investment bank named Llendl Corporation. Llendl’s company motto is “Were into Everything.” Wahlberg persistently assumes that drugs are involved. But as the movie points out, he only does this because he’s an idiot. It is the Will Ferrell character that figures out that they are witnessing a $32 billion dollar theft from unwitting investors in order to make solvent the huge investment bank. (In contrast, that high speed chase involving the Popular Guys at the beginning of the movie achieved nothing but the arrest of a couple of Jamaican’s selling marijuana). The Will Ferrell character is routinely bullied by the other cops (Rob Riggle amongst them) and called a pussy, a queer, a bitch, and several other epithets. His Prius, which gets great mileage, is also routinely derided for its unmanliness. This is all done in Ferrell/McKay style. So the insults are clever and we are invited to laugh at Ferrell. But then the movie’s plot does something quite extraordinary. It gives Ferrell’s character a smoking hot wife played by Eva Mendes and has him almost single-handedly solve an enormous crime that has as much complexity as the scheme in “Chinatown.” So was it wrong to laugh at Ferrell? Am I the idiot for having done so? 

The most recent collaboration between comedian Will Ferrell and writer/director Adam McKay is an absurdist comedy where realism is abandoned at every whim in order to get laughs. This is most evident in the presence of several ridiculous characters. One is a mild-mannered police chief played by Michael Keaton who moonlights at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and inexplicably quotes song lyrics from TLC. Another is Dirty Mike and the boys, a gang of homeless men that like stealing Priuses and having orgies in the back of them (“Soup Kitchens” I believe they’re called). There are also a host of very funny comic situations like a whisper fight at a funeral, Ferrell’s back-story as an accidental pimp, and the deaths of the Popular Guys via mind-blowing stupidity. Finally there is plenty of funny dialogue, the best of which is an argument about whether a lion or a tuna would win in a fight. The big question though is whether you can still take a movie seriously once the writer/director casts himself as Dirty Mike. Does Adam McKay want us to think? Or is this all for shits and giggles?

Perhaps this movie’s biggest fault is that it is intent on being all three movies. This makes the movie feel like it is constantly interrupting itself. Near the end when one of the movies becomes a little more interesting than the others (for me it was the social commentary) it seemed like a distraction when it changed course again. The parts of this movie are all very good, but there are too many parts and makes the movie seem overlong at points. This is a small complaint though. I would rather a movie gave me too much than too little and there is quite a lot here. 

Given the movies that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay have collaborated on, one might get the impression that they specialize in portraying arrogant alpha males behaving badly, but that would be an oversimplification. Alpha People are entitled to be arrogant to a certain degree if they actually know what they’re doing and are better at it than most people. What Ferrell and McKay are particularly good at conveying is Overconfidence. They know inside and out the type of guy who acts like he’s Alpha without actually being better. This type of guy is oftentimes confused with the Alpha Male because, at first impression, they both display a stunning amount of confidence. But there is usually a way you can tell them apart. In my opinion the main giveaway is if the guy equates his ignorance and stupidity with being manly. For example, it is common overconfident man-knowledge that the manliest beer in the bar is always the worst tasting god-awful swill you can find. Now if you knew anything about beer you might confidently point to a better brand. But it certainly takes more confidence to adamantly proclaim that the worst is the best. You may even go so far as to say that anyone who likes his alcohol to taste good is a pussy or fag. By the way, just the act of calling a guy a pussy is also very bold. Pussy, as we all know signifies feminine traits. So to call a guy a pussy in a derogatory sense is like insulting every woman in the room. If the main goal of your night out drinking is to get laid it should follow that you wouldn’t go out of your way to insult women. BUT, wouldn’t it also signify the enormity of your self-confidence to do exactly that and then be as forward as possible. I mean only someone who is truly better than other people, an Alpha Male, could get away with that sort of thing. So the logic goes around like this: You aren’t better than anybody. But to give the impression that you are better, you do something incredibly stupid because only a truly better person could afford to get away with it. And people do fall for it. Take for example, the death of the two Popular Guys. If they had actually survived their idiocy (which action movie stars do all the time), would you think they were stupid or badass? Why are some women attracted to bad boys? I mean that’s just retarded.

This line of logic leads to the sort of hilarious idiocy that is on full display in Ferrell/McKay comedies and especially in “The Other Guys.” The NYPD is full of officers that take macho pride in cracking down on petty crime while their very livelihoods are being put into risk through complicated financial schemes they find to boring and faggy to understand. A $32 billion theft is huge, but nobody besides the Will Ferrell character cares about the case. The Other Guys are ordered to turn over all the evidence to SEC, only to find out that the SEC agent is also the lawyer of the Wall Street scumbag he is supposed to be investigating. I assume that the makers of this movie we’re angered by the Wall Street fiasco of the past years. They wanted to make a movie about it but, at the same time, wanted to stay true to their chops of action/comedy. So in effect, what we have here is a subterfuge movie like Blood Diamond or Quantum of Solace. The audience walking into the theater has been promised silly action and comedy. The movie delivers on this promise but has an ulterior purpose. In this case: veiled ridicule for society’s idealization of ignorance. Of course the funny thing about making fun of overconfident people is that they won’t ever admit they’ve been insulted. They take the insult and brag about it. You can trick them, insult them, and laugh at them all you want but you will never win the argument. Take that Wall Street. 

Oh and by the way, Ferrell and McKay are huge pussies by having the safe, competent accountant married to an incredibly hot doctor. I mean she actually likes him and there is even a comic riff about them having great sex which apparently they enjoy equally. What fags.

Iron Man 2 (4/5 Stars) May 29, 2010

Less funny. Better action. Just as good as the first.

I’m going to throw something out there that might be a little controversial to fanboys. Perhaps Iron Man 2 would have been better if there was no such thing as Iron Man. Imagine what this movie could have been as simply an intense rivalry between two egotistical, charming, nutty, arms manufacturing CEOs played by Robert Downey Jr. and Sam Rockwell. There would still be plenty of witty dialogue, arrogant machismo, gear-head porn, and explosions galore but less to distract from all of that like glitzy special effects sequences that involve battle suits whose functions and limits I don’t fully understand. I mentioned in my review for the first “Iron Man,” that I found Tony Stark more interesting outside of his suit than inside of it. That continues in this movie. I think the problem was that I was never sure how protective the Iron Man suit was. Would bullets actually penetrate it? How badly did it need to be hit before Stark became hurt? It seems that it could be thrown through walls and it wouldn’t affect Stark at all. I don’t know if bullets actually would hurt it. Plenty were thrown around but I don’t think a single bullet from any gun hit any target in this movie. After awhile the sound of machine guns sort of gets redundant. I don’t recall the last movie I saw when the bad guys weren’t shooting blanks. 

The movie was directed Jon Favreau and written by Justin Theroux. Both are mainly recognized as actors but do a competent job here. The inspiration in this movie has primarily to do with casting. If you want to hear me gush over Robert Downey Jr. see my previous review of “Iron Man.” I also particularly like Sam Rockwell as his business competitor, Justin Hammer. Together I suppose they could be called the Kings of Nuance. Both have this incredible ability to insert odd rhythms into their speech that can really liven up the conversation. I was very glad that the movie gave each of them plenty of lines. I can listen to these two all day long, it was just too bad that they didn’t have more than one conversation with each other. It could be said that normal people don’t talk like these two. But then again, megalomaniacal arms manufacturing CEOs aren’t normal people. One of my favorite moments in the movie is when Sam Rockwell opens his keynote speech at the Stark Expo by doing a nutty little dance up to the podium. I love that dude. 

The story has two main conflicts. One is that Tony Stark is dying. The core that is keeping him alive is also poisoning his blood. The Second is that a disgruntled Russian named Ivan Vanko (played by Mickey Rourke) believes Tony Stark’s father stole his father’s idea for the iron man suit. He is out for revenge and has a pretty cool suit for himself. There’s also a side story that involves an eye-patch wearing Samuel L. Jackson who seems to be recruiting Robert Downey Jr. for another sequel. I’m sure anyone who has read the comic books will know what that is about. I didn’t but it didn’t particularly bother me.

The laughs in Iron Man 2 do not come as early as they do in Iron Man, but after a half hour through the film they start to pick up. The makers do a good job of keeping up a screwball pace to the dialogue and the actors are eminently capable of throwing the lines back and forth. There is a particularly great scene where Tony Stark attempts to apologize to Pepper Pots for several arrogant indiscretions. Stark’s attempt reminded me of the Dude trying to explain the new shit that had come to light to the Big Lebowski. It really is perfectly delivered. 

For the reasons stated above, the best action scenes are those that don’t involve the Iron Man Suit. I particularly liked Ivan Vanko first battle with Tony Stark in which he chops his racecar in half on the Monaco speedway. More impressive though was Scarlett Johansson’s fight scene in which she beats the crap out of about ten much larger dudes. It was the first time I have seen a movie put in the effort to debunk the ‘Implausibly Tough Girl’ cliché. (For reference sake the Implausibly Tough Girl is any woman in an action movie who has the extraordinary ability to disable men twice her size simply by knowing kung fu. This hard to believe discrepancy occurs because we like our action women in a certain paradoxical way. We want them to match our standards of beauty i.e. be very thin, buxom, wear lots of makeup, etc. but also possess the ability to kick-ass. Of course someone who is very thin will also naturally be very weak. That’s why it’s implausible. Because it happens all the time makes it a cliché.) How “Iron Man 2” does this is something I advocate all the time. They show the action sequence in long enough shots so the audience can tell exactly how Scarlett does it. I’m still not sure the physics made complete sense but I did actually see it happen. In one scene she manages something related to a scissors kick to grasp Jon Favreau by the neck and throw him to the ground. I was impressed. I’m very much looking forward to what Scarlett will get to do in the next movie. As far as I remember the first movie didn’t have any hand-to-hand combat, something I will always find more entertaining than the consistently ineffective use of machine guns. For that reason I’d say the action in the second is slightly better than the first. In short, the movies are about the same caliber and are worth seeing. 

I should also mention a small part of Garry Shandling as a Senator who repeatedly fails to get Tony Stark to give over the Iron Man suit to the United States. He plays the type of hapless person you would think he would play and is consistently funny in doing so.