Captain America: Civil War (4/5 Stars)

At least once a year I feel the need to point out the moral ambituity of large-scale action sequences in modern blockbusters, specifically the untold and unfelt thousands of deaths that necessarily must occur when entire cities are reduced to rubble. I had been crying in the wilderness to nobody in parituclar about this for so long that I expected that I would continue to do it indefinitely. Imagine my pleasant surprise then when Marvel’s new movie, “Captain America: Civil War” not only admits the reality of human collateral damage but makes it the focal conflict for the entire story.

It starts with a covert operation in an African country by Captain America, Black Widow, Hawk, and Scarlett Witch (new to me but apparently introduced before). A bad guy is trying to steal a biological weapon. The fight starts in a parking lot moves to an office building and finally ends in a crowded marketplace. The bad guy has a suicide bomb in which he means to kill everybody. Scarlett Witch, whose mutant power is to telekinesis, moves the bomb explosion from the marketplace to the air but miscalculates and ends up killing about fifteen people in an office building. The Avengers given that they are conducting vigilante military operations are held suspect for this outcome. A proposal is passed to give the United Nations oversight over the Avengers.

Iron Man, aka Tony Stark, feels guilty enough for this occurrence (The fifteen dead were charity workers although any fifteen dead people would have been good enough for me) to support the resolution. Captain America, coming out against democracy, believes that the resolution would stop him from taking action for or against whatever he deems himself to be important. It may be obvious whose side I am taking in this conflict. I’m with Iron Man all the way. Captain America apparently thinks he knows better than entire democratic societies. That is the sort of behavior that gives Freedom a bad name.

The amount of characters and superheroes already introduced in this umpteenth of Marvel movies makes listing all of them and the actors playing them time prohibitive, but they line up in equal numbers on each side. Thankfully Thor and The Hulk are somewhere else, as their presence would seriously tip the scale against the more destructible members of the Avengers. The action sequences are better and more entertaining than previous Marvel movies. This is because instead of relying on the spectactles getting bigger and more explosive, the superheroes fight themselves (and thus aren’t nameless pushovers) and thus humor and creativity have to be employed to make sure nobody gets embarrassed. The abandoned airport fight is especially good. Also, as I said before, no massive human collateral occurs. The result is a very enjoyable movie and my favorite Marvel movie so far.

Joining the Marvel universe for the first time is SpiderMan (the other two Sony franchises have not happened in this particular franchise) and Black Panther. Now this is a good opportunity for a compare and contrast between what is considered to be one of the most beloved characters of Marvel and what is sure to be the most boring.

Spiderman, aka Peter Parker, is a dorky teenager who lives with his Aunt May in Queens, New York. Black Panther is the handsome well-mannered prince of the aforementioned African nation. When Stan Lee created Spiderman, his stated intention was to give the character all the regular flaws a teenager generally has like immaturity, acne, and a hopeless crush on a girl. Such honesty and relatability became endearing pushing Spiderman to an upper echelons of popular superheroes. Black Panther, in contrast, seems to be a corporate marketing committee’s response to an outcry for political correctness. He stands in like Two-fer in “30 Rock” as proof that the corporation believes black people can be noble, properly educated, and not sidekicks. It is perhaps a good thing that the effort was made but the fact that they went about it in a way that crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s goes a long way in making the character generally unrelatable and almost as important, boring. He has no flaws and by the end of the movie his one conflict is resolved. I can’t imagine what will happen in the next movie that will allow the character to learn and grow in complexity. Perhaps he will join Thor battling interstellar ice monsters. Peter Parker as we all know has a long journey ahead of him since not incidentally he starts from a far humbler beginning.

(I doubt anyone else has noted this but the term ‘black panther’ refers to the militant wing of an oppressed poor minority group. Is it not culturally insensitive for a wealthy member of a ruling majority class to appropriate the moniker? Or does this not count because they are both black.)

But enough about this. I really liked the movie and would recommend it to anyone interested in seeing a blockbuster. The humor, the action, and most importantly the maturity set it apart from most others. Finally I have added the original Captain America movie to my DVD queue. For the first time I have wanted to see it and fill in that particular gap in my Marvel movie knowledge.

Everybody Wants Some!! (3/5 Stars)

In 1995, Director Richard Linklater came out with a movie called “Before Sunrise.” In this movie, a guy (played by Ethan Hawke) traveling through Europe asks a woman (Julie Delpy) who is traveling to Paris to get off the train with him in Vienna. His plane leaves the next morning and he does not have money for a room. Would she be interested in just roaming the city with him walking and talking for a night? She thinks about it and then gets off the train and they spend the night walking and talking.

Bullshit, right? Like on three levels. First level, what woman would get off a train with a complete stranger in a city where she knows nobody? That’s potentially dangerous and most women wouldn’t do it. Second level, what guy would propose this sincerely? Wouldn’t a normal guy assume that a normal woman would be creeped out by the proposal and consider it impolite to ask. Or would he not assume that the prospect of walking and talking (not even going to a bar or dinner because he has no money) would not be appetizing to a normal woman. Third reason, assuming they got off the train and spent the night together, who is actually interesting enough to carry on a decent conversation for at least ten hours straight. Who are these people?

Well, at least one of them was Richard Linklater. The movie is based off an experience he had during a trip from New York to Austin. He spent one entirely platonic night in Philadelphia with a woman just walking and talking before he left at sunrise. There are a lot of better directors working today than Richard Linklater but I seriously doubt any of them are as cool a person as he seems to be and if I could choose to strike up a conversation with any one of my favorite directors at a party I figure the best one ought to be Linklater. I can’t imagine him running out of interesting things to say.

“Everybody Wants Some!!” is another one of his movies like “Boyhood” and “Before Sunrise” that would be preposterous in its main characters “coolness” if it weren’t admittedly autobiographical. That is, if the main character here “Jake,” was supposed to be some normal guy, I wouldn’t believe it, but if Linklater says it is based on him, well, he did make “Waking Life,” so I guess it’s possible for a college baseball player to be this cool.

Jake (played by Blake Jenner) has just showed up to his college house. He’s not in the dorms as a Freshman because he has a scholarship to pitch for the very popular baseball team and with that scholarship comes the free housing off-campus (very cool). He is good looking (also cool) like every other guy in the all star baseball house (hot friends, add that to the cool) and at the baseball house party that night (parties are cool), he gets laid almost immediately (I told you he was cool).  

But this movie isn’t entirely about that. If it were, than Jake would be in danger of being a douchebag. But he’s not. He’s Richard Linklater. So in this baseball house are a lot of distinct personalities that are fun to hang out with and get to know. Jake, it turns out, is a sincere listener who essentially gets along with everyone and everyone gets along with him. The other pitcher is a wise fellow (curiously beyond his years really) who is great at casually philosophizing and smoking pot. The other guys are competitive but it would be weird if they weren’t, after all, this is an all-star sports team. And like most jocks I’ve known, they care quite a bit about winning but are as forgiving of slights made in competition. Case in point: there is another pitcher who is crazy unlikable and everyone teases him but it is unmistakable that they do not ostracize him from the team. (Actually in my experience getting along with jocks is easier than getting along with any other social group. Just show up, give 100%, and don’t complain. That’s really all there is to it.)

Another guy Jake spends a lot of time listening to is Finnegan (played by Glen Powell). His philosophy to life is illuminating. At the baseball house party the other players implore Jake to listen in on how Finnegan explains his playing style to a couple ladies. Now how a baseball player explains his playing style is code to explaining how he has sex. (It is assumed that the girls know this. I mean are they really at the baseball players house party to talk sports?) Anyway Finnegan explains that he doesn’t have the best bat, not that much of a heavy hitter, but he is a true team player, is smart on the field, and ready to help his mates out in a pinch. Classic curveball. Nice touch.  

Finnegan and Jake go to several parties over the weekend. The first is at a disco. The second is at a Country-Western bar. Then they help throw the baseball house party. Then they go to a punk rave. And finally Jake gets invited to a theater student’s party by leaving flowers and a poem on her door. He brings Finnegan and the other baseball players as well. Finnegan dresses up as a person who would fit in at all of these and instructs Jake to do as well. Jake asks at the punk rave, “aren’t we posers?” “No,” Finnegan explains, “it doesn’t count if you are doing it to hit on girls.” An eloquent philosophy and the way he practices it discounts the creepiness that other guys would not get away with. That is to say there might be a difference between changing your appearance and personality to trick a woman and take advantage of her and changing your appearance and personality because you are hoping to please a woman who would like you that way. Or at least the movie would like to think there is a difference. Or maybe this loophole only applies to Linklater who is much cooler than the rest of us.

The difference seems to be sincerity and given the types of movies Linklater has made for the last quarter century it should be fair to say that he treats people sincerely (sometimes to a fault, see “Slacker”). Perhaps we should at least take heart that at least once that attitude helped a guy get laid routinely. That is to say this nice guy never finished last. He wasn’t racing of course, that’s the whole point. But if he was racing, he wouldn’t have finished last. Not that he cared or we should either, but you know what I’m trying to say.

Knight of Cups (2/5 Stars)

I don’t like movies that require reading to understand it. I suspect “Knight of Cups” is that type of movie. Specifically it may have been a good idea to read “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It is quoted directly several times. Is this an adaptation of that book? I don’t know, maybe?

“Knight of Cups” was directed by Terrance Malick and ostensibly written by him as well. I say ‘ostensibly’ because the actors seem to be walking in and out of scenes improvising without a script. Malick consistently uses a narrative device somewhat unique to him throughout the film. You have seen him do it before in a movie like “The Thin Red Line.” He employs poetic voiceover over the eye of a wandering camera. It provides a celestial quality to a scene especially those that are hectic and that have the original audio cut from it. This worked so well in “The Thin Red Line,” because the underlying action was very easy to understand. In was a WWII movie that involved an army trying to take a Pacific Island. The voiceover commented on the scene but never needed to explain what was happening. The story was very clear in that respect. “Knight of Cups,” however (and Malick’s last two films as well “The Tree of Life” and “To the Wonder”) employs this device without the simple plotline and the effect is quite different. It feels like it is being used to cover up bad directing in the editing room. There are plenty of “scenes” in which actors walk around improvising dramatic situations in desperate need of some direction. Since everything is cut up and entwined with vines of excess cinematography and voiceover it is hard to tell what they scenes are about, but that may just be hiding the fact that they might not actually be about anything. This movie perhaps means something to Malick but he sure didn’t feel the need to explain it to me.

It’s a beautiful movie of course. The cinematographer is Emmanuel Lubezki, winner of the Academy Award three years in a row. His target this time is Los Angeles and the areas that surround it. The camera follows a writer, played by Christian Bale. He doesn’t look or act successful but apparently he very much is. He is invited and attends many gorgeous parties in lots of mansions. He spends time with an assembly line of models. Among them are Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Frieda Pinto, Imogen Potts, Teresa Palmer, and Isabel Lucas. And I haven’t mentioned yet the naked nameless ones. He has a manager that says something about making him richer than he already is.

Christian Bale does not particulary care about any of this and kind of walks about in a daze. That may indeed be Malick’s point: that this Hollywood lifestyle of riches and easy sex with beautiful women is ultimately unfulfilling. However that brings to mind the biggest question every critic who has seen the movie has had to ask: That is, if Terrance Malick does not like all these beautiful things (architecture and women and everything between), why did he expend so much effort to catalog it in this movie. He very much has an eye for it. One telling example is the Las Vegas roadtrip scenes. Terrance Malick may feel that Las Vegas architecture is fake, unfulfilling, and whatever but he goes about that sentiment in a very confusing way. He makes it look flat out gorgeous and then has Christian Bale walk around it totally unimpressed. This happens several times in the same way until the movie ends without the characters or the world changing in any significant way. 

The fact that Christian Bale is rich and respected, sleeps with many beautiful women, and hangs out at all these great parties will probably inspire envy in the normal viewer not the knowing spiritual yearning of a world weary philospher that perhaps Malick is trying to get at. This is nobody’s fault but Malick’s. It is fair to say the movie is “out of touch.”

I like his earlier work better. It is amazing how many great artists this can apply to. It is cliché but that does not mean it should not be examined. Perhaps it should be examined because it is so cliché, i.e. so common. After all, some artists (say Martin Scorsese or Tom Waits) never stop being great no matter how old they are. So what is Terrance Malick’s problem?

I suspect it follows from being known as a genius and then subsequently surrounding oneself by ‘yes men.’ It helps to have that asshole producer that will direct one to take the audience’s expectations and comprehension abilities into consideration when making your art. When one is making one’s name in the world, one cannot but help having this influence. No studio in their right mind would give a young unproven director money without an experienced producer looking over the shoulder. But sometimes a director gains a reputation for being great and there comes this notion that they can do no wrong and at some point all of their bad tendencies and indulgences flow through. Who was there to tell Quentin Tarantino that he could have an hour and a half of just talking before any action occurred in “The Hateful Eight.” Why doesn’t anybody explain to Michael Bay that action movies should not have running times of over two and a half hours? What the fuck is David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”? What is it???!?

“Knight of Cups” contains every beautiful technique that makes a Terrance Malick movie the unique special thing that a Terrance Malick movie is except the movie part. It’s an important part that movie part. I hope he remembers it next time.