Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (3/5 Stars)

When telling a story, there are details that need to be explained and others that don’t, and yet others that seem like they should be explained, but actually, not really. And some things it is best to not provide an explanation for at all.

Perhaps the best non-explanation of a thing in the history of moviedom is Back to the Future’s treatment of time travel. Doc Brown points to what looks like (and is) three neon tubes and explains “this is what makes time travel possible, the flux capacitor”....aaand that’s it for the movie’s explanation of time travel. But my point is that this is the best way to explain time travel because time travel is impossible, so there is no point in spending an inordinate amount of time trying to justify it. We’re trying to watch a movie here. In this movie it’s possible because of the flux capacitor and we’re moving on.

The Mad Max series of movies (until this last one) are very good examples of movies not explaining things that are best not explained. We are told that the plot takes place in some future dystopian wasteland where nothing grows and the most prized resource in the world is gasoline. Gasoline is important because seemingly every technology but the internal combustion engine has vanished off the face of the earth giving armed stockcar and motorcycle gangs military superiority. And before you can really question how likely that scenario is, here are 90 minutes of awesome car chases.

A specific example of something not being explained in the last movie, Mad Max: Fury Road, was the missing arm of the female protagonist Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). She shows up as a highly capable warrior who can drive and shoot and fight and she doesn’t have her left arm. No explanation is given or attempted. What did the audience think of this? Well, if they were like me, they would have just assumed she was either born without it (this is a toxic wasteland) or she lost it doing something badass.

In Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, we are treated to the explanation for how her arm was lost. And now that I have experienced both knowing and not knowing, I can tell you that I prefer not knowing how the arm was lost. In fact, consider this alternate take on the Furiosa movie. The movie starts with a two-armed child. She gets kidnapped by bikers and grows up at the Citadel. Later in the movie, as the character switches actresses from child to Anya Taylor-Joy (late 20s now), she is reintroduced without her arm, the idea being that she lost it somehow, and there is still no explanation given. Think about it, wouldn’t that be kind of awesome.

There is way too much explaining going on in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Just look at the run time, 2 hours 38 minutes. Max Mad: Road Warrior from 1982 was a brisk 96 minutes. Mad Max: Fury Road was the longest of the movies at 2 hours, but still its plot was deceptively simple. That movie starts with a car chase that goes one way and then they turn around and go back to where they started. It’s all over within a few days of movie time.

Here we have a plot heavy movie for the first time and much of it is not the kind of plot that we line up to see a Mad Max movie for, that is, it doesn’t involve car chases in the desert. Sorely missing is the exhilaration of Nicholas Hoult’s performance as the delirious and excitable War Boy Nux in the Fury Road movie (“What a Lovely Day!”). There is a notable big rig fight with a bad guy called the Octoboss, but that is too small a part in this movie, which is full of too many things that mean something. Since the world is impossible, it is best not to dwell too much on what makes it work. I’m not sure I need to understand the political machinations between the Citadel, the Bullet Farm, and Gas Town.

Did Anya Taylor-Joy do a good job? That is hard to say. She certainly wasn’t memorable in the way that Charlize Theron was. Then again, she is not given much to work with. She has next to no lines, and didn’t do anything that would establish her as an action star. We have Chris Hemsworth chewing up the scenery, but there is either not enough of him, or just too much of other things.

I was very impressed by the look of Mad Max: Fury Road when I saw it all the way back in 2015. I had a similar experience watching Furiosa this year that I just had watching Dune 2. That is, I was less impressed by the visuals. I wonder whether it is because the world is not being introduced to me for the first time or because I saw the movie at home on a smaller screen. It is hard to say, though I do believe that the action in Furiosa is inferior to Fury Road. Something about it, well, I just know sometimes when I am watching a CGI car crash or a CGI blood spatter, and it isn't exciting. I wish the creators just figured out some way to do actions scenes without it. Ultimately, CGI is a crutch not a solution. Just watch Road Warrior. I am continually amazed by how well those 1982 action scenes work with no computers at all to rely on. They just have to do a little bit less in frame and employ a little more creativity.

Thor: Love and Thunder (3/5 Stars)

 

I don’t think anyone could have predicted that Thor would be the Marvel character to be the first to get a fourth movie. After all, Iron Man had gotten his third before anyone had even gotten their second and Thor’s second movie “The Dark World” is arguably the worst Marvel movie ever made. But Marvel took a fairly substantial and ultimately successful risk with the third movie “Ragnarok”, replacing the pseudo-Shakespearean seriousness of the first two installments with the rainbow goofiness of Taika Waititi, the new director of “Ragnarok” and here as well “Love and Thunder”. So dramatic was the reorientation of the Thor franchise, that the third movie left out entirely the largest subplot of the first two movies, Thor’s romantic relationship with the scientist Jane Foster, played by Natalie Portman. Say all you want about the acting chops of Natalie Portman (and there is much to say), but she isn’t all that funny. Given the new direction, ditching her was probably a wise move. But her story was still out there to wrap up. This “Love and Thunder” does while expanding dramatically the “Thor” universe of the “Marvel Universe”. 

There’s a lot of expanding going on all over the place in the Marvel Universe Phase 4. I watched the TV Series “Loki” and that introduced an infinite amount of timelines. I watched “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and that introduced an infinite amount of universes. I didn’t watch “The Eternals” but it seemed from the trailer that Marvel had decided to start its own religion (diverse and abnormally good looking, just like the world’s present elite). Now “Love and Thunder” establishes that every polytheistic religion in history has real gods that all hang out together in Omnipotent City. There is, among others, Queztalcoatl the Aztec god, Bast the Egyptian god, some sort of Samurai god, and Bao the god of dumplings. They are ostensibly led by Zeus, played here by a fat Russel Crowe with a Greek accent. It is hard to tell where Marvel is eventually going with all of this, but I expect it will be a bit more difficult to tie together something with the weightiness of the previous Avengers movie. After all, what does it matter what occurs in an Avengers movie when it has been established that we are watching but one timeline in one universe with an infinite amount of other timelines and other universes where something else entirely different occurs. I expect Marvel was always going to have this problem no matter what if had gotten so successful that it eventually introduced all of its characters. It seems like an exceedingly wise decision looking back to start the journey with the simplest of heroes, Iron Man, whose superpower was mechanical in nature. It helps to ease the audience into it. 

It was once opined by some person whose name escapes me that the advent of comic book characters was like the resurrection of the old polytheism. (I only remember that this person went on to prepare a thesis about this topic and then became a professor who taught this class for his entire career). I think that is only fitting that a villain of the “Thor” universe be a character named Gorr, The God Butcher, who vaguely resembles Jesus. What do I mean by that? Well, for one he is played by a thin Christian Bale and is dressed in sandals and a robe. He looks vaguely like Jesus might if he were a character in a Marvel movie. Also like Jesus (at least as compared to the old polytheistic gods) he lacks a sense of humor and is a bit of zealot. But really, the biggest similarity is that he is going around killing all of the gods, much like the intolerant Christians (and also Muslims) of history. It is not a mistake that Marvel did not include Jesus (and especially not the Prophet Mohammed) in the crowd in Omnipotent City. There would have been protests in America and riots in the Middle East. 

In “Ragnarok” the villain played by Cate Blanchett was kind of by-the-numbers and the weakest part of the movie. Here, Gorr the Butcher is one of the strongest parts. In particular, Christian Bale’s performance is so strong and his arguments so on point there is a real danger that his seriousness might overpower the goofiness of Thor’s new groove. Here is an example of how Taika Waititi (and his co-writer Jennifer Kaitlin Robinson) deftly avoid that. In one scene the children of New Asgaard (appropriately now a tourist attraction in the Disney owned Marvel Universe, see The Northman) are kidnapped by Gorr the Butcher, spirited to the Shadow Realm and threatened with death. Thor explains to the children that they are in a tight spot, but as they are Vikings of Asgaard, they will gain eternal reward in Valhalla should they die in glorious battle. Classic Thor. 

Two more notes. First, in one scene Thor gets his clothes blown off. The movie clearly uses CGI on Thor’s naked body. Really? Is even Chris Hemsworth not good looking enough for a Marvel movie? Second, one of the throw-away scenes involves an allusion to gay romance. I don’t think Marvel should get diversity credit for that unless they keep it in the Chinese version.

Avengers: End Game (5/5 Stars)

A victory lap is the perfect description of Avengers: Endgame. It is a good enough story on its own, but is not afraid to tack on much earned nostalgia. If Lord of the Rings: Return of the King garnered a Best Picture Oscar in part because it was the culmination of a gorgeously executed triology, I don't see why the same logic wouldn't apply to Avengers: Endgame which is the perfect culmination of ten years and twenty-two movies of Marvel storytelling

Leaving off where Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp ended, half the life in the universe has been snapped out of existence by Thanos and his Inifinity Guantlet. The Avengers not snapped out of existence conveniently include the original assembly: Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, The Hulk, and Hawkeye. Captain Marvel shows up almost immediately after and they all get in a spaceship and track down Thanos. Unfortunately by the time they get to him, he has already destroyed the Infinity Stones. It's over. What happened cannot be fixed.

Then the movie jumps five years. It is a ballsy move and cements a feeling of reality over the events of Avengers: Infinity War. Usually comic book movies don't have dramatically acted scenes, but this one contains a particularly good bit of acting by Robert Downey Jr, as Tony Stark/Tony Stark, who excoriates Chris Evans, Steve Rogers/Captain America, decision several movies ago in Captain America: Civil War which broke up the Avengers and made Thanos harder to stop.

There is a catch of course as there must be. It comes in the form of Ant-Man who was stuck in the quantum realm when the Snappening happened and comes back five years later. (There is an emotional scene where Paul Rudd, Scott Lang/Ant-Man, finds his name on a memorial for those who died during the Snappening and when he reunites with his daughter.) Scott shows up at the Avengers headquarters with an idea that has to do with time-travel through the quantum realm. Much exposition is needed in this movie and quite a bit of it is people explaining things to Ant-Man who hasn't been around in the last five years. Most of it is quite funny.

Alot of this is quite funny. Some characters' arcs are rather dramatic like Iron Man, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow. But other characters are firmly in the camp of comic relief. Two characters that have completely hit their stride are Hulk, who is now Professor Hulk, a big, green and unangry Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). Then there is Thor. What happened to him over the past five years is the stuff of comedic legends.

The question here isn't if Avengers: Endgame will reverse the outcome of Infinity War. We know it must simply due to sheer amount of marketable product that was snapped out of existence. The question is whether how this is accomplished is too predictable or too confusing. It isn't predictable and it generally makes sense (in a comic book science sort of way). A few times in the movie I was sitting there wondering how they were going to accomplish what they had set out to do and then how they did was quite satisfying.

Without giving away too much of the plot, the Avengers actually visit previous movies. Three in particular: The Avengers, The Dark World, and The Guardians of the Galaxy. The team splits up into groups to go back in time and retrieve what they need from those films. It is always when you have many full formed characters and then mix and match teams so people who have not really met or interacted before are doing so for the first time. Thor's interactions with the Guardians of the Galaxy is great in particular. Captain American fights himself and that is satisfying too. There is a lot of good stuff all over the place here. One particular moment, where Captain America finds himself standing alone in front of an evil army, and the moment right after, garnered cheers from the audience that I was in. I felt like cheering too. I really like these guys.

Following the example of other great culmination of movies, the last hour of Avengers: End Game has a lot of goodbyes in it. I believe the movie earned these moments. I look forward to the next twenty films.

Bad Times at the El Royale (4/5 Stars)

1968 in all its terrifying glory

Welcome to the El Royale. A classic party hotel near Lake Tahoe on the border of California and Nevada. I mean right on the border. The border runs right through the hotel and neatly divides the rooms available into California and Nevada rooms. There are a lot of available rooms. The hotel recently lost its liquor license and with it all of its regular customers.

“Bad Times at the El Royale” is a nice compact story that uses some old tricks of the trade to confine its characters in time and place. These tricks of the trade (I won’t get into too many details) will feel like familiar tropes of horror and mystery stories. For instance, many horror movies requires that all the characters stay in the same place so as to limit the chance of escape. Mystery movies limit the amount of characters so as to help flush out a culprit. “Bad Times at the El Royale” is not a horror or a mystery movie. What it does is use the above tropes to gather and force a suspicious and varied group of characters to interact with each (sometimes violently) within the course of one day/night. Like most great writing, the writer/director Drew Goddard imposes these constraints through the reasonable choices of his characters. The movie acts at many points like a very good play with areas of extended conversations that never get tired punctuated with reveals and reversals.

The movie is divided into chapters based on the rooms that each of the characters originally let. There is Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm), a sociable southern traveling salesman, intent on taking the Honeymoon Suite he can finally afford since no-one uses the hotel anymore. There is Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges) in town to visit an old acquaintance. There is Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) a “Wall of Sound” backup singer in town for a gig in Reno. There is a surly woman (Dakota Johnson) who won’t give her name. And finally there is the Royale’s one and only employee Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman) a meek lad who doesn’t seem to be particularly good at anything. No-one is as they seem and some reveals as to who they actually are always good, and sometimes great (particularly the first and last reveals). By the end, it seems the Drew Goddard has decided to lump all the outrages of 1968 into one day/night at this one hotel. We have government conspiracies, Manson-like cultists, Vietnam trauma, and mafia schemes. Darlene Sweet is the most exact reference, obviously referring to the real life Darlene Love of Six Feet to Stardom replete with an obvious Phil Spector-like creepy manager. Her story is the most straight-forward in that she is actually who she says she is. Her character more than pulls her weight though by providing the music’s soundtrack, great acapella versions of “Wall of Sound” doo-wop music. If you love that sound like I do there will be long stretches of this movie you will find particularly enjoyable.

Chris Hemsworth shows up without a shirt half-way through though I won’t be able to tell you why. Jeff Bridges’ performance is great too though the scene he is particularly memorable in I can’t give away either. Several people die. A couple of other people get rich. Everyone in the audience has fun.

Drew Goddard has only one other writer/director credit to his name Cabin in the Woods (He is a prolific producer and writer though of TV shows like Lost). I have not seen that one but I heard, and now believe, that it is was made by a man who knows his stock characters inside and out. More than anything, that is what “Bad Times at the El Royale” is. It is a genre piece from a certain period of time with recognizable characters. Drew Goddard mixes it all up and makes it interesting again. Weirdly it is an original script, though the material really could not be more adapted.

The Avengers: Infinity War (5/5 Stars)

The last time a movie franchise achieved something akin to what Avengers: Infinity War accomplishes had to be The Lord of the Rings. That epic multi-Oscar winning movie was itself the third installment of a cohesive and perfectly realized trilogy of movies based on revered source material. Avengers: Infinity War leap-frogs that accomplishment. This movie is the culmination not of a trilogy but a universe of interconnected movies that spans nineteen films. Perhaps the HBO series Game of Thrones is the closest thing, but that TV series is still not of the same scale nor found in so many variations as the Marvel franchises that have climaxed into Infinity War. No, there really is nothing quite like Avengers: Infinity War in the history of movies.

Avengers: Infinity War has seventeen credited writers. It has two directors, Anthony and Joe Russo. It tells a story that attempts to involve all of Marvel’s outstanding franchises. These include:

Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man); Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Pots); Don Cheadle (James Rhodes/War Machine), Samuel L. Jackson (himself)

Thor: Chris Hemsworth (Thor); Tom Hiddleston (Loki); Idris Elba (Heimdall); Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk); Peter Dinkalge (Eitri)

Captain America: Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America); Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow); Paul Bettany (Vision); Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch); Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson/Falcon); Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier)

Guardians of the Galaxy: Chris Pratt (Peter Quill/Star-Lord); Zoe Saldana (Gamora); Karen Gillan (Nebula); Pom Klementieff (Mantis); Dave Bautista (Drax); Vin Diesel (Groot); Bradley Cooper (Rocket); Josh Brolin (Thanos)

Dr. Strange: Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange); Benedict Wong (Wong)

Spider-Man: Tom Holland (Peter Parker/Spider-Man)

Black Panther: Chadwick Boseman (T’Challa/Black Panther); Danai Gurira (Okoye); Letitia Wright (Shuri)

Any of these franchises can and have carried a great movie on their own. (In particular, since 2013 Marvel has made a stretch of great movies including Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor:Ragnarok, and Black Panther). So one of the great obstacles Infinity War had to overcome is how to fit all the above in the same movie giving each and every character their own moment to shine. Amazingly, this is done. All of the above share this movie in equal heft and have their own moments to shine. I’m not sure how seventeen writers and two directors go about doing something like that, but its time to start handing out Oscars.

What may to be the hardest thing to accomplish is how consistently funny the movie is. I say this because there are two big things fighting against it. The first is that the main villain, Thanos (played by Josh Brolin) is trying and succeeding throughout the movie to kill off half of the universe. It is heavy stuff and is taken quite seriously, not least by Thanos. Two important characters from the Thor franchise, Loki and Heimdall, die in the first fifteen minutes. Another important character from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise dies at the half-way point. At the end, well, it seems like half the characters die. I won’t tell you which half, that would be a spoiler. The second is that this is an action-heavy blockbuster and huge spectacles and jokes generally do not generally complement each other. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs working is the first Ghostbusters movie. A good example of blockbuster spectacles and laughs not working is the Ghostbusters remake. But in Infinity Wars, every joke lands. Dr. Strange is funny, Thor is funny, Star-Lord and Drax are funny, Spider-man is funny. Some characters are generally funnier than others. For instance Captain America and Black Panther were never particularly humorous, but almost everyone has their moments. There is also the added pleasure of seeing various characters interacting for the first time. At one point Thor meets up with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Bruce Banner has a scientific conversation with Shuri in Wakaanda. Dr. Strange and Tony Stark have this dialogue upon meeting.

Tony Stark: Nice cape. What's your job, again?

Dr. Strange: Protecting your reality, douchebag.

Infinity War is supposedly only the first of a two part movie, the other coming out next year. In that case, it is hard to judge the overall story at this point. But really, given how well this movie did what it set out to do, how could it be bad? Marvel is at its peak and the movies it has been making deserve to start getting serious recognition and not just for special effects. I expect Black Panther will run away with a serious amount of Oscars next year. Perhaps the year after Infinity War 2 will take the ultimate prize. As far as I’m concerned, Marvel has already earned it. At this moment, They are the best in the business.

Thor: Ragnarok (4/5 Stars)

For those that felt Thor would be more entertaining if his tragic flaw was stupidity as opposed to pride (see my review of “Thor”) and did not bother seeing the second movie because it looked more stilted and oppressive than the first, the third movie in the “Thor” saga is exactly the course-correction the character and story sorely needed.

One half of the story is business-as-usual. There is a political crisis in Asgaard. Odin has finally died (or has he?) and his long-lost daughter, Hella, played by none other than Cate Blanchett, has come back from the throne. As she is Odin’s eldest issue and apparently was his right-hand person in establishing Odin’s empire, she has a pretty good argument for being Queen. Thor, played by Chris Hemsworth, and his brother Loki, Tom Hiddleston, aren’t going for it though and try to start a fight. She defeats them handily and even crushes Thor’s mighty hammer.

Thor lost his hammer in the first movie, but whereas in that movie the event inspired soul-searching and just a little bit of crying, in this movie Thor’s loss of his hammer merely serves to knock a few power notches off the characters ability points so the fights he undertakes afterwards are fairer and funnier. Thor finds himself on a garbage dump planet ruled by the Grandmaster, Jeff Goldblum, who specializes in providing gladiatorial contests. The whole scene feels like the color scheme and outgoing nature of “Guardians of the Galaxy” has been injected into the Thor universe (or that Thor has taken a vacation in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” universe for a spell.) This works much better than one would perhaps think. Thor has never been especially funny, but becomes quite useful for initiating and returning jokes in this movie. It helps that Chris Hemsworth is an underrated comic actor and is particularly good at being a dumb blonde hunk (see the recent “Ghostbusters” reboot).

Surrounding Thor in the trash world are other routinely funny characters. Jeff Goldblum, an inspired piece of casting if there ever was, is essentially playing a meme-version of himself. Given that he is technically the bad guy, his weirdly punctual way of stilted speaking deprives any sense of foreboding in the story. He enters Thor in a non-consensual gladiatorial contest. There Thor meets a rock giant named Korg whose accent and style of speaking is reminiscent of the “The Flight of the Conchords.” That is no mistake. He is voiced by a director of that series, Taika Watiti, who also is the director of this movie. Thor also meets the reigning champion, none other than the Incredible Hulk, who has eschewed his Dr. Jekkyl-Bruce Banner persona for a running two years because this garbage planet actually likes the other guy. Thor without his hammer is a bit like Superman consistently surrounded by Kryptonite. It brings him down to earth where Hemsworth comic abilities allow the rest of us to laugh at him. It also helps that they shaved off his pretentious long hair.

The battle scenes in Thor: Ragnarok are spectacular and not so cringe-inducing as most other blockbuster movies. I’ve complained ad infinitum about nameless and countless humans being destroyed in great movie spectacles of violence without anyone in the story particularly caring. This is less of a concern when the characters are gods and cannot actually die or get all that much hurt. The gladiatorial contest between Thor and The Hulk is especially pleasurable.

Given that one-half of the movie is consistently funny and fun to be around, the other half seems to lull in parts. This has got to be the first time that I have written that Cate Blanchett does not inhabit the most interesting part of a movie. Here it is true, but it is mainly because the Thor-Hulk story-line is so entertaining. I got a great kick out of it and look forward to the next Thor movie.

p.s. If Thor is the God of Thunder and he can summon thunderbolts, why would he not be immune to tasers that use electric shocks.

Ghostbusters (4/5 Stars)

This Ghostbusters is not a remake (in which the same characters do the same things) or a sequel (in which the same characters do different things) but a reboot. It has the same name and the same overall structure but different characters that do different things. For example, in the first Ghostbusters (1984), the crew look for office space and stumble upon an old fire station in Tribeca, New York. The place is a piece of junk in a terrible neighborhood but it is thankfully cheap enough for them. In the reboot, the new crew looks for office space and is shown the same fire station. This time they are told it costs $21,000 a month in rent.

It’s a good joke and one this movie tells many times. However, doing so reveals the weirdness of the movie. See if you can wrap your head around this. In the 2016 version of Ghostbusters, the 1984 Ghostbusters don’t exist. That in and of itself is normal for a reboot. What is weird is that the reboots wrings every callback opportunity possible out of the earlier film. Some examples: The Ghostbusters logo is “serendipitiously” created by a graffiti artist, the original cast shows up in cameos and quote the original’s catchphrases, and a giant stay puff marshamallow man is fought in the climatic scene. The movie treats these situations as if the movie knows about the original film, but the characters in the 2016 version don’t know about the original film. So there’s a disconnect between what the audience experiences and what the characters experience because the audience remembers the thing that is being called back in a scene but none of the characters in that scene remember it. Like I said, weird.

It is fun to hear all these callbacks but I would posit that it hurts this movie’s ability to be a stand-alone movie because to understand these many jokes one would need to see the original movie. A viewer who has not seen the original would probably be confused as to why the movie would make such a big deal about a callback moment when the characters themselves, by definition, can’t. To draw a contrast, take the movie “Creed.” That was a reboot too in a way. But the new character existed in the same time universe as the original so when it made callbacks it made sense for the characters to feel the weight of them. Those moments do not work in this reboot (if you take the time to think about it) and that is this Ghostbusters oddest and biggest mistake.

It’s an odd mistake because this movie probably didn’t need the callbacks and nostaligic jokes. This movie is a “Bridesmaids” reunion, a movie that will be a classic once I convince everyone. It is directed by Paul Feig and stars both Kristin Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. Kristin Wiig continues to impress. She has been cast in this movie as the straight man (she is a scientist at Columbia trying to distance herself from a ghost book she co-wrote with Melissa so she can gain tenure) so she has not as many opportunities to be funny but that doesn’t stop her from having the movie’s funniest moment in a restaurant freaking out in front of the mayor. She should be funnier more times but this is not really her fault, as I will explain later.

Melissa McCarthy continues to be not as funny to me as she apparently is to everyone else. I would compare her to Zach Galifinakis. She rose to stardom in a very well written supporting role, which has been hard to translate into mainstream comedic stardom. What seems to happen, just like Zach, is that most of her funny moments come about not through chracter revelations but from non-sequitor asides, quite a few of which distract from the narrative flow of the movie. There is one more thing and this actually does happen to do with her gender. Melissa McCarthy is fat but won’t do fat jokes. This distinguishes her from every male of ample gut that calls himself a comedian. Her writers won’t do it also (here that is Katie Dippold and Paul Feig) and it leads to some unbelievable situations, like in “The Heat” where she is cast as the sexually vigorous and attractive one opposite to Sandra Bullock of all people. Unfortuately for our politically correct culture, fat jokes will always be funny because (obesity epidemic due to subsidized corn syrup excepted) it is fundamentally true that they reveal character (unlike say racial jokes or misogynistic jokes). And jokes that reveal character are and will always be the best ones. Melissa McCarthy’s pride ignores this to her own peril as a comedian. It is about time for her to own it and join the big boys of comedy (Rodney Dangerfield, John Candy, John Belushi, Zero Mostel, Jack Black, Jim Gaffigan, Jason Alexander, to name but a few).

The revelation in this movie is Kate McKinnon. She is hilarious. I’ve known her a little bit from Saturday Night Live (she is probably going to blow up big time impersonating Hillary Clinton this fall) but have never seen her in a movie. She reminds me of the early freewheeling zaniess of Jim Carrey in a 5’5” frame. Making her more fun is that she is in charge of the really dangerous equipment. She does a dance at one point with blowtorches. Classic McKinnon.

The fourth is Leslie Jones. She fills the Ernie Hudson role and then some. In fact she shows up earlier, has more jokes, and says more smart things (she reads lots of nonfiction and knows all sorts of things about the city) than Hudson ever did in the original. It doesn’t matter. This Ghostbusters, unlike the first, is getting shit for not giving the black woman a role as a scientist, as opposed to the (apparently undignified) job as an MTA worker. I’m not sure what Ernie Hudson was doing in the first Ghostbusters. He shows up three quarters of the way through and then doesn’t really do anything in it besides postulate about the end-of-the-world, but if he was absent from that one and Leslie Jones (who is only here because of Ernie’s presence in the first) was absent from this one, the only thing missing would be the liberal outrage.

(I’ve been trying to figure out why this sort of controversy irks me so much. I can only ascribe it to what I would consider an unfounded and pathetic sense of entitlement amongst those that are outraged (not just black people of course, I remember Mahnola Dargis of the NYTimes complaining about it too.) Its unfounded because to tell a good story, even one with paranormal elements, it helps to set it in a realistic context. I think it is fair to say that a black person in NYC in 2016 is more likely to work for the MTA than for Columbia University as a scientist. If that is a problem, it is a problem for the real world. It is not a detriment to Ghostbusters to merely reflect reality. That is to say the solution to this problem should be to fix it in the real world, not insist that a movie project falseness. Its pathetic because (and I shudder to accuse people of this) it insists that a person’s self-esteem comes from how they see other people who look like them are portrayed in movies. It should be a basic thing taught to all five-year-olds that movies should not dictate how one feels about themselves. To say Ghostbusters, of all movies, made you feel less than, well, that’s just, it’s just one of the saddest things I could possibly hear someone say.)

The largest difference between the original and the reboot has to be the extraordinary progression of digital effects in movies. The comparison is a good reminder that being able to do anything with computers does not necessarily make it better than the old cheap way. The special effects in the original were crappy but they had thought in them and quite a few of them were jokes. In the reboot, the effects are so big that it is damn near impossible for them to be comedic. There is a big action sequence at the end in which the ghosts of New York City past attack the four ghostbusters. It is notable for its lack of laughs while being great to look at. Roger Ebert made the observation that the original movie was an exception to the general rule that big special effects can wreck a comedy. He explained:

“Special effects require painstaking detail work. Comedy requires spontaneity and improvisation; or at least that’s what is should feel like, no matter how much work has gone into it…rarely has a movie this expensive provided so many quotable lines.”

The suits in charge of the reboot have, like so many recent movies, used big budget spectacle, nostalgic throwbacks, and political correctness (where are the ghost hookers of Time Square in the climatic battle? Why are they fighting pilgrims instead?) as a crutch in the place of character, creativity, and originality. The tragedy is that all the ingredients for greatness are here but they have not been given space to breathe and grow. In the meantime it’s good enough. Perhaps the sequel will do a better job at making the apocalypse work for the comedy and not the other way around. At least there should be less callbacks.

The Avengers (3/5 Stars)

It’s Okay!

 I never read comic books as a kid nor did I have a ton of video games, but I did own action figures, mostly Star Wars and Legos. Action figures, unlike books and video games, do not come with their own story lines so kids had to use their imaginations in order to have fun. I do not recall any particular story of mine that is worth repeating suffice to say they all had one thing in common: continual cartoonish violence. You know the kind where you take two action figures and you harmlessly smack them against each other and make kablooie noises. I remember it fondly in that odd nostalgic way people tend to glorify the stupidity of children (or innocence, either one), but I would not insist on making a feature film out of it, which, I would argue is essentially what “The Avengers,” is: A story composed of the kind of action sequences I would have come up with when I was ten years old....and had access to several hundred million dollars.

Don’t get me wrong. “The Avengers,” is okay and I must admit I haven’t the slightest idea how they could have made it better. It seems fated to be mediocre due to the cast of characters that are included. The Avengers are composed of Iron Man/Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) a genius mechanic/billionaire who wears an indestructible suit that can fly and has plenty of machine guns and missiles. Then there is the Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (played by Scarlett Johansson) who is good at martial arts and uses pistols. Then there is Hawkeye/Clint Barton (played by Jeremy Renner) who is good at archery. Then there is The Hulk/Bruce Banner (played by Mark Ruffalo) who is a brilliant scientist who involuntary turns into an uncontrollable green monster with unlimited strength whenever he gets angry. Then there is Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth) who is an immortal demi-god with an all-powerful hammer that can summon lightning storms. Finally, there is Captain America/Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans). He has a patriotic uniform and a nifty shield. It should be fairly obvious that these superheroes aren’t exactly equal. I mean Captain America may be strong, but not as strong as the Hulk, and he can’t fly like Iron Man, and he has no ability for stealth like the Black Widow, and he has no long range ability like Hawkeye, and he isn’t educated like Bruce Banner or Tony Stark. In fact, he really doesn’t know anything about the last fifty years because he was cryogenically frozen during that time. (He is otherwise their leader though.) Contrast that with Thor, who as an indestructible and immortal god should be able to beat the tar out of every other Avenger in every scenario. The presence of a superhero such as Thor also requires the story to have a super-villain with an almost equal amount of power as him. Enter his brother, the semi-god Loki and an army of mean-looking aliens with supposedly superior technology.

The movie stages two rather huge battle sequences. One takes place on a flying aircraft carrier (largest waste of taxpayer money EVER) and another in Midtown Manhattan. Besides the death of one person, it may surprise you that nobody else gets seriously hurt or dies. No superheroes, no military personnel, and no civilians end the movie with anything more than the faintest scrapes, cuts, or bruises. In fact, I would argue the greatest special effect used during the full scale destruction of a completely inhabited Manhattan is the framing of the shots in such a way that we never actually see anybody getting hurt. This sense of total unreality is what reminded me of playing with plastic toys as a kid. Nothing is real. Otherwise Tony Stark would be dead ground meat in his fancy suit after every battle he is in. And can the Hulk really survive a multitude of rockets launched point blank into his face without a single blemish occurring?

 For some reason it has become increasingly difficult for blockbusters to achieve the very reason they exist: to excite and thrill. It is not hard to have violence that is exciting. It simply must include actual danger or actual pain or the threat of actual pain. To demonstrate how little you need, take a look at the movie, “Black Swan.” In particular, the scene where the main character notices a cut near her nail cuticle, tries to fix it, and accidentally pulls off a strip of her skin. When I watched that it made me recoil. Why then would Thor knocking Iron Man 100 feet into the air with his magic hammer have little to no effect at all? Well, because it results in nothing but a dazed look. It must not have hurt. A movie with action sequences that have no effect on the characters is not exciting. It is desensitizing. Pretty soon it does not matter how big the explosions are, all I recognize is their impotence. What is more, when I do not understand how things happen, I stop caring pretty soon if they happen at all. I don’t get how Iron Man can survive all the blows he takes. I don’t understand how The Hulk can beat up a floating leviathan one thousand times his size. And will someone please tell me how the hell Scarlett Johansson can beat up burly men three times her size. She has no muscles. None.

 I suppose some of this has to do with the MPAA. There is this strange rule out there that allows PG-13 movies all the gunfire, explosions, and metropolitan destruction they want just as long as you do not see anybody getting hurt. However, if you wanted to see a man realistically cut off his own arm like James Franco does in “127 Hours” you would get an R rating. In effect, violence is morally okay just as long as you don’t show the consequences of it. Oh, will someone think of the children. They are our future. But unreal hammed up violence is not in itself bad. I’ve seen plenty of movies I loved that worked just like that. The best of director Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, Planet Terror, Machete, Desperado) excels in that sort of thing. The difference though is that these movies are fun exploitation movies that don’t give us a bunch of scenes containing impassioned speeches about the importance of it all. “The Avengers,” needs to be more uniform in its purpose. If you are going to make the action sequences ridiculous then make the characters and dialogue ridiculous, and do it the whole way through. And please no intended-to-be-taken-seriously-patriotism. This country deserves better than that. “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” was a great action movie. So, for that matter, was “Black Dynamite.” “The Avengers,” works best when it treats itself like it should: a joke. There are enough self-referential and belittling jabs that make the movie pretty funny throughout its run time. Quite a lot of these are provided by the best character, Tony Stark, played brilliantly as always by Robert Downey Jr. Mark Ruffalo, the nth incarnation of Bruce Banner, does a solid job as well. I still wish Thor’s weakness was stupidity and not arrogance (see my review of “Thor”) and I never saw Captain America’s movie so I guess I missed the part where it makes sense for our symbol against Nazism be a guy that looks like the poster child for Aryan machismo. Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner like most interesting actors continue their star rising descent into less interesting movies.

Thor (2/5 Stars)

I find it amazing sometimes just how much faith a movie will have in the audience’s ability to accept spectacular visuals but how little faith it will have in the audience’s ability to accept spectacular audio. “Thor” takes place in three different interstellar realms. One is Earth. It looks like New Mexico. One is a name I can’t remember how to pronounce or spell. It is where a bunch of surly frost giants live. It looks like a craggly icecube. The last is Asgard, which is where all the Norse gods of mythology live. Asgard is what the earth would look like if it were flat, made entirely of a city on a mountain, and contained the most extravagant and impractical architecture ever. The inhabitants of Asgard are Norse gods. There is King Odin (Anthony Hopkins) and his two sons Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Then there is a crew of other Norsemen that aren’t very memorable. Finally there is the great Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from “The Wire”) who plays the dutiful gatekeeper that guards the realm from evil threats. Guess what? The conversations of these immortals never rise past the level of present day high school English. The sentences are short and clipped. The vocabulary is limited. The phrases are unimaginative and totally underwhelming. If the gods could speak, I would be hugely disappointed if they sounded like this. I’m making a huge point about this mostly because the movie was directed by Kenneth Branagh, a man best known for his Oscar nominated movie adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. If anyone is capable of punching up a script to include more exalted dialogue it would be this guy. The fact that this wasn’t done suggests that the makers thought the audience wouldn’t accept it. Because I guess larger-than-life steroid-toking Norse gods that hang out in gargantuan palaces and wear over-elaborate warrior costumes is one thing, but if they had intelligent conversations, well that would just be snobbish.

The plot works really well in the form of a one-paragraph pitch. Earth is a battleground between two realms of gods. One contains the frost giants and the other contains the Norse gods of Asgard. Somehow a couple of frost giants trespass into Asgard. Thor wants to escalate the mere trespass into a war. This is something Odin forbids Thor to do. Thor goes into the frost giant realm anyway and starts a big fight with his hammer. Odin, angered by such arrogance, banishes Thor to Earth. He also banishes Thor’s hammer to Earth but not before putting a curse on it. Only those worthy of the hammer will be able to pick it up and receive its power. That includes Thor at this point, who is now stranded on earth without any of his powers. The first people Thor meets on Earth is a astrophysicist played by Natalie Portman, her mentor played by Stellan Skarsgard, and a college intern played by Kat Dennings. Meanwhile in Asgard, Thor’s half brother Loki connives to usurp the throne.

This could make a really good movie I bet. Let me explain what the movie should have done. Here we have Natalie Portman playing what is said to be a brilliant scientist with social problems. It wouldn’t hurt if she acted like the description. The way she is in the movie is abnormally normal. Then there is the Stellan Skarsgard whose character basically consists of unbelieving skepticism of the existence of Norse gods in the face of increasingly obvious evidence. Almost every conversation he has with Natalie goes something like this:

Stellan: This is silly Natalie, there is no such thing as Norse gods.

Natalie: But what about the elaborate computer generated effects we saw and the man that fell from the sky that looks like Thor and even calls himself Thor.

Stellan: Oh Natalie, you silly person.

That’s paraphrased somewhat but you get the gist. There should have been only one of these exchanges. After awhile Stellan starts sounding really dumb. Finally there is Kat Dennings who is this movie’s attempt at comic relief. If the movie followed my advice in allowing Thor to speak in exalted prose and allowing Natalie to be a total nerd, then this character would have a lot more material to make jokes from. But as it is, she is just another normal person in a town of normal people. She tries, bless her heart, but there is very little to work with. It is hard to make sly wisecracks about people who act just like you.  

I am now going to suggest something that will essentially rewrite the story. How about instead of being banished for his arrogance, Thor was instead banished for being a big dumb idiot. Imagine that his foray into the Ice World was not merely macho zeal, but incredibly stupid. That instead of him going in and easily beating the frost giants (as what happens here), he instead goes in against much larger odds and has to have his ass saved by his dad. Then Odin banishes for his stupidity, sends down his hammer and curses it with hex that Thor can only lift it if he proves that he can use his brains in battle as well as his biceps. Now that he is on Earth without any powers, he will have to do just that.

This would accomplish a couple of things. One, it would make the bad guys much more formidable. Right now, the Frost Giants are kind of pushovers. Two, it would help the movie avoid melodrama and slow motion; the absence of which would have made the movie move faster and be much funnier. Three, it would make the Natalie Portman character much more useful. Here, she helps Thor overcome his arrogance by teaching him table manners. How about instead she taught him the basics of working your brain to accomplish things. Natalie Portman would then be perfectly cast. Did you know that in real life she is brilliant? She's a Harvard graduate and a bona fide scientist. Add to that the fact that she is small and weak. Portman and Thor technically complement each other very well, if only the characters could be developed in a way that allowed them to do so. Thor could help the socially inept scientist in return. For example he could improve her social standing by being a hunk that talks to her in public or perhaps he could help her move a large piece of furniture.

The way it is in the movie, Thor’s problem with arrogance can only be cured with being a more polite person. That’s great I guess but it hardly helps a summer blockbuster. You may be surprised by how many slow scenes of touchy-feely soul searching there is in this movie. Just take the climatic battle sequence. To win, the mighty Norse god Thor pulls a “Jesus.” He “turns the other cheek.” Now I do hesitate to suggest that a character shouldn’t act like Jesus, but I think something must be said about staying true to the source material. Would the Norse god of Thunder really be into self-sacrifice? Come on.

One more thing, I really have to complain about Branagh’s decision to film so much of the movie in weird tilted camera angles. The point I would think of using those angles would be to confuse perception and unsettle the audience. Sometimes that is called for in a movie like “12 Monkeys.” But in this movie? I don’t think so. This movie should be presented in a straightforward manner with confidence. This is a blockbuster about an immortal after all.