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.

The Beaver (1/5 Stars)

I am not a doctor. So you should take what I’m about to say next with a grain of salt. As far as I know, not all depression comes from the same types of places. The most typical kind of depression I would think can be characterized as a lack of hope. This lack of hope can basically be about anything really and have many psychological or emotional causes. In that case, it should help the patient to have a happy family, a loving wife, and a decent job. Therapy, prayer, social interaction, and the like should have positive effects. A second type of depression is merely a symptom of some other type of physical disease, syndrome, or problem. The best examples I can think of are people with sleep apnea. One case involved this horribly depressed guy that no amount of therapy helped. Turned out he was such a loud snorer that he would consistently wake himself up at night. He hadn’t had a decent sleep in years. In his case horse tranquilizer would have been a better help than therapy ever could be. They performed surgery on his nose to fix the snoring problem and his depression vanished.

Now take the example of Walter Black, played in this movie by Mel Gibson. Walter Black used to be a successful businessman, a loving husband, and a good father to his two sons. Now all he wants to do is sleep. He still is the CEO of his toy company although due to his off performance it has been suffering in the stock price lately. His wife, played by Jodie Foster, still loves him but has just kicked him out of the house as a measure of last resort. Every type of therapy, self-help mantra, and pill has been tried to no effect. Keep in mind that his depression apparently preceded all the problems he now has in his life. Now, knowing all of that, which type of depression profile does Walter Black seem to fit? Does he sound like the type of person that has severe complex emotional and psychological problems or does he sound like he is simply utterly exhausted.

This movie is under the impression that Walter Black suffers from emotional problems. I admit that I don’t get it. I spent the entire movie wondering what exactly his problem could possibly be. The depression itself is never explained or given a cause. I’m just going to assume that the writer of this movie, Kyle Killen, got his inspiration from some very successful and brilliant person he knew that inexplicably fell into a depression. He must think that these things just sort of happen from time to time. (That’s life, alas.) That kind of attitude is a mistake I think because it can lead to some pretty wacky very unhelpful solutions not just in the movies but also in real life. A person suffering from physical depression can’t mentally “snap out of it,” because the problem isn’t a mental thing. No, sticking a beaver puppet on your hand and creating a new personality for yourself is not going to work. To this movie’s credit the beaver solution doesn’t work for the entire movie. However, I find it inexplicable that the beaver would work at all. There are several scenes in this movie where the practical aspects of a grown man wearing a beaver hand puppet with a cockney accent are glossed over to a shameful degree. The most distressing is when Walter Black shows up to work with it on and the beaver starts giving orders. Guess what? Nobody quits that very same day. I don’t find that very realistic. If Walter Black is suffering from neither physical depression (for which the beaver would not help) nor emotional depression (for which the comfort of his wife would be a much better solution), then he must be insane. Except he does not look or act like an insane person in the movie. In effect, the character as written and as Mel Gibson plays him doesn’t make sense. And that might be okay in a comedy, but it is fatal in a serious movie. I can’t have empathy for something I don’t understand. Then again, I’m no doctor.

Then there is this subplot involving his son. He has a business at school where for two hundred dollars he will write your paper and at the same time make it sound like you did it. Quite the skill, the novelty of which the movie takes for granted and never explores. One day the school valedictorian/head cheerleader, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who as I am writing this is 21, comes up to him and offers him $500 to write her commencement speech. She explains that even though she gets straight A’s, is the most popular girl in the school, and excels at everything she has ever done, she still has nothing to say. This is what I would refer to as a clever screenwriting technique that gives the lonely misunderstood emo boy an excuse to be needed by the most beautiful girl in the school. Anyway, even in the presence of such a character as Walter Black, she takes the gold medal for most unrealistic character in the movie. This comes to a head in one scene that seems to be constructed as a revelatory insight into the human condition but comes off as more of a cruel joke. It is revealed that this girl was arrested when she was in 8th grade for tagging, which is slang for graffiti. She hasn’t exercised her art in over four years. And then one night, inspired by a sort of “express yourself” cliché, she decides to take it up again. What she accomplishes in one night after four years of no practicing and apparently with only an 8th grade art education looks like something that would take an accomplished artist several weeks to do. She steps back and nonchalantly remarks that, “I guess I had a lot of things to say.” The art is very modern so its hard to understand what exactly she was trying to say, but I will take a guess that is something along the lines of a huge “F*** You” to every teenager who has ever picked up a pencil or paintbrush, tried art for the first time, and realized that it might actually take some time and practice to become good at it.

Again, these sorts of mistakes wouldn’t bother me in a broad comedy, but a movie that intends to be realistic about mental illness and teen angst can’t be allowed to get away with not knowing what it is talking about. These are serious issues after all. Here are some good movies that deal with depression that perhaps you should watch instead: Lars and the Real Girl, Punch-Drunk Love, and Fight Club. Those may seem to be odd choices but they are the best I have seen at portraying how being in a hopeless funk feels like. If you don’t think “Fight Club” is about depression than may I direct you to the scene where the imaginary friend gets so fed up with his real counterpart that he starts beating the living shit out of him. A similar thing happens with the beaver in this movie, but “Fight Club” did it better.

p.s. If you know someone who seems depressed because all they ever want to do is sleep, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure that they are actually sleeping and not simply lying on a bed hoping to God they could go to sleep but finding themselves physically unable to. Sleep deprivation is a killer. It’s what interrogators use on prisoners to break them. At least 7 hours a night, people. Chances are you’ll feel better.

Meek's Cutoff (3/5 Stars)

Day (???), Wagon Axel broke, LOST

Director Kelly Reichardt and star Michelle Williams, the team from “Wendy and Lucy,” are collaborating for the second time on the near perfect movie about a lost wagon train on the Oregon Trail in 1845 named “Meek’s Cutoff.” The star rating I gave and the words “near perfect” may confuse you. Let me explain. Star ratings aren’t really helpful in that it rates a movie good or not relative to all movies and not other in kind movies of a particular genre. For instance I gave “Sucker Punch,” a flawed movie, four stars mainly for its ambition. It tried for about 100 things and got fifty of them right. “Meek’s Cutoff,” a near perfect movie, gets three stars because it is small. It tried about 10 things and got nine of them right before ending on an ambiguous anti-climax that I didn’t really care for. Does that mean people should like “Sucker Punch” more than “Meek’s Cutoff” generally. No of course not. I just like a bigger movie, that’s all. What I’m trying to say I guess is that the reader is better off reading the review before deciding whether they want to see the movie or not. The mark of a superior reviewer is one that describes a movie well enough that someone interested in that type of movie will have their interest piqued whether or not the reviewer liked it himself (and vice versa). 

In describing Reichardt’s work one has to take out some pretty arty words. Words like “contemplative,” “aesthetic,” “serene,” “minimalist,” etc. Reichardt likes setting her places in Oregon. She likes lingering in long shots. She focuses in on minute details and treats conversations like she would the cinematography. Most of them are not entirely important and fit nicely into the background. I would be surprised if the budget for this movie went into seven figures. In a way, Reichardt works like the wagon train. She’s out there in the wilderness with very little crew or way of direction, trying out something original that almost nobody will see. Still the movie is very well made. The score gives the movie an unsettling tone. The acting is exceedingly natural. Over time, as the water runs out and tensions rise, suspense builds. The climax of the movie should be completely unexciting by any normal movie standard as it involves a situation that is often only the start of much larger action sequences. But here it still works because there is such a sense of reality that people pointing guns at each other feels very serious. It also helps that one is a woman who does so reluctantly. “Meek’s Cutoff” isn’t some sort of revisionist history. The Michelle Williams character, like the other women in the three wagon train, is of her time and place. She acts subordinate to her husband and men in general. But she also doesn’t want to die. And after wandering the desert being led by a braggart named Meek (played by Bruce Greenwood) who hasn’t the slightest idea of where he is going nor the slightest inclination to admit it, she becomes less and less enthusiastic about standing around waiting for the water to run out. Little by little she oversteps her bounds in the politest way possible until finally there is no more room for being polite.   

It was once said by William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) that the hardest thing about writing a Western was finding something interesting for the women to do while the men had fun shooting each other and what not. “Meek’s Cutoff” doesn’t necessarily give the women things to do that usually belong to the men, but it is told through the POV of the women. Normally this wouldn’t be so interesting as it involves them spending a good amount of screen time gathering brush, cleaning, and cooking. But here it serves the movie’s purpose in that it underscores the complete hopelessness of the journey. It’s one thing to have an argument over whether to go North or South in search of water, it’s another thing to have to silently stand around while the men argue over which way to go off in the distance. Things get more complicated when Meek captures a lone Indian. He has the bright idea to kill the heathen right then and there. Or perhaps they could ask the Indian to lead them to water. I guess you can say this is the Oregon Trail version of the modern cliché of a guy not wanting to ask for directions.

Bringing along paranoia and emotional wailing is another couple on the wagon train played by Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan. Every time I see Dano he is hanging out in an unforgiving desert (Little Miss Sunshine, There Will be Blood.) You would think at some point he would get a tan. Anyway he has been perfectly cast. Mr. Paleface does not belong here. He should not have come. Providing the movie with the necessary amount of historical racism is Shirley Henderson. She has a nice way of going about it, like for instance fearfully remarking that Indians are murderous non-beings and then subsequently backing up the statement with the words, “It’s a well documented fact.” On some level every truthful historical movie is going to have characters that are flawed in such a way. Almost everybody back then was what we would call racist and sexist today. Future generations will probably say similar things about us I’m sure, though for what I have no idea. 

One of my favorite books, “The Education of Henry Adams” had the following quote in it that caught my eye:

“The study of history is useful to the historian in teaching him of his ignorance of women; and the mass of this ignorance crushes one who is familiar enough with what are called historical sources to realize how few women have ever been known. The woman who is known only through a man is known wrong, and excepting one or two like Mme. de Sevigne, no woman has pictured herself.” (1905)

Growing up in school you have this notion that all of world history is accessible simply by opening a book, but this isn’t the case. History is limited by memory and preserved only by the efforts of real people who take the time to write it down. It is a profound truth that the people who did write things down were mainly concerned with men and were almost never women. According to what I’ve rated on Netflix, I have seen 1,511 movies. I can count on one hand how many of these were stories about historical women told by a woman (In this, I am subscribing to the auteur theory of filmmaking by crediting the role of author to not the writer but the director of a movie. In either case, still one hand) Specifically, I have only seen two movies. One was Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” and now this one. This isn’t simply me being not very broad in movie choices nor is it completely the fault of the Hollywood boy’s club (though admittedly they do a downright awful job of marketing their products to half the movie going public.) It represents a literal gap in our knowledge of the world. These stories are lost to history. “Meek’s Cutoff” is based on a true story. There was a guide on the Oregon Trail named Stephen Meek who led a wagon trail in 1845 off into an uninhabitable no-man’s land. He didn’t know where he was going. The train ran out of water. People died and the settlers mutinied. But there were thousands of wagons not just three. And the Michelle Williams character? She’s completely fictional. Certainly there were women there. Yes, they did all the work we see them do in this movie. But if they had any personalities at all, we have no way of knowing what they consisted of. Nobody bothered to record it.

Hanna (4/5 Stars)

Once upon a time there was a very special girl who lived in the woods.

Hanna is the name of a teenage girl, played by Saoirise Ronan, who apparently has spent all of her life in the arctic somewhere with no other human contact but her father, played by Eric Bana. He has been training to be the ultimate warrior. She can hunt deer with bow or gun, she knows several languages, she is an expert at mixed martial arts, etc. etc. What is he preparing her for and why her? Well, we don’t really know because he never tells her and this movie more or less doesn’t explain anything until Hanna discovers it for herself. Events unfold. Her father tests her ability one day and finds her ready. He hands Hanna a honing device that will give away the position of their house in the woods if switched on. Hanna switches it on. Her father gives her instructions on how to be captured, kill the CIA agent on her case in her holding cell, make her escape by evading a SWAT team in an underground labyrinth, and to meet him in Berlin. The rest of the movie is the unfolding of that plan in various chases and fights. No doubt, the sheer ambiguity of what is going on dampens the suspense and urgency of “Hanna,” and one can see how this movie could have been downright awful. But there is behind this movie a very good director named Joe Wright who has been able to assemble a terrific cast and construct some damn good action sequences. Because this is the type of story that is impossible to know if it is worth watching until the end scenes finally provide some motivation for what you’ve just seen, the only way it can work in the meanwhile is if there is plenty to admire that can stand alone. There is. You can appreciate the clean crisp look of “Hanna.” You can admire the acting ability of Saoirise Ronan, who has created a character that is believably both an innocent and a killer. You can admire Cate Blanchett’s stoic style and screen presence. You can admire Tom Hollander’s ability to look dangerous in short shorts. You can admire the chases and fights all of which are logically edited, competently shot and choreographed, and develop within the thin overlapping lines of creativity and possibility. Finally the ending does make sense of the beginning and things that happened are justified. This is actually one movie that I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel to. Of course, I don’t mean another thriller like this. I’m thinking more along the lines of a comedy where Hanna tries to assimilate in the world and gets a job working at a carnival or something. I think that would be funny. Just throwing it out there.

This is Director Joe Wright’s first true action movie. It suits his style very well. In the past he has done dramas like “Pride and Prejudice” and “Atonement” but they have always felt and moved fast. Wright loves to move his camera around his characters in long shots. In “Hanna” there is an especially impressive fight scene with Eric Bana and five special agents in a Subway station. The camera tracks ahead of Bana as he enters station with an agent following him. As he walks forward the camera circles around Bana revealing adversaries on all sides. A fist-fight starts (hand to hand combat because the head bad guy wants Bana alive)  as the camera keeps on circling. This goes on until all the bad guys are incapacitated, at which point Bana picks up a dead bad guy’s phone, calls the last number and acquires some useful information as he is walking out of the station. The entire scene was done in a single unbroken camera shot. It must of required a hell of a lot of choreography, planning, and practice. This is something directors rarely do especially in fight scenes as it is much more work for something the audience might not notice anyway. (The point of long shots is to add realism to a scene. There isn't any movie cheating in a long shot because nothing is being edited.) But the fact that the director can pull it off at all is a testament to his coordination, skill, and ambition. That doesn't mean the technique can't be overused though. Wright's seemingly favorite thing to do in this movie is focus in on Ronan’s face as she is hurriedly going somewhere. Since the camera is moving quite a lot, the background of a shot is always changing and noticeably out of focus. It can get dizzying. But then again, it is a very watchable face to look at. It always looks like its viewing the world with heightened awareness. Go ahead and Google Saoirise Ronan before going to see this movie. If you find it objectionable in any way then “Hanna” is not the movie to see. You will be staring at her in close-ups for a substantial period of time. (Psst, I think Wright might be in love with Ronan...or at least her face)  

Playing the role of bad guy is Cate Blanchett, a CIA agent intent on capturing Hanna. She is exceedingly impeccable in this movie. There isn't a single blemish or a hair out of place. She looks like she's been carved out of alabaster marble and fitted with a fiery red wig. Cate the Great gives off a natural fierceness but unfortunately never goes over the top. I’m still waiting for a performance from her that matches that one line about being a hurricane in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” but goes on for an entire movie. I can definitely see her in the type of role that a Jack Nicholson would play. One of her hired henchmen is Tom Hollander, playing against type as an unstable mercenary with a strange sense of fashion. He does good work as well. This is his third movie working with Wright who has only made four movies. They make a good team. There is also a family on vacation that Hanna meets on the road and travels with for part of the journey. The mom is Olivia Williams who you may remember as the teacher in “Rushmore.” The daughter is about Hanna's age. She quotes pop culture references as if they're important. I think it's a toss-up over who sounds more like a freak. Anyway the family provides a welcome human and comic element in between all of the chase scenes. In one side scene Hanna goes on a double date with the daughter and a couple of soccer players they meet at a campground. They listen to music, which Hanna has never heard before and then there is almost a kissing scene. Almost. I’m telling you this character would be great in a comedy. She reminds me of the aliens from “3^rd Rock from the Sun.”

All the Grimm Fairy tale stuff in the production design are a nice touch. It makes perfect sense for a child-in-danger movie. If you've ever read a un-Disneyfied version of any of the tales you will know what I mean. The Grimm's had literally no qualms about putting children in mortal danger.

p.s. Coming Soon! Hanna 2 - Death in Montana!

Source Code (5/5 Stars)

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the first great movie of 2011. “Source Code” is a top-notch science fiction thriller about a secret government program that allows a person to relive the last eight minutes of another person’s life. This is possible because each person has an eight-minute track of short-term memory that theoretically can be preserved after death. The government sends a soldier back into the memory of a teacher named Sean Fennersten. Once he is in the Source Code, he inhabits Fennersten’s body for eight minutes before a bomb explodes onboard the train he is riding in, killing Fennersten and all the other passengers. The soldier has free will and can control Fennersten’s body, even going so far as to change events within the memory, but he won’t be able to save anybody because the bomb already went off in the past. The soldier’s mission is to identify the bomber in order to prevent another impending terrorist attack. This theoretical technology is completely absurd. I was expecting to see a flux capacitor somewhere but instead the scientist in charge merely invoked quantum mechanics and parabolic calculus. Obviously, he’s counting on my ignorance of the subject so I won't know exactly why his explanation is ridiculous. Well played, sir. But still the story works extremely well because the director, Duncan Jones, and the writer, Ben Ripley, instinctively know that the power in any science fiction story is not how the technology works but how it enables the characters to fulfill some universal need or desire that normally would be impossible to achieve. Why would anyone want to relive the past? Is it because if you knew then what you know now, you wouldn’t have said what you said or done what you did? Let’s be honest. Time travel, at least to the recent past, is about regret. The soldier, Captain Colter Stevens, being the first test subject of this technology doesn’t really know what he is doing. And so he consistently fails in one way or another before the eight minutes runs out and he dies a fiery death, again. Unlike the rest of us, he can reset the clock and start all over. Perhaps, if given enough tries, he can find a way to use his time wisely.

This conceit should be most familiar to anyone who has seen the great movies “Groundhog Day” and “Run Lola Run.” Stevens, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, starts each Source Code at the same place right before the woman across from him, his girlfriend, played by Michelle Monaghan, thanks him for his advice. Nobody else in the train remembers the last train ride. This means two things: One, Stevens can act as impulsively and rashly as he wants and not fear any reprisal because the world ends in eight minutes. And Two: Since nobody remembers, nobody can really help him. It’s a good that Stevens spends much more time acting rashly than trying to convince anybody of the situation. He’s not wasting any time, and besides, they’re all dead anyway. Give credit to the Ben Ripley because Stevens’ actions have a persistent logical thread to them. He never repeats himself and no other passenger ever changes his or her personality. (Monaghan, in particular, does a pretty good job of being somebody one could logically fall for in eight minutes). This is a movie you can pay close attention to and get a kick out of how they don’t cheat. Everything is considered and taken into account. I especially liked how the writer put a professional comedian, played by Russell Peters, just two rows behind Stevens as this gives the movie several excuses for witty quips once Stevens’ behavior starts getting more and more irregular. I also got a kick out of when Stevens automatically resorts to racial profiling during one of his first runs because, let’s be honest, if you knew there was a ticking time bomb and nothing else, wouldn’t you suspect the only middle-eastern guy on the train. This movie isn’t afraid to admit that undesirable tendency. Stevens follows him off the train at the next stop, confronts him, and assaults him. And as he is beating him up, to the horror and shock of his girlfriend and everybody else at the station, somebody else activates the bomb and the train in the distance blows up anyway. Back to the drawing board, buddy. No, it’s not going to be that easy.

I won’t go too much more into the plot because following where it twists and turns is a natural pleasure of the movie. Except for one more thing: Why doesn’t Captain Colter Stevens remember training for this mission? The last thing he remembers is being in Afghanistan with his unit. Then one day he wakes up to find himself as Fennersten. At the end of each eight minutes he finds himself in a type of isolated chamber speaking over a video intercom to a soldier named Goodwin, played by Vera Farmiga, and a scientist, played by Jeffrey Wright. Where is he? I won’t tell you but if you ever saw Duncan Jones’ first movie, Moon, the discovery that Colter Stevens eventually makes is not unlike astronaut Sam Rockwell’s discovery that he is living in a cloned body that has a contractual expiration date. Duncan Jones has only two movies under his belt but he is already developing a personal style and motif. His movies are low budget but look like they cost quite a bit. They are sleek, clean, and tightly wound. He is especially interested in science, technology, and bureaucracy’s disregard of the sanctity of human consciousness. If Jones ever wanted to make a period piece, Frankenstein would be the perfect story to adapt. He has a keen understanding of the topic.

For my money, this movie is about two minutes two long. There’s a nice moment near the end with a still frame pause. They should have just held that for a few more seconds and then went straight to the credits. But hey, that’s just me.

Sucker Punch (4/5 Stars)

Zach Snyder, director of “300” and “Watchmen,” tries out his writing chops for the first time with “Sucker Punch,” a story about a wrongly committed girl who attempts an insane asylum escape. Well actually there is five of them and they’re prostitutes in a bordello and um…The whole escape thing involves fighting World War I, giant mechanical samurais, a dragon…and it all takes place at or in uh…imagination land…you know what? I’ll get back to that. “Sucker Punch” lives up to its title. It is a totally unpredictable unapologetic excess of heightened emotion, ultra violence, and stylistic overindulgence. You can arguably say that “Sucker Punch” is a bad movie but that's sort of like remarking that Opera isn’t realistic enough. I will say this though about Snyder. I’ve always had the feeling while watching his movies that I was witnessing something unmistakably new. If “Sucker Punch” is folly, it is at least my favorite kind. An ambitious one.

The movie starts with your average worst-case scenario. A woman dies. She leaves her entire estate to her two daughters. The evil stepfather gets enraged and with largely incestuous overtones attacks his kids. The older daughter, a girl named Baby Doll, played by Emily Browning, runs to get a gun but returns to late. Her sister has been murdered. The evil stepfather frames Baby Doll and gets her committed to an insane asylum. He then bribes the sadistic operator, played by Oscar Isaac, to have Baby Doll lobotomized within the week.

At this point, the movie becomes a completely different parallel movie, whereupon it seems that Baby Doll imagines herself to be a prostitute in a bordello, who is to be sold to a character called the High Roller within the week. She enlists the help of four other fellow prostitutes, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Amber (Jamie Chung), and Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) to plan an escape. They will need a map, a cigarette lighter, a knife, and a key. The plan is for Baby Doll to put on a highly entertaining burlesque act that will distract all the men in order for the others to steal the items.

I left something out. In the asylum story, there is a psychiatrist (Carla Gugino) who has the inmates perform their sad stories on a theater stage as a sort of therapy. In the bordello, she is a madame who runs the burlesque show. When Baby Doll starts dancing (or supposedly acting out therapy in the first storyline) the movie switches over into battle scenes, which include the five girls donning salacious battle-rattle and fighting various armies for the items. They have to kill Zombie Germans stationed in World War I trenches for the map, a fire-breathing dragon for the fire, and so on. Throughout most of this you can sort of tell what is actually happening in the other story-lines although you may have some very good questions. Like for instance, why is this woman imagining herself in a so very male fantasy world. Or who is the Scott Glenn character, a wise entity that shows up only in the battle fantasies to intone enjoyably ridiculous advice, supposed to be in reality, whatever that is.

The best answer I think is that the several story-worlds have less to do with plot or logic and much more to do with giving Snyder an excuse to zealously indulge into what could perhaps be called an “artistic vision.” I’m guessing he worked backward with a thought process like this: How can I get a team of scantily clad women to battle World War I zombies, medieval dragons, and science fiction robots, all in the same movie? Well, it can totally be in the imagination of a stripper on a mission. That would provide the excuse for putting them in full makeup and revealing outfits the entire time. But wait, what type of stripper would be crazy enough to imagine all that? Well, perhaps if the stripper was but the schizophrenic alter ego of a truly insane woman. But wait, what would make someone be that bat shit crazy? Aha! I’ll have her father kill her sister and frame her for it! Break out the champagne! I’m going to start up the drawings for the gigantic samurai robots!

Really, your enjoyment of this movie is not going to come from the plot or character development. It will come from your willingness to enjoy stand-alone set pieces of ridiculously outfitted women battling equally ridiculous things. In that aspect, the movie truly delivers. The action scenes are outrageous and innovative. Helpfully, Snyder also has the habit of using slow motion. This allows the viewer to admire the artistic still frame, which in turn stops the action from becoming a Bayesian mish mash of mindless confusion. Outside the battle scenes, there is also plenty to admire in style if not in substance. I especially like the camera angles and the exaggerated details in objects and characters. (The Mayor and Cook were my favorite grotesquely comical caricatures). Plenty of attention is placed on composition, color palette, and atmosphere. Snyder’s use of green screen in every shot allows him the requisite control to stylize every single shot. The voiceovers and serious talk could have been more poetic and Snyder's choice of music isn't very good, but still there is a truly great movie waiting somewhere in Snyder’s style. I hope to someday see it. 

The character development in this movie leaves something to be desired. I don’t think it was a very good idea to name the characters Sweet Pea, Amber, or Baby Doll. Blondie is okay I guess. But really, given what the women are made to do, the only name that makes any sense is Rocket. She’s played by Jena Malone and is appropriately the only actor here that gives off any lasting impression. (Emily Browning on the other hand seems to have been cast solely on her ability to look sad). Jena you may remember from “Donnie Darko” and “Into the Wild” and probably don’t remember from one of my favorite hidden movies, “Cheaters.” She deserves to be on the short list of underrated and perpetually underused actresses. Her presence here lends the team its admittedly limited amount of credibility. 

Two more things. The makers will have you believe that this contains themes of female empowerment. Plenty of critics, including two I highly respect A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips, say it is decisively misogynistic. I disagree with both. It’s neither. It’s a comic book movie and as such it contains a certain style that equally applies to both men and women. The good guys are exaggerated into the maker’s idea of ideal beauty and the bad guys are exaggerated into the maker’s idea of ideal ugliness. I don’t recall anybody saying that the one-dimensional Spartans in “300” with their ridiculously perfect perpetually uncovered abdominals were somehow demeaning to men. They simply commented on how nice the abs looked. That attitude should be applied to the heroines of this movie. It's true, Snyder deals in the objectification of people. But then again so do all comic books, and for that matter anything dealing with fashion, or why not the entire branch of art called Humanism going all the way back to when Michelangelo added all those muscles in the Sistine Chapel for no other reason than he thought the human body was an admirable thing and that there was no harm in making it look its best. Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder and people may logically be turned off by the presentation of these women (or like me have a preference for one amongst the others), but I don’t think anyone can argue that Snyder, or for that matter his wife/executive producer Deborah Snyder, wasn’t trying to make the team look as gorgeous as he thought possible. There's nothing wrong with that. 

As far as the plenty of "women in danger" material in this movie, I can’t see how you can have an action movie without it. If there isn’t any danger, there isn’t any conflict. The movie might as well have taken place at a shooting range with the bad guys being cardboard cutouts. The test I would think is whether the makers intend the audience to empathize primarily with the women: Do they mean for us to feel scared when they are in danger and to be relieved when they are triumphant? I think the answer to that is obvious in this movie. If the test worked any other way than every movie with a female action star would be automatically exploitative. That would include Ripley, Clarice Starling, and Lisbeth Salandar. Truly we would be missing out by keeping all those fictional women in the movie universe up on their pedestals totally safe all the time.

Having said that, the PG-13 rating is completely absurd, a perfect example of how hypocritical the MPAA can be. Future moviemakers take note. You can kill all you want just as long as there isn’t any blood. You can present sexual violence just as long as there isn’t any nudity. And you can have characters yell "motherfucker" just as long as you cut out the audio for the second half of the word. Of course, the most ridiculous thing is what the MPAA apparently thought was too objectionable to keep in. The credits and trailer show what sort of look to be like the actual burlesque shows that we never get to see in the movie. So apparently murder and near-rape is fine, but a song and dance number that the women seem to be actually enjoying isn’t. Hmm…now is that misogynistic? 

Paul (3/5 Stars)

Paul isn’t a rip-off of every other science fiction movie. Every other science fiction movie is a rip-off of Paul…according to Paul that is.

Well it didn’t take long to find an exception to my “Ripoff/Homage” theory. A full week. “Paul” is an exception to that rule mostly because of the odd way that it uses its references. For example, the Alien in “Paul” has most of the same special abilities of classic movie aliens. He can heal people like E.T. and he can mild-meld like Spock. But this movie isn’t simply taking undue credit for coming up with these abilities like an ordinary rip-off; it goes even further than that. It declares that Paul the Alien is actually the inspiration for E.T. and Spock. There’s even a flashback scene where Paul, in the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark, counsels Steven Spielberg over the phone and gives him the idea for E.T.’s healing power. Such is one of the most interesting conceits of this movie: the Alien didn’t just crash land here yesterday. He came over forty years ago right about before “Star Wars” came out. He’s been kept secret at Area 51, but the government has allowed him to counsel movie producers in an effort to ease the general public to the idea of alien life through cultural osmosis. So Paul may look like an unimaginative stereotypical Alien, the small green type, but that’s only because the government has been secretly brainwashing you the last 40 years that Aliens should look like that so when you finally see one you won’t be so freaked out. So “Paul” relies heavily on its references, but in a way it has too. I’ll get back to this.

“Paul” is directed by Greg Mottola and constitutes the reunification of Team Pegg and Frost, who wrote and star in this movie, their first collaboration since “Hot Fuzz.” Frost is an unpublished science fiction writer. Pegg is his illustrator. They hail from England and are visiting the United States for the first time on their dream trip. First, Comic Con in San Diego followed by a road trip through the American Southwest with stops at all the famous UFO sites (Area 51, Roswell, etc.). Some of this borders on the absurd. One stop is something called “The Black Mailbox.” It looks just like a mailbox in the middle of a barren desert. The only odd thing is that it is covered with fanboy graffiti and is actually white. Pegg and Frost stand across from it, stare at it for a while, and agree that it is awesome. They must know something I don’t know. (Actually I’m assuming that they saw it in a really good movie or something. If so, then I understand the interest. Ever since I saw “Being John Malkovich” I’ve always wanted to visit that one spot on the New Jersey Turnpike and take pictures. I can’t explain it. You would have to see the movie.) Then in the middle of the night, the car in front of them runs off the road and crashes. They stop, get out, and find that the driver is an alien on the LAM who needs their help getting to a rendezvous point. Frost faints and pisses his pants.

The Alien is voiced by Seth Rogen, perhaps the last person you would think an alien would sound like. It’s odd for the first minute or two and then I got to liking it. Paul acts like Seth Rogen. He’s a laid back and comfortable alien, quick to make immature gestures and amusing jokes. Pegg and Frost are endearing good sports that take a liking to the little guy. In fact, everybody here gets along fine. Everything is all like cool and mellow and because Paul has already been on Earth for so long, nothing has to be explained to him. So I wasn’t hearing worn out explanations of stuff like food and love. Instead Paul explains things to Pegg and Frost. (Actually this is stuff I’ve heard before because I’ve seen most of the movies that Paul is taking credit for.) Anyway, the movie settles into a comfortable tone. There are plenty of campfires with beer and brats and just a little bit of weed. It wasn’t all that funny, but then again it was never annoying. I wouldn’t mind having a beer with these guys.

Then the movie makes a strategic mistake. It gets violent in a not funny way. Some serious Men in Black are tailing the trio. The lead guy is Jason Bateman and two ordinary policemen, Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio, help him along. These are all gifted comedians and that’s a problem given what the movie eventually makes them do. It really is imperative that a villain who meets an untimely demise be unlikable. A huge problem here is that Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio spend most of the movie being funny and then right about the third act, they take out their guns and start shooting with intent to kill. When a movie casts likable comedians in violent roles it is a tactical error. Especially in a movie that has as its best quality a laid back comfortable feeling to it. I didn’t want to see anybody here put in mortal danger. Buzzkill, man, Buzzkill. Either they shouldn’t have cast Hader and Truglio at all or they should have reworked the story.

But how would you rework this story and keep the conflict. Here’s a suggestion: find someway to get rid of the guns. Violence is funny up to a certain line, and guns, once they start firing with any realism, cross it very quick. Without guns, violence is physical comedy. For one thing, a person with a gun is stationary, and a person who is shot with a gun stops moving very quickly. This literally kills the kinetic momentum of good physical comedy. For a second thing, a wound from a gun is a serious wound, emphasis on the word “Serious.” Here, they should have ditched the guns and had everyone fight with fake light sabers or something.

There’s an impressive cast in this movie. In supporting roles we have Jane Lynch (used well), David Koechner (used not so well), and Jeffrey Tambor. Most importantly the inimitable Kristen Wiig joins the RV crew along the way. Wiig runs an RV camp and is what you would call a Jesus Freak, a firm believer in Creationism and not in aliens. This leads to arguments between her and Paul. It’s a bit of an unfair debate. Perhaps in somebody’s next movie an arcangel will come down from heaven and explain to some UFO enthusiasts the unlikelihood of a government conspiracy. But anyway, shaken in her belief of God, Heaven, and Hell, Wiig decides to let loose. She spends the second half of the movie cursing like a sailor. In any other actor’s hands this wouldn’t be nearly as funny, but Wiig is a wizard at line delivery. I keep seeing her in small parts in the movies of lesser comedians (Will Forte in Macgruber anyone?). This May we will finally see what she can do with a lead role. That’s when “Bridesmaids” comes out. She writes and stars in it. It’s about time.

Anyway let’s go all the way back to the beginning. This movie relies on plenty of references. Some work much better than others. So let’s put down a few rules that will clarify Ripoff/Homage does and don’ts. First Rule: Jokes cannot be retold. A reference can be used as a joke, but you can’t use a joke from a reference. A bunch of times in this movie, characters will actually quote jokes and catchphrases from other movies. Jason Bateman at one point while talking on a car radio, disagrees with the person on the other side, takes out his gun, shoots the radio, and says “Boring Conversation anyway.” That’s a direct rip-off from “Star Wars.” It was only sort of funny when Han Solo said it. It’s less funny now. Any pleasure I get from that line will come directly from my experience of watching “Star Wars.” It makes no sense to put a line into a movie that will only make the viewer want to watch something else that did it better. Second Rule: References can be used to create a mood or character for a scene but they can’t make the scene. A great use of this in “Paul” was the casting of Sigourney Weaver as the head bad guy. A viewer with knowledge of the Aliens franchise will know that Weaver is the ultimate merciless alien killer. It helps create suspense in the scene just by having Weaver show up. BUT, that doesn’t mean the scene is going to be any good. The maker still has work to do.

The main problem with this movie about fanboys is also the main problem with fanboys in general. They will quote movies without adding anything to the conversation about them (i.e. they keep telling you things you already know.) It may make sense that this movie does that because the characters are fanboys, but that doesn’t make the movie any better. Ask yourself this question as you watch the movie: Would you rather see “Paul” or any of the movies it alludes to like “Star Wars,” “Aliens,” “E.T.,” etc again? “Rango” was an affirmative to that question. I can’t say the same about “Paul.”    

Rango (4/5 Stars)

Alright all you cinema lovers you’ve got a Netflix assignment before watching “Rango.” Knowledge of the following should enhance your viewing enjoyment ten-fold: Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood’s “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” at least the first chapter of Hunter S. Thompson “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” the chapter “Red Queen” from Marc Reisner’s “Cadillac Desert,” and most importantly Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown.” It also wouldn’t hurt if you’ve familiarized yourself with the walking style of John Wayne, the Indian from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the Eye of Mordor from “The Lord of the Rings,” the wheelchair movement of the Big Lebowski, cursory knowledge of desert flora and fauna, Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” and any and all Looney Tunes parodies or something to do with a “New Sheriff in Town.” You don’t need to have seen any of these to enjoy “Rango,” but then again you won't be in on some of the jokes. Unlike most movies that dumb themselves down to the lowest common denominator in order to appease the ignorant, “Rango” has absolutely no shame for looking peculiar, channeling classic movies, and counting on the audience to appreciate the quirky references not to be turned off by them. Overall, “Rango” is a good movie that was made by people who love great movies for people who love great movies.

“Rango,” is about a pet chameleon wannabe thespian that spends his days in his glass case acting out Shakespeare with inanimate props. Then a crisis occurs, the speeding convertible transporting his case hits an armadillo, and he is thrown out of the back where he subsequently almost hits a red shark and lands in a desert wasteland in the middle of nowhere. Actually circumstantial evidence suggests he is somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert on the road to Las Vegas. We don’t know the chameleon’s given name although again circumstantial evidence suggests he’s one of those “Goddamn Animals!” Anyway in search of water, he comes upon a town aptly named Dirt. The place looks like a Spaghetti Western inhabited by Ralph Steadman drawings. The characters are various desert animals dressed in western attire, all of them looking like there hasn't been enough water for showers in years. The amount of detail that went into the visual aspect of Rango suggests somebody put a lot of love into this thing. Gore Verbinski, who previously directed the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, is at the helm here. It may be a few movies too soon to say this, but I think one day he may be regarded as an equal among such other great artistic directors like Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, and Guillermo Del Toro. Animation in general has reached such a level of sophistication that I wonder if movies like this will ever be recognized by the Academy for Art Direction or Costume Design. I mean most of the design in last year’s “Alice and Wonderland” was entirely CGI. Why wouldn’t “Rango” be considered?

 Johnny Depp continues his career long quixotic quest to not look attractive by voicing the odd-looking chameleon with different size eyes and a potbelly. Upon coming to the town, he decides to put his acting skills to the test. Instead of simply admitting he’s lost, he calls himself “Rango” and tells a far out story about how he killed seven members of the same family with one bullet. He must have seen “True Grit.” I liked that movie too. This chameleon has good taste. Unfortunately for him, the town is in an enormous water crisis and actually needs a really good sheriff, what with the last one getting killed and all. So you can see where this is going.

The dialogue in “Rango,” is verbose and witty. The level of vocabulary in “Rango” is on the level of “Pirates of the Caribbean.” It should be. John Logan (Aviator, Gladiator) wrote the screenplay but Gore and James Ward Byrkit both straight from “Pirates” also get story credit. The Pirate accents have been switched for Western accents, but everything is still gruffly poetic delivered in a slurred multisyllabic rough and ready converse. Isla Fisher voices a lizard named Beans, giving us the least romantic name for a love interest ever. Abigail Breslin provides the voice of Priscilla, who I think might be some sort of Jewish possum. Bill Nighy is Rattlesnake Jake with suspiciously familiar eyes. Ned Beatty continues his dominance in evil cartoon voices (see Toy Story 3) with the Mayor. This time he's channeling John Huston in “Chinatown.” The Spirit of the West also shows up to counsel Rango in the form of Clint Eastwood in his Man-with-no-name garb driving a golf cart with a bunch of Oscars in the carriage. It’s a scene on par with Ed Wood getting advice from Orson Welles in “Ed Wood.” Unfortunately Eastwood didn’t voice himself. It was Timothy Olyphant. That’s too bad. It would have been so cool if he did.

The story of “Rango” is a movie cliché and one well-versed in movie knowledge will perhaps guess all the plot points before they happen. That didn’t bother me at all really because the movie itself is counting on me knowing everything anyway and instead spends its enormous energy in making all the old memories fresh and new. This movie is a great example of what the difference is between rip-off and homage. A Rip-off is a cynical attempt to capitalize on a popular trend. Homage is a nostalgic callback to something remembered fondly. Actually in practice they are exactly the same thing. What makes a movie one or the other is how deserving it is to be in the same class as that it is imitating. If a movie is lazy and dumb, then it is almost an insult to the classic to see itself in the inferior product. However, when the movie is creative and smart, as is Rango, a callback can be a compliment between artists who are on an equal level. “Rango” does not rely on its references. Take out every homage and it still would be funny and look great. That’s why it is full of homages and not rip-offs. Depp and Verbinski aren’t riding any coattails here.