Watchmen (2009)

I am almost sure director Zack Snyder's favorite part of making Watchmen was when he got to show four blue dicks on screen at the same time.

When he heard Dr. Manhattan constantly walked around either naked or in a speedo, Zack Snyder, the man responsible for the other ultra-masculine man-movie 300 and so many others like it since, said 'finally! A story that I can really relate to and appreciate! I will adapt this into the greatest slideshow of hypermasculine beefcakes ever made!'

With all the shots of musclebound men with clearly defined asses and bulging biceps and six-packs being so prominent in this and every other fucking movie he's ever done, it really does show that he is the manliest man ever in the history of the world. His movies are all unquestioning love-letters to manliness. The ultimate expressions of testosterone's glory. No shadow of doubt, nor any shadow of any other kind, will be cast on Zack Snyder's undeniable heterosexuality.

Director: Zack Snyder

Starring: Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman

IMDb

Co-written with Michelle.

If you took all the slow-mo scenes out of this, it really would be about 40 minutes shorter. The fight scene at the beginning where the Comedian dies and is thrown out a window is so long and dragged out. It's really not a good sign if your fight scene is like a long, pointless guitar solo in a bad 80s song – if it's just distracting from the story, then it's a shitty fight scene. If I wanted to watch a pointless fight scene, I'd go the gym and bump into a 'roided-up frat guy and then blame that on the guy next to him, and watch the fireworks.

The slow-mo is so silly in all of this. In the scene where the Comedian falls out the window, he falls so slowly that I think he could've survived the fall. It isn't like he would've hit the ground at a lethal speed with that slow mo going on!

"I sure am glad gravity bends to my will!"

Then we get a bunch of scenes you know from the book. It's hard to make fun of this, because all Snyder did was copy-paste scenes from the book and vomit them up on his movie, like he just stumbled back in the door after a night of binge drinking.

The real problem with all these scenes – of Rorschach investigating shit, Dan and Laurie hanging out, Dr. Manhattan being weird as fuck – is that it just feels like they're cut-and-pasted to check off a list of scenes, rather than further a story. I don't know why, but even though I love the Watchmen book, these scenes all fall terribly flat for me, and I can't get into the movie's arc or emotional scenes at all. The lighting and coloring look perfect for the book, but everything just has this digitized, overly slick, sexy kind of sheen on it that makes it impossible to feel like anything is really happening. I just don't like the "look" of the whole movie. I'm constantly aware that this is a movie when I'm watching it – rather than be immersed in its world, I'm pulled out of the story by the over the top visuals and reminded that it's all fake and rehearsed, which shouldn't happen.

The actors all sound bored as fuck and deliver their lines in a monotone – they sound like kids reading off cue cards. The philosophical and insightful dialogue from the comics comes off as just meaningless prattle here. It's like, yup, you sure got those words from the comics in your movie! Thumbs up! I know some of these actors could do very well, but the whole attitude of 'we HAVE to stick EXACTLY to how the book looked' just limits what they can really do with the characters in terms of making the performances their own.

He looks like the book! Even if he is soulless and boring as a character in this. But he looks like the guy from the book, and that's all that matters.

Michelle and I just didn't care about these characters. When Laurie finds out The Comedian is her biological father, that should be the big scene - it was in the book, in terms of her character anyway. But in the movie it just gets lost at sea in the middle of all the other crap. There's just too much going on.

The real problem is that the numerous flashbacks and side-stories that worked so well in the book just come off as overly cluttered and confusing in the movie, jumping around more than Super Mario on cocaine. In the book, you could read at your own pace, and in books that kind of time jumping and complicated narrative is expected. I don't think Snyder translated it well to film at all. The lack of direction in this movie is kind of like a broken GPS – it just takes you all over the place and you never get where you want to go. It's hard to tell what's a flashback and what isn't in this movie, with all the endless rolls of fat.

There's one scene of Laurie and her mother talking in the apartment about the Comedian – it comes off like some kind of weird, awkward one-room stage play. It feels very stiff and awkward.

"I definitely have breast cancer. So when are you and Dr. Manhattan going to get back together?"
"Mom, I told you, I don't love Dr. Manhattan anymore. I love Nite Owl now."

In fact, it kind of reminds me of something...

Nah, must just be coincidence.

Or this other scene of Ozymandias talking to reporters or something, with the over the top ominous music behind it and him constantly with that cold smirk on his face. I'm sure he's not the bad guy! Really, he isn't! But I dunno, maybe this is a faithful adaptation – maybe Alan Moore, when he wrote that scene in the book, also had that same ominous music in mind playing constantly behind Ozymandias, and Zack Snyder wasn't just a hack-ass director with no understanding of storytelling.

Don't bother turning on the light. All interviews should be done in dark rooms on very cloudy days to make sure things look as obviously sinister as possible!

The movie would also be way shorter if we didn't have scenes of Rorschach monologuing over a montage of him walking around in a graveyard or opening cabinets! I know it was in the fucking comic book, but that doesn't mean you have to include it in the movie! I think Zack Snyder hears the word self restraint and thinks it's some kind of mumbo jumbo foreign type of yoga.

This is like the Stephen King's IT movie in a way – it's just so bloated and they focused too much on putting in the material from the book, rather than delivering a good movie. But I'll give IT this – it was never even half as pretentious or up its own ass as Watchmen. This movie is like a college student's 2 a.m. drunken philosophical Facebook notes mutated after exposure to radiation into a horrible monster. Holy shit. I mean, this whole thing just radiates the flannel shirts and the PBR-stench of someone who just read Nietzsche for the first time. The book had a lot of this, too, but Alan Moore's clear talent and knowledge of storytelling made it work. The movie's slow pace and bloated runtime just makes the philsophical stuff unbearable and annoying.

"Life is meaningless. Life is only pain." = him in this movie, condensed version.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the excruciating slog of the last 25 minutes, in which the film goes through the climax. If you don't know, it's where Ozymandias, revealed SO SURPRISINGLY IN THIS MOVIE as the bad guy, says he's blown up half of New York and that's his crazy plan to bring about world peace. The characters all react with shock and horror in very rote, boring, scripted ways, and none of it is exciting. Rorschach then dies in a way that almost evokes a pulse of excitement, but then remembers it's this shitty ass movie and quits doing that.

Amazing how the biology of his blood when he explodes is so in tune with irony. I guess nature is funny sometimes.

I've had my car broken down in the dead of winter before and still gotten somewhere faster than Watchmen's climax does. A snail could get to the other side of town in the time this takes to get anywhere. If I had to listen to any more of Ozymandias's dead-eyed speechifying in this movie, I think I'd be praying to be in New York when that bomb went off, too. Just to save myself the pain.

A fitting metaphor, finally!

I remember being a bit younger, back when I first saw this movie seven years ago. I remember seeing all the people complaining about book-to-movie adaptations never being faithful to the source material. These days, we have good adaptations like the Hunger Games series or Gone Girl that tell a good story independent of what they were based on. But with Watchmen, it stuck too close to the book and was somehow worse off for it. I remember seeing this when it came out and thought "yeah, this is exactly like the book," but I just wasn't crazy about it, because “looking exactly like the book” isn't synonymous with good movie.

Overall, the movie is just proof that film and books are fundamentally different mediums. You can't just assume everything done in one of those mediums will fit the other. You have to adapt them – that's why it's called adaptations. If you just take everything in a book and throw it on screen with zero context or changes minding the fact that movies and books are different, it looks clumsy and awkward. If Snyder had any ingenuity or cleverness, he could have taken the massive pages and pages of dialogue that worked in the comic, and the complex flashbacks and differing storylines that also worked in the comic, and worked all that into a compelling film by moving things around and changing things and, y'know, adapting them. But nope – he just threw it all directly from the comic to the page, no changes at all! This movie is the fat kid eating too much cake at a birthday party and passing out before the party's even over. There's just zero restraint or filter here.

Maybe under a better director this could've been good. I thought while watching it that this could've been a good Netflix TV show – all the flashbacks and different storylines might lend themselves better to that, with the long-winded, oft-complex nature of it all being more easily digestible as hour-long increments. Maybe it'd have more room to breathe as a story. As a movie though, Watchmen too much; it's bloated and over-stuffed to the point that it's barely watchable.

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.

My Thought Process While Watching "Super" (2011)

Director: James Gunn

Starring: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1512235/

This is the best representation of my thought process while watching Super. I hope you enjoy it.

I was excited for this one, as it looked sort of like Kick-Ass except even weirder and darker, which is always something I like. But man, was this a disappointment. I haven’t seen an ending ruin a movie like this in…well, since Identity, pretty much. The basic premise is that this dorky, socially awkward man (Rainn Wilson) who most likely has a mental illness loses his girlfriend to a drug dealer (Kevin Bacon), so he decides to put on a costume and start “fighting crime,” or rather, going up to drug dealers and, wait for it, people who cut in line, and bludgeoning their skulls with a wrench. He teams up with an even crazier, more morbid soul in Ellen Page’s character, who laughs cutely while cutting open peoples’ chests with hand-made Wolverine-style claws.

…sound charming yet? This is a really screwed up movie, and I liked that for most of the runtime. In fact, my exact thoughts – the exact post I made on Facebook while watching the first half hour – was as follows:

so far Super is an incredibly disturbing film about a mentally ill man who puts on a costume and beats people savagely with a wrench. If that's it's intention I like it. Weird little...social commentary sort of thing.

Yeah, this movie wasn’t exactly clear on its real intention at first, which made me think “Oh, good, a film that is morally ambiguous while also having a really dark sense of humor – good!” Like a couple of scenes where Rainn Wilson is preparing to become a superhero, praying to God to let him save his wife – a rather chillingly pathetic and revealing scene. But then you get this image right afterwards:

Confusing, right? Oh well. Most of the movie is still pretty good so far. The scene where he brutally bludgeons a man and cracks his skull – like you actually see blood coming out of the split in his head up close – for CUTTING IN LINE kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but hey, it’s a dark comedy. The fact that this guy actually thinks he’s doing good, and doling out some kind of “justice,” should make for some really macabre humor later on, right?

Oh, and Ellen Page is in the movie now! She is way too excited about her new position as Wilson’s sidekick. She persuades him to go over to this guy’s house where they beat him up for, supposedly, messing up one of her friend’s cars. Then after Wilson nearly beats him to death in his own home, with almost no provocation, Page blurts out “I THINK this is the guy who did it!” Gee. This movie is actually getting really disturbing now. Where can it possibly go from here? What crazy things will Ellen Page do next?

The final battle comes around where we get to see Kevin Bacon and his minions in their big country ranch mansion. Wilson and Page ambush them from outside and slowly kill off the guards like it’s a slasher movie – note here how Page kills one guy in cold blood, quite happily, with some Wolverine claws. Note her apparent lack of any kind of empathy or human emotion at all – what kind of psychological disorder does she have? What was her past like? Well, we’ll never find out because she gets killed off and Wilson never even mentions her again. Another of his own mental failings? Maybe.

So he saves his wife and…I’m not going to lie; the ending is complete, total horseshit. You will be insulted beyond your wildest dreams. What transpires, in so many words, is this – Wilson takes his wife, who has had maybe 4 lines in the whole movie, back home where she of course instantaneously gets clean, and the epilogue is basically his revelation that he was “working” under God’s plan the whole time to save his wife, who apparently goes on to have a normal and productive life. What about the struggle of getting clean from drugs? What about Ellen Page? She’s never even mentioned again! What the hell were these writers smoking? This whole thing is played off so moralistic and cutesy that it’s like they forgot what movie they were making! I mean, hello, THIS IS THE MOVIE WITH BRUTAL BLUDGEONINGS FROM A CRAZY MAN IN A SUPERHERO OUTFIT.

I’m sorry; this movie is just so frustratingly inconsistent. The ending doesn’t fit at all with how it started or what the tone was throughout the film. These two characters, Rainn Wilson’s and Ellen Page’s, are deeply disturbed. They need help. The movie trying to play it off like they’re just quirky and silly DOESN’T WORK. You can’t have a happy, fluffy ending with characters like this – these are people who have no problem with cracking someone’s skull just because he was mildly rude to them. I want to see some psychological character development here! I want to delve into their psyches! Hell, I at least want some kind of more morbid humor in here than what we ended up with! And this movie actually has the gall to try and teach us a lesson with THIS SHIT in it?

Get real. Super is crap, and I can’t think of a worse missed opportunity in a film in recent times. It has no idea what it wants to be and fails horribly at absolutely everything it tries. Kevin Bacon is great and Rainn Wilson is actually very good himself, but even they can't save this mismatched pile of confusing nonsense in the end. Go watch Kick-Ass instead; at least that movie is actually good.

Images copyright of their original owners.

REVIEW: Hulk (2003)

Well, with The Avengers finally out and winning worldwide acclaim, it looks like superhero films have finally hit their stride and become worth talking about again – it’s been a long time coming with a lot of steep roads, but finally we have some viable superhero flicks to lead the genre and prove that it isn’t a big half-assed joke just made to cash in on the comic books. Indeed, we certainly have come a long way since movies like the 2003 Hulk film with Eric Bana, a movie so lame and so boring that it feels like you yourself are getting a radioactive zap straight to the brain. And yes, I did just use a joke that bad. I should be ashamed, but then again, I’m still better than the people who made THIS.

Director: Ang Lee

Starring: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286716/

I mean MAN this is a dull, plodding, hackneyed piece of nothing. Who knew you could make The Hulk so boring? It’s got all the elements you’d expect a Hulk film to have, but they’re done incredibly poorly, and mostly it will just put you to sleep. Eh. Let’s…try and get it over with, I guess…

We start off with a guy named David Banner doing illegal experiments without the government’s permission like experimenting on his own son – what a douchebag. He gets sacked rightfully, as what he’s doing is highly illegal. He starts to freak out and break shit and then immediately runs home to kill his son; what a champion father. We don’t exactly see what happens next, because the movie is as incoherent as your average meth addict, and just fades into another scene with main character Bruce Banner as a teenager about to go off to college and leave Woody, Buzz and all the other toys behind for the last time:

Maybe I got the wrong movie franchise...

Okay, seriously, what’s up with the flashbacks? Does this director just not think we’ll be able to understand The Hulk’s plot without showing us Bruce Banner’s past? And for that matter, why change the story like this? Bruce Banner was a normal guy who got caught up in radiation and became a big green monster. THAT’S IT. What is all this nonsense about his father conducting secret experiments on him and trying to kill him as a little kid? It’s just needlessly complex and dark.

So we finally get to the present day as we see Bruce Banner played by Eric Bana and his ex-girlfriend Betty, played by Jennifer Connelly, neither one of whom ever seems to give a shit about any of their lines throughout this thing. I’m serious, you could get cardboard cutouts to play these characters and you’d have the same level of emotional attachment. These two are ex boyfriend and girlfriend and it seems like this is supposed to be a point of contention between them, but the way Bana and Connelly act, it’s just a minor inconvenience to laugh about. So glad THAT riveting emotional character development was avoided!

They mosey around for a while exchanging some nonsensical dialogue and the scenes are transitioned horribly through schizophrenic drug induced hallucinations that look like stuff you’d see in a 1995 computer game. The whole thing is just too cluttered and claustrophobic, with short scenes broken up by tons of bright, flashy colors enough to give small Japanese children seizures. How am I supposed to be invested in this? It’s practically the cinematic equivalent of a hyperactive little girl on too much sugar!

So Banner and Betty do some more experiments until their dumbass friend accidentally breaks the machine and gets Banner infected with the radiation. It should kill him, but instead, mysteriously, he’s OK, and even better than before. He then gets visited by a creepy old Unabomber impersonator, his own crazy father who escaped from a mental ward and disguised himself as the janitor of the building, played by veteran actor Nick Nolte. How did they get him to do this? Well, I imagine a lot of horrible, horrible blackmail was involved. And what’s up with the three random dogs he has with him all the time? Is this supposed to be taken seriously?

The true picture of villainy; a crazy homeless man from your local subway with a bunch of weird dogs around him for no reason.

Nolte hams it up in front of the camera as he’s going to do for the entire movie – this guy is seriously just terrible here, and it’s baffling because I know he can do good in other movies. What happened, was he just told to act as poorly as possible? I also love how he tries to get all self righteous and finger-pointing at Banner for not being a good scientist or whatever when HE was arrested for malpractice and experimenting on humans and then put into a mental ward. Not exactly in the position to chastise others, are you pal?

And what is also so strange about this is…HOW THE HELL DID HE GET HIRED BY A GOVERNMENT-FUNDED SCIENTIFIC BUILDING? He has a criminal history! Do they just not do any background checks on their employees? “Hey, I know this guy was arrested thirty years ago for doing illegal experiments and has been in a mental ward ever since, but I really think he’s perfect for our scientist building as a janitor! NOTHING BAD could possibly result from this!” USE YOUR BRAINS YOU MONGOLOIDS.

Banner turns into the Hulk and destroys the lab, causing everything to get shut down by the government and Banner to be arrested the next morning. Betty’s father the military general (Sam Elliott) comes in and arrests Banner despite Betty’s pleas otherwise – he’s ONLY a danger to all mankind as long as he’s free, after all! Why do some parents have to be so inconsiderate?

That night we see David Banner’s most diabolical plot yet…three rabid super-dogs, one of which is a French poodle. I swear I am not making that up:

Reminds me of The Breed...

Or, no, wait. It's like Cujo II:  Who Let the Dogs Out! There we go!

I…can’t tell if this is stupid or genius. But we get a pretty decent action scene I guess, remarkable enough for the fact that it involves a demonic French poodle, but decent enough otherwise, too. Then they go back and we find out that Betty really wasn’t so loyal after all, as despite the fact that Banner helped her, she tranquilizes him and lets the military take him. What a whore.

They take him to some compound where of course they NEVER do anything stupid like…just letting him walk around all he wants with his ex girlfriend with no guards or protection, thus putting everyone in danger…oh wait, they DO do that. What a bunch of morons! But at least they’re prepared for a Hulk break-out in case they do some experiments on him underwater and he gets angry and breaks out…oh, wait, they’re NOT prepared at all, and have to run around like their heads are up their asses just to make sure he doesn’t kill them.

Aren't you glad the US is paying taxes in this world to fund idiotic experiments like this, which could have literally been orchestrated better by a five year old? How is it THIS HARD to NOT waste valuable resources? If you want to make The Hulk come out, how about actually getting prepared for it, and setting up damage-proof settings where he won't destroy anything? But I guess that would make too much sense. Instead these guys just love to run around like turkeys with their heads cut off while The Hulk demolishes all their hard work. But hey, whatever works, ya know?!

Is anything these guys do sensible or smart AT ALL? I’ll just spoil that for you and say no, no it isn’t.

So the Hulk breaks out of the compound and goes on a rampage all around the desert and even through the Grand Canyon. And okay, even I have to admit, this is the only good part of the movie, with some excellent scenery and even some decent action for once. Seeing the Hulk jump around the Grand Canyon is pretty awesome.

But the movie RUINS it soon after by having David Banner, Bruce’s father and now a crazy Unabomber wannabe, talk to Betty alone and try to get her to let him talk to Bruce again, even offering to turn himself in. Now, in any rational universe, the military’s response would be “No, you crazy freak, we’re just arresting you and putting you back in that mental institution for the rest of your life.” However, in THIS MOVIE, the military just goes along with his demands and agrees to them!

…

…….

…………….

ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS? What kind of military is this? They ACTUALLY let him see his son after everything he’s done? I mean, he’s only an escaped mental patient locked up for doing dangerous experiments on human beings. It’s not like he’s, oh I don’t know, CRAZY or anything, right? This makes no sense! What kind of military organization would ever negotiate with a hostage like this? What do they gain? Brownie points for reuniting a son and his father, even though the father is a known lunatic and could do anything to activate his son’s Hulk persona and sabotage everything the military themselves is working for? Are they just TRYING to screw up as much as possible? Is that the experiment they're doing; how to royally mess up everything as much as possible? I’m sorry, I don’t get it, and this movie has officially crossed the line into complete WTF territory, never to return. Movie, YOU NEED HELP.

So anyway, now we have a second climax which involves David Banner biting on a big electric wire and turning into, well, what looks like a big pile of Transformer droppings:

Noogie noogie noogie!

They fight some more and David turns into…oh, do you even care anymore?

I really don't, so I'm not going to bother explaining this part.

Then the military bombs them and leaves them for dead without even checking to SEE if they’re dead or not – have I mentioned I’m not exactly enthralled with the way the military acts in this movie? – and we’re done, right? No? There’s still another ’1 year later’ epilogue scene? Oh come on, JUST END ALREADY, you big pile of green garbage!

Sigh. So apparently a year later, Jennifer Connelly still can’t act, as when she says she still loves Bruce, she sounds like she’s just saying she lost her shoes or something – don’t get TOO emotional there honey; don’t want to actually make us give a shit there or something! And we see Bruce himself in the jungle with some native tribe, getting robbed by some thieves. He glares at them and says, in a foreign language, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

So, just to recap that, the signature line of the Hulk series is only uttered in a foreign language at the very end of the movie – it’s not THAT BIG of a deal or anything, but it just points out how much this movie utterly fails.

And fail it does! This was crap. Aside from the awful special effects, acting and storyline, it was just so cluttered with nonsensical transitions and too many plotlines for what should have been a relatively simple movie. I didn’t really get a chance to mention it in the review, but this movie is also really, really friggin’ pretentious and ponderous, with far too many faux-philosophical ramblings from Nick Nolte’s character that just get on my nerves with how self-indulgent they are. For psychological superhero movies, The Dark Knight was still a long ways off.

So yeah, this sucks. Go see the 2008 one instead. It isn’t anything amazing, but it’s at least a real movie, unlike this haphazard collection of psychedelic music video images and pretentious college-student speeches. And I think that’s a big plus!

Images copyright of their original owners.

The Avengers (2012)

Starring: A bunch of people

Director: Joss Whedon

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0848228/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(2012_film)

Many of you have never heard of this small independent film that explores the deep realms of the human psyche by analysing the most intellectually intriguing phrase of our time: "HULK SMASH!!!!!"

Or it just might be about something completely different...

The movie starts off with Loki (Tom Hiddleston) coming to Earth with the intent of becoming its supreme ruler. It is up to a familiar group of superheroes, including Iron Man, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, and Hawkeye (respectively played by Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, and Jeremy Renner) under the guidance of Nick Furry (Samuel L. Jackson) to stop him. However, they first have to learn to work together as their conflicting personalities soon become apparent.

Umm...it's awesome! Nope, I don't have anything to add to that; I think I've made myself pretty clear. Okay, fine, if you insist...

I was expecting this movie to be pretty good even though I have mixed feelings about the previous Marvel movies that preceded it. "Captain America" was great and "The Incredible Hulk" was enjoyable. The "Iron Man" movies were pretty good though I feel like they could have been better. "Thor"...was okay, but I say that generously since it had major flaws. Still, I figured this movie would take enough of the best elements from each of them and be able to create a competent story. And...it did! It really just goes all out: it makes the most of the characters and how they interact with each other, it has a number of funny moments that are actually funny, it has some good serious moments, and (perhaps most importantly) it has lots and lots and LOTS of action!!! What more can you want?!!!

That's pretty much it. I really can't elaborate on it any further, at least not without spoiling it. Too be honest, I can't really criticize it either. The only part I really questioned was how the characters seemed be clued in on a bunch of the major details about each other and the situation at hand. But they explain how the film takes place about a year after the other ones ended and given how persistent Nick Furry has been about keeping tabs on people (and how high profile some of their individual circumstances were in the media) its seems logical that they would all have a basic idea of what was going on. Which is good because it minimizes the number of scenes needed to do all that explaining and cuts straight to the good parts!

So...yeah! It is a really solid, excellent movie. Most of you who are reading this are probably going to see it anyway or have already done so, but if you are on the fence for some reason, I definitely recommend it. I can't think of any other superhero movie that will be able to beat this one this summer...

Hmm...forgot about that one...

P.S.: As you would expect, there is a scene after the main closing credits that...okay, I will not spoil it. And if you wait until the end of rest of the credits, there is something else. Just in case you wanted to know.

REVIEW: Chronicle (2012)

A superhero movie that actually does something interesting with its plot is rare to find these days as many of them are adaptations from already existing comic books – so even the best ones don’t usually surprise us in many ways, being that they are telling stories that we have always loved. But Chronicle puts a different spin on things and delivers a surprisingly dark, haunting picture that I found to be quite addictive.

Director: Josh Trank

Starring: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706593/

Before I get into the rest of it, yes, this is one of those found footage shaky-cam movies, and no, I don’t think it detracts at all from the movie. In fact there are several scenes which couldn’t have been done as effectively in a normal filming style and the handheld thing is handled really well.

This movie’s story is not really one that reveals its complexity through a summary. It’s about a group of kids that find a mysterious asteroid in the ground and gain telekinetic powers through it. One of the kids, due to his troubled home life, begins to go bad. The three main characters, Andrew, Matt and Steve, are the focal point of all the movie’s tidings and they are actually damn good characters. Sure, they sort of embrace age-old clichés like the jock, the popular kid, the loner, but they’re very well detailed and textured characters who have clear dimensions to them. These guys are good actors and they play the characters with a lot of personality and charisma to them – they tell the whole movie’s story through their interactions and the way they change through the infusion of their newfound abilities.

The abilities themselves are scarcely explained and I like it that way; this is so much cooler than just a boring ‘superhero origin’ movie because it doesn’t dwell on any of the usual crap that those do. It’s a smart, gritty movie that has some serious twists, turns and thrills that you won’t see coming. Unlike most ‘kid with superpower’ movies like Jumper and I Am Number 4, Chronicle is dark and feral all the way and doesn’t wimp out on the danger that would realistically be present. The focal character Andrew (can’t really call him a protagonist) doesn’t get the girl, not everyone makes it out OK and where a lot of films would go for a safer, more happy-go-lucky character arc…this movie just gets darker and darker. When you think it’s gotten to its lowest point, Chronicle surprises you and gets even darker where most movies would pull out and relieve the characters of their pain. I respect this movie for that.

The two supporting leads, Steve and Matt, are pretty good kids, with a good grasp on what they want to do. Some of the most entertaining scenes are at the beginning when they’re all playing around with their new powers and just having fun. An interesting thing about this movie is the setting, which is decidedly grittier and more urban than a lot of other movies like this. These aren’t kids who have everything – they’re just average, suburban kids who joke around in crowded department stores and live on roads and in houses that could all use a bit of fixing up.

Andrew is a child of a very broken home with little hope on the horizon – his mom’s sick and dying, his dad’s out of work and abusive. He is a troubled teenager to the extreme, and when he gets his powers he does not magically turn over a new leaf. This movie is a really good portrayal of a main character that is not anyone we want to identify with or even really follow, but then the film does it anyway, and it turns out compelling and even arresting at times in its insanity. It’s a great character study of kids like Andrew who exist in plentitude in the real world – kids who have nothing and don’t seem to be on the planet for anything else other than to be punching bags for the karmic forces. It’s tragic, and the movie portrays Andrew’s darkest moments in that light almost as much as they are deplorable and disgusting. Mostly they’re all three.

Maybe the saddest parts are those in which Andrew actually does seem to be getting better and going places in life – having fun on stage at a talent show, meeting a pretty girl – and then he never really does. He is always shoved back down to his usual lows and like too many kids, he cannot rise above his own surroundings and the meager inheritance he’s been handed in life. A lot of kids can’t. A lot of kids just crumble and lose themselves to the darkness.

The real deciding point for movies this dark is how they handle the serious subject matter. A lot of movies tend to go overboard with the whole morbidity and darkness of their stories and forget to actually ground it with a leavening of light. This is a concept called duende, which asserts that every great work of art has a helping of both dark and light in its emotional and textural palette. Chronicle is good because it manages its darkness with class and grace, and makes sure each moment is felt with the weight and clarity it deserves, and yes, with enough light in it to make sure it does not suffocate on its own bile. Chronicle is a chronicle of the weakness of youth and how easily it can be manipulated by outside forces. Brilliant stuff.

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Review: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) TH

An Uncle Sam who gets his hands dirty

While other superheroes are just out to stop thugs and fight crime for what the police and average citizens can't handle, instead Captain America is a political savior with a chunk of the world in his sights: someone who has a knack for heroics, team leadership and is capable of changing the tides of war with not only his brawn but his determination and unselfish attitude.

"Captain America: The First Avenger" is set during World War II and like "X-Men: First Class" it creates an alternate universe with shared commonalities to the past, as what's unfolding isn't just working in the shadows like, say, "National Treasure," rather it's stepping out to the light to make its own substitute history with different names and faces. In doing so it manages to pose a series of what if questions: What if Germany perfected scientific weapons before the US? What if one man could actually make a significant difference in war? What if they had more advanced artillery and technology in the '40s and how would it have panned out otherwise? Hitler is only mentioned with mock and referenced talk, but instead the main Axis bad guy named Johann Schmidt (Weaving) is at the forefront with possibly more ambition than the tiny mustached dictator could hope. Nazis and swastikas aren't delved into but instead an organization/political party/cult named "HYDRA" with a different but still threatening emblem to wave.

A scrawny guy named Steve Rogers (Evans) from Brooklyn, who has the underdeveloped frame of an average 13 year old but the courage of a warrior, is doing all but holding his breath to enlist in the military so he can serve his country despite health issues and a Hobbit stature. After continually getting denied, he gains his chance when meeting an honest man named Dr. Abraham Erskine (Tucci) who's an idealist scientist who sees potential in Rogers for a new experiment. The serum can't be used on just anyone as it will transform the person into an unstoppable super soldier as well as amplify their temperament from bad to really bad, and good to extremely good. Thus when the ultra-patriot-to-be comes out a taller, bulkier one-man-army, not to mention a lady magnet, he has the perfect antithesis of a rival with Red Skull on the side of HYDRA who uses his powers for gain and domination.

Like "Green Lantern" this thoroughly concentrated on character development, including what it means to have these awesome strengths and how to direct and use them to their maximum potential. Though when it came time to get his hands dirty, the antagonist vs protagonist element seemed somewhat straightforward, glossed over and easy to the unchallenged Captain. The only moment the brain kicks in is when a scene is too vague rather than being too complex. From doing campaign pledges for war bonds and gimmicky shows that include American flag dressed woman dancing to hooting soldiers, Cap gets heckled off stage by real combatants and decides to put his abilities to the test to save his friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) and fellow soldiers held prisoner. Soon enough with the help of Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) with his uniform, he has a motley crew of fighters that go out on missions that somehow have a detrimental effect on the war effort, yet it's never fully explained how that's possible. It makes things extremely simple and that part of the story only seems there to do nothing but perpetuate fast flying, combustive action.

Red Skull, apart from his intensely commanding appearance and dress, wasn't as outlined and the performance came across at times like a run-of-the-mill, snide villain who ends up being somewhat predictable. Not to mention some of the delivery was scripted to a fault as some lines felt preplanned and a lost cause to the quick pacing. Chris Evans went for sincerity due to toning down his usual showmanship and humor from past films like "Fantastic Four" and instead lets others take on one-liners like the hilarious Tommy Lee Jones who plays the no nonsense, southern Colonel Chester Phillips. Evans performs the role as somewhat naive to the world at large from knowing exactly what he wants and everything else along the way being second, such as dames and his own well-being. Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) shows up as the physically attractive agent on the surface but underneath is confident and not to be underestimated. There's a budding love angle but fortunately the picture never slows down to entirely make it a distracting cliche that every blockbuster summer flick "must" have.

"Captain America: The First Avenger" never lets up from being relentlessly theatrical as a number of scenes are set up with the intention of going for a grand show and timed out unveiling rather than attempting to create a piece of naturalism or history lesson. Despite its exaggeration and garish ways, it indeed works as a mostly simple and entertaining experience with a little food for thought about Cap's little guy background and eventually plenty of action fodder to give it energy. The 3-D wasn't completely maximized to its full potential but it did have its moments of shining, such as a few particular scenes that for the first time actually made me flinch with his iconic shield coming right out of the screen! The film moves steadily along and doesn't feel its two hour time length partly due to frequent location changes. The effort put into the art direction and set pieces while melding CGI positively showed as they were generally constructed down to the finest detail. In terms of fire power in a war movie, this shuffles between guns that shoot bullets and fictitious ones with beams of energy, as well as flame throwers and tanks, and, of course, more fiery explosions than can be counted on fingers and toes in a packed theater.

Director: Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Jurassic Park III, The Wolfman)
Starring: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell, Stanley Tucci, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Neal McDonough
Website: IMDB

REVIEW: X-Men: First Class (2011)

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Starring: James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender

Website: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0891216/

This was a surprise to me, as superhero movies have been getting stagnant. I didn’t expect to have one actually pull me in that wasn’t a Christopher Nolan Batman movie in these modern times of CGI and special effects and 3D. But here we have the new X-Men movie, quite a pleasant surprise for sure, and I found myself very entertained here.

The reason this film works is that it actually does focus more on the characters and their various journeys than on some kind of superfluous need to tell a superhero story, even when there were no ideas. Director James Vaughn previously directed the excellent Kick-Ass, which was another superhero movie with great writing, relatable characters and a powerful, inviting sweep, and so you can see where he's coming from when you watch this movie. This is a superhero movie, but it’s one that takes the high road and doesn’t try to check off the various tropes of its genre before getting into the substance of the story first. First Class is a smart, snappy action movie that has enough drama to interest the more prudent among you, and enough comedy to make sure it doesn’t sink into a mire of modernist depression. It is well rounded and feels wholesome and complete.

The film focuses on Xavier, played by James McAvoy, who is a great actor and really pulls off the character with style and passion, making you care about what he says and what he’s doing. I was really impressed by this performance, as he pretty much turned one of the less interesting X-Men characters into someone I found very intriguing, and who I wanted to see win. Erik, or Magneto, played by Michael Fassbender, also puts out a great performance. The chemistry between the two of them on screen as friends was very believable and actually one of the best parts of the movie – I wanted to see more of it. They’re both hugely charismatic and enjoyable to watch.

The other main character is Mystique, or Raven as she was known, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who also starred in the superlative Winter’s Bone last year. In this film’s universe she met Xavier as a young child, and stayed with him all throughout his growing up. She’s uncomfortable with her mutant state and wants to look normal, although the film’s progression shows her slowly shedding those ideals and embracing opposite ones. She’s a very well done character and I enjoyed seeing her progression. A great performance on all counts.

So yeah, the film’s other characters aren’t quite as fleshed out, but they’re still cool. They introduce a few new X-Men not even from the comics. The film goes on a bit long, but it packs in a lot of great scenes like the early ones with all the kids together for the first time, and the several scenes in the middle where they're all training - very creative and fun. The ending battle scene is actually really awesome, which is refreshing, as a lot of movies like Thor and Iron Man really skimp out on having memorable finales. The movie’s main message is a coming of age one. These kids don’t know where they’ll end up yet, and although the viewer does, it doesn’t make the ride any less engaging, because of the strong acting and well told story. So go see this. It’s fun, effective and involving. Recommended.

Review: Lightspeed (2006)

Director: Don E. FauntLeRoy

Starring: Jason Connery, Nicole Eggert

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0822827/

"Don't you know speed kills?"

-Python

Stan Lee was responsible for many great comic book characters, like Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, The X Men, Dr. Strange and many more. You’d be hard pressed to find a guy more influential and revered than him in the comic industry. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t created his share of unbearable crap, too. And if you thought Spider-Man 3 was the worst thing he had ever put his name on…well, just wait until you get a load of Lightspeed. This putrid, half-cocked attempt at a superhero movie somehow manages to use all the regular clichés of these movies and yet never creates anything worth viewing.

Yup. Yup, you have to be pre-etty bad to do that. And in case you were curious about this pile of cracked up pig vomit, well we're going to review it today. Brace yourselves. It's going to get pretty damn stupid, I'll warn you right now.

The movie starts off with perhaps the most boring shoot-out and secret-agency espionage ever as we see people we don’t know wearing all black so we can’t see what they look like running around a bland looking office building and trying to kill one another. What are they trying to do? I don’t know. Maybe they were trying to stop the production of this movie…but it doesn’t work, since the green lizard-man hybrid gets away in the end.

"This is what happens when you don't eat your vegetables."

Yes, a green lizard-man; it looks like something Reptile from Mortal Kombat would vomit up if he ate the Lizard from Spider Man and also drank a gallon of Drano. Apparently his name is Python, and yes, he's going to get a lot of screen time in this movie, so prepare your Jaegermeister. It's going to be a long hour and a half.

After a very poorly done CGI explosion, we cut to 4 years earlier, which honestly begs the question of why you couldn’t just show this part first, seeing as it is, you know, the BACKSTORY. But maybe it’s actually important; maybe what they’ll show us here will totally justify the lame first part...but I doubt it. We get a scientist that is talking to his assistant about a research project he’s been doing that can heal dead human tissue by fusing it with snake skin, or something like that. To test it, even though he’s never done any tests before, he decides to burn his own arm over an open fire.

…doesn’t that seem a little STUPID to you? Why would you test it out on yourself before at least seeing if the snakes work? What if they didn’t work? You’d feel pretty dumb then, wouldn’t you?

Okay, to be fair, his sister is in the hospital with a horrible burned body due to an accident, and that’s why he’s doing all this. But she dies like right after his stem cell lab gets shut down anyway. He breaks into his lab, and…somehow starts a fire from nothing at all...and then presses a button that was conveniently right there to get a skin-cell transplant from one of his snakes, turning him into the un-threatening monstrosity he is in the present day. Don’t you wish you had a button that did that? I know I do. Boy, I tell you; I'd use that damn button every day if I did!

Then we go back to the present time, where we get an incredibly jumbled sequence of shots of the rescue squad taking the one surviving cop from the explosion to a hospital. His legs and pelvis have been completely crushed, they are told. The doctor tells the secret agent commander guy and…random blonde woman agent…that he can do an experimental procedure to get the injured agent, whose name is Daniel, to walk again. And with only so much as one line of dialogue explaining what that procedure is, the chief says ‘do it.’ Boy, the people in this movie are really reckless about experimental science, aren’t they? You’d think they’d have…questions, or something, but I guess those are just for morons.

So after Python comes back and slaughters everyone in the hospital except for Daniel, kidnapping the witness who could have helped identify him, nobody ever mentions it again, and the secret agents and hospital orderlies who died are apparently completely forgotten about. Instead we get a training montage as Daniel tries to learn how to use his legs again! Yeah…that’s not cool at all. By the amazing power of his indestructibly elastic clothes, the amazing Daniel spontaneously learns to run at high speeds just like the Flash, except unlike the Flash, he just really sucks. The only explanation really given boils down to ‘radiation.’ That’s it. Just ‘radiation’…because of course, it does whatever the writers want it to do. In a good movie, this might matter less if we could get into the story, and if it was clever enough. But Lightspeed is the kind of movie that makes me wish I was watching a horse’s rectum instead, so you can imagine how well that holds up.

Oh, and did I mention he just walks into a sports equipment store and buys his whole costume right there in the open? I just…I can’t…okay, just look at the picture and tell me if you think this costume justifies the stupidity of just buying it in a hockey apparel store:

Seriously, look at him; he looks like a drunk reject from the Justice League. Outcast because he couldn't put down the bottle long enough.

So he thwarts a robbery at a convenience store, probably only due to the fact that nobody can stare at that costume for more than two seconds without laughing. One of the guys even gets on the roof…how, I don’t know; but he does. And when confronted by, uh, “Lightspeed,” I guess, he backs up and falls off the roof of his own accord. Clumsiest robber ever? I think he’s definitely a candidate.

A reporter takes some pictures of him, probably to sell them on eBay, and then we see that Daniel’s girlfriend can’t find a connection between the reptile dude and the scientist who blew up in the lab four years ago. Because I guess she needs it spelled out for her in bold letters. Also, note that nobody seems to care that a man who should have been limping around, moving a step or two every five minutes on his crutches, is now walking like a normal guy with no trace of any injury at all. Huh. I guess I shouldn’t have doubted the scientific miracles in this movie after all. Silly me.

The reptile guy kills a bunch more secret agents and invades a scientist building where he finds a machine that can generate coldness, which has been getting a lot of fanfare lately among the scientific community. He says in the hokiest voice, “Did you know that this was one of my original creations before the burn experiment? Before I was reborn…before I was born.” That last part is actually hissed like he thinks it sounds scary. Well, I hate to be the buzzkill here, but it’s not. It’s not scary at all. Not even a third grader could find this even one bit intimidating. And to think Stan Lee actually produced this…dreadful. Maybe this movie's director caught him doing something embarrassing and blackmailed him into it. That's the only excuse.

Before I go on, what the hell is the logic in having all the agents run around in broad daylight in those black ninja outfits? They’ve been doing this all movie long and I am just about fed up with how dumb it looks. Look at these idiots running around on the grass like they’re actually camouflaging themselves; it’s just silly. Why the black masks and full-body suits? It doesn’t look like every bit of it is armored; they’re just wearing ski masks over their heads. Uh, that really only works at night, you blithering idiots, not in broad sunny daylight. Ghost Squad? Is that what these guys are calling themselves? Because I’ve never seen such…visible, easy to see ghosts.

"These black clothes will definitely help us blend in and do our covert secret work, and nobody will EVER notice us out here in the parking lot!"

After trading some hammy dialogue with Mr. Scaly-Skin here, Lightspeed saves his girlfriend from being crushed by a falling object and then decides to take off his mask and drink his medicine right in front of everyone, revealing his secret identity, as nobody else has to take that kind of special medicine to make sure they don’t screw up their body from the ‘radiation.’ Smart move there, guy; couldn’t you have just gone out of sight before you did that? But nobody ever thinks to mention this again, even though they see Daniel in the next scene. What a load. These 'secret agents' are about as perceptive as…as blind people, for Pete’s sake! The guy who got exposed to radiation in an accident and recently underwent surgery mysteriously disappears every time that Lightspeed character shows up. Pay attention! No, you know what? Blind people are MORE perceptive than these yahoos any day. Secret agents my ass; these morons couldn’t find out who took the cookies out of the jar before dinner.

So the agents are interrogating the guy who they caught from Python’s team, and Python actually kills him from his own hideout by…typing his name in on the computer and pressing a button. Okay. That’s a really lazy and convenient way to write out a character. We see him next killing off the senator who shut down his stem cell research operation from four years ago, and why didn’t he do this four years ago or something? I don’t know, I don’t really care. Let’s just move on.

A guy is tortured and gives up the location of the safehouse where Daniel and his girlfriend are staying. Python goes and kidnaps his wife and…forces her to sit down and play the piano. That’s oddly un-threatening. Then we see Lightspeed show up and demonstrate his amazing acrobat skills – yes, he can do back flips and jump over people’s heads now – and he confronts Python with an amazing display of horrible and unconvincing acting, before Python knocks him down and kidnaps his girlfriend-thing again. Why can’t Lightspeed stop them even though he’s clearly still conscious and able to fight? Because we need to pad out this movie longer! Oh, please, somebody help me.

So we get a generic supervillain plot about defusing bombs around the city, which works because Lightspeed is fast enough to do it. Python beats up the girlfriend a little, kills his assistant when he tries to talk some sense into him, and then goes on this huge, whiny rant, shouting over and over about how he didn’t do anything wrong and that they took everything away from him. Sheesh, dude, get a blog; it'll help you vent. And this is the point where his voice completely crosses the line into something that honestly I don’t think anyone could take seriously; he sounds so goofy. “Don’t you know speed kills?” is one of his lines, I am dead serious. Although I guess I should applaud them for saving that joke until now…

So it’s revealed that the secret agent leader guy was the real traitor the whole time, which doesn’t make any sense, but the movie is almost over anyway. He gets shot and killed in like an instant, and by Python no less, making the whole thing entirely pointless. Then Python gets shoved out of a two-story window on fire, Lightspeed and his girlfriend are reunited, and the movie ends. FINALLY, it ends.

Man, this is rancid. If you think you’ve seen a bad superhero flick, just watch this one and you’ll be begging for Spider-Man 3 and The Spirit. The acting is totally cardboard, the direction looks like it was made as a home movie, the plot is hacked up crap that a fifth grader could do better than, and there are so many plot holes you might as well call it Swiss cheese and just be done with it. How could anyone green light this? How could someone honestly look at this and say, “Yes. This lives up to the rest of the things Stan Lee has endorsed. Let’s put it out for the world to enjoy”? I don’t know, but I never want to see this again, and neither should you. Just run away…at the speed of light, even.

Or just don’t rent it. Either one works.