WALL-E

Dir. Andrew Stanton, 2008



It is rare that a film comes along that really seems to defy categorization, and that takes a classic idea and successfully modernizes it. There have been many rehashings of Shakespeare dramas, or reiterations of tired romantic plotlines, but it is unusual to see a film that takes a completely original approach to a classic, and makes it work in every way. This year, I have been relatively unimpressed with what I have seen, but I had high hopes for Wall-E to be at least sweet and funny, and well animated. I was unprepared to be totally thrown for a loop. This film really went to the roots of the classics, the story of creation, and went with a risky idea that threatened to alienate some audiences, but that ultimately has such broad appeal for whatever anyone can hope to find in a movie.

The opening moments of Wall-E present a sparkling view of outer space, paired with the optimistic opening lines from the song “Sunday Clothes” from Hello, Dolly!, which leads one to think that this will be the start of the cute and fun love story between the Wall-E and Eve, which we know is coming, thanks to the trailers. Then the camera takes a dip down and shows us the Earth, dusty and brown and encrusted with a filthy layer of satellites. As the music wells and fades, we see that the surface of the Earth is dry, barren, dead, and heaped with trash of all kinds. It is truly a shocking view of what may come, and one that does not seem improbable. But then we see a little guy, rolling around, playing this uplifting song from Hello, Dolly!, and we know that we have seen our hero.

Wall-E is the last robot of a class of clean-up machines, the Waste Allocator Load Lifter- Earth Class. Years ago, everyone on Earth went off into outer space on a luxury-cruise style ship, the Axiom, leaving the Wall-Es to clean up, with the intention of returning in 5 years when all the trash was taken care of. At this point, we do not know what has become of this plan, but it looks like a lot more time has passed. So much time, in fact, that Wall-E has had the time to rifle through the artifacts of the human lifestyle and to develop an idea of what the culture must have been like. From watching Hello, Dolly!, he has also developed a notion of what love is, and to realize that he is lonely. One day, out of the sky, comes another spacecraft with a beautiful, Macintosh-esque robot, Eve (E Vegetation E) whose “directive” it is to find some sign of life of Earth. Wall-E is instantly smitten, and does anything to try and introduce her to his life here on Earth and his highly amusing collection of items, including a little plant that he’d just found. Eve, upon seeing the plant, sends out a signal for the spacecraft to come back for her so that she can bring the plant back to the Axiom. Wall-E, unable to imagine being alone again, follows along, and the adventure begins!

This entire portion is completely without dialogue beyond each robot’s repetition of the other’s name. I mean, how else are robots going to communicate? The only narration is from a talking billboard that advertises the Axiom and the Five-Year Clean Up Plan, and the lyrics to the Hello, Dolly! songs. And yet, it is engrossing. The children in the theater did not seem antsy at all, but appeared to be as transfixed as anyone else. There is enough slapstick humor to keep things at a “children’s movie” level, but it never ranges into the idiotic. The rest of the film, the majority of which takes place on the Axiom, changes tone considerably and becomes a kind of action-adventure film, where Wall-E and Eve combat the ship’s computer, which has a directive of its own, unbeknownst to even the captain of the ship, an actual human. It is a triumph of the will story in this respect, and a satisfying one.

But the story of creation lies in the details. The humans, who are revealed to have been on the Axiom for 700 years now, have lived idle lives on levitating lounge chairs, plugged into a screen that tells them when to eat, what to eat, what color jumpsuit to wear, and which direction to coast. After all these years, their skeletons have shrunk, they can hardly read, most likely cannot walk, and appear to have no free will. They are all infants, at every stage of their lives. Even the captain admits to only having one duty on the ship, which is to advertise the perfect conditions of the Axiom, as maintained by the ship’s computer.

Then Wall-E comes in, and through a series of missteps and stumbles unwittingly becomes the agent for free will. He tracks terrestrial dirt into the ship, and because he is the only entity on the ship that does not follow a pre-set path, he leads the automatic cleaning robot, MO, off of his set path. When trying to break into the flow of manned lounge chairs, he knocks one human, John, off of his seat, and brings his attention to the surroundings of the ship, which even though he has spent his whole life there, he has never actually seen. Similarly, when trying to get close to Eve, who is being taken to the control deck, he interacts with another human in a floating chair, Mary. She, too, is snapped to cognizance, and begins to see their lives for what they actually are. Mary and John (hinting at some Biblical themes) find each other, and begin to enjoy their lives and try new things for the first time, like splashing in the water and marveling at the view of the cosmos that the ship affords.

When Wall-E finally meets the captain of the ship, and becomes the instrument by which he learns of the Five-Year Plan, Wall-E also inadvertently teaches him about such fundamental aspects of Earth living, like agriculture and dancing. The captain realizes that this is what humans are meant to do, rather than to gradually atrophy and take up space in the Axiom, and he overtakes the ship’s computer, a HAL-like being that seeks to maintain the status quo. The human spirit overcomes, and free will reigns.

It is a beautiful irony that the instigator of free will, the savior of the human race, and the one who introduces love to humans and robots alike, is a man-made machine. Wall-E only has one basic function, but through years of cultivation, has become the Prophet. Although everything that he does is unintentional, this is the only way that a story like this could be bearable. Without it, the film would appear too preachy, too Biblical, and much, much less entertaining. (It is, after all, a kids’ movie, and pratfalls are necessary to keep them in rapt attention.) It is a bold move for the Pixar people to make a film like this, one with little dialogue and with such a serious message. I’m not entirely sure if this is something that most kids would catch on to, but the message would surely grow on them.

Not only is this film an indictment of man’s wasteful nature and a proponent for alternative conservational lifestyles, it is also an optimistic view of a life where man and machine can live in harmony. Rather than it being an apocalyptic view of the future where computers and robots are in control and humans have to overthrow them entirely in order to survive, it is accepting of the habits that people already have, and does not rely on a reactionary lifestyle to show hope for the future. While many visions of the future involve a kind of battle against technology that develops independent thought, this film attempts something quite different and is therefore much more bold. It is hard to see our somewhat destructive lifestyle as positive, but it is also easy to lay the blame on technology.

When I first saw Wall-E, I absolutely adored it, but it was so avant-garde that I was almost afraid to fully take in everything that it was saying. Andrew Stanton is an excellent director, but he doesn’t have the humanistic genius of Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles). For this reason, I felt less of an affinity for Wall-E and Eve, and felt that the film was slightly lacking in credible sentiment. But then I saw it a second time, and I realized that Brad Bird wouldn’t have made the same kind of film as this one is, and the higher level of human relatability would not necessarily be appropriate. This is a film about robots, and so there has to be a degree of mechanical detachment. Additionally, the ideas in the film that seemed so frighteningly ambitious had a little time to sink in, and I was able to fully appreciate the brilliance the second time around. It is a very detailed and very clever film, and one that really works to hint at the dangers of a wasteful lifestyle, while providing a realistic glimpse of a future where we don’t have to let go of our technological activities.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2008



Pan’s Labyrinth was one of my favorite films from 2006. I thoroughly and unabashedly enjoyed Hellboy 1. Because of this, I had very high hopes for Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and it was one of the films I most looked forward to this year. And because of this, I feel like Guillermo del Toro personally let me down. It makes me want to find him, sit him down, and say, “Memo, what’s the deal? What happened?” While it definitely was a visual spectacle like none other, it was so without content that it played like a beautiful slideshow narrated by a really annoying person.

Hellboy II starts off with a moving flashback on when Young Hellboy learns the fable of the Golden Army. Many years ago, a race of (let's say) elves warred with humans, and the elf king was tired of his army's casualties. He hired a smith to create an unvanquishable golden army that completely obliterates the entire opposing army. Consumed by remorse, Elf King shuts them down and breaks up the gold crown that someone of royal descent must wear in order to control into three pieces and hides one among the humans. The king's son, Prince Nuada, disagrees with this policy, so he runs off and trains in martial arts for many centuries.

The main action of this second film picks up about where the first film left off, with Hellboy and his girlfriend, Liz, undergoing relationship problems, Abe Sapien moons around, pointing his omniscient hand at things, and the supernatural world continues to interfere with the human world. One third of the royal golden crown (the one that controls the golden army) is being auctioned off, so Nuada naturally steps in to reclaim it, this piece having finally been located after a truly indefinite amount of time. Strong premise! Strong setup! Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there.

I shudder to think that it was the decision of Del Toro, someone whose total lack of schmaltz and devotion to the macabre made Pan's Labyrinth so wonderful, to put such heavy focus on the utterly uninteresting romance between Hellboy and Liz. Ron Perlman is a mighty talented actor, and it was a shame to see his prowess limited by eye-rolling and drunken sentimentality. The conflicted, evil-or-not Hellboy is completely absent here, and is replaced with a slightly sarcastic but mostly emotional heap of blubber. When I want to see a romantic comedy, I'll go and see one, but action/adventure is not the place for it.

Hellboy's character is so rich, with so much potential for internal struggle, above and beyond that in the first film. It is what separates Hellboy from any other heroic badass; that he is actually a demon, and therefore the draw to ultimate evil is inherent to his existence. I know this without even having read the comic, because there can be no other reason to have a character who is constructed in this way. His pairing with Liz is nice because he's the only one who can withstand her flammable outbursts, and it has a sort of star-cross'd destiny about it, but when it turns into sitcom type banter, it is such a waste. Hellboy is the ultimate anti-hero: he rescues babies from giant plant monsters, but he is a demon. If ever there was a better battleground for good vs. evil, I have yet to see it. It is a premise that is breached in the first film, though perhaps a little bit too brief. In Hellboy II, there are a couple of off-hand comments that hint at this possible internal struggle, but nothing happens.

I have heard Del Toro accused of having a "monster fetish," but I was really excited to see what his imagination would yield. There is a fun sequence in a troll market that feels a bit like a cross between that one bar on Tatooine and a Middle Eastern bazaar. It is by far the most entertaining part. Additionally, the Tooth Fairy myth is revisited and transformed into a nightmarish, Brothers Grimm-esque story. But the most intriguing character that drew me in when first I saw it in the trailer is this:



It is presented as Hellboy's Death, and it presages the end of the world at the hands of Hellboy himself. Ironically, his death is his savior in this film, which, again, was glossed over so disappointingly quickly. For a creature that is so intricately beautiful and freakish, and who provided the biggest draw to the film, it is only in it for about three minutes. I will be mighty miffed if the prophecy is only there as a hook, and meant to entice you to see Hellboy III: End of Days. (I am making that title up; I have no idea what is to come.) Rather than there being a final showdown between nature and nurture, the ending is so anticlimactic that I might actually have said, "Is that it?" when it was over. I can't even bring myself to talk about it.

As if totally diluting the main character wasn't bad enough, the supporting cast is clearly phoning it in. David Hyde Pierce did not return to voice Abe Sapien, which I was surprised to find gave the character much, much less personality. Selma Blair's performance does not even dignify an adjective. Jeffrey Tambor is humorous, as usual, but is also only in the movie for a couple of minutes. The lesser-known actors playing the rest sure try hard, but it all seems dull and heavy-handed. The sumptuous visuals are nice, and I did enjoy looking at it, but I have come to desire more from the films that I watch. I want content. I am no longer satisfied with just images; I need to be intellectually stimulated, legitimately kept on the edge of my seat, or impressed with an original approach to whatever genre the film happens to inhabit. Guillermo, I know you're better than this. I've seen your previous work. Don't let me down again.

Hancock

Dir. Peter Berg, 2008



In a season full of superhero movies, some based on comics, some not, one's expectations of greatness are dulled. Hancock didn't have the flash of the Marvel movies, the fancy suits and the glittering CGI. It looked like a Will Smith Movie, with sass and silliness, plus a little panache thrown in there by Jason Bateman. I had low hopes, which were not aided along by mediocre reviews and lackluster reception. But ultimately, I had fun watching it, and appreciated its relatively novel approach to the otherwise tired genre.

Will Smith plays Hancock, a jaded, boozing superhero who causes much collateral damage as he helps the city of Los Angeles fight crime. He appears to have a particular sensitivity to being called "asshole," which inevitably comes up as a frequent feature, much like, "Don't call me Junior." His delinquent destructiveness eventually pushes the fine citizens of the City of Angels over the edge, and they demand for Hancock's incarceration. Jason Bateman plays Hancock's PR guy, as a service in thanks for (sloppily) saving his life, and recommends that it might be good for his image to turn himself in. In doing so, he is reconnected with all of the petty and not-so-petty criminals that he put away himself. As an added bonus, the Angelenos realize that maybe they do need Hancock to do such fancy things as swat bullets away like flies and whisk away bad guys with a flick of his wrist.

What separates Hancock from other superhero films of the genre is that it jumps into the tale in the middle of his life rather than setting up a series or a canon. Hancock starts off as the boorish antihero that he is, without any highfalutin story arc of the other epics of this summer movie season. It feels more like this movie is intended to be a stand-alone film rather than part of a franchise. As previously mentioned in the Incredible Hulk review, this cheapens the film and lessens its credibility as an actual work by a director. Instead, the franchise films (with a few notable exceptions [Batman]) seem to not hide the fact that they merely exist to capitalize upon a recent fad and to make as much money as possible.

I don’t deny that the makers of Hancock want to make as much money as possible; putting Will Smith in any movie is enough to garner several hundred million dollars in profit and to appeal to a wide range of moviegoers. But one gets the feeling that the writer cared about the action in the film and wished to create a significant arc that served a greater purpose than just setting up numerous sequels. The character development is complete and there is no obvious foreshadowing to future conflicts with steadily more daunting supervillains.

And yet, Hancock is not an excellent film. Will Smith has excellent star power, and his delivery is without compare. Jason Bateman is ever charming, and the film starts off strong, albeit a bit slapstick and brash. But about halfway through, the filmmakers choose to take it in a strange direction. While I admire them for trying something new, it doesn’t quite work. Hancock is shown to actually belong to a race of gods or angels, and finds out that his soulmate and lifelong partner is none other than Jason Bateman’s wife, played by Charlize Theron. When they identify each other as partner, a sort of clash of the titans ensues, complete with breaking of cars, city streets, and high rises. This is not particularly interesting, since it eventually becomes a kind of dull, extended love story.

I personally belong more to the demographic that wants to be swept up with exciting action sequences and clever one-liners tossed off by Bateman and Smith. There’s some of that, but there’s also an awful lot of stuff that is probably just the studio quota for the number of times that Smith is allowed to say “bitch” and the number of minutes that two romantically linked characters are supposed to gaze meaningfully into each other’s eyes. It is filler, and it would be so much more interesting if more conventions had been broken. Even though it is interesting and exciting to see explosions and general mayhem, I begin to feel sorry for all those imaginary people whose cars get smashed, windows get blown out, and who get stuck in the worst possible traffic because a giant piece of the freeway collapsed.

All in all, however, I appreciate that Hancock broke any conventions at all. Two years ago, before the superhero movie craze really took flight, this might not have seemed so unusual, but it definitely is now. Variety is the spice of life, and this summer has felt like night after night of macaroni and cheese. It’s good once or twice, but the novelty wears off quickly, and even the best still seems like a tired standard. Hancock is, let’s say, macaroni with white cheddar and hot dogs. Gets an A for effort.

The Five Obstructions (DVD)

Dirs. Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier, 2003



I have spent so much time recently reviewing and thinking about big budget, superhero, franchise, action-adventure type movies, that when I saw The Five Obstructions, my mind was completely blown and I felt that I did not have the mental capacity to even take it all in, let alone write about what I thought. The film is such a drastic turn from what I had become accustomed to that I felt that it was the greatest film ever made, that it was simply brilliant and I was a mere intellectual fledgling in the world of thought-provoking art. This may not be the most articulate words said about the film, but it's all I got.

I had put off seeing this because I have not recently been in the mood to see a film so crushingly depressing as I know Lars von Trier can make. So when I found that it is actually by him and the stately Jørgen Leth, and therefore not at all like the other films of his I have seen, I was a bit relieved. Not only is it different, but it is unlike any other movie I have ever seen. Conceptually, it seems as though it would be tedious or dull, but it is entirely enrapturing.

In 1967, Let made a short film called The Perfect Human, which illustrates a man and a woman as they do commonplace things like eat, groom, and dance, and marvels anthropologically at how a "perfect" person does these things. It presents a series of rhetorical questions, like "How does the perfect human lie down?" and "Why does he dance like this?" In The Five Obstructions, Leth joins von Trier in re-examining this short through a series of "obstructions" (a word which is given a different connotation than what I am familiar with). Whether to test the short's timelessness, or Leth's true skill is not entirely clear at the onset, but it is so interesting that one never wonders what, exactly, is the point. The film presents itself as a documentary, but it is also composed of Leth's obstructions, five more experimental short films. It quite defies specific categorization.

The first obstruction involves von Trier throwing out suggestions, at random, on how to re-film The Perfect Human, but with restrictions and conditions meant to be difficult to accommodate. Originally shot in Denmark in Dutch, the first obstruction is to be shot in Cuba with no set, will have no cut longer than 12 frames, and is to answer the existential questions proposed in the original film. The outcome is fascinating. Leth himself says that the 12-frame cuts were a gift, because what resulted was a frenetic, stylish version of the (admittedly) dated black-and-white narrative of The Perfect Human. The "real hombre" who plays this paragon of humanity has a fabulous face, and the set up with the answers to the short's questions feels more natural than the original film.

The remainder of the obstructions appealed a bit less to me on some level or another. The second was set up in the red light district of Bombay with Leth himself playing the perfect human, serving to juxtapose the posh, quiet privilege of the introspective film with the overwhelming misery of the surroundings. While Leth was very observational and detached in the original short, the intention was for him to be more emotionally involved, or emotive. Von Trier felt that Leth failed this one, because he did not completely leave the surroundings out of the film, but rather diluted it slightly by putting a translucent plastic screen between him and the multitudes of envious Indian onlookers. This set up, while it made sense in a way to challenge Leth and make him uncomfortable, felt very exploitative although it was beautifully shot. Leth was sensitive enough to insist that he could not return to Bombay to film it again, and dangle this absurd set up in front of so many impoverished locals, but the audacity of the set up was disturbing.

Because he failed, Leth was punished by either going back on location, which, as previously mentioned, he refused to do, or to re-attempt the short again, this time without restriction at all. Von Trier had felt like all of these limitations on the films were like suggestions, so without it, Leth was coasting purely on his own ideas. At this point, he was getting frustrated, but he cranked out another version, this time modern and Belgian, which was decent, though a bit flat and impersonal. Von Trier, ever irritated by the constantly excellent quality of Leth's films, tells him the next obstruction is to make the film animated, a medium that they both utterly despise. Again, though, Leth turns out a brilliant work, stylized by the rotoscopist who worked with Richard Linklater on Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.

The final obstruction was done entirely by von Trier. In the course of the documentary portion of the film, von Trier had been making his own version of The Perfect Human, featuring Jørgen Leth himself as the perfect human being. Such a trial this entire process has been, an exploration into how one man functions in the guise of exploring how other people function. By throwing all of these seemingly impossible iterations of the original short film, von Trier kept expecting Leth to fail, but did not. The Perfect Human, though notable for its detached and impassive narration, was clearly personal and meaningful to Leth, and his life had become so intertwined with it that all permutations thereof are coherent, interesting, and developed. When the unflappable Leth gets frustrated, he looks into his reservoir of good ideas and comes up with something quite good.

The film seems like a game, albeit one for the gifted and privileged. While there is hardly any action and the short films are somewhat odd, the segments are so short that it is easy to stay interested. It is a fascinating set up for the project, and probably the best format they could have done. While the original short film may stand alone as a cinematic work, the obstructions cannot necessarily without the reference point, as well as the conversations between Leth and von Trier. Everything in the film depends on everything else, making it a beautifully constructed gem.

The Incredible Hulk

Dir. Louis Leterrier, 2008



A friend of mine had complained, upon viewing Iron Man, that this current batch of superhero flicks do not exist outside of the franchise. While the action may be satisfying enough, the film does not exist as an entity, but rather an extended commercial for the coming sequels and spinoffs, complete with blatant foreshadowing and thinly-veiled hints. I enjoyed more about Iron Man than just the bare minimum ability to entertain me, so it didn't bother me that we all knew that the Avengers movie would follow, and that Samuel L. Jackson would helm the band as Nick Fury. Not being a comic book connoisseur, this meant nothing to me, so I was neither excited nor disappointed.

This is not a review for Iron Man, but rather a comparison of execution. (My review of The Incredible Hulk will remain in the vacuum of itself, without contrasting it with Ang Lee's 2003 film, which I did not see.) Iron Man had merits that I believe allowed it to stand as a fully enjoyable film, in addition to an extended commercial for its sequels, while The Incredible Hulk did not. There is a noted lack of directorial style, character flair, humor and creativity that would make this film anything but a set up for its own branch of spinoffs. I did not share my friend's complaint about the former film, but I fully understand it regarding this one.

The origins of Bruce Banner are so well-known, that the filmmaker, Louis Leterrier, clearly chose to gloss over it and shoved it, warped-image-wise, into the opening credits through a green filter. I hear that it is quite true to the comic, but, again, I didn't read it, so I had to use my superior powers of deductive reasoning to assume that a radioactivity experiment went awry, and transformed mild mannered Banner into the seething verdant mass that he becomes once his heart rate exceeds a convenient 200 bpm. The credits jump straight to the Avengers foreshadowing by flashing through several official government documents, one of which has Nick Fury's name emblazoned in quite visible, quite legible Courier. You could miss it if you blinked many times in a row, but I'm pretty sure that anyone who didn't obviously catch on probably stored it in their prefrontal cortex for subliminal purposes. (Note: I did not study the brain. I am just guessing.)

Edward Norton, who is shamefully miscast as Banner, begins by hiding out in some favela in Brazil where he works at a soft drink bottling factory and gets paid under the table. The ever-so-brilliant U.S. Government figures out where he is once a drop of his blood ends up in one of these bottles, and Stan Lee consumes it. They trace the bottling source to this particular factory, and all Brazilian hell breaks loose, notable spearheaded by the ambitious and frightfully wiry Tim Roth as a British/Russian mercenary. Well, these guys piss Banner OFF, he flies into his heart-rate elevating rage, be-Hulks, smashes everything and has to run away ALL over again, and gosh, how inconvenient. Through some magic of illegal immigration, he ends up back in the United States where he dangerously bums around in his hometown, and where his erstwhile girlfriend, Liv Tyler, lives. They team up, take on Uncle Sam, and All Green Hell breaks loose again and again and again.

That's all you really need to know about the plot because it's lackluster, uninspired, and predictable. It really is there ONLY to set up the next films. They throw in the obligatory supervillain, played by the over-stimulated and overHulked Tim Roth, now the Abomination, but there was no way that there was any doubt that Hulk wouldn't improbably and yet completely defeat him. I mean, we know that the superhero is going to defeat the bad guy in EVERY case (except for the notorious Superman Is Dead! issue, but they tell you that on the cover, too), but he could at least do it interestingly. Large explosions and crashing cars do not an exciting scene make. Somewhere along the course of his battle with Abomination, Hulk develops the lexical capability to utter "Hulk Smash!" before chunking his fists into the ground, creating a far-reaching chasm. That's apparently also in the comic; I'm sure the writer, Zak Penn, is nowhere near clever enough to come up with that brilliant moniker.

What really made Iron Man for me was the way the cast carried it off. Robert Downey, Jr. has all the suavity and swank of the best villain AND hero, and his supporting cast was not in the least annoying. Not so much in Incredible Hulk. Liv Tyler spends the majority of the film simpering into the camera in teary-eyed, bee-stung lipped concern, while miraculously calming Hulk down into human again and again, despite his supposed lack of emotional control. Gosh, she must be some girl. As previously stated, Edward Norton is a terrible casting choice, mostly because his face is so deeply associated with the milquetoast characters of his past filmography, but also because he doesn't bear a shred of resemblance to his alter-ego. Neal McDonough and Eric Bana have the physiques and head shapes to ostensibly become something big and square, while Norton is notably more ovular. This is a personal qualm, but it was distracting. William Hurt is similarly poorly used and poorly cast, so much so that I was sure that it was merely "that guy" who always plays a military guy. Alas, William Hurt is one of my favorite actors, and it pains me to see his far-reaching talents not utilized. Finally, I will never buy Tim Blake Nelson as an intellectual or even as a smart person. Call it typecasting, but he does not look scientific in the least.

Because the cast of this film is uninspiring and miscast, there is nothing to distract the viewer from the evident mess that is this mise-en-scene. While Ed Norton apparently exerted his typical control issues and rewrote various scenes, it couldn't save this paltry script. (Is he even a good writer? Why does he do this? Maybe it was just that bad to begin with.) Any attempt at humor falls flat and prompts this one to roll her eyes. After an infuriating experience with a New York taxi driver, Liv unconvincingly makes use of the one "fuck" that this PG-13 film is allowed, and lets the driver have it. Banner looks at her and cracks, "I have some tips for you for controlling your anger." Har de har har. Really? Tim Blake Nelson, the unconvincing scientist who hopes to help/exploit Banner's abilities, is being set up to become another villain in another film, which is apparent to anyone who's ever seen a film with a sequel before. His story is not followed through in the film, so with all and every likelihood, he will use the infusion of Hulkblood to match strength to become Hulk adversary #2, Abomination II. Or whatever they'll call him. Nelson probably wanted some money, and to impress his kids, so he took on this embarrassing project. I don't even have to look this stuff up.

The tipping point, for me, came at the close of the film, not even after the credits where Tony Stark (Iron Man) comes up the William Hurt, the other Hulk exploiter, and says he has a proposition for this Green Man to join him and Nick Fury. Well, duh. But, couldn't they have at least pretended that the film preceding it meant anything at all? Also, when did General Hurt become Hulk's agent? Last we saw him, he exerted no control over the Rage Machine at all. Seems that Stark would be better off hunting Banner down in Canada to ask him himself. But, you know, Tony wouldn't want to ruin his nice suit. I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. What a piece of crap! Apparently, the Captain America flick, which is already rumored to star Thomas Jane or his doppelganger Aaron Eckhart, will somehow play into the formation of the Avengers movie. I mean, how could it not? He would complete the quartet of Famous Actors As Superhero Types. Why have the movie at all? Why not just swindle the American public of $150 million and let us use our imaginations to put together a coming-of-superhero-age movie for Captain American and just jump straight to the Avengers so we can get over all of this hype?

Wanted

Dir. Timur Bekmambetov, 2008



As I was composing this review in my head, I was thinking of many vitriol-fueled things to say about how bad I thought this was. However, I saw this over a week ago now, and my feelings of ire have somewhat subsided and I'm left with a dull lull of indifference. At the onset, I had felt angry and betrayed by what I had hoped would be a fun romp à la Matrix, but the film was far too heavy and proselytizing to merely take lightly. Now, however, I see that it was actually a misguided attempt to lend some gravity to what would have been fine as merely a fun romp. I also see that I, once again, erred by reading too much into a film based on a comic book.

Wanted is either about the secret society of the Brotherhood which uses physics-defying techniques to execute flamboyant assassinations, or about a disgruntled anxiety-ridden office worker (James McAvoy) who rises above and finds his true calling, which is to defy physics and execute a series of flamboyant assassinations. Either way, the sultry Angelina Jolie ropes him into the Brotherhood, where he proves to be something of a natural, shooting the wings off of flies on his first day, and quickly learning how to run on top of trains and knife fight with stealthy butchers. All this is fine. Pretty exciting stuff, actually. Who doesn't like a Rocky-esque training montage, overlaid with grinding heavy metal?

McAvoy is being conditioned to assassinate the alleged killer of his alleged father, whom he had never met. Because we, as the audience, have the gift of detachment, it is obvious that there is more at stake here. Morgan Freeman, the leader of the Brotherhood, reveals to McAvoy the orchestrator of their destinies, the Loom Of Fate. I'm not sure if there has been a sillier object with a sillier name. I could hear smirks around me as these heavy words were uttered. Anyway, the Loom Of Fate automatically pumps out coded yards of fabric with names encrypted in binary. It is this way that the Brotherhood knows who the next target will be. When McAvoy (understandably) questions the legitimacy of a cloth machine, Angelina tells a heart wrenching story of a child whose life is ruined by the murder of her father by a killer who was not slain at the beckoning of the Loom. As if we didn't know that she was talking about herself.



One great tragedy here is that the cast is sadly underused. This is a stellar ensemble: McAvoy, Freeman and Jolie, plus Thomas Kretschmann, Common and Terrence Stamp. Such talent here has such potential to really class up the flick, but some of them have only one or two lines, at most. McAvoy has shown with his work in Atonement and Last King of Scotland that he really is talented, but the best he does is to feign sweaty, debilitating anxiety and act pained when he is beaten up by surly henchmen. Angelina Jolie, who has yet to knock my socks off performance-wise, does nothing more than seethe in the camera and make this atrocious face:



Horrid.

As if misuse of cast, silly and predictable plot, and ill-advised expressions weren't bad enough, the most aggravating aspect of this film is the confused politics. It is unclear whether this film advocates free will or team loyalty, the value of life or the thrill of killing. The very last shot shows McAvoy, after a convoluted kill, sneer right into the camera and say, "What the fuck have you done lately?" Besides this being a somewhat poor use of the word "fuck," it is such a self-righteous gloat that makes me wonder whether these people really believe that someone will think that their life would be better if they gave up everything and took up assassination for hire.

After cracking down and discovering that the Brotherhood is all a sham held together by Morgan Freeman who didn't have the stones to follow the word of the Loom and sic his entire organization on each other and wipe themselves out, Angelina does what the filmmaker/comic book author clearly thought was the most noble choice and perform one last feat of aerodynamic bulletry and decimates everyone, self included. I DID just give away the ending, but I don't really care because it was, again, appallingly self-righteous, and completely contradictory to the end scene with McAvoy's pride in his kill. In following the word of the Loom, even though it called for the disbandment of the Brotherhood, is to give yourself to fate, whereas trigger-happy McAvoy is so proud to have taken the reins and made the most of his life, doing what he wants... which is killing and following the Loom? Without the Brotherhood, does the Loom still manufacture binary targets? Will McAvoy be the next, since obviously the Loom doesn't want the Brotherhood to exist as a destructive force? Should he just bite the bullet and actually bite the bullet for the sake of Our Lord God Loom? So many unanswered questions, so many plot points not thought out.

I know that this is based on a comic book, that it is not Bekhmambetov's best, and that because I have not seen his other films OR read the actual comic, my critique is not best informed. I think that it is valid, however, because the filmmakers have to anticipate the uninformed audience, and some of us will have a brain and will be thinking about the film as we watch it. If they want to rely so heavily on previous knowledge of his style and the original medium, the film will be inherently flawed because it's as though the uninformed haven't been let in on the whole story. Other graphic novel-based films can successfully draw the uninformed viewer into the story without alienating anyone, so I feel confident in the umbrage I have taken. For that, I declare Wanted to have been an utterly disappointing and unsuccessful film, a squanderer of talent and confounder of message. Whether or not this is the fault of the comic book itself or the adaption, I do not know, but I only saw the movie.

Get Smart

Dir. Peter Segal, 2008



For some reason, I feel the need to qualify this with "Well, I liked it." While watching this film, it didn't even occur to me that the people I was with might not be enjoying it. Which is not to say that this is the greatest film ever made, but simply a pretty fun one that stayed pretty true to the spirit of the original television show. A friend who was sitting to my immediate left was squawking in laughter throughout the whole thing, so when we were leaving and she was saying discouraging things, I was baffled. What were they expecting?

When I was 11 years old, I spent a long period of time in the hospital with a broken leg. My sleep schedule was erratic, because every time I had nothing to do, I would just nap. This led me to being awake at strange times, and seeing strange things on TV. "Get Smart" used to air at 2 or 3 in the morning (or maybe it was in the afternoon), and while I didn't fully understand the intricacies of the espionage aspect of the plot, I found it amusing when Maxwell Smart would bumble around and use his shoe for a telephone. I don't recall anyone ever watching it with me, though I suppose someone had to explain the Yiddish jokes to me. I wouldn't necessarily say that I have a profound or meaningful relationship with "Get Smart", it was never my favorite thing to watch, and I never particularly looked forward to it. But it was fun, filled the time, and made me laugh.

That is exactly how I feel about the film. Fun, filled the time, made me laugh. It's all I wanted, all I expected. Some of the jokes I even found particularly amusing. I guess sometimes things just work. Steve Carell brings a sort of modern, goofy sincerity to Maxwell Smart, and Anne Hathaway keeps Agent 99 classy. They are a humorous pair, though their chemistry falls somewhat flat. Although we are meant to believe that Anne Hathaway's face is a result of excellent plastic surgery intended to make her look much, much younger, she does not even act, let alone look old enough to be a love interest for Steve Carell. He is not old, and I don't mean to appear ageist, but the age difference is pretty dramatic. It's one of the least convincing pairings since Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe.

This really is quite a stellar cast, actually. All the supporting actors are so enjoyable to watch: Alan Arkin, James Caan, Terrence Stamp, Masi Oka, and Bill Murray. Even Dwayne "Always Known As The Rock To Me" Johnson thoroughly redeems himself from shattering mediocrity in Southland Tales and makes the most of his hammy inability to act. He's a big buffoon, to quote M from Casino Royale, he is a blunt instrument. It is a mistake to give him depth, and in this, he is as shallow as you can get. But he does bring some bravado to the mix, and his comic timing isn't too bad. Some might say that this fun cast can't save the film from what it is, but I chose to see this as an opportunity to see a lot of good actors play off each other, and that was satisfaction enough.

There were some things by which I was incredibly put off: fat jokes, genital jokes, vomit, and Nate Torrence, who has never been funny to me, and looks like the discount version of Joey Fatone. As I mentioned earlier, the romantic plotline was totally unbelievable, and to make you further sentimental about it, they replay key moments in the film in the most pointless flashback ever committed to film. They showed things that happened literally minutes ago. Finally, the action scenes are somewhat exciting, but I have a limit to how many pratfalls I can watch when they are not balanced out by adequately inspiring events.

I could have chosen to dwell on these faults and get annoyed by the mugging and the screaming and the falling down, but I chose to focus on the humor, which I believe is ultimately the point of the film. It is a venue for silly jokes and spastic antics, and for Steve Carell, et al to exercise their comic timing. That part was fun. I laughed, probably more than a lot of the people in the theater which almost never happens, and certainly not for a movie I don't feel passionately about. I would call it successful in not having wasted my time, and showing me that Mel Brooks is still doing what he does best. For that, I can say that I liked Get Smart.