Labels or Love

Late in Birdman, one of this season’s surefire Oscar contenders, washed-up movie star Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) accosts Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), the icy New York Times theater critic who has sworn to give his new play “the worst review anybody has ever read,” before even seeing it.

“Keep scribbling down your labels,” he sneers. “That’s what you do. You label things. You label people and you label art. … Nothing about technique or structure.” He plucks a daisy from a vase resting on the bar beside them and shoves it in her face. “Do you have any idea what this is? You can’t even see it if you don’t label it. The beauty and depth of this simple thing escapes you. You mistake those sounds in your head for true knowledge.”

I love this scene, and I don’t love Birdman. I don’t hate it, either — I am not eager to label it “a volcano of creative ideas in full eruption,” as Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers did, or “the nadir of Western civilization,” as Tabitha presumably might. I’m not too into the “label” thing anyway; I prefer the notes on “technique” and “structure” that Riggan laments are missing in Tabitha’s judgmental and influential prose. Ironically, I find little to say when I apply such rigor to Birdman, aside from the given “Look how much the camera moves!” bromide, but, well, that is a topic for another time.

The topic today is the job of the critic, or how the popularity of professional labelers like Tabitha distorts the public perception of that job and, in turn, of how art works. Most people assume a critic should stand in for the paying moviegoer, à la Consumer Reports, here to tell you whether a movie is good or bad so that you can make an informed decision about where you spend your money. This view of criticism has never held as much sway as it does now, with Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, IMDb and other aggregate services pulling in tremendous traffic and ad revenue.

These websites do away with the act of reading altogether, for they quantify a movie’s value by swirling around sometimes over a hundred reviews and arriving, somehow, at a numerical grade. One four-star review holds no weight: A buzzworthy movie needs dozens, to plaster over a full-page New York Times spread and to bump its Tomatometer rating close to triple digits. Individual opinions collapse into unqualified praise or else the most fiery invective, those binary verdicts fill into a consensus and that consensus cements as some objective truth, e.g. “Look, Birdman has a 94 percent, what do you mean you don’t like it?”

The words that survive in this ecosystem are, fittingly, the loudest. Critics like Tabitha know how to pen a line to hammer home the “freshness” or “rottenness” of the work they have deigned to review. Why bother reading the full piece, when it’s all there in one conclusive sentence? Blurb-masters like the aforementioned Travers reward no critical investment, since they often repeat themselves (seriously, search Travers’ name and the phrase “sneaks up and floors you”) and pay little attention to films as texts with nuanced structures that produce dense, vital images worth unpacking. No wonder Travers loves Birdman so much: The peddler of sound and fury without substance has met his cinematic match.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Professional criticism is a business, as hilarious that may be to put to print, and businesses stay alive by appealing to as many people as they can. The majority does not want to consider films as texts, and would likely sock me in the mouth for using either of those terms, and again for putting them in the same sentence. For some, movies really are an “escape” from the troubles of the world and not an investigation of them, and I consider it a privilege to so devotedly believe in the latter.

But let’s hesitate before we so blindly eat up all the “labels” shoveled our way. Labels — whether they be adjectives, qualitative nouns (“triumph,” “train wreck”), comparisons to other works (“Interstellar is so much better than The Dark Knight Rises”) or numerical grades — can only serve as conversation-starters. For labels to consume the whole conversation is to have no conversation at all — just modifiers, without an anchor, or any involvement, in the film itself. The act of interpretation can run parallel to a firm opinion or many conflicting ones, but the act can only enliven what is there, not desecrate it. “Doing justice,” or at least attempting to, is what we like to call it, except we sometimes may watch a film so esteemed and see no justice to be done at all.

This article was written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location here. 

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Review

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez
Released in 2014

How would you react if you walked into your baby brother’s bedroom to find him flailing around a razor-sharp katana sword? With horror, I hope. Now, how about if he was just rapping the trigger to a toy machine gun, shouting lines from Predator? You’d laugh, though you might also worry that he’s watching too many R-rated movies at his age.

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For thinks it’s packing all the shock and danger of the former scenario when it’s nothing more than a clearinghouse for obscene and tedious fantasies scraped together by over-stimulated little boys. I laughed, for one, at the sheer idiocy of it all, which means there’s a bit of that “so bad, it’s good” appeal here, but as a piece of art or even coherent entertainment, Sin City 2 is a lifeless, often insidious failure.

Before I get to last week’s bomb, let me deflect with another question: Did you like the first Sin City, from 2005? I did, back in the day, but I am now reluctant to revisit it. Because while this overdue sequel traffics a formless script and some criminally underwhelming combat scenes, its worst offense has more to do with the cheap and sadistic worldview of Frank Miller’s graphic novel universe, a through line in both this film and the last. Deformed, or else mutilated, men take pleasure in snuffing out the lives of rabid frat boys, gamblers and security guards, doing so slowly so as to drink in their suffering. Directors Miller and Robert Rodriguez (Machete) deploy violence not to confront (à la Cronenberg), gross out (Verhoeven) or indict the viewer’s sick pleasure in it (Hitchcock), but to titillate. There’s no divide between the ravenous on-screen anti-heroes and the presumed straight male viewer, who savors in the parade of scantily clad or nude women as much as the splashes of white, red and yellow blood.

Credit to Eva Green, then, for owning her psycho femme fatale Ava Lord to such an extreme that, naturally, the men behind the camera have no clue what to do with her. Ava wears no clothes for about half her screen time, which will be worth the price of admission for some, and she uses her chiaroscuro-bathed body to seduce both allies and enemies. Her enforcer Manute (Dennis Haysbert, replacing the late Michael Clarke Duncan) tells scorned lover Dwight (Josh Brolin) that Ava is “a goddess” who “makes slaves of men.” She uses the same men again and again, which is awesome, but Miller and Rodriguez shackle us to the perspective of Dwight, a deathly bore, whenever she is on screen and so prop her up as a slice of buxom crazy. A better movie would follow Ava around, ruling shit, for the full duration, but that would require an actual story and a bit of feminine empathy, and besides, that’s why we have Lucy.

In case you haven’t gathered, I am not laying down the expected plot summary for this movie because it is a) needlessly complicated and b) entirely predictable. Miller’s script checks in on four characters — Dwight, Marv (Mickey Rourke), Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Nancy (Jessica Alba) — as they avenge, revenge and drone on in purple prose-infected voiceover that laughably feigns poetic insight. One violent scene ends with Johnny saying, “Death is just like life in Sin City.” Dwight’s first words rip off, of all writers, Edward Bulwer-Lytton: “It’s another hot night. Dry and windless. The kind that makes people do sweaty, secret things.” This is all delivered straight, in a brooding, tough guy, Robert Mitchum-mocking way. It’s macho nonsense for the child who never reads.

And the action isn’t even that good! You would think Rodriguez would be dependable for visceral, anti-humanist thrills, but he barely photographs human movement here. Punchy sounds like bone snaps attempt to hide stilted camerawork and hyperkinetic editing; in lieu of fluid, graceful combat, Miller and Rodriguez resort to the stomach-churning tactics of the YouTube Pooper. Furthermore, the utter disregard for human life backfires, in that there are no stakes, and thus no excitement, in watching bad and worse people slice each other apart. The directors have clearly seen some classic Hollywood film noir and would be eager to parrot the “film noir equals cynicism” cliché. But what they exclude from Sin City is the melancholy hiding behind Mitchum’s cigarette smoke and Bogart’s sunken eyes. To include melancholy is to admit weakness, and we all know a boy with a plastic rifle in his hands is the most fearless person in the world.

Final Verdict:
1.5 Star Out of 5

This article was written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location here.

Hollywood's Super (Violent) Heroes

*Minor spoilers for Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Iron Man 3 ahead*

No phenomenon fascinates me more than violence, and no medium of art enthralls me more than film, so I am, naturally, very interested in violent films. That is not to say I like bloody, gory movies — your Hostel’s and Human Centipede’s. In fact, I really loathe that kind of queasy, exploitative fare, but not as much as the modern model of the Hollywood blockbuster, with its far more troubling, almost subliminal degree of violence that needs to stop … now.

If you saw Man of Steel, Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, White House Down, World War Z or The Wolverine over the summer, you might have an idea as to what I’m getting at. Former Indiewire critic Matt Singer called it this summer’s crop of movies’ “PG-13 Problem,” while other critics, from Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan to The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, decried the stain of 9/11 on this year’s action movies. The sanitation of violence and the evocation of 21st century terrorism go hand-in-hand — look at Man of Steel. At the end of that film, Superman and General Zod face off for like 30 minutes and take down about half of Metropolis with them, totaling, according to Watson Technical Consulting, around $750 billion in property damage and 129,000 civilian deaths. That’s more than 9/11 right there — closer to Hiroshima. But the real problem is that all this death goes unacknowledged under Zack Snyder’s direction. Without the disfigurements and falling, flailing bodies such destruction entails, or even a reflective moment where Superman acknowledges the losses he partially caused, Man of Steel earns a cozy PG-13 rating. Bring the whole family.

These “implied deaths” — to borrow Matt Singer’s phrase — have no emotional impact on me, no matter how long I think about it. That’s the problem. When the loss of life in a movie boils down to unquantifiable statistics and Joseph Stalin references, we are losing something. Man of Steel was especially awful, but even the half-decent offerings from the summer staged similar bloodless bloodbaths: Khan razing San Francisco with the U.S.S. Enterprise in Star Trek Into Darkness; Tony Stark, in a borderline patriotic display, ordering all 42 of his suits to kill the Extremis mutants in Iron Man 3; the side of a plane blowing open mid-flight, sending all the zombies on-board flying out like rag dolls in World War Z. At least World War Z showed these zombies hurtling toward their death, though the decision to end all trailers of the film with this shot — a spot reserved for a blockbuster’s “money shot” — suggests a more callous, “Doesn’t that look awesome?!” intent. The budgets for these large-scale flicks has ballooned year after year, with more money dedicated to constantly improving special effects technology. These filmmakers want to make sure you see what they are paying for, and almost all have come to the conclusion that the best approach is to kill a hell of a lot of (fictional) people, in the coolest way possible. We have arrived at a very depressing place, where incomprehensible massacres serve as nothing more than set dressing.

For all the trash talk hurled at The Lone Ranger, some of it deserved, I will defend its grotesque, off-the-wall scene where the bad guy stabs a dude in his sternum, carves out his heart and proceeds to eat it. It was definitely at odds, tonally, with the rest of its Disney production, but at least it shook me, inspiring a WTF or two, even if director Gore Verbinski concealed the real gore off-screen. I do not care if filmmakers think violence is an inherent fact of life or a horrible disturbance in the otherwise positive human experience, but they have to provoke us with it and, most importantly, comment on its existence.

Of all Hollywood movies this summer, I cannot think of any that truly justified its use of violence. Rely on the independents, then, to bring brains and a sense of morality to the cinema, perhaps none more than Fruitvale Station. With Oscar Grant, a 23-year-old who was killed by a BART police officer in the early hours of New Years Day, 2009, as its protagonist, this film dodges the gangsta scenery that Hollywood loves to trot out whenever a young African-American male assumes a lead role. Instead, director-writer Ryan Coogler lets us live with Oscar for his final 24 hours. He plays with his daughter; loves his girlfriend, despite their fights; cooks for his mother’s birthday; lies to his family about losing his job. Oscar is like anyone else, with flaws to spare. Coogler stages a harrowing, protracted sequence at the end, when Oscar is shot and grasping for life, that communicates a painful message: No one deserves this. The chaos descends from nowhere, ensnaring him and his loved ones in a pain that Coogler captures through shaky cam and agonizing close-ups. The death of one man is a tragedy, indeed.

Fruitvale Station reportedly cost somewhere around $1 million in production expenses — that’s like a day’s worth of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine protein supplements. After watching Lawrence of Arabia this past Sunday at Cornell Cinema, I long for the challenging, mature spectacles Hollywood so rarely produces anymore. In that 1962 epic, cinematographer Freddie Young fills the screen with legendary shots of Middle Eastern landscapes and architecture. Yet director David Lean balances all that with some wrenching close-ups of Peter O’Toole’s face as he, as T.E. Lawrence, hesitates and then orders the massacre — “No prisoners!” — of hundreds of fleeing Turkish soldiers. It’s one of the most disturbing things you’ll ever see, because Lean forces you to think about, and literally look at, the blood on this man’s hands — he’s the hero, for god’s sake, of this whole movie! But I guess he was no superhero, who don’t got the time for sissy introspection, and whatnot — they have an explosion quota to meet.

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

Man of Steel Review

Man of Steel
Directed by Zack Snyder
Released in 2013

Man of Steel’s failures — as art, as drama or even as just mindless entertainment — pale in comparison to what its success (a $125 million opening weekend, as of press time) says about the current state and future trajectory of Hollywood cinema. Director Zack Snyder, producer Christopher Nolan and screenwriter David S. Goyer did not make a movie so much as a two-hour, 20-minute highlight reel — a joyless, soulless composite of the last 15 years of blockbusters, from the Star Wars prequels and Independence Day to Avatar and The Avengers. There is not one modicum of originality in Man of Steel’s plot, themes or aesthetics, yet here we all are, pitching this as the Movie To Beat this summer, buying, quite literally, into the hype and the grotesque Gillette/Wal-Mart/National Guard-marketing scheme some freshly promoted PR team drummed up. It’s all really depressing, if also fascinating when you stop and think about it.

Let’s get formalities out of the way. Like last year’s The Amazing Spider-Man, Man of Steel is the latest summer-superhero-reboot-of-a-franchise-that-was-only-rebooted-like-less-than-10-years-ago. Bryan Singer directed Superman Returns in 2006, with Brandon Routh as the titular man in tights. That film dragged, overlong and histrionic, but you could sense a real, almost operatic ambition throughout, particularly whenever Superman and supervillain Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) shared the screen. Now, Snyder and Goyer play the Superman, a.k.a. Clark Kent, a.k.a. Kal-El origin story once more, this time without almost any feeling at all. Sure, Henry Cavill dons the spandex with a real winning smile. Too bad he has to fight the dull, lumbering military-industrial complex that is General Zod (played by Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Shannon, who is unforgettable in that show but not here) and has not the least supply of wit or charisma to get him through the by-the-numbers plot.

Said plot never materializes as one passionate struggle, whether external or, more crucially, internal, for Clark Kent to overcome, which partly explains Kent’s bland on-screen personality. This problem can, in turn, be credited to how poorly structured the whole film is, or, more specifically, how often the point of view does not belong to Kent. We follow Jor-El (Russell Crowe), Kent’s father, for the first 15-20 minutes of the film, as he shoots his way through generic sci-fi baddies in order to send his newly born son into space before Krypton, their home planet, implodes. Snyder pads what should have been a quick prologue with aerial dogfights and acrobatic flights that unmistakably resemble scenes from Star Wars III and Avatar, respectively. The whole slog could stand as its own act, one where the film’s protagonist (at least in his grown, communicative state) has yet to be introduced.

Soon after, we see Kent as a buff, superhuman miracle worker drifting across America, and just as scenes start to drop hints as to what makes him tick, out of left field comes the love interest, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lois Lane (Amy Adams). We follow her around for a bit, as she investigates Kent’s shirtless heroism for obviously, strictly professional reasons. One could say, “Hey, by diverting attention to Lois Lane alone, the filmmakers prop her up as an independent, feminized lead capable of her own brand of heroism.” Reading into comic book gender politics never ends well, so, to that end, it is worth noting that any hopes for a strong, (post)modern Lois Lane might as well be checked at the door. Her introductory scenes only serve to further distract from the de facto protagonist, Clark Kent, and each following scene affords her fewer lines than the last, to the point where her sole purpose is to trot (and “trot” is the right word, as the sound mixer makes sure the clacky-clack of her heels can be heard over the surrounding bedlam) onto the battlefield and embrace Kent’s battle-worn bod.

Perhaps that’s all for the best, because as Man of Steel devolves into gratuitous slam-bang action scenes, the few times Lane or Kent open their mouths remind us why they shouldn’t. “You know they say it’s all downhill after the first kiss,” Lane (actually) says, to which Kent responds, “I think that’s true only about kissing humans.” A few winners from General Zod: “Release the World Engine!” “I was bred to be a warrior. Where did you train? A farm?” and, my favorite, “There’s only one way this ends, Kal: Either you die, or I do.” The dialogue is so bad that you begin to question the abilities of these proven, gifted actors. But it’s so much easier to blame Zack Snyder and be done with it.

Those lines only sample the festival of clichés that is Man of Steel, and Snyder one-ups Goyer’s clunky screenplay by transplanting shots and images from a drove of recent successful films. Beyond Avatar and Star Wars (and J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek), Snyder rips off Spider-Man 2 (see the clawed, Doc Ock tentacles chasing Superman through Metropolis), Thor (the nondescript, Midwestern Main Street where Superman fights Faora-Ul, resembling where Thor battles the Destroyer), Independence Day/2012/any Roland Emmerich film (crumbling skyscrapers, of which the new Star Trek and Iron Man also stand guilty) and Transformers 1-3 (the last third, particularly whenever more than one flaming/explosive projectile bombards the same shot). For a change of taste, there’s even an unearned Terrence Malickian montage of a nine-year-old, caped Kent frolicking before a wheat field, where the soundtrack drops to silence and Snyder expects us to absorb this awkward moment as something profound and nostalgic. I will admit I dug the Apocalypse Now shout-out, where aircrafts soar before a massive, blood orange Kryptonian sun, but for the rest, Snyder approaches something more like plagiarism.

This all may sound like miniscule nitpicking, but let’s put this into context: New Hollywood directors — Scorsese, Altman, Friedkin, et al — often paid homage or “tipped the hat” to prior films and cinematic styles. One of the greatest examples is the stairwell scene in The Untouchables, where Brian De Palma recreated the baby carriage’s dramatic descent in Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin for a Prohibition setting. That 1987 film starred Kevin Costner — who I have neglected to mention brings the only real gravitas to Man of Steel as Kent’s adopted father — and De Palma maneuvered Costner through the scene, as he simultaneously shoots gangsters and tries to save that falling baby. There was no character like Costner in Battleship Potemkin, so De Palma both 1) paid tribute to the Soviet cinematic great and 2) updated his scene to fit a different tone, era, story, etc. What Snyder has done in Man of Steel does not abide by such parameters of respect, knowledge or innovation. His is a style of “Oh, that worked there, so let’s put it here.” Man of Steel cannibalizes not the classics from film school but the record-setting blockbusters still filling studio ledgers. It is an unsustainable mindset motivated by profit and removed from the forces that met to make Christopher Reeve a star.

Final Verdict:

1 Star Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

The Dark Knight Rises Review

The Dark Knight Rises
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Released in 2012

A record 70 minutes of footage from The Dark Knight Rises was shot using IMAX cameras. IMAX theaters stand about five stories tall and used to only screen movies about mountains and sea turtles. Since Christopher Nolan’s Batman predecessor The Dark Knight pioneered Hollywood’s use of these cameras with 30 minutes of IMAX in 2008, these giant theaters now rattle with loud bouts of action. Because IMAX cameras emit loud buzzes or whirs or whatever sound they make while operating, actors must dub over their lines in post-production. Layering heavy, percussive score over the soundtrack sounds like the other solution, at least the one these audio mixers devised.

I list these facts and observations because, for all the moments The Dark Knight Rises fills the screen and sonic space with intricate, thundering shoot-outs and fistfights, the more apparent it becomes that noise rules over silence, brawn over wisdom and text over subtext. Naturally — but not effortlessly — the last entry in Batman’s War on Terror trilogy boasts immaculate production familiar to Nolan’s prior masterworks like Memento and Inception. Many talented Nolan collaborators return, such as cinematographer Wally Pfister, production designer Nathan Crowley and editor Lee Smith. The two hour, 45 minute film keeps pace but its energy does not sustain from fresh set pieces or inspired ideas as much as a maximalist take on terrorism that oversteps The Dark Knight’s tasteful balance.

Before the obligatory plot outline, I must mention one exception to that thesis above. Batman’s foil, Bane (Tom Hardy), makes a spectacular entrance. We meet Bane hooded and handcuffed on a CIA plane. When help arrives, he not only escapes but destroys the aircraft and all in it. His soldiers rappel from a bomber above, tearing apart the plane with wires and aerodynamics, and descend into the vertical fuselage to retrieve Bane and a nuclear scientist (guess what the scientist will do). As per his style, Nolan inserts a bizarre detail in the middle of the action — transfusing the scientist’s blood into a lookalike corpse — that, while biologically and forensically infeasible, leaves a brutal signature. This prologue was screened before IMAX showings of last year’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol and stands alone, then and now, as a thrilling and appropriately terrifying assemblage of creative stunt work and computer effects.

From here, the plot picks up eight years after Batman took the blame for Harvey Dent’s murders in collusion with Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), who continues to perpetuate the lie despite a clawing conscience. Meanwhile, Batman’s alter ego, the once-billionaire Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), holes up in Wayne Manor like a Howard Hughes recluse, hobbling around with a cane, atrophying legs and dwindling financial assets. He entrusts Wayne Enterprises to alternative energy innovator Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) and dons the cape once again beside Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), called “Catwoman” in the comics but not in the film. Being women, the two serve as love interests to Bruce Wayne/Batman. I would accept the inclusion of romance if there was any.

That is not to say that Selina Kyle does not belong in the film, as Hathaway brings out the mischief of a character that moves the plot forward from an intriguing vantage point. The other worthy addition is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Officer Blake, an idealistic detective whose investigations on the streets correctly predict Gotham City’s impending attack. Batman could have filled that role, but the following list of characters stood in the way: scheming suit John Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn), his slimy assistant Stryver (Burn Gorman) and spineless Deputy Commissioner Foley (Matthew Modine). Others simply waste time like Selina’s accomplice Holly (Juno Temple), who puts Batman in pursuit of the “clean slate” program, a MacGuffin that only leads to significant plot holes. I felt nothing for any of these characters, except disdain for the aforementioned Miranda Tate and not the deliberate kind. Every one of them could have been coalesced with another or deleted outright, only granting more time to those we already care about. No one would complain to see more of the old man trifecta of Gordon, Wayne engineer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Bruce’s butler Alfred (Michael Caine, who multiplies the numerator of blubbery acting per second on screen).

By virtue of screen time, Bane matters more than all of these supporting and minor parts. By all other indicators, he matters very little. When the movie ends, his irrelevance to the overarching plot and lack of standout moments stick out. With that gnarly mask draining all emotion — Nolan could have at least shot close-ups of his eyes, the only human element on his face — and his faux-genteel Vocoder speak, Bane incites populist rage in the denizens of Gotham. His soldiers — how many are there, who are they, what is their motivation? — assault the stock exchange, demolish the bridges and imprison the police officers, leaving the rich penniless or dead and this anarchic city-state under mob rule. The hand of the people hovers over the trigger of a nuclear bomb, set to blow if any interfere. That is what Bane tells the people, at least.

Echoes of “We are the 99-percent” are felt, if not heard. The obvious interpretation is that Christopher Nolan and co-writers David S. Goyer and Jonathan Nolan are critiquing the “class warfare” of Occupy Wall Street. Yet the hostility to the revolutionaries also extends to the fat cats themselves, as Deputy Foley rolls his eyes at a panicked stockbroker and tells him, “I’m not risking my men for your money.” When viewed from afar, the financial grandstanding so prominent for the film’s first two-thirds reduces to complete nonsense. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad plot twist at the end trivializes Bane’s ideology and sweeps the motives of the entire attack under the rug. With the bomb’s countdown ticking away, big ideas flatten under the crunch of the final battle.

Under threat, the innocent hide in their homes or join the outlaws to loot the streets. On the other hand, the trapped police officers band together to dismantle the opposition. There is an underlying, and I believe unintentional, cynicism in having only those who formally swear to protect their city actually do anything to save it. For a director so eager to employ sensitive imagery of the terrorism we know — urban destruction, dead cops — does Nolan forget the good we see in the masses? The outpouring of grief and determination to pick a stranger up after evil attacks stands resilient. You need not look farther back than a week to the tragedy associated with this very film.

Nolan hammers this false depiction of terrorism for most of the film’s duration. The middle act in particular suffers through overbearing sinister acts without any break for humor or hope. Pfister’s cinematography beautifully captures this carnage, but Gotham’s snow-swept, smoldering streets look like Warsaw Ghetto filtered through 9/11 more because they can than because they have something to say. The Dark Knight built comic relief into the madness itself, with Joker as both the chaos and the jester. I don’t think Bane has cracked a joke in his life, and there are times when you would think none of these characters have.

Audiences love this movie; at press time, user votes have placed this Batman at number nine on IMDB’s greatest movie list, one behind The Dark Knight. The ranking will eventually settle downwards and the site’s polling is notoriously skewed young, male and partial to comic book adaptations. Nolan sure knows how to end a movie, as the suitably epic closing hits all the right notes to send fans hollering. While I may not join in, I do admire the simple and profound core storyline — that of the Dark Knight rising. Often the clutter of Gotham’s revolution engulfs the film’s most important narrative. Both Bruce Wayne and Batman are reborn as “more than just a man,” approaching a Christ-like symbol of incorruptible strength. Bruce must climb out of hell — in this case, a deep, open pit used as a stone prison — to vanquish the demon born in it.

There is a beauty in The Dark Knight Rises struggling for recognition. When Batman returns from exile, there is a striking shot of him walking through the streets toward Bane (picture above and to the left). The police officers in Batman’s way drift to the sides, as does a cloud of mist that no longer obscures his body. The cameramen and lighting technicians must have toiled for that shot. What accompanies this potent image? Composer Han Zimmer’s relentless timpanis and a quick cut to Bane pummeling a random nobody. Imagine if the editors slowed down the action, extended the shot and silenced the soundtrack save for Batman’s footsteps and a few pretty choral or string measures. Enough time to ponder that no matter what happens, good has risen and evil will lose. After all, there is no such thing as a subtle approach when projected on a five-story IMAX screen.

Final Verdict:

2.5 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

The Amazing Spider-Man Review

The Amazing Spider-Man

Directed by Mark Webb

Released in 2012

The Amazing Spider-Man provides a real learning experience, at least to me, on why some action films succeed and others fail. A handful of totally valid complaints can be charged against this reboot of a franchise that only booted ten years ago. Most quarrels hone in on its mere existence. How many times can studios get away with repackaging the same story just to reel in an easy profit? Consider if Marvel recast The Hulk for the fourth time in a decade; this argument is not without merit.

Well if I am just another sheep fulfilling some corporate scheme, this time, I am rather enjoying my subjection. Question the film’s purpose all you wish; The Amazing Spider-Man soars much higher than it has any right to with its sterling commitment to character. Character, character, character — if art’s purpose is to explore humanity, then, in film, priority should be placed on developing the human surrogates. The connections between viewer and character make or break action films preoccupied with flaunting their special effects. My admiration for Men in Black 3 and distaste for The Avengers reflects this truth.

Andrew Garfield’s embodiment of a more inquisitive, wide-eyed Peter Parker rises to such distinction. Emma Stone as love interest Gwen Stacy does, as well. They make a cute couple, at the very least. Director Mark Webb assembled the quirky romance of (500) Days of Summer, so the interplay between the two sparks in ways Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst did not. There is no epic “MTV Best Kiss Award” moment, but many small, real little moments: After Gwen acknowledges him for the first time, Parker’s lips twitch as he imagines kissing her. That ultimate kiss itself is a hilarious mix of revulsion and seduction. In a movie without any standout supporting characters — with the exception of Denis Leary’s Captain Stacy, Gwen’s policeman father, who plays a surprisingly crucial role in the plot, steeped in Leary sleaze — the couple actually steals the show.

Of course, the romance is just a subplot to the origin story. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man covered much of the same ground, but it would be tedious to point to which scenes were better or worse. Webb and screenwriters James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves (Harry Potter) breeze through much of the exposition, adopting an alacrity that does not slow down to underline this transformation or that discovery. In fact, Parker’s super-fast and ultra-adhesive fingers rip apart his keyboard, parodying that “Google for answers” cliché that has emerged in recent years (Though Parker uses Bing for some horrid, inexplicable reason. Sony owns Columbia Pictures, so Microsoft either wrote a fat check or held a marketing executive hostage).

The answers Parker seeks revolve around the abrupt fleeing and subsequent death of his parents when he was a young boy. Living with his Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen, who was always the Ben I imagined, with all respect to the late Cliff Robertson), Parker finds the mysterious briefcase his father left behind the last night he ever saw him, which includes an immaculate “decay rate algorithm.” Learning that his pop’s old partner was Dr. Curtis Connors (Rhys Ifans), Parker treks over to the imposing Oscorp tower in the heart of Midtown to befriend and assist this lost family friend (The mutated spider bites him at this point, too). Connors lost his right arm years before and researches “cross-species genetics” to make reptilian limb regeneration a human reality. It goes without saying that playing god turns you into an angry, rampaging Godzilla.

The script throws at us a love story, a science-fiction thriller and a hardboiled mystery, though the central arc starts, grows and tapers as a coming-of-age tale. Characters ascend and fall according to their commitment to altruism. The hotheaded seek vengeance, while the wise hope for forgiveness. The separate narratives have little problem coexisting for they each quietly impart these themes. Peter Parker is still a kid — he buys milk when roaming the streets at night and plays Breakout on his smartphone from his spider web ambush. But he matures along the implicit yet unspoken “With great power comes great responsibility” adage so pertinent to the character, sacrificing personal happiness and well being for others. In the movie’s most powerful scene, Spider-Man rescues a little boy from a burning car, giving him his mask and telling him, “It will make you strong.” Spider-Man’s presence raises the weak around him, even when you realize through his repentance that Parker is only saving himself.

Mark Webb and cinematographer John Schwartzman capture these perilous episodes with the right colors and pacing, brightening the palette and speeding up camera movement for the acrobatic action scenes and softening the focus and tone when goofing in high school. They bathe his Manhattan web-slinging (now achieved through mechanical ‘biocable’ shooters Parker builds himself, consistent with the comics) in a neon, Times Square glow, the city surrounding and literally superimposed upon him — the tourist’s vision of New York City, at least. As Spidey brachiates throughout the city, Schwartzmann and the CGI team retain a startling level of fluidity as they track him plummeting and careening back up, not blurring the surrounding skyscrapers in a roller coaster effect. They screw with shutter speed in ways I have not seen before.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man gave us Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin and Spider-Man 2, perhaps the greatest superhero movie ever made, hosted an unforgettable turn from Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus. This incarnation of The Lizard does not stand in their league. Rhys Ifans is a gifted character actor, so the blame does not rest on his shoulders but rather the screenplay’s, which studies his character at arm’s length, no pun intended. The Amazing Spider-Man can certainly compete with its predecessors, but its leaner approach fortunately precludes humdrum Venn diagrams. This film nurtures a joyous spirit that also pulsated through the mid-term Harry Potter entries, like the imperfect but captivating Goblet of Fire. The characters are more like you than not, for all their superpowers and magical abilities. They channel that nascent desire for more, not in material wealth but in strength and integrity. And through every deed and moment of sacrifice, they teach us why we can’t have it.

Final Verdict: 

4 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

Men in Black 3 Review

Men in Black 3

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

Released in 2012

Reflecting on Men in Black 3, my mind, for some reason, keeps jumping to comparisons with The Avengers. Marvel’s blockbuster is still Hulk-smashing every box office record out there, so the film is probably occupying every Variety subscriber’s thoughts for some reason or another. But the two movies share a similar premise — banding together estranged heroes to stop an alien threat — and a love of comic foreplay that faintly nestles them side-by-side. In that case, MiB 3 is without a doubt the superior film. With a $225 million budget, MiB 3 has all the bells and whistles of your typical summer hit yet still possesses a warmth missing in so many others. This film does not succeed by flaunting what it has but by having all it needs and letting it sing.

What MiB 3 has is genuinely great acting, a sharp, economic script and director Barry Sonnenfeld’s clutch balance of such quality. The story is independent of the first two films in the franchise, scrapping Agent Zed, Frank the pug and 90s artifact ‘the worm guys’ except for fleeting cameos. Agent J (Will Smith) assumes the lead, tracking down Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones, with Josh Brolin playing his young self) back in 1969 via time machine after an evil alien Boris the Animal (Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement) erases K’s entire existence. There are dozens of plot loopholes and continuity errors but to dwell on such trivia is to ignore the film’s characters, tone and, really, its whole point.

It is reasonable, however, to complain about the outrageous salaries some celebrities receive, especially in these tough times. But, really, the $20-plus million upfront and 20-percent backend thrown at Will Smith is doing some good, because the man earns it. Besides not aging one bit since 1997, Smith still jokes, brawls and charms in league with Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford. There is a moment when Agent J stares at Brolin’s young Agent K when they are driving through 1960s-era New York City after meeting for the first time — the shot is prolonged enough that Smith’s grin is supposed to be construed as awkward. The theater laughs; it’s a joke. But there is a real sweetness to this gesture, of seeing your best friend for the first time, again, before you ever met — Smith is capable of blending a joke with humility and love, in the span of just a few seconds.

Tommy Lee Jones proves again why he is one of his generation’s most gifted and enjoyable actors, with a face as cratered as the moon and a presence equally bright. In the beginning, K infuriates J by withholding secrets that J feels entitled to know. “I promised you the secrets of the universe, nothing more,” K says over the phone, ensconced in his apartment’s leather chair, fireplace smoldering behind him. J and K then share a moment of silence, with a close-up on K’s face. He does not look indifferent but sad that he cannot speak the truth (the reasoning, of course, is revealed later). After they hang up, K nonchalantly presses a button that raises the wall and fireplace behind him to unveil a vast arsenal of ‘space guns.’ He picks one up, snaps it side to side, sits back down and awaits the dangerous Boris the Animal who has a score to settle.

It is not so much a juxtaposition as a natural coexistence of comedy and drama, light and heavy, deft and steady that this film — with much credit to the directing — continuously pulls off. Josh Brolin nails the clip of Jones’ voice, but thanks to a script that actually lets K smile for once, he develops a character richer than the one we started with. The joy K radiates recounting a night spent with Agent O (Alice Eve, dressed like a Mad Men secretary working at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum) brings more humanity to a character in ten seconds than all of MiB II.

Then there is Griffin, a fifth dimensional alien who can read and live in all seemingly infinite alternate realities. Played by A Serious Man’s Michael Stuhlbarg, he probably pillaged a thrift store to hide his unknown alien appearance under layers of secondhand sweaters. His introduction at The Factory — yes, The Factory, Andy Warhol’s (Bill Hader) bastion for counterculture extraterrestrials — lets loose a string of possible immediate futures that all spell doom, only to conveniently end up on the most improbable historical line on which our heroes are still alive. When not tortured by clashing apocalyptic realities, Griffin revels in the remarkable events when everything works out, like the “Miracle Mets” 1969 victory at Shea Stadium. Stuhlbarg, a brilliant actor Scorsese recently tapped for Boardwalk Empire and Hugo, legitimizes a supporting role with all the debilitating neuroses and yearned-for optimism we share.

I have not even mentioned the zany futurist set and costume design, remarkable time travel sequence or nods to modern and 60s pop culture (Lady Gaga now adorns the MiB headquarters’ monitors; “The Viagrans have an amazing new pill…”). Nor have I yet admitted that the 3D in this film actually works; it does not desaturate the overly bright shots but rather exaggerates the rapid digital action scenes, with flying projectiles and long-exposed motion blur. Men in Black thrives on the characters it develops and the connections they make with one another. Studios love to pile different genres onto one film to reach everyone — which is effectively no one. This film proves that at least a few wealthy filmmakers can see past the gloss and craft with their own human hands, as the bittersweet ending bears witness. This is a sci-fi action time travel comedy, yes, but don’t hold that against it.

Final Verdict:

4 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link. 

The Avengers Review

The Avengers

Directed by Joss Whedon

Released in 2012

There is no reason to review The Avengers. If you love it, go tweet “#Avengers is awesome / See it!” and be done with it. If you hate it, your words will fall on ears deafened by the cha-chings of $207 million in opening weekend box office receipts, or maybe a Furious Samuel L. Jackson. And if you neither love it nor hate it, like me, then — who cares?

The flaw and triumph of The Avengers is that it succeeds so well in capturing its source material and nothing more. That source material is a line of Marvel comics that started in the 1960s and throws some of Marvel’s most popular characters together to save the world against “foes no single superhero can withstand.” It is a fun, pulpy series, with a lot of macho banter between, and during, action scenes in place of true character development seen in the individual heroes’ stories.

Those superheroes are Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Nick Fury. Say goodbye to the reality of the Iraq War that set the scene for Iron Man, and hello to Norse mythology besides a gamma-radiated beast and former Nazi hunter. Their foe is Thor’s adopted brother, Loki, who seeks to enslave the world with some magical cube that unlocks a portal to another universe. The stakes are so high that it is hard to care. It is more Loki’s ability to sustain perfect posture and speaketh in faux-Middle English while wearing egregious golden horns that convinces me that, yes, this is a job for more than one.

This film is clearly not The Dark Knight and does not pretend to be. I see that as a relief. IMAX agrees, for it holds a strict summer quota on “brooding, depressing, not-so-super hero tragedies.” But The Avengers is not even a hearty, standalone comic adaptation in the vein of Spider-Man 2. Director, co-writer and nerd-throb Joss Whedon basically crafts a superior version of Michael Bay’s Transformers films: irresistible to the eyes, with wit and fan service to spare, yet still without a thread of substance or speck of beauty underneath it all.

Despite the love Whedon is given by Internet culture, his talent displays itself sporadically in the film. With a movie set to top a billion dollars and a budget of over $220 million, it’s disappointing that many of the dialogue scenes possess a cheap aesthetic. To juggle all the characters, the film jumps from one character to another, often using dolly or crane shots to quickly establish a sense of place and familiarity with someone you might not have seen for three minutes (an eternity in a blockbuster). Filmed digitally, a lot of the dialogue looks like that of a TV show — no surprise considering Whedon’s Buffy and Firefly history. But there is a disposable, uninspired feeling to these shots and, further, to whole scenes. Our few moments with, say, Hawkeye are recorded in the same stock fashion as just another ensemble cable drama.

Given its rather simple expectations, however, The Avengers might just benefit from these artistic shortcomings. It is one of the most faithful comic book film adaptations in recent memory, with all the pretty visual motifs, ridiculous scenarios and emotional shallowness you can find in its inspiration. The S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier — an aircraft carrier capable of stratospheric flight — looks crazier in motion than it could possibly appear on hand-drawn panels. Iron Man flying through the city, back facing the ground, is an iconic image brought to life, as is the 360-degree rotating shot of The Avengers, cornered by foes and New York City skyscrapers, prepping for battle. These scenes are just about copied from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original work, but it’s the kind of flattering plagiarism everyone can get behind.

The special effects are obviously remarkable, dazzling, super-duper. I am continually impressed by the different ways Iron Man enters and exits his suit; when he lands on the open-air pad of his own skyscraper, Tony Stark quickly emerges as spinning discs and robotic arms disassemble the intricate exoskeleton. Stark is, of course, blasé to the whole display. In the final action sequence, the camera swoops down streets and up buildings in an uninterrupted, natural flow that follows each hero kicking ass and farming testosterone. Don’t ask who their enemies are (Wikipedia says they are Loki’s army of “Chitauri,” and I am not sure the film said even that) and ignore that they look like a poor mesh of Gears of War’s Locust army and Transformers 3’s flying monsters. Just enjoy the show.

Detailing the story would bore me more than you: Things happen, things are explained, things are never explained. You could toil over the numerous plot holes, or you could just read the comic book — the answers are there, I hope. I did notice some light contemporary political commentary, with Nick Fury as the neoconservative hawk pushing for action, Bruce Banner (The Hulk) as the frustrated diplomat and Captain America as the old-fashioned ideologue of World War II-era America. These tensions manifest in one key scene of verbal conflict and are not addressed afterward, but the film deserves an ‘A’ for its effort, right?

Speaking of The Hulk, Mark Ruffalo’s portrayal of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde pacifistic beast steals the show. Ruffalo is a naturally reserved and faintly awkward presence on screen — Bruce Banner incarnate. Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark continues to rob all the witty one-liners (before he flies off with Hawkeye in his arms, Stark deadpans, “Clench up, Legolas”), but The Hulk has a few key moments of winning physical comedy, one joke of which set my theater off in an uproar of laughter that didn’t cease until halfway through the next scene.

So, The Avengers is funny as well as entertaining, attractive and exciting. What’s not to love? Truthfully, most of the film’s problems arise from the concept more than the execution. You can say, “Well, it was the best ensemble superhero movie ever!” And I would agree, with such stiff competition and all.

But look: This movie is going to make a billion dollars. Far more than that, actually. With only three days in the States and thirteen worldwide, it has already accrued a staggering $650 million. This is not the last Avengers movie, nor the last Marvel sequel or spin-off. The Avengers sets a decent precedent, one of cheery mirth and harmless arousal. It is not the plethora of explosions and jokes that rubs me wrong. Rather, it is the notion — nay, insult — that we cannot handle anything more.

Final Verdict:

3 Stars Out of 5

This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.

How to Make a Billion Dollars

Courtesy of Santi Slade

While the weather may have its own agenda, summer is almost here — four days away, in fact. No, not because classes end then. And not Slope Day, either, though with all the alcohol and sweat it might as well feel like it.

No, this Friday, May 4, The Avengers will open in theaters across the country, unofficially inaugurating the start of the summer movie season. Marvel is hoping you and I are excited about this movie; in 2010, summer “began” May 7, with Iron Man 2, and last year on May 6, with Thor (at this rate, in 60 years, Hologram Nick Fury vs. The Royale With Cheese will kick off summer on February 19, 2072).

Lots of money is on the table for this one. Consider how each summer for the past four years has featured big-screen advertisements for this very film. They all did well (the weakest was The Incredible Hulk, which earned $263 million worldwide), but so far all of these films have eluded that coveted $1 billion landmark. Disney — who put $4 billion down for its acquisition of Marvel Comics and all its associated properties — does not want to lose any more dough on its films, especially with the colossal failure of John Carter earlier this year.

Will The Avengers cross the totally arbitrary $1 billion worldwide gross threshold, which only 11 other films have passed to date? It seems likely to considering that seven of those billion dollar babies were released in the past four years, with three films alone released last year. The trailer depicts actors we love (veterans Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr., along with rising stars Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth), an actress men love to ogle (Scarlett Johansson, conveniently wearing a skintight costume) and explosions in a metropolitan setting. (Has anyone else noticed how our discomfiting fetish with city destruction has only accelerated post-9/11? Look at every Transformers or Roland Emmerich film we watch). Oh, and the movie is good too, with upwards of 96-percent approval on Rotten Tomatoes. But we are speaking about the bottom line here, so silly things like whether a movie you pay $12 for is “good” or not are kept at the door.

After this weekend, in which The Avengers will undoubtedly deliver a huge turnout upwards of $120-140 million, the box office curve will naturally slope downwards. Last year’s Harry Potter reached $1 billion in 19 days. No matter how much comic book geeks obsess over Hawkeye’s long-awaited inclusion or Captain America’s abdominals, there’s no beating Dumbledore’s Army. It was this similar, though skewed younger, demographic that launched The Hunger Games into stratospheric financial success, with the third best opening weekend of all time at $155 million, the number to beat this summer. But even Games has a long ways to go to hit a billion clams, as the $600 million it has made to date worldwide, after 38 days in theaters (which still slays the rest of the year, by the way), reveals its weak sustainability. Think about how the waves of pre-teens (I will not use the “twe-” word) saw the movie: They screamed at their moms about Katniss and Peeta enough to get them willing to drive to the theater or even hooked themselves. But then it’s back to work and back to school.

So, Marvel’s biggest yet will likely not pull in the explosive first weekend but looks more set to survive. How about the rest of the summer? Expect good showings from Men in Black III (the first real impediment to Avengers, three weeks after), Brave (Pixar’s newest won’t mine the lucrative merchandising goldmine like Cars or Toy Story, but should boast a creative return to form a la Wall-E) and Prometheus (an R rating may hold it back from a few but not from the droves of adults looking for a mature option).

I expect The Bourne Legacy to underperform, because while the original films defied expectations, many still do not know leading man Jeremy Renner and the studios are dumping it off at August, which usually signals hesitance. The Amazing Spider-Man does not have to apologize for the franchise’s awful third movie, for that still accrued nearly $900 million worldwide, and it will fare better than many think (say, $80 million opening, $650 million worldwide finish). Same goes for Ice Age: Continental Drift, which will likely pull in unimpressive domestic sales but skyrocket in the increasingly critical foreign markets. There’s something about animation and mysterious megafauna that turns on those across the pond(s). Ask Kung Fu Panda.

It’s the easy answer, but put your money on The Dark Knight Rises as king of the summer. Its predecessor hit a billion with over 50-percent of its total gross in domestic box office, the only case in the billion dollar movie club. While this film may not have the Heath Ledger scuttlebutt to energize its P.R., its varied cast (read: women) and intriguing art direction (read closer: women in tights) will entice more foreign crowds this time around. If the trailers play up its conclusiveness of the Nolan saga (so they say) and Bane’s bizarre physical presence while hiding the silly American football scenes, Batman can soar all the way to Tokyo … again.

My columns are usually about big ideas and my struggle to comprehend and reconcile them with my daily life. This entry is rather anti-intellectual, not about big ideas but rather big numbers. And when the summer ends and all my above predictions prove wrong, enough time will have passed so that you forget I ever made them. I think this Cornell education might be actually starting to pay off.


This article was originally written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location via this link.