War Horse

War Horse

War Horse is a tough film to review.  It certainly isn't the best film in the world and yet I find myself often defending it to my friends.  Maybe I just don't agree with the reasons they don't like it...or maybe I'm just being fussy in my old age.  Either way, War Horse is definitely a mixed bag.

Joey is a special horse (as we are reminded constantly) and develops an immediate bond with young English farm boy, Albert Narracott (Jeremy Levine's debut performance).  But the farm is destitute and Mr. Narracott is forced to sell Joey to the English army on the eve of World War I.  Little Albert is shattered and swears he'll see his horse again.  What follows is the episodic adventures of Joey as he navigates his way through war torn Europe and hopefully back to Albert.

A problem with most episodic movies is that they are full of a lot of short little stories, and if some of these episodes aren't strong, it can drag down the whole movie.  I definitely think this is the case of War Horse.  Some of the stories are terrific, especially the World War I excerpts, such as when Joey serves as the cavalry mount of dashing British Captain Nichols (Thor's Tom Hiddleston channeling a killer T.E. Lawrence vibe) and when he is forced to pull literally tons of heavy artillery up a steep slope to their firing positions.  These sequences are truly superb and depict some of the best representations of World War I that I have seen.  But then we also have a story where Joey becomes the pet of a precocious little French girl (Celine Buckins), that I suppose is sort of cute, but completely drags the momentum of the movie down.

The other major complaint about the movie, and one that I agree with, is that it tends to be overly sentimental.  Spielberg has always worn his heart on his sleeve as a filmmaker and I admire the fact that he doesn't restrain his emotional side, but he goes overboard here, especially in the last act.  Everything following the superb barbed wire scene right up to the sunset finale is just thick, thick syrup - and too much for me to handle without rolling my eyes.  It's just started to be a bit too much.

But I've also heard a lot of people complaining that the movie is just unrealistic.  It bothered them that with hundreds of thousands men being slaughtered, why does everyone care so much about a horse?  It's just a horse!  I don't think that is the right way to look at the movie.  War Horse isn't realistic.  It's a fable and the horse is a metaphor, a symbol of an earlier, simpler time - when people were tied to their land, and when there was a certain nobility and chivalry in combat, before the world was violently dragged into the modern world by the horrors of mechanized warfare.  World War I was the transition to modern war and that transition is handled brilliantly by Spielberg and Company.  The characters in the film yearn for the world of yesteryear, for a happier time before barbed wire, mustard gas, and trenchfoot.  It makes sense that everyone in the film is touched by Joey.  He is a symbol of everything they have lost.

Overall, I think the movie's greatest strength is how old fashioned it is (which is ironic because I think its greatest weakness is how old fashioned its sentimentality is!).  I think this is Spielberg's John Ford film.  Truly, I think if John Ford had made War Horse in 1948, it would have been remarkably similar to what we ended up with 2011.  It's the classic style of the filmmaking, and it's the way the camera sets the characters against the landscape, tying them intrinsically to the earth.  I admired that.  There is actually a lot to admire about War Horse.  If the story had been just a bit tighter, and if the attempts to yank on our tear ducts had just been a bit more subtle...well, we would have had something terrific.

MVP:
Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg's Director of Photography, is the clear MVP here.  He's brilliant with the camera, both with his framing, and his great use of filters and lighting.  He gets the MVP for two moments in particular - the first is an insane sunset at the end of the film, a return to the English farm set against a blood red sky.  At first, I grumbled, because I thought, "why did they use CGI for that sunset??"  Except then I read that it was actually a real sunset and that the colors in that part of England are that insanely vibrant.  It's a heck of a great shot.  But my favorite shot is actually earlier in the film, when Joey makes a dash through the trenches.  We are treated to a superb tracking shot, the camera keeping just ahead of Joey as he twists and turns, men toppling to each side, explosions filling the air above him.  It's a brilliant shot and I'm not quite sure how they did it.  Kaminski is the Man!

BEST LINE:

Geordie: How are things in yonder trench?
German: Delightful.  We read.  We knit sweaters.  We train our rats to perform circus tricks.

TRIVIA:
Fourteen horses played Joey in the film.  The primary acting horse, Finder, also played Sea Biscuit.

 

Le Grand Chef: Kimchi Battle 2

Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle

You know what is most disappointing about Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle?  The title!  While it is not inaccurate, the title definitely makes this movie sound like a comedy, which it most assuredly is not.  This movie is hard core Korean soap opera, a weepy weepy drama at its most weepy weepy.  Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; I just want to make sure you know what you are getting into before you watch it.

Jang-eun (Jeong-eun Kim) is a world renowned chef who has now achieved success after years of climbing her way through a mostly male-dominated profession.  Now one of the best chefs in the world, she wants to return home to Korea.  Her ailing mother owns a little traditional restaurant that is in danger of going out of business.  But Jang-eun doesn't want to help.  Oh, no.  She harbors deep and bitter resentment towards her mother because she wasn't married when she had Jang-eun.  All her childhood, Jang-eun suffered the social stigma of growing up in a one parent home in a society that frowns upon bastards as improper and wrong.  So now Jang-eun wants to force her mother to retire, tear down the traditional restaurant that means so much to her, and open a fancy new high-end Asian fusion restaurant.  The only thing that stands in her way? Foster brother Seong Chan, the good son who is also an incredibly amazing cook.

Conveniently, Korea is staging a nation-wide contest to see who can make the best kimchi.  Both Seong Chan and Jang-eun enter, agreeing that whoever wins gets to do what they want with mother's restaurant.  And the stage is set.  Both are masters of their craft, their foods perfectly representing their characters: Seong Chan's food is as traditional and calm as he is, while Jang-eun's cooking is bold, experimental, and ruthlessly ambitious.  This sounds like a lot of fun, right?

Well, it's not.  I just described the setup.  But the movie is really all about people with mommy issues.  And there is so much crying.  There is even a random side plot with an escaped convict who misses his mother's cooking that exists in the movie just so a few other actors can get a chance to cry.  Wow, does this movie get depressing.

I don't want to say this movie is bad, because it isn't.  The characters are interesting, the acting is terrific, and the cinematography is rock solid.  And wow, when there is cooking going on, the film explodes with life, color and excitement.  The food in this movie looks fantastic and should inspire the hopeful chef in all of us.  And I also admire the fact that Koreans are making films about families with real three-dimensional people with real emotional problems.  Hollywood doesn't really do that often anymore.  My wife, an avid lover of Korean soap operas, loved it.

But, it just isn't my type of thing.  When a movie calls itself Kimchi Battle, I expect to have some fun.  Oh, there are some half-hearted attempts at comedy, but I know the director's not interested in that.  He wants his characters and his audience to cry.  Me?  I just wanted a Kimchi Battle, damn it!

MVP:
I am going to have to go with Jeong-eun Kim as Jang-eun, an over confidant and bitter woman.  She is the villain of the film, make no mistake, but Jeong-eun Kim never plays her that way.  The best villains are the ones whose motivations we understand.  And her performance shows the pain that led her to become this way, how she had to develop a cold exterior to deal with childhood hazing, how she had to fight tooth and nail to work up the ladder and become one of the greatest chefs in the world.  No matter how bitchy she gets, no matter what she says or does, you just can't hate her as a human being.  You might even find yourself admiring her grit and creativity.  I think this is all due to the fine performance from Jeong-eun Kim.  She gets my MVP.

BEST LINE:
Kimchi Judge: This tastes like cabbage.

Castaway on the Moon

Castaway on the Moon

Sometimes you go strolling through Netflix with some friends and nothing jumps out at you.  There seems to be so much and yet nothing worth watching at the same time.  You tap from page to page, someone offering a suggestion, someone else turning it down, and the minutes just tick tock away.  And then you see a strange picture of a Korean dude running across a river, and you all think, "meh, I don't  necessarily want to watch that, but I guess I will because it's better than that other thing."  And when everyone has that same reaction, well, it's unanimous.

Sometimes you pick a random movie and you end up with aimless junk, something that passes the time and is instantly forgotten.  And sometimes you pick a random movie, and you find gold.

And make no mistake, Castaway on the Moon is absolutely gold.  It was a complete shock to my senses - a true original.  It was like nothing I have seen before.

Kim Seong Geun (played by Jae-Yeong Jeong) is super depressed, woefully in debt, and recently dumped by his girlfriend.  Despondent, he leaps from a bridge into the Han River.  His suicide attempt fails and he finds himself stranded on a small island in the middle of the river, too far for anyone to hear his cries for help, but close enough to Seoul to be cruelly tortured by its skyline.

At the same time, a nameless young woman (Ryeowon Jung) in Seoul is stranded in her own way, unwilling (or unable) to leave her room for the past three years.

The tragic circumstances of these two characters would make you think Castaway on the Moon is a study of loneliness and isolation.  And it is.  But it is also a study of hope.  And I don't mean the movie is just about how the characters need to find hope.  It is it also about what the film does to us, as the audience.   By the end of the film, we have gone through so much with them, laughing, crying, riding their triumphs and disasters, that we feel intimately involved in their fate.  We hope for them.  It's pretty inspiring when a movie can do that.

And plus, it is funny.  Wow, is it funny.  A look at my pick for the best line of the movie below should tell you that!

I hope I haven't built this movie up to much.   There is nothing worse than disappointment.  But for me, this movie was a real treasure.  I don't want to say any more.  The less you know, the better.  I've already said too much.  Just go find some friends, pop over to Netflix Streaming and scroll around until you see a strange picture of a Korean dude running across a river.  Trust me.


MVP: 

It's a tough call.  Do I say writer/director Hae-jun Lee for concocting such a brilliant little adventure?  Or do I go with the two leads, whose stellar performances are equal parts pathetic and compelling.  I think I have to go with Hae-jun Lee because of his inspired madness.  I hope you guys find this film and like it as much as I did.


BEST LINE:

Kim: I need to make healthy poop!  And a lot of it!!!!

Prometheus

Prometheus

When I was coordinating schedules in order to see  Prometheus with an old friend, I unknowingly reviewed the film fairly accurately via text message.  I wrote, "let's grab a beer after the movie so we can discuss how brilliant Ridley Scott is, or how disappointing.  Or more likely both."  And that, my friends, pretty much sums up Prometheus.

Whether I like Prometheus or not depends entirely on how I am thinking of the film at any given moment.  When I think of the mistakes, the inconsistent behavior of certain characters, the missed opportunities, and the major, major plotting problems, I get a bit sour on the film...and yet...and yet, there is too much brilliance here to completely discount Prometheus.  It is a brave film, it is about something, and it doesn't insult our intelligence.  It is a movie that makes us think, and that is always something worth celebrating.

Let's get into it then.  Prometheus is about the quest for where we came from and who we are.  Scientists Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall Green) and Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Repace) have found carvings and paintings across the globe that prove that we were created by another race.  Thanks to a trillion dollar investment from the Weyland Corp, they now journey through space to find their makers, who Dr. Shaw likes to call The Engineers.  Among the various scientists and crew, we also have a super cool captain (played by the always super cool Idris Elba), the frosty corporate executive (Charlize Theron) and the android David (Michael Fassbender), who serves as the ship's steward and who also happens to be obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia.  The ship lands on a barren and remote planet where they find an abandoned alien facility.  But something isn't right.  Something horrible happened there 2000 years ago, and if our heroes aren't careful, they could unleash forces beyond their control.

So first, the good.  We have a dazzling film, with top notch special effects, superb cinematography and editing, and wonderful acting.  They also do a remarkable job with the 'science' part of science fiction, with a whole slew of fun little gadgets that are entirely believable (I love those little mapping globes).  Most of all, as I mentioned earlier, I like that this movie is about something.  Ridley Scott is asking interesting questions here - not just where do we come from or where do we go, but also do we even belong?  What is our place in the universe?  And what does it mean to be a creator?  This last question is an intriguing theme that runs through the film.  Mankind has advanced so much that they are now creating life, or at least a very close simulation of life in David.  The difference is the Engineers seem to have left mankind alone, whereas man is constantly reminding David that he is just a creation and has no soul.  That must get really annoying.  But it also raises the uncomfortable question of whether humans even have a soul - something Prometheus doesn't answer (probably so we can spend our time debating about it).

But then we have those flaws...and there are many, mostly plot-driven.  I think the film barrels along, despite its problems, leading easily to the best scene of the movie...and then it just kind of falls apart during the last twenty minutes.  There are gaps in logic, story holes, a stupid death straight out Looney Tunes, and despite everyone's best efforts, the movie just begins to collapse under its own weight.  I have read that the blu ray will have some extra footage - maybe those extra scenes will solve some if not most of my problems (just like the superb director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven solved all my problems in the theatrical version of that film).  But until I see that director's cut, we are left with this theatrical version - in all its brilliance and maddening frustration.

P.S.  For those who want to know what specifically bothered me in the movie, I have them bullet pointed at the bottom of the review.  Don't want to ruin anything for anyone!!!

BEST LINE:
David:  "I didn't think you had it in you.  Sorry, poor choice of words..."

MVP:
Michael Fassbender is probably my favorite up and coming actor right now, and in Prometheus, he shows why.  His performance is superb, playing David just slightly off, just enough to make you make you realize he is not normal and to make you uncomfortable.  It's not a flashy role or performance.  It's subtle and brilliant.  I think he deserved a Supporting Actor nomination, but alas he did not get one.

Which leads me into some spoiler territory - just what is the significance of David's obsession with Lawrence of Arabia?  His obsessions is extreme enough that he even dyes his hair blonde and practices lines from the film, most significantly, "the trick is not minding that it hurts."  Lawrence and David have much in common.  They are both outsiders, they are both different than what society accepts as normal, and they are looked down upon and ridiculed for their uniqueness.  The irony is that Lawrence actually thinks he is better than everyone else.  He's smarter and craftier, and he knows it, and yet everyone still mocks him.  And how does his arrogant ego allow him to put up with this continuous disrespect?  By "not minding that it hurts."  For David, watching Lawrence of Arabia must have been a revelation and inspiration.  He fancies himself a modern day Lawrence, surrounded by lesser beings who think they are better than he is.  It's a fascinating parallel and explains many of David's actions throughout the film.

Anyway, that's all a tangent.  What is all goes back to is that Fassbender is amazing and he gets the MVP.

TRIVIA: 
Spoiler/foreshadowing alert!!! The name of the moon where the crew finds the facility is LV 223, which could be a reference to Leviticus 2:23: "If any man among your all your descendants throughout your generations, approaches the holy gifts which the sons of Israel dedicate to the Lord, while he has an uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from before me."  Coincidence?  I think not!  Thank you, IMDB for this one!


SPOILERS:

Okay, so you want to know what really bothered me about Prometheus?  Here you go.  Some are admittedly nitpicks, but since I am keeping a list anyway.

1. I don't like how the two scientists who are smart enough to try and leave the alien facility because they don't want to be horror movie cliches suddenly turn into horror movie cliches when they a) get lost, b) decide to stay put in the sketchiest place in the facility, and c) decide it would be a good idea to play with the scary looking cobra snake worm thing because it "looks cute."  I'll buy this sort of behavior in a crappy slasher film, but not here.  This film is supposed to above such shenanigans.

2. Aren't there good actors out there who are in their 70s?  Why did they cast middle-aged Guy Pierce as an old man?  This makes sense if they had flashbacks or if they had de-aged him at some point, but this never happens.  It's just Guy Pierce in bad old person makeup.  Don't we have talented older actors?  Why not Max von Sydow?  Why not Joss Ackland?  How cool would it have been to cast Lawrence of Arabia himself, Peter O'Toole?  Now, that would have been really trippy for David!  Oh, well.  Maybe there is a flashback in the director's cut...

3. Meredith Vickers' death is straight out of Looney Tunes, I'm sorry.  It's ridiculous.

4. Did we really need that gratuitous shot of the xenomorph alien in the end?  We all already understood that the monster was a giant face hugger on top of the Engineer at the end...Ridley Scott had successfully made the link to the Alien franchise.  Did he really have to ruin this cool moment by showing the alien itself?  It made people in the theater laugh.

5.  I don't like how Dr. Holloway, Shaw's partner and boyfriend, keeps changing character, going from an adventurous and supportive scientist to the ship's drunken asshole to Mr. Lover Boy.  I liked Logan Marshall Green; I just wish they had done a better job with his character.

6.  And the BIG problem.  This is the one I can't live with.  After the best scene in the movie, when Dr. Shaw has surgery to remove an evil alien that is growing in her womb, we get perhaps the worst scene in the movie.  Dr. Shaw stumbles around the ship, covered in blood, and walks into a room and sees Weyland and David, and they ignore the fact that she's covered in blood!?  Granted, David puts a blanket over her, but that's the extent of their noticing her condition.  They're just, "hey, what's up?  We're gonna go talk to the Engineer.  Wanna come?"  And despite the fact that she just went through major surgery (with kind of a crappy, rushed patchup job, I might add), she still says she will go!  And I don't care if you occasionally grunt and lean over like you are in pain.  That isn't enough to explain how you are running around, jumping, getting punched in the stomach, etc. etc. after what might be the craziest surgery I've ever seen in a movie.

Then you have the fact that they completely drop the point that David tried to forcibly cyrofreeze Shaw with the evil alien inside her...neither of them talk about that, or that she beat up two guards to escape, or that David even knows or cares that the alien is no longer inside of her.  WHAT?!  I can't help but think that there are scenes missing in this area, because this whole sequence just makes no sense.  And it bothers me to no end.

7. The deus ex machina at the end is a bit silly.  You know, when David says, oh, by the way, there are other ships.  And if you take my decapitated head to the ship, I can totally fly us wherever you want to go.  Well, that's awfully convenient.  It's made a bit more annoying when David starts his dialogue by saying, "I know we've had our disagreements..."  But as I mentioned above, they actually don't have their disagreements.  Because they never actually talk about their conflict or bring up the fact that David just tried to screw her over.

Sigh.  Maybe the director's cut will fix all this.  Frustrating.

Ironclad

Ironclad

People who know me well understand that I have a weakness for 'sword' movies.  It doesn't matter if it is a fantasy or a swashbuckler or an epic; if it has a sword, I am there.  And Ironclad is right up my alley. A sort of adaptation of one of my favorite films, Seven Samurai, Ironclad is a medieval adventure that takes place during the Baron's War in England.  After being forced to sign the Magna Carta, King John decides to bring in an army of barbarian mercenaries and exact revenge on the rebellious barons who dared to defy his authority.  Seven rebels take the strategically vital Rochester Castle, which John needs.  And so you know what that means - time for some awesome siege warfare!

There is a lot of quality in the movie.  First off, I have to give director Jonathan English some credit.  He takes a tiny budget and gives the film more scope and excitement than I would have expected.  The film never looks cheap and that is an accomplishment.  I also generally like the cast, with some seasoned pros like Brian Cox (Troy) , Derek Jacobi (Gladiator), Jason Flemyng (Snatch), and Charles Dance (Game of Thrones) - all taking their turns munching on the scenery.  But the movie really rests on the shoulders of our two main opponents. James Purefoy (Rome) plays Marshal, a Templar Knight recently returned, shell shocked and bitter, from the Crusades.  Meanwhile, the villainous King John is played by Paul Giamatti (Sideways), spewing righteous fury as he tries to retake his kingdom.  Both are truly excellent in their roles and elevate the movie.

All in all, this is all a recipe for a movie I should love. Unfortunately, I didn't.  Despite the movie's strong points, there is just too much I didn't like.  The biggest problem lies with the character of Isabel (Kate Mara from 127 Hours), the young wife of Rochester's master.  When our heroes first arrive, she takes an immediate interest in Marshal, his violent past, and especially his vow of chastity.  And she is just all over him.  This whole story thread is infuriating.  I understand what the filmmakers are trying to do.  They want Isabel to act as Marshal's conscience and show him that life is actually still worth living, if you live it the right way.  Well, this doesn't work.  Instead, she is a complete distraction and just comes across as a bored housewife who wants to bone the new knight in the neighborhood.  Marshal goes about his business, trying to save everyone's lives, and she just follows him around, yammering on about why vows of chastity are lame and killing people is wrong and blah blah blah.  Stop distracting him, you idiot!  The man is trying to fight an army of barbarians who want to kill all of you!  Maybe you should leave him alone and let him do his thing until, I don't know, maybe when the battle is over?!

Unfortunately, this isn't a subplot I can ignore.  It's too large a piece of the movie.  Now, just to be clear, I am not blaming Kate Mara.  She's a fine actress and she does the best she can, but the character is so frustrating that I doubt even Meryl Streep could have saved it.

The battles themselves are also a bit disappointing.  The fighting falls victim to the same over-editing that maligned Quantum of Solace and other recent action films.  This is a trend that filmmakers love to use today in an attempt to make the audience feel like they are part of the chaos.  Well, stop it!  It doesn't work.  No one I know likes it.  It just gives us a headache.  And if we can't see the awesome fighting, then we are aren't going to like it - no matter how awesome it might be.

So there you go.  Overall, Ironclad is diverting enough, I suppose.  It's definitely not as bad as the recent Conan the Barbarian reboot!  There is fun to be had here if you have an afternoon free and feel like some medieval battle fun.  But it should have been a lot better, so overall I can't help but be a bit disappointed overall.


MVP:
It was almost James Purefoy, an actor I have been a fan of ever since I saw him in A Knight's Tale.  I think his work in Rome remains the best Marc Antony ever put on screen.  He carries Ironclad extraordinarily well, despite being dragged down in the Isabel scenes.  Giamatti was also excellent as King John, but overall I thought Purefoy was making more of an impression throughout the first 2/3 of the movie.

But then we got King John's big speech.

Holy cow.  At the 2/3 mark, King John begins to rant and rave about the foolishness of rebellion and the divine right of kings.  It's a good monologue and Giamatti just knocks it out of the park, but then he goes even further, ramping up the delivery to 11.  His voice breaks and explodes, his performance loses complete control, and Giamatti just vanishes.  He's not there.  He is channeling King John himself, furiously venting out 800 years of pent up wrath and vengeance.  It is a monstrous moment, shocking and Oscar worthy.  I don't know what movie Giamatti thought he was acting in, but it certainly wasn't Ironclad.  And whatever movie Giamatti thought he was in...I want to watch that one!   For sending chills up my spine and for genuinely scaring me, I have to give Giamatti the MVP.  That is an easy decision!

BEST LINE:
Marshal: Have you ever killed a man?  It is not a noble thing.  Not even when it is from God.

TRIVIA:
Here's a funny bit of trivia for you.  I have no problem with movies changing history, but I do get concerned when you change history this much.  So this great ol' battle that the good guys win in the movie?  Yeah, well, they didn't win.  They put up a good fight, but they pretty much got their butts kicked.  In fact, King John's generalship at Rochester is actually considered a textbook example of how to effectively conduct a siege operation.  That's taking historical license a bit too far for me!!!

Club Paradise

Club Paradise

After a life-threatening illness derailed his career in the 1970s, Peter O'Toole (Lawrence of Arabia) seemed poised for a comeback.  He secured well-deserved Oscar nominations for The Stunt Man (1980) and My Favorite Year (1982), and made a lasting impression as the Roman general Silva in the sprawling Masada miniseries (1981).  And then something happened, something horrifying, tragic and terrible.  And that thing is called Club Paradise.

Wow, is this movie bad.  Club Paradise is the unfortunate type of comedy where you don't laugh at all.  You can't laugh.  All you can do is stare and wonder how it even got made.

Robin Williams plays Jack, a retired firefighter living in the tropical paradise of St. Nicholas.  Eventually he decides to refurbish and manage a resort with his buddy Ernest (played by reggae artist Jimmy Cliff).  The problem is that despite their best efforts, their resort is a piece of trash and is literally falling to pieces.  Jack and Ernest spend much of the movie trying to keep the place together so their guests can have a good time.  Another problem is that a ruthless American businessman and the island's prime minister are plotting to force the locals into a tourism sucking cycle of servitude, leaving them destitute forever and unable to climb the economic ladder.  Grr!   Evil foreign capitalism!

...

Yeah, you read that right.  Look, I'm not saying that fancy foreign businessmen and their big fancy resorts haven't played their parts in preventing economic equality on some of these islands, but this theme seems kind of heavy for a movie as crappy as this.

The biggest shame is that the cast and crew is full of talented artists.  We all know what insane joyfulness Robin Williams is capable of bringing to the table, but he is terrible here and constantly changing character.  He is actually acting like he is doing a standup routine, which makes for a pretty bad character performance.  Was he trying to make the crew laugh maybe?  The bad guys are played by Brian Doyle Murray (Bill Murray's brother and a fine comic actor in his own right) and the Oscar-nominated Adolph Caesar (A Soldier's Story).  The hotel guests include fine actors like Rick Moranis (Ghostbusters), Eugene Levy (American Pie), Andrea Martin (SCTV) and Joanna Cassidy (Bladerunner).  The director is the gifted Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) and the script was co-written by Ramis and Murray, both of whom are really fine writers.

And then there is Peter O'Toole.  I love that man.  His brilliance in film, on stage, and in bars is legendary.  He has risen above terrible material and delivered gold.  And in this movie, he just...isn't any good.  I don't know what is going on, but he is really off.  To me, it's a big disappointment.  Sure, he has the best line in the movie (see below), but it is the line that it clever, not O'Toole's delivery.  And from my perspective, all the good will built from The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year, and Masada vanished.   This was the beginning of the "unfortunate" period, that included such classics as Supergirl, Creator, King Ralph, High Spirits, Phantoms, The Seventh Coin, and Phantoms.  Sure, there was that quality blip on the radar (The Last Emperor), but overall this was not a good time in O'Toole's career.  Of course, who am I to judge?  He probably had a lot of fun and made a lot of money doing these films.  But wow...painful.

Actually, that is a good word for this whole movie: painful.  Please avoid it.  Please.


BEST LINE:
Governor Hayes (referring to his island): "Either the Americans will move in and turn it into Miami Beach, or the Cubans and Russians will come and turn the entire island into bloody Albania.  There really is no hope."

MVP:
I have to go with the non-actor of the bunch, Jimmy Cliff.  I don't think he made that many movies, but he actually has a nice screen presence.  Everyone else seems to be trying too hard, while Cliff just goes with the flow.  He gets my MVP, for sure.

TRIVIA:
The movie was originally supposed to star Bill Murray and John Cleese, both of whom would have been more appropriate in their roles than Williams and O'Toole.  I don't know why they dropped out, but the decision probably ranks among their best career moves.  Easily.

The Avengers

The Avengers

And this is it.  After years of planning and hundreds of millions of dollars invested, Marvel's master plan has finally come to fruition and The Avengers has been released in theaters.  The film is the culmination of a strategy that began with 2008's Iron Man, a plan to introduce all the major Avenger super heroes in their own films and then bring them together in a big old fashioned crossover.

And the strategy worked brilliantly.  The Avengers lives up to expectations and even manages to exceed them.  After his defeat in Thor, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) comes into contact with an evil alien race called the Chitauri.  He makes a deal with them.  He will retrieve the all-powerful Tesseract (the super weapon from Captain America) and turn it over to them in return for an army with which he will conquer the Earth.  What stands in Loki's way?  The Avengers!  Assembled by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), The Avengers team includes Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and Captain America (Chris Evans).  Together they have to band together, defeat Loki, and save the planet.

That's a lot of characters and that is where Marvel's gambit paid off.  Because we have already been introduced to these characters, we don't really need to waste time delving into their back stories.  We can just jump right into the movie.  Because I'll be honest, the movie is two and a half hours long, as it is.  If we had to introduce audiences to these heroes, we would be in big trouble.

As it is, the film's weakness is in its first half hour.  We have all these characters and we need to get them all together somehow.  Sometimes these moments seem a bit forced, others - such as Thor's introduction - are downright contradictory to the earlier films.  Not that these scenes are particularly bad.  They just have some...speed bumps, I guess you could say, and are not as strong as the rest of the movie.

Because once we have everyone in the same room, the film really begins to hum, and then it churns, and then it explodes.  Every member of the cast is pitch perfect - especially newcomer Mark Ruffalo, who replaced Ed Norton as Bruce Banner/Hulk.  I initially thought Ruffalo was miscast, but he won me over pretty quickly.  And now I think he is the best cinematic Banner we've had yet.  He's almost the MVP of the movie.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that even though this movie is super crowded, everybody - and I mean, everybody - has their moment to shine, including smaller characters like Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg).  Every hero has a crowd pleasing kick butt moment, especially in the final battle.  This is a tricky juggling act and we have to credit Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy and Firefly) for shepherding such a complicated cast through the film.  Give him credit, too, for the great sense of humor that permeates the film.  Simply put, The Avengers is funnier than most of the comedies we get these days, plus we get great effects, great heroics, and great acting, too.  There are other summer films coming out that might end up being better than The Avengers, but I doubt any of them are going to be anywhere near as entertaining.

But in the end, The Avengers is not just a fun summer film, it is also accomplishes a remarkably feat -  it captures the spirit and the magic of the comics.  The Avengers really feels like a comic book come to life.  It is easily Marvel Studios' best film and rightfully takes its place as one of the best comic films of all time.


MVP:
Full disclosure - I am not a Whedon fanatic.  I think he is a talented writer and director, but I do not fawn over everything he does.  I loved Firefly and Serenity, but Buffy was just okay (here comes the hate mail) and Angel was just slightly better.  I want to qualify that just so you know I can be unbiased about this whole MVP thing, because I gotta say that Whedon just upped his game 500%.  I felt comfortable as soon as he was hired because I knew he was adept at handling team dynamics.  But I didn't think he would knock it out of the park like he does here.  I am still incredibly impressed how no character was under-utilized.  Everyone had something important and relevant to do - and we had eight major characters.  That is pretty remarkable.  And as a writer, he was able to give each hero their own distinct voice, which is also pretty difficult to do.  It's just impressive all around.  Whedon captained this ship and gave us one of the best of the genre.  I can't wait to see what he does with the sequel.  This was an easy MVP decision.

BEST LINE:

Ouch, so many.  Lots of good lines.  But I can say this line got a lot of cheers in the theater:

Captain America: "Ma'am, there's only one God, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that."

TRIVIA:
Some fans were disappointed that the villainous aliens in the movie weren't the Skrulls, Marvel Comics' go-to evil alien race.  The aliens in the film, the Chitauri, actually come from the Ultimates comic version of The Avengers.  In the comic, they do claim that they go by other names, including The Skrulls.  So why not just use the Skrulls name?  Well, turns out there were some legal issues.  The Skrulls were also villains in the Fantastic Four series, and since Fox Studios currently has the rights to Fantastic Four, that means they couldn't be used in The Avengers film.  Bummer.