So, a heads up about “Captain America”, stay through the end of the credits, they include the first teaser of the upcoming “Avengers” movie. Now, the review proper can begin.
Captain America has always been a staple of the universe in Marvel Comics, if for no other reason because he’s one of the three key members of Marvel’s super hero team, The Avengers. However, Capt. has had a rough time making the transition from page to screen. There were two made for TV efforts done in the late 70’s with cult B movie action star Reb Brown in the title role, which were boring and nonsensical not to mention embarrassing for all involved. Then in 1990 the first theatrical attempt came out, it was slightly better if for no other reason it had Captain’s arch nemesis, the Red Skull, in it and featured more of his back story from the comics, buuuuuut it was another real dud because it’s action was boring, Captain America really didn’t do much and it had a whole bunch of WTF moments in it.
So not only does this new movie have the pressure of trying to actually bring this character to the big screen in a respectable way, it also has to be able to put the last remaining pieces together for the Avengers team up. This is no easy task, so how did it do? Amazingly!
This movie is extremely good. Other critics have called it the best of the Marvel Studios adaptations, and I whole heartedly agree. The main reason being that, for once, “Captain America” takes itself 100% seriously. Yes, you heard right, a movie about a guy that fights evil in a costume that is basically the American flag, takes itself seriously. The big problem that I can see with the other movies is that they were trying to hide it’s Americana origins by either down playing it and just turning him literally into Batman on steroids, or just kind of vaguely hint at it in the film’s opening before going the exact same route.
This time, the film’s action is set in the midst of World War 2, and Steve Rogers is trying to enlist in the army to help defeat the Nazis, but is unable to do so because of his own poor health. He’s then given an option to do so as a test subject for a super soldier serum. However, when the scientist is murdered and the last of the serum lost, Steve is the only such soldier to be created and thus becomes Captain America.
What makes this work is Chris Evans as Steve Rogers. He plays the character’s intense good guy, stand up for what you believe, never run from a fight persona with a HUGE amount of sincerity. In fact his performance helps the film over come one of its bigger flaws as far as special effects, because while you can in fact tell, really easily too, that they are using CGI to make him look puny and scrawny early on, Evans performance really make you not care. I’ll elaborate on that in a moment but the fact that the actor in the role is actually playing it straight, as a good man that got the chance to be a great hero is actually something that makes it really enjoyable. In fact the first time that you see him in the Captain America costume, he’s doing so to sell war bonds and boost national morale in the fight against the Axis. You’d think that he’d be resentful or emo about this, but no, he takes it seriously and goes at it like it was just as noble as if he were actually punching Hitler in the face, instead of just some guy in a costume.
All the other actors also take this very serious. Tommy Lee Jones almost steals the whole movie as Steve’s CO, and Stanley Tucci is very moving as the scientist that gives Steve his shot at glory. The love interest, played Hayley Atwell, is actually really interesting as a character first and as if director Joe Johnston hadn’t given us a delicious enough sundae, her chemistry with Evans is so good that I finally get to have some proof that I don’t hate a movie for having a love story because this one is actually, you know, well told and interesting.
Added to this, it has really stellar action and the way they have the good Captain fight in the movie is impressive and creative, it’s almost as if he has no real style to his fighting, more he just dives in and uses his own will power and cunning to make it out alive, again, going back to how seriously they took his character. On top of that, you can actually see every single punch and know who is shooting at what… You getting all this Michael Bay? Do you need a pen and paper to write notes on? The action has weight, and yet, it’s done quite simply. For action to be good, you need to have a tenable, emotional connection to what is going on. This movie’s villains are basically explained thusly, I’m not making this up, they are more evil than the Nazis. No, I’m serious, they just set them up to be unapologetically evil and could only be shown as more so if you saw them murdering puppies or something like that. And yet it actually works, you hate these guys and want good guys to bring them down. So when you see the Captain bash a guy’s face in with his shield, you punch the air yelling “YES!” I would like to invoke the great Bruce Lee here. When it comes to any kind of action or fight scene, the most important thing is that “We need emotional content”. And “Captain America” has that in spades. When you see someone vaporized in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” it’s just manipulative, it’s quite literally the movie telling you: “This is bad, you should be really concerned and sad now, or something I guess.” In “Captain America” the organization Hydra also has vaporizing weapons, but when you see someone get vaporized here, it feels like it’s out of a war movie. You get upset when these people die, even if you’ve never seen them before or knew their name.
In fact the only problem I can really find with “Captain America” is that it has a few moments where the effects kind of show that they are really just Special effects, but that’s not a bad thing. Things like the original “Clash of the Titans” or even further back, “King Kong” are the same way, but the films really makes them work through performances, story and other such things. Like I said earlier, early on the effects used to make Chris Evans scrawny and out of shape aren’t quite up to snuff but at the same time, Evan’s performance makes up for it and it goes back to that emotional content argument from before.
When all is said and done, I loved “Captain America”. It was well written, perfectly paced and a testament to how you can make something hard to adapt into a workable product. It never compromises or feels ashamed of itself. If “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” was the perfect example of the lowest grade I can give a film, “Captain America: The First Avenger” is the perfect example of the highest grade I can give a film. It’s well written, solidly directed and wonderfully performed. I highly recommend seeing it while in theaters and can’t wait to see the Captain in action in “The Avengers” again and hope that his own sequel is swiftly to follow.
I give “Captain America: The First Avenger”
5 moments of uncommon valor out of 5.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
Transformers: Dark Of The Moon
You may have noticed if you read my blog with any regularity that I have a big thing for bashing on Michael Bay. The main reason is that I really don’t like his movies (save for “The Rock” which I’ve already gone over) or directing style all that much. It just seems like the exact combination of elements to really put me off, plus the whole Platinum Dunes remaking every good horror movie thing earns him no points in my book. But the big reason that I can’t stand this director is because he has made two movies that I cannot stand, at all, even if you paid me millions of dollars I would not say that these movies were even remotely good. One was “Pearl Harbor”, a movie that was incredibly boring, not to mention kind of insulting if you ask me since it was supposed to be this big tribute to the men lost in tragic event of the title, but was actually a really badly written love story that went exactly nowhere. The other was “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. Now, I didn’t grow up with the transformers, they were around and I have fond memories of that one animated movie with kick ass music, but I was never hardcore into them. I just want people to know that I’m not some whiny fan boy or something like that, especially since I thought the first live action movie was a perfectly average summer blockbuster, meaning that it’s not actually that great a movie but I at least thought it was somewhat entertaining. However, when the sequel came out, I left the theater and the first thing that came out of my mouth was “That was the worst theater going experience of my life.” I HATED that movie so much. It was a stupid, low brow intelligence insulting piece of shit that ran waaaaaay to long and had nothing redeeming about it. The fact that I had to add giant robot testicles and the bare ass of a middle aged man to a list of things that shouldn’t be in a Transformers movie should explain why I really really disliked that movie.
So in a way, this third and dear god please let it be the last installment of the franchise gets to be a great catharsis for me because I can vent all my frustrations on the second movie and bash it’s sequel at the same time, oh SPOILER ALERT! “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” sucks! In fact, the nicest thing I can say about this movie is that yes, it IS better than “Revenge of the Fallen”, but since that puts the bar so low that it’s actually gone through the core of the Earth that really isn’t saying much, especially since it still has most of the same problems. For one, over two thirds of the movie is Shia LeBouf complaining that life isn’t fair… When’s he’s had a free ride to an Ivy League school, dated two super models, has a car that turns into a robot AND got a freaking medal from the president (which he will not let you forget. EVER!) Dude, shut up! If you’re life sucks than mine is completely a waste of existence by comparison. Also, I’m really starting to notice that outside the fact that Mr. LeBeouf is pretty much the textbook definition one note, Sam Whitwicky is actually a HUGE asshole. He insults the Autobots all the time, is so freaking self entitled that even Al Bundy would tell him to let it go, and to top it off SERIOUS anger problems. He flies into pointless blinding rages so often in this movie, and HE’S the one the audience is supposed to indentify with?
Then there are the numerous amounts of comic relief characters that serve exactly nothing for the plot, John Malkovich is kind of funny but totally pointless. Ken Juong is only there to give off a plot device and give us a really bad stereotype with some really bad homophobic humor before giving us the most satisfying death of the movie. John Turturo is back and as “zany” as ever, the list still goes on and on. Why? Why so many human characters in a movie ABOUT GIANT ROBOTS?! While we’re on it, the Megan Fox-bot version 2.0 (real name Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is just as wooden as, and only slightly more visually attractive than the last model, not to mention it’s pretty clear that they just went into Microsoft Word and did a find/replace on the names. Plus the exploitation of her is offensive and horribly so. Yes Michael Bay, I think she’s cute too, but I don’t need an almost full minute shot of her ass, thank you.
That’s always been the overall problem with these movies. It’s supposed to be about the robots, they’re in the title, the posters feature them prominently, all the previews show the footage that has them, you get my point. So someone tell me, please explain to me in detail. WHY ARE THE ROBOTS THE B-STORY IN THEIR OWN GODDAMN MOVIE?! NO! I am NOT more interested in the stupid conspiracy sub plot! NO! I am NOT interested Shia LaBeouf being jealous of his girl friend’s boss! NO! I do not give a damn about what has happened with the guys from N.E.S.T.! For the love of God, it’s so simple, you call the movie Transformers. That to me means they must spend just as much time, if not MORE than the human characters in this movie. Adding even more insult to that, most of the action is actually the army doing stuff with most of the robot action being done off screen or only done in the last minute or so of a fight. To the people that say they want to see this movie for “robots fighting”, you will leave very disappointed. Bay has described this movie as “Black Hawk Down”, only with a homeland bend… and giant robots. Ok, ignoring that Michael Bay will NEVER make a movie as good as “Black Hawk Down” and while we’re at it, will NEVER have the kind of clout Ridley Scott has, how is this a good idea? Not to spoil but, the plot of “Black Hawk Down” was that everything went tits up and it was all about fixing the upwardly inclined mammories, in the process showing the soldier’s drive and determination to get out alive. This is not a bad plot, but it doesn’t really give much room to let the whole giant robots thing happen.
And on top of all this, Bay screws with his stupid pitch even more by not letting it have a coherent tone. One scene will be dark, and those with kids planning on seeing this, charred human remains and people being vaporized here. Then, we’ll turn around and have some horribly crowbarred slap stick or bawdy jokes, you know things that four years olds wouldn’t even find funny. For a frame of reference, before sitting down to write this I re-watched about 20 minutes of the animated Transformers movie. In that 20 minutes, yes a lot of the robots were killed, but they were major characters, giving their deaths weight, not to mention you could tell which robots were which a whole hell of a lot better, something the new movies can’t claim. Plus even the dark opening of one giant robot destroying an entire planet worked because it established a major threat that started the plot going. This 20 minutes was by far better thought out than this 200 million dollar, 155 minute live action movie!
Folks, I seriously could go on and on complaining about this movie. I have merely scratched the surface here and as I write this review, the movie has already made more than 162 million dollars in the states… A fact that just makes me feel so depressed. Yes, it’s just a movie, but for someone that loves movies as much as I do, knowing that one of the highest grossing movies of the years is going to be a bloated two and half hour mess of a movie, who’s only positive is that it’s slightly less painful in some regards to the last movie makes me just feel so… Defeated, I’m just done with this. Don’t go to this movie, at all! Oh, and Happy Fourth Everybody!
0 out of 5
And to show you that I don’t just have contempt for movies that you can just turn your brain off for, here’s a list of movies that fit that description and are by far more entertaining than all three of the Transformers movies, combined.
- Godzilla: Final Wars (the only way I will sit through another Transformers movie is if Ryuhei Kitamura is announced as the director)
- Broken Arrow
- Commmando
- The Punisher: War Zone
- Lethal Weapon 1,2,3 & 4
- Die Hard 1, 2, 3 & 4
- The Rock (Yes, there is an entertaining Michael Bay movie, fair is fair.)
- Robocop 1 & 2
- True Lies
- Hard Boiled (You can watch it dubbed if you don’t like subtitles.)
- Top Gun
- Man On Fire
- ANY of the James Bond movies.
- El Mariachi
- Desperado
- From Dusk Till Dawn 1, 2 & 3
- Once Upon a Time In Mexico
- Sin City
- Planet Terror
- Machete
- RED
- The Fifth Element
- The A-Team
- Predator
- Predators
- Blade 1 & 2
- Hellboy 1 & 2
- Supercop 1 & 2
- City Hunter
- Police Story
- Rumble In The Bronx
- G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra (Yes, there IS a movie based on toys that I give a recommendation to!)
- Air Force One
- Heat
- Ronin
- Collateral
- Drunken Master 1 & 2
- Under Siege (Yes, I would much rather watch Seagal than this!)
- Hot Fuzz
- Evil Dead 2
- Army Of Darkness
- Assault on Precinct 13 (Either one, though I prefer Carpenter’s original a lot more.)
- Escape From New York
- Escape From L. A.
- John Carpenter’s Vampires
- Enter The Dragon
- Fists Of Fury
- The Chinese Connection
- Return of the Dragon (Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris, enough said.)
- Shoot ‘em Up
- Crank 1 & 2
- Speed Racer
- Kung Fu Hustle
- Kill Bill
- The Wild Bunch
- Conan The Barbarian
- Total Recall
- The Professional
- L. A. Confidential
- Domino
So in a way, this third and dear god please let it be the last installment of the franchise gets to be a great catharsis for me because I can vent all my frustrations on the second movie and bash it’s sequel at the same time, oh SPOILER ALERT! “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” sucks! In fact, the nicest thing I can say about this movie is that yes, it IS better than “Revenge of the Fallen”, but since that puts the bar so low that it’s actually gone through the core of the Earth that really isn’t saying much, especially since it still has most of the same problems. For one, over two thirds of the movie is Shia LeBouf complaining that life isn’t fair… When’s he’s had a free ride to an Ivy League school, dated two super models, has a car that turns into a robot AND got a freaking medal from the president (which he will not let you forget. EVER!) Dude, shut up! If you’re life sucks than mine is completely a waste of existence by comparison. Also, I’m really starting to notice that outside the fact that Mr. LeBeouf is pretty much the textbook definition one note, Sam Whitwicky is actually a HUGE asshole. He insults the Autobots all the time, is so freaking self entitled that even Al Bundy would tell him to let it go, and to top it off SERIOUS anger problems. He flies into pointless blinding rages so often in this movie, and HE’S the one the audience is supposed to indentify with?
Then there are the numerous amounts of comic relief characters that serve exactly nothing for the plot, John Malkovich is kind of funny but totally pointless. Ken Juong is only there to give off a plot device and give us a really bad stereotype with some really bad homophobic humor before giving us the most satisfying death of the movie. John Turturo is back and as “zany” as ever, the list still goes on and on. Why? Why so many human characters in a movie ABOUT GIANT ROBOTS?! While we’re on it, the Megan Fox-bot version 2.0 (real name Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) is just as wooden as, and only slightly more visually attractive than the last model, not to mention it’s pretty clear that they just went into Microsoft Word and did a find/replace on the names. Plus the exploitation of her is offensive and horribly so. Yes Michael Bay, I think she’s cute too, but I don’t need an almost full minute shot of her ass, thank you.
That’s always been the overall problem with these movies. It’s supposed to be about the robots, they’re in the title, the posters feature them prominently, all the previews show the footage that has them, you get my point. So someone tell me, please explain to me in detail. WHY ARE THE ROBOTS THE B-STORY IN THEIR OWN GODDAMN MOVIE?! NO! I am NOT more interested in the stupid conspiracy sub plot! NO! I am NOT interested Shia LaBeouf being jealous of his girl friend’s boss! NO! I do not give a damn about what has happened with the guys from N.E.S.T.! For the love of God, it’s so simple, you call the movie Transformers. That to me means they must spend just as much time, if not MORE than the human characters in this movie. Adding even more insult to that, most of the action is actually the army doing stuff with most of the robot action being done off screen or only done in the last minute or so of a fight. To the people that say they want to see this movie for “robots fighting”, you will leave very disappointed. Bay has described this movie as “Black Hawk Down”, only with a homeland bend… and giant robots. Ok, ignoring that Michael Bay will NEVER make a movie as good as “Black Hawk Down” and while we’re at it, will NEVER have the kind of clout Ridley Scott has, how is this a good idea? Not to spoil but, the plot of “Black Hawk Down” was that everything went tits up and it was all about fixing the upwardly inclined mammories, in the process showing the soldier’s drive and determination to get out alive. This is not a bad plot, but it doesn’t really give much room to let the whole giant robots thing happen.
And on top of all this, Bay screws with his stupid pitch even more by not letting it have a coherent tone. One scene will be dark, and those with kids planning on seeing this, charred human remains and people being vaporized here. Then, we’ll turn around and have some horribly crowbarred slap stick or bawdy jokes, you know things that four years olds wouldn’t even find funny. For a frame of reference, before sitting down to write this I re-watched about 20 minutes of the animated Transformers movie. In that 20 minutes, yes a lot of the robots were killed, but they were major characters, giving their deaths weight, not to mention you could tell which robots were which a whole hell of a lot better, something the new movies can’t claim. Plus even the dark opening of one giant robot destroying an entire planet worked because it established a major threat that started the plot going. This 20 minutes was by far better thought out than this 200 million dollar, 155 minute live action movie!
Folks, I seriously could go on and on complaining about this movie. I have merely scratched the surface here and as I write this review, the movie has already made more than 162 million dollars in the states… A fact that just makes me feel so depressed. Yes, it’s just a movie, but for someone that loves movies as much as I do, knowing that one of the highest grossing movies of the years is going to be a bloated two and half hour mess of a movie, who’s only positive is that it’s slightly less painful in some regards to the last movie makes me just feel so… Defeated, I’m just done with this. Don’t go to this movie, at all! Oh, and Happy Fourth Everybody!
0 out of 5
And to show you that I don’t just have contempt for movies that you can just turn your brain off for, here’s a list of movies that fit that description and are by far more entertaining than all three of the Transformers movies, combined.
- Godzilla: Final Wars (the only way I will sit through another Transformers movie is if Ryuhei Kitamura is announced as the director)
- Broken Arrow
- Commmando
- The Punisher: War Zone
- Lethal Weapon 1,2,3 & 4
- Die Hard 1, 2, 3 & 4
- The Rock (Yes, there is an entertaining Michael Bay movie, fair is fair.)
- Robocop 1 & 2
- True Lies
- Hard Boiled (You can watch it dubbed if you don’t like subtitles.)
- Top Gun
- Man On Fire
- ANY of the James Bond movies.
- El Mariachi
- Desperado
- From Dusk Till Dawn 1, 2 & 3
- Once Upon a Time In Mexico
- Sin City
- Planet Terror
- Machete
- RED
- The Fifth Element
- The A-Team
- Predator
- Predators
- Blade 1 & 2
- Hellboy 1 & 2
- Supercop 1 & 2
- City Hunter
- Police Story
- Rumble In The Bronx
- G.I. Joe: Rise Of Cobra (Yes, there IS a movie based on toys that I give a recommendation to!)
- Air Force One
- Heat
- Ronin
- Collateral
- Drunken Master 1 & 2
- Under Siege (Yes, I would much rather watch Seagal than this!)
- Hot Fuzz
- Evil Dead 2
- Army Of Darkness
- Assault on Precinct 13 (Either one, though I prefer Carpenter’s original a lot more.)
- Escape From New York
- Escape From L. A.
- John Carpenter’s Vampires
- Enter The Dragon
- Fists Of Fury
- The Chinese Connection
- Return of the Dragon (Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris, enough said.)
- Shoot ‘em Up
- Crank 1 & 2
- Speed Racer
- Kung Fu Hustle
- Kill Bill
- The Wild Bunch
- Conan The Barbarian
- Total Recall
- The Professional
- L. A. Confidential
- Domino
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Super 8
Trying to write a review for this movie is pretty hard because while J.J. Abrams’ “Super 8” is by no means a ‘perfect’ movie, it is really freaking good and it’s hard to make a very interesting review out of something like this because I don’t want to spoil the movie, but it’s hard to explain why the movie is so good while avoiding them. Thankfully being hard doesn’t instantly translate into impossible and thus, here we go.
The plot of “Super 8” is basically summed up as “E.T.” meets “Cloverfield”. In more details it’s about a bunch of kids in the late 70’s/early 80’s (They reference George Romero a lot, so I’m going to assume that Dawn of The Dead had come out, which puts this in the 1979 neighborhood.) that are making a zombie movie and while filming one night they witness a huge train crash. The military shows up and weird things start happening as they realize that what they filmed may be more important than they know.
So let’s get to what works, for the most part the script is really good, working in that character driven way that made things like “The Goonies” and “E.T.” work so well. Added to that the cast of young actors all play their parts well, seriously the kids are the best actors in this movie, Elle Fanning in particular is amazing and here’s hoping that this movie is the big jumping off point for a great career. Lead Joel Courtney does a nice job giving me flashbacks to Henry Thomas as Elliot and Kyle Chandler plays his father the deputy with a great balance of sadness and obsessive professionalism that creates a great dynamic between father and son.
However, as good as the movie is, I still have some quibbles with it. What really works is all the stuff with the kids and how they deal with seeing the train crash and what they do in its wake, and if the movie had stayed focused on that it’d be pretty much the template for a 5 star rating. Unfortunately it doesn’t, we spend just as much time with Chandler’s investigation of the weird goings on, and there’s a large amount of the story that’s devout to a military cover up story. Neither of these stories are really that well done and when you’re seriously wanting the b plot to go away so that the movie can be fun again, you really might as well not have the b plot.
But like I said, “Super 8” is a really really good movie despite those flaws I mentioned, which I feel to be minor hiccups in an overall damn good movie. I say go see it, it’s one of those rare summer movies that should be seen and is probably the closest we’re going to come to getting the spark that gave “The Goonies” such popularity and staying power for a long time.
Super 8 gets
4 mysterious disappearances out of 5
The plot of “Super 8” is basically summed up as “E.T.” meets “Cloverfield”. In more details it’s about a bunch of kids in the late 70’s/early 80’s (They reference George Romero a lot, so I’m going to assume that Dawn of The Dead had come out, which puts this in the 1979 neighborhood.) that are making a zombie movie and while filming one night they witness a huge train crash. The military shows up and weird things start happening as they realize that what they filmed may be more important than they know.
So let’s get to what works, for the most part the script is really good, working in that character driven way that made things like “The Goonies” and “E.T.” work so well. Added to that the cast of young actors all play their parts well, seriously the kids are the best actors in this movie, Elle Fanning in particular is amazing and here’s hoping that this movie is the big jumping off point for a great career. Lead Joel Courtney does a nice job giving me flashbacks to Henry Thomas as Elliot and Kyle Chandler plays his father the deputy with a great balance of sadness and obsessive professionalism that creates a great dynamic between father and son.
However, as good as the movie is, I still have some quibbles with it. What really works is all the stuff with the kids and how they deal with seeing the train crash and what they do in its wake, and if the movie had stayed focused on that it’d be pretty much the template for a 5 star rating. Unfortunately it doesn’t, we spend just as much time with Chandler’s investigation of the weird goings on, and there’s a large amount of the story that’s devout to a military cover up story. Neither of these stories are really that well done and when you’re seriously wanting the b plot to go away so that the movie can be fun again, you really might as well not have the b plot.
But like I said, “Super 8” is a really really good movie despite those flaws I mentioned, which I feel to be minor hiccups in an overall damn good movie. I say go see it, it’s one of those rare summer movies that should be seen and is probably the closest we’re going to come to getting the spark that gave “The Goonies” such popularity and staying power for a long time.
Super 8 gets
4 mysterious disappearances out of 5
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