The Avengers

If all genres eventually end in satire, then The Avengers is the logical evolution of the superhero genre, and Joss Whedon is the perfect person to helm a superhero movie. I wasn't sure if Whedon could make the transition from Dollhouse, which for all its brilliance often felt like it was filmed in someone's basement in the Valley, to a $200 million blockbuster. 

The answer is that he definitely can. Points for the additional degree of difficulty afforded by having to write around incredibly boring characters like Captain America (Chris Evans), whose main weapons are a shield with a bullseye painted on it and a deadly earnestness; Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who wears phylacteries and shoots arrows at things that don't seem to be bothered by guns; and Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who talks like Yoda and wields a weapon that looks like something you'd play whack-a-mole with. 

The Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) shows up tied to a chair in her underwear, and in a charming set piece, um, answers the phone–to say any more would spoil it–and really sets the tone for the movie. For the rest of the show, Johansson does her best to act out from under a harrowing dye job and a character who doesn't actually have any super powers at all, although she is super-sexy. Her specialty is allowing men to think she's weaker than she is and using their assumptions to her advantage.

It only takes one thing to make up for all of this: Tony Stark, aka Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) We meet Tony in the penthouse of the Stark building, bantering with Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts, and the two of them ignite the movie, like a modern Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. 

In fact, it's a tribute to Whedon's writing skill, and Downey's acting, that the movie doesn't collapse like the Golden Gate Bridge in a disaster movie when Paltrow and her cutoff shorts get into the elevator and leave the building. For that, we have Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) to thank, since he gives Stark somebody to talk scientific twaddle with, and somebody to needle. 

Here's the plot: there's a glowing blue energy cube, and whoever controls it controls the world, and...oh, really, nobody gives a rat's ass. It's all just an excuse for the heroes to quarrel with each other, and then eventually team up against supervillain Loki (Tom Hiddleston, having almost as much fun as Downey). There might be a hidden message here about whether the superheroes are causing more damage than they cure, or whether the good guys are actually using the superheroes to help them build evil weapons, but if there is, the audience is pretty much guaranteed not to get it, because they'll be too busy laughing at Stark's nicknames for his fellow Avengers (Hawkeye the archer is "Legolas"; long-haired Thor is "Point Break"...you get the picture).

When the action scenes start, though, Downey has trouble projecting his mojo through the red and yellow suit, and Whedon's writing feels trapped in there with him. The heroes yell stupidities at each other, get thrown into a bus from a mile away, and arise breathing hard and lightly covered with dust. What finally saves these sequences is the animated Hulk; the incarnation of the character looks a little like Claymation, but the movement is so filled with life that it doesn't really matter. The Hulk is, in a word, hysterical.

Is it the best superhero movie ever? I don't know. It's certainly the best one that doesn't take itself seriously. And since comic books themselves often don't take themselves seriously–Spiderman is all about corny puns, isn't he?–that's probably okay. There's a little hint of backstory between Black Widow and Hawkeye that makes a perfunctory effort at drama, but overall it doesn't really aspire to more. Which is a shame, because usually Whedon does aspire to that. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse, especially, had juicy layers of serious right underneath the crispy strudel of one-liners. Maybe now that he's proven his box office abilities, in his next movie Whedon will be able to give us, along with his trademark wit, the depth of, say, Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight.

Chronicle

Or "Heathers, if it starred teenage boys with super powers."


This movie is saddled with an unfortunate title–unfortunate because I had seen trailers for it and knew I wanted to see it, but kept forgetting the name.


It's also weighed down by the eye-rolling contrivance that one of the characters is filming all of the events in the movie. Thanks for nothing, Blair Witch Project. But if you make it past the first twenty minutes or so, Chronicle swiftly becomes a breathtaking film–visually and aurally stunning and emotionally wrenching.


Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) is a shy high-school loser with a videocamera, an abusive father, a dying mother, and an alpha male cousin, Matt (Alex Russell) who feels compelled to hang out with him but clearly doesn't relish the job. 


At a party, Andy, Matt and student-council president Steve (Michael B. Jordan) find an alien-artifact Maguffin. It quickly becomes clear that the encounter has given them super powers, and we watch the trio's sophomoric glee as they use their telekinetic powers to pull adolescent pranks, and their genuine joy as they use their newly found ability to fly to play football in the clouds and hang out having incredibly awkward conversations on top of the Space Needle. While I wasn't fond of the found-footage conceit, I did find myself amazed at how much more interesting the special effects seemed when melded with footage that wasn't quite so slick. In that respect it reminded me a little of Neill Blomkamp's District 9 (and ironically, Chronicle was also shot in South Africa).


As I watched this unfold, I was struck by how much more feasible this superhero-origin story seems. If a sixteen-year-old boy was able to move things with his mind and fly, would his first impulse really be to put on a colorful costume and nab crooks?


From the beginning it's clear that of the three, Andy is the best at mastering his new abilities. One of the first things he does is learn to levitate his camera, which measurably improves the movie from a visual standpoint. At first he just basks in the respect he gets from Matt and Steve, and we cheer him on as he finds the strength to confront his dirtbag father. Gradually, Andy becomes the alpha male. Watching the teenage dominance pyramid invert is a barrel of monkeys.


It's only at this point that the real genius of Chronicle becomes apparent. In most superhero movies, an external threat would materialize and the new superheroes would save the earth. In Chronicle, the real threat turns out to be within. We realize that the source of Andy's power is actually the explosive rage that he has spent years repressing, and now that he's more powerful than anybody he knows, there's no reason for him to keep repressing it. As his mother gasps and wheezes frighteningly in the next room (some of the best sound design I've ever heard), Andy dies inside too.


All it takes is one brief Carrie moment, one public embarrassment he'll never live down, to snap him. As the film escalates, the visual effects up their game, as well--Chronicle is a $12 million movie that feels like it cost ten times that much.


Maybe the most interesting conclusion of Chronicle, in the end, is that all boys turn into their fathers.

The Lorax

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
That's one of the very few rhymes left in this movie, although there's plenty more left in it. Enough left, anyway, to make the right freak out about it. How dare Hollywood making a movie denigrating captains of industry?


They might not have bothered. In 1971, when The Lorax was published, it was pretty far ahead of its time. To most, its save-the-Truffula-trees ideology must have seemed utterly daffy. But forty years later, it's the people who think saving the trees is daffy who look like idiots. So from a political standpoint, the movie's self-congratulatory tone feels a little like the guy who takes you aside at a party and tells you he's just discovered the abacus--and it's going to take the world by storm.


Thankfully, The Lorax has done a much better job than other Dr. Seuss adaptations of turning a few hundred words into a movie of 94 minutes (yes, I'm looking at you, The Cat in the Hat). Some of the padding is achieved through musical numbers, which are done well enough that I wish there were more of them. They're big, and bold, and modern, and they don't sound like they're begging to be in The Lorax--The Broadway Musical.


In the plastic city of Thneedville, where zeppelin-dwelling tycoon Mr. O'Hare sells people bottled air (he sells them something they can get for free, get it?) tween Ted (Zac Efron) is in love with the beautifully bemaned Audrey (Taylor Swift). She wants a tree, and he's going to get her one. You would too, if your beloved's locks were so beautifully rendered. Spurred on by his grandmother (the ubiquitous, luminous and hilarious Betty White), he goes in search of the Once-ler, who supposedly knows where they went.


There follows a kind of awkward plot structure in which the Once-ler (Ed Helms) narrates the story, in installments, of how greed and mommy issues drove him to become an evil tycoon and chop down all the trees. But it's punctuated with beautiful moments. When the Once-ler chops down his first Truffula Tree, all the animals build a ring of stones to bury it. That brought a tear to my California liberal eye, although I imagine it caused the Fox News team to roll theirs and wonder aloud how many trees died to print the script of The Lorax.


Visually, the movie is nice, although they've slipped visuals from Dr. Seuss's original artwork under the end credits, and added just a little three-dimensionality (if you see it with specs), and it's hard not to judge the movie harshly in retrospect, with a few exceptions. I've already mentioned Audrey's hair, and the Lorax, who actually looks not unlike Audrey's hair, is also very attractive. Watch the credits for the people responsible for the hair and cloth rendering, and give them a special round of applause. The birds and fish and bears are beautiful and speak volumes with their eyes. The humans look a little bulbous, and truthfully, they don't emote so much as bloviate.


I'm guessing I don't have to tell you there's a chase scene, Ted delivers a big eco-friendly lecture, and trees win out at the end. 


But I can't help thinking that if you're going to the political well, you might as well drink. And if you're going to end with the quote I began with, maybe you should give people a little push. On your way out of the theater, how are you going to make things better? Aside from singing "Let It Grow," which, mind you, will certainly make the world a little brighter all by itself? And hawking "Truffula Tree Approved" eco-friendly cars?


So take the little ones to see The Lorax. And then teach them to turn out the lights when they leave the room.

The Ides of March

Or The West Wing, minus all the walking and talking. Where's Aaron Sorkin's right hand Tommy Schlamme when a film needs him?

The title of this movie is very carefully chosen, as if to say that they want to appeal to an audience that remembers its high school Shakespeare just enough to remember what exactly "the Ides of March" is. It's almost as if the movie is saying: if you have to Google it, don't bother. It's kind of elitist. Why exclude John Q. Public from your movie by giving it a title that he doesn't understand?

But it's actually kind of accurate, because the movie appeals to exactly the sort of overeducated liberal political junkie who finds a title like that appealing. Ryan Gosling plays Steve Meyers, a brilliant young political operative working for the presidential campaign of George Clooney's Governor Mike Morris, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clooney also directed this film, and surprisingly, his direction lacks flair. The scenes where Morris is on a podium have the requisite bright klieg lights; the scenes in stairwells or the back of limousines are appropriately high-key; but the camera doesn't move much and the editing adds nothing to the dialogue. I wasn't really fond of the performances either, with the exception of Clooney's. It's almost as if he knew what he wanted but was unable to convey it to everybody else.


There's a lot of pseudopolitical babble in this film, "we're going to run the numbers in the 17th and the 22nd and check the demographics against the voter reg," and the like. The purpose of this eye-rolling nonsense is to give the movie a veneer of truthiness that it totally doesn't deserve, and to make us feel, as The West Wing does, that these are not slimy political operatives, but whip-smart, dedicated professionals. Meyers even makes a point of telling someone that he's working for Morris because he truly believes in him, because the country needs someone like him. Come on, only the interns really think that. You're bound to think that this kind of naiveté is going to get its comeuppance.

Morris is a liberal's wet dream. In the course of the movie, he manages to give speeches supporting every progressive cause. He refuses to compromise, dammit! He's going to win this his way! He's like Dennis Kucinich without the plaintive whining.

It makes you wonder why Clooney is play-running for President. After all, he's very good at it. Unless you live under a rock, you know that he's one of those liberal actors who teases the public about running for something, like Harry Belafonte or Alec Baldwin, and never does. Good God, he's like a horny teenager who watches porn endlessly but is afraid to actually approach a girl.

Luckily for the movie's ultra-liberal audience, Morris is a shoo-in for the nomination--unless he fails to make a huge, contrived compromise in his ideals, by making a deal with a senator played by Jeffrey Wright. If he sticks to his ideals, he will lose Ohio, and then he loses the nomination.

Frankly, though, this deal does not seem particularly awful, and I'm not fond of this kind of contrived plot anyway. My first thought was: if this is the worst thing you have to do in order to be president, jump at it! I know I'm sounding very politically cynical, but in a country of 300 million people, compromise and accommodation are necessary. Note that I didn't even say "necessary evils." This is the way things get done. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Then Meyers learns that Morris is not as squeaky-clean as he seems. The posters in his campaign headquarters rip off Obama, but his behavior is more Clinton. Need I say more? Meyers seems tragically upset by this discovery, which makes him look even more naive, and he handles it in a way that seems unnecessarily cloak-and-dagger. Again, my reaction was to think that if the movie really wanted its progressive audience to feel that outraged at Morris, they were going to have to find a much bigger skeleton.

So you clearly know there is a betrayal in this play, and I say "play" because it is actually based on Beau Willimon's play Farragut North, and unfortunately it looks a little like a play, as well. Morris often appears to be running for student council president, and Cincinnati, where most of the action takes place, appears to be completely deserted.

When the long-awaited knife in the back comes, the film wants us to see the birth of a political Darth Vader. Instead, it only feels like the allegedly smart Meyers has just figured out what everybody else has known all along: that politics is sausage and you shouldn't ask what the ingredients are unless you have a strong stomach.

Contagion

This movie is so good, I actually think I caught something from it. As I write this, my throat is sore, my nose is running and I have a mild cough. These symptoms are not unlike those of MEV-1, the fictional virus at the heart of this movie. I'm a little worried for me, because in the movies--dating back to Camille--a slight cough is usually a sign that you'll be dead in a week.


Many of you will be glad to know that the first cough belongs to Gwyneth Paltrow. She is Patient Zero for this scary new epidemic--an epidemic that was not caused by evil scientists or frothing terrorists and does not turn people into zombies or body snatchers. It just kills a quarter of the people who get it, and mathematically, that's more than enough. For the first few minutes of the film, the camera lingers on spots where germs are apt to spread; a doorknob, a keypad, a glass. It's a great way to heighten the tension right from the start.


The first half of the film, in which the virus gradually spreads all over the world, wreaking logarithmic havoc, reminds me of two books: Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On, the story of the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic, and Richard Preston's The Hot Zone, about the Ebola and Marburg viruses. In these books, the heroes are CDC doctors, and they are in Contagion as well, played by Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Ehle.


How refreshing to see a movie in which the scientists are actually the good guys. And they actually get to be the good guys by just doing what they do. There is no eye-rolling fake biobabble. The scientists do not have to swashbuckle through an African forest in search of a magic ingredient. The CDC labs look exactly like real labs, although you might not believe it unless you Google it. Apparently somebody in Atlanta takes a little time off from saving the world to make a few flashy graphics now and then, but hey, it's a movie.

If there's a flaw here, it's that the doctors are a little too goody-goody, which is why one of my favorite moments is when Fishburne's Dr. Ellis Cheever makes a very bad, and yet totally understandable, error in judgment, and starts a rumor that spreads like the virus he's fighting.

It's not all doctors versus germs, though. Matt Damon plays Gwyneth Paltrow's husband, who loses his wife and son but is determined not to lose his daughter as well. Damon may be moonlighting as Jason Bourne, but he really shines as a regular, overprotective dad. Meanwhile, Jude Law chews the scenery as a conspiracy-mongering blogger.

As the virus spreads, we quickly realize that it isn't the biggest threat out there, and this is where Contagion really sets itself apart. Civil society starts to fall apart. People become paranoid and violent; hucksters and charlatans reign; the authorities tighten their grip or lose control completely. The real question the movie means to ask is this: will the virus destroy us or will we destroy ourselves first? I'd tell you, but *cough*.

Drive

There really ought to be an Oscar category for "Best Film Noir," since it's really one of the most important categories in American cinema, and if there were I think this film would take it easily. Ryan Gosling plays an ordinary Joe with no name, some kind of unmentioned, criminal past, violent impulses, and deep down, a good heart.

In film noir heaven, Bogey is smiling.

If it's important to you that you be able to understand the plot of the movie--perhaps you have an advanced degree in particle physics and believe you should be able to follow a movie made for teenagers--then maybe you should give this a pass. There's something about one mob group hiring somebody to steal money from another mob group so they can...so they can...oh, never mind. It's really not important. Like The Big Sleep, this movie has no plot to speak of and it really doesn't matter. It's about acting. Well, okay, acting and car chases.

"Drive" is refreshing for what the characters don't say and what they don't explain. My favorite scene is where Ordinary Joe meets his pretty neighbor's husband, just home from the big house. It's pretty clear Joe has been sleeping with the neighbor, although the movie never actually shows us. So the tension is tighter than a PG&E gas line. And then the ex-con next door says to his son: "c'mon, let's go, let mommy talk to her friend." And the entire plot turns on the forgiveness that he never explicitly grants.

Did I mention there are car chases? Ordinary Joe has many jobs. He's a mechanic, he's a stunt driver for Hollywood films, and apparently he's also a getaway driver. The car chases in this film are notable for their lack of cliche. In your average car chase, it goes to eleven right away, and frankly, I get bored quickly. This is different. There is a very exciting moment in one chase scene where Joe is...stopped at a red light. Director Nicolas Winding Refn creates scenes with highs AND lows. It's breathtaking in its originality.

Since it's a film noir, there are bad guys who are much badder than Joe. One of them is played by Albert Brooks--lots of people are upset that his performance was overlooked. Personally, I can take it or leave it.

And yes, Joe will do One Last Job, as the noir hero must do in order to pay his debts and go legit, and this job will go spectacularly wrong, as it must do in order to get the screenwriter paid. If the film has a flaw, other than its inexplicable use of the totally inappropriate and illegible font Mistral, it's that Joe crosses a line that I don't think the filmmakers mean for him to cross. There's a moment when he does something very bad in front of the girl, and you can see on her face that he's lost her...and comes close to losing us, too.

We're supposed to love him for being willing to alienate her if that's what it takes to save her, but in point of fact at that moment the audience stops identifying with Joe and starts identifying with the girl: what did you do, Joe? We liked you, but you've crossed the line.

I liked Joe, and the movie. Your mileage may vary.

Midnight in Paris

Just as Avatar is a militaristic film that's ostensibly about the dangers of militarism, Midnight is a nostalgic film that's ostensibly about the uselessness of nostalgia. It's easy to forgive it, though, because it's such beautiful eye candy, a sort of "Manhattan" for the Left Bank. Woody Allen owes cinematographer Darius Khondji a drink.

Owen Wilson plays the Woody Allen character, a nebbishy screenwriter named Gil engaged to a harpy played by Rachel McAdams who exists only to be completely unworthy of Gil. As Kenneth Branagh discovered, it's a tough job playing Woody's stand-in, but Wilson is actually pretty good at capturing the stuttering, intellectual essence of a Woody Allen role without actually seeming to ape him.

Gil is rather fond of Paris, which apparently is an underappreciated city, like San Francisco, or Buenos Aires, or Venice, at least among American Tea Party philistines like his fiancée's parents. He discovers that if he waits on a certain street corner at night, a car will come take him back to Paris in the Twenties, a place populated exclusively by famous people--Fitzgerald, Picasso, Eliot, etc. Most of the actors don't really seem to know what to do with the opportunity, and Fitzgerald comes off as a frat boy, Zelda as a ditz, Buñuel as clueless, and Picasso as a bore.

There are some really great exceptions, though, which totally make it worthwhile: Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein, Corey Stoll as Hemingway, and especially Adrien Brody as Dalí. Gil tells a group about the dilemma that is his love life, and Man Ray says: "I see a photograph," Buñuel declares: "I see a film," and Dalí exults: "I see...a rhinoceros!"

The question is whether Gil will return to the present or stay in the past with Marion Cotillard's Adrianna, who is not as scintillating as Gertrude Stein, but presumably Gil stands a better chance with her.

That question is solved rather cleverly, although the cleverness of it is brought down a little bit when the characters actually explain it to the audience. Still, this is some of Allen's best dialogue in ages, and I found it very enjoyable.