Review - Snow White and the Huntsman

Grade: B-

Comic book fans of a certain age--as if there are that many fans that aren’t of a certain age--will remember the late 80s to early 00s as era where “grim and gritty” trappings became de rigueur for comics. It was a time when Superman died, Batman was paralyzed, and big guns replaced big hearts. Comic scholars claim this “dark age” was as much a response to the cheerful superheroics that marked the 60s and 70s as it was an attempt to grab a more “adult” audience. 

Like the comics industry, this year’s two Snow White movies have faced a similar identity crisis in trying to escape the fairy tales kid-friendly image and reach the 18-35 demo. Back in March, Tarsem Singh delivered a whimsical, snarky re-imagining of Grimm’s classic tale; now, Rupert Sanders offers a grimmer, grittier Snow White with style points lifted wholesale from Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. How timely.

Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman (SWATH) focuses mostly on the evil queen, Ravenna, played with ridiculous over-the-top aplomb by Charlize “I like getting ugly and naked on camera because it shows I’m serious” Theron. Ravenna is a post-feminist evil queen who believes she is striking back at men for discarding women once they pass an “expiration date”. Ravenna comes across one such man, a king no less, who has just lost his wife and remains the sole comfort for his daughter, who will grow into the informed beauty Snow White, played with the drowsy red-eyed awkwardness that is to be expected of Kristen Stewart. Ravenna proceeds to kill the king and take the kingdom while the sheer toxicity of her reign brings only decay. During such time, Ravenna, who has a taste for milk bathes and draining the youth from nubile peasant girls, wisely locks Snow White away, on the word of the liquid metal Mirror-Mirror-2000, for fear of the cursed/blessed by birth Snow’s ability to destroy her.

When Snow escapes, thanks to the horniness of Ravenna’s creepy wannabe pedophile brother with a dopey squire cut (Sam Spruell), Ravenna dispatches a drunken Asgardian...er...Huntsman, Chris Hemsworth playing up the Han Solo angle, to retrieve Snow from the mystical, hypnotic Black Forest. Meanwhile, the remnants of the old kingdom--including seven grumbly, battle hardened dwarves (played by such genre vets Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones, and Nick Frost) and  Snow’s childhood friend and second coming of Will Turner/Legolas, charming “Prince” William (Sam Claflin)--are mobilizing against Ravenna. As Snow journeys to side with the resistance and witnesses the damage of Ravenna’s grip, she must embrace her destiny as “the one” and garner the love of her people, especially that of her two hunky would-be suitors.

The love triangle that surfaces by the tail end of Sanders SWATH is only one of many curious spins on the Snow White tale that make SWATH such an interesting exercise. Visually, it is fairly stunning, despite being bogged down with a cloudy gray palette. The whole Game of Thrones aesthetic at play grounds this fairy tale and allows for some adequate fight scenes that recall the smaller battles from Peter Jackson’s LOTR trilogy, but it also makes the proceedings dishearteningly dour in the midst of some high fantasy ridiculousness. Sure, the dwarves bring a little comic relief, as does Hemsworth with his Harrison Ford impression and Theron’s unintentionally comic scenery chewing, and there’s fairies and trolls and the like, but generally, this is a pretty joyless affair. Even the performances do little to relieve the seriousness of the proceedings. Stewart seems ill-equipped to lead anyone into a battle that doesn’t involve pouting, and Theron prefers to be a preening cartoon rather than a three-dimensional character. Thankfully, Hemsworth brings some of his Thunder God presence to bear to balance Stewart’s languor and Theron’s melodramatics. 

From Stewart’s conflicted Bruce Wayne-esque arc to Theron’s Joker-esque megalomania to the Game of Thrones militarism, Sanders was clearly aiming for the crossover audience by melding the classic princess narrative with the amped-up fantasy and action elements, but in doing so he lost the core of the tale. In SWATH, the Snow white tale is no longer solely about the fear of aging and society’s obsession with youth; it is a feminist spin on the Hero’s Journey with a dash of Twilight--albeit with much more worthy suitors--and a smattering of the style and storytelling from everything from Star Wars to the latest Alice in Wonderland adaptation. That said, SWATH isn’t terrible, and in fact, has a number of solid moments that will make audiences recall their first time seeing Star Wars or LOTR, but it does so in such an alternatively melancholy and melodramatic manner that it is hard to view this as a worthy successor to those film’s legacies.

The Yin and Yang of it

Yin: Dour re-imagining that rips off some of the most popular epic fantasy films of the past thirty years to mold Snow White into a post-feminist hero’s journey. Stewart plays to type while Theron goes beyond over the top.

Yang: Decent action and a some solid visuals help to spread the appeal of a tale unfairly tagged “girls only”. Occasionally recalls the best qualities of Star Wars, LOTR, and Game of Thrones all wrapped into a gloomy package.

In-Between: Chris Hemsworth’s Huntsman sports a silly Scottish accent. In one scene, the accent drops and his native accent, the one he uses for Thor, surfaces, and I could not help but think how he would crush every villain if he called for Mjolnir.

Review - Men in Black 3

Grade: B-

Has anybody honestly missed Will Smith and his whole king of 4th of July schtick?

I’ll wait...

The decline of the straight-up, old-fashioned movie star has been well documented, and Big Willie Style is no exception. Ever since the Fresh Prince started chasing Oscars over Box Office receipts a few years ago, he has started to fade into that unfortunate space where his buddy Tom Cruise used to reside: the space where audiences see stars in the gossip rags more frequently than they do on the silver screen.

Granted, neither the gossip rags nor the box office numbers have been particularly kind to Mr. Smith over the past few years, which means it’s just about time for his team to get the kid from Philly on the comeback trail with a sequel to one of his biggest hits.

In response to the raucous clamoring for more misadventures of intergalactic Border Patrol Agents J and K, Will Smith has dusted off his movie star persona and forced Tommy Lee Jones to come along for a third, and generally unnecessary, Men in Black 3 (MIB3). Roughly ten years after their last outing, J (Smith) and K (Jones) have been going about  their duties blasting aliens into to space goo and neuralyzing innocent bystanders. Meanwhile, on Lunarmax, a supermax space prison for aliens reminiscent of the the floating supermax from this spring’s Lockout, the Macho Man Randy Savage, known here as Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement doing his best Tim Curry impression)--a one arm Boglodarian with a grudge against the ever-grimacing K--escapes with the aid of a Pussycat Doll (Nicole Scherzinger). His plan is simple: go back in time, kill K, and allow his fellow Boglodarians to invade and conquer Earth. When Boris manages to jump back and erase K from the timeline, J jumps back in time to work with the younger K (Josh Brolin) to prevent the older K from evaporating into nothing and say “aw, hell naw” to a Boglodarian invasion. 

Boasting a simple plot, which is always best when dealing with time travel, MIB3 sports the hallmark breezy silliness of the previous installments, but director Barry Sonnenfeld wisely focuses the action on the relationship between J and K. Sonnenfeld and a writing team headed by Etan Cohen of Tropic Thunder fame use J’s journey back to the past to build K beyond the muttering cartoon he has been since the first Men in Black. J, on the other hand, remains the same boisterous smart mouth he has been from day one, and despite a mildly touching 12th hour retcon, he shows almost negative growth. Sadly, he gets the most screentime and the most “laughs”--including a few ribald racial jokes that recall the discomfort of Wild Wild West--which I’m sure Will Smith and his massive trailer had nothing to do with. Despite dominating the proceedings, Smith still manages to bring an exuberant charm--probably because he’s not running and crying--that occasionally offsets some of the more trite elements of his performance.  Smith even lets co-star Josh Brolin shine in a role that is amazingly more than a drawn-out impression, with Brolin giving some reasonable dimension to K that manages to make Jones’ version that much deeper. Michael Stuhlbarg, best known as Boardwalk Empire’s Arnold Rothstein, also deserves a note for his performance as Mork-ish precog Griffin, a goofy sidekick who bypasses grating and steps very close to being charming.

Combining with the generally inoffensive, albeit formulaic, plot and some decent character-building performances, MIB3 comes off much better in execution than it ever sounded on paper, especially in light of the hubbub around Smith’s efforts to try his hand at screenwriting on a major studio release. Now, MIB 3 is very likely going to get crushed at the box office this weekend, as have all other contenders to the Avengers throne, but at least it is not as bad as the other blockbuster options out there. [UPDATE: MiB3 actually did the trouncing this past weekend, but still didn't prevent Avengers from edging closer to the No. 3 on the biggest domestic box office list] Plus, if we want to spare  ourselves from another Seven Pounds then we need to keep the Fresh Prince focused on making blockbusters and away from leaden, weepy dramas that hurt everybody’s feelings.

The Yin and Yang of it

Yin: More of the same MIB action and jokes. Will Smith dominates the punchlines and the screentime with all the classic Fresh Prince-isms in tow..

Yang: Decent character building courtesy of Brolin and Jones. Smith offsets his trademarks with an almost giddy charm. Generally breezy, inoffensive plotting.

In-between: Will Smith teleports back to 1969. Racial humor in vein of Wild Wild West ensues. Frown.

Review - Battleship

Grade: C-

So, imitating Michael Bay is a thing now?

I was always under the impression that, despite Bay’s success, no director would ever want to consciously ape Bay’s signature style, with the exception of Tony Scott and Dominic Sena of Gone in 60 Seconds fame. 

Peter Berg apparently doesn’t share that perspective.

Berg’s Battleship is a ham-fisted hodge-podge of the worst Bayisms committed to film, particularly those culled from Transformers--obviously--and Pearl Harbor. Battleship follows the meteoric rise of slacker-turned-seamen Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch) who was shotgun enlisted into the Navy by his big brother, Stone (Alexander Skarsgard), after raising the ire of the Hawaiian police during an attempt to impress the attractive, vapid Sam (Brooklyn Decker), who just happens to be the daughter of a Navy admiral (Liam Neeson). At the same time Alex was courting Sam by burgling burritos from the local Circle K, a pair of NASA researchers (Hamish Linklater and Adam Godley) discovered a new planet mere light years away that could possibly sustain human life. In the absence of a credible deep space exploration program, the boys at NASA decide to send a homing beacon to the planet. What could go wrong? One year later, Alex is a lieutenant, preparing to participate in annual Naval war games off the coast of Oahu while NASA’s Oahu signal relay station finally gets a response from their signal to Earth-2. Within hours, a small squad of Cybertronian aircraft makes its way to Earth-1 and begins transforming and wreaking havoc across the planet with weapons that look vaguely like the red pegs from the original tabletop Battleship game. Three of the crafts plop down in the Pacific, right in the middle of the RIMPAC challenge between Alex and Stone’s fleets and a Japanese fleet lead by Hopper’s noble rival, Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano). Faced with the Go-Bots advance team, Hopper and a crew of misfits must do all they can to stop the transforming menace before it claims Earth or raises the ire of the Autobots, whichever comes first.

From the sun-drenched palette to the ridiculous slow-mo and 360 shots to the garish infatuation with military personnel and hardware, every element of Battleship is ripped, part and parcel, from Michael Bay’s imagination. The aliens are Transformers, no way around it. The only difference is that these Transformers are manned by pilots decked out in Master Chief armor. The cast is a conglomeration of diverse cut-outs that include a music star (Rihanna in a decent turn that produces the best line of the movie), a disabled vet who won’t be conquered by his injury (Gregory D. Gadson), and a cadre of real-life veterans. Kitsch’s Hopper is practically Armageddon’s A.J. Frost with a hint of Tim Riggins. Brooklyn Decker is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s Carly from Dark of the Movie. I could go on, but I’d be forced to take a shot for every character from Battleship that matches a character from a Bay movie. 

Berg not only rips Bay’s palette and casting strategy, he manages to snatch Bay’s simplistic approach plotting, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in the hands of the write director, and makes a plot that’s less sensical than Revenge of the Fallen. For instance, the aliens come to conquer earth but leave the entirety of their fleet in deep space, waiting for the advance squad to activate NASA’s homing beacon. Somehow, the an army of Chitauri movie made the leap in the Avengers, but these guys, with their transforming spaceships, couldn’t do the same? 

Battleship is, indeed, a senseless, shameful knockoff of the Transformers franchise and Michael Bay’s vision, but it’s so similar to those films that any fan of Transformers and the rest of Bay’s oeuvre will be at least mildly entertained, as long as they don’t apply any amount of thought to the proceedings. At its best, Battleship is adequately-made crap--a loud, dumb experience filled with explosions, which is exactly what is to be expected of such a typical summer tentpole. Then again, what more should have been expected of an summer tentpole that turns a tabletop guessing game into an alien invasion flick with Transformers.

Yin, Yang and In-Between:

Yin: Big, loud and dumb, just like the Michael Bay movies it is ripping off.

Yang: Loud, simple, and filled with explosions and transforming robots, just like Michael Bay’s hit Transformers movies.

In-between: Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) has now been in two more mainstream movies than Vinnie Chase. Ari, do your job, man.

Review: Dark Shadows

Grade: C

My father is no fan of vampires. Sure, he enjoys the occasional Angel rerun or a late Saturday afternoon showing of Blade on TNT, but generally he’s pretty resistant to the fangers. Ironically, one his favorite TV shows--one he talked about more than any other--was Dark Shadows.

Interestingly, for all the talking my father did about Dark Shadows, he was never all that forthcoming with details. From the little he told me, it was essentially a cheesy soap opera with vampires. And that is exactly what Tim Burton and his cadre of collaborators deliver with a big screen adaptation of the series that is as plodding and tepid as it is out and out weird.

Johnny Depp mixes a quarter of Ichabod Crane with half of Sweeney Todd and another fourth of Captain Jack to play 200-year old vampire Barnabas Collins. Cursed with vampirism by former mistress and vengeful witch Angelique Brouchard (Eva Green) in the latter half of the 18th century, Barnabas awakens in the year 1972 to find his family’s beloved manor, Collinwood, in a state of disrepair. Collinwood is now under the care of Barnabas’ descendant, the steely, unflappable Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeifer), and houses the few remaining members of the Collins family, including Elizabeth’s moody daughter Carolyn (Chloe Moretz); her vapid widowed brother Roger (Johnny Lee Miller); and his haunted son, David (Gulliver McGrath). Just as the Collins are welcoming a new governess for David, Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote)--clearly the doppelgänger of Barnabas’ true love, Josette--Barnabas is awakened from his torpor, only to find that the witch who cursed him has managed to cheat death and is threatening to put the Collins family seafood canning business, and Barnabas, out to pasture.

Dark Shadows is easily one of Tim Burton’s most gratuitous exercises in self-indulgence. Granted, Burton has always been self-indulgent, but he usually does so without alienating large swaths of the viewing audience. But, with his past few films, Burton has increasingly pushed mainstream audiences away and aimed his sights squarely on the Hot Topic crowd. With Dark Shadows, he seems to have completely abandoned hope of connecting with casual viewers and opted to make a movie for himself and his cohorts despite the film’s positioning as a mainstream summer release. He burdens Shadows with a languid pace, flimsy plot, and a soft focus aesthetic that makes everything far colder than the cheap jokes would imply. By the time Dark Shadows finally slogs it way to its sluggish climax, even the most patient viewers will be begging for an exit, a response that could have been avoided if Burton simply increased the pace and heightened the stakes of the conflict.

Burton may shoulder most of the blame for Dark Shadows, but his collection of repertory players don’t exactly help. Johnny Depp carries the film mostly on his requisite charm and goodwill from his past work. Since much of his performance as Barnabas is informed by his recent big screen outings as off-the-wall Englishmen like Captain Jack and Sweeney Todd, it’s hard to fault him for giving the audiences what they seem to want, but it would be nice to see him switch up his approach in the way he did with his work from the late 90s to early 00s. Besides Depp, Eva Green is the only member of the cast who is bringing something resembling her A game to the table. Green looks to be having more fun as the wacky, horny, palefaced Angelique, in a turn reminiscent of Robert Zemeckis’ Burton-esque Death Becomes Her, than any of the other members of the cast. Michelle Pfeiffer spends 90% of the movie keeping her eyes from rolling out of her head at the insanity. The former Hit-Girl, Chloe Moretz, also seems to be fighting off a case of exasperation, but unlike Pfeiffer, her eye-rolling is in character. As usual, Helena Bonham Carter shows up with her typical cat-lady antics, this time playing a alcoholic shrink-in-residence for David Collins, played with an admirable lack of precociousness by Gulliver McGrath. Jackie Earle Haley is also on hand, barely registering as Barnabas’ Renfield, while newbie Bella Heathcoate spends more time staring with dead eyes than emoting.

Even without Burton’s indulgences or the sluggishness of the proceedings, Dark Shadows would have been a risky proposition. The source material is practically ancient to the target demo, and the flick itself is not overly offensive, but it does little to  stand out amidst other followers to the Twilight trend, despite preceding Twilight by almost 40 years. This may have worked as a long-form TV series, where its camp and potential for complexity would have fared far better, but as a film too much precious time is wasted on indulging the children of the night and not enough on crafting a compelling narrative.

The Yin and Yang of It

Yang: Depp does his thing while Green bring her A (ish) game. Burton’s cold, creepy aesthetic is a perfect fit for the material.

Yin: Plodding pacing and general weirdness abound, as per usual for a Burton film. Most of the cast is either ingloriously over-the-top or terribly disconnected, with no in-between.

In-Between: Barnabas Collins circa 1972 and Michael Jackson circa 2009. Not much of a difference.

After-the-fact Review: The Avengers

Grade: A

Most days, it doesn’t pay to be an optimist. Such a quality inevitably leads to heartbreak. But, there are days, like no other, when positive thinking pays phenomenal dividends. Today, is one of those rare days.

Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s, with a twinge of Mark Millar’s Ultimates, Avengers is pure, unadulterated fun. A random audience member two seats down from me, may have summed up the Avengers better than I ever could, “If I told my younger self that there would be an Avengers movie of this quality, she would never believe it.”

Unfortunately, a few naysayers may have felt that the Avengers was little more than a curious, if impossible, prospect before seeing Whedon’s summertime masterpiece, but rest assured, Whedon has done what seemed impossible. He has made a balanced, respectful superhero flick that remembers exactly what superheroes should be: fun.

Avengers essentially recounts the first meeting of Marvel’s famed dysfunctional supergroup and their first encounter with an otherworldly force that no one hero can withstand, in the case Loki (Tom Hiddleston) the petty, mischievous brother of Asgardian God of Thunder, Thor (Chris Hemsworth). When faced with Loki, who possesses the a glowing cube with cosmic power, The Tesseract, and an army of alien Skeletors, one-eyed super spy, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) goes about assembling four of Earth 616’s mightiest heroes and two kinda-superspies. Man out of time, Captain America (Chris Evans);god from another world, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), anger personified, The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo); and cocky techKnight, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) join Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and, eventually, Green Arrow pastiche, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) to become the most functionally dysfunctional superteam, one that has time bicker incessantly despite facing down alien armies and nuclear strike teams. As with any confluence of superheroes, the question becomes: will these heroes be able to put aside their differences to save the world? Of course, they can...

Whedon’s Avengers has a simple plot, but he uses that decision to do what he does best: build unforgettable characters who play off each other phenomenally well. Granted, the Avengers are well-defined enough that they don’t necessarily need Whedon’s, who also snagged a screenwriting credit, deft touch, but it doesn’t hurt. Every character, from Cap to Iron Man to fan favorite Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), is remains true to the core qualities developed in decades of comics and writ large in the individual Avengers prequels. Cap is as noble and principled as expected while Tony Stark reveals heroism beneath unflinching snarkiness, and those are only two of the most memorable examples of the exemplary character work Whedon puts on display. Whedon balances character and spectacle so well in the Avengers that one wonders why Marvel doesn’t just hand him their slate of big screen endeavors from here on out. Whedon orchestrates character and chaos with equal aplomb. The sheer quality of the mayhem--coherent, clear, and consistently thrilling--that unfolds on screen is astounding. The attack on Manhattan that composes the last hour is easily the superhero flick equivalent of Helm’s Deep, only better. In fact, The last hour plus of Avengers somehow crams more action--with exceptional geography--than any superhero flick ever has, and for that audiences really need to thank Whedon and Marvel for making this happen. 

Whedon and company could not have made this happen without an top notch cast. Robert Downey Jr. is the undeniable star of the show here--though the Hulk probably truly deserves the title--as he dominates every scene with Tony Stark’s trademark asinine, cocksure quips. Chris Evans comes in a close second, further eschewing his own well-known cockiness to give Captain America and unflinching earnestness that makes him the hero really deserve. Mark Ruffalo steps up to plate to prove that third time’s the charm for the Hulk, making Bruce Banner far more engaging and palatable than his predecessors by subtly weaving Banner’s bookishness with a razor’s edge of intensity. Chris Hemsworth continues make Thor far more digestible than most Thor comics have by expertly balancing Thor’s Shakespearean bravado and the character’s own endless compassion for his brother. Speaking of which, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki proves even more threatening and nuanced than he did in Thor and makes for a great villain who does more than attempt to take over the world. Even Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow is a far more improved character than she was in Iron Man 2, and thankfully, she’s focused more on kicking ass this time than posing. Sadly, Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye gets short shrift this time, and we never get to see the character’s well-known rebellious streak. 

Looking at that list, and the fact that Marvel and Whedon managed to wrangle so many actors and characters to create such an amazing display, one can’t help but be amazed at Marvel’s ambition. Sure the plot is basic--but so was the first issue of Avengers--and the original creators get minimal credit--by all rights, this should be Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Avengers--but this is nonetheless and exceptional achievement. Avengers has raised the bar for superhero flicks by going back to basics. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy may have been the most recent set of superhero movies to raise the quality of the genre by bringing pure artistry to the fore, but the Avengers does something that Nolan’s film rarely make audiences do: smile.

The Yin and Yang of It

Yang: Amazing character and action on display in Whedon’s blockbuster masterpiece. Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and the Hulk are standouts amongst a cast of standouts.

Yin: Plot is a bit simple and the sheer existence of this film in the face of Marvel’s recent entanglements with the Avengers original creator, Jack Kirby, is an affront to creator’s rights, but these are minor quibbles.

In between: Hulk smash.