Jul
30
Every so often, I’ll cull my DVD collection of all the titles that I’ve soured on, lost interest in, or don’t know why I bought in the first place and sell them to Amoeba Music. It’s a quick way to make $30-$40. Never mind how much money I probably spent on the DVDs in the first place. I’ve become more discriminating in my DVD purchases over the years. One day I hope to look at my collection and not find a single title that I’d be willing to part with for a couple bucks. I’m getting there. I’m still on the fence about whether or not I really need all six seasons of “Dawson’s Creek” on DVD.
One boxed set jumped out at me as I was culling last night: “The Lethal Weapon Trilogy.” In 2006, I sold back to Amoeba “Mad Max,” “The Road Warrior” and “Braveheart” after Mel’s anti-Semitic meltdown but kept the “Lethal Weapon” flicks, sort of splitting the difference between my intense dislike of the man in real life and my willingness to eighty-six his filmography. Now that Mel’s added blacks, Hispanics and Timothy Dalton to his growing list of people he hates, not to mention the allegations of domestic violence, I feel it’s time I parted with the rest of his movies. I simply can’t bring myself to watch them again. Well, bringing myself to watch “Lethal Weapon 3″ was already nearly impossible.
It’s very strange to do a complete 180 on a celebrity. Mel Gibson in particular used to be the man who could do no wrong. He picked projects better than his fellow A-listers, many of which struggled throughout the ’90s to crank out half as many hits. Both he and Tom Cruise, however, justified their colossal paydays with boffo box office hauls time and again. Incidentally, Tom Cruise similarly imploded in the mid-2000s, but the particulars of his tailspin seem trivial when stacked against Gibson’s. That Cruise’s name still can’t appear in an article without the words “couch jumping” and “Oprah” in the same piece seems asinine to me, and I’m hardly the world’s biggest Tom Cruise fan. It’s been five years! Yes, it was in poor taste to criticize Brooke Shields for being on anti-depressants, but you have to take into account the fact he believes in the hokiest religion ever, second only to Catholicism.
Nice segue. Gibson’s fanatical devotion to Catholicism, not unlike Cruise’s goofy adherence to Scientology, is what seems to have caused him to unravel to some extent. Even before his 2006 diatribe, his 2004 $30 million Jesus fan film, “The Passion of the Christ,” was derided as being anti-Semitic. I didn’t find the film to be much more than a two-hour exercise in Catholic guilt at its most nakedly aggressive. But it was definitely a red flag, signaling that Gibson might have a screw loose.
(Man alive, would I like to see Tom Cruise self-finance — and topline — a mega-budget L. Ron Hubbard biopic.)
And so, the last bit of Mel Gibson residue will be purged from my DVD collection this weekend. The stink of Gibson’s contempt for everyone save himself hangs over all three “Lethal Weapon” movies, regardless of the quality of his performance or the films’ technical and storytelling merits.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
26
Avengers Assembled
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After months of speculating, fan-casting and the whole Edward Norton/Kevin Feige flap, the final cast for 2012’s “Avengers” film, not to be confused with that craptacular 1998 Uma Thurman movie, was announced at Comic Con. Joining Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Chris Evans’ Captain America, Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, and Scarlett Johansson’s breasts are Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner, playing Bruce Banner/Hulk and Hawkeye, respectively.
I am totally fine with this casting. In an uncharacteristic move for a long-time comics reader, I really don’t have any complaints about the who’s playing who, nor am I all P.O.’d that Giant-Man and Wasp aren’t rounding out the team. I will cop to feeling some mild disappointment that Scarlet Witch, a super-sexy gypsy whose boyfriend is an android, isn’t in the cast; Eliza Dushku would’ve been ideal for the role. But, there are better things to experience nerd rage over.
I’m actually quite thrilled to see Ruffalo and Renner are confirmed. They’re both great character actors who should acquit themselves nicely in their respective roles. Neither Eric Bana nor Edward Norton really made an impression on me as Bruce Banner. It’s a bit of a thankless role to be sure, but hopefully Ruffalo will infuse it with some of the hopeless desperation that Bill Bixby brought to the character. Renner just might steal the movie as fan-favorite archer, Hawkeye.
Now the only question is, Who’s going to play the big bad?
-Brad Lohan
Jul
16
“Inception” Review
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This review will remain as spoiler-free as possible. In order to get the maximum enjoyment out of “Inception,” it’s best to go in cold. Nothing I’ll discuss in any detail will go beyond the end of the first act, so you’ll get a taste for what’s in store without being bored or unsurprised by how things play out.
I caught a midnight of “Inception” last night and am still processing it on about four hours’ sleep. I definitely need to see it again (and again) because director Chris Nolan fills his movies to the bursting point with details and ideas and subtleties that reward repeat viewings. That being said, I don’t think the flick is as byzantine as people make it out it be. It’s a heist film first and foremost. You can appreciate it on that level even if some of the ideas and concepts blow right by you.
There’s a creeping fear that the film might underperform because — gasp! — it’s a thinking man’s movie, and I find that incredibly dispiriting. This is the summer of big dumb movies at the very worst. We’re in the thick of Hollywood at its most mindless and cynical. “Inception” is the movie that people claim they want to see. It’s original for one, and loaded with action and dazzling visuals. Are people going to be turned off by having to pay attention? If so, they deserve “Jonah Hex.”
In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a professional dream thief, capable of entering another person’s mind and removing their ideas. It’s “Ocean’s 11″ by way of “Nightmare on Elm Street.” From what I gathered watching the film (i.e. no flying cars), it’s set in the modern day, but like “Face/Off,” it presents a far-flung science-fiction concept as though it currently exists. The mechanics of dream thievery are bound by a host of rules. Nolan wisely introduces a fish out of water character, Ellen Page’s Ariadne, who serves as the audience avatar and helps acquaint us with the logic and physics of the radical ideas presented in the film.
Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy and Ken Watanabe round out the rest of Cobb’s crew. Levitt anchors the film’s show-stopping setpiece that was met with applause at my screening. Hardy, still bulked up from his turn in last year’s career-making “Bronson,” plays a unique kind of forger. Watanabe, a Nolan favorite, is an obscenely wealthy businessman along for the ride. And what a ride it is. Doll-faced Marion Cotillard also stars as Cobb’s estranged wife who haunts him in the dreamscape.
The “mark” in the film is played by Cillian Murphy, another Nolan regular, whose mind becomes the area for the bulk of the film. But rather than extracting an idea from his head, Cobb’s tasked with introducing one, a difficult process known as inception. And that’s about all you really need to know.
Nolan doesn’t waste a moment. The first few minutes of the film made me a little nervous, as I had no idea what was happening or why. You have to play a little catch up. The opening moments have that disorienting quality and non-linear approach that’s been Nolan’s hallmark since he burst onto the scene with 2000’s “Memento.” The film doesn’t unfold in reverse, but images and scenes are repeated throughout, adding texture and causing you to question what’s real and what isn’t. Again, this is a film that asks you to give it your fullest attention. Damn if I wasn’t pleased by having to turn my brain on at the movies for a change.
-Brad Lohan
Jul
9
“Predators” Review
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I had high hopes for this one. This summer has to be one of the worst on record as far as blockbusters go. I had my fingers crossed that Nimrod Antal’s “Predators” would be a lean and mean actioner that would stand apart from the overwhelming number of tepid offerings this season. Produced by Robert Rodriguez, a filmmaker whose stock in trade is eye-popping action on a budget, and featuring more than one of the semi-transparent, mandibled hunters who bleed green and see in infra-red, the film seemed to be a fairly sure bet. So is it a worthy successor to John McTiernan’s original and the criminally underrated Stephen Hopkins-directed sequel?
Yeah, no.
“Predators” has to be one of the most aggressively mediocre action films I’ve seen since last summer’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” It’s just sort of there. Things happen, but none of them are terribly engaging. The characters are characterizations. Nobody’s given enough to do beyond hitting their marks and dying in no particular order. Almost everyone’s wasted. Only Walton Goggins, playing the death row inmate given an unexpected parole, shines with the limited amount of material he’s given. Danny Trejo, on the other hand, has little more than a featured extra role. Such a wash.
And yet, the film sounds good on paper. Parachuted onto an alien planet, our eight characterizations are thrown together for reasons completely beyond their understanding. There’s the military guy (Adrien Brody) who’s apparently our hero, though the film short-changes him in the character sympathy department; “Predators” is a case study in how not to create a likable protagonist. There’s a female sniper of some sort (Alice Braga), whose rifle has what looks like a TV remote control lashed to the scope for some reason. There’s a Russian soldier; a Yakuza gangster; the professor and Mary Ann. In short, there are too many characters to keep track of. None of them hold a candle to Dutch’s elite commando unit in the original “Predator.” Well, maybe Adrien Brody could take the bespectacled guy who tells all the beaver jokes. Maybe.
The overpopulated cast trudges through the dense jungle for what seems like eons. Then they’re chased by creatures who look like Pandoran feral cats. And then they trudge around some more. It takes forever and a day to get to the Predators who are supposedly hunting them. Problem is, the Predators are barely in a movie that’s called “Predators.”
“Aliens” has a slow build, though, right? A-ha, yes, it does. But in “Aliens,” we have that dream sequence up front that reintroduces the chest-bursting Xenomorph, giving us a bit of a jolt and reminding us of who our protag’s up against. In “Predators,” we don’t see, smell or hear an actual Pred until over a third of the way into the film. That they’re invisible is irrelevant. In “Predator,” we see his ship enter our atmosphere in the very first scene. In “Predator 2,” we see the light-bending Predator at the end of the opening action sequence. The threat needs to be at the forefront of the audience’s mind ASAP. It’s boring as hell, watching people wander around, killing time until someone starts killing them.
Worse, the script by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch is so disinterested in its characters, we react numbly when they die. Early in the film, someone points out that one of their number is missing. I immediately thought, Uh, who? Back to my griping about Brody’s hero character, Royce, we’re provided with next to nothing to like about him. There are many, many hero sympathy devices that are used in screen storytelling to make the protag likable (he’s courageous, compassionate, funny, unfairly injured, good at what he does, loved by others, obsessed with achieving a particular goal, in danger, etc.). About the only one I could attribute to Royce is that he’s in danger, but that’s hardly enough for me to care about whether or not he gets off the planet in one piece. Heroes don’t need to have all the character sympathy attributes to work. Yet, the more the hero’s got, the more we’ll care about him. Don’t give me this anti-hero shit, either. Even anti-heroes have many of these qualities.
Let’s compare Royce to, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character, Dutch, in “Predator.” Dutch is courageous, leading his team into a nest of South American guerrillas to rescue some kidnapped diplomats; he’s compassionate in that he cares about his teammates; he’s funny in that he slings one-liners while mowing down the opposition (not the greatest example, but hey); he’s unfairly injured when he discovers his old CIA buddy lied to him to get him to run point on the mission; he’s good at what he does by taking out all the guerrillas and not losing any of his men; he’s loved by others, which is evidenced by his friendly interactions with his teammates; he’s obsessed with killing the Predator once they find out “there’s something out there, and it ain’t no man;” and he’s in constant danger. How about that, huh? You can play the same game with Danny Glover’s character, Harrigan, in “Predator 2″ and learn that he, too, is a sympathetic hero for almost all of the same reasons; Harrigan’s unfortunately not funny.
Movies like “Predators” don’t work because they’re missing some of the key fundamentals of screen storytelling. It’s why they feel boring, uneven. You can have all the action in the world, but if we’re not invested in the hero or his story, it’s all just sound and fury. I found “Predators” diverting. It’s a film where you keep waiting for it to pick up, to find its stride, to coast on the goodwill its predecessors have built up. But it never quite clicks.
Is summer over yet?
-Brad Lohan
Jul
2
Andrew Garfield Is Spider-Man
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After a lengthy casting process in which dozens of high-haired oddballs competed for who’ll be the Roger Moore (or the George Lazenby) to Tobey Maguire’s Sean Connery, Englishman Andrew Garfield has signed on to play Spider-Man in the wholly unnecessary reboot of the franchise.
Garfield’s an unknown Stateside. He starred in a British drama called “Boy A,” which I saw at the NuArt not too long ago. He’s a good actor, but I was crossing my fingers that they’d sign Aaron Johnson from “Kick Ass” if they absolutely had to make this crummy movie.
Yes, I’m still bitter that Sony’s junking all the groundwork laid by Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” trilogy and making a cheapjack fourth installment. The film’s budget is rumored to be $80 million. The first “Spider-Man,” shot almost ten years ago, was budgeted at $100 million. Budgets for major tentpole pictures are routinely in the $150 million these days. Director Mark Webb is going to deliver a visually dazzling comic book film for almost half that? Rumor is Spider-Man won’t even be in costume for much of the running time.
Oh, but it’ll be in 3D!
So yeah, I’m still none too thrilled with what’s in store for Spider-Man on the big screen. I can’t say a I’m immensely disappointed that Garfield’s been cast. It’s probably the first bit of news about the film I reacted to with utter indifference rather than outright disgust. I guess that’s a victory in and of itself.
-Brad Lohan