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Movie Review: The Avengers

Well, I'm willing to eat some crow. I said The Avengers would have a lot of hype to live up to, seeing as five movies have been building up to it. Sometimes the exposition of the build-up seemed to cripple those movies, especially Iron Man 2 and Thor.

But -- sorry, almighty Thor -- it was worth it. Hype achieved. The prime virtues of The Avengers are old-fashioned: great character work and crackling dialogue. Writer/director Joss Whedon (Zak Penn is also credited on the screenplay) even seems to do some course-correction on the characters he inherited, making them better -- wittier, more psychologically interesting -- than they've ever been. Black Widow, Hawkeye, The Hulk and even Agent Coulson suddenly pop as never before. And Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark has always been funny, but never quite so funny as in this film. Whedon not only has the comic book sense to see how the Avengers will fight together (and against each other), he has the writerly sense to see how they will spar verbally.

If you are among the few who haven't already seen the film, I recommend a packed auditorium and soon. Even if you don't keep reading this review, you are bound to encounter spoilers. This movie is so water-cooler-friendly, I guarantee you will hear plot details discussed in public. (Also, I recommend seeing the 2D version, as there have been quality-control issues with the 3D prints).

Okay, now for my nitpicks... and spoilers. Keep reading (major spoilers!)...

Movie Review: The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito)

I love filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar's almost effortless ability to create iconic movie moments. If I have any criticism of his latest film, The Skin I Live In, it is that it is too much of a good thing. The movie is an overstuffed grab-bag of pulp sensationalism: a demented plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas), parallel suicides, a rapist in a tiger suit, a chained prisoner, burn-resistant super-skin, and several violent deaths by gunshot.

And the above list is just a small sample. Fans of the classic over-the-top Almodóvar -- of, say, Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, his 1988 collaboration with Banderas -- will not be disappointed. This film will also please those who like when Almodóvar explores the fluid boundaries of sexuality such as in his recent, more-restrained masterpieces like Talk to Her and Bad Education. Without revealing the central surprise embedded in the film's Pulp Fiction-esque nested doll structure, let's just say that casting Elena Anaya, an actress perhaps best known for the steamy lesbian affair film Room in Rome, as Gal, is likely no accident.

Since the story is ostensibly based on a French novel by Thierry Jonquet, Mygale, with which I am not familiar, I can't say whether Almodóvar added in Almodóvarian elements or they were what attracted him to begin with. I can safely guess that the integration of a hypnotic performance by the singer Buika and the over-sized voodoo-doll sculptures -- artist unknown, so I'll credit production designer Antxon Gómez -- is pure Almodovar, given his penchant for incorporating art in all its varied forms into his tales.

The Skin I Live In is preposterous, melodramatic, shocking, beautiful, thrilling, horrifying and also a deep meditation on the nature of identity. It doesn't all cohere -- Brazilian nanny Marilia (Marisa Paredes) and the daughter character Norma (Bianca Suárez) could have used more development -- but I can hardly think of a film that surprised me more, even when I could guess what was coming. If you like having your mind blown in a cinematic manner, I recommend a dose of the latest Amodóvar.

Movie Review: The Ides of March

I like talky movies, and thus I often like movies based on plays. The Ides of March is no exception. Although I am not familiar with the play upon which it is based, Farragut North by Beau Willimon, the plot of the film features a sticky moral quandary, an element that has been in vogue in American playwriting since at least Arthur Miller.

George Clooney, director of the film, also acts a key role, that of a Clintonesque governor running for President of the United States. But that is not the end of his list of his credits for the film, he also gets screenplay adaptation credit along with previous collaborator Grant Heslov (Good Night and Good Luck). Reportedly he insisted on changing the title of the play to the reference to Julius Caesar. The "Ides of March" was the name of the 15th of March on the Roman calendar, the day Caesar was assassinated.

No assassinations happen in this political thriller, unless it is the career assassination of Ryan Gosling's character, Stephen Meyers, campaign spinmeister for Clooney's Governor Mike Morris. Gosling is the star of the film, not Clooney, and although he does a fine job as a glib spinmeister, I much preferred him as the taciturn driver in Drive. Too much of his character is established by describing his facility with his job, rather than showing it.

Even less is established about Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood), a campaign intern with whom he begins an office romance. The turn her character takes late in the story is neither established well-enough, nor dwelt upon with the gravity it deserves. To ask us to care whether Gosling's Meyers will come out on top in the backstage power struggle more than we care about the resolution of her story is its own exploration of moral equivalences. And, as long as we're questioning the priorities of the screenplay, it is never clear to me why rival campaign managers sharing a beer would be a scandal.

For all I like about Ides of March -- it assumes an intelligent audience, it has a dark view of even the shiniest sides of politics, it wrestles with fascinating ethical issues -- I can't recommend it without qualifications. Based on my conversations with other people who have seen the film, the screenplay's soft spots and Evan Rachel Wood's inauthenticity are probably be too much for most moviegoers to overlook. Some have made hay of Clooney sending out political messages, effectively making a proxy presidential run through his character, Governor Morris.

Without spoiling the end of the film, I'd say that, given what is revealed to be behind Morris' messages of hope, the movie can only be read as a vicious critique of President Obama. Anyone who reads the film differently must be clouded by Clooney's stated liberal views in real life. Clooney casting himself in the role is a brilliant stroke, not only playing as it does upon what audiences may already know about him, it allows him to reverse expectations with great dramatic force. Whatever his political allegiances in real life, in The Ides of March, his loyalty is clearly toward good dramatic storytelling. And for that, this film has my vote.

Movie Review: Contagion

Quarantine your excitement. This procedural drama from director Stephen Soderbergh, writer Scott Z. Burns and a centrifuge of Hollywood top actors is a workmanlike outbreak tale with an incubation period of two days of paranoia.

Yes, the movie will scare you. You will ick and yuck multiple times. There are even some genuinely moving little moments. But I found it emptier than Soderbergh's other serious global fugue, Traffic, which at least had a surprising turn from Benicio del Toro. The closest thing we get to a narrative surprise in this film is a snaggle-toothed Jude Law seeping through the cracks of the justice system.

The movie was shot on the RED camera (by Soderberg using nom de cam Peter Andrews) in an unfussy, verité style. The art direction is a triumph, and what visual effects have been done (there are several artists credited), are seamless. We are never in doubt, visually, that this is a world over-run by a viral contagion.

If only the script was as credible. Are we expected to believe that mass rioting would not interrupt the scientific and government effort to contain the virus? Would Laurence Fishburne's character really be held to account for his (very human and forgivable) actions? I can believe that rules on human-testing would be relaxed in such a crisis more than I can believe that a smart doctor who is an expert on the virus would risk killing herself. (Even successful vaccines will harm a percentage of recipients. The movie has the time to explain R-0's but not "herd immunity".)

To be fair, I know someone who saw a preview screening of this film and said the original cut was much, much longer. I expect in the extended version of the story scenes like the one between Dr. Hextall (Jennifer Ehly) and her father didn't come out of nowhere.

If I chide, it is because I have high expectations from the players involved. Certainly the film -- as a movie, as a story, as a sobering warning about potential pandemics -- is in another level beyond the recent schlockbuster Rise of the Planet of the Apes. There probably hasn't been a film this genuinely frightening in theaters in a long time. Don't throw away this smart film petri dish -- just keep cultivating!

Movie Review: Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life

This oddball, sexy, dangerous debut from writer/director Joann Sfar might be accused of being extreme if it didn't have such an extreme character at its core. Pop music superstar Serge Gainsbourg is probably less familiar to American audiences than his actress daughter Charlotte, but this film effortlessly makes the case that his life is among the most dramatic of the 20th Century -- even if you were to eliminate the bits where he makes the strange, electrifying music that brought him fame.

Gainsbourg, born Jewish (Ginsberg), survived by hiding in the French countryside during the Nazi occupation. He also survived creatively through a vivid inner life, which in boyhood manifested itself in a grand comic-book mythology. Sfar, also a comic book artist, brings the imaginary world into the real one through animation and Michel Gondry-esque puppetry. Giving up on drawing and painting as young man, Gainsbourg later defects to pop music. But he always stayed faithful to his one true love: beautiful women.

The movie dramatizes several of his legendary affairs, including a memorable sequence where Bridget Bardot (Laetitia Casta) improvises a strip tease with a bedsheet to one of his tunes. Of course, like all pop stars who spread their love around too much, he ends up tasting the flip side: loneliness and despair.

The last part of the film (the loneliness and despair part) is not even as close to as much fun as the expressionistic childhood and the scenes of Gainsbourg's rise to fame. But it does allow actor Eric Elmosnino, who plays Gainsbourg, to show his incredible range. Elmosnino has been winning awards at film festivals left and right (Tribeca, César) for this performance, and justly so. It is a phenomenal turn which has put him on my radar the same way Marion Cotillard popped up after her performance as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.

I wish this film was longer. Maybe the filmmakers have cherry-picked only the most fascinating bits from Gainsbourg's life and the rest was boring. But it seemed like there were more stories to be told and more cigarettes left in the pack. I can't say you'll walk away with a solid sense of who Gainsbourg was -- a scoundrel? a musical savant? a revolutionary? -- but perhaps that's a truer form of biography. The traces of our lives don't always fit in a neat box, even though physical remains do. The subtitle of the film, "A Heroic Life," is not wrong, but it's too small a definition. Gainsbourg, as portrayed, is larger than life. He is a hero, a villain, a visionary and a killer soundtrack.

The film opens August 31st in New York and will be hitting various other cities around the U.S. through November. Music Box Films, the relatively new company (2007) who brought us Tell No One and The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo is distributing.

Movie Review: Submarine

Ten minutes into Submarine, I was already looking forward to watching it again. You could try to describe this film, ostensibly a coming-of-age tale set in Wales in the 1980's, in terms of the precocious protagonist and precious designs of Rushmore, or maybe talk about how the French New Wave influences in the film make one think of Stolen Kisses, or possibly the underwater imagery and wry dialogue of The Graduate, or perhaps the morbid humor of Harold & Maude. Or maybe it is best to just let Submarine be Submarine: that is, an awesome film.

Richard Ayoade (writer, director) has adapted the novel by Joe Dunthorne about 15-year-old Oliver Tate so freshly and cinematically that I have trouble believing it wasn't a film project from the beginning. (I have not read the novel and now feel like I have no need to.) I dare say this makes me wish Ayoade would give up his sitcom acting career, as funny as he is playing Moss on The I.T. Crowd.

As surreal as the film often gets, it captures the heartbreaking and hilarious details of a teen boy's life, at least as I remember my own, which is really all the barometer I have. Craig Roberts, as Oliver Tate, is spot on. You could search for years and never find another teen actor who can deadpan a voiceover so perfectly. The supporting cast is likewise revelatory, especially Yasmin Paige, as Oliver's love interest Jordana, Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor, as Oliver's parents. Also to mention, Paddy Considine, who has a nigh impossible role -- an absurd peddler of New Age hokum who hides an aura of utter sadness.

There is little else I would rather write about Submarine than this: go see it right now! And let me know when you're going, because I'd like to come along. It will be a delight to watch again!

Movie Review: Bridesmaids

Reviewing a comedy is tricky, because people have different senses of humor. If only it was as easy as one question: Did the movie make you laugh?

So here's the subjective answer. I laughed a couple times during Bridesmaids, which is a couple times more than I laughed during The Hangover, the movie of which it has been dubbed a distaff doppelganger. (Actually, I'm betting no one has ever called anything a "distaff doppelganger". That should start and end right here.)

I could compare the movie to other films. With the climactic reveal of a teen nostalgia band at a wedding, last year's Kristen Bell vehicle You Again came to mind. You Again also had the whole female rivalry angle. I guess where Bridesmaids trumps You Again is in its attempts to maintain a veneer of plausibility. They call this "keeping it grounded" in the biz. Not that Bridesmaids doesn't let loose. There's a sequence with vomit that is already achieving There's Something About Mary-level notoriety. The funniest character in the film, Megan (Melissa McCarthy), is completely detached from reality, even when her feet are planted on the ground.

I guess I prefer my comedies to build from plausibility to full-blown farce (most episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm), be unapologetically silly (Austin Powers), or to remain plausible throughout (Meet the Parents). This 'medium funny' approach is hard for me to get comfortable with. Are we supposed to be laughing at the characters, or laughing with them? Do they occupy our world, or a strange one with montages of inappropriate acts performed in front of a cop? (more...)

Movie Review: Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3D

For everyone who thinks that 3D should be limited to action movies or done away with altogether (cough, Roger Ebert, cough), the sensational documentary about the Chauvet cave paintings, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, should be an adequate rejoinder. Even though the 3D photography is far from perfect (washed out, sometimes mis-converged), it is absolutely essential to appreciating the artistry of the unknown artists who worked 30,000+ years ago on the uneven rock surfaces of the French cave. In this film, you will see these paintings in shifting, moving light which approximates their torches, and you will see how they used the bulges and pockets in the rock walls to give volume to the painted menagerie.

Director Werner Herzog goes to great lengths to bring the world of our early ancestors to life, but he doesn't do that well. His is not a scientific mind, but a poet's. And a clumsy poet, at that. (Albino alligators?!?) As anyone who has seen his work will attest, sometimes his reaching toward is its own reward. His previous celebrated documentaries, Grizzly Man and Little Dieter Needs to Fly, have a greater unity. But here he has a subject that is almost entirely made of mystery, and who can fault him for wandering off on whatever tangents that present themselves?

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, you will meet a man dressed in reindeer fur who pipes the "Star-Spangled Banner" on a vulture-bone pipe. You will meet a master perfumer who sniffs the cave and detects the whiff of cavesmell. (more...)