Man of Steel/World War Z

Going in my interest in seeing both of these could be described as moderate at best.  I just don't find Superman to be that interesting of a character, and as for World War Z, do we really need more zombies (given the box office success probably yes)? But, I found myself out of town for the weekend with some time to kill in a city that was 100 degrees, so here we are.

As for Man of Steel, Vince over a Filmdrunk had a pretty good review of this most recent entry to the Superman series, and I think he hits most of the big issues with it.  I agree with people who say the first half has some interesting ideas but the second half just degenerates into a pretty generic action thriller with some glaring, to say the least, plot holes.  I even like Zach Snyder (an opinion that seems to be in the minority, at least among 'serious' film fans). I thought 300 had a manic energy to it that was a lot of fun, and had be able to infuse some of that energy into Man of Steel then the film could have avoided turning into slog most of the last hour plus ends up being.  But whatever, its a solid C film. Not horrible,but nothing I feel any desire to watch again.

A couple of other random thoughts:

-This is probably a spoiler but the way Pa Kent dies is just idiotic. Basically he goes back to save the dog and waves off Clark so he can keep his abilities secret. I like dogs as much as the next guy (editors note: That is a lie, Eric's interest in dogs could be described as ambivalent at best), but when a tornado is bearing down I think its time to let little Sparky try to make it out himself. He had a good run.
-Its an old comment that these superhero films (or action films in general) just ignore the collateral damage that our ostensible protagonist unleashes in the name of 'justice' but Man of Steel turns it up to 11. Easily millions of people die while superman is doing his thing, and nobody really seems to notice. If the film exhibited any sense of humor I would almost think they were making a commentary about action films, but it shows no indication of self-awareness at all.
-Michael shannon just isn't that good as General Zod, but since he's usually excellent I'm going to assume  a lot of that has to do with how dumb the plot surrounding him is.

Now the one big advantage World War Z has over Superman is that its a half an hour shorter. I mean that as  a compliment. Besides the relative brevity Z is a compentently paced action film with a few interesting ideas interspersed with a lot of A-B-C action. Its not boring,but its also not all that compelling. Really the best way to describe it is that I entered indifferent, and left indifferent. Not bored, just kind of 'meh.' Basically its not worth seeking out, but if you run across it on cable one day you could do worse.

Now you See Me

So yeah, magicians as bank robbers, but not really. Whatever, I liked the cast and after a day of reading labor migration research I didn't want to watch anything that caused me to have to think too much. And it definitely met that bar. Its watchable, mainly because of the cast (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fischer, the Franco bother who was on Scrubs, Melanie Laurent, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Mark Ruffalo), but also needlessly complicated (not in a you can't follow way, but in a 'if you think about what's actually happening for more than a second the plot doesn't hold up at all' way) and takes itself a little too seriously for what should have been a pretty light heist movie (it needlessly revolves around this idea of what 'true' magic is).

But whatever, the most fascinating part of the experience was this guy about three rows back. He could not have been more entertained. He was busting up at the film's couple of half-hearted attempts at a one-liners, and at the big 'twist' ending he about lost his, pardon the vernacular, shit all over the theatre. I worry  if he saw a film that was actually clever and surprising, like say The Usual Suspects, he may actually have a heart attack.  So I guess its good that middle of the road, immediately forgettable, films like this exist. There's a certain segment of the population who wouldn't be able to go to the cinema and come out alive otherwise.

Before Midnight

Before Midnight represents the third film in a series (after Before Sunrise and Before Sunset) that periodically  (every nine years)checks in with two lovers played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy.  Its kind of a fictionalized version of the 7-up series, and sets out to show the progression of a relationship over time and, in particular, how messy and complicated things can become.  Like the previous films, Before Midnight is ambitious, interesting, and contain a lot of truth, but I'm not sure that I really enjoy watching it that much.

The biggest problem with all three, and this one in particular, is that they're almost too literary. The entire film is almost entirely monologues, which I'm sure plays well on the page, but end up just becoming exhausting by the end of the film. Really each conversation ends up feeling like a one act play with lots of grand statements and truths being compressed into a short amount of time. I don't deny that people often have conversations like this, but all at once was a bit much for me. Also the amount of vitriol that was spilled had me wondering how Hawke and Delphy were still together. I get that point of the film was the relationship they built in the previous two entries is what pulls them through the conflict, and I like how everything is still a bit ambiguous at the end, but I still ended up feeling restless as it played out.

That said these are still bold films and I appreciate how they endeavor to portray a real relationship. There are certainly moments that capture real truth in each film, but I do feel like the execution falls short of the ambition.

A whole bunch of stuff

I saw a fair amount of stuff around/during a recent international trip. I'm sure at one point I had a coherent narrative about all of them, but I'm too lazy to write more than a few disjointed notes.

Iron Man 3

At this point I just enjoy hanging out with the Tony Stark character so much that the action is actually something I just sort of put up with while waiting to get back to the smack talk. The film dealt with the problem of why the other Avengers/S.H.I.E.L.D. never show up to help out by just ignoring their existence, which I guess is the best possible approach. As a result this ended up being the most standalone Marvel Film since the first Iron Man. In fact writer/director Shane Black kind of turned it into a superhero equivalent of an 80's cop film, with one of the few non-annoying kid characters in film history, and Jarvis the computer, playing the role of Downey's partners.  The film also has some nice moments of humor (particularly how it treats the Mandarin character and a great cameo by Max from Happy Endings (RIP)) and manages to keep the tone relatively light until the obligatory massive final fight. I don't know if this is the best Marvel film, but it was generally entertaining.

Star Trek Into Darkness

I actually saw this twice. While Into Darkness is a nice continuation of its predecessor, it spends a little to much time referencing the earlier incarnations of the series. The last half an hour or so in particular gets really goofy as they pretty much take the ending of Star trek 2: Wrath of Khan and just flip the roles of the two main characters, culminating in a moment that had me laughing out loud in the theater (both times).  I think the comedy in this case was completely intentional (I hope), but I think the makers of these films have played out just re-imagining the original films and need to start taking the characters in a new direction.  Otherwise the series runs the risk of becoming a series of in jokes and fan-service, as opposed to something bigger.

Also, the ending is essentially the same as Iron Man 3 which was interesting (or not).

6 fast 6 furious

I found the whole Fast and Furious franchise (which in my case consisted of just watching the first film) to be completely completely tedious until Fast 5. In that film the filmmakers decided to embrace the inherent cheesiness of the premise and turned out the closest thing to an over the top 80’s action comedy (in a good way) that I’d seen in a while.  6 fast continues in this tradition, but with less narrative coherence (something I never thought I’d attribute to Fast 5).  Other than The Rock, the acting is really bad and the two leads (Vin Diesal and Paul Walker) actually seem to think they’re participating in a real bad-ass action film.  The fact that they take it so seriously of course adds to my enjoyment (and also explains my love for One Tree Hill).

Like any great unintentionally comedic movie,  the intentionally comedic elements of the film (meant to be embodied by the Minstrel Show that is Tyrese and Ludacris) are laugh free, and in this case borderline racist. All the fun comes from the over the top action (At one point Vin knocks out three bad guys with a flying head butt), groan inducing dialogue (too many to mention) and the constant effort to make it look like Vin Diesel is as tall as The Rock.  The film is definitely too long, but I still laughed out loud a lot, which is more than I can say for a lot of mainstream comedies.

This is the End

I don't have a lot to say about this other than its actually pretty funny, if a bit long and maybe a little too insular. The actors have a nice chemistry, and it made me really want a sequel to the criminally underrated Your Highness. I'm not sure how broad the appeal of something like this is, but its certainly worth seeing if you enjoy the idea of James Fanco, Seth Rogen, Danny McBride and company basically just spending $20 million to sit around and talk trash to each other for a couple of hours.

To the wonder

The people that hated Terrance Malick's previous film, The Tree of Life, are absolutely going to despise To the Wonder. Somehow its even more abstract, and has less of a plot, than the earlier film, and anybody who's not already on board with Malick's meditative, loose (to describe it generously), and visceral approach to filmmaking is not going to have their mind changed by this. The film is 90% voiceover and 90% of that is in French and Spanish (there's a box office draw if I ever heard one). And just like the Tree of Life it constantly cuts between past, present, and future, with little or no indication as to why. Its beatifully shot, as usual, and contains some indelible images but the end result is more of an impressionistic painting than a film. This works for awhile, but after an hour or so I did get restless. Say what you want about the Tree of Life, but at least that film had the chutzpah to try to portray the beginning and the end of the world. To the Wonder doesn't have anywhere neat that level of ambition, which it makes it more difficult to stay engaged in the more digressive sections (which the particularly snarky of you could argue make up the entire film, but then you just have a bad attitude). Its worth seeing if you're already all in for Malick, but probably not otherwise.

One other note: Given that the dialogue is majority voiceover we get plenty of scenes before and after, presumably, important conversations. This definitely is in line with the film's general approach, but it definitely keeps all the characters at arms length.

Oblivion

Oblivion is an odd film.  What I mean is that you can tell the director is predominantly focused on the set design and world building. As a result, when forced to have a plot he just grabbed a bunch of cliches/tropes from other sci-fi films and just throws them out there to get a narrative flow/ending.  The blatant nature of this is actually kind of interesting as the set pieces are pretty much wholly lifted from other films (most glaringly Moon, the Matrix movies, and Independence Day to name a few).  I sort of appreciated how blatant the ripping off is and how uninterested the film was in doing anything other than letting Tom Cruise run around and fix drones. That part of the film (which makes up most of the first half) actually looks pretty great and its enough to keep you interested for awhile.  Eventually though the languid pace gets a bit tedious, and while its fun to play 'spot the other film this scene is ripping off' for a few minutes during the second half even that gets old after awhile.  Oblivion isn't worthless or unwatchable, it just never really engages on more than a technical level.  Which is more than I can say about the director's last film  Tron: legacy.

Few other random observations:
-The voiceover is really bad.  Again then this could be a direct result of nobody being that interested in anything other than the visuals.
-Morgan Freeman is in this for like five minutes, contrary to what the trailer would have you believe.

Gi Joe: Retailiation

Like the first installment of this series, seeing this was a pure nostalgia play.  Until they make a My little Pony movie, GI Joe is the one toy/cartoon from this current trend of lazy reboots that I have enough of a soft spot for to actually sit through a movie.  Even though I knew full well it wasn't going to be good (and make no mistake its really not).

Its not worth getting into all the plot holes (though I will say there is one sort of clever twist where Cobra gets all the other countries in the world to give up their nuclear arsenals) or illogical fighting (in the big Ninja showdown not one bad guy thinks to just cut the rope of our heroes) because you expect that in this sort of film.  What did surprise me is that I think there is a way to make  G.I. Joe film actually work.  If they just embraced the ludicrousness of a world where its perfectly acceptable to un-ironically only refer to people by their code names (Roadblock, Snake Eyes, Lady Jaye, etc), have no problem having prisoners get brought to your super-secret prison in full combat attire because the character can never be seen without their mask, or have the big enemy be a large multi-national corporation with apparently limitless resources run by this guy - then the whole enterprise could turn into a reasonably fun send-up of action films.  The film seems to realize this at moments (for gods sake they have the RZA cast as a blind ninja master, no way that's a serious move), but for the majority of the time it takes things way to seriously.  It should just embrace the inherant nuttiness of the universe rather than trying to 'tough' and 'badass.'  Though I did see the trailer for Fast 6, so there is that.