Marvel's Contract Negotiations: The Movie!

Year: 2018

Director: Joe & Anthony Russo

Cast: C'mon

Run Time: 2 hours 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

So, the time has come. More or less the entirety of modern cinema has led to this, the culmination of ten years of multi-million dollar blockbuster filmmaking. People online have made fun of Marvel's comment about Avengers: Infinity War being the most ambitious crossover event in cinema history, but people online don't have a great track record of thinking things through. Marvel is right. Infinity War is an act of pure Hollywood hubris, cramming as many successful properties into one punch-kicking chunk as humanly possible. It was either going to be the best movie ever made or a fully incomprehensible hash.

Unfortunately, because the world doesn't live in binaries like we want it to, Infinity War lands somewhere in between. But honestly, that's the best case scenario, because it could have been so much worse and frankly we as a species don't deserve the glory of what would have happened if they threaded that needle.

But we DO deserve Danai Gurira and Chris Evans' beard being in as many movies as possible, so at least we're getting that started.

Oh boy. This is the part where we recap the plot of the movie. Wish me luck. 

Umm... remember all the Marvel movies since 2008? Well, you'd better. Every character you've ever known and loved and a bunch of characters who you assume are from the ones you didn't see are in danger, because the big purple Jay Leno alien known as Thanos (Josh Brolin) is finally ready to bedazzle his Polly Pocket glove with the sparkly Infinity stones that have been cropping up oh so often lately. Once he collects them all, he can send in the box tops to receive his prize: the death of half the population of the universe.

Turns out, people don't like that idea, so pretty much everyone who has a superpower or who looks good in a leather catsuit have assembled to prevent this catastrophe on as many fronts as possible. Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Rocket (Bradley Cooper voice, Sean Gunn mocap), and Groot (Vin Diesel) search for a mythical god-killing weapon. Meanwhile the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy - Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) - head to cut off Thanos at the site of some Infinity Stone or other. 

Meanwhile meanwhile, Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) has disappointed girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) by hopping onto the ship of Thanos' right-hand monster Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) to save Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) with stowaway Spider-Man (Tom Holland).

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, Vision (Paul Bettany) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) are trying to bone in peace, but he's got a big ol' Infinity Stone in his head so he must be evacuated to Wakanda by war criminals Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) into the custody of Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and also Hulk is there (Mark Ruffalo).

Did I miss anything? Oh yes, 45% of the cast. Well, I tried. I really did.

I'm getting why Thanos wants to destroy half of these people. It would really make things easier to follow.

Much like the screenwriters of Infinity War, I really don't know where to start. There's a lot of good in Infinity War and a lot of bad, but they're all hopelessly entangled. Maybe we should start with Thanos, who has been lurking in the background of this franchise since the end credits tease in 2012's Avengers. The movie really wants to have a sympathetic villain, but doesn't quite stick the landing. Maybe it's the fact that it's easier to relate to someone who doesn't look like a CGI gummy bear. Maybe they cashed in their small supply of Good Villain points to make Killmonger back in February. Maybe it's just the fact that every time the script shifts to its serious tone, the gears start to grind a little bit. I'm going to assume it's all the above, but let's discuss the latter.

The screenplay, from the writers behind your favorite Marvel entries including Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor: The Dark World, is kind of a mess. Whenever it attempts to get profound (as any apocalyptic movie is tempted to do), it adopts a clownish grimace and forces its characters through a gauntlet of the most maudlin, overwrought monologues yet known to man. Combined with the barbaric clunkiness of the exposition every time that rears its ugly head, a lot of sequences in this movie are just punishing to watch.

A scene where you can see exactly where it's going within seconds drags out its overheated drama for full minutes, jam-packed with explanatory dialogue that finds endless ways to rephrase "you say that things are THIS way... But they're THAT way!" Infinity War never cuts to the chase, and its complicated labyrinth of life-or-death contrivances, arbitrary ticking clock action sequences, and bizarre character motivations isn't smoothed out by how painful and empty the emotional scenes are.

But it's hard to drum up stakes when you know that there are going to be 18 more of these movies in the next, like, three months. Especially when the punches are as hyperbolically pulled as this one. The Marvel films have always had a problem with balancing the power levels of its various characters, but Thanos is so perilously overpowered that when he stoops to the level of a punchfight, you wonder why he doesn't just crush these people like ants. His strength and ability wax and wane exactly as the plot needs them to, and that almost completely neuters his ability to be an impressive villain. He's literally upstaged by his sidekick Ebony Maw, who has a crazy frightening countenance, a startlingly powerful telekinetic ability, and a much more mustache-twistingly eeevil approach to his work.

The fact that the movie doesn't realize how freaking terrifying he is just goes to show that you shouldn't add characters willy nilly when you're stuck with the ones you've been teasing for a decade.

This arid, emotionless state of affairs isn't helped by the cast, which is like 800 pounds of sexy glowering shoved into a five pound bag. Whether it's because they're finally grown tired of their characters or if they just feel like they don't have to try too hard considering they'll only get like five minutes of screentime, a lot of our team roster here is on autopilot. Much like the script, these performances are leaning hard on the assumption that you already know and love these characters and they don't have to try too hard to earn your trust.

Robert Downey, Jr. has obviously getting tired of playing Iron Man for some time, and Chris Evans has literally been fatigued by the lifestyle he's had to live to keep Captain America afloat, but their disinterest is front and center here. Mark Ruffalo also seems to have lost his hold on what exactly Hulk is doing in these movies, and some of the one-scene reappearances from actors like Idris Elba are clearly catnapping. And Gwyneth Paltrow is practically comatose.

Luckily, this isn't an actors' movie. This is a posing in tight shirts movie, and that more than does the trick. And a lot of material is patched up by the people who really are pulling their weight, usually the newer additions to the franchise. The Guardians of the Galaxy, fresh off their sequel, are still packing a comic punch that keeps the lighter tone in the air, Danai Gurira from Black Panther owns the screen with just a twitch of her lip, and Chris Hemsworth is still harnessing the Kiwi magic that made Tho: Ragnarok so special. Plus, Tom Holland is flat out great, giving me the only scene that actually impacted my emotions in any way at all.

Even though the Iron-Spidey suit is... questionable.

OK, finally we've transitioned into the good parts of the movie, of which there are quite a lot. In an infinite universe all things are possible, and there's no universe as big as the MCU, so there was always going to be just as much good as bad. Or... almost as much.

The action scenes aren't all spectacular, but they're definitely engaging popcorn cinema, and one fight that brings back the magical aesthetics of Doctor Strange is a decadent visual feast, reminiscent of Dumbledore and Voldemort's showstopping battle in the Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Aesthetically, the film comes alive for a lot of its spacefaring adventures, painting worlds and landscapes we've never seen before with candy colors that are drunk on the visual potential of comic books. Not every setting is perfect (a climactic battle is staged in a location where everything is a different shade of "rust"), but there's a lot of big budget whimsy to be had here.

And when the script does shift to its lighter tones, the comedy pretty much always works. Obviously laughs are in the mouth of the beholder, but over the past few days since I saw this movie my mind has been irresistibly drawn back to a lot of the one-liners, of which I have retained a much higher quantity and with greater accuracy than even most straight-up comedy films I like. Again, the best of these are delivered by the actors who are actually trying, but everybody gets a shot at a line or two that undeniably works.

And... fine. Not all the melodrama is bad. I wish I could talk about it without spoiling it, but I can't, so I'll suffice it to say that a metanarrative decision on the parts of the filmmakers really drives home the emotional impact of an event in the third act, retroactively making it feel much more brutal than it felt, at least to me, in the moment. Ask me in the comments if you want more detail on that.

Anyway, there's really a lot wrong here, but I'm going to err on the side of enjoying popcorn cinema and forgive some of its sins in favor of the parts I did really like, at least on a shallow entertainment level. The sheer amount of balls they manage to juggle is impressive, and while it doesn't feel seamless, it's at least comprehensible, which it almost certainly didn't seem like it was going to be.

TL;DR: Avengers: Infinity War is surprisingly legible and certainly fun, but emotionally unavailable due to its jam-packed story.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1764

Reviews In This Series

Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)

Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015)

Captain America: Civil War (Russo & Russo, 2016)

Doctor Strange (Derrickson, 2016)

Black Panther (Coogler, 2018)

Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo, 2018)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)

Q2 Review Purge

Howdy, folks! You may have noticed that Popcorn Culture hasn’t updated in over a week. I’m very sorry for that, but I also have a very good reason. I’ve been in a midsummer frenzy, packing up my apartment, job hunting, prepping season 2 of Scream 101 (big announcements are on their way), And I just spent all of last weekend working on the set of All the Creatures Were Stirring, the feature film debut of my friend Rebekah McKendry, which I’m absolutely thrilled about. And then this weekend was my birthday and volunteering for Blumhouse at the ScareLA haunted house convention. All of these things, you may notice, are not formally considered “writing this blog.”

Popcorn Culture isn’t going anywhere, but in this scheduling melee, I’ve decided to once more unclog my backlog by releasing atypically brief reviews of films I’ve watched in previous weeks (and months, ugh that I haven’t had time to give my full attention to. It was either that or call a plumber. Let’s get started!

Pinocchio

Year: 1940

Supervising Directors: Hamilton Luske & Ben Sharpsteen

Cast: Dickie Jones, Christian Rub, Mel Blanc

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: Approved

A lonely woodcarver builds a marionette named Pinocchio that he wishes was his son. His wish is granted, breathing life into the puppet, but Pinocchio must prove his integrity before he becomes a Real Boy.

I know, I know. I should never have made that grand statement that I’d be marathoning every movie in the Disney canon. That was an incredibly foolish thing to so, given my track record for successfully completing marathons. But I did get a step or two further down the trail from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Pinocchio is a massive improvement on Snow White’s sometimes spotty animation, the beautiful backgrounds and consistent character designs holding up much better under modern scrutiny.

Unfortunately, the story isn’t quite there. This is a film filled with incident, but there’s not really any rhyme or reason to its plot. Pinocchio is launched through a series of visually compelling and frequently terrifying vignettes with absolutely no connective tissue. The film completely forgets the bit about his nose rowing when he lies after one scene, and Monstro devours Gepetto entirely offscreen. When you need to have other characters explain to one another what’s happening in the plot, you know there’s some deep structural damage there.

But in a nascent medium like feature animation, story is only half the battle. Pinocchio’s ridiculously advanced sense of camera mechanics and framing in a hand-drawn medium is at the height of the craft, so Pinocchio’s a must-see for artists of all kinds. Like they haven’t already seen it. Plus, it’s weirdly obsessed with butts, so there’s that.

Rating: 6/10

Fantasia

Year: 1940

Supervising Directors: James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ford Beebe Jr., Norman Ferguson, Jim Handley, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield, & Ben Sharpsteen

Cast: Leopold Stokowski, Deems Taylor, Corey Burton 

Run Time: 2 hours 5 minutes

MPAA Rating: Approved

A series of short form animation pieces set to classical music.

Talk about not having a plot! Fantasia takes Pinocchio’s slack script and completely demolishes it, replacing it with a flurry of pure visual mayhem. A mind-bending blend of animation live action, and symphonic music, Fantasia was like nothing that had ever been seen before or since, perhaps Walt Disney’s greatest artistic triumph. I, of course, am a heathen, so I’m bored silly by it.

I’m not well equipped to handle non-narrative film or non-lyrical music, though I do recognize that this is an excellent example of both. It’s a glorious burst of pure animation imagination, informing the look and feel of dozens of Disney features in the years to come with its vibrant colors, fantastical animal designs, and graceful sense of motion. The mythological sequences are a little too twee to hold my attention, though once again Disney doesn’t stray from full tilt horror, depicting ghastly creations like the Chernabog in “Night on Bald Mountain” or the surprisingly tense flood sequence facing poor Mickey in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”

I definitely forgot there were dinosaur fights in Fantasia, so that part was cool, but by far my favorite segment is an early piece using abstract color and line work to depict the emotional movements of a composition. It’s a gloriously compelling segment that is the closest anyone has ever come to a visual depiction of sound. And then there’s fairies and hippos and crap for like two hours. Like any anthology, which is undoubtedly what this is, the sum is much less than certain parts of its whole.

Rating: 6/10

Not Another Teen Movie

Year: 2001

Director: Joel Gallen

Cast: Chyler Leigh, Jaime Pressly, Chris Evans 

Run Time: 1 hour 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In a parody of 80’s and 90’s high school rom-coms, a popular jock is dared to make the indie rebel girl into prom queen material and falls in love with her along the way.

Remember the massive run of “____ Movie” parody flicks made up of pop culture offal and shattered dreams that ran in bulk from the early to mid-2000’s? Yeah, I try to forget about them too. But now we live in a world where those movies have been diverted from theaters and are pumped directly into Netflix (Tooken, anyone?), so we can look back on America’s unhealthy obsession with some degree of clarity and moral high ground. Let’s just pretend we didn’t give A Haunted House enough money to earn a sequel.

This is a low bar here, but among the Scary Movies and Date Movies and Meet the Spartanses, one movie actually stands out as being not quire so terrible as all that: Not Another Teen Movie. Perhaps it’s due to the presence of latent superstar Chris Evans, who brings a delightful blend of steely overconfidence and goofy charisma to the role. Perhaps it’s the soundtrack, which cherry picks the most instantly likeable 80’s hits from Brennan’s Bin of Beloved Pop Classics. Or perhaps it’s because the film actually has a damns sense of focus, parodying the teen movie genre as a coherent whole rather than winging off in random directions in pursuit of hot topics and trends from the millisecond it was released.

The obvious pitfalls are still present (whole scenes are lifted from other movies almost untouched, ands some of the humor is just too random to make heads or tails of) but Not Another Teen Movie is striving to be an actual parody, using elements of its genre, and it’s intermittently successful. That makes it infinitely better than even its closest competition. The fact that there are a few laugh-out-loud jokes that don’t cop from other movies and a handful of trenchant, actually analytical observations on the genre means that this movie is the Citizen Kane of its cycle. Even if it sports a totally random, ill-conceived musical number and a deeply boring football scene. Although, to be fair, pretty much every high school movie has a boring football scene, so they got that right too.

Rating: 6/10

Mean Girls

Year: 2004

Director: Mark Waters

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Jonathan Bennett, Rachel McAdams

Run Time: 1 hour 37 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A new girl at school is coerced into infiltrating the evil popular clique to take them down, but she unwittingly becomes one herself.

Reviewing Mean Girls is a challenging undertaking as a millennial. The film is such a zeitgeisty hit that it barely reads as a movie anymore. It’s just a carousel of Tumblr gifs, Twitter bios, and whispered quotes in the back of classrooms. But it has gotten that way for a reason. It’s a damn good movie. Well, it’s a damn good comedy.

The script is witty and sharp, with a plot loose enough to allow the characters to flourish yet still keep track of the throughline. The punchlines show off that then-undiscovered Tina Fey pop, and the characters watch Friday the 13th Part 2 on Halloween, so they clearly have their heads screwed on straight. With a gratuitously fantastic ensemble and a Lindsay Lohan in her prime to give voice to the sharp screenplay, Mean Girls can’t help but be a winner.

The actual filmmaking is totally cardboard and anonymous, but who the hell cares? Mean Girls is the last great teen movie (well, Easy A gives it a run for its money, but still), and its clever premise is both a generation-defining clash of the high school classes and a sweetly powerful movie about the damage teen girls can cause to one another and why.

Rating: 9/10

The Last Five Years

Year: 2014

Director: Richard LaGravenese

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Jeremy Jordan, Tamara Mintz 

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A relationship is shown out of order in a series of musical numbers depicting its inception, triumphs, pitfalls, and eventual destruction.

Sometimes a movie is all about performances. It’s a good thing, too, because without Jeremy Jordan and out-of-left-field musical prodigy Anna Kendrick, The Last Five Years would crumple like a bouncy castle in a power outage. The movie is essentially (500) Days of Summer cross-pollinated with an opera, and though its tone management is ferociously askew (Kendrick is saddled with an Adele album’s worth of ballads, with Jordan receiving all the poppy, high energy stuff), it’s a small-scale love story that lives and dies on the actors’ ability to apply human emotion to a battery of arbitrary musical numbers, which they do with aplomb.

There are some intensely memorable longform musical sequences at play here, but The Last Five Years is crippled by a devastating problem: It’s pointless. The out-of-order gimmick is but a lark, and we leave this couple having gained no particular insight into why their story is worth telling. The only reason it’s not told in chronological order is that no musical could have been so mismanaged as to backload so many weepers. This is a vehicle for two delightful young performers, not a necessary entry into the cinematic canon of doomed relationships.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1684

When Tony Comes Marching Home

Year: 2016

Director: Anthony & Joe Russo

Cast: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson

Run Time: 2 hours 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Captain America: Civil War is one of those frustrating movies that renders film criticism even more useless than it already is. A negative review is but a fragile echo in the void while Marvel plows through their stacks of money with a bulldozer. And a positive review is extravagantly pointless, because you know you’ve seen the goddamn thing. But I watched it, and I’m morally obligated to give my two cents. Why not have some fun with this exuberantly pointless exercise?

I’m not a regular blog. I’m a cool blog.

So, Captain America. The Avenger that nobody would give a flying fart about if he weren’t played by the human mountain we call Chris Evans. Full disclosure, I haven’t seen the first two Cap movies, but I’ve been on my roommate’s Tumblr page enough to grasp the gist of things. The constant between the films (aside from a set of wholly bland villains) is Captain Steve Rogers and James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan), and the fact that the series is essentially a longform exploration of male friendship is by far the most interesting thing about it. Oh, also Cap’s friend Falcon (Anthony Mackie) is there, though he hardly finds a convincing reason for his presence. A third wheel is a third wheel, even if you’ve got a bird suit.

Bucky has been brainwashed by the Nazis Hydra to become the Winter Soldier, a mindless assassin who carries out their wickedest deeds when read a special passage from a Dr. Seuss-esque red book. Tensions have already been rising between the Avengers when, following a botched mission, the government decides to regulate the team, having them answer to the UN. Because nothing streamlines saving the world like handing the reins to international bureaucracy. This effort is spearheaded by Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), Iron Man himself.

When Bucky lands himself in the sights of the coalition, an already dubious Steve assembles a team of MCU cameos to help him save his friend and also the world (from the requisite milquetoast villain, Zemo – played by Daniel Brühl), defying the UN Accords. Iron Man assembles his own team, including an olive branch from Sony: Spider-Man (Tom Holland).

Meanwhile, Hulk and Thor are vacationing in the Poconos.

It’s intriguing that both of this year’s major superhero mash-ups (Civil War and Batman v Superman, and please allow me to extend my humblest apologies for bringing up that crapfest again) directly grapple with the collateral damage caused by superhero brawls. It’s an important conversation to be having, in terms of the depiction of onscreen violence, but I can hardly think of a less exciting tend for comic book movies. It’s just one step above that stultifying superhero standby of “I must resist using my powers because they’re bad (and we can’t afford the special effects).”

And do you want to know the worst thing? In terms of directly addressing the repercussions of their own violent content, Batman v Superman is actually the superior film. Only in that regard, mind you, but talk about a plot twist. That movie, while incomprehensible, actually had high stakes and some clear consequences. In Civil War, the Accords are pretty inconsequential, just a garnish for a massive action sequence between two sides chosen as arbitrarily as a game of dodgeball.

Civil War plays it way too safe, and the supposedly grand, operatic plot beats feel like they’re tiptoeing on eggshells, not wanting to throw a wrench in Phase 3 with anything as gauche as [SPOILERS a major character death or even a stubbed toe. They refuse to even allow ludicrously minor characters like War Machine (Don Cheadle) the dignity of being bumped off to raise the stakes, no matter how clearly he super duper died in the film. And so help me God, if I don’t get to see Thanos crack open Vision’s (Paul Bettany) stupid, didactic Klaatu forehead before the end of Phase 3, I’m going to rip myself in half.] All I’m asking for is that a storyline as grand and sweeping as Civil War be treated with a little more gravity than Thor’s latest bubble bath.

Well, maybe I’m overextending myself expecting gravity from this guy.

OK, I’m calming down. Though Civil War fails to reach the heights of the raging maelstrom promised by the comics, the trailers, and the advance reviews, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad film. I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. But as a piece of popcorn superhero mayhem, the film largely delivers. Frankly, the one-on-one action sequences between Captain America and Iron Man pull so many punches that they end up smacking themselves in the face (and yes, a hardcore moment that is almost instantly retconned counts as a pulled punch), but when our other heroes get in on the fun, the movie gets a shot in the arm.

Where Civil War truly triumphs is its ensemble action, which is an astonishing feat of character juggling. The ubiquity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is helpful, precluding the film from having to reiterate backstories for returning characters like the spuriously-accented Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), the expert agent Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), or the sharpshooter Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner, and I am pleased as punch to report that his appearance got the biggest applause from my audience), but the script stays true to their personalities and longform arcs.

It manages this while also introducing two entirely new heroes to the pack: the vengeful Wakandan prince Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and the snotty teen Spider-Man in his third cinematic iteration. I’m deeply concerned to admit that I actually enjoyed Tom Holland in the role, because I sure as hell don’t want to shell out money for an umpteenth Spidey flick.

The guy has more regenerations than a Time Lord.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. The movie doesn’t get as distracted by its massive smorgasbord of superheroes as I do. In a jam-packed chase sequence as well as the inevitable showdown between both teams in a massive airfield, Civil War effortlessly weaves an infinitum of motivations, personalities, and character struggles into one seamless, breathtaking tapestry. The only hero who doesn’t get his fair share of the pie is Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), who’s just here to have fun. Although, considering the cotton candy froth that his film turned out to be, I guess that’s still staying true to Ant-Man’s mission statement.

Plus, despite the stakes being dismayingly low on the grand narrative scale, these fight scenes are filled with little moments that will sock you in the gut. One scene in particular with a helicopter stopped my heart for a second.

OK, TWO scenes in particular with a helicopter.

The relative intensity with Russo brothers bring to the action also serves to give the Whedon-tinged dialogue more comedic punch when it does arrive. This is a transitional film between two Marvel phases with two distinct personalities, and tonally it’s an excellent midpoint between the both of them. So while I found myself immensely frustrated by large portions of this overlong film (this is no empty complaint – I could slice half an hour off this behemoth and never miss it – including two, count ‘em, two romances so chaste they feel vacuum sealed), it’s still an excellent entry in the overall Marvel canon. Enough that I can confidently proclaim that, whatever happens, Doctor Strange will still be the worst MCU flick out this year.

TL;DR: Captain America: Civil War is a grand achievement in unwieldy ensemble filmmaking, but plays it too safe to be a superhero classic.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1286

Reviews In This Series
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015)
Ant-Man (Reed, 2015)
Captain America: Civil War (Russo & Russo, 2016)
Black Panther (Coogler, 2018)
Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo, 2018)
Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)

New Year's Resolutions: Yuk Yuk Yuck

Who’s ready for a tsunami of white posters? Here’s a heaping platter of mini reviews for comedy films I screened in the fourth quarter of 2015.

Miss Congeniality

Year: 2000

Director: Donald Petrie

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, Benjamin Bratt

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A tomboyish FBI agent is given a makeover to go undercover and stop a terrorist attack on the Miss USA pageant.

What is there that I can possibly say about Miss Congeniality that could contribute to the conversation? See, there’s the trouble with comedies. You know what you’re going to get and you get it. It works or it doesn’t work, but only in a very finite number of combinations. Sandra Bullock is a charmer as an FBI agent so flamboyantly tomboyish that she doesn’t own a brush I mean, come on. I’m as macho as they come and I own a brush. Don’t fact check that.), her sassy gay mentor can’t figure out how he could possibly make her beautiful despite the fact that she looks like goddamn Sandra Bullock, and she finds a balance between love and work. It’s funny. Bada bing, bada boom.

The truly interesting thing about Miss Congeniality is the gender politics that form the story’s backbone. At its heart, the film is a story about a woman learning to love other women and accepting that traditional femininity is a valid choice, even if it’s not one that she personally wishes to make. More than romance or action sequences (of which there are a surprising amount of the latter), the film focuses on female friendship, which is always a welcome addition to any comedy, especially such a humorous fish-out-of-water extravaganza.

Rating: 8/10

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

Year: 2005

Director: John Pasquin

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Regina King, William Shatner 

Run Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Gracie Hart is now the public face of the FBI, but she struggles against the organization’s restraints when her friend, the former Miss U.S.A., is kidnapped.

First and foremost, I would like to commend Miss Congeniality 2 for forgoing the typical comedy sequel route. It could very easily have been, “Gracie! We need you to go undercover at the Miss Universe Pageant in Acapulco! It’s bigger so it’s funnier!” However, instead of that claptrap, this film continues the universe of the original in a realistic and satisfying way. There is no pageant this time, because there’s no way such a high profile mission could actually be repeated, but the skills and friends that Gracie made there must come into play again, all with the undercurrent of women from different walks of life forming bonds: this time in the shape of a buddy cop story between Gracie and an aggressive new recruit.

The comedy itself is broader and glitzier, and never quite as effective, but as a story continuation it’s satisfying as hell. Drag shows, celebrity cameos, and old lady shtick prevent Miss Congeniality 2 from launching itself above the lowest common denominator, but strong women are once again front and center in this action-comedy, so it ain’t all bad. Plus they save their absolute worst tawdry callback to the original film until the final scene, so there’s plenty of goodwill saved up to cancel it out. All in all, it’s not a film I’ll ever feel the need to watch again, but I’m not sorry I saw it in the first place.

Rating: 6/10

Ghost Town

Year: 2008

Director: David Koepp

Cast: Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear, Téa Leoni 

Run Time:  1 hour 43 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A misanthropic dentist briefly dies during a botched surgery and discovers that he can now see ghosts. He reluctantly agrees to help one out in exchange for being left alone and ends up falling for his newly engaged widow.

As you can probably tell, this is pretty much a comedy remake of The Sixth Sense, one of my favorite horror movies. I find no shame in admitting that, as a result, Ghost Town is one of my favorite comedies. They’re also two of the only movies that make me cry every time. I feel like with those last three sentences, I have given you a pretty deep glimpse into my soul. Geez, buy me a drink first.

Giving Greg Kinnear his Jason Bateman The Gift role, in which he finally embraces the fact that his stock character is kind of an asshole, Ghost Town matches his acid-tongued charms with the professional curmudgeonry of Ricky Gervais. It’s a match made in Hell, and these two awful people bounce off one another until they slowly learn what it means to be human. It’s a typical comedy setup, really, but with a fantastically offbeat cast. Throw in Téa Leoni as the begrudging love interest and Kristen Wiig as a vacant surgeon and you have an utterly unforgettable ensemble.

The comedy isn’t flash-bang, light up the room funny, but it’s never a dud, always hitting its marks with idiosyncratic charisma. As delivered by its stunning cast, it presents an emotionally valid storyline that vies for subtle humanism over grand romantic overtures. Plus, it probably has the best soundtrack of the century (Drive would probably be a close second). I love this movie, perhaps way more than anybody else in the entire world, but that’s fine. If you want to experience life through my eyes for 90 minutes, pop this movie on and bask in the glow.

Rating: 10/10

What's Your Number?

Year: 2011

Director: Mark Mylod

Cast: Anna Faris, Chris Evans, Ari Graynor

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A woman who has slept with 20 men finds out that women with over 20 sexual partners rarely find their soulmate. She teams up with her lothario neighbor to track down her exes and see if they’re The One because she has already hit her ceiling.

For totally safe, female-led sex comedies, What’s Your Number? is totally adequate. It ticks all the boxes to be what it needs to be without striving for something more. Imminent wedding of a close friend/relative? Check. Kitschy hobby that’s more satisfying than actual job, but she only needs a push to make it a career? Checkaroony. Somehow affording an enormous apartment on literally no salary? Hell yeah, that’s a check. Two people who don’t realize they’re perfect for each other until the very end? Ding ding ding! We have a winner. And don’t you dare complain that that’s a spoiler. You literally don’t need to have seen a single movie in your life to predict the end of What’s Your Number?.

Its two main functions, both of which is performs with mechanical perfection, are to provide a heaping hors d'oeuvre tray of man meat courtesy of Chris Evans (who graciously braves the cold every other scene) and give a showcase to Anna Faris’ ever-underappreciated talents. Faris and Chris Evans(’ torso) are both served well, but the thin script holding them up sags a bit in the middle, like a generic brand paper towel in one of those comparison commercials. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but it’s charming and has font jokes, so it’s an at least tolerable good time.

Rating: 6/10

Sex and the City

Year: 2008

Director: Michael Patrick King

Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon

Run Time: 2 hours 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Carrie Bradshaw and her friend continue to struggle with the responsibilities of life, love, work, and sex… in the city.

Sex and the City was a huge hit, so it was no surprise when it was bestowed with one of TV’s very rare movie continuations, four years after it went off the air. What is surprising is that director/writer Michael Patrick King attempts to jam an entire season’s worth of material into the feature, leaving it teetering with a bloated and unwieldy 2 ½ hour runtime. In sitcom format, Sex and the City is a sprightly watch, but at this staggering volume, the flaws of the show become concentrated into one punishing punchbowl of pain.

Our tacky materialistic single gal Carrie Bradshaw is now a tacky, materialistic engaged gal, and she calls upon her far more interesting friends to coo and fawn over her while suppressing their vomit at the sight of the mammoth plastic flower she has grafted to her sternum. You can tell that they’re matured since the show’s finale, because sometimes there’s a toddler in a high chair shoved into the corner of the frame. 

While her friends deal with a variety of realistic human problems (well, Miranda and Sam at least deal with spousal betrayal, sexual dry spells, and unsatisfying relationships. Charlotte has a series of successes quietly in the corner and resurfaces every once in a while to chirp and make shocked faces over lavishly overpriced lunches), Carrie whines about having the wrong area code and wrecks her relationship because this movie needs a plot.

Sex and the City is greeting card comedy for miserable white 40-somethings, at least whenever Carrie is around. The only recognizable jokes she makes come in the form of truly ludicrous brand name-dropping and self-centered bleating. Cut her out of the movie and it would be a sultry breeze. But alas, that’s the one thing that’s never going to happen, so we’re stuck with this interminable Titanic of nauseating commercialism.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1565

Reviews In This Series

Sex and the City (King, 2008)

Sex and the City 2 (King, 2010)

The Best Friends Gang

Year: 2015

Director: Joss Whedon

Cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo

Run Time: 2 hours 21 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but comics are kind of a big deal now. Audiences worldwide just can't get enough of hot women in leather, even hotter men in leather, robots, monsters, sardonic quips, and wanton property damage. After Marvel combined the superhero formula with the geek champion auteur Joss Whedon, the ne plus ultra of nerd culture was born: The Avengers. The film went on to make all the money in the world.

This year's sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron is more or less the lynchpin of Marvel's Phase Two, the success of which could make or break the approximately 2,600 years of scheduling that the studio has already announced. It was inevitable that Avengers 2 would make money on name value alone, but a massive dip in quality could really poison audiences against the Phase Three efforts, which will include lesser-known properties like Doctor Strange, The Black Panther, and Captain Marvel.

Luckily for the company and for comic fans everywhere, Age of Ultron is a fairly worthy successor to the Avengers throne. Marvel ain't going nowhere just yet.

And yet there's still no Black Widow movie.

Age of Ultron begins where absolutely nothing left off: with the Avengers re-teamed, storming a Hydra stronghold to steal Mr. MacGuffin Loki's scepter. If you don't have a thorough knowledge of all 10 previous Marvel Cinematic Universe entries as well as one or two of the television shows, prepare to hit the ground sprinting and wheezing. 

While you're hacking up a lung, let's have a brief re-introduction to our main cast of characters. The assembled Avengers include Iron Man aka Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), the billionaire playboy weapons manufacturer with a robotic exoskeleton; Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), a gamma radiated scientist who turns into the opposite of the Jolly Green Giant when he's angered; Captain America (Chris Evans), the long-preserved purveyor of the American Dream; Thor (Chris Hemsworth), an otherworldly being with otherworldly deltoids about whom Norse mythology has been written; Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), an ex-spy with thighs that can snap your neck; and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), an ace shot with a bow and arrow, and my personal favorite Avenger. 

While we're on the subject, where's my Hawkeye movie?

The Avengers are mowing through the faceless goons when Hydra introduces their two newest creations, the X-Men mutants Eastern European experiment volunteers, the twin siblings Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). Their parents were killed by Stark weaponry and they want nothing more than good ol' fashioned revenge on Iron Man and his posse. Eventually, for reasons that he is a dick, Tony Stark decides to see if he can create artificial intelligence. He does, and it is called Ultron (James Spader, of all people), and it wants to destroy the human race. Good work, Tony.

While Ultron tries to find himself an enhanced body and wipe out the population of the Earth, the Avengers work their way through a series of interpersonal tensions and have climactic, building-leveling fights in just about every location across the globe that will let film crews past Customs.

My personal biggest concern with Age of Ultron was if it could capture the sprightly comedy of the first installment, and I was not disappointed. Sarcasm and wit drips from the eaves of the film like the aftermath of an explosion at the molasses factory. The best scenes of the film are those that take a break from the Important Comix moments to just let the personalities of the characters ping off of one another. As this was exactly what I was looking for, I was immensely pleased, but the fact remains that the film is a little lopsided. The renewed strength of the dialogue can't quite match the diminishing returns of the battle sequences.

I understand that there's only so many combinations of blows, laser beams, and hammer thrusts that the action scenes can provide (which they do, amply), but there's a certain lack of creativity behind the combat, especially in the climactic sequence. There are some admittedly terrific combo moves when two Avengers combine their powers, but for the most part these sequences feel disjointed. It doesn't feel like a team working together so much as a series of vignettes about punching.

Hella rad vignettes, but still.

The biggest flaw of the film, and the only one than comes even within a mile of being film-breaking is its middle third. There is a swath of about 30 minutes in which the humor is dropped in favor of arbitrarily introducing what feels like dozens of plot strands that make the whole mess far more complicated than it needs to be, leaning a little heavily on extracurricular comic-reading to get its point across. Also there's a few scenes sprinkled into the middle that feel like they're ripped directly from a 90's techno-thriller where high school kids battle online villains through the "'Net." It doesn't make a lot of sense and it's not particularly fun, but it doesn't take too long for the film to incorporate these elements and get back on its feet.

Also there's some shockingly dark implications that the Avengers might not be much better than a terrorist group considering the widespread damage they inflict across the globe, some of which echoes 9/11 imagery a little too closely for comfort. The film seems tentatively tempted to explore this thread before it jams itself back into Fun! Action! Mode.

HA! HA! HA! Big funny Iron Man! Please don't think about the skyscraper we just leveled.

But the dark side of Age of Ultron isn't ample. It's not like this is a Christopher Nolan flick. For the most part it's an engaging, light adventure pic that reliably executes what should honestly be a premise as stale as a Big Lots gingerbread house. It's fun, it's big, and it's thrilling. What more could you want, honestly?

And now that we have an entire Avengers film and umptybillion Iron Man/Captain America sequels under our belts, we know the characters more intimately than ever before so the juggling act of handling so many personalities simultaneously is a little smoother. This is perhaps the only element of the film that's actively better than its predecessor. Age of Ultron grabs a handful of genuine character moments  and tosses them to each of the Avengers like an overeager flower girl. These developments are perhaps a little bit more reliant on basic emotional indicators rather than truly intensely three-dimensional personas, but holy hell we're talking about a comic book movie. This is revolutionary.

So overall, yes, Avengers: Age of Ultron is a fun time at the movies. It doesn't capture the lightning in a bottle that the original film did, but its light bulb in a bottle does the trick.

PSA: Once the black and white credits scroll, feel free to take off. You can stick around until the end of the credits if you wish, but brace yourselves for a fat wad of nothing.

TL;DR: Avengers: Age of Ultron is a reliably entertaining sequel to a generation-defining superhero hit.

Rating: 7/10

Should I Spend Money On This? You already have.

Word Count: 1217

Reviews In This Series

Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015)

Captain America: Civil War (Russo & Russo, 2016)

Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo, 2016)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)