Captain America: Civil War Movie Review

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one hell of an impressive machine. It has churned out three Iron Man movies, two Thor movies, a dedicated Hulk movie, two Avengers movies, Ant Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and now a third Captain America movie (or Avengers depending on how you look at it). Through all of it, the stories have toyed with more important themes and topicality. They have often remained a notch above just popcorn and candy, explosions and mayhem. Now, after lots and lots of catastrophic destruction in the name of heroism and the self-anointed good trying to stymie evil, Captain America: Civil War aims to dive deep on the divide between those who would allow for an unchecked team of independent heroes (or vigilantes, call them what you will) and those who would seek to control them, track them, and direct them in order to minimize collateral damage and tamp down the public belief that these “enhanced individuals” are running roughshod over the globe.

Deadpool Movie Review

For all the hoopla surrounding Deadpool – strong box office receipts; excellent audience reception; and even positive critical consensus – it doesn’t take long to look past the surface to see that there’s not really much there apart from an admittedly entertaining comic book adaptation. Shouldn’t that be enough for a comic book superhero movie? We go for the entertainment, right? But nothing else?

This may be a case of people getting a little too excited just because the movie attempts to break ranks with the clichés of the genre. Instead of pleasant PG-13 action that’s short on bad language and long on mild violence, Deadpool sears up and down, there’s sex, and the violence (though cartoonish) very violent and full of blood. This ground has been trod before. Kick Ass got there first, although I think Deadpool does it better and with great moral clarity.

Kingsman: The Secret Service Movie Review

I continue to fall victim to these early-in-the-year releases that get good reviews, forgetting every year that for the most part, these films are not very good. It’s just that critics are desperate to grasp at something remotely interesting in the early months on the calendar. Kingsman: The Secret Service is one of these movies. It’s all flash and panache, giving the illusion of something stylish and innovative. This is Matthew Vaughn’s second film adapted from a Mark Millar comic. Kick Ass was the first and, truth be told, violence is treated equally in both films, which tells me that Millar and Vaughn see no difference between violence committed by and against a twelve-year old girl and English gentlemen.

Avengers: Age of Ultron Movie Review

Does it really matter what anyone thinks of a movie like Avengers: Age of Ultron? These kinds of movies don’t live and die by either critical or popular opinion. They are guaranteed to rake in huge revenue not only at the box office, but through merchandising tie-ins. The hype and excitement, the feeling of its being a cultural event THE movie you must see this summer (or early spring as it opened in early May) ensure that hordes of people will go to see it. And those multitudes have been programmed from decades of action-packed, effects-laden event movies to believe that all they have to do is stimulate the physical senses. As long as lots of stuff blows up, implodes, collapses, cracks, breaks, splinters, and crunches accompanied, of course, by appropriately deafening sound effects, then the movie has accomplished its primary goal.

Man of Steel Movie Review

I’m not even sure there’s much point in having a critical view of a movie like Man of Steel. What exactly does it add to the conversation? When an indie or an arthouse film is bad, at least it’s bad in a way that still contributes something to cinema. When big, bloated action films are bad – and most of them are – they’re just plain bad. And anyway, they’re not made for people who actually try to put nuanced thought into their movie watching.

The Dark Knight Rises Movie Review

I’m not ready to jump on the bandwagon of The Dark Knight Rises. Before I get labeled a hater or someone who badmouths Hollywood movies for the sake of it, let me point out I was a big fan of both Inception and The Dark Knight. It is true I dislike most big budget action films, but not for the sake of setting myself apart from the masses. It’s because they are so often so bad. The world was geared up to love The Dark Knight Rises. It’s been built up immensely. Everyone – not just Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. – has significant investment in its success. If you hate the third part, what does that say about your love for the first two? We are primed to enjoy this final chapter in the trilogy. I’m afraid my primer didn’t take.

The Amazing Spider-Man Movie Review

Was it really necessary for Sony to reboot the Spider-Man series only five years after the last film and ten years after the first? Is Sam Raimi’s trilogy already ancient history? Apparently for the Millenials anything older than half a decade is passé. I don’t mind a new actor in the Peter Parker/Spider-Man role or a new director at the helm. James Bond has changed hands through six actors across fifty years. The problem I find is the absurd need to retell the origin story. The Batman series went through three actors and two directors with a major stylistic shift halfway through without getting back into Bruce Wayne’s history. It was Christopher Nolan who rebooted that franchise by taking a completely new track on the mythology. Unlike Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man which is virtually indistinguishable from the first trilogy.

The Incredible Hulk Movie Review

The Incredible Hulk has the distinction of being not only the best teaser for The Avengers, but perhaps the most capable of standing alone, the most brisk in its storytelling. It falls somewhat short of Iron Man, which elevated the bar slightly by having a charismatic actor and hero in Robert Downey, Jr., who really kept those films light on their feet. Edward Norton in the Bruce Banner role is more sullen and brooding, as anyone with a Hulk affliction likely would be. He can’t risk being around anything stressful or anger-inducing lest he transform into a huge green rage monster, tearing up everything in sight and then waking up nude in another country (his first incident in the film takes him from Brazil to Guatemala).

Captain America: The First Avenger Movie Review

When Steve Rogers is brought in to a super secret military lab via a secret passage in a Brooklyn shop, you have to ask yourself how efficacious it is to have a super secret military lab replete with doctors, scientists, senators and military police who all had to enter via a secret passage in a Brooklyn shop. Aren’t they at all concerned that anyone spying on them might wonder why none of these several dozen people ever exit this magical retail establishment? All I ask of action movies besides being exciting and fun and written in a way that suggest the screenwriters didn’t sleep walk their way through it, is that the story makes some logical sense on its own terms. For the most part Captain America: The First Avenger passes the last test. The first ones could use a bit of work.

Thor Movie Review

The Marvel Comics movie Thor is more than just a commercial for The Avengers, it’s also a movie where characters behave in ways that are necessitated by the plot and some adherence to the comic lore. It’s a movie that spent so much time and energy creating two different planets (one inspired by Flash Gordon and the other by The Lord of the Rings) that they forget to apply some production design to a New Mexico town that abruptly ends at the end of Main St. That Kenneth Branagh stooped to direct this mess does not speak highly of Kenneth Branagh. Has he become the latest in a series of unique directorial talents to become a slave to a large paycheck? How does a man whose screen representations of Shakespeare are rivaled only by Olivier come to work with such hackneyed writing and wooden acting?

The Avengers Movie Review

A funny thing started happening in my mind a few days after seeing The Avengers – I actually began feeling like I wanted to see it again. This after coming out of it with the usual lackluster feelings I have after another superhero movie. The bar has been set so low for our expectations when it comes to the latest incarnation of some colorful but troubled person with special powers that we think of films as uninteresting as Spider Man 2 and Iron Man as great works of art. I enjoyed those films almost as much as anyone I suppose and I agree they are among the best the genre has to offer, but as far as I can tell the only thing that sets them apart from junk like The Fantastic Four is a slightly better screenplay and at least an attempt at something deeper and richer beyond blowing stuff up real big and loud.

X-Men: First Class Movie Review

Superhero movies used to mercifully few and far between. Now they’re ubiquitous along with their various sequels, prequels and spinoffs. I understand why Hollywood studios continue to return to the same source material. It’s guaranteed box office receipts without having to do the heavy lifting of crafting new character. And basically the stories are ready-made clotheslines that have basic garments that always hang on them and the hired writers just have to decide on the occasional undergarment or accent to place alongside the old and familiar. So it is with X-Men: First Class, the fifth iteration of the X-Men franchise, this time going back to the origins of Professor Charles Xavier, Magneto née Erik Lenscherr, and the special school established by Charles to nurture and guide other mutants to learn to control their abilities.

The Adventures of Tintin Movie Review: Tintin, We Welcome You to America

The opening credits of Steven Spielberg’s motion capture animation The Adventures of Tintin is probably the most exciting opening credits since the same director’s Catch Me If You Can. The title designs are similar, both based on the classic Hollywood work of Saul Bass with spritely jazz compositions by the great film composer John Williams. His Tintin opening theme highlights such instruments as are not often heard in orchestras, but which lend themselves credibly to the time period (1930s) and setting (Europe) of the “Tintin” stories. Amid the fluttering flutes, dancing clarinets and staccato brass we hear accordion, harpsichord and bells all featured prominently. It’s a sequence that offers the promise of excitement and adventure to come. It’s been a long time since I had that feeling in the first moments of a movie. Unfortunately, what followed turned out to be a slight letdown.

Cowboys & Aliens Movie Review: An Interesting Melding of Genre Films

What a fascinating concept, the mixing of genres in Cowboys & Aliens, director Jon Favreau’s latest action spectacular with enough brains to rise slightly above the usual mediocre dreck. Why must it be inevitable that every science fiction film about alien invasion has either a contemporary or a futuristic setting? If you’ve ever wondered how men on horseback with six-shooters and rifles would fend off technologically superior alien invaders, Cowboys & Aliens is a mash-up that might satisfy your thirst for knowledge. At any rate, all alien invaders are by definition technologically superior to humans.

Wanted Movie Review: Matrix Lite - Not the Same Great Taste, Less Fulfilling

First published on American Madness on 30 January 2009.

Republished here unaltered.

A young man works day in and day out in a soul-crushing office job. He’s thoroughly dissatisfied with his life, which he views as devoid of any meaning. One day he’s visited by a mysterious stranger in the form of a beautiful woman. He is saved from someone who seems to be after him and brought to meet a ragtag team led by a wizened black man who will give him spiritual guidance while training him to free his mind and become a highly skilled fighter and assassin.

Tamara Drewe Movie Review: Stephen Frears Attempts Classic British Farce

Gemma Arterton as Tamara Drewe makes heads turn

Stephen Frears is no stranger to directing films that find notes of humor in dark subject matter. The Hit, The Grifters, and even to some extent High Fidelity, all comfortably juxtapose the two moods. His latest film, Tamara Drewe, is an uncomfortable melding of comedy into serious drama. I’m not sure he’s entirely pulled it off here.

It’s the story of the goings-on in a small village called Ewedown in the English countryside. There, Beth and Nicholas Hardiment (Tamsin Greig and Roger Allam) run a quaint hideaway for writers from all around to get “far from the madding crowd,” as their sign out front proclaims. And wouldn’t you know it, but an American writer has taken up residence there to complete his Thomas Hardy book. As (bad) luck would have it, this little spot is also anything but far from the madding crowd. With the high jinks that go on it’s a wonder that Nicholas can manage to crank out another in a series of popular detective novels year after year. Perhaps it’s his shameless philandering with a younger woman that gets him through. The screenplay was written by Moira Buffini based on a serial comic strip by Posy Simmonds. The comic strip itself is based on Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd.

Iron Man 2 Movie Review: A Preview of Our Coming Attractions

I was not one of the legions of critics who fawned over the first Iron Man. I thought it was a top-notch superhero film, but hardly the revelation that many thought it to be. It benefited greatly from a charismatic lead actor (Robert Downey Jr.) in a role of aching narcissism, egotism and bravado. Now along comes the sequel this year and like many a superhero movie sequel that preceded it, comes more bloated with extra characters, extra plot and extra baddies.

Kick-Ass Movie Review: If You Think This Movie Is Funny, Please Seek Professional Medical Help

The opening, depicted in full in the trailer, shows a man wearing an odd costume with wings standing on top of a New York skyscraper. A voiceover talks about fantasy of wanting to be a superhero. The man leaps from the ledge and plummets head first toward the street below while the crowds cheer. He slams full speed into a taxi cab – dead. This brief sequence is a microcosm of what follows.

I really wanted to like Kick-Ass. Really, I did. I thought the trailer showed great potential for ironic satire. I followed with bemusement the minor uproar over the filthy language that comes out of the mouth of Hit Girl, an eleven year old superhero played by Chloe Moretz. Then the reviews started coming in and some critics were put off by the violence inflicted by and on that same young girl. I thought maybe some of these critics were simply old codgers who were no longer in tune with the hip. Then I saw it and I never thought I would have this reaction to a movie in my life: This movie is morally repugnant.