Kitsch-y

It doesn’t look like my review of John Carter ran in this week’s issue, so here it is in its entirety. Make your weekend movie choice wisely, my friends.

When you cast someone’s whose last name is Kitsch in a bound-to-be-cheesy sci-fi action film, you’re begging for a review that says that the movie is “kitschy.” And that would be perfect description of John Carter, since the film is “a worthless imitation of art of recognized value.” (Thank you, Wikipedia, for that apt definition.) In some ways, I thought I was watching some weird mash-up of two other kitsch touchstones, Flash Gordon and Stargate. Yet, I think the director Andrew Stanton, who gave us the Oscar-winning Wall-E, and the film’s original screenwriter Michael Chabon, who won a Pulitzer for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, were trying for populist high art, something along the lines of Avatar or Star Wars. But the film, despite its technical achievements and good, silly fun, is just two hours and 12 minutes of kitsch.

John Carter is based on A Princess of Mars, the 100-year-old novel that was the first of Edgar Rice Burrough’s enormously popular Barsoom novels. In these books, the people who live on Mars call their planet Barsoom, and John Carter is a Civil War veteran from Virginia who is mysteriously transported from a cave in Arizona to the dusty deserts of the red planet, where he falls in love with a Martian princess, befriends some green tribesmen, and gets into a lot of fights. The eleven novels in the series were credited as major influences of Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, Michael Crichton, and even the work of NASA. Burroughs, who also gave us Tarzan, is arguably the greatest pulp fiction writer of the 20th century. While his work was certainly not kitsch, and it was certainly wildly imaginative, it was certainly not high art. So maybe John Carter is an apt representation of Burroughs’ work.

After a brief prologue on Mars, the film begins with John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) dying at a young age and leaving his massive estate to his nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Among John’s belongings is a diary, which tells the story of John’s accidental teleportation from a strange cave to Barsoom, where he is at first taken captive by the Tharks, a tribe of giant, six-armed, two-tusked green men. John befriends both the tribe’s chief Tars (Willem Defoe) and his daughter Sola (Samantha Morton) before he inserts himself into a battle between warring humanoid Martians that occurs in the skies over the Tharks’ city. John rescues Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins, playing a feminist revision of Burroughs’ damsel in distress) of the city of Helium from the evil Sab Than of the city Zodanga, and, of course, Carter and Dejah fall in love. Sab Than has been given a strange, all-powerful blue zapper from some god-like beings and is out to destroy Helium – unless Deja marries him. There are sword fights, explosions, impressive special effects, a little romance, and a dialogue as wooden as anything James Cameron has ever written.

It should also be noted that on Mars, all humans speak with English accents. And they’re all played by actors best known for their roles on HBO shows like Rome, The Wire, and True Blood. And they all do the worst work of their careers, which isn’t terribly surprising since they’re acting on green screens and speaking words that would sound absurd coming out of Meryl Streep’s and Laurence Olivier’s mouths. Kitsch, in the first of his two mega-budget sci-fi action films that arrive this spring (the next is Battleship) and mark his transition from Friday Night Lights brooder to hopeful movie star, is fine – handsome, fierce, charming. But he is not very much of any of these things, and like Collins and the whole movie, while not worthless,  he is mostly forgettable.

John Carter
Directed by Andrew Stanton
Written by Andrew Stanton and Mark Andrews & Michael Chabon
Starring Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, and Dominic West
Rated PG-13
At your local multiplex

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rf55GTEZ_E]
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Hippies are still funny

Wanderlust isn’t that great, but I laughed and laughed and laughed. My review won’t be printed until next Thursday, bu the movie is already open, so here’s the review.

After seeing Wanderlust, I was exhausted and teary. Happily, it wasn’t a maudlin factory of crying jags, like some of last year’s Oscar bait. No: I just hadn’t laughed as hard at the movies since Bridesmaids. While not nearly as surprising nor as carefully and smartly written as Bridesmaids (which was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay), Wanderlust does something similar: it mines the recession’s soul-crushingness for cathartic humor. And it gives Paul Rudd yet another opportunity to prove his meddle as the best comedic leading man working in Hollywood today. Reteaming with David Wain, with whom he did Wet Hot American Summer and Role Models, Rudd leads a mostly wonderful ensemble that laser-pointedly satirizes New York City real estate, HBO’s programming, Atlanta’s suburban sprawl and ennui, and the eccentricities of modern day hippies.

Rudd plays George and Jennifer Anniston plays his wife Linda, and they are a yuppie Manhattan couple who, as the movie opens, are buying a tiny apartment in the West Village. It’s a tiny studio but their real estate agent (Linda Lavin) convinces them that it’s a “micro loft.” And they convince themselves they can afford it, since Linda is convinced she’s going to sell HBO her documentary about penguins with testicular cancer. Just as her meeting at HBO goes terribly awry, the financial services company where George works is shut down by the SEC. George and Linda are then forced to move to Atlanta, where George’s horrifying boar of a brother Rick (Ken Marino, who co-wrote the screenplay) has offered him a job at his successful porta potty company. On the way to Atlanta, George and Linda end up spending the night at a bed-and-breakfast run out of a hippie commune called Elysium Fields, where the pot is stellar, the residents are spacey, and the love is free. When Rick’s racist humor, searing arrogance, and McMansion lifestyle get too much, George and Linda, broke and with nowhere to go, decide to try living at Elysium Fields.

That the lifestyle of the commune – or rather “intentional living” – isn’t going to work out for George and Linda is pretty obvious from the beginning. And it’s also obvious that the hippies’ default leader Seth (Justin Theroux) is up to no good. There’s always a snake in the Garden of Eden, and there’s never been a movie made about hippies that isn’t intent on picking apart their idealism and reifying the standard American consumerist lifestyle. And aside from Taking Woodstock, it’s the rare movie about hippies that admits how gay that community was and is; that the free love in Wanderlust doesn’t even hint at bisexuality is pretty lame and very cowardly. But Wain and Marino don’t want Wanderlust to break ground or make point, and certainly not a political. They just want you to laugh.

Rudd is usually best as the straight man playing off someone or something wacky or exasperating – he delivers sarcasm better than anyone – but in Wanderlust he has several scenes in which he gets to be insane. One, in which he’s psyching himself up for some free love, is, well, epic. Anniston, who is a pretty great comic actress, is fine and earns some good laughs, but her role isn’t as meaty as Rudd’s. Alan Alda, as Elysian’s grandpa, is similarly underused, though it’s always nice to see him on screen. Anniston’s current boyfriend, Justin Theroux is a sly, sexy foil, though I felt he was more of a device than a character – as was Elysian’s goddess, Eva, who Malin Ackerman phoned in. Ken Marino and Michael Watkins, who plays Rick’s heavily sedated wife, steal their scenes from Rudd and Anniston; their vicious parody of Stepford suburbia is nothing new, but it’s still wonderful to behold.

Wanderlust
Directed by David Wain
Written by David Wain and Ken Marino
Starring Paul Rudd, Jennifer Anniston, and Justin Theroux
Rated R
At your local multiplex

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Terribly stupid, totally fun.

I needed a laugh when I saw This Means War. And I got it. Terribly stupid, but totally fun. Also: Tom Hardy.

I broke my rule last week. I read a review of This Means War before I saw it. I only read one: Roger Ebert’s vicious pan of the film. While I’ve not always shared Ebert’s taste, I have developed a deep affection for him as a champion of independent movies, liberal politics, and, after cancer surgery left him without the ability to speak, how to live with a disability with integrity.

So I was rather dismayed at the tone he took in his review of This Means War,which not only attacked Reese Witherspoon for not being a sexpot and therefore absurd as a woman that Chris Pine and Tom Hardy would go to war over, but also blasted the relationship between best friends Pine and Hardy, who do everything together and adore each other like brothers. “Because surely they’re gay,” Ebert writes.

If only. I’d love Tom Hardy to play gay. With me. But there’s nothing gay about Tuck (Hardy) and FDR (Pine) and their friendship unless you believe, like so many adolescent homophobes seem to, that any vague display of affection between two men must mean they’re sleeping together.

I saw the film in a theater full of young straight guys and they seemed to love the movie. Partly, I’m sure, because of the competition between Tuck and FDR, and partly because it’s very, very funny.

This isn’t to say that This Means War is a brilliant film. It is absurd; the plot requires more than your average suspension of disbelief. Tuck and FDR are twoCIA agents who are grounded after turning a covert mission in Hong Kong into a frenzied gunfight that ends with the brother of their target falling from a skyscraper. Instead of doing their desk jobs, they both start dating Lauren, who doesn’t know they are CIA agents or that they know each other. As the men compete for her affections, they devote more and more CIA resources to tracking and sabotaging each other. And then the target of the Hong Kong fiasco shows up to take revenge. Insanity ensues.

As silly as it is, I found This Means War very funny and very entertaining. McG paces the comedy and the action equally well, but he also has Reese Witherspoon, something like a cross between late ’80s Meg Ryan and mid ’60s Doris Day. Tom Hardy, who is distractingly sexy, oozes charm and winking humor. Chris Pine, who has a distractingly large forehead, pulls off FDR just fine, but I would rather the role had been cast with someone a bit less safe, a little more dangerous. I doubt a little more edge would have pleased Ebert; he just hated it, and possibly for all of the wrong reasons.

This Means War
Directed by McG
Written by Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy, Chris Pine and Chelsea Handler
Rated PG-13

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Some kids shouldn’t have powers

I totes loved Chronicle. Here’s my review, which can also be found here.

A few weeks ago, I watched Dane DeHaan, one of the stars of the new teens-with-superpowers movie Chronicle, answering questions at a press conference about what made Chronicle different from other “found footage” movies. He claimed that the difference was that every shot of film – every spliced together piece of camcorder shots, close circuit clips and news coverage – propelled the story. I’m not sure how this is different from Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, and Paranormal Activity, since all of those films, the greats of the genre, have pretty clear and propulsive stories. Isn’t it all in the editing? And isn’t it just carefully crafted and constructed footage made to look “found?” Chronicle doesn’t reinvent the wheel. But it does make the wheel shiny and new. Unlike the three movies mentioned above, Chronicle is not just good sci-fi action with smart special effects; it’s a character-driven drama. At times, it’s even moving.

Andrew (Dane DeHaan) is an awkward, easily bullied senior in high school. His drunken father beats him, and his mother is dying of what seems to be emphysema. Andrew’s cool, philosophically minded cousin Matt (Alex Russell) drives him to school every morning and is his only friend. Matt advises Andrew to stop bringing his camera everywhere he goes, because it’s “weird.” And as one cheerleader says, asking him to stop filming the cheerleading practice, “It’s creepy.”

But Andrew doesn’t relent, even bringing his camera to a rave. This is convenient when the big man on campus, Steve (Michael B. Jordan), comes looking for Andrew to film a strange discovery he and Matt had made in the woods. It’s a big hole, and it looks to have been created by an asteroid of some sort. The three boys descend down into hole and find a giant glowing crystal-like thing. The next thing we know, they all have telekinetic abilities.

As they learn to control and hone their powers, Matt and Steve focus on having fun, but Andrew’s home life and his history of being bullied, of being a social outcast, make his goals and his interpretation of what these powers mean more layered, problematic and ultimately sinister.

While much of the film’s edge can be attributed to the scrappy, hand-held and sometimes telekinetically-held found footage, and to Dane DeHaan’s fiercely angry and emotional Andrew, director Josh Trank and writer Max Landis have constructed a thrilling exploration of adolescent angst through fantastical situations. The dialogue rings true; these teenagers sound like teenagers, even when Matt is quoting Jung and Schopenhauer. And when the action starts, it is quick and exciting and terrifying.

Chronicle
Directed by Josh Trank
Written by Max Landis
Starring Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell and Michael B. Jordan
At your local multiplex
Rated PG-13

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I love it when Streep is Streepy

It wasn’t even my lead review the week I wrote about The Irony Lady, but it ended up being the cover story for LGBT Weekly. Ha.

The buzz on The Iron Lady has been that Meryl Streep is amazing as Margaret Thatcher and the movie isn’t very good. Since I don’t read reviews before I write mine, I’m not sure why the buzz isn’t that Streep is amazing and the movie is excellent. Because I loved it. Told in flashbacks from the perspective of an elderly Thatcher heading into the dementia from which she now suffers, The Iron Lady is in some ways a typical biopic; we see her go from an eager and brilliant daughter of a grocer to a prickly and ambitious member of parliament to become, finally, the longest-serving prime minister of Great Britain in the 20th century – the century’s most powerful woman.

True, the film isn’t perfect. It is top-heavy with Thatcher’s elderly doddering, and at times I felt that Streep was perhaps too funny, that Jim Broadbent, as Mr. Thatcher, was too silly. And worse, I was worried that I was developing a deep fondness for someone whom my liberal heart wants me to loathe. But by the end of the film, I found it to be balanced; Thatcher’s downfall in 1990 is depicted as deserving, and her flaws as a mother and wife are never hidden.

But director Phyllida Lloyd and the brilliant screenwriter Abi Morgan do what Clint Eastwood failed to do in J. Edgar. They didn’t make a dull history lesson; they created something artful, inventive, intriguing, wry and entertaining. Much – but not all – of this is because Streep gives a performance as towering as any in her career. There isn’t an emotion that she does not nail, and, of course, her accent, delivery and body are more than imitations of Thatcher. Streep’s performance is funnier, bolder and more moving than anything one could get from documentary footage.

The Iron Lady
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Written by Abi Morgan
Starring Meryl Streep and Jim Broadbent
At your local multiplex

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