483 - The Hangover review

You can tell a lot about a person by how they respond to a hangover that blanks out the memory. Do they contemplate those missing frames with humor or dread? I once woke up from a fantastic party with a headache so vicious it felt like pain was physically spilling out of my ears and onto the bed sheets. I was happy enough with the night before until I realized that the pistol I had received as a graduation present was nowhere to be found. Whoops.

My problem turned out fine, but others have it much worse. “This just means we had a great time,” says Phil (Bradley Cooper) the night after his buddy’s wild Las Vegas bachelor party, a belief he hangs onto even after discovering a tiger in the bathroom, a missing infant in the closet, and the keys to a stolen police car, amongst other things. I can’t help but admire his optimism to a point: what’s done is done, so enjoy the spectacle. His pal Stu (Ed Helms) sees the downside of things, such a felony arrests, missing teeth, and a hotel that has his credit card on file. The best man’s future brother-in-law Alan (Zach Galifianakis) is such a scatterbrained imbecile that it’s difficult to tell whether or not he even knows where he is, but all three do have one common concern: where did the groom go?

Todd Phillips’ “The Hangover” is at its core an unapologetic celebration of male bonding via lewd, booze-and-drug-fueled partying. I confess that I’ve always pitied my friends that permanently abstain from throwing caution to the wind and embracing the playfully indecent, as nothing short of serving in a war adds so much to the friendship of quarter-aged men. The endearing effect of mischief is on full and accurate display here, aided by surprisingly layered performances from the three leads and a script that gets the important parts right.

The film’s straightforward vulgarity and wit means that its staggering box office success ($200 million and counting) is a relief during a period where screen comedies are becoming increasingly defined by Will Ferrell-style post-modern mugging and Judd Apatow-style “sweetness.” Phillips demonstrates no interest in either, doing what Mel Brooks might call “rising below vulgarity” with a simple enthusiasm for the material and respect for the actors scoring the laughs.

It’s to the filmmaker’s credit that even though the laughs begin to thin out in the final stretch, I hardly noticed, because by then the characters and plot had possessed my attention well-beyond what I thought possible going in. There are even flashes of brilliance, such as Stu’s pathetic defense of his indefensible girlfriend, which sees a line that’s funniness masks its commentary on our cultures perception of sexuality and certain hypocrisies. Zach Galifianakis has received the most attention for his performance as a man who sincerely wishes the best but whose ineptitude nearly leads to ruin for the group until a harebrained scheme yields unexpected dividends. Bradley Cooper, now plastered on every other page of Entertainment Weekly, proves that not only is he an expert at playing the best friend, but he’s even better when the movie is actually about that best friend.

482 - The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) review

“The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” is the sort of movie I have trouble recommending, even though I liked it. To be sure, Tony Scott’s remake of the 1974 thriller accomplishes its mission. There are good performances, efficacious yet snazzy direction, and a script that strikes hard only when it needs to. But how can I readily suggest it when better choices exist, such as “Up” and perhaps even “Star Trek?”

The premise: Denzel Washington plays Walter Garber, a New York City subway executive temporarily demoted to dispatcher after allegations of corruption surfaced. He works in a command center with so many colorful displays that I’m certain applications to the NYC transit department will spike. The day takes an eventful turn when a train is commandeered by Ryder, who is played by John Travolta with the dial set to gleeful villainy. If Ryder and his goons don’t receive $10,000,000 in cash within an hour, the hostages will die.

It’s there the plot kicks into high gear, with machine gun fire, ransom demands, and tense conversations about deadlines. Although my synopsis alone should be enough to accurately predict exactly how the story ends, Tony Scott and crew utilize boilerplate thriller elements with such cool efficiency and steady energy that the edge of your seat is an easy place to find yourself. Scott severely tones down the hyper-kinetic, frenzied style of his past several films (such as “Man on Fire” and “Domino”), giving “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” a look that comfortably oscillates between gritty and sleek without overwhelming the senses.

Particularly key here is Washington, who gives a great performance that reminds us what a good actor he is, uninterested in histrionics and seemingly incapable of looking foolish. Considering this, Travolta’s histrionics play off Washington’s reserve quite well, their relationship a push/pull dynamic unfolding primarily through radio until the script needs its climax. There’s a fantastic moment between the two where Ryder extracts a deeply upsetting personal confession from Walter. Here, the performers’ strengths are maximized onscreen while their motivations are revealed, and from then on we believe what they do and say, even if we don’t believe it. John Turtorro has one of those thankless cop roles as a hostage negotiator, while James Gandolfini chimes in as the mayor of New York City, a character that’s half-Bloomberg and half-Giuliani, but who seems like a decent guy nonetheless.

Par for the course, little of what happens passes any sort of logic test. Just how was Ryder supposed to get away? Who knows. Would the cops really give a civilian a gun? Nah. But I suppose questions like those (and several dozen others) are irrelevant for this sort of thriller, one that’s fun and cool but not marvelous or haunting. Like the titular train, you’re onboard for a while, and then it comes to a stop, and then it’s all over. Good enough, if you’ve already seen “Up.”

3 out of 5

481 - Star Trek review

The success of J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” serves as proof that what was once the exclusive domain of the geek has infiltrated and taken control of the mainstream. This has been evident for years with the success of films based on comic books and other properties, but by repackaging “Star Trek” as a fast-paced, youthful, explosion-filled space opera, everyone from that vital market of people under 50 has been invited to drop their cash on characters and plots once primarily attended to by nerds.

Will the Trekkers be satisfied with this one once the dust settles? I don’t know, and it’s obvious that Abrams doesn’t much care; they’ll be buying tickets regardless of whether or not they actually approve of it. It’s obvious throughout this incarnation that the goal is You, the non-Star Trek fan, the people who always considered “Star Trek” to be boring compared to “Star Wars” or watching paint dry. In this age, perhaps no intellectual property is invulnerable to a dramatic and glitzy transformation tailor-made to make great advertisements.

Gone are the middle-aged scene-chewers of the series and subsequent films, replaced with handsome men that probably had a better looking prom dates than I did and pretty women that might traipse around in their underwear should the advertisements call for it. Those TV budget-friendly model ships give way to gloriously expensive CGI space vessels, replete with dozens of weapons platforms and crew not afraid to use them.

What about the script? Well, it’s quite light on Spock’s beloved logic, which essentially means that it carefully mimics the vast majority of the TV episodes and films. A villain from the future (Eric Bana laden with facial tattoos) travels in a ship to the past (still hundreds of years ahead of where we are now, get it?) to satisfy a grudge against Spock (played both by Zachary Quinto as a young man and Leonard Nimony as an ancient one), which also entails destroying Earth, where all of us have presumably been buried for quite some time now. William Shatner is replaced by Chris Pine, who plays Captain Kirk as a sort of belligerent brat whose charm makes him likeable instead of insufferable. Iowans might take time to notice that as a child Kirk drives his father’s classic car off the Grand Canyon, which in the future is apparently located in Iowa. Kirk and Spock and the rest of the original characters minus 50 years must stop the villain by any means possible, the only means that apparently work being to use lasers and bombs, which entertain most people more than diplomacy and gimmicky-science tricks.

Abrams, the creator of stupid TV shows such as “Alias” and brilliant ones such as “Lost,” seems a bit uncomfortable directing outside of the small screen, leaning heavily on trivial developments to push the story forward. That considered, it’s a tribute to the charm of the cast and the staggeringly impressive special effects that “Star Trek” largely soars through its running time, becoming about as good of a PG-13 blockbuster we’re going to get this summer, one that either evolved or devolved (depending on your prior commitment to the series) into something easy to consume and much more dazzling to the eye than to the mind.

480

Excuse my inactivity, but I just returned from a long trip to Mississippi. I saw a cockroach for the first time in a decade; it was horrifying.

Coming soon: a review of J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek."

479 - Terminator Salvation review

“Terminator Salvation” tells the story of an earth ravaged by humanity’s war with computer-generated Macguffins. The robots act menacing and slow, unless their target is fleeing in a car or helicopter, in which case they act menacing and fast. Despite an array of hi-tech weaponry, the humans and robots prefer to fistfight one another, for reasons left unexplained because a valid one couldn’t possibly exist.

My pal the critic Christian Toto suggested that the harder a filmmaker hawks their movie, the worse it is likely to be. If McG’s countless trips to nerd conventions are any indication, then Christian’s theory is dead on. McG’s interactions with the fans, silly affairs where the woeful auteur would combatively assure them that his swing at the “Terminator” series was going to be the greatest thing since ripped Arnold, were an early indication that something was rotten in the state of Skynet. Comparing his work on “Charlie’s Angels” to James Cameron’s work on “Piranha 2,” he engaged in bald-faced lies as he claimed not to know whether or not his film would be PG-13 (it is, and a soft one at that) and outright foolishness as he exasperatedly explained away his moronic moniker (it was his childhood nickname, as if real adults are supposed to stop finding it stupid).

If it sounds like I’m carrying an vitriol for this guy, that’s because I find it beyond maddening that a talentless nitwit can somehow acquire hundreds of millions of dollars to mangle a beloved film franchise by shooting a script only marginally coherent and doing so with the artistry of a high school media student so bereft of cinematic aptitude that even the kindly teacher can’t issue more than a C. Top to bottom, the film is a catastrophe, with the exception of the special effects, which were worked on by f/x wizard Stan Winston before his death.

As convincing as the effects are, there’s shallowness to the design, the robots looking largely like giant children’s toys run amok; even the memorable humanoid robots from the first films are drained of their danger by McG, who treats them like barroom bouncers instead of efficient metal assassins. When a sixty foot tall automaton sneaks up on the heroes (yes, sneaks), we witness the complete bastardization of the bleak future hinted at by Cameron’s classic originals, the tantalizing possibilities for hard-edge cinema replaced by the efforts of writers who thoughtlessly only seek to make something cumbersome and loud. The film’s 2018 setting sees a Los Angeles ravaged by nuclear war, but as the film runs on and we get a closer look, we recognize the staginess of the scenery, which looks neglected and rundown as opposed to shattered and desolate.

When we meet a teenage Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin, the sole actor who manages not to humiliate his or herself) caring for a Black Mute Orphan Child, he looks like a contemporary kid who simply hasn’t had a shower in a couple of weeks.

Christian Bale plays John Connor, the prophesied leader of humanity against the machine uprising. I say “prophesied” with a grain of salt, because the ridiculous script seems unsure as to whether or not Connor is supposed to be living in a sci-fi universe that supports prophecies. Bale approaches the role as if he had never seen Edward Furlong or Nick Stahl’s humorous and three-dimensional performances, instead making Connor a scowling, pouty thug, a sullen man who watched “The Dark Knight” several dozen times and decided to imitate Batman’s voice every moment of the day. If Bale is embarrassed by his leaked tempter tantrum, then the knowledge that millions of people will see this performance might inspire him to commit hara-kiri (I hope not, because he’s still one of the best actors working today).

McG and the various screenwriter’s collective ineptitudes are consistently and mercilessly made evident throughout: the human resistance initially appears to gigantic, then appears to consist of a dozen people, then appears tiny again. It’s a bad sign when the filmmakers clearly know no more about the setting than does their audience. At the film’s climax, Connor casually strolls into the heart of the machine base, at which point the robots announce that they’ve set a trap and plan to kill him: guess whether or not they do. OK, I’ll spoil it for you: they don’t. I’m hard-pressed to think of a worse script to receive so much money and promotion.

At least there’s action, some say. Screen violence and destruction can be the bees knees (see “Hard Boiled”), but only if it has impact, which McG saps out of every frame. Thousands of rounds fill the air, explosions shred robots and buildings, and resistance fighters bare-knuckle box with indestructible terminators (this is just as if not more inexplicably stupid than it sounds), but absent is a sense of peril, the illusion that a named character that we’re intended to sympathize with might suffer the slightest of injuries. To regard this as fine action cinema is to lower one’s expectations so low that a movie simply needs to bleed cash onscreen to satisfy them. By the time the dreadful story has lumbered to a close, nothing of meaning has happened, and we’ve been issued a pathetic twist ending which was hastily filmed to replace a deeper one that some geeks protested.

Soaking up a good half of the screen time is Sam Worthington who plays a death row inmate reawakened as a machine in 2018. The film opens in his jail cell, a scene so ineptly executed (pun not intended) that if there’s a worse opening scene for the remainder of the year, I’ll follow Werner Herzog’s example and eat my fucking shoe. “He’s a find,” says one critic of Worthington, which convinces me that not all critics actually bother to watch the films they’re being paid to review. His American accent is wobbly, his emotional range as narrow as Bale’s, his character utterly uninteresting. Perhaps it’s is good fortune that he’s also the star of James Cameron’s upcoming “Avatar,” because even if the legendary blockbuster maker can’t direct him to a good performance, then at least the movie surrounding it might be interesting.

478 - Up review

Why is it that Pixar, that wonderful animation company, seems to be the only movie studio left capable of producing a sure thing? I often tell people one of the tricks to film reviewing: never expect a movie to be great or absolutely awful. But it’s hard to stay faithful to this idea when sitting down to a Pixar film, with their gloriously beautiful visuals and inventive, joyous stories.

“Up” is the latest Pixar success, a whimsical journey through the rainforests of Venezuela that’s as magically entertaining as it is heartfelt and delicately poignant. Its hero is Carl Fredrickson (Edward Asner), an elderly man who spends his desperately lonely days lamenting the death of Ellie, his beloved wife. In a lovely early sequence, we see Carl and Ellie as childhood sweethearts, where they watched newsreels about a famous adventurer and dreamed of a daring life where the sky was the limit. As their life passes by, visions of grand travels and family are supplanted by the unfortunate reality and quieter pleasures. Now old and alone, his life void of meaning, Carl decides to see how limitless the sky truly is by tying thousands of helium-filled balloons to his house, which uproots the structure from its foundation and sends it floating marvelously through the heavens.

Carl’s plan goes off with but one hitch: Russell (Jordan Nagai), a Junior Wilderness Explorer seeking a badge for assisting the elderly, has stowed away by mistake. Russell is a similarly lonely child with an absentee father, and though he endlessly grates on Carl’s nerves, the old man takes pity on the boy, surely recognizing a part of himself that time has mercilessly faded away.

Before long, Carl’s house-turned-airship reaches its destination, a South American rainforest with quite the lovely view. Here the story kicks into high gear as they make the acquaintanceship of Kevin, a huge, vibrant bird lost in time, and Dugg (Bob Peterson), a good dog with a mechanical collar that translates his thoughts into words. I’ll decline to spoil the secrets of the plot except to say that it’s among the best of its kind, engaging and riveting while satisfying tried-and-true convention.

The virtuosity of “Up” is simply stunning as well as stunningly simple. Many films these days look great, but there are countless moments here that plead with us to gape at the splendor: Carl’s house hoisted into the sky via thousands of colorful balloons, the playful prehistoric bird and kindly talking dog that latch themselves onto our heroes, the thrilling action scenes that propel the plot forward. But these all ultimately serve the narrative, a straightforward tale that insightfully looks at the value of exploring the treasures of life. The delights and laughs are plentiful and constant, the experience of unusual staying power.

“Up” reaches its emotional crescendo as Carl realizes the value of his newfound friendships, which leads to a rousing climax and a sweet, fitting epilogue. It’s a rare film that can suffuse such magnificent production value with a near-perfect story, functioning flawlessly as both must-see entertainment and great art.

4.5 out of 5

477

Today is my birthday. As in previous years, I request that you take a moment to quietly reflect on the joy I have brought to your life.