Action Archives - Page 19 of 50 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

TIFF ’12: The Iceman

September 12, 20122012, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Gangster, Mystery, Thriller, TIFF

*½/****
directed by Ariel Vroman

by Bill Chambers Although The Iceman proves that a movie cannot get by on Michael Shannon’s dark charisma alone, Shannon has reached that point in his career where his casting supplies the lion’s share of subtext. Hence, a line like “I dub cartoons for Disney”–uttered not two minutes into the film, before there’s enough context for it to be a joke or a lie–induces titters of recognition. Of course, most will know going in that Shannon’s playing real-life contract killer Richard Kuklinski, who’s thought to have dispatched over 100 people, professionally-speaking. In The Iceman, the film version of his life, smut-bootlegger Kuklinski starts a family with winsome Barbara (a baby-talky Winona Ryder) at the same time mobster Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta) makes him an enforcer. He keeps Barbara in the dark about his new profession (his old one, too), telling her he’s a stockbroker to explain the conspicuous infusions of cash; by the time their angelic daughters are in middle-school, he’s settled comfortably into the schizoid role of suburban-dad-slash-serial-killer. Eventually, he sub-contracts himself out to Pronge (Chris Evans, so skeevy I mistook him for Bradley Cooper), a free agent who operates out of a Mr. Softee truck and gives Kuklinski the idea to freeze his victims, and thus his eponymous nickname.

TIFF ’12: Argo

September 7, 20122012, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Thriller, TIFF, UK

***½/****
directed by Ben Affleck

by Bill Chambers Ben Affleck’s films as a director are no longer surprisingly good–they’re expectedly good. The surprise of his latest, Argo, is twofold: first, put a beard on Affleck and suddenly he’s an actor of gravitas; second, that this directing detour his career took may have been born of not just self-preservation, but real movie love. You can see it in his hoarding of genre staples for one-scene (Adrienne Barbeau) and in some cases one-line (Michael Parks) roles, but more importantly, you can see it in the gentle Hollywood satire Argo briefly–perhaps too briefly–becomes. Set in 1979, the picture is suffused with a passion for filmmaking, if also a tinge of wistfulness for that bygone era in filmmaking. Though it may be period-authentic when Affleck shows the Hollywood sign in a state of disrepair, I think it’s meant as commentary on the present. Argo is the second Warner release this year to revert to the golden-age Saul Bass logo–it fits better here.

Romeo Must Die (2000) + Cradle 2 the Grave (2003) – Blu-ray Discs

September 2, 20122000s, 2012, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Martial Arts, ZERO STARS

ROMEO MUST DIE
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jet Li, Aaliyah, Isaiah Washington, Delroy Lindo
screenplay by Eric Bernt and John Jarrell
directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE
ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras D
starring Jet Li, DMX, Anthony Anderson, Gabrielle Union
screenplay by John O’Brien and Channing Gibson
directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak

by Walter Chaw There are a lot of interesting things about Jet Li’s sad run through Hollywood, among them the fairly simple question of why, in Romeo Must Die, this particular yellow Romeo must die. But then he doesn’t die, and he also doesn’t get to kiss the girl, who isn’t white but Aaliyah (black)–mitigating, I would have thought, the taboo against Asian men in American cinema having any kind of sexuality that isn’t ridiculous (see: Long Duk Dong) or that involves a white lady. In his next film, Kiss of the Dragon, Jet teams up with a white prostitute (Bridget Fonda) and, belying the sly Orientalist promise of the title, doesn’t get to kiss her, either–and she’s a fucking hooker. It’s a cultural ban so stringent that there’s a specific category of porn, deeply perverse, that is not only interracial, but specifically Asian man on white woman. Not long after 2003’s Cradle 2 the Grave, Li played an Asian man kept on a leash who, at a word, is made to perform martial arts for his white master’s favour. Danny the Dog (retitled Unleashed in the United States…why, again? Because of Hollywood’s sensitivity?) is probably the most poignant expression of the plight of the Asian action hero in the United States: castrated, humiliated, valued for the single trait of knowing kung fu–even if, as it was for Jackie Chan in the Karate Kid reboot, Chinese “kung fu” is reconfigured as Japanese “karate.” Chris Tucker’s favourite joke in the Rush Hour movies, after all, is to mistake the two cultures–a favour to neither and funny, probably, only to Tucker.

Full Metal Jacket (1987) – Blu-ray Disc (DigiBook)

August 28, 2012****/****, 1980s, 2012, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Drama, FFC Must-Own, UK, War

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lee Ermey
screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford, based on Hasford’s novel The Short Timers
directed by Stanley Kubrick

by Alex Jackson One of the most noticed Stanley Kubrick trademarks is a scene in a bathroom. I haven’t read too much about why there is always a scene in a bathroom, but rarer still are comments related to what goes on in the bathroom. Different activities have different meanings. Urination (A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut) is a sexually arrogant act. It’s the one bathroom activity in Kubrick’s films that is done with the door open. Bathing (Spartacus, Lolita, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange again, The Shining) is a hedonistic, bourgeois indulgence and an escape to a safe place. Kubrick is not beyond exploiting the bath’s mythological, symbolic connotations as the unexplored subconscious (the subversion of Aphrodite iconology in The Shining) or the womb (Star Child Alex in A Clockwork Orange); bathing is largely a private activity, you see. It is sometimes interrupted, but when that happens the invasion of privacy has significance. (James Mason’s interrupted bath in Lolita, for example, had purely narrative- and character-based implications. He regarded it as just another humiliation to add to the pile.) Defecation is even more private, so private that a Kubrick character has never interrupted it. To defecate (Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey) is human, you see. Everybody has to take a shit, but to shit is shameful. The perfect human being would not shit, would indeed be beyond shitting. The HAL computer doesn’t shit, does it? Does the Star Child shit? I sincerely doubt it!

Unstoppable (2010) – Blu-ray + Digital Copy

August 27, 20122010, 2012, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Tony Scott, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson, Ethan Suplee
screenplay by Mark Bomback
directed by Tony Scott

by Walter Chaw It’s strange to be writing this review a couple of days after Tony Scott ended his life by walking off a bridge in California–an event that inspired me to revisit my favourite of his films (Enemy of the State and Déjà Vu) and one that spurred me, too, to finally give Scott’s Unstoppable another look after finding I had little use for it upon initial release. I have an aversion to Scott’s movies in general; I don’t have the muscle or sensitivity to distinguish between them and other stuttering, grandiloquent pictures that have resulted in things like Michael Bay. Believe me, the temptation is high to present a critical re-evaluation of his work immediately upon his passing. Positioning oneself as the guy who knew that Chris Farley was John Belushi is one of those vantages every critic wishes he had, if only for the brief respite from charges of elitism it might bring. But listen, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Domino, Spy Game, The Fan, Days of Thunder, and Beverly Hills Cop 2–there’s really no defense for any of it. And when I say that I like stuff like The Hunger, True Romance, The Last Boy Scout, or even Scott’s Jim Harrison adaptation Revenge, I’m not saying I love them. Tony Scott’s an auteur, sure–proof that “auteur” doesn’t by itself confer a positive or a pejorative connotation. I’ll give him this, though: He shot a Tarantino script as a remake of Badlands and produced a sneaky sequel to The Conversation, so, yeah, I’ll miss the bastard, too.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) [15th Anniversary Edition] + High Fidelity (2000) – Blu-ray Discs

August 26, 20121990s, 2000s, 2012, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Music, Romance, Thriller, UK

Grossepointe2

GROSSE POINTE BLANK
***½/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras D
starring John Cusack, Minnie Driver, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd
screenplay by Tom Jankiewicz and D.V. DeVincentis & Steve Pink & John Cusack
directed by George Armitage

HIGH FIDELITY
***½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C
starring John Cusack, Jack Black, Lisa Bonet, Joelle Carter
screenplay by D.V. DeVincentis & Steve Pink & John Cusack and Scott Rosenberg, based on the novel by Nick Hornby
directed by Stephen Frears

by Jefferson Robbins John Cusack spent much of the 1990s stubbornly trying to dodge his high-school reunion. Barely present in Sixteen Candles, he nevertheless may have suffered a bit of the curse that pursued John Hughes’s other players: We wouldn’t let them grow up for quite a while, and careers were hampered. Cusack navigated this impasse better than most, netting late-’80s leads both romantic (Say Anything…) and dramatic (The Grifters) that unpack and showcase his mature dimensions. Cusack has, if it’s not too oxymoronic, a vulnerable edge–his characters are deeply attuned to others, but only out of self-defense. Lloyd Dobler, Roy Dillon, and, in the two films under discussion, Martin Blank and Rob Gordon constantly assess input to learn how the prevailing emotional currents of a scene affect them, not others. “You think I’m a dick,” Lloyd determines when Diane (Ione Skye) gives him a Pen of Friendship as a parting gift. His feelings, dependent on hers, are paramount. Cusack’s heroes are sensitive but far from selfless, yet the actor somehow convinces us otherwise.

Jaws (1975) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

August 25, 2012****/****, 1970s, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Spielberg

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A+
starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary
screenplay by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, based on the novel by Benchley
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw What’s not mentioned in very many conversations about Jaws is the pleasure it takes in work. That it’s one of the most influential films of all time–a picture commonly identified as the one responsible for the studio summer-blockbuster mentality–is a given by now. The miracle of it, though, is that it gets better every time you see it. I have the movie memorized at this point; I can recite it like a favourite song. I still jump when Ben Gardner appears in the hole in the hull of his boat, and I still laugh when Hooper helps himself to Brody’s uneaten dinner. More than a fright flick, Jaws is a beautifully rendered character piece, establishing Spielberg as–a little like Stephen King, oddly enough–a master of the easy moment. (They’re artists I’ve conflated in my head for their popularity with and influence on a generation of people my age.) It’s a little nasty, too, Jaws is, in throwaway moments like the one on the beach where, after a giant fin appears in the water, Spielberg cuts to a group of old men picking up their binoculars. They’re there to looky-loo; they’re expecting carnage. It’s not a Hitchcockian moment of audience critique (though it functions that way), but a brilliant character beat expressed with Spielberg’s savant-like visual genius. But above all, Jaws is about function and work–not unlike Star Wars, the final nail in the New American Cinema, will be two years later.

Premium Rush (2012)

August 23, 20122012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Jamie Chung
screenplay by David Koepp & John Kamps
directed by David Koepp

by Angelo Muredda Those who had hoped Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s presence in The Dark Knight Rises signalled some kind of Tim Drake extravaganza only to make do with his dour Robin surrogate John Blake ought to perk up, for Premium Rush is here. David Koepp’s unabashedly silly, good-natured courier thriller is curiously light on thrills, its daytime climax of a bike race in the park about as low-stakes as Harvey Keitel’s hot pursuit of a pickpocket simian in Monkey Trouble. What it lacks in dramatic heft, though, it more than makes up for in its fleetness and tight grasp on cartoon physics, as well as its smart use of Michael Shannon as an unstable roadblock and Gordon-Levitt as just the blunt instrument to push past him, a chiselled boy wonder who knows his way around a fixie, i.e., the lightweight single-gear bike to which he’s practically glued.

Lethal Weapon Collection – Blu-ray Disc

August 12, 20121980s, 1990s, 2012, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Thriller, ZERO STARS

LETHAL WEAPON (1987)
**/**** Image B- Sound B Extras D
starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Tom Atkins
screenplay by Shane Black
directed by Richard Donner

LETHAL WEAPON 2 (1989)
**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Joss Ackland
screenplay by Jeffrey Boam
directed by Richard Donner

LETHAL WEAPON 3 (1992)
ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras D
starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo
screenplay by Jeffrey Boam and Jeffrey Boam (sic) & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Richard Donner

LETHAL WEAPON 4 (1998)
*/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras D
starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo
screenplay by Channing Gibson
directed by Richard Donner

by Walter Chaw It’s tough to convey exactly how fresh Lethal Weapon seemed in 1987. The leap that Woody Boyd’s girlfriend–half-naked in frilly bloomers–takes off a high-rise in the early going, the character of unstable police sergeant Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson, before we knew he wasn’t acting), even the buddying up of Riggs with “too old for this shit” partner Murtaugh (Danny Glover), were smart and groundbreaking. I must’ve watched this movie thirty times in those halcyon days when VHS made stuff like this and porn middle-class pursuits to be pursued in private. Lethal Weapon holds for me, still, this gritty, dirty allure: sexy, violent, nihilistic–like the first time a kid truly reads the Old Testament.

Outland (1981) – Blu-ray Disc

August 6, 20121980s, 2012, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK, Western

***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen, James B. Sikking
written and directed by Peter Hyams

by Jefferson Robbins Has anybody looked at Alan “Laddie” Ladd Jr. as an auteur of U.S. film’s late-’70s/early-’80s science-fiction renaissance? By definition, the auteur theory addresses directors, but producer-execs are inevitably part of a film’s genome–at their worst, barriers to a film’s artistic ambitions, at their best, enablers of daring visions, and often rescuers or champions of interesting failures. Ladd, of course, famously midwifed and defended Star Wars (later Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope) while he was president of Fox, and the studio went on to shepherd Alien to theatres during his tenure.¹ His production firm, The Ladd Company, sent forth Blade Runner, the first film to put a Philip K. Dick concept on the screen in addition to being very much its own, deeply influential beast. Some unifiers among these films include introductory crawls or intertitles, situating the audience in a far future or faraway galaxy; grimy or rusty milieux, painting the SF frontier as a sumptuous scrap pile; deep attention to class, with starcraft piloted by hardworking space jockeys in trucker caps; and, as it was pointed out to me on Facebook the other day, a reliance on established fantasy/SF artists (H.R. Giger, Ron Cobb, Moebius) to carry out much of the production design. Building a world costs money, and Ladd signed the checks.²

Barbarella (1968) – Blu-ray Disc

August 5, 20121960s, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Fantasy, France, Italy, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Marcel Marceau, Ugo Tognazzi
screenplay by Terry Southern and Roger Vadim, based on the comic by Jean Claude Forest and Claude Brulé
directed by Roger Vadim

by Bryant Frazer Barbarella begins in the fur-lined cockpit of a space-faring starcraft, fabulously appointed with a statue of a moon goddess and, inexplicably, what looks to be a full-sized replica of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte. Despite the high-flown frivolity of its conception and the infectiously groovy theme song, this tableau does not represent the most quintessentially with-it of all possible sci-fi worlds. That changes when the astronaut who has floated into view starts pulling off the different panels of her moon-suit to reveal, underneath the shapeless layers of scuba-like gear, a naked strawberry-blonde with slender, delicate fingers and legs that don’t quit.

Total Recall (2012)

August 1, 20122012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

**/****
starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bill Nighy
screenplay by Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback, based on a screenplay by Ronald Shusett & Dan O’Bannon and the short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick
directed by Len Wiseman

by Walter Chaw For about forty minutes, maybe less, Len Wiseman’s ironically forgettable Total Recall redux demonstrates energy, inventiveness, and proper respect for Blade Runner‘s production design, at least, if not for its predecessor. By the end, it’s just a bigger-budget Lockout that not only doesn’t do anything with the Philip K. Dick source material, but is also wholly incapable of trumping the absolute, tripping-balls perversity of the Paul Verhoeven original. It’s a problem that not even resurrecting the three-titted hooker can solve, especially since her appearance in this Total Recall highlights not the mutagenic strangeness of Mars but the oddness of…Australia? It’s Colin Farrell this time around as everyman Douglas Quaid, stepping in for Ah-nuld of course and, in so doing, making the film’s one possible narrative reality that Quaid is actually a Bourne-like super-agent less a possibility. Farrell is in fact too good at being ordinary–the long introduction that establishes Quaid’s boring workaday existence is arguably the best thing about the whole thing. There’s real pain there when he doesn’t get a desired promotion, real desperation in his coming home to a sleeping wife before going out again to drink cheap beer with his assembly-line buddy. The result of Farrell’s being kind of a really great actor is that he (like Guy Pearce in Lockout) instantly reveals the vehicle and its execution to be not nearly good enough, its aspirations not nearly high enough. And whatever questions the picture asks in the pursuit of metafiction, well, Farrell is capable of conveying more.

Priest (2011) [Unrated] – Blu-ray Disc

August 1, 20122011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Vampire

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Paul Bettany, Karl Urban, Cam Gigandet, Christopher Plummer
screenplay by Cory Goodman, based on the graphic novel series by Min-Woo Hyung
directed by Scott Stewart

by Walter Chaw I'm completely unfamiliar with the Min-Woo Hyong graphic novels on which visual-effects guy Scott Stewart's Priest is based, and the biggest surprise of the picture isn't that the guy who did the abominable Legion managed to make something so watchable, but that Priest made me want to track down Hyong's work. Before seeing this movie, I just sort of assumed that the comic was another weird west thing along the lines of Vertigo's Preacher; after, I'm led to believe that it's a canny little mélange of cyberpunk, weird west, and horror comics, with some solid Ghost in the Shell manga tossed into the mix. There's not a minute of the film, mind, that's without a clear antecedent–not one second that passes without a namecheck of not only stuff like Blade Runner (on the "Final Cut" of which Stewart served as an uncredited techie during his time at ILM) and, most obviously, Alien/Aliens, but also The Searchers as tortured, titular Priest (Paul Bettany) declares that if his vamp-abducted niece Lucy (Lily Collins) becomes infected, it would be his pleasure (?) to dispatch her.

Blood Work (2002) – Blu-ray Disc

July 8, 20122000s, 2012, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C-
starring Clint Eastwood, Wanda De Jesús, Jeff Daniels, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by Michael Connelly
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Walter Chaw You can figure out the pivotal clue in Blood Work if not by the title alone–which gives altogether too much away–then surely come the thirty-minute mark. You can deduce the identity of the murderer as soon as he saunters on screen, and you can predict the love story almost before it happens just by dint of the kind of movie that Blood Work is. The only thing you can’t figure out is why Clint Eastwood, who sometimes makes interesting movies like Bird, A Perfect World, White Hunter, Black Heart, and Unforgiven, almost as often makes boring, predictable, prosaic movies like The Rookie (1990), Absolute Power, True Crime, and now Blood Work.

Savages (2012)

July 5, 20122012, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta
screenplay by Shane Salerno & Don Winslow & Oliver Stone, based on the novel by Winslow
directed by Oliver Stone

by Walter Chaw Another disgusting piece of crap that Oliver Stone makes watchable and even fitfully interesting, Savages sees Stone returning to ground he already plowed in Salvador, his screenplay for Scarface, and arguably his best film in hindsight, the filthy U-Turn. One possible excuse for its foulness, in an ocean of possible excuses, is a cast headlined by Taylor Kitsch, the new Paul Walker; Aaron Johnson, the new Skeet Ulrich; and Blake Lively, the new…I don’t know, Bridget Fonda? Another possible explanation is a godawful script by Don Winslow (author of the novel upon which the film is based), Shane Salerno, and Stone hissownself that opens with a ridiculously bad voiceover tease and ends with same, sandwiching in between a tale of blissed-out California marijuana kingpins Chon (Kitsch) and Ben (Johnson) vs. the Mexican cartel, led by Lado (the always amazing Benicio Del Toro) and Elena (Salma Hayek). Sound awful? It’s awful. And it would have been even without an embarrassing John Travolta, wheedling and whinging through an entire performance as a corrupt DEA agent. With him, however, Savages at least has the benefit of occasionally elevating from entirely-useless to sometimes-whimsical camp artifact.

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

July 2, 20122012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Spider-Man, Superhero, Theatrical

**/****
starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Sally Field
screenplay by James Vanderbilt
directed by Marc Webb

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The only reason for choosing (500) Days of Summer helmer Marc Webb to steer the Spider-Man property in a new direction is the hope that Webb would somehow inject into it a twee, precious, emo-romantic pheromone irresistible to Zooey Deschanel-brand nerd-chicks. Think: Twilight for girls who aren’t illiterate. It’s not a bad movie in and of itself, but I’m ambivalent about its nominal success, just because rebooting a franchise that’s still so fresh (Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 was a mere five years ago) proves a terrible distraction. As much as I like Andrew Garfield, the new Peter Parker, I spent a lot of time comparing his performance to Tobey Maguire’s in the same role (ditto Emma Stone (the new Gwen Stacey) and Kirsten Dunst (the former Mary Jane)) and wondering what Raimi would have done with a Lizard (Rhys Ifans) voiced/motion-captured by Dylan Baker, had he been allowed to finally pay off that thread. I spent a lot of time, too, distracted by cool emo touches, like having Peter decorate his room with a lovely, vintage Rear Window poster, ostensibly because this Parker is soulful enough a 17-year-old to not only have seen the film but also perhaps modelled his own photography jones after that film’s shutterbug protagonist. But what about Rear Window‘s hero being a voyeur? A scene early on in The Amazing Spider-Man where Parker snaps a surreptitious photo of Gwen hints at a draft of the screenplay that maybe wanted to deal with Parker as a real, honest-to-goodness fucked-up kid. Sad that only moments now and again suggest any kind of depth or greater purpose. Sad, too, that the movie’s not otherwise exciting or innovative.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)

June 20, 20122012, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Horror, Russia, Superhero, Vampire, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith and Simon Kinberg, based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith
directed Timur Bekmambetov

by Walter Chaw That idiot Timur Bekmambetov continues his reign of terror with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, an adaptation of a Seth Grahame-Smith novel co-written by Grahame-Smith himself that tries to walk the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies line between reverence and camp but only manages to be ugly and stupid. Abe’s (Benjamin Walker) superpower is honesty, natch–and a silver-coated axe. One night, as a child, after witnessing a vampire kill his mother but somehow not turn her into a vampire (vampires don’t fear the sunlight in this one, either, or at least fear it only as much as Edgar Winter does), Abe embarks on a vengeance-crusade aided by vampire hunter-trainer Henry (Dominic Cooper). Henry has a secret! It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter inspires a sense of absolute despair and hopelessness in the viewer, as it’s not just bad, it’s misguided in every way a film can be misguided, from conception to execution. There’s a horse-stampede fight, a burning bridge and a train, grotesque misuse of slow-motion and CGI, and nary a naked Angelina Jolie anywhere to leaven the stew. I want to muster up some outrage at the portrayal of Confederate soldiers as bloodsucking legions of the damned, but that actually strikes me as the least offensive of the film’s myriad offenses.

Prometheus (2012)

June 6, 20122012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Ridley Scott, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, UK

*/****
starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron
screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof
directed by Ridley Scott

by Walter Chaw It’s time, probably long past time, to admit that Ridley Scott is nothing more or less than Tim Burton: a visual stylist at the mercy of others to offer his hatful of pretty pictures something like depth. If either one of them ever made a great film (and I’d argue that both have), thank the accident of the right source material and/or editor, not these directors, whose allegiance is to their own visual auteurism rather than any desire for a unified product. For Scott, the conversation essentially begins and ends for me with Alien, Blade Runner, and Black Hawk Down (for most, it’s just the first two, with a political nod to Thelma & Louise)–genre films, all, and each about the complications of mendacity given over to lush, stylish excess: the gothic, biomechanical haunted house of Alien‘s Nostromo mining vehicle and its hapless band of blue-collar meatbags; the meticulously detailed Angelino diaspora of Blade Runner and its Raymond Chandler refugee; and Mark Bowden’s Mogadishu, transformed in Black Hawk Down into a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Again, there’s that utility. Without it, Scott’s films are impenetrable monuments to style, as smooth and affectless as a perfume advertisement–and the more you watch them, the less memorable that style becomes.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

June 3, 20122011, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Mystery, UK

*½/**** Image C+ Sound A+ Extras B
starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Rachel McAdams
screenplay by Michele Mulroney & Kieran Mulroney
directed by Guy Ritchie

by Angelo Muredda On my way out of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, I overheard a woman telling her friend that it was “the sort of thing you have to see a second time.” Presumably she meant the intricate scheme by which “Napoleon of Crime” Moriarty (Jared Harris, suitably menacing) seeks to deliver Europe into an early Great War, a mystery so trite that its solution hinges on whether Holmes (Robert Downey Jr., inching dangerously towards Johnny Depp levels of hackdom) can get a hold of his nemesis’s pocketbook. But showing us everything for a second time is very much Ritchie’s M.O. There are about twenty minutes of movie in A Game of Shadows, all told: the rest is instant replay, a shameless parade of alternate angles and slow-motion recaps of bullets firing out of barrels or getting jammed in the process. It’s as if in lieu of the finished product, Ritchie submitted home footage of his own work in the editing suite, dazzled by Final Cut Pro’s array of grey filters and motion blurs.

John Carter (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD

May 27, 20122012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Sci-Fi

*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Willem Dafoe
screenplay by Andrew Stanton & Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon, based on A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by Andrew Stanton

by Walter Chaw Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote grand, incendiary pulp. He in fact defined pulp for me as a kid, not so much with his Tarzan, but with his Barsoom. I remember the Gino D’Achille covers for the Ballantine run of the books, all eleven of them, and I remember how excited I felt once I finally completed my collection of them at a mildew-smelling (delicious) used bookstore that didn’t know what it had. It’s easy to forget the thrill of those discoveries in the pre-Internet bazaar. When I was on the fence about buying a Kindle last Christmas, I saw that Burroughs’s complete run of Barsoom (i.e., John Carter of Mars) novels was available for free; now I own a Kindle. Rereading the series this past year in preparation for Andrew Stanton’s John Carter, I was reminded of the scope of Burroughs’s work–its sociology, its uncompromising stance on religion, its unabashed chivalry and romance; when I read Sir Walter Scott years later, it couldn’t hold a candle to Burroughs. Barsoom was my gateway to works by Burroughs contemporaries H.P. Lovecraft (compare what Carter finds at the gate of the River Iss with the arctic nightmare of At the Mountains of Madness and tell me they didn’t influence one another) and Robert E. Howard, but at the end of it all was always, for me, Barsoom. I’ve been waiting for a big-budget, prestige presentation of this property for almost as long as I waited for the Star Wars prequels–and if I’m not as disappointed, it’s only because Episode I killed much of what was disappointable in me. John Carter is garbage.