Quick Reviews: Zero Django

I have five movies to write about but the other three are 2013 releases, so I'm getting these two out of the way first. (By the way, I have a handful more 2012 releases to see, including a couple of Oscar Best Picture nominees, so I'm going to hold off on a best-of-2012 a bit.)

After watching Zero Dark Thirty, which tells a story -- not the story, as there are some details (including names) changed for various reasons -- of the USA's long but eventually successful manhunt for Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I was struck with two things that kind of bothered me a bit. And one of those things was not whether the film glorifies the torture used to obtain evidence. It clearly doesn't. It displays it quite graphically but it doesn't really take a side. The film centers around Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA officer with a dogged determination to solve the mystery of bin Laden's whereabouts, but she's such a mysterious character -- all we really know about her is she began her CIA career after high school -- that I thought it was difficult to understand her or identify with her. And while there may be artistic merit to the style of shooting the raid on bin Laden's compound, with jittery cameras work, with scenes either dark or seen through night-vision goggles, and no real "money shot" of the actual killing of bin Laden, it also blunts the emotional payoff a bit. It's a very good film but it seems a bit drained of passion. My grade: B-plus.

As for Django Unchained, it fits right into the Quentin Tarantino formula: lots of violence, lots of in-jokes, homages, music, cameos, etc. Where "Inglorious Basterds" was a revenge-on-Nazis fantasy, this one is all about revenge on slave traders and plantation owners. It's so...out there. A German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) who frees, then teams up with, Django (Jamie Foxx) to collect more bounties before rescuing Django's wife, now owned by plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio -- actually a nice change of pace for him, playing a villain instead of a hero). Of course, the plantation is called...wait for it...Candyland. It's just hard to take too seriously, which is fine, but at the same time I almost feel like Tarantino should do a romantic comedy or something, just to challenge himself. My grade: B-minus.

Quick Reviews: J. Edgar, Muppets, Puss in Boots

Blogging for me is in fits and spurts right now. Either I have to be really inspired or it has to be something quick (such as those featuring a photo or two), and my lack of time (due to work and other issues) makes it worse. As far as these movie posts are concerned, I finally decided that I'm just not going to get to separate posts for these right now. So...

J. Edgar: The story (more like a psychological profile) of infamous FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is well-acted but the jumping back and forth in time made it much too disjointed. I read lots of comment about Leonardo DiCaprio's makeup for Hoover's latter days but to be honest I thought the makeup job done on Armie Hammer was worse. My grade: B-minus.

The Muppets: I loved the old Muppet Show and enjoyed this movie, but it was a bit too much of an exercise in nostalgia to be truly spectacular. I appreciate Jason Segel's efforts in getting the Muppets back on the big screen, but somehow I felt this didn't quite fully win my heart. The best celebrity cameo (and one that got quite a reaction from the audience) was by Jim Parsons as...well, I won't spoil it. My grade: B-plus.

Puss in Boots: It took weeks but I finally got to see this yesterday. Spinning Puss (voice of Antonio Banderas) off from the Shrek films wasn't a surprise, but stripping the film of the "Shrek" barrage of pop-culture references was. It was a wise decision. But why didn't anyone tell me they used a Lady Gaga song in the film? I might have seen it sooner. My grade: B-plus.

My Week In Comics 7-28-10

We start with the bad, and work our way up...

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne 4 (of 6): I alluded to this last week in my comment on the first issue of "Time Masters: Vanishing Point." This series has turned into a train wreck. Bruce Wayne has gone from prehistoric-era Gotham to witch trial-era Gotham to high seas pirate-era Gotham, and now he's jumped through time again and is in the Wild Wild West-era Gotham. And this story involves Jonah Hex. You may remember there was a Jonah Hex movie earlier this summer. It was a huge bomb. So is this book. In the first issue Bruce was incoherent, then was able to speak normally (for the era he was in). In this issue he doesn't say a word. I barely have any idea what's going on and I'm not sure I care.

Gotham City Sirens 14: This book is losing me as well, although more slowly. The last few issues have been tightly focused on one or two of its three stars, meaning the interplay between the three that was so entertaining is mostly missing. Here, Poison Ivy is checking out something interesting at her job at S.T.A.R. Labs, something that turns out to be dangerous. Meanwhile, back at the home they share, Catwoman and Harley Quinn haven't heard from Ivy in a while. They decide to give her a little more time. Then, separately, they get into costume and go looking for her at S.T.A.R. So at least they're all in the same place...

Action Comics 891: We get a look at a few of Lex Luthor's dreams...contrived as they are, as they've been placed into his mind by Mister Mind, an alien telepathic bug. So it's sort of like "Inception" without the different dream levels and Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There's even a cameo by Superman, sort of. It's nice to see some version of Superman in his own book. Suffice to say, Luthor is still on his quest for the power of the Black Lantern rings, and his robotic substitute for Lois Lane is by his side.

Quick Review: Inception

If you're looking for a complex film that will make you think, "Inception" may be your film. Honestly, though, while there's much to like about it, the extreme complexity at times worked against it for me. Leonardo DiCaprio is Cobb, a thief who, because of something that happened involving his late wife (Marion Cotillard), is unable to return to the USA to be with his children. What he steals, it seems, is ideas. With the help of some sort of device and some sort of sedatives, he and his team are able to enter a target's dream and manipulate things in order to learn some piece of information that the target is trying to keep secret. Cobb's team (including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy) is hired by a businessman named Saito (Ken Watanabe) to do something different -- instead of taking an idea from someone's mind, implant an idea instead. This is what the title refers to. The target is a rival businessman (Cillian Murphy), and if Cobb and the team are successful, Saito will arrange things so that Cobb can reenter the country and be reunited with his kids. There are various levels of dreams, and time advances more quickly in deeper levels, and...well, I can't do it justice. It is, as I think I've made clear, really complex. It kind of takes a leap of faith to accept everything without wondering about the rules of the dream states that are presented. Also, normally in a film you're rooting for the protagonists to succeed. In this case the protagonists are essentially criminals. As it went on I wasn't sure if I wanted them to succeed or not. Still, it is visually brilliant and well-acted, and the ending is certainly worthy of debate...although just before the very last scene played out, I knew exactly what would happen. My grade: B-plus.

Quick Review: Shutter Island

I've heard some comparisons of "Shutter Island" to other movies that have a big plot twist (for example, "The Crying Game" or, for a godawful example, "The Village"). So let me say right up front that I didn't quite see the plot twist of "Shutter Island" coming. I had an idea of how it would end but there was a little variation that surprised me. And don't worry, I won't spoil it for you. Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo play U.S. marshals who are investigating the disappearance of a patient at a mental hospital located on an island off the Massachusetts coast. The head of the hospital (Ben Kingsley) is less than forthcoming about the goings-on at the facility, and then things get strange for DiCaprio's character. He starts seeing visions of his dead wife (Michelle Williams), killed in an arson fire, and has flashbacks to the day his army platoon arrives at a concentration camp at the end of World War II. It drags a bit at times, and the flashbacks to the concentration camp seemed a bit out-of-sync with the rest of the movie. Overall, though, it's an interesting psychological thriller. My grade: B.

P.S. And for those of us who are a bit shallow (including myself), there's a scene in which Leo and Mark are naked except for towels. In Mark's case it sort of looks like this...