Quick Reviews Catch-Up Part 2: Summer Flicks

Continuing my rally to get to the land of semi-timeliness...and now we get to the movie industry's prime time.

Star Trek Into Darkness: A couple of the nods to the TV series were actually a bit much for me. I don't think it was good as the previous film. My grade: B+

Now You See Me: At times fun, stupid, mystifying, ridiculous...I had an idea of who was behind everything but was only half-right. I can't explain more without spoilers. My grade: B

The Internship: Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson reunited. No "Wedding Crashers" - not as raunchy nor as funny - somewhat predictable, at times charming but too stupid too often. My grade: C+

The Great Gatsby: Visually spectacular. I say this despite the fact that I got a 3D upgrade for free because the theater loaded up the 3D version by mistake for a 2D showing, so they had to give everyone the glasses. I'm not a 3D fan. Anyway, visually spectacular. Some of the music from the touted soundtrack fit well, some of it was jarring. Acting, though, was not good. If I never hear Leonardo DiCaprio call someone "old sport" again it'll be too soon. My grade: C+

Iron Man 3: Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic in this role, as usual, but the plot was lacking. Not as bad as Iron Man 2 but not as good as the first (and nowhere near "The Avengers"). My grade: C+

The Purge: The premise that for one night a year all crime is legal is provocative, but I was unsurprised at almost everything that happened. Not many sympathetic characters in this. My grade: C-

After Earth: Who comes up with a script that has Will Smith play a cold military dad and Jaden Smith play his son, a sour, whiny military cadet, in a future where the earth is a very bad place and humans live elsewhere, and the plot keeps Will in one place doing nothing most of the time? Will's talent and charisma (and whatever talent and charisma Jaden has) are totally wasted. My grade: D.

Where The Oscar Show Went Wrong

It's simple: if you want to be young and hip, it takes more than just hiring young stars to host. I adore James Franco and Anne Hathaway, and I think they had decent chemistry at times, but they were given just awful material to work with, as were the Oscar presenters.

A lot of people on my Twitter feed seemed to think Franco was high. I think they were confusing him with his "Pineapple Express" character. And he spent plenty of time posting videos to Twitter, which I think would be a problem if one is both trying to use a smartphone and host an awards show at the same time. Maybe he was too distracted by Twitter. I just think it was the terrible jokes and banter from the writers. (If Bruce Vilanch had a hand in this, as he often has had in past Oscar shows, perhaps it's time to consider retirement.)

One of the few jokes that worked, and I don't know if it was part of the script or an ad lib, came after Hathaway's little song-and-dance number. Because, he said, "you got to wear a tuxedo," Franco came onstage in drag. He followed that with: "The weird thing is I just got a text message from Charlie Sheen."

The whole reason for Oscar's being is for Hollywood to, metaphorically speaking, fellate itself. They're all there to congratulate each other and kiss each other's ass. There's no room for out there, edgy humor unless they're directing it at themselves (or close friends/coworkers, such as Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law). That's why the Sheen joke went over well:

Really Quick Review: Due Date

I nearly walked out on "Due Date" two or three times. I felt, however, that in order to write about it I had to see the whole thing. I thought about it a little, and I've decided that there's only one word to describe this "comedy" in which Robert Downey Jr. is trying to get to L.A. from Atlanta in time for his wife to give birth and runs into Zach Galifianakis at the airport, to his deep regret. You may find my choice of word to be in poor taste, but then, so is much of the movie: stillborn. My grade: F. (First F of the year, and it took until November!)

The Right Way To Update Sherlock Holmes

I really disliked the Guy Ritchie "Sherlock Holmes" movie from last year, which was trying to turn Holmes into something more like a modern-day action hero. So when I heard about a new adaptation of the legendary character I was concerned. The plan for "Sherlock," airing on PBS' "Masterpiece Mystery!" series, was to not just make Holmes and Dr. Watson seem more modern, but to actually bring the characters into the present day. And not by being cryogenically frozen, either. I was very skeptical, but still curious.

The new Holmes and Watson

So tonight, instead of being bored and disgusted by election coverage, I fired up the old DVR and watched the first two (of three) episodes. While not everything is the same -- the deerstalker cap is long gone, as it was in the Ritchie movie, and instead of Holmes' exclamation that "the game is afoot," here he says, "The game is on!" -- the famous address of 221B Baker Street is still their residence, and Mrs. Hudson is still their landlady.

In the first episode, we learn that Watson (Martin Freeman) was wounded in Afghanistan, is shipped back home and is having trouble readjusting to civilian life. He wants to live in London but can't afford decent accomodations; an old colleague introduces him to Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch), who is very much a fan of texting and has his own website, "The Science of Deduction," and he quickly gets Watson involved as he is asked by Detective Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard for assistance in investigating a series of deaths that appear to be suicides.

The chemistry between the two leads is lots of fun, with quite a few allusions to the oft-speculated idea that Holmes and Watson are lovers. And the manner in which Holmes makes his deductions is visually striking. This is the fast-paced, energetic but still incredibly brilliant Holmes that Guy Ritchie didn't quite achieve with Robert Downey, Jr.

There's one more episode on PBS this Sunday, but if you didn't see the first two you can catch up online for the next month.

Quick Reviews: Iron Man 2, Shrek 4

It seems right to combine these two into one post because they're both sequels, and neither lives up to previous installments. And, oddly enough, the title characters in both movies have something in common.

In "Iron Man 2" Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), with his identity of Iron Man now known to the world, seems to be enjoying himself. He charms the crowds at the Stark Expo, and in a Senate committee room where a senator played by Garry Shandling(!) is demanding Stark turn over the Iron Man tech to the government for military usage. However, the substance that powers the "arc reactor" in his chest is slowly killing him, and as a result he's acting out -- getting drunk at his birthday party (while in the Iron Man armor), turning over control of his company to Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), replacing the driver of his car at a Grand Prix race in Monaco. It's at that race that Stark is attacked by Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), who wants revenge for what Stark's father did to Vanko's father. And it gets more complicated from there. The fight scenes aren't as interesting as the rest of the movie, to be honest. The whole thing kind of drags a bit. My grade: C-plus.

In "Shrek Forever After," fourth in the series, again things seem to be fine and dandy. Shrek (voice of Mike Myers), his wife Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz), their kids, Donkey (Eddie Murphy), Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas), everyone in Far Far Away is happy. Except Shrek really isn't happy. He misses the days when he was a "real" ogre, when the villagers were scared of him instead of asking for autographs, when he could take a mud bath in peace instead of attending to his family duties, and so on. After an argument with Fiona at the kids' birthday party Shrek storms off. He meets the sneaky Rumpelstiltskin, who offers a deal: Shrek can have a day where he's a "real" ogre again, in exchange for another day from his past. Shrek signs the deal and soon realizes he's been tricked, and has to learn the old lesson that you don't know what you have until it's gone. There are a few laughs, but more often than not the jokes fall flat. It's being touted as the "final chapter," and based on this one, it better be. My grade: C.

Quick Reviews: The End-Of-Year Clearance

Last week I went to movies on four consecutive days. I'm pretty sure I've never done that before. I certainly haven't done it during the post-Christmas week, when theaters do major business thanks to people being off work and school.

I started off Monday with It's Complicated. Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin have great chemistry as a divorced couple who, on the occasion of their son's college graduation, find themselves in bed together and begin an affair. Problem: he remarried and she has another man (Steve Martin) who's into her. Particularly charming is "The Office" star John Krasinski as the future husband of Streep and Baldwin's oldest daughter. Much has been made of Baldwin's nude scene. It's not that horrendous, and it's not even him at any rate -- it's a stunt butt. Yes, he's older and gained weight, but Alec Baldwin is still rather irresistible. But let's remember him as he was (at left). My grade: A-minus.

Tuesday, in part because I got to the theater so early I didn't want to wait for what I planned to see, found me at Did You Hear About The Morgans? For a while I was wishing I hadn't heard about them. Unlike Streep and Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant are not a good match as the titular couple, successful New Yorkers who are separated because he cheated on her. Trying to win her back, he takes her to dinner. They witness a murder, are taken into protective custody and are whisked away to a small town in Wyoming. Oddly enough, I went to the restroom mid-way through and when I returned, for some reason I disliked it less. My grade: C-minus.

On Wednesday it was A Single Man, starring Colin Firth as a college professor, an older gay man mourning the recent death of his longtime lover (Matthew Goode, seen in flashbacks). It's 1962, well before the Stonewall riots set off a major push for gay rights, so things are much more difficult for him. Firth is excellent, as is Julianne Moore as his best friend who wants to be more than just friends. It's directed by fashion designer Tom Ford and, especially at the beginning, it looked too much like a fashion show or a perfume commercial with a lot of slick editing. Ultimately, the film as a whole was a little lacking, and the ending was hinted at much earlier. My grade: B-minus.

Which brings us, finally, to Sherlock Holmes. Guy Ritchie reimagines the legendary creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as an action hero in a buddy comedy starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Dr. Watson. The flaws in this movie aren't in the acting but in the plot (about a villain who is executed but manages to come back to life and takes over a secret society with plans to overthrow the British government and eventually restore America to the British Empire) and especially the characterization. Holmes is still a brilliant detective, but he's also often boorish. Holmes and Watson spend most of the film bickering. Rachel McAdams is wasted as Irene Adler, the only person to ever outwit Holmes, here merely a plot device to set up the inevitable sequel. I can understand trying to make Sherlock Holmes more palatable to a modern audience, but Guy Ritchie botches the job. My grade: D-plus.

My Week In Comics 12-2-09

...or, The Week of the Living Dead, thanks to two "Blackest Night" tie-ins and another book that I found in the store that became an impulse purchase.

Blackest Night: The Flash 1 (of 3): A fair amount of this book repeats events that took place in the main BN series, and a little bit of what is still taking place in the "Flash: Rebirth" miniseries, which should have been over by now but isn't, thanks to publishing delays. I'm not sure how much that will continue in the rest of this three-parter. Other than that, it's apparently going to feature the Rogues (Flash's enemies) vs. Black Lantern Rogues.

Blackest Night: Wonder Woman 1 (of 3): If this were a one-shot, that would've been fine. Wonder Woman vs. Black Lantern Maxwell Lord (the villain whose neck was snapped by Wonder Woman during the lead-in to "Infinite Crisis") at Arlington National Cemetery -- very well-written. The events at the end of Blackest Night #5 will apparently take precedence in this series as well, though. Still, if I'm buying issue 2 of either of these tie-ins, it'll be more likely this one than the Flash book.

Victorian Undead 1 (of 6): Enough of the Blackest Night pseudo-zombies -- it's time for the real thing! And they're in London -- in 1898! And none other than Sherlock Holmes is on the case! As a big fan of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories, I'm not sure how I feel about the upcoming movie starring Robert Downey, Jr and Jude Law as Holmes and Dr. Watson, but this book feels much more like the Conan Doyle stories. Other than the stuff about zombies, of course.

Superman: World of New Krypton 10 (of 12): This series is almost over. In this issue, a Kryptonian leader has been murdered, and special guest Adam Strange poses a valid (and unanswered question) about the missing suspect: "...it's a planet populated by people with x-ray vision...how is it none of you can find this guy?" Matters not, though, because DC has finally announced what all of this is leading up to in 2010: WAR OF THE SUPERMEN! I'm tingling with anticipation!

Simpsons Winter Wingding 4: A 48-page special featuring stories with a wintry theme. For starters, the Simpsons go green to the extreme -- and whatever happened to Mr. Plow's snowplow?