Midnight in Paris: Enchanted dream

Midnight in Paris (2011) • View trailer for Midnight in Paris
4.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, and needlessly, for mild sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.17.11


Back in 1979, Woody Allen opened his film Manhattan with the following rhapsodic voice-over:

He adored New York City. He romanticized it all out of proportion. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles. No matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black-and-white, and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.

The displaced Gil (Owen Wilson), already enchanted by his unexpected
surroundings, is further mesmerized by the coquettish Adriana (Marion
Cotillard), who guides him through a side of Paris that offers fresh surprises
from one moment to the next.

A bit more than three decades later, three minor swaps — the city so named, luxurious color for black-and-white, Cole Porter for George Gershwin — could have allowed the same soliloquy to apply to the deliriously romantic montage of images that kicks off Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

This is an idealized vision of Paris, much the way Manhattan was an idealized vision of New York: cinematic love letters to iconic cities with palpable heartbeats. The Paris of Allen’s new film doesn’t — can’t — really exist, any more than the similarly strawberry-lensed Paris of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 masterpiece, Amélie.

Although Allen remains an astonishingly prolific filmmaker — 42 big-screen features to his credit, going back to 1966, with an even more impressive one per year, without fail, since 1982 — he hasn’t had a no-argument-about-it critical and popular hit since 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters. That’s not to say he hasn’t done fine work since then — Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Mighty Aphrodite and Vicky Cristina Barcelona immediately come to mind — but merely that such films aren’t likely to stand alongside his best.

Well, add another title to Allen’s list of classics, because Midnight in Paris is grand, glorious, witty fun ... and extremely sharp and savvy filmmaking.

Although the delectable conceit that fuels this story has echoes of Brigadoon and even Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Allen’s shrewdly clever script moves in an entirely different direction and takes a playful poke at folks who tediously — or naively — insist that things were much better “in the good ol’ days.” Indeed, Allen eats his cake and has it, too, by waxing poetically about the charms of times past ... while cautioning those who’d try to take up residence.

Gil (Owen Wilson) and his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams) are vacationing in Paris while planning their upcoming wedding: an impending union of remarkably dissimilar sensibilities. Although a wildly successful Hollywood screenwriter, Gil chafes at the soulless emptiness of this career, and thus is trying to write a novel; he rather vaguely hopes that Paris will prove a proper environment for this effort. Inez, perfectly content with the largess that Gil’s income provides, wastes no opportunity to belittle or bluntly dismiss this new artistic goal. Gil tolerates her put-downs with good-natured calm, in part because he secretly worries that she may be right.

Green Lantern: Slightly diminished glow

Green Lantern (2011) • View trailer for Green Lantern
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for action violence and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang 


Forget about the ring; Green Lantern’s greatest super power may be the ability to save his own movie.

Which is to say, Warner Bros. owes a huge debt to Ryan Reynolds, whose charisma and cheerful, naughty-boy charm masks several sins.

After being transported across the universe and slapped into his slick green suit,
Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds, right) hopes that the compassionate Tomar-Re, left,
will be his new "ring instructor." But no, that assignment falls to the much
larger and intimidating Kilowog.

The biggest problem is a clumsy script that tries to accomplish too much, and winds up with too little: too little emotional resonance, too little time spent with plot chapters that should have been given more weight. Too many secondary characters treated casually; too many details handled sloppily.

Savvy credits watchers will raise a skeptical eyebrow at the presence of four screenwriters — Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg — which invariably points to a script that has been fine-tuned by committee and target demographics, rather than narrative clarity and artistic consistency.

I recognize the problem: The first entry in any superhero franchise arrives with the burden of necessary back-story ... often dialogue-heavy, and at odds with the cataclysmic battles that viewers desire. That problem is magnified here, because Green Lantern has more back-story than most: a complicated and cleverly devised reason for why a cocky Earth man gets tagged to join an elite force of inter-stellar space cops.

All this must be explained, before our hero’s actions can be placed in the proper context. Unfortunately, in an effort to present all this information, sidebar character development gets abandoned.

But that’s not the sole issue. Although director Martin Campbell has plenty of action epics in his résumé — two James Bonds entries, two Zorro adventures — he’s clearly not as comfortable with the quite different nuances involved when heroes and villains owe most (all?) of their existence to special effects. Most of the skirmishes here are little more than rock-’em, sock-’em slug-fests involving plenty of ring- or telekinetically manipulated furniture, lab equipment and handy military hardware, vehicles and planes.

At times, you’ll wonder if we’ve slipped into an installment of the X-Men film franchise.

James Newton Howard’s score doesn’t help; it’s all loud-loud-loud orchestral crashes and smashes, with few nuances to help sell quieter scenes.

Finally, the film suffers from a major casting hiccup: Blake Lively is simply wrong as Carol Ferris, the on again/off again girlfriend and full-time colleague/sorta boss of brash test pilot Hal Jordan (Reynolds). For starters, the notion that she, too, is a test pilot ... is utterly laughable.

Additionally, Lively’s line readings during the first argument between Hal and Carol are atrocious, and the lines themselves are pretty dismal. Lively is too much a product of the breathy melodrama she handles so well on television’s Gossip Girl and the two Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies. For that matter, she also delivered a persuasive job as the desperate, dead-end gal pal in last year’s The Town.

But Lively never seems to really believe the role she inhabits here; one gets the impression that she retreats to a corner, after every take, and snickers over the idiocy of the line she just spoke. A quick comparison to Natalie Portman (Thor) or Gwyneth Paltrow (Iron Man) reveals just how much Lively pales in comparison.

Anyway...

Super 8: Plenty of pizzazz

Super 8 (2011) • View trailer for Super 8
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for action violence, dramatic intensity and grody monster behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.10.11


This film reminds me how much I’ve missed the family-friendly action/suspense flicks of the 1980s, which introduced an entire generation of young stars to movie fans: The Goonies, Poltergeist, the prologue of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (the “young Indie” sequence, with River Phoenix), The Lost Boys, Fright Night and — most particularly — E.T.

And you thought your day was going badly? All heck is breaking loose in the
small Ohio town where our young heroes — from left, Martin (Gabriel Basso),
Cary (Ryan Lee), Joe (Joel Courtney) and Charles (Riley Griffiths) — have
been trying to make an amateur zombie movie. They're about to discover
something far worse than even their imaginations can concoct.

Super 8 plays like an energetic cross between E.T. and The Goonies, and I mean that in all the best ways. I’d expect no less from producer Steven Spielberg and writer/director J.J. Abrams, who make a great team. To a degree, Abrams has re-visited his “unseen monster on the loose” concept from Cloverfield, but (thankfully!) absent the irritating, jiggly video verité point-of-view that ruined an otherwise nifty little film.

Spielberg’s touch as producer was present on some of the above-named thrill rides; he’s clearly able to help bring out the best in other directors. The same is true here, with a nifty premise that hits the ground running and maintains a palpable level of suspense, while allowing sufficient time to explore the key characters and their varied relationships.

And while our heroes are (for the most part) middle-school nerds, their savvy doesn’t come at the expense of adults who behave like boobs. The principal grown-ups here are just as resourceful, when necessary ... and there’s a whole lotta “necessary” populating Abrams’ cheeky, mildly retro script.

Two things to bear in mind:

First, this is a very loud film. The premise demands plenty of crashing, smashing and heavy gunfire, and sound effects editors David Acord and Dustin Cawood, and supervising sound editor Matthew Wood, definitely earn their paychecks. Given a theater with a well-tuned sound system — as was the case at Tuesday evening’s Sacramento preview — this flick will leave you wide-eyed and breathless.

Second, the PG-13 rating is deserved. The occasional shocks and jolts are on par with the severed head that unexpectedly bobbed into view, back in the day, during an underwater search in Spielberg’s Jaws. Since the whatzis is this story is large and carnivorous, draw the logical conclusions and be prepared accordingly.

Abrams opens his story with a doleful prologue, as young Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) has just lost his mother to a freak workplace accident: a sequence handled with poignant subtlety. The loss also is felt keenly by Joe’s father, Jackson (Kyle Chandler, familiar from TV’s Friday Night Lights), who works as one of the town deputies. For reasons not immediately made clear to us — or Joe — Jackson blames Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard) for the accident. To makes matters worse, Jackson is a distant father at best, and their shared loss further strains the dysfunctional family dynamic.

Four months then pass, putting Joe and his friends at the beginning of summer vacation. The small gang takes its marching orders from Charles (Riley Griffiths), who serves as director on an amateur zombie horror flick they’ve been making with his Super 8 camera. Joe handles make-up, model work and occasional script tightening; Cary (Ryan Lee), something of a nascent firebug, takes care of explosives and pyrotechnics; Martin (Gabriel Basso), the tallest and most mature-looking, is the primary star; and Preston (Zach Mills) does anything else that needs doing.

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer: Dumb and dumber

Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer (2011) • View trailer
Three stars. Rating: PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang


Films adapted from popular children’s books come in two distinct flavors: those taking place in our real world — or at least a close approximation — and those occupying a warped fantasyland with no semblance of authenticity.

Judy (Jordana Beatty, center) and her younger brother, Stink (Parris Mosteller)
cautiously dig into a dessert fondue of sliced wieners, fruit syrup and breakfast
cereal: merely one of the concoctions prepared by their free-spirited Aunt Opal
(Heather Graham).

Last summer’s Ramona and Beezus was an excellent example of the former: a sweet and respectful handling of Beverly Cleary’s famed characters, with a storyline that dealt with kid-oriented crises such as a parent’s lost income or the death of a family pet. I also have fond memories of 2005’s big-screen rendition of Because of Winn-Dixie.

Director John Schultz’s handling of Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, in great contrast, is aggressively silly from the first frame. This is kid-oriented entertainment aimed solely at moppets who watch Nickelodeon specials in order to see big-name stars slimed with green glop, and who firmly believe — as this script demonstrates, time and again — that most adults are clueless numbskulls.

Thus, as a typical example, we’re treated to a limp-noodle aunt who can’t drive, but nonetheless plops her niece and nephew into the back seat of the family station wagon — without seatbelts, of course — and charges through red lights, creating all sorts of vehicular havoc before crashing into an outdoor display and watching as the elephant head from a giant sign impales the hood with its tusks.

Later, the same aunt utterly trashes the family living room while creating one of her many “artistic masterpieces” ... and nobody seems to care, or even notice.

And so on, in a similar vein.

Not my cup of tea, and much too reminiscent of the ghastly, pratfall-laden, live-action “comedies” that nearly sank the Disney Studios in the late 1960s and ’70s. Those films also involved imbecilic adults and the destruction of considerable personal property, usually while hailing a young protagonist as some sort of misfit hero.

One must assume that novelist Megan McDonald, on whose books this film is based, wanted it this way; she co-wrote this script with Kathy Waugh. Yes, McDonald’s Judy Moody books are more opulently farcical than those from, say, Beverly Cleary; Judy is much more given to hilariously theatrical gestures of defiance, disappointment and disgust. Nothing major ever goes wrong in Judy’s world; her perceived traumas are the stuff of superficial nonsense, such as a growing concern that her hoped-for “perfect summer” may turn out to be dull, dreary and discouraging.

The Tree of Life: Utterly lifeless

The Tree of Life (2011) • View trailer for The Tree of Life
No stars (turkey). Rating: PG-13, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.3.11


At one point during writer/director Terrence Malick’s unforgivably tedious slog of a movie, Brad Pitt’s Mr. O’Brien — while listening to a favorite piece of classical music, and no doubt wanting to comment upon the elusive search for perfection — explains that the composer recorded it 65 times ... and still wasn’t satisfied.

Jack (Hunter McCracken, right) lacks the patience to pull weeds and tend a
garden in the exacting manner demanded by his overbearing, short-tempered
father (Brad Pitt), who invariably takes the boy's "failings" as a personal slight.

A dangerous bit of dialogue, to insert into this dull, dreary and disjointed mess.

At my most generous, I might imagine that Malick intends his film to be more tone poem than typical narrative: more mood piece than conventional drama.

But I’m not inclined to be generous. The notoriously fussy Malick filmed this yawner three years ago, then spent the intervening time fine-tuning the footage in the editing bay.

He should have fine-tuned further.

Frankly, he should have given up entirely, and done unsuspecting viewers a favor.

The Tree of Life isn’t just bad; it’s laughably, crushingly awful. Unwatchable. Dull beyond description. Incomprehensible. Self-indulgently ridiculous.

Having said that, I’ve no doubt this film will speak to New Agers who love dissecting every last syllable of every last word in overly pompous poetry. Or, to put it another way, Malick’s approach will be adored by those who found the “star gate” sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey to be rich with theological grace.

As opposed to the rest of us, who kept checking our watches and wondering when Stanley Kubrick would get on with it, fercryinoutloud.

Kubrick actually is a good comparison, particularly later in his career, when he, too, was taking years and years to make a single film. Malick has made only five since his big-screen debut, with 1973’s Badlands. The second one, 1978’s Days of Heaven, remains his most mainstream work; two full decades would pass before the next one, 1998’s The Thin Red Line. Since then, he also unleashed 2005’s The New World.

Malick shares Kubrick’s desire to make every frame so gorgeous that it could be extracted, mounted and hung in a museum; in fairness, yes, the cinematography and composition are that gorgeous, often that powerful. But if I want to look at paintings, I visit a museum; motion pictures are so named because, well, they’re supposed to move.

The Hangover Part II: A case of the staggers

The Hangover Part II (2011) • View trailer for The Hangover Part II
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, drug use, sexual content, graphic nudity and flashes of violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.27.11


While The Hangover Part II probably will satisfy most of the folks who turned its 2009 predecessor into such a surprise hit, even avid fans will have to admit that the bloom has worn off the rose.

Stu (Ed Helms, left) gets ready to snatch a capuchin monkey — which
unknowingly carries an important document within its little vest — while Mr.
Chow (Ken Jeong, center) distracts the little beast, and Phil (Bradley Cooper)
keeps a wary eye on the Russian gangsters across the street.

The original's core premise relied on surprise: the means by which three badly hung-over guys determined just how wretchedly they had behaved the previous evening. That gimmick really only works once; this time out, no matter how much returning director Todd Phillips tries to freshen the salad, the result can't shake a been there/done that familiarity that breeds, if not contempt, then certainly ennui.

We know what's coming this time. We may not know the humiliating details — and Phillips delivers at least one grand sequence of ghastly embarrassment — but the key character riffs are easily anticipated.

When our three protagonists here repeatedly exclaim, "I can't believe this is happening again," they do so in an effort to acknowledge the obvious, while tying this film to their previous escapades. Unfortunately, we're occasionally inclined to agree with them: We can't believe it either.

Eager as I always am to credit — or blame — the scripters for a film's success or failure, I couldn't help noting the absence of the first outing's writing team of Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. They'd been quietly building a respectable résumé of romantic comedies, including Four Christmases and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past — neither of them classics, to be sure, but nonetheless showing promise and (here's the key) some character depth — and The Hangover was their breakout hit.

Rather than continue with a winning team, though, Phillips turned instead to writers Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong, both known for lowest-common-denominator moron comedies such as Superhero Movie, Road Trip, Scary Movie 4 and the wretched big-screen remake of Starsky and Hutch. Not an ounce of character development between them. Oh, and Phillips snatched a writing credit himself this time, no doubt because he collaborated with Armstrong on several of the above-mentioned misfires.

The difference is obvious. Lucas and Moore write funny movies for adults. Mazin, Armstrong and Phillips write tasteless movies for the sort of arrested adolescents lampooned so well by Zach Galifianakis in this very film. Draw your own conclusions.

While the results, in Hangover II, aren't as relentlessly vulgar as an average Farrelly brothers outing — no explosions of excrement, I'm happy to report — there's no doubt Phillips & Co. sacrifice basic plot logic on the altar of ongoing torment for these three schlubs. They also cross the sympathy line once, and quite badly. Despite the first film's antics, nobody was permanently affected; even Stu (Ed Helms) pops up with a full set of teeth, as this story kicks off.

This time, however, a major character gets maimed for life ... and, sorry guys, but that ain't funny. The mere fact that it happens is bad enough; the added fact that nobody seems to care makes it even worse. It's damn near impossible to sympathize with the three misfit members of this "wolf pack" if they're gonna be that callous.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides -- Back to basics

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) • View trailer
3.5 stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for action violence and sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.20.11


Johnny Depp hasn't lost his mincing swagger, and that's great news for fans of this loopy series.

Depp's impeccably timed comic performance remains the best part of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. To watch him is to laugh helplessly: the hilariously trashy pirate's garb; the bemused double-takes; the gently slurred speech and overly precise movements of somebody who drained one too many tankards of rum; the marvelous little bits of physical business, as when he constantly brushes away imaginary lint (as if he could tell, with such filthy apparel?).

Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) manages an impressive escape from the
clutches of King George and his Royal Guards, by leaping from one moving
carriage to another, as scores of men pursue. Unfortunately, he's merely
running from the frying pan and directly into the fire: a reunion with an even
more dangerous figure from his past.

Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow — along with all the other characters in these films — may have forever corrupted my vision of a classic pirate. Not even this film's hissably malevolent villain — Ian McShane's Blackbeard — is a figure of genuine dread; he's too idiosyncratically amusing.

But if Depp's constancy is a blessing, the change-up behind the camera is a welcome relief. Director Gore Verbinski has departed for different shores, and I couldn't be happier; his three earlier films in this series suffered from unnecessary bloat. At just shy of three hours, the previous installment (At World's End) was ludicrously self-indulgent, thanks also to a scattershot script that made no sense whatsoever.

Series screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio are back, but this film's new sheriff — replacement director Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) — obviously brought some much-needed discipline to the process. The story is tighter, the ancillary characters are better defined, and the pacing and editing (David Brenner, Michael Kahn and Wyatt Smith) are vastly superior.

Mind you, we still never completely abandon the cheeky fact that this entire series is based on a Disneyland theme ride, and those who've ridden the boats past the Blue Bayou diners will recognize one more tableau lifted from that attraction's soggy depths. Which is as it should be.

Marshall's approach also is a bit different. He front-loads the film's two best action sequences into the first act, one of which — a swordfight between Jack and an as-yet-unidentified adversary, in the bowels of a tavern's storage room— is a real corker. The superbly staged skirmish reminded me of the two Richard Lester Three Musketeers movies, back in the 1970s: the same inventive choreography, the same hell-for-leather passion by the combatants.

Unfortunately, we don't get anything to equal these sequences, in acts two and three; that's somewhat disappointing.

As the story begins, Capt. Jack's fortunes have dwindled again; he lacks funds, a crew and a ship, his beloved Black Pearl having suffered an unknown fate. It's all he can do to prevent his loyal comrade, Gibbs (Kevin McNally), from getting his neck stretched ... and that rescue concludes with a fresh set of problems. A chance encounter with the woman Jack once loved and cheerfully corrupted — Penélope Cruz's Angelica — results in his being shanghaied onto a scary ship commandeered by no less than Blackbeard himself: not a man to be trifled with.

Angelica is First Mate on this vessel. And she also happens to be Blackbeard's daughter. Which Jack didn't know, back in the day.