THOR: The Film Babble Blog Review

THOR (Dir. Kenneth Branaugh, 2011)

(Warning: This review may contain Spoilers!)

Summer doesn’t officially begin until late June, but the summer movie season began last week with the opening of the huge blockbuster FAST FIVE. However the season doesn’t really feel like it’s underway until a big-ass superhero flick swoops in, so today we get us the latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: THOR.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is a cocky (and somewhat douchey) Norse God who lives in the splendiforic golden CGI city of Asgard which is in another realm from our world, you see?

Thor’s father, the King of this realm, played with his patented gravely gravitas by Anthony Hopkins, is ready to let his son take the throne, but an attack by a gang of scaly skinned creepy creatures called Frost Giants throws that plan out of whack.

The Frost Giants steal the source of Asgard’s power “the Casket of Ancient Winters.” Defying their father, Thor and his brother (Tom Hiddleston) go after their frigid foes into their icy realm, along with their gung-ho troop of hearty warriors (Tadanobu Asano, Joshua Davis, Ray Stevenson, and Jaimie Alexander).

A busy and bombarding battle goes down, which doesn’t please Hopkins so he banishes his son to Earth, and throws his hammer of power down there with him.

It then becomes a bit of a fish out of water story with Thor meeting up with a trio of scientific researchers in a desert in New Mexico where he crash lands – Natalie Portman (much more animated than in YOUR HIGHNESS), a befuddled Stellan Skarsgård, and the wise-cracking Kat Dennings – who take him in as they just happen to be up on Nordic mythology.

Thor’s predicament is that he has to fight through a military instillation that has surrounded his mighty hammer in the desert since, like the Arthurian legend, it can not be removed by just anyone.

The film gets bogged down in noisy fight scenes and impenetrable exposition that I couldn’t follow recognize the weight of, but since I don’t know the comic from which this is based, that stuff may mean a lot more to the hardcore.

I got that Thor must fight his brother Hiddleston, who turns out to be half Frost Giant I guess, and a giant destructive robot in order to restore the kingdom of Asgard and awaken their father from some deep sparkling golden slumber, I think.

It was hard to follow or care about this because Hemsworth has little charisma or believability in the role, and his being paired with Portman is forced and fairly chemistry-less.

Those elements don’t completely cripple THOR, because on the surface it’s a serviceable super hero movie with plenty of fast paced action that folks just wanting mindless thrills will likely go for.

It’s also fun to see how the Marvel movies are building what my fellow local entertainment writer friend Zack Smith calls an “uber continuity” with Clark Gregg reprising his role as Agent Coulson from IRON MAN 1 & 2, a cameo by Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye, and an after the end-credits scene, which I won’t spoil, but will just say that it foreshadows events to come in THE AVENGERS, so stay until the very end.

I was very surprised to see that this was directed by Kenneth Branaugh because in retrospect except for some nuanced acting from a few members of the cast, there is precious little in this assembly line formula that could be reasonably attributed to him.

While I normally avoid 3-D, I didn’t have a choice with the advance screening I saw of this. I didn’t get a headache, but apart from a few scattered arresting visuals, the 3-D added very little.

THOR is bombastic and in your face enough without such enhancement, but I bet kids of all ages will eat it up in whatever format.

More later…

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER: The Film Babble Blog Review

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER (Dir. Woody Allen, 2010)

Another year, another Woody Allen movie. Another one set in London, but hey! No Scarlett Johansson – so that’s saying something.

This ensemble comedy with Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, and Josh Brolin as the principles reminds me of Juliette Lewis in Allen’s 1992 dramedy HUSBANDS AND WIVES telling her professor (played by Allen) her impressions of his long gestating novel:

“You make suffering so funny. All the lost souls running around.”

There’s plenty of lost souls, but suffering though isn’t so funny here – it’s not even that affecting.

To break it down – we start with Gemma Jones as the estranged wife of Hopkins visiting a fortune teller (Pauline Collins) for advice about how to move on. She’s despondent and in need of drink which could define every character on display.

Jones’ daughter, Watts, is in a frustrating marriage to Brolin who is struggling with writing a new novel. Brolin pines for a woman (Frieda Pinto from “Slumdog Millionaire”) he sees through his flat’s adjacent window.

Watts, meanwhile pines for her new boss (Antonio Banderas) at the art gallery where she just got a new job as an assistant.

In one of the most clichéd premises of a mid life crises I’ve ever seen Hopkins introduces his new fiancée (Lucy Punch) to Watts and Brolin over dinner and the extremely unnecessary narrator (Zak Orth) tells us that he’s not telling the whole truth about her.

Punch is a ditzy call girl who Hopkins woos into matrimony with promises of minks and money you see and so, of course, it’s a doomed relationship.

Meanwhile Brolin, jealous of a friend’s manuscript, goes to the dark side after finding out that his friend is dead after an automobile accident. He steals the book and his publisher loves it, but the catch is that is that his friend isn’t dead – he’s in a coma and doctors say there’s a chance he could recover at any time.

Brolin courts Pinto causing her to call off her engagement while Watts finds out her boss is seeing somebody else on the side from his wife and Hopkins is cuck-holded by Punch who also runs up quite a tab on his dime.

Jones, with the help of Collins, seeks spiritual comfort as well as companionship, but might find both in the form of, no, not a tall dark stranger, a short fat one portrayed by Roger Ashton-Griffiths who owns an occult bookshop and pines for his deceased wife.

The same tired themes of spirituality verses common sense are trotted out – it’s a treatise on whatever works to get one through life – like say in Allen’s last film “Whatever Works” – and the emptiness that the characters try to overcome weighs down the film in a wretched way.

Still, Brolin’s dilemma is compelling stuff even if it doesn’t come to a satisfying resolution (or any resolution really).

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER is a close to middling film with one juicy story thread (Brolin’s literary nightmare) amid warmed over Woody Allen thematic material that he has done to death.

Somebody not so fluent with the Woodman’s work may get more out of it, but would such a person really be interested in seeing it?

Brolin’s scenerio made me think that’s there’s still enough there for Allen to keep making movies, but maybe not so often as a film a year like his current record.

That’s not gonna happen however. Allen has another project already in the works (MIDNIGHT IN PARIS) so maybe I should be thankful at this late date that at least some shred of quality still remains.

More later…

IMAXed Out BEOWULF Style

“Just don’t take any class where you have to read Beowulf.”
– Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) ANNIE HALL (1977)

I went to the first IMAX movie I’ve seen in a long time at a venue I’ve never been to before – The IMAX Theatre at Marbles Kid Museum in Raleigh, N.C. The movie was BEOWULF, the new Robert Zemeckis 3-D CGI spectacle based on the Old English heroic epic poem (as Wikipedia calls it). Did I mention it was IMAX 3-D? Because if the flick didn’t have the ginormous screen 3-D enhancement I don’t think I would’ve liked the movie much. Anywhere here goes a review:

BEOWULF (Dir. Robert Zemeckis, 2007)

The very loose adaptation of the ancient landmark of World literature presented here won’t do any high school English teachers any favors. This throws out all but the basics of the original story and CGI’s everything up to 11 – with in-your-face bloody battles, in-your-face grotesque sea monsters and dragons, in-your-face golden villainess Angelina Jolie, and in-your-face uh, everything! It was IMAX 3-D you know so everything is constantly coming at you. Beowulf is played by Ray Winstone who with the benefit of the animation process becomes a buff killing machine Adonis while the other actors – Robin Penn Wright, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich appear confined to video game character aesthetic restraints. I honestly didn’t know until afterwards that it was the wonderfully weird Crispin Glover who provided the voice and mannerisms for the colosally disgusting Grendel – good thing too because that might have distracted a bit.

I am not a fan of the 300-style bravado that often dominated the proceedings and the thrill of the 3-D did wear off after the first half only to come back in spurts but overall BEOWULF is a fairly fun ride through ancient mythic vistas and bloody overwrought battles. Like I said before though it was the IMAX 3-D that made the show – I can’t really comment on what this film would play like in 2-D. As my father said to make Angelina Jolie into Grendel’s mother is quite a stretch but one that doesn’t matter as long as things keep coming at you.

More later…

The Failure Of The ALL THE KING’S MEN Remake

The IMDB reported this the other day –

“Oscar-winning screenwriter and director Steve Zaillian was clearly stunned by the critical and box-office failure of his latest film, ALL THE KING’S MEN, which opened with only $3.8 million in its debut and fell out of the top-ten in its second weekend. Zaillian told the Los Angeles Times that it was “like getting hit by a truck. … I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe down the road I’ll figure it out”.

Well maybe I can help figure it out – Since it is leaving my home town theater after a barely attended 2 ween run I decided to see the movie last night and it is one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen!! Not since I almost went into a coma watching HOFFA has my time in the theater been so deadly dull. Hard to say exactly where Zaillian and crew went wrong – it is well photographed, the screenplay hits the right points, and the cast is A-list (Sean Penn, Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, etc.) – it just doesn’t work. Most critics have blamed Sean Penn’s overwrought performance and yes it is true he does deserve to be one of the patients in Monty Python’s Hospital For The Over-Acting sketch but the blame lies elsewhere I believe.

I got the original 1949 version of ALL THE KING’S MEN (Dir. Robert Rossen) from Netflix and watched it this morning. It had won the best picture Oscar and for good reason – it is a good well crafted interesting exercise in good taste and restraint. Everything the re-make tries in vain for the original accomplishes with much more class. I’ll take Broderick Crawford’s believably flawed Willie Stark over Sean Penn’s wretched over-the-top spastic Willie Stark any day.

So it was just another unnecessary remake. I can’t think of one worthwhile remake that has been produced lately. Can you?

More later…