Along with Scott Pilgrim, this was my most anticipated comic-to-film adaptation since Iron man 2. Like Pilgrim, it involves taking a very specific narrative conceit and selling it to a mainstream audience. In this case, it was a snake eating it's own tail, because the conceit belied another conceit: it's established as a real-world superhero movie, but becomes more and more outlandish as it goes, playing with the conventions of realistic vs. cartoon violence, expectations about gender and age-appropriate behavior, vulgarity and sweetness, and frankly, finds ways of allowing the viewer to accept both shooting of children with handguns AND high concept action-figure tech. This film was as polarizing as I imagined it would be: some critics, and viewers, were so appalled they didn't know what to make of it. Others thought it was brilliant. While I don't think it was perfect by any means, I swing towards the latter.

I think the experience was probably much better if you read the books. You saw very specifically where Vaughn and writer Goldman veered from the source material to take their own stab at the genre-busting. You're also already more familiar with the world Kick-Ass inhabits, and the games being played. I read a critic's statement in a favorable review that the film was a combination of Watchmen and Wanted, and more enjoyable than either. I think the key there is that it plays on subversion of genre like Watchmen, has some stylistic pizazz and entertaining presentation, like Wanted, but I think it goes further than that. Watchmen as literature was a post-modern take on classic superheroes, but has become, over time, to be a benchmark FOR superhero storytelling, so when the film came out, there was no hope in telling this story in the context of four-color comic tropes, so they just focused on telling the modern myth of Watchmen, less commentary and more bad-ass. With Kick-Ass, they went in on similar footing: even many comic readers didn't see that the comic was more than just 'hey, let's make a realistic comic about a kid going off and getting his ass kicked in costume, and then turn it into a personal sandbox to beat the shit out of every comic concept I feel like, from classic Batman to teen schoolgirl assassins to big guns to slasher manga!'... because just on that basis, the book was already blisteringly awesome. But it works on paper because it ALSO shows how even steeped in ultra-violence and faux-reality, the plot was able to pull you along into a very comic-bookish narrative. It was like, the dressing doesn't matter: the story still works, as G or as R as you make it. So, with the film adaptation, they were faced with those same decisions, but unlike Watchmen, chose to go full-tilt into the comic subversion... and then kicked it UP a notch in the second and third acts, making it lampoon not only superhero comics and the very concept of people dressing as superheroes in the first place, but began to skewer the uptight expectations of what was appropriate in narrative in the first place. You could just imagine Vaughn and Goldman cackling to themselves: 'he's on fire, and the little girl is using a sniper rifle on infrared, and the entire internet is glued to it like pr0n, and they can't even SEE it, and the best part is: 90%of our uptight audience will actually be unable to handle it.' And they were right. But that's what i loved about the choices, even when they veered from what i wanted to see.



Kick-Ass is the story of a teenager, in Peter Parker mode, who cooks up costumed crime-fighting, initially for altruistic reasons, gives it a try, almost dies, gets really famous for it in a youtube-jackass way, and then gets hooked on the celebrity of it while not getting much better at it. It then veers into a story about the mob and their retaliation, about copycat heroes and betrayal and cowardice and expectations, of skewering imagery like Batman and Robin, or the Batmobile, or vigilante justice, and culminates in a story much bigger than the street-level adventures of a kid in a scuba suit and tonfa. It mirrored, in some ways, the inevitable arc of a small comic that makes it to film and grows and grows and grows in it's hollywoodization, from a story of a guy in spandex beating up crooks to vehicles and weapons, and multiple villains and extremely outrageous final acts. It comments on itself AS it's doing it.




The casting in this film was pretty spot-on. I kind of feel sorry for Aaron Johnson, though I guess I shouldn't since he's filming two new pictures and had to back away from the new X-Men because he's too busy. But this guy did an incredible job of conveying teen awkwardness AND physicality, in such a way that you could buy him as a dopey teen AND as a young crime fighter. I loved how he reminded us he was still a teenager, even under the cowl, from his head-bobbing to Gnarls Barkly in the Mistmobile, to how despite all of his mirror-practice, he was nervous and non-menacing and in a panic once confronted with real danger. At the same time, he was equally convincing as a young, resilient, emotionally charged, hormonal, adrenalized guy whacking the shit out of people with his clubs and do OK just by virtue of making contact in between more concerted attacks from his opponents. But despite that tenuous balancing act, he was upstaged I think by some of his co-stars, with the star-power-recognition of Chris Mintz-Plasse and Nic Cage, to the absolutely mesmerizing performance of young Chloe Moretz. Not since Natalie Portman irrevocably destroyed our ability to compartmentalize youth and violence in Leon/ Professional, have I been so enthralled by a young person displaying both innocence AND vicious lethality.

I would have preferred, personally, a little less voice-cracking nervousness from Kick-Ass, and a little more effectiveness in his combat. In the comic, John Romita Jr (who's work is seen throughout the film, as well, from the Big Daddy / Hit Girl origin story to the images up on the wall in Big Daddy's lair, to the comic art he was producing) did a wonderful job of showing that Kick-Ass may not have been very skilled, but when he got someone in the face with a club, their face fell apart. He would be kicking...ass, for lack of a better term... before being surrounded and clubbed from behind, or being tagged by a more competent melee fighter. It allowed the antagonists to actually take him seriously, even as they mocked his look. He was still a guy willing to jump in and crack your face. Kick-Ass in the film was far less effective.

I would have also, I think, liked to have done without the meta third act, the details of which I don't want to go into without engaging in spoileriffic descriptions, because it really IS fun not to know what they're up to. I liked it on the face of it, but part of me really did want to just have the film wrap with the kind of visceral physicality I got in the comics. But that's me as the comic-reading, engaged consumer, the very patron the third act starts to make light of anyway.

Also, I love Mintz-Plasse but I felt like he was miscast. In the comic, part of the interesting appeal to Red Mist and why i thought Kick Ass went with him in the Mistmobile in the first place was that he seemed edgier, like the senior to Dave's junior, or the older kid that is already either in college or dropped out or is just on his own after high school. he was drawn with stubble, smoking weed, and bigger, and it was like an honor and overwhelming to Dave that this guy had fashioned himself after Kick-Ass, but had the car and the weed and all that. Also, by setting up the fix in the film's plot earlier on, I just never got the sense of betrayal from Red Mist the way I wanted. It's like a poorly constructed murder mystery with no mystery.



I enjoyed the fact that Hit Girl gets into the family residential tower by playing the lost innocent child routine, complete with the awesome little plastic suitcase. The schoolgirl outfit and pigtails was very obviously a nod to both Leon and to Japanese manga convention as well, but what i felt it was missing was a statement about how, in the later case, the schoolgirl combatant thing is always sexualized, and one thing they wisely never did here was sexualize Hit Girl. I wanted her to say something condemning some guard looking at her wrong, showing she was old enough to do all this murder by numbers, and knew that the guys were leering at her, and that it was gross of them to do so. I wanted that aspect of it to be presented, but it wasn't. And it's a factor of age, more than anything. Katie in a catholic school get-up going to town on Dave outside of that cool comic shop/diner, that was fine to me, because it was two teens (and older actors) but the Japanese kink is very much about YOUNG schoolgirls and older men.

Some other notes and tidbits before I wrap this up:

1. I love Clark Duke in everything he does, and once again, his matter of fact enthusiasm and with-it even-keel delivery legitimized the scenes with Dave's high school crew. Glad he got his girl, too.

2. Xander Berkeley as Detective Gigante cracked me up. i love the actor, and I use that name as the version of the SF Giants in my Finit-e book, so everytime they referred to him < iwas dying. It's such a HARD name, for what was basically a slimy, corrupt coward.

3. Lyndsy Fonseca, who played love interest Katie Deauxma, was jogging my memory throughout the film. I couldn't decide why she seemed so familiar: was it that she was actually pretty hot, because she was. Was it that she looked like someone I knew? And then when I finally gave up and looked her up, I was jarred by the realization that she is the actress that plays one of the two kids in the narrative of How I Met Your Mother. In that show, the narrator, voiced by Bob Saget, is telling his kids, int he future, this sprawling story of how he and his friends in Manhattan had hi-jinks that led to their birth. Now they wisely filmed all the scenes of the kids listening to the story at once, so they never age. So even though I've watched that sitcom for years now, and the daughter never ages, but whoa, shes in her 20s. And is a dancer. And looks great in car-hood schoolgirl love scenes... I can tell you, that didn't happen to me in high school. But I wasn't climbing in girls' windows either.



4. I get the conceit of Nic Cage doing the Adam West impression, playing a Bat cipher after all, but it would have been more effective if he played like a Christian Bale gravel-voice thing instead. Adam West's 60's Batman camp just was a little too out there for this film, despite being a reminder of the absurdity of a post-middle-aged guy in a black body armor suit leaping from the ceiling. Otherwise, Big Daddy was awesome. I mean, Nic Cage played up the loving, doting, kind of goofy Dad who just happened to have a very clinically vicious revenge-focused worldview and was training his pre-teen daughter to be prepared in this hyper-realized version of the way parents (like me, believe it) send their kids to karate class and arm them with mace. He did such a fantastic job in this role, that I didn't need the goofy voice to remind me that this was that same guy under the armor: it was perfectly acceptable to me that this mild-mannered dad was also handy with close-range debraining tasks.

5. I love the detail that Hit Girl complained that being shot hurt more than he said it would and based on their practice sessions, and he admitted he had been using low-power rounds. That was very daddy of him.

6. I know there was a lot of controversy over the use of the word c_nt. I liked that they used it specifically because of that sensitivity. That was the shock they wanted. The only other word in modern parlance with that much negative association is n____r and had they used that, or had then contextually needed it, it would have derailed the film. It's also an in-joke since the original writer, Mark Millar, is European and uses that word much more freely.



Also, the new magazine he put together, in which he announced his plans for Kick-Ass 2, is called CLINT, very purposefully. See what they did there?

7. From IMDB, on an expression I had a hunch about, and was more or less right:
"Big Daddy's line, "Now go to Robin's revenge!" is a reference to a Robin comic where Robin was fighting a blind master martial artist. Even though he was was blind, his skill was such that Robin could not lay a finger on him. Robin was able to set up a whistle to blow automatically. This overloaded the blind man's primary sense and allowed Robin to sneak up behind him."

8. Quote of awesomeness: "Even with my metal plates and my fucked up nerve endings, I gotta tell you, that hurt! But not half as much as the idea of leaving everything behind. Katie, my dad, Todd and Marty... and all the things I'd never do. Like learn to drive or see what me and Katie's kids would look like or find out what happened on "Lost". And if you're reassuring yourself that I'm going to make it through this since I'm talking to you now, quit being such a smart-ass! Hell dude, you never seen "Sin City"? "Sunset Boulevard"? "American Beauty"? "

9. I loved the sub-plot, in the comic and in the film, of Dave pretending to be gay so as to get in with Katie. That's a pretty realistic assessment of a lot of my youth Not the pretending to be GAY part, but the pretending to just be a pal, or to play that role, despite wanting to shear the flesh from her bones metaphorically. Or something.

10. Quote of awesomeness: "I'm just fucking with you Daddy! Look, I'd love a Benchmade model 42 butterfly knife."



11. I loved that Red Mist's list of required equipment for the scam included a souped up Mustang full of gadgets. He didn't need that at ALL. Tolly a sneaky move, like mooching the expense account. That scene where they're driving around looking for crime, rockin out, that was one of the best in the film: it showed they were teenagers who, despite both of their roles and interests, still slipped into that goofy drivin-around--blasting-music thing to get comfortable. It was cool to see Red Mist sort of double-take at Kick-Ass bobbling along, like he was trying to present a cool environment to lure Kick-Ass into his confidence, but then was reminded that Kick-Ass is actually a teenager, like him. It was an interesting realization. I don't think he really grasped that Kick-Ass was really just a guy like him, raised under different circumstances, until then. I also found Red Mist's guilt and ambivalence over his betrayal and jealousy realistic. Sure, they set him up in that last scene in a fairly conventional manner, but it was actually a reasonable origin story for him: teenagers trying to gain the admiration and respect of their peers and parents, and failing, that is good motivation for a life's worth of fucked up headspace, indeed.

12. One of, if not THE best, shot in the whole film was Big Daddy getting ready for the final battle. How absolutely AMAZING was the notion of making a normal mustache into a handlebar mustache, as part of the disguise????

9/10 Clicks

Related posts:

1. Big Daddy: Kick-Ass’ First Disappointing Revelation
2. Infinite Crisis Mega-Review: Part Three
3. Kick-Ass Promo Posters

this was pretty funny, but it always felt like it was lacking that imaginative spark that sends a comedy over the top. the elements were just a little too formulaic, the couple was just a little too disconnected, the relationship between carell and rudd was just a little too easily navigated, the whole thing just felt kinda half-assed.

don't get me wrong, steve carell is fucking hysterical as the sort of dim-witted guy that paul rudd is bringing to his bosses "make fun of an idiot" dinner, and the whole cast, both main and supporting, is really good. but even the best moments of comedy in this film feel a little watered-down or forced or something.

this was entertaining as hell and there are some great scenes in there, but there's a ton of beige.

i give it an unenthusiastic 6/10 CLANKS! for some great funny moments and not a lot else.

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1. steve carell and tina fey — YES!
2. Review: Get Smart
3. It’s what’s for dinner–includes bacon

every year for the past 10 (or so), i've taken the friday or monday closest to my birthday off of work. that's today. and usually on that day, amongst other things, i go see a movie. and since i'm saving "inception" for a WR/IL rare movie outing, the only other choice i felt appropriate for spending the $20 on in the theatre ($9 ticket, $11 hot dog, junior mints, bottled water) was "salt." and here we are.

you know, never mind that angelina jolie is one of maybe 5 or 6 specimens of near physical perfection in our species (oh, and one of the others is her fucking boyfriend, cause that's fair). and never mind that you've seen her kick ass a handful of times over ("wanted," "mr. and mrs. smith"). this is just a really, REALLY good spy movie. the story is complex and smart, the action is up-close and frenetic, the main character is capable and driven without being superhuman, the antagonists change throughout the duration, allegiances are questioned, governments are in danger -- it's got everything.

and right in the middle of it is evelyn salt -- super-agent. the thing that's beautiful though, is that she's a begrudging super-agent. she's of the mind to get to a desk job and settle down with a husband. she doesn't want out of the game, but she definitely doesn't want to be fucking waterboarded or punched through the lungs anymore. this is something you used to see in the 80s with heroes like john matrix (commando) or the classic example, john rambo. but check that out -- both men. in fact, just about every action hero ever is a male. in fact, this movie was written with salt AS a male, and it wasn't until tom cruise dropped out or rejected it or whatever that they decided to take it in a new direction. (in fact, had cruise been in it, it would have been a little too similar to "mission : impossible.") but what they didn't do was make the character less tough because now it was a woman. this character was fucking badass from top to bottom.

there's a lot of twists and turns in the story, so i have to kind of end this review here, because i can't give too much more away. suffice it to say that if you're looking for a taut political action-thriller, this is your summer movie.

some favorite action points...
+ using a tazer to intentionally control a person's muscular flexure in her favor.
+ leaping from big-rig to big-rig across an entire freeway interchange, at speed, while shot.
+ death by repeatedly jamming a broken bottle into someone. i fucking LOVE that, it's so vicious.

plus, there's a GREAT disguise moment.

8/10 CLANKS! for a few over-the-top moments, and a +1 CLANK! for salt using her panties to disable a camera.

Related posts:

1. Edwin[A] A. Salt?
2. Review: Get Smart
3. Keeping Salt Salty

i have to say the only thing i didn't like about this movie was a few little formulaic and hollywoodish moments, particularly towards the end. everything else about it pushed my buttons in the right ways.

/// SPOILERY \\\
everyone knows what eli's book is by now, so i don't really feel the need to hide that, but what the book represents, on BOTH sides of the antagonist/protagonist spectrum, is where the story's real meat comes in. it's a tricky boat to incorporate the power of religion into a movie and not have it come across as preachy. especially when your star is pretty unapologetically religious to begin with. but this story is so successful because they make the book represent a whole slew of things, rather than just saying that the book has the power to save humanity. the book represents humanity's salvation to eli, it represents power OVER humanity to carnegie, and it is directly referenced in dialogue as the sole cause of the war that caused the apocalypse and subsequent downfall of humanity in the first place. if that's not covering all the possible bases, i don't know what is. i thought that was BRILLIANT storytelling.
\\\ END SPOILERS ///

one of my fondest surprises was lungFave TOM WAITS, who played (big surprise here) the junk shop man. other wonderful performances were jennifer beals as carnegie's blind concubine, and the amazing old couple that eli and solara encounter early in the third act. solara (mila kunis) was a character that frankly should have been played by someone else. i DIG mila kunis, both as an aesthetic desire and an actress. but this role was a little outside what i felt was her comfort zone. and carnegie (gary oldman) was not quite the level of madman that oldman typically carries with such fervor. the character was a little watered-down and therefore oldman was a little reined-in. but otherwise, all performances were amazing, including denzel. i won't go to see a movie because of denzel, as i might for johnny depp or brad pitt, but i've thoroughly enjoyed everything that i have seen him in, and this may be my favorite of his roles. just a wonderful character to watch.

/// COUPLE MORE SPOILERS \\\
the concept of faith is a huge part of this movie, as represented by eli, who is a man of pure faith. the power of his faith becomes truly apparent in the story's pretty awesome twist, which i won't even give away here in the spoiler section, but suffice it to say, it's a twist on par with the "fight club" twist, in that it's convinced me that i must watch the movie again to see if i can note any inconsistencies now that i know it.
\\\ OK, REALLY, NO MORE SPOILERS ///

this is a great post-apocalyptic movie -- FAR superior to most others, and certainly on-par with classics of the genre such as "the road warrior." it's also an amazing action movie. the fight scenes here are so fucking good that you almost can't believe what you're watching. just HYPER-fast martial arts shit that denzel flows through like water. (apparently, he trained in a filipino martial art for something like 6 months prior to filming.) but it's also a really beautiful and moving movie about the power of faith. and keep in mind, you're hearing that from a man who has none. i was DULY impressed with that aspect, specifically because of my personal belief system.

definitely give this one a watch, you won't be disappointed with anything other than a handful of little moments. and they're peppered through so much greatness that it really doesn't amount to a lick of negativity.

8/10 CLANKS!

Related posts:

1. new "the book of eli" trailer brings the awesome
2. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, BOOK II : A retro review
3. review : clash of the titans (2010)

i don't quite know what to make of this movie. i watched it on my return flight from my NYC familyReunion/july4th weekend, and at $8, it was still a deal from the movie theatre, so i don't think it was anything like paying too much for what i got or anything like that. the thing that bothered me most was that they changed things just for the sake of changing them. calibos had a totally different relation to the storyline (and was in fact a different character altogether), medusa was gorgeous, there was this wierd tribe of desert nomad warlock things, perseus resisted the fact that he was a demiGod, pegasus was black, the scorpions were created in a different way, the quest was wholly different -- just a whole shitload of "let's change it so it's different!" well, why the fuck would you do that? i can see doing that to your life when you're in a rut, but the story laid out in the original "clash of the titans" was fucking brilliant. it was mythological and exciting and it had repeated and solid ties to actual mythology. this one was just all giant scorpions and ralph feinnes. so like ... WHY?

sam worthington continues his uninterrupted career of solely playing someone who is not actually his own self, and i'm getting BOOOOOOORED. this is three fucking movies now. you need to show me something different. seriously, dude. you gotta have more than a well-shaped head to get me to watch. and for the fucking love of god, DECIDE WHAT ACCENT YOU'RE GOING TO USE. use your natural aussie or learn american. this half-and-half shit will not stand.

now obviously, the effects really did improve (how could they not?), and none of them were more impressive than the kraken. to me, this was an AMAZING creature. as terrifying to me as clover was. really, REALLY well-imagined "beast from the depths" kind of vibe. all uncontrolled, wanton destruction. AWESOME. too bad that was the last 3 minutes of the movie.

i'm really not going to go too much more into this. it didn't need to be changed. i could stomach a remake, DESPITE the deep personal affection i have for the harry hamlin original (first family movie night with my parents, i was 8, and it was at a drive-in movie theatre), if the remake had anything more than a passing respect for the original. the thing is the original was a GREAT story -- it could have looked amazing in today's fantasy adventure film style, but instead, they tried to change parts of the story that were done better the first time.

4/10 CLANKS!

Related posts:

1. first shot from "clash of the titans"
2. review : a nightmare on elm street (2010)
3. review : "salt"

on the flight to NYC friday for my whirlwind familyReunion/july4 weekend, i watched "date night." virgin america allows you choose from a number of movies, each costing $8, and though that's kind of expensive, "date night" isn't out on netflix yet, so it's still less than the theatre.

ok, so the premise is well-documented -- steve carrel's and tina fey's characters are a suburban couple with kids who are far enough into their american parenting dream to now be starting to lose touch with each other and with any sense of excitement. a lot of couples run into this unless they are VERY attentive to not letting it happen. i know only 3 couples who've been able to successfully avoid it, out of probably 20 married couples i know. this being the case, you can immediately connect. you know these people. you may BE these people.

in order to try and keep some of the fire going, they have a weekly "date night." lots of people do this. in fact, when i was married, my wife and i did it. it was our attempt to not get to the point that this couple was at.

anyway, on one of their date nights, they are both feeling kind of scared because not only is one of their couple friends getting a divorce because of all of these things, but on a previous date night, they were shocked to see a married couple being really affectionate. they just had it in their heads that once you're married, the fire dies. so they decide to switch it up and try something new and exciting.

but through a case of mistaken identity, the couple finds themselves in the sights of the mob. and hilarity ensures. they're running around the city, stealing cars, breaking into apartments, fighting with people, hanging out with a shirtless marky mark and his SUPER sexy grrlfriend, all just trying to figure out what it is the mob thinks they have. or rather, what IS in the possession of the couple who's dinner reservation they took, which caused the mistaken identity in the first place.

there's a couple of recurring jokes in here that i found kind of funny, despite the fact that they were kind of trite. one was that no matter who it was they were talking to when they were trying to explain their story -- the mob, the cops, strippers, criminals, or a security specialist in the east village -- they were all APPALLED at the fact that these two took someone else's dinner reservation. this was especially funny when it was someone who was a criminal to begin with, such as the mob or the people whose reservation it was they took in the first place. the other recurring joke is that marky mark never wears a shirt. this is more of just steve carrel's joke -- he's a middle-aged dude and he's naturally intimidated by the build of the guy, as any of us might be. but despite the fact that it's kind of contrived, i found it funny.

the adventure has all the staples of a good caper -- the mob, corrupt cops, underhanded politicians -- and as such, it flows pretty well. the performances are well-played, and there's quite a cast. common, ray liotta, mila kunis, james franco, marky mark, will.i.am, and my current crush kristin wiig all make appearances.

one of the things i'd read about the movie was that there was no chemistry between carrel and fey. not only do i disagree wholesale with that, but any lack of chemistry that DID appear was inherent to the story. this couple's been together for a long time and they ARE losing some of the spark. it happens. it's kind of the point. but rather than play their roles as one or the other (all-together vs. all-miserable), these actors put it down as it should be, where it's appropriate. i liked that a lot.

it's a feel-good movie in the end -- their relationship is validated and rekindled, the bad guys lose, the good guys win, and i had a lot of fun along the way.

i highly recommend this movie for couples, or for anyone who's been in a long-term relationship that lost it's spark at some point or another. it's really relevant and really funny.

7/10 CLANKS!

Related posts:

1. review : "dinner for schmucks"
2. SNL 3% SILA: Date with Megan Fox
3. review : clash of the titans (2010)

often times, especially when i see a movie in the theatre, my reaction to it is far more emotionally-charged than it might be if i'd watched the movie at home. this is a combination of the crowd around me, the fact that i paid $12 to see it (plus another $12 for 2 hot dogs and a pop), or maybe that i wouldn't even BE in the theatre if it weren't for SUPER high expectations.

as a result, i've tried to institute a policy over the last several years of giving a second home-viewing to movies that brought me to red-faced rage in the theatre. at home, i'm not subconsciously affected by a crowd, the food is free, the movie's free, and i'm usually way, WAY more stoned and mellow. hahaha!!!

take my INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL review, for instance. or as i called it at the time, "indiana jones and the suckdom of the crystal ass." re-watching the movie last night, i found myself feeling some of the same stinging pangs of disappointment, but NONE of the rage and hatred and feelings of violation. and while i wouldn't say that i loved it, i can definitely say that i enjoyed it, and that perhaps more importantly, i GET it now. let me elaborate...

in the indiana jones mythos, jones is almost exclusively chasing something spiritual (barring the opening sequences, of course). the ark, the stones, and the grail were the first three things. and while the two most successful of the movies dealt with strictly christian religious artifacts, ToD's stones WERE a spiritual object. so in this movie, the crystal skull, and what it was, and what it represented actually DID fit into the mythos. it wasn't a perfect fit, and at times felt super hamfisted and forced, but i think that was less of a change to the dynamic of the series (as i originally thought), and more of an exploration of "where else can we go?" so while it brought instances of WTF along the way, i respectfully withdraw my initial thoughts of the quest feeling out of place in the continuity of the series.

the first time round, i had a big issue with one of the action sequences -- when the amphibious vehicle dropped down the three waterfalls, to be specific. my suspension of disbelief took a real beating with that sequence, as i kept remembering all the action sequences in the previous movies as being outlandish without violating the verisimilitude. well, i was wrong. as i watched the film again last night, i realized that that sequence was no more outlandish than indy, willie, and short round falling out of the sky in an inflatable raft, 1000 feet to the mountainside, and then sliding off the cliff and falling another several hundred feet to the river below. both of those scenes (and several others across the series) were just good old-fashioned over-the-top action sequences, and in fact were perfectly in line with the whole idea of indiana being an everyman tough-guy, from the time when men were men and all that. so i also respectfully withdraw my initial opinion that that particular sequence violated the suspension of disbelief established across the rest of the series.

i also originally felt that the inherent character of jones was changed a bit, and i specifically noted the instance in which he started to grave-rob the mummified conquistador. well, i was just flat-out wrong about that. as i watched this movie again, i suddenly remembered jones crashing headlong through ALL of his adventures, leaving history overturned in his wake. remember in tLC when he was under venice and flipped the knight's coffin over, dumping out the remains and using the air trapped underneath to survive? that was actually MORE disrespectful to the artifact than the scene i initially despised so much in KotCS. so again. respectful withdraw of my initial opinion that the character of jones was changed in any way. in fact, i have to say, indiana jones may have been more fleshed-out in KotCS than in any other movie. as an older man, you got to see how his life up to that point had shaped and defined him. you got to see him fighting against his own age and constructed belief paradigm and a whole shit-ton of other things that actually SOLIDIFIED the character. a quick-thinker who's hungry for knowledge and adventure and just keeps going and going, despite seemingly insurmountable odds.

i'm still only BARELY tolerant of the refrigerator scene, and i choose not to believe that the monkey vine scene even happened, but really, if that's all i can take out of it that's a scathing negative, then this movie still isn't as bad as ToD.

i also still have a point of contention with marion's character. i kept watching her in this movie and remembering her against her original appearance in RotLA, and i simply can NOT see the parallel. in RotLA, marion was a fucking BADASS. she didn't take no shit from no suckas, and she was hard as nails without losing femininity. that's a tough balance to strike, and i know that her age and the fact that she has a kid now contributed to her mellowing out a bit, but i kept watching her and thinking "where the hell is the fire?" it was a huge disappointment.

one thing i didn't really do in my initial review was to note any of the really GOOD scenes in the movie, and that was a mistake. one thing in particular that was exceptional in KotCS was, specifically, the opening chase through area 51. that was VINTAGE indiana jones. all whip-cracks and fists, bullets and kicks, humour and action. i LOVE that scene. all the way up to the refrigerator. i also quite liked the car chase through the jungle. all the way up to the monkey vines. AND i particularly enjoyed the two scenes in which jones was crawling through spider-laden tunnels under the ground, searching for artifacts or pieces of the bigger puzzle. again, VERY classic indiana jones.

in the end, i'm significantly raising my review of this movie to a 7/10 CLANKS! i really enjoyed myself watching this last night. it was fun and outlandish, funny and action-packed, and jones was really entertaining to watch as an older dude. there were a few too many characters in it, a little too much CGI, and two scenes in particular that were just untenable, but in the end, it wasn't as awful as i originally thought.

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i searched around to see if there was a review up here already for this film, and i didn't find anything, but given the multiple potential spellings of the movie's title, i may have missed one. if i did, i apologize.

the short story is that this movie is nothing short of a masterpiece. it's easily tarantino's crown jewel, and i personally contend that it's one of the great films of all time.

as with all of tarantino's movies, this one relies heavily on dialogue. QT movies always have amazing dialogue, but this one in particular focuses on character exchanges in a way that i've not seen before. part of what makes the dialogue so special, beyond skillfully walking that fine line between liltingly poetic and cripplingly intricate, is that it is spoken in whatever language is appropriate. the movie is largely non-english, in fact. it's french and german predominantly, and there's a smattering of italian in there. there are a lot of subtitles, but they're not bothersome at all. but the main thing that makes the dialogue in this movie stand out as so special is that whenever two characters are speaking in a language that any other character on the screen does not understand, there are no subtitles. not only is that a brilliant and subtle extension of the storytelling, but it's also one of the more engaging film interaction experiences i've ever had, breaking the fourth wall in a way that you almost don't even notice.

i won't spoil the plot or anything here, and besides, you know what it's about anyway. so instead, let me focus on some performances. first, and undeniably best, christoph waltz as colonel hans landa. forget EVERYONE else in this movie -- waltz owns the screen even when he's not ON it. whether he is speaking in german, or in french, or in american -- his mannerisms and delivery and intelligence combine with his character's cruelty and cunning to create this monstrous thing that doesn't even have a proper description. and he's so engaging that you find yourself wanting more and more and more, even while knowing that the character is so effortlessly effective at his evil work that he'll frighten you. it's a rare movie role, and one that fully deserved the oscar that it got. check out waltz' SPEECH, if you haven't seen it already. it will give you a small taste of the actor's humility and hopefully interest you even more in seeing the film.

brad pitt's role is definitely good, but it's one of those cases of the a-lister taking a bit of a backseat to other people, such as waltz and my other favorite role, shoshanna (melanie laurent). shoshanna could arguably be the movie's lead character, though she doesn't really begin to dominate any screen time till about the second act. but her story is deeply painful and enthralling, intricately intermingling with waltz' landa through the whole film. shoshanna lives in this movie as two different people, too, one veiled from the public and one not. watching her public persona interact as it must in nazi-occupied france and knowing how her private persona must be feeling creates some of the most emotional moments i've ever experienced in film. she is unforgettable.

and what of the basterds? odd fact ... the basterds are really not much more than a sub-plot to the film. the film's story involves a HUGE number of other elements into which the basterds really just happen to find themselves thrust. they are, to me, really nothing more than the vehicle with which tarantino is telling the greater story. the audience's way in. the comic relief? i wouldn't go QUITE that far, but they border on it, yes.

/// LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD\\\
when i first saw the film, i was pretty upset by what i considered at that time to be a fatal flaw. deep into the third act, almost at the film's finale, the story seemed to take a drastic departure from the believable reality due to what i wrongly saw as an almost wholesale abandonment of a main character's belief paradigm. it left me with that unsettling sense of having just watched something magical take a total header. but when i watched a second time, i finally got it. it still feels slightly disjointed -- as if it were just sort of shoved into the story to fill a gap, or maybe just not completely refined -- but i get it now, and it makes sense within the greater context, and in fact, further solidifies the character's methodology, versus detracting from it.
\\\ END SPOILERS ///

an EASY 10/10 CLANKS! movie, clearly the best of tarantino's body of work, some of the best performances in recent years, and perhaps one of the great movies in all of cinema. at the VERY least, it's in the top 20.

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how do you make a successful movie version of the a-team? you get a charismatic cast that totally gels, strip off the cheese, pepper it with a bit of bourne-style hyperAction, and let sharlto copley OWN.

this was a fucking KILLER movie. a summer action banger with just enough homage to satisfy the old heads like me, and modernization that made sense. sure, some of the action sequences were over-the-top, but what episode of the old series had anything that made sense anyway?

the film starts 8 years before they're a team, with only hannibal and face knowing each other. they meet BA and murdock along the way, and that's where they become the tight-knit crew that we all know and love. the film explores why BA is afraid of flying, and in a nice piece of letting marketing materials denote what's successful and what's not, also cuts all the shit from the original trailers that was lame. for instance, in the trailers, when BA slams a dude with the door of the van and then quips, "sucks to be you, homie," is thankfully NOT in the final cut. same again with face saying "i'm sorry, i'm just looking at your hair" to BA. all good cuts, says i.

in the end, this is a SUPER fun, action-packed origin AND continuation story of the baddest group of mercs media has ever known. i fucking LOVED it.

i want to give special note here to sharlto copley, because he fucking RULES in this film. his murdock is the best murdock that this story has ever known. he's crazy, he's funny, and he's badass. all the things that dwight shultz should have been. it's pretty awesome, too, that he drops his american accent occasionally and lets the south african come out. it's at points where he's goofing or playing a role, and it totally fits and i loved it.

i also really enjoyed how the plans came together. they showed, as they did in the series, the layout and construction of the plans, but they were far more intense and intricate than the series could ever hope to accomplish.

i happily give it a 9/10 CLANKS! and i'll own this one when it releases on DVD.

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This is a follow-up micro-review to Ironlung's review at the time of film release. Like Lung, I want to focus on the positive. Much like T4, which came out around the same time, there was already so much you knew going in that would aggravate you, the only way to approach the film would be to aim for the good stuff and blow off the rest. Usually I'm wound up by missed opportunities in film projects. That still plagued me in T4, which had the framework and visual style of a very cool picture but was burdened by the McG-ness of it all and some cockamamie script logic. But G.I. Joe? This is a film I didn't need to see made. It's pure popcorsn, appealing to adults nostalgically but far less so than to a new generation of kids. In this way, they through out so much of what made the cartoon and comics (and toys) cool, and forged a different path. It DOES feel more contemporary, more of it's time in terms of the style of the design work. And some of the basic plot elements, such as G.I. Joe being an international taskforce, and Cobra forming out of the schemes of another villain, that all worked fine for me in concept. But you couldn't really invest in it because the acting, dialog and editing was so cartoonish all it was missing was the Ang Lee Hulk's comic panel framework.

But that all said, my bullet points focus largely on the positive or the random, and don't dwell on the weak, because there's just too much of it. But like Lung mentioned in his review of Nightmare on Elm Street, you can throw a project like this far more bones if you watched it at home, as I did, rather than in the theater with $33 US dollars worth of butterfat.

The loose premise of this film is that two soldier buddies, tasked with heading a caravan transporting a prototype weapon, survive an ambush by unknown terrorists, who kill everyone and steal the fancy new warheads (built by MARS labs as nanobot-based matter-eaters of some sort) and of course, one of our heroes recognizes one of the terrorists as his former girlfriend with a hell of a makeover. That's Duke and Baroness. So, the guys are recruited by a top-secret international bad ass action team, which apparently exist to prevent or deter such as-of-yet non-existent high-tech terrorist foes, which was sort of like a chicken or the egg thing, as G.I. Joe is insanely budgeted, packed with every conceivable toy/vehicle and combat training program ever, much like the impossible scale of the future Cobra. Anyway, tracking the mystery terrorist hottie leads them to eventually discover that the warhead theft was engineered by the weapons' designer, who planned to use them through his terrorist proxy, on a civilian target (Paris) and then I think be in a better position to provide arms to the governments of the world to protect against his own creations... or something... I lost track. Fairly standard engineer-your-own-enemy fare which i even use in Finit-e to some degree. Anyhow, we come to find that he's hooked up with Baroness, he's got a crazy mad scientist performing radical biomutation work, called the Doctor (who has engineered a series of super soldiers for our future Destro) and all seems to go according to plan until it doesn't. Lots of yo joe business, lots of battles, and ultimately the big betrayal: it turns out the Doctor had plans of his own, basically using Destro's cash and schemes to secretly build his own army of roided-up terrorist dudes, and take over. Which he does. And since Destro gets a face full of hot hot heat, he gets the chrome dome slapped on him and becomes surprisingly subservient in a hurry. By film close, all three are in Joe custody, with ominous warnings of future escapes and over-the-top random terrorism to follow.

Bullets:

1. Like Lung mentioned, using nanotech as the mystery WTF almost alchemical science that explains pretty much anything from the Joe mythos that they want to use, that's pretty clever. From metal eating weaponry to bio-mutation to super-soldiering... when you introduce far-out tech you need to establish something for the audience to hold onto as a rational framework, even if it's absurd: maybe it's a magic book, or a demon's wishes or an X-gene.You need something to give viewers to accept as plausible even if it leads to nutty irrational implausibility throughout the story. Surprisingly, the wishy-washy nanotech here worked just fine in that regard.

2. "Kung-Fu Grip"

3. It's unfortunate that they lost some of the unique design differentiation on the Joes by giving them simulated high-tech tactical black ops clothes. On the one hand, if this were a serious film, and they went the other way, I'd have been outraged, and been DEMANDING black fatigues. But somehow, in the just-this-side-of-a-cartoon nature of this film, i wanted more diversity in the costumes of the heroes. I especially wanted Scarlett's classic gear.



4. The Snake Yes vs Stormshadow thing was pretty much on model and interesting enough. I was losing my ability to concentrate during the chop socky action in the kitchen when they were kids, but hey. I loved Stormshadow's redesign. I would have preferred he stayed masked as well, like some sort of tradition they both followed. I never warmed to Snake-Eyes' creepy mouth, but I was totally sold on his character, the design (best port from the original material) and Ray park's recognizable moves of awesomeness.

5. The use of Zartan was near perfect. G.I. Joe, in all it's forms, is character heavy, and they did a great job of implying Zartan's awesome without overcrowding the story. The thing of using his piratey whistle to identify him as a mannerism went a long way towards accepting him in his mutated form. Think about that for a second: think of how much WORK they usually have to put into convincing the viewer that they're looking at Character B, but it's really Character A in disguise. Deceptively simple approach here. And his mischievous streak was kind of fun.

6. Dang, no Baron Bludd! I loved that figure.

7. Lung mentioned using nanotech to explain Destro's mask's malleability was clever, and I agree. It begged a question about planning and function... but hey, Cobra Commander wanted to have a bad ass looking right hand man (who was formerly his boss...) and the tie in with the family legacy of Iron Mask business was cool.

8. I was pretty surprised that they killed Cover Girl. It was a huge WTF given the kid-friendly franchise-building point of this film. And it was the best kind of unexpected attack, too. No one like a knife in the back. Through the clipboard!

9. Dennis Quaid sucked perhaps more than most of the other actors. I guess it's just knowing what he normally does vs this, but he was so ham-fisted in his delivery it was killing me. I was sadistically pleased to see him get cored in the spine. Sadly. I chalk it up to poor direction. We've seen this sort of thing before. Some actors look to the director to mold their performance, and some just do their own thing. I've read a lot recently about how challenging it is for actors because they work in a vacuum, everyone says 'great!!!!' on set and then they go and watch the dailies, see what they look like, then overthink it and course correct and get themselves wound up in a vicious cycle. I don't know whether Quaid overdid it because of dailies or because of the lack of them, or what. But my word what a ham. And I LIKE that actor!




10. Duke and Ripcord were plausible as narrative cores for the film. They were the right combination of wisecracks and bad assery and earnestness. I personally had very little patience for Duke and that actor has always seemed like a dim bulb when he does these sorts of roles, but I sense the girls dig him. I was impressed Wayans held it together enough to be convincing. He didn't come off like a jokester shoehorned into an action role, but rather a a beefy physical guy that happened to have a sense of humor. I liked him. I especially liked his incessant attempts to hook up with Scarlett.




11. Now, Scarlett. Lung mentioned that she was hotter than Baroness, and I I think this is so as well. It's a number of factors: we're given a peek behind the curtain for one. Her fending off the advances of Ripcord, and the general sense that she probably gets hit on by every guy in that squad (no Breaker jokes) was evident. There was also that sense of realism that you could project yourself into that weight room scene in particular. I felt like I was scoping a girl in high school working out before track practice or something. It felt eerily more profound than it was. Plus, her hair was cool. And they handled her crossbow business in a cool way, also bringing in the loopy laser business from the cartoons.



12. Baroness was hot as nails, but it was almost like she was handicapped by certain things. She was never given a chance to be THAT alluring or THAT menacing. She was stuck in the middle. And I never forgot that it was Sienna Miller, who has always been a skinny blonde actress with a face I liked but nothing else (well, OK, lingerie helped in Layer Cake) However stick her in black ribbed bondage gear and specs, give her guns and attitude, and yay: Baroness! Except this was the one part of the film where the missed potential killed me. I did like the tech of her goggle glasses, but really, I wanted what i wanted: raven black hair, tight ribbed corseted latex uniform, and plain ole black rimmed specs. And an effing ACCENT. Come ON. That said, still gorgeous, and very physical role. It's unfortunate they didn't give her a platform to walk on in the snow scene because she was teetering on her heels all that way. But I think she was at her best in the mall escape scene. That was the most Baroness-esque. I loved that stuff. And it was home to the best line in the entire effing movie: She shoots up a bunch of glass, screams at a bystander to get out of an elevator or something, and as the woman runs away screaming, Baroness looks and says, distractedly: "Nice heels." which was an awesome little moment of random realism. I loved that.



13. Now, Destro and the Doctor. Christopher Eccleston was chewing scenery in a huge way, and that was fine. But it was being played like the character that would be undermined by his own military staff and taken out. Consider the parallel with the recent Iron Man 2, where Hammer was usurped by Vanko with his own toys. It was almost identical to what was going on here. Except in IM2, we saw Hammer in his suit gnashing and throwing a fit when things got out of his control. Here, Eccleston gets a mask slapped on him and a change of attitude and suddenly he's a lieutenant? Now I know he was given a dose of magical nanotech subservience juice, just like Baroness, which is all a strange conceit to allow the bad guys to not reallllllly be as nasty as they are in case we want to turn them later (hello Baroness) odd in the same film that knifes Cover Girl's duodenum from behind, but still it was kind of a weak and quick flip. But the mask was rad anyway.




The Doctor... well, this was confusing. For one thing, his mashed up face was distracting. That mask design for the Doctor wasn't very effective. Interesting in that this was basically a port of the cartoon's Dr. Mindbender. We knew very early on that it was clearly her assumed-dead brother. And while I appreciated the moment in the lab where the brother, as soldier, sees the work that was being done and instantly tries to steal it, I think we could have used a narrative blip to show us that the character had a dodgy streak. It read like, I don't know, Lung finds a rocket propelled grenade in his garage and instantly decides to blow up the Bay Bridge (for not having bike lanes)... anyway, what REALLY threw me was that Joseph-Gordon Levitt, who was very proud of his performance and his growly voice in the interviews I saw, managed to apply all this savvy thespian experience to bear and yield... a solid impression of Justin Long. What the.



I mean, it became really distracting to me that it WASNT. Anyway, I liked his plots and schemes, I liked his use of the nanotech whatsis to make Zartan... well, Zartan. I liked the idea that unlike the original material where the Commander relied on henchmen and scientists and whatever like some generic despot (as Destro was doing) here he WAS the guy coming up with all the wonderful toys. Talk about a self-made asshole! That was cool. It was just so tough waiting for the final act reveal of the terrible Cobra Commander costume that we saw leaked online. What a bitter pill, knowing that the Destro reveal would be awesome and yet the Commander shot would blow chunks. It was so... poorly designed i couldn't stand it.



14. Lung mentioned the holograms... yes, way too many, and a poor conceit. But they could have used them more effectively, like no matter what you never knew if Destro was really there. Here they made the mistake of using the hologram version of Destro and Baroness and segueing scenes to the live versions of same. They tried to be clever. It was weak.



15. Eiffel Tower smashery: I really loved this entire sequence. It was clear throughout that they threw the FX budget at a few scenes and the rest of the film was ultra-poor CGI to make up for it. It was surreal, like two different films smashed together. That said, the Eiffel Tower collapsing was awesome.



Now, the Powered Armor that they were wearing was a misfire in terms of design. Clunky looking Halo armor that just looked.... cumbersome. It's no wonder that they had so much trouble making them look like they were running and leaping and such. Look again to Iron Man, where they made an armor design look both heavy and powerful AND acrobatic. I kept looking at them running through the street and thought that it would have been more effective if they were sleek in design. They DID have mass and weight and that looks good as they plowed through cars and trains and the like. But they never DID anything. It was unending chase with no gains. I was waiting for them to start jumping higher, or to get up at roof level, or something.




16. What a way to waste Mr. Ecko. I wanted HIM to be breaking spines all over town.

17. BTW, one final note about story: Lung mentioned that the film held to a plotline, and I agree. It wasn't as solid a narrative structure as T3 or Die Hard 4, two other so-so films made better by sold storytelling, but it really WAS the 'rise of cobra'...


I give it 6/10 clicks, but I liked what I liked!

Had Cobra Commander looked like this? I'd give it an 8!

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