Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Jan 09 2014
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Movie Reviews

Raging Bull Crap

De Niro, Stallone slug it out in clichéd boxing comedy

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Grudge Match

Starring Robert De Niro & Sylvester Stallone

Directed by Peter Segal

PG-13, 113 min.

What if the two boxers from two of Hollywood’s most iconic boxing movies of all time came together in one contemporary clash of the titans?

Well, Rocky and Raging Bull don’t show up, exactly, but you’ll have no trouble remembering the roles Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro played some 30 to 35 years ago watching them spar in Grudge Match, in which they both portray long-retired palookas lured back to the ring by the promise of a big payday—and the opportunity to settle a decades-old dispute about who’s king of the knock-outs.

Back in the day, “Razor” Sharp (Stallone) and Billy “Kid” Donnen (De Niro) were Philadelphia scrappers who battled their way to the top of the light-heavyweight heap, culminating in an epic slugfest that ended with a split decision. Razor called it quits, however, and announced his retirement before a tie-breaking rematch could be arranged, and Kid’s been obsessed with “what might have been” ever since.

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Kevin Hart (center) creates a major media event around the rematch of ‘Razor’ (Stallone) and ‘Kid’ (De Niro).

Now a motor-mouthed young promoter (Kevin Hart) sees an opportunity to make his name (and a lot of moolah) by setting up a long-overdue bout between the two rusty old steel-town foes and turning it into a major media event.

Will Razor agree to put on the gloves one more time? Will the Kid swap pancakes and scotch for salads and sit-ups? Will the press stop making cracks about Geritol and Life Alert necklaces? And who will the woman (Kim Basinger) who had to choose between Kid and Razor three decades choose this time around?

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Kim Basinger

Stallone mumbles, De Niro mugs. There are some funny bits, but director Peter Segal (50 First Dates, Anger Management, Get Smart) somehow manages to miss with most of his punches, comedic and otherwise. The jokes are lame and low; this is the kind of movie that thinks anything from the waist down is hilarious. The story trots out nearly every contrivance and cliché imaginable, and the performances are about as lazy as you can get in a movie that still requires people to get up and walk around.

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Alan Arkin

And walking around isn’t even required, at least not all the time, for Alan Arkin’s character, Razor’s “elderly” trainer, whose ability to self-ambulate comes and goes.

Ironically, one of the best moments of the whole movie happens after it’s finished. Stay for the credits and catch the snippet in which Hart’s promoter tries to tempt another couple of former boxing champs back inside the ring for his next Big Event.

By the time things get around to the “Grudgement Day” match you know is coming, you just want the scene—like the movie—to be over before either Stallone, 67, or De Niro, 70, gets hurt. If I had a towel, I’d have thrown it in long before the legacies of two great movies were slammed to the mat and ground into a crappy comedy like this one.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Dec 30 2013
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Movie Reviews, Music

Blowin’ in the Wind

The Coens’ tragi-comic odyssey of broken dreams and bitter truths

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Inside Llewyn Davis

Starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan & Justin Timberlake

Directed by Ethan & Joel Coen

R, 105 min.

“Hang me, oh, hang me,” sings Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) in the mesmerizing performance that opens filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coens’ ode to the New York’s Greenwich Village folk music scene of the early 1960s. Llewyn (pronounced Loo-en) doesn’t just sing the song, he inhabits it, picking his guitar and spinning its tale of a weary traveler defeated by his own misdeeds, finally surrendering to the noose and the cold, cold ground.

The bleak song sets the stage for the story that’s about to unfold—like a folk song—as we spend a week in the life of Llewyn, a young journeyman singer walking the razor’s edge between the glow of success and the gloom of failure.

There have been many movies about music and musicians, but the Coens—among the most unconventional of commercially successful filmmakers—take a characteristically unconventional path here: Their protagonist is not very likeable, nor very sympathetic, and his messy, meandering story is a tragi-comic odyssey of broken dreams, bashed hopes and bitter truths.

But we feel for him nonetheless, and Inside Llewyn Davis is another Coen Brothers gem. While not as boisterously gonzo as The Big Lebowski, as fabulously tangled as Fargo or as much of a toe-tapping toot as O Brother, Where Art Thou, it’s still cool, clever, cynical and achingly funny, meticulously crafted and marvelously quirky. And you don’t know where it’s going until it gets there—which, as it turns out, is right back where it started.

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Llewyn (Oscar Isaac) and Jim (Justin Timberlake) rehearse in a recording studio.

The soundtrack is outstanding, a slate of mostly traditional folk chestnuts given respectful new spins by producer T Bone Burnett, some stellar backing musicians and the cast. Isaac, the relative unknown who plays Llewyn, is phenomenal, doing his own singing and guitar playing live (instead of overdubbing or performing to prerecorded tracks). Pop superstar Justin Timberlake, who plays another folk singer, Jim, does likewise, as does Carey Mulligan, who portrays Jim’s wife and musical partner, Jean.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

John Goodman

There’s John Goodman, a Coen mainstay, cropping up as an overfed, overdosed jazz musician. There’s the tabby cat that Llewyn spends much of movie lugging around, trying to find, or catch. There’s the novelty tune that Llewyn records with Jim and another singer (Adam Driver) that becomes one of the movie’s humorous high points.

And there’s a certain other folk singer from Minnesota, the Coen’s home state, waiting in the wings to blow everything—and everyone else—away, in the wind. As Llewyn seems to know, the times they are indeed a-changin’.

Inside Llewyn Davis may not blow a lot of its competition away at the box office—like some other Coens’ fare, it could be a bit of an acquired taste. But for anyone who can feel its genuine grasp of its subjects, its music and its times in its deep, dig-it grooves, this cinematic sonnet to a struggling ’60s singer might just become a greatest hit.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Dec 20 2013
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Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Do The Hustle

A sprawling, swirling period-piece parable of swinging ’70s greed

Christian Bale;Jeremy Renner;Bradley Cooper

American Hustle

Starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper & Jennifer Lawrence

Directed by David O. Russell

R, 138 min.

“Some of this actually happened,” a placard playfully informs us at the beginning of American Hustle, director David O. Russell’s swirling, swinging tale of a pair of con artists in testy, zesty cahoots with an FBI agent to catch even bigger prey in the 1970s. It’s loosely based on the FBI’s real-life ABSCAM sting of the era, which ensnared several high-ranking politicians in a bribery and corruption investigation.

Christian Bale plays Irving Rosenfeld, a small-time Bronx con artist who’s made out pretty well in forged art and bogus loans. But his graft really kicks into high gear when he hooks up with Sidney (Amy Adams), a former stripper who sees a way to broaden their scams—and pave the way to a much bigger, richer life for them both.

But hold on: Irving’s a married man, and his wife (Jennifer Lawrence) is a real suburban scrapper.

Christian Bale;Amy Adams;Bradley CooperRichie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) is the hyper-adrenalized FBI agent eager to make his bones who brings down both Irving and Sidney, then uses them to make an even bigger sting, an elaborate affair that eventually includes a fake sheik (Michael Peña), a New Jersey mayor (Jeremy Renner), a slew of politicians and the mafia.

The movie is a deep, delicious dish of late-’70s detail, from the music to the clothes to the hair—and oh, the hair! Bale’s character sports one of the most outrageous comb-overs in the history of cinema, and agent DiMaso reveals that his teeny curls don’t come easy (or natural).

Amy Adams;Jennifer LawrenceBale is always fascinating to watch as he burrows into a role, but Adams and Lawrence bring the heat that makes this sexy story sizzle. And Russell (Silver Linings Playbook, The Fighter) juggles his ensemble of complicated, conflicted characters with an orchestral touch that often recalls the mastery of maestro Martin Scorsese—especially in a Goodfellas-esque casino scene with a gaggle of Las Vegas mobsters….and a very special surprise cameo.

It’s all hip, humorous, sad, edgy and immensely entertaining, this sprawling period parable about a group of gaudy, needy, greedy people who aren’t who they purport themselves to be—people with fake tans, fake nails, fake hair, fake lives, people who aren’t “real,” who are always conning somebody, everybody, each other, even themselves.

As Irving says, there’s “a lot of grey” in the muddled middle ground between good and bad, right and wrong, between the forger and the artist, in a world where it seems that everyone’s on the make, on the take, on the hustle, on the scam. Especially when, as Lawrence’s character says, all you’ve been dealt in life are “poisonous choices.”

When that happens, as Russell’s outstanding American Hustle suggests, all any of us might do is whatever it takes to survive.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Dec 17 2013
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Movie Reviews, Music, Pop Culture

The Nanny & the Mouse

The story behind the story behind the story of ‘Mary Poppins’

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Saving Mr. Banks

Starring Tom Hanks & Emma Thompson

Directed by John Lee Hancock

PG-13, 123 min.

A Walt Disney movie about Walt Disney making a Walt Disney movie, Saving Mr. Banks is a story behind a story behind a story that will strike a sentimental chord with anyone who remembers Disney’s 1964 hit about a certain singing, flying British nanny.

The true tale of how Uncle Walt convinced P.L. Travers, the writer of Mary Poppins, to sell him the rights to turn her storybook series into the now-classic movie musical is spun here into a witty, heart-tugging yarn about Disney’s unstoppable force confronting Travers’ immoveable object.

Tom Hanks plays the avuncular Disney, atop his Magic Kingdom empire in 1961 and trying to finally come through on a 20-year promise to his young daughters to take their favorite childhood character, Mary Poppins, from the storybook to the screen. The prickly Travers (Emma Thompson), the British author of the series of books featuring the English nanny with magical powers, has consistently, persistently tuned down Disney’s offers.

But now, in a financial bind, Travers finally agrees to come to Los Angeles and proceed with a film treatment as long as she’s given script approval and made part of the process. She tells Walt to his face, however, that she won’t have her fiercely guarded Mary “turned into one of your silly cartoons.”

SAVING MR. BANKSThe movie toggles between Travers’ comically difficult work with Disney and his staff, and flashbacks to her golden-glow childhood in Australia with her alcoholic father (Colin Farrell), building connections between the author, her past and her literary creation that don’t become evident until much later in the movie.

Travers hates everything, at least initially—everything about Los Angeles, Hollywood, Disney and the movie his company is trying to make. She hates Dick Van Dyke, the actor hired as the star.  She hates the songs, written by the crack Disney tunesmith siblings Robert and Richard Sherman (B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman). She hates the idea of dancing penguins.

SAVING MR. BANKSPaul Giamiatti has a recurring role as the friendly chauffeur hired by Disney to squire Travers around, becoming the only American she meets to really break through her icy shell. (It’s enough to make you wonder how the same actor could be playing a heartless slave broker just a few multiplex doors down in 12 Years A Slave.)

We all know how things turned out: Walt compromised just enough to win the tug of war, and the movie got made the way he envisioned it. Disney’s Mary Poppins was a smash. Critics praised it, fans adored it and it helped segue Disney from cartoons into live-action features. It won five Academy Awards.

As he did in The Blind Side, director John Lee Hancock pours on the emotion, so much so that it sugarcoats the shortcomings in the script, which fails to neatly, completely wrap up the rather dense details of Travers’ daddy issues and why exactly Mr. Banks, the father of the children in “Mary Poppins,” was in need of being saved.

But Thompson does a fine job, and so does Hanks, especially in a late scene together where their two characters warm to each other when he shares a story about his own hardscrapple youth, and about his own daddy issues—one that helps seal his deal.

And by golly, if you don’t get a bit of a lump in your throat during the “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” scene, well, you’ve got more ice that needs melting than even Ms. Travers.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Dec 16 2013
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History, Movie Reviews

Blood & Bullets

Navy SEALs mission goes tragically off course in Afghanistan

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Lone Survivor

Starring Mark Walhberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster

Directed by Peter Berg

R, 121 min.

Director Peter Berg’s bloody, violent Lone Survivor comes by its blood and violence honestly. It’s based on former U.S. Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell’s account of a bloody, violent 2005 mission in Afghanistan from which he emerged as—well, you can probably figure that out from the title, based on Luttrell’s New York Times Bestseller.

Luttrell’s book chronicled his involvement as part of a four-man team tasked with covertly tracking down a Taliban warlord in the remote, rugged Kunar province. But Operation Red Wings was quickly compromised and the SEALs (played by Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster) found themselves in a deadly bind, pinned down by Taliban fighters.

Berg, who adapted Luttrell’s book for the screen as well as directed, has made a rip-roaring war movie that literally rips and roars. Gunfire tears ferociously into flesh, clothing and bone; one shoot-out scene, in particular, is a nearly deafening chorus of high-caliber zings, zips, booms and pops as bullets fly and spent shell casings bounce off rocks.

5685_FPF_00265RThe SEALs’ predicament hinges on a decision they make when an Afghan shepherd, two boys and a herd of goats accidentally come across their mountainside surveillance spot. What they do in that decisive moment sets the rest of the movie in fateful motion.

And what rough-and-tumble motion it is, as Wahlberg and his co-stars absorb blows, bullets and shrapnel, break bones, lose body parts, dent skulls and plunge off the mountainside not just once but twice, sliding, slamming and ramming into boulders and tree trunks. Cinematographer Tobias Schliessler shoots the punishing, pummeling violence as if it’s both horrific and saintly, a Passion play of blood, saliva and bodies battered and bullet-riddled to pulp for a higher cause.

Lone SurvivorIt’s a super-macho movie without a single female character, and definitely not for the squeamish—but neither is war, and what it sometimes requires, and that’s the point. A pre-credits slideshow introduces the real servicemen portrayed by the cast, as David Bowie sings “Heroes.”

And you’ll see another photo of someone in the movie who was also a hero, but I won’t spoil it by telling you who. A modern-day Good Samaritan pivotal to the story in the final stretch, he also reminds us that not everyone in a place where we’re at war is an enemy.

Lone Survivor isn’t exactly a cup of Christmas comfort and joy. But this brutally intense, emotionally stirring tribute to America’s fighting spirit has a message that will certainly resonate, like a punch to the gut, with anyone who’d prefer a steaming slab of gung-ho movie sausage to yet another slice of nutty holiday fruitcake.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Dec 09 2013
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Movie Reviews, Music

Ice, Ice Baby

Disney princesses in ‘Frozen’ are too cool for storybook endings

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Frozen

Starring the voices of Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, Jonathan Groff & Idina Menzel

Directed by Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee

PG, 108 minutes

Disney princesses are nothing new, but this movie is generous: It has not one, but two.

Loosely adapted from a 19th century Hans Christen Anderson folk epic, Frozen marks a return to the buoyant, song-filled fairytale-fantasy format that became a Disney hallmark in The Little Mermaid (another Hans Christen Anderson fable) and Beauty and the Beast.

Here, a pair of young royal daughters, Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel), grow up apart, sequestered from each other in their sprawling Nordic palace after an unfortunate childhood incident reveals the dangerous darker side of Elsa’s mysterious “gift” to deep-freeze anything she touches.

When the girls become young women and Elsa is reluctantly crowned queen, her coronation ball ends in an unplanned eruption of her powers. Accidentally turning summer into winter and perma-frosting her entire kingdom, the “ice queen” flees to the top of a desolate snow-swept mountaintop.

FROZENSome of the townspeople think Elsa’s a “monster.” Her little-sis princess, insisting she’s just misunderstood, sets off to find her. Along the way, Anna meets a helpful ice harvester (Jonathan Groff, from TV’s Glee), his trusty reindeer Sven, and a goofy, gabby snowman, Olaf (Josh Gad), who longs to experience the warmth of summer—without realizing what heat can do his cool composure.

The songs woven into the storyline are almost all standouts, signaling a new batch of Disney musical cream rising to the top. They’re from the husband and wife songwriting team of Bobby and Kristen Anderson-Lopez. Lopez has won Tony Awards for his Broadway work, and the tunes in Frozen likewise sound like they’re just waiting to be launched into a lavish, long-running stage production.

The story sags a bit in places but comes through with plenty of humor, heart and a couple of rousing action scenes, including a thrilling chase by snarling wolves through a predawn forest and an encounter with a fearsome snow monster. And the computer-generated animation is impressive, with many dazzling cinematic variations on the “beautiful, powerful, dangerous, cold” ice themes noted in the opening musical number.

"FROZEN" (Pictured) ELSA. ©2013 Disney. All Rights Reserved.And in the end, we’re left with a message that won’t surprise anyone who’s ever seen any Disney movie—but one that, refreshingly, doesn’t quite conform to a “typical” princess-storybook ending, either. The two Frozen sisters may not exactly represent a new royal standard in Disney females, but they do pack a powerful two-fisted punch about the power of love…and waiting for the right person who, as Olaf puts it, is “worth melting for.”

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Dec 02 2013
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Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Make a Joyful Noise

Movie musical puts soulful new spin on familiar Christmas story

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Black Nativity

Starring Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Angela Basset and Jacob Latimore

Directed by Kasi Lemmons

PG, 93 min.  

If you’d like going to the movies to be a little more like going to church, then you’ll probably like going to see Black Nativity.

Based on a 1960s musical by acclaimed poet/novelist/playwright Langston Hughes, it’s a modern embellishment of the Nativity story as told through the converging lives of various characters coming together for the staging of a Christmas Eve pageant at a Harlem house of worship.

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Jennifer Hudson & Jacob Latimore

Writer/director Kasi Lemmons fleshes out Hughes’ stage play with a wider drama about a down-on-her-luck single Baltimore mom (Jennifer Hudson) who sends her teenage son (Jacob Latimore) to live with his grandparents in New York during the holidays while she works two jobs and tries to figure out how to keep her and her son off the streets.

For the displaced teen, Langston (named after the famous poet), it’s clearly not the most wonderful time of the year. Mere minutes after stepping off the bus in downtown Harlem, his backpack’s snatched, he has a run-in with the law, and he meets a toughened street hood (Tyrese Gibson) that we’re sure he’ll come across again. Welcome to the big, bad city, kid!

Langston also bristles at the rigid God-centric rules laid down by his strict pastor grandfather (Forest Whitaker), but warms somewhat to his beaming, gracious grandma (Angela Bassett).

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The original Black Nativity stage production was a rich tapestry of traditional Christmas music and hymns, African-American rhythms, jazz and poetry. The movie version weaves in all of those elements, too, sprinkling throughout its dozen performances some contemporary hip-hop and rap for today’s ears.

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Mary J. Blige

Everybody sings, but it certainly helps that the cast includes a gut-busting tune-belter like Hudson, the Grammy and Oscar-winning American Idol finalist, and  an appearance by Mary J. Blige, the electrifying “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul.”

It’s Whitaker, though, who truly surprises. The Oscar-winning actor doesn’t often get a chance to show off his old college chops as an opera tenor, but he does here when he cuts loose in the “Black Nativity” pageant, as the reverend leads the congregation in a soulful burst of preachin’ and praisin.’

This modest little feel-good movie probably won’t contend for any major awards (unlike Whitaker’s other movie this year, The Butler). It’s pretty basic in its production—although some of the handsome shots by veteran cinematographer Anastos Michos are top-notch—and its drama tends to get a bit syrupy as it’s trying to soar.

But its heart is in the right place. And it can put yours there, too, if this holiday season you’re seeking a wholesome story with a joyous, tune-filled message about forgiveness, second chances and the true, timeless meaning of Christmas.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Nov 25 2013
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Movie Reviews

Oh, Daddy!

Vince Vaughn goes for warm & fuzzy as a fantastically fertile father

DELIVERY MANDelivery Man

Starring Vince Vaughn, Chris Pratt and Cobie Smulders

Directed by Ken Scott

PG-13, 105 min.

When Brooklyn meat delivery-truck driver David Wozniak (Vince Vaughn) discovers that anonymous sperm donations he made to a fertility clinic some decades ago have resulted in more than 500 now-adult children, he decides to check them out. Not all of them—just the 142 New Yorkers who are suing to find out the true identity of their dad.

So the deliveryman who’s sewn his seeds over the Big Apple goes off to see how they’ve sprouted—without letting any of them know who he really is.

DELIVERY MANThis remake—by the same director—of a 2011 French-Canadian flick called Starbuck (after a champion stud breeding bull) follows Wozniak as he interacts with his offspring. He encourages the street musician, cheers for the historical reenactor, gets a manicure from the salon worker, and subs for the barista at a coffee shop so the aspiring actor can skip work and go to an audition.

He even saves the heroin addict from an overdose.

There’s also a subplot about how Wozniak’s latest get-rich scheme has resulted in a massive debt to some sleazy loan sharks, and about his girlfriend (Cobie Smulders of How I Met Your Mother), who’s pregnant with his baby but not really expecting her screw-up of a partner to be much of a co-parent.

Can “Starbuck” turn his life around and become the man he needs to be—and the father he already is, 500 times over?

Vaughn, whose acting career has generally been defined by playing slouchy, raunchy man-child slackers, takes a decided turn toward the warm and fuzzy here, but still retains enough of his trademark comedic brand to not totally surprise anyone expecting to see a “Vince Vaughn movie.” It’s Chris Pratt, however, a supporting player on TV’s Parks and Recreation, who snatches most of the laughs right out from under him as his best friend and lawyer buddy.

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Chris Pratt, from TV’s ‘Parks and Recreation,’ gets most of the laughs as Vaughn’s best buddy and lawyer.

There’s something creepy about a grown man sneaking around, spying on dozens of barely 20-somethings, sneakily tweaking their lives. There’s something implausible about just how swell, well adjusted and full of sunshine all these kids are, even the heroin addict. And the scenes in which Vaughn interacts with his severely disabled son (Sébastien René, reprising his role from the original movie), meant to show Wozniak’s love for all his kids, instead come off as manipulative and mawkish.

Ultimately, this tall tale of a fantastically fertile lug and his epic leap into the nether-reaches of fatherhood has a message about family, connectivity and belonging that wraps around its comic center like one giant group hug. But Delivery Man makes you slog down a long road of soppy, artificially sweet goop to get to it.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Nov 18 2013
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Movie Reviews

The Old(ish) Man & The Sea

Robert Redford goes it alone in an epic struggle on the ocean

AIL-0551-Credit-Daniel-DazaAll Is Lost

Starring Robert Redford

Directed by J.C. Chandor

PG-13, 106 min.

“I must go down to the seas again,” wrote British poet John Masefield in the early 1900s, rhapsodizing the “wind’s song and the white sail shaking.”

Robert Redford’s character in All Is Lost probably read that classic maritime poem, once upon a time. But we wouldn’t know. In fact, we don’t know much anything about him at all, including his name, where’s he’s from, or why he’s alone on a sailboat, headed across the Indian Ocean, 1,700 miles from land.

All we know is that, in opening narration over a scene of lapping waves, he informs us (in words that sound like he’s reading his farewell note) that he’s “tried everything” and “all is lost.”

Then the story flashes back so we can watch his dire predicament unfold from the beginning. Awakened from a nap by water lapping on the floor of the cabin of his boat, he realizes his vessel’s been struck—its side pierced—by the jagged edge of a floating metal cargo container. Suddenly, his little pleasure craft has become a mini-Titanic.

photodazastills_3569.CR2But “Our Man” (as he’s listed in the credits) doesn’t panic. He immediately springs into action, stoically, calmly going about the business of survival. Then he notices dark clouds on the horizon, and things go from bad to worse.

Redford, the only actor in the entire film, gives a monumental, majestic performance. It’s his show all the way, and a spectacular, galvanizing display of how this one-time Hollywood “golden boy,” now 77, can still commandeer the screen.

As he shimmies to the tippy-top of his ship’s mainmast to fix an unhooked wire, later gets swept overboard, and eventually has to abandon ship altogether into an inflatable lifeboat, his age-defying athleticism is amazing. And through it all, he’s a man of few words—almost none at all.

Director/writer J.C. Chandor, whose only other film was Margin Call (2011), working with cinematographers Frank G. DeMarco and Peter Zuccarini, and three-time Oscar-winning sound editor Richard Hymns, creates a dynamic, driving existential narrative with only the slightest smidgen of dialogue. You realize just how unnecessary, impractical, and downright useless words can be in situations, like this one, when there’s no one to speak them to.

(You also realize just how yappy with blabber most other movies can be.)

ALL IS LOST

Will Our Man endure? Can he make it into the international shipping lanes, where a passing freighter may—or may not—spot him? Will he hang on to the will to live…or will that, too, sink beneath the waves? And what about those circling sharks?

I’m not telling. But I can tell you one thing: After watching All Is Lost, with all due respect to the British poet, I think I’ll pass on “going down to the seas again,” at least for a while, and I certainly won’t be going all alone in a sailboat.

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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Nov 11 2013
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Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

It’s Hammer Time…Again

Super-fans will get their fix, but everyone else might feel like this ‘Thor’ is just ‘more’

thor251e6e6b3ae340Thor: The Dark World

Starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman & Tim Hiddleston

Directed by Alan Taylor

PG-13, 112 min.

It’s hammer time again as Marvel Comics’ mallet-wielding Norse god of thunder makes his third appearance on the big screen.

Chris Hemsworth returns to the starring role and strides confidently into the story, which builds on elements from the first Thor (2011) as well as the The Avengers (2012), in which Thor joined with his fellow Marvel do-gooders Iron Man, Captain America and The Hulk.

Superhero franchise flicks have become big booming business, in case you haven’t noticed. All the ones based on Marvel characters start with a “flip-book” montage of Marvel iconography and end with teasers during and/or after the credits promoting upcoming movies, and the plots of most of them are already working ahead, spinning threads on storylines in the making and setting up new characters.

In this movie, as he does in every movie based on one of his characters, Marvel’s founder Stan Lee makes his obligatory cameo, and an Avenger pops in for a cameo. And now there’s a TV show, The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., about characters spun off from the movies that spun off from the comic books.

Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman

Maybe that’s why this movie often feels like one big, expensive promotion, and the main dramatic driving force of this Thor just seems to be “more.”

Superhero fans will probably get their fix, but everyone else could easily feel like they’re being hammered into submission by a major marketing plan.

The characters are the same as be-Thor…I mean before. There’s the blonde-haired astro-Nordic beefcake himself; Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), the beautiful, brainy Earth scientist who loves him; his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins), the king of the cosmic kingdom of Asgard; Thor’s resentful step-brother, the treacherous trickster Loki (Tim Hiddleston); and an assortment of returning supporting players, including Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgård, Rene Russo, and Kat Dennings from TV’s 2 Broke Girls.

The story’s…well, if not the same, more of the same: Something catastrophic will happen if Thor doesn’t stop it. In this case, it’s an evil force called the Aether in the hands of Dark Elves who want to use it to seriously gunk up the universe.

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As the ensuing computer-generated battle rages across the vastness of space, and the story ping-pongs between Asgard and England, Middle Earth-ern bows, arrows, swords and shields mix with Star Wars-ish laser blasters, teleportation devices and anti-gravity beams, as if two sets of mismatched action figures somehow spilled out of the toy box and onto the play mat.

Think of it as Game of Thrones in a galaxy far, far away. Which isn’t too much of a stretch, given that director Alan Taylor’s impressive TV resume includes that particular HBO series.

Tim Hiddleston

Tim Hiddleston

But Hemsworth owns his role, and so does Hiddleston as the villainous Loki, who has certainly become one of the franchise’s strongest second-tier characters.

It’s Stellan Skarsgård’s nutty professor Selvig, however, that really intrigues me. He prances naked around Stonehenge, uses a pair of shoes to explain a complicated theory of planetary alignment, knows how to take the oomph out of Armageddon, and works without pants because he says his brain functions better that way.

Now, when is that guy getting his own spin-off?

—Neil Pond, American Profile Magazine

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