Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Posted on April 3, 2014 at 6:00 pm

This is how you make a superhero movie. Director brothers Joe and Anthony Russo are best known for sitcoms with few but passionate fans (“Community,” “Happy Endings,” “Arrested Development”) and the underrated crime comedy “Welcome to Collinwood.” That is not the kind of credential that usually leads to a big budget comic book movie. But they prove to be just what the doctor ordered, funny where it should be, exciting where it should be, smarter than it needs to be, and just plain fun. Plus, I may be late to the party, but now I totally get the shield thing now as offensive and defensive weapons and it is very cool.

This is the sequel to the WWII-era origin story, where Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) a 98-pound weakling, volunteered for a government experiment that turned him into a super-strong super-soldier. But he got frozen in a block of ice and was thawed out more than sixty years later in time to join “The Avengers.” the storyline continues Captain America’s adjustment to the 21st century. We first see him running around Washington D.C.’s monuments neighborhood, repeatedly lapping vet Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). Pretty soon, they’re talking some mild smack and Wilson is telling Rogers what he has to add to his catch-up list of cultural touchstones: Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man. Also on the list “Star Trek/Wars” and Steve Jobs. Evans and Mackie have a natural chemistry that makes that scene very funny but also shows us how much both of them need a friend who understands what it’s like to be a soldier home from the war.

But then Captain is called into action again. Alongside the Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson, tough, smart, funny, and just a touch flirtatious, as she chats with Rogers about girls he might want to ask out while they trade blows with the bad guys. There’s a mission, a hijacked cargo ship (I kept looking for a captain-esque crossover from Captain Phillips). Straight-ahead Captain America, used to fighting Nazis and other incontrovertibly bad guys who dress the part, expects that the people on his side will treat him with the same trust and respect and integrity he gives them in return. But this is the 21st century, and it’s complicated.

Rogers knows how to follow orders and he knows how to fight. Now he must learn to understand who he is fighting and what he is fighting for. It’s one thing when the bad guy has a Red Skull and wants total world domination because he is a fascist. It is another when both the good guys and the bad guys wear suits and speak in tempered, diplomatic tones, and want total world domination because it is best for everyone. “Don’t trust anyone,” Nick Fury tells Rogers. And Rogers, used to trusting everyone (how many people today would allow the government to inject them with an experimental serum?), has to learn what that means.

And it is one thing to take on a dozen bad guys at a time, knowing none of them have superpowers. But here Rogers must face an assassin called The Winter Soldier, someone as strong as he is, someone without any of the second-guessing that comes from understanding the complexities of the situation, someone who cannot be reasoned with or argued with or appealed to. And someone Rogers knew and trusted in the past.

The easy chemistry between Cap, Sam, and Natasha/Black Widow adds depth and heart to the story. Natasha needs to learn to trust as Cap needs to learn when not to trust. “How do we know who the bad guys are?” Sam asks as they race into battle. “The ones who are shooting at us,” Cap tells him.

There is just enough depth and gloss and humor and heart to set off the action, gorgeously staged in and around Washington, D.C. The elevated Whitehurst Freeway along the Potomac River gets the super-fight it was built for and it is a beaut. Wait until you see what’s been going on under the Potomac. It was a whole other level of pleasure to see a movie that gets Washington’s geography right. Most important, this is a film that respects the genre and the audience. Captain America and his fans get the movie they deserve.

Parents should know that this film includes constant comic book, action-style, superhero violence with many characters injured and killed, guns, bombs, chases, crashes, explosions, weapons of mass destruction, discussion of genocide, torture, fights, and brief strong language.

Family discussion: If you were advising Captain America on cultural developments while he was gone, what would you suggest? What is the biggest problem he faces in trying to adjust to modern times? How do the plans under consideration here relate to current discussions on world affairs?

If you like this, try: “The Avengers” and the other Marvel superhero movies

300: Rise of an Empire

Posted on March 5, 2014 at 10:52 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong sustained sequences of stylized bloody violence throughout, a sex scene, nudity and some language
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Wine
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant very graphic peril and war-time violence with many graphic and disturbing images and sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	March 7, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00BEJL6Q8

eva-green-as-artemisia-in-300-rise-of-an-empire — Copyright Warner Brothers 2014

Here’s a new term: this movie is neither a sequel nor a prequel to 300, the story of the 300 Spartans who died battling the vastly greater army of the Persians. This is a “side-quel,” a “meanwhile” story about what was going on in a sea battle led by Spartan’s rivals, the Athenians. While “300” was based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, itself based on historic events in ancient Greece, this side-quel was written at the same time as Miller’s still-uncompleted follow-up, to be called “Xerxes.”

We get a bit more backstory this time, too. In a previous battle, Athens’ great warrior Themistokles (hunky Sullivan Stapleton) killed the Persian king. His furious son, Xerxes (returning Rodrigo Santoro) traded his humanity for godlike powers to get his revenge by invading Greece. The leader of the Persian forces is the even-more-furious Artemisia (Eva Green), who can kiss the lips on the head she has just severed, enjoying the kiss just slightly less than the kill. She is tougher than any of her generals, more lethal than any of her soldiers, and even hungrier for inflicting desolation on Greece than her king. And she has the kind of fearlessness only found in those who have nothing left to lose and who will never win enough to feel that they have succeeded.

Themistokles needs to get the support of the resolutely independent city-states if they are to hold off the far greater Persian forces. He knows that his men have heart and dedication, but they are not trained warriors like the Spartans. I could say more about the story, but let’s face it — like the first film, this is about abs, swords, and lots of blood spurting in artistic slo-mo, drenching the screen.

The primary differences are the absence of Gerard Butler and the shift from battles on land to battles on water. We feel Butler’s loss, as he brought a bit more to the original in terms of acting and managed to give his character some depth and personality in the midst of the carnage. But that works for the story, as the death of his character Leonidas is felt deeply in Sparta. The only thing that stands out from the carnage, though, is Green, whose Artemisia cranks up the cray-cray as one of the most evil-relishing villainesses since Cruella De Vil. There’s a sizzling sex-and-fight scene (hmmm, Green did something very similar in “Dark Shadows“) that is way over the top of whatever point over the top used to be. Green has a blast striding around casting laser beams of hatred at everyone, and wipes everyone else in the cast off the screen more thoroughly than her character does to to the “farmers, sculptors, and poets”-turned soldiers of Athens.

Parents should know that this film has constant very intense, graphic, and bloody violence with many battles, swords, fire, drowning, executions, rapes, disturbing images, nudity, sexual references and situations, and some strong language.

Family discussion: What are the biggest differences between the Greeks and the Persians? Do we think about war differently today?

If you like this, try: “300” and “Gladiator”

Kick-Ass 2

Posted on August 15, 2013 at 6:00 pm

The first Kick-Ass was entertaining as an over-the-top response to true-blue superhero movies. The Dark Knight might think he’s angsty and tortured and tough, but he has nothing on the merry band of misfits who form a sort of Justice League on crack, featuring an 11-year-old known as Hit Girl who was raised to be the world’s greatest assassin.

It is less entertaining this time. The lines have already been crossed, the 11-year-old is now 15, and all that’s left is to add a few new characters and a lot more violence. There are some interesting ideas, but mostly it’s just a bloodbath.

The first movie ended with Dave (Aaron Tayl0r-Johnson), who has assumed the identity of a superhero (without any superpowers) named Kick-Ass, killing off the crime boss with a bazooka. Now the crime boss’ son, Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), wants revenge. He has unlimited resources and unlimited fury. He dresses up in his late mother’s bondage gear, looking like a cross between Spinal Tap and Maleficent. He gives himself an unprintable name, builds an evil lair with strippers and a shark, and hires an international assortment of mercenaries to set himself up as a super-villain.

Meanwhile, and this is the interesting part, it turns out that even knowing dozens of ways to kill a bad guy, with his own finger if necessary, Mindy/Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) cannot escape a little bit of an adolescent identity crisis. Though she confidently assures Dave that Kick-Ass is his real identity and it is being Dave that is the mask, when her cop guardian (an underused Morris Chestnut) makes her promise to be a normal highschool freshman, she decides to give it a try. A section of the movie is like Buffy crossed with “Mean Girls” as she is taken in by her high school’s Plastics and there is a funny scene where she tries out for Dance Squad by imaging herself in a ninja fight. But, as we all know only too well, the evil in high school is worse than any super-villain, and Mindy, like Dave, will learn what her real identity is.

Over and over, characters tell us that what they are going through is real life, not a comic book. That gets as tiresome as the over-the-top carnage and efforts to shock. Writer-director Jeff Wadlow, taking over for Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman, fumbles the eternal challenge of a sequel, keeping it enough like the first to deliver what the audience expects while taking it in new directions to make it surprising. His biggest mistake is in overlooking the obvious — this movie belongs to Hit Girl. Every time she is off the screen, it’s like the projector bulb fades.

Parents should know that this is borderline NC-17, an exceptionally violent film with very graphic and disturbing images and sounds, massive destruction, and many injuries and deaths. It also includes exceptionally raw and crude language (a running joke has Mindy filling more than one swear jar), sexual references, and explicit sexual situations and nudity.

Family discussion: Was Dave responsible for what happened to his father? What is the difference between Dave and his friends and vigilantes?

If you like this, try: the original film and the comics by Mark Miller and John Romita, Jr.

2 Guns

Posted on August 1, 2013 at 6:00 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Preschool
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for violence throughout, language and brief nudity
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug dealers
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant intense and graphic peril and violence, some very disturbing images, torture, guns, chases, explosions, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 2, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	November 19, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00BEIYN9Q

The couple with the most electrifying chemistry on screen so far this year is Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg in “2 Guns.” As the title of the the graphic novel by Steven Grant and Mateus Santolouco suggests, it is a double-barreled shoot-em-up. It is very violent, and it seems that the two stars think they are making a more light-hearted, escapist bang bang frolic than the movie can deliver. The other characters in the often-sour story seem to be in a different movie. But as long as the two stars are trading quips in syncopation with the rounds of firepower, it is very entertaining.

Washington plays Bobby, a DEA agent who has been undercover for a couple of years infiltrating a Mexico-based drug ring. Wahlberg is Stig, working undercover for the Navy for the same reason. We’re told they are the best at what they do, but somehow when they are trading banter about the best doughnuts in three counties and the drug dealer henchman who has been separated from his head they never figure out that they are both working for law enforcement. Me, I think I might suspect that Bobby was not the usual bad guy when he stops in the middle of a robbery to pick up and soothe a crying baby. But Stig is too busy being cool to notice. Other than that, and repeatedly trusting the wrong people, and not making much progress in getting anyone arrested or confiscating any drugs or weapons, they are both crackerjack detectives.

Bobby has some issues. He is a loner. He does not “have people.” He has a sometime girlfriend, a Justice Department attorney named Deb (Paula Patton). “Did you ever love me?” she asks him when they are in bed together. “I meant to love you,” he says. Stig is more easy-going, but he may be too far in the other direction when it comes to trust, not able to see when his “people” are less loyal to him than he is to them. That may be part of the explanation for their mutual blind spot in not figuring out that they were both doing the same thing. Neither they nor we have much time to think about that as very quickly it turns out that they have been set up and betrayed, and they will need to find a way to work together in the midst of being hunted down by three separate groups who want to kill them.

After that, it’s just banter, chase, banter, shoot-out, banter, a couple of torture scenes, banter, betrayal, more quippy banter, and then ludicrous even in the context of this movie side-story about the perils of illegal immigration, then pay-off (literally). It is an uneasy mix, but the stars own the fizzy dialogue with such brio, electricity and pure charisma that they provide the real explosive power.

Parents should know that this film includes constant comic book-style violence, some graphic and disturbing images, torture, guns, explosions, chases, fights, many characters injured and killed, non-explicit sexual situation, female nudity, some strong language, and pervasive corruption.

Family discussion: The issue of loyalty occurs several different times in this movie. How do Bobby and Stig show their views about loyalty? How does Deb? How do their views change over the course of the story?

If you like this, try: “Lethal Weapon,” “Shoot ’em Up,” and “The Other Guys”

The Wolverine

Posted on July 25, 2013 at 6:00 pm

The first X-Men spin-off movie with Hugh Jackman as the super-healing, never-aging mutant who shoots blades out of his knuckles was called “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” This one is called “The Wolverine.” Got it?

Wolverine is the, well, lone wolf of the X-Men. After a flashback that shows him saving the life of a Japanese soldier as the atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, this chapter opens he is doing the Grizzly Adams thing, living in a cabin on a mountain far from everyone. His dreams are haunted by memories of Jean (Famke Janssen), missing her terribly and consumed with guilt over her death. That is the closest he gets to companionship. Because he does not age, he has witnessed more than a century of tragedy and destruction. He feels guilty for his part in it and he does not have the heart to engage any more. Or so he thinks. A poisoned arrow shot into a bear is enough to provoke his sense of justice. Or his anger, which is close to the same thing.

Out of hiding for a moment is enough time for him to be found by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a Japanese martial arts specialist with punky red hair. She tells him that the man whose life he once saved is dying and wants him to fly to Japan to say goodbye. He agrees to go for one day, but of course it turns out to be a lot more complicated and dangerous. Wolverine ends up having to rescue Yuikio’s sort-of sister Mariko (a pretty but colorless Tao Okamoto) from some bad guys including a lady with literally poisonous breath and a viper tongue (an unconvincing Svetlana Khodchenkova). One drawback of putting a real actor in the lead role is that is sets the bar pretty high. Jackman has more acting ability and screen presence than anyone else in the film and that throws off the whole movie off balance.

A superhero movie has to have three things: a reason to care about the characters, sensational action scenes, and a really interesting villain. I’d give this movie one out of three. There are some great action scenes, particularly a fight on top of what we’re told is a 300-mile-an-hour bullet train. It is a wonder of split-second timing. And Fukushima is a quick, inventive, and graceful combatant.

Secondary factors are strong as well. Director James Mangold (“Walk the Line”) draws effectively from the visuals of the Japanese atmosphere and setting, though does not make much from the culture beyond a demonstration of how to tie a samurai’s belt and a warning that chopsticks sticking straight up from a bowl are a bad omen. Wolverine has existential conflicts. I’d give a lot for a non-angsty superhero these days, but there is an interesting twist here in tying his reluctance to get involved to the emotional exhaustion of an endless life span. A superhero needs a super-villain, though. Here Wolverine fights a series of interchangeable yakuza thugs in action scenes that are artistically staged, especially one with arrows raining down on Wolverine’s broad shoulders and back, but the pay-off on who is behind it all is scarcely worth it. The real ending to the film comes during the final credits, when we see that what has been missing from this film is promisingly on board for the next installment.

Parents should know that this film includes constant fantasy superhero peril and violence with some graphic injuries and disturbing images, swords, knives, arrows, poison, characters injured and killed, drinking, some strong language (s-words, one f-word), and a non-explicit sexual situation.

Family discussion: What does Wolverine mean when he says he is a soldier? Why was he so isolated at the beginning of the movie and what made him change his mind?

If you like this, try: the “X-Men” movies and comic books