The Avengers

Posted on May 2, 2012 at 1:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout and a mild drug reference
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Brief reference to "weed"
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant comic-book style action violence and peril, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	May 4, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	September 24, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0083SBJXS

“The Dirty Dozen.” “The Bad News Bears.” “The A-Team.” “The Expendables.” Stories about a mixed group of badass tough guys who have trouble with authority but learn to work together are second only to stories about loners taking on The Man in their enduring popularity. Writer-director Joss Whedon, who revitalized science fiction and fantasy with “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly” makes “The Avengers” a smart, exciting, and engaging superhero story that deftly balances seven larger-than-life characters (some literally), their personal and inter-personal struggles and their interplanetary battles. The film does not take itself or its characters too seriously but it takes entertainment seriously, serving up plenty of popcorn pleasure. There’s a light dusting of politics (secret WMDs) and character (sibling rivalry, making peace with oneself), and some humor pixie dust to break the tension and add sparkle, but this is about fighting the bad guys, and it does that very well.

There are two super-geniuses. The enormously wealthy businessman Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) gets his super-powers mechanically. Scientist/humanitarian Dr. Bruce Banner (newcomer Mark Ruffalo taking over from Eric Bana and Edward Norton) has somehow become credentialed as a medical doctor and is providing health care to the poor while trying to maintain his equilibrium to avoid turning into an enormous green rage monster. There’s a demi-god: the Norse deity Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who swings a mighty hammer. The Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is a former Russian spy and assassin. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has super-archery skills, shooting a near-endless supply of high-tech arrows with a Swiss Army knife’s worth of super functions. Super-soldier Captain America (Chris Evans) is still adjusting to modern life after having been frozen for 70 years. For him, defeating the Nazis was just months ago and the discovery that the world is still so unsettled and violent is disturbing. But he perks up at a flying monkey reference — that one he recognizes. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is the guy with the eye-patch from S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) who brings this group of “remarkable people” together, explaining that they might not be able to save the earth, but they can certainly avenge it. If they can stop fighting with each other in a sort of rock-scissors-paper that has them matching strengths and weaknesses to see whether an immortal deity outranks a guy in an iron suit that flies and which is stronger, the hammer of Asgard or a vibranium shield.

When Thor’s brother Loki (a nicely demented Tom Hiddleston, pale as a vampire) steals the tesseract (a glowing blue cube that has the kind of powers you don’t want in the hands of the wrong people), it is time for the Avengers to assemble. Only the most completist fanboys will think that they could not have cut out about 20-30 minutes of the opening sections of tracking everyone down and having them battle each other until they develop some respect and the ability to work together. Some of it is necessary as an introduction to everyone’s powers and vulnerabilities, but we all know they’re going to get on board, so it slows things down too much. Do we really need the “This is not a drill” evacuation sequence? And why must every summer action movie feature a black tie party with a string quartet?

Once everyone is on the team, though, things pick up nicely as Loki’s warriors with long, creepy teeth show up in Manhattan and there is plenty of battle to go around. The bad guys bring all kinds of nasty stuff, including enormous sea-monster-type flying ships. And we get to see each of the Avengers do what he or she does best as they struggle with their own issues to be the heroes the world needs them to be. The Hulk is not the only one who has to make peace with his darker side. “Aren’t the stars and stripes a little old-fashioned?” Captain America asks, wondering what his new uniform should look like? “People might need a little old-fashioned,” says Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), who proudly owns a near-mint (light foxing) set of Captain America trading cards. The idea of heroes sometimes seem a little old-fashioned in these cynical and compromised days, and it is good to see a story that brings that idea back.

NOTE: Stay ALL the way through the credits. It will be worth it.

DVD/Blu-Ray: There are some lovely extras including commentary by writer-director Joss Whedon, a gag real, and behind the scenes features.

Parents should know that this film has constant comic-book peril and violence, chases, explosions, characters injured and killed, and a brief joke about “weed.”

Family discussion: Why was it so hard for the Avengers to learn to work together? What was the most important thing they had in common?

If you like this, try: “Iron Man,” “Thor,” “Captain America,” the X-Men movies and the original comic books

Sneak Peek: ‘The Avengers’ Super Bowl Ad

Posted on February 1, 2012 at 3:20 pm

One of the most eagerly anticipated movies of 2012 is “The Avengers.” Here’s a teaser ad to be shown during the Super Bowl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZsu3sbWnAU

The Adventures of Tintin

Posted on December 21, 2011 at 8:00 am

Two box office champion directors and a cult favorite joined forces for a film that was a first for all of them, a 3D motion capture animated story. It is clear that director Steven Spielberg, producer Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings”) and co-screenwriter Edgar Wright (“Shaun of the Dead”) were thrilled at the total freedom of animation, bringing storyboards to life without any pesky problems posed by weather, local ordinances, camera placement, safety, or the laws of gravity. And so they have created a film that is non-stop, brilliantly staged action, with every mode of transport and obstacle, half Indiana Jones, half M. Hulot, with a touch of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, turning the entire material world into a giant Rube Goldberg contraption. Wonderfully cinematic shots and transitions show us how the masters have fun with pure, unleashed movie story-telling.

The comic book stories of the boy reporter Tintin created by an artist/writer known as Hergé (Georges Remi) are wildly popular in Europe but not well known in the US. Tintin is brave, capable, inquisitive boy of indeterminate age, probably somewhere around 14. His excuse for getting involved in all kinds of adventures is that he is a reporter though neither the books nor the movie waste any time on the details of actually writing or filing stories, or, indeed, on any facts about Tintin’s origins or family. He has a dog, Snowy, who is as intrepid as he is, and their journeys give them many chances to rescue one another in many exotic locations.

Spielberg and Jackson (whose WETA firm did the animation) did not try to copy the iconic linge claire style pioneered by Hergé, though there is a sly nod to it in the delightful opening credits and in a street artist’s sketch of Tintin at the beginning. Instead it is an intensely detailed motion and performance capture with hyper-real textures and 3D effects that make the vertiginous chase scenes feel very visceral. Tintin (voice of Jamie Bell) buys a model ship that turns out to be of great interest to a mysterious man named Ivanovich Sakharine (voice of Daniel Craig). That leads Tintin to an adventure that involves cities, a desert, an opera singer, a potentate, pirates, dim policemen (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as Thompson and Thomson), as he is drawn into a multi-generational saga involving lost treasure. Along the way he meets up with Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), a drunken sailor who is part sidekick, part clue.

It has a lot of alcohol for a PG movie and some parents may be uncomfortable with the repeated references, some intended to be humorous, to drinking and drunkenness. And some will find the non-stop action overwhelming and just too much to process, even in these frenzied movie-as-video-game days. Even the exacting eye of Spielberg and the prodigious talent of WETA have not quite mastered the physics of movement with motion capture technology. The textures are wonderfully vivid and tactile and the angles and velocity are superb and the seas and ships toss convincingly. But the weight of the bodies when characters leap or fall or objects crash feels strange and somehow off and the faces never find the right spot between the realism of the textures and a more stylized or cartoony look. This is one element where they should have been more true to the original.

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9/11 in the Comics

Posted on September 11, 2011 at 8:00 am

Today nearly 100 cartoonists in the Sunday comics observe the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Every family should take some time to read through them to appreciate the many ways the comic artists and writers have found to tell the story of that day of terrible losses and extraordinary heroism.

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Comic book/Comic Strip/Graphic Novel

Cowboys & Aliens

Posted on July 28, 2011 at 6:28 pm

The last word I thought I’d be using about a movie called “Cowboys & Aliens” is “realistic,” but what I like best about this film is the way it uses the most speculative of fantasies for thoughtful exploration, not just six-guns vs. laser shooters. Perhaps “respectful” is a more appropriate term. Without any snarkiness or irony it shows us the way that frontiersmen a decade after the Civil War would rise to the challenge of an alien invasion the same way they battled nature and each other, making up in determination for what they lacked in knowledge and technology.

As co-star Brendan Wayne explained to me in an interview, we can’t make the kinds of iconic John Ford films his grandfather, John Wayne starred in because “you can’t really do cowboys and Indians without insulting history and culture.” But a fight against aliens doesn’t require any nuance or sensitivity and that makes it possible to revisit the archetypes that continue to define us as a culture in a way that is both traditional and new.

As for plot, the title says it all. A cowboy (Daniel Craig) wakes up with amnesia. He does not know who he is, where he got the injury to his abdomen, or how a strange metal cuff became attached to his arm. We learn at the same time he does that his fighting skills are excellent and he has no compunction about killing — or relieving his victim of his boots, guns, and horse. And he has eyes the color of the clear sky over the Rockies.

“What do you know?” asks the preacher (Clancy Brown) who discovers the gunman has broken into his home “English,” says the gunman. He seems to know how to survive, or at least how to recognize danger and the vulnerability of those who intend to attack him.

The preacher lives in a town where the hot-headed and arrogant son of the local rancher accidentally shoots a deputy sheriff. He and the gunman are jailed waiting for federal marshalls — or for the young man’s father. One way or the other, they will leave the jail that night.

The father, Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) arrives, determined to take his son home. The marshalls arrive to take him to federal court. And then the aliens arrive and even in this land where nothing is certain and no rules seem to apply, this is so far out of their experience they can only call the invaders “demons.”

This middle section is the most intriguing. The cowboys can’t go to Google or watch old movies to figure out what to do. They don’t have electricity or automatic weapons. They have to figure out a way to fight their demons using only the same qualities and resources they bring to staking their claim on the land.

They know how to track their prey. And Dolarhyde was a Colonel at Antietem. That means he knows military tactics. And what it means to lose his men. The gunman’s memory begins to return and they get help from some unexpected sources in time for a final battle. The film falls apart a bit here and the long list of writers and producers (including Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard) may have been a factor in a disappointing last act that shows evidence of compromise and lack of focus. The aliens themselves also seem under-imagined and the reveal of their ultimate purpose caused some laughter in the theater.

Director Jon Favreau (“Iron Man”) likes to avoid CGI whenever possible, and he makes superb use of both the mechanical effects and the Western landscape. The faces of Ford and Craig are a landscape of their own and both men provide heft and a sense of resolute determination that resonates with our deepest myths and reminds us why so many of them include cowboys.

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