Red

Posted on January 25, 2011 at 8:00 am

Give me Dame Helen Mirren with a semi-automatic weapon and Morgan Freeman smiling, “We’re getting the band back together,” and I will happily settle back and enjoy the popcorn.

“RED” stands for “Retired Extremely Dangerous,” and this is the designation applied to a group of former CIA and other operatives. They find it difficult to adjust to a peaceful life and are as relieved as they are energized when it turns out that they have been targeted by the same kinds of hit squads they used to run. Game on.

The graphic novel by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner is a bit more grim than this high-spirited adaptation with Oscar-winners Mirren and Freeman having a literal and metaphoric blast doing just what their characters are doing — showing the young folks how it’s done.

Bruce Willis plays Frank Moses, who lives in a house with all of the personality of an airport motel and whose only pleasure is in talking to Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) the woman at the call center about why he isn’t receiving his retirement checks — which he is receiving and tearing up to give him an excuse to talk to her. Masked assassins try to take him down. Not hard to find — his is the only house on the block with no Christmas decorations. But apparently they don’t realize he is Bruce Willis so they are quickly dispatched. He grabs his go bag and is off to pick up Sarah, for her own protection of course, and, well, get the band back together to figure out who’s after them this time and what they need to do about it. That includes former MI-5 agent Victoria (Mirren), nursing home resident Joe (Freeman), and Marvin (John Malcovich), a survivor of the CIA’s LSD experiments who exemplifies the truism that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re not out to get you.

The sharp, witty script is expertly presented by top performers with great action scenes, a little romance, and surprise appearances by two more Oscar-winners, likely to mow down the competition at the cineplex with as much elan as they go after the bad guys.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Posted on November 24, 2010 at 3:54 pm

Happy Thanksgiving!

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Posted on November 2, 2010 at 10:00 am

Director Edgar Wright’s latest movie is based on the popular series of graphic novels about Scott Pilgrim, an often-clueless, out of work musician who falls for a girl named Ramona and has to fight her seven evil exes in a mode that is half superhero, half computer game. In other words, it’s a Comic-Con Quadrella.

Those who were born before 1980, don’t recognize gamer terms, and are easily confused by a cuddle puddle of comics, Bollywood, indie music, and the omni-connectedness of the 2010’s, will either find this an imaginative anthropological journey or an unintelligibly precious mish-mash of smug self-awareness. Those who are in the right age group will either find it uniquely speaking to their own sense of alienation mixed with a boundary-less
hive-mind ultimate oversharing — or an unintelligibly precious mish-mash of smug self-awareness.

I thought it was cute and funny and surprisingly sweet. Director Edgar Wright (“Shawn of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”) tells the story with great energy and imagination, incorporating an pan-media range of story-telling techniques. When Scott has a realization, Wright has a quick cut to a parking meter with a needle that swings from the red “no clue” to the green “gets it.” Another character’s feelings are expressed when the pink, fluffy word L-O-V-E wafts in Scott’s direction.

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera, of course) is a nice if somewhat clueless guy whose cluelessness is tolerated and sometimes enabled by his roommate Wallace (Kieran Culkin, employing a terrific, seen-it-all-and-finds-it-amusing deadpan), his fellow band mates (Sex Bob Omb, and his high school girlfriend Knives (Ellen Wong). Yes, her name is Knives and she is his high school girlfriend not because he met her in high school but because she is in high school. What do they do together? “She tells me about how yearbook club went and once we almost held hands on the bus.”

And then Scott sees Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and in a time-honored tradition that goes back even before Hot Pockets and Nintendo, love will make him braver, stronger, and able to consider the feelings of others for pretty much the first time in his slackery life.

But first he has to fight her seven evil ex-boyfriends, I mean exes. Each one is a physical manifestation of anyone’s insecurities in a new relationship. Will he be strong and brave enough for her? Pure enough? Successful enough? What have they got that he hasn’t got? On the way to understanding, I felt big, pink, fluffy L-O-V-E wafting from me toward the screen.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Posted on October 29, 2010 at 5:55 pm

This Halloween classic is temporarily available on Hulu. Happy Halloween!

Jonah Hex

Posted on October 12, 2010 at 8:00 am

Josh Brolin plays Jonah Hex, a man transformed by loss in a fantasy western set just after the Civil War, based on the series of comics and graphic novels. The war is over in the United States, but it continues to haunt Hex, who rides the West as a gun for hire still wearing his Confederate Uniform.

Hex has no friends, at least not any who are alive. He has one enemy, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), who made Hex watch as he ordered his men to make Hex suffer as he had, to watch as he loses everything he loves and has to live on, scarred inside and out. After Turnbull burns down Hex’s home with his wife and child inside, he orders his men to apply a fiery brand to Hex’s face, burning through the skin to the jawbone. “Every day that mark will remind you of the man who took everything you had.”

But that physically and psychologically searing experience gave Hex something, too. “It left me with the curse of talking to the other side,” he tells us. And so he rides, feeling nothing but vengeance, a gunman for hire, haunted by the dead and answerable to no one but himself.

Turnbull steals the most powerful weapon ever made, a sort of pre-industrial age H-bomb, And President Grant (Aidan Quinn) orders Lieutenant Grass (Will Arnett) to get Hex to find Turnbull and stop his plan to bring down the United States government as it reaches its 100th birthday.

It has a trim just-over-80 minutes running time, so I’m guessing there will be a future DVD release with a lot of deleted scenes. But the lean story-telling works well for its taciturn characters and spare settings, beautifully presented by cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen, and well scored by Marco Beltrami and John Powell with assistance from Mastodon. The blend of history and fantasy, both tweaking and saluting the conventions of both genres, works better than the clumsy references to current concerns like terrorism and tea party anti-government sentiment. Brolin is as at home in the role as he is in the saddle. As (of course) a prostitute with a mean right hook and, at least for Hex, a heart of gold, Megan Fox has to learn that a husky voice and a smoldering look are not enough to create a character. On the other hand, in that wasp-waisted corset (reportedly a Scarlett O’Hara-size 18 inches in diameter) she should get an award for staying upright.