Kick-Ass

Posted on August 3, 2010 at 8:00 am

“Kick-Ass” revels in its transgressive, nasty brutishness, and its audience will, too.
Of course, it’s one thing to have a 11-year-old girl in a comic book use very strong language and kill lots of people and it is another thing in a live-action movie, when the character is played by an actual 12-year-old. So let me say up front that I object to the rules allowing a child actor to perform this kind of role. If there are words an adult could be arrested for saying to a child, a child should not be permitted to say them on screen. Director Matthew Vaughn says that it is hypocritical for people to complain about the language used by a young girl, but not the violence. Well, first, I am complaining about the violence; I do not think children should be permitted to film graphic violent scenes whether they are the perpetrator or the victim (this movie has both). And second, the violence is fake but the language is real, so it is fair to take that seriously. So, for the record, to the extent I endorse this film, I want to be clear that I object to the involvement of a then-12-year-old in making it.
The problem is that it is getting harder and harder to find anything that is shocking or disturbing and having a child use bad language — in this case some crude sexual terms that are arguably misogynistic — and shoot bad guys in the face is one of the few remaining ways to provoke that delicious boundary-defying sensation. And — reservations aside — it works. Seeing Hit Girl, well, kick ass to the kicked-up-a-notch cartoon theme from the “Banana Splits” and then to Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” is a tonic. And there is something undeniably heady about seeing a vulnerable young girl mow down the bad guys — like “Home Alone” on crack.
“Kick-Ass” is a knowing tweak on the comic book genre. Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a comics-loving high school student who dreams of being a superhero, but, as he says, “My only super-power was being invisible to girls.” Undaunted, he orders a diving suit, turns it into a uniform, and re-creates himself as Kick-Ass, defender of justice. And then he gets beat up, stabbed, and sent to the hospital. No radioactive spider-bites or gamma rays, but he does come out of the hospital with two helpful results from his injuries — nerve damage that lessens his ability to feel pain and some metal plates in his bones that make his x-ray look — at least to him — like Wolverine’s.
Meanwhile, a former cop (Nicolas Cage) is raising his young daughter to be a killing machine, a pint-sized Kill Bill he calls Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz). His superhero persona is Big Daddy and his uniform is reminiscent of both Batman and Night Hawk. What they don’t have in superpowers they have in training, equipment, very, very heavy artillery, and single-minded focus.
Director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, “Layer Cake”) has a great eye and knows how to stage stylish, striking action scenes. Moretz (500 Days of Summer and Diary of a Wimpy Kid) has a great deadpan delivery and a natural chemistry with Cage, whose witty, skewed take is slyly funny.
The superhero genre has always been about transformation — the mild-mannered loser who contains within him (if only everyone knew!) a secret source of power. Here, the power is not x-ray vision or the ability to fly; just an extra dose of the hallmarks of adolescence: an affect of ennui about everything but smashing through limits and a sense of irony about everything but sex.

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Salt

Posted on July 27, 2010 at 10:24 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant peril and violence, shooting, fighting, explosions, torture, some graphic images, many characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Very strong female character
Date Released to Theaters:	July 23, 2010

“Salt” is the story of a CIA agent with an exemplary record who is accused by a mole of being a Russian spy, part of a cadre trained as children to infiltrate America by living normal lives until ordered into action. Angelina Jolie plays the title character, Evelyn Salt, bringing all of her Angelina Jolie-ness with her, for better and worse. She continues to explore the fearless action star stunt daredevil side she showed in the “Tomb Raider” movies and “Wanted” and the intensity of a wronged but fierce and fearless woman she showed in “The Changeling” and “A Mighty Heart.” And there’s the inevitability of her real tabloid-fodder life spilling over into the story as well, the wild child with her knives and Ã©pater le bourgeouis attitude evolving into the glowing madonna working tirelessly for the world’s children and happily devoted to her own highly photogenic six.

And so, when the movie opens, showing us Salt/Jolie being tortured by North Koreans, wearing nothing but her scanties, all of that comes along with whatever we are learning about her character. She is fierce and brave and will do anything it takes to protect her home. Once she is rescued, she holds it together until she sees who it was who insisted on getting her out, not the CIA, which has strict procedures for calculating the greater good, but her German boyfriend Mike (August Diehl), a scientist specializing in spiders.

Five years later, she has a desk job at a CIA cover organization and is getting ready to celebrate her wedding anniversary when a Russian guy shows up with an offer to provide information. He says that Salt is a Russian spy and is about to kill the Russian president (yes, I know that does not seem to make much sense). Her long-time colleague Ted (Liev Schreiber) believes she is telling the truth when she says she is loyal to America. But another official named Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) wants her investigated. Salt runs. It could be because she thinks Mike is in danger or because she does not trust Peabody. Or it could be that the Russian was right.

The chase and fight scenes are well staged, especially when Salt leaps across the tops of trucks as they race along a highway. But the absurdity of the plot is made even harder to accept because Jolie’s dignified diligence seems so out of step with the film’s tone. The Jolie of “Tomb Raider” and even “Gone in 60 Seconds” knew how to have fun on screen. But the wild child era is over, and even in film these days, Jolie seems to want to go for the gravitas. If so, this is the wrong movie.

Clash of the Titans

Posted on July 27, 2010 at 8:45 am

Director Louis Leterrier (the second “Hulk” movie) says that he was a big fan of the 1981 Clash of the Titans when he was a child. Perhaps that is why he has remade the wrong parts of that film. Nearly 30 years later, fans of the film are willing to overlook its essential cheesiness because of their affection for its special place at the apex of old-school analog special effects before the rise of computer-generated images. People did not watch the movie to see classically trained British actors slumming for a paycheck; they watched it to see the last creatures created by special effects superstar Ray Harryhausen. Each one was meticulously crafted and, as often happened in Harryhausen films, they often seemed more alive than the human performers. Note, too, that the movie was shot in 2D and then reconfigured after the fact for 3D, a very different effect than the fully-realized, fully-immersive experience of a movie conceived and shot in 3D.

This remake is bigger and grander but it is missing just that sense of life that Harryhausen brought to his fantastic creations, which were always astonishing and unique. Instead, we get the same CGI-fest we have seen so many times, with nothing especially imaginative or memorable.

The same can be said for this generation of classically-trained British actors, including Liam Neeson as Zeus, in a shiny (and anachronistic) Joan of Arc-style suit of armor and Ralph Fiennes as Hades, the god of the underworld, dressed like a Norwegian death metal band member trying to play Richard III. They are the titans who clash by proxy.

The gods need the loyalty of humans to survive. Zeus insists that they will get more fealty with love; Hades, still bitter and jealous that it is his brother who is king of the gods, believes in ruling by fear. The winner of their battle will be decided by a fight to the death of their progeny. Perseus (Sam Worthington in an even more anachronistic buzz cut) is Zeus’s son; the sea monster called the Kraken is the child of Hades. The arrogant king and queen of Argos have committed the sin of hubris, thinking they are more important and powerful than the gods. So Hades tells them that he will destroy the city unless they sacrifice their daughter, Andromeda to the Kraken. Perseus is determined to fight the Kraken and save the princess. And he is determined to “fight as a man,” not to use any of the powers or tools of the gods because he blames Zeus for the death of his mother and his adoptive parents.

With a small band of allies, Perseus travels to the three Stygian witches, who share one eye, to find out how to defeat the dragon. The journey involves battles with giant scorpions and trip into the underworld to fight the serpentine Medusa, the snake-headed lady whose eyes can turn a person to stone. And then, he must make it back to Argos in time to save Andromeda and defeat the giant sea monster, to the tune of some even more anachronistic rock chords.

The effects would be more impressive than the original’s only if you were still living in 1981. Today we take for granted that anything is possible on screen. But possible is not good enough; there has to be something truly striking. The witches and desert djinns look like they are wearing Halloween masks and the creatures look like variations on one predictable theme. There is a demigoddess whose powers seem to vary from scene to scene. The liberties taken with the original myths and the 1981 version’s story seem purposeless. And Worthington just seems lost, as though he wandered in from the set of “Avatar” and is looking around for the exit. I know how he felt.

The Runaways

Posted on July 20, 2010 at 8:00 am

The fierce determination. The big break. The tyrannical and sometimes unreasonable and sometimes even crooked manager. The endless rehearsals. The performances in dingy clubs. The breakthrough. The first album. The first magazine cover. The first fans. The fights among band members and between band members and their families.

And then, inevitably, the nightmare descent into booze and drugs.

That’s just about every single episode of “VH1 Behind the Music,” because it’s just about every rock band’s real-life experience. But the very success of that series has made it extremely difficult to make a movie about a real-life rock band that does not seem strangled by the constricting inevitabilities of the rock star story arc — as numbingly familiar in movies as it is in real life.

All of that is in “The Runaways,” the story of the pioneering all-girl rock group of the 1970’s. Joan Jett (“Twilight’s” Kristen Stewart) is the one with the fierce determination, especially when a guitar teacher suggests that girls don’t rock. She wants to have an all-girl band. Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) is the perfect storm to be out front — she is very pretty, just past puberty, and has a home life so awful that she will do anything for attention and affection. When a music promoter named Kim Fowley brings them together, he tells the teenage girls (in a much cruder way) that they should rock like men.

They were one part female empowerment, one part novelty act. They were Lolitas with a backbeat, jail bait in jumpsuits, their very name emphasizing their youth and rebelliousness. And they really did not have much in common other than a lack of experience and maturity and a longing for thrills. Jett, who went on to a long rock career and is still performing, was a serious rocker. Currie, who was barely old enough to drive when The Runaways were singing “Cherry Bomb” in lingerie to packed concert halls, had no great passion for performing. It is telling that in an early scene we see her at a school talent show — lip-synching David Bowie. It is her memoir that is the basis of the movie, and so it reflects her perspective and her story. She was torn apart by family problems and soon became addicted to drugs.

Related Tags:

Based on a true story Biography Musical

Cop Out

Posted on July 20, 2010 at 7:50 am

If you have some affection for the 1980’s-era buddy cop movies (the “Lethal Weapon” series, “Running Scared,” “48 Hours,” etc.), rent one of those. Don’t try to re-create the genre by seeing Kevin Smith’s tired re-tread, “Cop Out,” starring Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan. This is the first film Smith has directed without writing, and once again the suits got it backward. Kevin Smith can write, but he has never been much of a director. Remember his first film, “Clerks?” He basically set up the camera in one position and let the characters talk for 92 minutes. And it was that talk — the relishing of banality, the tsunami of TMI — that made the movie successful.
The check-list items are here. It begins with our not-so-lovably bickering heroes getting into trouble, being chewed out by a choleric police chief and dissed by a higher-ranking team (Kevin Pollack and Adam Brody). Denuded of guns and badges, they still have to figure out a way to save the day not just in locking up (or, mostly, shooting down) the bad guys but also in resolving their personal problems. Jimmy (Willis) has to figure out a way to pay for his daughter’s $50,000 wedding and Paul (Morgan) is hyper-jealous and has installed a nanny-cam in a teddy bear to find out whether his pretty wife (Rashida Jones) is cheating on him. Of course they run into an obnoxious small-time crook who will help them catch the bigger crooks (the Joe Pesci role — with a bit of Jason Mewes — goes to Seann William Scott). They are constantly nattering at each other but always having each other’s backs. And they mess everything up, in many different locations, until they don’t.
On the meandering way to the conclusion, we also see ambitious Mexican drug-dealers, a foul-mouthed kid, a valuable collectible, and a beautiful woman who has been in the trunk of a car for two days, as she repeatedly reminds everyone.
Willis looks like he is just running out the clock until his next project. Morgan and Scott try their best to stay afloat and there are some inspired improvisational riffs, but the script and direction keep getting in their way. The bad guys don’t do much but squint and call everyone “homes” all the time. Smith brought in Harold Faltermeyer, composer of the unforgettable “Beverly Hills Cop” soundtrack (he also provided the music for “Fletch” and “Top Gun”), occasionally amusing but mostly just pointlessly retro. And the movie perpetuates the least appealing element of its predecessors by giving its female characters nothing to do. Michelle Trachtenberg looks goth-pale and scary-thin as Jimmy’s daughter, Jones feeds Morgan straight lines and looks very pretty as Paul’s wife, and Ana de la Reguera is stuck in a typical spitfire (with real spit) role. Only Susie Essman (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) is able to make the most of her brief appearance as a pistol-packing homeowner.
Smith, smarting after a couple of failures, decided to play safe with a studio movie when what he needs to be doing is to stop putting all of his creative energy into funny tweets and go back to writing scripts with heart and humor and memorable characters. Anything else is a cop out.

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Action/Adventure Comedy