The A-Team (2010)

In his review of Joe Carnahan's 2010 The A-Team remake, a troubled film nearly 15 years in the making, Roger Ebert writes of his difficulty in sustaining any interest in this, an action movie where the central element -- the action -- is so cartoonish and unpredictable as to leave the film boring and unengaging. Here he strikes upon a problem prevalent in several recent films, and not limited to the action genre.

Take Guy Ritchie's latest effort, the WB revamp of the Sherlock Holmes franchise. Genius though Holmes's detective work may be, we are left unable to follow any of it, because the film has set no sure rules for itself. We have to take everything for granted, including the possibility of Holmes's level of intelligence -- he knew, for instance, that breaking that water pipe would cause the giant saw to stop working simply because he did, and through no clues that the audience is able to follow. Iron Man 2 suffers from a similar fault: its "look! sciencey stuff!" sequences are so pared down to appeal to the lowest possible common denominator audience that they make the premise of the original film seem positively realistic. Even the plotting and dialogue of Transformers felt subtle and nuanced compared to its unintelligible and mildly racist sequel.

The new A-Team falls into the same category, unfortunately: all the humanity is sucked out of a promising remake in favor of loud, dizzying, unfollowable action. As a result, the potentially potent mixture of a great new cast and a healthy respect for the source material feels completely wasted. Indeed, it's hard to think of anyone who could have better reincarnated the A-Team: Liam Neeson as Hannibal Smith leads Bradley Cooper's Face, Sharlto Copley's Murdock, and Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson's B.A. Baracus, all of whom carry on the spirit of the TV show, while also looking remarkably like the actors in the original program. Cameos from the original cast are also sadly bungled, with Dirk Benedict appearing on screen for all of 2 seconds.

If by this point you still care, the plot is a convoluted mess, too. It basically establishes an origin story for the A-Team, an elite group of humorously snarky and impressively apt welders who also happen to be Army rangers. One of them is legally insane, but he's the only pilot they can find, plus he's funny, so it's OK. They meet in Mexico and have a helicopter chase sequence filled with many pithy one-liners. Genesis story over, we are told of their many successful (and presumably humorous and action-packed) missions together, before the film drops us "40 missions later" in Iraq.

There, after a mission gone wrong, the team is set up for a crime they didn't commit by evil "Jersey Shore"-esque commandos who wear matching sunglasses and matching spikey haircuts and matching black polo shirts with popped collars. They promptly escape from maximum security stockades, regroup in scenes you've already seen in the trailer, and attempt to clear their names. Jessica Biel's PG-13 sexiness, senseless action, and obviously impossible stunts that break the laws of physics and reason all follow.

A lackluster score by Alan Silvestri rounds off this disappointing film: apart from the remix of the original TV theme tune, the soundtrack resembles more what would be written for a SyFy original TV-movie, than something created by the man who scored the Back to the Future trilogy.

Nevertheless, you have to give the movie some credit: it fails to be original, while also failing to pay homage to the original, and that's an impressive feat, indeed.

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is remarkably unremarkable for a Guy Ritchie film.

Gone are the interchangeable sets of heroes and villains who, equipped with impenetrable accents and conflicting motives, populate the intricately interwoven plots of Ritchie's other films to date. It feels almost as if Warner Brothers, wary of losing control of a newly minted franchise, held Ritchie back: "Now, make it cool, but easy to understand." Indeed, the plot, about a secret masonic society's attempt to take over the world with dark arts, is easily forgettable. The most innovative sequences are Holmes's occasional mental flash-forwards, which don't exactly complicate things. Holmes, unlike Snatch and Lock, Stock, will require no repeat viewings.

The plot isn't the only part of this film that is cartoonishly simple. Stylistically, it bears more resemblance to 1986's The Great Mouse Detective than to any of Arthur Conan Doyle's mysteries. With his slicked-back hair and hulking great coat, Mark Strong's evil Lord Blackwood is even a dead ringer for the cartoon antagonist Professor RATigan (get it?). Although it was impressively rendered, the Victorian London geography is also about as badly bungled as it was in National Treasure 2: in a crucial scene, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) runs from Parliament to the partially constructed Tower Bridge (a good hour's walk) in a matter of seconds. For a film whose main character relies on precise details, general history is also somewhat misrepresented -- the bad guys declare that "civil war has made America weak," and yet the story is set around 30 years after Appomattox.

Nonetheless, all these are just nitpicks, and in no way detract from the enjoyment of seeing Robert Downey, Jr steal another role. He is excellent as the preternaturally perceptive and invariably scruffy eponymous hero, and effectively returns Hugh Laurie's Gregory House, MD back to his roots. Downey creates a Holmes all his own, emphasizing the mental agility, pugilist pastimes, and black moods of the famous detective, all found in Doyle's stories, but tweaked here to attract an audience indifferent to Basil Rathbone's traditional Meerschaum pipe and Deerstalker hat. Holmes's reclusiveness and genius are explored, though, without mention of his cocaine-addiction, probably to keep the PG-13 rating. Jude Law is also perfectly cast as the soon-to-be-married Dr John Watson; his dialogue with Holmes is the best, sharpest, and most well-written part of the movie, and fails only in its own relative scarcity, lost amidst the fight scenes and chase sequences.

Although the plot lumbers, it adequately throws the heroes into new and interesting situations frequently enough that we don't notice; although the style feels neutered, there are plenty of slow-motion fight scenes set to a great score by Hans Zimmer to make up for that. The performances, if under-used, are pitch-perfect. Yet, the film is still a bit of a mess. Why?

Two reasons. First, it surprisingly fails to deliver a Sherlock Holmes we can relate to. His detective work suffers for its implausibility, because the movie has set no rules for its universe, and has given us no way of keeping up, both of which make following Holmes's observations a pointless exercise. His deductions are therefore based on clues which are understandable only to him, and so the audience is forced to trail along, trusting that everything will eventually make sense after a predictable and disappointing "I'm-telling-you-things-you-already-know" scene of explanation. The perfect cast feels wasted on the poor execution of a muddled plot.

And, second, never have I been more disappointed by a trailer spoiler. We were promised a scene with Rachel McAdams in a corset, damn it!

Whatever Works

Larry David is Boris Yelnikoff, a curmugeonly former physicist who whiles away his remaining years complaining while eating with his impossibly tolerant friends, complaining while drinking San Peligrino, and complaining while teaching chess to "inch-worm" middle-schoolers, until Evan Rachel Wood's Melodie St Anne Celestine, an innocent waifish runaway from Plaquemines County, Mississippi, arrives on his doorstep, asking for a place to sleep.

So begins a comedy of culture shock and clashing values, and probably the most useless film of the year. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Woody Allen fan -- that's the problem. There's nothing new here.



The script is a rewrite of a dusty draft sitting around since the seventies (and it shows, despite the occasional Obama reference), the story is a rehash of several old plotlines, and the characters we've all seen before. So, if you're into Allen, you've already seen the depressive panic attacks about the meaninglessness of life (Hannah and her Sisters), the sometimes jarring monologue narration style (Annie Hall's Alvie Singer), the mentor/lover relationship of an older man with a precocious young girl (Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan), and so on. And if you're not into Allen, I just named three far better ways of introducing yourself to his work.

Whatever Works still works, though, despite these obviating self-plaguarisms. Most of the jokes are well-timed, and Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley, Jr both deliver strong performances as the Celestine parents, both fish-out-of-water in the big city.

Larry David's Boris is, surprisingly, the weak point of the film. His genius is never established enough to warrant our toleration of his jaded cynicism, and David seems to struggle at times with Allen's dialogue, which somehow would have sounded more natural coming from the elder actor. And Henry Cavill as the British travelling minstrel (he sits in his houseboat all day and plays his flute, apparently) who woos the married Melodie comes off as a totally creepy stalker, rather than as the (intended?) sweet romantic.

Ultimately, the strength of the writing and the optimism of the refreshing, if rather heavy-handed, final message make up for the film's shortfalls, and leave Whatever Works an intelligent and funny summer comedy, which in turn left me jonesing to rewatch Michael Caine's brilliant performance in its superior sibling.

Cloverfield

I did not get sick at Cloverfield.

This is surprising, because I have gotten sick 1. on a ferry crossing the placidly calm East river, 2. in an indoor pool, 3. during my third viewing of The Bourne Ultimatum, and 4. during church (which isn't even moving at all).

The film is meant to seem like it was shot entirely through a home-video camera, an illusion attempted by jerky movements and blurry zooming, but successful only in producing audience members retching from vertigo or laughing in disbelief. Surely, real amateur cameramen could have framed a shot much better and far steadier, without sacrificing any realism or immediacy?

Although I guess the characters were all supposed to be annoyingly rich yuppies, hours away from a much-needed caffeine-fix in a latteless Godzilla-ravaged New York, so that probably explains the shakiness well enough.

Anyway, I avoided getting sick by unfocusing and just letting the film do its thing; incidentally, this strategy is also necessary for enjoying Cloverfield's plot. Rob is going to Japan, and so his friends have thrown him a raging all-night party in his 100,000 sq. ft. Financial District apartment. There's some misplaced humor, some loud music to fill out the soundtrack CD, some whining about a girl, and then the lights go out. The rest of the film plays out in pretty much exactly the same order as the trailer, but only about twice as long.

A Monster has attacked Manhattan, toppling buildings, shedding scary spidery things, and generally leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. It also impressively chucked the Statue of Liberty's head towards the camera from an impossible uptown direction. Now Rob must both risk his life and defy the laws of physics by walking from Spring Street to 59th Street (in 10-12 minutes), directly into the Monster's path, to rescue his ex-girlfriend Beth.

There is a lot that director Matt Reeves got right. The snippets of TV news, the eerily 9/11-reminiscent building destruction, pandemonium on the streets, and onlookers snapping cellphone camera pics of all of the above: these scenes strike as resoundingly honest as such scenes could. The whole homemade, first-person POV aspect, while sometimes sickening and always annoying, is still pretty cool, as is the "US Government Property -- Classified Tape" bookend.

Nonetheless, the Monster is pretty disappointing, even borderline forgettable. Its spidery offspring do make people's heads explode I guess, which is always neat. Although exactly where this thing comes from is never explained (space? the posters claim "Something Has Found Us"), JJ Abrams has posted a lot of fake sites to the intarweb to spread origin-story gossip. I refuse to look at any of it, because I prefer to remain blissfully unaware of all but one possible source: the egg in Madison Square Garden that Matthew Broderick didn't destroy. Give this theory a try, it's quite satisfying.

That's really what I found most unbelievable about Cloverfield: no one ever mentions that this thing looks a lot like Godzilla. That'd be the first thing I'd say. Well, after, "No, I'm not going to walk the subway tracks," and, "Screw this low-flying helicopter evacuation crap, I'm taking the PATH to Jersey."

Final verdict: ultimately unsatisfying, but undeniably cool.

P.S. But come on, "Cloverfield?"
Even IMDB's "Untitled JJ Abrams Project -- 1/19/08" was better.

I Am Legend

After a miracle cure for cancer mutates into a deadly rabies-like virus, Robert Neville (Will Smith) stays behind in a quarantined Manhattan, struggling both to find a cure and to survive in vampire central. As The Last Man on Earth (or so say the movie posters), Neville keeps his sanity by watching taped TV, constantly renting movies in an OCD-enhanced alphabetical order, and talking to animals and large dolls. I do all of these things already anyway, so I feel very well-prepared for the impending Vampire Holocaust.

Oops, sorry. I forgot -- we can't call them vampires. Maybe some copyright issue with 30 Days of Night or something. The closest they come to getting a collective name is the "Night Seekers," which sounds, apart from ridiculous, like a paperback by R. L. Stine.

Anyway, Neville roams the impressively rendered abandoned city streets, scrounging for food in scary dark buildings, broadcasting his distress signal on AM stations, walking through a lot of tall grass, and working on his various Apple computers with their "six redundant hard drives." He must be a pretty busy guy, since he found time to make enough money to own an apartment on Washington Square North, become an Army Lieutenant Colonel, study immunology, train to be a survival expert, and still had a few hours left over to somehow spread the deadly virus.

About 33% of this move is flat-out awesome; that accounts for half of the first two acts. The scenes of deserted New York are simply stunning. Long show-off shots of grassy streets -- abandoned Humvees barricading evacuation routes, forgotten Christmas decorations glinting eerily in the summer sun, crickets dominating the silent cityscape -- are the coolest ever put to film.

Add to that source material by Richard Matheson (writer of some of the best Twilight Zone episodes) and some superb acting by Smith, whose portrayal of a man as burnt-out as the cars lining his street dominates the potentially overpowering computer-created scenery and drives the film forward, and you've got one hell of a formula for a successful movie.

Nonetheless, the night-time sequences, and pretty much all of the final act, resemble a jam sandwich dropped into the body cavity during open-heart surgery: a bloody unfortunate mess. The pale, all-CG vamp� Night Seekers are more silly than scary, and their rendering somehow resembles that of cut-scene bad guys from 90s PC shooters. They are about as unrealistic and unneccesary as the wolves from The Day After Tomorrow, and serve much the same purpose: to jump out and scare you without causing any real harm to anyone.

After a tense sequence with infected hounds (who are conveniently allowed out earlier than infected people are, although I'd be more worried about squirrels, personally -- there are a lot more of them, and they are already evil enough), Smith hits an emotional high point that only serves to show how crappy the rest of the movie will be by comparison.

The addition of two new survivors is a pointless move, as one of them does nothing but gets scared and hide, necessitating his rescue. It's a cheap move to motivate a flagging script and, like a jab of adrenaline to the heart of a dead hooker, fails to resuscitate it.

By this point the previously small plot holes are ripped open into gaping bloody wounds by digital fangs. Where did they get all of these shiny Ford trucks, outfitted with winches and brushbars and KC lights? How does Anna drive into and out of Manhattan when all of the bridges and tunnels have been destroyed? Why can't the Infected figure out how to kill deer or work a can-opener, if they can set an elaborate trap? Why can't they just swim off the island? How can they bust through a steel door in 10 seconds but take 10 minutes to break one made of Plexiglass?

I guess none of this really matters. The central message of the film, as painfully apparent as the "butterfly" theme, is delivered via an unnecessary end-credit voice-over: Light Up The Darkness. This is very good advice: the daylight sequences of this movie were so spectacular, and the dark ones with the vampires so sucky, director Francis Lawrence should have just taken the Infected as read and stuck with answering the film's deeper questions, like couldn't Neville have just thrown the damn hand-grenade? How can a Mustang, with a solid rear-axle and no traction control, corner so well? How could Batman and Superman ever have a crossover?

If only they had listened to Bob Marley.

Heroes

Just imagine waking up one morning to discover you have amazing powers which you can neither understand nor control.

Then you are approached by a shadowy individual who claims you are a new breed of man: genetically mutated, living proof of evolution itself. And then, as if that wasn't already enough to deal with, you realize you are being monitored and abducted by an evil company that is trying to protect all the other, non-mutated people.

'Wait a minute,' you say. 'I've seen this one. The bald guy from "Star Trek" in a wheelchair gets into everybody's heads, while Xenia from "Goldeneye" and the jealous magician from "The Prestige" try to stop Gandalf from messing up magnets. And there's a dam or something, I'm not really sure.'

Yes, it sounds like "X-men," doesn't it? In the words of "Heroes"-creator Tim Kring, when asked the same question at an early production meeting: 'Well, it just isn't. So there.'

Nonetheless, just in case you find yourself wondering which show you are watching, I have created a handy 10-step guide.

You are watching NBC's "Heroes" if...

1. You recognize that the acting is mainly crap, but don't care.
OK, Sendhil Ramamurthy and Jack Coleman are decent in their roles as Mohinder Suresh and Noah Bennett. But come on, Ali Larter's take on split-personality manifests in Jessica screaming at herself in the mirror. Greg Grunberg lumbers about as Matt Parkman, and somehow manages to screw up the mind-reading acting even more than Mel Gibson did in "What Women Want."

2. The writers do not respect their audience.
The show's inconsistency is its greatest blunder. The writers seem to forget that audiences are smarter these days, and will probably pick up on major plot holes; or perhaps they don't care.

Tension is never sustained because all interesting story-arcs are immediately axed at the start of the next episode: Mr Bennett takes a bullet to forget his daughter, only to remember it all again because of a note. That girl who can IM with her mind just disappears. Matt Parkman gets shot five times in the chest, only to recover without a scratch.

And come on, you know, deep-down, that Hiro and Ando were definitely in LA at the end of the last episode, carless and powerless, and yet somehow they are now in New York again.

3. You are watching it online (legally!) in what is certainly one of the first of many forays to come by a major network into the digital world, as the big-wigs realize that people want to watch shows for free, when they want, where they want. RIP TV-links.

4. Your main bad guy is a disappointing, whinging emo loser.
Sylar's origin story as Gabriel, the unloved clock repairman, negates virtually all of his character's impact. Casting Malcolm McDowell as the evil villain, and leaving his emotional baggage unexplained, would have been far more effective and scary (and far too much like Magneto).

5. You no longer trust yourself to remember if certain characters have met before. But the writers seem to be oblivious to all previous episodes anyway, so why shouldn't we be. The sheer enormity of the cast makes the show nearly untenable: characters and their subplots disappear for episodes at a time, preventing all understanding of the season's progress so far.

6. Having eyes that turn black and then kill everyone (or put them to sleep or something) now counts as a super-power. Let me remind you that Wolverine had adamantine knives that pierced through his knuckles.

7. You find yourself strangely craving a Nissan.
'Look Ando, Nissan Versa!' / 'Oh Dad, thank you for The Rogue!'
And since when do NYPD patrolmen drive Sentras? Extra points if you can guess the cars that Peter Petrelli and D.L. both drove.

8. Look! We don't know what this is, but it's definitely science stuff!
Why does a high-school lecture about Darwin require Bunsen burners and jars full of colorful chemicals? Not to mention Dr Suresh's sped-up theory of evolution.

9. Characters use their powers only at the most inopportune times.
Why the hell does Claire cut off her toe, stick her hand in boiling water, jump off a platform, etc? Yes, she can regenerate, but it still hurts! And why the hell couldn't Peter just fly into space himself?! And why doesn't Hiro just go back in time and stop himself from saving Kensei's life the first time around? Jeez.

10. Milo Ventimiglia is gasping about being a bomb or something. Every show has its defining moment. I think this one was in the second episode: 'Nathan, don't you get it! I think I can fly!'

Somehow, though, none of this matters. Despite all the talentless writing, atrocious acting, cheesy romances, and dead-end plot developments, I still watch the show, and care about what happens to everybody. Kind of.

And if two-dimensional characterization is what it takes to perpetually keep Hayden Panettiere in a cheerleader's outfit, then so be it.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

There is a scene in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" where Cate Blanchett stands heroically on deeply green, oversaturated cliffs, looking off wistfully into the distance at burning Spanish gallions, as a stiff wind rips through her tent, blowing away (hopefully unimportant) maps and papers in slow motion.

Afterwards, she gallops ahead of her army on a brilliant white horse, dressed in full shiny metallic battle armor, her fake ginger hair flowing out behind her. At this point my mind wandered, and I started to think about Robocop. I then started to think about how awesome "Elizabeth" would be if, instead of two hours of period banter festooned with fantastic set pieces, costumery, and computer animated ships, it had run wild with director Shekhar Kapur's sci-fi/fantasy ambition.

What if Queen Elizabeth, wearing her armor, had for the last twenty minutes of the movie transformed into a giant flying robot who could fly, and shoot lasers, and ride on the backs of genetically mutated Tyrannosaurus-rexes, and had annihilated Philip's armada with heat-seaking missiles and other technology impossible even today, let alone in 1588.

Why, that would be a truly original cinematic acheivement, something heretofore unseen in any film. It would have taken every audience-member and critic by surprise, and would have become not only the most absurdly ridiculous but also probably the most talked-about film in decades.

But, alas, instead of breaking phantasmagorical boundaries, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" rides poorly on the coattails of its predecessor, and remains unoriginally grandiose, beautiful, and haughty. Oh yeah, and Clive Owen plays Jack Sparrow for some reason. And later, a horse swims underwater in slow motion for about a half hour. Also, there are midgets.

The film wants us to question the necessity of Elizabethan values and opulence, but ends up forcing us to ask the same question of this sequel itself: "Now, was that really necessary?"