Thor: Ragnarok

Alternate Title:  Asgardians of the Galaxy

                                                                                                                                                            

One sentence synopsis:  Thor must escape from the gladiator pits of a far-flung world to save Asgard from the depredations of the Goddess of Death.

Things Havoc liked:  Within the library of ongoing wonder that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a project that is now approaching its tenth anniversary, the Thor films have been kind of strange outliers. The first, directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh, was a Shakespearean ode, a huge, boisterous, fantastical film, full of drama and pathos and hilarity and adventure, a fish-out-of-water story crossed with a soap opera crossed with Wagner. I loved it. The second film, directed by TV (and Terminator: Genisys) director Alan Taylor, was much less universally-acclaimed, but still a good film, I thought, underrated by the public at large, as it continued the themes of adventure and family dynamics, expanded the character of the series' breakout star (Loki), and offered a lot of fun action, adventure, and cleverness along the way. I liked it, though I did not love it as I had its predecessor. All throughout, though, the films have sort of stood apart, not conventional enough for inclusion within the main tapestry of the MCU canon, not ludicrous enough to really branch out on their own the way Guardians of the Galaxy did. There was a sense, shared by many critics, that the Thor movies didn't quite know what they wanted to be, and good as they were (especially the original), there was something of an ephemeral quality to them as a result, that some new direction would need to be taken in order to make them into the pillar of the MCU community that Marvel plainly wanted them to be.

Enter Taika Waititi, and exit all remaining doubt.

Thor: Ragnarok, directed by the New Zealand creator of What We Do In the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, is a masterpiece, a towering achievement that numbs the mind to consider, even now, two weeks removed. Not merely the best Thor movie of the three, it might (might) even stand as the best film in the entire MCU, a universe which includes everything from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, to Avengers 1 & 2. My period of reviewing films has coincided almost exactly with the entire scope of Marvel's insane triumphs, and I do not make claims such as these lightly, but even if Ragnarok ultimately proves less skillfully made than those previous cornerstones, it remains a stupifyingly great film, a movie made with care and love and tremendous skill by all involved, a movie which everyone and their mother should instantly go to see, for the fates are good to us this day, and have gifted us something magical, something spectacular, and something above all, fun.

The Marvel films, in many ways, are not typical of the way that Superhero movies are done. Superhero movies in general live and die by their villains, while Marvel uses their villains as props and plot devices, employing them not for their own sake, but to cast light and dimension upon their real main characters, the heroes themselves. This sounds elemental, but it's actually quite rare, as the ranks of movies like Batman, X-men, and the better Spiderman films will show you. Villains give more range of motion to actors and writers, allow for more character freedom, without the shackle of having to make the audience identify with and like them. Marvel though has an almost revolutionary obsession with the character of their main heroes, and thus in Ragnarok gives us what amounts to an close-cropped adventure story with two main and two secondary characters. The former are, of course, Chris Hemsworth's Thor and Tom Hiddleston's Loki, sometime enemies, sometime allies, brothers and adversaries all in one. Both characters and actors are on fire here, set loose in a world that doesn't take them or itself too seriously, to milk all of the ridiculous family drama and over-the-top viking madness that they embody, be it Thor's wisecracks and congenital inability to be serious, or Loki's supreme intelligence and craftiness mated with even more supreme arrogance and crushing inferiority complex. These two have been doing this dance for three movies by now (four in the case of Hemsworth), so it should come as no surprise that they are practiced experts at the ridiculous, Shakespearean, and classically tragic dynamic between the two. Thor has, in many ways, evolved over the course of the films, becoming a more whole, more stable, more balanced person, one who is, at last, beginning to accept his brother for who he is, as the God of Mischief, warts and all. Loki, on the other hand, knows seemingly less about his place in the world than when he started, still resenting Thor and Odin and all of Asgard, and yet yearning so desperately for acceptance by them all. An early sequence showcasing just what Loki's been up to since we last saw him in The Dark World hits right on the money, a combination of ham-fisted narcissism, weeping hilarity (the cameos, oh god, the cameos!), and truly tragic subtext once you stop and think about what's being done. Though the film has a lot to do, and devotes less time to our dynamic pairing than previous ones did, what sequences are included are uniformly excellent, such as a frank discussion between the brothers about Loki's probable future, with Thor no longer able to bear his brother ill-will, and Loki utterly unable to decide how to react to that.

The secondary characters I mentioned before are newcomers, in one case technically, in one case literally, and they're both awesome. The Hulk is one of them, not Bruce Banner (whom we'll get to), but the Hulk himself, who following the events of Age of Ultron, disappeared into Marvel's Cosmic Universe and now makes an appearance drawn directly from the pages of Planet Hulk. Imprisoned on an alien world where he is used as a gladiatorial champion, this Hulk has existed as Hulk for long enough to develop a personality and character of his own, and it's awesome. The writers seem to have realized both the character limitations of the musclebound green monster (limitations which sank the first two standalone Hulk films), and instead decided that he'd make a great straightman in a Lethal Weapon-style buddy comedy, which is genius itself. The other character is Valkyrie, played by Selma and Creed veteran Tessa Thompson. Thompson didn't impress much in those two films, but she makes up for lost time here, as her Valkyrie is a revelation. Too easily, a character like this can be introduced as nothing more than a token woman (or actor of color), either a love interest, or a tagalong, or a Strong-Independant-Woman-Who-Don't-Need-No-Man, or whatnot. Valkyrie, though, isn't just not the above (another pitfall), but an awesome, ludicrous character perfectly suiting the irreverent tone the film has in mind. Her introduction is a thing of beauty, a hero-moment spoiled, just briefly, by her falling off of her own starship due to being mind-shatteringly drunk, and her role is less token anything, than it is the fallen, dissolute veteran who must find their honor/skill/fire/guts/whatnot once again. A perfect match for the operatic viking saga that is the Thor movies in general, and Ragnarok in particular. Thompson is incredibly good, turning in a star-making performance that effortlessly fits into the wider MCU, equal parts badass and character study. I have no idea what Marvel has in mind for Valkyrie (probably, like everyone else, they intend to wait on events), but I can't wait for more, from her or from any of the others.

What others? Oh god, where do I even start? Jeff Goldblum plays Jeff Goldblum, and it's wonderful. His character probably has a name, but we're fooling nobody here. Ad-libbing all of his lines (apparently), Goldblum turns his warlord/gladiator promoter into a pastiche of his own public persona, all hemming and hawing, and awkward asides to his minions about when the appropriate moment to present the melting sticks is. Waititi himself takes a voice-role as Korg, a rock-creature and fellow gladiator whose job is to be comic relief in an action-comedy, something which probably wouldn't have worked had it been anyone but Flight of the Conchordes-veteran Waititi manning the controls. Waititi apparently derived the character's demeanor and voice from those of burly Maori bouncers at Aukland nightclubs, enormous men with soft-spoken voices, who need never shout, because one glance at their size tends to defuse situations better than any screaming would. Karl Urban, of all people, makes an appearance as an Asgardian named "Scourge", well supplied with guns and less so with brains, who positions himself as the right hand man of film antagonist Hela without him (or, frankly, her) having the slightest idea of how that relationship is supposed to function. And speaking of Hela, she is portrayed by Cate Blanchett, Galadriel herself, in her finest black queen regalia and icy demeanor. I mentioned before that Marvel isn't generally that interested in their villains relative to their heroes, but Hela is the first of their villains who seems to know that, luxuriating in her long-delayed revenge and stopping periodically for deadpan moments that fit right into the overall structure of the film, and prevent her or us from taking her too seriously. Blanchett is brilliant in the role, of course she is, and the script wisely allows her to take on a role and a motivation that has nothing whatsoever to do with Thor, Loki, or anyone else present, under the principle that if the movie isn't too interested in her, she won't be bothered to be interested in it. And while I don't want to over-focus on the socio-cultural "meanings" of the movie, or anything, it is worth noting that her entire plan revolves around revealing Asgard, the brilliant, peaceful, utopian land of lily white marble (and skin) as having been originally founded on a campaign of ruthless, violent conquest and subjugation, all swept conveniently under the rug when it became politically inconvenient to remember that the bloodshed had ever taken place. Given that director Waititi is of Maori heritage, and hails from New Zealand, a nation forged through bloody wars and conquest, and which now presents itself as a friendly, liberal bastion of racial tolerance and kindness, one has to wonder how much of this subtext is accidental.

But the big win here isn't with the cast, good as they are, nor with subtext overt or subdued, it's with Waititi himself, and his screenwriters Christopher Yost and newcomer Eric Pearson, who like many teams of directors and writers in Marvel's past, have put their own stamp on an MCU piece, but with effects far, far greater than most of the previous efforts. Waititi's a comedian after all, his previous work on this project was What We Do in the Shadows (which you should go and see, dammit), and for Thor Ragnarok, his decision was to drop the dramatic-comedic balance of previous films and make a straight-out action-adventure-comedy. There will be more on that decision in a moment, but whatever you think of it, the result is one of the funniest movies I have seen in goddamn years, and that's a fact. The entire film is riotously funny, from the piss-taking of overserious buffoons like Jeff Goldblum (God, he's good at that), to lightning-fast dialogue spit-takes, many of which were ad-libbed (the elevator scene with Thor and Loki is a high point), to glorious callbacks to signature moments of the previous films, deadpanned and dressed up for the most fanservicey-sorts of comedic throwbacks as can be imagined. I've long wondered what someone utterly unacquainted with the MCU would think of films like this one, this far into the series, but as someone who is acquainted with the series, the effect is paralyzingly funny, squeezing humor from the most juvenile of jokes ("your hammer pulls you off?") and even simple sight gags or situation comedy straight out of a Steve Carrel show. Hemsworth in particular is a terribly funny man, who has The Rock's gift of being able to clown himself without sacrificing authenticity, and playing this element up in the film to produce a weird Big-Trouble-in-Little-China vibe for it is manifestly the right call. In keeping with Thor's transition to the Cinematic side of the MCU, Waititi shoots the film in bold, vibrant color, luxuriating in the rich saturated worlds that it exists in, be it Asgard's Norse fantasy realm, the bowels of assorted and various Hell dimensions, or the oppulent Vegas-goes-to-Star-Wars planet Sakaar, comprised of half piles of garbage, half Roman orgy-palace. The score is incredible as well, a mix of classic rock tracks (Zeppelin's Immigrant Song features prominently, of course), and an ethereal electro-instrumental soundtrack provided by Mark Mothersbaugh, of Devo, as well as of literally dozens of other films ranging from most of Wes Anderson's work to the Lego Movie(s). The whole production, start-to-finish, is brilliantly-done, a labor of love and craft and care tremendously well-executed and realized. A tour-de-force for Marvel, Waititi, and his many collaborators.

Things Havoc disliked: That said, I do understand why some people hated it.

Okay, 'hated' is too strong a word. But I have spoken to quite a number of people, fans of the MCU in general, who were left very cold by Thor Ragnarok, for all the glitter and sparkle and hilarity on offer. And while I would hesitate to speak for all of them, the core of the objection seems to be tonal. Simply-put, Ragnarok is very different from the previous Thor movies, especially the magisterial first one, which was directed by Kenneth Branaugh in his finest Shakespearean pomp. It had comedy, to be sure, and quotable lines ("This drink! I like it!..."), but it was a family tragedy first and foremost, centered around the character arcs of Thor and Loki both, and while Ragnarok does not ever forget who these characters are, it is not at all the same thing, having eschewed most of the dramatics in favor of a straight-up comedy. And as a result, those who come in hoping for more depth to the bittersweet relationship between Loki and Thor, while they are not denied entirely, will probably find themselves disappointed, as the film is manifestly not about Thor and Loki (or really any other specific character or idea), but instead is about presenting an incredible, hilarious, and very funny adventure, starring characters we've all come to know and love. Ragnarok, ultimately, trades on its predecessors in ways that the other Marvel films typically do not, and it's only by dint of the high level of execution overall that stops the film from being honestly quite insufferable.

And it's not just Thor and Loki's relationship that gets the short shrift. Characters from previous films are either gone entirely (Sif, for instance, is nowhere to be seen), or get such a reduced share of screentime as to constitute being shelved (such as the Warriors Three). Odin is barely in the film (for admittedly defensible reasons), and while I appreciate the chance to watch Heimdall kicking ass (it's Idris Elba, I'd watch him make a sandwich), it would have unquestionably been nice to give him something substantive to actually do while he and everyone else waited for the plot to get back to him. The one who gets it the worst though, is Bruce Banner, as distinct from the Hulk. An interesting and tragic character in his own right, introduced and explored carefully in both of the Avengers movies, Banner is used basically as nothing but comic relief in the film, bumbling through his scenes as a fish out of water before it finally becomes time to let loose the Hulk once again. It's not that this is totally inappropriate given the setting, nor does Mark Ruffalo do a poor job with the material. But there's a certain lessening of the character by using him solely for this purpose that is hard to get around. Similarly, the film's relentless focus on comedy and snark also threaten to derail some of it's most genuine moments. Not that it never simply lets a moment happen, for it does, but as with the original Avengers, there's sequences that, in all honesty, could have done with a bit less guffaws and winks to the audience, and a bit more sincerity. This is particularly true near the end of the film, which is otherwise a rousing, triumphant action-setpiece, but also contains a couple of lines I would have cut, as they drain the impact from scenes that are decidedly not intended to be funny.

Final thoughts:   All hesitations aside though, Thor: Ragnarok is a goddamn marvel, a stupendously-good film that takes the series in a bold new direction with no hesitations whatsoever, and while it may not be the Thor movie that everyone wanted, its underlying qualities are so pronounced as to render the matter effectively moot. If Thor degenerates into nothing but a one-liner-ridden comedy-action mess the way the Transformers movies did, then perhaps its critics will be vindicated, but for now, I cannot confess fast enough how much I loved this film. Marvel's deranged cinematic universe has given us a lot of surprised, not the least of which was its own existence, but this film is one of the best surprises of all, presenting old characters in a new way, and giving us a film bursting at the seams with energy, excitement, and above all else, fun. Considering the comprehensive cinematic cataclysm that was Batman v. Superman, the abomination that was Suicide Squad, and the tonally-dissonent mess that reviewers are describing for Justice League (which I have no plans to see, thank you very much), Thor Ragnarok did not need to be this good to earn my praise. But it is this good, one of the finest films that Marvel has to offer, and the best thing they have done in their entire Third Phase of moviemaking.

Though if the trailers for Black Panther are properly indicative, it may soon have some competition on that front...

Final Score:  9/10

Next Time:  Time for an Oscar Season Roundup!

Mad Max: Fury Road

Alternate Title:  A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

One sentence synopsis:     Max Rockatansky becomes embroiled in an escape attempt by female sex slaves after he is captured by a fanatical warrior-cult.


Things Havoc liked:  Mad Max. What a cavalcade of total cracked-out insanity those two words conjure up for anyone of my approximate age. Three totally batshit films from underground Australian cinema master George Miller, the weakest of which spawned a whole series of pop culture catchphrases that survive through to today ("Two men enter..."). What with the recent trend of adapting 80s classics into bullshit "modern" remakes, Robocop and Total Recall come to mind, I was not overly pleased to hear that Mad Max was coming back to the big screen, but took some heart from the fact that George Miller himself would be directing the remake, and that to take over the duties of playing everyone's favorite Australian wasteland-wanderer, he had selected one of my favorite actors currently working, Tom Hardy.

At some nebulous point over the last couple of years, Tom Hardy became "the man", and has not relinquished this title since through a whole armful of films as varied as The Drop, Locke, and The Dark Knight Rises (shut up, I liked that one). Having seen Guy Pierce of all people take on Mad Max (or something like it) in The Rover last year, I was eager to see what an actor I actually liked might do with the role. The answer is exactly what he should. Hardy's Max is basically identical to Gibson's, if anything even more laconic and world-weary, to paraphrase the opening narration from the Road Warrior, "an ordinary man who was smashed by the wastelands". Hardy actually downplays Max quite a bit, an interesting decision that works well for the character. Max in the other films was always the loner who wandered by chance into the middle of other people's problems, and reluctantly took on the role of doing what he could to help. He doesn't pause to explain his motives, his background, even his name to basically anyone, getting everything across with a combination of glances and subtle gestures. In a way, this is full circle for Hardy. Two years ago, he was in a movie in which he drove a car for two hours and did nothing but talk. Now he is in a movie where he drives a car for two hours, and says practically nothing.

But that's manifestly the right call this time, because Max has a co-star here in the form of Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa, a child-slave-turned-warlord who decides to break a group of sex slaves out of captivity, despite the fact that this will surely incur the wrath of supreme war-boss Immortan Joe and his army of fanatical neo-barbarian quasi-viking killers. Theron is on fire in this movie, a shaven-headed ultrabadass with a prosthetic arm comprised of what looks like a drilling augur, and a body count that could rival anything Arnold has ever done. I've seen Theron kick ass before of course, I saw Monster and The Italian Job and Snow White and the Huntsman, but this is a whole different level of awesome, a rousting, violent, Mad Maxesque performance, which not only serves to force me to forgive her for Prometheus, but also proves that even with her head shaved, one arm hacked off at the elbow, and with face smeared indiscriminately with dirt and axle grease, Charlize Theron is still perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world. She and Max encounter one another fairly early on in the film through circumstances that are complex, albeit believable, and though everyone who's seen the trailers knows that these two will eventually team up to battle Immortal Joe, the process by which this happens, and in fact the general dynamic between Furiosa and Max, is one of the best renditions of this sort of thing I have ever seen. There is no telegraphed "moment" when they are on the same side, no turning point in the script where Furiosa finally trusts Max or vice versa. It is a completely natural thing, given the fantastic foes that these two face and the manifest rightness of the cause that Furiosa has staked everything on and that Max, without ever saying one word either in favor or against, clearly is prepared to see through. The dynamic is all the stronger for never being spoken of, as in the immediacy of the dangers they face, allegiances are apparent enough to require no words at all.

And what of those dangers and the means by which our heroes must overcome them? Oh... my... god...

The action in this movie is like nothing I've seen, perhaps ever before, a riotous assembly of expertly-crafted sequences that go on and on and on, never becoming stale or forced or gimmicky, as we are not watching some pale imitation of a greater classic, but a grandmaster producing his magnum opus before our very eyes. I have been waiting for literal years to have the opportunity to use the phrase "orgiastic bloodfest" in one of these reviews, and the day, my friends, has finally come. Mad Max is a symphony of death and violence, a ballet, a showcase of the cinematic art of killing that I struggle to find comparison points for. Not content with blocking and choreographing some of the greatest action I've ever seen, Miller gives us a techno-barbarian all-you-can-eat buffet of awesomeness that starts with chrome-painted warrior-cultists hurling explosive javelins at the spine-studded cars of their rivals from atop an armored big-rig moving at eighty miles an hour in the middle of a flaming sandstorm/hurricane/tornado cluster, and gets crazier from there. We get ravening mutants spouting garbled techno-viking mythology as they leap into battle bearing chainsaws and bolt cutters, or dangle from engine-block counter-weighted vaulters' poles to drop upon their enemies. We get warlords of the wastelands straight out of the Lord Humungous playbook who bear colorful titles like the Bullet Farmer or the People Eater, and who occasionally, start blasting away with reckless abandon with akimbo machine guns while screaming biblical rhetoric at the top of their lungs in the middle of a lightning storm, as the soundtrack strikes up thunderous orchestral overtures from Dies Irae and Gotterdammerung. We get a tribe of dirt-bike-riding old women who are also snipers, who bait reflective towers with beautiful naked girls to draw in predators, and who engage right alongside our heroes in pulse-shattering action showstopper scenes that would send most movie watchdog groups screaming into the night. So relentlessly mad, so demented, so gloriously epic is the action in this movie that it is totally in keeping with both the tone of the film and the world it presents when we discover that Immortan Joe's army is led into battle by a Mac truck made of speakers and amplifiers to which have been affixed half a dozen enormous Taiko drums, and at the front of which is stationed a red-garbed lunatic called The Doof Warrior who stands on a makeshift stage mounted on the truck's hood and shreds endlessly an electric guitar that spews fire.

And yet... for all this raving madness, there is underlying method to the world here, and this may be what Miller's strongest suit is for this film. The movie is batshit insane, but everything feels... 'real' is the wrong word, but 'consistent' is not. Little touches, like the use of steering wheels as holy relics by the warrior-cultists of Immortan Joe, like the slapped-together feel of even the mightiest war machine, like the names such as "Bullet Farmer" which evoke instantly what the dynamic must be between the various factions that are chasing our heroes, none of which is actually explained or even has attention drawn to it, but all of which points to a future world that has been meticulously thought out. Emblematic of this is a character played by Nicholas Hoult (of X-men First Class and Days of Future Past), a war cultist named Nux, introduced initially as simply another maniacal bad guy, but who over the course of the film, allows us to actually see the twisted and abused mentality that underlies the anarchic insanity of the War Boys and their machine cult. All of the other characters, from the former slaves themselves to the lieutenants of Immortan Joe, to Joe himself, played in a wonderful little throwback by Hugh Keays-Byrne, the very man who played the villain Toe-Cutter in the original Mad Max, all of their dialogue, their appearances, their very gestures and glances at one another, all are marshaled in service of telling the story of what this world is and how it became that way, obviating the need for exposition of any sort. If film is a visual medium and stories within it are to be shown and not told, then Miller here has put on a doctoral seminar on how to do just that, producing a film that has simultaneously no explanation within it at all, and all the explanation that anyone could possibly need.

Things Havoc disliked: It is challenging, truly challenging, to find a place in this movie where it fails somehow. Perhaps it's the logistics, as the film seems a long way removed from the shoestring remnant-feel of the previous films, films wherein individual bullets or half-broken children's toys were indescribably precious, literally irreplaceable items. The excesses of this film preclude that, as the warbands seem to have as much food, fuel, and ammunition as they could possibly want, and even Theron at one point suggests that if they take to motorcycles, they will have supplies enough to last them a hundred and sixty days (???). I suppose the movie is simply operating at a different scale this time, and positing a higher level of social organization among the warlord-clans, but one does miss the feel of things having gotten "real" that came when Lord Humungous decided to load his revolver with the last six bullets that remained, for all anyone knew, at all.

But that left aside, the only objection I can really make to Fury Road is that there isn't enough of it, in the sense that the world is so immense and complex and rich that the glimpses of it that we get are not enough to fully appreciate all that's going on. So many characters have unstated backstories or histories that are plainly in there somewhere but not shown to us, that it's impossible not to feel like we've missed a great deal. A lot of the dialog is fairly hard to understand, not because of the sound mix, but because the characters speak using a language we don't share and referring to things we don't know about. None of this is unintentional, of course, but one gets the sense that if we only had another half hour or so to study the world of Mad Max, we would come away with a deeper appreciation of its richness. But honestly, I'm at loathe to even suggest such a thing, as to mess with a movie this finely-produced could easily ruin everything, and perhaps its for the best that all we get to see is what's shown to us.

Final thoughts:   Last year, around six months ago, in the aftermath of the great disappointment that was The Expendibles 3, I posited that movie genres have their day, and that perhaps the Action movie as a genre piece was finally dead, and that the slew of bad action films I had seen in the two years before were simply the death rattle of the genre as a whole. In the half-year since that prediction, we have seen John Wick, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Fast and Furious 7, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and now this, one of if not the best action movies I have ever seen, a run of such quality that friends of mine have asked me if I might start publicly predicting the end of other genres such as Space Opera. At this point though, I've never been so glad to be wrong as I am now. In a year that, still not even half-complete, has showered us with amazing, high-quality action movies, Mad Max: Fury Road is, nonetheless, a revelation. Perhaps a revelation of total gibbering madness, but a revelation nonetheless. It is almost the platonic ideal of an action movie, packed with spectacles of violence sufficient to send any action movie fan into rapturous hysterics.

In almost any year but this one, Mad Max: Fury Road would be a shoe-in for the best movie of the entire year. That it may not reach such lofty heights in 2015 says a great deal about the overall quality of the blockbusters we have had so far. But even among such giants, Fury Road stands as proof positive that the best way to remake a beloved classic film is to find the filmmakers responsible for the original and dropping a dump truck full of money on their front lawns with a note pinned to the pile telling them that this time they should "do it properly". True, sometimes doing that will net you the Star Wars Prequels. But I would unhesitatingly put up with those all over again if it meant that I could, once in a while, get something as magical as this, a masterpiece reborn in madness, fire, and fury.

Final Score:  9/10

Next Time: The land wherein the sun will come out.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Alternate Title:  Apotheosis

One sentence synopsis:     The Avengers struggle to contain and defeat a former project of Tony Stark's after it attains sentience and attempts to exterminate humanity.


Things Havoc liked:  It's... been a rough year to date.

I mean, it always is this time of year, as the Doldrums finishes its final, awful convulsions, and the gravitational waves of the first big blockbuster of the season clears everything else out like a tidal wave sucking all the water off of a beach. The last couple of weeks in particular have been a bunch of castoffs and throwaways, as no studio, not even an indie one, wanted their release date to be anywhere near Avengers 2. But all calms before a storm eventually end with the storm itself, and with Doldrums season now finally, mercifully behind us, it's time to consider Marvel's 11th movie in its endless parade of amazement, a movie with more to live up to than perhaps any film since the Star Wars Prequels, following up not only on the excellent Marvel films of last year, but its own direct prequel, 2012's masterpiece-grade showstopper, Avengers itself, and implicitly on the entire towering edifice that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You all know my position on Marvels' films. You know I'm a fan, you know I've loved them, but more importantly you know that I've always been nervous about their ability to produce ongoing quality as they move through this never-before-seen project. Particularly after Iron Man 3 and (to a lesser extent) Thor 2 showed that Marvel was capable of making non-amazing films, I have been sitting in mixed-anticipation and fear with every successive movie, expecting that each one in turn would be the one to finally snap the spine of this fantastic beast they had conjured up. I expected Winter Soldier to be lackluster, and it was anything but. I expected Guardians of the Galaxy to have no prayer of working, and it worked beyond my wildest dreams. So when I tell you that I expected that Avengers 2 would be unable to live up to the high water mark of its predecessor, it should not surprise you either that I doubted, or that I was wrong.

But... I don't think anyone was expecting just how wrong I was.

The Avengers, Age of Ultron, is a masterpiece, a doctoral thesis in how to make a superhero film, forged with wit and charm and bucket-loads of skill that boggle the mind to even conceive of. I described the original Avengers in such terms, raining praise down on Joss Whedon and his team of lunatics for having produced one of the finest movies I had ever seen, but having done so, I feel as though I've now painted myself into a corner when it comes to this film, as Age of Ultron manages, somehow, through methods inexplicable and possibly illegal, to be better than its predecessor, a matter of degrees certainly, but palpable nonetheless. I have not enjoyed a movie this much since I began writing these reviews, and if you have lingering doubts as to whether you should go and see it, let that statement sink into your minds.

The setup is familiar. The Avengers, each having had the chance to work through their own personal issues at greater length in individual movies (with the exception of The Hulk of course), are once more united to take on a more dangerous threat. Last time it was Loki, this time it's the proliferation of Loki's technology, the advanced, alien tech that has been allowing organizations like Hydra to make terrifying advances in weaponry and superhero production. And yet this threat is only the initial stopping point, as the movie centers itself around Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.'s) desire to find a more permanent solution to the perennial threats that are blanketing the world. After all, as he puts it, the end goal of the Avengers project is to disband and go home, having secured the world once and for all. Anyone who's seen the trailers knows how this project goes, but the strongest element of the movie remains the cast and the characters, all played by actors at the peak of their games, who have had in some cases as many as half a dozen movies to establish themselves. Everyone, from Downey's older and more brittle/mature Iron Man, to Evans' more decisive, undisputed leader Captain America, to Hemsworth's more serious, more aware-of-the-stakes, and more willing to trust Thor, to Ruffalo's more resigned, more accepting of his power/disability Hulk, everyone is at the absolute peak of their game, and the film wisely spends lots of time just letting them all hang out, interact, argue and debate, drink and celebrate together. To my surprise, this includes previously-shortchanged badass-normals Black Widow and Hawkeye, who finally get the promotion to A-list screentime they both deserve, and whose actors (Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner) prove themselves worthy of it. I've questioned Johansson's role as Black Widow in many films before, from Avengers 1 to Winter Soldier, but at long last she has finally nailed it, delivering a performance I effortlessly believed, one which fits in seamlessly to the rest of the cast, and which actually left me looking forward to her appearances. As to Hawkeye, Renner's patience with this character has finally been rewarded, as his role is massively souped up for this iteration, and as a big fan of Renner's, I could not be happier.

But movies like this need more than just their protagonists, and this is where Age of Ultron truly surprised me. I love James Spader, but I had no idea what they were going for with Ultron going in, and was not expecting what I got. Ultron is a dark reflection of Tony Stark, in every sense of the word, and while the trailers got the menace he exudes across perfectly well, it didn't get the rest of him, the snark, the dry wit, the self-awareness, and the boiling rage that comes when someone of immense capabilities and intellect is denied or frustrated by circumstance from making use of it the way he intends. It's not how I would have chosen to portray Ultron were I given the choice, but that only goes to show why I am not given the choice and why Joss Whedon was. His character fits perfectly into the self-referential, sharp, well-drawn world that the Avengers inhabit, and the movie wisely spends most of its time with him dealing with who he is as a character and why he acts as he does, rather than bog everything down with the hows and the pseudoscience. But if Ultron was a pleasant surprise, that's nothing compared to his two disciples, Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch, twin war orphans from a Bosnia analog played by Kick-Ass' Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Oldboy's Elizabeth Olsen (who weirdly-enough starred together as a married couple in last year's lackluster Godzilla remake). I had no hope for these two, based as they were on characters I don't like, shoehorned into the Avengers artificially (I felt), and portrayed by actors I've had mixed feelings on, coupled with the fact that another version of Quicksilver already appeared (awesomely) in last year's excellent X-men: Days of Future Past. And yet once again, it turns out I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, as these two are awesome, brilliantly set up and characterized, matched correctly with the Avengers themselves, given depth and background and character arcs and meaningful sequences with the various other characters on offer. I could not, for the life of me, envision these two working, and yet they did, somehow, as does everyone else from the cameos by series regulars like Anthony Mackie (Falcon), Don Cheadle (War Machine), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter), or Stellan Skarsgård (Dr. Selvig), to other characters, the identities of whom would be spoilerish even to reveal.

And what of the film itself, absent the characters (which is a difficult thing to evaluate, admittedly)? Triumph. The action is superb, the cinematography glowing, the soundtrack (by Danny Elfman!) unobtrusive and properly triumphant or dour when it needs to be. Whedon's command of dialog and of writing in general was what recommended him for this film series in the first place after all, and it has not deserted him, as practically every line is note-perfect no matter who is saying what. Avengers had, among its very few flaws, the problem of some lines feeling rather artificial or forced, as though the characters were uttering them to set up a joke as opposed to because it made sense for them to say it at the time. Not here. The in-jokes and asides are side-splittingly funny without ever being pushy, the references to previous films, and even to the wider universe of television shows and Netflix original series are richly applied, but none of them get in the way for those uninitiated. Even plot tropes that I always groan to see, the "heroes must battle one another for arbitrary reasons" or "the team is broken up by evil mind control" routines, are done with skill and poise, turning the former into a more-or-less open slap at Man of Steel's disregard for civilian body counts, and the latter into an opportunity for the characters to explore their own natures further when confronted with truths and fears they did not wish to discover, rather than the customary, laborious "wait for the characters to figure out what the audience already knows" sequence that it usually becomes in other movies. The pacing of the film is blisteringly fast, but it generally doesn't feel rushed at all, as the movie knows what is and is not important, and ruthlessly trims away the latter in favor of the former throughout its entire run-time, letting the useless exposition drop whenever it can and pausing instead to let the characters breathe in between action sequences of breathtaking complexity. If filmmaking, as Shirley Clarke used to say, consists of a series of simple choices, then this film surely is what happens when a director, cast, and crew unerringly make all the right ones. It is, without hyperbole, as near to perfection as I think I have ever seen.

Things Havoc disliked: Near to perfection and perfection itself are not the same thing, of course, and if one wishes to dive into it, there are issues I can bring up. A couple of shots, particularly early on, are clearly trailer-shots, designed for no other reason than the fact that the marketing department needed something equivalent to Avengers 1's famous 'circling the wagons' shot at the outset of the climactic battle. In a lesser film, that wouldn't even be noticeable, but this is a movie which goes out of its way to make everything work organically, and so something included for such reasons manages to stand out.

There is also a cost at inflating the cast and giving each of them screentime enough to establishing themselves, and the casualty this time around, sadly, is Thor. Not that Thor is sidelined in this movie, far from it, he gets his quota of character moments, banter, and action time just like everyone else, but there are some sequences featuring him that clearly were intended to be longer set-pieces, that had to get truncated just to make the movie fit. This truncation isn't done poorly by any stretch, but its' visible, and those who regard Thor as their favorite Avenger will consequently be forced to wait for the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok to get their proper fill of everyone's favorite Thundergod (to say nothing of Loki).

Final thoughts:   Age of Ultron, Marvel's final answer to the flood of imitations that are going to be let loose upon us next year by studios such as Sony, Universal, and Warner Brothers, is an emphatic, stamped-metal, full stop to the question of how unique their cinematic universe actually is. It is the Godfather, Part II to Avengers' Godfather, and I anticipate the same level of debates among film aficionados as to which one is actually the best as one finds for those films. From what I can tell online, the consensus among the nerd community is that, while a great film in its own right, it is not the equal of its predecessor. With respect, however, to both the original film, and the learned opinions of my colleagues concerning it, I must disagree. Avengers 1 was a fantastic film, a masterpiece in its own right, but Age of Ultron is one of the best films I have ever seen, and half the reason this review has taken as long as it did to produce is because I wanted to take the time to reflect on my own opinion and ensure that I was speaking with proper judgment and experience, and not in the first rush of excitement at having finally been liberated from the Doldrums From Hell. Having had the better part of a week to think it over however, I can only report what I truly believe. Avengers: Age of Ultron is a rapturously-good film, likely the best Superhero movie I have ever witnessed, and a sure-fire contender for the best film of the year if not the decade. I do not allow myself to indulge in panegyric hagiography for films, even great films, that cross my path, specifically because I wish to have some credibility to expend when a movie that is truly special comes along. And for three years now, I have been waiting for one worthy of the praise I have yearned so desperately to deliver, wondering more than once if I had become cynical or jaded or seen so many bad films that I was no longer capable of appreciating an achievement like this when it was presented to me, wondering where I would ever turn to find a movie that could fill me with nothing but gushing, torrential praise, a movie that would leave me singing hymnals to the grace of those who had seen fit to produce it.

I should have known. For this is the work of Marvel, and it is glorious in our eyes. Go forth and bear witness, and ye shall know what it is to experience joy.

Final Score:  9.5/10

Next Time: A pause for breath.  And possibly for zombies.

Cloud Atlas

Alternate Title:  The Story of Us

One sentence synopsis:  The lives of a group of people cross again and again throughout the past, present, and future.


Things Havoc disliked:  Yes, I know that normally I start with what I liked, and leave the whining until later, but this time I had to get something out of the way:

I don't like it when movies decide they're too smart for you. I don't like it when they go out of their way to be impenetrable, artifice-laden slogs. I don't like having to disentangle a movie from the pretensions of their authors, and I absolutely hate it when the movie compounds this issue by playing around with the basic language of cinema for some bullshit 'cognitive effect' dreamed up by an overindulged 'artiste'. Setting, character, shot selection, coherent editing, narrative flow, these are not optional elements in a film, they are the mechanisms by which the fever dreams of a cinematographer's imagination can be translated for the rest of us, and films which abuse these elements for the purposes of showing off how superior they are tend to arouse my ire.

Cloud Atlas, based on a novel by David Mitchell, is an unfilmable mess, worse by far than the Lord of the Rings adaptations ever were. The novel consists of six different stories told across time and space, linked together by the fact that many of the characters in each one are the re-incarnations (I assume) of one another. I am forced to assume this, as opposed to knowing it, because while in the film version of this novel, these characters are played time and again by the same actors, what is actually going on is never, ever explained. Some gestures are given to magical birthmarks, some to deja-vu, some to spiritualism and some to God, but we are clearly meant to simply sit back and accept the central conceit, something that would be much easier to do if it were made clear at any point if the characters played by such actors as Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, Kieth David, or Hugo Weaving (to name only the ones I recognize) are meant to literally be the same person brought forth in a new time and place, the descendents thereof, or something else entirely. I just finished the entire movie, and I couldn't tell you the answer.

Indeed, I can't tell you a whole hell of a lot about this film, not even if I had the time to sit down and parse out the various narratives of this story one by one. Part of the problem is that the stories are tied together so closely and with such rapid shift from one to the next that we scarcely have time to get our bearings in terms of what is actually happening in one tale before we're whisked off without warning or hesitation to another. Worse yet, several scenes actually have the temerity to flash-forward within the same (or even a different) narrative, further confusing everybody as to just what's happening. And as though that wasn't enough, one of the larger narratives takes place with the characters speaking some kind of post-apocalyptic argot that's effectively incomprehensible. And since subtitles (or, you know, English) would spoil the majesty of whatever brilliance the filmmakers are deigning to place before us plebeian swine, I still have no idea what most of the characters in that sequence were saying. Of course, this would be the one plot thread where the directors decide to actually slow down and linger for a time.

You can therefore imagine my frustrations as I sat through this interminable (three hour) movie, completely lost as to what was going on, who the characters were, what they were doing, and even what words they were speaking to one another. What greater point the movie was trying to make was only dimly perceptible beneath layers of artifice, confusion, and artistic chaos. And all I could think of as I sat there, was that eventually it was going to be my task to come home and try and make sense of this mess to the rest of you.


Things Havoc liked:  And then, around the 45 minute mark or so, something very strange began to happen...

Each of the six stories that we are told here, taken in and of itself, carries a different theme and a very different tone, all this despite the actors occurring and re-occurring within each one. Some of these actors, like Hugo Weaving or Halle Berry, are constantly playing the same basic character archetypes (slimy villain and intrepid explorer, respectively), set down in settings as varied as a 19th century ship, 1970s San Francisco, or the distant future. But what began to dawn on me was that other characters, particularly those that Tom Hanks portrays, are not. Hanks portrays, at times, a violent thug who brutally murders people in a drunken rage (his cockney accent leaves something to be desired), at times a nebbish scientist dragged into doing the right thing against his will, and at other times a cowardly fisherman trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world of cannibalism and death. He's not alone. Jim Broadbent goes from a murderous, virulently-racist ship captain one moment to a conniving book publisher trapped in a mental hospital, while Jim Sturgess and Korean actress Bae Doona go from demure Victorian aristocrats to fire-breathing rebel leaders in an Orwellian superstate. Once this became apparent, and it took some time, it dawned on me that what was being represented here was not a specific set of characters, replayed through the ages like broken records. What was being represented was a range of human experience. And how some people, for better or worse, can change over time, and some people, for better or worse, cannot.

This recognition, such as it was, was the first of many within this film's enormous running time, and as the movie moved on, I became more accustomed to what it was trying to tell me, and more importantly, how it was trying to tell it. What appeared at first to be maddening artifice slowly evolved into a different language entirely than the one I was used to experiencing in movies. The overlap between the stories, I came to realize, was not based on tone or scene tension levels (action scene links to action scene, for instance), but based around something else entirely, specifically the relationships between all of the various characters at given moments, and the resonances, not repetitions, that their interactions had as they rippled across time and space itself. And once I had gotten over my confusion, even in the slightest degree... what a tremendous landscape this film unveiled before me.

Every element to this film, taken by itself, is done extremely well, with great fidelity to the style and times required. The pastoral periods, be they pre-civilized or post-apocalyptic, are shot in glorious, vibrant color, while the futuristic dystopia setting has dark, gritty cinematography livened by bursts of bright visual effects, ones that honestly resemble Tron more than they do the Wachowskis' famous Matrix trilogy. The cinematography changes too, from broad canvasses appropriate to adventure films for the 1840s scenes, to a blocky procedural style for the 1970s segment, and to a more modern caper-flick Scorsese-inspired set of sweep-shots and held takes for the sequence taking place in the modern day. The major linking factor through all this is the truly incredible score, written by co-director Tom Tykwer, a score that somehow manages to make the same piece of music work for adventure, action, romance, and inspirational scenes all at the same time. It is able to do this because, as with everything else in the film, the important element isn't what scene is currently playing, but the overall tapestry of human experience that the movie is trying to portray, and a score appropriate to that will by definition be appropriate to every scene that represents it.

Indeed, Cloud Atlas might be one of the boldest films ever made, a sprawling, elaborate spectacle, both visually and in the sheer complexity of its narrative, which twists and turns around itself like a helix, filling every scene, every shot with detailed references to other stories, past or future. It's true that none of the individual stories that comprise this enormous offering are terribly nuanced by themselves, but taken in summation as they are, the stories buttress one another to produce a larger, more universal narrative, reflecting the themes of power, love, abandonment, indifference, and hope. Life, at times, is not terribly nuanced either, and only when combined with the stories of the lives of everyone that surrounds us does it acquire definition. This is not the sort of re-incarnation story where we see characters play out the same tale over and over again with changes of costume and scenery. Every story, every relationship, every moment of this film is unique to itself and yet rhymes in a strange, almost rhythmic way with moments and scenes scattered across creation. The various tracks that the movie jumps between with such frequency are not actually individual stories, but elements of a larger, cohesive whole, simultaneously unified and multifold, a record of human experience throughout the ages, and the ways that the black evils and selfless kindnesses that we do for one another resonate with people we never meet, whose lives we can scarcely imagine.


Final thoughts:  If the above sounds inane, meaningless, or like a particularly bad bout of over-analysis, then I apologize, but this is a film that defies easy description. Some critics have savaged the film for being a plodding bore, others for being overly full of itself, and some even for being horribly racist (several actors change their ages, genders, and even races for some of their characters, not always with the most convincing of effects). And yet, if I am to be brutally honest with everyone, I can't possibly describe it in terms other than near-rapture. I've seen dozens, hundreds of films in my life, both before and during this grand experiment. And yet I cannot name more than a handful of movies that have left me with such a feeling of awe and wonder as this one did. All the complaints I leveled against it in the beginning are true, and remained true throughout the movie, and yet at some point, I simply began to perceive what this film was trying to show me, and like an incomparably intricate Swiss clock, every element simply slid into place. What response it will generate from others, I cannot possibly speculate, yet the passion, heart, and empathy of the film are so strong as to be overflowing, all without once veering into maudlin or mawkish sentimentality. It is, without question, one of the greatest films I have ever seen.

'We are all connected to one another,' says one of the characters in this movie repeatedly, and indeed both the narrative and the thematic hearts of the film are encompassed within the above statement. This film's subject matter is no less than the interwoven nature of our lives, not in some basic tit-for-tat sense, but in all its glorious, majestic complexity. It shows us as we are, billions of individual threads dancing around and between one another, forming iterative patterns much greater than ourselves, simultaneously newly minted and long-worn. When revealed in all its glory, the resulting tapestry is vast beyond scope, yet infinitely detailed, a fractal pattern repeating itself forever, and each time in a manner wholly new. We call the result History.

Final Score:  9.5/10

The Intouchables

Alternate Title:  Where can you find a Quadriplegic?


One sentence synopsis:    A Senegalese ex-con from the slums of Paris becomes the personal aide to a wealthy paralytic.

Things Havoc liked: Having been seriously disappointed by most of the summer's offerings so far (with the exception of course of Avengers), I decided this week to try something new. The Intouchables is a French film generating a huge amount of buzz overseas, and none whatsoever here in the States. I suppose that's par for the course, but on the strength of excellent recommendations, I decided to give it a shot.

Wow.

Given the subject matter of this film, dealing as it does with poverty, racism, disability, loss, frustration, and the class divisions of French society, I was not prepared for how drop-dead funny this movie is. Wall to wall, the movie is a riotous send-up to everything from the pretensions of Haute-culture to classical music to thug life. Much of the reason for this is Omar Sy, a French actor whom I've never heard of before. Playing Driss, the felon-turned personal aide, Sy never puts a single foot wrong in the entire film. His character is boisterous and almost manic, shamelessly hitting on everything in sight, constantly bursting into laughter and offering hilarious commentary on the absurd lunacies of the high-class world he is thrown into, all without ever once appearing like a caricature of "poor" people, or an annoying ass. In lesser hands, this character could be downright insufferable, if not offensive, but Sy is a revelation, and effectively sells the entire movie with his performance.

Not that he's the only one of course. Veteran French actor François Cluzet plays Phillipe, a wealthy quadriplegic frustrated with his aides and with the febrile pity of his friends and family. Playing a character unable to move anything but his head (which cannot be easy), Cluzet gets across the bitter frustration of not merely his disability but the other losses he has suffered in his live, all without ever overselling the matter. His comment partway through the movie that he wishes Driss to take care of him precisely because he is 'pitiless' speaks more volumes than any tearful rage-against-the-heavens sequence that a lesser film might give him. He is not portrayed as a stuffy aristocrat (though of course he has his foibles), nor is his role in the film to receive the wise education of a "magic negro" (as Spike Lee famously described The Legend of Bagger Vance). He laughs at Sy's hilarious ridicule of an absurd Wagnerian opera, but still insists on sitting through it, despite Sy's protestations. The two play off one another famously, and the chemistry between the actors is such that the movie is a joy from start to finish.

The rest of the film doesn't disappoint either. The movie is written tremendously well, with a speed and wit that one seems to find only in French films (I jest). The jokes come fast and thick, often montage-style, and when the film isn't being funny, both the dialogue and the plot are believable and human, eschewing the forced-conflict that the movie looks early on like it might be about to set up in favor of reasonable behavior on the part of real people. That the film is based on a true story honestly comes as no surprise.


Things Havoc disliked:   A couple of plot elements, particularly the pen-pal subplot, were reasonably predictable, and though the scenes are funny (particularly when Driss insists on calling Phillipe's girlfriend), they do start to edge towards the "hip black man teaches the square white man how to live" territory. It wouldn't be noticeable at all if not for the incredible dexterity with which the film side-steps the barest hint of such notions overall. There are also a couple of subplots that do not receive proper resolution, such as Driss' younger brother. Finally, while I did like the ending quite a bit, I wish it had gone a bit more into what the dynamic between the characters ultimately evolved into.


Final thoughts:  Frankly, if I can only think of one paragraph worth of negatives to cite, and have to resort to "I wish it had been longer", then I don't think the filmmakers need to worry too much. The Intouchables was an astoundingly good movie, one of the best I've seen since I started this little project, and all the better for the complete surprise it was (at least to me). It may not be the most groundbreaking film ever made, and the reviewers who call it "Driving Miss Daisy Light" do have something of a point (though the ones screaming racism are simply out of their goddamn minds, I'm looking at you Variety!), but this is one of the most solidly entertaining movies I've ever seen, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Final Score:  9/10

The Avengers

Alternate Title:  How it is done


One sentence synopsis:   Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, and Captain America must team up to stop Loki and save the world.


Things Havoc liked:  This is it. The payoff. The final countdown. This is where Marvel, having begun this franchise of films four years ago with Iron Man, and having built up the tension through Thor and Captain America and Iron Man 2, finally had to cash in their chips. This is where all the plot threads, all the characterization, all the implied awesomeness that we've been promised for five years was supposed to finally deliver. And despite the excellence of the other constituent movies in this amazing series, there remained an unanswered question. Could Marvel, having promised so much, actually make good?

Frankly, I need to stop asking that question.

The Avengers is a masterpiece. A glorious, artfully-designed masterpiece, filled with writing, acting, and spectacle of the highest quality. It encompasses the individual strengths that made all of its predecessors great, and melds them together seamlessly to produce something truly special. Written and directed by Joss Whedon (of Firefly, Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and most recently, Cabin in the Woods), this film should, if anything ever can, silence his many critics once and for all. If not before, Whedon has finally delivered the magnum opus that many in the nerd community long suspected him capable of producing, and has, at least in my mind, catapulted himself into the ranks of such modern filmmakers as Chris Nolan and Peter Jackson.

I've waxed eloquently about these characters and actors before in their constituent movies, and to attempt to do so here would result in three pages of me gushing like a waterspout over the transcendent brilliance of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. His portrayal of my favorite comic book character of all time is, as it was in Iron Man and Iron Man 2, absolutely flawless, and Joss Whedon's trademark dialogue only serves to sharpen the character still further into a biting, acerbic genius with a buried streak of responsibility he is never quite able to completely hide. I stated in my review of Captain America that Chris Evans' performance, while excellent, was a bit unpolished for my taste, in that the character, still forming in WWII, was not yet the Cap I knew and loved. All such objections are negated here, as Evans plays, if anything, an even better Captain America than he did previously, an anachronistic, world-weary hero who nonetheless rises effortlessly to the occasion from his core of grit and iron. Chris Hemsworth's Thor has come full circle from his movie, and matured into a sobered, yet still properly viking thundergod, whose confrontation with Loki, his younger brother and arch-nemesis, now takes on an hints of the Shakespearean tragedy we were promised initially. Loki himself has darkened significantly from his incarnation in Thor (as is only appropriate), giving in to megalomaniacal dreams of conquest and rule. Yet for all his bluster and rage, when he confronts his brother in combat, he weeps.

New to the franchise is Mark Ruffalo, though his character, the Hulk, is unfortunately not. Hulk has had a bad run in film for the last decade or so, and actors as varied as Edward Norton and Eric Bana have tried and failed to portray him well. Where they failed, Ruffalo succeeds. He plays Bruce Banner exactly as he should, a man who has been living with his condition now for some time, and who has evolved effective, though not foolproof, means to manage it. Ruffalo doesn't play Banner as a shrinking violet, nor as a cannon waiting to explode, yet the undercurrent of menace is always there, and when he becomes the Hulk, the result can be absolutely terrifying. Hulk was never a favorite of mine in the comics, and yet watching this film, I at last began to understand why so many liked the character so much, and what it was that set him apart from all the other superheroes in the Marvel universe. The raw, unfettered rage of the Hulk comes across here as clear as day, and in a film packed this tightly with action, character, and superheroics, that is not a statement to be made lightly.

Also new (or at least elevated beyond their previous cameo status) are Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). Both of these characters are variations on the Jason Bourne theme of ultra-badass spy/soldier, providing an interesting sense of scale for the more outlandish heroes (and gods) that they are paired with. I've been a fan of Renner's since the Hurt Locker, and this movie exemplifies why, as he gives Hawkeye an icy, professional mien that, while not groundbreaking, provides an intriguing contrast to the larger-than-life archetypes that surround him. Johansson plays her character in much the same vein, though she has more of a role to flesh it out in, and while there is clearly much that she has done that she isn't proud of, she doesn't deal with that guilt or pressure the way one normally sees movie heroines dealing with it. The scenes with Renner and Johansson together (as the token normal-if-badass humans in this fantastical parade of demigods and robot warriors) are very good, as we get a pair of people who have clearly been through a lot together. Best of all, the movie lets their relationship remain mostly unstated, without ever once hinting towards a romantic one. This may actually be unheard of for a superhero movie with a female lead, and I appreciated it.

But as with all of Marvel's recent hits, it is the writing, and beyond that, the pacing of the film that really elevates it into the next dimension. A long film (more than two and a half hours), Avengers wastes none of its runtime, barely pausing to orient new viewers before launching into its tale. With six major and a slew of minor characters to establish and show off, Avengers simply has no time to waste, and does not. The writing is snappy and distinctive for each character, with very few expo-dumps and a varied (though generally fast-paced) tempo to the many dialogue sequences. Joss Whedon has a distinctive "style" to his writing, but Avengers bears his mark somewhat less obviously than Cabin in the Woods did. This is a film that knows that its characters well, and respects the lengthy comic, television, and film history behind them, and Whedon manages to make every character sound like themselves, rather than like him.

Finally, the spectacle of the film itself is simply gorgeous. Enormous, elaborate fight sequences are crafted with such care and discretion that it melts into the background of one's consciousness. No shaky-cam, no tilt-camera, not even much in the way of slow-mo-speed-up (only one shot I can think of, and that one definitely warranted). The action is front-and-center and shot in such a way that the characterization of each character (forgive me) shines through, even when they are beating people with fist and shield and hammer. Every character is given time in and out of battle to both establish themselves and be awesome, leaving us with a sense, moreso than any other team-hero movie I've ever seen, that this is actually a team of individually awesome, interesting badasses. Thinking back on the achievement, and how easy Whedon makes it look, I'm filled with something like awe.




Things Havoc disliked:  Of course, the film isn't perfect. There are a couple occasions when Whedon's tendency towards snarky one-liners misfires (usually because of timing problems). One of the secondary characters (played by Cobie Smulders, I think her name was Agent Hill) is a bit below the others in terms of performances, and does drag some of her scenes down, and there were a couple sequences (Loki's confrontation with the lone elderly German dude in Stutgart, and Fury's speech about teamwork) that I thought were blocked out a bit too obviously. Neither sequence lasts more than about ten seconds, but in a film of this overall quality, it did stand out. There were also occasions when the CG-real footage transition was a bit obvious, particularly in the climactic action sequence, though none where it was immersion-breaking.

I was also somewhat disappointed with Loki. His character was a revelation in Thor, and remains so here, a villain with a real motivation and arc to his character. But though the film does give Loki room to breathe, there isn't enough room here to really continue the arc that was initiated in that previous film. His interactions with Thor are excellent, and carry over the thematic elements that Loki previously embodied, but the movie just isn't able to push them forward at all, instead turning him into a megalomaniacal would-be dictator. Granted, he suits the movie just fine as this, but I was hoping for a little more nuance.

Finally, I had a few problems with Scarlett Johansson in this one. It's not that she's bad, far from it, but there were scenes (her expositional talk with Loki for instance) that I just didn't buy. It didn't help that, playing a Russian spy who describes herself in those terms, she has no trace whatsoever of a Russian accent (Others have pointed out that a good spy would have no accent, and I acknowledge this, but it still jarred).



Final thoughts:    I don't think I'm likely to turn many heads with this review, as at time-of-writing, The Avengers is busy shattering every box office record ever produced, earning accolades from almost every reviewer online or off. I can do nothing in this case but add my voice to the collective. The Avengers was a triumph in almost every respect, a film that took my nervous expectations for it, set them gently to one side, and then showed me something great. It exceeds the bar set by Iron Man, by Thor, by Captain America, and places itself in the stratosphere of the greatest comic book films in existence. To speak of The Avengers in the same breath as the Dark Knight is not heresy.

Welcome to Blockbuster season. May it be blessed with such films as this one.

Final Score:  9/10

X-men: First Class

Alternate Title:  Why I Love Comics

One sentence synopsis:  A group of mutants headed by Charles Xavier and Magneto must stop an evil mastermind from starting World War Three.


Things Havoc liked:  One thing I like about this new policy of a weekly movie is that I am forced to see films I would not otherwise have seen. Some movies are simply obscure or regarding a subject matter I have no interest in, but others are ones for which I have made a snap judgment based on the trailers. Trailers exist for such things after all, so I usually feel confident in pre-judging a film based upon it. This movie, like others I have reviewed here, had terrible trailers, and given that both X-men 3 and Wolverine were terrible, I had some confidence in predicting that this thing was going to blow. Hard. Yet in order to see a film a week, sometimes, I am forced to see movies I would otherwise skip. There are times when the movie turns out to be just as bad as I expected, or even worse, and I hate that I invented this policy. Once in a while though, a movie will surprise me, and on such days, I like this policy.

Today, I like this policy.

This movie was fantastic, from start to finish. It helps of course that the X-men were my childhood favorites growing up, but even independently of this, it tells a story that is compelling and rich and brilliantly well acted and faithful in the extreme to the comics and the (good) movies that came before it. It integrates the origins of the X-men into history superbly well, founds the characters in reality, and gives them weight and depth and likability. I love these characters, and I loved seeing them brought to life on the screen.

The story is, essentially, that of two people. Charles Xavier, and Erik Lenscher, known by the end of the film as Professor X and Magneto (the way they get their names is a hoot, by the way). Xavier, played by James McAvoy is spellbinding. He's arrogant, in his own weird way, a young man who thinks he knows what's best for everyone partly because he actually does. He's genteel and clever and wickedly insightful (as one might expect from a telepath), someone who knows exactly how to talk to someone else and get them to like him and trust him, yet also someone whose sense of morality is simultaneously unbending and flexible enough for compassion. A mentor and a friend to everyone, and yet human enough to drink and to hit on women by describing how their genetic code is beautiful (it's actually less pathetic than it sounds). A true, classical hero, and I'm astonished to say that McAvoy does a better job with the character than even Stewart did (partly because he's permitted to be much more active than Stewart).

And if McAvoy nails Xavier, then Michael Fassbender, who is always excellent even in bad movies, nails Magneto equally. Magneto is one of my favorite characters ever and this, THIS RIGHT HERE, this is why. Fassbender's Magneto is tormented, yes, but he's not an emotional wreck, and neither is he a stone, unfeeling killer. Magneto is a driven man who has suffered outrages and will not see them committed again against "his" people. He's one of those strange people who gets scarier the less angry he is, and yet the movie takes great pains to paint him, not as a villain, nor even really as a designated villain-in-training, but as a man, complicated and sometimes confused, who acts as he thinks is best, and has real compassion and capacity for greatness that he does not simply cast aside when it comes time to become the bad guy. Indeed, I wouldn't even call him "the bad guy". He's a character, whole and complete, and one may take him as one finds him.

Those two I expected, but what I did not expect, was a third character, scarcely any less important, specifically Mystique, played by Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence. Mystique is an important character in the comics, but I've never been a fan of hers. This movie changed my mind. In this, Mystique is Xavier's quasi-adopted sister, a homeless orphan taken in by Charles and his family when she was a child. As such, Mystique goes from being a devious villain (not interesting) to being Xavier's more grounded sibling (very interesting). Her nature as a visible, obvious mutant who must hide her identity is explored in depth, and she serves as an interesting vehicle to explore Xavier's and Magneto's contrasting philosophies concerning what Mutants' place in society ought to be, thus eliminating the need for the characters to actually stand around and tiresomely scream at one another.

The characters are themselves very strongly portrayed, written, and acted, but the brilliant part is not the characters themselves but how they interact. This movie gets it right. We see and believe Xavier and Magneto becoming friends, real friends, not because the plot requires pathos but because they simply are. Mystique's interactions with Xavier are so right I can't even do them justice. They act like siblings, argue like siblings, know one another the way siblings do, and care obviously for one another deeply Her connection with Magneto is equally interesting. We see why she is attracted to what he represents (and perhaps to him himself, though the movie doesn't force a "relationship" on us in any way). We see why he takes interest in her, what he sees in her both in terms of potential and in terms of a fellow member of his oppressed group. NONE of these relationships seem forced, NONE of them seem one-sided or even particularly unhealthy. These people genuinely love each another. That their characters force them to act differently to one another is simply the way of things. At the end of the film, I would not say they part as friends, but neither do they part as enemies. It is this intriguing element that made these characters my favorites as a child, and it made them so here again.

I've spoken endlessly, and not even gotten to other amazing things, from Kevin Bacon's turn as Sebastian Shaw, to Nicholas Hoult as Beast, to January Jones as Emma Frost, to Rose Byrne as Moira McTaggart. All four do justice to their characters, particularly Hoult. I've not talked about the great character actors like Oliver Platt, Rade Šerbedžija, Michael Ironside, or Matt Craven, who all bring great fun to their relatively small roles. I've not talked about the wickedly fun cameos (which I shall not spoil here), nor the superb writing, nor the effects, nor anything else. Suffice to say that the movie as a whole is acted, directed, scored, and written tremendously well across the board, and you will get the picture.


Things Havoc disliked:   Some of the minor X-men, particularly Havok and Angel, were not up to par with the rest of the cast. Not that they were terrible, but the caliber of acting is simply not there to compete with the main characters in the story. A few lines, particularly a couple given to Beast, ring false, which shows up more prominently because of the overall high quality of the writing. The subtitles on the exterior establishing shots are often laughable ("Secret CIA training facility!"). Finally, the movie (vaguely) implies that the Americans provoked the Cuban Missile Crisis deliberately, which is, needless to say, a view of history I find laughable.


Final thoughts:  This movie was just great, from start to finish. So much so that I doubt my own opinion on it and wonder if it might just be rampant fanboyishness talking. It gave me characters I cared about and had them interact with one another in interesting ways, and that, honestly, is all I can ask any movie to do. Comic book films have had such successes in the last decade or so that the bar is set ridiculously high for them, yet this movie vaulted over it effortlessly. It was faithful in detail and extreme to the comic, it was interesting and varied, it took its time when necessary and most of all it gave me the Xavier and the Magneto (and the Mystique!) I wanted to see.

Not long ago, I saw Thor in West Virginia. I thought it was the best movie I had seen all year. And here, for the second time in as many weeks, I have a new champion for that title, from another comic book film. I cannot guarantee that everyone will see it the same way as I did, but I loved this movie, and everything it stood for. Once again, the trailers lied to me.

But this time, I don't mind so much.

Final Score:  9/10