Michael B. Jordan: shooting star.

An Underprivileged Life Against Cowards With Guns.

Unarmed black man shot fatally in the back by cop. It’s not just a movie. It’s reality. Over and over again. This injustice has become so common in United States culture that there is an undeclared war between African-American men (who continue to be black) and cops (who continue to be cowards).

FRUITVALE STATION recounts the last hours of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African-American who was shot to death in the early hours of January 1, 2009, on a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) platform at Fruitvale, Oakland California by a 33-year-old transit cop named Johannes Mehserle. Mehserle first claimed he thought his gun was his taser, and then that he “feared for his life” that Grant – who was pinned to the ground by Mehserle himself leaning on Grant’s back, and another cop with his boot on Grant’s neck – was “going for a weapon.”

We can tell from the numerous cellphone videos of the incident that Mehserle is lying his ass off.

Exactly how gutless ARE you, Mehserle, you low-browed incompetent? You’re a loser either way: If you planned to shoot him, you’re a coward; if you thought it was a taser, you’re an untrained coward.

But FRUITVALE STATION contains none of that mitigating information on Mehserle; matter of fact, Mehserle is never mentioned, and there is no character by that name. The movie does not exist to absolve the cops or castigate them; nor does it re-litigate the case of Oscar’s unnecessary murder. It simply shows us the events. We all know who’s right and who’s wrong. The true horror of this story is not addressed: the sociological disparity that pits these two factions against each other. Not white against black, but rich against poor. (The police are, after all, instruments of the rich, supposedly “protecting and serving” everyone equally, but in practice, affording the wealthy a pass on every sin, including murder, and bringing the hammer down on petty crime, to wipe it from the sensibilities of the high-end criminals they work for.) The further down the social scale you are, the harder it is for police to treat you with the respect they afford their pimp funders.

FRUITVALE avoids this intrinsic societal disease, and focuses on humanizing Oscar Grant (played by a magnificent Michael B. Jordan (CHRONICLE), underplaying like there is no camera on him at all). Like Darren Aronofsky, writer-director Ryan Coogler’s Steadicam perches on Oscar’s shoulder as he goes about his underprivileged life. On this last day of 2008, Oscar has decided to turn over a new leaf, trying to better himself for his mother (Octavia Spencer, THE HELP), his girlfriend Sophina (Melonie Diaz, HAMLET 2) and his little girl, Tatiana (Ariana Neal). He’s also trying to plead back the grocery store job he just lost, and he’s cutting off his dope-dealing contacts, actually throwing away a stash instead of selling it. There is even a moment that seems to illustrate how futile all his efforts might prove to be, as he saves a run-over dog in the street, only to watch it die slowly as there is nowhere to take it for aid.

Is it true? Is this how Oscar actually spent his last day on Earth, or is Coogler simply stacking the deck? And why does he need to humanize the victim? Simple: Oscar Grant is made to look like a saint because to admit even the tiniest flaw would make it seem like the aggression toward him was justified. (Witness how every unarmed young black man shot dead by cops suddenly has his rap sheet splayed all over the evening news, to justify his illegal death at the hands of untrained and/or racist cowards.) Grant was a small-time thief, a drug-dealer, a guy who cheated on his girlfriend… you know, a normal human being. I do not cite these traits to condemn him, but to – ironically – actually humanize him. Yet even if Oscar Grant was a felon, ethics and morality and justice all denote that you don’t shoot to death an unarmed man who is down on the ground with another cop’s knee on his neck.

Would the cops treat a Caucasian congressman that way after it is discovered the congressman wrote and passed laws that indirectly killed low income citizens by denying them food stamps, housing, healthcare and the right to vote? And that’s happening every day in Whitey Republican Congress.

So we know that Coogler is playing fast and loose with facts about Oscar’s ethos, his actions and his background. A piece in Forbes delves into details. And the MintPress News goes in the opposite direction, interviewing a cop who takes an apologist stance for the police (no surprise).

But look at it this way: even Coogler’s smoothing of Oscar’s rough edges is unwittingly a straw man argument – because the pertinent fact remains that Oscar was shot to death during a routine apprehension. And even if it was totally an accident on the part of the cop, even if it was not about Mehserle’s probable racist upbringing (they put the clearly-heard racial slurs from the videos – “bitch-ass nigger!” – in the mouth of the biggest “name” actor in the cop cast – Kevin Durand), even if it was not about what transpired on Mehserle’s shift that day to lead him to that level of discombobulation – even if all that was justifiable! – the fact remains: Oscar still lies dead. Shot in the back.

It might not contain any solutions on rectifying social disparity, but FRUITVALE does show us the results of being so poor. Everything is about money – that Oscar doesn’t have and cannot get. Browbeaten by his girl to provide for his family and be a good father, yet no idea where his next income will materialize, living in a neighborhood with sirens always in the distance, having done jail time 2 years ago, and trying to make his mother proud by following the straight and narrow, we feel Oscar’s pain, sharp as a stab every time he must buy some small item, money going, going… And seemingly no way he can earn money without doing something illegal or unethical. His end of society is just not structured to provide enough legal income to support a family and enjoy a quality of life.

Amazing that FRUITVALE STATION is Ryan Coogler’s debut feature film (reaping awards at Sundance and Cannes), tackling such a loaded subject and then displaying such finesse in unpacking it. His unobtrusive cameras allow for great naturalistic performances, especially by the three principals; Jordan is in a league of his own, ably supported by Diaz. Then there is Octavia Spencer, whose poignant performance is made all the more heartbreaking by her blaming herself for her son Oscar’s death, having told him to “take the train” into the city, so as not to drink and drive, and he – surprisingly – heeding her advice. “I thought he would be safe…” Turns out he was least safe from the people who are supposedly sworn to protect and serve him. It’s just a slogan on the side of police cars; it’s not a directive or a law…

Responding to a report of a disturbance on the BART station, the cops haul Oscar and his friends off the train and line them up sitting on the ground, amidst racial epithets, confusion, abusive manhandling – and innumerable passengers rolling their cellphones and protesting the cops’ small-dicked aggression towards Oscar’s party.

The altercation is so well-staged, when the shooting happens, it is almost incidental. Like Stone in JFK reconstructing the Zapruder footage and adding other angles, Coogler reconstructs the scene from all the cellphone footage made public. We see the cop with his bodyweight on Oscar’s back (we presume this is Mehserle, who is unnamed and unfeatured, just a canary blonde), and Kevin Durand’s cop with his knee on Oscar’s neck. When the gun goes off, there is a sickening second of silence (if we believe this is cinematic license, it is not – we also witness this silence in the videos! I guess it’s how humans react to a gunshot during heightened aggressive situations), and Oscar cranes his neck back in stunned disbelief, as his life bleeds through his teeth, “– the fuck? You shot– You shot me brah…”

The end title cards:

“After firing the officers involved, the general manager and chief of BART stepped down.”

“The officer who shot Oscar was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. After claiming he mistook his gun for his taser the jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to two years at state penitentiary and released after 11 months.”

Not a bad sentence for a first degree murder. Musta had a good white lawyer. You know that phrase “criminals walking the streets”? Well…  And you also know that line from that Rolling Stones song, “Just as every cop is a criminal…”

END

Dark Ark.

Obsession! It’s not just a perfume. It’s all over the King James Bible. And for the first time, captured in a major motion picture that doesn’t paint a biblical figure like a cardboard cutout whimsically pimping himself out to God’s unholy will.

On the strength of a “vision,” a guy builds a boat 300 cubits long (whatever that is), gathers every animal on Earth and tends them for years while his own species and all creation is annihilated around him – on any psychoanalyst’s couch, that’s obsession! And writer-director Darren Aronofsky is well-versed in obsession (REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, THE WRESTLER, BLACK SWAN), imbuing this compelling new hook into the wave-rider known to us since schooldays as a doddering 900-year-old fossil. But Noah here is not the meek, white-bearded saint with the walking stick and halo – he’s the gladiator who became a slave…

NOAH is a tsunami of fresh ideas, a font of profound and creative filmmaking, from a story older than christianity (stop that whining, you mongrel religion of stolen rituals!).

Now we could be sidetracked here and argue aimlessly around biblical lore and theology – but why bother? Aronofsky has used merely the barest nub of King James plot to drive his story – after that initial spark about the flood and a savior named Noah, everything else is grand invention. (Just like the bible!) Flood myths abound in every religion and culture, so for Republicans and christians and islamists et al to ban, badmouth or boycott this film as if THEY exclusively own the right to be outraged over 10,000-year-old myths is more irrelevant than the impotent petulance of their imagined gods. It’s a fantastic piece of filmmaking. Sit back and enjoy it, dickheads!

Poffy Noah and extinct pal

Russell Crowe is Noah Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Felix legions of the North, and soil swisher (I can’t figure what he does for a living except swish his drum-gloves through black soil with his family). Jennifer Connelly (such perfect beauty, such passionate talent) is his faithful wife Naameh (also Crowe’s wife in A BEAUTIFUL MIND). They begat three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and adopt a wounded girl Ila, who would grow up to be the powerful wizard Hermione.

Back when the Earth was only 1000 years old, God spaketh to Russell Crowe and bad him build an ark to save the animals because mankind was facing the chopper at His Almighty Petulant Hand for becoming “evil,” which, from what I can tell, means eating meat and wanting to have The Sex. Noah visits his hermit dad Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) to seek advice, who immediately puts a Spock nerve-pinch on Noah’s son for not bringing him berries, and rufies Noah.

While half-baked, Noah sees the world covered in water, and figures that “fire means death” but “water means cleansing” (which is ironic, considering he hasn’t taken a bath his whole adult life). Methuselah gives Noah a magic seed from Jack and the Beanstalk, and when Noah plants it, a 1000-acre forest springs up instantaneously. Just like it says in the bible. Apparently, the Creator (he’s not called “God” because that would affect the box office) supplied the lumber for the ark by magic. Just like it says in the bible. Which begs the question: If he could make trees by magic, why not make an ARK by magic? Fallen angels called Watchers help Noah build. They’re giant beings made of rock that speak like Treebeard. Just like it says in the bible.

Genesis 2:10: “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden…” We see streams of water issue from ground zero, snaking for hundreds of miles, and – as God foretold – every CGI animal at Industrial Light and Magic that dranketh of the water followed its source back to the ark. (The time-compression and jump-cut methodology are awe-inspiring during this sequence, and Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique will put that technique to even greater use when Noah relates the tale of Genesis.)

NOAH stays so true to biblical writ that when the British supervillain appeared, it was like I was back in bible class being caned sensually by Father Smithins again. Ray Winstone is Tubal-cain, a descendant of Cain, the guy who killed his brother’s lemur… what? oh, his brother’s keeper… (I thought he said “Blessed are the cheesemakers…”) Cain calls himself king and wants the ark; he commands mindless hordes who are meat eaters, unlike Noah’s holy vegetarians. British, meat – they must be evil! And all meat eaters are rapists and atheists, right? That’s all that goes on at Cain’s camp: meat-eating and raping and not worshipping god. (Where do I sign up?)

Criteria to enter ark: you must be a large mammal,
and you must live on THIS side of the ark.

In the trailers, we see Tubal-cain challenge Noah, “I have my armies and you stand there alone and defy me?!” Noah answers, “I’m not alone,” and the scene cuts. He’s probably talking metaphorically about his invisible god “standing beside him in spirit” blah blah – but no! We now see past the cut – to the rock angels suddenly rising up from the earth around Noah, to the dismay of Cain. And us! (They left that scene out of trailers not because it was a cool reveal, but because marketing didn’t want to risk christians being put off by rock angels!)

Meanwhile the human interest stories pile up, that will smash headlong into Noah’s obsession later. Shem (Douglas Booth) is trying to make Ilia (Emma Watson) pregnant– are you crazy, boy?! Ruin the world’s sexiest spinner with stretchmarks? Luckily, she is barren. And teen Ham (Logan Lerman, 3:10 TO YUMA 2007, a young Christian Slater) realizes that when humanity is wiped out, there’ll be no leftover girl-meat for him. Noah tries to avert this dead-end situation by going undercover in search of brides in Cain’s evil camp. Finding none, he comes to an epiphany – that the Creator wants mankind wiped out! That Noah himself is the instrument to save all the animals and then perish with his family.

THIS – was something new! In the 6,000-year history of this planet, I have not seen such audacious rewriting of mythology since MAN OF STEEL (where “sent to Earth for a reason” was transmogrified into “terraforming and racial cleansing”). Aronofsky (and co-writer Ari Handel) have boldly rewritten Genesis 7:7 (“And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark…”) and made Noah’s elder son’s wife barren, and left Noah’s two younger sons wifeless virgins. (Next they’re going to spin some other such leftist hogwash, like the Earth is four billion years old, or the universe is expanding!)

Neemah wails, “I just want my sons to have love!” Uh, you mean sex. Because when it comes down to the wire, as in this story, all pretense is thrown out with the unicorns. Shem and Ham urgently realize the reality that ‘love’ isn’t going to propagate the human species. If there’s one thing christianity has taught me, it’s that Sex Comes First. So sayeth Father Smithins every time he touched my botty in the name of Christ.

But shit’s about to get real…

“we have been entrusted with a task much greater than our own desires.”

Noah’s first act when the ark is seabound is to stoneheartedly refuse to save hundreds of humans clinging to a nearby crag screaming in agony. He stoically maintains his stance of only saving those who will be doomed to die out – his family.

In response to their protests of him being a meanie, he relates Genesis – and it is astounding how this sequence – which should have made my head explode – won me over!

The film-making to this point has been exemplary; visual storytelling, motivations, foreshadowing, seamless CGI, breathtaking scenery, the ark itself magnificent, and the deluge as depressing as a rain-soaked Monday morning. Now, as Noah recounts the “first five days” of the universe, computer graphics accompany his narration that tell a less simplistic story, as if we have skipped across to the new COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY: we see the Big Bang (very correctly depicted as an “expansion” not an explosion), the early coagulating of matter in spacetime; we see the nascent Moon smashing into the Earth, fragmenting and accreting!; we even see the splitting of cells!; visuals tread very lightly on dinosaurs, evolution, ape-like creatures…to the Fall of Man (cough-woman’s fault!). With the scientifically accurate visuals, we can see the filmmakers have sincerely tried to reconcile ridiculous fancy with facts – and it works (unless you’re a religious freak or a Republican).

Then Noah drops the bomb: “Now it begins again – air, water, plant, fish, animal. Paradise returns – but this time there will be no men to destroy it. The Creator has judged us: mankind must end!” Noah relates the order in which each of them will bury the other as they die off, “You Japheth, will be the last man, and in time, you too will return to dust…”

It rocked me backwards in my little cucumber seat. And when Hermione gets pregnant, Noah’s arc of descent (heh!) has reached its nadir, his fatalism and obsession at the point where he doesn’t want the human race to continue even if it could!…

The biblical Noah tale is just another in a long line of flood myths, each myth embellishing its culture’s values, primal fears and redemption fantasies into the narrative, so massive kudos to this new Whitey version that makes it dramatically compelling to modern audiences who would have stayed away in droves had it been about a pious whitebeard tending sheep and giraffes while wearing a halo. (There is a reason why Noah is Gladiator Maximus – so that when he engages in hand-to-hand combat against vagrants trying to board the ark, we buy it 100%. Noah is Action Man for THIS generation. This ain’t your grandpappy’s Noah.)

After a fake CGI dove, during a fake CGI rainbow, Noah entreats Hermione’s two wizard girl babies, “Be fruitful and multiply – replenish the Earth.” Y’know, with only the seven of you on the planet, I can’t think of any realistic way to do that without being INCESTUOUS SLUTS. But they must have been successful, because here we are, 5,000 years later, having survived the deluge, the dinosaurs, the dark ages, and ancient aliens (in that order). Let me consult my Hogwarts Book of Spells on how it was done…

END

NUMBER FOUR is number two.

Like a turd falling from the sky and hitting every branch of the Cliché Tree on the way down, I AM NUMBER FOUR dumps on us by way of TWILIGHT and the Uncanny X-Men. And every other superhero/teen/action/alien movie it can possibly steal from.

A couple of sexy aliens are fugitives on Earth from a race of evil aliens called Mogadorians. Yes, before we go one step further, they used that name. Say it out loud and taste the kindergarten toughness: Mogadorians. Really? Was the word “Zambathustian” taken? Or how about “Bombalambian”? (Vonnegut did call his fictional alien civilization Tralfamadorians – but they were meant to be satirical.)

You’d never know these guys were aliens though – they are Alex Pettyfer (blond as a supermodel and twice as bland) and Timothy Olyphant (somehow retaining his characteristic ice cool through this idiotic role). Normal humans in every aspect, except they can fire energy bolts from their hands and say Mogadorians with a straight face.

But let’s get past the utter lack of imagination in once again making intergalactic aliens able to morph into human shape (and then not utilizing that shape-shifting ability when it would actually be worthwhile – like when they’re recognized by Mogador– sorry, I refuse to say that word again, in case I have to run for Congress one day).

In a movie rife with stupidities, here’s the apex stupidity that drives the prosaic plot: the good aliens (the ones who have morphed into blond supermodels) can only be killed in numerical order. Pettyfer, so he tells us, is “Number Four,” and One through Three have been killed in requisite order, so now it’s his turn. Again, I urge you to discard any queries about how aliens have a numbering system that is identical to our Roman/Western European idiom that developed over millennia. Any pondering over this fact will result in running for Congress.

Number Four falls for a blond high school chick with a big nose who is actually blander than he is (Dianna Agron) and before we can question whether convergent evolution has outfitted his intergalactic man parts to fit her trailer trash girlie parts, they are bonding on dates by running from evil aliens together. Big Kevin Durand is the eight-foot tall evil alien commander, whose gilled nose is even uglier than Agron’s. And before we can ask why alien Four would be attracted to an organism who isn’t even on his species line, we realize the story has gotten too stupid for us to care, as big special effects battle other special effects and in the midst of running from aliens on one of their dates, Four and Big-Nose stop at her high school dark room to develop some sweet 35mm pictures. Now before we can ask why this teen in 2011 is still using film rolls in her camera instead of using a digital camera like everyone else on planet Earth, we realize there are some questions best left unasked, in case some idiot answers.

Australian Teresa Palmer is Number Six, one of the New Wave Of Fantastically Gorgeous Blonde Bims, flaunting her bim-bone like a baboon in leather-panted estrus. When Number Four meets her in a blaze of sensual lightning, teleportation dynamism and Thigh Kwon Do, we wonder how he could ever consider going back to the ugly-nosed human chick who isn’t putting out because of primitive Earth customs.

When you aim your movie at teens, I guess you’re hoping that none of them realize every single frame is ripping off someone else’s style, story, substance, character, concept, clothing, hairdo, jawline and telekinetic abilities. D.J. Caruso directs this milky ride into explosive mediocrity, from a series of novels by two witless authors whom it is no surprise use a collective pseudonym – Pittacus Lore (Jobie Hughes and James Frey).

To top off the clichés, they literally ride into the sunset… If there’s anything we learn from I AM NUMBER FOUR, it’s that teen love can cross intergalactic species lines (but I just want to see the startling deformity they call a baby); and that evil aliens are quite anal about killing people in order of ascending integers; and that no matter how much Alex Pettyfer poses, he’ll never be as cool as Timothy Olyphant.

Mogadorian. Really?

END

Swapping out the Intelligence Meter with the Big Bicep Reloader.

Steel with Real Feel.

I can’t tell if this is massively retarded, or ultra cool. wtf.
–YouTube comment.

I’m going to officially declare this movie hella enjoyable. It may not be the Oscar-muncher of the year, but it’s definitely the most fun. And is it coincidence or mild irony that Wolverine is the star of a movie called REAL STEEL?

In the near future, humans have stopped the obnoxious “sport” of boxing – and transferred the stupidity to eight-foot tall robots with flamboyant names (like Midas, Ambush, Noisy Boy and Zeus). Remote controlled by humans, these ‘bots do our dirty work, thereby vicariously retaining the brutal element that raised us from the caves, yet removing our frail flesh from the mix.

Hugh Jackman is Charlie Kenton, an ex-boxer who now hustles in the metal-bending underground robot boxing scene that is slipping out of his grasp. He’s that “friend” who’s always begging you for a loan to bet on a “sure thing” – and losing. An excellent performance by Jackman, as he makes himself wholly unlikable in the first act: reckless, rootless, shiftless, unheeding advice on straightening his life, even from his best girl (Evangeline Lilly – the new Kate Beckinsale – what a perfect nose!); and to top it off, he discovers he has an 11-year-old son from an ex-girl, gaining unwanted custody of this boy just as he embarks on a fight tour with his robot. Blame it on insensitive courts and Plot Convenience Screenwriting.

Dakota Goyo is Charlie’s estranged son Max, who discovers a discarded robot called Atom (no prize for phonetically sounding like “Adam,” First Man), and trains him to become an unlikely champion. Though Charlie sees the robot as merely a cash cow, Max embraces the beast as a surrogate father, who doesn’t judge, doesn’t question and doesn’t leave; and on Atom’s face, the vestiges of weld marks create the hint of a permanent innocent smile. This aspect of the movie almost reminded me of Pixar, how they imbue lifeless things with an inner spark that compels us to care for their fates.

But this ain’t Pixar – it’s Touchstone/Disney, so of course, the kid is smarter than the parents, the woman is smarter than the man, and the pet is smarter than everyone. In this case, the pet (the robot) opens the mind of the kid, and the kid unlocks the father’s paternal instinct. It’s not as gay as it sounds; in fact, it’s refreshing that under the ostensibly simple premise of boxing robots, and the awesome coolness of the robots striding metal through it all, there is a heartfelt story of loss and redemption.

The father, his boy and their robot come from three different directions of loss (he has lost his career, the son has lost his family, the robot was found discarded in a sewer) and only through their threeway collaboration do they overcome the odds. In the underdog robot, the abandoned son finds a surrogate father, and the frustrated father finds a surrogate boxer to impart his skills to. Atom was designed as a sparring ‘bot, able to take a punch and get back up again… hmm, the metaphors come thick and fast… ironically, only through Atom’s brutality does the frail flesh find meaning: father redeems himself to son, and son grows to respect father. (Who said boxing has no redeeming qualities? Oh, that was me.)

The robot designs are a welcome relief from the eye-strain of the TRANSFORMERS‘ metal ganglion: relatively sleek with just the right amount of street cred carbon scarring.

Atom has a “shadow feature” that allows him to mimic his trainer during fights, basically shadow boxing. So Charlie uses his human skills to make Atom beat down his opponents. (Isn’t that kinda cheating? Or at least defeating the purpose of removing the human element?) As Atom and the Kentons rise to prominence, they must face bigger and flashier hipster demolition ‘bots and evil Asian controllers with urgent designer jeans.

And in the final battle, as Charlie and Atom fight to the death against their most hipster Asian opponent (Karl Yune) and a destructo-bot named Zeus, Atom’s metal arms shadowing Wolverine’s sexy punch-dance, we see Max looking on in love as he realizes his father has been brought back from the dead and is only alive doing what he does best (and what he does best isn’t very nice). We see Evangeline’s perfect nose watching Charlie and Max bonding through senseless brutality, a mixed message that is stupid yet poignant, and we realize that this heavy metal has turned into adult-oriented pop.

But I gotta admit, it works. In the way he frames these final scenes, director Shawn Levy cuts through the cheese of redemption slomo with some real heart. It is truly touching how the inanimate object brings out the best in the humans. Through, uh, senseless brutality…

END

Everything’s Archy.

GLADIATOR and BRAVEHEART had a baby and they called it Russell Crowe.

This ain’t Errol Flynn, this ain’t Adam Ant, and it’s certainly not Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, riding through the woods… This ain’t your daddy’s ROBIN HOOD; no swinging from vines in the forest, no star-crossed lovers, no archery competition, no “splitting his competitor’s arrow in twain,” and no men in tights all haughty and gay. But it’s still 13th century Europe and everyone is still covered in poo.

In Ridley Scott‘s reimagined origin tale (is that a double negative or a faddish cliché?) Russell Crowe is Robin Longstride aka Robin of the Hood. (Y’know, if there was any more evidence we needed that “Robin Hood” is folklore and not fact, the hero’s name is a dead giveaway. How come his name was not “Cyril Doily” or “Tatum Mooby”? Longstride; yeah, we know what the spreaders of that myth had on their minds.) Longstride – snigger – is neither hero nor coward, merely a brawling archer in the service of British King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston, such a knack for these high and mighty roles).

After Richard is killed in battle, Robin sneaks back to England (now under tyrannical rule of Prince John) with his band of rootless archers, Will Scarlet (Scott Grimes), Alan A’Dayle (Alan Doyle) and Little John (towering Kevin Durand, wielding not Li’l John’s infamous quarterstaff, but a mallet that looks like Mjolnir).

Coming upon a dying king’s knight named Loxley (spelled “Locksley” in most Robin tales), Robin promises to return the knight’s sword to his father. Thus Robin pretends to be Loxley, and he and his men impersonate knights to gain passage on the ship back to England. All the nobles whisper suspiciously about Loxley looking a little less like the knight that left for the Crusades and a little more like Russell Crowe than is legally allowed.

Poffy of the Hood

Robin returns the sword (inscribed with, “Rise and rise again / Until lambs become lions”) to blind Sir Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow), and is smitten by Loxley’s daughter, Maid Marion (more like Madame Marion here, played by boiler Cate Blanchett). Old Loxley adopts Robin as his son as a ruse to retain his estate, but as it turns out, Robin’s actual insurrectionist warrior father forged that sword and Robin’s destiny lies somewhere between leading England against Prince John and Cate Blanchett’s thighs.

When petulant Prince John (Oscar Isaac) asks Robin sarcastically, “What would you have – a castle for every man?” Robin replies, “No, every Englishman’s home is his castle!” Big cheers. Russell Crowe – like he did in GLADIATOR – invents democracy again! Like the characters in BRAVEHEART, these medievals are somehow imbued with a 20th century independence even though they could not have comprehended any method of governance other than aristocratic land barons, and would not have been educated enough to care otherwise.

Rotund Mark Addy (THE FULL MONTY) is perfectly cast as Friar Tuck, instrumental in turning Robin to the ways of “robbing from the rich to give to the poor,” of which there is only one instance, very well-staged.

William Hurt is cucumber-cool as Lionheart’s Chief of Staff, fired when Prince John takes over, replaced by Godfrey (Mark Strong), who traitorously leads the French to England’s shores, causing the final beach landing to birth the hobbled twin of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

Callous, heartless Prince John cannot rally England to beat off the French, so Robin the Boy Wonder unites the civilian armies like the son of Maximus Decimus Meridius and William Wallace, and Prince John takes the credit. He promises the farmers land for backing him, but like every politician ever spawned from Satan’s Vagina, he reneges after they help him win, turning on Robin at the end and calling him an “Outlaw!” with such a surfeit of vitriol it made the trailer.

The eeevil Sheriff of Nottingham is not the nemesis plaguing Robin through his legendary exploits, rather a peripheral figure at the end of the movie – to signify that The Adventures Begin Here.

As he did with GLADIATOR, Ridley Scott (and cinematographer John Mathieson) creates a living landscape for our eyes to wondrously crawl over – part CGI, part poo, all Merry Olde England. Writers Brian Helgeland, Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris avoid the old highwayman cliché for a compelling origin tale instead (the origin tale itself a clichéd concept these days). The movie might have slid into too much political intrigue or childish blockbuster, but retains a good mix of both. And I’d rather see a gritty origin tale done well, than a rehash of Errol Flynn camping it up in forest-green ballerina spandex.

END

Apoca-Limps.

Humans against angels at a truck stop diner. Fate of the world in the hands of rednecks. As usual.

LEGION follows Angel Michael (Paul Bettany) helping the rednecks fend off the heavenly host sent to wipe out the human race. God’s pissed again. Can you blame him? Y’know, I don’t see eye to eye with Him on anything (on accounta He doesn’t exist) but I kinda agree with the Big Girl’s Blouse on this one: Humans have to die.

The clincher is: YOU agree with Him. Your Christian God is infallible, right? So when He decrees you’ve had your chance, that you blew it, and are slated for extinction via his armies of wing-ed destructors, well… haven’t you spent the last two millennia saying He Moves In Mysterious Ways (like angels “possessing” the bodies of humans to kill them… uh, somehow) and Yours Is Not To Reason Why (Why send an Ice Cream Man and old lady?)? And now you deign to question His smiting and try to stay alive against His wishes?

But Angel Michael sees it differently (once again, misinterpreting the easiest of primo Commandments: Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me) and thinks God wants him to Do What’s Right instead of what’s, uh, “right” from God’s POV (which – if he is infallible – is whatever he decrees; “If the president does it, it’s NOT illegal!”), so rebels against God and tries to save the puny humans. Last time an angel rebelled against God, Hell was created…

Paul Bettany puts in a strong Bruce Willis performance and director Scott Charles Stewart affords him all the hero angles and a champion pair of wings. Leader of the rednecks and owner of the diner is Dennis Quaid, phoning in his Concerned Face #3, Charles S. Dutton doesn’t even bother picking up the phone, Tyrese Gibson sets-and-forgets his LA Gangsta, Lucas Black just forgets – how to act; Kate Walsh tries looking like Wendie Malick and Willa Holland tries harder to look like Mila Kunis.

Most important to the asinine plot, there’s the pregnant woman (Adrianne Palicki) who’s about to have the baby that will “lead the world out of darkness,” so must be protected at all costs! Hmm, where have we heard that before? CHILDREN OF MEN, THE SEVENTH SIGN, REVENGE OF THE SITH, The Bible…

When the baby is born, Michael says “History has been unwritten” – that’s because no one in this town is smart enough to write.

Illogical, irrational, pointless, contradictory, perversely ignorant, LEGION is a quasi-zombie bulletfest that would like to be a philosophic action movie. Aimed at bible freaks who think mankind has preferential standing with a deity who is powerful enough to create the universe yet unable to wipe out seven humans at a truck stop.

Archangel Poffy

By the way, the diner is called Paradise Falls. Ha ha – get it? “Falls” as in verb.

Angel Michael tells the rednecks, “the weak-minded are the first to go,” that is, become possessed by angels and act like zombies; which implies that even the “strong-minded” will eventually get possessed. (And I snigger at the other implication: that these diner rednecks are the “strong-minded.”) Later we hear a radio report that the military have set up a barricade against the zombies– hang on! Shouldn’t the military, being the weakest-minded of all humans, be the absolute first on the angelic list of abductees?

So what’s the ultimate plan anyway, Azazel? When the humans get possessed by angels, they walk around with blank stares and, uh, then what? Kill themselves? Fly into space and suffocate? Big Man wants to wipe out humanity – why not another Deluge? Or flare the sun into supernova. Rip the atmosphere off the globe. Pull the Earth out of orbit. Or just selectively kill all humans by making them drop dead, or just disappear. Guess it’s too much to ask His Big Supernaturalness for something SUPER-NATURAL…

The Elongated Ice Cream Man (the great Doug Jones – Fauno in PAN’S LABYRINTH, Abe Sapien in HELLBOY) and the Wall-Crawling Old Lady pay their visits to try to murder the diners. Don’t hate them: they’re ANGELS doing God’s bidding; something you should all be doing as well, hypocrites!

Luckily, these supernatural zombie angels are not immune to bullets from good old American automatic weapons. (Big fist-up for the NRA!)

Angel Gabriel (fierce-faced Kevin Durand) appears to do battle with Angel Michael and – being a supernatural entity an’ all – he brings a mace. (How Spanish Inquisition of him – well, the Inquisition was perpetrated in God’s Holy Name…) And being supernatural (you know, beyond Nature, from Heaven’s unimaginable realm), one wonders why these two angels are speaking English to each other. The Gospels are silent on that one too.

The DVD synopsis tells us: “Their mission: protect a waitress and her sacred unborn child from the relentless, bloody siege of the demonic legion.” But the Legion is not demonic – it’s ANGELIC! And who said the baby was sacred? Even Michael says it is outside the realms of holy and evil. So even though this guff is marketed for lowbrow rednecks, the marketing is too gutless to admit that these are ANGELS blindly following God’s orders like spineless sheep (you know, like the American military), and that the newborn child is a pagan (you know, like Thomas Jefferson or Jesus).

In the grandest of ironies, Paul Bettany’s role just prior to this glittering dung was in CREATION, where he played naturalist Charles Darwin, whose theories of natural selection forever changed the way humans regarded themselves in the scheme of the universe, and who is congratulated by Thomas Huxley – for “killing God.”

END

Drink it in.

Claws I Said So.

What amazes about that boy Wolverine is that over a century of storied adventures, traveling the world, fighting numerous battles, through changing trends and technological advances, he manages to keep that same funky Astro Boy hairstyle.

Poffy Logan

I’ve lost track of all the “authorized” Marvel Comics origin tales and “official” timelines of Wolverine/Logan, although I remember enough to know X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE is a consolidation of many strands of the Logan mythos into a cogent origin tale that will itself stand as an “authorized” version to many. Or just confuse everyone.

Written by David Benioff and Skip Woods, directed by Gavin Hood (RENDITION, 2007), WOLVERINE is glaringly designed to be Hollywood glossy, studio extravagant and popcorn maximus. Despite all this, it’s a pretty good actioner that won’t offend too much – unless you’re a fanboy.

The Logan from the graphic novels broods darkly over his hunted existence, assassin status and homicidal urges. Unlike Peter Parker and Clark Kent, the Canadian mutant with the caress of steel is, like his animal counterpart, constantly subsuming his berserker bloodlust and paying for it psychologically. His complicated loves and losses are tragic in ways that a PG-13 actioner could never define. WOLVERINE might have been one of the great superhero movies had it steered into the curve like WATCHMEN and created a gritty R-rated closeup of a tormented soul. Instead, we get muttonchops sautéed in popcorn.

Aussie Hugh Jackman is Wolverine, his fourth film as this character, still proving himself one of the best casting choices ever made in cinematic history, with his – ahem – razor wit, altar boy charm, brooding superhero irony and playgirl muscles. Oh, dem muscles!

Movie follows Wolverine aka James Logan from his youth, when he first discovers bone claws housed in his forearms, through adulthood, fighting in world wars, civil wars, and eventually cajoled into a cadre of mercenaries led by William Stryker (Danny Huston).

Through it all, by his side, his half-brother, Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber), also a mutant, with ripper nails and fangs instead of claws (who would later become the villain Sabretooth – but that’s another x-tale).

The opening montage is a movie unto itself – the brothers battling through many eras in world history, each segment filmed in the style of the iconic film that represented that era – at Normandy, the visuals copycatting SAVING PRIVATE RYAN; in Viet Nam, APOCALYPSE NOW. This movie is so big and muscular – like our favorite berserker – we just hang on and hope someone has greased the axles and maintained the transmission while our hearts pump diesel.

Stryker’s Death Squad features Ryan Reynolds as the katana-wielding Wade Wilson, who can slice an oncoming bullet in two; Will i Am is Wraith the teleporter; Dominic Monaghan is Bolt, handy to have around during a power outage; Kevin Durand is Fred Dukes, who would later become The Blob; Daniel Henney is sharpshooter Zero. Victor loves the ferocious camaraderie in this band of mutant brothers, but unethical missions leave Logan disenchanted and he walks away from this Death Squad, taking his muscles with him.

He and his muscles settle into idyllic life in the Canadian Rockies with a girlfriend – no, not Mariko, fanboys – Kayla (the luscious Lynn Collins), until crazy-eyed Victor comes gunning for him. Or should that be clawing?

man of steel

Logan and Victor never age or get killed over all those wars. It is artfully conveyed that their mutant ability is superhuman regeneration of their body’s cells. We “age” and die because our cells eventually die quicker than they can regenerate, so it makes sense these guys would live healthily into their hundreds if their cells never stop reconstituting at superhuman speeds, even over bullet wounds.

Marriage Claws.

So even before he was imbued with the indestructible metal adamantium, Logan was pretty indestructible. And Hugh Jackman looks it, using every opportunity to get down to that tank top and tight jeans. Who can blame the boy if he’s worked that hard to get that hard? Back in the 50s and 60s, Superman and Batman movies featured skinny actors in padded suits. Who could have envisioned that in 2009 there would be an actor – not a “weightlifter” or “bodybuilder” – who could embody the physique that those weaklings aspired to? The irony is that comicbook superheroes in those days were actually drawn with boxy bodies; Jackman resembles the artwork of the late 70s, early 80s.

Sure, the Austrian Oak showed us what a real comicbook superhero’s body should look like in CONAN THE BARBARIAN, but he was a ringer. Hugh Jackman is in the same profession as those puny girlymen from days past; merely an actor.

And when he comes roaring naked out of that water tank, roped forearms blazing akimbo, adamantium claws snikting in fury, veins bursting through biceps, ferocious torso aglaze with electric runoff… you know every woman in her seat is as wet as he is.

That’s what it takes to get infused with adamantium – a Playgirl posedown. And he becomes a true super man. And probably the only comicbook hero who never gets into costume, and who fans accept that way.

“‘Cause I’m the best there is at what I do and what I do isn’t very nice.”

Through double-crosses and betrayals, Logan’s purpose eventually solidifies as revenge on Victor and Stryker.

sip from many cups, drink from none

The Ma and Pa Kent Moment: Logan is welcomed by an old couple on a farm after he escapes Stryker’s lab. All we’re missing is the glasses and cape and Glenn Ford saying, “Now wouldn’t that beat all get-out?”

Brotherhood Claws.

The Rambo Moment: over the radio, Logan tells Stryker, “I’m coming for you!”

The Striding Away From Explosion in Slow Motion Moment. Low angle. Very Dolby. Very Tarantino meets John Woo.

The Dick Cheney Moment: Stryker kills an American general in cold blood “to protect the American people from every threat, foreign and domestic.” But Stryker doesn’t kill the general for doing something wrong; the general is killed because he was trying to stop Stryker from doing something wrong. That’s our diseased Dick.

There is another Dick Moment: Kayla, an empath, says to Stryker, “I should make you kill yourself but that would make us no better than you,” then she does something worse. She mentally forces him to “walk until your feet bleed and keep walking.” That’s right – she tortures him. Because, as Dick tells us, Torture is Good, Torture is American.

The Werewolf Moment: “The only thing that will take him down is an adamantium bullet…” Well, he has the muttonchops for it.

The Clint Eastwood Moment: Hugh Jackman’s stride from behind looks like The Man With No Name.

And of course, the “Noooo!” Moment (twice!) complete with aerial camera pull back. Very blockbuster. Very Shaka Zulu.

Surprisingly, there is a stunning original moment in WOLVERINE: where Logan slices the spinning rotor blades off a helicopter.

Only in this fourth X-MEN movie do we feel the full lethality of Logan’s claws, as he slices through everything in his path, from steel walkways to vault doors and Humvees, through cages, choppers and even the bathroom sink! Those claws, as well as all the other mutants’ super powers, are utilized intelligently and often. There are never any moments where we roll our eyes because a character is not using their powers effectively – like in all the other X-MEN movies.

Gambling Claws.

We meet Gambit (Taylor Kitsch), and a young Cyclops (Tim Pocock), who, like his older counterpart James Marsden, graduated from Teen Model Mannequin University. And Patrick Stewart is a young Professor Xavier, airbrushed like a Playboy Bunny.

Action directors don’t get enough credit. Director Gavin Hood stages a magnificent fight scene atop the lip of a nuclear funnel at Three Mile Island between Logan, Victor and Deadpool (a reanimated Wade Wilson – still played by Reynolds), a mutant possessing the powers of teleportation, optic laserbeams and adamantium katanas in his forearms. Like the scene atop the train in SPIDER-MAN 2, it boggles the mind trying to imagine how this rambunctious three-way fight was storyboarded, blocked, composited with effects and eventually pulled together. Bad action directors come by the busload (Paul Greengrass’s BOURNE movies, Michael Bay’s TRANSFORMER movies), but a good action director goes unnoticed, because he turns mortally confusing eyestrain into a watchable sequence.

As a prequel, WOLVERINE acquits itself nicely, answering questions on how Logan acquires his adamantium, interacts with young Stryker; how he loses his memory and how he becomes too sexy for a spandex costume.

But it still doesn’t tell us how he got that funky Astro Boy hairdo.

END

Just another Tuesday in Vegas…

It’s a mad mad mad mad assassination.

The logic precept Occam’s Razor tells us that “Plurality should not be posited without necessity.” In other words, “Simpler is better.” But SMOKIN’ ACES fell asleep during physics class and won’t go near any logic precepts.

A walloping actioner with way too much exposition, there is more unnecessary dialogue here than in the Pam and Tommy sex tape.

Plot is straightforward: a mobbed-up magician, Buddy ‘Aces’ Israel (Jeremy Piven, ENTOURAGE) is about to canary to the FBI. Holed up in a Lake Tahoe hotel penthouse, the mob wants him dead – thank you, Captain Obvious! – and puts out not just a contract, but a bounty on his head for one million dollars. Out to scalp him is every vicious criminal and gunslinger in the west – rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, desperadoes… mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswaggelers, horse thieves, bulldykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shitkickers and Methodists.

Smokin’ Salad

And writer-director Joe Carnahan (bastard spawn of Guy Ritchie) is intent on giving us backstory on each and every one. With jump cuts slamming enough to knock over an elephant, we are introduced to crooked cops led by Ben Affleck, goth-insane Tremor Brothers (Chris Pine, Kevin Durand, Maury Sterling), a steel-speared Persian-looking guy (Nestor Carbonell), a Welsh master of disguise, various other pain-meisters and do-badders – there’s even an Ambiguously Lesbian Duo (Taraji P. Henson and Alicia Keys)! And all the while we’re wondering: if these muthas are so publicly badass, how is it that they haven’t been arrested/killed/given a reality series yet?

For pure visceral entertainment, this is the movie for you – problem is, it loses focus: is it aiming for a gut-level slam to the reptilian brain, or trying to unspool a complex story with a half-relevant twist at the end? I’m here for the visceral; please stop with the dialogue – too much talking! Stop the talking! Will you go to lunch?! Go to lunch! WILL you go to lunch?!

A discernible thread follows the two cops, Carruthers and Messner (Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds), trying to stop the hit, with Andy Garcia (supersuave as always) their superior officer with ulterior agenda.

Jason Bateman scene-steals as an alcoholic, cross-dressing sleazebag lawyer (nothing new, I know), Tommy Flanagan is chilling as the LEON/Hannibal master of disguise, and Ben Affleck does some of his best acting while he lies dead and his killer works his mouth like a puppet (the same method that was used in GIGLI).

The most disturbing murder is the intimate one, when Persian spears a Security Guard and almost sensuously embraces him ’til death.

Aussie Joel Edgerton does such a fantastic job of assimilating first his Russian character and then Tommy Flanagan’s assassin character (who wears his rubber face – in reality, it is Joel playing the assassin) that we actually believe he is first a klutz Russian and then a nerveless assassin.

There are some well-directed, tense moments, the usual shoot-em-up melees, an emphatic, tear-streaming performance from Jeremy Piven, with a half-lame twist at the end that prompts – you guessed it – more talking, as Ryan Reynolds actually says to Andy Garcia, the mastermind behind the quasi-scam, “Make it all make sense.”

Really, if we wanted this much unnecessary talking, we’d pop in Pam and Tommy’s sex tape.

END