The closer you look, the less you’ll care…

Magician J. Daniel Atlas has a slogan: “The closer you look – the less you’ll see.” Uh, no, I’m actually seeing right into your cliché-riddled screenplay, and your swooping camera moves to misdirect me means that you know that I know what you don’t want me to know…

Four smug magicians use their talents to pull heists and give the money to the less fortunate, like modern day Robin Hoods. They’re young, sexy and dangerous. And too smug for their own sleight of hand.

With slick, kinetic direction (by Louis Leterrier), wasted on conceited characters that are aching for a bitchslap, the magician heist dramedy NOW YOU SEE ME is alternately very entertaining and very irritating. As with any heist movie, much of the heist action is kept from our prying eyes until it can be told in flashback as a “cheat” rather than a smart reveal, like sucking on the teat of the OCEAN’S movies.

Jesse Eisenberg is illusionist Atlas (now exploiting that ice-cool mercenary he found with his Zuckerberg), leading a quartet of magicians brought together by a mysterious magic guru called The Eye, who is the mythic leader of the cult of the same name. Woody Harrelson is mentalist (aka “mind reader”) Merritt McKinney, Isla Fisher is escapist Henley Reeves, and Dave Franco is small-time hustler Jack Wilder. All four desire admittance into that exclusive magic club The Eye, and are willing to follow any enigmatic directives to gain it. You know the beats: they’re all slipped a card to be at a certain place at a certain time, where more mysterious directives are placed before them, which they will blindly follow because apparently, and ironically, they’re gullible idiots.

Atlas finds his card just before sex with a groupie. As he kicks her out, promising to call, she wails, “You don’t have my number.” His reply, “I’m magic. I’ll find you.” He doesn’t say, “I’m a magician” or “I’m magical.” He says “magic.” As a noun. That’s so funny!

Each of the four have some damaged past, and only in uniting – begrudgingly at first – do they find overwhelming success, as a Vegas act called The Four Horsemen. Michael Caine is Arthur Tressler, who funds the Horsemen, and is taken for a horsey ride when the magicians turn on him for owning an insurance company that doesn’t pay its claims. (One would think he’d know better after warning us of The Turn in THE PRESTIGE). And Morgan Freeman, smugly smirking in the middle background as former magician Thaddeus Bradley, is a James Randi-type skeptic who cannot quite figure the Horsemen, except that he’s having a smirking good time watching them make asshats of everyone trying to catch them. You’d think that two of Batman’s pals would know better.

Ruffled Mark Ruffalo is the lead detective tailing the Horsemen, with the boy-model name of Dylan Rhodes, with a smokin’ hot Interpol detective in tow – Mélanie Laurent (Shoshanna from INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) – who is only here for eye candy, exposition and forced romantic resolution. For coolness, Michael Kelly (Frank Underwood’s “Al Neary” in HOUSE OF CARDS) is Dylan’s partner.

Shades of THE ILLUSIONIST and THE PRESTIGE and any Michael Bay movie where the tracking cameras hijack the action. At first, we are intrigued by The Pledge (the premise of what is going to transpire in the realm of misdirection), and we are always taken aback at The Turn, but our interest soon wanes when The Prestige of each act reveals results too impossible to achieve without REAL magic, the insufferable Harry Potter kind. During one show, Henley swooshes open a big scarf, and we realize – it is CGI, as it swooshes around against the laws of physics. Why? I doubt the professional scarf-twirler was out of your budget as a practical effect. You people are just hooked on bullshit for the sake of it.

Ironically, in cheating their own audience, writers Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt spoil the illusion of the movie itself. For example, to heist an armored car, we are told the magicians are already inside it. Well… how’d they get there? Is it that easy to build a fake floor in an armored van? To heist a vault in faraway Paris, we are told there is an exact replica of the Paris vault under the stage. Well… who built this? Are the Horsemen master contractors as well? (By the way, the French bank director whom they heist – Jose Garcia – is the French Robert Downey Jr.)

How is Wilder playing with a deck of cards in the interrogation room? (You mean they removed all his personal belongings when they arrested him, and let him keep a deck of cards?) How did Atlas have his phone on him in the interrogation room, to be able to switch with the boy-band-named Dylan Rhodes? (Again, they frisked him and said, “Okay, you can keep the phone”?) And Rhodes only realizes his phone has been switched days after the fact, and only because the phone screen glitches. But anyone would know in an INSTANT if their phone was switched, the moment they tried to use it. Do I even need to explain why? A dummy phone contains none of your personalization or history. Later, we discover a logical reason why the detective didn’t realize his phone had been switched, but then we look back at the moment he “realized” and it becomes even more of a pointless plot point.

Like its subject matter, NOW YOU SEE ME is fast-paced because it needs to be, to misdirect, and make us think it’s doing something interesting while really doing something sneaky. Only for the gullible.

END

Hash of the Titans.

Liam Neeson and Sam Worthington try to out-act special effects. Fail. 16-year-old boys rejoice. Mankind tries to live without deities. Fail. Churches rejoice.

CLASH OF THE TITANS is written to be enjoyed exclusively by 16-year-old boys. Hell, I loved the 1981 original film starring Harry Hamlin and Burgess Meredith. When I was 16. The 2010 remake obviously has better special effects and much better-realized and refined supernatural creatures (as homage to the original film, the electronic owl makes a cameo), but the acting and the story have not graduated past the level of acceptance required by 16-year-old boys.

Perseus (Aussie Worthington, who just can’t seem to shake that accent as his ancestors Mel Gibson, Guy Pearce and Daniel Craig did), a demi-god in ancient Greece, must battle against the gods themselves when the city of Argos is forced to sacrifice its princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) to the gargantuan monster, the Kraken.

Like any story that involves religion, everything happens for irrational reasons and without motivation and without any point. Perseus’s very birth is laden with irrational backstory, as mortal King Acrisius (Jason Flemyng) feuds with Olympian god Zeus (Neeson), raiding Olympus every weekend, causing Zeus to rape Acrisius’s wife.

Poffeus

Let’s backtrack for a moment: How exactly do you feud with a god? And how does one raid Olympus? Isn’t it on another dimensional plane? And even if Olympus is just a physical abode resting on the lowest clouds, how do the ancient Greek soldiery (possessing no flying machines) actually “attack” Olympus?…Onward…

To rape Acrisuis’s wife, Zeus makes himself look like Acrisius to gain her bed – but being an omniscient god, why stoop to such banal subversion to overcome a woman? Just offer to fly her to Paris for lunch – she’ll be yours before dessert. Acrisius’s wife births Perseus, who is half-god, half-Australian. Acrisius, in a fit of rage, uh, waits nine months until baby Perseus is born, to entomb both baby and mother in a coffin and hurl it into the sea “to destroy Zeus’s seed.” Guess his “fit of rage” didn’t take into account it might have been easier to just stab the mother while she was pregnant…

Long story short: Perseus lives, becomes a fisherman, in a world which has started to defy the gods who created them. Soldiers destroy a giant Zeus statue and broham Hades, ruler of the underworld, immediately appears as a giant black pissed-off winged entity (with smaller bat-winged demons reminiscent of JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) and wipes the floor with the soldiers. So what kind of cretin would continue insulting gods? (When the Greek scribes wrote this tale, did they not see the paradox of their plot point? In a world where gods continually give physical evidence of their power, just how stupid does mankind have to be to defy them? These people of ancient Greece were written with the sensibilities of people who lived in a world without gods, i.e. ours.)

As testament to this spreading impertinence, Queen Cassiopeia of Argos boasts that her daughter Andromeda is more beautiful than the goddess Aphrodite, at which point Hades (Ralph Fiennes, doing his best Gary Oldman), appears again and calls for Andromeda’s sacrifice – or he will release the Kraken (which we presume is a Very Bad Thing because he pronounces the name so terribly feyly). I was sure he said “OR” he would release the Kraken – but later, he releases the Kraken anyway to pick up the sacrifice. Hey, we made the sacrifice, why not send something not so dangerously fey to pick it up? You killing two birds with one stone here?

After Hades lays down his curse, Perseus unwittingly gets roped into the quest to stop the Kraken, which involves visiting Stygian witches, taming a Pegasus flying horse, lopping off the head of the gorgon Medusa and using it to turn the Kraken to stone. While Hans Zimmer‘s music makes it epic on toast. All in a day’s work for a demi-god. But Perseus spends half his skirt-wearing, sword-wielding time bitching about wanting to be a man not a god.

Perseus maintains to Zeus, “We live, we fight and we die for each other – not for you,” which again, is spoken like a man living in a world WITHOUT gods, or in a world with imaginary gods, i.e. ours. If the gods showed themselves and performed magical, physics-bending havoc when you defied them, I’m betting you would learn quicksmart how to live, fight and die for them.

Blaming director Louis Leterrier and writers Travis Beacham, Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi for these discrepancies would be like blaming Peter Jackson for the illogical happenings in THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The Greek mythology is already written – if the movie writers stuck to every detail and inserted every ulterior motivation of the complex characters, we would need a trilogy of movies. As a movie version of CLASH OF THE TITANS had already been written in 1981 by Beverly Cross, these remake writers simply took that script – and dumbed it down even further.

As illustrated by the box office, no one cares. In modern parlance, “going Greek” doesn’t involve mythological classicism.

These are fairy tales that turned into legends that turned into religion that turned into mythology. (Christianity is still at the religion stage.) So it’s irrational from the outset. CLASH OF THE TITANS is one deus ex machina piled on another. Uh, literally.

Mads Mikkelson, Danish megastar and Bond Villain, is Draco, leader of the quest (he was never this hefty in CASINO ROYALE, but in CLASH, can’t stop looking like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson); Gemma Arterton is Io (also a Bond character in QUANTUM OF SOLACE; here, a Google substitute whenever anyone needs info on ancient Greek mythology – and as she’s dodging giant scorpions we almost see her undies!).

The visualization of the creatures – from Flemyng’s Calibos makeup to the ferryman Charon, to Medusa, the Pegasus and the Kraken – is monstrously good, although I will say that Medusa should have been topless. She’s a snake-like monster who lives amongst ruins and turns people to stone with her stare; can you really see her adjusting her ornate bra for maximum push-up effect? I’m just sayin.’

But I do object to the giant scorpions – boring! All CGI arthropods, arachnids or insects make my eyes glaze over. One deus ex later, with the aid of rock creatures, everyone’s riding these useless effects.

The story makes an infantile decision to paint Hades as a “villain,” as if synonymous with the christian devil, but Hades was not a simple polar opposite to Zeus; Zeus ruled Olympus, Poseidon ruled the oceans and Hades ruled the underworld, which was called either Tartarus, Elysium or Erebus, and was a region ALL human souls passed through, not just “bad” ones. And Olympus was NOT the equivalent of christian heaven, it was the exclusive abode of the gods – NO human was allowed there.

Would that any human cast his unworthy gaze on Liam Neeson’s fake pirate’s beard and absolutely fabulous outfit; gadding about in a shimmering silvery ballroom gown made of chromium wings that is even gayer than his costume as Qui-Gon Jin.

The Stygian Witches prophesize that if Perseus goes after Medusa, he will die. Again, prophesy proven wrong. But no one seems to notice. Of what use then was the prophecy? And those rock monster guys who tamed the scorpions abandon Perseus, even though the prophecy said that he would die, not them! And they can’t be affected by Medusa anyway – cos they’re already rock! But who are we to speak of such logic – screenwriters?…

As a final insult to us, and the grandest misnomer of all: the twelve Titans of Ancient Greece were Cronus, Oceanus, Tethys, Mnemosyne, Hyperion, Themis, Thea, Iapetus, Phoebe, Rhea, Coeus and Crius. Any names you recognize from the movie? Of course not. When I was 16, I believed one of the Titans was the Kraken, the other Medusa, still another, Perseus. And though Zeus or Hades are erroneously regarded as Titans by some texts, they are merely offspring of Titans, Cronus and Rhea. So… a movie called CLASH OF THE TITANS which features not one actual Titan.

The moviemakers are just bending us over and going Greek on us.

END

Someone tell Ed he doesn’t have to work that hard – we’ll use CGI when he turns into the Hulk…

Hulk Movie – Smash!

Don’t make him… hungry! You wouldn’t like him when he’s hungry…

Bill Bixby’s infamous caveat, once again comically bastardized. In Ang Lee’s HULK (2003), Eric Bana delivered it in Spanish at movie’s end; now in 2008, Edward Norton delivers pidgin Portuguese – badly.

Neither a sequel nor an origin tale, THE INCREDIBLE HULK is an adrenalized shot to the sternum – if it doesn’t knock you black and blue, it will at least slap you and call you Susan.

Poffy – he’s already green!

The intro sequence reveals the origin backstory, allowing movie to hit the ground running, with skinny Edward Norton as Bruce Banner hiding out in an old-world Brazilian village, text onscreen, “Days without incident: 158.” Our first impulse is “Wha-?” This is Edward Norton after all, he of renowned Thespian fame; maybe a tad overqualified to deliver lines like, “Hulk smash!”? Then – it hits (no pun): it’s EDWARD NORTON, no stranger to Dual Personality – from his breakout schizoid role opposite Richard Gere in PRIMAL FEAR (1996) to his ravenous Tyler Durden opposite Pitt in FIGHT CLUB (1999), to sliding in effortlessly amongst giants Brando and De Niro in THE SCORE (2001), and even to the nerve-jangling DEATH TO SMOOCHY (2002) – Norton delivers “second personality” like second nature.

Hulk good!

Coincidentally, the last HULK movie ended in Brazil, all the press junkets maintaining that starting this movie in Brazil in NO WAY ties it to Ang Lee’s film – whatever you say, movie-mongo dudes…

In Brazil, Banner works in a bottling factory, minimally able to communicate with co-workers; performing body control exercises with a meditation guru who thrills in bitchslapping him incessantly; monitors his heart rate via a wrist readout and, unlike the rest of the fad-infected world, tries NOT to “go green,” awaiting an antidote to his Hulk genes from an online mystery man in America named Mr. Blue, before he dares return home. (Of course, Banner’s code name is… Mr. Green. We didn’t see that coming.) And running gags about stretchy pants abound…

But General Ross (William Hurt, phoning it in) wants Banner’s genes to utilize as military weaponry, so single-minded that he would risk his own daughter’s life to attain that power. Typical pathological military jughead – nothing we haven’t seen in the real world. There’s crazy. Then there’s Army Crazy. Ross enlists the aid of hard army grunt, Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth, deranged as per usual), injected with a super-soldier serum (wink to Captain America fanboys) to take on the Hulk mano-a-mano and capture him for lab experiments which probably include examining the magical material in his pants.

For a superhero action movie, there could be no better pedigree than director Louis Leterrier (TRANSPORTER 2, DANNY THE DOG) and writer Zak Penn (X2, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND).

The Hulk’s first appearance is well-staged, in glimpses and silhouettes. When we see Hulk in full battle daylight, it is astounding! Not just due to the effects team (Gentle Giant Studios, among many) melding him with “reality,” but because of the innovative motion-capture technology of Giant Studios. When the Hulk and the soon-to-be-birthed Abomination move, they are smoothly human; walking upright casually, without the jerkiness or “simulated” movement of computer beings, interacting with debris, machinery, people, water rivulets cascading off flexing muscles… and though his name reflects the 1962 Marvel Comics creation, no more is Hulk a bulky blob, but a svelte man-machine with a sexy v-shape. I especially like the way these creatures run full tilt, with the desperate lean and violent arm-swing of slim sprinters.

So you been concentrating on “tone,” brah!

Although the movie must have offended some aficionados by spawning Hulk through super-soldier serum instead of gamma rays, there are still innumerable canonical nods and winks: Stan Lee as an unwary office guy who drinks a soda tainted with Hulk blood; Bill Bixby in a TV snippet from COURTSHIP OF EDDIE’S FATHER; the Lonely Man Theme from THE HULK TV series, where Bixby walks the lonely highway in snazzy bellbottoms that will be shredded by the next episode; a cameo by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) to synergize the Avenger Initiative; and – not least, Lou Ferrigno!; again as a security guard (and also voicing the Hulk), looking fit enough to play a real life version of the CGI eponym.

When Banner gets back to the U.S. he covertly looks up his old flame, the daughter of General Ross, Betty (Liv Tyler, also phoning), who, like every woman whose love-of-her-life is on the lam, is time-serving with another guy. Of course, the part-time movie-boyfriend is a complete dork who looks like Casey Kasem in a vest. (It’s never a David Lee Roth circa 1980 Van Halen.) When Betty accidentally encounters tragic Bruce, she’s all over him like a thousand-dollar gfe hooker. If only all women were so devotional as to curl around you so urgently and intimately after years of separation, unquestioning of the condition of your shovel and the medical history of your last hookup. That’s why they call these things “fantasy.”

Betty and Bruce seek out Mr. Blue (an eccentric Tim Blake Nelson), who has been hoarding Hulk blood samples like geekboys hoarding back issues. Mr. Blue doesn’t really help Bruce, but he helps the plot, when Emil Blonsky, insatiable for monstrous power, forces Blue to inject him with Hulk blood; apparently, mixing super-soldier serum and Hulk blood creates a big vomit-colored, bone-splintering monstrosity called The Abomination… which precipitates the TRANSFORMERS moment: that point in any film where you realize everything onscreen is computer-generated and that this eye-candy battle between two big things might as well be a video game – and you’re sitting here watching it even though you’re over 30.

Still, the action surprisingly contains heart. Hulk becomes Hero. No matter the many incarnations that portray Hulk as brainless or fogged with gamma-amnesia, this Hulk retains a sizeable chunk of Banner-brain, and his fierce compassion bleeds right offa the emerald giant’s computer blips. We sense quite poignantly that Hulk’s most compelling battle is not with big things that go boom, but with himself. And as good as Hulk’s battles are, I don’t think many of us over 30 would complain had we been given more of the great Ed Norton doing introspective and sullen.

End frames set up the Avenger Initiative with Stark – it is no secret Marvel are cross-pollinating their cameos; hope springs eternal that IRON MAN and THE INCREDIBLE HULK presage a spate of quality Marvel offerings, and that the slated 2011 release of FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA won’t be as super-mundane as the 1979 TV series, with Reb Brown gadding about in a foamy muscle suit and plastic bike. As a Cap fan, that debacle made me very angry.

Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

END