DVD Review: Iron Man 2

Overstuffed, top-heavy sequel arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray September 28.

If sequels to successful films rarely live up to their fan bases’ expectations, then sequels to films that surprised audiences have twice as much work cut out for them. The surprise of discovery and the thrill of infatuation clear away, and the hard work of earning an audience’s respect – while justifying their initial enthusiasm – settles over the sequel like a heavy cloth from which the story has to emerge.

The first Iron Man surprised almost everyone a couple of years ago by presenting better entertainment than even fans of the Marvel Comics superhero likely anticipated. Its sequel, arriving barely two years later into theatres but atop a crest of eager audience expectation, feels rushed and over-reaching for much of its wall-to-wall, action-packed proceedings. Luckily an enviable ensemble of actors, including most especially Robert Downey, Jr., work to keep the whole project from dissolving into noise and chaos. But it takes their combined efforts, and they succeed just barely.

Following Tony Stark’s (Downey, Jr.) revelation to the world that he is in fact the armored hero, his use of the suit has rankled his competitors and lawmakers alike, especially his bumbling rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) and a pompous senator (Garry Shandling) who would like the armor’s secrets for, respectively, themselves and for the government. But the maverick Stark ain’t having it, insisting he has “successfully privatized world peace” and that he serves the people at his own pleasure. “You can always count on me to pleasure myself,” he quips.

But pride goeth before a fall, and when Russian physicist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) attacks Stark during the Monaco Grand Prix, it sets off a domino chain of events that crash Stark’s world down around him. “All I have to do is sit here and watch,” Vankdo taunts from a jail cell, “as the world will consume you.” Hammer later recruits him to perfect his own flawed armor technology, while the U.S. military exerts increasing pressure through Stark’s buddy Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard) to cooperate with their own agendas. Making matters worse, the palladium that powers the reactor in Stark’s chest is slowly poisoning his blood, provoking increasingly erratic and self-indulgent behavior that alienates him from Rhodes as well as secretary/love interest Pepper Pots (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Relief and assistance come from directions both expected but welcome and unexpected and disappointing. The spies of SHIELD, led by the eyepatch-wearing Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) have the means to treat the blood poisoning but want Stark’s cooperation in their own efforts; to that end, they’ve had a sexy agent (Scarlett Johansson) posing as a legal assistant within his company for weeks. Stark also learns his father Howard (John Slattery) was a founding member of the organization, and that an old filmstrip contains the aloof elder Stark’s vision for his son’s greatness and salvation. At this point the film comes closest to coming completely off the rails: to see the individualist Stark reduced to daddy issues, and to have a solution handed to him, is probably the film’s greatest and cheapest fault.

All of this and more is compressed into a two-hour runtime, with the result that the script often bulges at its seams. The first hour is a flurry of exposition and explanation that sometimes loses its coherence, and for audiences not already well-steeped in the comic mythology the confusion is likely to be compounded. The translation from comic book to screen is almost never without a few bumps, but here a persistent sense of something going unsaid, something taken for granted, permeates the characters’ dialogue and interaction. Little is done with the new characters to establish their connections to one another, save for some brief explanation by way of tossed-off speech. Typically, that speech is Stark making a wise crack about them.

The hurried sense of chaos unfortunately takes its toll on the performers. Rourke’s casting was heavily publicized, but his role remains opaque and largely devoid of nuance. He’s a bad guy, evil and driven by revenge, with little else complicating him. For as entertaining as Cheadle and Johansson are in their parts, there’s no compelling reason for their participation except that their characters are mainstays of the source comic; in a telling sign, none of the new characters are ever called by their comic code names: Stark dubs Cheadle “War Machine” out of context, Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff is never referred to as “The Black Widow,” Vanko is never called “Whiplash.” To be fair, Johansson’s fight sequences have an exciting fluidity in contrast to the high-tech armor everywhere else while Cheadle, the consummate actor’s actor, manages to seem completely at home in what’s essentially a fighter jet worn as a suit.

Rockwell does his best with an underwritten part, but Hammer is too self-sabotaguing to ever seem a credible threat to Stark’s genius; if ever a villain performance actually needed more mustache twirling, this may be the case. John Slattery plays Howard Stark as an unmistakable riff on Walt Disney in the 1960′s, when the animator had turned his energies towards a utopian futurism that likely seemed naive even then. (It’s a weird counterpoint to his normal role as the cynical Roger Sterling of Mad Men.) Of the returning characters, Downey Jr. is excellent yet again, building on Stark’s less endearing qualities while undercutting them with vulnerabilities and needs he has no idea how to express. Paltrow is exactly the same as she was last time, no more and no less; Jackson is fine but looks somewhat less than convincing marching around in a leather trench coat and riding boots in broad daylight.

The Marvel Universe is nothing if not interconnected, and all the superfluous characters and story threads piled over one another are all leading to 2012′s The Avengers. Like last time, fans will want to stick around after the credits for a brief scene that teases the ongoing build-up to that film. In the meantime, this flm feels too rushed, too ambitious, and preoccupied to match the giddy revelation of its predecessor. But it’s still entertaining thanks primarily to what was right with the first film, even while introducing some new elements that stand on their own. It’s an above average sequel to a superior action film, not great but pretty good, moving the ongoing story forward while only sacrificing some momentum.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, May 2010 Edition

The end of another month means our monthly roundup of news and analysis miscellany. 

Well, that was May 2010, and as far as films go it was distinctly underwhelming, with the television landscape not looking an awful lot better. The biggest releases of the month both disappointed, with neither Iron Man 2 or Robin Hood meeting the promise that their predecessors or creative talent suggested. With three new large-scale films - Prince of Persia, George Romero’s Survival of the Dead, and the already dated-looking Sex And The City 2 slamming into multiplexes this week there’s no doubt the summer season is upon us. (We remember when the Memorial Day weekend was the starter. Like the holiday season, summer comes a little earlier every year now.) 

At the end of every month we roundup some news, information, and analysis that we never got around to giving our complete blogging attention. They’re listed below, in no particular order of importance. 

 1. What exactly was so disappointing about Iron Man 2, or for that matter Robin Hood? Both films look superb “on paper,” and the spectacles inherent in their concepts alone promised at least diversionary thrills. In retrospect, now that the buzz around both films has dissipated, we think Iron Man 2 suffered from a surplus of corporate enthusiasm. With too many new characters – the film desperately wants audiences to demand Black Widow and War Machine spinoffs – too many storylines and too little time for character development, the whole effort feels in retrospect like clanging, top-heavy overkill. 

Robin Hood, meanwhile, seemed entirely the answer to a question nobody asked. Glum, excessively violent, and sometimes almost misanthropic, it was a new look at a character that most audiences possibly weren’t thinking needed a  gritty treatment. On the other hand, it may age better than Iron Man 2, growing a respecting fan base with DVD and cable showings.  

No future: FlashForward

 2. The ratings deathmatch between FlashForward and V, ABC’s two sci-fi franchise hopes once touted as the heirs apparent to Lost, came to an end with V getting the second season greenlight and FlashForward airing its season finale May 27. Ratings analysts had speculated that the network would renew one – and only one – series, and a modest late season bump in V‘s ratings let it edge ahead. We’re not going to armchair showrun either series, but FlashForward had potential it deferred too long; V needs to turn the heat up on most of its plotlines and jettison at least two characters if it has a chance of growing a larger audience. Now comes news that ABC may revive Alias, which seems like a knee-jerk reaction to losing Lost. 

3. On the far other end of the television series lifespan graph, Law & Order is also cancelled after a mere twenty – count ‘em, twenty – seasons. By way of perspective, the people born the year it debuted are in college now. (Unfortunately, it falls just a single season short of the longest-running drama series record still held by Gunsmoke.) Its cancellation might be something else to blame on the Jay Leno debacle: had NBC not shuffled everything to accommodate Leno’s 10 PM time slot, Law & Order might have held on to a larger audience as more people could actually find it on the schedule. All is not lost, however. Franchise mastermind Dick Wolf plans to explore other avenues for the show to continue, including a two-hour TV movie as a last resort. Meanwhile NBC plans to trot out Law & Order: Los Angeles this fall.

We miss seeing Bridget Fonda.

 4. Quentin Tarantino’s most accomplished but least appreciated film is on track for the prequel treatment. Writer-director Daniel Schechter (Goodbye Baby) has adapted Elmore Leonard’s novel The Switch, which featured several of the characters that later appeared in Rum Punch, the novel Tarantino reworked into Jackie Brown. Specifically, The Switch relates an early crime adventure of Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara, the roles played in Jackie Brown by, respectively, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert DeNiro. Tarantino reportedly won’t be involved in the project, which is tentatively scheduled for a 2011 release. The search for a director and cast is currently underway. 

5. We’ve eagerly, obsessively collected and even suggested ways to build your own, and this July 13 Warner Bros resumes their Film Noir Classics box set collection with a new four-disc set. Volume 5 includes eight films, a slight downgrade from Volume 4, which boasted ten, but also showcases lesser-known works from noir auteurs including Anthony Mann and Robert Fleischer. The charmingly noirish titles include Cornered, Desperate, Backfire, and Crime In The Streets. 

Continuing the noiry excitement, two weeks later Paramount Pictures releases its own trio of offerings, including the William Holden-Barry Fitzgerald noirish thriller Union Station, the Charlton Heston-starring Dark City, and the Alan Ladd vehicle Appointment With Danger. 

6. At the risk of jumping to conclusions, Criterion may release their edition of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line if a bare-bones preorder page at Amazon.com proves to be correct. Based on the novel by James Jones, author of From Here To Eternity (and featuring many of the same characters, albeit renamed), the film structured the events of World War II’s Guadalcanal campaign into a series of vignettes about the men fighting it, taking in every human emotion and failing along the grueling way. 

Upon its 1998 release the film was unfairly ignored by a public that preferred the more simplistic jingoism of Saving Private Ryan (released earlier that year) or felt leery of its sorrowful, meditative tone. Nevertheless, Malick’s eye for arresting imagery didn’t dull one bit after an almost twenty year hiatus; the trailer alone is more picturesque than most films. 

 

Here's looking at you, kid.

7. Finally, we want to invite you to post your feedback. In a weird inverse ratio, the number of comments posted to our site has dropped off even while our traffic has steadily grown. Discussion being the root of understanding, we’d like to hear your own ideas, especially about some of the more obscure material we blog about. If you’re just posting a comment to build links, however, don’t waste your time. We delete those immediately, without approval.

Next week we’ll be back with a review of Prince of Persia. Have a good Memorial Day weekend and remember to stay safe on the roads.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Iron Man 2

Robert Downey, Jr. and an ace supporting cast hustle to keep an overloaded script aloft. 

If sequels to successful films rarely live up to their fan bases’ expectations, then sequels to films that surprised audiences have twice as much work cut out for them. The surprise of discovery and the thrill of infatuation clear away, and the hard work of earning an audience’s respect – while justifying their initial enthusiasm – settles over the sequel like a heavy cloth from which the story has to emerge.

The first Iron Man surprised almost everyone a couple of years ago by presenting better entertainment than even fans of the Marvel Comics superhero likely anticipated. Its sequel, arriving barely two years later, feels rushed and over-reaching for much of its wall-to-wall, action-packed proceedings. Luckily an enviable ensemble of actors, including most especially Robert Downey, Jr., work to keep the whole project from dissolving into noise and chaos. But it takes their combined efforts, and they succeed just barely.

Following Tony Stark’s (Downey, Jr.) revelation to the world that he is in fact the armored hero, his use of the suit has rankled his competitors and lawmakers alike, especially his bumbling rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) and a pompous senator (Garry Shandling) who would like the armor’s secrets for, respectively, themselves and for the government. But the maverick Stark ain’t having it, insisting he has “successfully privatized world peace” and that he serves the people at his own pleasure. “You can always count on me to pleasure myself,” he quips.

But pride goeth before a fall, and when Russian physicist Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) attacks Stark during the Monaco Grand Prix, it sets off a domino chain of events that crash Stark’s world down around him. “All I have to do is sit here and watch,” Vankdo taunts from a jail cell, “as the world will consume you.” Hammer later recruits him to perfect his own flawed armor technology, while the U.S. military exerts increasing pressure through Stark’s buddy Colonel James Rhodes (Don Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard) to cooperate with their own agendas. Making matters worse, the palladium that powers the reactor in Stark’s chest is slowly poisoning his blood, provoking increasingly erratic and self-indulgent behavior that alienates him from Rhodes as well as secretary/love interest Pepper Pots (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Relief and assistance come from directions both expected but welcome and unexpected and disappointing. The spies of SHIELD, led by the eyepatch-wearing Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) have the means to treat the blood poisoning but want Stark’s cooperation in their own efforts; to that end, they’ve had a sexy agent (Scarlett Johansson) posing as a legal assistant within his company for weeks. Stark also learns his father Howard (John Slattery) was a founding member of the organization, and that an old filmstrip contains the aloof elder Stark’s vision for his son’s greatness and salvation. At this point the film comes closest to coming completely off the rails: to see the individualist Stark reduced to daddy issues, and to have a solution handed to him, is probably the film’s greatest and cheapest fault.

All of this and more is compressed into a two-hour runtime, with the result that the script often bulges at its seams.  The first hour is a flurry of exposition and explanation that sometimes loses its coherence, and for audiences no already well-steeped in the comic mythology the confusion is likely to be moreso. The translation from comic book to screen is almost never without a few bumps, but here a persistent sense of something going unsaid, something taken for granted, permeates the characters’ dialogue and interaction. Little is done with the new characters to establish their connections to one another, save for some brief explanation by way of tossed-off speech. Typically, that speech is Stark making a wise crack about them.

The hurried sense of chaos unfortunately takes its toll on the performers. Rourke’s casting was heavily publicized, but his role remains opaque and largely devoid of nuance. He’s a bad guy, evil and driven by revenge, with little else complicating him. For as entertaining as Cheadle and Johansson are in their parts, there’s no compelling reason for their participation except that their characters are mainstays of the source comic; in a telling sign, none of the new characters are ever called by their comic code names: Stark dubs Cheadle “War Machine” out of context, Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff is never referred to as “The Black Widow,” Vanko is never called “Whiplash.” To be fair, Johansson’s fight sequences have an exciting fluidity in contrast to the high-tech armor everywhere else while Cheadle, the consummate actor’s actor, manages to seem completely at home in what’s essentially a fighter jet worn as a suit.

Rockwell does his best with an underwritten part, but Hammer is too self-sabotaguing to ever seem a credible threat to Stark’s genius; if ever a villain performance actually needed more mustache twirling, this may be the case. John Slattery plays Howard Stark as an unmistakable riff on Walt Disney in the 1960′s, when the animator had turned his energies towards a utopian futurism that likely seemed naive even then. It’s a weird counterpoint to his normal role as the cynical Roger Sterling of Mad Men. Of the returning characters, Downey Jr. is excellent yet again, building on Stark’s less endearing qualities while undercutting them with vulnerabilities and needs he has no idea how to express. Paltrow is exactly the same as she was last time, no more and no less; Jackson is fine but looks somewhat less than convincing marching around in a leather trenchcoat and riding boots in broad daylight.

But the Marvel Universe is nothing if not interconnected, and all the superfluous characters and story threads piled over one another are all leading to 2012′s The Avengers. Like last time, fans will want to stick around after the credits for a brief scene that teases the ongoing build-up to that film. In the meantime, this flm feels too rushed, too ambitious, and preoccupied to match the giddy revelation of its predecessor. But it’s still entertaining thanks primarily to what was right with the first film, even while introducing some new elements that stand on their own. It’s an above average sequel to a superior action film, not great but pretty good, moving the ongoing story forward while only sacrificing some momentum.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, April 2010 Edition

Commentary and analysis of interesting stuff that didn’t get a full post.  

April’s over, and the summer movie season is chomping at the box office bit. There’s not much going on in movies right now, but like most Aprils that dearth of films – leftovers, misfires and films little-loved by their studios – pretty much represent the lull before the storm. (An exception being The Losers, a film we liked more than we thought we would.) The sequel to Iron Man, which most fans of the original have been looking forward to since its closing credits, opens next weekend; meanwhile the heavily-hyped remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street finally opens tomorrow. In the coming weeks – May alone – we’ll see the premieres of Robin Hood, Sex and The City 2, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and Shrek Forever After. June promises a similar metric ton of movies with budgets in the eight- and nine-digit range.  

In the meantime, here’s our favorite news items and topics we thought were worthy of discussion and/or coverage, even if we never got around to blogging about them all on their own. They’re in no particular order of importance.  

1. A couple of years or so ago we called Ang Lee’s Ride With the Devil to task for its choppy narrative structure and uneven performances. A just-released Criterion Edition premieres the director’s cut of Lee’s (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm) Civil War saga, along with a new screen transfer and some pretty straightforward extra features. Though often well-staged and intelligent, the barely released 1999 theatrical version promised more than it ultimately delivered, especially in the way of performance: many of the supporting characters, including roles played by Skeet Ulrich and the suburb Jeffrey Wright, got short shrift despite hints of richer work left on the cutting room floor. Hopefully the ten restored minutes smooth out these problems, letting the film it could have been emerge. It’s available in both DVD and Blu-Ray formats, in keeping with Criterion’s aggressive new high-def release strategy.  

Wow: Blunt

2. There’s no poster image or teaser trailer available yet, but we’re still intrigued as all Hell by the upcoming The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt as potential lovers kept apart by mysterious and possibly sinister forces. Damon plays a firebrand congressman fascinated by a beautiful ballerina (Blunt), despite strange circumstances that continuously work to keep them separated. Writer-director George Nolfi (The Bourne Ultimatum) loosely based the script on the Philip K. Dick short story “The Adjustment Team,” in which reality is carefully managed by unseen but powerful orchestrators. The film also stars Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, Terrence Stamp, Daniel Dae Kim and Shohreh Aghdashloo. It’s currently slated for a late September release.  

The film probably won't contain this many characters. (Damn.)

3. In other upcoming movie news, though some sites – including imdb.com – are reporting it as a done deal, Joss Whedon is still not confirmed to direct the upcoming The Avengers. While on press junkets for his own Iron Man 2, executive producer Jon Favreau has told audiences there’s no deal “in stone” for Whedon to handle Marvel’s team of superheroes, which include Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and The Hulk.  

To throw in our two cents, without ambiguity: Whedon is the wrong choice for The Avengers. Its very concept suggests a scale and scope that do not play to the writer-director’s strengths, and to try and shoehorn the two together wouldn’t benefit either. To be less charitable, we don’t think Whedon’s recent efforts are on a par with his earlier work: 2005′s Serenity was a muddled and solipsistic bit of nastiness, while Dollhouse was a mixed success at best. We’d much rather see him attempt a Marvel franchise closer to his own style, such as Elektra (we’re not forgetting about the Jennifer Garner trainwreck) or possibly Firestar.  

4. Just about matching the retro magnificence of last year’s Watchmen viral videos, the following spot for the Lots-O’-Huggin Bear from Toy Story 3 perfectly replicates children’s commercials from the decade that was pretty much a golden age of toys. Just watching it once got us thinking of similar products from the era, including Teddy Ruxpin and the weird, weird My Buddy doll for boys. The video below perfectly captures the fashions and 10K graphics of the era, while the clogged tapehead static at the bottom of the image is a stroke of authentic genius:  

 

Let's do the time warp again.

5. The May sweeps period begin today, so if you’re hoping your own favorite low-rated television program gets renewed for another season this is the time to watch or to write its network. For weeks now we’ve been following the slow ratings erosion of ABC’s once and presumed hits Flash Forward and V on great sites like tvbythenumbers.com as a kind of loose experiment, tracking the series’ episode quality from week to week and comparing it against the posted ratings the next day. 

Of the two shows, though both are borderline we give V the better chance of renewal. The central cast is smaller (and presumably cheaper), the storylines pick up steam with each passing week, and we suspect its long-range dramatic possibilities are greater (Flash Forward is already flailing somewhat in this regard; the conspiracy behind the time-jumping blackouts remain frustratingly vague in motivation.) On the other hand Flash Forward is a solid hit overseas, especially in Europe, and it’s apparently something of a bargain to produce, as well. The network will announce its fall season May 18. 

6. Sometimes ignoring the ratings is a good thing. Despite its under-performance this spring, TNT has renewed Southland for a third season to begin airing in 2011. The “second” season aired by the network consisted of episodes that original network NBC had ordered but not broadcast, and featured a streamlined structure that focused on self-contained stories with greater emphasis on individual characters. TNT would be wise to allow show creator Ann Biderman and staff to continue that momentum. Southland has the potential to become as  good as show as ER or Biderman’s previous NYPD Blue, but like countless other ensemble cast shows that rose to greatness it needs time and breathing room to develop. 

7. Finally, Serena Bramble’s “valentine” to film noir has been all over the online world for a while now, but we’re so amazed by it we want to include it on our site as a way of saying thank you. Presenting some of the genre’s finest work meticulously and often brilliantly set to Massive Attack’s aural bombing raid “Angel,” the montage is a six-miuntes and change crash course in what makes noir so haunting, and why its fans hold it in such romantic regard. If you’re a noir fan already, the video can act like a brochure to explain its smoky charms to the uninitiated. 

 

We’ll be back next week. Thanks for reading. 

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, March 2010 Edition

This has become our most popular feature. Go figure.   

By the time you read this, March 2010 will likely have gone out like a lamb, with April and the full arrival of  spring coming just after it. Not an awful lot happened by way of movies and film in the last month, at least by way of new releases. A couple of films we expected to do better performed poorly at the box office, while others offered mild surprises. The coming months at least promise plenty of popcorn fare, including The Losers, the eagerly awaited Iron Man 2 and, this coming week, the less-eagerly awaited Clash of the Titans reboot.  

The following is just a roundup of news about television and film stuff we didn’t get around to giving the blogging attention the stories probably deserved. There in no particular order, and they’re just our opinions. They may differ from your opinions. That’s okay.   

1. March was noticeable for a couple of releases that we think fell short of  our vague, informal box office expectations. We thought Green Zone would have excited the public more, though Repo Men, which looked to address health care the same way that Soylent Green addressed overpopulation, got the box office cold shoulder we were afraid it might. Green Zone seems a victim of the American movie audience’s continuing aversion to films about Iraq, while Repo Men was simultaneously under- and mis-promoted. Green Zone may also have been perceived, to quote a friend of ours, as The Bourne Redundancy.  

We'd rather stay home.

2. For a while now we’ve had an idle theory that there exists an inverse proportion between the quality of a high-budget, high-concept movie and the degree of saturation which its marketing receives. If this theory is true, we already suspect Date Night may prove one of the worst movies of the year. The omnipresent, profoundly unfunny ads explaining the film’s premise were all over the dial this month, broadcast and cable alike, making us suspect that 20th Century Fox has little faith in its appeal spreading by word of mouth. For our part, we’re weary of stars Steve Carell’s and Tina Fey’s bland, self-congratulatory schticks, and can’t imagine paying to get what we can see, for free, every Thursday night.  

3. Which is not say NBC’s Thursday night lineup is completely without laughs. Over the course of its first season, Community has quickly bloomed into one of the smartest and most daring shows on network TV. Critics fault its humor for being too reliant on cultural references and its own quirkiness; we see those issues as growing pains in a show with the potential to become a classic ensemble comedy along the lines of New Radio or even Cheers. NBC finally renewed it for a second season, several weeks after re-upping the far drearier Parks and Recreation.  

4. FX’s new Justified has garnered rave reviews in just its first couple of episodes, praise with which we’re hard-pressed to disagree. Adapted from an Elmore Leonard short story, the almost flawless pilot established U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens’ (Timothy Olyphant, Deadwood) return to Harlan, Kentucky as punishment for an act that may or may not have been simple vengeance. Fans of Leonard’s complicated characters and wry black humor won’t want to miss the show; neither will fans of old-fashioned, uncomplicated TV-hero drama. It’s great fun, and like Community has the potential to only get better.  

5. In last month’s Miscellaneous Debris we talked about the land war in Asia that was the casting process for The First Avenger: Captain America. Late this month it was announced that familiar comic book movie presence Chris Evans (The Fantastic Four) had finally won the role. An informal sampling of friends and associates (we asked around our local comic book shop) revealed the general mood surrounding the announcement amounted to vague relief. Nothing against Mr. Evans, who’s dependable if not exactly thrilling as an actor, but such long-awaited news ought to elicit more from its target audience than a collective “well, it could’ve been worse.”  

To this day, we're not sure who killed Laura Palmer.

6.  Here’s something to make Gen-X’ers feel their age: Twin Peaks turns twenty years old next week.  As argued in this panegyric from the British Observer website, the 30-episode surreal crime drama subtly revolutionized television drama, moving it away from the superficial episodics of the 80s towards the meatier, more literate fare that’s become the modern bastion of cable television from The Sopranos on down. Some of us were fans back in the day, and some of us still appreciate the never-ending reruns on the Chiller cable network. Nevertheless, the occasional campiness of the plots and acting are starting to show their age, and the early episodes are markedly more cohesive than the show’s troubled second season.  

7. The industry isn’t promoting their release as well as they could, but several studios are quietly issuing some classic and near-classic fare to Blu-Ray at bargain basement rates. We’ve already found the 80s vampire cult favorite Near Dark and the Steve McQueen crime classic The Getaway for less than ten bucks each at the local big box retailers, with similar prices offered on several more films. Though the cumulative Blu-Ray library still has a long way to go before rivaling DVD in depth or quality, putting out such special-interest films at collector’s prices is a huge step in the right direction.  

Here’s the trailer for The Getaway, not so much a preview as a seemingly random assortment of moments from the film:  

  

If you’ve scored your own cheap Blu-Ray find, tell us about it in the comments section below.  

8. Finally, an open plea to our readers: longtime DVD collectors will likely remember the heady days of the early 00′s, when the format’s swift replacing of the VHS medium caused a deluge of titles to appear on retail shelves and in the catalogues of online boutiques alike. Now, many lesser known titles that were given releases back then are going out of print and/or commanding exorbitant prices on eBay and throughout Amazon.com’s gallery of affiliate merchants. If you know of a reputable, dependable e-commerce DVD retailer, please let us know. Particularly, right now we’re looking for Fat City and The Duellists; on a larger level, we’re trying to find a dependable e-commerce merchant with a broad, deep back catalogue. Thanks.  

We’ll be back next week with more reviews. Thanks for reading.  

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: Sherlock Holmes

Scruffy, irresistable re-imagining of the famous sleuth arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray this week.

Early in Guy Ritchie’s thrilling Sherlock Holmes, there’s a moment when the film slows to a crawl and we get inside the great detective’s (Robert Downey, Jr.) head. As he hides in a darkened recess, Holmes plans how he’ll attack the strongman stalking him, plotting out the ensuing attack with ruthless, clinical precision. When the attack happens, replaying in normal time, it’s no less visceral or exciting for us to watch, even if it’s a foregone conclusion for the characters involved.

The moment more or less sums up Holmes’s byzantine psyche. He’s already figured everything out, and the act of living is just a process of going through the motions. Ably if sometimes wearily assisted by his confidant Dr. Holmes (Jude Law), his day-to-day existence is largely a war of attrition with boredom. Lucky for the film it has Downey in the lead, in a performance that solidifies the total comeback begun in 2007′s Zodiac (another, darker kind of mystery altogether) and continued through the Iron Man franchise. Downey makes this film, saving its rollicking pace and grimy texture from occasional doldrums while giving its iconic main character a human face and heart.

The knotty, fast-paced plot has Holmes and Watson pursuing the occultist killer Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), first ensuring his capture and then attempting to deduce the means with which he seemingly rises from the dead and conducts a new reign of terror on Victorian London. At times aiding and other times hindering their investigation are Holmes’ fiancé Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly), who feels no appreciation for Holmes’ eccentricities; and Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), a grifter and the only woman for whom Holmes has ever shown romantic interest.

The search expands to involve the British parliament, Scotland Yard, a secret cabal of sorcerers, British foreign policy, and the ancient riddle of the Sphinx. Screenwriters Michael Robert Johnson, Anthony Peckham, and Simon Kinberg pile details upon clues upon meaningful gestures, building a haystack of details for Holmes to sift through. The script doesn’t expect the audience to keep up, either, as the frequent flashbacks and explanations provided by Holmes and Watson stopgap context and explanation at regular intervals. The doubling back is sometimes welcome: though Ritchie’s trademark dexterity in staging action sequences is here as good as it’s ever been, the film drags sometimes when moving all its characters into place or providing depth to some of the supporting characters. Blackwood in particular is practically a cypher, full of foreboding that seldom solidifies into tangible menace.

Yet the place where the characters move remains fascinating in its vivacity. The London of 1891 is an endless warren of primitive, steam-spewing machinery and clustered rooms, a far cry from the quaint cobblestone and stodgy myopia of innumerable BBC and PBS specials. The city seems a mechanical place, full of its own rumbling energy, entirely believable as the capital of the hell-bent-for-industry 19th Century world. The surroundings are so vibrant they often seem to swallow the characters, reducing their importance to ants in a gritty hill, as Ritchie draws on its size and shadows to give the story both suspense and meaning.

Of the supporting cast, Law is sympathetic as the harried Watson, highlighting the stalwart sidekick’s conflicting urges towards the stability of a real home life and the adventure Holmes offers. McAdams makes Adler confident and sexy without playing to the camera. She’s one of the few mainstream American actresses around right now who can act without looking like she’s acting, and she does well in a part that’s a favorite among Holmes devotees. Ritchie is smart enough to stay out of his cast’s way, letting them ricochet dialogue off one another while keeping the momentum going forward. His direction and choice of scene isn’t perfect – the dog gets too many jokes, the scene with a nude Downey shackled to a headboard comes off asinine – but the overall effect remains bracingly immersive.

It’s tempting to see Downey bending the Holmes character into a variation of the persona started with Zodiac ‘s Paul Avery and continued through Iron Man‘s Tony Stark: the malcontent invariably cursed to be the smartest guy in the room. The similarities across all three performances are numerous, but given the actor’s effortless charisma and ability to communicate a range of emotions with simple gestures (Holmes never seems comfortable sitting down) his strengths play, as they did before, to the character. Diehard purists of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories might take offense at this Holmes’ physicality, but there’s no denying the energy it represents.

Those purists will be either delighted or further annoyed that the already-planned sequel will feature Holmes’s arch nemesis Professor Moriarty. The arch-villain circles this film, too, shading the story’s edges with mysterious evil. Guessing his identity will also serve as a litmus test to distinguish those familiar with Doyle’s cast of characters and those who aren’t: his first appearance makes a suprising revelation that calls for only a little elementary deduction.

- Michael Kabel

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(Note: An earlier version of this review originally appeared for the film’s theatrical release)

Oh Mickey, You Were So Fine

Remembering the early career of Mickey Rourke, this year’s comeback kid.

Possibly no other actor of his generation rose so quickly and brightly, nor fell so precipitously, as Mickey Rourke. An A-list leading man following his breakout performance in 1982′s ensemble drama Diner, Rourke’s smoldering, barely-subdued screen confidence combined with a vaguely sordid ambivalence, as if James Dean had come out of the 1970s having tried a thing or two he probably shouldn’t. In fact, for young male audiences of the era he embodied the kind of restless, anti-authoritarian screen persona John Garfield held in the 50s and Jack Nicholson occupied in the 70s: the surly outsider getting what he wanted by following his own discontented moral compass.

Though it’s hard to pin down where things began to go wrong for him, Rourke’s career was always dogged with controversy and often seemed fueled by hubris. His star continued to rise through the mid- and late-80s, making period landmarks like The Pope of Greenwich Village, 9 1/2 Weeks, and Rumble Fish, while his turn as a Charles Bukowski analogue in 1987′s Barfly single-handedly made the film a minor classic. Still, his reputation for being difficult to direct and quick to anger undermined his career, as did a series of woefully missed opportunities. He’s reported to have turned down starring roles in Top Gun, The Untouchables, and 48 Hrs. in favor of little-seen works such as Francesco and A Prayer For the Dying, smaller and more ambitious films that lacked the widespread appeal of such larger projects. And the partying never helped, or the misbegotten plastic surgery, or the notorious boxing career that often left him looking ridiculous and self-deluded.

Yow! Rourke, Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks

But ultimately it’s likely the public simply grew bored with him. Never afraid of adult material, the eroticism of 9 1/2 Weeks and Angel Heart (more on that below) linked Rourke in the public mind to “tawdry sex films,” and a starring role in 1989′s stupendously awful Wild Orchid left him typecast in that niche for years. It’s also fair to say, though less fair to him, that by the end of the 80s he seemed merely passe, a relic of his decade best set aside in favor of younger stars. He’s spent much of the last twenty years in supporting parts in A-movies and starring roles in B- and D-movies, often in roles that are little more than cameos.

Now his career is resurgent. Besides his award-winning turn in The Wrestler he’s won a starring role as the villainous Whiplash in Iron Man 2 and a prominent part in the action ensemble The Expendables. And as further proof that all things are cyclical in Hollywood, the recent indie The Informers featured both Rourke and his 9 1/2 Weeks co-star Kim Basinger, onscreen again after twenty three years. Still and nevertheless, the best of his early films stand among the best movies of their era. The five presented below are representative of that body of work, though by no means comprehensive.

Diner (1982): Rourke is so charismatic in Barry Levinson’s boys-will-be-boys remembrance that his costars Kevin Bacon, Daniel Stern, Steve Guttenberg and Paul Reiser often seem trapped in black and white film stock by comparison. The following scene, in which Rourke’s hairdressing law school student Boogie Sheftell tricks his date (Colette Blonigan) into touching him someplace special, is topped only by his oily charm at calming the girl down afterwards. A meandering piece more about time, place, and character than narrative movement, Diner cemented Levinson as a director to watch and made stars of its entire cast, which also included Ellen Barkin and Tim Daly.

The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984): Director Stuart Rosenberg’s (Cool Hand Luke) character study of two cousins in New York’s Little Italy was critically praised but flopped at the box office. Charlie and Paulie (Rourke and Eric Roberts) try to rob a safe so they can bet on a winning racehorse, a desperate and ill-considered scheme that puts them afoul of the local mafia and threatens their lifelong dysfunctional friendship. Rourke is focused and intense beside the all-over-the-place Roberts, allowing  their lost soul characters to forge a kind of New Yawk version of Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men. The following scene, early in the film, comes just as Charlie begins to lose all patience with Paulie’s goofing:  

Angel Heart (1987): Among the most unsettling horror films of the decade, yet probably the most disconertingly erotic, Angel Heart cast Rourke as Harry Angel, a 1950s New York private detective sent to New Orleans to find a missing singer named Johnny Favorite. As he investigates Favorite’s disappearance while courting local girl Epiphany Proudfoot (The Cosby Show‘s Lisa Bonet, a long way from the Huxtable household), he begins to realize his client Mr. Cyphre (Robert DeNiro) is framing him for a series of bloody murders connected to Favorite’s disapperance. Director Alan Parker (Midnight Express) piles on the creepy until even the film itself becomes as grimy and murky as yellowed glass. Rourke and Bonet’s torrid sex scenes were so graphic they were trimmed to get an R-rating but restored to a home video release, making the film one of the ealriest examples of a director’s cut.

Barfly (1987): Proving something of a critical comeback after the poor receptions of Year of the Dragon and 9 1/2 Weeks, Rourke’s turn as a slightly-fictionalized version of legenedary poet/drunk Charles Bukowski also returned Faye Dunaway to the screen after years of osbcurity. Rourke plays Henry Chinaski not as a holy fool or mystic spirit but rather as a shambling, self-destructive asshole who writes poetry sort of as a pastime from getting hammered. The film is a warts-and-all approach to Bukowski’s almost mythic life that doesn’t skimp on grit but also doesn’t back away from showing the dark comedy inherent in many of the situations. In the clip below Henry taunts his nemesis Eddie the Bartender, played by (you guessed it) Frank Stallone.

Homeboy (1989): Rourke wrote and starred in this rough, uncompromising character study of a broken-down boxer carrying an unrequited love for a carnival worker Ruby (Debra Feuer) while nursing a brain injury that might kill him the next time he fights. Christopher Walken, years away from the self-caricature of his 90s work, plays a cheap hood trying to get Rourke’s Johnny Walker to come along on a heist. Reuben Blades and Jon Polito fill out the cast, while Eric Clapton provides the moody soundtrack. Rourke sued to have the film’s release stopped, claiming creative control promised him by the film’s producers was never delivered, and reviews have been mixed over the years. But Rourke and Walken give great performances despite the film’s middling faults, and with Rourke now celebrated for a similar role in The Wrestler it seems time to get this film an American DVD release.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, January Edition

Our irregular discussion of matters of passing interest.

So how’s your 2009 going so far? Over the holidays we got to see two of the big holiday releases, and both were letdowns. Of the two, Benjamin Button was the bigger disappointment, if only because the stakes there were much higher; Valkyrie was so close to being good we were cheering for the film to tighten itself up halfway through. We’re going next week to see Revolutionary Road, a use of time we’re pretty sure will count as an act of penance.

January is the traditional dumping ground for films whose studios have very little confidence in their success. Time was, Thanksgiving was the season for such likely bombs, a practice that led to films expected to fail getting the nickname “turkeys.” This week, theatregoers are subjected to Bride Wars and The Unborn, two rigidly formulaic genre flicks perhaps distinguished most clearly by their appearance in a theatre at all instead of heading down the direct-to-DVD chute.  January is also if nothing else a time to catch up on the December prestige releases trickling into wider release – Gran Turino and The Reader both open  nationwide tomorrow.

The following is stuff we thought worth mentioning but not worth blogging about for a whole entry. All opinons and snark are our own.

1. Next week’s big release: Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a “comedy” starring the fat guy from The King of Queens. Did Larry the Cable Guy pass on this project? Previews boast that it’s from Happy Madison, which means it’s for sure a script even Adam Sandler passed on (probably Rob Schneider wanted it though.) If God forbid there’s a sequel, we bet anything it’s set in the Mall of America.

2. The Dark Knight is finally getting some recognition from the various awards-givers. The Director’s Guild of America is nominating Christopher Nolan, along with more celebrated directors David Fincher, Ron Howard, Gus Van Sant and Danny Boyle. The film, and Nolan, undeniably deserve the recognition. Besides raising the bar for a genre that’s become one of the most prevalant and profitable of the decade, Nolan’s masterpiece includes Heath Ledger’s already-legendary turn as the Joker as well as the best work of Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart’s considerable careers. It’s not the kind of film that usually garners awards, but given the apathy greeting Oscar-bait flicks like Benjamin Button and Changeling maybe it’s time to open the awards to other kinds of films.

3. Speaking of superhero movies, rumors are circulating that Sam Rockwell and this year’s comeback kid Mickey Rourke are in talks to play the heavies in Iron Man 2. According to Reuters News Service, if talks go as planned Rourke would play the superpowered villain Whiplash, though Variety says he’ll appear as The Crimson Dynamo, who in the books was the Soviet Union’s answer to Iron Man. Rockwell would appear as Stark Industries rival billionaire Justin Hammer. As reported earlier, Don Cheadle will replace Terrence Howard as Jim Rhodes, though Robert Downey, Jr. is confirmed and Gwyneth Paltrow reported to return to their roles as Tony Stark and Pepper Pots, respectively.

4.  From the Snowball’s Chance In Hell Department: Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and chief Girls Gone Wild cretin Joe Francis plan to petition Congress for a $5 billion bailout. That’s right, the porn industry wants the government to give them money, saying that it’s only fair given the assistance already sent to banks and to the Big 3 automakers. Whatever, we imagine the hearings will go something like this: CONGRESS: We’re not sure why we should give you any money. PORN INDUSTRY: There must be something we can do to persuade you. We’d do anything. (takes off shirt) Anything. CUE MUSIC: Wonk, chicka chicka wonk wonk… Actually, we think Flynt deserves some kind of recognition for producing Who’s Nailin’ Palin?

5. Is it just us, or has The Office turned into a mean-spirited, slow-moving snore this season? Jim and Pam are treading water following their slapdash engagement, Dwight is an unmitigated asshole (instead of a mitigated asshole, like before) and supporting characters like Creed and Stanley are all but absent from the storylines. This year’s Christmas episode, in which Michael tried in vain to get Meredith into a detox center while Angela provoked Phyllis into revealing her adulterous affair to the whole staff, was about as funny as smog. And while it’s possible writer Paul Leiberstein enjoys bashing his own sad-sack character Toby, the joke itself is getting pretty old.

6. Marley & Me, a film in which two fading celebrities are bullied by their asshole dog, has grossed $106 million in just two weeks. What the hell, America? What the hell.

7. The Christian Science Monitor ran an intriguing article a couple of weeks ago about the resurgent popularity of film noir, and how even the genre’s fans are hard-pressed to define its forms and criteria. The cause for its rediscovery by modern audiences isn’t that difficult to theorize: film noir enjoyed its Golden Age in the late 1940s, a time when America was both tired of war and deeply skeptical about its place in the future of the world. In other words, a time exactly like right now. As a reminder to Hollywood, two of Jame Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet novels have yet to get adapted to film, and no one would mind if The Black Dahlia got a do-over.

8. ABC brings its adaptation of the cult British sci-fi series Life On Mars back to the schedule on January 28, giving it the berth after the network’s “That’s not over yet?” former hit Lost. During its six-episode stretch last year, Life On Mars got better by leaps and bounds with each episode, so if you’re looking to get in on the ground floor of something here’s your chance. Oz and Homicide: Life On The Street fans take note: Lee Tergesen and Dean Winters both carry important recurring roles on the series.

9. An era in 00′s television ends next week with William Petersen’s departure from CBS ratings behemoth CSI:  From his earliest work in gritty 80s neo-noirs like Manhunter and To Live And Die In L.A., Petersen has always been a superb craftsman actor who’s inhabited dozens of characters with perfect modulation and poise without showing off for the camera. You’ve probably never seen him in films such as Kiss The Sky, Gunshy, or The Rat Pack, so with his exit from weekly television this is a good time to look up those worthwhile efforts. (His Jack Kennedy in The Rat Pack is so authentic you’ll get chills.)

10. Not that this should do anything for you – we hope it doesn’t, but do your own thing – last year’s clunkers Righteous Kill, Bangkok Dangerous, Pineapple Express, and Babylon A.D. all arrived on DVD this week. Combined with two weeks of reruns, January is the scrap heap even in home entertainment.

We’ll be back next week with some honest-to-Jeebus film reviews. Have a good weekend.
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Five Likely Events In The Iron Man Sequel

With Iron Man‘s $102 million dollar opening weekend – as much as 40% higher than some industry expectations – a sequel seems like a foregone conclusion. In fact, reports indicate that bigwigs at Paramount Pictures and Viacom are already tentatively scheduling its debut for the end of April, 2010 – just two years away.

We loved the current film, and since we think it’s never too early to speculate on what a sequel might entail, here are our five best guesses and hopes for Iron Man 2. As a caveat, some spoilers of the current movie are probably unavoidable.

1. Tony Stark’s descent into alcoholism

A pivotal storyline in the Marvel comic books and a minor turning point for the medium itself, Stark’s battle with alcoholism affected his own book as well as his role in Marvel’s group title The Avengers for years to come. The Iron Man sequel might show Stark battling addiction while attempting to keep up the pace of his armored identity and running his company single-handedly. And heaven knows Robert Downey, Jr. is just the actor to play that part well.

 

2. The debut of James Rhodes as War Machine

With Stark left homeless and destitute after losing control of his drinking, the role of Iron Man fell to his personal pilot James Rhodes. After a time in the Iron Man armor itself, Rhodes eventually begins his own career using a more heavily armed version of the basic armor: the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit, or War Machine.

The current movie essentially advertises Rhodes (Terrence Howard) armoring up at a later date, so expect the two Iron Men to work together against a common enemy while continuing their bromantic friendship.

3. Armor for every occasion

Most of what forms the backbone of Iron Man’s mythos (including the events listed above) was created during creators David Michelinie’s and Boby Layton’s long tenure on the comic. Another of their innovations included Stark building a range of Iron Man armors suitable for any occasion. Some of the most famous include the Silver Centurion armor (pictured at right) an all-black stealth suit, and even a heavily padded model built for use against the Hulk.

Target and Wal-Mart already offer Silver Centurion and War Machine variant figures as in-store exclusives. Adding more kinds of armor means more merchandising possibilities – music to any studio chief’s ears.

4. More S.H.I.E.L.D. – and more Nick Fury

The noble super-spies of S.H.I.E.L.D. are the hidden movers in the Marvel Universe, and Iron Man’s association and collaboration with them is long and complicated. He’s even the agency’s director in current storylines. The extra scene at the end of Iron Man all but insures a larger presence in the sequel, including more of Samuel L. Jackson as S.H.I.E.L.D. honcho Nick Fury. Story elements might also springboard the film version of a hero with even closer agency ties – Captain America.

 

 5. The debut of Iron Man’s arch nemesis, The Mandarin

The seeds of this Chinese warlord and criminal mastermind’s appearance are subtly set up in the current film. In comics’ continuity, the Mandarin uses ten rings that each bestow a different super power. In the movie, the Ten Rings are the terrorist group that kidnaps Stark; their leader Raza is shown twisting a ring around one finger while watching Stark via closed-circuit television.

Ken Watanabe was such a convincing stalking horse Ras Al Ghul in Batman Begins that we’ll nominate him to play the true villain of Iron Man 2. With Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) presumably dead  – if in fact he’s gone. The Dude abides, after all – the sequel is a perfect time to introduce a greater threat to Stark Enterprises and S.H.I.E.L.D. alike, one that’s international in scope and a match for Stark’s intelligence and drive.

- Michael Kabel

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