Review: Super 8

Abrams and Spielberg team up to bring an adventure about scary monsters and precocious tweens. You can guess who brought what.

For those too young to remember, before comic book movies and other geek culture dominated summer release schedules a blockbuster’s pedigree was based largely on its stars and sometimes also the director and producers involved. For about fifteen years or so, roughly between 1982′s E.T. and 1997′s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s name on a project was pretty much a license to print cash. Long on adventure and what a less jaded era called “wonder” but also cynically sentimental and patronizing towards the “magic” of youthful exuberance, Spielberg’s directorial work – E.T., the first Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade – routinely provided an idealized vision of childhood for the latchkey generation.

So it’s probably no wonder that Super 8 takes place in early summer 1979, a period that’s come to symbolize an age of low-tech innocence in much the same way that the 1950s did for the 1980′s. Spielberg as producer is well matched with J.J. Abrams, a writer/director who doesn’t mind suspending spectacle for the sake of character development. But their collaboration is less a union of strengths so much as a blending of weaknesses, making the finished film an uneven, prolonged struggle with itself. To call it a bad film is perhaps besides the point, because it never really aspires to anything besides diversionary entertainment. Except it often fails to provide that.

Set in the Springsteenesque town of Lillian, Ohio, the story focuses on tween Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) and his sheriff’s deputy father (Kyle Chandler), struggling with the death of Joe’s mother at the local steel mill. The two are not close, but with the beginning of summer Joe finds a creative outlet for his grief helping overbearing buddy Charles (Riley Griffiths) complete his homemade zombie film for a local film competition. Complications arise when Charles casts local dream girl Alice (Elle Fanning) in a crucial role. Alice’s alcoholic father, it seems, is indirectly responsible for the death of Joe’s mother. Joe and Alice are fascinated by one another through guilt and grief, and their friendship – forbidden by Joe’s dad as well as Alice’s (Ron Eldard) – coalesces into the bulk of the film’s emotional substance.

Courtney and Fanning are both very good actors, and backed by old pros like Chandler and Eldard it’s almost a shame that the film won’t be an engaging character piece about these simple, sympathetic victims. Yet, despite, and nevertheless, the filming of Charles’ 8-millimeter saga captures a spectacular freight train-truck collision that frees something the Air Force was transporting across country; stranger still, the truck was driven into the train on purpose by their science teacher (Glynn Turman). In short order a series of strange events plague the town – machinery disappears, all the dogs head for the hinterlands, people start vanishing. The Air Force, led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich) obviously knows something but won’t share information with local officials. When the mysterious presence grabs the town’s sheriff, Joe’s father tries to hold things together while solving the mystery.

The strange events increase, growing more violent and more dependant on special effects. Joe and the gang realize, thanks to purloined evidence from the teacher’s storage locker, that the creature they see only dimly in the footage from their wrecked camera is the prisoner of the military, an alien crash-landed on Earth in the 1950s and held prisoner ever since. As the Air Force evacuates the town and steps up its attempts to recapture the alien, Joe embarks on a mission to save Alice from its subterranean lair.

The resolutions to both stories will feel familiar to anyone who grew up with Spielberg’s films and their legions of reruns on cable. Joe’s empathy allows him to reach an entente with the monstrous alien, saving Alice’s life even while the arrogance of the adults around them cements their downfall. The kids’ fathers reconcile their differences in short order (too short, really, given their source) and the alien gets to go home thanks to a spaceship cobbled together from all those stolen appliances.

The film’s getting a lot of press about Abrams paying “homage” to Spielberg’s 80s work, but the combined effect doesn’t feel so much like tribute as parenthetical citation. A nod to Close Encounters of the Third Kind here, an oblique reference to Jaws there, and of course a tureen full of The Goonies (of which Spielberg was Executive Producer, possibly a nebulous title except the film bears so many of his hallmarks). Yet all the little details don’t serve to move the story or the characters forward but instead hang from it like tinsel. Scenes drag on or fall short before reaching their payoff, and often hammy acting by the kids only compounds the problem.

The first act, past the lovely prologue involving the funeral of Joe’s mother, goes on much longer than it should, and falls short of establishing the children’s’ personalities before the creature is set loose. The second act, by comparison, contains most of the suspense but often feels disorganized and uncertain of its priorities. For as much as Abrams is willing to pause action to let his characters breathe – and he does in a heartbreaking sequence involving Alice and Joe watching home movies of Joe’s mother – the action when it happens fails to engage on anything but the most superficial level. He also relies on too many tropes he’s used before: the contraband film strip, the underground bunkers, the renegade scientists all recall Lost too much by half, and not in a way that invites favorable comparison.

For as good as Courtney and Fanning are, less so are Riley Griffiths and Ryan Lee as Charles the filmmaker and Cary the pyromaniac. But their characters are little more than stock types, meant to occupy space and provide comic relief, as are Gabriel Basso and Zach Mills as the gang’s third string. Emmerich is a sublime character actor who deserves better roles than Nelec, a villain who would twirl his mustache if he had one.

The ending is about what you ‘d expect, sentimental and superficially brave without excpecting any real emotional engagement from the audience. Spielberg’s films, after all, always made sure their stories ended tidily for everyone, character and viewer alike. Actually, this time the audience can stick around to see Charles’ completed zombie saga in all its goofy, patchwork glory. At several minutes in length it’s a nice after-dinner mint for the rest of the film, even if it’s maybe not as charming as Abrams and Spielberg think.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, November 2010 Edition

Our semi-monthly roundup of news and observations that didn’t get a full post the rest of the month.

The days are short, the lines to see Harry Potter are long, and the studios’ prestige pictures debut in just a few weeks. It’s autumn, though it feels like winter already, and the holidays are breathing down all our necks. What’s this mean for movies? It means it’s the best time of the year to go see movies.

At the end of every month or so we collect all the news items that we wanted to discuss on the blog but never got the chance, thanks to a time crunch or lack of space or scheduling or any of a dozen other reasons. They’re included below.

Nielsen in Forbidden Planet (1956), his second film appearance

1. First and foremost, we want to extend our sympathies to the family and friends of Leslie Nielsen, who passed away November 28 following complications from pneumonia. Originally the epitome of Cold War era lantern-jawed seriousness, Nielsen later found universal acclaim subverting his straight arrow image in satires including Airplane! and the Naked Gun trilogy, in which his deadpan delivery made every ridiculous statement believable. To pay him tribute one way: probably everyone on Earth named Shirley knows Nielsen’s name. He was 84 years old.

2. We were also saddened to learn of the passing, just one day later, of director Irwin Kerschner, whose film credits include Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back but also Return of a Man Called Horse, The Eyes of Laura Mars, and the James Bond feature Never Say Never Again. When Kershner asked why George Lucas had selected him to direct the immediate follow-up to the initial Star Wars film, Lucas replied, “You know everything a Hollywood director is supposed to know, but you’re not Hollywood.” Family members say he died at his Los Angeles home after a long illness.

Oscarbait: The Great Emancipator

3. Daniel Day-Lewis will reportedly play Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s long-simmering biopic about the nation’s 16th President, a role that for years was connected to Liam Neeson. Honestly, it’s tough to imagine the hammy, everything up-front style Day-Lewis relished using in overheated claptrap like Nine and There Will Be Blood doing justice to the man who steered America through its greatest crisis, or conveying the limitless dignity of his legend. We do imagine an Oscar highlight reel-friendly clip of Day-Lewis bellowing ”E-man-ci-PAY-tion!” however, and that depresses us already.

And we would rather look at Hathaway than Baldwin any day of the week.

4. Speaking of the Academy Awards, the news that comparatively younger stars James Franco and Anne Hathaway will host the 2011 ceremony caused a minor kerfuffle last week, with some speculating their selection was a blatant grab by AMPAS at the coveted Gen-Y demographic. We think their selection is a good idea, but not for that reason. Hollywood is desperately in need of new blood at its vanguard right now, and Hathaway and Franco are both movie stars in the classical sense, full of elegance and poise. Recent, more mature hosts including Hugh Jackman and Chris Rock have failed to resonate with any audience, and last year’s Steve Martin-Alec Baldwin pairing felt winded and stale. It’s time for something new.

5. As we’ve mentioned once or twice before, the term “turkey” to refer to a box office dud actually springs from a Hollywood practice of the 1940s, when films with little studio confidence received a late-November release date. The studios imagined no one wanted to go the movies if they could spend time with family instead – obviously, times change. This November has a seen a rain of turkeys (yeah, we’re WKRP In Cincinnati fans, too) all over the box office, including Burlesque, Morning Glory, and perhaps especially The Next Three Days. There’s no way of pinpointing why that last film has underperformed, though there are any number of reasons – Russell Crowe’s waning star power, a crowded release calendar, and almost nonexistent word of mouth; actually, substitute Cher or Harrison Ford for Crowe and the same theories apply to the other two films as well. Whatever, watch as all three are used as more ammunition for the tired “adults don’t go to the movies anymore” sermon that goes around the Web every few months.

6. The trailer to Green Lantern debuted this past month, giving audiences their first look at Ryan Reynolds as the hero who’s become DC Comics’ most profitable franchise after Batman and Superman. If the Martin Campbell-directed film is anything like the scattershot trailer below, fans may find themselves in for an epic disappointment. Besides the obviously derivative setups and unconvincing CGI, the preview suffers from a wandering tone and flat romantic tension and jokes. Is the film going to play the concept straight? Is it meant to be camp? It’s hard to tell one way or the other, but what’s on-screen looks awkward and a little self-conscious, as if the cast and crew had little confidence in the story’s concepts. Here’s hoping they’ve got it figured out.

Is it a good sign or bad that the trailer wastes about ten frames before showing Reynolds in his underwear? Probably a bad one.

Does whatever a spider can: Garfield

7. Meanwhile the Spider-Man reboot continues to take shape as the first superhero indie film. Following the hiring of (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb and rising star Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) to lead, recent casting announcements have included Denis Leary as a NYPD captain, Campbell Scott as Peter Parker’s father and Martin Sheen as Parker’s beloved Uncle Ben. Leary, Scott, and Sheen probably collectively appeared in half the indie cinema of the 90s; additional casting includes former Law & Order: Criminal Intent star Julianne Nicholson, who’s appeared in indie films including Flannel Pajamas and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men for more than a decade. Emma Stone (Easy A) also appears as Parker’s love interest.

What's in a name? Raymond-James, Logue

8. Finally, we want to end the month with an appeal to NBC and FX to save two very good freshman shows that haven’t received the ratings they deserved. The Event started strong in the Nielsens but has fallen off sharply, but we believe that downturn is only temporary as casual viewers tune out and the show builds a loyal following. Finely acted with frequent moments of tangible suspense and an intriguing overarching story, the show lives up to the quality implied by its Lost-meets-24 premise, and deserves some patience from NBC.

The quality of FX’s Terriers, meanwhile, has built on its strong start, with the last two or three episodes of its just-concluded season giving Mad Men a run for its superb money. The whole world knows that the show’s marketing was a misfire last summer – dogs know it – but that shouldn’t kill the drama’s chances to become something even better in a second season. FX  is expected to make a decision next week.

Good news for the show’s fans: its irresistible theme song, “Gunfight Epiphany,” is now available for download on iTunes.

We’ll be back next week, trying to convince you not to rent or download Inception. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, October 2010 Edition

It’s the end of the month. This is what we do.

October wasn’t much of a month for movies, not counting The Social Network - known to millions of lazy people as “The Facebook Movie” or the kinda cool, “Grumpy Old Hitmen” vibe of Red. The month included quite a few box office disappointments, however, most of which look like under-cooked prestige pictures dumped before the holiday season: Life As We Know It, Secretariat, and especially Hereafter are all still playing, yet none of them are lighting up cash registers or critics’ polls.

With the winter movie season just around the corner – and more intriguing movies set to start arriving at a pretty brisk pace – here’s the news that caught our eye this month, presented in no particular order of importance.

We don't have a season two photo: Community

1. The television networks are at this moment braced for the onset of November sweeps, the crucial period in which the nets determine their ad rates for the coming new year. Virtually by tradition, shows pull out all the stops to garner viewers, with even the most established shows growing to great – often absurd lengths – to build their audiences. NBC in particular needs to pull a rabbit out of its hat, since virtually none of its new shows this year have become bona fide ratings hits.

If you’re not watching the peacock’s Community, the best comedy currently on network television, you’re only hurting yourself. Years from now, you’ll want to tell people you watched it when it was still on. Don’t make yourself a liar.

An answer: No Riddler in third Batman film

2. The third installments of trilogies are seldom the best – just ask fans of Star Wars, The Bourne Identity, The Terminator or (if any still exist) The Matrix. Yet if any franchise could break that glass ceiling, it’s likely Christopher Nolan’s Batman series. This week the director gave the L.A. Times’ Hero Complex blog some tantalizing bits about the third film: it will be titled The Dark Knight Rises and include many returning characters from the first two films. Further, it will not be shot in 3-D, and it will not include The Riddler as an antagonist.

The Riddler, a kind of road show Joker who teased Batman with elaborately cryptic crimes, was portrayed by two previous actors: Frank Gorshin had the part in the 1960s television series, and Jim Carey chewed up the scenery as mastermind E. Nigma in 1995′s Batman Forever. By the way, Nolan has already scotched rumors that bad guy Mr. Freeze will appear, either. Still, there are plenty of villains left from which to choose.

3. In more immediate comic book news, Entertainment Weekly unveils Chris Evans as Captain America in their latest issue, displaying the more military-cut uniform and gear the hero has taken to wearing in recent years. Evans, for his part, looks the part; we were skeptical of his ability to pull off a role we felt for years belonged to Mark Valley, but the physical transformation is unmistakable, and after seeing The Losers we’re willing to believe he can give the patriotic hero a human dimension.

The film opens next July, and whether it’s great or terrible it likely won’t be worse than several of the character’s previous transitions to film and television. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe how low the bar is currently set.

Brand new Bilbo: Freeman

4. After several years in which it seemed Guillermo Del Toro would helm the Lord of the Rings prequel The Hobbit, New Line announced two weeks ago that Peter Jackson, who produced and directed the trilogy, will now direct the tw0-part spinoff. Both films will be shot in 3-D, with production set to start next February. Martin Freeman (Hot Fuzz) will play the younger, feistier Bilbo Baggins (played in the trilogy by Ian Holm.)

Jackson was originally set to serve as executive producer on the films, but stepped in following Del Toro’s departure. We’re all for his taking over, even if his post-LOTR projects, including King Kong and The Lovely Bones, haven’t exactly proven impressive.

Now to explain The Hobbit‘s story with music, here’s Leonard Nimoy:

5. It’s strange to say this after thinking otherwise for most of our lives, but we wouldn’t trade places with Eric Stoltz right now. The 25th anniversary home video releases of the Back To the Future trilogy include featurettes explaining why the young Stoltz, originally cast as Marty McFly, was replaced after five weeks by Michael J. Fox – in short, because he wasn’t funny enough. As if that weren’t bad enough, Stoltz’s current project, the Syfy-produced Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica, was just pulled from the network’s schedule for lack of ratings.

The clip below includes footage from his work on Back to the Future:

Keep your chin up, Mr. Stoltz.

6. Another, less famous relic of the 80s also celebrated its silver anniversary as Rock & Rule arrived on Blu-Ray and DVD at the end of September. Set in a postapocalyptic society in which evolved household pets have replaced people, the story centers around a struggling rock band brought into the machinations of a satanic rock star (with the awesome, probably legally actionable name Mok Swagger) intent on raising a demon to Earth.

The soundtrack includes original songs by Iggy Pop, Deborah Harry, Lou Reed, and Earth, Wind, and Fire, with Paul LeMat and Catherine O’Hara also supplying vocal talent. Produced by Nelvana – the studio responsible for the Star Wars spinoffs Droids and Ewoks - the film nevertheless belongs in the same 80s adult cartoon subgenre that includes Heavy Metal and Watership Down.

An example (and a recent review here)

7. We’re fascinated by the Vault Collection on Turner Classic Movies’ website, which features DVD releases of lesser known films from Warner Brothers, Universal, and RKO studios available on a press-upon-request basis. The WB collection is especially impressive, with hundreds of movies and television shows available from throughout the studio’s history. Even the prices, by and large, remain reasonable, if sometimes perhaps unrealistic. Good stuff for the film buff looking for that maddeningly hard to find DVD, especially with the holidays coming.

8. Finally, we want to end by promising to update more often with more content. Our staff has been pulled in several different directions by various careers and other responsibilities, but it hurts to see the blog languish with a dearth of material (even as our audience grows thanks to some basic SEO techniques deployed in various locations.) Anyway, we’ll be back next week with both some fresh material and a reprise of our drubbing of The Girl Who Played With Fire. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, November 2009 Edition

Our monthly compendium of stuff that didn’t get a full post, for one reason or another.

There’s just one more month left in the decade (unless you’re one of those weirdos who complain, “the decade begins with 1…”), meaning it’s not too early to start looking back. The 00′s were a decade that likely will never be remembered as a particularly good one for American film; we put it somewhere between the 1950s and maybe – maybe – the 80s in terms of total quality work produced. The amount of dumb, cynical, artless trash far outweighed the good, but then again that’s sadly, probably true of any given time period.

Anyway, here’s our monthly roundup of items of interest that didn’t deserve or receive a full blog post. All our opinions are our own, and all graphics are stuff we found lying around the Internet.

1. This month’s hysteria regarding the release of The Twilight Saga: New Moon came with an earnest attempt at a backlash dogging its wake, as critics from every corner of the media – and especially online – did their best to counter-shout the series’ fans. Not to defend the sparkly vampires, but anyone decrying the phenomenon shouldn’t feel surprised at its popularity. Vampires are a steady, resurgent franchise in American culture, and it makes sense that a version catering to the American Idol generation would surface sooner or later. If Twilight is superficial, mawkish, and clumsily obtuse, it’s only giving its audience what they’ve come to expect from pop entertainment.

2. While we’re on the subject of pop culture and what’s wrong with it, two news items this past week about David Hasselhoff and Donny Osmond underscored a major reason for the current media malaise. Celebrities don’t burn out anymore. They fade… and fade… and fade away. The proliferation of cable channels and other media outlets means everyone gets camera time long after their 15 minutes have worn off. Except all that detritus has become dead weight upon the public radar, with chances for the emergence of new talent becoming that much more remote. Much like pop music at the end of the 1980s, the film and TV industries are in desperate need of fresh air, the sooner the better. More than that, the industries have got to stop cashing in on the past because it’s cheap and safe.

3. Someone else said – but we’re happy to originate the idea – that George Clooney has two screen personae: there’s the talented ensemble actor, the guy that does offbeat work like O Brother, Where Art Thou and The Men Who Stare At Goats, and there’s his American Leading Man mode that you see in stuff like Michael Clatyon and the Ocean’s saga. We’re looking forward to December’s Up In The Air because it might present the first combination of the two while finally getting Gorgeous George the widespread critical respect he’s deserved for years. Here’s the trailer, in the unlikely event you haven’t seen it yet:

Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela

4. Another pervasive trailer this month previewed Clint Eastwood’s new Invictus, about the true story of South African president Nelson Mandela’s attempt to bring the post-Apartheid nation together via the 1995 Rugby World Cup games. While the idea of Matt Damon playing a rugby champion isn’t really surprising, the casting of Morgan Freeman as Mandela is one of those lightning-strike “why hasn’t this happened already” castings that happen every blue moon or so. It also makes us wish by free association that Steven Spielberg would make his Liam Neeson-starring biopic of Abraham Lincoln already. Still and all, props to Freeman for taking the role and props to Eastwood for tackling such unexpected (for him) material. The film debuts December 11.

Burrows to join L&O: CI

5. This time last year we bitched that the USA Network couldn’t nail down a season premiere for its Law & Order: Criminal Intent franchise. Now the show’s reportedly getting a virtually all-new cast when it returns “early” next year. Series regulars Vincent D’Onofrio, Kathryn Erbe, Eric Bogosian and Julianne Nicholson will all depart after the series’ ninth season opener. Saffron Burrows (The Bank Job) replaces Nicholson, while Bogosian will be replaced by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (The Perfect Storm). The newer, streamlined show will feature sole returning star Jeff Goldblum in every episode.

Though we like Goldblum as an actor and in his L&O: CI role, we also remember that his last effort at headlining a detective show lasted seven weeks, even with Graham Yost (Band of Brothers) as showrunner. We liked that show, too.

6. Elsewhere on basic cable, TNT announced this month they would pick up broadcast rights to Southland, the promising cop drama that NBC stupidly cancelled in October. Possibly as a way to afford the ensemble cast, the network has dropped their original series Raising The Bar from its schedule, with a second season for Dark Blue, its other cop show, stuck in limbo. Meanwhile their new Men of A Certain Age premieres next Monday. Anything with Andre Braugher or Scott Bakula has got our attention for at least a few weeks, and this has them both.

Renner in The Hurt Locker

7. Already among the year’s – if not the decade’s – most highly praised films despite only a limited release last summer, The Hurt Locker premieres on DVD and Blu-Ray January 12. The gritty drama co-stars Jeremy Renner, one of the best young actors around right now following his superb performances in ABC’s The Unusuals and onscreen in 2007′s The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. We’re glad his turn here is getting him some attention.

We value our female readership, and stuff like this never hurts.

8. You know it’s close to December when three of the top ten films have “Oscar Bait” written all over them. The Blind Side currently makes the most money (despite scathing reviews), while Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire and The Road are both still building momentum. In light of the sweeping changes made to the Academy’s voting process this year, however, it’s still too early to guess which film has the inside track towards Best Picture. If we had to suppose, we imagine Rob Marshall’s Nine will take the statue. It’s got a shitload of razzle dazzle (remember Marshall’s Chicago won in 2003), a screenplay co-written by the late Anthony Minghella, and a broad cast of flashy actors like Daniel Day-Lewis and Nicole Kidman. In years past such a combination would be like crack for Academy voters, but the new rules could change things up.

Watch the embedding—proof HD Trailer for Nine here, much of which looks an awful lot like an Oscar ceremony musical number.

Thanks for reading. We were a day late posting this, and we apologize for the delay – real life’s been pimp-slapping our writing time lately. We’ll be back later this week.

- Michael Kabel

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100 Posts and Counting…

We’re congratulating ourselves! You should, too!

Yikes! 100 Posts! And we’ve only been at this since last March. Credit our three-times a week update schedule. But it’s still fun. Actually, it’s more fun now that our traffic numbers are rising and we’re getting more feedback.

When we got to the 50-post mark we ran down a list of ten things we’d learned from the experience up to that date. They’re still true, but there are a few other new things we picked up since.

Fitzgerald actually wrote several fantasy stories as a way to make some quick cash.

1. We’re more certain of our mission statement now than we were seven months ago, in no small part because lately the fall season’s ad campaigns are staring once again to piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining champagne. The three big prestige pictures this year, from what we can tell, are Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road, David Fincer’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and future Bravo Network staple Australia, directed by Baz Luhrmann.

Of the three, we’re least leary of Benjamin Button, mostly because Fincher’s coming off his masterful Zodiac and Pitt is actually often at his best when playing more restrained, downbeat roles. We just hope the “I do de-clay-yah!” New Orleans grotesques aren’t as pervasive in the film as in the trailer.

9. Social networking tools like Digg and Twitter are great, and we welcome traffic from them, but there’s no substitute for good word of mouth. We’re getting less bitch mail than we used to, too, so we must be doing something right or anyway better than we were before. That being said, we wish there were more comments coming across our threshold.

The Man

8. Google works in mysterious ways. When we ran a pic of actor Skeet Ulrich on our 50th milestone post, the image somehow topped Google’s search rankings. So far we’ve had more than 300 visitors looking for that one pic.  To Mr. Ulrich’s fans, especially those coming over from Capturing Skeet.com, welcome and thank you. To Skeet himself, we probably owe you a steak dinner or something.

7. Our most popular post is still the “Six Forgotten Sci-Fi Films of the 1970s” retrospective from last May. It’s also the one that’s provoked the most griping, so if you check it out remember that one fan’s “forgotten” film is another fan’s cherished memory.

6. We don’t know if anyone else is laughing at our picture captions, but we’re cracking ourselves up. Editor Michael Kabel grew up reading Creem magazine, and it’s just too much fun paying some homage to that late, lamented mag by following their brilliant example here.

5. One post we wish got more traffic showcased a gorgeous montage of Homicide: Life On The Street images set to Coldplay’s “Don’t Panic.” Really, it’s a profoundly haunting couple of minutes. Here it is again:

Thanks again to easilyjaded2 for creating it.

Hello, I'm Shia LaBouef. I'm an actor.

4. Our worst review remains Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but Eagle Eye only narrowly missed taking that dubious distinction for itself. And in either film’s case, their appalling failure had nothing necessarily to do with mutual participant Shia LaBouef. It’s the films themselves that are godawful, virtually from the ground up.

3. Our posts are getting longer, but there’s more to be said about most films than will fit into a 500- or 600-word essay. Maybe the single greatest advantage of the Internet over print, to quote Walt Disney out of context, is the “blessing of space.” Now, that’s no excuse not to be succinct. But in reviewing some films and analyzing others it’s important to attempt comprehensiveness. Failing that, we’ll try to be funny if not smart.

Running down a dream: The Flash

2. We’ve tried several different types of features, from hypothetical sequels to rewriting underwhelming blockbusters to armchair casting films we know are getting made but don’t trust Hollywood to make the right personnel decisions. Our rewrites of the Star Wars prequels have been the most popular, though we’re not kidding ourselves that poeple are looking for info about the actual films. The post about how to make The Flash movie is a sentimental favorite.

1. Now that the blog’s growing bigger, it’s probably time for some big people clothes. Specifically, we’re looking for someone to create our new header. If you’ve got the design skills and think you can help, please contact us at the email shown back up and to the right there.

To wrap things up, and by way of crossing our fingers for the next 100 posts, the clip below is the famous “cuckoo clock” segment from The Third Man, starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten.

Wednesday we’ll have a review of the new DVD edition of L.A. Confidential. Thanks again for reading.

-Michael Kabel

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Review: Eagle Eye

Contrived, derivative actioner keeps its eyes on the product placement prize.

One of my favorite movie quotes comes from 1995′s vastly underrated Strange Days: “Paranoia,” one of the characters explains, ”is reality on a finer scale.” Later, another character asks the story’s protagonist, “The question isn’t ‘Are you paranoid?’ It’s ‘Are you paranoid enough?” Misunderstood as a Virtual Reality rock video, that film was really an examination of the way technology was steadily eroding the individual will at the turn of the millennium. In the thirteen years since its release, thanks in no small part to the shabby example set by our government, America has become more paranoid than ever, both as a people and as a nation. And the worst of it is that that condition shows no sign of going away.

Eagle Eye wants to be about paranoia, and about how 21st Century Americans are all ghosts in a giant machine of computer files and encrypted data that define us as individuals and place us within society itself. Subject to some expert hacking and a little determination, we are liable to having our lives turned upside down and twisted inside out, because we are all “on the grid” of the Information Age. Such an idea is a compelling if not wholly unprecedented theme, and that idea sometimes bubbles to the film’s shiny surface. But arrhythmic pacing, far fetched plotting and too many product placements ultimately make it collapse under its own cumbersome weight.

Can you hear me now? LaBeouf, Monaghan

Shia LaBeouf (Transformers: The Movie) plays Jerry Shaw, a minimum wage slave and designated prodigal black sheep of his career military family. When his (contrivances begin here) twin brother is killed, Shaw finds his bank account stuffed with cash and his apartment loaded with enough ordinance to stage a guerrilla war. Then a mysterious female voice begins giving him directions over his cel phone, directing him from Chicago to Washington, D.C. in the company of single mom Rachel Holloman. (Michelle Monaghan, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) The same voice is threatening to kill Rachel’s young son, who’s himself away on a band trip to the nation’s capital. It turns out Shaw’s dead brother was actually an analyst with a top-secret Pentagon intelligence project, one that seeks to assassinate most of the federal government in one fell stroke.

LaBeouf didnt realize the Decepticons already had him surrounded.

Rather than try to describe any more of the plot, I’m just going to list some of the plot devices: runaway artificial intelligence; explosive crystals detonated with sound frequencies; robot loading cranes; hidden floors at the Pentagon; preemptive military strikes on Arab villages; drone planes; pinwheeling eighteen wheeler trucks; twin sibling biometrics; and finally, the staggering credulity and incompetence shown by law enforcement officials in hundreds of other movies just like this. Perhaps more audacious, and more egregious, are the cribbed plot points and story elements lifted wholesale or in part from other films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Enemy of the State, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Wargames, The Parallax View, and The 39 Steps. Recognizing which parts of this film came from those better ones makes for a good diversion when Eagle Eye’s pacing falls slack, as it does several times.

LaBeouf, Monaghan enter the Circuity City Home Theatre of Despair

Director D.J. Caruso (The Shield) takes his directing style from a single page of the Michael Bay/Armageddon playbook, the one that says keep everything slick and glossy while stacking the supporting cast full of respected character actors in order to give the outlandish script some gravitas. Armageddon had Billy Bob Thornton, and he appears here as well. Actually, his flair for snarling lines like “You’ll be demoted to some kind of job that involves touching shit with your hands” brightens the film at several moments. Michael Chiklis, William Sadler, Rosario Dawson, and Anthony Mackie also appear as various military and/or police personnel.

Pretty: Monaghan

As for the leads, LaBeouf does his best but is neither compelling as a man distanced from his own twin or forceful enough to convey any fugitive intensity while hunted halfway across country. Monaghan’s character is better written, and she does a fine job of making Rachel both strong and terrified without whining or playing to the camera. But there’s only so much any woman can do in a film about computers, guns, robots and soldiers. Monaghan is a beautiful and promising actress who, after this and Made of Honor, needs to pick better scripts immediately and from now on.

The true stars of the film, however, are in many ways the products and corporations shamelessly and relentlessly marketed throughout. Executive producer Steven Spielberg has never been shy about putting products into his films, and here that commercial instinct overheats and very nearly explodes. The use of the Sprint phones alone, the company logo always prominently displayed, defies any claim to artistic integrity.

A couple of times lately I’ve written about movies that had something on their mind besides action and suspense. It seems an exaggeration to say the same about Eagle Eye, which feels in every way like screenwriters John Glenn and Travis Wright tried to write a blockbuster based on what they perceived as zeitgeist in the age of identity theft and government wiretapping. In other words, the film’s topical resonance is only a launching platform for semi-mindless boom boom boom action sprinkled with what the producers, studio, and director think people care about. But such second-guessing and condescension happen everyday in the movie business, regardless of whether the public realizes it or not. It’s enough to make any filmgoer feel manipulated, maybe even paranoid.

-Michael Kabel
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Long-awaited fourth adventure collapses under its own wait. 

After nineteen years, could Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull possibly live up to expectations? And what kind of movie would in fact please everyone? Well, you’d think George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford et al. could’ve done better than this. 

Unevenly paced, slow to find its rhythms and too impressed with itself by half, the fourth installment of the beloved retro-series shows the mish-mash of the endless script versions, revisions and rewrites that dragged its development out for years without ever gelling into a coherent whole. The plot, such as it is, involves Jones’ attempts to find and return a crystal skull – a Macguffin if ever there was one – to its rightful place in a long-secreted South American temple. He gets help from Brando-esque teen rebel Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), his ex-love Marian Ravenwood (Karen Allen), and a former colleague (John Hurt) turned holy fool by the skull’s mysterious properties. They’re pursued – relentlessly, incredulously – by Soviet agent Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), a one-dimensional Russian baddie complete with jodhpurs and fencing rapier. There’s family drama, and lost love, and some jokes about growing old gracefully. But they’re murmurs in the whirlwind of the action.

Except now the whirlwind feels winded. Lucas and Spielberg, to paraphrase P.T. Barnum, never went broke underestimating the intelligence of their audience, but this time the film’s gaps in plotting and common sense are too wide to ignore. Problems of logic and reason are left untended, until what’s supposed to be escapism becomes instead distracting. In the case of a less-celebrated director, such gaps would get blamed on lack of skill. Here, they hint of complacency – worse, of arrogance. Adding self-indulgence to injury, the directors endlessly rehash their favorite visual motifs. 1950s nostalgia? It’s there, first thing. Cute animals that behave like humans? In abundance, no less than twice. Mindless, stupid gore? Better believe it. Overlong set pieces? Of course. The many obvious soundstages look Disney-theme-park fake, as well, as if shot on a studio backlot. While that’s partly homage to the serials of yesteryear, it’s also glaringly artificial.

As for the performances, the actors make the most of the few scenes they have that don’t involve punching, jumping, ducking, or lunging. Ford and LaBeouf have a comfortable rapport, but their instant familiarity telegraphs a mid-film revelation that will surprise no one with intelligence greater than the film’s numerous CGI prairie dogs. Blanchett has been better, and Allen isn’t given much to do except drive whatever commandeered vehicle lays around, moon over Ford, and serve as an example of aging gracefully. LaBeouf isn’t terrible in a part that’s obviously meant to satisfy Lucas’ seeming compulsion to introduce minors into deadly situations and an overweening readiness to spin off a new franchise.

And Ford. At 65, the actor looks worn down to his last but still game for a final adventure. Unfortunately, the effortless charm that endeared Han Solo and Indy to a generation is at a low flame here, only coming to life in occasional scenes where he manages to imbue a little weariness into the shrillness around him. Even just an extra scene or two more might’ve helped the film towards becoming a fully-realized piece – but there’s special effects and fights and a field of killer ants and raging waterfalls and an army of angry monkeys (honestly) that won’t wait for such luxuries. The film aims to amaze, not entertain.

Twenty four hours after its debut, a backlash is already brewing. If the public rejects this last installment as more Temple of Doom than Last Crusade, who’s responsible? American film audiences are a fickle lot, and modern genre devotees especially delight in second-guessing film creators about how a follow-up can – and more importantly should – be handled. And of course the results are often disappointing and even dispiriting. But we as ticket buyers expect more from the best filmmakers of their generation, especially after waiting through years of rumors and hints about one last ride with the hero of many a childhood. We expect more, and for decades of loyalty we as fans actually sort of deserve it.

- Michael Kabel

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Weekend Mood Music: The Indiana Jones Theme

If you don’t get a little thrill hearing it you’re probably a little dead inside.

We’ll have our review of the new film up tomorrow, but in the meantime here’s a YouTube video of the classic John Williams theme in its entirety.

So if you’re reading us at work, close the door and crank the volume. Then leap out as the music swells into that awesome refrain.
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