IRON MAN 2 (Mild Spoilers)

Dir. Jon Favreau USA 2010

"I...have successfully privatized world peace."

The build-up to this film has been like a weird flashback to 2008. Summer movie season about to start, kicked off by an Iron Man movie. I was excited then, and I was excited two weeks ago. When the first film came out two years ago, it took everyone by surprise. Most people who weren't comic book nerds were more familiar with Iron Man the song than Iron Man the superhero. But with a combination of awesome casting, killer action and effects, and a general sense of fun that was slowly draining out of superhero films, Iron Man managed to make some serious bank and (re)launch Robert Downey Jr. back into the realm of superstardom where he so belongs. I was a little worried when the reviews for this film came back mixed, but ultimately, my fears were unfounded.

One of the common criticisms I heard about this film was that it didn't have enough plot, which I can understand, but didn't find to be much of a problem. The film basically covers a few weeks in the life of Tony Stark during which everything turns to shit in a hurry. He must deal with a) the fact that the arc reactor in his chest keeping his heart going is slowly poisoning him, b) the government trying to get its hands on the Iron Man armor and c) a vengeful Russian inventor (Mickey Rourke) with a grudge against Stark wielding his own suit of armor. These are just the three major plotlines; you also have Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) trying to recruit Stark for the Avengers, Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, the Steve Jobs to Stark's Bill Gates, as well as Stark's relationships with his best friend (Don Cheadle as Jim Rhodes) and his girl Friday (Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts). The movie transitions pretty effectively between all these plot lines and they all come together nicely in the final scenes. The movie also maintains a pretty breezy pace, helped in part by the constant movement between story lines.

Marvel has had a weirdly consistant track record when it comes to their trilogies. The first film is always decent and provides the setup, the second film knocks it out of the park, and then they completely drop the ball with the third. Blade, Spider-man and X-Men all follow this model pretty closely (Fantastic Four is the exception; those just sucked). Given that the first Iron Man film was damn near flawless, it's understandable that the huge expectations for this one were going to be tough to meet. The somewhat lukewarm reaction it received is, I think, more a product of those expectations rather than any flaws on the part of the film itself. In fact, this film manages to dodge many of the problems that often plague superhero sequels. Perhaps the most obvious is the inclusion of multiple villains, the downfall of many a comic book franchise. The film introduces the aforementioned Ivan Vanko (an effective blend of the Crimson Dynamo and Whiplash characters from the comic, although he is never referred to by either name in the movie) and Justin Hammer, who act as skewed mirrors of Tony at opposite ends of the spectrum. Whiplash represents Tony's ruthless efficiency and his desire to win at any cost. Hammer is Tony's playboy persona taken to a hilarious, somewhat pathetic extreme. Although the banter between Tony and Pepper was just as amusing as it was in the first film, the scenes between Tony and Hammer were definitely the highlights of this one. The plot not only gives both villains good reason to exist within the same story, but it allows them to work together in a way that does not seem forced or silly.

Superhero sequels are also expected to up the ante as far as action and effects as well. The action sequences in the film had a nice bit of variety to them; the racetrack scene features Tony fighting sans armor, the Rhodey/drunk Tony fight balances character development with things getting smashed and the big finale delivers aerial and ground combat, all of which is rendered and shot with the sense of energy and fun that I remembered from the first film. Surprisingly, the action scene I found the most enjoyable featured no super-powered armor, but just Scarlett Johansson kicking ass. I read somewhere that she trained for months to physically prepare herself for this part. She only has one fight scene, but goddamn, is it a doozy. Incidentally, I was concerned when Scarlett Johansson (one of the hottest women I've ever seen, but who I can take or leave as far as acting ability) was cast in the role and was not featured speaking in any of the trailers. Black Widow (although her character is not referred to by this name in the film) is Russian in the comics and I was worried that Johansson had butchered the accent and they didn't want anyone finding out until their ass was in the theatre seat. Thankfully, the character was adapted to be more in line with her Ultimate persona, so no worries there.

I'm surprised at how little I have to say about this film (especially given how long it took me to pound out this review), but I think it stems from the fact that this movie was just what I wanted it to be, no more, no less. I continue to have high hopes for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (yes, that's apparently what we're calling it), with Thor being the next big hurdle toward the Avengers film.

P.S. Stick around after the credits. Bad. Ass.

DEEP RISING (Moderate Spoilers)

Dir. Stephen Sommers USA 1998

"Full Scream Ahead!"

Although I didn’t intend it, this blog may end up focusing on shitty 90’s movies for the foreseeable future, thanks to mine and my roommates desire to revisit them while drunk. Deep Rising was a staple of satellite TV programming during my middle school years and, like The Faculty, did not age gracefully.

Plot recap in case your formative years were not, like mine, wasted in front of the TV: The Agonautica, the world’s most luxurious (and stupidly named) cruise ship, is celebrating its maiden voyage in the South Pacific. Rushing to intercept and rob it are a team of mercenaries lead by Hanover (an extremely growly Wes Studi) who have hired an unscrupulous rogue named Finnegan (a weirdly miscast Treat Williams) to get them there on his boat. They arrive to find the ship dead in the water and the majority of the passangers missing or dead. Turns out that the ship has been infested by giant carnivorous sea worms (oh noes!) and the mercenaries must team up with the survivors to battle their way to safety.

So I remembered this movie being silly but also kind of badass as a kid. Turns out, it's mostly just silly. The quote at the top of the review isn't actually from the film, but the tagline, which gives you a pretty clear indication of how this thing was marketed. It doesn't really surprise me that this movie was dumped in January and was pretty much forgotten by everyone but me, since it manages to fail pretty hilariously as an action movie, a horror movie and pretty much everything else. Allow me to explain.

So Deep Rising follows the tried and true formula of sending a bunch of people (generally badass dudes) on a mission and then have something scary start killing them one at a time. Predator, Aliens, Pitch Black...there's a long and storied history here. The premise of Deep Rising is a decent enough set-up for something like this, but the biggest (of several) failure that sets it apart from the classics I just mentioned is its character-building (or lack thereof). See, in Predator and Aliens, the films establish a sense of camraderie between the soliders before the shit hits the fan. You are shown upfront how they work together, how well they know each other, who's close with who, etc. By the time the monsters show up, you feel like you're one of the team and each loss hurts you accordingly. Deep Rising shoots for this, but doesn't quite get there. The mercenaries (aside from being very ethnically diverse, to a degree that almost makes it seem PC) are all stock tough guys who display no real emotions toward each other beyond the usual uber-masculine bullshit. Yet later, when the Austrailian guy bites it, the Irish guy laments that he was his best friend. And this was signified by...what? Them high-fiving earlier? No. I'm going to need a bit more than that to give a shit.

Now, of course Predator and Aliens are famously chockful of uber-masculine bullshit, but even the most ludicrous examples of this can be entertaining, dare I say even moving, if carried well by the writing and the acting. As you can probably guess, that is not the case here. Disregarding the fact that the dialogue in the film is derivative and unconvincing, the audience is never given any demostration that these guys are anything other than dumbasses with guns and/or cannon fodder for the monsters. The film shows them emptying their guns into inanimate objects that fall over during a tense scene, running away and not even attempting to formulate any kind of strategy beyond "Get the fuck off the ship". In Aliens and Predator, the soldiers are portrayed as competant professionals who have been forced into an extreme situation which, along with their pre-established and convincing inter-relationships, allows you to sympathize with and worry about them. None of this is helped by the actors, most of whom don't look all that tough to begin with and who end up just coming off as a bunch of chumps that I don't really give a shit about.

The three non-mercenary leads in the film fare slightly better, but I still had some issues. Leading the cast as Finnegan, the Han Solo-ish pilot, is Treat Williams, who is a little too old to be playing the role, but effectively plays the whole, burnt-out, "I'm too old for this shit" character through out the film. Playing the obligatory female lead is the insanely beautiful Famke Janssen as the ludicrously named Trillian St. James, a pickpocket working the ship. Kevin J. O'Conner (who I remember best as the weasely Benny from Stephen Sommers first Mummy film and who I kind of wish was in more stuff) is Joey, Finnegan's engineer/gear-head sidekick and all-around comic relief. Both Williams and Janssen seem to be aware that the entire enterprise of this film is silly and act accordingly, playing their roles with fairly broad action movie bravado/humor. The Joey character is only made bearable by O'Conner's nerdy, put-upon performance; most of the gags in the film fall pretty flat, coming off as more awkward than funny.

As far as the action itself, the movie is passable, but nothing to write home about. The film's complete reliance on CGI in a pre-Lord of the Rings world makes for some pretty fake looking monsters and allows a great deal of appreciation for how much more believable practical effects can be in films like this (Tremors is on deck for review soon and, in addition to being very similar to this film conceptually, makes a wonderful case for the disgust and tactial sensation that practical effects can generate). There was one pretty convincing/nasty scene that I like which blurs the line between practical and computer effects. Gross, right? In addition to quite a few jump scares and the like, the film cribs pretty shamelessly from films that have come before. Comparisons to Tremors nonwithstanding, one of the sequences in the second act, in which the characters have to swim one at a time through a submerged part of the ship, looks like it was compiled from footage of a similar sequence that occurs about halfway through Alien Resurrection, right down to the sickly green lighting. The fact that Deep Rising came out a short two months after Alien Resurrection can't have done it any favors. Most notable is the final action sequence which, despite being completely improbable and looking like it belongs in a video game, is still quite a bit of fun.

All in all, I'd say Deep Rising is mostly a piece of crap, but it's got some pretty good nostalgia value. Well, it does in my case. And I think that fifty years from now, stoned college kids will probably watch it in the same way that I would watch...I don't know...The Creature From The Haunted Sea.

Iron Man 2 is up next! I am so behind.

BELOW (Mild Spoilers)

Dir. David Twohy USA 2002

"What if, when we took on that Kraut ship, we didn't sink 'em? What if... they sunk us?"

I can unequivocally say that Below is the best haunted submarine movie I've ever seen. Which is a nice thing to be able to say.

Obligatory plot recap: The film is set aboard the U.S.S. Tiger Shark, a submarine patrolling the North Atlantic in the summer of 1943. Having successfully destroyed a German ship, the Tiger Shark answers a distress call from a downed British Merchant Marine vessel. They rescue three survivors: a British navigational officer, an injured German POW and a British nurse. Friction develops among the crew regarding the presence of both an enemy soldier and a woman (the old navy superstition about having a woman on a boat rears its ugly head; and they wonder why everyone thinks they're gay). The tensions increases to paranoia, and eventually violence, as inexplicable accidents and occurrences begin to plague the submarine. The crew eventually realize that the other-worldly threat they face may be connected to a terrible act committed by one of their own. DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN!

So, if you're anything like me, you barely remember this movie, which was released to little fanfare, mixed reviews and almost no box-office business in October of 2002. It popped up under the horror recommendations on my Netflix queue and two things caught my eye. The first was that it was the film David Twohy made between Pitch Black, one of my favorite sci-fi/action/horror flicks of all time and its sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick (the less said about that, the better). The second was that it was co-written by Darren Aranofsky, the auetuer director behind Pi, Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain and The Wrestler. His films are always interesting, in a cripplingly bleak kind of way, and a haunted submarine movie seemed a little off the beaten path for him, so I decided it was worth checking out.

Ultimately, I didn't seen any of Aranofsky's influence on this film. He was credited with two other writers, and I suspect his direct contribution to the script was minimal. This did remind me of Pitch Black in several respects. The entire idea of a small group of characters trapped in a dire situation, only to have an unexpected horror element make the situation even more dire, is pretty much the same set-up as Pitch Black and something Twohy seems comfortable with. He also makes good use of the cramped interior of the submarine and establishes the dimesions of the ship early on in a shot reminiscent of the begining of Serenity where a character walks through the entire vessel to spread a message as the camera follows them.

Unfortunately, the film is not without its problems. Historical authenticity is often difficult to pull off in genre films and/or films with a small budget. There's nothing glaringly anachronistic happening here, but something about the way the sailors interacted with each other just seemed a little to contemporary to me. Zach Galifinakis as one of the crew members didn't help. I can't really picture that guy existing in the 1940's, despite his navy-issue giant beard.

The biggest issue I had with the film was the fact that it ended up failing as a horror movie, when it would have made a perfectly serviceable psychological thriller. All in all, the movie wasn't that scary. The horror elements relied very much on 'characters slowly looking at something only to have it be nothing, then turn around and have someone be behind them'-type scares, which I always find kind of annoying. Many curtains were slowly reached for and pulled back, many mirrors stared into for too long (although I will admit, the scene of a character noticing that his reflection is delayed in a mirror was pretty creepy). In the end, the supernatural element of the film ended up taking a back seat to the tension and paranoia that existed between the characters, so much so that I found myself wondering whether or not it needed to be in the film at all. The FX were sparse enough that they weren't silly and the few sequences that directly involved the ghost(s) were effective enough, but I don't believe that there was any reason for the film to explicitly state that it was a ghost, when the ambiguity of the characters perspectives would have been sufficient. The quote I picked for the top of the review comes from a sly scene where the rank and file crew begin to suspect that something is terribly wrong on the ship and attempt to suss out its cause. The Twilight Zone idea of having been shot down by the Germans without knowing it could have easily been the final twist in a lesser version of this movie, but it illustrates (to me at least) the clear fact that the film has included an entire element of the plot that isn't really necessary. Ghosts are far less interesting than human paranoia and fear.

It's a testament to the effectiveness of the performances in the film that the ghosts weren't needed. Stand outs include (given my fondness for classy British women) Olivia Williams as the nurse who takes it upon herself to uncover the mystery plaguing the ship. Seeing her in this was a nice surprise for me after having watched Dollhouse get canceled a few months earlier. I was slightly embarrassed, after racking my brain for the entire film, to realize that the male lead was Elle's boyfriend from the Legally Blonde. He was alright. Fun supporting characters include Jason Flemying (who doesn't rock the American accent too well) and the aforementioned Zach Galifinakis.

All in all, Below is....a pretty decent haunted submarine movie. Check it out if it sounds like something you'd be into.

THE FACULTY (Vague Spoilers)

Dir. Robert Rodriguez USA 1998

"I leave for five minutes and when I come back, everyone's a fucking alien! Now if I have to Men in Black your ass, you're gonna fucking take it!"

This is the first review I'm writing of a film I've already seen. I hadn't watched it in at least 5 years and my roommates suggested revisiting it for a laugh. I remembered enjoying the movie in high school and I was curious as to how it would hold up against my current, somewhat matured tastes. Hoo boy.

Quick plot synopsis for the uninitiated: The faculty of an Ohio high school is taken over by a race of aquatic, worm-like parasites who intend on spreading across the world, Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style. The only thing standing in their way is a rag-tag group of six misfit kids who must overcome their social and personal differences to thwart an extraterrestrial invasion. I'm sure it was pitched as The Breakfest Club meets The Thing.

To understand how preciously silly this movie is, you have to send your mind back though time to 1998. While Miramax was busy cranking out Oscar bait (to great success), it's genre branch Dimension Films, was also going full steam, releasing pretty much every mid-budget horror movie that came out in the late 90's. They made a seemingly concentrated effort to combine the then trendy revival of slasher films with the equally trendy resurgance of teen dramas and comedies. One of the major architects of both of these trends was Kevin Williamson, the writer of the Scream films, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Teaching Mrs. Tingle (remember that one? I didn't.) and the creator of Dawson's Creek. He's currently the showrunner for The Vampire Diaries on CW. One look at this mostly shitty oeuvre and you'd probably think you know exactly what to expect from The Faculty. And you'd almost be right.

The wild card in this equation is director Robert Rodriguez. The Faculty is a bit of a weird pause in Rodriguez's filmography. By 1998, he had already established himself as the king of over-the-top, south-of-the-border mayhem with the first two Desperado films and From Dusk 'Til Dawn. Afterwards, he would spend the first 5 years of the 21st century making movies for his kids (friggin' Spy Kids) before getting back into genre flicks with Sin City and Planet Terror. Stuck right in the middle is The Faculty. Watching it this time, I tried to keep an eye out for the usual hallmarks of a Rodriguez flick. Other than Salma Hayek showing up as the school nurse, all of Rodriguez's usual players sit this one out. Gone are most of his super-stylized camera moves, fairly subdued is the violence and gore. Taking all of this into consideration, the film feels like it suffered from some studio homogenization before release. Either that, or Rodriguez owed the Weinstein Bros. a favor and phoned this one in. The movie just lacks that ubiquitous, bat-shit sense of fun that most of his other films have. At the very least, it does seem that Rodriguez was aware of how shitty the script was. A sequence where the camera zooms in on an (obviously) evil teachers face via a serious of quickly cut, increasingly tight close ups seems pretty tongue-in-cheek on the part of the director.

The majority of the blame for this movie being pretty retarded can be leveled at Williamson. I was 11/12 in 1998, so I can't really say I was intimate with the lingo and sensibilities of high-schoolers at the time, but I can't imagine that Williamson was either. The film's dialogue is a laughably embarrassing jumble of goofy slang ('Guarenteed to jack you up.'), dated references (Men in Black and Independence Day are both referenced more than should ever be necessary) and flat-out cliches (The jock is soulful! The drug dealer is a closet academic! The popular girl is actually insecure! High schoolers have angst but are tougher than they seem!). Watching this makes me wonder how well Scream (a film I liked better than this one but have also not seen since high school) holds up after all these years. It also makes me glad I never watched Dawson's Creek. Williamson's misinterpretation/oversimplification of high school dynamics (he's not the only culprit; I remember watching American Pie, She's All That and many other similar films of the era and thinking that they in no way resembled any of the experiences I had on a day to day basis) seem especially stupid in retrospect given the recent wave of teen films (Superbad, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) that, despite occasionally outlandish plots, portray the interaction and mindset of high-schoolers with what I would consider laser-like accuracy. I, along with all of my friends, cursed like sailors in high school, and we weren't even fighting parasitic aliens. The swearing in this is almost perfunctory, as though the cast and crew would occassionally remember that they had an R rating and have someone say 'fuck' because they could. The entire high-school experience this film tries to convey rings overwhelmingly false.

Even disregarding its misportrayal of teenagers, the script has quite a few other glaring problems. It seems distinctly possible that Williamson handed in a few pages worth of character outlines that were then just taken and converted into dialogue. Characters say that they are complicated when discussing their complications. The drug dealer answers a question regarding his uncharacteristic knowledge of biology with, "I'm a contradiction." No shit, Sherlock. I'm surprised they didn't call the movie, 'A Movie Where The Teachers Are All Aliens'. The script also makes no effort to give the characters plausible reasons for doing things. Most of the assumptions they make regarding the aliens are based on nothing but information from the movies they're constantly referencing. The entire third act is structured around the idea of finding the queen alien and killing it in order to kill the lesser parasites and save the infected townspeople. This is done only because the characters have seen it in movies. It could be interpreted as being meta, but it just comes off as stupid. The most annoying scene for me personally is the 'Thing' scene (cribbed directly from one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies of all time) in which the characters take turns taking hits of a drug that kills the aliens in order to prove that they are all human. Literally every single character has a stupid, inconsequential excuse for not taking it (Allergic! Straight-edged!) that they must be argued down from before they do it. It's just lazy suspense, pure and simple.

The real shame about this movie is that the cast is actually not bad. Leading our scrappy band of teen-agers are a 17 year old Elijah Wood (looking like he's about 12) as the artsy nerd and Josh Hartnett as the over-educated drug dealer. As far as I know, everyone loves Elijah Wood and he is pretty damn lovable in this, just because he's Elijah Wood. The person I was surprised by the most while rewatching this, however, was Josh Hartnett. When he first started showing up in movies, he seemed to fall into that lame Freddie Prinze Jr./Paul Walker archetype, but since then he's racked up a decent amount of weighty dramatic performances (Black Hawk Down and 30 Days of Night leap to mind). Despite his character in The Faculty having unbelievably douchey hair and being written as an insufferable, faux-deep know it all, I found myself ultimately giving him a pass on the whole. Not high praise I know, but it's something.

The actors playing the rest of the kids have mostly fallen into obscurity over the last decade. The only instance in which that seems undeserved is that of Clea DuVall, who played the disaffected, gothy outcast in this and many other films of this era (the Invisible Girl from Buffy being my favorite) and I always enjoyed her creaky, sarcastic voice and vulnerable sullenness. As for the teachers, they're played by a bizarrely eclectic cast of character actors (and Salma Hayek), stand-outs of which include Robert "T-1000" Patrick (giving every scene a possibly intentional comedic undertone by, to quote my roommate, "looking at every one like he wants to rape them") as the gym coach, and a hilariously young Jon Stewart as the science teacher. Also, keep an eye out for Shooter McGavin as Elijah Wood's dad. What happened to that guy?

I'm forced to conclude that, despite its derivative and stupid script, Robert Rodriguez was ultimately having fun with The Faculty. If you're going to watch it, I'd recommend ingesting your intoxicant(s) of choice beforehand and doing the same.