CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS

Dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller US 2009

"Alright, this...probably won't explode."

While Inception is still percolating in my brain (I saw it twice), I thought I'd throw this out there as a quickie. Jenn and I watched this on impulse last weekend and it turned out to be a lot better than either of us were expecting.

I have pretty fond childhood memories of the book this was based on, but I definitely don't remember any distinct characters or a plot that could fill up ninety minutes. The filmmakers (the guys behind the criminally unknown Canadian MTV cartoon Clone High from about ten years ago, which you should go download because there hasn't been a US DVD release of it yet) took the charming premise of the book, set in a town where it rains food, and grafted on a witty, well-voiced family comedy.

Bill Hader voices Flint Lockwood, a well-meaning, borderline-mad scientist who's inventions (or rather, their total failures) are the bane of his small island town. When he invents a machine that turns water into food and accidentally launches it into the sky above town, the weather patterns begin producing food of all shapes and sizes. Revitalizing his failing town as a tourist hot spot, Flint's glorious success is cut short by the increasingly unpredictable and destructive nature of his invention. He has to save his town, win his father's approval and get the hot, snarky weather girl to like him, all in a snappy ninety minutes.

So this movie got released to what seemed like little fanfare last year, and I completely forgot about it until I saw it on InstantWatch. If anyone's watched Clone High, the same awkward, absurd humor from that show translates fairly seamlessly to this movie, if only toned down a little. Flint is a portrayed as an extremely off-beat, border-line insane weirdo who's never had any real friends. Although it's all pretty much played for laughs, I can't remember the last children's film I saw that had a protagonist this emotionally disturbed. Most of this comes from Bill Hader's performance. Lots of awkward stops and starts and creepy asides. Anna Faris plays his love interest, a peppy TV weather girl who masks her genius on camera because she thinks only ditzy girls have successful careers. It's a nice role for Faris, letting her play with her bread-and-butter stupid blonde role while also playing a character with a bit more depth and intelligence. It'd be nice to see that from her in her live-action roles.

The supporting cast features James Caan as Flint's dad, Mr. T as an overzealous, ludicrously acrobatic local cop and, bizarrely, Neil Patrick Harris as Flint's pet monkey, Steve, who speaks through a helmet similar to the one Dug has in Up.

Yeah. I didn't have much to say about this, but I thought it was worth recommending if you're in the mood for something like this. Now, ::cracks neck:: Inception.

BORN TO KILL / THE BLUE GARDENIA

Dir. Robert Wise US 1947

Dir. Fritz Lang US 1953

"If a girl killed every guy who got fresh with her, how much of the male population do you think would be left?"

It's been a while since I watched anything old, so I poked around in the film noir section of Netflix and found these two gems, the first of which I got on the strength of the title and the second of which because I'd seen a scene from it in a Fritz Lang class I took and wanted to check out the whole thing. They're both great entry points for anyone who's never seen a noir or has only seen some of the major ones and wants to branch out a bit more.

Born To Kill is far and away the darker of the two films, starring a jarringly young Lawrence Tierney (who most people in my age demographic know as Joe Cabot from Reservoir Dogs) and the lovely Claire Trevor (who is pretty much the quintessential femme fatale, although I remember her best as the tragic, drunken moll from Key Largo). Trevor stars as Helen Brent, a newly minted divorcee who is preparing to move from Reno to San Francisco. On the night she is to leave, she returns home to find her promiscuous roommate and her one-night stand murdered. She flees without informing the police and meets Lawrence Tierney's character, Sam Wilde, on the train to San Francisco. Helen finds herself attracted to Sam's blunt manner and air of danger, unaware that he is not only a violently psychotic career criminal, but the perpetrator of the murder she discovered earlier. On his way to lay low in San Francisco, Sam develops a fixation on Helen and ingratiates himself into the lives of her, her fiance and her beautiful step-sister, an heiress to a newspaper fortune. Despite the increasing havoc Sam wreaks on her life, Helen finds herself further unable to stay away.

So people are rarely nice in film noirs, but in 1947, there must have been a collective decision to take it to another level. Tierney's Sam Wilde is cut from the same cloth as Richard Widmark's Tommy Udo, who famously pushed an wheelchair-bound elderly woman down a flight of stairs in his film debut, Kiss Of Death, released a few short months after Born To Kill. With no discernible virtues, Sam makes for a challenging protagonist, a paranoid, chauvinistic brute who takes what he wants and lays waste to anything that gets in his way. You could draw a pretty clear line from Tierney's Sam to Robert DeNiro's portrayal of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. One could certainly argue that Helen is the protagonist, but in many ways she proves to be no better than Sam. At the beginning of the film she exhibits morally grey indifference, not wanting to get involved in a murder investigation. By the end, her twisted relationship with Sam uncovers her dark side; manipulative and viciously jealous of her sister's wealth and kindness. Many would say that the two deserve each other, but I found myself sympathizing with Helen, even at the end of the film when everything comes crashing down around her.

With some strong supporting performances by Elisha Cook Jr. as Sam's long suffering partner and Walter Slezak as a sleazy, philosophy-spouting private eye, the film makes the most of what ends up being a fairly straightforward story. I didn't recognize Robert Wise's name initially, but imdb revealed him to be the director of West Side Story, The Day The Earth Stood Still and The Sound Of Music. Apparently he was quite the studio workhorse when compared with other more focused, auteur directors, but there's no arguing with results.

The Blue Gardenia was the first new Fritz Lang film I've watched since I took a Fritz Lang/Luis Bunuel comparison seminar in my senior year of college (so many weird sexual quirks in those two filmographies, let me tell you). Fritz Lang cemented his status as one of the cinema greats during Weimar-era Germany with Expressionist classics like M, Metropolis and the Dr. Mabuse films. Fleeing Germany in the 1930's (goddamn dirty Nazis) Lang emigrated to America and became a cog in the Hollywood system, averaging one film a year between the years 1936 and 1957. His work ranged from westerns to socially aware dramas to film noirs. Perhaps his most famous American film is The Big Heat, the 1953 classic that was immediately preceded by The Blue Gardenia.

The Blue Gardenia brings many of Lang's tropes to the table, most notably the wrongly accused (or is she?) protagonist. The film stars the uber-cute Anne Baxter as Nora Larkin, a young woman who spends her days working as an operater at a phone company and her nights pining for her boyfriend, serving overseas in Korea. When she gets an inverse Dear John letter, Nora becomes distraught and impulsively accepts a date from a playboy newspaper cartoonist Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr, rocking the same creep factor he displayed in Rear Window). She proceeds to get adorably drunk and accompanies him back to his apartment where he tries to take things a little to far. She struggles, blacks out and wakes up later that night, fleeing the apartment in a panic. That morning the newspapers announce that Harry Prebble was beaten to death with a fire poker and a woman matching Nora's description was seen fleeing the scene. Oh. Snap.

The Blue Gardenia is very much the kind of movie Alfred Hitchcock would have made (hot blonde protagonist, someone wrongfully accused of murder, etc.). But where Hitchcock would have gone for action and cheeky humor (and probably Anne Baxter hanging off the edge of some national landmark at the climax), Lang goes for a more low-bubbling tension as Nora tries to duck the police (and a tenacious reporter played by Richard Conte, aka Don Barzini from The Godfather) while trying to come to grips with the fact that she may have actually killed a man. Baxter plays Nora with refreshing realism, especially for a film from this era. She's sweet without being too sappy, frightened without being pathetic (although people did not know how to mask their guilt in old movies; every time someone brings up the murders in front of Nora, she proceeds to completely freak out). On the subject of naturalism, Nora acts as the straight man to her two roommates, the bookish, mystery novel-obssessed Sally (played by the unfortunately named Jeff Donnell) and the brassy, motherly Crystal (played by the always badass Ann Sothern). The interaction between the three women always felt genuine and smart, to the point that I found myself wishing that this was a comedy during there scenes together.

It's nice to be reviewing older stuff again. If anyone's ever interested in checking out some old film noir, both of these would be good places to start. Coming soon I'll have reviews of Inception (holy shit it ruled) and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (surprisingly hilarious).

PREDATORS

Dir. Nimrod Antal USA 2010

"This was a last stand. They were shooting in all directions."

As you may have guessed from some of my previous reviews, I am a huge goddamn fan of the original Predator in basically every way one can be. I also dig Predator 2, despite it's middling to poor legacy. I consider the Alien vs. Predator flicks to be dogshit, besmirching not one, but two franchises I greatly enjoy. What can be agreed on by all fans of the series is the fact that the first film is far and away the best. I saw it when I was (almost certainly) way too young to see it and have been extremely eager for them to make another genuine Predator movie for well over a decade. Robert Rodriguez had been commissioned to write a script for a third Predator movie in the mid-90's in the wake of his success with Desperado. It was shelved as being too expensive in favor of the cinematic eye-rape that was AvP. Good job, Hollywood. Knowing all this, you can imagine my excitement when I found out that the current wave of gritty rebooting had made its way to one of my favorite franchises, with Robert Rodriguez acting as co-writer and producer. I learned long ago not to get my hopes up when it comes to things like this, so I walked into the theatre last Saturday with what I would describe as cautious optimism.

Imagine my surprise at finding that the film was...just ok. Using the ol' Superman Returns loophole, Predators advertises itself as the third film in the franchise, ignoring the AvP films (although really, it essentially ignores the second film as well). Beginning with a fairly thrilling cold opening of Adrian Brody's character in freefall over a vast jungle, the film establishes that a group of extremely deadly people have been heavily armed and dropped into an unknown environment where they are being hunted by badass alien warriors. Nice and simple, right? Sort of.

It's very obvious that the makers of this film were seeking to evoke the first film in the series, and with good reason. The set up is very similar, the little call backs numerous (the line quoted at the top of the review was one of the more subtle references) and certain scenes almost qualify as a blow-for-blow remake. Where the film suffers however, is where it tries to improve. Which is admirable in a tragic sort of way. Do I hear you asking for an example? I thought so.

Ok, so one of the big hooks for this movie is the fact that all the human characters are uber-badasses from all over the world (always a neat trope). You've got Adrien Brody as a former US Special Ops soldier turned mercenary, Alice Braga as an IDF sniper (don't know how a Brazilian chick ended up playing an Israeli, but whatever), the always awesome Danny Trejo as a Mexican drug cartel enforcer, a Spetsnaz commando, an RUF death squad member, a Yakuza assassin, and a San Quentin death row inmate. The wild card comes in the form of Topher Grace, a mild-mannered doctor who is ostensibly there to serve as the team medic. Sounds pretty goddamn awesome right? Well yeah, but the major difference between this group of badasses and the badasses from the first film is that in the first film they all knew each other going in. They were old war buddies, comrades in arms, a well-oiled killing machine that takes out an entire goddamn guerrilla camp before the Predator even shows up. In the new film, no one knows anyone going in and there's the usual jockeying for leadership (although less than you'd expect) and all the mistrust and arguing that you'd expect from a situation like this. And of course, with everyone posturing and acting like hardasses, they kind of come off as...well a bunch of generic hardasses. With different accents.

In fairness to the filmmakers, they assembled a hell of a cast to inhabit these somewhat generic characters. Adrien Brody, who proved he could admirably handle action in King Kong, is surprisingly well cast as a cold-hearted mercenary who has no interest in his fellows beyond using them to survive. Other stand-outs include Walton Goggins (easily the best part of FX's Justified, and that's saying something) as the death row inmate and Louis Ozawa Changchien as the silent, but surprisingly expressive Yakuza. Alice Braga does fine as the lone female cast member, nicely averting the obvious romance angle, but awkwardly noble for the sole purpose of being a foil to Brody's fuck-everyone-but-me attitude. And something in me really wants to like Topher Grace, but he just...seems like such a bitch in everything he's in. Even more so than he's supposed to.

But fuck characterization, Steve! What about the Predators and all the action and shit! Is it awesome? Well. I will say that the designs for the new Predators are pretty snazzy. The leader sports a badass black outfit and some redesigned mandibles that are vicious to say the least. They mostly eschew the fancy new tech introduced in Predator 2 for the classic plasma cannon/wrist blade combo, and also introduce some kind of hunting dog creatures that, despite what many people on the internet seem to think (what a shock! people on the internet hate something!), were interestingly designed and effectively used. They probably should have stopped there.

So the human characters don't really figure out the situation there in/encounter the Predators for like, the first third of the movie. This sort of mirrors the pacing of the first film, but ends up dragging a bit since we know exactly whats going on and are just waiting for the movie to catch up. Whatever. Good time for characterization and all. The movie awkwardly brings the characters up to speed by revealing that the IDF woman knows all about the events of the first film, which she relays to the others once they encounter the Predators. That an IDF soldier would know about an extremely covert CIA operation that occured 20 years earlier in Central America doesn't make a ton of sense, and is especially silly given the introduction of a character in the second act who would be much more likely to have this information, but whatever, I digress. In an effort to make the Predators more interesting, the film introduces a sub-plot which reveals that there are (at least) two races of Predator which are currently at war with each other, amidst the backdrop of their usual hunting. This sounds interesting in theory, but ultimately it ends up being a little half baked and really only contributes to one fight scene toward the end that, frankly, isn't as cool as it should be.

Ultimately, what this film suffers from is mistaking streamlined for simple. The first Predator was streamlined, allowing for a slow-burn lead up to the action, great characterization (by action movie standards) and a genuine sense of awe and fear for this invisible, seemingly unstoppable hunter. Predators, on the other hand, seeks to recapture that streamlined premise, but clutters it up with a bunch of shit that should have a) been further developed or b) left out entirely. Nonetheless, it was nice to see a new Predator flick that was actually enjoyable for a majority of the running time, and will hopefully lead to something better in the future.

APT PUPIL / VIDEODROME

Dir. Bryan Singer US 1998

Dir. David Cronenberg CANADA 1983

"Death to Videodrome! Long live the new flesh!"

Both of these were movies I'd been meaning to see for a long time and fortunately they both shared creepy themes about voyeurism and sexuality. So here we go.

Apt Pupil is based on a Stephen King short story and was Bryan Singer's sole directorial effort between The Usual Suspects and X-Men. Set in 1984 Southern California, the film stars Brad Renfro as Todd Bowden, a straight-A high school student who develops a disturbing interest in Nazis after studying them in history class. Eventually he recognizes a elderly local shut-in named Arthur Denker (Ian McKellen) from a concentration camp photo he discovered. Threatening to expose Denker, who's real name is Kurt Dussander, unless he tells him stories of his time as a concentration camp officer, the two develop a disturbing friendship that eventually devolves into blackmail and worse as Todd, revealing himself to be a budding sociopath, causes Dussander's old murderous impulses to resurface.

I'd been interested in seeing this movie since high school, mostly because I dig Bryan Singer (X-Men and X2 allow me to forgive him for Superman Returns) and Ian McKellan (who is just fucking awesome). Apt Pupil brings a lot to the table, including Singer's preoccupation with homosexual issues as well as his apparent interest in Nazism (which is odd coming from a gay Jewish guy, but whatever). The film takes its broad strokes from Silence Of The Lambs, tracing a love/hate (or I guess 0bssession/loathing) relationship between a deeply disturbed mentor and his equally disturbed protege. Singer does a good job of keeping the tension crackling throughout the film and the relationship between Todd and Kurt fluctuates enough to keep the audience on their toes. Some of the scenes are a bit clunky (I'm thinking of the sequence early on when Todd is showering in the school locker room and imagines it as concentration camp and his classmates as starved prisoners) but several others are terrifically creepy. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a scene toward the end of the first act where Todd orders an SS uniform from a costume shop and forces Kurt to wear it and goosestep around the house. Kurt resists at first but eventually falls into a furious trance as it all comes back to him, while Todd looks on in rapturous wonder/fear. It's...about as fucked up as it sounds.

I'd never really seen Brad Renfro in anything prior to this, other than Sleepers and...that's about it, I guess. He really had the chops, even at a young age. As Todd, he does a great job of keeping you firmly on his side despite the characters increasingly grotesque actions and the competing charisma of McKellan's Dussander. His career dropped off pretty sharply toward the end of his life thanks to a drug addiction and he even ended up being overshadowed postmortem, dying exactly one week before Heath Ledger. McKellan is equally and unsurprisingly excellent as Dussander, never once letting his age mask the fact that he is an evil, evil bastard. Keep an eye out for pre-Dawson's Creek Joshua Jackson as Todd's friend at school and the always pathetic David Schwimmer as Todd's dipshit guidence counselor.

As much as I liked Apt Pupil, Videodrome is the film I was more eager to discuss in this review. I seem to be working my way through David Cronenberg's career backwards, beginning with his recent collaborations with Viggo Mortensen (2005's interesting A History Of Violence and 2007's utterly fantastic Eastern Promises) before delving back into his earlier work, which is way more fucked up to say the least. And if you've seen his newer stuff, you'll realize what a strong statement that is.

Videodrome is set in Tornoto during what may or may not be an early 80s version of the near future, shortly before VHS became the dominant/common format for home video. James Woods plays Max Renn, the sleazy executive of a private, small scale cable TV station that specializes in sensational/trashy programming. Growing bored with their regular schedule of softcore porn and the like, Max seeks edgier programming via a pirate satellite dish that is able to pull video from around the world. He finds what he's looking for in Videodrome, a bizarre, plotless show which depicts anonymous men and women being raped, tortured and killed. Convinced that (what he believes to be staged) snuff shows are the future of television, Max attempts to track down the source of Videodrome, only to discover the horrifying reality behind it in a series of increasingly surreal and disturbing events.

So this is one of those movies where you watch it stone sober and by the end you feel like you've been smoking weed all night. It's really goddamn strange. The film begins with a off-beat, but grounded premise, and by the end has veered into sci-fi/horror/exploitation. And of course no David Cronenberg film would be complete without disgusting bodily transformations/mutilations. Plus, Deborah Harry's in it. Like I said, strange.

The aspect of the film that I recall with the most clarity, however, is how bizarrely prescient it is. Of course, it seems silly now to describe anything like VHS as advanced, given that we're two formats past it, but in a weird way this film more or less predicts the rise of the internet. Allow me to explain. Part of the plot hinges on a character called Bryan O'Blivion, a sort of television guru/philosopher who only appears via pre-recorded video broadcasts and advocates a soon-to-be realized world where the majority of human experience and interaction occurs through television. He even refers to his pseudonym 'Bryan O'Blivion' as his 'television name'. The parallels between this and screennames/message board handles are obvious, as is the broader idea of people living their lives through the internet. Cronenberg managed to pull off a similar feat with 1997's Existenz, predicting MMORPGs and highly interactive videogames through (surprise!) invasive bodily horror. Even Videodrome itself invokes thoughts of all the nasty, fucked up porn that's only a few clicks away everytime you go on the internet. None of this is anything Cronenberg could have predicted, but it is kind of eerie how clear the parallels are.

So that about wraps this one up. I watched an old noir the other night called Born To Kill, which I enjoyed immensely. I'll most likely be pairing that with Fritz Lang's Blue Gardinia, which I plan on watching sometime in the next few days. Also, I'll be seeing Predators tomorrow, so expect some strong opinions about that as well.

THE MESSENGER / CRAZY HEART

Dir. Oren Moverman US 2009

Dir. Scott Cooper US 2009

So I've divided movies I'm reviewing that I don't see in theaters into two categories (loosely): Things that I'm watching for the first time and things I've already seen. This review will contain the former. As you may have guessed.

I'll start with The Messenger, since it's freshest in my mind. If you don't know the premise, it's a good one, the kind I wish I'd thought of. Ben Foster plays Will Montgomery, a U.S. Army Sgt. sent home after sustaining heroic injuries in Iraq. While rehabilitating, Will is assigned to serve out the last three months of his enlistment with the Casualty Notification service (the soldiers who go door to door informing people that their sons/daughters/whoever have been killed in action). His CO, Captain Tony Stone (an Academy-Award nominated Woody Harrelson) is an irritable, by-the-book hardass who has become jaded toward his morbid duty. Together they must deal with the horror of war as it has affected them and the families of their fellow soldiers.

So yeah, it's a bit of a downer. But it's great, for a variety of reasons. The gripping premise alone is a fascinating look into a world of grief that most of us will never experience and an aspect of the armed forces that most people don't really think about. Also excellent are the two leads. Ben Foster is rapidly becoming one of my favorite actors. In addition to being the best thing about the 3:10 To Yuma remake, he's turned in some great supporting performances in 30 Days Of Night and Alpha Dog. It's nice to see him featured as a lead and he definitely earns it, bringing serious anger and pathos to the role. Even better is Woody Harrelson, who also starred in Zombieland at the time The Messenger came out. Although his performance in the former film is the type that most people associate him with nowadays, he earned a well deserved Oscar nod for this film, playing a soldier dealing with a different kind of guilt than you'd find in most 'war' films. Never forget that Woody Harrelson comes from some pretty hardcore stock. Goddamn.

The only small complaint I had about the film was the subplot in which Ben Foster's character gets involved with a war widow played by Samantha Morton. Samantha Morton is great in the film (not to mention realistically attractive, which I appreciated; a lesser film would have cast someone like Charlize Theron in the part, which wouldn't have worked), but I felt like that plot line just stopped and started at random. I always found myself more interested in the relationship between Foster and Harrelson's characters than anything else. Nonetheless, the film is moving and topical without being political, and succeeds at being one of the few well made movies about the current war (other than The Hurt Locker).



Crazy Heart, while ultimately more uplifting, is also a pretty heavy film starring the great Jeff Bridges (in a well-deserved Oscar-winning performance), as 'Bad' Blake, a country singer in the vein of Waylon Jennings. Blake, once immensely popular, has become a washed-up drunk, reduced to playing in bowling alleys and bars in no-name towns, while his protege, Tommy Sweet (an uncredited and surprisingly subdued Colin Farrell) is selling out stadiums. While playing a show in Texas, Blake meets Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a local newspaper reporter who wants to write a story on him. He eventually grows close to her and her 4 year old son, setting the stage for redemption, angst and all the good stuff in between.

So, despite 'Bad' Blake not being a real person, Crazy Heart does end up feeling a bit like a Oscar-bait biopic at times. It hits all the same emotional notes and ends more or less where you'd expect it to. What really elevates this movie above the rest of its kind are the music and the performances.

The music, composed mostly by T-Bone Burnett (who also netted a well deserved Oscar for this film) makes for a great soundtrack, with catchy tunes that inform the plot and state of the characters. Definitely something I wouldn't mind owning. Jeff Bridges (and Colin Farrell) do all their own singing for the film, and both seem to have a real talent for it. You'll definitely finish the film with a greater interest in country music than when you started.

Acting-wise, Jeff Bridges give what I could tritely call the performance of a lifetime in this film. 'Bad' Blake seems superficially similar to Bridges' other famous role, The Dude; both are cavalier substance-abusers, one notch above homeless, grinding toward their declining years with what seems to be not a care in the world. Bridges, however, brings a sense of sadness and desperation to the part that cuts through his drunken antics and showboating, making you feel bad for him despite the fact that he has no one but himself to blame for how fucked up his life is. I think people give Bridges less credit than he deserves (until this movie apparently) because his acting is so natural that it's easy to miss all the nuance and detail in his performances, especially when it seems like he's playing himself. Equally believable is his May/December romance with Maggie Gyllenhaal's character which, given the 28 year age difference between the two actors, had the potential to come off as laughable or creepy. Luckily, Maggie Gyllenhaal projects a maturity (both in her character and in real life) that makes it work.



Seeing as how these were both limited run releases late last year, I imagine a lot of people were aware of them, but never got around to seeing them. They both come highly recommended.

THE A-TEAM

Dir. Joe Carnahan US 2010

"I love it when a plan comes together."

So, just to be upfront, I've never seen an episode of the TV show. And I probably never will. I appreciate its place in the annals of pop culture, but in never struck me as something I needed to experience. I went into this with modest expectations to say the least. I had recently been crushed (as you will know if you read this regularly) by the epic disappointment that was The Losers, which has a premise remarkably similar to The A-Team. Additionally, I was disappointed in Joe Carnahan's last film, Smokin' Aces, which was all style, no substance. He had made a brutal, heart-breaking cop drama called Narc in 2002, and I was saddened to see him go the commercial route, a path that The A-Team seemed deadset on following.

It's nice to be wrong once in a while. The A-Team was much more fun than I expected and, while definitely ridiculous, never gave me a second to think about it, which was nice. I won't bother with a plot recap, since I imaging anyone reading this pretty much knows how the A-Team rolls. I will say that the updated plot (set in the very near future and concerning the US withdrawl from Iraq and missing plates capable of printing illegal US currency) was nicely topical without overreaching for any kind of greater meaning.

While this movie would technically fall into "The Gritty Reboot" category, it is still fairly light hearted, which one would expect of an A-Team movie. The action/violence, which hits often and relentlessly, is almost completely bloodless, and despite featuring Bradley Cooper as the super-suave Faceman, the film features almost no sex or nudity of any kind. This is all strictly PG-13 territory. Normally that alone is enough for me to call bullshit on any action movie, but this movie has such an unabashedly fun (one might be tempted to say self-satisfied) tone, that it never bothered me. If you go to this movie to get your action fix, you will not be disappointed. While not gamechanging, some of the sequences are pretty inventive. The truck heist that ends the first act is exactly what The Losers should have been, and the "flying tank" scene that dominated the trailers features a finale that is so awesome I can't believe it hasn't been done before (that I'm aware of).

Again, I've never seen the original show, but I'm familiar with the four man dynamic of the team, and the new cast they've assembled is pretty brilliant. Liam Neeson is reliable as ever as Hannibal, the too-cool-for-school team leader (although I could have done with about half as many instances in which he verbalized his love for plans and how they come together. We get it.). Bradley Cooper, with the same super smug, 'you-want-to-punch-him-but-goddamn-is-he-handsome-and-charming' schtick that served him so well in The Hangover, slips easily into the role of Faceman. Both of them seemed shoe-ins for their parts, but the biggest surprise was Sharlto Copley as the wacky pilot, Murdock. Copley, who turned in a tour-de-force in his first role as the lead in last years District 9, successfully goes the classic route of most foreign actors when migrating to Hollywood by taking a safe, fun part in a big-budget movie (Christoph Waltz is making the same move, following Inglorious Basterds with Green Hornet). Well done. The dark horse award for the film, however, goes to Patrick Wilson for bringing some smarmy humor to Lynch, the shady CIA handler who alternates working with and against the team.

On the weaker side of the acting spectrum, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson has admittedly big shoes to fill, replacing Mr. T as B.A. Baracus, but it was fairly obvious that he was struggling to keep up with the other actors in most scenes. Far worse was Jessica Biel, as a completely unnecessary DOD officer hunting the A-Team once they go rogue. The character is poorly written, existing only to have sexual tension with Faceman and explain the fairly simple plot as it happens. This is all compounded by Jessica Biel's ability to be completely boring in everything she's in. Sure, she's gorgeous and all, but I can name you dozens of other actresses who are also super hot, while actually having a compelling screen presence.

A week later, it sucks to see that this movie came in a distant second at the box office behind The Karate Kid, but I hope that people will consider it. The action is fun, the humor is consistant and everything speeds along at a impressive pace. It's nice to be able to call a summer movie big and fun, while leaving out the dumb.

SPLICE

Dir. Vincenzo Natali US 2010

I don't expect that anyone had realistically high hopes for Splice. Not only did it come out in early June (when was the last time anyone released a horror movie between May and July?), but it came out on a weekend with three other major studio releases. Most surprisingly though, Splice is a hell of an interesting little film, combining horror, sci-fi, family drama and some challenging/fucked-up gender issues. Definitely not what the masses want out of their summer movie fare.

I'll keep the plot recap short, since I don't want to give too much away. Clive (Adrian Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) star as a couple who work for a small genetics company that is about to get a major contract from a pharmaceutical company for their work in gene splicing. Not satisfied with the results they're getting from working with animal DNA, they decide to throw some human DNA into the mix and see what happens. The resulting hybrid, which they name Dren, matures rapidly into an increasingly human, increasingly dangerous creature which they cannot control.

So. There's quite a bit to be said about this movie, both for and against. I would personally put it in the win column, but my girlfriend, who did not like it, gave me some well-articulated points for the other side. And while I don't deny the flaws the film has, I believe that any genre flick with something interesting to say merits some thought, no matter how inarticulately it may say it.

There are several scenes toward the end of the film (don't worry, no spoilers) that will stick out in your mind after you see this film. They are terrifying, grotesque, haunting, and in some ways, laughably absurd. You'll probably be able to figure out what happens in the first one of them early on, but the film hits you hard and fast with the follow-up, and the ending, while not quite a twist, is probably not what you saw coming when you sat down at the beginning of the film. The movie can be read through the lens of sexuality, focusing on several very specific types, but it also works as a metaphor for stem cell research, abortion and the difficulties of raising a child. It's a lot to address in 90 or so minutes, and everything doesn't quite balance, but you'll definitely have a lot of interesting thoughts swirling around in your head after you leave.

I realize how vague that all sounded. Way to take a whole paragraph to say, "This movie will make you think about interesting stuff." But I really don't want to give anything away. So lets discuss something a bit more tangible. One unreservedly positive thing I can say about this film is that the special effects are well worth the price of admission. Using a combination of CGI, prosthetics and a live actor, the filmmakers have created an admirable addition to the pantheon of great movie monsters in Dren. Starting out as a mostly computerized creature (a weird chimera of a rabbit, a kangaroo and a dinosaur), Dren is later played by two actresses, the 8 year old Abigail Chu and the 31 year old Delphine Chaneac in various stages of computer and make-up enhancement. Together, they succeed in making Dren something truly bizarre, but believably human; alternately repulsive and alluring. The performances, especially Cheneac's, are compelling enough to make you forget that you're watching something deadly, while the love Clive and Elsa come to feel for her is both believable and understandable.

On the flipside, Clive and Elsa's relationship beyond Dren is a bit spotty. Brody and Polley are both compelling actors (Brody a bit more so, but I do have a soft spot for Sarah Polley; she's like the blonde Winona Ryder next door), but their relationship seems to operate based upon the needs of the plot. This movie suffers from what my girlfriend would call Winchester Brothers Syndrome (after the two main characters on Supernatural), which features two characters alternating between being pig-headed and reasonable in order to create conflict in the story. One minute Elsa is the one making rash decisions while Clive tries to talk sense into her, and in the next scene, the parts reverse. I understand why writers do it, but it makes for some spotty characterization. Brody comes out looking better in the end, as Clive has a fairly direct character progression, but I found myself torn between sympathizing with Elsa and wanting to smack the shit out of her for being so silly.

Otherwise, the film is shot very well, almost never relying on jump scares or other horror movie nonsense to keep you on the edge of your seat. The entire movie takes place in the confines of only three or four locations, keeping it grounded and claustrophobic without feeling cheap or poorly made. And I can guarantee that no matter how much you like or dislike it, you'll definitely be thinking about it when you go to bed after watching it. Highly recommended.