Reviews

The Star Wars Universe--by turns technologically heroic, biologically exotic, visually epic yet warmly philosophical--doesn't so much require directors as genre magicians, capable of melding nostalgia & fantasy with the type of sturdy engineering and clever eye required for theme-park rides and fighter-jet air shows (the closest approximation would be some of the genial yet narratively peppery filmmakers such as Ken Annakin and Richard Fleischer employed by Walt Disney on his 20,0000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON). Originated by George Lucas--who employed quite a firm producer's hand on his subsequent hires, Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand--the central series lay dormant for 16 years before being revived again by Lucas in a thematically-muddy yet highly-successful prequel trilogy that still managed to divide fans & critics (Lucas again suspended production for several years before selling the rights to Disney). Now, after two new official entries to the central nine stories, and a somewhat-effective introductory tale called ROGUE ONE (thanks to its pleasant recycling of concepts from the original trilogy combined with a charming cast), the producers attempt a central origin story--SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY--of the franchise's most difficult human character, Han Solo. Originally played by Harrison Ford (and who returned as the character in an oddly-tragic plot development in J.J. Abrams' STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS), the whole film is in fact resolutely 'difficult' to pin down, a nominally-boisterous experience that keeps slowing down to a dark, chummy largo. Ably characterized by the slightly-curly-mopped, moon-faced Alden Ehrenreich (his subsequent adventures must have automatically straightened out Solo's hair), the film begins detailing Solo's opportunistic, ambitious drive as he transforms from a comical Empire foot-soldier in his youth to a fitfully-regretful ladies' man and plummy revolutionary. The film's action in its first half--especially a fiery anti-gravitational raid on a snowbound futuristic speeding train (but why would the villains use something as earthbound as a train??)--is well-staged and heartily assisted by a snappy support ensemble (Woody Harrelson, Thandie Newton, later Donald Glover as interplanetary gambler Lando Calrissian). But since the narrative keeps extending Solo's debtor dilemma by forcing him to offer an attempt to steal a priceless galactic fuel source for his gangster benefactors (this is really the only part of the film that bothers at all with outer space, and not even for that long), SOLO in its last hour becomes somewhat of an amiable yet didactic experience, as if the reported production trouble regarding its change in directors had crystallized into a serious budget crisis and stranding its surviving characters (including a gallant attempt at an regally icy alien-villain by Paul Bettany) onto a Brechtian desert landscape more out of a MAD MAX franchise entry rather that STAR WARS, its climax more conflicted and terrestrial than a grand space battle. Although it roughly gels together in its final 40 minutes, audiences expecting a giddy, thoroughly-warm Star Wars adventure from director Ron Howard (COCOON; WILLOW; APOLLO 13) may be somewhat taken aback at SOLO's emotional sparseness and witty yet clammy heroics. I don't believe this is unexpected; Howard started his career working for low-budget studio impresario Roger Corman, and has always understood the balance between artful reach (A BEAUTIFUL MIND; FROST/NIXON) and outright commerce (HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS). Perhaps he found the story of a young, wayward rogue bluffing his way around the galaxy to his own freedom too tempting to resist even if a perceptible narrative ending was never possible or even thematically necessary (the resulting script by Star Wars veteran scribe Lawrence Kasdan with Jonathan Kasdan is being sold as an adventure when it should be more accurately pegged as a reflectively bitter yet hearty story set around some earth-type war scenes and gamblers' dens--very reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway--that just happen to be set around the universe). SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY deserves at least one good primary theatrical look from audiences and Mr. Ehrenreich--who will have a long career once he gains more varied experience as an actor but admittedly was not responsible for his change in directors--has enough chops to not get smothered by the usual CGI-created mayhem. But this is a highly-unique entry to the Star Wars Universe about a unique character, and might require a slight unique adjustment to stay with it.

Fitfully-paced but ultimately-raucous reboot of the 1984 Ivan Reitman Ghostbusters lacks the superb technical & satiric polish of the original but does make for a dopily-urban/paranormal comic montage. Now inherited by a new female quartet of frustrated researchers (including the ropey, wittily-uncomfortable Kristen Wiig), a technical tinkerer and a Transit booth employee, the new Ghostbusters girls--who take a bit too much time 'trying on' the old franchise in what's supposed to be a scarily building adventure; remembering Mr. Reitman had earlier in his career directed a gruesome black comedy for American International, 1973's CANNIBAL GIRLS--discover a hotel employee who's connected metaphysical power-lines undergirding NYC's geography and opening a massive interdimensional portal to unleash thousands of variable-sized ghosts to destroy the city. Directed by SPY's Paul Feig, the film's zesty use of locations, good-to-indifferent staging (perhaps constricted by the very numerous effects-scenes requirements), and increasingly-brisk editing makes good use of its comedienne-actresses (although, oddly, Melissa McCarthy seems to defer to her fellow cast members much more than her earlier work with Mr. Feig, resulting in Leslie Jones' more outspoken Patty Tolan unexpectedly becoming the highlight of many scenes) and spunky support cast. The result is more of a series of knowing sketches stitched together well using the first film's basic imprimatur instead of the comically-ascending epic crisis of the original Harold Ramis (I would think he would be pleased by his cutely-snarky inheritor here, Kate McKinnon, who ends up growing on you)/Dan Aykroyd screenplay, but also needing the artistic filtering provided by the original's superb master craftsmen (John DeCuir, Laszlo Kovacs, Elmer Bernstein). By the end, when the team has finally gelled together very well and has a much more equal chemistry, you accept them for finally getting it instead of the original team's almost-instantaneous fourth-wall satirical viewpoint and PhD-minded, collaborative resolve. Fun, respectful, professional, hysterical-in-moments, GHOSTBUSTERS (2016) should get it right in the sequel with a tighter cast but it is possible in this day & age this is the best we could have hoped for.

Involving metaphysical romantic drama doesn't emotionally combine together in its final 30 minutes as much as it implies but actress Blake Lively's and the cast's sensitive, low-key performances illuminates the picture's larger ideas well. A kind of simpler TREE OF LIFE for the love-story crowd, Lively portrays resistant time traveler Adaline Bowman, an intelligent young single mother whose DNA was rendered frozen by an freak electrical accident during the 1930s and must now live in constant anonymity lest arousing suspicion from authorities. Finally safe in a San Francisco library job while her now-elderly daughter (Ellen Burstyn) encourages her to settle down, Bowman meets free-sprited accomplished artist Ellis Jones (Michael Huisman) who falls in love with her and while taking her to meet his family, inadvertently causes a traumatic meeting between his own happily-married father/astronomer William (Harrison Ford) and Adaline, who strongly had an affair decades before and forcing a literally-cosmic dilemma where Adaline must choose to expose herself and remain with Ellis or destroy her own future. Appropriately, the film has an excessively dark, muted look throughout, accepting more exterior & time-lapse shots and close-ups as it progresses, and the subtle use of songs and musical score don't hype or interfere much with the emotionally brittle dramatics. Director Lee Toland Krieger (who appears to have worked mostly in shorts and indie films) doesn't really seem to want to apply the deepest level of artistic/historic/romantic cruelty that would make him more deliberately comparable here to the early work of Brian De Palma or Roman Polanski but I did like his very naturalistic staging and use of time progression. Overall, THE AGE OF ADALINE comes off a very sweet, modest, well-acted love story with limited literary pursuit of its own abstract potential but is also a very fine new cinematic credit for its director and star.

Woefully under-budgeted new film version of the 20 year old best-selling Christian Apocalypse book series by Tim Lahaye & Jerry Jenkins (although some fans are already strongly protesting that very little of the books is contained at all here) reconfirms the frustratingly insular nature of the "Contemporary Religious Film" genre: no personal artistic or thematic vision, characters coming off as rather smarmy (almost as if the film's determinedly comfortable upper-middle-class viewpoint regarding the terrors of Armageddon was dramatized on the Lifetime or Hallmark cable TV channels), and its increasingly labyrinth insistence on 'exploring' each trapped character for several interruptable talky minutes (the 'businessman', the 'Middle Easterner', etc.). The film's broken, opportunistic dramaturgy centers around the dysfunctional relationship between airline pilot Rayford Steele (Nicolas Cage), his adult estranged daughter Chloe (Cassi Thomson), and further strained by the earnest spiritual zeal of Steele's newly Christianized ex-wife Irene (Lea Thompson). Each is adequately introduced but as Steele's scheduled Trans-Atlantic passenger flight is suddenly interrupted by the worldwide Rapture described in the Book of Revelations, the film-—probably due to a lack of budget cancelling out the ability to cut away to anything--begins a strange stop/start episodic dragging involving the actors that continues throughout the somewhat bipolar Act II; Chloe—after witnessing a couple hundred extras running madly around a shopping mall parking lot to indicate world chaos--is so distanced from the other characters while wandering throughout the city it is almost as if the filmmakers were trying to film a female version of Richard Matheson's book "I Am Legend," while up above somewhere Steele swerves between tearfully trying to reach Chloe by cell phone or giving increasingly tired speeches to his rather grimy set of passengers. Cage's adequate medium-star wattage (he and Thompson almost seem to come from another era) , combined with the perhaps-unintentional stunt casting (Olympian Lolo Jones as an airline ticket agent, American Idol contestant Jordin Sparks as a distressed mother-with-a-gun) and regional dinner-theater level actor hires combine as well as can be expected. Obviously, Nicolas Cage can be an acquired taste and those campily hoping that Cage would here apply some of his previous excesses as seen in such test-pilot crashes as VAMPIRE'S KISS or PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED are bound to be disappointed. He is not a literary actor (which would make his agreement with this type of mass market fiction perfectly understandable) but has always made an earnest, even goofy attempt to understand the oddity or severe crutch of his characters (from MOONSTRUCK to the bottled rage of his LEAVING LAS VEGAS), and his Rayford Steele here—although light years removed from what the novel's more conventional, Robert Redford/George Clooney-type characterization of Steele probably originally intended--is workably vulnerable and honest in trying to deal with both his daughter and his passengers in a nightmarish situation. But it is hard to determine why the filmmakers—although it's done unobtrusively—keep jamming the book's characters together in such listless combinations (a major character of the book, a controversial national TV journalist and strong romantic foil for Chloe named Buck Williams, played by 'One Tree Hill's Chad Michael Murray, comes off more like a love-struck puppy who continually keeps fading into the airplane upholstery; the character is included in the film's last shot as if the filmmakers were genuinely frightened we wouldn't remember him). This new incarnation of the book has taken several years to be put together—British director/veteran stunt arranger Vic Armstrong was signed two years ago—but it almost appears as if the time was used by the producers to erase any hint of an auteur. Armstrong's scenes are decisively staged individually but--strung together using the script's milky characters and apolitical stance (there is no explanation of what happened to either the NSA, the US military, air marshals or any local law enforcement)--the film has a murky, amorphous forward propulsion that cancels out the potential subliminal terror the situation was striving for (achieved in the antichrist THE OMEN film trilogy and much more cheaply in the 1970s Christian film market THIEF IN THE NIGHT trilogy). Some understandably have already written the results off with ridicule but as it unspooled—even with its admitted faults—I had to admit it has a disarmingly sincere, humorously tilted core about the spontaneous meetings with strangers and interpersonal conflicts of this life, and it hesitates to become too obviously 'preachy' on implied standards of spirituality. The film at least has a professional look provided by Clint Eastwood's former cameraman Jack Green and Robert Altman's son Stephen Altman as art director, and the stunt-/special effects-heavy climax, as befitting one supervised by a stunt coordinator like Armstrong, is not bad considering his lack of resources. The LEFT BEHIND movie series will probably manage one more sequel before either stopping completely or going the 'straight to DVD' route but its chatty brightness, threadbare visual poignancy, and clumsy sincerity is worth a conditional look for those who appreciate modest, adequately put-together works of imaginative faith.

Grimy, gently clownish yet brazenly epic interpretation of the old 'Lone Ranger' radio/TV shows featuring Johnny Depp now as its central character Tonto is difficult to ridicule or take for granted, even when the film doesn't seem to be sure exactly whose story it's retelling. Even with the efforts of Depp to bring a pained, highly exotic mystery to his role as a 1933 stuffed Indian museum exhibit brought to life by a little boy wondering what happened to the actual Lone Ranger, the film's antic, myth-busting cruelty almost begins working against itself and doesn't very firmly place itself behind either him (as he first relates what seems to be a bogus bank robbery using our heroes) or the newly-arrived Old West attorney John Reid (Armie Hammer), originally recruited by his Texas Ranger brother Dan to help hunt down the dastardly Butch Cavendish and his gang but is instead double-crossed by one of their own men and mistakenly left for dead after the others are killed. The film up until this point is decently faithful to the original George Trendle-/Jack Wrather-created media treatments that--admittedly fired up by the post-WWII pro-U.S. bent imposed upon American comics and juvenile action characters--made for a rather stoic, multi-principled Western icon (almost a living civil constitution legal form wearing a fringed leather rider's outfit, although the character's best known screen interpreter, Clayton Moore, along with his own Tonto Jay Silverheels, made the character cool). Director Gore Verbinski's decisively widescreen & sturdy if unilluminating scene stagings (Sam Peckinpah and Anthony Mann proved the overall camera setup for a character-driven Western showdown is always a little harder to accomplish than it looks) appear to promise a much more ribald & earthy Ranger adventure (support actors here such as Helena Bonham Carter, Saginaw Grant, and the intentionally-repulsive yet uncampy William Fichtner as Cavendish get right into the spirit of it), and for a time during the film's episode-stuffed 70-minute midsection swerving between the plights of immigrants, Comanches, wounded pioneer women (Reid's topsy-turvy widowed love interest portrayed by Ruth Wilson has a real feminine decency that survives all the rather startling amount of economic and political subtexts the character is expected to react to, almost as if the relationship was undergoing constant rewrites all through shooting) and a seemingly corrupt railroad magnate (Tom Wilkinson)--it almost looks like the tersely-tempered Tonto will actually be able to make an iconic hero out of Reid. But the film's ultimately impersonal attempts at humor or John Ford-type sentiment seem to almost undercut the almost imperceptible attempts to recreate the revered, Arthurian-type bestowing of such gifts to the Ranger as resurrection, the discovery and taming of an almost mythic creature to assist in chasing criminals (there is not even a moment of Reid & Tonto riding their horses alongside each other at high-speed firing their pistols at a target; the characters instead generally clod into towns together on the same horse as if in some 1980s buddy comedy), or the use of the mask and silver bullets to frighten Cavendish and intimidate his backers. The trouble does not appear to stem from Mr. Hammer as the Lone Ranger exactly; his gently beefcake Ryan Reynolds-type looks, somewhat too-wiry build, sharpened character inner drive (he at least makes the increasingly Jerry Bruckheimer-level screen mayhem including train crashes and railroad car fights tense and exciting), and accepting comic trades against Mr. Depp are not light achievements in themselves. But since the Lone Ranger is basically a 19th century form of haunting law-enforcing zombie, and cannot ultimately deal with temporal issues such as sexual romance & monetary award, the part almost requires a quiet, Gary Cooper-type reversive approach, emphasizing historical probity, the dedication to restoring assurance in a community to live and prosper by startling self-honesty, and a type of gently mischievous but observable contempt for seams in the art of rule-breaking. In this--as the film finally hurdles towards its hugely financed and publicized railroad chase so that Reid & Tonto can more settle an overwrought private grievance against Cavendish (or with the rail magnate and a blindly-led U.S. military officer, it is a little hard to keep track of) instead of uniting an evolving and newly-gifted portion of frontier America (Hans Zimmer's climactic use here of the legendary William Tell/Lone Ranger-theme Overture does at least skillfully try to reinforce this almost abandoned story angle)--THE LONE RANGER is totally recommendable for giving a fictional Western hero a giant, silver-nitrate-tinted, raw stage to play out on; it just isn't more highly rateable in its final form here for making John Reid, Tonto, and many of its own characters too much of uneven, carnival-type CGI-action sideshow attractions together (like THE AVENGERS set in 1870) instead of something more simply feeling and determinedly emotional at the same time.

This reviewer still owns an original copy of Jim Steranko's Mediascene Prevue Magazine, which states in a 3-page advance story on the upcoming movie version of Roger Zelazny's novel 'Lord of Light' in mid-1980 that famed comic artist Jack Kirby would be the film's visual concept artist. Amidst some large sized blowups of Kirby's sketches, the artist (known to have been a stereotypically jovial and saucy personality in the tough, deadline-demanding comics industry trade of the time) is quoted in a strangely awed and subdued manner this time. ("This film is going to have tremendous impact on the world. It will allow Eastern and Western Man to relate to each other...I believe the way we're conceiving this film could contribute to saving the world.", {Issue 41, Vol. 2, No. 1, pg. 26}. Mr. Kirby (portrayed by Michael Parks) is practically non-existent in Ben Affleck's dramatization of the events surrounding the use of the unmade film's material by the CIA during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-80. But the resulting film--titled ARGO in tribute to agent Tony Mendez' (Affleck) retitling of "Lord of Light" to create a bogus film company team that would be a cover for 6 State Dept. employees that he would try to sneak out of Iran before they could be captured by the military and possibly killed--is a concise, decently-staged, well paced caper film that recalls quieter, purposeful, politically informed works that were quite common during the intense days of the US/Russian Cold War by directors like Martin Ritt, Alan Pakula or John Frankenheimer. Mr. Affleck as director is not quite there yet in high-technical expertise of the medium as those three but the film's low-keyed photographic color tones, good contrasts in his art direction and props as the hostages see their world of mechanics and expensive travel replaced with ancient stone, wood, and handspun fabrics and circular containment, and his crosscutting between three separate story lines begins placing his craft toward their related achievements (the bogus film production in Hollywood includes the real-life makeup artist John Chambers {John Goodman, an uncannily accurate portrayal} calling in some old friends in the industry to help out including a rough-hewn film producer {Alan Arkin} who slowly sees the mission as a way of regaining some ethical ideals he appears to have lost in himself over many years. The third storyline at the CIA with Mendez' boss {Bryan Cranston, who provides a superb moment in his performance during a bureaucratic snag during the climax} is the most directly wordy and not entirely epic of the three (Affleck laudably has several real-life personalities from Pres. Jimmy Carter's top administration as characters riding herd or clearing the increasingly difficult details of the mission yet they don't quite come across as powerful or accurate as they should {Where was Chief of Staff's Hamilton Jordan's native North Carolina accent?}). Yet the film's central narrative trajectory--with Affleck being able to keep his very numerous locations and group motions distinct and geometrically designed to bring the small group of seven people finally--to the Swiss Air boarding gate at Tehran Airport and the edge of escape and freedom. Ultimately a thriller/suspense film merely dusted by politics (answering or correcting the supposed inaccuracies and dramatic liberties would probably have required an additional hour's length minimum), Ben Affleck's ARGO does at least very respectfully illuminate in both a Hollywood-nostalgic and Washington-heroic manner a frustrating and downbeat era regarding the Middle East for many Americans where (until between the release of the remaining Iranian hostages and the death of Osama bin Laden) the good guys actually scored a victory.

(3D viewing) Frantic, kid-friendly, pleasantly oddball CGI-mishmash supervised by comedian/producer Adam Sandler can't quite be labeled as either steadily charming (the expensive voice cast--with the possible exception of Steve Buscemi portraying a flat-headed, rolling-eyed werewolf--appears to be trying too hard, mostly force-fit together by voice editing and constantly abrupt scene transitions) or profoundly unearthly (the monsters deal more in competitive magic and mesmerism than spoofing outright terror). But as Sandler's ingratiating, widowed, porcelain-skinned Dracula successfully weans his teenage daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) past puberty into her 118th birthday, the cruise-ship-type monster revelry at his Hotel Transylvania resort castle is invaded for the first time by a dreaded, freckle-faced backpacking American mortal, Jonathan (Andy Samberg), who manages to fascinate and charm Mavis into the threat of an actual monster/human romance. Film's middle--as Dracula 'trains' Jonathan into masquerading as a monster to deflect suspicion or anti-human bigotry from Hotel's labyrinth number of creature-guests while hopefully wearing down Mavis' earnest new attraction--isn't narratively smooth but does feature the requisite 'wild' chases, adolescent and familial longings, and character contortions & gesticulations expected of these computer animated films nowadays. Director & former 2D/Cartoon Network animator Genndy Tartakovsky doesn't reinvent the wheel here, and the almost infinitely detailed digital texture mapping on display is second to no one else's. One does have to wonder however if/why either Sandler or Tartakovsky agreed to keep the film's rubbery interpersonal relations, character massings/groupings used solely for punch lines, and juvenile societal identities set rather low even for contemporary animated features (perhaps to avoid the overly melodramatic lecturing some kids' features descend into, if indirectly.) The climax--where a remorseful, fruit-bat-looking Dracula chases down a home-bound, jet-planed Jonathan to bring him back to Mavis and everyone at the resort--provides enough final giggles/smiles to make HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA a genial, occasionally very-well-imaged animated comedy entertainment that--although it may not have gone far enough for real literature-based horror fans or animation critics--will probably be in serious rotation in your minivan DVD player or kid's playroom TV.

Clippy, extremely lore-crammed launch of the first major big-screen Marvel Comics teamup goes a little too much into the anime-type features and weaponry of the SHIELD spy agency and its monochromatic personnel during its first half but soon settles into a huge yet decently Medea-theme-motivated exploration of the superhero identity, and an occasionally funny action film based upon several evolving lines of the comic characters' histories (non-readers who know little if anything of the arcane intricacies of the Marvel Amazing Fantasy/Strange Tales/Tales of Suspense/Ultimate Avengers lines will find this a bit of a slog) as SHIELD's eyepatched lead agent Nick Fury's agency's base is invaded by the Norse god/trickster, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who steals a new intergalactic energy cube called the Tessaract for the invading alien race called the Chitauri. Fury, with the help of the slinky, red-headed Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) organizes the participation of a small group of terrrestrials/magnates/scientists better known as the Hulk (a pleasantly-greyed Mark Ruffalo)/Iron Man/Thor (the sturdy Chris Hemsworth)/Captain America a.k.a. the Avengers, who recently had a variety of individual adventures but are now needed to defeat Loki and send the Chitauri back to their interdimensional plane. The film's unexplained, insistently locale-centered structuring—weaving from a destroyed SHIELD hidden land base to their floating battleship called a helicarrier, where the Avengers collect and argue their theories—seems almost at cross-purposes at times from the charmingly insultive, rowdy, obdurate band of costumed characters getting some help from the crunching sound-effects and punchy yet glacial camera-work. Director Joss Whedon is not David Lean or even Superman I's Richard Donner (he doesn't seem to know how to subtly build grand and stacked sequences or use scale into centered release points for the audience to invite them into constant rousing applause for these 'heroes'). But Whedon does evoke a non-cynical appreciation of these characters minds (Chris Evans' Captain America is as much a straight shooter as straight arrow) and hearts (Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark/cardiac-wounded Iron Man probably comes off the most believable considering he had two full screen adventures of his own, yet the character's mogulistic resources—enough to bankrupt several continents—beggar the question as to why he would need SHIELD at all instead of starting his own superhero gang), and their clear-cut stagings and streaking, powerful choreography even during the most complicated effects scenes does make the appropriate impact. Once the Avengers assemble to defend New York City against a final invasion of giant slug-like creatures and Chitauri attackers THE AVENGERS illustrates the dichotomy of current genre epics, written for tween or undiscriminating audiences yet grandly casting decently talented actors in noble roles for the staying power of a halfway legitimate drama, and settling for digital-image glorification of a superhero costume instead.

Arrestingly-filmed yet oddly distanced dramatization of LA Times columnist Steve Lopez's (Robert Downey, Jr) series of articles regarding his befriending and increased sponsoring of a failed classical musician, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), now begging for change near several of the city's musical landmarks and during his investigations becoming forced to explore his own societal and interpersonal biases & fears. Lopez appeared to accept from reader reaction that Ayers--swerving between trilled spouting of information and history and self-dangerous descents into violent rage--came through the reportage more believably and immediate when the two went into action together--touring old haunts, enduring rehab, abandoned family members like Ayers' sister Jennifer (Lisagay Hamilton) reintroduced to him yet the encounters brim with recrimination. Yet through the patient and increasing level of support not just from the uncertain Lopez (almost driven to drink or career distraction without the knowing, cheeky support of his ex-wife and editor (Catherine Keener) but from an unexpectedly diverse range of contributors in LA and around the US who register their remembrance of Ayers or admiration of Lopez' remarkable patience and dedicated journalism, the film winds everything through a completely overburdened halfway house in the second half where Ayers himself will make the film's climactic decision on whether to embrace the help of esteemed classical musicians and a stable household or destroy himself in the immense miasma of the LA slums. THE SOLOIST refuses to either take sides or provide easy answers, and to a degree director Joe Wright (ATONEMENT) looks like he could pull the film version's ethically unovert conditions off successfully. Downey and Foxx throughout the film compete with Wright's excessively willful, almost smothering stylization--very hard key lighting and light source spillage, minimalist background staging, profile close-ups and crowded two shots whipped away by breathtaking location zoom lensing, all topped off with a breathtaking hi-fidelity sound mix (the orchestra scenes sound like the mikes were placed right into the bowstrings), alternating with reassuringly traditional lighting and designing of scenes of Ayers' childhood and early education at Julliard. Downey is particularly impressive, seeming to get steadily greyer and more anxious as he guides and controls Ayers' naive remembrances and stocky musical technique into repicking up his beloved cello permanently. As Ayers, Foxx packs a generally believable punch playing a street urchin who was capable of much more, and as the relationship developed I noticed Susannah Grant's screenplay devoting an inordinate--some might say unbalanced--amount of time to both Ayers and the wonky lot of the city's environs, creating understandably large amounts of audience empathy yet tottering a little too trustworthily into the comfort zone of a $60 million dollar big-star vehicle lecturing America about the poor. The result is that Foxx's zombied character conception (the fault may be more Grant's than his, though) lacks either the leavening humor, sociopolitical complexity, and symbolic gravitas (the film version cannot decide if its supposed to be a docudrama or a riveting psychological examination) to humanize him against Lopez and make them a representational force of both their adoptive city or their career frustrations. THE SOLOIST in the end does make for a occasionally striking and formatively well-acted drama but its arch technique and lack of severe social reverberation fails to take detailed advantage of two very fine actors and only partly captures the playful yet deeply haunting contact of an American journalist to a specimen/victim of America's obstinate focus on success and what an 'artist' should be.

Emotionally candid, appealingly unpredictable low-budget dramedy features a game cast and admirable use of New Mexico locations but is ultimately less misanthropic and cathartic than its cinematic forebear, 2006's LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (from the same producers). Two twentyish, struggling sisters--Amy Adams' Rose Lorkowski and Emily Blunt's Norah-- in contemporary Albuquerque combine their talents into starting their own crime-scene clean-up service (the only thing missing from their rusty 'Sunshine Cleaning' equipment van is an ongoing audible ice-cream jingle as they head to their next assignment) but their core divisive motivations into enlarging and profiting off the putrid, isolated nature of the profession seeps into much of their personal lives and romances, ultimately exposing the fragile, tragic reason for their tenuous relationship (involving their late mother) and leading into a contrasty concluding final half increasingly alternating between warmly supportive embraces and icy interpersonal stances. Megan Holley's script is somewhat comical regarding the sisters' supposedly threadbare existence (mended throughout with the strong, understanding guidance of their nearby, widowed, salesman Dad, played by Alan Arkin) and persistent distaste with their new & bloody tasks (alleviated with the help of a young local biograde equipment wholesaler played by Clifton Collins, Jr.) and her expansive narrative structuring for such a tiny project--with its very highly multiple use of offices, driveways, lobbies, and gore-splattered rooms--indoctrinate the audience well into the girl's predicament and immediate economic dilemma. Yet some of the inclusions are narratively suspect and oft-putting (making a major point of Rose dating a cop and putting her OCD-ridden son played by Jason Spevack into private school should automatically disqualify her from 'struggling') and I found the unwillingness of the staging by director Christine Jeffs to form a central thematic statement either through Rose, Norah or the characters as a whole in their locale a loss of opportunity (Jeffs' eye and camera coverage is more visually pleasing than LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE--features and close-ups of the actors are vivid and attractive--but much of the nature of MISS SUNSHINE's comparative crossovers, pop-ups and effortive struggling don't appear to be yet part of Jeff's own lexicon. I get the impression there was much more joking in the set designs or costumes than what really ends up on screen). Adams' milkfed Mid-Western pragmatism and wholesomeness befits her very well as she patiently scrubs, grooms, and sighs her way through a series of setbacks (yet I found her not as unself-possessed and vulnerable in the character's romantic and upper-middle-class-scaled desires as the script required. The longer European cut of the film maybe fleshes this out more, however.) and combined with Blunt's Mid-Atlantic-tinged haughtiness (very skilled with props or over-sized set conditions like room decay or train tracks to react with appropriate nausea or genuine wonder) the two generate believable and funny chemistry (they might even look funnier together than anything that could be written). I think a more focused sequel or another film featuring these two is a great idea--SUNSHINE CLEANING is entertaining, enlivening, and not undemanding in the best independent-movie way but the basic story of two sisters starting their own crime-scene clean-up business (honestly, in the end there really is not that much in the film about that concept in relation to everything else) must have come off much funnier or ironically tragic on paper than what ends up on screen.

Involving yet somewhat slender drama by Clint Eastwood, portraying an elderly Polish-American widower/Korean War vet/auto-industry retiree maintaining what's left of his decaying metropolitan household against the increasing incursions of gangland warfare and immigrant blight. As profanely verbose and insulated as he is leathery and gun-waving, Eastwood's Walt Kowalski has also managed to drive off what's left of his children and religious standing with his baby-faced priest (Christopher Carley), expending his remaining pungent life energies on his constant house/auto upkeep and warning off his Asian neighbors as trespassers. Yet when Walt's deepest bigoted fears occurs as one of the young neighbors is forced to participate in a gang initiation by breaking into Walt's backyard for thievery the event instead triggers shaky and harsh recriminations and explanations between Walt and the boy's family that soon become merely grudging and even welcoming, freeing the multi-generational Hmong family through their well-spoken daughter and interpreter Sue Lor (Ahney Her) to offer her brother as a laborer on any projects Walt needs to make up for the bad introduction. Through time and a lot of cooked food gifts and party invitations from his previously ignored and circumspect neighbors Walt begins viewing them as actual people with their own history of unfair treatment and cherished intra-cultural sustainments. Yet as Walt bears with a suspected terminal disease and trying to introduce the young man to a stronger view of himself through career and dating coaching, some of the local gangs become increasingly aggressive and offended by the increasing warmth and unity Walt's relenting have inspired, and when the group dealing with Sue Lor's brother make him a 'deal-with-us-or-pay" offer Walt's smoldering and deadly protective instincts rebound against the gang into a shocking and potentially deadly confrontation. Reasurringly reflective and gently humored in its first 2/3rds Eastwood is generous and composed here, organizing Nick Schenck's script (from Schenk's outline with Dave Johansson) with its threadbare lower-middle class American flavor and hearty exchanges against the generationally-stacked, commemorative ideals of the Hmong enclave. The sequences are engaging and compelling throughout. Yet I found Kowalski himself ultimately harmless as a protagonist, not because he lacks adequate narrative drive (I've never seen a more powerful shot of Eastwood than when he points a gun right into the camera here) but his actual reach as a bigot is written off only with a line about "I killed 13 men.", displaying nothing about if or when he willingly also 'killed' the efforts or opportunities of others unlike him to succeed and prosper alongside him at his jobs or within his community (while watching I could envision someone more along the lines of George C. Scott or Jack Nicholson equally understanding Kowalski but taking him into a more strategically-comical or unpredictable patterning). The film's visual technique, commencing with white-hot exteriors and comforted yet undimensionally-lit and spatial interiors soon becoming warmer yet hard-angled and shadowy, provides a highly immediate contrasting balance and suspense buildup of grit and sacrificial exchange that is belied by the earnest yet overly-coercive writing. GRAN TORINO therefore gives Eastwood--if not quite up to the achievements of UNFORGIVEN or MILLION DOLLAR BABY--and his surrounding cast of newcomers and reliable character actors a hard-hitting, eye-level contemporary canvas to explore what has been going on in America's post-Vietnam/post-Industrial era.

New Disney animated film that reportedly went through some development problems early in its production finally appears as a kind of unofficial semi-sequel to 2004's THE INCREDIBLES (had that film also included a family superdog), about a young White German Shepherd named Bolt (John Travolta, strongly used during the first hour or so but whose voice largely disappears during the last 20-30 minutes), employed along with his young owner Penny (the ear-popping Miley Cyrus) in the production of outlandish adventures for an unnamed studios' output of media and theme park attractions. When awakened to his contradictory usages by several of the other animal actors at the studio, the little pup goes off on his own by unexpectedly getting shipped to the East Coast and forgotten by everyone except Penny and her mother. Joined by an amusingly smart-mouthed alleycat named Mittens (Susie Essman, whose voicework skillfully displays comic skepticism without becoming one-note or overly hostile) and an overfed TV addicted Ohio hamster named Rhino (Mark Walton), Bolt decides to make his way back home somehow and prove to Penny and the audience that his life matters to what they have asked of him. Slightly longer-than-normal film of its type at first uses the additional material with seemingly traditional cartoon-movie reinforcements like a song midpoint (albeit good) or the moral that money can only exist to ultimately feed business kingdoms and royalty so don't make it do anything else. But alongside these genre tropes directors Byron Howard and Chris Williams inject energizing and inventive elements, particularly through the dedicated verbal character interplay of Bolt and his bizarre animal contacts (including blankly-eyed head-bobbing pigeons and dialog-feeding actor felines), or their encounters with a wide range of human physical types who come off more realistically American proletarian lower-class lifelike than most animated features usually include. In fact much of the film's comedy, starting with Bolt's own unintended myopia during the first half, is so low-key in funnily suspenseful scene transitions and delayed verbal punch lines that the standard animated movie audience may be taken somewhat aback if expecting constantly bawdy SHREK-like pop-media satire or romantically-/matrimonially-angled narrative sideroads (the Disney cartoon epics of the 1990s and 2000s). Like its little hero BOLT instead constantly keeps its head low and quite honest and is all the fresher for it as the little trio charmingly continues through the American Mid- and South-west and Bolt himself steadily learning his own sadness & disappointment can be offset and made palatable as he learns the value of real friendship and a sensible life goal of his own might see him through. Another successful element is the remarkable range of moods and settings the animators create by juggling sunsets, twilights, and light intrusions in shadowy cramped spaces (much of Act II takes place after dark and I was marveling at how the directors and their visual crew were keeping very strong pace through the lower-key nighttime lighting and compositions with the storytelling; when the action literally explodes at an all-night Ohio animal shelter [!] the resulting screams and chaos come off much funnier like a group of real animals and people were all just woken up and startled into disastrous realizations at the same time right at 3am). It all grandly combines near the end when little Bolt returns to LA just as the mourning Penny is involved with the climactic staging of a dangerous epic fire stunt that suddenly goes awry, and joined by his new friends along with the overtaken firefighters descends into the maelstrom to rescue his beloved owner for real and prove to himself and his audience what he's really made of. Its story elements a little creaky, its voice & star-speeching maybe a little too cut off before the final minutes, BOLT does finally combine its' modest strengths together into a rousing ending in the finest Disney way that bodes well for its new Pixar management and the imaginations of children who will find a little canine hero that they can learn from.

Producer Hal Roach was reportedly disturbed at the increasingly bizarre endings Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy proposed for their MGM-released features of the mid/late-30s but the comedic results here more than warrant it. The feature begins making you think it will be merely a spoof of a slightly-musty WWI 'returning veteran' melodrama, then enters a strange, deceptive 'midground' number of scenes where the two are supposedly happily reunited yet must almost literally battle each other in an undercurrent of mindslips, oddball personas, switched anonymity, and a willfully ignorant understanding of lethal technology (Stan attempts to back up a loaded dump truck to help Ollie leave a parking space and instead spills a ton of dirt and refuse right on Ollie's head. The results aren't much better when Ollie--unexplainedly--soon allows him to drive the car into his home parking garage.) The film's mise en scene finally settles at the resplendent, multi-leveled apartment complex where Ollie tries to get his previously sweet and accommodating wife to fix a steak "this thick" (Ollie holds his fingers apart several inches to indicate the due process and wealth both men are implicitly entitled to) for them. But once Ollie inadvertently destroys the complex's only elevator and the two begin to create total havoc not only with several other residents but with Oliver's own wife the film is a textbook example of brilliantly refined movie comedic targeting: sweetly gentle optical fades from debris-ridden visual punch lines, well-timed and properly attenuated sound effects (the 'hiss' from Oliver's kitchen gas stove when Stan dimly attempts to try to light it is particularly dangerous sounding), public revealment of the often unglamorous politics of marriage and neighborliness, supposedly innocent bystanders turned cheerleaders of outright societal collapse and hungry for more (this IMDBer was on the floor by the time a totally innocent married woman from across the hall had been stripped of her normal clothes & wearing Ollie's pajamas had to escape her own husband by masquerading as a chair while Stan kept trying to sit on her.) Say what you will about the increasingly poisonous business relationship between Stan and Hal Roach, the film is polished looking, employs several old timers from their silent years, and I found the portrayal of the women understanding and believable, not as quaint (Marx Brothers) or bellicose (W.C. Fields) as some of the competing comedy works of that era. Hadn't seen this one in years but it proves the boys were capable of many more years of contribution with the right administrative and technical support.

We can't feel awed or excited by an on-screen threat that costs the characters nothing and doesn't require some form of emotional responsive action. The second a giant monster usually hits Tokyo, air raid sirens begin sounding and thousands of people scream & scramble toward the subway.

When this Godzilla first steps into NY harbor the entire city population acts like they're sleepwalking. New Yorkers are supposedly the most profane, argumentative, aggressive screamers and yellers in the world but this movie cleans them up so much Godzilla might as well be attacking a Nazarene ladies convention. Upon first viewing Emmerich's attack scenes I immediately asked my audience companion, `Where's the air raid sirens? Why aren't the air raid sirens going off?' The film lacks any sense of brutal imaginative chaos like you get in the 80's films of Terry Gilliam i.e. BRAZIL. Godzilla doesn't care about real estate--he should knock over lines of skyscrapers in huge clouds of dust like they were made of cardboard and make someone else clean it up. People shouldn't be hiding in houses above ground having parties--they should be vomiting from contaminated water supplies, racing away from the city en masse, or shivering underground so they won't be crushed (the filmmakers oddly keep shying away from even implying how dangerous Godzilla's mere physical existence is) or, worse, eaten (the original 1956 Godzilla was a carnivore). What has charmed generations of audiences to Ishiro Honda's Godzilla & kaiju eiga films is that humanity succeeds against such an outlandish, multi-threat creature. It is fine and well for the charming, intrepid scientists & investigators of Emmerich's version to `figure out' Godzilla using insurance reports, home pregnancy test kits, and fish bait. But the people in a Godzilla film must ultimately outwit and outmatch him--they must never spend so much of the film's running time figuring him out that they trail behind him.