Black Hawk Down

As cities across the globe are besieged by extraterrestrials bent on eradicating us, we follow a Camp Pendleton-based squad of Marines, led by a green Lieutenant (Ramon Rodriguez) and Eckhart’s veteran Staff Sergeant, as they battle the indistinct-looking beings while evacuating civilians (including Bridget Moynahan and Michael Peña) from Santa Monica before the city is bombed to dust.

The film is comprised mostly of ground battles amidst rubble-strewn streets and freeways that look and sound fairly realistic, even if the soldiers are fighting aliens or trying to take out alien ships. Director Jonathan Liebesman effectively uses the popular shaky-cam technique to convey the life-threatening anxiety of it all, and the soldiers behave with enjoyably exaggerated military-movie bravado, risking their lives or selflessly sacrificing themselves on a moment’s notice.

Liebesman, whose resume includes horror films like Darkness Falls and the Texas Chainsaw prequel, proves very adept with the action stuff, blowing up vehicles and buildings and showing us spectacular shots of a devastated L.A. But he also makes the various firefights appropriately intense, and certain moments of destruction, like a helicopter exploding, sudden and shocking.

And he does this from beginning to end, from when the alien ships begin to rain down like meteorites and take out Navy destroyers, to the fantastic finale in which the surviving soldiers work feverishly to destroy a massive alien command ship. The effects are top-notch, too, and were created by a company run by the Brothers Strause, who coincidentally made their own alien-invasion movie in Skyline.

What helps make this film superior to that one is that we’re given characters to root for instead of irritants we’d rather see die. This doesn’t mean they’re particularly well-developed. There’s the scared newbie, the newly minted, yet unsure, squad leader, and the solider who resents the veteran (a story element that annoyed me). All one-dimensional, but certainly tolerable.

Michelle Rodriguez has made a career out of playing badass cops and soldiers and such, so her presence here as a tech officer is not surprising, but it is definitely welcome, as she’s one of the few actresses nowadays who looks both comfortable and convincing kicking butt or shooting a gun. One of her first lines has her joking, “I didn’t get this far on my good looks.”

The real surprise here is Eckhart. He takes his stock veteran-who-wants-to-retire role and gives it some decent depth. Sure, the writers give his character a little color by having him drive a classic Mustang. But it’s Eckhart who convinces us the guy is both a tough and intelligent soldier and a compassionate man who doesn’t mind telling a boy it’s okay to cry. His performance is the closest thing we get to nuance in this super-sized serving of somewhat silly sci-fi. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Sci-Fi

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 6/14/11

Wilson and Sudeikis play a couple of over-40 pals who are so unhappy with their sex lives that their wives (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate) grant them the title pass, basically a week off from marriage during which the guys are free to have sex with other women.

To appease the teen boys and college guys, the brothers throw in plenty of the kind of gross-out moments they’re known for–male and female nudity, a woman spraying diarrhea on a shower wall, Sudeikis getting caught by cops doing something he shouldn’t in a minivan–plus plenty of explicit talk about sex and such.

But they balance out the outrageous stuff with surprisingly meaningful writing and by having situations play out a little differently than you might expect. This goes mainly for the relationships that develop between Wilson and a hot Australian girl (Nicky Whelan) and Fischer and an older man (Bruce Thomas), as well as Applegate’s flirtation with a college-age baseball player (Tyler Hoechlin).

As well the brothers make sure all the characters are interesting, even the supporting ones, like Whelan’s coffeehouse co-worker (Derek Waters), Wilson and Fischer’s twenty-something babysitter (Alexandra Daddario), and the forty-something woman (Kristin Carey) who seduces Sudeikis. Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) plays what is easily the funniest character, a fifty-something playa who gives the guys advice on how to pick up women.

The main cast is what makes the movie really work, though. Wilson is unexpectedly affecting as the practical pal with middle-age worries, and his speech about the spot on his chest where his wife and kids have all fallen asleep is the film’s emotional highlight. Sudeikis deftly delivers laughs with his perpetual potty mouth and desperate attempts to get lucky, while Applegate is adequate and Fischer simply shines, especially during the nicely-handled scenes in which she’s charmed by said older guy.

If you just want laughs, there are plenty of them, including Wilson imagining the consequences of buying said babysitter some beer; a pompous guy boasting about his Prius, which is parked next to a Hummer; Wilson and Sudeikis being oblivious to the security cameras as they walk around said guy’s new house; the use of the “Law & Order” chime as each hall-pass day starts; Sudeikis wearing a strange mask to help him sleep; the guys going to Chili’s to find women; and pal Stephen Merchant’s hilarious envisioning of what would happen if he had a hall pass. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Romance

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 6/14/11

It features Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton and John Leguizamo as a trio of people who, along with a young boy (Jacob Latimore), struggle to survive a freaky end-of-the-world scenario in which shadows seemingly come alive and cause people to vanish into thin air, leaving behind their clothes. As long as the group is bathed in some kind of illumination, the shadows can’t get them.

As he did in Session 9 and The Machinist, Anderson eschews gore in favor of mood, effectively creating a surreal sense of dread, from Christensen discovering empty city streets and watching a passenger jet crash to the ground, to the way the shadows whisper as they slither about or close in on a survivor. Not to mention the anxiety you feel every time the lights flicker, which is a lot. The only instance of actual gore is when Newton happens upon a man who was in the middle of being operated on.

It helps that the characters aren’t as irritating as they usually are in apocalyptic thrillers, though they’re also not that well-defined. They each have their traits–Christensen’s selfish but has a heart; Leguizamo’s a shy conspiracy nut–and I suppose that’s enough to make us root for their survival. Newton makes the best impression, I think, as a woman who lost her baby to the writhing darkness.

I imagine it will irk some that we never get a real explanation as to what’s going on, just various theories (one emphasized a little more than the others) bandied about by the characters, as well as Christensen’s ominous observation that each day the sun rises a little later and sets a little earlier. I myself didn’t quite understand the part where Leguizamo walks down an underground tunnel. Nonetheless, if you’re not already afraid of the dark, you probably will be after watching this. – [DVD]

Horror/Mystery/Thriller

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/17/11

Kidman and Eckhart play a couple mourning the loss of their 4-year-old son, who only months earlier ran into the street and was hit by a car. During their struggle they lash out at each other, friends and family, and find new ways of coping, she by talking to the remorseful teen (Miles Teller) who was driving the car, he by befriending a pot-smoking member (Sandra Oh) of their support group.

The film was directed by John Cameron Mitchell, best known for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and he proves very skilled with the technical details. He lights the film beautifully, his framing of shots is exquisitely precise and he utilizes a gentle score to provide the right note of sadness. As a result it feels more like a big-studio effort than an indie flick that took less than a month to make.

What it lacks is the necessary emotional intensity. Which is frustrating, because the script by David Lindsay-Abaire, who based it on his play, gets the words and situations right, like the awkward moments when people ask Eckhart if he has any kids or accuse Kidman of not being a mother. Or when Kidman sums up the bleak state of their lives by saying, “Things aren’t nice anymore.”

The problem, I think, is that Mitchell’s direction is a little too low-key, and so the scenes of Kidman and Eckhart letting go emotionally, be it arguing or crying, never feel as cathartic as they should. It doesn’t help that Kidman’s performance, which was touted as being this really raw thing, feels so controlled. She’s never less than good here, but I don’t think she dug down nearly deep enough in trying to convey her character’s pain.

Thankfully, the always-reliable Dianne Wiest is around to pick up the emotional slack. As Kidman’s mother, a woman still stung by the years-ago death of Kidman’s drug-addicted brother, she effortlessly communicates weary anguish, without sentimentalizing it. Her moments with Kidman are the film’s best, none more so than when she explains to Kidman that grief never really goes away, but it does change, and even becomes bearable, “like a brick in your pocket.” – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11

Black plays the title character, here reimagined as a long-time worker in the mail room of a New York newspaper whose crush on one of the paper’s writers (an appealing Amanda Peet) leads to him traveling to Bermuda where, thanks to a fancy CGI whirlpool, he ends up in the land of Lilliput, home to said pocket-sized people.

I do realize the film is meant to appeal to kids, as sophomoric gags abound, including the aforementioned robot with which Black does battle, but none more so than the sight of Black dousing a fire in the Lilliputian castle by relieving himself on it. And if Black falling on a Lilliputian soldier rear-end-first doesn’t get the little ones laughing, nothing will.

Black does little more than his standard slacker shtick as Gulliver, using phrases like “condish” and “grade-A courtage” to try and make the material seem more hip. But what seemed like very funny behavior in School of Rock just doesn’t work here. Admittedly, the film does mine a decent sight gag out of his flabbiness that involves cannonballs.

I can’t really fault director Rob Letterman for trying to impart a grow-up-and-be-responsible message, either, I suppose, but it’s a half-hearted effort at best. Black learns his lesson in the broadest way possible, so I didn’t buy it when he admits to Peet that “These little people have grown very large in my heart.” I rolled my eyes, in fact.

None of this is to say the film lacks laughs. Indeed, Chris O’Dowd is hilarious as an arrogant Lilliputian general who sees right through Black’s where-I-came-from stories (“Vice President Yoda”), while Jason Segel (I Love You, Man) earns some chuckles as a Lilliputian commoner with a crush on the kingdom’s princess (Emily Blunt, also funny) and Billy Connolly makes for a perfect king.

The only sequence I truly enjoyed (which borrows from the second story in Swift’s novel) was the one in which Black ends up on an island whose inhabitants are giants and where he’s captured by a little girl who keeps him in her dollhouse. Nothing else here made me laugh more than seeing Black being forced to wear a doll’s dress while being force fed a baby bottle. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Adventure/Comedy/Fantasy

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11

Its long-awaited sequel, Tron: Legacy, also focuses on its looks to the detriment of just about everything else. The writing is weak, the direction, by one Joseph Kosinski, lacks style and the acting, save for Michael Sheen and the returning Bridges, is adequate at best. But, thanks to the huge advancement in visual effects since the original, it’s a far more impressive-looking creature, a grand visual creation utilizing some truly dazzling CGI, and so I was more willing to overlook such flaws.

The plot is thus: some two decades after Kevin Flynn, the genius software engineer played by Bridges, went missing, his rebellious, twenty-something son Sam (Garrett Hedlund, who at various times resembles either Hayden Christensen or Christian Bale) inadvertently finds his way into the dystopian-tinged computer world created by his dad, where he discovers not only the old man, but Clu, Bridges’ digital doppelganger who has plans to conquer the real world.

Kosinski wisely retains many elements from the original film, but understandably updates them. The suits still light up according to their wearers’ allegiance (blue for good, orange for bad, yellow for Clu), but are now sleek, black leather duds, the Light Cycles have the same shape, but are bigger and shinier and can curve around the track, and the identity discs (the glowing Frisbees) are razor-sharp weapons that can slice right through a digital denizen. I also appreciated the brief appearance of Bruce Boxleitner, who played both the title character and Bridges’ friend in the original.

As well the numerous action sequences possess a nice muscular energy, less the result of Kosinski’s directorial choices, I think, than of the superlative CGI work and superb sound design. It was especially cool to watch the way various vehicles materialized around characters, though I also liked how the Light Cycles exploded into big, brilliant gouts of blue or orange pixels when getting hit. And I do have to give Kosinski credit for creating the Outlands, the dark and ominous realm beyond the borders of the digital metropolis where digital thunder rumbles through digital clouds.

Bridges plays Flynn with a certain Zen-like weariness, wearing white robes and sounding a lot like The Dude from The Big Lebowski, only smarter. It works, though. He gives the film dramatic weight, and manages to make his solar-sailing bonding time with Sam a poignant pow-wow. But the big thing here with Bridges is that we also get to see a younger version of him as he plays Clu, a nifty, cutting edge digital trick that’s fairly convincing, save for the moments where his mouth doesn’t move quite right when he talks.

In his turn as a neon-cane-using club owner, Sheen (The Queen) briefly injects some outrageous, over-the-top energy into the film, prancing about like Liberace on steroids. Which leads me to mention Daft Punk, the electronic-music duo that cameos as the club’s digital DJs. They composed the film’s score, a most excellent fusion of electronica and orchestral elements that is perhaps the best thing about the film, turning what would otherwise have been just another slick and expensive sci-fi flick into an otherworldly epic. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 4/5/11

Disney

Said story, of course, is “Rapunzel,” the Brothers Grimm fairy tale about a girl with really long hair locked away in a tower by an evil enchantress. Here the girl, a princess kidnapped as a baby by a vain woman who wants the kid’s hair for its magical healing properties, is made into a relatable teenager who manages to escape the tower thanks to the arrival of a roguish thief.

Unlike her classic brethren, Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore), while certainly innocent and naïve of the world, is a spirited girl here, wielding a cast iron frying pan (an object turned into an amusing running joke) and tying people up with her lengthy locks. So she makes for a better role model for girls, and, in a nice gender-reversal touch, especially for Disney, essentially gets to save the day.

The thief is voiced by Zachary Levi (TV’s Chuck), who makes the guy both smooth and vain to a hilarious degree. His funniest scenes usually involve a white palace horse named Maximus, whose behavior and facial expressions help make him the film’s funniest character. There’s also Rapunzel’s pet chameleon, who sticks his tongue in Levi’s ear and shows emotion by changing color.

As well directors Byron Howard (who also made Bolt) and Nathan Greno render the film beautifully, wholly succeeding in their stated aim of making it sometimes resemble an oil painting, in particular the wondrous scene in which hundreds of lighted lanterns are released into the air. They also wring some genuine emotion from the story, like when the queen gently wipes a tear from the king’s eye.

Granted, the characters don’t look perfectly real (their eyes are a little too big), and the demise of Rapunzel’s captor (voiced with perfect wickedness by Donna Murphy) might prove a bit intense for some tots. But such darkness, which is present in the best of Disney’s animated films, is easily balanced out here by the sight of a tavern full of brutes singing about having dreams.- [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Animation/Comedy/Family

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 3/29/11

Jolie plays a British woman being trailed by Scotland Yard because of her romantic link to a mysterious, and wanted, man who apparently underwent plastic surgery to elude both the authorities and the man (Steven Berkoff) from whom he stole money. Via a letter, he instructs Jolie to board a train, find a man with his physical dimensions and make those watching believe that that man his him.

For its first forty minutes or so, the film possesses just the right note of elegant deception as we watch Jolie coolly ditch the authorities in Paris, board said train to Venice and latch onto Depp’s daffy American. Their initial conversation, in which Jolie verbally dominates Depp–advising him on how to talk to women, telling him she hates his name–is the film’s highlight.

But as soon as Depp stumbles his way across a slippery Venice rooftop, and subsequently knocks a policeman into the water, you realize director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others) doesn’t mean for us to take any of this seriously. Which is a mistake, because he proves incapable of meshing the comic elements with the more serious ones.

The film suffers as a result. The action scenes, including Jolie’s ridiculous boat rescue of Depp that features the unintentionally hilarious sight of Jolie fending off a henchman with a life preserver, are listless. And forget about suspense. What little there is dissipates the second we learn of Jolie’s true motives. The finale, which involves a safe and lots of surveillance, is dull as dishwater.

Pluses include the beautiful Venice scenery and, of course, Jolie, who was made for movies like this. She not only rocks expensive-looking dresses and sports an impeccable British accent, but raises looking cool and detached to an art form. She even gets to prove she can act thanks to a nicely done scene where she admits to Depp how she truly loves and misses her mystery man.

As for Depp, well, he just seems miscast playing a guy whom a British agent (Paul Bettany) rightly refers to as a moron. His performance is a little too broad, and I never believed Jolie could fall for him. He looks a little absurd, too, with his goatee and bohemian hairdo. As such the only thing he really convinced me of here is that he knows how to light up a cigarette. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Drama/Romance

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 3/22/11

Like that movie, it’s set in L.A., but instead of focusing on a pack of soldiers, it follows a group of irritating regular people (including Eric Balfour and Donald Faison) in a highrise as they try to survive a sudden and harrowing invasion by some hostile ET’s.

When they’re not staring at or fighting with the aliens while shouting helpful things like “Run!” or “Help!” or “Oh my God!,” the one-dimensional characters are yelling at or fighting with each other or, in the case of Faison’s blonde girlfriend, being nonsensically concerned about whom may have slept with whom.

The effects don’t quite make up for the lack of character development, but they come close, even if they do rip off other sci-fi flicks. The main alien ships alone are grand CGI creations, spitting out smaller ships that resemble something out of The Matrix, while the colossal alien beasts that stomp cars and climb buildings will remind you of the creature in Cloverfield.

And while I would never mistake the brothers as great directors, the military-vs.-aliens action scenes here do have energy. In one of the better ones, a shot-down fighter jet smashes into the highrise’s roof, rolls over Balfour and his girlfriend, and rams an alien beast right off the side. Even better is the spectacular sequence in which one of the big ships is shot down and thunders into the ground.

It would have been nice know why the aliens are attacking us, I suppose, but they do have a somewhat original, if not icky, way of powering themselves. Icky also describes the interior of the big alien ships, where the movie ends with a ludicrous but fairly ingenious little twist that will no doubt be elaborated upon in an equally second-rate sequel. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 3/22/11

A lesser film would have painted the community of Lowell with a dark brush, and it would have been easy to do so. Its rowdy, working-class denizens and depressed post-industrial streets are a ripe set up for the quintessential “escape from the slums” boxing story, but director David O. Russell (Three Kings) sees it through the eyes of a resident–as a raucous, eccentric place to be from. Even a crack house that figures prominently is not so much a threatening pit as it is a sort of overgrown treehouse where the loser kids waste their lives. Micky’s army of sisters, who go by names like “Pork” and “Red Dog,” are part Greek chorus, part West Side Story gang. They, and their mother (Leo, always a highlight in any cast) don’t get along well with their brother’s new squeeze (Amy Adams) but as nasty as they get towards her, she doesn’t buckle. And that’s the great thing about The Fighter–it doesn’t even occur to its characters to be victims.

Of course this is a boxing movie (yes, based on a true story and all that), so there are the requisite scenes of training, injuries, and dramatic underdog matches. But it’s all done with such humor and verve, it never drags. Though it isn’t very showy about it, the editing is some of the best of the year, with sharp cuts that heartily propel the action and even sometimes make nice little visual puns. Wahlberg is nicely low-key as Micky, which may be why he didn’t get a lot of awards attention. It’s a great delight to see Adams and Leo spar with each other, just as it is to see Bale sporting some fantastic cheap M.C. Hammer-esque pants. This is one of those feel-good, inspirational tales that’s also funny as heck. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Biography/Drama/Sport

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 3/15/11