The Great Gatsby

Let's get two things out of the way right off the bat: I am very, very fond of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I think that the new adaptation by Baz Luhrmann looks tremendous.

I'm honestly a little surprised by all the backlash this film is getting, especially in terms of the casting.  If Luhrmann had asked me for my personal opinion I could not have picked a more perfect cast.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a proven quantity at this point.  He can do gravitas, he can do the breakdown, he can do pretty much everything - when I think about him as Gatsby, I'm reminded of his role in Catch Me If You Can, wherein he plays a character that is both involved in a disastrous downward spiral but is also living a sumptuous life of wealth and the freedom that comes from breaking the law.  It's a similar feel to how I read Gatsby, except that Gatsby is older than Frank Abagnale, so his descent is tempered against the fact that he really should know better - but he can't, because he's trapped himself in his own stories and delusions.  Appropriately, DiCaprio is older now, older and a better actor.  He can handle this, guys.  Think of that first shot in the trailer, of Gatsby holding the champagne glass and looking down from his window.  That's a man who believes he's controlling the world - until he realizes that he can't.

Who can't love that shot?

The other inspiration is Carey Mulligan as Daisy.  Daisy is beautiful, ethereal, too young for her place in life, too much of a dreamer, and with too tenuous a grasp on reality.  How can anyone look at Mulligan in the trailer and not utterly believe her?  From her blond flapper bob down to that last line - "I wanted to do everything in the world with you."  I am in love with her already.  Even Mulligan's characteristic "two moments from weeping (and she'll probably do it prettier than you)" expression fits in here.

Perfection.

As for the rest of the trailer: it's a visual treat, over-the-top and art directed from here to eternity, but this is the 1920's and we're talking about characters who have no desire to behave themselves.  They have too much money, too much time on their hands, and no real sense of personal responsibility.  Luhrmann's tone is right on point, with the air full of metallic confetti and a drink in every hand.  The story is about a lot of things, but at its most basic it's about the rich behaving badly, and superficially we're definitely getting that here.

I can't wait to see the kind of trouble they'll get in to. 

The Avengers

Let's chat.

There were a lot of things that could have gone wrong with The Avengers, truth be told.  It was helped immeasurably by some solid prequels, great actor choices, and a seemingly great writer/director, but still: I had my suspicions that it was simply going to be too BIG to handle.  Comic film franchises tend to suffer in their later films by the attempt to cram too much shit into one film: Spider-Man 3 was a clusterfuck of bad guys, X-Men 3 was a mess of poorly written plot and badly explained detail.  I was afraid that The Avengers was pulling too many elements together.

1. Joss Whedon dialed back his "Joss-ness."  Yes, I appreciate what Whedon does, and I love the dialogue he writes, but going at this big, hulking Hollywood behemoth with his style turned on 100% was never going to work.  I deeply appreciated that he was able to dial the irony back, and that Tony got the majority of his snark (which is where it should have gone) but that he also wrote the characters who needed to be earnest and transparent in that manner (Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner, mostly).  He found a good balance between his preferred aesthetic and the Hollywood comic machine, and it works.


2. The direction and cinematography were perfection.  Let's talk about Whedon a little more as a director, because this may be his biggest project yet in terms of Hollywood grandeur and dude seriously stepped up to the plate.  Shakey-cam was conspicuously absent - I could see and process everything that was going on, which is exactly what the singular power sets of our heroes demands.  (This is how you know that someone in the visuals department plays Marvel Ultimate Alliance; who else saw the Iron Man/Captain America fusion power?).  In the big fight scenes, the camera moves seamlessly from one hero to the next, so that you can see how, even while they're all fighting their own piece, it's all an interconnected sequence.  I called Whedon a virtuoso on Twitter, and I stand by that.

3. Not a minute was wasted.  Whedon was not playing around: he dropped you into the story, trusting that you'd done your homework and seen the lead-in films, and kicked the movie into overdrive in a matter of minutes.  This made his huge cast of characters easier to juggle, since none of them were burdened with obligatory background; the only characters who hadn't really gotten an origin story already, Black Widow and Hawkeye, delivered exactly as much detail as was necessary to understand their place in The Avengers narrative.  I would totally watch a prequel movie about the two of them being superspies, but for the purposes of this film we got what we needed and not a speck more.

That sense that no time was being wasted meant that, even at 2 and a half hours, The Avengers never drags or feels slow.  It's a briskly paced action film with rapid-fire dialogue that trusts its audience to keep up.

4. Mark Ruffalo is the best-written, and best-acted, Hulk we've ever seen.  I've been told the Edward Norton version of The Hulk gets better on re-watching, but I've never tried to sit through it again so I wouldn't know.  I can say, definitively, that Ruffalo does very different things with the character than Norton does and it works COMPLETELY.  This is not a Bruce Banner who's just been through the gamma ray accident - this is a Bruce Banner who is totally beaten down and defeated.  The way Ruffalo stands, the way he holds his hands, the way he talks to other people are all so indicative of a man who is completely resigned to his life being horrible and isolated.  But, and this is important, this is not a man who's lost control - rather, he is SO in control of every aspect, every emotion, every bodily movement that it's tragic.  Ruffalo gets my three favorite moments in the film, and I like them so much because they say so much about how Bruce lives with the Hulk, and how extraordinarily sad his life has been.  This is also the first time that I've ever been afraid of the Hulk and what he can do on a destructive level.

No, really.  He's freaking terrifying.

THIS PART IS KIND OF SPOILERY, FYI, SO YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE YET.

I really loved the way that Ruffalo gives you the sense that, rather than the Hulk being the product of Bruce "getting angry," that he's ALWAYS angry; the Hulk is a product of him loosing the reigns on that anger.  So, you end up with two possible scenarios: Bruce loses control of the Hulk and that destructive energy, and lays waste indiscriminately to everything around him; OR, Bruce CHOOSES to let the Hulk loose, and can thus direct that energy to specific destruction.  Both go back to that idea that Bruce is a man tightly, tightly under his own thumb all the time, and it just makes him so endearing and empathetic as a character.

END SMALL SPOILER


5.  Everyone has a purpose.  This is not to be taken lightly.  You've got a team with three over-powered superhumans and one literal god, and then...two assassin-spies with a lot of gymnastics training and good eyesight.  And yet, I never felt like Hawkeye or Black Widow were shoe-horned in, or a waste of time.  They had clearly defined roles in the party and did some useful, kick-ass stuff.  I was also impressed with Scarlett Johanson's acting, which I haven't been in a really, really long time.  She gets some good scenes and some good lines, and actually delivers on them.

In summary: this movie does not disappoint.  I'm ready for the next round of Avengers, are you?

Summer Movie Season!

This Friday, The Avengers will finally open in U.S. theaters, officially marking the start of Summer Movie Season.  I tend to think of SMS as lasting from whatever Marvel blockbuster opens in May until early September, when it bleeds into the beginning of Oscar Bait Season.  With that timeframe in mind, allow me to share with you the top ten movies I'm excited about seeing this summer (that aren't The Avengers, since DUH).

These are in order of release date rather than order of excitement, since my excitement over movies is hard to quantify - it is roughly equivalent to length of time until the movie is released, multiplied by my familiarity with the property, triangulated with how awesome the trailer looked.  The point is, these are my must-sees this summer:

May 25: Men in Black III

I've been on the fence about this one for a long time - MIB2 was so bad, you guys.  SO BAD.  But I'm cautiously optimistic...and I have faith in the fact that Will Smith is only getting better with age, while retaining a bit of that smart-ass edge that MIB the original had so much of.  Also, Tommy Lee Jones should make more movies.

June 1: Snow White and the Hunstman

HELLO, ART DIRECTION.  But seriously, this movie looks super beautiful, and my love and respect for Charlize Theron more than makes up for how ambivalent or hostile I may feel about Kristen Stewart.  Plus I love the idea of a warrior-princess Snow White, and it is typically an easy sell to get me into a glossy, high profile fantasy film.  

This one also got a boost from how completely dreadful Mirror Mirror looked - if you can only see one Snow White retelling this year...

June 8: Prometheus

There is nothing about this that doesn't look awesome.  Space travel?  Science fiction horror?  Michael Fassbender playing a robot with ~feelings~?  Cinematography that looks like it took notes at David Fincher's film-making seminar, and staticky kind of scary music?  The return of Ridley Scott?  YES PLEASE.

June 22: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

The title of this movie sells itself, really.  Also I really liked the book, and while this looks like it's veered a bit more into whack-a-doo territory, I have faith in the power of axes that can explode trees.  And Rufus Sewell playing a vampire.

June 22: Brave

Are you excited about Pixar's first feature film starring a lady?  BECAUSE I AM. 

July 3: The Amazing Spider-Man

Spider-Man 2 was awesome.  The third one, much less so.  Which is why I'm glad Sony is going back to basics with this reboot, scrapping even the visual tone of their first trilogy.  Andrew Garfield has enough dorkiness about him to make a convincing Peter Parker, so it just remains to be seen if he can pull his action weight.  Emma Stone is guaranteed to be charming, and I'm really, really hoping the villain delivers - The Lizard could be either really cool, or...really, really bad.  Fingers crossed for the former.

July 20: The Dark Knight Rises

BATMAN.  Although INFINITE SADNESS that Nolan and Bale aren't making any more of these.  I hope directors of Batman films in the future will take a page from Nolan's notebook; especially his fearlessness to explore the darker corners of this franchise.  Can I get a Long Halloween movie, now?  Please?

August 3: The Bourne Legacy

Jeremy Renner was pretty much born to play an action hero, and these movies have been SO fun.  While I found the original trilogy to be complete on its own, I feel as though there are still plenty of ~government secrets~ to plum, and you know what?  I trust Jeremy Renner to do that, and to kick a lot of people in the face in the meantime.

August 3: Total Recall

I didn't know I needed this movie in my life until I saw the trailer.  I love how they've spiffied up the super campy visuals from the original, and while it's kind of a bummer this one doesn't go to Mars (or so I've heard) I look forward to the CGI mutant yelling at Colin Farrell's eyebrows.  This is a remake that needed to happen, no matter how good you think the first one is - memory and brain stuff is a common science fiction story trope, but hard to do right.  I'm hoping this one does the job.

August 17: ParaNorman

I'm a sucker for good animation, and this one just looks charming (I'm more excited about Frankenweenie, but that one's not a summer release).  It also reminds me of Monster House, which I LOVED and felt was tremendously under-appreciated.