Battleship (2012)

The end credits for Battleship say it was directed by Peter Berg, and screenplay credits were given to Erich and Jon Hoeber, but if you can find any significant evidence of their authorship you are a more perceptive person than I. These folks had a hand in constructing the film, sure, but there’s never any doubt that the real control over the final product went to the executives at Hasbro Studios; the newly-formed company with the mission of turning all your favorite childhood toys and board games into mind-numbing blockbusters. Hasbro decided to dive head-first into the movie business no doubt because of the success of Michael Bay’s Transformers series, and Bay’s influence is evident in every last frame of Battleship. It is more carefully-constructed and less outright offensive than the average Bay film, but it is still no more than a protracted, mostly mindless exercise in explosive battle scenes that occasionally becomes a brazen Navy recruitment video.

The Dictator (2012)

I know I’m not alone in thinking Sacha Baron Cohen’s shtick has grown somewhat tiring over the years. His films aren’t even the problem; it’s more the way he goes about promoting them via a series of “controversial” red carpet stunts and talk show appearances. Any shock value it once had is gone, and the sneak attack approach seen in Borat and Bruno is no longer a viable option. If you’re Baron Cohen, people can now smell your tricks a mile away. As such, his new film The Dictator forced him to take his latest creation—Admiral General Aladeen, tyrant of the fictional Wadiya—into entirely scripted waters. This is a blessing in that it forces Baron Cohen, his screenwriters and director Larry Charles to create jokes, but they have serious trouble turning it into a coherent whole. There are plenty of funny moments in The Dictator, but they are hampered by an overall shapelessness and a few sequences that are downright painful.

The Breakfast Club: John Hughes' 1985 Time Capsule

Few filmmakers were as willing to date their films as the late John Hughes. While that may ultimately doom his long-term legacy, there’s no disputing that this is part of what made him so massively successful at the peak of his powers. His films are so incredibly of their time and place that they couldn’t help but resonate with the young people who went out to see them in droves. The problem with me is that the ’80s have never been an era that fascinated me from an artistic standpoint, and thus the films of John Hughes have yet to really click with me. He had his share of unimpeachably great films—I would agree that Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is terrific—but other movies like, say, The Breakfast Club have never really pulled me in. In this case, I cared so little about it that I never got around to seeing it until just recently.

Disc of the Week (5/15/12)

In my last Disc of the Week post on Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, I mentioned how his film rose above the usual expectations for January movies. Normally a month reserved for films that even Hollywood thinks are trash, this year provided a few selections that were actually quite worthwhile. Not only did we get Haywire, but we also got the solid Mark Wahlberg thriller Contraband along with a couple selections that are coming out on DVD and Blu-ray this week: The Grey and Chronicle. Both are very good movies, but the latter is one of my favorite movies so far this year. While I could do without the found footage format, it takes the familiar tale of the superhero origin story and presents it in a far more pessimistic manner. Just because you give a teenager super powers doesn’t mean they’re going to use them for good.

Dark Shadows (2012)

One of the highest compliments you can pay a filmmaker is that they have a style so distinctive that one can identify their work without being told whose it is. Tim Burton is one such director, and as problematic as his films have been in the past decade or so it’s always refreshing to see a unique voice at work when so many mainstream films can feel anonymous and mass produced. The problem with his last few films is that they’ve mostly felt like empty and calculated exercises in which he employs his style in service of a well-known property such as Alice in Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. While his latest Dark Shadows—based on a famous soap opera from the late ’60s—doesn’t exactly repair these problems, it exists in a much richer and interesting universe then some of these other films. It’s tremendous fun just to hang out with the Collins family in their cloudy Maine mansion, and though Dark Shadows is often incredibly sloppy, several great performances and a wonderful atmosphere make it one of the more engaging Burton joints in years.

Trailer Trash (5/11/12)

Volume 25: Getting Way Too Comfortable with Paul Rudd

Film and Television: The Migration of the Epic

“Television is better than movies.” This has become an incredibly popular point of view among people who write things online or otherwise, and it seems it’s every other week that a new thinkpiece or blog post comes out about how television has become the new medium for storytellers and movies are quickly being left in the dust. It’s never a debate I’ve been particularly interested in, if only because deciding which is better just isn’t that important to me. They are both great for different things, but if there has been a change in recent years it’s that their respective artistic aims have started to come closer together. Movies are still telling stories—and occasionally doing it in an intelligent manner—but television has turned out to be a viable outlet for auteurs to let their stories stretch out over a long period of time.

If there has been an unfortunate side effect on film, it’s that an entire genre is nearing extinction: the epic. This started to occur to me this past weekend, when I decided to watch Michael Mann’s Heat again just for the heck of it. (In hindsight, perhaps it was not the best idea to kill time with a three hour movie, but I got this piece out of it, didn’t I?) As the film went on, and as more and more characters were introduced into Mann’s dense Los Angeles world, I realized this is a movie that could never get made today. It’s not even that old, yet it’s length, scope and ambition feels like something out of another era. After it ended I tweeted that these days Heat would not be a movie, but a television series on HBO or AMC. Mann recently worked on David Milch’s ill-fated series Luck, and if he were to think up a Heat-like idea today I can guarantee you he would not take it to a movie studio. He would keep it on the small screen.

The CinemaSlants 2012 Summer Kickoff

With the release of The Avengers this weekend, summer movie season has officially begun. So, huzzah. For the next few months, we are going to be bombarded with sequels, blockbusters, and movies with a lot of explosions and stuff. Last year’s offerings were on the mild side—there was a handful of good movies but nothing that felt like required viewing—and Hollywood seems to be making up for it in 2012. May’s lineup isn't great, but once we hit June it seems like a hotly anticipated film is released every week. In this post, I shall take you through all that these next few months have to offer; what I’m excited for, what I’m dreading, and everything in between.

The Avengers (2012)

Like pretty much everyone, I’ve been looking forward to The Avengers for a very long time. The prospect of throwing all these iconic characters together into one film under the supervision of Joss Whedon is a thrilling prospect, and since most of the heroes had worked reasonably well on their own there was reason to expect great things. At the same time, I’ve grown to somewhat resent this whole Avengers project, mostly because it’s kept Marvel from giving us great standalone superhero movies. Instead, films like Thor, Iron Man 2 and parts of Captain America were devoted entirely to setup, and there were long stretches where I just wanted to get back to the actual movie, already. It’s not like the tickets were any less expensive just because it was a prequel.

This relentless Marvel universe-building put a whole lot of pressure on The Avengers. This couldn’t just be a capable superhero movie. We’ve already had several of those. It had to be a truly epic superhero movie; the thrilling culmination of all the Marvel films we’ve watched over the last several years. Not only does it have to feel like a huge movie, but it also has to be a good one. All of the characters have to get equal time, the dialogue has to be smart, and when the end credits finally roll there has to be a feeling that it was all worth it. In a rather brilliant gamble, the Marvel team decided to hand the keys over to Joss Whedon, who in this case is a fan as much as a filmmaker. He knows exactly what Marvelheads would want to see out of an Avengers movie, and he comes through. This is not a film without rough patches, and some aspects are a tad sloppy, but if it’s an all-star team of superheroes coming together you want, it’s an all-star team of superheroes coming together you’ll get. And then some.

Safe (2012)

There's a reason Jason Statham has turned into one of today's most reliable action stars. It's not just that he's exceptional at pounding baddies into submission, but it's the strange sincerity with which he does it. For the past several years, all of his movies have followed the same formula, and by now it should have grown old. Yet it hasn't. Every time Statham gets ready to enter "fight" mode, he is able to make it a new and engaging experience. It's not just in his fists, but in his eyes. There is a determination there; fighting is the one thing his characters are good at, and when he enters the fray there's a feeling that we're seeing this man in his natural habitat. Statham could probably be winning Oscars if he wanted to, but it's hard to fault a man for sticking to the thing that he's exceptional at. Safe is ultimately just another formulaic Statham vehicle, but the meal hasn't grown stale just yet.