Before you head out to see Breaking Dawn this weekend, give a listen to the Halloween episode of Filmjitsu, in which Jason Santo and I join Mike and John for a roundtable discussion of the Twilight “saga,” the nature of true love, and the merits of vampire baseball. You can find the Twilight discussion here. If you make it through part one, forge ahead on to part two, in which we discuss our favorite on-screen vampires.
J. Edgar
Early in Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar,” we learn that there’s history, and then there’s history as told by J. Edgar Hoover. As played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Hoover is a man whose obsession with fact and truth ends when the subject is himself. The film opens with Hoover dictating a biography of his career to a junior FBI agent. The goal, he says, is to write something that clearly defines the heroes and villains of history.
Cowboys & Aliens
In “Cowboys & Aliens,” Daniel Craig wakes up in the desert bruised, bloodied and wearing a strange bracelet that he soon discovers is an alien weapon. Later, he learns he can control the weapon by clearing his mind and not thinking. Your enjoyment of “Cowboys & Aliens” is predicated on that same ability. Think too long and hard about the film and it goes from a passable, mediocre bit of summer entertainment to an embarrassing exercise from a group of professionals who should have known better. But maybe we all should have known better.
The simple premise seemed ripe with raucous possibilities for blockbuster season. It’s helmed by Jon Favreau and stars Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, and a stable of great character actors. What could go wrong?
Almost everything, as it turns out. But most glaringly: the movie’s five credited screenwriters squander the premise, Favreau loses the swagger he brought to the “Iron Man” films, and each cast member seems to think he’s in some other movie about cowboys and aliens—a comedy, maybe, or some kind of ironic western.
Craig, at least, is pretty clear on his role. He’s Lonergan, a hard-drinking, ass-kicking gunslinger who’s got no memory of how he ended up in the desert wearing some weird jewelry and sporting a bad wound in the gut. Lonergan makes it back to town, gets sewn up by the preacher and, in short order, lands himself in jail on charges of robbing a stagecoach. The gold he allegedly stole belonged to Dolarhyde (Ford), the big-shot cattle rancher who runs the town and who is determined to see Lonergan hanged for his crime.
But then the aliens show up in some jets that look sort of like dragonflies. They strafe the town, blow up some buildings, and snatch up a bunch of townsfolk, including Dolarhyde’s no-good son (Paul Dano) and the wife of the local saloon keeper (Rockwell). Lonergan’s bracelet comes to life and starts zapping alien ships, the remaining townsfolk form a ragtag posse, and the mysterious Ella (Olivia Wilde) tries to help Lonergan recover his memory and commit to kicking alien ass.
Favreau keeps things chugging along, but it’s so predictable that there are no surprises and little fun. The screenwriters, including genre vets Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, mash together western clichés with alien invasion clichés instead of having fun with the material. A brief stop at a riverboat casino the aliens have dropped in the middle of the desert is promising but never amounts to much. And some sequences are downright laughable, such as when Lonergan undergoes a mid-movie vision quest with the help of some Apache and his spirit animal, a hummingbird.
Nothing fits together here. Is “Cowboys & Aliens” a lighthearted sci-fi action flick? Is it a serious-but-dumb blockbuster? Is it an ironic tweak on genre conventions?
It seems to depend on who’s on-screen at the moment. Craig is grim and confident, but with a touch of humor—a perfect performance for a brainless mid-summer blockbuster. But Ford seems grumpy and vaguely embarrassed about his lines. Dano and Rockwell, meanwhile, tailor their performances for an ironic western comedy that might or might not involve aliens. Favreau doesn’t even seem to know what sort of movie he’s making, and the cool confidence he lent to “Iron Man” and its sequel are totally absent.
The problem may start with the source material itself. “Cowboys & Aliens” originated all the way back in 1997, when Scott Mitchell Rosenberg pitched the movie based on a one-sheet poster of a cowboy fleeing from a UFO. That pitch became a graphic novel in 2006.
“Cowboys & Aliens” is a movie based on a comic based on a poster, which wouldn’t be so bad if the film ever moved beyond its own premise. But it doesn’t, and the crazy thrills promised by the idea of cowboys slugging it out with aliens never materialize. Rosenberg should have stuck with the poster and left it at that.
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2
The eighth and final film of the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” has the heavy task of providing three different endings. First, it wraps up the adventures Harry and his companions began in the first part of “Deathly Hallows,” released in 2010. It also wraps up the cinematic incarnation of the series, which began all the way back in 2001. But, perhaps most importantly, it’s the last new Harry Potter adventure we’re likely to see for a while. There are no more books or movies to look forward to (there is some sort of website, but what fun is that?), and unless J.K. Rowling decides to go back to the well in a few years, “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” may be the last dispatch from the wizarding world.
As endings go, it’s a good one, though not without some difficulty. Director David Yates, who’s helmed the Potter series since the fifth film, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” had the tough job of wrangling Rowling’s sprawling seventh novel into two films. The first “Deathly Hallows” is more contemplative and full of angst than its sequel, which fires off magic curses first and delivers explanations second. It mostly works, although “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” is so concerned with racing to the inevitable, climactic battle between Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) that the smaller character touches that have made the series so great get lost in the shuffle. Continue reading
Horrible Bosses
There have been plenty of R-rated comedies during the 2011 summer movie season and plenty more are on the way. It’s not a renaissance so much as a deluge, and the highest praise that can be heaped upon “Horrible Bosses” is that it is, in fact, part of the flood. It’s not even close to being as funny or likable as “Bridesmaids,” but it’s also not as offensively lazy and bad-natured as “The Hangover Part II.” “Horrible Bosses” succeeds as much as it fails, the sort of middling competence that will give you a few laughs and help you remember four months from now that yes, you already saw this movie, and don’t need to add it to your Netflix queue. If you were one of the titular horrible bosses, and “Horrible Bosses” was one of your employees, it would be so inconspicuous and barely memorable that you’d save your evil-employer powers for a richer target. Continue reading
Bad Teacher
Teachers, especially those of the public school variety, have it rough. The job is difficult and thankless and teachers are at the mercy of parents, administrators and, occasionally, students. The pay sucks, the demands are impossible and often contradictory, and because they’re charged with educating children, teachers are held to a moral standard that even the most pious religious leader might find chafing.
Somewhere in all that, there’s room for a good satire, but it’s not “Bad Teacher.” Written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (the team responsible for the 2009 bomb “Year One”) and directed by Jake Kasdan, “Bad Teacher” takes the formula perfected in “Bad Santa” and follows it joylessly to the letter. Take an innocent, sacrosanct profession, add a boozy, vulgar protagonist looking for redemption, mix in some adorable kids and see what happens.
But Billy Bob Thornton, in all his gruff, gross glory, anchored “Bad Santa” with an equal mix of pathos and unapologetic jack-assery. Cameron Diaz doesn’t even come close in “Bad Teacher,” though she might deserve an A for effort. Well, maybe a B+. Continue reading
