X-Men Origins: Wolverine – *(out of ****)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a very mean spirited film, introducing friendly, innocent characters and then killing them, seemingly for the purpose of making Wolverine angry enough to cause more damage. As I said in a Twitter post, not one of the main characters in this movie has enough morality to consider him or her a decent human being. Each has their own agenda, usually revenge, and will stop at nothing to fulfill it. Gavin Hood, who directed the Oscar Winning Tsotsi, a fine film set in the slums of South Africa, seems to have little passion for the subject matter, and the script’s only intention is to highlight the array of mutant powers that are combined into one super mutant whose purpose remains unclear, though he naturally gets in a superbout with Wolverine, which was pretty dull. I heard some pretty high figures regarding this film’s budget, but I never cease to be amazed that these movies can’t hire fact checkers when introducing script elements. A doctor recently told me that a drug used to render a character’s heart beat so slow as to make her appear dead would have no such effect. Why spend so much on a film and not bother with a consistent script? That, unfortunately, is a question I ask myself far too often.

Star Trek – **1/2

Star Trek didn’t fully work for me. I was entertained, mainly because seeing Leonard Nemoy as Spock one more time was great. He could have been reciting the Vulcan Bible and I would have enjoyed myself. The rest of the film was simply too much of an action movie. I don’t love the Star Trek series, but I have always enjoyed the little bits of philosophy featured in the story lines. In this revamped looked at the early lives of the original Enterprise crew, we meet a young Kirk (his legendary birth opens the film) and see his entrance into the academy and unlikely ascension to the captain’s chair, which corresponds with the entrance of a very evil villain, bent on destroying the universe of course. A battle ensues and guns are fired, that is, guns are fired when Kirk has one. He seems to get in a lot of fistfights in this supposedly futuristic film. Let’s move on.

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker – ****

Marketed as an unbiased look into the lives of bomb diffusers in Iraq, The Hurt Locker is also the perfect action film, achieving the suspense that so many summer blockbusters fail to achieve by creating characters filled with humanity and placing them in perilous situations that could cost them their lives. The difference between a great action movie like The Hurt Locker and a poor one like Wolverine lies in director Kathryn Bigelow’s understanding that watching stuff blow up is not nearly as tense as waiting for it to blow up, which is an an old Hitchcock mantra that Roger Ebert often mentions. Throughout this movie, Staff Sergeant William James and his crew identify and attempt to diffuse bombs, creating a movie that never lets the audience relax. In scenes back at the base, we see the emotional toll these missions have on the soldiers and that their mental state is just as endangered as their physical being. In removing politics from the film’s point of view, Bigelow gives a matter of fact version of the life of an American soldier in Iraq. I don’t remember seeing a movie this suspenseful since I first watched Alien.

Julia and Julia – ***

In Julia and Julia, the latest remarkable creation of Meryl Streep is the famous chef Julia Child, whose book, “The Art of French Cooking” is one of the best selling cookbooks of all time. Ostensibly a light comedic role for Steep, she gives us a closer look at the legend than we expect, reflecting her many moods during a tough but optimistic rise to the top of the culinary world. Interlaced with scenes of Julia Powell’s modern day blog documenting her effort to get though all the recipes of the massive “Art of French Cooking” in one year, the film does a nice job of telling both stories, though I don’t think that the concept truly works. The two stories are told, and Child does have some influence over the way Powell lives her life, but only in superficial way. The common theme is not strong enough to hold the narrative together because the only similarities between the two characters are that they are both married and like to cook.

Inglorious Basterds

Inglorious Basterds – ****

So long have we waited for Inglorious Basterds! Since Tarantino released Pulp Fiction in 1994, he has sporadically worked in the director’s chair and continued to release great movies. Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, and Death Proof were films that contained Tarantino’s sharp dialogue and ironic sense of adventure but not one of those films made me anxiously await a second viewing. Finally, the Basterds have arrived, and I foresee myself re-watching and quoting this movie for years to come.

“Wait…for the cream.”

Inglorious Basterds is a mix of Marx brothers style comedy, give-and-take-and-give-some-more dialogue, and serial style adventure against the Nattssseees, as Lt. Aldo Raine likes to call them. The film takes itself just seriously enough to regard its characters as human beings in life and death struggles, but ultimately it’s a twisted fable about sticking it to the Nazis. I think this is the best film of the year. I can’t wait for my next opportunity to throw an Inglorious Basterds quote into a conversation.

Col. Hans Landa: You will be shot for this!

Lt. Aldo Raine: Naw, I don’t think so. More like I’ll be chewed out. I’ve been chewed out before.

The Taking of Pelham 123 – ***

The claustrophobia of subway trains and tunnels is one of the great settings in urban based movies. This year, following a spectacular subway crash in the underrated Science Fiction movie Knowing, The Taking of Pelham 123 gives us a full length feature in the tunnels of Manhattan, entrapment defined. Though being trapped in a subway car is probably not the best setting for a villain, making the crew seemed doomed from the start, a hostage taking team manages to protect themselves well from outside intrusion as they execute their money making scheme. The film is very entertaining, but I didn’t buy into the plot. John Travolta’s character, a former stock broker, holds the hostages in New York with the specific purpose of sending the stock market into a panic so that he can short sell his stocks and make a fortune on the $2 Million he embezzled and hid away before serving a prison term. It’s a good plan, except a hostage taking situation in New York City, if severe enough to effect the markets would probably shut them down for the day. In this movie, not even the Feds seem to get involved and in several scenes, we hear other subway cars zoom past the car with the hostages. Once again, a lazy script hurts what was a great scenario.

Crank 2: High Voltage – ***

I have ambiguous feelings about Jason Statham’s career as an action star. His movies are consistently ludicrous and clichéd but he makes so many of them that he has had a few memorable roles: Crank’s Chaz Chelios being one of them, while Jenson Ames in Death Race is not. Crank 2: High Voltage seems to have been made by a filmmaker in the middle of a cocaine binge. His scenes move fast, characters drift in and out of the story in kinetic moments of madness, and, as usual, Chaz Chelios continues to do what he must to stay alive. The film’s tag line, ‘He was dead, but he got better’ pretty much describes the logic of Crank 2, which is an entertaining movie fueled by Statham’s glib attitude towards his dire situation. He is on a video game style revenge mission, and this movie makes no pretensions of being anything more than that. I like it.

Death Race – 1/2*

I did not like Death Race. My understanding is that the movie takes place in a not too distant future when prisons are taken over by corporations and used as profit making ventures. In one of these prisons, the warden, who seems to have only one guard to protect her, holds Nascar-style races delivered to the public via pay-per-view. In one scene, the filmmakers make it a point of showing that the three day event costs $250 and we soon find out that more than 10 million subscribers are watching the race. So, from one weekend event, and these races seem to happen every couple of months, this prison has made $2.5 Billion dollars, yet the warden sits behind a metal desk on top of a raised deck overlooking the prison and employs about 50 guards. With that kind of money, she should be watching the events from her own office tower rather than jeopardizing her life living amidst the prison. The pay per view figures are one of the few moments in this movie that doesn’t feature a car race or an insult match between the drivers. I looked up Death Race on IMDB to see who actually wrote (or didn’t write) the script, and of course it was the director Paul W.S. Anderson (not to be confused with Boogie Nights’ director Paul Thomas Anderson), who has made some of the worst movies in recent memory. I don’t even think if I liked Nascar I would have liked this movie.

Bruno – ***

No longer having the element of surprise has hurt Sasha Baron Cohen’s comedy, but Bruno, while no Borat, is still a pretty funny movie. The backlash against this movie seems to stem from the high expectations audiences had for Cohen’s Borat follow-up, but I see no reason to be disappointed. Bruno still manages to find a wide array of people to mock and offend, and he particularly scores with a scene auditioning babies for a risqué photo shoot and in scenes where he exposes the homophobia of rednecks. One aspect of the film that doesn’t quite work all the time is the implication that these scenes are not staged. At times in the film, the behavior of those being interviewed seems so irrational as to appear fictionalized, and a few of the set-ups probably are, but many are not. Baron Cohen’s fame can make it difficult to believe that those in the film don’t know him but he targets individuals who seem unlikely to Borat on a Saturday night. Bruno is not as likable as Borat, at least in this movie, and so the jokes can seem a little more mean spirited but this movie is still one of the funniest films of the year.

District 9 – ***1/2

District 9 is an interesting concept for a film that uses an alien arrival on earth in an allegorical fashion to explore the racism and xenophobia director Neil Blomkamp experienced while growing up in South Africa. Shot in a documentary style that heightens the negative attitudes the citizens of Johannesburg have towards their extra-terrestrial visitors, the film nicely builds up tension as one of the aliens, who are referred to as Prawns because of their appearance, conceives a plan to return to the abandoned ship that hovers ominously over the city. The alien, whose name is Christopher Johnson, has unclear intentions throughout the film and its ambiguous ending leaves us wondering whether Johnson is a hero to his ‘people’ or a desperate man committing his final act. Despite its serious message on racism, District 9 is essentially an action film. As one of the humans who finds himself hunted by his race turns to Johnson for help, we are presented with a man-on-the-run style thriller that culminates on an explosion laden finish. Still, the unusual participants in the action separates this film from others in the genre, and Christopher Johnson is a terrific creation, potentially the Martin Luther King Jr. of the Prawns.

Ponyo – ***1/2

Every time Japanese animator extraordinaire Hayao Miyazaki makes a film, the world becomes more convinced that he is the heir to Walt Disney’s throne. He creates worlds that stimulate the senses and the imagination and Ponyo, his latest film, is a worthy addition to Miyazaki’s library. His films often centre on environmental themes, which makes him an important filmmaker in addition to being a great one. The film opens in the depths of the Pacific Ocean, where Ponyo and her father reside. He has become disenchanted with humans and raises his daughter, whose mother is a sea goddess, and her hundreds of baby sisters far away from land, but Ponyo’s curiosity brings her to the coast, where she becomes infatuated with Sosuke, a human boy. As the story unfolds, we are treated to some visual wonders as the sea rises in line with Ponyo’s hopes of staying with Sosuke. In one wondrous scene, Ponyo leaps from wave to wave in a thunderous storm to reunite with Sosuke. However, despite having Miyazaki’s usual visual magic, the film’s anti-climatic ending removes a sense of adventure that pervades throughout the early parts of the film. I wanted a little more danger; I know Ponyo would have prevailed.

The Hangover – ***1/2

The Hangover, yes, let’s see…I remember Mike Tyson singing Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight, Zach Galifianakis inviting his future brother-in-law and his new friends into the one man Wolf Pack, a naked effeminate man beating up a hungover crew who has just managed to explain why they woke up with a unknown baby in their hotel room (among other unwanted surprises), and, of course, I remember the candy shop. The rest of my memories from this movie are blurred because I laughing along and enjoying the ride. Great story, perfectly executed and exuberantly told. I can’t wait to see it again.

Up

Up – ****

Up was a joyous experience. Pixar’s finest movie to date has an opening scene that is as poignant a statement about loss as any I have seen in film, saying more about life than I would have ever thought possible in animation. The relationship then formed between a boy with an absentee father and an old man who has just lost the love of his life is a wonder to behold. A live action movie could have been made using the same two characters, representing a great new direction for Pixar. I loved Woody and Buzz but I hope they forgive me for calling them just toys. Russell and Carl and noble hearted adventurers who deserve each other, and I am glad I got to meet them.