The Guilty Snob

Possibly my favorite paragraph in film criticism comes from David Thomson’s “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film”, where he writes about seeing David Lynch’s masterpiece “Blue Velvet” for the first time. In it he writes “The occasion stood as the last moment of transcendence I had felt at the movies – until The Piano. What I mean by that is a kind of passionate involvement with both the story and the making of a film, so that I was simultaneously moved by the enactment on screen and by discovering that a new director had made the medium alive and dangerous again. I was the more captivated in that I had not much liked David Lynch’s earlier work”. This perfectly captures the feeling for me of experiencing a new film that I almost immediately sense is one of the greats, the kind of moment that I go to film after film in search of.  His description of both fully engaging with the film on a narrative level, while also evaluating it and marveling at the making of such a film as ‘transcendence’ is apt: it is a kind of experience where one completely loses one’s self-consciousness and becomes completely absorbed by the film experience.  This kind of experience seems to rarely occur when you expect it to, but rather seems to sneak up on you and take you by surprise. Perhaps the first time I was aware of such an experience (i.e. after reading Thomson’s piece) was at the screening of another David Lynch film: 2006’s “Inland Empire”. Since then I have only had a similar experience at three films: 2007’s “There Will Be Blood”, last year’s “Melancholia”, and now “Cloud Atlas”.

There is some difference between the experience Thomson describes and mine: in all four cases I was very aware of the filmmaker in question (I would have been disappointed at any less of an experience at Inland Empire), and Lars Von Trier is the only director of the four films whose previous work I didn’t care for at all. But in all of these cases there was a real sense of discovery, and perhaps none more than “Cloud Atlas”.

The directors of the film were a big part of my surprise: it is one of the rare movies that credits three directors, who apparently directed different portions of the film in separate production units, one headed by siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski, the other by German director Tom Tykwer. The Wachowski’s are hardly an obscure duo: they have a very particular place in film history (and infamy) as the directors of the Matrix trilogy, a series that began with one of the greatest American action films, and eventually devolved into a duo of interesting, memorable, but enormously flawed and heavy-handed followups that attempted to take on far more weight than they could sustain. Their work since then has been a mixed bag: first an adaptation of the classic graphic novel “V For Vendetta”, which had it’s equal share of admirers and haters, and a live action adaptation of the 60’s anime “Speed Racer”, which seemed to exist solely to capture on film the feeling of throwing up after eating too much candy. Tykwer’s career has been just as odd and uneven, including “Run Lola Run”, his engaging but spastic debut,“Heaven”, an adaptation of a Kryzstof Kieslowski script, “Perfume”, another imaginative adaptation of a difficult novel, and “The International”, a generic heist film. Based on this eclectic and inconsistent pedigree I expected an interesting but incoherent mess of a film, but was surprised by how emotionally engaging, and thematically powerful it ended up being.

The narrative is difficult  to describe: it involves six different storylines, one revolving around a plantation owner (Jim Sturgess) stranded on the Chatham Islands in 1849, one about a young gay musician (Ben Whishaw) who collaborates with a cranky but  brilliant composer in Brugges circa 1936, one about a female reporter (Halle Berry) in 1970’s San Francisco, one about a bumbling author in present day England (Jim Broadbent), one about a Korean clone (Bae Doona) in “Neo Seoul” circa 2144, and the last about a goatherder (Tom Hanks) in an unspecified, post-apocalyptic future setting. Though each story revolves around a different character, most of these actors (along with several others) appear in almost all the other storylines as reincarnations of their characters. The film carries on in a long tradition of “everything is connected” films, where a vast number of characters are coincidentally linked together (the masterpiece of which is still Paul Thomas Anderson’s devastating “Magnolia”). This genre appeared to have been repeated to the point that nothing original could be added to it, yet Cloud Atlas succeeds by connecting the characters across time in an extremely satisfying fashion. Other films, particularly Darren Aronofsky’s ambitious failure “The Fountain”, have attempted such a structure, but were overly obvious and emotionally hollow.  Unlike the weaker films in this genre, like the heavyhanded “Babel”, “Cloud Atlas” does not establish direct and convoluted narrative links between the segments, but ties them together thematically, and through coincidental and unpredictable interactions between the key characters.

It is certainly an extremely unusual film, in that almost all of it’s power of the film lies in its structure. At first the film seems disjointed, and seems to be attempting to tell six stories at once, and it isn’t until nearly an hour in when the different tones and style start to mesh together. None of these stories would be particularly stunning or unpredictable if taken individually, but linked together they create an unforgettable and stirring kind of mosaic narrative. There are elements in the film that don’t seem to belong in any respectable work of art: among many other spectacles the movie features Hugo Weaving essentially playing Nurse Ratched in Mrs. Doubtfire style drag, a significant plot twist ripped straight out of “Soylent Green”, several nearly direct addresses to the viewer, many instances of bizarre casting across gender and race lines, and voiceover that sometimes seems to run throughout half the movie. Yet the film is so self-assured in its direction that it not only carries the viewer through these rough patches, but transforms them into strengths. As it goes on, the editing intentionally becomes more and more fluid, and key scenes across time periods and storylines are inextricably linked to each other. It isn’t clear until the final 30 minutes (out of nearly 3 hours) what exactly these stories have in common, but by that point the viewer is unable to separate the threads from each other, as the editing links them in visual and emotional ways that make sense on a completely different level from the intellectual themes.

But I do not mean to indicate that this is a particularly intellectual or difficult film. Like most successful films with complex narrative structures, it seems vast and nearly incomprehensible at first, yet is deceptively simple by the end. On paper it may sound like the kind of postmodern structure that would be comparable to a Charlie Kaufman or David Lynch film, but it has just as much in common with epic, crowd pleasing romances like “Titanic” and “Gone with the Wind”. Like those films it has massive flaws which are nearly impossible to overlook: including wildly over the top supporting performances, massive tonal shifts, pieces of tin-eared dialogue, and underdeveloped storylines, but features such universal emotions and entertaining spectacles that its power is difficult to deny. Once the themes of the movie reveal themselves, they are much more romantic than intellectual in nature, something that the directors wisely realize and emphasize. There is a self-awareness to the film that manages to temper the sillier aspects while not distracting from the serious emotions at it’s core: it is clear that the directors know that is inherently amusing to make up the beautiful Halle Berry as a decrepit male Korean doctor, and make these kinds of moments gleefully absurd, rather than awkward and embarrassing. This is aided by the exceptional makeup effects, which are by turns subtle, artful, grotesque, and hilarious.

There are six different narratives and nearly eighty significant characters here (almost all played by the same 12 or so actors), yet the script and editing are so artful and precise that the various threads never become difficult to parse. This is partly because some narrative shortcuts are taken: there is not really time to develop the characters as specific individuals, so most remain archetypes on which the audience can project their own emotions and experiences. While normally this would result in vague characters that arouse little in the way of emotion, this works for two reasons here. Firstly, though the reincarnation theme causes some actors to be cast very oddly in small roles, all the central roles are cast to perfection, with the actors conveying the specific humanity within the characters that the script does not have time to establish, and  secondly because the editing clarifies the arc of each character outside of the context of their specific storylines. Certain narratives might be much more effective than others if the storylines were separated (the parts set in Neo-Seoul, and 1930′s Brugges are particularly engaging) but the directors makes it impossible to do so, tying every stray part into an inextricable whole. While the reincarnation theme could have come off as a goofy pseudo-profound gimmick, instead it works to clarify certain character arcs and heighten the emotional payoff. Perhaps the most original aspect to the film  is that it suggests that the characters do not experience their other lives in chronological order: for instance there is a moment in the film where a pair of lovers are separated in a future storyline, and simultaneously reunited in a past one. This kind of situation sounds inscrutable and abstract, but it is edited in such a way that becomes a powerfully emotional and relatable romantic moment. More than any other film in recent memory, “Cloud Atlas” is a reminder of the magic of cinema, that there are certain ideas and feelings that film is better equipped to convey than any other art form.

Rating: ☆☆☆☆

The latest Batman film has a rather hubristic title considering how much it has to live up to: it is a sequel to “The Dark Knight”, which is generally considered the greatest comic book based film ever made, as well as director Christopher Nolan’s even greater “Inception”, the best summer blockbuster film of the last decade. But while it doesn’t exactly succeed in surpassing Nolan’s previous two films, it manages to get enough right that it is sure to go down in history as one of the most successful finales of any film series.

While the previous two installments in the series had little direct connection plot wise, “The Dark Knight Rises” binds together important plot elements from both in order to lay the ground for this film’s story. This is both the best and the worst thing about the film: while the way in which it pays off seeming loose ends from the earlier films is satisfying, the return of weak plot elements from the first chapter in the series (2005’s “Batman Begins”) prevent the film from reaching the level of “The Dark Knight”. That second installment far surpassed “Begins” because Nolan figured out how to keep the elements that worked from the original, and toss out most of the ones that didn’t to craft what was essentially an epic crime thriller that was able to stand alone, outside of the context of the larger series. While “Rises” shows Nolan continuing to grow as a filmmaker, the obligation to return to the missteps of his earlier work is a big part of what makes this one of his weaker films.

The film opens with a stunning and memorable action sequence that far surpasses that of any previous Batman film, in which the film’s central villain Bane (played by an unbelievably bulked up Tom Hardy) allows himself to get captured and taken on board a plane, in order to kidnap (and fake the death of) a Russian scientist, for mysterious purposes. While this scene isn’t actually that important to the overall story of the film, the imaginative staging and Hardy’s bizarre and scary vocal performance make it comparable to the stunning opening sequences of Nolan’s two previous films.

After that we discover that 8 years have passed since the ending of “The Dark Knight”. The public still believes that Batman murdered Harvey Dent, and Gotham’s “hero” hasn’t appeared since. Jim Gordon has managed to use the incident to pass the “Harvey Dent Act” which allows the police far greater power, including the ability to deny parole to criminals. This has managed to make Gotham a far safer place, but it exists essentially as a police state, and the gap between the obscenely wealthy and the impoverished is greater than ever. Without Batman, or his lifelong love Rachel Dawes, Bruce Wayne has retreated from the world, rarely leaving the east wing of his house. It turns out that some years ago he invested most of Wayne Corps’ resources into a machine intended to harness fusion power, a project led by a board member named Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), but suddenly shut it down when he discovered it could be weaponised. This crippled the company hugely, and he ceased to play an active role in its development. His ever faithful butler Alfred desperately wants him to return from his self-imposed exile, but Bruce has given up on the world.

Enter Selina Kyle (a stunning Anne Hathaway), who breaks into Bruce’s manor (seen here for the first time after being mostly destroyed in the first film) who breaks into the east wing, stealing the necklace Bruce’s mother was wearing when she was killed, but most importantly Bruce’s fingerprints. It turns out she was hired to steal the fingerprints by a crooked CEO, John Daggett (a character based on the animated series’ crooked pharmaceutical businessman Roland Daggett). Kyle had made a deal to give Daggett the prints in exchange for the “Blank Slate” program, which would allow her to erase her criminal record from every database in the world, leaving her free to live a normal life outside of the confines of Gotham, but Daggett betrays her. Meanwhile, Commissioner Gordon discovers a secret underground lair in which Bane has taken up camp, and barely manages to escape alive, and Bane hatches a plan with Daggett to run Wayne Corps. into the ground so Daggett can take over. And finally there’s the introduction of the film’s moral compass, a young cop named John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the only character uncompromised enough to become a true hero in the eternally grey area of Gotham. It may sound like I’m giving away a lot, but these events only take place in about the first hour of the film, before the real thrust of the story gets started. The result is a complex, and sometimes overbearing knot of story threads that manages to serve as an analogy for America’s worst fears in the wake of 9/11, and a commentary (and perhaps critique of) the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Heady stuff for a superhero film, but make no mistake: this is a superhero film through and through, much more-so than Nolan’s previous Batman films. “The Dark Knight” in particular seemed to be trying to distance itself from other comic book films in order to function as more of a “Heat” style epic thriller, with much more grounded and plausible takes on The Joker and Two Face characters than appeared in the comics. “Rises” is chock full of comic book logic, highly implausible developments, and over the top villains. Though he no longer has a steroid pumping tube in the back of head, and isn’t able to double in size, Bane is essentially a cartoon villain, and Hathaway’s Catwoman is a fun, sexy, wisecracking type of character: Nolan has finally let go of his rather pretentious attempts at “realism” in his previous films and gone for broke.

The area in which “The Dark Knight” improved the most over the original film was the performances, but it was unclear if a third film would repeat that success, since Aaron Eckhart and Heath Ledger, the real game changers in that the previous film, would be unable to return. Yet the cast here is more than capable of picking up the slack, and the performances are much better-rounded than in the previous films. Christian Bale’s performance in the other films seemed cold, distant, and aloof: he was attempting to show how disengaged Bruce had become emotionally since the death of his parents, but his character just came across as dull and unlikable. Here he finally shows the vulnerability and pain that came across in his great performance in “The Prestige”: despite having less screen time than in the other two films, his character gets a lot more definition and development. Michael Caine also improves here immensely in his few scenes: his wisecracking performance seemed a bit like he was on autopilot in the other films, but here he manages to portray just how deeply Alfred cares for Bruce, and delivers his best performance since “The Quiet American”.

But the performance that people will leave the film talking about is Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle. Kyle only appears in maybe 30-40 minutes of the film’s 165 minute running time, but Hathaway makes the most of every scene. The range on display here, particularly early in the film, is astonishing. She can shift from a terrified maid, to a confident and in control burglar at the flip of a dime, and in her most surprising scene she plays the role of the terrified victim only moments after beating up several grown men. Hathaway’s performance is so convincing that we actually feel frightened and sympathetic for her, even though we know it is an act. Best of all, her character is just fun and believable, and Hathaway exudes a cool assurance that lets us know we are in good hands. The character functions much like The Joker did in “The Dark Knight” (though her character is less thematically important): it’s thrilling every time she appears onscreen and most of the film’s best scenes feature her prominently. While this Catwoman may not make us forget about Michelle Pfeiffer’s similarly stunning performance in 1992′s “Batman Returns”, it certainly lives up to it. For some reason Hathaway has yet to be taken seriously by most audiences, despite managing to go toe to toe with Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada”, and her realistic, transformative performance in “Rachel Getting Married”. If this performance doesn’t manage to put her on the map, then nothing will. Though Kyle is not the most important figure in the film, she is what makes it work: her lighter, carefree attitude to life manages to keep the film from sinking under its weighty themes. Though spinoffs are usually a bad idea, it would be a shame for this to be her only appearance as Selina Kyle: there’s just enough of the character to make one wish for a film in which she played a more central role. Tom Hardy does fine work, and it’s hard not to admire his physical commitment to the role, but Bane’s voice straddles the line between silly and scary, and it is a bit disappointing how much less threatening he is than The Joker. Oddly, Marion Cotillard is the black sheep in the cast: whereas she was the emotional lynchpin in every other film I’ve seen her in, her character is unnecessary and highly disposable here, and her performance follows suit. Miranda is underdeveloped to the point that she barely exists, and it’s difficult to see what her romantic interest in Bruce is. Whereas Hathaway and Bale have surprisingly intense chemistry, Cotillard’s scenes with him fizzle, and her final scene in the film is an almost embarrassing display of bad acting.

The film’s structure is problematic as well: while it begins with a nicely paced first act, which is capped off with an absolutely stunning action sequence in which Batman first reappears on the streets of Gotham, the second act suffers from a surplus of ambition. Attempting to weave together three epic and famous story arcs from the comics (The Dark Knight Returns, Knightfall, and No Man’s Land), as well as various elements of other comic stories, the film is incredibly overstuffed. It also suffers from Nolan’s tendency to force the plot to fit the themes he’s trying to explore in too obvious of a fashion: his biggest weakness has always been his tendency to sacrifice storytelling logic for thematic resonance, a tactic that is taken to incredible extremes here. The second half of the film is absolutely riddled with plotholes and unbelievable developments, even by summer blockbuster standards: a huge step down from his airtight “Inception” script. The film is insanely overlong as well: half an hour in the middle could easily be trimmed either to cut down the length, or could have been more wisely used to feature more of underserved characters like Gary Oldman’s loveable Commissioner Gordon, or just to give Hathaway more time to do her thing. Still it picks back up in the third act, which is tense, exciting, and surprisingly moving, in spite of a forced and predictable shock reveal that occurs extremely late in the film.

Still the film does so much right it’s hard to fault it too much, and at its best it feels ripped from the pages of a great Batman comic in a way that no other Batman film has to date. Nolan’s weakness in the first two films was the action sequences, which were so darkly lit and choppily edited it was hard to tell what was going on. Although there are only four major action sequences here in a nearly three hour running time, they are all exciting and memorable, particularly when seen in the film’s intended IMAX format. Although Nolan’s Batman films are all extremely flawed, they are also standout examples of what summer blockbusters can strive to be, and provide plenty of fodder for discussion and thought. This may be far from Nolan’s best film, but as a capper to one of the more successful trilogies in film history, it is still an achievement that helps to cement his status as one of the greatest current English language filmmakers.

Rating: ☆☆☆

The most interesting thing about “John Carter” is the way in which it proves how much the film world has been altered in the last ten years by the advancement of CGI and the popularity of films like “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter”.  For decades Edgar Rice Burrough’s pulp novel “A Princess of Mars” and it’s sequels have been heralded as unfilmable, yet filmmakers couldn’t help themselves from making the attempt. The first failed effort to film this story goes all the way back to 1931, and Disney’s current production heralds back to  2004, with both Robert Rodriguez and Jon Favreau trying and failing to get the film off the ground. The lengthy production history is enough to make anyone curious about the adaptation, and what the final product would look like, especially when Pixar’s Andrew Stanton (who did brilliant work on “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E”), a director that had only worked on animated features previously, signed on board. Would John Carter be the next great sci-fi epic, or a disaster of epic proportions?

Unfortunately, the result is far less interesting than one would imagine, mostly due to the fact that in the time it took to get an actual adaptation of “John Carter” off the ground, the ideas of the series have been so completely absorbed by the film world. At this point epic space operas are old hat, beginning with “Star Wars” and the glut of ambitious science fiction failures (and occasional successes) that followed in its wake, to more recent (and financially successful) films like “Avatar”, “District 9”, and “Star Trek”.  Even the science fiction/western mashup seems trite and unoriginal after last year’s tiresome “Cowboys and Aliens”. Though John Carter is still a pretty terrific looking film, images that would once have been stunning now seem a bit generic, and certain sequences are unfortunately reminiscent of the recent Star Wars prequels (though I’m not sure whether George Lucas copied these images  and ideas from Burrough’s series, or whether director Andrew Stanton was inspired by Lucas). This could have been a breathtakingly ambitious epic if it were made in the 70’s or 80’s, but today “John Carter” just looks like yet another in a series of very similar space operas, memorable only for its unusually detailed special effects, unnecessarily complicated storytelling, and a particularly petulant and unlikable hero.

John Carter begins with a series of brief and jarring sequences, which appear to have little to do with each other, and much of which doesn’t pay off until the closing scenes. It first begins with an unwieldy chunk of exposition (delivered by a narrator that never pops up again) reminiscent of the opening of David Lynch’s “Dune”, informing you of places and character names without giving you any indication as to why this information is important, before abruptly launching into a highly unnecessary action sequence. The real point of this scene is extremely minor, simply showing how the film’s villain comes into possession of his power, and the lack of context makes it extremely confusing. It is almost impossible to tell from this sequence what role Dominic West’s Sab Than, the central character of this sequence, is going to play in the remainder of the film: I expected him to be a mysterious character who would become the lynchpin of the plot, and was extremely surprised when he is nothing but a snarling, generic villain for the rest of the film. The scene is highly unnecessary, as everything that happens in it is explained later in the film in a much more organic way later on. It is an early indication of one of the film’s greatest failings: its tendency to deliver massive chunks of exposition that could easily be shown to the audience in a more natural manner.

Then the audience is introduced to the actual main character, John Carter, on 19^th century Earth for a brief sequence, only to immediately be informed that he is dead and introduced to his nephew (apparently meant to be Edgar Rice Burroughs himself, and played ineptly by former spy kid Daryl Sabara), who is given his journal and starts reading of his fantastic adventures on Mars.  In the space of about ten minutes we are dropped into four separate time periods and places, with whiplash inducing results.

We discover that John Carter (played by Taylor Kitsch of TV’s Friday Night Lights) was a great Confederate soldier from Virginia in the Civil War, who suddenly decided to defect and blaze his own trail as an outlaw searching for gold (for predictable reasons that are revealed later). When General Bryan Cranston (who plays the role as Walter White in a ridiculous blonde wig) catches up with him in the Arizona desert and attempts to forcibly recruit him, only to be ambushed by Indians, John ends up accidentally finding the “cave of gold” that he was searching for. He doesn’t have much time to enjoy his discovery however, as he is quickly attacked by one of the creepy bald guys who appeared in the first scene. Carter quickly dispatches him, but discovers a medallion the man was carrying which teleports him to Mars. The best and most imaginative sequence of the film takes place immediately afterwards, when John finds himself back in the desert, and can’t figure out why he can’t walk like he did before (presumably due to the different gravity on Mars). The film’s best concept is that since John isn’t built for this planet, he can jump higher, hit harder, and throw further than any of the natives. This sequence introduces the concept in a fun, comedic (and nearly wordless) sequence that is reminiscent of director Andrew Stanton’s best work in his previous film, “Wall-E”. However this sense of fun and discovery doesn’t last long, as we are quickly dragged into a muddled, yet utterly generic plot about a battle between two warring factions on Mars (called Barsoom by the natives) and the green skinned, six limbed race called Tharks that refuse to become involved. It also involves a Martian princess, Deja, played by Lynn Collins, who is being offered as a bride to the evil Sab Than as a peace offering by his father, and the race of Creepy Bald Men, who apparently gave the brutish Sab Than a weapon called “The 9^th Ray” so he could take over Barsoom and allow them to destroy it, using him as their puppet.

The screenplay for the film is a complete mess, hopping from place to place on Barsoom without much rhyme and reason, and the film’s sense of momentum is constantly bogged down by characters stopping to deliver long monologues containing “important information” that rarely helps to progress the simplistic storyline. It is a wonder that Carter’s nephew chooses to believe his tale in the end, since it has all the flaws of a bad lie: a simple story filled with unnecessary details. The plotting is incredibly formulaic, as John is continuously sent on quest after quest, paired up with different variations of characters, ends up getting involved in battles, and is then sent on a new quest. The film is essentially comprised of a series of abrupt starts and stops: John will seem to sit around forever having dull conversations, until he suddenly runs into the next character required to advance the plot or becomes involved in a massive battle out of nowhere. The dialogue is disappointingly witless, considering Stanton also helped write Finding Nemo, one of the funniest films of the 2000s, and Michael Chabon, a great storyteller in the world of literature also did work on the script.

Perhaps the greatest flaw is that the central characters are so uninteresting: John never comes off as more than a smug, selfish prick and his supposed “redemption” by the end of the film is utterly unconvincing (especially since it’s impossible to think of a moment where he acts out of anything other than self-interest). Lynn Collins looks beautiful but between her terrible British accent and poorly written dialogue it’s impossible to discern any personality. Dominic West’s performance is incredibly over the top, yet another in a series of weak film roles for the actor. By far the most interesting characters are the Tharks, played mainly by Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, and Thomas Haden Church, but their appearances are disappointingly minor, and the characters are only really important at the beginning and end of the film.

It should be mentioned, however, that the film does have some excellent action sequences, which never get bogged down in blurry special effects like the Transformers films, and manage to be varied and imaginative enough that they haven’t gotten tiresome by the film’s climax. John’s ability to jump increasingly far distances leads to some exciting and unusual sequences, as do small air ships that lead to some truly breathtaking and three dimensional sequences. Too many blockbuster films get pretty much everything other than the action sequences right (“The Dark Knight” is a perfect example of that), so it’s disappointing that these sequences are surrounded by a film that is otherwise dull and lifeless. The animation is also quite stunning, blowing the Star Wars prequels and even Avatar out of the water in terms of how detailed the CGI characters are. Despite looking so alien, the Tharks’ movements and expressions seem utterly natural, and they rarely look fake or cartoony.

“John Carter” ends up being a mediocre but curious beast: a film that is clearly a passion project from a filmmaker that has always dreamed of bringing a beloved series from childhood to life, but ends up feeling utterly generic and devoid of personality. Though I have never read Burrough’s books, I get the impression that Stanton stayed true to many of the details of the book series, but has left out the passion and personality in order to make the film a slickly marketable product that Disney can safely release. Yet the film still feels too idiosyncratic and full of ridiculous names and concepts to really catch on with a mass audience. It’s a movie that’s stuck in the middle: it can’t decide whether it wants take ambitious risks or dumb down the story to resemble every other fantasy action film, so it ends up in a middle ground that is neither interesting nor effective as mindless entertainment.

Rating: ☆☆

My response to the Harry Potter movies has been very mixed and contrarian, especially considering that it’s a series which hasn’t really varied all that much in quality, aside from a big step up in quality beginning with 2004’s “Prisoner of Azkaban.” How much I enjoyed a particular book in the series has never been a good indication of how much I would enjoy the corresponding film, and my rankings of the books vs. the movies is almost completely different. Furthermore, no one else I know really seems to be able to agree on what the strongest and weakest films in the series are. I’m not sure if this is because the series has generally been so consistent that picking out certain ones as superior to others is a case of comparing apples to oranges, or because different people look for very different things in the films.

My feelings towards the books are so strong that I judge these films quite differently from most others. What I mostly look for in the Harry Potter movies is the film’s ability to portray emotions and story details from the books in genuinely cinematic ways, to visualize them in a way that the books weren’t able to, and to make the action and emotions more visceral and immediate. This is why, for instance, “Order of the Phoenix” worked so much better for me as a film than a book: in the book the climax was page after page of poorly described hallway chases and battles. Rowling’s prose made the whole thing very difficult to follow or understand, whereas in the film version the whole sequence was boiled down to its essence, and became an exciting, visually memorable, and high stakes action scene. While the movies aren’t really able to convey the excitement of being a wizard, and the daily routines and misadventures of the characters, which was always my favorite thing about the books, the best ones are able to make the stories more thrilling and immediate than Rowling was able to.

This was one of the reasons I was so excited about the final installment in the series: the second half of “Deathly Hallows” is one of the most jam-packed segments of the series, alternating between lengthy action sequences and dramatic character moments without any of the padding the first half was filled with. I wasn’t a big fan of all of this: the Deathly Hallows themselves and the strange wand switching rules seem like weird last minute inclusions that were only added to provide storytelling shortcuts, many of the deaths only seem to be added for cheap shock value, the final battle is pretty underwhelming and nonsensical, and the epilogue is possibly the most poorly written and conceived section of any of the books. But the overall effect was still fairly breathtaking, and the revelations about Severus Snape and Aunt Petunia are some of my favorite moments in the series.

Not to mention that Part One was, against all odds, one of the best entries in the film series. I figured that if director David Yates had done such impressive work with a section of the book I disliked, he must have quite a film in store for the good parts. Unfortunately “Deathly Hallows, Part Two” doesn’t come close to matching the first part: whereas that film was atmospheric, elegant, and well-paced, this one comes off as rather rote, rushed, and shoddily edited. It merely presents dramatic plot points and then moves on, as if checking off big moments from a list, while unnecessarily protracting certain scenes for no real reason, in a manner reminiscent of the worst aspects of Chris Columbus’s first two films.

Admittedly this doesn’t really set in until the second half of the film. “Part 2” might start off a bit shakily, and it would be difficult for it not to, considering that it opens in the middle of a story. However, after the first few minutes of Harry and co. awkwardly interrogating secondary characters, the film quickly moves on to it’s first (and by far best) big action set piece, in which Harry and his friends break into Gringott’s bank to recover the next Horcrux. The sequence, which begins with a nervous Hermione disguised as Bellatrix Lestrange attempting to fool a goblin, and climaxes with an escape via dragon, is probably the best action sequence that Rowling wrote, and it is portrayed just as well in the film. Yates has a genuine talent for staging action scenes that none of the previous Potter directors possessed, and he paces the scene brilliantly: it’s the film’s only sequence that manages not to feel rushed, or to overstay it’s welcome.

The return to Hogwarts afterwards is also well done, though the editing seems to get a bit shaky here, as certain characters appear and disappear in confusing ways. Many beloved characters that weren’t seen in the previous film reappear, as well as Hogwart’s itself. One of the greatest strengths of the films is their ability to show us around Hogwarts and allow the audience to understand where things are and how it’s set up in a way the books weren’t quite able to do. Because of this, the destruction it undergoes in the final installment is more heartbreaking in the film, as familiar areas are reduced to rubble.

However, once the film get around to the final battle, the seams start to come apart. The whole thing is a bit of a letdown, since there have been so many fantasy battle scenes similar to this before, and it’s difficult not to compare it unfavorably to the big climax in 2002’s “The Two Towers,” though the sequence where the wizards join together to place a magical barrier around the castle is quite breathtaking. While the final showdown between Harry and Voldemort was a bit of an anticlimax in the book, that seems merciful compared to the silly way it’s protracted in the movie, with Voldemort attempting to convince the good wizards to join him with a ridiculous big movie villain speech, and a strange and laughable sequence where Voldemort and Harry fight while flying through the air. The ultimate effect is that the excitement of the film dies about halfway through, replaced with dull, plodding, and uninspired sequences of people shooting light at one another. Worst of all, the wonderful character moments from the book are rushed through as if Yates just wanted to get to the next action scene: Harry’s final conversation with Dumbledore barely happens, Snape’s revelation doesn’t have a tenth of the power it did in the book and barely seems to affect Harry, and the deaths are reduced to Harry looking at dead bodies for a few seconds and looking sad. Many beloved characters, like Hagrid barely appear and are given nothing to do, and even the subplot about Dumbledore’s past is confusingly hinted at, never explained.

And though the epilogue was obviously going to be a misfire, it comes so quickly after the climax that there’s barely time to breathe before the big happy ending, which is mostly notable for containing some very odd hair and makeup effects. The overall result is a finale that isn’t exactly bad, but seems content to be merely good enough, making sure not to insult fans or make any dramatic alterations, but never seeming to put much effort into the proceedings. However, given the hugely positive response to the film, this tactic has apparently worked to great effect. Like too many films this summer, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” is just good enough to keep people leaving the theater satisfied, yet severely lacking in genuine inspiration or emotion.

Stars: ☆ ☆ 1/2

By reputation, at least, the Pirates of the Caribbean series thus far has followed the most common and definitive route that film series take: an instantly classic first film that was fun, surprising, and fresh, followed by increasingly more tiresome sequels that reuse and expand everything that was good about the first film in uninspired and tiresome ways. This was the trajectory that pretty much every film series took, with only a few rare exceptions, until the dawn of faithful fantasy novel and comic book adaptations gave film series a better reputation. While I loved the first film for breathing new life into the out of fashion pirate film, and managing to preserve the look and feel of older adventure films while bringing modern sensibilities to the genre, the dreadful “Dead Man’s Chest” (2006) was enough to make me forswear any further sequels. I would certainly be shocked if I had known that six years later I’d be showing up for the fourth film in the series.

I decided to pay my five bucks to see this film, in spite of the incredibly disappointing previous two films in the series, and the dismal reviews, for a few reasons. The first was my faint hope that this could be the film to bring the series back on track: I enjoyed the trailers and was pleased by the decision to scale this film back to the simple adventure story roots of the first film, by jettisoning most of the supporting cast of the previous films and making the film a simpler, less convoluted standalone film. The casting of Penelope Cruz, an actress who’s been in the prime of her career in the last few years (regardless of the qualities of the films she’s been in), was another plus, as was the fact that it’s based off of a (reportedly excellent) novel by Tim Powers. This was exactly what I thought the series should have done as a sequel in the first place, instead of trying to weave every single major and minor character from the first film into some sort of convoluted high fantasy “epic” as the first films tried to do. Even the decision to place hack director Rob Marshall in the director’s chair rather than the extremely talented Gore Verbinski wasn’t enough to completely throw me off this film. The last reason was that I simply wanted to write about it, and this May has been a surprisingly dry season, leaving me with few other options.

I was extremely disappointed when the film’s reviews indicated that it might be weakest in the series, but I stalwartly made my way to the theater, figuring that if it was somehow even worse than Dead Man’s Chest I could at least write a scathing review to cheer me up. To my great surprise, the film turned out to live up to my original expectations: it’s a fun summer film that proves itself to be a worthy successor to the original film. Like all the films in the series the story is a bit convoluted and the opening both seems too rushed and too expository, but it’s nowhere near as confusing as the last two films. As the film opens, Jack’s former first mate Gibbs (the reliable Kevin McNally) is brought to trial under suspicion of being Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp, as if you didn’t know), and is saved by none other than Jack himself, who predictably turns up posing as the judge. However, both are soon enough captured by King George II (Richard Griffiths in a really bizarre cameo), who mistakes Jack for someone else pretending to be Jack, who is putting together a crew to search for the Fountain of Youth, a quest that the real Jack had already given up on (see what I mean by convoluted?). The King wants Jack’s map, which shows the path to the Fountain of Youth, so that his own crew led by the reformed Barbarossa (Geoffrey Rush, who could pretty much chew scenery in his sleep at this point) can reach before the Spanish fleet manages to. However Gibbs has already stolen Jack’s map, so Jack ends up empty-handed, and instead flees from the King and Barbarossa in one of the film’s many fantastic chase scenes. He’s saved by his dad (Keith Richards, whose appearance this time around is too brief to derail the film) who points him towards the crew that the impostor Jack is putting together. The person impersonating him is revealed to be Angelique (Penelope Cruz), an old flame of Jack’s who turns out to be none other than Blackbeard’s daughter. She’s helping her father find the fountain because he’s received a prophecy that he will be killed soon, and she wants a chance to save his soul, since she used to be a nun before Jack led her astray (or so she claims). Only now she needs Jack, since he’s the only one who knows how to reach the fountain, since he’d memorized the map long ago. Meanwhile Gibbs helps Barbarossa reach the fountain as well, and the quest becomes a three way race to see who can reach it first.

In classic adventure film fashion there are plenty of coincidences, twists, and double crosses, but they never reach the incoherence of the former films in the series. Unlike the other sequels, “On Stranger Tides” stays focused on it’s story, keeping Jack squarely in his place as the film’s not-quite-hero, rather than getting bogged down in needless subplots and supporting characters. Much like the first film, this is a simple quest story in the fashion of Robert Louis Stevenson, Errol Flynn, and Indiana Jones, rather than the Tolkien-lite historical fantasy maelstrom of the previous sequels. References to the previous films are brief and vague, and it would be perfectly possible to skip from the first film to this one (so long as you weren’t too concerned by why Barbarossa’s alive). The action sequences are the best of the summer so far, and the sword fights are both balletic and physically believable, if a bit outlandish (even at their worst, the previous films had excellent action sequences). Marshall manages not to become distracting, and is unexpectedly good at shooting action, resisting the urge to cut every 2 seconds as he did during the dance sequences in “Chicago” (2002) and “Nine” (2009).Whereas Verbinski seemed bored with the material in the last two films, often turning to strange, out of character bouts of surrealist humor, Marshall manages to do a good job recreating the look and feel of the original film and keeps the the film fast and light without the jarring tonal shifts of the previous films.

The performances are appropriately charismatic and over the top: Depp, who had been coasting a bit in the previous films, returns to his lively, seemingly improvisational performance with more vigor than ever. Jack Sparrow could have easily been reduced to a caricature at this point, but Depp manages to keep the character fresh and fun. His recent performances have seemed a bit tired and forced, so it’s nice to see him recapture that energy in one of his best roles. It helps that this time he has a performance that’s nearly as fun as his to play off of: Penelope Cruz adds this to her long list of fantastic performances in the last few years. She makes Angelique fun and fiery, simultaneously sympathetic and despicable. Unlike Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Swann character in the previous films, her crosses and double crosses are all driven by a single, simple motive: to bring salvation to her father, and get him to renounce his ways. Her steadfast faith in his ability to change, despite all evidence to the contrary, gives her character a tragic air. Though Jack is the central character, the film really revolves around her (much as the first film revolved around Will Turner), and Cruz is strong enough in the role that she could carry the film even without Depp’s help. Their scenes together provide the spark that Knightley’s scenes with Depp only hinted at, and the film is at it’s best when it just lets the two characters duke it out, both verbally and physically.

The supporting cast is about what you’d expect at this point, and mostly consists of veteran actors chewing the scenery. The film’s big addition to the supporting cast this time around is Ian MacShane as Blackbeard, who’s performance is really little more than adequate. He has some fun camp moments, but often just seems bored, not really revealing why Blackbeard is so feared, or convincing the audience that he’s a threatening antagonist. The film’s biggest weakness is that there’s never a real sense of any threat or danger for the central characters: the whole thing is a fun, breezy adventure with remarkably low stakes. Geoffrey Rush continues his string of incredibly lazy and hammy performances: he barely even seems to try in his films anymore, and his performance as Barbarossa this time around is remarkably uninspired. Hopefully this character will be laid to rest in future films, considering that he should never have returned after the original film. Sam Claflin and Astrid Berges-Frisbey show up in semi-major roles as a missionary and mermaid who fall in love, but their characters are largely forgettable, and seem to be mostly there to eat up time.

As should be expected of these films at this point “On Stranger Tides” is too damn long, despite being the shortest in the series at 139 minutes. This is the kind of film that shouldn’t be taken too seriously, and should never come in at over 90 minutes: the extra time really just weighs this one down. There’s way too much introductory nonsense here and the middle is saggy, with a lot of sitting around and talking in the jungle without much reason at all. The missionary and mermaid characters should have been excised completely, as their subplot adds nothing to the film as a whole. At least this one doesn’t climax with an endless series of dull ship battles as the others did, though the climax is still a bit underwhelming after all the time it takes to get there. The film also doesn’t manage to be as funny or surprising as the original, though this is hardly surprising in a third sequel. For all the comic energy of the performances, there are scant few memorable, laugh out loud moments, though the whole thing is so enjoyable that it’s easy not to notice it till after the film’s over.

I’m a bit confused by the overwhelmingly negative response this film has received, by critics and audiences alike. I think that most people have just become tired of this series after the seemingly endless second and third films: their capacity to enjoy this series has been worn out. I feel that if this were the second film in the series, it would have gotten much more praise and recognition as an enjoyably bubbly summer film, rather than being seen as a worn out and tired entry in a series that’s already dead on it’s feet. For me though, there’s always room for a light, funny adventure film, and “On Stranger Tides” fulfills this role wonderfully. I’m perfectly content to pretend that the disastrous previous films never happened, and proclaim this as a rare sequel that comes close to matching it’s original. Just a shame that it had to come six years too late.

Grade: ☆ ☆ ☆

In case you’re curious, here’s the the grades I would give to the rest of the series:

Curse of the Black Pearl: ☆ ☆ ☆  1/2

Dead Man’s Chest: ☆

At World’s End: ☆ ☆

I have a confession to make, which could easily put my reputation as a snob to rest here and now: I love superhero movies. Each summer I eagerly anticipate all but the most dire upcoming comic book films, and I read the news updates about each one eagerly. But as I do so, a thought often pops into my head: what if the film I’ve spent all this time reading about isn’t worth the anticipation? What if it comes out and it’s no good? What it’s so badly reviewed I decide it’s not even worth the money and energy it takes to see it? I had some of my greatest doubts about “Thor”. I can’t say that I’ve ever known much about Thor as a Marvel character; I didn’t even realize that he traditionally has an alter ego (an element excised from the film version) until looking him up after the movie, but the concept of using a Norse god as a superhero always kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and it seemed like it would be difficult to reconcile a Norse god with characters like Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.

The cast and crew announcements didn’t exactly reassure me either: neither Chris Hemsworth or Tom Hiddleston (in the roles of Thor and Loki, respectively) had really done much prior to Thor, so they were essentially wild cards. I’ve hardly liked Natalie Portman in anything other than “Black Swan” (2010), and Anthony Hopkins was a stupidly obvious casting choice for Odin, to the point that I could imagine his performance before the film was even released. But the most troubling news was the choice of Kenneth Branagh for director. I’ve remained unimpressed by even Branagh’s most acclaimed films, particularly his “Hamlet” (1996), which I found incredibly bloated and self-indulgent.  Even if he had once been a great director, Branagh has been on a terrible downhill slide for at least the last ten years.  I doubt most people realize that his last two films, a version of “As You Like It” (2006) that didn’t even make it to theaters, and a remake of the Michael Caine film “Sleuth” (2007) even exist. Branagh’s presence suggested that Thor might not just be a sub-par superhero movie, but a flop of “Daredevil”-like proportions.

So, given these misgivings, I’m pleased to report that Thor is a crackerjack superhero film, certainly among the top ten best superhero movies ever made, and easily the breeziest and most purely entertaining comic book film this side of “Iron Man” and “Hellboy II” (both from 2008). Best of all it is something of a break in the formula for superhero movies, as it has a very unusual story structure and tells a story that is certainly a beginning of sorts, but not exactly an origin. “Thor” proves that even among the glut of superhero and comic book films that have cropped up in recent years, it is still possible for one to be surprising, exciting, and (almost) original.

The film opens with an arresting sequence in which Natalie Portman’s scientist character Jane Foster, and her sidekicks, seasoned pro Dr. Eric Lewis (Stellan Skarsgard), and intern Darcy (Kat Dennings) are chasing storms looking for… something. I’m actually realizing now that the film never really explains what’s driven Jane to do this, but ah well. Anyway they find it, as Jane drives straight towards an electrical disturbance; in the midst of the confusion a man flies out of nowhere and hits their truck. The storm abruptly stops and they walk out into the midst of the clearing, leaving Jane to ask “Where did he come from?” while looking towards the sky. This could easily be the beginning of an alien invasion movie, and gives the audience a clue as to how the film will handle the Asgardian gods. The film then launches into an extremely lengthy prologue, detailing the history of the Asgardians, here portrayed as superpowered beings from one of the nine dimensions of the universe, Midgard, or our universe, and Jotunheim, the land of the Frost Giants, being the other two that figure in the storyline of the film. At some point in the past the Frost Giants attempted to conquer the other Realms, but were quickly stopped in their tracks by Odin (played by Anthony Hopkins, because of course he is), who defeated them and stole “the Casket of Ancient Winters” from the Giants, the source of their power.

The film then flashes forward to the present day, when Thor is about to be crowned as Odin’s successor over his brother Loki. However, a Frost Giant invasion interrupts the ceremony, as three of the giants break into Odin’s palace and attempt to steal the Casket, only to be quickly zapped by Odin’s giant robot thing, The Destroyer. How this film manages to get away with a super powerful giant robot that looks like a CGI version of a Power Rangers villain without completely devolving into camp is beyond me, but it somehow manages it. Thor is obviously enraged, and decides to immediately invade Jotunheim, along with his companions Sif (Jaimie Alexander), Volstagg (Ray Stevnson), Hogun (Tadanobu Asano), and Fandral (Joshua Dallas), and Loki. Honestly, I had to look up these characters’ names, as they are completely goofy and useless: only the Xena-like Sif (she’s even explicitly compared to Xena in the film), who has a very subtly hinted at crush on Thor, registers at all as a character.

It is here that Thor’s greatest weakness becomes apparent: its action scenes just aren’t that great. The battle against the Frost Giants is sub Lord of the Rings stuff, and like many modern action scenes, the editing is so hectic that it can be difficult to tell what’s going on. Branagh just doesn’t have a great eye for this stuff, and watching a hammer fly around hitting CGI giants gets old pretty quickly. The other action scenes are much better than this, but they don’t even come close to the best action set pieces from the “Iron Man” films. Obviously Thor gets in over his head and Odin discovers what he’s up to and rescues the merry band at the last minute. Finally the central action of the film occurs, as Odin strips Thor of his hammer and exiles him to Midgard, while also throwing away his hammer, bestowing it upon “whosoever is worthy of the power of Thor” (to paraphrase).

This business eats up about a half hour of screentime, at least fifteen minutes longer than it should, as the film hasn’t even really begun yet. This prologue would have worked better if it was more sketched out, and not related in such great detail. Luckily the next hour of the film fires on all cylinders: Portman’s scientist takes Thor to the hospital, not yet realizing his connection to the storm, and Loki confronts Odin about his heritage. Meanwhile SHIELD, the mysterious Samuel L. Jackson-led organization from the Iron Man films has discovered and co-opted Thor’s hammer for unknown purposes.

Unfortunately I can’t summarize the plot much further without getting into spoiler territory, but the film’s middle section is certainly its best, and this is because it’s centered on the film’s strong suit: the performances. Marvel has been careful to cast very good actors at the center of their recent series of superhero films, and “Thor” is no exception. Hemsworth oozes charisma making Thor a likeably arrogant hero, and he comes off as strange, but never stupid in the scenes on Earth. Portman likewise conducts herself well, and her performance has a flirtatious ease and grace to it that I’ve never seen her pull off before. She always comes off as an actress trying too hard, which results in oddly forced and stilted performances (a quality that actually worked in her favor in Black Swan). Here she is completely at ease, and hardly even seems to be acting. This is possibly because she has so little to do, other than be adorable and science-y, but her relaxed chemistry with Hemsworth turns what could have been a very forced romance into a surprisingly moving relationship. You find yourself rooting for these two to get together without the film ever having to push it too much.

The rest of the cast acquits themselves well: Skarsgard is instantly likeable, as usual, and his down to earth character helps root the film in some sort of reality, Dennings is amusing but woefully underused, and Tom Hiddleston is a revelation. This film’s greatest asset is Loki, who easily makes the short list of the best villains in these sorts of films. Hiddleston plays Loki as completely vulnerable and subject to act rashly on his emotions, yet never lets this diminish the threatening and dangerous aspect of Loki’s character. This is all the more impressive because Hiddleston isn’t exactly an intimidating figure: he looks scrawny and barely noticeable next to Hemsworth. But Hiddleston is the kind of actor that can be intense without saying a word and that can make a whisper far more intimidating than a scream. He’s at his scariest when simply talking and Hiddleston makes Loki a far more complex and layered character than he has any right to be, at least on a script level. Hopkins is the only odd one out, delivering a rather robotic version of the same performance he’s been giving for at least the last decade: he seems to have just given up on nuance and essentially become the high profile British version of those actors playing the patriarch characters on soap operas.

On a script level Thor is actually pretty problematic, and it’s clear the studio struggled to figure out how to convey all this: the film never quite overcomes the problem of having the action occur in two dimensions, and the structure of the film is downright bizarre: Loki doesn’t really directly impact the action on Earth which makes all the stuff in the human world strangely lacking in dramatic tension. It’s all amusing and entertaining, but the stakes are never particularly high. The film is also lacking a central action set piece: the script doesn’t even seem designed to have a standout action scene. The characterization is pretty shallow, essentially leaving the actors to fill in the blanks. However, it handles all the crossover stuff pretty gracefully: SHIELD is integrated into the story naturally and Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson is given plenty to do without overshadowing the central storyline or reminding people of how he was in Iron Man. Best of all, Samuel L. Jacksons’ Nick Fury doesn’t appear outside of the post-credits tag, though Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye is introduced rather bizarrely in a sequence too brief to really hurt the film.

Surprisingly, Branagh’s direction really pulls the film together, given his track record of being a self-indulgent and often inert director. However he manages to pace the film perfectly, keeping it moving along nicely even when it completely lacks any sense of urgency. This is actually an asset in a way: Branagh lets the film breathe and gives the actors plenty of room to show what they can do. The film never feels busy or frantic in the way “Iron Man 2” did and the pacing is refreshingly relaxed. In fact, the actors make the characters so compelling that I found myself wanting more character development, particularly from the human characters: this is the rare modern action film that might be able to use an extra half hour, even at a none-too-brief 114 minutes. Branagh is still far too reliant on needless canted angles and edits frantically during the action scenes, but this is easily forgiven by the performances he gets out of his actors, and the excellent pacing he brings to the film. Finally the film concludes on a note that is exceedingly rare in action films, with a wonderfully ambiguous and elegant final scene that I wasn’t expecting at all. In spite of the myriad elements that could have sunk this production, “Thor” proves triumphant, and is already guaranteed to be a highlight of the barely begun summer season.

Stars: ☆☆☆

Welcome to Movie of the Week, the first of our regular features! Each week here I’ll post a review of a new movie I’ve seen: in theory it will be a newly released movie that I caught in theaters every week, but it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll actually see a new movie each week, so sometimes it will just be something interesting I saw over the previous week, or occasionally of one of my favorite films. These reviews will be lengthier and more detailed than ordinary reviews, running about 2,000 words. Movie of the Week will be posted every Friday, hopefully around noon. The first review is of Thor, hope you enjoy!

PS: A bit of explanation for the star ratings; the highest rated movies are four stars. There’s also a 1/2 star rating for each number after zero.

Ratings:

No Stars: Absolute dreck: movies with no stars aren’t even hilariously bad. Nearly unwatchable.

☆: Terrible movie, poorly made every way, but potentially entertaining. Usually so bad it’s good.

☆ 1/2: Has some potential to be a decent movie, but falls very short of the mark. Can be worth seeing for the train wreck factor.

☆☆: Generally an interesting film with some good ideas, but poorly executed. Could be recommended for some particular scene or element.

☆☆ 1/2: A pretty good movie, able to be recommended, but not particularly stunning.

☆☆☆: A solid, well made movie, easily recommended.

☆☆☆ 1/2: Very strongly recommended, a future classic, or at least a top movie of the year.

☆☆☆☆: A masterpiece, near flawless film that succeeds on pretty much every level. A must see.