Comic Book Movies

Batman Begins is the film comic fans have been aching to see since the release of the first Superman movie. It is an epic, well-written, skillfully directed film that, action-packed though it may be, achieves a surprising poignancy that one is hard-pressed to find in most other superhero films. Its greatest attribute is its treatment of the title character; unlike previous takes on Bruce Wayne, who had always been played "close to the vest," never divulging much of his thoughts or feelings, here we are treated to a full and vivid portrait of a man- a flesh-and-blood human being- dealing with the grief and guilt over his parents' murder and trying to find a place for himself in the world. Christian Bale plays Bruce Wayne brilliantly, not brooding as much as previous actors while still conveying grief and anger that never feel forced or artificial. And as Batman, Bale is the first to stray from the monolithic shape with the gravelly whisper; Bale's Batman seems always ready to spring, crouching on ledges like an animal awaiting its prey, and when he speaks, what comes out is a primal growl (good for disguising his voice and scaring the piss out of cowardly criminals). On top of this, each member of the supporting cast is remarkably fleshed out, and the actors portraying them are as top-notch as they can be. Michael Caine breathes life into previously stuffy butler Alfred that never overshadows the hero, but creates a more three-dimensional character out of what, 'til now, has been a British butler stereotype. Cillian Murphy is just plain creepy as Dr. Jonathan Crane, giving a rather small part enough heft to make us wish there was more of him. Gary Oldman plays the Gordon comic fans know and love: a good cop steeped so deeply in the corruption of the police force that he can't resist an offer to help clean things up, even if it comes from a masked vigilante. Liam Neeson is a surprisingly ferocious mentor for Bruce, playing Ducard with both human emotional depth and villainous cruelty- he walks the line deftly, and creates an undeniably charismatic character in doing so. Linus Roache imbues his character of Thomas Wayne with so much likable energy that it truly comes as a shock when the inevitable occurs, and his presence is felt throughout the entire movie. Tom Wilkinson has what looks like a blast as mob boss Carmine Falcone, and Ken Watanabe is a fantastically intense Ra's Al Ghul. Together, these characters create a compelling drama about a man trying to find direction in his life. But when the time comes for action, Chris Nolan does not disappoint, showing us scenes of rapid-fire cuts and frantic movement, in which the Batman is finally presented as he was always intended to be: fast, dangerous, and terrifying. The techniques used for Batman and Crane are like a lesson in horror-movie scares, ranging from the simple guy-comes-from-nowhere camera turn to more modern jump-cutting, film distortion, and audio montage. The climax is an epic conflict with plenty of action, a race against time, and even explosions, but it can essentially be pared down to a battle between a surrogate father and son, tying the themes of the film together brilliantly. Batman Begins is more than just flashy summer entertainment, more than just another superhero flick in an ever-growing lineup of superhero movies. Batman Begins is more than just a good film; it is a great film.

This is the movie I have been waiting for since I first became a devoted film fanatic. It takes a perfect distillation of everything I love about truly great cinema (e.g. "the classics"- Godfather, A Clockwork Orange, Silence of the Lambs, etc.)- the depth of emotion, the layered plot, the thematic consistency, the dramatic intensity (ESPECIALLY the dramatic intensity)- and seamlessly fuses with it my favorite genre character of all time: the Batman. The result is the first film based on a superhero that takes itself 100% seriously, never condescending the integrity of its own premise and, in the process, creating a brilliant work of action, drama, and suspense, a crime thriller that just happens to center around a hero in a cape and cowl. As a viewing experience, it's a white-knuckle affair; there is really nothing to prepare you for how powerful this film is, from the shocking intensity of the violence to the dark tragedy of the characters. It's a film that wrings you out, keeping you breathing hard and bolted to your seat, and finally leaving you emotionally drained and, bizarrely, wishing for more. Picking up shortly after Batman Begins left off, we find Bruce Wayne diligently working to bring down the mob as the Batman, joining forces with Lieutenant James Gordon and the newly-elected District Attorney Harvey Dent to stop organized crime in Gotham City for good. Everything seems to be going to plan, until a recent rash of mafia-bank robberies brings to the attention of the mob a criminal called the Joker, a madman slathered in clown make-up who offers to rid them of the Batman once and for all. Suddenly, no one in Gotham is safe, and as the Joker's chaotic rampage through the city racks up more and more victims, Batman finds himself struggling with the moral code he's set for himself in the light of the Joker's limitless cruelty. For his second go-round as the Dark Knight, Christian Bale has got his character down pat, from the vapid playboy facade (that creates some of the lighter points of the movie) to the dark, gravelly-voiced creature that is Batman (who gets much more screen time than Wayne does, actually); but as the real Wayne, who so few are privileged to see, Bruce is deeply conflicted about his double life, torn between the desire to leave it all behind (an opportunity presented by the rising star D.A. Dent) and his need to fulfill his self-appointed mission. Things become even more complicated when the Joker turns his double identity against him, shifting public opinion against the Dark Knight and trying to force him into turning himself in. Working with Batman this time is Harvey Dent, as played by Aaron Eckhart- a public crusader for justice who personifies the hope for a better future in Gotham City. Harvey is a truly good, decent man, trying his best to do the right thing in the mire of corruption and politics, but unfortunately he still is just a man, and every man has a breaking point; Dent goes through a major character arc through the course of the film, one that twists his ideals against themselves and transforms him into a tragic, all-too-plausible monster, and Eckhart plays the descent into darkness phenomenally. The third man of our trio of heroes in this film is Gary Oldman, back for round two as Lieutenant James Gordon. This time, his skills as an actor are put to much better use, as Gordon has much more to do here than before: he is a father, a friend, a cop, and a man of action in this film, and especially near the end his character is put through the wringer, but Oldman delivers like he always does. And then, there's the Joker. There really aren't enough good things I can say about the late Heath Ledger's turn as the Clown Prince of Crime- he IS the Joker. He manages to craft a completely unpredictable character, one that is both amazingly scary and surprisingly funny at the same time (as perfectly captured early on in the film: "How about a magic trick?"). A self-described engine of chaos, everything about him is chaotic, from his often violent actions and statements (he describes several different scenarios for how he acquired his scars, investing himself intensely into each one) to his facial tics and mannerisms; Ledger disappears completely into the role, so much so that it's hard to connect the tragedy of Ledger's death to the character when you're actually watching him (which is both a great relief for the audience and a hell of a compliment to his performance, when you think about it). Even though he has the least screen time of all the principal leads, his presence looms over the entirety of the film (kind of like Thomas Wayne's in Batman Begins, but much more potently), creating a disorienting sense that absolutely ANYONE can die at any moment. As for the rest of the cast, they are all expanded upon from the previous film, and they are ALL fantastic: Michael Caine's Alfred has the unenviable task of keeping Bruce's spirit intact through the pain he's subjected to, Morgan Freeman's Lucias Fox faces up to an ethical dilemma of his own when Batman's quest to fight crime pushes past the boundaries of basic human rights, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, infinitely more pleasant as Rachel Dawes than Katie Holmes was, is stuck in a love triangle between childhood friend Bruce and the handsome, likable Dent. The script is tight and powerful, despite the film's long run time; there is not a single scene that could have been left out, and the intricate plot that's constructed is incredibly elaborate, thematically rich, and deeply engrossing. The character work and dialogue is fantastic: the dramatic highlight of the film would probably have to be the interrogation room scene between Batman and the Joker, in which we learn a lot about the Joker's twisted ideology and his perceived connection with Batman. The action this time around is astonishing, too; Christopher Nolan, apparently tired of complaints about the shooting style of the fight sequences in Batman Begins, now shoots simple, straightforward angles of the energetically choreographed clashes, making them much more effective. The stunt work and effects are blazingly good, keeping C.G. use to a minimum to maintain maximum believability (they flipped a semi truck. For real. Even seeing it in the trailer doesn't diminish the awe inspired by that moment). The cinematography trades the golden hues of Begins for colder blue tones, which creates a bleak landscape for our heroes to fight in; the music, by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, is electrifying, conjuring the twisted darkness of the Joker while holding true to the heroism of Batman and Dent. All around, the Dark Knight is a quantum leap forward from its predecessor (described aptly by some as the Godfather II of superhero films); Christopher Nolan has really stepped up his game with this one, creating for the first time a rich, deeply layered cinematic experience that centers around a superhero, albeit one that's as flawed and human as any other film protagonist. This is the first superhero film that could rightly be categorized as an achievement in film as an art form, and not simply a commercial venture, and I hope that it gets the recognition that it deserves. Frankly, my only real concern is with how Nolan is going to top it, especially without Ledger around to conjure his magically sinister Clown Prince of Crime anymore (there is no way they can recast that role), but even if this were to be the last Batman film ever produced, I think it would be a hell of a good way to go out. Ultimately, this movie is everything I've ever wanted in a film- it's as simple as that. "Why so serious?"

This movie is, and always was, a personal favorite of mine (it is, according to available record, the first movie I have ever seen). Though watching it now, I can perceive flaws in Tim Burton's third (and largest, at the time) foray into studio filmmaking, Batman has always been more of an experience than an intellectual exercise in film-going. The scope of this picture is immense, spanning huge sets and sound stages that are supplemented with matte paintings to appear endless and intimidating. The plot is almost incidental to the film's style: a mysterious vigilante dressed as a bat has been prowling the streets and rooftops of corrupt cesspool Gotham City for a just under a month, scaring the crap out of petty criminals before beating the crap out of them. While breaking up a raid at a chemical factory, the Batman sends a mob lieutenant tumbling into a vat of waste, from which he emerges with white skin, green hair, and a permanent smile. Calling himself the Joker, the man takes over the organized crime of the city and sets his sights on the murders of every man, woman, and child in Gotham, and only one man can stop him: Batman. Michael Keaton's gruff, whispering Batman was a revelation, the first popular shift away from the Adam West characterization. His Bruce Wayne is moody and brooding, too- a man uncomfortable in his own skin, whose neurotic compulsion to fight crime in a bat-suit prevents him from having anything close to a normal, happy existence. His Batman is dark and reserved, popping in and out of the story and commanding the scene once he arrives, and although he could barely move in that suit, he manages to project an air of power and menace whenever he appears on screen. Nicholson, on the other hand, is so perfect for his part that it's scary, pulling of a deadly and maniacal Joker with ease (despite being many years older and a few pounds heavier than the Joker is traditionally portrayed). The only problem with his portrayal is that it's literally impossible to separate the character from the actor, as the Joker seems like nothing more than Jack Nicholson's id unleashed; the part can never be entirely convincing because you never forget who is playing him. Kim Basinger comes off as the odd woman out, a lone bastion of down-to-earth sensibility in a totally out-there production; it works well enough, I suppose, but her most important dramatic beat comes off as hackneyed and stale, and I can't help but wonder how Sean Young would have done in her stead. Michael Gough, a mainstay from the Hammer horror days, gets a small but fantastically stuffy part as Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce's confidant and trusted manservant (a role that would carry him through all of the successive sequels). Billy Dee Williams also gets a small but fun part as Distict Attorney Harvey Dent, a role that should, by all rights, have lead to his playing Two-Face in a Batman sequel; the only really important scene he has is a banquet with a strong Citizen Kane vibe, but it does make me wish he had gotten another crack at the role later. Visually, the film has Tim Burton's style without nearly as much of the personal signature that his later films would develop; the art department is definitely in charge here, with Anton Furst's set and production design in the forefront, and everything is grimy and industrial, creating a hell of urban decay that would win the design team an Oscar. The compositions are clear and engaging, and the lighting is like something out of film noir, with high-contrast shadows and conveniently placed shafts of light (and oh, how I do love it when they pull a Lugosi and highlight Batman's eyes during the darker scenes). The score, by Danny Elfman, is pure cinema gold, with a resounding, powerful, hum-able theme that weaves through the music and sticks with the viewer; easily, it's one of the best scores Elfman's ever done (if not one of the best scores EVER), and it established him as one of the premier film composers in the industry for over a decade. The script is the focal point of a typical Hollywood creative tragedy; the original screenplay, written by Sam Hamm, was a fantastic piece of storytelling, with clear, sharp characterizations and a tight, engaging plot (and yes, I HAVE read it, and it IS that good- Tarantino reportedly called it one of the best scripts he'd ever read). During the writer's strike of '88, however, Hamm couldn't be on-set during the shooting of the film, and as a result, rampant on-the-spot improv and overnight rewrites by the director and producers wreaked havoc on the film, turning the third act into a convoluted mess and transforming the Joker into the murderer of Bruce Wayne's parents (a move which, while dramatically interesting, infuriated comic fans, and is still a point of confusion for casual viewers, especially if they've ever seen Batman Begins). Sure, these improvs did add some great moments to the film (such as the classic "I'm Batman" line, which was originally scripted as "I am the night"), but they also robbed it of a great deal of credibility, particularly when Alfred allows Vicki into the Batcave for a last minute, horribly written romantic interlude before the climax. The insertion of Prince's songs take some steam of of the film, Batman kills a few to many people for anyone who knows anything about the character, and the aforementioned resolution to the Bruce-Vicki relationship makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER, but Burton's Batman is still as entertaining as when it was first released. The new Batman franchise helmed by Christopher Nolan may be more critically acclaimed, but ultimately, it will never be as iconic or as groundbreaking as Tim Burton's pass at the character. All they needed on the poster for this film was a logo. That just about says it all.

If someone were to ask me the exact moment that I felt the Burton-Schumacher movies were taking a turn for the worst, I'd have to answer honestly with Batman Returns. The first Batman was by no means a perfect film- thank you very much, Writer's Guild Strike- but it at least maintained an integral honesty to its main character and its source material, and in the end it was a fun movie to watch. Unfortunately, the biggest creative force behind the film, Tim Burton, didn't really have much more to say on the subject of Batman after the first movie was completed. Warner Brothers, desperate not to lose such a unique element of the franchise (before it had even crystallized as a franchise to begin with), made Burton an offer that no self-respecting artist could refuse: instead of directing a Batman movie as funneled through the creativity of Tim Burton, he could direct a Tim Burton movie with the creative focus of Batman. The result, ironically, is a film that bears little resemblance to its predecessor, or even to a Batman movie- for some reason, it's unbearably dark, and it is so distinctly Tim Burton that the few Batman elements that remain are submerged under an avalanche of new, bizarre concepts. Keaton is back as the dark knight (in an inexplicable new suit- for some reason Batman has never had the same costume for two consecutive movies), and he does as good a job with the part as before (despite his newly emphasized tendency to horrifically kill the criminals that he battles- with a smile, in one instance). Michelle Pfeiffer is new villain number one, a woman raised from the dead by cats (it's handled more believably than it sounds) to kick ass and pursue her own mysterious agenda as the patchwork black vinyl-covered Catwoman. Here Catwoman is portrayed with a motive, a great improvement over her ill-defined comic counterpart, and Pfeiffer makes the psychologically complex role hers. For villain number two, we have Danny DeVito as the Penguin, a hideously deformed circus freak with a dark agenda and a gang of carnival-themed criminals who runs for mayor and wages a P.R. war against the dark knight. Sounds excessive? It is. But if anyone could play a believable half-man, half-penguin freak, it's Danny DeVito, and he does not disappoint, sinking his teeth into the role with perverse relish. Again, the script tries to create a backstory and a motivation for a poorly-defined character in the comics, but here it doesn't work quite as well. And as an added bonus, we get villain number three: Christopher Walken! Okay, it's Walken as millionaire tycoon Max Shreck, the Penguin's unwilling benefactor and leading campaign contributor, but since there is no Max Shreck in the comics, the character can be seen as nothing more than a place-holder for Walken in a fright-wig. If it sounds like there's a bit too much going on here, that's because there is- Burton goes so in depth on our villains and their complex psychological workings that our hero, the freaking title character, is relegated almost to secondary character status. Of course, that doesn't make Batman Returns a bad movie- on the contrary, it has its darkly funny moments, the action scenes are more polished than in the first one, and there's quite a bit of social satire involving the Penguin's bid for Mayor. And as if this over-abundance of villainy doesn't make the movie dark enough for you, the new cinematographer and production designer have created a landscape of deep, inky blacks and stark whites that make the movie incredibly depressing to watch. There isn't a plot to speak of- it's pretty much Batman fights the bad guys, with a few token complications thrown in for good measure. The problem is that it tries to stuff ten pounds of psychology into a five pound bag already loaded with two-and-a-half pounds of action. A review that I once read made a compelling argument for the idea that the villains were each representative of a different aspect of Batman's psyche: the orphan (Penguin), the vigilante (Catwoman), and the philanthropist (Max Shreck). Therefore, the whole movie is an in-depth exploration of Batman's character, even though he's barely in it. And while that may be a great premise for a Tim Burton movie or a Batman graphic novel, it just doesn't work on a Batman film. It's a shame that this extremely angst-filled sequel pushed the producers in the opposite direction, going back to light-hearted fluff when it came time for Batman Forever- I would love to have seen what Burton would have done with the Riddler. Nevertheless, Batman Returns was an experiment, a furthering of the approach that worked in the first Batman (keep it serious, keep it dark), that pushed the character a little too far into the shadows, and pushed its director a little too far into the spotlight.

Oh, God. The pain. The agony. It's... so... BAD! I know there's a law of diminishing returns when it comes to sequels, but this is ridiculous. Rather than working to enhance the better qualities of its predecessor, Batman and Robin instead takes all of the overblown, superficial, relentlessly campy tripe from Batman Forever (which only really worked because Jim Carrey was in the picture) and blows it completely out of proportion, killing any and all pretense of this being a real attempt at filmmaking. The dialogue is beyond cringe-worthy; taken all at once, the script is a full-fledged epileptic seizure waiting to happen. The sets are like something out of Cats, and sadly, so is everything else- seriously, I wouldn't have been surprised if the characters burst into show-tunes and the thugs formed a chorus line. It doesn't help things that almost every action beat in the movie- punches, falls, landings- is given not a believable sound effect, but rather something from the Looney Tunes library of sound. And as for the performances, well... yeah. George Clooney plays George Clooney expertly, but that mask is sometimes pretty distracting. Arnold seems to have a blast making everyone in the audience groan, and he never comes off any better than a cartoon would have (in fact, the cartoon Mr. Freeze out-acts Arnold easily in the animated series). Uma Thurman is actually a pretty decent Poison Ivy- were this film using an exponentially better script, she'd actually have created a great character. Not so with Alicia Silverstone; if I didn't want to kill her after Clueless, this pushed me over the edge. Chris O'Donnell is, well, useless as ever as Robin. And hey, they even threw in Bane for some reason! Yay! The fact is, if you go into this expecting even an okay movie, you're going to be disappointed- "unbearably stupid" does not even do this flick justice. Go into it expecting crap, though, and you'll be surprised how entertained you'll be. It really makes me laugh- just not when it's trying to.

Oh, we believed, all right. In a decade defined by Watergate, the continuing atrocities of Vietnam, and a mounting national rebellion against authority and an increasingly oppressive socio-political climate, one movie had the guts to stand for Truth, Justice, and the American Way without a hint of irony or sarcasm. Following hot on the heels of Star Wars, the Man of Steel's big-screen debut was- and is- an epic, high-spirited adventure, the absolute gold standard for superhero movies for decades after its release, and a film that's so clearly a labor of love that it's practically stamped on every frame. What's really great about this movie is that, instead of ignoring the climate of cynicism that had been cultivated in cinema for the past decade, Superman posits itself as an ideological response to it, placing its hero in a world not far removed from the likes of The French Connection or All the President's Men and playing against that well-established stark realism for a brilliant contrast between the two aesthetics. The irony of this is that Superman, whose idealism and relentlessly good nature might make him seem hopelessly naive to many of the citizens of Metropolis, is the only character who is portrayed absolutely seriously, while the disillusioned pragmatism of the other characters is played for laughs- a clever strategy, because it makes Superman sort of the audience's perspective on the rest of the world, the identifiable character through which we evaluate the rest (which he maintains even as Clark Kent, his sly smiles and small gestures letting us in on the joke that he's only pretending to be clumsy and oafish... taking advantage of society's preconceived notions to hide in plain sight). Despite a few... problems with the screenplay (i'll get to those), Superman: the Movie remains the ultimate portrayal, in any medium, of the Man of Steel, and one of the greatest adventure-fantasies to ever grace the screen. The film opens on the planet Krypton, as a desperate scientist tries in vain to warn his contemporaries of the imminent destruction of their world. Jor-El, rebuked by his peers and forbidden to leave the planet, places his infant son Kal-El into a starcraft and sends him to Earth just as Krypton's sun goes nova. The craft lands safely in Kansas, where a kind and decent couple discover the child and raise him as their own. Flash foward several years, where we meet Kal, now rechristened Clark Kent, as a teenager in Smallville, just discovering that he has powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. After his adoptive father dies of a heart attack, Clark discovers a mysterious crystal- a piece of the craft he arrived in- that leads him to the arctic, where it grows into a massive crystal palace: the Fortress of Solitude. Here he learns all about his heritage and how to master his powers, and after twelve years of study, Clark sets out to Metropolis, becoming a reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper and concocting a mask of impentirable meekness to ensure his anonymity. But when fellow reporter Lois Lane finds herself in mortal danger, Clark reveals his true nature to the world: in a flash the reporter is gone, and in his place stands the red, blue, and yellow figure of Superman! Filling in those big red boots, of course, is Christopher Reeve, and actor who so quintissentially embodied the qualities of Superman that even now it's hard to seperate the image of the man from the character itself. Reeve projects an immutible confidence as the Man of Steel that makes you believe that he actually IS bulletproof, but is tempered with an easy charm and an earnest innocence that is somehow worldly, not naive (as if he was aware of the depths of humanity's darkness- and he certainly acknowledged it- but still ultimately believed that mankind was inherently good, and could be, well, redeemed [yes, he's a Christ figure. Secular Jesus. Deal with it.]). More impressively, however, he creates a Clark Kent through body language, a subtle slouch in posture, and a higher octave speaking voice, that you actually could work next to every day without once suspecting that the most powerful being on Earth was sitting right across from you; for once, the glasses are just an accesory, not a disguise. Playing opposite Reeve (both spectacle and bispectacled) is Margot Kidder as intrepid reporter Lois Lane, the feisty-yet-jaded yin to Superman's yang who, in this incarnation, is a chain-smoking working girl, a sort of avatar for urban life in the 1970's, who knows all the angles and sniffs out bullshit for a living. Kidder plays her with manic energy; Lois is a woman on the go 24/7, and that's the way she likes it- which is why she finds Clark Kent (slow, fumbling Clark) so unappealing. Superman, however, is a different story; the romance between Lois and Superman is the dramatic crux of the movie, and it is executed wonderfully as a sort of screwball-comedy, His Girl Friday courtship, with the hard-nosed Lane turning to butter every time the Man of Steel locks his cobalt-blue eyes on her. The Flying Sequence is the unquestioned centerpiece of the film, a majestic, romantic flight through the clouds that somehow never feels overwrought or cheesy, even with Kidder doing a lyrical voice-over through half the scene. But while the love story dominates the majority of the film, you can't have a hero without a villain, and in this film Superman faces off against Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, the personification of all the worst qualities of humanity. Keeping with the thematic conceit of the film, Lex is kind of a clown, dressing in cheesy plaid suits with ridiculous "wigs" and referring to himself as "the greatest criminal mind of our time", but beneath it all there's a current of genuine menace that Hackman brings to the part- a mean-spirited cruelty that he disguises as wit and sarcasm (an interesting reversal from Clark Kent). The part is definitely a little overdone (the Abbott and Costello-ish relationship with Otis is sometimes a bit much- sometimes- and WHY does he have an evil underground lair?), Hackman makes Lex into a perfect foil for the Man of Steel, exploiting his seemingly only weakness- overconfidence. Last but not least (first-billed, in fact) is the legendary Marlon Brando as Superman's father, Jor-El, who, for the latter part of the film is portrayed as a giant floating head (which seems somehow appropriate). Brando is good as the wise alien scientist, lending the film's opening some serious gravitas (balanced nicely against the incredible Terrence Stamp-but more about HIM later...) and anchoring the more fantastic elements of the story to the tone of the rest of the film. That tone is set by director Richard Donner, the strongest guiding force behind the film, who somehow manages to evoke three distinctly different styles in the film- the quasi-biblical science fiction opening, a nostalgic portrait of rural America, and a modern urban comedy- that mesh together as a complete, integrated story. His camera moves in slow dollies and pans, giving a sense of scale and grandure to his big scenes, and his color palettes are rich and vibrant, from the bright blue skies and amber fields of Kansas to the deep browns and grays of Metropolis, against which Superman pops out like a beacon (the cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth is phenomenal; I can't say enough about the visuals in this film). Production designer John Barry gives us a Krypton that still looks majestic and awe-inspiring today, set against an Earth grounded in realism; the flying effects are still impressive, even to today's jaded viewer... with the occasional exception (did anyone EVER buy those young-Clark-running-home shots?); and John Williams crafts a score that captures everything we love about Superman in a single, powerful title march (the score is so good that it was re-used for every single sequel with virtually no thematic changes- a cheap move, but surprisingly it works). The script is the area in which the movie fumbles worst; the climax makes the ridiculous assertion that, by flying around the planet so fast that he reverses its rotation (which would more likely rip the atmosphere to shreds than make the world spin backwards), Superman can TURN BACK TIME, which he does only to save Lois just this once (and yet, while the nuclear bomb clearly still hits the San Andreas Fault, the fissure that forms under Lois's car and killed her the first time DOESN'T HAPPEN the second time around. Go figure). Add to this the most mind-blowingly stupid scene in the film- Lex Luthor's deduction of the existence and effects of Kryptonite (try to follow his steps in reason without getting a splitting headache)- and you have a movie that has some definite problems with logic. Be that as it may, the fact remains that Superman is the patriarch of all superhero films; without it, there would be no Batman, no X-Men, no Spider-Man, and certainly no Dark Knight or Iron Man. More than that, though, Superman: the Movie was a landmark in popular film, its hero held in the ranks or Rocky Balboa, Darth Vader, Indiana Jones, and the shark from Jaws as an icon of pop culture and a herald of a new, brighter era in cinema- for better or worse. The film is a love letter to a character who had been around for nearly forty years (now nearly seventy-five), a story that took the ideals of its hero and contrasted them with a world rendered in ever darker shades of gray... making those ideals stand out that much more. Of course, it's not a political picture; Superman: the Movie is escapism at its finest, and adventure about a man who can fly, who bends steel in his bare hands, and who always tells the truth. It's hard to say which it was of those that was hardest to accept in the decade the film was released, but audiences believed every minute of it- and we still do.

GENERAL. ZOD. The very mention of the name is enough to bring a smile to the face of any Superman fan. Never before in cinema history has there been a villain as megalomaniacal- as egotistical- as prone to referring to himself in the third person- as Zod. Plenty of super-criminals have expressed the desire to take over the world; Zod ACTUALLY DID IT. After the phenomenal tease of the character played out at the beginning of Superman: the Movie, it was obvious where the filmmakers were set to go with the sequel: a titanic, superpowered battle royale between the Man of Steel and the three Kryptonian criminals, Zod, Ursa, and Non. Even better, though, the second film works to add a new dimension to the character of Superman himself, approaching him with more evident humanity by taking his relationship with Lois Lane to the next level. This particular outing in the franchise benefits (for the most part) from a combination of filmmaking styles: the epic scope and colorful sense of Americana of former director Richard Donner (who'd shot most of the sequel during the production of part one), and the more down-to-Earth British sensibilities of newcomer Richard Lester, whose dry wit is frequently an asset (Clark Kent has some great moments this time around) and occasionally a hinderance (I find his portrayal of rural Americans insultingly juvenile; "Holy skunk-sweat", indeed). Whatever your position is on the whole Donner/Lester debacle (which I won't get into in THIS review), it's impossible to deny that the final product of their haphazard collaboration is a solid sequel that manages to one-up its predecessor in a number of ways, and while it's not a perfect film (far from it, actually), it is a hugely entertaining action-adventure movie, the apotheosis of the pretensionless superhero film. With an opening credits sequence that serves as a recap of the previous installment, Superman II hits the ground running, with the Man of Steel averting a terrorist attack in Paris. Disposing of a nuclear weapon in the terrorists' possession by chucking it into space, Superman inadvertantly releases General Zod, Ursa, and Non from the Phantom Zone- each of whom gain all of Superman's powers as soon as they're freed. Meanwhile, Clark Kent is having troubles of his own, as Lois Lane is slowly closing in on his secret. Before long, Lois discovers that Clark is actually Superman, and the two fly off to the Fortress of Solitude for a romantic rendevous. Torn between his duties as Earth's protector and his love for a human woman, Superman, blinded by his feelings, sacrifices his powers to be with Lois... just as the trio of Kryptonian criminals descend upon Earth, leaving a trail of chaos and destruction behind them. Now, with the world on the brink of annihilation, how will a powerless Superman ever hope to defeat the greatest threat the Earth has ever seen? Despite creative shake-ups behind the camera, virtually the entire principal cast is back for Part II, with Christopher Reeve front and center as the Man of Steel once again. Reeve continues to excell as both the confident, charismatic Superman and the bumbling Clark Kent, and the line between the two is pretty well defined- even when we see Superman in Clark Kent's clothes. The character is fleshed out much more this time, though, transforming the slightly authoritarian Superman of the first film into a more human character by focussing on his love for Lois Lane and their burgeoning relationship. Now that we know what he can do and what he stands for, it's his personal vulnerabilities that make the story interesting, and discovering those, we become more invested in seeing him overcome them- this time, we root more for the character than for the concept. Playing opposite Reeve once more is Margot Kidder, returning for her second go-round as Lois Lane. Suffering, I suppose, (if that's the right term) from a real-life smoking habit (even her character smokes like a damn chimney), Kidder is noticably emaciated and her voice is much more shrill than in the first film, but Lois is still feisty and sardonic, even if she's not as up-beat under Lester's direction as she was under Donner's. The scenes between her and Clark are screwball comedy gold, and her love scenes with Superman are just as solid- if not as blazingly flirtatious- as before; ultimately, though, Lois is just a footnote to the bigger things going on around her, and the tragedy is that she knows it... a sentiment perfectly captured by Kidder in her final scene with Reeve, by far the best contribution to the film Richard Lester provided. Her only chance at happiness with Superman is crushed, ultimately, by the timely arrival of the three criminals from Krypton: the mute, brutish Non, played to comically menacing perfection by Jack O'Halloran; the sultry and malicious Ursa, wonderfully played by Sarah Douglas as something of a playful femme fatale; and, of course, General Zod, flawlessly played by Terrance Stamp (who, for some reason, gets last billing in BOTH Superman movies). Stamp plays Zod as pretty much the exact opposite of Superman: an absolute, irredeemable bad guy, the personification of egotism and the lust for power, and (getting back to the biblical symbolism of the first film) the Lucifer to Jor-El's God and Superman's Jesus (which I guess makes Luthor the Anti-Christ by default). What's really fantastic about this character is that he bounces between scenes of overplayed malevolence ("Come to me, son of Jor-El! Kneel before Zod!") and smooth, underplayed menace ("I see you are practiced in worshipping things that fly. Good."), and Stamp is at home with both of these extremes, creating an unbelievably arrogant and strangely charismatic presence the makes him (to fall back on a cliche) a villain you love to hate. Stamp's Zod simply OOZES evil- so much so that it turns the returning Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor into a mere comic foil for the Kryptonian trio (poetic justice given Lex's treatment of Otis, his own comic foil). Actually, Hackman didn't sign on to come back for the sequel- all of his scenes were shot by Richard Donner, with a body double and voice impersonators used to smooth the transitions between Donner's original scenes and Lester's revised ones. But regardless of a few strange digressions with his character (the most obvious being during the climax), Hackman gets to play his twisted mastermind to the fullest, even though this time, in trying to manipulate General Zod, he bites off more than he can chew. The composite Donner-Lester script is, on the whole, surprisingly coherent. Here again, however, is where some of the film's biggest faults lie: thanks to the omission of Marlon Brando's Jor-El from the film on financial grounds ($3 million for three weeks was bad enough, but asking to be paid twice was pushing it), there's never any proper explanation given for how Superman gets his powers back at the end of act two, as Jor-El was to be instrumental in his son's re-empowerment. And speaking of powers, apparently they don't have Superman comics in Great Brittain, because Richard Lester seems to have no concept of what exactly the Man of Steel's powers ARE, throwing everything from telekinesis to teleportation to intangibility into the pot; and while the amnesia-inducing super-kiss may've had some basis in Silver-Age comics lore, I suppose, there is no excuse for turning Superman's S-shield into a giant cellophane net that dissolves shortly after contact with its target. That's just stupid. The special effects are at least as good as the first film's, with improvements in some areas and weaknesses in others (the use of animation sticks out glaringly); the movie's twelve minute battle-royale in the streets and skies of Metropolis is the highlight of the film, bringing together all the effects techniques from both films into one massive, pulse-pounding action sequence, which suffers only occasionallt from flying-toy shots and a dummy Zod being whirled in circles. The cinematography is decidedly bi-polar, flipping from the muted color schemes of the Lester material to Geoffrey Unsworth's more vibrant palette, but the mix is effective since the Lester scenes are more subdued anyway, and the Donner scenes more operatic. The score is just a re-orchestration of the first movie's, rearranged by Ken Thorne to fit the new scenes, which is a tragedy, because I would give my left nut to hear John Williams' composition of a General Zod march theme (I'm a Williams enthusiast, so sue me). While it may not be as good as the first film (a position that is highly debatable, and I've found myself on either side of the argument from time to time), Superman II is easily one of the best sequels ever made, and probably the most underrated action film of the '80s. They say heroes are defined by their villains, but Superman has always been an exception to that: a mythically powerful hero with a rogues gallery that, compared to Batman or Spider-Man's, was pretty pathetic. Superman II is the movie that finally created a threat to match the Man of Steel, and, in a way, a villain that was defined by his hero- General Zod, along with Ursa and Non, the only forces ever able to overpower, if not necessarily out-think, Superman. They are the perfect opposites to Reeve's perfect hero, and that alone is quite an achievement.

See, this is why producers should never be in charge of story on a movie: the thinking is always, "How can I get the most profit from the least investment?", and that can lead them to do some pretty stupid things- like casting Richard Pryor in a superhero movie. When the first two Superman films were a hit, the Salkinds knew they wanted to do a Superman III (they'd even announced it in the credits of II) but they didn't know where to take the story- Mario Puzo had written I and II as a self-contained two-part epic, so they had to come up with III from scratch. And while Ilya Salkind did write a treatment for a cosmic-minded, kid-friendly sequel (featuring Brainiac and Mr. Mxyzptlk as villains who team up for some reason, and including a romance between Superman and the newly-arrived Supergirl, which, being as that they are cousins in the comics, is truly horrifying), the story that the filmmakers ran with ended up evolving out of two primary considerations: budgetary concerns and box-office appeal. The result is a much smaller scale film than the first two, the plot entirely contrived to shoehorn Richard Pryor into Superman's world (or perhaps to shoehorn Superman into Pryor's world; most of the film feels more like a god-awful comedy than a superhero flick). Director Richard Lester's shortcomings as an action director are much more apparent now that he doesn't have Richard Donner to fall back on (his action is flat and not terribly exciting, as if Stanley Kubrick decided to take on action), and his penchant for lame gags coupled with the already comic bent implied by Pryor's presence make this a film that you can't take seriously (unfortunately, it's not terribly funny either). Ironically, the film is at its best when it steers away from the flimsy main plot, indulging in sentimental moments between Christopher Reeve and Annette O'Toole or pitting Reeve against himself- literally. The story (if you must know) begins with Gus Gorman, an unemployed shmuck who finds out during a basic computer training class that he is a computer programming idiot-savant. Landing a job at Webscoe Industries, Gorman hatches a scheme to embezzle thousands of dollars through a computer manipulation (if you've seen Office Space you know what I'm talking about), but is discovered by CEO Ross Webster, a corrupt businessman who decides to use Gus' talents for his own benefit. Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated series of events, Clark Kent returns to Smallville to write a story about his high-school class reunion (it's an 18-year reunion, for some reason- class of 1965?), and there he reunites with Lana Lang, former prom queen and Clark's would-be high school sweetheart, now divorced and with a young son, Ricky. The two hit it off again, and romance starts to brew. After that... well, some stuff happens, and Webster gets Gus to produce synthetic Kryptonite to get rid of Superman. The substance is flawed, however, and instead of killing him, it transforms Superman into a cruel, malicious dirtbag. Finally, the Man of Steel splits into TWO people- the degenerate Superman and the wholesome Clark Kent- and in the film's absolute best sequence, the disparate sides of the Man of Tomorrow fight it out to see who will survive. Then, ah... more stuff happens... giant computer, blah blah blah. If any of the films in the franchise could really be said to showcase Christopher Reeve's versitility as an actor, this would be the one. Reeve plays THREE parts this time: the upright, heroic Superman (whose character significance is greatly reduced this time around), the nerdy Clark Kent (who has evolved from previous films; no longer the uncoordinated klutz, Clark is far more self-possessed and confident, and is presented this time as the "true" personality- the actual person behind the gaudy spectacle), and the new Dark Superman, a character not so much evil as he is base and ugly, ruled entirely by the darker impulses in man's nature. Reeve is unbelievably good in this new persona, deftly creating a mean, self-loathing, destructive mirror of the clean-cut hero that's almost unpleasant to watch. But what actually IS unpleasant to watch are all of the scenes featuring the film's villains, none of whom are from the comics and all of whom are grossly uninteresting comedy types. At least Richard Pryor is enjoyable at times as Gus Gorman- the guy was a phenomenal comedian, so he couldn't possibly be all bad- but the man is just horribly out of place in the middle of a Superman movie, skewing the film's sensibilities in the wrong direction. Worse still is the actual villain of the film: Ross Webster, a dime-store Lex Luthor played by Robert Vaughn who possesses no menace, no charisma, and should pose no threat to the Man of Steel. It is so painfully boring to watch this psuedo Bond villain schlep around his rooftop ski slope with his bulldog of a sister and his shrill trophy-girl that sitting through the whole thing sometimes feels like watching C-SPAN on mute. But for all the mistakes Lester and the Salkinds made in the production of this movie, the one thing they got absolutely right was the casting of Annette O'Toole as Lana Lang. After two films with a grating, chain-smoking Lois Lane, O'Toole is like a breath of fresh air as the beautiful, wholesome good-girl Lana, who cares more for Clark than she does for Superman, and whose sweet, down-to-Earth charm harmonizes so well with Reeve's good-natured nerd that the romantic scenes become the highlight of the film- the one instance when Lester's storytelling strengths click with the character. Unfortunately, Lester isn't the film's sole hindrance; writers David and Leslie Newman just can't dream up a story big enough for the Man of Steel, cramming him instead into a dull, episodic faux-comedy in which, to a large extent, HE ISN'T EVEN THE MAIN CHARACTER (Gus Gorman is the focus of most of the film's narrative, and he has the biggest arc). Making things worse is that the producers cut corners in virtually every department, particularly the score, which sounds like a cheesy cover of the previous films' music and fails to deliver the scope or grandure of the original Williams themes (the bizarre opening credits swap the soaring space-flight titles for a street-level chain-reaction gag that is anything but funny- ominous portents of what is to come). In fact, the only area in which the film is a real improvement are with the flying effects, particularly during the Grand Canyon missle battle- but hell, after two films, I would hope they'd have a better handle on flying; and while the split-screen effects for Clark vs. Superman were okay, the rest of the effects are old hat (but at least we didn't get any more saran-wrap S-shields). Anyone who was expecting something on par with the first or second Superman films were in for a disappointment with Superman III. While it has its moments, and introduces some interesting new characters- Lana Lang and Dark Superman, namely- it also introduces quite a few boring ones- Gus, Brad (yeah, I didn't mention him before, but trust me), etc., etc.- and tries to pass off Robert Vaughn as a Superman-worthy threat. More than anything, though, part III fails because they tried to make it a funny movie with a superhero in it, as opposed to a superhero movie with funny moments in it. I don't care how much Richard Pryor loved the first Superman films, comedy and superheroes don't mix. But I guess we'd never know that if not for this movie.

That's the thing about good ideas- sometimes the timing just isn't right. Take, for example, the Flash, a television show that was at LEAST ten years ahead of its time. To better understand what I mean, just break it down to the core components: the story concerns a SUPERHERO who, for a day job, is a CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATOR. If that isn't a dynamite recipe for creative synergy, I don't know what is. Had the Flash been conceived in, say, 2003 or 2004, it would have tapped into a HUGE fan-base established by C.S.I. and the emerging superhero movie boom. Instead, it came out in 1990, trying (and failing) to ride the wave of hype generated for Tim Burton's Batman, and was ultimately felled in one season by another new program running in the same time slot: namely, the Simpsons. But the Flash, while it wasn't horrible, wasn't a perfect show, either, as is perfectly exemplified by the pilot movie that launched the series. It displays more than a few shimmers of inventiveness and creativity, and it's an entertaining way to spend two hours, but it's bogged down by a cheese factor and a lack of subtlety that crops up unexpectedly and kind of kills the mood, making it something of a mixed bag. The story concerns Barry Allen, a forensic criminologist caught in a freak lab accident (the chemicals he is working with are struck by LIGHTNING and explode in his face) who finds himself suddenly able to move with incredible speed. At first seeking a cure for his "ailment" (enlisting the aid of metabolic specialist Dr. Tina McGee), Allen decides to use his abilities to fight crime after a motorcycle gang led by a psychotic ex-cop murders his police officer-brother (in an obvious attempt to re-use the revenge theme of Batman for another superhero). Portraying our hero, Barry Allen, we have John Wesley Shipp, who plays the character as a likable everyman (despite his soap-opera good looks and rippling muscles) with a chip on his shoulder. Born into a family of cops- his dad was a cop, and his brother is a cop (well, for a while, anyway)- he has something of an inferiority complex about "only" being a police scientist, which drives him into workaholic tendencies and, eventually, vigilante activity. The problem with Shipp's Allen is that he's never really believable as a studious, intellectual scientist, mostly because he behaves so melodramatically emotional that it's difficult to see him as a rational person sometimes. As a superhero, though, he does seem to fit the bill, even if he's more stoic and angry than the Flash usually is, and the ripped musculature of his costume looks preposterously bulky on his already athletic frame (another touch of Batman- the dark, brooding hero in the sculpted muscle suit). This implausible outfit is provided for Barry by his specialist and accomplice, Tina McGee (played by Amanda Pays), a British scientist working for state-of-the-art S.T.A.R. Labs who happens to be the only person that knows of Barry's condition. Pays plays McGee as a much more believable scientist than Shipp does, even if the science she practices is more sci-fi than anything else. The two have a good, subtle chemistry, but Pays comes off as just a bit hollow in her part, despite the writer's attempts to give McGee some depth with a personal tragedy that influences how she works with Barry; it just seems like she's playing more to a British stereotype than to the idea of a real character, but she ultimately seems natural enough in the part. One character who does NOT come off naturally would have to be Michael Nader as bad guy Nicolas Pike, a scarred and grizzled ex-cop who would seem to be doing his best Stephen Seagal impression for the whole movie. The script suffers badly from the weakness of its villains- the theme of urban decay isn't really explored deeply enough to make these outcast biker-punks interesting characters, and they all play like cardboard cut-outs anyway (plus, I can't help but laugh when, in one scene, they reveal the names of two of the bikers to be "Bill" and "Steve"- badass mofos, to be sure). Other than this, though, the script is a surprisingly strong one, with good character development, interesting dialogue (despite a few patches of clichés), and a good (if occasionally wicked) sense of humor; it also introduces some fascinating concepts to the character, such as Barry's voracious appetite (he has to replace the calories burned when running with copious amounts of food) and the explanation for the suit (so that he can run without friction tearing his clothes to bits). The cinematography is kind of overly colorful sometimes, using gel-colored lights and neon to get that comic-strip look popular in the early nineties (most noticeably in Dick Tracy), but it stays classy during the character moments, and the compositions are actually pretty good for a TV movie. The effects, which cost a pretty penny at the time, modulate between the corny and the utterly fantastic (the multiple-exposures and blur effects are phenomenal, even by today's standards). The music, specifically the theme by Danny Elfman, strongly recalls the music of Batman, but with a much more adventurous streak that makes it sound quite good on its own. I can't say that the Flash was a sure-fire hit that just got shafted by a time-slot disadvantage; the pilot would never have passed muster as a feature film, and almost as often as it hits on moments of greatness, it sinks to lows of unoriginal thinking (thankfully, there are more highs than lows). But despite this, I still love the Flash as a great bit of light entertainment that had the potential to be something a lot better, even if we never saw that potential fully realized (either as a successful T.V. show or as a self-contained movie). Besides, it's a perfect fit with the superhero films of the day- Superman and Batman, that is- in its sense of fun and adventurousness, a style that has gone out of fashion in the current world of ultra-realistic, angst-ridden superheroes. It may not have been a superhero C.S.I. (and how cool might that have been?), but considering the time it was released, the Flash is a good, solid bit of fun, as a lead-in to the show or as a movie on its own; I honestly believe that the only reason it didn't stick around longer was because it just happened to show up on the wrong night at the wrong time.

Every superhero's gotta have an arch enemy. In the comics, the Flash has always had a phenomenal assortment of costumed sociopaths ready to do battle with him at a moment's notice (especially in recent years), but none of them every really stood out as the yin to his yang, the oil to his water, the Al Pacino to his Robert DeNiro (well, except for the Reverse-Flash, but that one always felt like sort of a cop out to me). So when the ratings were flagging on NBC's ridiculously expensive T.V. adaptation of the Flash, the creators set out to save the show by taking one of their hero's more... ehhh... JESTER-like enemies and transforming him into a full-fledged nemesis. The ploy might not have worked- in fact, it DIDN'T work in the end (the show tanked after one season), but dramatically speaking, it might not have worked at all if not for the producers' one magical (re-)discovery: Mark Hamill. You see, while Hamill made his mark as a naive young farm-boy-turned-intergalactic-knight in the Star Wars films, he was so typecast because of the role's popularity that it took a good fifteen years before anyone discovered that Hamill had some acting range, after all. Turns out, Mark Hamill is surprisingly good at playing over-the-top giggling psychotics, as he proves amply as the titular villain of the movie, the Trickster. The "film"- actually two episodes of the television show spliced together as a continuing narrative- features Barry Allen, a.k.a. the Flash, getting back together with private investigator and former flame Megan Lockhart after rescuing here from the clutches of a madman. Said madman, one James Jesse, is a homicidal role-player with a truckload of aliases who, after nearly sawing her in half with a chainsaw, develops a psychotic fixation with Lockhart, conjuring a new, twisted personality to cater to his delusional fantasies; now calling himself the Trickster, Jesse sets out to destroy the Flash in order to rescue his love Megan, whom he sees as his sidekick, Prank, from the speedster's "hypnotic powers". John Wesley Shipp returns as the Flash, this time more often than not playing the straight man to Hamill's clown; Shipp still tends to get over-dramatic when his character is supposed to be emotional (hey, working on soap operas will do that to you), but the tendency towards excess seemed to be dying down as the show progressed; who knows? He might have achieved subtlety had the show gone on longer. Of particular interest, though, is the character change he goes through in the second half, when the Trickster brainwashes him; now no longer playing a stiff, Shipp gets to have some fun as a cartoon-y bad guy with super-speed, which makes for some pretty funny moments- even if it is completely implausible and out-of-character. And then... there's Mark Hamill, as the Trickster. The character is campy, sinister, and loony at the same time, and somehow Hamill makes that work. The guy is a walking cartoon, with an extreme face that's set off by his absolutely bizarre (and initially poorly thought-out) outfit, and his delivery is over-the-top in all the right places. And his laugh! Mein Gott, he has the most perfect insane laughter I have ever heard, and he has it down to a science! I never would have guessed that Mark Hamill could be so funny, but he really makes the comedy in the movie work, even though it's not exactly gut-busting material he's working with. In fact, any value that can be derived from this movie is thanks almost entirely to him (which is probably why I like this better than the first Flash movie)- he steals the whole show. Sure, they made a bad call dressing him in a unitard in the first episode (Spandex without thick undergarments is a BAD IDEA), but the fact that you only really notice that, like, once or twice, says a lot about his performance, but I digress. There ARE other characters in the movie- Megan Lockhart, for one, as played by Joyce Hyser (you may remember her from the eighties teen comedy Just One of the Guys... then again, you may not); she's a hard-boiled private detective who knows that Barry is the Flash, and as such, she's tough, capable, and still completely unable to save herself from Mark Hamill (of all people). Hyser is pretty good in the rather shallow part: the victim to the Trickster's stalker and the loner who doesn't like to be tied down; she also has pretty good chemistry with Shipp, so their on-again, off-again relationship is actually borderline interesting. Also on the sidelines for the film is Amanda Pays as Barry's faithful British sidekick Dr. Tina McGee, the Alfred to his Batman (albeit with a weird sexual tension that thankfully isn't present in the aforementioned relationship). In this movie, McGee is part of an ill-defined love-triangle with Barry and Megan, one that is forced into resolution when Megan and Tina have to work together to find Barry. Other than that, she's just a convenient excuse for expository dialogue- AGAIN. The script is filled with funny bits and some interesting gimmicks, but falls prey to rushed characterization and clunky dialogue (the inevitable stumbling-point of all television shows); it's fun, but there's no real substance to it (despite failed attempts at substance). The set-ups are meh for the first half, and actually pretty fun for the second, with a lot of camera movement and a sustained shot at the beginning making things interesting (especially good is the last shot with the Trickster, which uses expressionist camera movement to draw us in almost against our will). The lighting is sometimes film quality, and sometimes just a step below (what the obsession was with using primary-colored neon lights to insinuate comic books in the early nineties, I will never know). The score is by Shirley Walker, whose ability to come up with simple, catchy themes never ceases to amaze me (her Trickster theme is especially infectious, even though you really can't hum it). What's really cool about the Flash II is that, unlike its predecessor, it doesn't take itself too seriously, allowing it to go from a bad "movie" that's just painful to watch to a bad "movie" whose faults actually make the whole thing more enjoyable. Sure, some of the jokes misfire, and sure, sometimes the heroic stuff gets cheesier than a quesadilla, but as long as you're willing to suspend your sense of good taste long enough to get through it, you'll find plenty of great little moments that make the whole viewing experience worthwhile. And seriously, Mark Hamill is a blast to watch in this movie- so much so, that he would ultimately parley the experience (and his maniacal, zany delivery) into a continuing voice-acting gig playing the greatest criminal trickster of all, the Joker (a role he's been doing, on and off, for a good ten or fifteen years- and STILL nobody does it better). So the Flash T.V. show may have bombed in the end... but at least it wasn't all in vain!

To watch Catwoman is to know the true meaning of pain. It's the kind of movie that makes you want to claw your eyes out over just how many levels of stupidity it achieves- the premise is stupid, the performances are inane, the technique is atrocious; it's hard to justify abstract statements like "the worst movie of all time," but if someone were ever to compile an unbiased list of the poorest excuses of storytelling ever put to film, this film would sure as hell be somewhere in the top twenty. The story, such as it is, is simple: Patience Phillips is an extremely introverted graphic designer who looks an awful lot like Halle Berry. She works for a cosmetics company. She one day overhears that the company is going to release an evil, addictive beauty cream (?), and then she is killed for it. Her corpse is found by an army of cats led by an Egyptian mau, which spews green mist into her face (??) thus resurrecting her and granting her amazing cat powers- not to mention a string of feline characteristics like hissing at dogs, munching on fish, and freaking out for catnip. She then dons a chauvinistic S&M cat outfit for no discernible reason and seeks vengeance, all the while dating a cop who's investigating her case. Frankly, the concept is a transparent attempt to ride the coattails of the ultra-successful Spider-Man, crammed haphazardly into a story that sounds like a fifth grader made it up (an evil cosmetics company? Seriously?). Add to that some of the most preposterous plot devices of all time (a LIP PRINT confirms Catwoman's identity- I don't think THAT'S ever been on CSI), and you have a script that is a recipe for disaster- even BEFORE you factor in cast and crew. But dear God, the director- some guy named Pitof (and you just know a one-named director is never a good thing)- actually takes the thing to a whole new level of horror. I get the idea that he got his start shooting, appropriately enough, cosmetics commercials, or maybe music videos, because the guy's camera simply WILL NOT SHUT UP. What I mean is, a good director knows when to pull back, and just take in his actors and the scene- when, in essence, to quiet down, and not call attention to himself or his technique. For God's sake, even Tim Burton can do that much. Pitof, however, doesn't seem to want to pull back- he keeps the camera mobile during dialogue scenes, he cuts excessively and arbitrarily, and he insists on throwing a bunch of unnecessary zooms and CGI-assisted camera tricks into the film, which, in the end, becomes distracting and jarring, steamrolling over the actors and forcing the viewer out of the movie (not that anyone would really want to be there to begin with). The cinematography also seems to be focussed on turning this into a Maybelline photo shoot- the daylight is always too golden and perfect to possibly be real, and the nights never even approach actual darkness; everything is so glamorized it's sickening, and it ironically works against the intended subtext about vanity and inner beauty. And the score- sweet Jesus, the score- is nothing but psuedo-R&B girl-power pop garbage, ridiculous to the point of being laughable. Halle Berry, for what it's worth, seems to be enjoying herself, but when she actually becomes Catwoman, she's way too over-the-top to be a relatable hero. Benjamin Bratt is just... there as Tom Lone, the cop that Patience falls for because we can't have a movie like this without a love interest. And Sharon Stone is an appropriate choice for the villain, considering how she's been a symbol of brainless chauvinistic filmmaking for the past fifteen or twenty years. But Catwoman, first and foremost, is an adaptation of a comic book, so I would be remiss if I didn't point out that this film is NOTHING LIKE its comic counterpart, which features a completely different character named Selina Kyle that does NOT have cat-powers and is a significantly more complex, morally ambiguous figure (despite the attempts by the filmmakers to make Patience seem conflicted between good and evil by... ummm... telling us that she is, even when her actions don't support the idea). The way I see it, it's like Warner Bros. decided to purge all the crap and idiocy that had accumulated in their minds about comics before they released their big comeback films- Batman Begins, Superman Returns, etc.- and in one great swell of celluloid bile and stomach acid, they coughed up Catwoman. Honestly, I could go on for hours tearing this movie a new one- it's the most entertaining thing you can get out of it, frankly- but bottom line, this film is a mess. DON'T WATCH IT.

Oh, the folly of spin-offs. Get ready for a rant, dear reader, because not only is this a poor excuse for a movie- even a crappy mid-eighties fantasy flick, which Supergirl resembles much more than a superhero movie- but it is, at times, completely incomprehensible and utterly devoid of even the most rudimentary sense of logic. The ironic thing about this whole mess is that the title character is actually quite charming and very well portrayed, but it's as if, having come up with a unique spin on Kara Zor-El that made her more than just a female Superman, the filmmakers had no idea what to actually DO with her... so they crammed her into a weird cross between a tame teen movie and a sword-and-sorcery (minus the swords) flick. The plot, such as it is, starts in Argo City, a tiny chunk of Krypton that inexplicably survived the f*@%ing PLANET exploding and now resides in "inner space" for some reason; it seems the city crackpot inventor Zaltar decided to have his jollies one day by stealing one of the city's primary power sources, the Omegahedron, and using it to make shiny pieces of modern art (and yes, it gets weirder). He then hands it off to a wide-eyed teenage girl, our heroine Kara, who promptly blows a hole in the city wall (nearly killing herself and everyone else in Argo City) and lets the Omegahedron slip through the gap and into outer space, where it inevitably lands on Earth. Without it, Argo City only has days to live. Kara, in lieu of saying "I'm sorry," jumps ship, hopping into a floating metal bubble and blasting off to Earth, where she arrives, underwater and in full costume no less, as Supergirl! Now, instead of heading off immediately to track down the Omegahedron and save her home from a slow and painful death, Supergirl decides to adopt a human identity (using her unaccounted-for ability to shapeshift her clothes and turn into a brunette at will), infiltrating an all-girls boarding school as Linda Lee, Clark Kent's cousin (which, while Kara really is supposed to be Superman's cousin, it's never explained how she's supposed to know about him at all- let alone being aware of his secret identity); meanwhile, the Omegahedron is found by a megalomaniacal witch, and since it is now also a source of unfathomable black magic for some reason, she plots to use it to take over the world (after she forces some thick-skulled gardener to fall in love with her- a character and situation so contrived it's hardly worth mentioning, though it takes up a great deal of the movie). SEE! Supergirl fighting a giant monster that isn't there! SEE! Zaltar getting drunk in the Phantom Zone before convincing Kara to climb a mountain that's next to a technicolor tornado through the magic of reverse psychology! SEE! Jimmy Olsen stand around and try to figure out why he's in this movie! Supergirl is just a hodge-podge of bizarreness, ranging from the unintentionally funny to (more often) the mind-numbingly stupid. For all the failures going on in this movie, only a few things actually work, and foremost among them is Helen Slater as Supergirl. Capturing a sense of childlike innocence and wonderment at the world around her, Slater brings sincerity to a film sorely needing it- even when things get downright nuts, Slater delivers every line like she really believes it. Her youthful energy really sells what's ultimately the best scene in the movie: Kara discovering her powers on Earth, gracefully floating through the air like a dancer before setting off across the country (by means of the greatly improved flying effects, the second thing in this movie that works well). Unfortunately, the villainess of the story is just the opposite of Slater: an overdone, hammy performance of a poorly-conceived character. Faye Dunaway plays Selena, an amature witch who lives in in an abandoned amusement park with her wisecracking best friend (a set-up that reeks of sitcom, not cinema) and who nurses ambitions of ruling the world. Dunaway, indisputably a good actress, apparently took a page from the '60s Batman's playbook, vamping it up for the camera and killing any respect that the Oscar may have garnered for her (kinda like Halle Berry in Catwoman). Not helping matters is Peter O'Toole as Zaltar, Kara's obligatory mentor and the only sweater-wearing Kryptonian I have ever seen (I don't know why, but in Argo City all the Kryptonians dress like futuristic hippies). O'Toole's greatest asset in this part is his aristocratic British accent, which lends some authority to the psuedo-psuedo scientific drivel he's forced to spout whenever he's on-screen; the funniest moment in the movie, for me, is when we meet the cynical, broken Zaltar of the Phantom Zone, whom I couldn't help but see as O'Toole's personal reaction to the very movie he was in. The script (assuming there actually was one) is inconsistent and directionless, stringing together random set pieces with god-awful romantic comedy bits that play like a twisted episode of Three's Company. The filmmakers never deign to establish any logical rules for the magic or science fiction stuff, making Supergirl's inevitable triumph over them seem as flatly contrived as the magic itself; the characters' marked stupidity grows increasingly glaring as the villains actually WATCH Linda Lee transform into Supergirl and somehow still fail to deduce her identity in scene after scene; and the final act of the film is about as devoid of reason as a pair of three-legged pants. The special effects are pretty good for the time, save the occasional slip-up (let's play Spot the Wires! Or how 'bout Travelling Mattes?), but the fact that their use services a story that makes no bloody sense (Supergirl beats the Invisible Demon with a lightning-shooting lamp post?) takes away a lot of the luster, especially since most of the experimental stuff would only be excusable if you were really into the movie (lens distortion is not a storytelling device, dammit!). Saying that Supergirl is the worst movie ever made would be a slight to a lot of crappy movies out there more deserving of the title, but you wouldn't be far off to put it in the top twenty. It's a brainless, formless, and, worst of all, boring attempt to cash in on two distinctly seperate genres, the superhero and the epic fantasy, the result of which does justice to neither. The first total superhero flop- but sadly, not the last.

Generally speaking, I love pilots. A well-made pilot can be a beautiful thing- if the director knows how to use a small budget to its best advantage and the script is competent and well structured, a pilot can be on par with a feature film. Just look at the Incredible Hulk, or Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. To me, the best pilots are entertaining (setting up plot and character naturally) but self contained, resolving an initial conflict of some sort while leaving an opening for a continuation of the story that isn't forced or predictable. On the other hand, you'll notice a startling tendency in pilots to introduce menial, uninteresting conflicts to introduce their characters, or pilots that have mediocre actors that are later phased out when the show becomes a series and/or cheesy effects that get better only later in the show's run (Star Trek TNG being a prime example). As for Spider-Man, pilot of the shot-lived TV show from 1978... well, it has EVERY ONE of the above mentioned qualities, good AND bad, going for it. It's sort of a great relic of seventies television that seems to have some potential to it, but is bogged down by sheer corniness. In this one, Peter Parker, college student and freelance photographer, is bitten by a radioactive spider (ahhh, the days before gene-splicing), and instead of developing leukemia he gains the strength of two or three men and the ability to slowly glide up walls as if he's being lifted by wires. Having been spotted scaling a wall and realizing that he can use the skill to sell pictures to the Daily Bugle, he stitches together a brightly colored costume, constructs an apparatus that fires a web- like substance from his wrists, and decides to fight crime and right wrongs as the Amazing Spider-Man... FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. That's right- there is no Uncle Ben here, no motivation for his sudden ascent into super heroics. He just gets powers and decides to use them to fight crime, 'cause, well, what else is he going to do with them? At the same time, a criminal madman straight out of a James Bond flick is hypnotizing people, forcing ordinary, honest citizens to rob banks and threatening to make ten New Yorkers kill themselves unless the city pays him a ransom. Parker, now decidedly a Super Hero, decides to track the dastardly cur down and stop him. And that's... about... it. What saves this from being a waste of videotape is that, while it lacks in ingenuity, it actually has some good character stuff going for it. Nicholas Hammond, while a little old to play a college student, is actually a pretty decent Peter Parker-earnest and straightforward, he's a nice guy, the kind of guy you'd expect to become a super hero JUST BECAUSE. While he's not any more of a wise-cracker then Tobey Maguire's Spidey, he definitely gets the hard-luck, Charlie Brown image of Pete just right: he suffers from allergies, even when he's Spider-Man, he can't sell a picture to save his life, he's always broke, and he has piss-poor luck with the ladies. Unfortunately, while Parker's on-screen translation comes close to accurate, the other characters from the comics are a little more flat. David White's J. Jonah Jameson, rather than seeming like a gruff but funny thorn in Pete's side, is instead presented here as a full-blown asshole, insulting and condescending Peter left and right and never displaying so much as a single redeeming quality. Hilly Hicks is a little too excitable and a little too hip for the level-headed Robbie Robertson, and Jeff Donnell is there and gone as the stereotypical Aunt May. We also get Michael Pataki as a cigar-chomping cop who has a problem with Peter's convenient appearances at the scenes of crimes; the funny thing about him is, if you gave him a mustache and a buzz-cut, he would have made a great J. Jonah Jameson, but as a cop, he's just annoying and clichéd. Speaking of clichés, the Bond-reject villain of the piece, as played by Ivor Francis, is a subversive New-Age guru (in a suit) who hits all the typical villainous marks. He serves his purpose- namely, to give Spidey someone to go after while he crawls aimlessly up and down the same wall over and over again, and to hire samurai bodyguards to try to beat Spidey with bamboo sticks if he ever gets off said wall. The direction is pretty cut-and-dried; no style, no flair, just medium and close-up shots (with that annoying tendency to zoom from the seventies) set in flat lighting (the dullness of which does make Spidey's bright, colorful costume pop against the drab sets). The effects are laughable, but hey, it wasn't just 1978, it was TELEVISION in 1978... what are you expecting, Jurassic Park? Despite its plethora of failings, Spider-Man is a moderately enjoyable pilot, a toothless 70's crime thriller with a wall-crawling hero and a surprisingly springy sense of humor at times. Just don't go in expecting Superman the Movie- heck, Incredible Hulk had this one beat by a mile. If you have a high tolerance for corn, though, you might just like it.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when comic book movies were the exception and not the rule. A time when, for comic geeks like myself, the release of a superhero movie was a momentous occasion, one that happened only every few years or so, and, other than the initial releases of DC's biggest guns, one that was most often a disappointment, delivering watered down interpretations of beloved characters and concepts (Two-Face, mayhap? Catwoman? Or Steel?). Marvel, in those days, was a mass-media piss-ant, a small-time outfit trying to squeak out a profit by selling out their lower-tier characters for cut-rate prices, resulting in cheap garbage like Captain America and the Punisher. Sometime around the turn of the millennium, though, the tides began to turn; slowly, but surely, Marvel got a foot in the door, getting out the dark action-thriller Blade and the sci-fi-heavy X-Men. Then Spider-Man changed everything. Suddenly, superheroes weren't just cool, they were blazing hot, and the face of summer cinema was changed almost overnight. The only reason it all came to pass, however, is that Sam Raimi made a smart, funny, action-packed film that won over the hearts (and wallets) of movie-goers everywhere. Spider-Man is a superhero movie that broke all the rules while simultaneously setting new ones: it had a cast of well-known actors (instead of big-name stars) playing fleshed-out characters in a fairly realistic, relatable world. Peter Parker, a nerdy kid from Queens, is bitten by a genetically-enhanced spider, and gains the powers and abilities of said arachnid. At first lured by the idea of using his powers for personal gain (and to win the heart of classmate and girl-next-door Mary-Jane Watson), Peter learns the hard way that he has a responsibility to use his powers to help others, and so he becomes our friendly-neighborhood Spider-Man (just in time to stop a maniac on a jet-propelled glider who happens to be his best friend's millionaire father). Playing Peter Parker, Tobey Maguire brings to the part a boyish charm that a bigger star would have been lacking, while pumping up sufficiently to look believable as the super-strong superhero. Maguire shines as a decent guy who's been picked on most of his life and can't seem to catch a break (except for his romantic night-life as Spidey), but his Spider-Man... well, it's missing something. In this film, Spidey doesn't banter. It's my one, big criticism of the whole movie- the whole franchise, actually. Spider-Man is supposed to be funny, but in the movie he only cracks one joke in costume, and it is so lame it hurts (mostly because Maguire tries to deepen his voice heroically in hero mode, which might work for Batman or Superman, but not for Spidey). Other than that, Maguire is pitch-perfect as Peter, the first superhero in film history to make you care more for the man beneath the mask than the mask itself. Playing opposite Maguire is Kirsten Dunst as M.J. Watson, the girl of Peter's dreams. Just as Peter would perceive her character, M.J. is played with a multitude of layers, scores of which are only alluded to in the film, and you get the sense that there's a lot of stuff going on with this girl even if all we ever see is her screaming in terror or chatting pleasantly with Pete; Dunst plays the role ably, and her romantic scenes with Peter seem honest and believable with their bits of subtle character development. "Subtle" is a word that doesn't apply so much to the film's villain, Norman Osborn, a.k.a. the Green Goblin, whose gleefully evil performance by Willem Dafoe is a great example of over-the-top caricature in villainous parts, but I liked it- it works for the role, and his two-sided psyche is actually well played. The costume he wears gets a lot of flack for being cheesy and Power-Rangers-esq, but the Goblin costume was a tough look to translate into reality, and I thought they did a pretty good job of it. James Franco doesn't really have that much to do in this film as Harry Osborn, but every one of his emotional beats is hit surely and confidently, and the complicated relationship with his father is set up brilliantly for sequels. Finally, who could review this movie without acknowledging J.K. Simmons and his hilarious turn as J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of the Daily Bugle and the most vocal of Spider-Man's public detractors? No, not I, it seems. This being a Sam Raimi film, I'm sure a lot of people were taken aback by the camera techniques employed- the final battle sequence alone feels almost surreal with its use of slow-mo and tracking P.O.V.- but the man knows how to tame his visual wild side for the quieter moments, and the film benefits greatly from it. The cinematography is a bit too bright and colorful sometimes- M.J.'s hair can give you a headache, if you stare at it too long- but it makes the Spider-Man and Goblin costumes pop satisfyingly, and gives the rest of the world a vivid life of its own. The music is a little too techno, perhaps, but regardless, the score is effective, establishing character themes that stick with you (the Green Goblin, in particular, has a doozy). The script is clever, entertaining, and, at the time, unique; rather than just using concepts from the source comics, this was the first film to actually draw plot points from story arcs in the books, and its fidelity to the characters and their histories is remarkable. Ultimately, Spider-Man is the movie that brought comics into the big-time, forcing studio execs to re-evaluate the viability of superheroes on film and, as a result, creating a boom of comic book movies that hasn't subsided since its release. More than that, though, Spider-Man is a fun, exciting, enthralling film, one that creates a world of characters that we actually feel for and brings a real dramatic tension to events that some might once, not all that long ago, have dismissed as childish melodrama.

Looking back on it through the ensuing changes of time, this movie seems to be more of an experiment than an actual film. It seems to me as if Bryan Singer, whose previous works were smaller-scale, character-driven thrillers, was testing the waters with X-Men, trying to bring his own dramatic sensibilities to the material and root it in reality while, at the same time, measuring out how far to take the science-fiction elements without breaking the viewer's suspension of disbelief. Sometimes, the film strikes a very strong, resonant note dramatically- say, during the opening sequence set in World War 2-era Poland, or the cage-fight scene in Carson City, British Columbia- and sometimes it falters, particularly during the numerous expository moments and with the plot-device machine that Magneto constructs, but all together, the movie maintains a cohesion and relatability, particularly due strong character development, that makes it a fun viewing experience and an overall good, if not great, movie. The film, while based on a comic book, is more heavily rooted in sci-fi than superheroics, and because of this the story bears a metaphorical depth that you might not expect: a new order of human beings, referred to as mutants, are springing up among normal people. Born with extra-normal abilities that kick in at puberty and range from the novel to the extremely dangerous, they are regarded with fear and hatred by the people around them. Out of this climate of intolerance and prejudice, two reactionary groups are formed: the Brotherhood of Mutants, a terrorist organization led by mutant radical Magneto (a Polish Jew who escaped the Holocaust as a child), and the X-Men, a paramilitary group of peace-keeping mutants lead by the pacifistic Professor Charles Xavier. Caught between the two are an unlikely pair of mutant outcasts: Rogue, a young woman whose touch drains others of their life force, and Logan, a gruff loner with twin sets of razor-sharp metal claws, an incredible healing factor, and a mysterious past that he remembers only bits and pieces of. Hugh Jackman was a far cry from any comic fan's idea of the perfect Logan- he was too tall (Logan's supposed to be only 5'3"), he was too handsome (Logan never really was much of a pretty boy), and he was a complete unknown. What made Jackman overcome all this is that, well, his Logan is a complete badass. He channels a rebellious tough-guy vibe that never comes off as phony or forced, but he also has this haunted, distrustful air about him at times that makes his anti-social attitude more understandable. While Jackman excels as the world-weary, cynical mutant, Anna Paquin plays the young, awkward mutant Rogue just as well, if a bit unevenly. Rogue wields a dangerous power she can't control, and feels like an outcast both with humans and with other mutants; this is a great metaphor for any member of persecuted minority group, struggling to find acceptance in society, and Paquin portrays the despair and fear of her character well. Playing the benefactor of our heroes is Patrick Stewart, everyone's favorite bald thespian, as Professor X, the X-Men's telepathic founder and mentor. Stewart has a commanding presence about him that brings gravitas to the part of Xavier, which is a really good thing, because Xavier is ultimately nothing more than an expositional tool. Seriously, almost all of the film's exposition (and there is a LOT) comes from this one character, and when he finally stops expositing, he literally goes into a coma until the movie ends. The one thing that keeps him from being a one-note character, in fact, is his relationship with Eric Lehnsherr, typified by three scenes that establish a long friendship embittered by rivaling ideologies. Lehnsherr, alias Magneto, the leader of the enemy camp, is played by, of all people, Sir Ian McKellan, a Shakespearean actor from the British stage who pumped the role full of dramatic integrity and an undercurrent of sympathy and understanding for Magneto's perspective on things. Having lived through the worst example of racial intolerance in human history and convinced that mankind isn't far from launching a war to eradicate mutants from the face of the Earth, Magneto's agenda is to fight back against the looming human oppressors with his considerable power (he has the ability to generate magnetic fields) and to establish mutants as the dominant species on the planet. The rest of the cast, while solid, is mostly peripheral: James Marsden plays team leader Cyclops as the stick-in-the-mud he's always been, but the script never gives him any good character moments, so he comes off flat; Famke Jansen is great as the telekinetic Dr. Jean Grey, who is the crux of a love triangle with Logan and Cyclops; Halle Berry is grossly miscast as Storm, a character that is just badly portrayed and not terribly interesting; Bruce Davidson plays slimy politician Senator Kelly with aplomb, showing us the selfish side of prejudice; Tyler Mane makes for a great heavy as wooly thug Sabertooth; Ray Park hops about gleefully as Toad; and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos kicks butt quite well (despite not wearing what you would traditionally call "clothing") as Mystique. The script for the film is sodden with exposition, mostly because there are so many concepts from the comic to fit in to it that there's no other way to introduce them effectively (without giving this a four-hour run time, that is); for the most part, though, the characterization is right, and the dialogue is natural enough... despite a few bile-raising gems ("Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning?"). The shot compositions are unique for a Bryan Singer film, with many more intimate close-ups than he's used before or since, and some unusual arrangements. The sound design is fantastic- so much so that I felt compelled to comment upon it- and the score is fitting and melodic, much less brassy than the later scores for X-Men movies. Despite the few misfires that keep it from being a truly great film when taken on its own, X-Men is still a fun, entertaining movie, a crowd-pleaser that raises some interesting questions (even if it never takes the time to answer them) and creates a group of interesting, unique characters (even if it doesn't have the time to properly introduce us to all of them) that we want to see more of when the film is over. While it might have mixed results at times, I think that Bryan Singer's X-Men is an experiment that can ultimately be called a success... and I know of a few million moviegoers who would have to agree with me.

In general, I am not a proponent of switching out directors for a film franchise. When Tim Burton left the Batman series and Joel Schumacher took over, we ended up with Batman and Robin. When T3 was handed to Jonathan Mostow instead of James Cameron, we got a Terminator that insisted that we "talk to the hand." And when Brett Ratner- and unabashed X-Geek whose best work to date was the original Rush Hour- took over the X-Men franchise for Bryan Singer, what we got was a mixed bag, a film that tries valiantly to live up to its predecessor, but never makes good on what it promises. The portrayal of the Phoenix is an interesting idea, though it doesn't jive well with the established character arc, and Famke Jansen is more than up to the task of playing her, turning what could have been a pretty cheesy character into a truly scary wild card. While she does garner early fatalities, however (which are done for shock value, but are nonetheless done well), for the latter half of the film she doesn't really do anything but stand around and watch the movie unfold. Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier is as dignified and as subdued as ever, but this time around his actions take on a certain moral ambiguity that I couldn't help but find intriguing- it raises the question, however briefly, of "how can you trust your actions or beliefs around a psychic?" On the other hand, Ian McKellen's Magneto and Aaron Stanford's Pyro seemed to have lost all of their ambiguity, and I found to my great disappointment that even McKellen's performance came off as less nuanced and much more obvious than I would have liked (despite a few moments of greatness that even Ratner couldn't stifle). Of all the problems that this movie has, the worst by far is the criminally short running time- half of which is spent introducing characters and sub-plots that are immediately forgotten. Ratner almost seems desperate to introduce all of his favorite characters without going over the two-hour mark; Ben Foster's Angel barely makes a blip after the prologue (he only has THREE SCENES), Juggernaut is horribly underused considering how well Vinnie Jones plays the role, and Kelsey Grammer's Beast gets the best treatment of all... but that's not saying much. It's also a pity that the franchise finally settled on a good Kitty Pryde (in the personage of Ellen Page) right before it came to a close... but at least she gets some good moments. What's worse is that, even with these characters getting so little screen time, the returning cast don't fare that well, either- except for Storm, thanks to Halle Berry's continued whining about how her character should have more to do, and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, whom Ratner does not get at all. Wolverine's characterization is off by a mile- for some reason, he becomes team leader in this film (mainly because Ratner callously tosses aside Cyclops in the first act), and he seems so willing to accept the role (and to spout team-spirit speeches right before the big showdown) that one can't help but agree when Phoenix hisses that Xavier has "tamed" him. A deleted scene, featuring a disillusioned Logan returning to the wilderness of Canada to sort things out for himself, would have given the film, and the character, a much more appropriate send-off, but Ratner instead decides to give us the "sunshine, loolipops and rainbows" happy ending... despite the fact that HALF THE ORIGINAL X-MEN ARE DEAD. Overall, X-Men the Last Stand isn't a bad movie, but it's not a great movie, either; it's full of bad humor, sometimes clever (but most times cringe-worthy) dialogue, spectacular special effects, the occasional moment of brilliance (Phoenix vs. Xavier), and utterly dispensable characters that serve no purpose (Callisto, anyone? Or Archlight?). It serves as a fitting end to the X-trilogy, but one can't help but wonder what someone like Bryan Singer (or at least Matthew Vaughn) would have done with it.

"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them."
-Pauline Kael

Everyone has a guilty pleasure- some sad, unusual indulgence that, even though you know it's bad for you, even though you know it has no beneficial value whatsoever, you can't help but love to revel in. Well, that's how I feel about Albert Pyun's 1991 direct-to-video Captain America. With its laughable effects, cringe-inducing dialogue, and, most infamously of all, the lamented rubber ears on the eponymous hero's cowl, Captain America hardly sets the standard for good comic-book adaptations, much less for great cinema. As a child, I despised this Batman knock-off for its faults as a superhero flick: the hero doesn't wear his costume for most of the film, the Red Skull's skull is only red for one sequence, etc. But having grown up and acquired a taste for subtlely crafted cinematic ventures as well as all-out action spectacles, I find myself inexplicably drawn back to this celluloid disaster. Matt Salinger redefines bad acting as our hero Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America. In many scenes, his reactions essentially amount to him looking towards a different part of the screen every few seconds with a blank, unresponsive gaze. Sure, he gets a few moments to shine- to date, I have never seen a man drink a glass of milk as angrily as Salinger does in this movie- but that isn't enough to save him from utter mediocrity in a part that reeks of poorly written "awww-shucks" wholesomeness. Scott Paulin as the Red Skull (whose skull is, for the most part, definitely NOT red) fares much better (or worse, depending on personal taste); his stilted accent and slicked-back hair gives him a distinctly Lugosi/Dracula feel, which is probably why I love his performance, cheesiness and all. Paulin does manage to get across a great deal of subtlety- the Red Skull's deep-seated hatred of newspapers, for instance- but he's never really given room to breathe in the film's tightly-woven plot, which is constantly moved forward via obtrusive dubbed exposition (his performance is much better as the doctor attending Steve Rogers after the Super-Soldier experiment, which included a close-up that you could almost swear was of a cardboard cut-out). The Skull's make-up is kind of lame, making his face look all puffy and shiny (in a way that says to the viewer, "LOOK! I'm wearing make-up!"); for the one scene in which his skull actually IS red, however, the effects are better than one would expect, making him into sort of a Nazi Freddy Krueger. Newcomer Kim Gillingham gets to play a triple role: young Bernie Stewart, Steve's girlfriend from 1943; old Bernie, Steve's girlfiend now married in 1993 (and sporting one of the WORST old age make-ups I've ever seen); and Sharon, Bernie's bleach blonde, suntanned, valley-girl daughter and Steve's consolation prize. She's not particularly believable as any one of them, but her Sharon is so annoying that I could help but want to throttle her through half the movie. Francesca Neri, on the other hand, plays the Red Skull's daughter (who, come to think of it, is never mentioned by name, though we do see her I.D.), a blasé euro-trash heiress with a cadre of like-minded layabouts and a helicopter to carry her motorcycles. Ned Beatty picks up a paycheck as an investigative reporter, Sam, who can, apparently, track down wandering superheroes in the wilderness of Canada and make direct phone calls to the President of the United States, his childhood buddy Tom Kimball (played by Ronny Cox in a surprisingly non-villainous turn). Cox delivers probably my favorite speech of all time as the ass-kicking President: "It's bad medicine. And nobody said the medicine would taste any good... but can we afford not to take it? I don't think so. If we don't take this medicine now, we'll all die. Slowly... but we'll die." For all its hokey effects and insanely-cut action sequences (with alternating cuts done quickly enough to induce epilepsy, if one isn't careful), this was a well-intentioned (if pitifully executed) attempt to bring an icon to the screen, and I hold true that, with a little reworking and a larger budget, this could have been a worthy effort. It may not be Star Wars- hell, it's not even Howard the Duck- but if you're willing to put up with just how abominably BAD this movie is, you might just have a lot of fun watching it...

T.V. movies are not supposed to be this good. Usually, a movie made for television is shallow and forced, with shoddy acting, poor production values and no style. The Incredible Hulk telefilm, on the other hand- aired in 1977, just a year before Superman: the Movie- is so well crafted and marvelously executed that, were it not for a few budget tells, stylistic choices, and its full-frame presentation, I would fully believe it to be a motion picture (and, on many levels, it even out-does the later film adaptation of the character- though not with its effects, of course). The story concerns David Banner, a research scientist who is searching for the key to superhuman strength after a car accident takes the life of his wife, whom he wasn't strong enough to rescue from the wreckage. Discovering a potential link between a DNA irregularity and gamma radiation, Banner tests his theory on himself, bombarding himself with gamma rays and mutating his genetic structure. Now, when he is overcome by anger, he transforms into a large, green monstrosity with incredible strength, a creature that may be the key to everything he's been searching for... or it may be a curse that will tear his life to pieces. Bill Bixby plays Dr. David Banner as a good, likable man who is followed by his own dark cloud of anger and grief, a fog that keeps him from seeing all the good things he still has in life. He also has something of a temper, which we can see simmering in a number of scenes before his experiment- Banner is angry at the world for taking away his wife, and the gamma radiation merely gives his rage form. Working with Banner on the project is Susan Sullivan as Dr. Elaina Marks, a smart, warm woman who clearly has feelings for David, but can't seem to get through the veil of his grief,, instead settling for being his close friend. Sullivan and Bixby have great chemistry together, and the scenes between them are playful and light, evoking a long, comfortable working relationship that may have blossomed into something more under different circumstances. The primary obstacle between them, namely David's grief and rage, is personified in the creature played by Lou Ferrigno (who is never formally referred to as "the Hulk" in the film). Ferrigno cuts quite an intimidating figure as the Hulk, even with the fright wig and huge forehead/nose appliances. He manages to come off as just less than human, and when he needs to be scary, he does the job ably. Finally, there's Jack Colvin as investigative reporter Jack McGee, the pain in the ass who snoops around to find out just what's going on with the giant creature for his news rag. Colvin is bizarrely dated with his brown suits and Elton John sunglasses, and for some reason he's dubbed half the time, but as a persistent, somewhat annoying foil for Banner, he does a great job. What works best about the film is its ability to establish mood and suspense. The subdued opening credits sequence, topped off by that wonderful quote ("Within each of us, ofttimes, there dwells a mighty and raging fury"), creates an ominous tone from the get-go which filters through the movie brilliantly. It culminates in the first transformation scene, set at night in a rain storm, which feels almost like a sequence from a horror movie. Alternately, the movie also builds up suspense masterfully, particularly starting with the gamma injection scene and building all the way up until that first transformation; the director uses audio montage to pile the stresses in Banner's thoughts on top of one another, while each instance of flaring temper makes the viewer try to guess when he's finally going to snap. The shot compositions are really clever (especially with the camera viewfinders during the interviews), the editing is superb (I love the little muted flashes of David's rage that pop up from time to time). Sure, the director has a nasty, television-bred habit of zooming excessively, but it's not as bad as some other shows to come out of that era. The music can also be pretty corny, especially when the Hulk shows up (cue the bongos!), but for T.V. in the seventies, it's not half bad- at least it's not all synthesized. And okay, the effects are sometimes pretty hokey, too (like when the Hulk changes back to Banner in front of Elaina), but they aren't driving the story anyway, so it doesn't matter. What drives this film is good, well done suspense, wonderful character development, and the occasional burst of bodybuilder fury. It doesn't rely on the superficial aspects of its story, instead focusing on the heart of the tale; because things like good storytelling, sharp characterization, and human drama don't cost all that much, the film succeeds with only a fraction of the budget of some major motion pictures. The truth is, the Incredible Hulk is one of my favorite movies because it has everything that most cookie-cutter blockbusters don't, and while it's not technically a film, it's still far better than many of its cinematic counterparts.

Now this is more like it. Having gone into the first Hulk movie with astronomical expectations (while I had never read the comics much before, I did love the T.V. show) and having come out hugely disappointed, I just didn't really give much of a rat's ass about the Hulk franchise for a long while. That's actually the one reason why I was willing to give this thing a shot, despite it looking a bit fuzzier than its predecessor in terms of dramatic focus- after all, I reasoned, they already nose-dived this character into the ground, so where else is there to go but up? Well, I was right to feel that way. By taking the concept in exactly the opposite direction than the first film did, building on action and suspense instead of intense character drama, the Incredible Hulk takes a few popcorn-flick missteps, but is ultimately a far more entertaining and engaging film than it's precursor, unburdened by the psychological baggage foisted upon its protagonist, instead focussed on the universally understandable concept of an ordinary man who must keep his anger in check for fear of hurting those around him. What really clicks this time is that the film is played as a suspense thriller, with a good dash of horror thrown in to spice things up. The character of the Hulk never really worked much as a superhero, and he didn't really click as a psychological metaphor for repressed rage, but as a straight-up MONSTER... as a giant, unstoppable force of pure destruction, the Hulk is awe-inspiring, terrifying, and empowering, serving as both a wish fulfillment and a cautionary tale in the Dr. Jekyll vein. In this episode, Dr. Bruce Banner (physician, scientist) is on the run from the U.S. government, hiding in Portugal and trying to find a way to control the raging spirit that dwells within him. After an accident leads General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross to bring an end to his Central American getaway, Banner heads back to the states in a desperate attempt to locate a cure for his condition, reuniting along the way with his lost love and former colleague Betty Ross. While they race to find the mysterious Mr. Blue, Bruce's benefactor who claims to have a lead on a cure, General Ross begins injecting aging hard-case Emil Blonsky with a super-soldier serum. One thing leads to another, and Blonsky transforms into an "abomination"- a creature stronger than the Hulk and retaining the intellect of Blonski- leading Banner to face the fact that his own inner demon might just be the only hope of stopping him. Edward Norton carries the movie's dramatic elements almost single-handedly, bringing a lonely desperation to Bruce Banner and evoking a man who always seems worried that he might be on the edge of exploding (a trait which leads to one of the movie's funnier comic relief bits). More in line with the television show than the comics or the other movie, Banner is shown here as a relatable everyman type (albeit with a brilliant intellect) who helps others whenever he can, and finds in the Hulk a way to help people on a bigger scale by the end of the movie. His perennial love interest, Betty Ross (a.k.a. Liv Tyler), is unfortunately a little flat by comparison, and actually comes off pretty bad when you consider that (at least in the theatrical cut) she drops her psychologist boyfriend Leonard Samson (played by Ty Burrell) like a hot potato at the first sign of Banner's return. I have to admit, I liked Connelly more, as she was one of the Lee film's biggest assets. General Ross doesn't come off that much better, either, as William Hurt is no substitute for Sam Elliot; the senior Ross reeks of the "irrational government heavy" stereotype, so obsessed with bringing in his quarry that he takes unnecessary risks and creates the film's real monster. Other than Norton's Banner, though, the movie's best performance comes from Tim Roth as badass mo-fo Emil Blonsky, a soldier in his late thirties who takes General Ross up on an experiment meant to make him into the next super-soldier (the first one being Captain America, incidentally). Blonsky is aching for the youth that he once had, but once he becomes enhanced, he gets addicted to the physical power he develops, and becomes desperate to use it, to prove that he's the best there is; Roth plays Blonsky's wounded ego and subsequent lust for power wonderfully. The action, of course, is good, ranging from taught chase scenes to spectacular super-powered brawls, and Louis Leterrier's penchant for ridiculous CG-assisted camera tomfoolery only gets in the way twice (which isn't all that surprising, since the hero is already computer generated- something that would make the camera tricks stand out a lot less than in his other films). The script actually feels really sharp this time, with all the plot dividends coming together nicely by film's end, but it has two strikes against it: one, it feels abridged (the cuts enforced by Marvel are felt throughout, but particularly during the character scenes), and two, it gives in to the popcorn-flick humor trap a couple of times (that is, making jokes about plot elements in light-hearted moments that keep the film from getting too heavy), albeit quite well most of the time. The effects, while exaggerating the more cartoonish elements of our protagonist's dark side, are still noticeably better than the first film's (not really that shocking, given the time lapse between the two) and, similar to the techniques from X-Men: the Last Stand, are used in new and interesting ways (for instance, to give the reasonably fit Tim Ross a cut musculature after he takes Ross' super-soldier serum). The change from Bruce Banner into the Hulk is done in a very American Werewolf-esq way in one scene, and the effect is much more impressive than what has come before: we hear Banner's bones crunch together as they grow, shifting radically beneath his darkening skin as the blood in his veins turns green and his flesh starts rippling outward, growing thicker and tougher. It's a classic horror movie moment that just happens to be in a superhero movie- one crafted by people who understand what makes the Hulk such an interesting, alluring character to begin with. It's not the darkness of unspeakable childhood trauma that draws people to him; it's that force, that dark, terrible force that, to some extent, we all have lurking inside us, unreasoning and destructive- a force just waiting to be unleashed. It might not be Greek tragedy, but the Incredible Hulk is a popcorn flick that knows what it is and has fun with it; this time, the filmmakers knew exactly what we wanted to see: specifically, Hulk Smash.

Socially, politically conscious super heroism. Who knew? Thanks to the work of director Jon Favreau and company, the first film out of fledgling Marvel Studios is an entertaining yet thoughtful burst of summer movie action and clever, engaging characters. Though it's based on one of Marvel's less iconic characters, the film is accessible and fun for those who may never have read a single comic book; yet for comic fans (such as myself), there are still plenty of easter eggs worked in unobtrusively- little nods to the Marvel universe that promise to bear fruit in later films (such as the inclusion of S.H.I.E.L.D.). The film concerns one Tony Stark, a technological genius and a billionaire weapons mogul, who, while visiting Afghanistan for a demonstration of his latest smart weapons system, is severely injured by shrapnel from a terrorist bomb produced by his company. Captured and imprisoned by the terrorists, who want him to construct a missile for them, Stark instead builds a powerful suit of armor that runs on a dynamo built into his chest (the same device that keeps his injured heart from failing) and blasts his way to freedom. Now disillusioned by the discovery that his weapons are being used by the terrorists he had them designed to fight, Stark creates an even more fantastic armor suit and dedicates himself to ending the threat that he himself feels responsible for. Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark, the sarcastic, eccentric, somewhat naive head of Stark Industries; he has the slick, witty, devil-may-care attitude of Stark down to an art form, and when Tony starts to show a bit of a sensitive side (usually masked by his slick exterior), Downey doesn't disappoint, bringing a great depth to the quieter moments of the film. The fact is, Robert Downey Jr. IS Tony Stark, and the film would have suffered greatly without him. Standing by Tony for most of the film is Gwyneth Paltrow as the bizarrely-named Pepper Potts, Stark's assistant and right-hand woman. While most superhero movies feature the tried-and-true "hero quests after unattainable dream girl, saves her from a deadly fall, and wins her heart" formula, here we have a great work relationship between hero and love interest, who plays sort of a His Girl Friday part with Stark, complete with machine-gun banter and underplayed sexual tension. Potts is actually portrayed as a REAL WOMAN, with a life of her own, her own friends, and her own misgivings about getting involved with Stark; Paltrow channels that 1940's, independent woman vibe deftly, and she has a great chemistry with Downey Jr.- she brings to life the first comic-book heroine that you can respect as an individual, not as a trophy for our hero. Terrence Howard gets a good supporting role as Stark's best friend Lt. Jim Rhodes, whose involvement with the Air Force ends up being a snag to his friendship with Tony when Stark announces that he will no longer produce weapons for the military; Rhodes doesn't get all that much screen time, but his straight-man to Downey's ostentatious billionaire is a great fit, and the hints of more development of his part in the sequel (as the grey-and-white armored War Machine) makes you hope for a sequel as soon as possible. Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane presents an interesting character, who flips from a manipulative peripheral character to a devious, cold-blooded maniac; Bridges underplays the menace of the part, which actually helps make him seem more of a bastard (particularly in one of his later scenes with Tony), but once he hops into his Iron Monger suit, the character becomes a little too bombastic (not Bridges' fault, though- that's the need for a climax built into the script). The film is well-shot and well-lit, though nothing visionary in that respect. Its portrayal of terrorism and war surprised me with its drive for realism. It wasn't gruesome or excessively violent, but it didn't shy away from the grubbiness and violent nature of terrorism, and likewise, it doesn't shy away from the idea of the hero killing the villains (which shocked me at first, until I realized that, under the circumstances, Stark would have no compunctions about killing, as long as he felt he was fighting for good). The action is fantastic, and the special effects are first-rate; the dogfight scene between Iron Man and the two jets was a thrilling, action-packed spectacle, by far the highlight of the film. What's probably my favorite element of this movie, though, is its theme of personal responsibility. Sure, responsibility has been covered by superhero movies before (particularly by one arachnid crime-fighter), but here it is given an interesting real-world context, with a fascinating ethical question attached to it about the culpability of weapons manufacturers for the deaths brought about using their weaponry. Overall, I must say that Iron Man is a phenomenal summer blockbuster- a movie with plenty of action, awe-inspiring special effects, great actors having fun as interesting characters, and enough substance underneath it all to make the whole experience resonate in your mind after it's over. A good way to start a summer- a great way to start a franchise.

"Ham-fisted" does not even begin to do this film justice. The first of the new wave of Marvel superhero movies that really lacked in quality (and one of the few to receive neither a sequel or a remake- just a failed spin-off, Elektra), Daredevil suffers from a combination of elements: an untried, inexperienced writer/director, a hit-and-miss high-profile cast, and the recent success of a similar film, Spider-Man, that pushed this one in the wrong direction. What makes watching this film into a painful experience is the fact that there is so much potential here, with the concepts, the characters, and even occasionally with entire scenes, but the film never really gels, and we are forced to see that potential go up in flames with the application of poor screenwriting, unnecessary visual effects and C.G.I., bland acting, and an overall cheesiness to the execution that subtracts drastically from the dramatic impact of the whole thing. Mark Steven Johnson, whose sole previous credit did not in any way justify handing him the reins to a movie like this, seems to be comfortable only when things take a funny, lighthearted turn (Jon Favreau and Ben Affleck's buddy scenes are uniformally good, and even Colin Farrell only works when we're laughing at him), while all the darker parts seem fake and unconvincing, with Johnson falling back on cliches and forced compositions to telegraph heavy-handed concepts to an audience who gets the point already; this is Johnson trying to be the filmmaker that he just... isn't. There are two cuts of the film, a director's cut and the theatrical version, and of the two I think the former is incrimentally better; the story follows the life of Matt Murdock, from his boyhood when an accident blinded him while superhumanly enhancing his remaining four senses, then shortly thereafter the murder of his prizefighter father by a mafia hitman, to his adult life as an altruistic lawyer by day and a demonically-themed vigilante superhero by night (and if that sounds like a poor man's Batman to you, you're not alone). Matt's existence seems like nothing but a never-ending gauntlet of pain, agony, and violence... that is, until he meets Elektra (whom he ultimately picks up by getting into a fight with her. Let me repeat that: by getting into a fight WITH HER). Suddenly, things are looking up- until the mysterious Kingpin of crime puts out a hit on Elektra and her father, and a psychotic hitman called Bullseye comes to collect. Can Daredevil stop Bullseye and track down the Kingpin before Elektra gets filleted with her own sai after stabbing D.D. in the shoulder with it thinking that it was he, not Bullseye, that killed her father? Ahhh... no. Headlining the film (and certainly starting things off on the wrong foot) is Ben Affleck as the eponymous Man Without Fear (a billing for the character that is used but never actually explained). Affleck, I've often maintained, is not a bad actor- he just gets cast in a lot of bad parts, working with bad directors. And while his heroic frame and impressive jawline might make you think "superhero", the role of Matt Murdock is too dark, coupled with a director that skews too light, to be anything but touch-and-go, especially given his nasty habit of smirking during every significant character beat(he literally ends the damn movie smirking). He's not the most convincing blind man I've ever seen on film, but given the character's unique circumstances, I can forgive him that; in the end, the mix of gritty darkness and smirking humor combines into a performance that's just... bland. Equally so would have to be Jennifer Garner's Elektra Natchios, a rich man's daughter with a (murdered) father complex; since she has to play the role straight, there's not much fun to be had in her- after all, she's just playing "the girl", the motivator for all the main character's actions, even if she is a particularly vengeful one; when she gets into kick-ass mode, it becomes easy to see why 20th Century Fox thought they copuld build an entire movie around her. Of the heroes in the film, the only one with any real character is Jon Favreau as Foggy Nelson, Matt's partner at his lower-end law firm, who is sort of the witty everyman of the film and only works as well as he does because of Favreau's marvelous comic timing (no puns intended) and his buddy chemistry with Affleck. On the villainous side, though, things are a bit more interesting. Colin Farrell plays Bullseye as a sort of campy punk-rock sadist, an overdrawn badass who can literally kill you with anything he can lay his hands on; coming from a pre-Dark Knight, pre-Spider-Man 2 superhero movie, Farrell's part is pretty cutting-edge, as enjoyably over-the-top as Nicholson's Joker in the first Batman. Balancing out his manic viciousness is the monolithic Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin, a diabolical crime lord in tailored suits with enough bulk to him to steamroll over anyone who stands in his way (the final fight between Kingpin and Daredevil is the most rewarding of the film because it uses no excessive wirework and it's pretty darn brutal). The special effects in the film are flat-out ridiculous- not in their quality, per se, but in terms of what they depict. Made during the height of the wire-fu craze, Daredevil features characters who can leap fifteen feet into the air or jump off a seven-story building without being hurt- none of whom possess superpowers that could explain these abilities. Making matters worse was the recent success of Spider-Man, which spurred Fox to give Daredevil a higher budget at the last minute- most of which was spent on preposterous C.G. rooftop-hopping scenes that made the film look more like a Spidey rip-off than its own movie. The script, as mentioned before, has irksome moments of decency that are drowned in a barrage of cliches and bad dialogue- most egregiously the voice-over for Murdock's character, which is so bad ("My sense of sound gave off a kind of radar sense") that it tries the limits of your sanity to listen to it. The cinematography comes off a bit too washed-out or stylishly gritty, never really looking real in its zeal for hyper-realism; the music is servicable, but nothing special. While it definitely has its bright spots, Daredevil strikes me as a film that could have come to so much more if somebody else had been behind the camera. Don't get me wrong, I think Mark Steven Johnson could make a hell of a romantic comedy, but when it comes to a dark superhero film or a gritty crime movie, he's just not the man for the job. Let me put it this way: he shot a courtroom sequence- a genre known for its subdued realism- almost entirely in Dutch tilts. DUTCH TILTS. I rest my case.

Again, with the enjoyment of garbage. I'll admit that Ghost Rider doesn't have the most realistic dialogue, the most thrilling action sequences, or the highest IQ of any comic book adaptation I've ever seen (let alone any film in general), but Mark Steven Johnson really impressed me with this one. After the excrement that was Daredevil, I didn't think Johnson worthy of directing street traffic, let alone a big-budget motion picture, but Ghost Rider is much more competent than his previous works, showing a visual flair that's a bit less forced and a bit more interesting, a great sense of atmosphere and mood (at times), and a greater willingness to have fun with the material (or at least, a more appropriately implemented willingness). Ironically, it is not in the action set pieces or the superhero spectacle that the greatest entertainment is to be found, but in the quirky character work, the dramatic tension, and, yes, the awe-inspiring special effects for the Rider (though whenever he talks, all his mystique melts away- they seriously needed a better voice, or less dialogue for Ghost Rider). But in fact, the best parts of the movie don't even deal with the flaming one, but rather his alter ego, Johnny Blaze. Nicolas Cage is obviously having a blast as the stunt biker Blaze, and brings to the table more than a few... unusual character traits that transform what could have been (another) two-dimensional stereotype character into a living, breathing weirdo. But a fun weirdo. And he's not the only one that breaths life into the film; Eva Mendes is totally believable as a down-to-Earth Roxanne Simpson (which the name alone makes this a hard part to swallow). She makes the character not only seem real, but grounded and approachable- despite being quite preposterously attractive. I can't say that Peter Fonda gave an award-worthy performance as the devil Mephisto, but I did enjoy watching him, and he also seemed to be enjoying himself; and Sam Elliot plays, well, Sam Elliot, as only Sam Elliot can. As far as the cast is concerned, my biggest gripe would have to be with Wes Bentley as Blackheart. Seriously, who thought Wes Bentley would make a good villain? The man couldn't intimidate his way out of a paper bag, much less cut the mustard as the son of SATAN (without at least underplaying it- but that's not on the menu here). The fact is, once the villainy pops up, you're forced to check out, as we are treated to more M.S.J. trademark exposition-through-dialogue, not to mention (oh dear sweet Jesus) hero-villain banter ("Sorry- all out of mercy!" "You're going down!" "You cannot catch the wind!"). And because this is a film about magical, mythical beings, the script is confronted with a quandary- how do you defeat a demon/angel?- that is solved with a paper/scissors/rock mentality that makes no sense (fire beats EVERYTHING!), resulting in dramatically devoid action scenes. An action movie where the action is the lamest part may sound terrible, but for the life of me, I can't help but enjoy watching this movie. The score is moody and appropriate, the humor is funnier more often than not, the effects are amazing, and everyone seems to be having so much fun making it that it makes it fun to watch. It's appropriate that a movie about a carnival stunt biker would play so much like an amusement park attraction, and in the end, that's really how you should look at this movie- just check your brain at the door and enjoy the ride.

Whenever I watch this movie, I have to marvel at the fact that it was ever given a theatrical release. Captain America didn't get one, after all, and this movie really isn't any better than that one. So why the double standard? Well, thanks to the brilliant filmmakers and marketing people of the late eighties, the difference is that, while Captain America is so clearly a superhero, the Punisher could be pared down to a gritty ex-cop out for revenge, not particularly any more "super" than Martin Riggs or John McClane (okay, that is still pretty super, but you get the point). It's funny to me that superheroes used to be an embarrassment in Hollywood, even with the box-office success of Superman (except the last two) and Batman (except the last one). Because of this, characters like Spider-Man couldn't have their movies made for years because they were too bright and overtly fantastical for what was perceived to be the tastes of the audience at the time (probably a good thing, since the effects could never have worked fifteen years ago). However, this was not the case with Frank Castle. Take the giant white skull off his chest and voila! You have a completely nondescript vigilante killing machine, exactly identical to the hordes of revenge-flick heroes that populated the screen at the time. The Punisher is just that kind of movie, too: poorly thought-out, badly acted, devoid of tension or character, filled with improbable action sequences which don't come off as too convincing, and ultimately forgettable. Truthfully, the most fun to be had while watching this one is to see Dolph Lundgren hold the exact same emotional state through the entire film, no matter what actually happens to him (it's funny, in some scenes it looks like he's actually fighting NOT to react). This is about as cheesey and predictable as action gets, my friends; if you have a couple of hours to kill, and want to see just how much better Marvel's films have actually gotten in recent years, this is your movie. It's not as good as Captain America, though.

So many movies are indebted to Blade for so many reasons that it's not even funny. Foremost would have to be its undeniably large part in bringing about the resurgence of comic book movies, without which we'd have no X-Men, no Spider-Man, no Batman Begins, no Sin City, and no Heroes (one of the few television shows I actually put forth the effort to watch on a regular basis). It was one of the first popular films to come up with the vampire-as-virus, "realistic" (as opposed to superstitious) approach to its monsters, a trend that would continue in movies like Underworld and 28 Days Later. Furthermore, it came up with the black-trenchcoat-and-sunglasses look a whole year before the Matrix was released (not to mention doing bullet-time for one shot, though much less effectively than the former), which, whether that influenced the Wachowskis or not, definitely puts it in the category of originality. But more than any of its future repercussions on the creative world of filmmaking, the measure of a movie must be in its viewing, and Blade does not disappoint. It is a visceral, energetic film experience, a truly exciting action film with break-neck editing speed, well thought-out cinematography (in a world of grays and blacks, the red just stands out that much more), and a story that introduces us to a new and frightening world by bleeding it through the day-to-day a little bit at a time (again, the concept of the world-beneath-the-world is something else that resonates with the Matrix, but with Blade, it is a significantly less literal interpretation). Wesley Snipes plays the role he was born to play, his attitude no longer as chaotic or cocky as his earlier films from the nineties, but rather controlled and focused- a refreshing change of pace. Kris Kristofferson is so good as Whistler that I could hardly believe that he could play anyone else until I saw it myself- and later, I would realize that he was channeling Sam Elliot more than a little. Stephen Dorff is great as a late Gen-X alternative vampire upstart, being both sharply funny and carelessly vicious enough to pull of what sounds like a cardboard character on paper (and one with a few too many adjectives, to boot). And the story, action-packed though it may be, is still richly layered and well-written; and while the symbolism may sometimes be a bit too forthright (I challenge you to watch the blood ritual near the end and NOT get the metaphor), it still adds a dimension to the film that some filmmakers may have neglected. In short, Blade is an intelligent action movie from a time in movies when such a term would have been an oxymoron- it was a step or two in the right direction(s), which were subsequently followed through by the Matrix and X-Men. But for a first step, Blade left a hell of a footprint.

Here comes the cheese... For a T.V. movie from Fox circa the mid-nineties, yeah, I guess Nick Fury is a halfway decent effort; the problem is, Fox has always made TERRIBLE T.V. movies, and by the standards of any other audio/visual art form, this has got to be the second-to-worst film I've ever seen (with the dubious honor of "worst movie ever" going to the Roger Corman Fantastic Four). Filled with horrible, obvious lighting, incredibly painful acting, and laughably bad special effects, Nick Fury is like an assemblage of the absolute worst spy-movie clichés in the book- which is actually really disappointing, since it's written by David Goyer, the comic-movie golden-boy who brought us the Blade trilogy and the first draft of Batman Begins. The story is a familiar one: terrorist organization HYDRA is plotting to release a deadly super-virus in the greater metropolitan area of New York City, and all that stands in their way is secret intelligence organization SHIELD. With the rise of a new leader in the HYDRA ranks- the daughter of the evil Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker- SHIELD has called their best agent out of early retirement: the grizzled, one-eyed rebel-in-a-leather-jacket, Nick Fury. Portraying our leading tough guy is perpetual running gag David Hasselhoff, and while he does occasionally call forth the gruff loner archetype from his subconscious during his deliveries, the years of oiled-up pretty-boy parts have taken their toll; the Hoff can't act his way out of a paper bag, much less an enemy stronghold, and not once during this film do you buy the man as anything more than a guy desperate for a paycheck and possessed of no discernible skills or assets (save the shape of his chin). Seriously, it's amazing how bad his performance is in this part, but what's even more astounding is that HE'S NOT THE WORST ACTOR IN THE MOVIE. Sandra Hess wins that contest hands-down; as Viper, the wicked, psychotic mastermind behind the diabolical doings of HYDRA, Hess is a nightmare, speaking in an overbearing German accent that renders every line of dialogue intolerable. Her gestures are extremely melodramatic, and her speeches are cringe-inducing. In fact, the only thing that keeps her from being impossible to watch is the fact that she's... well, hot. Still, it's not enough to make her character enjoyable to watch. Besides, it's not as if there's any shortage of attractive women in the film (even if none of them can act worth a damn); Lisa Rinna, for instance, plays Contessa Valentina de Allegro Fontaine (a name which, of course, Nick has to say IN FULL when she first pops up), a fellow SHIELD agent and prerequisite former love of Mr. Fury (who still harbors feelings for the big lug). She, at least, isn't painful to watch, but she sure didn't win any acting awards for the part. Also, we have Tracy Waterhouse as Kate Neville, an agent with an E.S.P. chip (?!?) who makes for a great plot device. And finally, we have Neil Roberts as Alexander Goodwin Pierce, the greenhorn agent who graduated top of his class and idolizes Fury; he comes off better than you might expect, but still predictable and tired as a character. The script is pretty poor- it sounds like they went off a first draft, and I'm guessing they didn't do a polish. Still, the film MIGHT have been something interesting if not for its execution: brightly colored lighting (and an over-reliance on back lighting), poorly arranged shots, and DUTCH TILTS (bane of the serious filmmaker) jut pointedly out at the viewer- not to mention how the piss-poor production values turn all the sci-fi elements into bad jokes (how many low-budget sci-fi shows from the nineties featured a body-scanner machine with flashing neon rings, I wonder?). Not that the science fiction concepts are all that believable to begin with- I mean, a portable, robotic duplicate programmed with your voice and mannerisms? NOBODY thought that was maybe a bit too far-fetched? Or what about the spray-off disguise? Or that bloody E.S.P. chip? The special effects are an interesting blend of models and early C.G.I., which succeeds in looking... completely fake! The design for the Helicarrier is decent, but I see nothing but a toy whenever it shows up on-screen. In summation, this movie of the week is a wreck, a misfired attempt to plunder two then-defunct genres (comics and spy movies) of any entertainment value they may have had left with as little effort as possible. At best, it's a great example of Marvel's long-dead past as a showbiz failure and an amusing piece of garbage (favorite moment: after Viper slips away in a dreadfully slow-moving glass elevator, Fury, after a pause, grumbles, "She's probably halfway to China by now."); at worst, it's absolute drivel, useful only for distracting the feeble-minded or confirming the existence of David Hasselhoff. David Goyer may have cut his screenwriting teeth on this sucker, but it's not even half as good as his following work, Blade. Hell, it's not even half as good as Blade: Trinity. If you want a Marvel fix, I don't care HOW desperate you are, I suggest you look elsewhere.

Adaptations are always tricky. When a book gets adapted into a movie, there's usually a lot of material- good, solid storytelling- that has to be cut (or altered) from the source narrative to make the story work as a movie. Sometimes this works out fine- such as with the Godfather, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Jurassic Park- and sometimes it doesn't go so smoothly- see The DaVinci Code, Lord of the Flies, or the Bonfire of the Vanities. In the case of Watchmen, adapted from the epic graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, director Zack Snyder faced the task of taking one of the most intricate, complex, lengthy comic book tales ever written (one considered to be "unfilmable" by previous filmmakers) and pairing it down to a reasonably long, commercially viable film without watering down the weighty philospohical heart of the story or, worse still, alienating the hundreds of thousands of fans who want to see nothing less that absolute, unwavering fidelity to the book. Amazingly, I believe Snyder has has accomplished these tasks to an extraordinary degree, and furthermore, he brings a specific style to the film (a flourish, if you will) that makes the film unmistakably his without steamrolling over the tone of the original... too much. Certainly more explicit than the graphic novel, the movie plays to Snyder's strengths (action, violence, suspense, slow-motion), thus coming off as a sort of Americanized version of the more intellectual, philosophical, detatched (Dave Gibbons' distanced, matter-of-fact illustrations and moving-camera perspectives remind one of a Stanley Kubrick film) British tale (Alan Moore being a Brit). It's not a perfect film; there are times when the dialogue feels forced and expository, and certain elements of the story go unexplained (such as Ozymandias' genetically-engineered lynx Bubastis), but as a whole, Watchmen is an excellent adaptation of the book, and a great movie on its own. Set in an alternate 1985 in which superheroes, having been a reality for more than forty years, have totally changed the course of history and brought mankind to the brink of World War III, Watchmen begins with the murder of Edward Blake, a.k.a. the Comedian, a superhero working for the government. Suspecting that Blake's death is just the first in a campaign against costumed heroes, the vigilante Rorschach begins hunting down leads and warning the few remaining heroes- retired crimefighter Dan Driedberg (Nite-Owl), multimillionaire industrialist Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias), indestructible superbeing Dr. Manhattan and his girlfriend, Laurie Jupiter (Silk Spectre)- that they may well be next on the hitman's agenda. But as the circumstances surrounding Blake's death come to light and the mystery deepens, the question becomes: what is the ultimate goal of these attacks? And will anyone be able to stop it? Leading the cast of relatively unknown actors is Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, a street-level crimefighter whose extreme methods have made him an outcast even among fellow superheroes. Haley dives headfirst into the role, bringing a slightly more human dimension to the grungy misfit while maintaining his polarizing, black-and-white attitudes towards morality and justice. Haley has the unenviable task of having to act through a full face-mask for most of the picture (during most of which Rorschach is a mysterious, aloof character whose journal reads like something out of Taxi Driver), and he does an admirable job of projecting through it with his voice and body language, but it's when the mask comes off that the character comes to full, ferocious life. Rorschach eventually joins forces with Nite-Owl (played by Patrick Wilson), a retired hero who's having trouble adjusting to his civilian life. Wilson is fantastic in the role, conveying Driedberg's feelings of vulnerability and uselessness in the face of Armaggedon while still being a formidable figure physically (despite his pale, doughy appearance). Driedberg pines for Malin Akerman's character, Silk Spectre, the crux of a love triangle between nice guy Dan and a certain omniscient superbeing; she's not portrayed as quite so horribly damaged of a person as she is in the book, and the result is that the character loses some of her bite, becoming a bit more like superhero eye-candy than a complicated character (but quite effective eye-candy, at least). Another kind of eye-candy comes in the form of Dr. Manhattan, a walking special-effects extravaganza played phenomenally by Billy Crudup. I couldn't say enough for this performance: Manhattan is a veritable god walking among men, and his detached, emotionless delivery gives us an immediate understanding of a "man" no longer moved by the petty affairs of human beings. On the other end of the spectrum, Adrian Veidt cares perhaps too much for the fate of humanity. Supposedly the world's smartest man, Veidt, played by Matthew Goode, is a humanitarian searching for long-term solutions to the ills that beset modern civilization, whose coolly arrogant demeanour only hints at the calculating ruthlessness he is capable of in pursuit of the greater good. But of course the catalyst of the film's plot is the Comedian, an ironic symbol of America's pursuit of power and a sterling example of the fascist potential of superheroes as secret police, accountable to no one ("Who Watches the Watchmen?"). The Comedian is probably the most straightforward character in the book, a malicious scumbag who enjoys hurting people and has little respect for anything, let alone human life; nevertheless he has layers that come to light as the story unfolds, and that slight, almost nonexistant humanity is hinted at perfectly by Jeffery Dean Morgan, who somehow makes this twisted human being strangely likable, like a beligerant uncle that you wouldn't mind sharing a beer with sometimes. The script is about as tight as it could have gotten and stayed coherant, keeping all the major dramatic beats of the book and condensing as little as possible while keeping up the pace of the story and making certain parts more... cinematic, shall we say. Snyder doesn't try to perfectly duplicate the comic panels- at least, not all the time- an his tendancy to emphasize the drama of the story over the philosophy make the transition from page to screen run pretty smoothly (even if his action sequences are a bit ostentatious, considering that none of the characters other than Manhattan have superpowers). The film maintains the graphic novel's preference for secondary colors- purple, orange, and green are rampant- and the world is shown to be a dark, grimy place, no matter how colorfully lit it is. The movie makes use of some truly unorthodox musical choices, going with period accurate music to emphasize the timeline- ergo we are treated to Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and a number of great artists of the past (the song "Unforgettable" is used to amazing effect to underscore a fight scene, as strange as that sounds). Okay, let's face it, Alan Moore's works have rarely been translated to celluloid with any measure of success. For every V for Vendetta or Constantine, there's a From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Swamp Thing, so for Watchmen to have arrived as anything other than a catastrophic failure is a victory unto itself. What we should judge the film on isn't it's inability to perfectly duplicate the complexity of the book, but rather the degree to which it was able to translate the themes and characters of the book into a completely new, more inhibiting medium, and how entertaining and thought-provoking it proves to be in and of itself. While it's not as revolutionary a superhero movie as the Dark Knight proved to be, Watchmen stands on its own as an involving, uncompromising neo-noir, a character study populated by great actors and look into the past as seen through the looking glass, different yet the same. So much for "unfilmable".

Not too many movies these days try to be both topical and entertaining. Typically, you find either films that are complete escapist fantasy, which shy away from the ugly truths of real life with a vengeance, or harsh, uncompromising reality, hammering away at you with some unsubtle bit of political rhetoric. What's great about V For Vendetta, though, is that it's placed right between these two extremes; it's a fantastic action-adventure tale set in the future, but its story is laced with political allegory and philosophical contemplation (something which, if you've read any of my other reviews, you know I think quite highly of), and it is not above giving us a first hand look at the uglier side of life. V, our title character, is an unrepentant murdering terrorist, but due to a masterful performance by the always-excellent Hugo Weaving and a cleverly charming and witty script, we come to sympathize with him, and understand his reasons for taking such extreme actions- even though we never see his face! Evey Hammond, played by Natalie Portman, is our main character, and she has the toughest job of the cast, as she transforms through the story from an innocent but weak person paralyzed by her fears- a model for all the people held under the boot-heel of the totalitarian regime ruling England- into a hardened, self-assured young woman with no fear. Portman is perfect in the role, making it her own and pulling it off completely believably. The screenplay, based on Alan Moore's critique of English government in the eighties, manages to infuse modern political relevance to the tale, specifically involving the media's role in government relations, terrorism (and the line between terrorism and revolution), and basic human rights violations . But even with all this going on, the script never strays far from the human element, giving us intimate glimpses of lives effected by tyranny and intolerance, and emotionally investing us in the relationship between Evey and V, doomed though it may be. V for Vendetta is a surprisingly powerful film, made more so by the director's knack for appealing shot and lighting compositions, and the brilliant use of juxtaposition and montage by the editor. It resonates after viewing far longer than most other films coming out these days, and it has the power to stimulate hours of conversation on the myriad of pointed subjects tackled in its two-hour time frame. But mainly the reason I love it is that I never get tired of it; it is an entertaining, thought-provoking, and emotionally powerful film, and, like V and the Count of Monte Cristo, it gets me every time.

Yeah... this one needs almost no explanation. 300 is probably the most powerful, intense, exciting, and emotionally stirring mainstream motion picture to come out of Hollywood in years. While certainly visually stunning, 300 is more than just eye candy (though it certainly does have a lot of that), and it goes a step beyond Sin City in that it maintains the feeling of a Frank Miller work while bringing more storytelling depth than a direct port of a comic. Gerard Butler as Leonidas is... well, ripped, but he also passionately invests himself in the role, managing to balance human sensitivity and relatability with Spartan toughness and resolve with exceptional skill. Lena Headey as Queen Gorgo stands on her own as a formidable diplomat, warrior, and queen, despite the obvious tendency to play her as a cypher that would have been indulged in any other movie. We see in her, through Headey's performance, a woman that we believe Leonidas would see as a total equal. On the other side of things, the god-king Xerxes, as played by Rodrigo Santoro, is just a gloriously overdone villain, digitally altered to appear nine feet tall and given a deep, resonating voice that sounds far from human; the constant demands that he makes of others to kneel before him couldn't help but bring General Zod to mind. David Wenham as our narrator Dilios came as a surprise to me- having only seen him in Van Helsing as an unassuming friar, I couldn't imagine him as a friggin' Spartan- 'til I saw the movie, that is; his narration is typical of Frank Miller's work: repetative as heck, but still fun when read right, and Wenham does a good job with it. The action is all wonderfully overdone and exaggerated, but what's great about that is that the hyperbole tends to emphasize the legendary nature of the story- and it's a welcome change of pace from the excessive fidelity to history in most recent movies (only Frank Miller could get me to say something like that, though- I HATED Moulin Rouge). The action sequences are hyperkinetic, both in content and editing, but the quieter scenes are just as well handled, given a breezier pace when it benefits the story (and it isn't chopped to bits, like you might see in some other movies- Bourne, I'm looking at you). Though it would seem to be just a blood-and-guts action spectacle, though, 300 has a very heartfelt love story buried amidst the violence, and it's that grounded core (coupled with Frank Miller's unique aesthetic) that elevates 300 from yet another swords-and-sandals Gladiator rip-off to a genuine epic film-going experience.

Let the buyer beware. When Frank Miller first wrote Sin City, the miniseries that would later be renamed "The Hard Goodbye" the same way Star Wars was renamed "A New Hope" when the sequels came around, he conceived of it as the "anti-movie"- a tale so full of ultra-violence, sex, and profanity that it could never pass muster with a major production studio. He did this primarily because of his bitter experiences with the RoboCop franchise (he wrote scripts for parts two and three that were butchered due to their excessively graphic natures), and he was determined that this was a project that he would never let Hollywood get its hands on. Irony of ironies, Sin City is now the only Frank Miller-based movie that's worth a damn- excluding Batman Begins, which is only partially based on his work anyway- and it's all because one Hollywood filmmaker came knocking that didn't want to change a thing. Sin City is so fundamentally Robert Rodriguez that, despite the obvious Miller influence on both the visual aesthetic and the direction, I consider this the epitome of Rodriguez's creative work. Taking three major storylines (and a short story) from the Sin City graphic novels and crunching them down into a single movie (with three storyarcs), Robert Rodriguez does for comics what the Lord of the Rings trilogy did for fiction novels- he creates the closest possible adaption of a work from a different medium while simultaneously crafting a unique and entertaining movie in its own right. Finally using green-screen tech for a film NOT dedicated to pleasing his children, Sin City is about as controlled as a film can be, literally painting the frames around the actors in an attempt to perfectly replicate the comic panels of its source material. This does tend to remove any feeling of natural flow from a number of scenes (as comics tend to allow readers to fill in the gaps between panels, something film cannot do as well), but this just reinforces the feeling of this being a work of art, rather than a recording of life. I had never seen Mickey Roarke in any film before I saw this one, which made his Marv that much stronger in the viewing- but even knowing who's underneath all that make-up, he is completely concealed and transformed by it anyway (so much so that I was shocked to see what Mickey Roarke really looked like later on), and it is completely believable- at least, in context of the film. Everyone seems to be having a lot of fun with the material, which is both noir and comic-bookish; the dialogue is far from plausible ("Dwight, you fool... You damn fool..."), but the actors pull it off, more or less (the less said about Michael Madsen, the better). Everything in this movie is pumped up to extremes, from the angles and the shadows to the violence and the sexual content. And that is my sole caveat about this film- it is DEFINITELY not for everyone; just as Frank Miller intended, it deals with some pretty dark subject matter, and is unflinching in most of its portrayal of the seedier side of life (save the fact that Nancy wears more clothes while on-stage than in the graphic novels). If you're averse to dark, taboo, or extremely violent material, I'd stay away from this one. However, if you've got the stomach for it (or you can laugh at the almost cartoonish treatment of a lot of it), Sin City is a singular viewing experience, the closest thing to a comic book that the silver screen can accomplish and a declaration of creative intent by two gifted individuals from two very different fields. Just be aware of what you're getting yourself into...

There are certain parts of the nineties that I try to block out of my mind whenever possible: Batman and Robin, the long-hair or ponytail trend (which even spread to Superman, for God's sakes), and the sudden surge in "grim 'n gritty" entertainments, spurred on by Frank Miller's comic book success in the eighties and the tremendous box-office returns of the first Batman movie- in fact, the only thing I despised more than "grim n' gritty" was "extreme", but that's a point for later discussion. For the longest time, I included the Crow on the extensive list of Batman's bastard step-children, right before the shallow Dick Tracy and right after the flat attempt the Shadow. I never actually watched the movie, 'cause I figured I had it pegged- black leather, grimy sets, and bad mattes. Thankfully, as it turned out, I was wrong. Darker and much more Gothic than Burton's Batman, the Crow is a story about the depths of despair and the catharsis that sweet, bloody vengeance provides, all while maintaining a genuine emotional core and a connection with our main character. It's undeniably tragic to hear of Brandon Lee's death on the set (SOMEhow, live rounds were switched into the actors' guns on the LAST DAY OF FIREARM STUNTS), and it has an impact on how much you can enjoy certain parts of the film (the gunfights in particular feel decidedly morbid), but had Lee lived, I have no doubt that this would have been a star-making turn for him; his Eric Draven, a man who returns from the dead to avenge his girlfriend and himself, is vulnerable and emotional, but when he sets his sights on the men who murdered him and his girlfriend, he becomes nihilistically jovial, taking his time and reveling in his vengeance. The character is sardonic, brooding, and genuinely likable, all thanks to a phenomenal performance from Lee that really drives the movie... which is why the scenes where a stunt man takes his place are all the more glaring and out of place. On the other hand, EVERY ONE of the villains is brutally overplayed, making them more caricatures than real people- but likely, this was done to eliminate moral ambiguity and get us on Draven's side 100%. Michael Wincott is always good at playing pure, undiluted evil (see the Three Musketeers or the Count of Monte Cristo), and he does not disappoint here as crimelord and cutlery enthusiast Top Dollar, a man with a rather disturbing relationship going on with his weird Asian half-sister Myca (Ling Bai). We also have a bunch of cut-out thugs that work for Top Dollar, and whom Draven is gunning for: Tin Tin (Laurence Mason), another knife-lover; Funboy (Michael Massee), the morphine addict; T-Bird (David Partick Kelly), the arsonist; and Skank (Angel David), the speed freak. Thankfully, we have Ernie Hudson as Sergeant Albrecht to bring things back down to Earth; an honest cop with enemies in all the wrong places, Hudson once again pulls off the blue-collar hero routine as a guy who's just trying to do the right thing. Rochelle Davis, a one-film wonder, is still convincing as Sarah, the skateboarding little girl and friend of Eric, both before and after death. The film itself does have its nineties Goth moments- pretty much any scene in the nightclub, for instance- but the darkness and constant rain of the setting is expressionistic, reflecting the inner turmoil of Draven as he seeks his revenge and mourns for his lost love; this gives a great hopeful and metaphorical meaning to the recurring line, "It can't rain all the time..." (e.g. there's light at the end of the tunnel). As I mentioned before, the film does fall prey to matte shots that attempted to push the limits of film at the time a little TOO far; the model shots are obvious, but impressive nonetheless- Alex Proyas was clearly honing a visual style that he would expand upon greatly in the aptly-named Dark City. Overall, the film is dark, intriguing, dark, action-packed, dark, emotional, and, uhh, dark. It is surprisingly touching for a leather-and-vengeance flick, and it is surprisingly funny for a Gothic film about death and despair. Mostly, though, it is just a surprisingly good film that stands on its own, owing its existence to nothing that had come before and making a mark for itself in cinema history. And it's WAY better than Dick Tracy.

Bone-splitting, blood-curdling horror, in the E.C. tradition! Admittedly, I am a bit biased with this film- I'm a big horror buff, and I LOVE vampires, not to mention having more than a passing affinity for comic books (this film being based on a graphic novel). Because of this, I found myself almost instantly enjoying 30 Days of Night, one of the few horror films fresh out of Hollywood that ISN'T a remake. The premise is simple, but brilliant: Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States, goes through a period of thirty days without a single sunrise. So, given the harsh weather conditions and confined spaces, what's the one thing you wouldn't want to run into on those thirty days? Answer: VAMPIRES! Now fighting a pitched battle to survive an onslaught of the undead, the survivors of Barrow- lead by the local sheriff and his estranged wife- hunker down, try to stay hidden, and pray for daybreak. Though the film sounds about as high-concept as they come, it's got good character dynamics going for it, and definitely benefits from originality in its portrayal of vampires. Josh Hartnett plays our hero, Eben Oleson, a good hearted, soft-spoken man devoted to his family who finds himself forced to overcome unspeakable horrors to keep himself, and the people he protects, alive. Hartnett is actually very good as Eben, who starts to unravel a bit as he has to perform pretty brutal acts to survive, and once again he displays a talent that could grow into something great (given the right conditions). Melissa George plays Stella Oleson, Eben's separated wife, who gets caught in Barrow after missing the last plane out and becomes Eben's second-in-command. She is a sharp, intelligent character, and George has a believable chemistry with Hartnett; their problems never really come to light in the film, but you get a sense of a long, happy relationship brought to an end by commitment issues (interestingly, on Stella's part)- that it's only implied helps it to feel more real. Ben Foster plays the Stranger, a mysterious... ah... stranger who appears in town om the last day of sunlight to kill their sled dogs, burn their cell phones, threaten waitresses, and foretell impending doom. Foster just seems to get better and better at playing creepy guys as he goes along; slipping the guy into redneck Fundamentalist territory would have been a part-killing move for other actors, but for him, it comes off as bizarrely appropriate. Also, Mark Boone Jr., of Batman Begins and Memento fame, plays a small but memorable role as Beau Brower, a reclusive, grizzly guy who's the sole loner in the friendly small-town Barrow. Facing off against our troupe of humans is by far the most terrifying set of vampires I've yet to see in film; more than just beasts but significantly less than human, these things are like a cross between man and shark, with jagged, razor teeth and black, upturned eyes ("Like a doll's eyes," to quote Quint from Jaws). These guys are ferocious and deadly- stronger and faster than humans, and capable of slitting your throat with a swipe of their taloned hands. Leading this pack of vicious bloodsuckers, Danny Huston plays Marlow, the only vampire with relatively normal features and one of the few to speak (in a Vampire language, for some reason- I guess to reinforce the idea that vampires have secluded themselves from human society). Marlow has a malevolence and a coolly intelligent, cold-blooded menace to him that makes him a great villain- not to mention having the perfect style (I'm a sucker for black trench coats with red lining). The film is preposterously violent, with the kind of graphic gruesomeness that could only be possible with the advent of computer generated imagery. People are decapitated (ON CAMERA), have their heads blown off, fall into threshing machines, and have fists explode out the backs of their skulls. Needless to say, it isn't a movie for everyone (keep your Grandma away from this one), and though I am no detractor of excessive violence, I found it to be a bit hard to swallow at times (even though it serves a good purpose in the narrative most times). What makes up for it is the style- the film has this blue-gray, bleak cinematography style that accents the biting cold of the environment, and highlights the reds when they come up (making the blood seem quite vibrant), and the shots are all well arranged and frequently picturesque (probably due to the graphic novel's influence). The script is effective and scary, but with a good focus on the people in the town of Barrow and their relationships- how they dissolve or grow stronger in the face of death. The film brings a great, pulpy horror feel to the vampire genre, evoking E.C.'s horror comics that featured vicious, bloodthirsty undead creatures who were far from romantic. Perhaps it is a bit too much of a throwback to those kind of full-steam ahead horror stories- particularly the ending, which is very much reminiscent of a comic book climax without tainting the mood of the film- but for me, it's a breath of fresh air, and while it may not be a watershed in the history of horror movies... it's still damn good.