Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2014: Guardians of the Galaxy

 So now it's time for the Cap'n to eat some serious crow. From the moment it was announced until the second I said "ah, what the hell, if people love it this much, I'll give it a shot," there wasn't a person more skeptical of Guardians of the Galaxy than me. There was no way it could work: we're talking about a comic book that nobody read (and even less have heard of) where a talking raccoon and a talking tree are major characters. Marvel had gone from "Dark Elves" to "What the Hell, We're Rich" hubris in no time, announcing Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, and Doctor Strange. Okay, there's no way. Guardians of the Galaxy? The hero's name is Star Lord? Seriously? I don't even read Green Lantern comics anymore, and I've never paid attention to Marvel's cosmic crap. There's no way it could be good. And the trailers didn't change my mind. It looks kitschy, obnoxious, loud, and unfunny. Drop the mic, I'm calling it: failure.

 And now I'm 0-3 when it comes to James Gunn. Somehow, I always doubt that he can make something so impossibly lame sounding be great, and he proves me wrong. Every time. Did I think Slither looked stupid? Yup. Wrong. Along comes Super, and I look at the poster and think "oh, great, hipster Kick-Ass." Totally wrong. So of course I foolishly thought that this time, as the director of a stupid space movie with talking trees, he wouldn't be able to craft a winner. That they'd mute his Troma sensibilities, and the end result would be watered down garbage nobody would like.

 Yeah, and how did that turn out?

 It's true that I'm not the only person surprised that Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the best movies of 2014, but at least I should have known better. Gunn's specialty, it seems, is finding the perfect tone of his movies, one that can comment on how ridiculous genre tropes are without undermining the story he's telling. It's a balancing act that not many directors are willing to try, the obvious exception being Marvel's other cosmic tinkerer, Joss Whedon. At the risk of sounding heretical and thus sending the internet into fan rage, I'm going to give the edge to Gunn, if only because in my limited field sample, he's more consistently successful*. Allow me to make my case.

 (In what might turn out to be a horrible idea, I'm going to assume anybody reading this already saw Guardians of the Galaxy, so the standard "paragraph or two synopsis" isn't going to be here, where it would normally be. Also, SPOILERS.)

 Guardians of the Galaxy, as presented in the film (I've still never read the comic), is an inherently goofy premise. If you want a very quick version of why, I highly recommend you watch the Honest Movie Trailer for the film. Putting aside the "Space Avengers" part, we are talking about a movie with more impenetrable monologues than the Star Wars Prequels combined, about characters we know nothing about, and can barely relate to - remember, Peter Quill / Star Lord (Chris Pratt) has been living most of his life in space. He has a better idea of what's going on than we do, and he doesn't really seem to know or care. Quill can barely remember that the girl he hooked up with is still on his ship. But that's what's great about how Gunn manages the world he's introducing us to - the serious moments, like everything building up to "I'm going to be honest; I forgot you were here" is played in equal parts important and "yeah, I know, this is kind of silly." There were a dozen ways to make the dancing to "Come and Get Your Love" groan worthy, but you know what wasn't? Using a dead space rat as a microphone.

 Mind you, this is all following the "young Peter Quill watches his mother die and is abducted by aliens" cold open, which isn't joke-y and sets the stage for things to come. While it's a completely different kind of movie, Guardians of the Galaxy shares with Captain America: The Winter Soldier the ability to be funny one moment and deadly serious the next. Gunn only uses it when necessary, but in many ways, he does it more successfully than the cheap kills in The Avengers or The Winter Soldier. I mean, yes, he kills Groot (Vin Diesel), but it's more of a sacrifice than a sudden "gotcha!" kill. When Baby Groot emerges at the end of the film, it makes sense that it was something he could do, and something that Rocket (Bradley Cooper) wouldn't realize was possible. Which is weird, because he's a living tree, so why couldn't he? Also, go ahead and be the hard hearted bastard that tells me you didn't well up a little bit at "WE are Groot." Go for it. It's the internet, and you can lie anonymously.

Despite the fact that Groot is Guardians of the Galaxy's equivalent of Minions or Penguins or Disney's anthropomorphized animals that every movie for kids have these days, we care about what happens to Groot because Rocket cares about Groot. And we care about Rocket, which honestly amazes me. I really did not think that I was going to be able to get past the "there's a talking raccoon in this movie," but the animators and Bradley Cooper and Gunn find a way. There's a moment, halfway into the film, where we learn everything we need to know about how a talking raccoon feels about being genetically modified. It's not dissimilar to the fight between Drax (Dave Bautista) and Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), where the real weight of the former's need for revenge clashes headlong into his inability to actually carry it out. Ronan, who up until this point just did a lot of speechifying and sent Nebula (Karen Gillan) to do his dirty work, finally seems formidable. Drax doesn't stand a chance, and that's before Ronan has the Infinity Gem.

 See, that's an extremely nerdy sentence, and I'm not going to lie, I had to double check Karen Gillan's character name. Yet another reason why it's so impressive that Guardians of the Galaxy was not only a hit with fickle comic fans, but also mainstream audiences. It's not quite on the same level of "A Song of Ice and Fire is hit TV show? Seriously?" but we are talking about a movie that introduces us to planets, characters, races, and throws around terms like we're just expected to keep up. And we do! I had no idea that Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula were adopted children of Thanos (uncredited Josh Brolin) or that Nova wasn't just one dude. Seriously, had I known the Nova Corps was the Marvel equivalent of the Green Lantern Corps, I might have hesitated even more. I think the only part of this movie I didn't know because of another Marvel movie (mostly Thor: The Dark World) was Howard the Duck. And let's be honest here, even if you read Howard the Duck, we all know why people remember Howard the Duck.

 But this is what I get for assuming it wasn't going to work. James Gunn pulls a fast one on me again, with a fantastic cast, razzle dazzle effects, smart (and smart-ass) plotting, and damn if I'm not looking forward to seeing more of them. He managed to introduce five major new characters and a dozen or so supporting characters without needing separate movies to do it. No offense, Phase One, but it turns out you can incorporate characters in one film, give them enough time to develop, and still be entertaining without spending two hours apiece with them. And hey, now I know who Chris Pratt is! He's not just the guy who crapped himself in Movie 43 anymore!

 Guardians of the Galaxy did something I didn't think was possible: it handily displaced X-Men: Days of Future Past and Captain America: The Winter Soldier as the best Marvel film of 2014. I'd say "comic book film," but if we're putting it up against Snowpiercer, it's a tougher case to make. It's a breezy, fun movie, one that has a soundtrack and vaguely 80s tone that appeal across the age spectrum, and Gunn even snuck in Nathan Fillion (Blue Alien in Prison), Rob Zombie (Ravager voice), and Lloyd Kaufman (Lloyd Kaufman Covered in Mud in Prison), just to keep his case for auteur in the mix. It might be super nerdy and have a talking tree and a talking raccoon, but dammit, they're fun. It's fun. Way to prove me wrong, James Gunn.




 * It's not an exactly fair comparison, but I do know several people who can't stand Joss Whedon and who had a lot of problems with the see-saw tonal shifts in The Avengers. They also didn't like Serenity for much the same reason, but enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy. So, uh, flame on, I guess.

Retro Review: Christmas Surprises

 For today's Retro Review, I thought I'd take a holiday trip down memory lane. You see, every year we (that being the Cap'n, Professor Murder, and Cranpire) go and see a movie on December 25th. We've been doing it for so long I can't actually remember when the tradition started. Some years we don't see anything new, but we usually try to go out and give those poor bastards working on Christmas a reason to tear their tickets and pop that horrible popcorn. Here are a few instances where our often assumed "bad" taste served us well...

 Last year we didn't see anything on Christmas night - there was talk of Black Swan, but Cranpire was sick and the weather was indeed frightful. We did see Tron Legacy two days later, and True Grit the week after that, but it doesn't really work in this situation. Let's skip back to 2009...

 Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - technically, we saw this the day AFTER Christmas, but since the widely loathed Sherlock Holmes was the 25th's essential viewing and it still seems like I know five people who like it and nobody else, let's focus on a movie that was the exact opposite. If you've seen the trailer for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, you - like we did - had a sneaking suspicion that it was going to S-U-C-K. Trainwreck levels of suckery punctuated by Nicolas Cage Mega-Acting. Twas not the case, fortunately: there was an ace in the sleeve, and that's Werner Herzog. Never count out that crazy German filmmaker from being able to take a bad idea ("hey, let's not actually remake Bad Lieutenant or really make a sequel, but give it roughly the same kind of sleazebag main character") and turn it into an exquisitely bizarre but also really great movie. It has iguana POV shots, for crying out loud, and it still works.

  Role Models - There's going to be a trend here of "movies we thought might be okay / kinda bad but went and saw because Cranpire wouldn't come to the really terrible ones" which is exactly how Role Models happened. The film wasn't even still playing in regular theatres - we went to the $1.50 joint on Blue Ridge Road and watched another movie that was much better than advertised. The ace in this sleeve? David Wain - director of Wet Hot American Summer and one of the creative forces behind The State. As I wrote in 2008, it's a "hybrid of Judd Apatow and David Wain sensibilities" and works despite that odd pairing.

 Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - I've been beating the drum for Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story for the last four years and I'm not going to stop now. I'm so glad we skipped AvP:R because Cranpire (shock) didn't want to come out for our annual Christmas night movie, because I probably wouldn't have given Walk Hard a shot otherwise. It just seemed too questionable as quality went. How wrong I was. Just watch it, like right now.

 Rocky Balboa - The last movie I can remember Cranpire coming with us to see (unless you count Tron Legacy, which doesn't count because it was a few days later). It washed away the awful memories of Rocky V, which always seems to be on television. Honestly, it's been five years and I don't remember a whole lot other than being pleasantly surprised. We tend to be rewarded for taking a shot on questionable movies during the holidays - that's the trend I'm sensing here...

 I don't know what we saw in 2005, because looking at the list there's not a film released in December that I saw until it was released on DVD the following spring. That would include The Matador, Munich, The New World, Santa's Slay, Match Point, and Brokeback Mountain. It's possible we saw King Kong, but since Cranpire hated the Lord of the Rings films, I somehow doubt he's go see another three hour
Peter Jackson joint. Going even further back, I can only find Dracula 2000, which wasn't a good "surprise." I wonder where Bad Santa fit into all of this...

Blogorium Review: Cyrus

John (John C. Reilly), a freelance editor*, has been divorced from Jamie (Catherine Keener) for seven years, but when she comes over to tell him she's marrying Tim (Matt Walsh), she also insists he joins them at a party in the hopes of meeting someone. After striking out repeatedly, John meets Molly (Marisa Tomei) and they hit it off. After two dates, John follows Molly home (wondering why she leaves early), and meets Cyrus (Jonah Hill), her 21 year old son. Cyrus and Molly have an unusual mother / son dynamic: she dotes on him too much, and he takes advantage of that to drive a wedge in her burgeoning relationship with John. When John realizes what Cyrus is doing, he must decide: "do I wage war with her son, or is this relationship worth pursuing?"

If I had seen Cyrus while working on my "year end" list, it would have fallen right in the middle; there's really nothing wrong with the movie, but at the same time there's nothing exceptional about it. The film, written and directed by Jay and Mark Duplass (The Puffy Chair, Baghead) is a by the numbers romantic comedy, right down to the predictable ending, presented under the auspices of an "indie" cinema. The catch is that, unlike the low budget Baghead or The Puffy Chair, Cyrus was produced by Ridley and Tony Scott, and despite their efforts to disguise the production values, the film is too conventional for anyone to by the mumble-y dialogue or gently-strummed-high-pitched-whisper song soundtrack.

The Duplass brothers do try to trick their fans into thinking Cyrus is more than a by-the-numbers romantic comedy: the camera work is designed to look like an "on the fly," caught in real time cinema verite, at least for a while. Before long, they begin to indulge in montages with dialogue that leaps forward and backward with the image**, and then the camera seems to settle down into "master/close up/reverse shot" setups. So too does the awkward, "mumblecore" dialogue begin to shift to the more traditional, and characters cease to behave like humans and simply behave according to story devices.

Story-wise, Cyrus falls into the "man-child" genre of comedies that Judd Apatow and Adam McKay have been occupying for the last six or seven years; John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill are essentially playing variations of their "type" - Reilly as the soft spoken, awkward loser and Hill as the sarcastic jerk. The only real difference is the level to which Hill pushes Cyrus into a manipulative sociopath; he just barely keeps himself out of stereotypical territory, despite all of the blank stares, muttered threats, and bogus "panic attacks."

Marisa Tomei has virtually nothing to work with as an actress: as the film progresses, Molly becomes less of a character and more of a cipher, an object for the emotionally stunted man-boys to fight over. By the time her character goes catatonic when John finally leaves, one struggles to remember the woman who saw past his act early in the story. Catherine Keener and Matt Walsh have absolutely nothing to do outside of giving Cyrus a "supporting cast": Walsh is barely in the film and Keener's Jamie is saddled with all of the "am I just being neurotic or is the kid evil" rants from John. Since Cyrus is transparently manipulative, Keener's assurances that he's "weird, but not in a bad way" are hollow to the audience.

I realize I sound like I'm panning Cyrus, which is being unkind to the film; I tend to be very hard on films that settle for being in the "middle": movies like Cyrus don't actually try to do anything that sets it apart from every other comedy of its kind, nor is it bad enough to simply ignore. John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, and Jonah Hill are all doing good work with what they have, and the film at least tries to insert a modicum of "realism" into an otherwise trite rom-com dynamic. Aside from the ending, everything that happens is organic within the story, derived from things unsaid or from character traits. The problem is that I just can't get that enthused about Cyrus: there's not enough going for it to merit recommending, and at the same time I don't hate it (the same way I do, say, Juno, which is as transparently obvious in its storytelling). Cyrus is just there, and for me that's not enough.




* The film is so vague about John's job that it isn't actually clear he's a film editor until he barges into Jamie's office (where he also works, although that's not clear until even later) to talk conspiratorially about Cyrus.
**I'm tempted to call this the Soderbergh effect, since it's one of his most relied on techniques, but that presumes that he invented the style instead of co-opting it from films like Point Blank

Movie Night Recap: One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

Greetings and salutations to all those who could not make it to the first "theme" night that didn't involve horror movies or acts of torture performed on attendees. Quite the contrary, as once a comedy through line had been selected, the choices of "One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer" were quality all around.

Before I get to the movies, a quick note to prove I meant what I said about not providing awful alcohol. While there's certainly enough Wild Irish Rose, MGD 64, Aristocrat, and Bud Light with Clamato to share, none of those were on the menu tonight.

Adam provided Glenlivet Scotch, I provided Knob Creek Bourbon, and the beer didn't actually factor into things much, but if you want to count it Adam brought over some Hobgoblin. Far from the garbage I'm sure you were expecting.

The movies were comparably good stuff, and broke down thusly:

Bourbon - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Scotch - Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Beer - Wet Hot American Summer


I don't really feel like giving full write ups to each movie (although I can't find any kind of official write up for WHAS), but I would like to share some tidbits we noticed in watching these films again after some time.

- Chalk this up to a "you just didn't know who he was then" category, but Bradley Cooper (The Hangover) is in Wet Hot American Summer. And not just in a "blink and you'll miss him" way; he's the guy Michael Ian Black is making out with and the co-director of the Camp Talent Show with Amy Poehler. He's also the person who suggests the counselors get together "Ten years later" near the beginning of the film. I honestly had no idea, and it's amusing because current Bradley Cooper fans might be surprised to see him in WHAS.

- Dr. Strangelove is clearly visible in the War Room for most scenes prior to when he's introduced. It's most obvious when General Turgidson (George C. Scott) is on camera talking to the President (Peter Sellers) off-camera. There is a shot featuring both the President and Strangelove facing the camera (when Turgidson is accusing the Russian diplomat of spying), although I suspect that rather than some split-screen trickery, Strangelove is merely a Sellers look-alike.

- Here's another "Because you didn't know them then" tidbit: look for most of NBC's Thursday Night Comedy Line-Up somewhere in Walk Hard. Seriously, in addition to being able to easily spot Chris Parnell and Jenna Fischer, look for Ed Helms, Craig Robinson, and Jack McBrayer. Additionally, there's Jane Lynch and 3/4's of The Upright Citizen's Brigade (I contend that, though uncredited, you can see Matt Walsh standing in the wings during one of Dewey Cox's early performances).

- Try as I might, I cannot for the life of me notice what's missing in the Theatrical Cut of Walk Hard from the Extended Cut and vice-versa. It should be easy, since there's almost 30 minutes worth of material included in the longer cut.

- There's a typo in the credits for Dr. Strangelove: the film is apparently "Base on the Novel by Terry Southern." I'm not making that up. Put in your copy and check.