Quick Review: Ant-Man

 Ant-Man is a tricky situation when it comes to reviewing the movie itself, but in the wake of my Fantastic Four review, I feel like it provides a much needed contrast. What Ant-Man had, going in, that Fantastic Four didn't, was a level of expectation on the part of much of Marvel fandom. Maybe not even Marvel fandom, but Edgar Wright fans to be certain. Ant-Man was, by Wright's admission, a passion project, and his very public departure from the film left Marvel and Kevin Feige with a serious PR mountain to climb. Ultimately, it turned out to be more of a molehill, or - wait for it - an anthill. At least for me; there's still some debate about what is vs. what "could have been," and I think that's going to last a lot longer than the "Fox won't show my Fantastic Four, which was a great movie" Twitter war.

 I get the easy jokes directed at Peyton Reed, who was hired to come in after Wright left the film (rumor has it over story changes mandated by Marvel's "creative committee"). Reed directed Yes Man and isn't considered to be much more than a puppet of the studio who hasn't made anything since Bring It On that you've heard of. For me, he also made Down With Love, (a movie only I seem to like) which nearly landed him the Fantastic Four gig the first time around, and would have fit in with the 60s vibe that Down With Love is an homage to. But anyway, visionary Wright out, hack Reed in - that's the narrative you can still see in reviews for Ant-Man. But then there's the tricky part, because the Ant-Man that is turned out to be pretty good.

  There are a few different factors in play that help Ant-Man: one is that is dispenses the "origin story" pretty quickly and integrates it into the narrative in a way that keeps everything moving forward. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is a thief, recently released from prison, who can't get his life back together. He can't get a job because he has a criminal record, so he can't provide alimony payments to his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) which complicates his ability to have any leverage to visit his daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson). Also standing in the way is Maggie's new husband, police officer Jim Paxton (Bobby Cannavale). This could be played very heavy handed and one sided, but there's a surprising effort to be balanced and not make Maggie or Paxton out to be antagonists. They want what's best for Cassie, and Scott is a thief.

 Like most ex-criminals, he goes back to his old habits to make ends meet, teaming up with his partner Luis (Michael Peña) and his new gang: Kurt (David Dastmalchian) and Dave (T.I.), who are working on a heist of "some old rich guy" who has a safe Scott might be able to crack. Unfortunately, when he breaks in, the only thing Scott finds inside is a suit, which he takes anyway. The "old rich guy" is Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), and he wanted Scott to steal his Ant-Man suit, because he needs him to use it for a particular heist involving Pym Industries. His former protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) has advanced the shrinking technology that Pym hid from his company (and S.H.I.E.L.D.) and he needs somebody to make sure Cross doesn't sell his work to the military (or worse). Pym's daughter, Hope (Evangeline Lilly) wants to do it, but Hank refuses, for personal reasons.

 The narrative of Ant-Man moves at a brisk pace, with Scott learning how to use the suit and become the new Ant-Man while also planning the heist. There's even time for the reveal of why Hank won't let Hope take the suit, which allows you not only to shrink but also to be able to control ants. It gives you increased power because of the reduced size, so Scott becomes "like a bullet" and has to meter out how hard he hits someone, as not to kill them. Rather than front load Ant-Man with this, Reed / Wright put it in the middle of the movie, and it never bogs down the film. It also helps that Ant-Man is balances comedy with superhero shenanigans in the same way that Guardians of the Galaxy does. It's never too silly or too serious, although Peña pushes it sometimes. Surprisingly, though, not in the rapid cut flashback/monologues he uses to very quickly get exposition across to Scott.

 The special effects are pretty impressive, considering that most of the film is from a very tiny perspective - the sequence where Scott shrinks in his apartment and falls through the floor to a neighbors party downstairs is quite good. His terror at nearly being stomped on while people are dancing and trying to navigate his way out (he doesn't know how the suit works) takes a fairly normal situation and makes it fun for the audience. Also kudos to the de-aging team for making Michael Douglas in 1989 not look like Arnold Schwarzenegger's body double in Terminator Genisys. It's a nice touch and gives the scene with Howard Stark (John Slattery, back from Iron Man 2) added gravitas. It makes sense why Pym would choose a thief over the Avengers, and why he'd have no second thoughts about sending Scott in to steal something from one of "Howard Stark's old warehouses". Of course, the warehouse turns out to be the New Avengers Facility, where Scott runs into Falcon (Anthony Mackie in an amusing cameo). The scene is mostly designed to set up Ant-Man's role in Captain America: Civil War, but I'll allow it because Mackie and Rudd make the scene entertaining. There's a much better use of foreshadowing later in the film, with a very quick reference to Spider-Man (now back in the MCU).

 If there's one thing that really elevates Ant-Man over most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and I'm mostly talking about the Disney releases), it's the scope. Appropriate to its source, it's scaled back, smaller, but not simply because Scott shrinks down to ant-size. The trend, at least since The Avengers, has been to have a giant fight at the end of the movie involving something in the sky that's going to destroy the planet / our heroes / etc. Seriously, just take a look at the finales of Thor: The Dark World, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and even Avengers: Age of Ultron, where they're trying to keep an entire city from crashing down from the sky and killing everybody. Airborne battles are, it would seem, the thing that Marvel loves the most. There are even variants of it in The Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four because, you know, if the formula works, overuse it.

 Ant-Man, on the other hand, sets the climactic battle inside of the bedroom of Scott's daughter, and most of the final battle with Yellowjacket takes place on a Thomas the Tank Engine train set. Reed frequently cuts back from the action to actual scale so you can see what it would look like to normal people. It's mostly for comedic effect, but for this film, that technique works just fine. Ant-Man acknowledges its somewhat goofy premise without ever demeaning what Scott (or Pym) can do while in the suit. When he goes sub-atomic to stop Yellowjacket at the very end, the risk implied with doing so (involving the original Wasp) isn't treated like a joke. There's a fine balance between being silly and diminishing the movie overall. How much of that was Wright, how much was Reed, we're probably not going to know. Wright retains a writing credit, and by many accounts the first half of the film is almost exactly what he wrote. Increasing Evangeline Lilly's role as Hope (to set her up for future films as the new Wasp) is allegedly what pushed Wright away, but she didn't seem to overshadow Paul Rudd or Michael Douglas to my eyes. The only problem Ant-Man really has is the same one Marvel has struggled with since Iron Man: having an interesting villain whose name isn't Loki. Corey Stoll is mostly wasted as "angry scientist villain who is mad at Hank Pym for some reason and becomes Yellowjacket".

 In a perfect world, we might know what Edgar Wright's Ant-Man looked like, and while I'm not happy about his departure, there is some solace in knowing that the version of the film we did get is still a lot of fun. I'd go so far as to say that I enjoyed Ant-Man more than Age of Ultron - a movie I've tried to write a review for repeatedly since May* - and am looking forward to watching it again. It has some of the problems of MCU movies, but eschews many of the "same old, same old" story structures in favor of a more character based narrative. While I wasn't crazy about the villain, Rudd, Lilly, and Douglas made for a fine combination, and I'd be happy to see more of their adventures outside of the increasingly unwieldy "crossover" films. As shoehorned in as it seemed, I actually liked the thieves, mostly because the chemistry between the four of them makes it entertaining enough to overlook the fact that Scott doesn't really need them to get into Pym Industries near the end. Reed also somehow made me feel bad for an ant, and not only that, but one with a terrible pun for a name. Good job.

  More importantly, since I brought it up in the first paragraph, whatever happened between Wright leaving and Reed taking over, the end result is less disjointed than in Fantastic Four. Without looking it up online, I didn't take a mental tally of "which part of the film came from which," and more to the point, I wasn't thinking about it at all. Instead, I enjoyed Ant-Man, Frankenstein-ed as it is. It has the benefit of being altered before cameras started rolling, but the mixture of original vision and studio mandated chicanery doesn't show in the same way it does with Fantastic Four. We're never going to see the pure, unadulterated versions of either film, but at least with Ant-Man I know there's one out there I would see again.




 * While in aggregate, I did like Age of Ultron, every time I sit down to think about it, or to focus on specific points, the draft ends up becoming a fanboy-ish critique of "Whedon-isms" throughout the film. They aren't so bad in their entirety, but when I have to address things like "well, I was born yesterday" or the party scene, it begins to feel like nit-picking. The fact that a HYDRA soldier actually says "no, it wasn't" after Iron Man shoots them and says "good talk," kind of annoys me. Anyway, the short review is that it's a fun movie that suffers from trying to set up too many parts of Phase 3.

Quick Review: Fantastic Four

 This one has been a tough nut to crack: on one hand, I really don't want to pile on to a movie almost everybody has been tearing a new one. Because, yeah, it's a mess. Most of it is pretty bad to really, really bad. Some of it is okay, maybe even pretty good, but then structurally it collapses again. On the other hand, there's almost something worth mentioning in Josh Trank's Fantastic Four that I've seen mentioned offhand in a few reviews, but that most people haven't picked up on, or at least discussed in depth. This isn't the first superhero movie that's dipped its toe into Cronenbergian "body horror," but in whatever it's original incarnation was - more on that in a bit - Fantastic Four is definitely the first mainstream comic book movie to have tried to specifically approach an origin story using that pervasive sense of dread.

 It's just too bad that we'll never see that movie, if it was ever finished. We will probably never know, at least until an "unauthorized" book comes out in a decade or so. Actually, blog post. I keep forgetting that's the world we live in now, where a book like The 50 Greatest Science Fiction Movies Never Made would now just be a series of articles on some geek friendly site. Anyway, the post-mortem on Fantastic Four is going to make for fascinating reading someday, more so even than the movie that came out of it. Which is, let's be fair, not worth seeing. I'm sorry, but even given what I'm going to tell you, the end product just isn't worth your time. It's not bad enough to be entertaining, and what few moments of interest it has don't amount to enough to make it worth your time.

 Without getting into the salacious details of what the director did or didn't do on set, or how Fox rushed Fantastic Four into production so as not to have the rights revert to Marvel, let's just say that the production of this film was haphazard. And it shows. If nothing else, there are clear markers of what scenes were reshot because Sue Storm (Kate Mara)'s hair color changes due to a comically mismatched wig she's wearing. It's more prominent later in the film, but you'll see it sprinkled throughout the first half as well. Apparently - and again, other than a deleted tweet from Trank and rumors, we have no real confirmation - Fox saw the completed footage and were shocked that the director of Chronicle was less interested in making a Marvel Audience Pleaser movie and was much more interested in a psychological exploration of what super powers do to the human body and mind. They also allegedly claim the film didn't have an ending, which might explain the embarrassingly bad one cobbled together from every other Marvel film, whether Fox owned the rights to them or not. There is a marked shift from the first half of the film, which at least looks like it was shot in practical locations, to the last 15 minutes, which were clearly shot on a green screen, in order to have a showdown with our heroes and the barely established Dr. Doom.

 As I said, that's not really what I found interesting. The final showdown with the giant beam in the sky that manages to steal from X-Men, Thor: The Dark World, and The Avengers (actually, both the first one and Age of Ultron, not that I think about it) is kind of par the course for Marvel movies now. To the point where a comparably small scale fight in a little girl's bedroom makes Ant-Man* a refreshing change of pace. But I digress. Back to the only thing about Fantastic Four that's vaguely worth discussing. There is a moment, in the middle of the film, when Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) and Sue Storm (Mara) are in Area 57, a top secret military facility. They've been exposed to the green goop from Planet Zero, which also swallowed up Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) after they got drunk and used the Quantum Gate to visit the other dimension. It's a long, dumb, story, but basically Government Man (Tim Blake Nelson) wants to take the project away from Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and send NASA to the other side. Anyway, I guess it's less dumb to go Ninja Turtles than "Cosmic Radiation".

 So they're in Area 57, and Franklin has been given access to visit them. When we first see our heroes, they're in separate, dimly lit rooms, strapped down and totally unable to control their powers. Reed's arms and legs are extended and he can't move his fingers. He doesn't even seem to be aware what's happening. Ben is screaming for help from his darkened cell, embedded in strange rocks from Planet Zero. Johnny uncontrollably bursts into flames, and Sue phases in and out of invisibility. Trank films these scenes to appear as disturbing as this sudden change would be - Reed is sweaty, distended, and horrified. Ben is a giant rock monster, and he's alone with no one to talk to him. Johnny is dangerous to the lab technicians - during a nightmare, he overheats and blows out the glass window they're watching him from behind. For a change, our young protagonists behave the way someone might actually behave if they experienced a radical change to their bodies, and while it might not be what audiences expect from a Fantastic Four movie - let alone Marvel in general - it's a refreshing take on comic book adaptations. This is a far cry from discovering you can stick to walls, or many of the "discovering your powers" montages from other comic book movies. This is all of Brundlefly, all at once - the power and the rotting fingernails. The fear, the loathing, alongside a perverse fascination. Trank does an admirable job of mimicking Cronenberg's fondness for shots that linger on "new flesh," so to speak. For a moment, I thought this might be a movie worth watching.

 And then that all falls apart, because of an unusual choice to cut ahead "One Year Later" after Reed escapes, where we're given quick exposition on what their powers are and how they work. The Government has been conditioning their powers to use in combat situations - Grimm first, but they're grooming Johnny to also be a weapon. Were it not handled so poorly, this might be an interesting extension of the creepy shift in approach to being a "super hero," but instead it's underdeveloped, like everything that follows. It's the first hint of the Scanners-like finale we might have seen (again, we'll never be sure), but once they rebuild the Quantum Gate and find Doom is still alive (albeit fused to his suit and glowing green), things quickly collapse. Most of this happens in the last twenty minutes and is rushed, to put it mildly. I'm not sure what part of Doom's powers made him a scanner, but he absolutely walks through the facility making people's heads explode. It's surprisingly violent for a PG-13, even when the lights conveniently cut off.

 This extension of Cronenberg inspired body horror is, however, quickly abandoned in favor of a much more conventional "fight it out" ending on Planet Zero with the punching and the fireballs and the invisible force field blah blah Doom sucked into his own portal whatever. Victor Von Doom goes from being a fairly interesting human character - albeit one that resembles the comic book version in no way shape or form - to being evil C-3P0 with scanner powers who decides to destroy Earth so that they can't exploit Planet Zero. We get that from two lines of dialogue before he pops Government Man's head like a zit with brain powers. I'm not honestly sure that Trank's take on the Fantastic Four could have worked for the entire film, or even how he had planned to close out his version of their origin story, but it was different. Admirably different, even: I had heard it was "dark and gritty," which is not exactly something I'd associated with The Fantastic Four, but it's not "dark and gritty" in the way that Batman v Superman looks. Instead, it's psychologically traumatic, drawing from The Fly and Rabid and Videodrome more than Spider-Man or any of the X-Men films.

 And yet, we're left with the mess that is Fantastic Four - one pretty good ten to fifteen minute stretch couched between a fairly stupid beginning (really, Dan Castellaneta was somehow Reed's science teacher in elementary and high school?) that cuts ahead to bored actors - Teller and Mara particularly seems disinterested the entire film - and peters out at the tonally incongruous coda. I wouldn't be the least bit enthusiastic about the further adventures of this foursome, even if Bell brings pathos to Ben Grimm / The Thing that makes a talking rock monster not inherently comical. That's an impressive feat, but it's one of a small handful of moments that make Fantastic Four that much worse. Because if it was just awful, like Terminator Genisys, I might even consider recommending it. But instead, there are some tiny, neat, ideas rolled up into a patchwork mess of a movie, one that's just going leave you dissatisfied. So stick with the real Cronenberg, and I guess if you need to see that world collide with comics, there's always A History of Violence...




* Speaking of a movie with its own sordid behind-the-scenes history, albeit one whose seams are much less apparent, and with a much more enjoyable end result.

Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2014: Birdman, Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

 I'm not sure that I had a favorite movie of 2014, but if I absolutely had to pick one, it would be Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). I told this story to most of my friends, but after hearing people rave about it for weeks after it came out, I finally decided to go see it on Saturday. Beforehand, I watched The Empire Strikes Back, because I hadn't seen it in a while and it's still the best Star Wars movie, no contest. By the time the credits finished rolling on Birdman, I had completely forgotten that I watched The Empire Strikes Back that day. All I wanted to do was find somebody who had seen Birdman so I could talk about it. It's the sort of movie that you want to talk to someone about, something I've seen in practice as friends have slowly gravitated towards Birdman.

 There are many films which inspired Birdman - Opening Night is an obvious example - but I can't think of any that are like Birdman. It's not the fluid camera, designed to appear as a series of single "takes," or the way that Iñárritu toys with what's really happening and what isn't - you can look at Rope or any film with an unreliable narrator for that. It's not the "washed up actor trying to reinvent himself" that sets it apart. Again, nothing about what happens in Birdman is really that novel, but something about the way that Iñárritu constructs the story, the way that the propulsive, seemingly improvised drumming goes from non-diegetic to diegetic and back again, the way that Birdman seems to exist in our world but simultaneously in its own universe. Something ephemeral about the film, that makes it so unlike its obvious cinematic precedents. It's hard to describe, but when you're watching it, you can tell. The sensation is clear: this is not like everything else.

 As plots go, Birdman, Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is pretty basic: Riggan Thomsen (Michael Keaton) is an actor who walked away from a lucrative career in superhero movies, and has toiled in obscurity ever since. He's trying to jumpstart his career by adapting a Raymond Carver novella What We Talk About When We Talk About Love into a Broadway production, which he's also directing and starring in. The play is approaching its preview nights, and Riggan isn't happy with his male co-star, so he may or may not have used his telekinetic powers to cause an accident requiring a recasting. Oh, did I mention that Riggan might have telekinetic powers? Or that he's constantly being critiqued by Birdman, the character he walked away from? None of these things ever happen when other people are around, mind you, but the light did fall that guy's head for no reason...

 His producer, Jake (Zach Galifianakis) is already at his wit's end when Riggan blithely informs him they'll be recasting, but fortunately Lesley (Naomi Watts), one of the female leads, is dating Broadway bad-boy Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), who just happens to be available. He learns fast, has strong opinions about the material, and Riggan likes the challenge, so he joins the cast. He immediately hits it off with Sam (Emma Stone), Riggan's daughter, who's working as his assistant in order to be around her father. This does not appear to be her idea, but it's a place where she can stay sober and under his supervision. Mike and Lesley are having issues, Riggan is dealing with self-doubt about being treated as a "serious" actor, and Sam couldn't care less. On with the show.

 In addition to Opening Night, you could point to Noises Off!, State and Main, or any "theatrical / Inside Hollywood" based narratives, and there are other, stranger references, like the carpet from The Shining figuring prominently into the background, or the similarity of the opening credits to Pierrot le Fou, or Iñárritu's persistent references to Hollywood blockbusters. The elephant in the room is Michael Keaton playing an actor who walked away from a comic book movie franchise, but what's more interesting to me is that all four of the film's "name" stars have been in films based on comic books: Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk, Emma Stone in The Amazing Spider-Man (she was filming 2 while Birdman was in production), and the one nobody remembers is one of Naomi Watts' first roles was in Tank Girl. That might explain the otherwise out of left field moment between Lesley and Laura (Andrea Risenbourgh), which is very reminiscent of a film Watts is better known for, Mulholland Dr.

 While I'm not entirely sold that it's the case with Watts and Stone, Norton and Keaton are almost certainly playing the versions of their "personas" that audiences assume to be accurate. I've heard that the fallout between Norton and Marvel didn't have anything to do with him being a trouble-making, egomaniacal tinkerer, but that's certainly the perception. Keaton has been working steadily since Batman Returns, but I guess most moviegoers haven't paid close attention to that, so there's a large contingent that believe Riggan Thomsen and Mike Shiner are slightly fictionalized versions of the actors playing them. I do feel like this is an intentional movie by Iñárritu, considering that many of the other actors he name-drops before Mike steps in are current stars of major franchises, but I'm not convinced it's some grand statement about art vs. commerce in Hollywood. At least, no more than it is about the divide between theater and film, and celebrity in general. Yes, it's hard to ignore the literal presence of people dressed like Spider-Man and Bumblebee of the Transformers near the end, but Riggan's conversation with Tabitha (Lindsay Duncan) seems to point at a broader argument than "blockbusters are bad."

 Tabitha is the big time theater critic in New York, and she's not shy about telling Riggan she's already torn What We Talk About When We Talk About Love a new one, sight unseen. He's a tourist to the stage, a pretender, leveraging his celebrity against the "serious" world of acting, and he'll be punished for it. He'll be mocked for it. Riggan retorts by tearing into criticism with the same fervor, using arguments that have existed for as long as there has been art and someone reacting to it. I'm not saying either of them is more right or wrong than the other, just that Iñárritu is more interested in exploring the various position within the world of acting and directing and criticism than he is in making declarative statements with Birdman. There's a lot to chew on in the movie, if you choose to, and I disagree with the sentiment that the film is trying to be "clever" and falls short. There have been reviews from people whose opinions I respect that hate the third act or don't feel that Birdman reaches its supposed "goals," but that's fine. People are talking about it, which is good. It's a movie to talk about.

 I have slowly been running out of superlatives over the course of this recap to convey how impressed I am with performances, which makes it difficult to describe just how revelatory Michael Keaton is as Riggan Thomsen. I don't think he's playing himself, and he's onscreen for almost the entire movie, in long takes, propelling Birdman forward. It's really a tour-de-force performance from him, and even if nothing else in Birdman worked, I could watch it just for him. I like how, despite the fact that Iñárritu keeps it ambiguous about Riggan's "powers," Keaton invests completely in Thomsen believing he has telekinesis. Even when he's clearly walking away from a taxi after "flying," he behaves like he soared back to the theatre (this is the part you've almost certainly seen in the trailer). The rest of the cast give what could be argued career high performances as well. Only Naomi Watts isn't given much time to register, but Norton, Risenbourgh, Stone, and Galifianakis are better than I've seen them. Amy Ryan has a small, mostly thankless role as Sylvia, Riggan's ex-wife, but uses her little time onscreen to be anything but the stereotype that part could be. Lindsay Duncan similarly owns what amounts to a cameo as the critic, withering and cynical that she may be.

 There were only a handful of films I saw more than once in 2014: John Wick, Guardians of the Galaxy, Snowpiercer, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I bought Birdman, Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) when it came out last week, and am looking forward to experiencing the film again. And talking to more people about it. If there has to be a favorite, I'm comfortable calling Birdman it. It was a better year for movies than I was expecting, and this one exceeded even that. If 2015 has anything nearly this invigorating, then I look forward to it...

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.

Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2014: Snowpiercer

 You might say that I'm being overly lenient with my definition of "films released in 2014" to include Snowpiercer. It is true that Bong Joon-Ho had finished the film in time to be released in 2013, and that a protracted struggle within the Weinstein Company kept Snowpiercer out of theatres until the following year. At the heart of the debate, it seems that Harvey "Scissorhands" Weinstein wanted to cut thirty minutes out of the film in order to make it more "palatable" for audiences. To be honest, having seen Snowpiercer, I'm not sure what parts he thought cutting out of the film would improve it in any way. It doesn't need improving, and there's no amount of editing that could turn this cerebral, at times surreal film, into a crowd pleaser. The failure of the more crowd friendly Edge of Tomorrow is a testament that sometimes, the audiences just aren't going to come in. Eventually they came to an agreement that Snowpiercer could stay at its original length, so long as it only saw limited release. The good news is that word of mouth really made a difference, and like the even more bizarre Under the Skin, Snowpiercer was being talked about, even when it was hard to see it.

 Based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, Snowpiercer is deceptively simple in its premise: in an attempt to curtail global warming, climate scientists an experimental compound, which backfires, freezing the entire world. Humanity has been all but wiped out, save for those who managed to board a luxury train designed by Wilford Industries. It was designed to run almost perpetually, and it's the only thing left that can traverse the frozen wasteland. For 17 years, the train has been going, never stopping. The social strata that makes up the remainder of humanity correlates with the sections of the train: the very poor, destitute, who could not pay for their way aboard the Snowpiercer are in the back, and the rich live near the front, in opulence, near the reclusive Wilford, who conducts the train. The back section is tired of the inequity, and Curtis (Chris Evans) finds himself leading a push from to the front - violently, if necessary.

 Embedded into the protein bars, someone has been sending Curtis messages, and with the advice of the former conductor, Gilliam (John Hurt), he thinks that now might be the time. Their only contact from the front of the train comes through Mason (Tilda Swinton), an officious, pompous bureaucrat who loves nothing so much as to remind them of their place. If they can capture her, and get past security with the help of Namgoong (Song Kang Ho), who designed the doors but also has a debilitating addiction to the train fuel's byproduct, there's a chance to confront Wilford* and stop the train. Or better conditions. Or, it depends on who gets there first. One of the interesting things is that despite the fact that Snowpiercer is a metaphor for class struggle and revolution, it's also fairly evident that this doesn't mean everyone has the same agenda. What Curtis wants is very different from what Namgoong wants, and how Gilliam and Wilford respond are fascinating unto themselves.

 Some people, like Tanya (Octavia Spencer) or Andrew (an unrecognizable Ewen Bremner) want their children back. Every now and then Mason takes them up to the front, for reasons no one in the back know, and they never return. Others, like Edgar (Jamie Bell), who were born on the train, want a sense of justice, of agency. They've never known anything but misery, undernourishment, and subjugation. We learn later in the film what life was like in the early days, moments that give considerable weight to character moments at the beginning of the film. Before that, as Curtis and company move to the front of the train, things get weird.

 This, perhaps, is what Weinstein thought he could "help" Snowpiercer with: each section of the train is distinct from the one that came before it, often in truly unusual ways. There's no way to adequately describe the surreal classroom sequence featuring Allison Pill (The Newsroom) as a Wilford Propagandist Teacher. It's not the last time the film is willing to get truly odd, which is saying something about Snowpiercer. Because the structure of the revolution is back-to-front, we often get information (particularly symbolism, like dipping axes in fish guts) before its significance is addressed. What seems like an outré moment becomes, not long after, significant in the larger structure of the world. I still love the point where a large contingent of security guards, led by Mason and Franco the Elder (Vlad Ivanov) and Franco the Younger (Adnan Haskovic) meet our heroes in a long car to battle. It abruptly comes to a halt when the train crosses a long bridge, which marks the passage of another year. The brief celebration (on both sides) and cheers of "Happy New Year" come to an end when Namgoong's assistant / translator, Yona (Ah-Sung Ko) informs Curtis that they're about to enter a "really long tunnel," and only the guards have night vision goggles. It's these unusual touches, which often collide with the brutal, post-apocalyptic reality, that give the film its distinctiveness. Trimming them out in order to "improve" the run time would have robbed Snowpiercer of many of its best moments.

 Without spoiling too much, I'd like to return to the moral ambiguity of the film by briefly discussing the inevitable conclusion when Curtis reaches Wilford (I won't say who does or doesn't make it along the way, but Bong Joon-Ho doesn't hesitate to thin both sides of the herd). There's a customary "talk with the Devil" scene, where our hero faces temptation, but this time, you have to hand it to Wilford. The case he makes is, to be honest, a fair one: what did Curtis really expect to do when he made it to the engine? Is he really going to risk wiping out all of humanity by stopping the train? It was established earlier in the film - in a horrific way - just how long a person can last exposed to the outside world. Wilford has been responsible for some horrible, unforgivable decisions, and it's during his speech that many of the seemingly "weird" moments begin to make much more sense. We've been introduced to everything that's happening in the movie well before we realized it, and the case that Wilford makes, however ghoulish, is pragmatic. From his perspective, as the steward of all of humanity, what else can he do?

 I'm not necessarily justifying either side here - before meeting Wilford, Curtis explains exactly why he's been so hesitant to lead, and what happened in the first few years, and it's not necessarily the sort of story you tell proudly. Evan's face during the monologue is riveting, and the revelations are every bit as disturbing as the discovery of what the protein bars are made of. It's the first of many revelations that contextualize dialogue you'd largely considered to be standard "I'm not fit to lead" conversations earlier in Snowpiercer. In many ways, it's a far more complicated movie than its premise would suggest, and the fact that neither side is necessarily "right" in what they want to do and how they want to do it give more heft to the ending.

 Across the board, performances are high level. Anyone who thinks that Chris Evans can only be stoic and "goody two shoes" need only spend two hours with him as Curtis to wipe that notion away. Swinton and Pill border the closest to "cartoonish" in the film, with Mason resembling a caricature of Margaret Thatcher (by design) and the Teacher being part of what is Snowpiercer's oddest moment. Both serve a purpose in the film, as does Ivanov's largely silent Franco the Elder, who doggedly pursues the rebels up the train. Special kudos to Kang-ho Song (Thirst) and Ah-sung Ko (The Host), who are more than what they seem and whose impact on the story is significant. If there's a missed note in the film, it might be from Emma Levie as Claude, Wilford's assistant, who is underdeveloped to the point of being superfluous, even late in the film. Otherwise, most of the ensemble cast is more than capable of following the story in whatever direction it takes.

 To be frank, I'm happy that we got to see Snowpiercer in its original form. There was always a chance of it lingering on the shelf in obscurity, because of debates surrounding its "palatability" with mainstream audiences. I'm not sure that the masses would or could embrace a film as nihilistic as Snowpiercer is willing to be, but now it's out there for the world to decide. It was a great year for science fiction, and Snowpiercer is near the top as far as the Cap'n is concerned.




 *I'm deliberately leaving out who plays Wilford, because it's more fun to find out, although you're likely to see the name of the actor before you watch the movie. Just not here.

Cap'n Howdy's Best of 2014: Captain America - The Winter Soldier

 Coming into 2014, I must admit that I wasn't very excited with Marvel's schedule. After the pretty good, but definitely "yup, we're going to do Dark Elves and crap like that" nerd-out that was Thor: The Dark World, it seemed like we were in for a year of Marvel spending testing how far a mainstream audience would follow them. Mostly by that I mean Guardians of the Galaxy, which I'll be getting to soon, but I wasn't particularly interested in Captain America: The Winter Soldier either. It had less to do with the premise - which was a pretty good arc in the comic - but more that I just didn't like Captain America: The First Avenger. I still don't, really: it's an assemblage of scenes without any clear narrative structure or, to be honest, stakes, designed to tell Steve Rogers (Chris Evans)'s origin story, introduce the Red Skull and the Tesseract, and then freeze Cap so he can be in The Avengers. It is not, however, a movie that I found to be worth watching again, and I tried.

 Accordingly, I had very little enthusiasm for The Winter Soldier, despite the presence of different directors (Joe and Anthony Russo instead of Joe Johnston) and a focus more on Cap's role in S.H.I.E.L.D.* over trying to sell the "shared universe." That is, to say, more like Iron Man 3, which everyone seems to hate but me, in part because I knew it was a Shane Black movie. Still, I didn't really have any reason to assume that the brothers Russo, veterans of Arrested Development and Community, were any better equipped to make a Captain America movie than the director of The Rocketeer. I also didn't know what kind of Captain America movie they were making - that it would be heavily influenced by 1970s paranoia thrillers, mixed with modern action films, but with slightly more coherent editing. Had I known that, I might have still been suspicious of the directors' background in comedy, but it would have assuaged any lingering concerns that The Winter Soldier would be anything like The First Avenger.

 In fact, The Winter Soldier isn't even anything like The Avengers, which worked Cap into the fold, but sometimes in uncomfortable, ham fisted ways. We're not talking Hawkeye levels of "why are you in this?", mind you, but if you look at the team dynamic, Steve Rogers has very little impact until late in the film, and even then it's mostly Iron Man's show. The Winter Soldier, despite the increased presence of Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), is mostly Steve Rogers' show. It's less a film about him adjusting to the present than putting Captain America's "good old fashioned American values" against the modern surveillance / defense landscape. More importantly, it's not necessarily clear that either side is totally right or totally wrong. Fury finds himself the target of an assassination, Cap and Black Widow end up on the run, and the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) has to make a decision about the organization's future.

 To say much more would spoil the movie, and by proxy, the end of the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and on the off chance you're the one person reading this who hasn't been prepping for The Avengers: Age of Ultron, I'll let you be surprised. If there's any character who gets the short shrift in The Winter Soldier, it's the titular character, who is limited to a "Darth Maul" level of screen time for much of the film. When he's onscreen - and for SPOILER purposes, I won't identify the actor - The Winter Soldier's impact on the story is felt, but his overall arc feels more like the beginning to a larger story. That said, he's part of several crackerjack action sequences, handled with aplomb by the Russo brothers. Both are essentially chase sequences: one with Fury, and the other involving Cap, Black Widow, and the man who will become Falcon (Anthony Mackie). Aside from John Wick, they may be my favorite sustained action sequences in a film this year, and I was not expecting that from Marvel. Not only are they well choreographed, but the Nick Fury chase scene is as suspenseful as anything I've seen in a while.

 I noticed that The Winter Soldier has a slight shift in the way that Cap / Steve Rogers is portrayed: Chris Evans adds more nuance to the "good guy" type from The First Avenger and The Avengers. He's trying to fit into the world now, and not just in a way that generate anachronism laughs. The Winter Soldier is frequently funny without relying on "Rip Van Winkle" jokes - although his notebook of pop culture to catch up on is amusing in its own right. The film also bridges the first and second film by having a few returning characters, mostly presented in logical ways. It's a bit sad to see an elderly Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) suffering from Alzheimer's, even if we also meet her granddaughter (Emily VanCamp). Technically that might be a SPOILER, since the film doesn't necessarily address it yet, but instead lays the groundwork for her character as an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in a few critical junctures of the story. The most surprising cameo has the potential to be the dumbest, as it is the equivalent of the "Bond villain explains his plan" moment in the film, but the audacity behind it makes the scene work. In fact, it's hard to think of a moment that doesn't work in the film, other than maybe the Big Dumb Climax.

 Like Guardians of the Galaxy, and Thor: The Dark World, and Iron Man 3, and The Avengers, and I would argue, even The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier ends with Cap and Falcon trying to bring down three flying weapons of mass destruction before they, well, destroy everything. How you feel about this apparent strategy to end every Marvel film the same way is going to depend on your mileage for this overused finale. It's not any better or worse than the others, and its impact will be felt on the larger Marvel universe in movies we haven't gotten to yet (Ant-Man, how do you feel about the collapse of, uh, SPOILER nevermind). It does seem silly to use this as the backdrop for a moment between Captain America and The Winter Soldier, as the film does end on a series of quieter moments, but maybe the blockbuster comic book movie demands it. I mean, Days of Future Past isn't a lot different, what with its "dropping a stadium around The White House", and while I didn't see The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I sure heard about its Big Dumb Ending.

 Anyway, I was quite mistaken in thinking I wouldn't like Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It's a thriller disguised as a comic book movie, one that's clever and works hard to stay ahead of its audience for as long as possible. A background in comedies, particularly comedies like Arrested Development and Community gives the Russo brothers the skill to convey information quickly without dumbing it down. Instead, they can rely on audiences to pick up hints and foreshadow events without spelling it out again. Characters go through some serious doubt and don't come out unscathed at the end. Now the Russos are going to bring Civil War to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and this is a very good sign of things to come for Captain America. It wouldn't be the first time I was wrong about Marvel's direction in 2014, but I'm glad I resisted my misgivings and watched it. And then watched it again. And then with the commentary...





 * As a side note, it's probably worth mentioning that I had been so underwhelmed by Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. after the first few episodes that I stopped watching, and didn't finish the first season until after The Winter Soldier came out. The back half of the first season is considerably better than the first six or seven episodes.

Some Other Movies I Saw in 2014 (It was a Great Year for Science Fiction)

 In an average year of films being released, it's unusual to see more than one or two really good science fiction releases on the big screen. For the most part, the films that make it to multiplexes are either comic book adaptations with elements of sci-fi, or a director with some clout putting out an ambitious, if flawed, release. Let's say, oh, Prometheus. You're lucky to get a Looper or a Moon every now and then, but most of the time it's Transformers: Age of Whatever or something that's like that but just different enough. Has somebody bought up the rights to Go-Bots yet? I mean, there was a Ouija movie this year, and if that's not scraping the barrel of licensed properties, we're in trouble. The point is that, most of the time, you're looking to independent films or video-on-demand for intelligent science fiction.

 Which is what makes 2014 all the more an embarrassment of riches for fans of science fiction in cinema. Not only did we get a sizable chunk of releases, the ones not named Transformers: Pain & Gain Edition Now With Dinobots were all pretty good to really good. In fact, there are at least two that should be in this section, but won't be precisely because they were among my favorite movies of 2014. You'll also notice that there are more existing reviews in this section than in any of the ones that preceded it, because I wanted to get the word out. We've already covered Godzilla, Interstellar, Automata, and Lucy, and while I didn't necessarily love the last two, they're still better than most of what passes for science fiction. However, what follows are much closer to the cream of the crop, including one comic book movie I'm including because it involves time travel.

 There's nowhere to start but strong with this list, so I might as well begin with Edge of Tomorrow, a criminally under seen film from Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) and starring Tom Cruise (Oblivion) and Emily Blunt (Looper). It didn't do very well at the box office, which I'm just going to go ahead and attribute to "Oblivion fatigue," mostly because I haven't seen Oblivion because it looked like Wall-E meets Moon with Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. Maybe it's good, maybe it isn't, but I didn't see it and it's from the director of Tron: Legacy. Take that for what you will. Tom Cruise hadn't really been doing anything that the tabloids were leaping over each other to cover, so that's my only explanation for the audience ennui that led Warner Brothers to rebrand the film Live. Die. Repeat. when they released it on Blu-Ray, further confusing people.

 And this is a shame, because Edge of Tomorrow is that rare beast of a science fiction / action hybrid that trusts its audience to keep up, toys with our expectations, isn't chopped into a million pieces in editing the combat scenes, and is a lot of fun to watch. In fact, it's funny. Like, really funny. If your smart-ass buddy leaned over on his couch and said, "heh, check it out - Video Game: The Movie," he'd be half right, but Edge of Tomorrow is really more like Groundhog Day in the middle of an alien invasion. Its exposition is reminiscent of Pacific Rim: quickly dropping you into a world where humans are getting their tails handed to them by an unknown alien force, nicknamed "Mimics". Major William Cage (Cruise) is a propaganda official who we meet during the news pieces that open the film, and shortly thereafter is shirking any responsibility to be involved in a D-Day like offensive being organized by General Brigham (Brendan Gleeson). Cage has never seen combat and is, frankly, a coward.

 His attitude rubs Brigham the wrong way, and when Cage is knocked out trying to leave HQ, he wakes up in the middle of an Army Base, handcuffed and issued a Private's uniform by Master Sergeant Farrell (Bill Paxton), who treats him like a newly enlisted grunt. Cage is taken to the worst unit, J-Squad, and informed he'll be on the front lines of the offensive, whether or not he learns to use his EXO-Suit. For the record, he just barely figures out how to reload before he manages to kill a Mimic, and then is promptly killed himself. Then Cage snaps awake, back on the Army Base, handcuffed and thrown his uniform, with no one having the slightest idea what he's talking about. It's not until the third or fourth time Cage dies horribly that he's noticed by Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Blunt), one of the "faces" of the war, who seems to understand what's happening to him.

 From that point onward, Edge of Tomorrow balances the repetition of action and character moments as Cage and Vrataski work together to use his ability to their advantage, to beat the Mimics at their own game of adapting to human strategy. Liman, screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie, Jez and John-Henry Butterworth - adapting Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel All You Need is Kill - use our familiarity with Cage's predicament to leap forward in time and let us figure out how many times he's replayed a scenario. As a result, Cruise spends most of the movie working his way towards the "stoic hero" persona you're used to seeing. It's actually fun watching him play a coward, somebody totally overwhelmed by, well, everything, acting as the comic foil for Blunt. Edge of Tomorrow has the good sense not to pander to audiences, up until perhaps the end - which is going to again remind you of Pacific Rim - and barrels ahead. The cast seem to be having a great time here, particularly Paxton as the anti-Hudson from Aliens. For a movie I wasn't expecting to see at all, I must say that Edge of Tomorrow delivers on everything it sets out to do, and does it very well. It's a shame more of you didn't watch it, but that's what home video is for, right?

 One of the nice things about the short window between theatrical and video releases is that it makes it possible to see movies that don't open in a very wide release, but are nevertheless on my radar. Such was the case with Jonathan Glazer (Birth)'s Under the Skin, which is a film I don't feel is inaccurate to describe as "Lynchian". Here's an excerpt from my review earlier this year (light SPOILERS if you don't know anything about the film or book it's based on):


"Under the Skin [...] is filled with visual tics and images that suggest, but often never explain. Glazer seems content to introduce a concept in the film and explore it in its bare minimum, instead leaving much of the heavy lifting to the audience. If you like films that are puzzles, ones that present the pieces but don't tell you how they fit together, Under the Skin excels at that. Perhaps reading the book by Michael Faber would help with interpreting Glazer and Walter Campbell's adaptation. Perhaps not. I haven't read the book, although I'm certainly more interested in doing so now. At the moment, I'm still digesting what I have seen, what tantalizing clues I'm not putting in the right places. [...]Glazer does an interesting about face, particularly considering the amount of nudity from Johansson in the film I wasn't expecting. The"male gaze" is on display near the very beginning - when Johansson either takes over for the last "agent" or simply removes the clothes of a dead woman - slowly gives way to another sort of gaze. I hesitate to call it "feminine" because she's clearly not playing a human, and it implies that the male objectification operates in the exact same way that the "male gaze" does. It's more of an "alien gaze," although her entire purpose is to draw men in using their "male gaze" - critical in drawing them to follow her into the Black Room and by extension, their doom."

 I could have sworn I reviewed The Rover, but I can't seem to find it, so I must not have. It's a continuation of "Australian Post Apocalyptic" cinema that most of you would identify the Mad Max films with. The Rover is more stripped down, almost to the barest of essentials, but it's nevertheless science fiction in that it takes place after the world has collapsed, following people hardened by trying to stay alive. It's not quite the post-apocalypse we're used to: there are attempts to maintain society as it was, to run stores and an emphasis on money still being viable (US dollars, though), but things are going downhill fast, and martial law isn't what it used to be.

 Eric (Guy Pearce) is a man with a car. We meet him stopping at a bar, cleaning up, and having a drink. Meanwhile, three crooks driving away in their SUV come speeding towards town, in the aftermath of what clearly was a robbery gone wrong. Henry (Scoot McNairy) is shot, but seems more concerned that he abandoned his brother, despite the insistence by Caleb (Tawanda Manyimo) and Archie (David Field) that he's probably dead. When they swerve off the road and into some construction, Archie abandons their car and takes the nearest available one - Eric's. This, it turns out, is a mistake, and the rest of The Rover is about Eric's relentless pursuit of his car. We won't know why until the very end, but he wants it back. He needs it back, and no one and no thing in this world is going to stop him.

 Pearce is something to see in The Rover - his grimy, buttoned up shirt, cargo pants, and sneakers imply a man who can be pushed around, who values pragmatism over principle, but take a careful look at his shaggy beard and patchy, home-cut hairdo. This is not a man with whom you should trifle, and he's not the sort afraid to leave a trail of bodies in his wake. The way he gets a gun on the way to finding them, or the casually brutal way he deals with Rey (Robert Pattinson), Henry's brother, who is alive, but barely, are a sign of what's to come. He takes Rey to a doctor (Susan Prior), strictly out of necessity, to keep him alive long enough to get to Henry. Rey seems to be just a simpleton, who doesn't understand the world, but Pattinson plays him in such a way that it's not always clear how much is real and how much of it is an act.

 There are moments when Rey is clearly more attuned to the situation than Eric is, not the least of which when he rescues his captor from the Military. There were only four of them, and to be honest, the world has gone to hell, so they don't even really care about processing Eric. It ends up not mattering - they're all dead in a flash - but moments like these are critical in the world building of The Rover. What we learn comes in fits and spurts - it's never clear what caused society to collapse - but it's enough to make it believable that it isn't just the "strong" that survive. Sometimes the bitterly determined, or the decent, can make it if they're willing or stubborn enough. Eric is most certainly stubborn enough to follow through to the bitter end, and in doing so ends the film on a wicked pun. And that's all I will say about that. If you like low key apocalypse stories, ones without a massive scale or insane chases, The Rover will be right up your alley. Just don't expect Mad Max - we'll get that soon enough...

 Somewhere between the beginning and end of the summer, my "Double Double Feature" turned into a "Triple Double Feature." I had the great fortune of taking a chance on The One I Love, a movie that I'd initially passed on based on my not so great track record with the brothers Duplass (who produced). I'm glad I changed my mind, based mostly on finding out some of the premise, which I guess I kinda SPOILED. Then again, if you already read my review from September of last year, you know the basics of the story, just not where it goes from there. Here's a sampling:

 "There is, it seems, more going on than meets the eye, but it's less important than watching Moss and Duplass interacting with very different versions of their characters (more Duplass than Moss, as the "other" Sophie isn't much of a factor until late in the film) and what it does to their already fractious relationship. Ethan finds himself competing for his wife's affection with, well, himself, only a more appealing version. Out of desperation, he pulls a potentially relationship damaging act of subterfuge, one that comes back to haunt him when they discover that the "other" Ethan and Sophie are able to leave the guest house. Their final night at the house is indeed a tense one, as both Ethans and both Sophies have dinner and attempt to navigate mutual suspicions. And then, near the end, we have some idea why the therapist isn't answering his phone and what purpose these "others" serve. I'll save that for you to find out.

 If this was a largely improvised movie (as per "mumblecore" ethos), it certainly didn't feel like it. Some of the conversations between Moss and Duplass felt a little open ended, but that might have more to do with the ambiguous nature of the situation Ethan and Sophie are in. There's a considerable amount of set-up / payoff in the film, particularly at the end, and while I'd technically classify the film as "science fiction," it's mostly realistic in execution."

  Blogorium regulars will already know that this followed a doubled-up review of Enemy and The Double from the month before, and I'm still on the fence about which one I prefer more. The ambiguity and at times disturbing imagery in Enemy sticks with me, but there is something to be said for the Gilliam-esque universe of The Double, of its tone and refusal to simply head in the direction it seems to be going. The good news is that I don't have to pick one. Here's a taste of Enemy, followed by The Double:

 "The entire film is cast in a sickly, yellow pallor, indicative of the state of mind of at least one (but probably all) of the main characters. Gyllenhaal distinguishes Adam from Anthony so well, both in physical performance and in delivery of dialogue that I never doubted they were two distinct characters, despite knowing it was the same actor. Laurent is in less of the film than Gadon, but makes an impression that's hard to shake. Gadon carries much of the emotional arc of the film - she meets Adam before Anthony does, and her perplexed reaction to him (he doesn't know who she is) is crushing. The impact of his existence hurts her more deeply than it does Adam, a meek and shrunken individual every bit the opposite of the confident, scheming Anthony. That is, if either really exists. Without giving too much away, there are elements of Enemy that reminded me of Mulholland Dr, but in a more abstract sense. The shared dreams and experiences of the doppelgängers don't directly point towards a revelation in the story: Villeneuve and Gullón are content to imply, to suggest, right up until the very end. Or the beginning.

 The Double is a less abstract but in many ways more impressionistic film exploring similar territory, albeit based on an older (and arguably more bizarre) story. A colleague of mine mentioned that he was impressed anyone would even try to adapt Dostoevsky's "weirdest" novel, which he described as "Jung 50 years before Jung." If there was anyone with a sensibility to make it work, The Double landed in the capable hands of Richard Ayoade (Submarine), who crafts it into a film that I can only describe as unique. I feel like doing The Double an injustice by suggesting that it resembles Fight Club by way of Brazil, but there's an element to Ayoade's stylistic approach that is highly reminiscent of the latter, with elements towards the end similar to the former. That said, The Double isn't quite like anything most of the time.

 [...] Ayoade's visual presentation of The Double gives it the feeling of a lucid nightmare, of a dystopian future that's simultaneously retro (while I don't think it's ever stated, The Double seems to take place in an alternate 1980s). It's doesn't draw attention to itself, but the television program Simon is fond of and the computers they use are clearly several generations removed from the 21st Century. His scene transitions are often inspired, capitalizing on isolated faces in darkness that suddenly emerge in new settings. While Enemy sparingly uses split screen or digital technology, Eisenberg is almost constantly interacting with himself, and the seams aren't apparent in the slightest."

 As I find myself on the subjects of doubles or alternate versions of characters, it's as good a time as any to mention the Marvel comic book movie that ended up out in the cold, memory-wise, by year's end. Not to denigrate the other three (four, if you want to count Big Hero 6), as two of them will be popping up later in this recap and the other one was The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but I do feel bad for X-Men: Days of Future Past. It is a really entertaining return for Bryan Singer to the cinematic mutant world he created, and does a few impossible tasks with aplomb. I mean, we are talking about a movie that manages to combine X-Men: First Class with the original Singer films without making us think about how terrible X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine were. It might have even erased one of them entirely*.

 Singer liberally adapts the original Uncanny X-Men story, which will be much to the consternation of Kitty Pryde fans. On a marketing and somewhat logistical level, I understand it: Hugh Jackman's Wolverine has consistently been the face of the franchise (he's been in every movie, including First Class) and while unfair, building the movie around Ellen Page travelling back in time would only serve to remind fans of X-Men: The Last Stand. It's pretty clear from the ending of Days of Future Past (Kelsey Grammer cameo aside) that Singer and company are working hard to undo the Brett Ratner helmed third film, so Logan gets shipped back in time. Singer pulls off an impressive juggling act of keeping things light and, frequently, funny. At least, that is, after a dour, post-apocalyptic prologue action sequence, introducing us to (and then murdering) several familiar faces to fans of the comics.

 Actually, Days of Future Past might be the most violent of the X-films: the prologue essentially sets up the menace of Sentinels, as we watch them brutally murder what's left of the X-Men one by one. I mean, yes, it's bloodless by and large, but seeing Iceman decapitated and then have his frozen skull crushed it pretty rough stuff. I mean, inside of twenty minutes we're hanging out with Logan in bell bottoms.

 It remains to be seen what Joss Whedon is going to do with the character, but Singer gives the character of Quicksilver (Evan Peters) a showcase moment in slo-mo halfway through the film that shouldn't be anywhere as fun as it is. It's a scene among many scenes where characters who went under-used in First Class have the opportunity to really shine, from Beast (Nicholas Hoult) to Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor Xavier (James McAvoy). However, Jennifer Lawrence actually makes an impression this time around as Mystique, which is odd only in that her character was supposedly the focus of First Class. Peter Dinklage has some fine moments as Bolivar Trask, who is perhaps rightfully unnerved by mutant evolution, but whose methods of research are, shall we say, excessive.

 Still, it's not really fair to talk about Days of Future Past without mentioning Hugh Jackman, who at this point IS Wolverine. He's the only character who really has any idea what's supposed to happen, but his discombobulated state and inability to convey what the older Xavier (Patrick Stewart) wants the young Xavier to do is quite funny. It's a fish out of water story despite the fact that Logan is clearly inhabiting his younger body. He just can't remember much of what it was like to be there. Jackman sells the comedy with ease: watch the scene where Logan walks through the metal detector, and the relief on his face when nothing happens. It's balance nicely with the more serious moments, like a brief back and forth between Xaviers, or the impressive - albeit excessive - climax involving the White House and a football stadium. Singer puts everything together so well, handles the mutants so logically, that you're totally willing to forgive him for leaving to make the most boring Superman movie ever. But, even for Marvel 2014, it's not enough for people to remember it in the same breath as, oh, that other space movie or the one with the soldier. Winter something or other...

 I know that this next movie is technically a documentary, but one of the great things about Jodorowsky's Dune is the speculative quality it brings to the true story of the adaptation that never was. For a long time, it was whispered among fans of science fiction, typically as a counterpoint to the "Alan Smithee" extended cut of Dune. I still have friends who prefer that version to the one David Lynch was willing to put his name on, but neither iteration comes close to the "other" Dune, the mythical Dune. And now we can see what it might have looked like, thanks to Jodorowsky's concept art / script. Here's a snipped of the original review from last year:

  "It is still hard to imagine that Alejandro Jodorowsky's mad plan could have translated to film, although I'd love to have seen his try. He only made three films after Dune's collapse - Tusk, Santa Sangre, and The Rainbow Thief (I've only seen Santa Sangre) - but being involved in Pavich's documentary led Jodorowsky and Seydoux to reconnect, and together they made The Dance of Reality last year. I hadn't heard of it until Jodorowsky's Dune, but it's described as a "metaphorical, poetical" autobiography, so I plan to seek it out in the near future. In the meantime, I highly recommend Jodorowsky's Dune, both to people who have been aware of the story and to people wondering what we were all so excited about. This review only really scratches the surface of what's covered in the film - I left out almost all of Jodorowsky's best stories - so don't worry that you'll already know everything going in. Just sit back and enjoy what might have been."

 Appropriately enough, I began this section about a great year for science fiction on a strong note, and will close on an even stronger one. If you've been around the Blogorium a while, or have made use of the "search" function (I have one of those, right?), you might know that my biggest problem with Rise of the Planet of the Apes were its one-dimensional human characters. For a movie that was so much better than anyone thought it could be, all of the focus seemed to be on the apes. Ironically for a movie with digital protagonists, the humans were mostly cartoonish and unbelievable, which dampened the proceedings somewhat. It didn't ruin my ability to invest in Caesar (Andy Serkis)'s arc, but it did keep it from being a fully realized entry into the series. Instead, it was a "better than most of the sequels" re-imagining of part of Escape from the Planet of the Apes.

 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes does not suffer from the same shortcomings, although I'm sure people will point to Kirk Acevedo's character, or Gary Oldman's bullhorn speechifying. And you might have a point, but I'll make my case in a little bit why they're far more dimensional than Tom Felton or David Oyowelo were in Rise. What's interesting about Dawn - which is, at its heart, a retelling of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - is how even-handed the story is. Rather than trying to paint one side or the other as being in the wrong, much of the film is spent with the mistakes that Caesar makes in negotiating with the humans living in San Francisco. He wants to show strength, to maintain Koba (Toby Kebbell)'s respect, but his affinity for Will (James Franco) from the first film remains, and it causes him to overlook wrongs inflicted, for the most part, accidentally.

 Humans and apes haven't seen each other in nearly a decade, and while the apes have created a society to raise their families and teach each other, humanity has struggled just to stay alive. The virus wiped out most of society, and those who survived don't necessarily have the same information that the audience does. Acevedo's character, Carver, represents this ignorance about what the "monkey virus" really means, and he's accordingly terrified when he encounters them for the first time. It leads to an accidental shooting that nearly derails talks before they can begin. Carver is part of a team working with Malcolm (Jason Clarke) to restore a hydroelectric dam near where the apes live, and territorial issues spring up immediately. Dreyfus (Oldman) is holding together the population of survivors as best he can, but without power they won't survive much longer. Caesar is living in peace with the apes, but the presence of humans brings longstanding grudges, particularly on the part of Koba, who never forgave them for experimenting and the scars that mark his face. Malcolm and Cesar attempt to reach a peaceful settlement, but is it even possible?

 The Planet of the Apes series would never be accused of being, shall we say, subtle, but Rise was interesting in that it took Caesar seriously. The all CGI, all singing, all dancing apes were the reason to see the film. To be fair, yes, it took what sounded like a horrible idea - rebooting the series and jumping back in time to not step on the cold, dead toes of Charlton Heston - but managed to tie itself to the first film in ways that didn't seem dumb. More importantly, it made me want to see more Apes films, which I thought I'd never say following Tim Burton's terrible remake from 2001. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ups the ante by refusing to make us choose "apes" or "humans": giving us good and bad on both sides, neither of which is totally resolved at the end. If anything, it's a kind of melancholy cliffhanger: Caesar stays, Malcolm goes. War is coming, and the apes have no choice but to fight it. And win. I mean, we know they're going to win. They can ride horses and dual wield machine guns.

 Yes, that happens in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and yes, it's pretty cool. Impractical? Oh yeah, but we're talking about building a world which will eventually get back to mutants who worship an unexploded atom bomb. Also, while it puts asses in seats, most of the film isn't ape-on-human whooping. In fact, the first twenty minutes are just apes, communicating mostly through sign language (don't worry - they can still talk). There's a lot of time spent leading up to the Big Dumb Climax, which is arguably better than the Big Dumb Climax on the Golden Gate Bridge in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) even manages to sneak in some visual cues that echo Rise in Dawn. Even if it was just a fun action movie with talking apes and humans being corny villains, I probably would have enjoyed it. But instead, there are nuances, little moments that go beyond "broadly drawn type." Dreyfus explaining how he came to San Francisco. The first time music plays in the gas station. Maurice (Karin Konoval) trying to calm Caesar about the influence Koba has on the others. Or wondering if any people are still out there. Koba's "shuck and jive" performance for the guards.

 If I was onboard for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes after Rise finished, I'm certainly keen to see the next film. We're headed for all out war, which means that the gap between Conquest and Battle for the Planet of the Apes will happen, on-screen, and maybe it means a less terrible take on Battle to follow. As long as the series builds to, but does not decide to take on, Planet of the Apes, then keep those sequels coming. We can stand to have some well thought out science fiction along side our apes on horseback firing machine guns. I mean, if a talking raccoon can do it...

 Oops, got ahead of myself there. We'll get to those other talking animals (and trees) soon, but first I need to finish with the runners-up. The end is nigh, cats and kittens...



 * Full disclosure: I haven't seen The Wolverine yet, so I don't want to include that.

Some Other Movies I Saw in 2014 (Part One: The Less Worse, I Guess)

 It's fair to say that you might see the first few movies on this list and say "really, _____ made it on your 'Worst' list, but that didn't?" That's fair, I suppose; I could hide behind the veil of "subjectivity" and argue that this is my list, not yours, but the name of the blog isn't "General Cranpire's Den of Filmduggery" (note to Cranpire - that's a great title and you should use it, post-haste), so that should be obvious who the opinions belong to. Spoiler Alert: The Highest Bidder! But yes, okay, it's under a weird criteria that I determined where to stop the "worst of" without including one of last year's Liam Neeson movies (not the one where he fights vampires, I assume strictly from the title). That's how I roll, kids.


 So it makes sense to just get Non-Stop out of the way, and by that I mean mostly just link to my review from earlier this year. It was short enough to sandwich in with Bye Bye Birdie and Die, Monster Die!, so while I didn't hate it, clearly the movie didn't make much of an impression, review-wise: but, looking back at it, it's way longer than needs to be in a recap. This section of the review does seem to sum things up pretty well:

"It's almost ridiculous enough to recommend in and of itself, but the fact that the first half or so is also a decent game of "cat and mouse" works in its favor. In the "Liam Neeson, man of action" genre, it falls somewhere between Taken and Taken 2 - neither as enjoyable stupid as the former, nor as inane and redundant as the second [...] If you're inclined to enjoy movies like this, or saw the poster and said "I'll rent that," you're better off watching Non-Stop than, say, Drive Hard. If you're more predisposed towards, say, Neeson in The Grey, this is not going to be your cup of tea, but if you liked Flightplan... well, um, you liked Flightplan. Congratulations?"

 Fading Gigolo is a movie I'm guessing most of you didn't see, because it came out not long after last year's "is Woody Allen a pedophile or not" row that was everywhere between the Golden Globes and the Oscars but was pretty much gone by the time Magic in the Moonlight came out (a movie I'll be discussing in another part of the recap). At this point I'm going to stop talking about that, because I learned what a bad idea it is to mention the words "Woody Allen" or "Roman Polanski" and "controversy" on the internet. But yes, Woody Allen is in Fading Gigolo. He did not direct it - John Turturro did, along with writing and starring as the titular character, Fioravante. He's a florist, and his friend Murray (Allen) just lost his bookstore and needs money. Fioravante agrees to become an escort with Murray as his manager, in the service of eventually fulfilling the fantasy of Murray's dermatologist (Sharon Stone) and her friend (Sofia Vergara) to have a three-way.

 That's probably enough of a movie right there, but Turturro also includes an entirely separate plot about an Orthodox Jewish woman named Avigal (Vanessa Paradis) who Fioravante falls in love with, much to the chagrin of Dovi (Liev Schreiber), a community police officer. At some point, a council of Rabbis get involved, and it plays out like a bizarro version of being confronted by the mob, complete with Murray needing his lawyer (Bob Balaban) to save him from charges of being a pimp. It's a mostly harmless and sometimes amusing movie, even sweet sometimes, but not something that stuck with me for very long afterward. There's a better movie with John Turturro that will be showing up later in the recaps, so stay tuned for that.

 While we're on the subject of "better movies," I feel like there's a better movie somewhere in Alexandre Aja's Horns. Maybe it got lost in the editing, or maybe it's just inherent in the adaptation of Joe Hill's novel, but the finished product just don't quite work. It's as though Aja made a bitterly funny, black comedy, and also made a more generic, teen-friendly story of good and evil, and then smashed them together at the worst possible junctures. For the opening twenty minutes of Horns, you're probably going to think the movie is great: it has a wicked mean streak, Daniel Radcliffe is spot on as a guy everyone thinks is a murderer, that embraces the horns he grows and the power that comes with it. The way people react, first telling him their darkest fantasies and then acting on them when he says they should, is often hilarious.

 And then we hit the first of what turn out to be several, lengthy, flashbacks, giving us the backstory of Ig (Radcliffe) and Merrin (Juno Temple), leading up to her death - the one everyone assumes Ig is responsible for. Everyone, including his family - played by James Remar, Kathleen Quinlan, and Joe Anderson - is positive he did it and that he's lying, with the exception of his friend, Lee (Max Minghella). The "whodunit" is pretty easy to work out for yourself, even if Aja, Hill, and screenwriter Keith Bunin throw in a number of red herrings. I bet, without telling you anything else, you can guess who the real killer is. That's not the problem, so much as the flashbacks that put the mystery together. There's a massive tonal shift from black comedy to slightly tragic story of temptation and of good and evil (on a biblical scale), and for some reason, ne'er the twain shall meet in Horns.

 I can understand how it might have worked in Hill's novel - which I haven't yet read, but plan to - but as a film, the structure of the story is at times jarring and disruptive. Maybe there was no way to properly balance the two in a film, because Horns alternates between wicked and bland, between clever and obvious, without ever finding a good middle ground. There are some fantastic moments sprinkled throughout the film, and the cast is game for anything, playing both the best and worst versions of themselves as they encounter "evil" Ig, but Horns gets away from them. It's never quite the movie that it could be, so I'm left feeling ambivalent with the end result.

 Speaking of ambivalent, here's a good time to mention Bad Words, a movie people seemed to like a lot more than I did. While it's true that I liked Horrible Bosses 2 less than Bad Words, Jason Bateman is jerk instead of beleaguered everyman was not novelty enough to win me over what is essentially a one-note joke. If Bateman hadn't directed the film and the star was, oh, let's say Billy Bob Thornton, I somehow doubt anyone would even be talking about this, another film in the "bad" series of comedies. (For the record, that review is probably NSFW, just based on the first sentence).

  The best thing I can say about Automata is that it's a better version of I, Robot than I, Robot is. Actually, there are a lot of things to like about the film, which is not-so loosely based on I, Robot, but for some reason the film as a whole is underwhelming. There's little doubt in my mind that the film is trying to skirt by under the radar without people noticing the similarities to Alex Proyas', kinda loud, kinda dumb Big Willie Style / Shia LeBouf CGI action fest, including scaling back to rules of robotics from three to two (and changing one of them to suit the narrative - that robots can't self repair). It's a visual feast, for what I have to imagine was not a large budget (director and co-writer Gabe Ibáñez shot the film in Bulgaria).

 Stop me if you've heard this before: in the future, there's been a catastrophic global weather shift, which caused most of Earth to be irradiated. People live in cramped cities, with some living in zeppelin-like housing units. Robots help humanity, although they've so permeated the culture that they're considered just as useless as any of the other trash (shades of Elysium, if you remember that movie from, you know, last year). Cop Sean Wallace (Dylan McDermott) finds one repairing itself, and blows it away, causing the ROC Robotics Corporation to send insurance adjuster Jacq Vaucan (Antonio Banderas) to investigate. What he finds could change the ROC corporation forever, as well as endanger his boss, Robert Bold (Robert Forster) and his wife Rachel (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) and their unborn son.

 And what does he discover (SPOILER???): that the robots are evolving, some past the point where they require humans at all. But they just want to be free, man. This doesn't sound familiar or anything, so I'm not going to belabor the comparisons to I, Robot any more. You get it. It's a more visually stylish, more sober approach to the story, after Jacq is rescued by the robots (one voiced by Melanie Griffith, who is also another character in the film, and one voice by Javier Bardem, although I didn't realize that until I saw his name in the credits). The ending is kind of predictable, but it feels like there's more at stake than in I, Robot, and that violent ends can and will come to any character.

 So why didn't I like it more? That is an excellent question, and I'm not convinced I can give you a good answer. Despite the fact that it does almost everything I, Robot does, but better, in part by giving is a Neill Blomkamp sheen or grime and decay over everything, there's something strangely inert about Automata. I can't quite put my finger on it, but instead of being invested, I found myself distanced, at times bored. It wasn't that you can see where the movie is going a mile away - that can be said of Horns, too, which is at least partly a fun ride - but that despite all of the effort into making the film look great, Ibáñez never quite makes the humans interesting. Banderas certainly gives it his all, but neither he nor the robots are all that gripping as characters. It's a very nice film to look at, and has a lot of things I would recommend about it, but I hesitate to recommend it over any of the better science fiction films released in 2014. And there were a lot, as you'll see when we get near the top of my list.

 There's a degree to which I enjoyed Batman: Assault on Arkham, one of the better DC Animated films that I've seen in a while. Despite the misleading title (this is, make no mistake, a Suicide Squad movie that Batman pops up in periodically), it's fast paced, sporadically funny, surprisingly violent, and pushes the PG-13 as far as they can with animated sideboob. Being that it's a Suicide Squad story - one tied to the Arkham games, and specifically Origins - the death toll is quite high, including many of the main characters. Unless you're a massive DC fan, you probably won't know many more characters beyond Harley Quinn and Deadshot. Maybe Captain Boomerang, and if you didn't, yes, that's a real thing. It has the odd distinction of having Kevin Conroy as Batman but not Mark Hamill as the Joker (although Troy Baker does a fine job) - also odd because Conroy isn't the voice of Batman in Arkham Origins, which ends with the setup for this movie. It's short, and I'm struggling to remember much more than a few offhand references to The Dark Knight and using the layout of the asylum you'll immediately recognize from the first game. So, uh, recommended?

 On that decisive note, we'll leave it here for now, but there's more. Next time, I'll move a little farther up the list, to mixed-positives that you might want to check out (with some caveats), although I have the feeling that one of them might be more contentious than anything included in this section. Until then...