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.

Blogorium Review: Django Unchained

 Django Unchained is by far the most entertaining of Quentin Tarantino's films. This comes from a fan, an unabashed apologist. I look forward to Tarantino films and I rarely find myself disappointed after finishing each new offering. (The exception being Death Proof, which had the unfortunate task of being immediately compared to Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez's crowd-pleasing horror portion of Grindhouse.) As I revisit the films, I find I appreciate them more, and while Django Unchained may not be my favorite - not after one viewing, anyway - it's the most fun I've had watching a Tarantino movie since I saw Pulp Fiction at far too young an age.

 It's worth noting to the five or six of you who read the Blogorium but haven't seen Django Unchained yet that like Inglourious Basterds, its attachment to the title and the adherence to the legacy of the Django series of Spaghetti Westerns is tenuous at best. Yes, Franco Nero appears in the film, but most of the audience I saw the film with (and many of my friends) a) didn't know who he was or b) weren't aware that the title was based in any way on anything, let alone half a dozen movies about the titular gunfighter sometimes - but often not - played by Nero and directed by Sergio Corbucci*.

 That said, you don't really need to follow any of Unchained's cinematic antecedents - or necessarily be aware of them - to enjoy the story of Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave separated from his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) turned apprentice Bounty Hunter by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). If you've seen the trailer, you know the basic beats: Schultz is hunting the Brittle brothers (MC Gainey, Doc Duhame, and Cooper Huckabee), and because they captured and split up Django and Broomhilda, his associate has the benefit of knowing what the brothers look like.

 What I didn't expect was how quickly this particular plot point is resolved, and for the most part by Django without the involvement of Schultz. It turns out that "the kid is a natural" at the bounty hunting business, not to mention the "fastest gun in the South," and by the time Django and Schultz head into the heart of Mississippi to rescue Broomhilda from Calvin Candie (Leonardo Di Caprio), the apprentice has surpassed the mentor. When it comes to dealing with the discomforting reality of slavery, and particularly of "Mandingo" slave fighting, Django has more of a stomach for it than Schultz does.

 Since we spend most of the film with Django and Schultz, I'd like to mention Jamie Foxx's stoic, composed title character (until he sees Broomhilda, anyway) and Christoph Waltz's amiable, conflicted Dentist / Bounty Hunter. As if to counter-balance Hans Landa, Tarantino gives Schultz's German dentist an appropriately disconnect European opinion of slavery - he feels uncomfortable at the concept of having to buy Django, even though strictly for legal purposes in order to free him. Until late in the film, when he can no longer help himself, Schultz is a man capable of maintaining whatever ruse is necessary to win legally. Django, he discovers, has a natural talent as a gunfighter, as a bounty hunter, and a fierce loyalty to what Schultz taught him. As he slowly transitions into the character audiences are expecting to see, Foxx earns our good will because he doesn't begin the film as "Bad Ass Django." When we come to the end of the film, he's earned a just victory.

 On the opposite side are Calvin Candie and his house servant Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson). Candie is the spoiled, sadistic, and not particularly bright third generation owner of Candieland, the third biggest plantation in Mississippi. While not immediately apparent, it becomes clear that Stephen is the real power behind the throne, and he realizes quickly what Schultz and Django are up to. There's been some debate about the merits of Stephen being arguably a worse human being than Candie, and I'm not sure what side of the fence I land on. It's clear that he's happy to perpetuate slavery on the plantation in order to maintain his own standing, but much of what he does in the film is a reaction to his distaste for Django in principle.

 Much as it pains me to say it, Tarantino really dropped the ball with Broomhilda, the least developed female character I can remember in any of his films. Yes, she occupies most of the first half of the film in Django's imagination, linked to Die Niebelnungen by Schultz's recognition of her name (Brunhilde was in all likelihood "Americanized" to Broomhilda by the Brittles or Candie), but when we're finally introduced to Kerry Washington's character in the present narrative, she's naked and being kept in "the hot box" for trying to escape. Admittedly, she doesn't have it quite as bad as the other failed escapee, who Candie feeds to his dogs after Django seals his fate. Nevertheless, Broomhilda never develops beyond a crying, fainting, screaming, tortured plot device. I don't blame Washington so much as I do Tarantino, because there's just not much of a character there.

 Django Unchained may suffer from that in other instances, as there are a lot of recognizable actors in small roles, many of which you might miss entirely. I saw Amber Tamblyn but not Russ Tamblyn, neither of whom factor into the narrative at all. Candie's toadies include Tom Savini, Robert Carradine, and almost unrecognizable Zoe Bell, and Walton Goggins, who may be the only character that registers at all.You'll also see Bruce Dern, Tom Wopat, and James Remar in two roles - once as the slaver Schultz kills to buy Django and later as Candie's "muscle."

 Tarantino pops up late in the film with another superfluous cameo, this time with a terrible Australian accent to answer the question "could this be any more obnoxious?" He's accompanied by Michael Parks and Wolf Creek's John Jarratt, and if nothing else, Tarantino's (SPOILER) death scene elicits laughter enough to justify his nearly pointless appearance.

 In the past, moreso in the pulpy Kill Bill films than in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has mixed humor in with his violence to keep the audience engaged, but I can't recall anything quite as funny as the proto-Klan scene in Django Unchained. When Big Daddy (Don Johnson) brings together his posse to kill Django and Schultz for (legally) killing the Brittle brothers on his plantation, they quickly realize that wearing masks with hoods on makes it almost impossible to see. The impromptu meeting to complain about the masks is played broadly, with Jonah Hill of all people the straight man, one of Big Daddy's lackeys who tears his eyehole. It's one of many scenes in the film where the comedy is overt and designed for the broad laughter it invariably gets (at least from every review I've seen). Juxtaposed with the at times brutally violent sequences - Candie's introduction, for example, which is accompanied by an exceptionally rough "Mandingo" fight - Tarantino balances entertainment with a sobering truth about the world these characters inhabit.

  But is there a degree of "white guilt wish fulfillment" in the revenge narrative of Django Unchained? I feel like the question can't be avoided. It is apparent that crowd reactions to the movie have been similar - if not identical - to the one I experienced: laughter, gasps, uncomfortable chuckles, and some degree of cheers as Django tears his way through the slimy bastards at Candieland, saving Stephen for last. The audience I saw the film with was racially mixed, but it seems like there is a sense of relief in seeing Jamie Foxx blowing holes into these villains that satisfies a white audience's discomfort over our past.

 Yes, it's not all of our pasts, and not all of our ancestors had slaves, but slavery remains one of the great unresolved chapters in American history, so Django Unchained, like Inglourious Basterds before it, allows audiences to feel comfortable (by proxy) watching excessively violent retribution against two universally loathed types of people (Nazis and slave owners). In both instances, the oppressed turns against the oppressor and systematically dismantles their enemy, regardless of historical accuracy. (Unless, of course, historians have been wildly exaggerating Hitler's final hours.)

 Was it historically appropriate to use the same racial epithet 109 times in one movie? Probably. Does it still feel excessive? Sure, but I might argue it's necessary to. It tempers the escapism a bit, and calls into attention the baggage surrounding Tarantino's use of the "n-word" in his earlier films. Like the flashbacks to the dogs tearing into the runaway D'Artagnan, there is a conscious level of discomfort in place during Django Unchained. The question is what end it serves: to contextualize the fictional narrative in real horrors or to justify further audience catharsis when Django has his vengeance?

 Slavery and the Holocaust were both very real, and while to some degree I can understand Spike Lee's reasons for dismissing Django Unchained as "disrespectful" sight unseen, Tarantino's film is, like Basterds, a movie. Since Kill Bill, Tarantino's output has largely been increasingly operatic tales of vengeance, enacted on increasingly horrendous villains. Django Unchained is more streamlined, more satisfying as entertainment - it's a two-and-a-half-hour extension of the climax of Basterds, and while the film doesn't skirt around uncomfortable imagery, there is a concerted effort to leave viewers cheering at the end. It's escapism, constructed brilliantly, and so I'm conflicted about how much I should simply allow Tarantino's accomplishment to stand as a film and how much of what's behind the hybrid of Spaghetti Western and Blaxploitation influence what makes me uncomfortable while laughing.

 Can I give it a pass because it's just a movie? Particularly when Tarantino doesn't let John Ford off of the hook for putting on a KKK hood as an extra in Birth of a Nation, or the following paragraph (used partially out of context when reprinted by The Huffington Post):

"One of my American Western heroes is not John Ford, obviously. To say the least, I hate him. Forget about faceless Indians he killed like zombies. It really is people like that that kept alive this idea of Anglo-Saxon humanity compared to everybody else's humanity -- and the idea that that's hogwash is a very new idea in relative terms. And you can see it in the cinema in the '30s and '40s -- it's still there. And even in the '50s."

 If Ford and, by extension, Griffith, were perpetuating a notion, that Tarantino is theoretically rebuking with Django, I'm still torn as to how to reconcile the ugly reality present in the film with the heightened reality of a revenge film, one told to provide a cathartic reaction for audiences who feel some degree of discomfort about said ugly reality. It's not whether Django Unchained can have its cake and eat it too, but how we as an audience are complicit in reacting to this disparity. It's not "did I enjoy Django Unchained" so much as "should have I enjoyed it as much as I did" and why?


*   To be honest, it's not really an issue unless you're expecting Django Unchained to be a Spaghetti Western (or "Southern" as Tarantino prefers to call it), but I'd suggest you look a little more locally for direct influences on the film. Specifically, Fred Williamson's "Charley" trilogy, which I  would prefer not to mention by their full names, and of which only the third film - Boss - is available on DVD. They center around a freed slave who ends up on the run (it directly influenced the Blacksmith's backstory in The Man with the Iron Fists) and who alternates between fighting oppression and tormenting the racists he comes across.

Blogorium Reviews Assemble!: Iron Man 2

 Iron Man 2 is a classic case of "too many good ideas for one movie." From the "making of" documentary and featurettes for the film, it is evident that director Jon Favreau felt rushed to complete the film in order to meet Paramount and Marvel's release date, and the wear on him physically and mentally is apparent. He also mentions how little time they have, how the script isn't quite finished, that costumes aren't done, effects shots and casting come down to the last second. There's a moment where screenwriter Justin Theroux comes in to help feed lines to Sam Rockwell in order to set up the War Machine subplot. Based on the pressure to keep things moving and the suggested lack of connective tissue, I would wonder if that was more the norm than the exception.

 Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), having revealed that he is Iron Man at the end of the previous film, is now facing scrutiny from the U.S. Government in the guise of Senator Stern (Gary Shandling) for not wanting to share his creation with the military. Stark boasts he's "privatized world peace" but it's clear he isn't the only person capable of making an arc reactor. For one, there's weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer (Rockwell), who has been unsuccessful in making his prototypes work but is more than interested in selling them to hostile countries. There's also Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), the son of a Soviet defector that helped Howard Stark (John Slattery) create the arc reactor technology. When his father dies, Vanko decides to create his own suit and instill chaos into Stark's life as Whiplash. Meanwhile, Tony is running out of time as his current reactor is slowly poisoning him, bringing tension to his relationships with Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow), Happy Hogan (Favreau), and Colonel Rhodes (Don Cheadle, replacing Terence Howard). Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) intervenes and assigns Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) to keep an eye on Stark, along with the mysterious Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson), his new secretary. That may be the least of his worries when Hammer and Vanko join forces to create an army of Iron Drones, just in time to ruin the annual Stark Expo.

 Frankly, it's impressive that Iron Man 2 holds together at all. There are at least four competing stories in Iron Man 2 that don't always seem to fit together. Let's take a quick look:

 1. Tony Stark's greatest invention is killing him, and his friendships are suffering. The only hope is to reconnect with his deceased father in order to discover a way to stay alive and do good, but he's running out of time to find a stable substitute as his celebrity continues to rise.

 2. The Stark family history (including the Expo) hide a secret about what Howard Stark did to get where he got and the people who were stepped on along the way, including the Vanko family. Not only does Tony have to continue to be accountable for the Stark history of warmongering, but he faces a very palpable threat in the guise of a wronged man and a rival weapons dealer.

 3. Tony has to deal with the possibility that not only can the Iron Man suit end up in the hands of his enemies, but also his friends. When "Rhodey" takes a Mark IV suit with him and returns it to the military, they immediately set about working with Hammer to create a "War Machine" along with Hammer's drones, and use Stark Expo to unveil their new weapon.

 4. Stark's place in the larger Marvel Universe if offset as the film sets up The Avengers by introducing Johansson as Black Widow (I'm assuming you've seen Iron Man 2 by now or at least the trailers for The Avengers so that's not a spoiler) and increasing S.H.I.E.L.D.'s role in the film with Coulson and Fury making extended cameos in the film. There are also direct references to the events of The Incredible Hulk (which appears to happen simultaneously with the end of Iron Man 2) and the arrival of Mjolnir - Thor's hammer - on Earth at the end of the film, a tease that has no direct bearing on Tony Stark.

 All of this happens in two hours, and that's not including the first fight with Whiplash that derails a Grand Prix in Monte Carlo, a prison break for Vanko, an action scene for Black Widow (and, for comic comparison, Happy Hogan), and the showdown between Whiplash, his drones, and the Iron Man / War Machine tag team, also during the Stark Expo. The various plotlines are resolved haphazardly, if at all (the Justin Hammer character basically disappears in handcuffs promising revenge) just in time for Tony and Pepper to get together after his new suit saves his life. Black Widow doesn't really make much of an impression at all, as there's not a lot of time for an arc for Johansson in someone else's movie. And hey, there's Agent Coulson in New Mexico! He found Thor's hammer!

 There aren't many "villains" in Iron Man 2, at least in the conventional sense that Jeff Bridges' Obadiah Stane was as Iron Monger in the first film. Ivan Vanko is a man who comes from a family wronged by Howard Stark and is justifiably angry with Tony's glorifying being Iron Man. Justin Hammer is a guy who desperately wants Tony Stark to be his friend, or at least consider him as an equal, to no avail, so he acts out in foolish ways to get even. Even Rhodey only steals the suit because Tony is being a drunken mess during his birthday party and using his own suit to blow up bottles and watermelons. The drones are just that - drones. You don't really feel anything for them so it's no big thing to see them wiped out en masse at the end. Even the perceived threat of Stark's mortality (played up repeatedly in the film) is a straw man, because we all know he's not going to die in the second movie.

 So how is it that Iron Man 2 works? How is it that, despite the overstuffed narrative and the rushed schedule and the various "needs" being addressed to facilitate more Marvel films, that I still mostly enjoy the film? Well, it is still funny - Robert Downey Jr. brings a sardonic quality to his impending demise, and his conversations with Jarvis (Paul Bettany) continue to make me chuckle. Likewise the relationship between Stark and Coulson, which actually figures prominently into The Avengers (kinda SPOILER), and the scene where a hungover Tony meets Nick Fury at a doughnut shop. Favreau and Theroux poured every ounce of themselves into the film, as did the cast and crew, and despite the fact that Iron Man 2 just shouldn't work it almost makes it.

 It doesn't collapse on itself (like Captain America) and doesn't lopsided in one direction (Thor). The Incredible Hulk's connection to the Marvel world is more tenuous - watching the film again I noticed that all mention of Stark Technology and of S.H.I.E.L.D. appear during the opening credits and the Super Soldier Serum is mentioned by name only once. Were it not for Robert Downey, Jr. appearing at the very end of the film to talk to William Hurt's General Ross, there'd be no tie between Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk at all. That's not really on Iron Man 2, which has a "blink and you'll miss it" screen of footage of Hulk's college campus showdown with the military, but one does get the impression that Marvel felt the need to overcompensate now that the stage had been set.

 I'm curious to see Shane Black's Iron Man 3, which has the opportunity to largely be free of the need to set up other Marvel heroes or to feature S.H.I.E.L.D. so prominently (that's what The Avengers 2 is for), and to see where they go with Iron Man's rogue's gallery next. Favreau left the series (and The Avengers) citing a disinterest in moving into the "mystical" realm, although watching the extra footage, I wouldn't be shocked if exhaustion didn't factor in as well. One of the last things you see him doing is recording the audio commentary for the film - before Iron Man 2 is released. He admits it feels surreal to be speaking about the finished film without any context of its release, reaction, or with any distance from its production. Iron Man 2 was a race to the finish line, and it just manages to cross before collapsing.

Spoiler of the Day: Basic

 In one of the stupider twists I've ever seen (and I've only seen the "twist" of this movie), no one on Samuel L. Jackson's elite team were killed, nor is John Travolta (who is involved in the "investigation"). At the very end, they reveal it was all a ruse to end drug smuggling, and they offer the investigator a spot on the team. Seriously.


Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Braveheart

Blogorium Review: The Other Guys

It's taken me some time to get to reviewing The Other Guys, the new film from Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. Like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, The Other Guys is a pretense for McKay and Ferrell to insert their goofy humor into a specific genre: in this instance, the "buddy cop" film. Unlike 1970s news anchors or Nascar drivers, the Cop film has been explored more than once in the last ten years, which hampers The Other Guys in a way earlier collaborations didn't.

Detectives P.K. Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson) and Charles Danson (Dwayne Johnson) are the big bad boys of the NYPD, constantly getting involved in wild shootouts and destructive car chases. Since they can't be bothered to do their own paperwork, it usually ends up on the desk of Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell), whose partner Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) can't stand. Hoitz made a mistake and shot the wrong person, curtailing a promising career, and Gamble's lack of ambition - and surprisingly hot wife Dr. Sheila Gamble (Eva Mendes) - baffle him to no end. Hoitz and Gamble bear the brunt of abuse from the force, including detectives Martin (Rob Riggle) and Fosse (Damon Wayans, Jr.), but when one of Allen's seemingly inane investigations may involve a massive Ponzi scheme at the hands of David Ershon (Steve Coogan), they might have a big break. If only Gamble and Hoitz can convince beleaguered Captain Gene Mauch (Michael Keaton) to let them investigate, and if they can keep the mysterious Roger Wesley (Ray Stevenson) from killing them both...

There's really not much to say about The Other Guys; of the Adam McKay / Will Ferrell collaborations (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers), this is going to be the film I revisit the least. That's not to say it isn't funny, but I find that the silliness is toned down in The Other Guys, or directed towards running jokes that only halfway work (hot women are inexplicably attracted to Ferrell's Detective [?] Gamble, or his insistence on listening to The Little River Band to get pumped for cases). The "losing face" midsection doesn't work as well in The Other Guys, in part because it interrupts the mystery and doesn't serve the narrative as well as it does in Talladega Nights or Anchorman.

Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson aren't in much of the movie, but their extended cameos add necessary spice to the beginning of The Other Guys, even if their (SPOILER) deaths don't make any sense, even as a spoof of "Super Cop" movies. It's a convenient and inexplicable way to get rid of their characters, which does open the door for the rest of the story. It opens the door for Rob Riggle and Damon Wayans Jr. to take over, but their roles turn out to be about as incidental as Jackson and Johnson.

On the other hand, there are a handful of running gags that work very well, including Captain Mauch's supposedly unintentional quoting of TLC when giving Gamble and Hoitz advice, or Hoitz's unending grief for accidentally shooting Yankees' Short Stop Derek Jeter. Wahlberg actually benefits the most from the goofy character touches, and his explanation for knowing ballet saves an otherwise directionless scene involving his ex-girlfriend. There's a revelation about Gamble's past about halfway through the film that shouldn't work as well as it does, but Ferrell sells the transformation so well that I didn't mind.

It also helps that McKay and co-writer Chris Henchy have a knack for writing throw away lines that consistently bring the biggest laughs (one involving a hobo orgy and Gamble's much derided Prius comes to mind immediately), and the cast seems to be having a lot of fun. Ice-T's narration was a nice surprise, and while I can't guarantee it, there's a line that comes so close to the premise of Dexter that I wondered aloud if it was an intentional reference*.

It may be that The Other Guys suffers from the inevitable comparison to Hot Fuzz, which deconstructs the "buddy cop" genre with such insight that any subsequent take is going to pale in comparison. The only real new take The Other Guys makes is killing off the supercops early in the film and handing over the detective work to Hoitz and Gamble, who do actually follow a trail of evidence and do actually crack a case - mostly without cheap saves. This is nice, but as the film doesn't go as far afield as one might expect, the exercise is less than exemplary. The Other Guys is, admittedly, light years ahead of Cop Out, a movie I had so much trouble finishing that the Cap'n eventually gave up on reviewing both films at once**.

I also want to mention the end credits, which run alongside graphics on how a Ponzi scheme works, how the economic crisis happened, and who benefited from the taxpayer bailout. This is timely and rather informative, but the film handles it as such a secondary plot point that the graphics seem wildly out of place, even if they inform the "crime" Ershon is perpetrating.

Are you going to chuckle during The Other Guys? Oh yes. There are times when you'll laugh quite a bit, even if it doesn't reach the same sublime goofiness of Anchorman or Step Brothers (there's nothing that comes close to "Boats 'n Hos" in this movie) and the bizarre supporting characters are considerably scaled back (despite fine turns from Mendes, Coogan, Stevenson, Keaton, Riggle, and Wayons Jr.). Considering how much footage from the trailers is nowhere to be found in the film, I sense that there's a much funnier version of The Other Guys waiting in the wings for DVD and Blu-Ray release, so while I'm not necessarily say wait to rent it, there's a good chance the film will step it up in an "Unrated" form. Either way, feel free to check it out.



* it's something along the lines of "a good cop knows how to use his dark side for good, and then he moves to Florida"

** I genuinely disliked Cop Out, a movie that at no point elicited a chuckle from the Cap'n. I don't blame Kevin Smith for the dialogue (because he didn't write the film), but his workmanlike direction does the film no favors, and the performances he draws out of Tracy Morgan, Bruce Willis, and Sean William Scott are frankly pathetic. There's no reason for Cop Out to be as unwatchable as it was; it took me three tries to get through the painfully unfunny "interrogation" sequence.

From the Vaults: Blogorium Review - Snakes on a Plane

I did not like Snakes on a Plane.

Half of you are now saying "Gee, I'm shocked." with the sarcasm that just doesn't translate when typed, and some of you are probably saying "Really, but it has to kick ass!" with all of the enthusiasm of someone smart enough not to watch the finished product.

Oh, it's true; Snakes on a Plane could be a movie as dumb as its title, but it's not. This is the kind of movie that tries too hard to be a stupid action thriller, so instead of getting an Exit Wounds, we get a Half Past Dead. (for those curious, Exit Wounds was a Steven Seagal / DMX movie that was so stupid it was hilarious, but when they tried to do it again with Steven Seagal and Ja Rule in Half Past Dead, it was just stupid.)

Snakes on a Plane desperately wants to be Con Air with Snakes, and with a title as dumb as Snakes on a Plane, you try to convince yourself it is. But it's not. This is a movie that doesn't have the guts to amp the stupid up to 11, and instead hovers around 6 for most of the movie, throwing you the scraps of the kind of movie it should have been.

When I first heard about Snakes on a Plane, there was no Samuel L. Jackson attached to it, so I assumed it was a Steven Seagal direct to dvd movie (with the following ending: Seagal has parachuted out of the plane which explodes above him, and out of the explosion comes a snake, which he somehow does a mid-air kick to with his snake skin boots, and then says "That's what I call some hot snake on snake action." Roll Credits) but instead Sam "the Man" Jackson got involved, and everyone assumed that we'd have a movie of Dave Chappelle's Sam Jackson, all screaming and cursing.

Which would have been the movie they wanted to make, but even when they went back to get that R rating, it still doesn't work the way they planned it. Yes, he says "I'm tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane", but it's so late in the movie and at a point where it just doesn't make sense to say it. It's not the beginning of an inspirational speech, or at least, it shouldn't be. But it is, so instead of Sam being the man and wiping the floor with snakes immediately before and after that line, we instead get passengers strapping in.

Snakes on a Plane looks like the retarded fun action movie that the Seagal's and the Van Damme's are more than happy to pump out four times a year, but instead it comes up short, making the only enjoyable part of the film the scene with Kenan Thompson and Sam Jackson in the cockpit, where the line "is it playstation or x-box" becomes unexpectedly hilarious thanks to the disgust in Jackson's voice. Sorry folks, this movie is bad, but not in a so-bad-it's-good way, just in a "boy, I wish Michael Bay had made this between The Rock and Armageddon.", because that's the movie you're looking for, not a watered down Passenger 57 with venom.

It was suggested to me that this movie is nothing without the proper audience, but since I saw The Grudge and The Ring 2 with the same "proper" audience (which is to say the screaming dimwits who are more excited than they really should be) and those movies still sucked, I sort of doubt it.

Thoughts from 2010: Strangely, when I think back on Snakes on a Plane, a movie I haven't given so much as a passing glance to since first watching it on DVD, I'm reminded of Hot Tub Time Machine. Both movies share a concept boiled down in a ridiculously under-complicated, tell-you-exactly-what-you're-getting title, and yet both films fail to deliver the absurd promises they make. Hot Tub Time Machine comes a little closer in execution, but I still think that it, like Snakes on a Plane, is a better movie in your imagination than it is in reality.

Horror Fest Day Two: 1408

I get it. Now that I've watched both cuts, I understand why people have a bad taste in their mouth for watching 1408, if not outright hatred.

1408 is a movie with a very simple premise: Guy investigates haunted hotel rooms, finds the ultimate haunted room, spends the night. Shit happens. For the purposes of this kind of movie, it's basically a one man show, and if you're looking for a guy who can go unhinged and still maintain credibility, you can't do much better than John Cusack.

Cusack plays Mike Enslin, a guy who had a promising future as a writer and then gave it up to pen trashy books about the degree of "haunted-ness" a place has on a five skull rating system (cute). After we see him debunk one and get some idea of his limited fame, it's on to the big kahuna: a postcard saying "don't stay in 1408", the infamous haunted room of the Dolphin Hotel in New York. Of course Mike is going to check it out, otherwise we don't have a movie, so off we go.

The movie would have you believe that Samuel L. Jackson is the co-lead in 1408, but don't be fooled, dear reader: depending on which cut you watch, his role is either a cameo or an extended cameo, and nothing more. Yes, you get Sam Jackson and John Cusack in a room together once (maybe twice), and Jackson's job as Gerald Olin is to keep Enslin from staying in 1408, which leads to this exchange:

"Enslin: Most hotels have switched to magnetics. An actual key. That's a nice touch, it's antiquey.

Olin: We have magnetic cards also, but electronics don't seem to work in 1408.
Hope you don't have a pacemaker.

Enslin: [into his tape recorder] General manager claims that the phantom in room interferes ...

Olin: I have *never* used the word "phantom."

Enslin: Oh, I'm sorry. Uh, spirit? Specter?

Olin: No, you misunderstand. Whatever's in 1408 is nothing like that.

Enslin: Then what is it?

Olin: It's an evil fucking room."

And evil it is; the build up once Enslin gets inside of 1408 is nothing short of awesome, because for the first little bit you can argue either way about whether the room is evil or that Olin is fucking with Mike, but when 1408 finally asserts itself, all hell breaks loose and the movie kicks into high gear, and stays that way for about an hour.

Then something happens. Something that just doesn't work with this kind of movie, and it's sustained way too long, and even I got impatient, wondering when they'd get this shit over with and get back to the REAL plot, which they eventually do. Depending on which version you watch, the movie is either a) slavaged, but not saved, or b) totally wasting your two hours.

I urge anyone interested in seeing 1408 to find the two disc version, because the Director's Cut on disc two is the only thing that's going to keep you from totally feeling gypped in the end. After I watched the ending that went to theatres, I was bitterly disappointed. It's a total cop out, and thematically just doesn't fit with the trip Enslin takes in the rest of the film. The director's cut is darker, but so much more appropriate, with a final image that makes sense considering everything else you've seen come before it. It's still not enough to totally wipe out the stumble two thirds of the way in, but at least it doesn't make everything nice and happy.

Up next:....? Maybe From Beyond. I haven't decided.

Tonight is probably going to be 3-D night, but failing that, we're going to watch 28 Weeks Later, Planet Terror, The Monster Squad, Night of the Comet, The Call of Cthulhu, and part of Death Proof, if not more stuff.

So move your dead bones on over here, you slackers!