SLED ASTRAY

Check out my review, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Red One...

...the silly but fun holiday action comedy with Dwayne Johnson, J.K. Simmons, Chris Evans and Lucy Liu, now in the multiplexes.

A LIGHTYEAR IN THE LIFE

Opening this weekend:

Lightyear--At the beginning of this animated feature from Disney/Pixar we are informed that back in 1995, a little boy named Andy got a toy from his favorite movie. "This is that movie."

The reference, of course, is to Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, the "Space Ranger," voiced in that film by Tim Allen, who competed for Andy's affections with Woody, the cowboy voiced by Tom Hanks. In this new feature Buzz, voiced here by Chris Evans, is the troubled hero of a far-flung sci-fi yarn. At the beginning Buzz, an intrepid hero in the Roger Ramjet vein, screws up while exploring a habitable but dangerous planet, with the result that a huge, radish-shaped spaceship full of scientists in suspended animation gets marooned there.

In trying to resume the space odyssey, Buzz makes repeated attempts to achieve "hyperspace," always falling short, and skipping ahead years each time. He keeps returning from these failed test flights to find a larger and more settled colony than he left, always seemingly less interested in leaving the planet; his fellow Space Ranger and best friend Alisha (Uzo Aduba) is also grayer and has moved on further with her life each time.

The movie has plenty of humor--the best of it, perhaps, from Buzz's deadpan, blandly capable robot cat Sox, voiced by Peter Sohn (Sox reminded me a little of Rags, Woody Allen's robot dog in Sleeper, though Sox proves far more useful). But Lightyear doesn't really have the tone of a comedy; it's surprisingly ambitious and surprisingly poignant. It's about the pain of living with our mistakes, and about the speed with which our lifetimes seem to get away from us.

Like so many of the Pixar films, it's an impressive, thematically complex piece of work. But despite a second act in which Buzz and his band of pals, voiced by the likes of Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi and Dale Soules, battle invading robots, this isn't a rollicking space opera, and it's a little hard to imagine it being Andy's favorite movie.

Culturally, what may be most significant about the film is that it includes a same-sex marriage, complete with a kiss. The significance isn't so much in the relationship itself, which is peripheral to the story, but rather in the splendidly matter-of-fact manner with which it comes across. Again, it belies the supposed conceit of the movie; it's hard to imagine the intensity of the reaction this element would have stirred up in 1995. But it's cheering to note how commonplace it seems today.

SUPERFEUD

Opening this week: 

Captain America: Civil War—In March it was Batman and Superman that couldn’t get along; now it’s the gang over at Marvel. The U.N. wants the Avengers to agree to regulation. Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) thinks it’s a good idea. Captain America (Chris Evans) doesn’t want anyone telling him what he should and shouldn’t do.

I’ve become a bit of a curmudgeon about the current run of superhero flicks; technically eye-popping though they are, most of them seem overlong and humorless to me. That’s true of Civil War too, but I will say I enjoyed it more than Batman v Superman. About midpoint the quarrel leads Iron Man and his pals into a brawl with Cap and his pals at an airport, and the goofy, semi-slapstick action and the trading of corny quips between adversaries really conjured up the fun of reading an old-school comic. For once, the movie didn’t feel like Wagner without the arias.

The point of contention between Iron Man and Cap is, I suppose, a fair dramatization of a central conflict in the American attitude toward the rule of law, especially international law. But whichever side with which you may sympathize ideologically, there’s little doubt of which leading man wins this Civil War from an acting standpoint—Downey is as manically vibrant as ever, while poor Evans is as pleasantly bland a leading man as you can find in American movies right now.

Also adding some liveliness is Paul Rudd, returning as Ant-Man, Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther, and Tom Holland as another new Spider-Man. Spidey gets a new Aunt May his time, too—Marisa Tomei. Yes, that’s right; since the first Spider-Man flick back in 2002 the role of Aunt May has gone from Rosemary Harris to Sally Field to Marisa freakin’ Tomei. It’s a bit of a jolt to realize that Aunt May is two years younger than I am (and looks at least ten years younger).

STRANGENESS ON A TRAIN

Summertime tends to be sci-fi time at the American movies, and so far this summer is no exception. Opening this week:

Snowpiercer—This one begins with the release of a cooling agent, something like “Ice Nine” in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, to combat global warming. The world immediately freezes and, according to the opening exposition, “all life became extinct.” This would be rather anticlimactic, so the movie contradicts itself at once: A remnant of society remains, riding a futuristic supertrain in a constant, annual loop around the snowbound earth.

The train’s “Tail Section” houses the ragged underclass, kept in check by armed guards and fed on nasty-looking cubes of protein gel. A band of revolutionaries led by Curtis (Chris Evans) and a wizened old sage, Gilliam (John Hurt) makes a charge toward the front of the train, where the first-class passengers live in decadent luxury. Once past the more brutal and unsavory security forces, each car along the way is increasingly swanky and bizarre—the revolutionaries storm aquariums, sushi bars, schoolhouses, beauty salons and discos. Central to the plot are such initially baffling elements as hard-boiled eggs, tape measures and apparently the last two cigarettes in the world.

Based on a French comic book (Le Transperceniege), this is the work of Bong Joon-ho, the brilliant Korean who made The Host. For a while I couldn’t decide if Snowpiercer was the silliest piece of camp in years or the most blisteringly profound allegory for modern society since Hobbes’ Leviathan, but after a while I realized I didn’t have to choose—either way, the movie is never boring.

The cast is superb—it includes Jamie Bell, Ed Harris, Song Kang-ho and Ah-sung Ko (both from The Host), Octavia Spencer, Alison Pill and, best of all, Tilda Swinton, hilarious as a toadying minor official. The design of the train is a series of nutty surprises, and the music, by Marco Beltrami, is stirring. Snowpiercer is savagely violent at times, and has episodes that fall flat, but overall it’s one of the weirdest and most fascinating sci-fi movies to come down the track in a long time.

Earth to Echo—Three preteen friends are about to be separated by the eminent domain destruction of their Nevada subdivision. They decide to have one more big adventure together, so they ride their bikes out to the middle of the desert, tracking a digital signal, and there find a cute little cybernetic alien, apparently marooned. They dub him Echo and quickly figure out how to communicate with him. Soon, joined by a pretty girl they like, they’re helping Echo gather parts to repair himself and return to his spaceship.

The movie is a collection of motifs from ‘80s kids’ fantasy/adventure movies—most obviously E.T., both in its storyline and in certain visual nods, like the creepy, amorphous mob of human researchers chasing the boys, flashlights in hand. But there are also hints of The Goonies, Explorers, maybe even Stand By Me, and Echo looks a bit like Bubo the clockwork owl in the original Clash of the Titans. This gives the film a pleasing throwback quality, and the young leads create a likable sense of loyalty to each other.

Still in theatres:

Transformers: Age of Extinction—Because the Transformers toys came along after my own childhood, I don’t have the sentimental attachment to them that boys who were kids in the ‘80s do. And the first two big-budget Transformers blockbusters starred Shia LeBeouf, whose appeal, I’m afraid, was lost on me. So those films left me cold.

But this new sequel features robotic dinosaurs, and I’ve always been partial to dinosaurs. And instead of LeBeouf in the male lead, it features Mark Wahlberg, who I also like (though not as much as I like dinosaurs). So I was prepared to like this movie.

Well, it has some splendid otherworldy spectacle. The director, Michael Bay, doesn’t seem to have an ounce of restraint in his personality, but he is able to stage scenes in which robotic giants amble nonchalantly through settings of burnished Americana, as if Isaac Asimov’s imagination had somehow invaded the vision of Norman Rockwell, and this stuff is executed seamlessly by the special effects team.

All that said, this move is dumb, and so outrageously overlong that it feels, somehow, like an act of aggression. It’s nearly three hours long. It’s almost an hour longer than Citizen Kane. It’s more than an hour longer than Casablanca. And you don’t even get to see the robot dinosaurs until near the end. If you really want to see it, wait for the DVD.

OVER THE CAP

There are many exciting, ingeniously-directed scenes in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the extravagant sequel to 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger.

On the deck of a ship, for instance, the Marvel hero (Chris Evans) engages in an extended scrap with a French pirate that looks like some sort of folk dance. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) holds off an attack by gunmen dressed as cops from inside his heavily fortified SUV. A little later, Cap finds himself surrounded by turncoat enemies in an elevator, and all hell breaks loose in the enclosed space.

These sequences and others are cleverly executed by directors Anthony and Joe Russo. The movie also has Scarlett Johansson going for it—she’s drolly alluring as Cap’s butt-kicking ally Black Widow. I enjoyed Johansson’s gentle prodding of the less-than-electric Evans, but overall, when the end credits of Captain America: The Winter Soldier arrive, it’s more a relief than anything.

The 2011 film, which squared Cap off against his nemesis Red Skull, was a period piece, circa WWII, which maybe gave it a bit more snap and flavor than some of the other Marvel flicks of recent years. Cap was frozen in that film and thawed-out in contemporary times, and the new movie pits him, along with Black Widow and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and a few other good guys, against cyborg menace Winter Soldier. It’s watchable, but it gets bogged down in too many interminable shoot-outs and chases, and a lengthy finale involving giant airships.

Indeed, it suffers from the same problem—though I may be in the minority in regarding it as a problem—as most recent superhero flicks: None of them seem to know When To Quit. They dawdle on, climax after climax and then coda after coda, even interrupting the end credits for a now-obligatory parting shot. My best guess is that, having charged us so much for our tickets, they’re terrified that we’re going to feel we haven’t gotten enough for our money.