SUPER MAX DEAL

Opening in theaters today...

Superman--It's excellent, so a certain poet has told us, to have a giant's strength, but tyrannous to use it like a giant. Before James Gunn's Superman has started, the title character (David Corenswet) has pre-emptively interceded to stop the invasion of one country by another, without causalities and in near-certainty that in so doing he has prevented murder and oppression. It's obvious to him that he's done the right thing, but even so, his action strikes some as overbearing, and public opinion of the Man of Steel shifts.

This is all connected, it turns out, to the scheming of Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) to neutralize Superman and consolidate sanctioned power. Superman ends up imprisoned and subjected to torture by kryptonite in an interdimensional "pocket universe" run by Lex. Clark Kent's girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and her colleagues at the Daily Planet are on the case, as, with varying degrees of urgency, are Superman's pals in "The Justice Gang."

Best of all, he's got a dog on his side. Krypto, introduced in the comics in 1955, finally gets a proper live action screen treatment here, in a vivid CGI rendering. As in the comics, Gunn depicts the superdog as a sweet-natured and well-intentioned but not always well-behaved creature; he could use a PetSmart obedience class. But he's still a good boy.

Gunn's achievement with this new movie is considerable. The writer-director has managed to make a version that feels original and imaginative, but also authentic; it truly looks and feels like Superman, as much as the George Reeves or Christopher Reeve or Kirk Alyn films or any earlier versions. It's not a perfect movie by a long shot, but it's bold and fun and cheerfully messy; its virtues far outweigh its faults.

Gunn also explores some stimulating ideas here, as if in response to anyone who might wonder if this superficially naive American myth has anything left to teach us. Among these themes is the question--always relevant to interventionist-minded America--of whether omnipotence, even if it was possible and even if it was linked to genuinely good intentions, would inevitably lead to correct action.

It's hard, as it is so often with comic-book and fantasy films these days, not to read contemporary allegorical significance into them. In his spite and resentful envy, Lex seems a lot like our current president; on the other hand, in his calculated efforts to take over our military-industrial power structure, he also seems quite a lot like our current president's biggest donor. As played by Hoult, however, he's more appealing than either of them.

Hoult's performance is one of many in what feels like a truly ensemble cast. Corenswet is one of the few actors to play this role who are at least as charming as Superman as he is in Clark Kent drag. Gunn's attempt to give an explanation as to why nobody sees through Superman's transparent disguise is unnecessary, however; it's just an accepted convention, like a Shakespearean heroine undetectably disguising herself as a boy.

Brosnahan may be the sexiest of all Lois Lanes, or at least since Phyllis Coates back in the first season of the TV show, and she's plucky and loyal and lovable too. Skyler Gisondo makes a fine, competent Jimmy Olsen, Wendell Pierce gets little screen time as Perry White but feels right, and Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Hall are touchingly more rustic than usual as Clark's Smallville parents. On the superhero side, Edi Gathegi is a hoot as a dour, taciturn Mister Terrific; so is Nathan Fillion as a dyspeptic, self-impressed Green Lantern (of the Guy Gardner vintage).

This Superman is overambitious, and more than a little uneven. What I liked least about it was the pocket universe. It gets the movie in over its head, front-loading Lex with too much power. If he can puncture and fracture space and time like this, why should he worry about getting the government's permission for anything?

My distaste for this device goes beyond this point of plausibility, though. If anyone's asking (no one seems to be) I would invite superhero flicks to take a nice long break from dimensional portals, and time/space rifts and alternate universes (except with Dr. Strange, of course; that's his shtick). Also, from crumbling buildings. Enough with the crumbling buildings. It's time to shake off that post-9/11 mentality.

What I liked best about the movie, however, is what it isn't: It isn't "dark." It isn't brooding, or gritty, or cynical. The title character isn't, in the usual sense, cool; Superman uses words like "golly" and "gosh" and Gunn doesn't seem to mean it as camp, or to be more than gently mocking his hero. Even Lois rolls her eyes at Clark's guilelessness here, but he's unperturbed, and so was I, as a viewer. It's taken this genre a long time to work its way around to the idea that being an unabashed, unapologetic good guy is truly punk rock. But it's been worth the trip.

Sorry, Baby--Agnes, a young professor, lives alone in a farmhouse in the Massachusetts woods. It could be the setting for an old-school scary movie, but this film is about a more appallingly common sort of horror.

As the movie starts, Agnes (Eva Victor) is welcoming her best friend and former roomie Lydie (Naomie Ackie) for a visit. The two share a blankie on the couch and catch up on their lives, talking with hilarity about the follies of sex. They're having fun, but it's clear that something heavy from the past hangs in the air. Gradually, in chapters that flash back and forward, we learn what it is: Agnes is a survivor of sexual assault.

Written and directed by star Victor, Sorry, Baby is a spectacular debut, restrained and economical yet emotionally intense, poignant yet frequently funny, unpredictable yet believable from beginning to end. Again and again, Victor catches us off guard, using suggestion and distance to get across an outrage, or undercutting misery with quiet but insistent comedy, or with the unexpected restorative grace of a "really good sandwich."

Agnes is a tour de force role, and Victor is devastatingly good, one minute displaying crisp comic timing, another the depths of psychological distress. The supporting cast is mostly for support, but Ackie is a pleasure as usual. Lucas Hedges is serviceable as the neighbor guy that helps Agnes start rebuilding trust, and John Carroll Lynch, reliable as ever, has an excellent scene as the stranger with the sandwich. As a rabidly competitive professional rival to Agnes, Kelly McCormack may seem a little caricatured, but probably less so if you've spent much time around academics.

Victor seems determined not to let the movie be oppressive; to give full measure to the crime that it's depicting but also to the beauty and joy that Agnes takes in life in spite of her trauma and loss. We see her teaching a lit class, and get a hint of her love of and skill at what she does. We see her find a kitten in the street, and how this relationship jolts her soul awake. Somehow all this makes the crime against her more infuriating, not less.

The sequence at the end that explains the title suggests that Agnes may find the hovering, solicitous worry of her friends almost as much of a burden as what's she's suffered. No doubt that's a common feeling for survivors, but I couldn't help it; the movie made me feel the same way her friends do.

Somewhere, perhaps, some other critic may be writing a dissent, feeling a more graphic, less tacit dramatization of sexual abuse is called for. Maybe they're right. But it's hard for me to imagine a movie that generated more understanding of the impact of sexual abuse on a victim. It's one of the best films of the year.

APOCALYPSE; MEOW

Opening:

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga--In the unlikely event that I'm ever asked to take the "Colbert Questionert" on Late Night, my answer to the question "Favorite Action Movie?" will be George Miller's 1981 Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. It would probably be on the list of my twenty or thirty favorite movies, all-time. So any later chapter in George Miller's postapocalyptic Down Under car chase franchise has a lot to live up to.

This fifth entry is a prequel, offering backstory on the one-armed warrior played by Charlize Theron in 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road. Turns out that Furiosa was abducted, as a child, from a "place of abundance" into the Wasteland, a vast desert region inhabited by gnarly motorcycle-borne pirates shuttling between three horribly symbiotic fiefdoms: The Citadel, Gas Town and The Bullet Farm.

The Citadel, a water source, is presided over by the masked warlord Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and filled with his bald, pale, mindlessly loyal followers the War Boys, who recall the acolytes of Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian. Gas Town refines the fuel that the Wasteland's countless motor vehicles burn; The Bullet Farm provides the munitions.

Furiosa is dragged into this miserable world as a girl (Alyla Browne) and ends up in the clutches of the gabby nomadic biker chieftain Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), who more than earns her grudge against him. Over the more than two-hour run of the movie, the grown-up version of Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) is carried along through Miller's lengthy showcase chases and battle scenes, which have the feel of movements in a symphony.

I saw this film in IMAX, with a large screening audience, and what I noticed is that every time one of Miller's mad, headlong, thundering action sequences wound down, the crowd was left quiet, mesmerized. The term "gripping" gets thrown out a lot in describing movies, but Furiosa truly grips. I liked but didn't love Fury Road; this one still falls shy of Road Warrior for me, but it's a majestic piece of filmmaking nonetheless.

There's no director quite like Miller. His action scenes are staged with an epic sweep but also with a macabre slapstick intricacy. His view of humanity seems deeply jaundiced; he's forever showing us people taking cruelty and indifference to their fellow humans to horrifying extremes, yet he does it with a casual humor, as if to say, of course we're capable of this.

Yet somehow this bleak outlook doesn't come across like cheap, sophomoric cynicism, and it isn't depressing. Partly this is because he always shows us decent human values struggling to hold on in this world, but it's also because the generous-hearted Miller imbues his characters, even the deplorable ones, with so much personality and grotesque glamour.

Taylor-Joy, with the jolting anger that takes over her almost inhumanly urchin face, fits the role perfectly. As her love interest, driver Praetorian Jack, handsome Tom Burke has a valiant and sympathetic appeal. But it's Hemsworth, his eyes wounded and his tone aggrieved every time somebody has the temerity to resist him, who really engages with the audience. The final clash between Dementus and Furiosa, featuring some of the best dialogue from the script (by Miller and Nico Lathouris), gets at the impulse to avenge with a subtlety that few action movies attempt. 

There can be little doubt that Miller's films have contributed to the dangerous illusion that many people, especially young men, seem to hold: that the collapse of civilization would be cool and liberating and fun. He should probably be censured for this, but it sure makes his movies exhilarating.

The Garfield Movie--Another origin story; this computer-animated yarn starts by tracing the humble beginnings of the indolent, lasagna-loving housecat from the calculatingly marketed comic strip by Jim Davis. Turns out that as a kitten, Garfield, voiced here by Chris Pratt, was left in an alley by his feral father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson) and met his devoted human Jon (Nicholas Hoult) when he saw him through the window of an Italian restaurant. His overeating is a psychological overcompensation for early want.

The rest of The Garfield Movie concerns our hero and his exuberant canine pal Odie getting abducted by the cronies of the Persian cat Jinx (Hannah Waddingham), who has a grudge against Vic. Somehow it all leads to an attempt to steal milk from a commercial dairy, and an alliance with a glowering, lovelorn bull (Ving Rhames, who's pretty funny).

Admirable as Pratt is as an easygoing onscreen star, his voice struck me as a bit generic for this character, after being performed in earlier iterations by such distinctive voices as Bill Murray and Lorenzo Music. But he's not bad, and the movie has imagination and a snappy, propulsive comic precision, not to mention a catchy theme song by Jon Batiste. It's inconsequential but slickly-made fun, and when it was over, I'll admit I went out for lasagna.

I WANT A NEW BUG

Opening in theaters this weekend:

Renfield--The wild-eyed, insect-gobbling toady to the Vampire Prince became a horror icon in his own right more than ninety years ago, when the great Dwight Frye unleashed his unforgettable giggle in Universal's original Dracula. It's a little surprising that he hasn't been given his own movie vehicle sooner.

But while Nicholas Hoult, who plays the title role in this horror spoof from Universal, briefly gets to do a respectable imitation of Frye's deranged laugh (hrrrr, hrrrr, hrrrrrrr....), he otherwise plays R. M. Renfield without mania, as a modest, mild-mannered, good-hearted fellow. He's also an action hero; munching bugs gives him superhuman strength and martial arts skills and recuperative powers.

His decades of servitude have made him reflective as well; he's come to entertain the possibility that he might just be in a toxic relationship with his boss. He's started attending a support group for people in a similar boat, both to explore his own emotional needs and to scout for victims--the abusers that people at the meetings describe--to serve as food to his convalescing sanguinary master.

The film is set in modern-day New Orleans, where Renfield has brought the charred remains of Dracula after the duo's last tangle with fearless vampire killers. The Count isn't looking well, but he's still able to bully and shame his poor lackey into submission, and he's a little more menacingly intact every time we see him. Then when Renfield comes to the attention of both a local crime family and of a New Orleans cop (Awkwafina) with an angry grudge against the gangsters, he must decide whose priorities he will focus on, Drac's or his own.

Directed by Chris McKay from a script by Ryan Ridley and a story by Robert Kirkman, Renfield is very silly and often heavy-handed. It's extremely gory, but like this February's Cocaine Bear, the gore is played strictly for laughs and lacks any true shock; it's too insubstantial to pack much punch even as a gross-out. The satirical points about modern self-help culture and pop psychology are trenchant enough, but they've pretty much exhausted themselves before the film is half over.

That said, Renfield is colorful, fast-moving and full of comedic invention, and Hoult is charming and easy to root for. Awkwafina pushes pretty hard, as she has in almost all her movies except The Farewell, but she also gets across an honest fury and grief, and when she lets herself connect with Hoult she lightens up agreeably. Shohreh Agdashloo has a gleefully sinister glint in her eyes as the queen of the crime family, Ben Schwartz is properly loath-able as her imbecilic son, and the support group offers some fine character players.

The movie would carry a lot less weight, however, without its other Nick. Growling through a mouth full of pointy teeth, seething with grievance at his reduced circumstances and unable to maintain the air of grand menace he's trying for, Nicholas Cage offers probably the goofiest parody version of Drac since George Hamilton in Love at First Bite back in 1979. Unlike Hamilton's, however, Cage's Count isn't meant to be lovable. Cage sinks his fangs into the role, and taps a rich vein of malignant narcissism.

NOTHING BUT THE FEST

The Phoenix Film Festival opens tonight; check out my short article, online at Phoenix Magazine...

...previewing the festival.

SISTERS ARE BUSTIN' IT FOR THEMSELVES

Opening this weekend:

Ghostbusters—Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones assume the title roles in this “reboot” of the 1984 slapstick-supernatural fave. Anticipation of the film has ranged from enthusiasm to hysterical outrage. Maybe because I liked but didn’t revere the original—full of favorites of mine, but not representing the greatest work of any of them—I went in with neither attitude, and was pleasantly surprised.

I’ve heard it theorized that the sexist fury over the distaff casting may have been exaggerated and harnessed to help market the film. That’s possible, I suppose—and admirable, if so—but I doubt that it was whole-cloth fabricated. About a decade and a half ago, I worked as a publicist for a comedy club, and I can attest that the wearying belief that “women aren’t funny,” at least not to the same degree as men, is genuinely held within the comedy world (Christopher Hitchens also notoriously forwarded the opinion).

This sensibility—comedy as a kind of machismo—may be shifting, however. With the possible exceptions of Kevin Hart and Seth Rogen, I can’t think of any male American comedy stars that are currently as reliably bankable in the movies as McCarthy and Wiig, and none that are more so. Somebody thinks these women are funny.

All of this, however, is of more sociological than cinematic interest. The new Ghostbusters, directed by Paul Feig, is no more a masterpiece than the old one, but it’s an engaging variation, hitting most of its iconic aspects—the New York setting, the hearse, Slimer, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and many cameos—while allowing the stars their own characterizations. Wiig is prim, McCarthy is brash, Jones is openhearted.

The wild card is the certifiable McKinnon, with her avid sidelong glances and her through-the-teeth tone of sly, conspiratorial intimacy. Also amusing is Chris Hemsworth as their brainless secretary; this male lead seems happy in the role of ditzy eye candy.

Equals—This sci-fi romance is set in a distant future in which everyone wears summery white and maintains a blandly polite, emotionless manner. It could be called Planet of the Cater-Waiters. Coworkers Nicholas Hoult and Kristen Stewart realize they're suffering from a dreaded condition called SOS—“Switched-On Syndrome"; possibly the movie’s wittiest gag—when they fall in love, and have to hide it. Eventually they find an underground of fellow “hiders,” that is, secretly emotional people.

Directed by Drake Doremus from a script by Nathan Parker, this cross between Romeo and Juliet and Brave New World seems slightly campy at first—a hushed, austere version of '70s dystopias like THX 1138 or ZPG or Zardoz or Rollerball or Logan's Run. But it gradually finds its own voice, gathers emotional force toward the end, and proves an ingenious gem.

THRUSH HOURS, RUSH HOURS

Opening today:

Pitch Perfect 2—The 2012 comedy to which this is the sequel was set in the world of collegiate competitive a cappella groups. It had adorable young actresses, beautiful singing, and catty wit offset by a bit of heart, so on the whole, it was a fun couple of hours. It also had—and was, for me, marred by—some self-conscious, heavy-handed gross-out gags.

Pitch Perfect 2’s excuse for a plot has our heroines the Barden Bellas accidentally disgracing themselves at a Kennedy Center performance in front of the President. They’re pariahs in the a cappella community, but aim to redeem themselves at an international competition in Copenhagen. As they prepare for this, all sorts of wacky stuff happens, along with a bit of undemanding romance.

At the center of the ensemble, once again, is the charmingly commonsensical Anne Kendrick as Beca, supported by Brittany Snow, Rebel Wilson, Ester Dean, Hana Mae Lee and the rest of the gang from part one, along with additions Hailee Steinfeld and Chrissie Fit. Reprising their roles from part one are John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks as two cheerfully inappropriate play-by-play commentators.

Banks also took over directing duties this time, replacing the original’s Jason Moore, and I think the results are looser, sillier and funnier. Banks sustains the comic energy through some nutty extended sequences, like a competition between four vocal groups, and the big numbers have some spectacle and punch. The script, again by Kay Cannon, is dense with quizzical, non-sequitur verbal jokes that play surprisingly well, and when Kendrick and her pals sing a wistful version of her improbable hit “Cup Song” around the campfire, it manages even to be a little touching.

About the music: A friend of mine expressed doubt that the songs here were truly a cappella—it sounded to him like bass and percussion enhancement had been added. He could be right, and if he is I suppose I would find that a disappointing cheat. But even so, it sounds good.

Mad Max: Fury Road—1982’s Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is, I believe, arguably the best action movie ever made, at least of the chase variety. It would probably be somewhere in my top twenty or thirty favorite movies. So this follow up had a lot to live up to.

Set in the Down Under outback, The Road Warrior, a sequel to the 1979 low-budget actioner Mad Max, depicts a not-too-distant future in which the world economy has collapsed in the wake of a global fuel shortage. Society in the desert has returned to tribalism and savagery, and gasoline is the only currency left for the marauding brutes that rocket along the desolate highways in motorcycles and hopped-up cars. A small, fortified colony of reasonably civilized people have developed a refinery, and are trying to move the cache of gas they’ve generated to a safe location near the sea, but they can’t get past the besieging army of the masked, hot-rod-riding warlord Humungus.

To the reluctant rescue comes the title character, the mysterious “road warrior” known as Max, played by Mel Gibson. This soul-wounded loner agrees to drive the armored tanker-truck for the colonists and fend off the onslaught of the freaky gas-pirates. The resulting climactic sequence, full of thrilling and often horrifying stunt work and the sustained kinetic direction of George Miller, is, for my money, the most headlong, jaw-dropping, Wagnerian motor-vehicle chase ever put on film.

The 1985 sequel Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome wasn’t as good, and with the new film clearly employing heavy doses of CGI effects, I had my doubts that Miller could recapture the earlier classic’s remarkable quality. And he doesn’t, quite—The Road Warrior remains without peer. But happily, Mad Max: Fury Road is still a very potent action movie, and the second best of the series.

Miller has lost none of his directorial panache—Fury Road casually offers up everything from two-headed lizards to human dairy farming to combat inside a raging haboob. Along with this grotesque yet epic visual imagination, there’s a certain grandiosity, tinged with irony but still visceral, to Miller’s staging of violent action that is one-of-a-kind. His cutting has the speed and dazzle of modern action masters like, say, Paul Greengrass, but it also has a clarity and precision that give it a Rube Goldberg comic dimension, and a relentless momentum. There’s simply no filmmaker quite like him.

Fury Road benefits from having, like Road Warrior, a relatively straightforward storyline. Max finds himself helping similarly haunted, one-armed driver Charlize Theron transport a handful of the “breeders”—who look like refugees from a Victoria’s Secret ad—of a masked, rumbly-voiced warlord very similar to Humungus, to safety, wherever that might be. The path leads through a seemingly endless supply of bizarre vehicular killers.

As for Tom Hardy, he cuts a serviceably lively figure as Max, but—much as it galls me to admit it—he doesn’t have the electric presence of Mel Gibson. Unlike the somehow sullen Hardy, Gibson’s Max seemed…well, mad. Maybe he wasn’t acting.

WALKING TALL

A story with a hero named Jack is always promising. The Ripper aside, fictional Jacks tend to be plucky, resourceful working-class fellows who overcome adversity through courage and native wit, without benefit of being knights or princes. Indeed, in latter-day retellings they sometimes even get the Princess—and while killing a giant may be impressive, being accepted by the 1% is truly the stuff of fairy tale

The Cornish folktales known since at least the 18th Century as Jack the Giant Killer have been adapted for the movies at least once already, in a pleasant 1962 version manifestly made in imitation of the Ray Harryhausen classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. The lavish new version opening today, directed by Bryan Singer and called Jack the Giant Slayer, borrows elements from the earlier film but applies them to a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk.

The new movie’s Jack is played by Nicholas Hoult of Warm Bodies, whose long, homely-handsome face lends itself to the idea of a farm-boy hero. The script, by Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney, cleverly makes Jack’s acquisition of the Magic Beans plausible without either violating the spirit of the story or making him a hopeless dupe. The plot is also embellished to add a sweet Princess (Eleanor Tomlinson), a fretful King (Ian McShane), a scheming rat of a courtier-villain (Stanley Tucci, sly as ever), and a valiant guardsman (Ewan McGregor), among other secondary characters, all effective.

But of course this movie must stand or fall by its giants, and it’s nice to report that they’re terrific—squalid and scabby and scary, but with a certain uncouth grandeur and with pungently distinctive characterizations, from the two-headed alpha male (the left head voiced by Bill Nighy, the gibbering right by John Kassir) down through various aggrieved subordinates and malcontents. They have pathos and a bitter dignity along with their menace; you want to see them defeated, but you don’t hate them.

When episodic high fantasy of this sort is done right—soberly but not somberly, with unpretentious high spirits, a generous heart and a well-structured story that sticks to the rules it sets up—it can offer one of the keenest pleasures of which the movies are capable. Jack the Giant Slayer comes closer to nailing this atmosphere than any I’ve seen in a while, much closer than the remake of Clash of the Titans from a couple of years back.

I don’t think I could ever feel as warmly toward CGI effects as I do toward stop-motion, but that’s personal nostalgia. And it should be said that Giant Slayer is likely to be a little too frightening for smaller kids. But that’s not a criticism either; it just means that they’ve taken their giants with proper seriousness. Jack the Giant Slayer is a strong entertainment. Only in its final minute or two does it strike a very slightly sour note, when it links the story’s legacy to an ongoing aristocratic fetish that is unworthy of a self-respecting Jack.