THOR: THE DARK WORLD: A Marvel Mess Of A Sorry Super Hero Sequel

Now playing at multiplexes in all of the 9 realms:

THOR: THE DARK WORLD

(Dir. Alan Taylor, 2013)

One thing certainly hasn’t changed for me in this follow-up to both Kenneth Branaugh’s 2011 origin story, and Joss Whedon’s 2012 super hero ensemble smash THE AVENGERS:’s Thor, portrayed by Chris Hemsworth, remains my least favorite member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


However Hemsworth, who showed some decent chops in Ron Howard’s RUSH earlier this year, isn’t the one to blame. It’s the fault of screenwriters Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely who fail to make the Norse God into much of a compelling character. They also don’t succeed in creating much excitement in their unwieldly plotline, which I struggled to follow through tons of nonsensical exposition and a bunch of boring set pieces.

This installment deals with Thor being forced to team up with Loki (Tom Hiddleston, reprising his villainous role from THOR and THE AVENGERS) in order to stop an ancient race of Dark Elves led by Malakith (Christoper Eccleston) from conquering the 9 realms, of which Earth is one. Threading through this is the threat of a floating red fluid life force called the Aether that infects Thor’s love interest, the returning Natalie Portman.

Also reprising their roles from the first one are Anthony Hopkins as Thor’s father, Idris Elba as Norse God Heimdall, Stellan Skarsgård as Dr. Erik Selvig, Rene Russo as Thor’s stepmother, and for comic relief there's Kat Dennings, taking a break from her trashy sitcom Two Broke Girls.

So there’s a likable cast caught up in all this mayhem, and fans of the formula will surely appreciate the surprise appearance from one of the other Avengers, the obligatory Stan Lee cameo, and the requisite after the credits stinger, (sadly Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson doesn't pop up as he’s busy with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. these days), but these elements just don't have their usual zing here.


No matter how high they try to make the stakes, what with the fate of the universe hanging in the balance, it never really seems like Thor or anybody or anything is in any danger. 



As you’ve probably seen in the trailers, Thor obliterates a ginormous rock monster into tiny boulder bits with just one swing of his mighty hammer and then casually tosses off a standard action hero one-liner: “Anyone else?” This got a big laugh at the screening I attended, but I groaned. The scene is intended for us to be impressed by the power of our protagonist, but for me it perfectly displays that the indestructible Thor is one smug douche. And people say Superman is boring.

Of course, we don’t trust Loki to begin with so none of the twists in their scenario have any impact, but there’s a little fun to be had with Hemsworth and Hiddleston’s bickering - a little. 



Unfortunately again there’s zero chemistry between Hemsworth and Portman, who acts like she’s an awkward lovesick character in a fluffy rom com, except when she’s in an alien space junk-induced trance in strained close-ups.

THOR INTO DARKNESS, sorry, THOR: THE DARK WORLD doesn’t even try to be bigger and better than the first one. It’s just another big ass CGI-saturated sequel outfitted in useless 3D – seriously, I can’t recall a single instance of the imagery being helped by the tediously trendy device.

The only real surprise for me was the odd bit of casting of Chris O’Dowd, the Irish comic actor who comedy fans know as Kristen Wiig's love interest in BRIDESMAIDS and Roy in the British sitcom The IT Crowd, as a guy who goes on a blind date with Portman early on in the movie before Thor returns to earth.

O’Dowd is only in two scenes: the date scene which gets interrupted by Dennings, and a later bit in which O’Dowd phones Portman for a second date, and his signal somehow helps her and Thor reconnect to another realm or something, I can’t remember exactly how.


O’Dowd is on the sidelines disconnected from all the chaotic events, with no character being straight with him, or caring that he has no idea what’s going on. In the mist of this Marvel mess, I so know how he felt.



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ALL IS LOST: the Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at an indie art house near you:



ALL IS LOST (Dir. J.C. Chandor, 2013)

After his last few preachy pleas for relevancy (LIONS FOR LAMBS and THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, which he both produced and directed), Robert Redford has redeemed himself with his role as a man stranded at sea in ALL IS LOST, J.C. Chandor’s follow-up to his directorial debut MARGIN CALL.



Set, as titles tell us, “170 nautical miles from the Sumatra straits” over eight days, the film starts with Redford being awakened on his yacht by water gushing into his cabin. While he was sleeping, his boat had hit a large stray shipping container floating in the Indian Ocean.



Things don't look that bleak at first, as Redford patches up the hole, and bails out the water, but a violent storm that's soon approaching ensures that his boat is in big danger.



Apart from an opening monologue via voice-over concerning last regrets and apologies, we barely hear Redford speak, and we don't get any back story about his character or get any idea where he's going or why. All we can deduce is that he's a smart resourceful guy, who's wealthy enough to own an expensive yacht.



But despite still having a lot of fight left in him, the 77-year old can't seem to get a break as whenever he thinks he's found some breathing space, a few moments of safety, another life threatening predicament rears its head.



It's a very sad scene indeed when his boat completely sinks and our protagonist, who's only credited as “Our Man,” moves to an inflatable raft, with only a few cans of food, some potable water, and several flares to get him by.



Redford is able to head his raft to the shipping lanes, but he finds that it's extremely difficult to get seen by the large passing cargo ships, even when firing off flares. 



Desperate, defeated, sun burned, broken down, and surrounded by sharks, Redford doesn't just drop an f-bomb at one of his lowest moments; he launches it into the heavens, cursing all creation for what looks like will be his ultimate doom.



ALL IS LOST feels longer than its 106 minute running time, but I mean that in a good way, as it's a riveting journey that never drags as it takes us intensely step-by-step through Redford's worsening situation, and wrings every bit of emotion possible out of it.



The ocean here, starkly shot by cinematographers Frank G. De Marco and Peter Zuccarini, is as vast and scary as outer space is in GRAVITY, another 2013 tale of survival under extreme circumstances that shares similar levels of stressful scariness.



In this spare yet engrossing as Hell story, Redford gets off of his Sundance soap box ass, and reminds us how committed and vital an actor he still is.



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New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 11/5/13

As I wrote in my review last summer, I found Roland Emerich’s WHITE HOUSE DOWN, to be bigger, dumber, and a lot more fun than Antoine Fuqua’s like-minded OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN from earlier in the year. But guess which one was more successful and is getting a sequel? That’s right, not the one I liked. Oh well, maybe Emerich’s Jamie Foxx/Channing Tatum vehicle can pick up more of an audience when it releases on home video today in a Two Disc Combo (Blu-ray / DVD + UltraViolet Digital Copy) package and a single DVD editon (+UltraViolet Digital Copy).

WHITE HOUSE DOWN’s Special Features include a Gag Reel, a bunch of featurettes with interviews, behind-the-scenes breakdowns, and an examination of the contributions of Cinematographer Anna J. Foerster equaling around an hour.

A summer hit that I proudly missed, Dennis Dugan’s GROWN UPS 2, the second go around with Adam Sandler and his buddies ( Kevin James, Chris Rock, and David Spade, but this time not Rob Schneider), also drops today on 2-disc Blu ray combo, and 1 disc DVD editions. Special Features on the film that grossed over $240 million despite having only a 7% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes include Deleted Scenes equaling only a few minutes, and less than 10 minutes of featurettes. Surprising, as I thought they’d really load this sucker up with much more crap, but in this case, less is definitely more.

Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK, Peter Landesman’s PARKLAND, which takes its name from the hospital where Kennedy was taken after being shot, comes out this week also in 2-disc Blu ray and single disc DVD editions. Zac Efron, Ron Livingston, Billy Bob Thornton, Gil Bellows, Colin Hanks, and Paul Giamatti star in this depiction of the world-changing events in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 through the next few days after. Special Features: Director's commentary with Landesman, and Deleted Scenes.

Peter Jackson's THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (2012) gets its inevitable Extended Edition box this week, with a new commentary by Filmmaker Peter Jackson and co-writer Philippa Boyens and a ton of featurettes, on 3D Blu ray and DVD, alongside TWILIGHT FOREVER: The Complete Saga Box Set, which captures all the TWILIGHT films together with bonus material aplenty on 10 Blu ray discs, and 12 DVDs.

Also out today: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's Kristen Wiig vehicle GIRL MOST LIKELY, James Franco's William Faulkner adaptation AS I LAY DYING, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedmans' LOVELACE (starring Amanda Seyfried as '70s porn star Linda Lovelace), Edward Burn's comedy drama THE FITZGERALD FAMILY CHRISTMAS, Greg Mattola's Larry David HBO telefilm CLEAR HISTORY, Gilles Bourdo's French biopic RENOIR, and Aram Rappaport's marketing comedy SYRUP.

On the older films front there's the 30th Anniversary Edition of Philip Kaufman's THE RIGHT STUFF, ELF: 10TH Anniversary, Bob Clark's comedy classic A CHRISTMAS STORY: 30th Anniversary, Burny Mattinson's MICKEY'S CHRISTMAS CAROL: 30the Anniversary Special Edition, and Richard Donner's SCROOGED: 25th Anniversary Edition.

The A & E reality series Duck Dynasty celebrates the upcoming season with their DVD-only release I'm Dreaming of a Redneck Christmas, which repackages the finale for season 2 finale as a stand alone holiday release. This appears to be a greedy move as one can get the entire season for just a few dollars more so buyer beware.



Other TV season sets releasing today include Mad Men: Season 6, Law & Order: The Thirteenth Year, Magic City: The Complete Second Season, Saved By The Bell: The Complete Collection, Ice Road Truckers: Season 7, Boy Meets World: Complete Collection and the entire run of the popular BBC comedy Absolutely Fabulous aptly named Absolutely All Of It.



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ENDER’S Big Screen Video GAME

Now playing at a multiplex near you:

ENDER’S GAME (Dir. Gavin Hood, 2013)

Two things I’m not going to do: compare this film to Orson Scott Card’s original 1985 novel, and recount the controversy over the author’s outspoken hatred of homosexuals. This is because I haven’t read the book, and the views of Card, who hails from my home state North Carolina, are well documented on these internets, as are the calls within the LGBT community to boycott the movie.

As its #1 at the box office (take that, boycott!), audiences have found what I found out when attending an advance screening last week - Gavin Hood’s ENDER’S GAME is, simply put, a rock solid sci-fi flick.



It’s also one of the most successful attempts to make a big screen video game vividly come alive, something that Hollywood has been trying to do since the early ‘80s in movies like TRON and THE LAST STARFIGHTER. Here, the tried and true premise of kids’ gaming skills being put to the test in actual intergalactic combat fully envelops the viewer like never before, largely thanks to its lavish IMAX scope.

Set in the year 2086, in which Earth has been attacked by an alien race called the “Formics” (they were called “Buggers” in the book, but that could be seen as an anti-gay slur), and the International Fleet is training a bunch of young cadets via intense simulations and drills to be able to fight off the next invasion. The star pupil, Ender Wiggin (the brilliant Asa Butterfield from HUGO), is recruited by Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) and Major Anderson (Viola Davis, always making the most out of supporting roles) to attend Battle School, located on an elaborate space station orbiting the earth.

War game after war game goes by, with Butterfield sharpening his skills under Ford’s tutelage. Man, there is a lot of over serious strategizing, and military minded mumbo jumbo, but Hood, who adapted Card’s novel for the film’s screenplay, keeps it all moving with an entertaining precision aided by sparkling visuals.

Hailee Steinfeld (TRUE GRIT) puts in a poignant performance as one of Butterfield’s classmates who becomes his best friend and ally, while Moisés Arias (KINGS OF SUMMER) affectively flares his nostrils as a pint sized adversary along the way to the inevitably climatic battle simulation, which houses the film’s big thematic fake-out.

In what will likely become his fourth major franchise, Ford tops his almost unrecognizable role in Brian Helgeland’s Jackie Robinson biopic 42 earlier this year, by showing he can give a damn again as the gruff Graff. Ford’s iconic presence is one that Butterfield’s Ender and audiences trust, bringing a stately gravitas to his overseer position, and it’s enjoyable to see him act alongside Sir Ben Kingsley in a brief bit as half-Maori war legend Mazer Rackham sporting a pretty prominent face tattoo.

Despite growing up on STAR WARS and Star Trek, I don’t consider myself a sci-fi guy, and I’m certainly not a gamer, but ENDER’S GAME kept me interested with its neat narrative and absorbing sense of purpose. Anyone who’s felt the competition in the air of a locker room can attest to the tone that this film nails. It also deftly captures the coming-of-age realization of how manipulative the world of adulthood can be. 

Now, these are pretty fancy themes indeed to be embedded inside a film that could just function as eye candy. Hood’s adaptation of Card’s creation succeeds in being a big screen video game with a brain.

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12 YEARS A SLAVE: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now opening at a theater near me today, that is, exclusively in Raleigh at the Rialto Theater:




12 YEARS A SLAVE

(Dir. Steve McQueen, 2013)

12 YEARS A SLAVE, the third full length feature by 44-year old British filmmaker Steve McQueen, is going to be the movie that everybody feels that they absolutely have to see this season. But don’t go mistaking it for just another piece of big issue Oscar bait, for it’s a powerfully personal story driven by an exemplary performance that movie-goers will benefit greatly from experiencing.

The British born Chiwetel Ejiofor has shown he’s got the actorly goods before in numerous movie and television roles, but here he works his worry lines like never before as Solomon Northup, a New York native who was born free but kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841.

The film, based on the real life Northup’s 1853 autobiography of the same name, focuses without shuddering on Northup, renamed Platt by his abductors, as he tries to survive unspeakable conditions for over a decade on a Louisiana cotton plantation.

Ejiofor’s Northup would get beaten, brutally lashed, if he protests that he’s not a slave so he resigns himself to the misery of the hand he’s been dealt, and, despite the movie posters showing him on the run, largely doesn’t try to escape (on an errand he take off through the woods at one point but runs into some evil white men hanging slaves and thinks the better of it).

McQueen (wish he’d use a middle initial or something so people would stop asking me if he’s *THE* Steve McQueen) populates his film with recognizable actor folk like Paul Giamatti as a cold slave trader, Benedict Cumberbatch as a slave owning preacher, Paul Dano as a particularly abusive foreman, and Michael Fassbender as the worst of the worst slave drivers who constantly refers to Northup and his people only as his “property.”

All the white people aren’t evil however as Cumberbatch appears to have some compassion, and Brad Pitt (one of the film’s co-producers) shows up as a wizened Canadian carpenter and abolitionist, who just may be able to help Northup out.

Aided by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, who shot the director’s previous films, McQueen makes use of long takes and lingers on some shots in a effectively stirring manner that makes us feel what our poor protagonist is going through intensely. One scene, in which Dano strings up and attempts to lynch Northup, has our suffering lead left dangling with only the tips of his toes touching the ground as the other slaves continue their daily activities quietly behind him.

These harsh incidents are indeed hard to watch, but to fully appreciate the severity of what went down they are a vital necessity. Elements such as Adepero Oduye as one of Ejiofor’s fellow slaves crying uncontrollably over being separated from her children from one scene to the next are as harrowing and haunting as cinema can possibly achieve. Fassbender, who previously starred in McQueen’s SHAME, embodies a creature of pure cruelty so convincingly that you can feel the audience’s hatred of him in full force. There won’t be much sympathy for Sarah Paulson as his wife either, for she’s a wretched piece of wrong-minded menace as well.

Folks may compare it last year’s DJANGO UNCHAINED, but while they may share similar subject matter and may equal each other in the heavy abundance of the use of the “N-word,” Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist revenge fantasy was a cartoon compared to McQueen’s heartfelt and heartbreaking work here with its blindingly faithful to reality rawness.



12 YEARS A SLAVE is McQueen’s best film and one of the best of the year by far. It demands to be seen and felt by everybody who is unafraid to see and feel how somebody can endure such Hellish torture, and survive to tell their tale. It can seem like ancient history, especially as we now have a black President, but here we are reminded that it really wasn't that long ago that there were these horrible conditions in our country, and the repercussions of these injustices are still largely felt to this day. As Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”



It seems these days, the only way to even begin to get past such horrors is to fully acknowledge them. The unflinchingly honest 12 YEARS A SLAVE is here to make it even harder to look the other way.



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The Lame, Almost Laugh Free LAST VEGAS Isn't Completely Lifeless At Least

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

LAST VEGAS (Dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2013)

Four Oscar winners - Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, and Kevin Kline - join together for a film that will win no Oscars. The famous foursome play friends since childhood (forget that their ages range from 66 to 76) who hit Vegas for some bachelor party shenanigans in this crappy comedy that critics everywhere are calling THE HANGOVER for the geriatric set.

I’m not a fan of THE HANGOVER movies, but they at least have more of an attempt at a narrative; LAST VEGAS just piles on a bunch of city of sin set-piece ideas (the guys judge a bikini competition, get in a bar fight, pretend to be mob bosses, etc.) that seem right off the top of the head of the film’s screenwriter Dan Fogleman (CARS, CRAZY STUPID LOVE, THE GUILT TRIP).

The bare as bones back story is that in their youth, Douglas and De Niro’s characters had been in a love triangle of sorts with a girl who chose De Niro. The gruff as ever De Niro is now a widower who’s angry at Douglas, now engaged to woman half his age, for not coming to his wife’s funeral.

Other loose story threads are that Kline has been given a “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” card from his wife (Johanna Gleason) so he’s got a HALL PASS thing going on, and that Freeman is sneaking out on his overprotective son (Michael Ealy), who thinks his old man is going on a church retreat.

Another Oscar winner, Mary Steenburgen, pops up as a torch singer in a rundown lounge, all smiling and amused at the guy’s antics. Predictably Douglas and De Niro both fall for her in scenes devised to give the proceedings some emotional weight, but end up feeling shoehorned into this glib series of geezer sex gags.

There’s also the cringe-worthy scenario of the fellows bossing around Jerry Farrera (Turtle from Entourage). Their Parks Hotel concierge (Weeds’ Romany Malco) told Farrera that the guys are the heads of four crime syndicate families so he’d be scared into serving them. That obviously means that there’s terrible tough-guy jokes in the miserable mix to contend with too.

I have to say though, that castling Turtle does nail the air-headed Entourage guys-bonding-through-partying ethos the film is going for. The energy the leads put into their performances does elevate the flimsy material at times I also feel I should add.

But while it’s far from lifeless, LAST VEGAS is a lame, almost laugh-free, piece of PG-13 fluff that will please only incredibly undemanding crowds. 



It’s funny (funnier than anything in the movie, anyway) how Kline comes off like William H. Macy in WILD HOGS. That is, the one guy that you’d thought wouldn’t get caught slumming it up in such commercial dreck like this. However, more power to him because he looks like he’s having a better time than anybody else onscreen. I can't help thinking that his character and performance so deserve to be part of a much better movie.

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New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 10/29/13

This week, one of last summer’s biggest hits shares its home video release date with one of the summer’s biggest bombs: Dan Scanlon’s Pixar prequel MONSTER’S UNIVERSITY, which grossed over $700 million, and Robert Schwentke’s supernatural spoof R.I.P.D., which barely made back 10% of its $130 million budget. MONSTER’S UNIVERSITY, featuring Billy Crystal and John Goodman reprising their roles as Mike and Sullivan from 2002’s MONSTER’S, INC., is available in a 3 disc Blu ray edition (Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy), and on a single disc DVD. Special Features include a bunch of featurettes, Art Galleries, Promo Picks, the 7 minute animated short BLUE UMBRELLA, and a audio commentary with co-writer/director Scanlon, producer Kori Rae and story supervisor Kelsey Mann.

Amid lots of critic's cracks that it looked like a lame remake of MEN IN BLACK, I skipped R.I.P.D. along with the rest of civilization when it briefly played in theaters last July. The flop comedy starring Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds as deceased policemen patrolling the afterlife is now out in spiffy 2 disc Blu ray (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD with UltraViolet) and 1 disc DVD editions. Special Features: Alternate Openings, Alternate/Deleted Scenes, over 30 minutes of featurettes, and Gag Reel.

Baille Walsh’s acclaimed 2012 rock doc about The Boss and his fans, SPRINGSTEEN & I, drops today in single disc Blu ray and DVD editions. Special Features include Springsteen’s Hard Rock Calling 2012 performance, in which Paul McCartney joins in with Bruce on “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “Twist and Shout”; 28 minutes of Fan Submissions, and over 10 minutes of “Meet the Fans.” Yep, this release is really fan-centric.


Also out today: Neil Jordan’s British-Irish Vampire film BYZANTIUM, Justin Kreutzmann’s concert film of tribute: Move Me Brightly: Celebrating Jerry Garcia's 70th Birthday, and Henry Saine’s sci-fi thriller BOUNTY KILLER.

On the older film out today front, there’s the Criterion Collection edition of Michelangelo Antonioni's 1961 classic LA NOTTE, Brian De Palma's 1978 cult horror flick THE FURY, Harold Cronk's Christmas comedy SILVER BELLS, and another title from the Pixar franchise division, CARS 3D: The Ultimate Collector's Edition.



TV series sets releasing this week: Christopher Guest's Family Tree: The Complete First Season, Degrassi Season 12, Line of Duty: Series 1, Damages: The Complete Series, and Agatha Christie's Poirot: Series 9.





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