The latest film by Noah Baumbach,Greenbergis a tour de force for actor Ben Stiller, who knows how to marginalize audiences himself (he directed The Cable Guy and Tropic Thunder, after all). Combine him with the writer-director of The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding and you have two individuals creating something capable of making you squirm uncomfortably (in your comfortable theater seat) for its entire two hours, waiting for (if it were so formulaic) a reckoning of devastating proportions.
That would be letting you off easy.
Roger Greenberg (Stiller) is recovering from a nervous breakdown, and is house-sitting his brother's place and dog in L.A.—a place where he can relax in the hills above the smog and try to put his life back together. A carpenter by trade, it is his goal to build the dog a dog-house. "I'm really trying to do nothing for awhile," is his stock answer. "That's brave at our age," says an old flame (Jennifer Jason Leigh, who co-wrote the story) that was extinguished long ago. Greenberg tries to connect with old friends from school days, but as he didn't communicate with anybody while he lived in New York, there's not much in common anymore.
Greenberg is essentially stifled. Not capable of moving forward and paralyzed at the thought of doing something to change that ("I woke up one morning and literally my legs couldn't move. They said it was psychological."), he exists through the day not calling people, then wondering why nobody talks to him. He's insensitive to other people's needs, wants or emotions—he can't see past his own smog drifting through his mind.
Because there's nothing else to do—he doesn't drive, not terribly convenient in L.A.—he ends up seducing his brother's nanny (Greta Gerwig), herself a fairly directionless person, numbed by a recent break-up and a tendency to be too compliant.
But, the relationship is one way and it all sucks towards Roger. A psycho-narcissist, he is so self-absorbed that any empathy perspective or ambition save for animal imperatives have been consumed and purged. A nanny is perfect for him, as he hasn't grown up. At all. And seems doomed to drive off any kind soul, sympathetic enough to put up with his bullying in-denial bullshit.
Now, let's pause for a second. We've been talking about Greenberg this whole time. let's talk about YOU for a moment. YOU are NOT Greenberg.*
Oh, you might be in your worst moments—everybody can reach their limits of tolerance, have a crisis or a bad hair day and be less than 20%. And Greenburg can be a litmus test for anyone the least bit self-absorbed (but not in denial). I've already read a couple of reviews that seem to cast the writer's own issues onto a scenario that don't suggest them. So, yes, you will recognize yourself and others in this movie (all except for you, Mother Theresa), but you are not Greenberg. If you were, you'd already be dealing with it by subsisting on some anti-psychotic, anti-hysteric, anti-depression pharmaceutical to get past it. And understand, this is Greenberg's behavior ON Zoloft.
So, this movie can make you crazy. I had waves of wanting to strangle this 40 year old infant...if he weren't already doing it to himself. Reactions to a movie like this can be healthy; at least, I didn't want to walk out. And there is the least amount of some resolution to this guy who isn't happy unless he can hear himself talk.
Still, this is one to take in stages...at home.
* I succumbed to this. I can be insensitive, self-absorbed (I write...duh), and fail to recognize the needs of others. The one that hit me the hardest is that Greenberg occupies his time writing complaining letters to...everyone. And what have I been doing? Writing movie reviews (I blame you, you read them). But, I've been doing other things as well. I have the most finely buffed and polished resume in town. My dog has his waist back (it's been a long Winter), and the taxes were done sooo long ago. I am not Greenberg. You are not Greenberg. But THAT guy? Oh, man! (*tsk*) Def-initely.
It's(Marvel)Clobbering Time
or "Get Back What We Lost—Keep What I Got (Would Be Nice)—And Not Die Trying"
Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) said (in Avengers: Infinity War) that he had gone forward in time to see the outcome of the Avengers' battle with Thanos and that he saw 14,000,605 outcomes in which they lost and only one in which they survived. When Marvel announced that their Avengers: Endgame would be just over 3 hours long, I thought, "Geez, do they have to show us ALL of them? Can't we just see the one?" It turns out the one is enough to fill those 3 hours, but along with the idea of solving the problem of Thanos' grand scheme of culling 50% of the Universe's population—which takes relatively little time—it also has to reward movie-goers who have stayed through every frame of past Marvel Studios' films (starting with Iron Manin 2008) to give them what they want. Fan service takes a lot of time, it turns out.
There's a lot of that. "Fan service," I mean. There's a lot of call-backs, reflections, echoes, and cameo's—lots of cameo's—from past Marvel movies that they re-visit to give you that warm feeling that you're being rewarded for your recognition and thanked for your support throughout the whole, slow dissemination of the Thanos/"Infinity Stones" storyline.
But, I can say the movie picks up at a singular moment for one of the Avengers after the "Finger-snap Heard 'Round the Universe." The one Avenger we didn't see in Infinity War—Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has his little dust-up, and it sets him on a path of retribution and vengeance that attracts the attention of the remaining Avengers, although they stay out of it and away from him for the time being. There are other issues to take care of. Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) are marooned in space after leaving Titan following their disastrous encounter with Thanos, who is still out there...somewhere. And—lest we forget—Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) is still trapped in "the quantum realm."
And that...is all I will say about that.
I will, however say, that it goes in a completely different direction than I thought it would, thinking that Captain Marvel would play more of a role—she doesn't, but manages to be efficiently useful when the Deus' are Machina'd. Core Avengers are utilized with special emphasis on The Big Three: Downey's Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth's Thor and Chris Evans' Captain America. They are given considerably more screen-time to complete their character arcs.
And there actually are character arcs (which is why the movie ballooned to such a length). I'd groused that Infinity War was all desperate action, with little emotional resonance to it, save for the actual culling of the Universe at Thanos' left hand. Here, the emphasis is on that resonance and it gives all the actors a chance to strut their stuff rather than just furrowing their brows and assuming the position. It also separates itself from the Marvel Comic Universe by taking those characters places they just wouldn't and couldn't in the comics. I liked that.
And as good as all these performances are, I thought the acting kudo's should go to Jeremy Renner, who must serve as the audience's emotional touchstone, starting with the very first scene and to almost the very end. He is quite amazing in this.
If the movie suffers, it is from too many endings, all in the service of character, which is a worthy thing to do, especially in a superhero movie.
"Okay, how many of you have never been in space? Raise your hand."
Also, Endgame is a different Marvel movie as it is more reflective and nostalgic, looking back, rather than facing forward ("true believers") and serving as a launching point for the next one, it is a completion. For that reason, you have no need to sit through the entire end credits. There is no teaser, no preview, no dangling thread. I only wish I knew that before I sat through the entire thing.
I have quibbles—I always do. There's the "too many endings" issue, a large continuity problem, the disparate fire-power issue, a few cute lines that land with a thud (and are repeated), and Thor's hammer. I have an issue with Thor's hammer. But, that's probably just me.
"Hey, Cap, do you read me?...Cap, it's Sam, can you hear me?...On your left."
It's well-done with a lot of fine grace-notes, and a climax that is, frankly, thrilling to behold. It's quite an experience...and very, very satisfying.
DeusExMarvela
or "Trust Me, True Believer" (My Flurken Swallowed My McGuffin)
The first of 2019's "Captain Marvel" movies is here,*and it has a lot of significance for movies, Marvel movies, and Women-in-Films, and as a result it's stirring up "the usual" dust-up's on increasingly unreliable review aggregates and social media. It's like the perfect storm of click-bait, but it has nothing to do with the movie itself. ...Which is good, clever (in the details stream) and provides a great role for the peculiar talents of Brie Larson, who's been a joy to watch in everythingI'veseenherin. It's a good entertainment, but not a great movie. But, worth seeing...if only because you're going to get a hint of how The Marvel Movie-Makers are going to solve the issues caused by the cliffhanger of Avengers: Infinity War—which, in short-hand, is "they're going to cheat" by some story-telling sleight-of-hand while they were distracting you with other stuff. Fair enough.
After an atypical Marvel Studio's logo—the "R.I.P Stan Lee" version—we meet "Vers" (the afore-mentioned Ms. Larson), who is having nightmares and can't sleep. The dreams have something to do with a crashed ship on a blasted landscape, where Vers is bleeding green blood and looking at a woman (Annette Bening) as she's pointing a weapon at an alien form (a Skrull, if you're familiar with Marvel comics) and wakes up. She goes and wakes up Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), her commander in the Starforce, based on the planet Hala of the Kree Empire (yeah, that's a lot of exposition there) is annoyed, but still accedes to her demands for a fight-work-out where he tells her she needs to tamp down her emotions and not rely on her abilities of using force-blasts out of her hands (luckily for him), a gift of the Kree for her abilities (and, of course, if she's not a good little girl-soldier, those powers will be taken away). Face front, soldier.
Rogg assigns his Starforce Squad to rescue a Kree spy from captivity, but the mission is a blind, designed to lure the Starforce agents into ambush by a band of Skrull warriors led by Talos (Ben Mendelsohn, who we don't get to see enough of). Vers is captured and subjected to a memory scan in which she starts to remember that many years ago, she was a human on Earth, an Air Force pilot, working for a Dr. Wendy Lawson (Bening). Her memories of her past inspire her to escape, she grabs a convenient space-pod, jets out of there and crashes on the most convenient planet nearby, C-53 according to the Kree.
That would be Earth circa 1995.
You can tell. You can just tell. Well, Vers' checks out a couple video's, then tries to find a way to contact Yon-Rogg, which she does by hot-wiring a telephone—in a booth—and telling him that she's on the hunt for Skrulls and don't wait up. Thing is, with Skrulls, they can shape-shift. Makes it easy to detect...except if you start asking them questions because any memory they might have of their shifted shape is only a few seconds old and they're no-good at long term memory.
Meanwhile, Skrulls have chased Vers to Earth where they start doing good human imitations and looking for her. They should just ask around because she's walking around L.A. "dressed like she's ready for laser-tag." That line is from a young agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. named Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who with his partner Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), is getting a lot of reports about a woman going around Los Angeles looking a little surly, dressed in rubber armor, and freaking people out, like the Security Guard outside that Blockbuster whom she approached and asks "Do you understand me? Is my Universal Translator working?"
This is where casting is kind of important. A lot of actors would play up the confusion, the fish out of water aspect, but not Larson's Vers. She walks around like she owns the place and doesn't give a rip if people are giving her second and third glances. She's got a job to do and she charges through it, with an attitude like she's dealing with morons—which she might be and probably is, so just go with it—it seems to be working with these monkey-people. No "Prime Directive" issues here. Just go with the "direct" approach.
Meanwhile, Fury has his own encounter with a Skrull, while he's simultaneously doing a "French Connection" style chase with an elevated train with an escalated fight between Vers and one in disguise. Taking the body of Fury's Skrull back to S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury decides to find "Blockbuster Girl" and find out what the hell is going on because he's never encountered anything like this before, and his desk job is getting a little dull.
Turns out they're looking for the same thing—Vers' identity, and between a visit to Project Pegasus, where Dr. Lawson had worked on a top-secret "light-speed engine" and the crystal containing Vers' extracted memories, they discover that Lawson was killed in a mysterious plane crash, where all were lost, including the pilot, a USAF flier named Carol Danvers. That's part of her memory. Afterwards, she was evidently taken straight to Hala...for some mysterious reason, given abilities by the Kree and enrolled in their Starforce. Why?
After pouring over the files from the crash, Fury and Danvers take a flight to Louisiana to talk to a friend of Danvers', a fellow pilot named Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) and she is recognized instantly by her and her daughter, Monica (Akira Akbar), and they fill her in on the woman she's forgotten to be. At the same time, Talos appears, with a story of his own, and the adults in the room determine that it's time to do things the right way...for once.
Carol Danvers: [Referring to the front of the baseball cap that Fury has given her ] What is this? Nick Fury: It's a S.H.I.E.L.D. logo. Carol Danvers: Does announcing your identity with branded clothing, help with the covert part of the job? Nick Fury: ...said the space soldier who's wearing a rubber suit.
Okay, there's a lot going on here, as fully 3/4 of the movie is a grand setting up of a story that the last quarter completely subverts. Even stalwarts who've been reading the Marvel "Captain Marvel" stories over the years are going to be a little confused at how the five screenwriters (all but one are women) have turned and spun the "Mar-Vell" stories on the tip of curved blade atop the Starforce's helmets—the film-makers allude to this by making Danver's hair part of that design, which I found very clever. Trust me, there's a lot of back-story to tell, but it managed to be done in 2 hours and squeeze in a lot of credits (with inserts—one is advised to stay to the very end).
What they've done is turn the comics' Carol Danvers from the standard Marvel "girlfriend" who got lucky enough to acquire superpowers, to a person who grew up determined to be the best she could be—who then got lucky enough to acquire superpowers. She already HAS the responsibility before she gets the great powers. It's an improvement, if hewing a bit close to the Lantern Corps story. But, Carol already knows right from wrong and her responsibility before being rewarded by the..."thing"...event...that gave her powers.
Now, she just has to decide who's side she's on.
Performances are good, all the way through, with Larson being the stand-out, but a shout-out has to go to Jackson who does his most prolonged...and...best performance as Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Especially, as he's got to play a much younger version of the character than he ever has before. Yeah, okay, he's been pixelated to lose a few years in appearance, but, hand it to the guy, he STILL has to play a character 25 years younger, and that takes attitude, bearing, and energy and he's all that here (the actor is 71 years, ladies and gentlemen).
And he's a great match-up with Larson—as they were in Kong: Skull Island, but this time's the roles are reversed (I kept expecting her to say to him: "Bitch, please..."). Fury is looser and more of a smart-ass, while she's regular Army in the uniform of a renegade and their banter may not have the wit, but it has the speed of old Howard Hawks banter, which combined with the duo's abilities to change expression on the thinnest of dimes, well, they're just a fun couple, and Fury's regard for this super-soldier from the sky explains a lot about everything he's done in the Marvel Universe movies.
It's the first time a woman has directed a Marvel movie, or co-directed one, and one wishes that Ann Boden and her co-Ryan Fleck had more of a command on things behind the camera as they do in front of, but it's just not so. They are well-regarded for their indie flicks, but their action scenes will leave you scratching your head about what's going on and who's doing what to whom. It might be they haven't figured out how to separate individuals who are all fighting in same uniforms, or the best way to hide a stunt-double, but the early fight scenes are a mess, and when the action turns cosmic, they shoot from a distance (to save on the rendering, or because we've gotten tired of super-heroics on a Richter scale?). No pun intended, but it gives it less of an impact. And, as we're just a little clueless about what Danvers' powers are, exactly, a little closer demonstration might have been nice—Marvel, whether in comics or movies, tend to be a little vague about power-scales/distributions.
Without going into too much detail (now's my chance to be vague), as much as I enjoyed a lot of Captain Marvel, there's the sense that The Studio was holding this one back (or something else in the "I dunno know what it is, but it sure packs a wallop" side of the Marvel school of cosmic speculature) as its "Ace in the Hole" for writing itself out of the "How are they going to get out of THIS one" dilemma posed by the Thanos-culling of the MCU in Infinity War—and that is by telling you about somebody you didn't know about, with some powers that haven't been figured out yet, but will when it becomes convenient in the upcoming Avengers: Endgame. In the meantime, just put in a "TBD" for that power-level and expect it to be risky and that "I've never gone this far before, I don't think I can handle it..." to be uttered at some point. I sure hope not. In the idiom of the internet, that would "suck."
So, the result is a movie with minor joys and good intentions that will eventually be enough to solve the Marvel Saga's immediate problem, and maybe—just maybe—allow the idea of more female-centric superhero movies in the Marvel Universe (how long has Scarlett Johansson been waiting for her "Black Widow" movie? Quite awhile, and enough that you can imagine her studio contract expiring before they get around to it).
Oh, and one other neat little idea in Captain Marvel—Stan Lee's cameo. The movie's setting being 1995, we see him on the elevated train trying to memorize his scene from Kevin Smith's upcoming Mallrats** (which came out about that time), a neat little call-back for his next-to-last cameo in the Marvel movies. As irritating and non-essential as they could be, one already misses the prospect that he won't be around for more of them, and that's a sad thing. Excelsior, true believers. (Just don't say "Shazam!")
*It's a loooong story and since this post is about this current version of the trademark "Captain Marvel" we won't get into it. We will give this one it's due.
Gorilla My Fever-Dreams or Monkey-See, Monkey-Poo It's hard to know whetherKong: Skull Islandis a monster movie or a comedy. The team that put together the new film version of Godzilla (minus Gareth Edwards, who moved on to the Star Wars franchise) have whipped together a reboot of King Kong—I have no idea how many Kongs this is now, but it rivals the number of kongs my dog went through in his life. That confusion might be due to the influence of writer Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawlers, The Bourne Legacy—the non-Damon one), who might have taken on this assignment to fund one of his own more personal projects...and didn't quite have the wherewithal to take it too seriously. Peter Jackson, who was obsessed with the original, did his own elephantine version of King Kong some years back (he suggested Guillermo del Toro direct the new one), but this version has little to nothing to do with that one. For one thing, the Kong in this one is monstrously huge, freakishly taller than Jackson's. And, as any re-boot will do, they start afresh, as if nothing before it had happened. Everything, that is, except Apocalypse Now.
After a prelude which sets up a character's back-story and feels a bit like John Boorman's Hell in the Pacific, we cut to the story's main time-line. It is 1973 and President Nixon has announced the end of the Vietnam war. Troops are headed home. But Nature apparently abhors a military vacuum. Driving into Washington D.C. is Bill Randa (John Goodman) and geologist Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) who are in town for a terse and not-too-welcome meeting with Senator Willis (Richard Jenkins) seeking a grant to explore a hither-to unknown piece of landscape, Skull Island. Randa badgers the Senator into getting the funds, but, before he leaves, one more thing...he'd like a military escort.
Cut to the Sky Devils Squadron, in the process of rotating stateside when a phone-call comes to Col. Preston Packard(Samuel L. Jackson) with a new assignment—chopper Randa and his crew to Skull Island. Randa and Brooks, meanwhile, are recruiting: they hire James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston)—Conrad (nyuk, nyuk*)—a former Captain of the British Air Services as a tracker; photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson); and Landsat employees, geologist San Lin (Tian Jing), Victor Nieves (John Ortiz) and Steve (Marc Evan Jackson)—you know that when a character doesn't have a last name, they're not going to have a lot of screen-time.
The odd mix of scientists and Air-Cav take a ship to Skull Island and launch a reccy with Huey's over the seemingly deserted island. But, sometimes, all it takes is one...."I-is that a monkey?" says one of the pilots. And then, all Hell breaks loose.
Usually, in a "King Kong" movie, they save the air-vehicle swatting for the finale, but, here, it's the opening act as Kong dispatches the Huey's like so many annoying mosquitoes. Machines get knocked out of the sky with extreme prejudice, or, in a phrase that will come up later, "no conscience." The surviving parties are scattered across the terrain, enough to create two sides: the military and the scientific. The scientific respond with an alarmed "what the Hell was that?" The military respond with an alarmed "whatever the Hell that was, let's kill it." Col. Packard is pissed that too many of his guys have bought it from the monkey-menace and he confronts Randa about what they're doing there.
"Monsters exist." says Randa. "No shit," says the unimpressed Packard.
Randa tells him that he has a history with a monster, but the world has considered him a crack-pot despite his being the only survivor of an encounter. This little sortie has had a purpose beyond geology—to provide proof for his group MONARCH, in the business of finding Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms, or MUTO's. Where have we heard that term before? Godzilla. "This planet doesn't belong to us." says Randa. "Ancient species owned this Earth long before mankind, and if we keep our heads buried in the sand they will take it back."
Sounds like Packard is on the same page, but a few chapters behind. Randa thinks the Earth is hollow with all manner of unmannerly critters hidden inside and that we need a coordinated plan to deal with it all. Packard is not so forward-thinking. He's got men dead who should have been with their families instead of dealing with these monkey-shines, and he's going to take the primate down with whatever weaponry he can salvage from the downed choppers. But, as the movie has a ways to go, the Monarchs and the Sky Devils split up for a rendezvous point downriver where the scheduled pick-up is going to occur, giving the Monarch team to get into a bunch of mis-adventures and set-pieces.
The best of these takes place in a smokey boneyard, where there is evidence of the carcasses of other Kong's and creatures littered across the landscape. The air is shrouded with a thick sickly-green mist...all the better for beasties to come lurching forward into sudden view in 3-D to make patrons jump out of their seats...as both are wont to do.
Skull Island has a bunch of weird creatures, odd enough you might see a Del Toro influence...either that, or the design staff kinda gave up. Sure, there's a skyscraper-tall spider (that's rather interesting), but there's also a thing called a Skull Crawler ("I never said that name out loud before, it sounds stupid now that I think about it. You call them whatever you want.") that's basically a big lizard that wears its bones on the outside. Then there's a monster that just appears nameless that resembles a walking tree-trunk. Okay, they saved some design-money there.
The puny humans do their best to hold things off, and then Kong stomps in and whups on them—that's the pattern for all the Kong movies since Merian C. Cooper directed the first one in 1933. But, again, the Del Toro influence is evident because a lot of the battle moves are straight out of Pacific Rim.
The director is one Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who has been mostly directing TV, but has one feature in his resume, 2013's The Kings of Summer, which is as far away from this as one could get. Vogt-Roberts has a rather straight-forward style, more dependent on art direction than direction, encourages comedy in the performance of the actors (except for his leads) and he has one odd quirk: he seems to be a techno-fetishist. No one can turn on a piece of equipment or flip a switch on anything electronic without it getting its own cutaway shot, a move that tends to halt the momentum of the story, and, after awhile, gets annoying. One wonders what the motivation for this is—it certainly isn't to enhance the story-telling.
Entertaining, it is, if kinda dumb, and the Apocalypse connection is, simultaneously, inspired and derivative, exchanging Marlon Brando for a gorilla (at least the gorilla isn't babbling pretentiously). But, one quibbles at one's own risk when you face the fact that it's a movie about a flippin' giant monkey. One can't get too high-brow about this as the bar is so low. Instead, one should just be glad there's a spark of life in the thing—something you can't say about John Guillermin's 1976 version...or, most of them, for that matter. Previously, Kong movies were merely a showcase for technical FX advancements in the art of illusion. Now, in the CGI-verse, everything is on the same level pixelated playing field. We want more from our King. It will be interesting to see what they do with these things—a post-credit sequence promises a Godzilla/Kong mash-up (with hints of Mothra, Ghidrah (the three-headed monster), and Rodan). Thank God(zilla) they're not taking these things too seriously. That means I don't, either. Pass the banana-flavored popcorn.
"This is the end...."
* "Conrad" refers back to author Joseph Conrad, who wrote "Heart of Darkness" on which Apocalypse Now is based. Another character is named "Marlow" after the story's protagonist.
The producers promise a sequel of King Kong v. Godzilla.
