Thor

Hot on the heels of Fast Five, Marvel's latest superhero entry continues the momentum of Summer 2011. Kenneth Branagh's Thor is a notable departure from the more reality-based Iron Man franchise; this movie spends half of its duration on Earth, but also introduces audiences to the Norse realm of Asgard. A star-making performance from Chris Hemsworth, a nicely balanced script, and an organic blending of S.H.I.E.L.D. mythology make Thor a blast to watch and one of the best films Marvel has made to date.

Thor
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Clark Gregg

Who would have thought the guy from the opening scene of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek had the ability to carry an entire film? But Chris Hemsworth has insane screen presence, easily holding his own against the gravitas of veterans like Anthony Hopkins as Odin, king of Asgard. Hemsworth is jacked, absolutely believable as a badass warrior with a terrible temper. Tom Hiddleston plays Thor's younger brother Loki*, a jealous conniving trickster competing for their father's affection. He does a great job as the villain here, and (SMALL SPOILER ALERT) he'll be interesting to watch as an evil force in Joss Whedon's The Avengers. I'll go ahead and get my biggest complaint with the film over with now: Thor's transition from hot-headed blowhard to humble servant struck me as rushed, with the screenwriters clearly trying to pick up the pace and get the action rolling again about halfway through the film.

Thor is important because it beats WB's Green Lantern to the punch when it comes to epic space-themed superhero movies this summer. Asgard is a fantasy world, to be sure, but Branagh applies his Shakespearean experience to that world and grounds it with universal paradigms as old as storytelling itself: a king passing down his throne, betrayal between brothers, loyalty among warriors, and much more. These are themes we've seen countless times, and make it much easier to relate to relate to these events as they're surrounded in otherworldly visuals. The production design of Asgard is fittingly regal, a vast empire filled with towering structures and CGI crowds. Alternating between impressive and slightly cheesy, the look of the movie is ultimately effective enough for an audience to accept the characters riding across a rainbow bridge and fighting Frost Giants. 

But that's only half of it. Once Thor is banished to Earth, he becomes a point of interest for Natalie Portman's Jane Foster, a scientist searching for a link between worlds. There's something of a love story tossed in, but Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson this ain't. Portman works just fine, but this is not a standout performance for her. She's gorgeous - no surprise there - so it's easy to see why the god of thunder would fall for her. Kat Dennings plays Darcy, an intern seemingly more concerned with making quips than contributing to Jane's research. Thankfully, even as a character so blatantly written as comic relief, Dennings never strays into annoying territory. She's given just the right amount of one-liners, and her quippy delivery and cutesy persona is exactly what the movie needs to balance out the sometimes overly serious drama going on back on Asgard. The success of the film is largely dependent on how believably it transitions between the two worlds, and even though the love story isn't the most compelling aspect of this movie, the film is equally effective regardless of the setting. Stellan Skarsgard is also a fantastic addition to the cast, playing Dr. Erik Selvig, the veteran father figure on this side of the universe.

One of the things this movie does best is incorporate the characters and elements of S.H.I.E.L.D. into the story in an organic way. Katey Rich wrote a solid piece at CinemaBlend detailing the things Thor does better than Iron Man 2, and its treatment of S.H.I.E.L.D. is the standout achievement in my opinion. Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson discovers Mjolnir (Thor's hammer, which Darcy hilariously mispronounces continuously throughout the movie) and forms a compound around it, setting up for a confrontation with Thor when he comes to retrieve it. Personally, I'm glad the actor has a bit more to work with here than in previous films. The only slightly negative S.H.I.E.L.D. comment I have was the totally unnecessary cameo of Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who not only has about three lines and never fires a single shot, but basically just appears so audiences will recognize him when he shows up in the upcoming SuperTeamUp movie The Avengers in 2012.

Though the film is well balanced, the action is a bit uneven. The battle scenes on and around Asgard are much more cartoonish and outlandish than the ones set on Earth; I'll take the practical effects used in the explosions in the Destroyer sequences over the digital effects used during fights with Frost Giants any time. The graphics are decent overall, but the crazy color scheme of the world of the gods got a little too outrageous for my tastes as the movie progressed. Also, the 3D is pretty worthless, so save your money and see the 2D version if one's available in your area.

Marvel has accomplished their goal with Thor: the film hasn't even hit American theaters yet and it's already made nearly $100 million overseas, seemingly assuring a direct sequel. But more importantly for Marvel, Thor will serve as a gateway for its lesser known "magic-based" characters to find a home on film. After watching a movie about Norse gods, it should theoretically be easier for audiences to digest a movie about a powerful sorcerer like Dr. Strange, for example. But in the meantime, we can be content that Thor is a well-directed, visually interesting (far of those canted angles, eh Branagh?), exciting entry into Marvel's quickly-expanding film library. Until next time...

*I'm just going to go ahead and assume Thor is a prequel to The Mask, since Loki is the spirit locked in the mask that gives Jim Carrey his crazy powers in that movie.

Fast Five

I'm an unapologetic fan of the Fast and Furious franchise. Justin Lin has revitalized a franchise once thought to be near death, and by restructuring the timeline (which currently sits at 1, 2, 4, 5, 3) writer Chris Morgan has turned what was once simply a remake of Point Break - set in the world of street racing instead of surfing - into one of the most entertaining action franchises currently in Hollywood. The newest addition, Fast Five, reunites all the major players of the series and continues its tradition of providing audiences with big, dumb, overcharged fun drenched in testosterone.

Fast Five
Director: Justin Lin
Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster, Dwayne Johnson

The film picks up where Fast and Furious left off: Dominic Toretto (Diesel) has been sentenced to 25 years without parole, and it's up to former FBI agent Brian O'Connor (Walker) and his girlfriend Mia Toretto (Brewster) to bust Dom out. After a ludicrous bus crash sequence, our lovable group of antiheroes flees to Rio de Janeiro, where they can catch their breath and lay low for a while. (The audience never forgets they're in Rio, because there are no less than four excessive sweeping helicopter shots of the giant Jesus statue overlooking the city.) But since the audience doesn't want to see a movie about people sitting around and waiting for the heat to blow over, Brian and Mia sign up for a job almost instantly after arriving. Their mission: boost a series of cars from a moving train. This sets up one of the best action sequences in a movie full of them - I won't go into the details, but it's a great sequence, well paced and executed with style by Justin Lin, who I really feel is coming into his own as a director.

The worst part about this new gig is the boosted cars belonged to Reyes, the resident villain who practically owns all of Rio (including their entire police force). He's none too pleased to be put out; he's searching for something that's in one of those cars. So it's up to Dom, Mia, and Brian to find out what it is and use it to take Reyes for all he's worth. And good news for fans of this series: there are a ton of familiar faces, including Tyrese and Ludacris from 2 Fast 2 Furious, Vince from the original, Han from Tokyo Drift, and many more. But that's not all: this franchise gets a boost of energy from Dwayne Johnson as Hobbs, a special agent tasked with tracking the Toretto crew down. I imagine Chris Morgan relished writing this character, a seemingly no-nonsense guy who ironically spouts nothing but nonsensical one-liners. A sample: a lackey tells Hobbs he has good news and bad news, to which Hobbs replies, "You know I like my dessert first." Johnson is particularly well matched with this material, considering his professional wrestling background; Hobbs is basically a pro wrestler, complete with two inch staredowns with other sweaty men.

There is a much-touted fight scene between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson that was worth the price of admission if you're a fan of either of those guys. Unlike Stallone in The Expendables, Lin knows how to make a star-studded face-off engaging and bone-jarringly effective. (Sorry Sly. You're my boy, but that movie was disappointing.) Like its predecessor, Fast Five also sets up for potential sequels, and Johnson has expressed interest in being a major player in The Fas6 and the F6rious or whatever they end up calling it. By the way, make sure to stick around for the post-credits sequence in Fast Five - fans of the series will definitely walk away intrigued.

I alluded earlier to Justin Lin's impressive abilities behind the camera, and now I'll go a step further: I think Michael Bay finally has some true competition in this genre. Bay has always been a master of expertly staged set pieces, but the extended vault heist sequence at the end of Fast Five is as equally destructive, ridiculous, and frenetic as anything I've seen in a Bay film. And after Lin dropped briefly into the TV world and directed Community's "Modern Warfare" paintball episode, it's even clearer to me the man has a deep understanding of all things action and can successfully walk the line between parody and legitimacy. None of the Fast and Furious movies should be taken seriously, but that's the fun of them - the actors all play it straight while the audience sits back and laughs at the audacity and preposterousness of their scenarios.

The acting here is terrible, and the plot is the kind of stock story that fans of action films have come to expect, but none of that matters when the movie is this well-executed. I caught some flack recently for not liking Scre4m: my detractors were using the tried-and-true "what were you expecting? You know what you're getting into with a movie like that" argument. While that may be true with some of the series-specific gags and such, I felt like that movie should work as either a comedy or a horror film (or both), and I didn't think it succeeded on any level. In the case of Fast Five, some may use the same "what were you expecting?" argument when it comes to the characters, dialogue, story, etc. But the best part of Fast Five is this: it works as an action movie. It's well paced, and there are some truly thrilling sequences, chases, shootouts, and heists. Even if you hate the characters and think the story is idiotic, you can't deny that this is a worthy action film.

The floodgates of Summer 2011 have officially opened, and if the rest of this summer's lineup has the same spirit as Fast Five, this will be a good year. This is a movie that features car surfing, Vin Diesel using his bulging forearms to block a hit from a metal pipe, and a finale chase scene that rivals The Blues Brothers. Go ahead and mark me down for Fas6 and F6rious - if it's more of the same, I'm totally fine with that. Until next time...

The NJNM Podcast: Ep. 38 - The Fountain

In this week's episode, Ben and Tyler talk about Darren Aronofsky's 2006 film, The Fountain. (Note: we're taking a week off next weekend due to Easter.)




Introduction
Character Name Game Intro - 1:41
In My Netflix - 2:03

Media Consumed
Ben
The 39 Steps - 8:15
TRON: Legacy - 14:18

Tyler
Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures, Daedalus Opus - 20:00
"Happy Endings," Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2 - 21:45

Review
The Fountain - 27:15

Wrap-Up
Next Time: The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppet Movie - 56:15
Listener Voicemail/E-mail/Twitter - 58:15
Character Name Game - 1:00:15
Where You Can Find Us - 1:03:13

Scre4m

I have a confession to make: I've never seen Scream 2 or Scream 3. If you think that invalidates my opinion about this fourth entry in the franchise, I won't begrudge you that opinion. But I look at it like this: since I haven't seen those earlier films, I'm not bringing the baggage of those movies with me into my experience here, thereby allowing me to look at Scre4m a bit more objectively and measure its merits as a standalone movie. So does Wes Craven's latest work as a horror film, or is it a bit too meta for its own good? Read on to find out.

Scre4m
Director: Wes Craven
Starring: Neve Campbell, Emma Roberts, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin

This film is all about redefining our expectations for the franchise. After all, it's been more than ten years since Ghostface last slashed his (or her!) way across theater screens. Ten long years, leaving behind a cinematic landscape littered with horror parodies and countless regurgitations of genre variations we've seen a hundred times before. But, as the tagline for Scre4m says, "New decade. New rules." I've got a rule of my own: Any movie in which the characters call attention to being "meta" is probably trying a little too hard.

Because this movie is so overly self-referential, it sacrifices a lot of the fun we're supposed to be having. The film takes itself way too seriously, attempting to dupe the audience at every turn; it goes so far out of its way to circumvent our assumptions that A) when the killer is finally revealed, it feels like a bit of a cheat, and B) it wears the audience down to the point of abuse, blindsiding our notions of what's about to happen, and then instantly blindsiding the blindside just to keep us off balance. Nothing ever feels earned. All the scares are cheap jump scares, and Craven seems content with mining recycled content.

Much like the way Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day was nearly a carbon copy of its predecessor - even down to featuring some identical scenes - Scre4m feels like an imitation of the original Scream. Just because characters address the fact that similar events are happening in this movie as they did to Sidney back in the first film isn't quite enough to justify this movie's existence. As much as it wants to be about progress and reshaping our thoughts moving forward, this movie (and especially its older characters) are all stuck in the past. Sidney (Neve Campbell) has written a best-selling book about moving on with her life, but she can't resist returning to Woodsboro on the anniversary of the original deaths. From the moment we see her in Scre4m, she's caught in the past: Rebecca, Sidney's publicist (played by Alison Brie) asks Sidney what she thinks of a display case in the bookstore window, but Sidney is captivated by a Ghostface mask hanging from a streetlamp nearby. Gale (Courteney Cox), who has stretched Sidney's trauma into seven books that provide the basis for the Stab movie series within the film, has come down with writer's block. But as soon as Ghostface returns, Gale perks up at the chance to return to solving the case. "This is what I'm good at," she tells her husband, the lovable sheriff Dewey (played by Cox's real-life husband, David Arquette).

Writer Kevin Williamson (who also wrote the original) desperately tries to infuse the story with a modern spin by including multiple opening scenes (one of the only times the "subverting audience expectations" method was actually well-executed) and featuring a character that is constantly broadcasting his every move via a webcam attached to his head. That entire character screams (no pun intended) executive decision, and no - I'm not talking about the Kurt Russell movie. What I mean is that no kid wears a freaking webcam on his head all day long; that kind of broad generalization of "what teens are into" seems like a decision borne from a conference room discussion rather than the writer's creative muse. The new class - Emma Roberts, Hayden Panettiere, Rory Culkin, etc. - seem tacked on to give the movie some youthful exuberance, but since they're just spewing genre tropes and not contributing anything that ever feels important to the story, time spent with them seems like time wasted until we return to Sidney's exploits on screen.

There are a scant few fun moments in the movie, but they're spread very thin, crippling the film's effectiveness as a whole. None of the performances stand out, with perhaps the lone exception of supporting actress Marley Shelton, who adds yet another strange role to her resume. I suppose this is worth seeing for the completionists among you, and fans of the series will see it without regard to any review, but I honestly didn't find anything interesting about the movie and therefore can't recommend seeing it. Wes Craven would do better to return to making small confined thrillers like Red Eye than cashing a paycheck for another in this franchise. What's my favorite scary movie? Tough call, but this one's nowhere close. Until next time...