Wanted

If you've seen the trailers, then you know what you're getting yourself into with Wanted. The thing that I liked the most about it, though, is that while the trailers showed the marketable "curve the bullet" scene a hundred times, they didn't really ruin anything else for us. Unlike Get Smart, Wanted thrives off of what we didn't see in the previews and gives us one hell of a ride from start to finish.

Wanted
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman


Like WALL*E, I was admittedly not excited about seeing Wanted in theaters. I was sure we had seen the best parts in the trailers and I was cynical that the storyline would try too hard to replicate The Matrix. "Meh," I thought, "it's just another movie based on a comic book that I've never read - how good can it be?" But this movie blew into theaters with kicking ass and chewing bubble gum on the agenda, and it was all out of gum.


The story wasn't anything mind-blowing; we've seen this type of thing before. Wesley Gibson, the archetypal loser stuck in a dead-end job, gets his life turned upside down by an incredibly sexy assassin who brings him word of his estranged father's death. After getting over the initial shock that his dad was a member of The Fraternity, a league of assassins created a thousand years ago, Wesley embraces his training in order to kill the man who killed his father. I don't want to go any further into the plot or the stunts or anything because it'll just ruin it for you. [Don't you hate that? When you hear one certain thing about a movie (or see a scene in a trailer) and then you're waiting the whole time for that scene to come so you can just get on with enjoying the movie? I do. That's why I don't read reviews before I see movies anymore. ANYWAY...]


What differentiates this film from others like it is Timur Bekmambetov's vision. The Russian director, responsible for the most lucrative films in that country's history (Night Watch and Day Watch), brings his signature style to America in his Hollywood debut. My first thought after walking out of the theater was "Wanted is this year's Shoot 'Em Up." Like that film, this one doesn't hold back at all on the language, sex, or violence and embraces those things as integral parts of the production.


Angelina Jolie fittingly plays a character named Fox, who embodies the lifestyle that Wesley (McAvoy) can't even fathom: sex, bullets, and speed. She actually did a better job than I thought she would, and whew - she hasn't looked that good in a long time. Morgan Freeman (who hasn't been bad in a movie since...ever) reigns as the enigmatic leader of The Fraternity, and plays the part effortlessly. The dude is so solid. He's a great addition to any film, automatically upping the quality level and (I'm sure) influencing his co-workers to step up their game.


Wanted is what you would get if you crushed Swordfish, The Matrix, and Shoot 'Em Up together into one action blowout. It's stylish, sleek, quick-moving, adequately acted, and visually fantastic. Fans of the comic book series by Mark Millar have been vocal about the film's differences to the comic book, perhaps suggesting the film would suffer because of it. But a recent interview with Millar sheds light on the creator's opinion of the final cut of the film: "F***ing hell. I loved it. I could not love it more. It's weird passing your wee baby over to someone else, but this is like putting someone up for adoption and seeing him come back as Einstein." That's a pretty glowing review from the guy who created the work in the first place.

Yeah, my eyes are closed. I'm THAT good.

I think this is one of those movies like 300 that pretty much every guy over the age of 4 will love. It's not big on commentary, context, or subtlety, but the "Ass-Kicking Quotient" is through the roof. It doesn't take a film student to realize what's going on in this one: unadulterated summer action throttling us in our seats and then questioning the audience with one of the best closing lines I've heard in 10 years - "What the f*** have you done lately?" Until next time...

WALL*E

Let me start by saying that I didn't think I would like WALL*E at all. I thought the trailer showed too much "cutesy" stuff and not enough solid storyline. I still don't like the trailer, but I was wrong about the movie - it was actually one of the better films of the year so far.

WALL*E
Director: Andrew Stanton
Starring: Ben Burtt


WALL*E, the small garbage-compacting robot, is serving his purpose trying to clean up the Earth. Humans have long since evacuated the planet due to unlivable conditions: heaps of garbage caused by an overindulgence in consumerism and materialistic culture. So the humans took off on the Axiom, a ridiculously huge spaceship, and are cruisin' through space living the lazy life while the robots clean up the planet. Little do they know that WALL*E is actually the last one left doing his job; but it's not like they're in any hurry to get back to the planet. They float around on hover Lazyboys eating meals in milkshake form, talking to each other on transparent computer screens even though they're only six feet away. They send probes to Earth periodically to search for plant life (if they find any, it means its time to come home), so WALL*E meets EVE (a probe) and falls in love.

As Boze said after we left the theater, this film could be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. The aforementioned plot synopsis might be enough for you if you were a child, but those of us looking for a little more depth to our entertainment are definitely rewarded with what we're given. The movie is virtually a silent film for most of it, with only a few words "spoken" (more like "beeped") by the robots until they reach the humans. That means that Pixar had to rely on visual storytelling rather than dialogue to achieve the connection between WALL*E and the audience. They did a phenomenal job. Everything about the movie flowed perfectly, and the look of the film was outstanding. I can't imagine how many man-hours it takes to put something like this together.


Aside from the visual storytelling, the film had a couple of underlying themes that I thought fit seamlessly into this simple story of a robot in love. First off, as I mentioned before, the world is covered in garbage and humans were forced to vacate the Earth. Duh - this is an exaggerated warning about what could happen to us if we don't take care of this planet. There was also a nice parallel to the current political system that came up in one scene - the gist of it was that the rules of the ship were set 700 years ago, but they wouldn't allow the captain of the ship to fix a problem that he had a simple solution to. This comments on the party system that people have been complaining about for years - there are other solutions, but the Constitution doesn't specifically say that we can make changes.


WALL*E was worth your time. It'll put a smile on your face. It has all the patented "Disney moments" that we've come to expect from family-oriented films like this, but it also gives us an interesting look at a possible future if the state of the world doesn't change. The characters are likeable and the optimistic sense of wonder the movie exudes is a welcome change from decent sequels and comic book movies (in case you're getting sick of those). The Incredibles and Finding Nemo were pretty good, and WALL*E is right up there with the best Pixar films since Toy Story.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Pixar always puts those animated short films in front of the main movie, and this one was my favorite that they've done so far. It's called Presto, and it's about a magician and his rabbit. I looked for it online, but I guess they're keeping a pretty keen eye out and swatting down unapproved video uploads of it. Oh well - you'll see it in the theater if you check out the movie. If you don't, I'm sure it'll be on the DVD release in November. Until next time...

The Happening

My love for M. Night Shyamalan films has been widely documented. I thoroughly enjoyed The Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Village. Unbreakable was pretty cool. But I'll be the first to admit that Lady in the Water kinda sucked. So naturally I was really hoping that Night (as he is known on his sets) could pull off some magic in his newest thriller and bring us something as high quality as his earlier works. As I'm sure you've heard by now, The Happening wasn't exactly a return to form: it was down there with Lady in the Water as a cool concept that was badly executed.


The Happening
Writer/Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo


It's becoming harder and harder to stay a supporter of Shyamalan when he keeps pumping out stuff like this. The Happening, according to an interview with the writer/director, was supposed to be a 50's style B-movie reminiscent of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Birds. That aspect of the movie was all but hidden from everyone besides people who happened to read that article, and it seems like the film suffered greatly in critical reception because of it. I knew what the film was aspiring to be when I sat down in the theater, and it still didn't live up to my newly-lowered expectations.


The most glaring proof of its B-movie nature can be found in the performances from the main characters of the film. Usually-bankable actors Wahlberg and Deschanel gave some of the most rigid performances I've seen in a long time, no thanks to the sometimes-laughable dialogue written by Night himself. I KNOW that Mark Wahlberg is a better actor than what his performance indicated in this film, so there had to be some sort of instruction from Night to make his acting as stiff as possible. If this were made known to the movie-going public beforehand, then perhaps the film wouldn't have been as lambasted as it was upon its Friday the 13th release date. Deschanel looked like she ate some bad eggs for breakfast the whole movie, and I'm not kidding when I say that Marky Mark had the same look on his face the whole movie:


Without giving away the patented "twist" ending (hint: there is no twist ending), I won't go too much into the cause of the mass suicides depicted in the trailer in case you decide to watch this movie and want to be surprised. Wahlberg plays Elliot, a high school science teacher who is having some marital troubles with his wife Alma (Deschanel). When the first event occurs, they meet up with John Leguizamo's character Julian, who is a fellow teacher at Elliot's school, to escape from the city.


The movie started with a mass suicide scene, but never really got going after that. We couldn't care for these characters because they were so distant to the audience due to their (purposefully?) poor performances. Thanks to this factor, the sense of urgency that was necessary for us to feel worried about the characters was nonexistent. Aside from that, the cause of the "events" only seemed to affect certain people, which made no sense to me at all.


It features a standard message of "protect the environment" and falls into the same type of apocalyptic-themed flicks as the recent I Am Legend and Cloverfield. Growing concerns over global warming, rising gas prices, and constant wars seem to be pushing the world into a state of paranoia, and we can only predict that movies with these types of themes prominently displayed throughout will not stop in the years to come. Whether they be government-themed paranoia like Disturbia or the upcoming Eagle Eye, or disaster-themed like War of the Worlds or the others I've mentioned, these types of movies are sure to be on the rise for a long time until we can figure out what to do about fixing some of these problems that are apparent in today's world. Until next time...

Get Smart

If only the title followed it's own advice. Get Smart was a mediocre attempt at comedy that had lowest-common-denominator audience members howling in their seats next to me. If a movie could win an Oscar for "Ruining Humor Ahead Of Time In A Trailer By Showing Too Much," then this film would have won it. Handily. Sadly, it was more of a children's film than a movie targeted toward the people who would have liked it the most: namely, 18-35's and fans who used to watch the show.

Get Smart
Director: Peter Segal
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Champ Kind


What a sweet cast. As far as performances go, all the main players pretty much did the best they could with the pitiful script they were forced to memorize. Carell was likeable and charming, while Hathaway reached her pinnacle of hotness that she had been dreaming of since the days of The Princess Diaries. Aside from that, her acting was passable since she was probably given the most complex role of anyone in the cast. Dwayne "I'm Not The Rock Anymore" Johnson was the typical jock who befriends the nerdy Carell, and he played this role as if he were sleepwalking through it waiting for the producers of the Scorpion King to call him for a sequel. (Incidentally, they didn't.)


The plot follows the government agency CONTROL analyst Maxwell Smart (Carell) as he gets promoted to Agent 86 and partners with Agent 99 (Hathaway) to take down the KAOS, a terrorist group who has infiltrated CONTROL's home base. All of the field agents are compromised because of the break-in, so Max and Agent 99 (who recently had plastic surgery to change her identity) are the only two left to save Los Angeles from destruction at the hands of the mysterious Siegfried (Terence Stamp of Superman II).


I think most of my disappointment with Get Smart stems from my opinion that the supposedly "funny parts" of the film weren't even that funny. What is happening to comedy these days? Are summer trash like The Love Guru and You Don't Mess With The Zohan the kind of quality that we've come to put up with at the theater? I think we as the American people deserve better when we shell out 10 dollars to see a movie. I think we deserve to actually laugh throughout a "comedy" and not just nod and say to ourselves "oh yeah, I remember seeing that in the trailer." Correct me if I'm wrong, but comedy should be funny.


The problem with Get Smart (in my humble opinion) was the same problem with Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - the script was abysmal. The directing was fine, the special effects were OK, the production design, lighting, cinematography, score - I didn't have a problem with any of that. But they needed to get a script a little more fresh than something a 12-year-old could have written. I know that the show was based on slapstick-type humor, but at least it had a little intelligence to go along with it. If you've ever seen a movie before, you knew exactly what was going to happen in Get Smart at least 10 minutes before it unfolded on the screen. Branz criticized me for being too hard on it, but I think the American people deserve a bit more credit than that. I'd like to believe that we are capable of comprehending some abstract thought, making hinted-at plot connections on our own without everything being spelled out, recognizing basic themes when they are presented to us, and all the other little things that go along with appreciating films and what they can do for us. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that you need a college education to make these type of cognitive leaps.


Anyway, the movie was probably worth a rental. There were some humorous sections (Mel Brooks co-created the show and was an adviser for the film), but overall it just wasn't funny enough to make up for its predictability. If you have children, you are a child, or you will be having children in the near future, then there's a distinct possibility that you might like Get Smart. Otherwise, wait for it to hit TBS in about 9 months. Until next time...