Tag Archives: september 11

“The world as it is … not how we’d like it to be.” Captain America: The Winter Soldier

6 April 2014

22 Comments

As all the Marvel movies go, my hands-down favorites feature Captain America. So I approached Captain America: The Winter Soldier with some trepidation that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. How wrong I was.

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The first Captain America film did a lovely job borrowing nostalgic pixie dust from films like Dick Tracy and The Rocketeer, and director Joe Johnston grounded those proceedings in postmodern yet earnestly American messages of anti-bullying and of championing the underdog. The follow-up, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, takes that Americana quilt-work and ups the ante, delving deep into the dark heart of post-millennial U.S. society.

In the years since September 11th, we have seen fear and anxiety chip away at the most American of values: tolerance and courage, freedom of thought and sincere kindness. The film attacks that dilemma square on, albeit with Marvel Studios’ now-trademark escapism, wit, and whiz bang effects.

I dare not spoil any of the twists and turns, and, while some have compared this sequel to 70s government conspiracy classics like Three Days of the Condor, it is more of a pulpy roller coaster ride than a tightly coiled potboiler. Regardless, it is smart and well done and expertly paced.

Chris Evans returns as Steve Rogers/Captain America, and, unlike his flippant work as another superhero Johnny Storm in The Fantastic Four series, he exudes a soulful sadness as a man quite literally out of his own time and depth. His heartache over an America that has strayed so far afield from his World War II-era “Greatest Generation” perspective is palpable.

The plot details the explosive corruption that runs through all levels of the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization – that CIA/Interpol-hybrid that has been a unifying element in all Marvel’s cinematic output. This sequel draws cleverly on thematic elements established in the first Captain America entry, specifically the Nazi villains’ monstrous notion that ethnic, spiritual, intellectual cleansing will bring about order in a chaotic world. Winter Soldier neatly turns that concept on its head, alluding to how some Americans today seem to share that same nefarious concept: that the only way to avoid anarchy, violence, and societal decay is to quite literally eliminate all those people who threaten “order” in their questioning of the powers-that-be.

Robert Redford is a fascinating and welcome addition to the Marvel Universe, playing Alexander Pierce, a Washington bureaucrat whose Machiavellian intentions are simultaneously noble and suspect. Bringing a nuance we don’t always get to see in these movies (with nary a glib moment), Redford telegraphs sincere, profound, and arguably misdirected concern for a world that he feels has gone totally off the rails. He is the kind of comic book heavy that only a steady diet of FoxNews and MSNBC could inspire.

The other supporting players, including Scarlett Johansson, Emily Van Camp, Cobie Smulders, Hayley Atwell, Frank Grillo, Samuel L. Jackson, Toby Jones, Jenny Agutter, and Anthony Mackie, rise to the material, providing gravitas and the occasional (much-needed) lighter moment (or two). Sebastian Stan as the titular Winter Soldier is a heaping helping of imposing glower, and he makes the most of a rather underwritten role (not unlike Tom Hardy’s Bane in Dark Knight Rises).

Unfortunately (and this is the only minor quibble I had with the film), the movie does little with the Winter Soldier’s fascinating, Terminator-meets-Manchurian Candidate back story. Hopefully, the inevitable third film will fill in those gaps.

Superhero flicks have, in aggregate, become an ever-expanding cinematic metaphor for the angst that blankets our planet – movies of note include Bryan Singer’s X-Men films (e.g. civil rights/tolerance), Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (e.g. class warfare, Orwellian nanny states), and now both Captain America entries. These films employ a kind of four-color funnies code with larger-than-life heroes and villains standing in for the mundane, insidious cruelties we enact daily.

Samuel L. Jackson notes at one point early in the film, “This is the world as it is … not how we’d like it to be” – nailing a haunting fear and sadness most of us over 40 grapple with daily. Not sure where the movie Marvel Universe goes from here as the studio’s architects are clearly picking poignancy and punch over popcorn and pizzazz. But I for one can’t wait to see what’s next.

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Bonus! ( … apropos of nothing … )

This Thursday, April 10 at 7 pm, Common Language in Ann Arbor (317 Braun Ct.) will host a mixer. I will be signing books, and theatre colleagues from The Penny Seats (including Rachel Murphy, Lyn Weber, Rebecca Biber, Nick Oliverio, Barbara Bruno, and now John Mola) will offer interpretive readings of some of my wilder essays. Light refreshments will be provided. See you there! Nice coverage from Sarah Rigg and MLive here.

Thanks to Ryan Roe and the Tough Pigs: Muppets Fans Who Grew Up website for this shout-out to Reel Roy Reviews and my review of Muppets Most Wanted. Be sure to check out the site – it’s a lot of fun!

Finally, enjoy this video interview of yours truly from last week’s Legal Marketing Association conference. Thanks to Lexblog and the Lexblog Network and Kevin McKeown for this opportunity!

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Reel Roy Reviews is now a book! Please check out this coverage from BroadwayWorld of upcoming book launch events. In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the book currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan; by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan; and by Memory Lane Gift Shop in Columbia City, Indiana. Bookbound and Memory Lane both also have copies of Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series.

 

“What’s more important than the safety of the American people?” RoboCop (2014)

24 February 2014

5 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

In the ongoing march of unnecessary remakes of 1980s films, here comes RoboCop clanking his way through the February movie doldrums, after all the Oscar bait has run its box office course.

And I liked it. Quite a bit. (And not just for all the on-location shots of Downtown Motown, including a ton of exterior shots of GM’s Renaissance Center.)

Maybe I am just tired of films that make artistic statements and am ready for one that is a low-rent summer-esque blockbuster. RoboCop certainly fit the bill.

Gone is the original film’s Swiftian satire of Reagan-era fear of one’s own neighbors. No comic undertones in this somber affair. In its place is a grittier/glossier take on post-9/11 American xenophobia and the supercharge it gives to the military-industrial complex’s ongoing economic prospects.

In fact, the film begins with a very telling sequence wherein robot police forces jackboot their way through some unidentified Middle Eastern country, lining the streets with men, women, and children deemed “nonthreatening” only after an invasive infrared scan (or two).

These scenes are interposed with footage of Samuel L. Jackson as an even cartoonier version of a Rush Limbaugh/Bill O’Reilly television pundit casting his death darts at liberal politicians who won’t allow such android stormtroopers to police American streets. Yes, his character proudly wears a little “Stars and Stripes” pin on his lapel and tosses the word “patriot” around the way some people discuss the weather.

Satirical or not, this film isn’t afraid to telegraph its punches.

Instead of sardonic Peter Weller in the title role, we have a more emo RoboCop (his armor is even all black) in Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman. Yes, RoboCop cries. A lot. Kinnaman does a fine job grounding the wackadoodle proceedings, which involve a decent Detroit cop being blown to smithereens, being reconstructed in droid form as part of a martial law experiment conducted by big bad OmniCorp, and then proceeding to solve his own murder much to the chagrin of, well, everyone.

Unlike Weller, Kinnaman as Alex Murphy consistently and genuinely seems distraught by his unlikely circumstances, and the scenes between his otherwise cardboard wife (Abbie Cornish) and son are effectively poignant, chiefly through his presence.

The rest of the cast is fleshed out (no pun intended) by a great group of ringers (and a surprising number of Oscar nominees): Gary Oldman as the Dr. Frankenstein-mad-genius-with-a-conscience who transforms Murphy from beat cop to Tin Man; Michael Keaton as OmniCorp’s believably “country club casual” money-hungry CEO; Jackie Earle Haley as a junkyard dog lieutenant in Keaton’s army-for-hire; Jennifer Ehle as Keaton’s coolly calculating corporate counsel; Marianne Jean Baptiste as a smoothly corrupt police chief; and Jay Baruchel doing his dorky-James-Franco-wannabe thing as Keaton’s chief marketing nerd.

I don’t know that the world really needed a RoboCop remake but, as an exercise in taking a well-worn narrative and using it to tweak our post-millennial materialism, self-preservation, insecurity, and fear of the unknown, it runs like clockwork.

Countdown: The Dark Knight Rises

6 February 2014

4 Comments

From my wonderful publisher Open Books…

Just 22 days until release date of ReelRoyReviews, a book of film, music, and theatre reviews, by Roy Sexton!

Here’s a snippet of Roy’s review of The Dark Knight Rises: “I will offer that all the players are saddled with way too many ominous, cryptic monologues. At times, the film is almost tediously Shakespearean in its speechifyin’—makes you wonder how these characters would, say, order a sandwich. It wouldn’t be quick, that’s for certain.”

Learn more about REEL ROY REVIEWS, VOL 1: KEEPIN’ IT REAL by Roy Sexton at http://www.open-bks.com/library/moderns/reel-roy-reviews/about-book.html

Living in a cage: Zero Dark Thirty

15 January 2013

7 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image Source: Wikipedia]

The downside to Oscar season is that sometimes you see a movie after all the nominations and critical hype have rolled in and said movie buckles under all that trophy-festooned weight.

Happily, Kathryn Bigelow’s latest Zero Dark Thirty is not one of those films. Did I love this movie? Not really. It actually left me kind of cold, but I suspect that was the point.

The film doesn’t make any effort to ingratiate itself to the viewer. In fact, it feels like homework…like reading an intriguing chapter in a kinda dull poli sci textbook.

The film details the CIA’s ultimately successful decade-long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden. The most pleasant surprise? The film, while indeed patriotic, does not traffic in fist-bumping, simple-minded, Lee-Greenwood’s-so-proud-to-be-an-American, self-aggrandizing flag-waving. In fact, this film is the total opposite.

Its brand of patriotism is much more nuanced. Like this year’s similarly themed Argo, Americans are a scruffy bunch, using ingenuity, persistence, and downright luck, mixed with a heaping dose of obsession, insecurity, and uncertainty, to save the day. In fact, always excellent Kyle Chandler plays almost identical roles in each film. The central characters are kind of a hard bunch to root for, in fact. No white hats here.

Is Jessica Chastain, as the CIA analyst who has an almost preternatural sixth sense about tracking Public Enemy #1, Oscar-winning good? Yup, she pretty much is.  It’s not a showy role – no scenery chewing, other than one sort of testy hallway chat with her boss (the aforementioned Chandler). Rather, Chastain paints a believable portrait of a careerist operative whose calloused growth parallels the nation’s growing frustrations and distaste with the CIA’s free-ranging intelligence-gathering techniques.

The supporting cast is roundly excellent from James Gandolfini to Chris Pratt, Mark Strong to Jennifer Ehle. Joel Edgerton is a particular standout as Chastain’s haunted compatriot.

The film paints a vivid portrait of how our world has changed, probably mostly for the worse. Violence is the only language anyone can speak, and the “heroes” and “villains” become a blur, employing interchangeable tactics to achieve spurious victories. The film’s most telling metaphor? The cage. Every character lives in one – some literally, some figuratively – with little solace, little meaningful connection.

A somber summer epic worth seeing: The Dark Knight Rises

22 July 2012

13 Comments

Description: Film poster; Source: Wikipedia [linked]; Portion used: Film poster only; Low resolution? Sufficient resolution for illustration, but considerably lower resolution than original. Other information: Intellectual property by film studio. Non-free media use rationales: Non-free media use rationale - Article/review; Purpose of use: Used for purposes of critical commentary and illustration in an educational article about the film. The poster is used as the primary means of visual identification of this article topic. Replaceable? Protected by copyright, therefore a free use alternative won't exist.

[Image source: Wikipedia]

A satisfying conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s powerful, earnest, at times too self-important take on the Batman mythos, the final film in his trilogy “Dark Knight Rises” is a somber summer epic. Will the movie find its way past the tragic circumstances surrounding its debut? Almost impossible to predict. But there is something strange that happens watching this film in light of that context: what was intended, no doubt, as an allegorical take on post-9/11 America with our nation’s rampant paranoia and wildly divisive political machinations, now becomes a rumination on violence begetting violence.

All the returning players bring an almost-PBS-miniseries gravitas to the proceedings – Oscar nominees/winners all, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman are all a pleasure to watch. (Freeman and Oldman lead the pack, with Freeman providing the too-few moments of levity.) I will offer that ALL the players are saddled with way too many ominous, cryptic monologues. At times, the film is almost tediously Shakespearean in its speechifyin’ – makes you wonder how these characters would, say, order a sandwich…it wouldn’t be quick, that’s for certain.

New additions Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, Tom Hardy as Bane, Marion Cotillard as a mysterious investor, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an eager young cop all turn in credible, engaging performances. Much has been written about Hardy’s Sean Connery-meets-Darth Vader vocal delivery, and, I may be in the minority, but I liked his villainous turn a great deal, almost as much as I liked Heather Ledger’s Joker.  The difference being that Hardy had, in reality, the harder row to hoe, saddled with that godawful mask, and conveying a great deal of anger and angst through only his eyes and physicality. I found Hathaway’s Catwoman a slinky, sly, snarky delight – the film brightens a bit every time she is on-screen. Gordon-Levitt, for once, is not doing his winky, dimpled, charming thing but gives a deep-feeling, humane grounding to the often over-the-top proceedings.

Yes, the film, like so many comic book adaptations, wraps up with a save-the-world-nuclear-doomsday scenario. That bit is beyond tired. Yet, I found fascinating the villains’ “Tale of Two Cities” plans (until that point) to foment a people’s revolution in the midst of an increasingly self-absorbed, detached society. At times, the film falls under the weight of its own lofty pretensions, and a bit more fun here and there couldn’t have hurt it. All in all, it is well worth seeing and should be applauded for trying to say something a bit deeper and more profound. These are messages we as a society are well past needing to learn – whether or not a movie of this ilk will accomplish that as we continue to skid off the rails is, as I said earlier, impossible to predict.