Derp Blog Into Darkness #21: PRIMARY COLORS

In Derp Blog Into Darkness, I take a plunge into the deep with movies I’ve never seen or (in some cases) never even heard of, with the only common thread throughout being that they were purchased by my partner in the years after the break with her religious upbringing. This gives me a range from mainstream comfort food to more daring, “rebellious” stuff.

Another movie whose revisiting was dreaded by Ella. I was amazed at her actually sitting through it with me – the first of her subsection of “Ugh, why did I ever buy that movies” for which she had done so. She claimed she’d only seen it the once, when she was far less discerning, and maybe it’d be a good chance to re-evaluate it. It was for nought, however, as she started playing with her phone about 30 minutes in. A true failure of a movie, then, holding no interest for casual viewers and dilettantes alike. When I inquired about what precisely turned her off, I got as a response the fact that all the characters were schemers and hypocrites and liars, but not in that outsized Game of Thrones way, just your regular old political bastardry, which rendered the whole thing uninteresting to watch.

I quite liked it, as I am finding to be the case with plenty of movies in this particular subgenre! After trudging through the first season of The West Wing and having found my intelligence thoroughly insulted on many occasions, PRIMARY COLORS felt like a nice dose of unpleasant reality with regards to politics on that level. John Travolta and Emma Thompson are First Couple-hopefuls Jack and Susan Stanton, a thinly veiled send-up of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The story is told through the eyes of new campaign manager Henry (Adrian Lester) – a *gasp* black! He’s really taken in with Stanton as the governor visits an adult literacy program in Henry’s home city. His girlfriend is understandably skeptical and tells him to focus on more immediate, community-centered goals, but soon Henry is whisked away to join the national circus. For much of the first act, he keeps in touch with his girlfriend over the phone, trying to convince her that “this guy is the real deal!” The movie’s grey enough to not have Stanton be a complete asshole OR “the real deal”. When we meet him, he gives a heartfelt speech about his illiterate grampappy, followed immediately by Henry catching him banging the teacher at campaign HQ the next scene. In debates, however, Stanton’s polite and respectful, agreeing with and even lauding his opponents at times. Behind the scenes, he’s constantly adamant that the campaign not “go negative” with attack ads and the like, but focus on the message. So we’ve got a pretty (personally) sleazy, but relatively (politically) honorable guy here. Of course, shit starts going off the rails, and the Stantons find their lofty ideals put to the test as they start going ever so imperceptibly slowly down that slippery moral slope – and so does Henry.

Special mention I feel should go out to Kathy Bates as Libby, the Stantons’ unstable lesbian college buddy and self-proclaimed “dust buster”. She basically cleans up any messes that Jack makes, but will not go digging for dirt on opponents due to her beliefs. She gives a funny, emotional and heartfelt performance which she apparently got an Oscar for. Kudos to her, I say! When do women of a certain age and (sorry) weight ever get to have cool parts like that? In that vein, Henry’s capacity as story focalizer is cool, cuz it’s not a “black” movie. While his race is acknowledged in a few scenes*, he’s not The Black Guy. He even has an affair with a white co-worker that sort of happens between scenes, without much fanfare. Any movie that just sort of presents gay and interracial couples as a given and doesn’t dwell upon them is a-okay in my book. If it’s well-written, witty, well-acted and delivers some nice political burns in the meantime – well, you’ve got yourself a good movie there!

I was under the impression that, like with Robert Altman’s A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, this was my first beginning-to-end viewing of a movie by a fancy pants filmmaker, in this case Mike Nichols. But no! I had already seen CLOSER, which I also found a good movie, if not for the faint of heart. While PRIMARY COLORS held no personal revelations to me as CLOSER did**, it’s still an interesting (if no doubt still pretty white-washed) look at American politics for those who haven’t seen the third season of The Wire.

*Mostly by friends of Henry’s, telling him to face the reality that a guy like Stanton isn’t gonna do anything for his community.

**Jude Law, M.D., informing me that “wanking” is applicable to women as well.

Derp Blog Into Darkness #20: A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION

In Derp Blog Into Darkness, I take a plunge into the deep with movies I’ve never seen or (in some cases) never even heard of, with the only common thread throughout being that they were purchased by my partner in the years after the break with her religious upbringing. This gives me a range from mainstream comfort food to more daring, “rebellious” stuff.

My first Robert Altman movie! Altman’s last Altman movie! I actually had no idea of this fact going in, which makes the experience of watching A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION all the more bittersweet. Originally entitled “The Last Broadcast”, Altman’s star-studded final work tells the tale of a live country music radio show on its last legs. The film is bookended by the VO narration of security chief Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) in a just-over-the-top-enough hard-boiled gumshoe parody. Kline starts out talkin’ detective talk in a diner car at the start of a movie, and then goes to work as security guy at the old theater. The reveal that it’s actually 2006 and Kevin Kline is this weirdo Dashiell Hammett cosplayer for no reason immediately endeared me to the film. He has no detective plot and his VO happens maybe twice in the movie. He just is, okay? And shit, he wasn’t even my favorite guy in the movie. That’s a shared honor between cowpoke singin’ duo Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), two crooners with an obsession for dirty/lame jokes that had me cracking up in basically every one of their scenes. Rounding out the cast are Garrison Keillor as the ever befuddled MC of the show, and Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin and Lindsay Lohan* as two singing siblings and one’s daughter.

All of these storylines are good, gentle fun with the Dusty and Lefty one just barely bringing the movie a PG-13 rating, but if there was one I’d have excised it would have been Virginia Madsen’s “Dangerous Woman” who actually turns out to be the Angel of Death. It’s not really a spoiler, since this movie doesn’t really hinge on plot. You’re just hanging around a bunch of colorful characters during their last broadcast, and it’s a great fun 90 minutes. There’s a lot of talk of passin’ and movin’ on, to the extent that I think any reasonably intelligent person picks up on the bittersweet vibe the movie’s trying to convey. Madsen’s character, delivering platitudes on “the fullness of time and the spirit” and don’t take life for granted and blah dee blah, just feels extraneous. You really could have had the entire movie happen without her, and for The Angel of fucking Death to be able to be excised completely from the movie without consequence… well yeah, you can see how superfluous the storyline is.** But ultimately, it doesn’t detract from the overall experience too much, especially in light of the circumstances of the movie’s production.

Yeah, I realize I don’t have that much to say, but it’s just a good ass movie! Learning that Altman died in APHC’s year of release makes the film’s preoccupation with death extremely poignant. The fact that it’s still so light-hearted and fun to watch makes me tip my hat to this giant of American cinema. I really should get off my ass and watch some of his stuff. I guess I should start with POPEYE.

If you think this is funny, this movie is absolutely for you.

*She used to be in movies!

**Okay fine, you’d have to do some MINOR reshooting since she interacts with a few big characters, but still.

Derp Blog Into Darkness #19: ONE NIGHT AT MCCOOL’S

In Derp Blog Into Darkness, I take a plunge into the deep with movies I’ve never seen or (in some cases) never even heard of, with the only common thread throughout being that they were purchased by my partner in the years after the break with her religious upbringing. This gives me a range from mainstream comfort food to more daring, “rebellious” stuff.

There aren’t many movies in Ella’s collection that, over the course of this experiment, I had to watch by myself because of her unwillingness to subject herself again to an unfortunate blind-buy. IGOR was one, BROKEN FLOWERS was one, and now, ONE NIGHT AT MCCOOL’S. When asked why, she said she couldn’t actually remember anything about the movie besides blind buying it, subsequently having it be something “completely other than what I expected”, and hating it.

My recollection of this movie’s existence was limited to Liv Tyler seducing a bunch of guys while washing a car, so I was going in pretty blind. The movie is told from the perspective of barkeep Randy (Matt Dillon), lawyer Paul Reiser and detective John Goodman. Equally credited (and producing) Michael Douglas is actually not one of the guys in the tale, but rather Matt Dillon’s confessor*. Reiser and Goodman also have fairly famous confessors, respectively Reiser’s psychiatrist Reba McEntire and Father Richard Jenkins. ONE NIGHT AT MCCOOL’S these guys came across a sexy young woman named Jewel (Liv Tyler), who appeared to be in trouble with her abusive boyfriend (lol fuckin Andrew Dice Clay). Dillon “saves” her in the most half-hearted way possible, and they go home to have hot steamy no-nudity-clause sex while the soundtrack blares GETCHUUU HOT GUUUURLLLL.

Turns out that Liv was going to rob the shit out of Dillon with her boyfriend the morning after, but she just can’t bear to call him up to get it done since… by gum, Dillon’s just so great! MISHAPS mis-happen and Liv and Dillon end up killing the sleazy boyfriend. Now that they are BONDED 4 LYFE, Liv starts fixing up Dillon’s shitty old place with stuff from her scrapbook. She’s got a home deco scrap book! Jewel’s life-long obsession was/is to live in a house that comes straight from the magazines, and she’ll do anything to get it. Soon, she’s got Dillon robbing homes of single guys she seduces to accessorize her new pad. When Dillon starts complaining, she decides it’s time to get some legal counsel (Reiser) and protection (Goodman) and rid herself of this whiny barista. Naturally, shit gets complicated (and murderous) as the three men get at each other’s throats over their special eclectic angel.

MCCOOL’S is a big, broad comedy for mainstream audiences. Some jokes are played for the cheap seats**, but others are pretty dry***, while some are delightfully coarse****. The actors are all really funny and entertaining, although Dillon is perhaps saddled with a boring “nice guy” role. When Reiser is telling his side of the story, Dillon’s always a retarded douchebro, so it’s quite a contrast to see Dillon really let loose in these scenes. Special mention for Liv Tyler, whom I pretty much knew as eye candy from Aerosmith videos, ARMAGEDDON and Arwen in LORD OF THE RINGS. She’s very beautiful, but I always found there was this weird detachedness about her which, of course, was ideal for an Elven Lady or Michael Bay Good Girl. In MCCOOL’S she gets to play nutty, petty and downright sociopathic with aplomb. Her I-just-sucked-down-half-a-roach demeanor actually helps sell it quite well!

I liked this movie perhaps more than I should, as I am always partial to blackly comic movies that show people of some authority and esteem giving in to their lower impulses while trying to maintain a veneer of respectability as everything crumbles around them. Shame about the occasional broadness, but it’s funny with a few hints of not-too-darkness. It’s kinda like a Coen brothers movie for your parents!

 

*A “confessor” is both the guy confessing and the priest listening to it. How confusing can you get!

**A pretty good set-up that is then wasted by driving it too far has all the men standing next to each other in different types of stereotypical outfits, with a wooden indian at one end – to which a gunman calls them “some Village People motherfuckers”. This was pretty organic, they weren’t dressing up as the Village People or anything, so it was a funny observation, well set up. Then the shootout is set to YMCA for no reason.

***”It’s like you don’t even care if we have a top tier home entertainment system!!” Tyler dramatically intones.

****In the second version we see of Jewel’s rescue from the eyes of a drunk Reiser in his parked car, he just slurs “Titssssss” – end scene.

“I’ve made a huge mistake.”– Don Bluth

ROCK-A-DOODLE opens in space. ROCK-A-DOODLE is a movie about a bunch of farm animals on a quest to find their lost rooster friend Chanticleer, who despondently left the farm for parts unknown after being humiliated by some mean owls. And yet, ROCK-A-DOODLE opens in space. That should tell you all you need to know about this frantic hobo’s fever dream of a movie.

Why space? Chanticleer does not take off into the far reaches of space after his embarrassment. Let me give props to mah dawg Gérard Genette for a second and lay down the histoire rather than the récit.

There is a farm of anthropomorphic animals who all love the farm’s rooster Chanticleer. He’s a cocky (hehe) rockabilly type, who impresses all the lady-chickens and is just generally a very popular guy. Additionally, the animals believe that Chanticleer’s song is what causes the sun to rise each morning. The owls, however, are not very happy with this. They are naturally creatures of the night, so they’d rather the sun didn’t come up at all. Also, the Grand Duke of Owls simply loathes rock ‘n roll music. To these ends, he comes up with a plan to silence Chanticleer permanently. An owl thug (!) is sent to tussle with Chanticleer at the moment of sunrise, so he is impeded in singing his song. To all the animals’ surprise, the sun still rises. They ridicule Chanticleer mercilessly, and the minstrel leaves a broken cock.

Let’s hold up a second right here. The owls want it to be night forever, but in trying to effect this, they simply prove that Chanticleer’s song doesn’t make the sun rise. The owls do not have a realization moment about this. At least they got rid of that damnable rock ‘n roll, huh?

So, space. An opening VO tells us about that whole rising sun thing, and what better to illustrate this than to actually pan in to Earth from motherfucking space. If that voice sounds familiar to you, it’s Phil Harris aka Baloo, voicing the hound Patou. Not Baloo, Patou. Get it right. He has a sorta cute recurring gag that he can’t tie his shoelaces. In a typical instance of half-assery/weirdness on the movie’s part, however, he is a dog that walks on all fours most of the time. Even though he has shoes, socks and pants on. As a result, Patou reminded me of one of those poor Chinese dogs that are made to wear panties and heels.

Patou narrates all the stuff I just told you, by the way. This is how we learn of the owls’ plan before we ever even see the Grand Duke (Christopher Slu—uh, Plummer). In fact, there’s such an overwhelming exposition dump going on, brought in such an incredibly clumsy manner, that I was starting to suspect that the money had run out during production and this VO was the best way they could patch already-animated scenes together. Turns out there originally wasn’t a VO, but test audiences found the owls’ plan confusing. I’ll say! I don’t understand it even with the VO!

We’re not done Veein’ Oh, however! Patou tells us that elsewhere, there was a little live action boy named Edmond, who was a super Chanticleer fan, and understandably upset by this turn of events. His mother reassures him that it’s only a story, but good luck with that when dad busts in dripping wet and tells mom that the barn is floodin’! Edmond wants to help, but mom says he’s too little, and he’d best stay in. Disappointed, he keeps on reading his storybook until, frustrated, he calls out for CHANTICLEER or SHAWNTECLEAARRRR depending on the scene. This unfortunately summons the Grand Duke, who is very upset that anyone would want Chanticleer back. For this impertinence, he will eat Edmond. But first, he shall be transformed into a cat because kittens are more easily digestible! The Grand Duke has some sort of weird multi-color breath attack that can change stuff into other stuff. He does this several times over the movie to several creatures.

…

Why doesn’t he just change Chanticleer into a worm or something? It is later revealed that Chanticleer is thriving as THE KING, a totally-not-Elvis singing act in the big city. His manager, Pinky Fox (voiced by BOSS HOGG), turns out to be in league with the Grand Duke, keeping Chanticleer dazzled with the empty and materialistic charms of pop success.

…

Why doesn’t the Grand Duke just change him into any animal that can’t sing? WHY SET UP A FAKE POP CAREER? Kitty Edmond, Patou, Snipes the magpie and Peepers the mouse set out on a quest to the big city to get him, beset on all sides by the tyranny of evil owls. Well, they get jostled a bit until they shine a flashlight at them and then they fly away screaming. Oh man, the Grand Duke has this hysterically screeching nephew called Hunch and I swear to god, his voice actor drew “speed” as the random drug to ingest that was contractually required for all VAs on this production. The movie already moves at an insane pace (all this has happened before the 30 minute mark) but whenever that little owl comes on, engage fucking hyperdrive, man. BUMP ZAP CRASH SCREEEECHHHH

Hunch is an unfunny character, but even the better Bluth movies are notoriously unfunny.* Far more damaging for a movie ostensibly about the power of song are the incredibly crappy musical numbers. Glen Campbell (LaBoeuf in the original TRUE GRIT) voices Chanticleer, and he’s got a servicable, if unremarkable voice – certainly nothing that makes the sun come up in the morning! The villain songs are more traditional Broadway/Disney style affairs, but since Plummer apparently isn’t too keen on singing, he half-narrates his way through the numbers, often drowning out the at least half way capable chorus singers.

Chanticleer’s private helicopter looks like this:

which I’m on the fence about whether or not it was intentional. Chanticleer is a cock, after all. The presence of faux Jessica Rabbit love interest Goldie Pheasant (cleavage toned down after shocked test audiences!) seems to indicate at least an attempt at mild sexual humor.

Here’s one way in which ROCK-A-DOODLE may be viewed in a possibly positive light. I very much doubt Bluth considered this angle, but here ya go: if you interpret the movie as the story a little 7 year old boy who can’t read very well, trying to come up with a story after his mom – the conduit for those weird markings under the pictures – had to go out on an urgent errand, then maybe the screaming anarchy of this movie makes sense. Hell, he even inserts himself into it as a cute kitty who saves the day! But, again, I sincerely doubt it.

You wanna judge for yourself?

Genuinely one of the shittiest movie’s I’ve ever seen, but it’s a heck of an experience. CLICK IT

*There is probably one sorta-clever gag in the movie. The bouncers are frogs.

Derp Blog Into Darkness #18: NOTTING HILL

In Derp Blog Into Darkness, I take a plunge into the deep with movies I’ve never seen or (in some cases) never even heard of, with the only common thread throughout being that they were purchased by my partner in the years after the break with her religious upbringing. This gives me a range from mainstream comfort food to more daring, “rebellious” stuff.

It’s funny, I’ve always liked Hugh Grant, but until now, I’d never really seen Hugh Grant play his nice guy persona. I have vague memories of seeing FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL long after its release, but the first time I was aware of him was when I read about his lewd conduct arrest in ‘95. The first movie I definitely remember seeing with him in it was BRIDGET JONES, where he plays a cocky asshole and the movie’s villain.

Most recently, I saw him in CLOUD ATLAS where he again plays (among other things) a cocky douchebag. ATLAS has plenty of nice guys in it, but the Wachowskis/Tom Tykwer didn’t ask Grant for a single one. He’s moved beyond his persona indefinitely, it seems! So from this point of view, it was quite interesting to go back to one of his most stereotype-affirming movies, NOTTING HILL.

The story’s fairly simple: Nice Guy Hugh meets and falls in love with Huge Movie Star Julia Roberts. But it’s tough dating a big movie star! She has a busy schedule and it’s hard to meet up. The paparazzi follow her everywhere! They have a crisis, which is somewhat of a funny reveal, but then they make up, but then they have another crisis, and then Hugh and all his wacky friends have to race to a press conference before she leaves the UK.

NOTTING HILL is an amiable, low-stakes movie that elicited a couple of laughs out of me. It’s a testament to Grant that, even when he’s doing obvious schtick, he’s still very likeable. Roberts’ performance is commendably restrained, as her actress character is meant to be pretty beaten down by the life. The movie admirably succeeds in making the life of a movie star seem quite unpleasant (“I’ve been on a diet every day of my life since I was 19.”) and, if anything, you want them to end up together so she’ll have someone nice in her apparently quite shitty life. But that’s where emotional involvement ends, unfortunately. The characters are so thin that it’s hard to get a connection. Hugh is nice, bumbling. Julia is sad, famous. The characters aren’t unlikeable, but they feel a bit empty. I wouldn’t be surprised if this movie was the turning point that made Grant want to drop his schtick.

Dylan Baker’s arch-nemesis Rhys Ifans plays a gross roommate and he’s pretty funny cuz his jokes are about dicks and butts.

I’ll admit that when I felt something, it was in scenes with Hugh’s circle of friends. They all came across as nice people with their shares of ups and downs. The actors (among which Tim McInnerny, Blackadder’s Percy) do a fine job at making them real and pleasant.

It’s not a bad film at all – just an extremely lightweight one. LOVE ACTUALLY, writer Richard Curtis’ next film, fares better because of its nature as a romcom anthology. Don’t like one storyline? Eh, there’s gonna be another one in a few minutes. The Grant-Roberts relationship isn’t interesting enough to carry an entire movie, so you’re kind of sitting there watching sort-of-nice people hang out and make the occasional amusing witticism.

RANDOM NOTES:

Hugh has a book shop, which is already pretty quaint in 2013, but a TRAVEL BOOKS ONLY book shop? Damn son, how do you pay the rent in London?

Hugh wants to meet Julia again, but her junket is running late, so he acts like he’s from a magazine to interview her. My favorite gag in the movie is when he’s asked what magazine he’s from. He looks around in a panic, and his eyes settle on HORSE & HOUND magazine. He literally makes this face at it:

and says “HORSE & HOUND magazine!” to which the publicist just goes “okay sir right this way” without missing a beat. It’s the worst deception I’ve seen in any movie since Aragorn told Eowyn her soup was okay!

Cameos by pre-fame Clarke Peters of The Wire and babbly Mischa Barton of The OC at that very junket! My fiancée is probably the only NOTTING HILL DVD owner that only recognizes the former.

Iron Man 3 is the first Big Comic Book Movie

Whaaaaa? Come on man, we just had AVENGERS. How much bigger and sillier can it get?

Yeah HOLD ON bro

AVENGERS was big and silly and great, but here’s the deal. It was essentially a superhero team origin movie. Which was novel, because we’d never seen a superhero team movie before*, and part of the fun was seeing all the heroes bicker and fight and eventually assemble as Avengers are wont to do.

IRON MAN 3 very much takes place in a post-AVENGERS world. The existence of alien life, the expansion of mankind’s playing field has not only had consequences for Tony Stark’s character, it changed the entire world. Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian intones, “Ever since that big dude with the hammer fell out of the sky, the days of “subtle” were over.”

AND HOW

Let me tell you, I was actually not really looking forward to this movie. Downey just slums it through most of his movies nowadays, pretty much counting on his slick charm to tide you over to the credits. While this was true for me personally in the case of IRON MAN 2, I also recognized that it was a pretty shitty fucking movie on its own terms. And after the rollicking Silver Age Hokum that was AVENGERS, why would I want to go back to Tony Stark sitting in his garage for 90 minutes cracking wise at a robot arm and then there’s a fight maybe? While the hiring of Shane Black as director and the reveal of Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin outfit and voice made me somewhat interested, I was expecting to be moderately amused.

I came out of it absolutely in love. Now, a lot of Marvel movies have that effect – “omg I think this was my favorite Marvel movie?” – but I actively went in looking for stuff to nitpick and lol at Kingsley. Holy shit, Marvel gave me a real movie with a plot and character development and everything. We start the movie with Tony having anxiety attacks about the sudden hugeness of the universe. No wait, back up. We start the movie in 1999 with Tony and Happy at a party in Switzerland. The fucking Marvel logo was accompanied by Italian Eurodance outfit Eiffel 65’s BLUE. What a hilariously shitty fucking song! Tony is doing his Tony thing, trying to bed science lady Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), while blowing off science dork Aldrich Killian’s invitation to join a think tank called Advanced Idea Mechanics (or AIM). Tisk tisk, Tony! That’s how you make supervillains! But he couldn’t have known that, it was a pre-AVENGERS world. Besides also featuring Lou Bega’s Mambo #5, this flashback just keeps on giving: turns out that Happy was a big fan of PULP FICTION since 1999 him is hardcore cosplaying Vincent Vega.

Black and co-writer Drew Pearce constantly find little character moments to spruce up proceedings too. Almost every character is laugh-out-loud funny. Several nameless henchmen got big laughs. I don’t know exactly who wrote what, but the Pearce/Black combo works very well. The movie’s humor is sardonic without ever crossing over into misanthropic in a way I thought LETHAL WEAPON kinda was upon revisiting it recently. And man, Black really brings some 80s action sensibilities to the movie: real sleazebag villains and henchmen, cheesy pre-death oneliners, MIAMI MANSIONS**, buddy cop banter***, President William Sadler and VP Miguel Ferrer, …

One thing mercifully left in the 80s is the misogyny. Not only does Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper kick ass, there are several female characters who are not easily pigeonholed (they have at least two dimensions and stuff!). Maya isn’t a femme fatale out to seduce Tony away from Pepper, and the Mandarin has a henchwoman who isn’t defined by sexiness. She’s just a henchwoman who kicks Tony’s ass in a fight scene. Mandarin has some pretty good hiring practices, in fact, since there were a good deal of female mercs under his command in the final battle.

That’s another thing: action scenes – great. Tony is constantly under duress, he’s constantly having to think on his feet. We see him tinker with household appliances to build new shit that isn’t just a new kind of laser for Iron Man. RDJ not wanting to be in the armor all the time actually benefits this movie greatly, cuz there’s some absolutely terrific and inventive action stuff in there. We’re finally reminded in a very visceral way that Tony Stark is one of the smartest guys in the world, and if he doesn’t have his suit, he still has his brain. TONY STARK BUILT THIS IN A CAVVVVEE – Shane Black shows us what awesome shit Stark can build with a DIY store at his disposal.

Besides reminding us that Tony is really smart to back up his cocky douchebaggery, IM3 also reassures us that the highly capable Pepper Potts and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) are Tony’s friends and they care for him. Yeah, Rhodes is a military man who’s slightly more responsible than Tony, but he’s a fun/funny guy. Pepper is not a shrill harridan who lives to spoil Tony’s fun. Happy remains about the same Jar Jar guy he was, but he was fine in the other movies. Fucking JARVIS has more personality than he’s ever displayed. Harley, Tony’s kid sidekick for the second act, is never given cutesy Hollywood kid stuff to do – in fact, when at one point he does, it’s immediately revealed to be an act. Yeah, get this – Tony spends a chunk of the movie in a small tax-breaky Tennessee town (lol classic Marvel), and it’s still pretty amusing and thrilling cuz, you know, he’s investigating shit and discovering new elements of Mandarin’s plot.

To come back to the hit-baiting title of this piece: Why is IM3 the first big comic book movie? Cuz it’s the first movie that feels like it takes place in a Comic Book Universe rather than a world like ours that is invaded by one fantastical element. This is a world where people deal with the fact that Asgard and who knows how many other worlds are real, and where IRON MAN VS THE MANDARIN AND THE LAVA MEN OF AIM is just a thing that happens.

Marvel has learned its lesson. AVENGERS was so huge they don’t need to remind people that they do other movies too by inserting distracting subplots, rather they’ve turned their shared universe into this fascinating background tapestry that informs character actions and motivations throughout a self-contained story. Even the post-credits sequence doesn’t tease any other upcoming releases, it’s just a fun gag with Tony and another big Marvel character.

TONY STARK WILL RETURN, the end credits promise. With the same crew behind it, I’m psyched.

i mean lol

 

*that didn’t exclusively fight SWAT teams in Canadian forests or disgruntled plastic surgeons on New York sidewalks

**I swear that was Johnny Tapia’s mansion

***One of my favorite gags was the Mujahedeen giggling at Rhodes along with Tony when they learn his lame War Machine password.

Derp Blog Into Darkness #17: NEVERWAS

In Derp Blog Into Darkness, I take a plunge into the deep with movies I’ve never seen or (in some cases) never even heard of, with the only common thread throughout being that they were purchased by my partner in the years after the break with her religious upbringing. This gives me a range from mainstream comfort food to more daring, “rebellious” stuff.

A little boy wakes up in an overly color-saturated room. He asks for his dad. Upon not receiving any answer, he proceeds through an overly color-saturated hallway into an overly color-saturated garden. There, he finds his dad’s hanging corpse. A sweating Aaron Eckhart wakes up from his nightmare. Next, we find him driving through a beautiful autumnal New England landscape, as Ian McKellen’s voice tells us the tale of a little boy named Zachary Small and his adventures in a land called Neverwas. Eckhart ends up pulling into the driveway of a mental health institution named Millwood.

I describe these first few minutes of the movie in such detail because at this point, I was still feeling around as a viewer. This is one of those movies I had literally never even heard of, so I popped it in without even reading the DVD cover. Always an exciting proposition! And, you know, dayummmm – dat cast! Vera Farmiga isn’t even credited on the DVD cover, that’s how stacked with good actors this thing is. The writer-director did not ring a bell, but apparently he’s doing that Ashton Kutcher Steve Jobs biopic next, so let’s see if he’ll crank up the hues for that one.

We learn that Eckhart’s dad (Nick Nolte) was a successful children’s author who suffered from manic depression. His big smash hit was Neverwas, whose protagonist Zachary Small was based on his own son Zachary. Hospital administrator William Hurt tries to dissuade Eckhart from the job he’s applying for with the weirdest and lamest excuses ever (“Naww nawww you’re from a fancy college we’re too lame for you!”) but Eckhart really wants it and then Hurt’s like sighhhh okay you can sit in on this group session if you reaallly want it I guess. I’m not sure about this hospital’s hiring practices!

The group session has Alan Cumming and Vera Farmiga in it. Wandering the common room is a mute Ian McKellen as well, whom Hurt assures he’d love to have in his talk group if he ever feels so inclined. Cumming plays Jake, a guy who has problems with his fiancée. Farmiga plays Eleanna, a woman whom Eckhart compliments on having a nice name. Cumming is actually listed on the DVD cover, but he has two scenes and ten lines. I have no idea what his actual deal was, or if it somehow got resolved.

Quirky music (by Phillip Glass!) accompanies a montage of Eckhart getting to know the patients in one-on-one interviews. But… they don’t say funny stuff. In fact… they all seem to have genuine problems. Movie, you are confusing me!

That’s where the movie starts losing it: the set-up is fine, if a little derivative, but it never quite knows how to follow up on it. McKellen is all about the Neverwas book, so at first you think he’s an insane superfan of Nolte’s, but somewhere in act two it is revealed that Nolte met McKellen while he was in treatment for his depression, and just poured all of his ramblings into a children’s book with his own son as the protagonist.

The director of NEVERWAS should basically fall to his knees that he somehow got a hold of Ian McKellen post-LOTR. McKellen is so wonderful, he almost (almost!) makes you believe in the magic of Neverwas. All the actors are good, really, but McKellen is the effortless standout. The movie’s big problem is essentially that both the real world and Neverwas somehow feel undercooked. You get the conflict between Eckhart and McKellen, between Eckhart and his mom, and they even manage to make the half-hearted lovestory between Eckhart and Brittany Murphy feel somewhat relevant due to a small twist regarding her motivations*, but in the end when you see all the real world locations that inspired Neverwas, you just don’t know enough about the book’s world to be all wowe.

McKellen’s past is also shrouded in too much mystery – or mayhaps no one really thought it through? He “sabotaged” a construction site. That’s all we know. Did anyone get hurt/die? I onno! Enough to lock the sumbitch up for years though, transferring him from ward to ward constantly. McKellen manages to escape by somehow letting all the inmates wander the grounds one night, allowing them to dance quirkily and stuff in the moonlight. How McKellen does this is not explained. He says to Eckhart to meet him on the other side of the mountain, and Eckhart and Murphy give chase, wanting to bring him in before the cops hurt him.

So yeah, here’s where Eckhart (who never was too big on his dad’s book) gets helped tremendously by Hermione Murphy who starts recognizing landmarks from Neverwas. They’re almost there when Eckhart says “You have to stay here! Call my lawyer, he’ll know what to do!!” Uhhh okay bro. So there’s a tense stand-off between the police and unarmed McKellen (who is suddenly in Ren Faire geare and also has A FUCKING CASTLE** IN THE WOODS) which then gets defused by Murphy arriving with some sort of document. What that document entails is never revealed, but the sheriff tells his men to stand down. The movie ends with another McKellen VO, Eckhart working happily at the (now very well funded??) institution, and McKellen reigning as the king of Trash Castle. So they dropped all charges and declared him sane enough to walk around? I swear I did not fall asleep during this movie!

NEVERWAS feels like someone wanted to make a BIG FISH but got a little BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA mixed in there and then lucked the fuck out with its cast. It’s not exactly a shit sandwich (mostly due to McKellen), but there is a little layer of shit between the ham and the lettuce.

*But then they squander it and sideline Murphy for the finale, which feels like she really should have been present for, given the character’s love of the book.

**It’s made of trash, but it’s a really impressive structure nonetheless.