Frozen (2013)

Ice-Ice, Baby
or
(The Cold Never Bothered Me, Anyway...)

Disney's latest animated feature—not in the flat 2-D classic animation, but in the 3-D pixilated version ala Tangled—is "inspired" by Hans Christian Anderson's "The Snow Queen," according to the credits.  That's a whole new interpretation of the word "inspired" because Frozen has next to nothing to do with "The Snow Queen" other than...there's a Queen...and she makes snow.  But Tangled wasn't exactly "Rapunzel," either.

But, it's a quibble (And it's Disney).

Disney, who just put the first female (albeit co-director) on one of their female-dominated animated films. Based on a screenplay by, and co-directed by Jennifer Lee (with Chris Buck), it's another "Princess" movie that will expand the Disney marketing franchise (with two of them), but as with Pixar's Brave it dares to up-end some story-book conventions, making the royal sisters Elsa (Idina Menzel) and Anna (Kristen Bell) the emotional hub the story revolves around, and relegating the two hunky guys that are standard love interests pretty much transportation tools. This is a good thing.  And especially when the movie sets up "the guys" (one prince/one working stiff) as the solution to the problems and then very briskly pulls the cloth-simulated tapestry out from underneath that cliché.  I like that.  And I like how the solution to "the problems" is bundled very tightly in one unexpected moment that, frankly, shocks, and takes one aback emotionally.  I like that even better.

So, it's not "The Snow Queen."  What is it?  Elsa and Anna are princesses in the kingdom of Arendelle and they're by no means twins—Elsa is older by a couple years, and she has the telekinetic power to freeze things and project snow and ice from thin air.  This delights Anna, but a childhood accident forces the King and Queen to seek the assistance of trolls who save Anna's life, but take away her memory of Elsa's power to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.  The Royals also lock up Elsa, keeping her from her sister...and everyone, until she learns how to suppress her powers, usually brought on by her emotions.

The two sisters grow up apart under the same roof, even after tragedy strikes the household.  The two don't see each other until Elsa's coronation day as Queen of Arendelle, but the two are distant even when inches apart, and when the scattered Anna becomes enamored of a visiting prince (Santino Fontana), upsetting Elsa and exposing her powers to the Kingdom.  Elsa flees, now that her frightening powers are out there for all to see.  

You couldn't miss it.  She's dropped Arendelle into a permanent winter, with no way to get it out.  It's up to the plucky Anna to go after her and try and mend fences and thaw her relationship with her sister and the town.

Prince Hans is a love interest, but so is an ice-cutter that Anna finds on her journey (voiced by Jonathan Goff), whose best pal is an anthropomorphized reindeer named Sven.  There's also a walking, talking snowman (created by Elsa) named Olaf.  The revelation of a goofy snowman in the movie was enough to give me a brain-freeze, but, as voiced by Josh Gad (he of "The Book of Mormon"), he's pretty danged funny.  The songs have the same show-connection, as well, as they're a collaboration between Robert Lopez (who co-composed both "Mormon" and "Avenue Q") and wife Kristen Anderson.  That's very much in the tradition of bringing the song-writing team of "The Little Shop of Horrors," Ashman and Menken, to Disney.  The songs are decidedly less Broadway, however, and more "pop" oriented—and will be appearing on the many reality-talent shows on the air in the not-too-distant future—and geared more for a cartoon audience than a theater one.

Again, quibbles.  And if Frozen didn't exactly warm my heart, my brain had some warm thoughts towards it.

Frozen is a Full-Price Ticket (I wouldn't spring for the 3-D, though).

One of three "I Want" songs in Frozen (four if you count Olaf's "In Summer").

Going in...er, "cold," the power-ballad approach makes one cringe, but given the back-story 

preceding it, it's a break-out moment...and a little scary.  In fact, the Elsa character was 

slated to be the villain of the movie until this song's themes of empowerment changed everything.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Maintaining Good Working Hobbits
or
A Dense Overlay of Smaug

The second of Peter Jackson's three "Hobbit" films, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is, predictably, more of the same.  It's a three hour ramble, a complication and a darkening of the tone of the first film—as usually happens with the second of a trilogy, so that we, the audience, can climb out of our emotional valley in time for the resolution of conflicts in the third.  Standard Operating Procedure.  We are given a quick recap of the first film—going back in time to when Gandalf the Gray (Ian McKellan) first put the idea into the head of Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and getting the dwarf crusade rolling.  Once the summary is done (in brief: Gold, Mountain, Dragon, Dead King, Arkenstone, New King, No Elves Allowed), they skip over An Unexpected Journey and head back to the Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves on the path to Lonely Mountain (Sindarin Erebor), orcs still snapping at their behinds and making their way to the entrance of Mirkwood.

A quick visit to the skin-changer Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt), who usually appears in the form of a bear—not much is made of him, even though he got his own poster with Gandalf last time—and they get to Mirkwood (by pony), at which point Gandalf goes "walkabout"—he does this every movie and they probably split the story to accommodate a "Gandalf disappearance"—so the wee folk must enter the spooky forest alone, with a promise from the wizard that he'll meet them at "the Lookout."

"The Lookout"—he said he'd meet us; he should be easy to find...

Anyone familiar with the book knows that you don't find out where G.theG. goes until the last chapter, and that was after Tolkien had written "The Lord of the Rings" and got continuity-conscious.  But, here, we do get to see where (hint: he went there LAST movie), and Jackson's The Lord of the Rings gets set up all good and proper (except Benedict Cumberbatch is voicing the character now—wonder if Jackson will Lucasize everything to make it all match up).   The dwarves and hobbit are concerned with icky things and splendors that one would associate with a place called Mirkwood, and the ring that Bilbo snatched from Gollum is starting to exert its unholy influence turning the peaceful little guy into a berserker bad-ass.  Travel packages with unruly companions and nasty accommodations with large pests and diffident natives will do that to anyone.  But, Bilbo proves his worth on more than one occasion and eventually they do make it to the Halls of Lonely Mountain, a few shy of a full dwarve-deck and make their way to a meeting with the titular character that's been hoarding all the gold and keeping it for himself—the ultimate one percenter of Middle Earth.

Bilbo above the canopy of Mirkwood

Smaug is the dragon, living in the massive storage caves of the Mountain, and he spends his time, far from desolate, sleeping among the gold and treasures of the dwarves like a big scaled, fire-breathing Scrooge McDuck. When Bilbo's attempts to find the Arkenstone awaken him, there is quite an extensive cat-and-mouse game as the small hobbit scurries around the cumbersome dragon.  Or I should say Cumberbatch, as the ubiquitous actor provides a nicely arch resonant voice to Smaug, which is accompanied by a lip-curling animation to enhance it.  This is where the film shines, as the territory is new, the imagineering of the dragon is fresh, and the surprises are many.  After the previous two hours, that's a bit refreshing.

For if there's a problem with Peter Jackson's version of The Hobbit, it's that, by now, we are so familiar with the way he does things that nothing much really resonates anymore.  The heavily belabored ripostes by the actors seem a bit too predictable—when Bilbo changes his story to gandalf that he found his courage in the goblin caves last movie (rather than The Ring), there's a close-up of Gandalf as he says what half the audience is expecting: "You'll need it." Really, that one and "You should be" are certain candidates for Screenwriting 101 "easy irony" along with "You just don't get it, do you?" and "They're standing behind me, aren't they?"  

And the action sequences, this time assistant-directed by actor Andy Serkis. go on and on, in ever-increasing silliness.  If last movie set a more rollicking, silly tone than The Lord of the Rings (in part by the influence of Guillermo del Toro), now the joke's wearing a little thin.  Extended fights between orcs and elves are no longer thrilling, they're a demonstration of every possible way you can kill something with an arrow.  An extended rush down a rapids in barrels is accompanied by additional orc-elf fighting, where the barrels are used for any other purpose besides transport, as every tree-limb and branch over-hanging is used as a foot-hold.  Some of this criticism isn't fair, because if this had been the first film in a trilogy of Tolkien adaptations, the marvels of the film would send people off a CGI cliff in amazement.  It might take at least forty-five minutes to tumble down it, though.

One should, however, point out that the "we've been down this glade before" problem didn't occur with Jackson's earlier Tolkien trilogy, where there was enough material to keep things seeming fresh each film, and Jackson and his screenwriters did enough juggling of the narrative to keep things seeming new from film to film.  Their attempts here amount to trying to add a romantic element between the elf warrior Tauriel (Evangeline Lily) and the dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner), much to the consternation of Legolas (Orlando Bloom, back in action).  And while it provides a reprieve from tumbling and shooting and other too-frantic sequences, it does take away from the basic focus on the titular Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) whose story this is.  Freeman's performance is, again, terrific, bringing all sorts of fretting elements to play, and making the transformation of his hobbit into a killer more than a little disturbing.

The vistas are staggeringly rendered, but some short-changing has been done with the characters in action sequences—Orlando Bloom seems to be the chief character robbed of some pixels, here and there, and the attempt to de-age him to a younger self doesn't really work (I've never seen it done convincingly, so far).  the only real surprises come in snatches of casting with Lee Pace, disappearing into the role of the elf Thronduil, Lily's elven warrior, and Stephen Fry's Master of Laketown.   Be on the lookout for some Laketown spies and you might even find Stephen Colbert for a brief second.  Oh, and Jackson gets his own "Hitchcock moment" out of the way very quickly.

Oh.  And SPOILER ALERT there's another movie coming, so this one ends at a rather inopportune time.  You only have to wait another year.

The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug is a Matinee.

"Conversations with Smaug" drawn by J.R.R. Tolkien

"Conversations with Smaug" drawn by WETA

Gravity

Push-Me, Pull-You
or 
"I'm Tellin' Ya, It's a Hell of a Story"

Gravity may just appear to you the shortest movie you've seen in awhile.  It lasts all of ninety minutes, but it rips by, despite long, leisurely takes where nothing much is happening (The opening shot alone is 17 minutes long without a traditional edit).  In that, it gets the yin-yang of space travel just so—floating at a relative leisurely pace while simultaneously moving at 16,000 mph, or as one test pilot describes the job—hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

Gravity pushes that out a bit, with many moments of sheer terror, but without some trumped up space monster hiding in lunar rocks (Apollo 18) or below the ice (Europa Station).  No, it doesn't need anything fancy.  It goes for the basics—a limitless indifferent Universe.

Up in space, aboard a futuristic space shuttle, terror comes by every 90 minutes or so, as a catastrophic collision between old Russian communication satellites causes a debris field hurtling by tearing holes through what ever fragile life-sustaining contraption we can put up there. Director Alfonso Cuarón (and his co-scenarist son Jonás) put the stakes right up front.  "Life in Space is Impossible."

They, then, spend the next 90 minutes destroying whatever faith in technology and science you might have.  It's an evangelist's dream come true.

That debris field starts out with a few little pieces, but like a cosmic game of "Asteroids" every collision creates more junk, sprays of it, and that just makes everything worse.  Space is our garbage field—Cuarón underpins the point by showing us all the junk—pens, screws, cuff-links ("cuff-links??")—floating in zero-g inside the space stations and capsules we put up there in some sort of mad attempt to make normal life in space.  It's a cosmic joke that after years of polluting the Earth, our garbage is making space uninhabitable (as if it ever was), too.

But, that's a lot of deep thought for after the film is over (as are some anomalies and plot conveniences).*  In the watching, Gravity is a fun-ride on so many levels, a visual romp and roller-coaster—the dialogue being mostly tangential and matter-of-fact—as the crew of the shuttle Explorer must deal with the fact that every 90 minutes their equipment is going to take a debilitating series of hits that might burst their protective bubbles just to survive.  The film is in mostly long, swooping stretches (the edits, interestingly, in dialogue situations), floating from one aspect to another, sometimes even violating the space of the astronaut's helmet, moving through the screen to get their perspective.  The novel aspect of this one is that the zero-gravity that science fictions films have recently taken pains to re-create or avoid has no restrictions in this scenario, there are no walls to bump into; if you go, you go until something stops you, slows you down, or retards your progress, and everything you do, pushes you in the opposite direction.  You can swim, but you'd better have an exit strategy for stopping, and spinning in place to turn around isn't going to help, because you're going to keep spinning.  And the series of catastrophes, hardships, and just plain pains-in-the-ass keep piling up one after the other, you would think it was Harold Lloyd up there.

Speaking of which, Gravity, besides the scrupulous pixelization of space, also boasts a dynamite sound experience.  In space, no one can hear dynamite, of course, but also no one can hear your thrusters whoosh-by, either, really. And Gravity is scrupulous about making sure you don't hear sounds in airless space, unless you absolutely have to.  Sounds are restricted to radio chatter (and interference) but also, only those sounds that would transmit through an astronaut's space-suit.  So, there are scenes where they're using power-tools? Only you don't hear the metallic grind of power-tools, you hear the vibration of the power-tools motors spinning.  But that's it.  Satellites get punctured, solar panels are torn off in bursts of shrapnel, but the most you hear is a muffled fwump if something impacts an astronaut, or vice versa.  And the theater I saw it in makes use of a Dolby system called ATMOS that pin-points where to put each particular sound as it careens through the theater.  It truly is an immersing experience in the theater.

For this space kid, despite some hokum here and there, it's the most fun I've had at the movies this year,** and someone is going to have to do something really exceptional to have better sound than this one.
  
Gravity is a Full-Price Ticket (Not only would I spring for 3-D, but try and see it in Dolby Atmos, for one of the craziest sound mixes I've ever heard).

* Three things, quibbles, anomalies, that are SPOILERS: 1) Sandra Bullock's hair is not plastered down on her head, but it's short, and would float around more than we see here (not a big deal, really, just a tech glitch, so the movie could get made); 2) At one point, we spend 10 minutes showing precisely how the whole friction-less world of Newton's laws of motion acts in zero-g, and then creates a cliffhanger situation that completely erases it, unnecessarily; and 3) Every 90 minutes that debris field shows up—IF everybody's in the same orbit, but one is STANDING STILL (which can't happen if you're actually orbiting) or they're going in opposite directions (at which point it would be every 45 minutes and very violently because they're colliding head-on).  As far as the plot conveniences, those are fairly obvious.

** There are some nice little in-jokes along the way.  My favorite: the unseen voice of Mission Control is Ed Harris, who played Flight Director Eugene Krantz in Apollo 13.  I could imagining him having conniption fits down on Earth: "Failure is NOT an option!" "Not on MY watch!"

Pacific Rim

"Jaeger-Meisters of the Universe"
or
Gigantor versus Godzilla

Oh, man.  Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim may be the smartest dumb movie ever made, a direct descendant of the Japanese monster movies that became increasingly inane and family-friendly...but were not without their charms...and cultish admirers.  Del Toro is obviously one of the latter, expanding from the menagerie of Big Creature Movies of the 1950's and '60's to posit "if we're getting so many of these things in our midst," what would the World do to combat them?

Build really big, hurkin' robots to beat 'em up, of course!  

In a short explanation at the beginning, pilot Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) says, "Whenever I felt lonely I looked at the stars. I was looking in the wrong direction." It turns out that we're not alone; there's a rift in the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean that serves as an inter-dimensional portal for creatures that attack coastal cities, starting in 2013.  The devastation wreaked by the increasing monster attacks compels the Pacific Rim nations—U.S., Russia, China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia—to form their own anti-giant lizard NATO against the "Kaiju," as they're dubbed, by using skyscraper-tall "Jaegers," huge piloted robot warriors to take on the huge lumbering monsters.

For awhile, the system works, the pilots becoming heroes, but the Kaiju get bigger and more resistant to Jaeger attacks and more sophisticated in their assaults, and Jaeger up-keep gets expensive.  World leaders start leaning towards defensive measures—thick walls to keep the invaders out—which, given the increasing abilities of the Kaiju, will eventually be a losing proposition.

Australians comment: "Funny, you don't look Kaijuish"

Parallels to current issues abound, and the film is a bit more subtle tackling other questions than one might expect in a robo-critter slug-a-thon: what are the Kaiju?  Where do they come from?  How does one fight an increasingly sophisticated enemy with the weapons you have?

Those are answered in the peripheries of the smack-downs that are the Jaeger-Kaiju battles, which have a giddy "Alley Oop!" quality to them.  There's an inherent goofy quality to seeing these lumbering mecha's—each with their own distinctive movement and swagger—planting hay-makers on assorted carapaces, using WWF moves on the monsters when it comes to close combat.  There's also something innately funny that these robots are so huge, as if they were walking Chrysler Buildings seeking revenge for past attacks.  It takes awhile for the Kaiju to figure out that they should go for the head (where the pilots are), but the Jaeger are so absurdly top-heavy one wonders why they don't just go for the knees in the first place.  Or double-team them by one sneaking up behind one (they have enormous blind-spots, being humanoid-inspired), and kneeling down, so that a front-attacking Kaiju can just push them over backwards—the fighting is that level of sophistication. But overlook that, and the basic concept of two people working in tandem for the movements—explained away by a hokum concept called "The Drift" that allows minds to merge—so that the minuscule puppet-masters can operate the stories tall rod-puppets.

That's in the foreground, but the basic concepts are deep and detailed, with the various Rim stations and individual fighter designs being incredibly complex.  There's also an optimistic "we're all in this together" spirit, despite all the expected competition and squabbling between the teams for most effective skills.

It's weird, inherently silly, but rather thrilling in conceptualization and realization.  And even though the Kaiju are not distinctive enough to be able to quickly ascertain who's who and what's what on first viewing, del Toro manages to keep all things clear—a bit like pulling off his own Jaeger juggling act.  

It's Kaiju-clobberin' time

Now, one would think that after a Summer of mounting indiscriminate screen carnage that has become increasingly boring to watch and numbing to the senses, that any more apocalypse would continue the trend of providing less bang for your buck.  But del Toro has managed to create a movie that has some impact, includes some awe-inspiring moments, and considerable humor to balance the package out, and one has to applaud the "togetherness" factor of individuals and nations forming a Corps of the Clobbering to take on the global threat (did I mention this movie is a complete fantasy?), in a way that doesn't feel militaristic, but is inclusive in spirit.  Hell, yeah, it's goofy, but it is also entertaining and points to how a particular vision can rise above pedestrian material to make something so enjoyable.

Pacific Rim is a Matinee.

The Wolverine

Ronin on Empty
or
The SNIKT Hits the Japanese Fan

The last Wolverine movie—which was also the only entry in the "X-Men: Origins" series—was not very good (I gave a "Cable-Watcher" rating).  But, like Wolverine healing from his wounds and coming back whole, hope springs eternal like adamantium claws, and there were enough interesting aspects to The Wolverine that one wondered if this time they might have got it right. They were basing it on the Chris Claremont/Frank Miller mini-series from way, way back, and the director is James Mangold, who did Cop Land and Walk the Line. I mean he's no Darren Aronofsky (who he replaced on the project), but maybe, just maybe...

It tries very hard.

The script went through the hands of many writers, some of them quite accomplished—Christopher McQuarrie, Scott Frank—and Mark Bomback, who wrote Unstoppable and Live Free or Die Hard.  It retains some of the Claremont-Miller story, like the beginning with a self-exiled Wolverine living in the mountains, and his dealings with a bear and its careless hunter, but abandons most of it, causing it to suffer from serious story-bloat.  There are echoes of the original throughout—a mention of a bullet-train from the story turns into a full-fledged battle on the top of one in this—but instead of echoes, we have the roar of something almost wholly new, adding other elements and characters from other stories in the canon (thankfully limited to this world).  For example, it gives us a back-story of how Logan (Hugh Jackman) first met the man he will be dealing with in the movie—Yashida (Ken Yamamura in these scenes, then aging to Hal Yamanouchi). It's World War II, and he's in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, conveniently close to the city of Nagasaki, just when the second atomic bomb is dropped.  Logan shields the POW guard from the effects of the blast that crisps Logan, but, no worries, he heals from the effects in five minutes, although very painfully.

Fast forward.  When we find Logan in the present, he is haunted by nightmares of his dead love Jean Grey (Famke Janssen).  As she died in the egregiously terrible X-Men: The Last Stand, I know exactly how he feels—I'm still bitter about how they atomized the Scott Summers/Jean Grey relationship in that movie. While he's attending to the bear hunter in the bar, he's confronted with the pint-sized assassin Yukio (Rila Fukusima), who, in her stealth ninja style has electric red hair.  Fascinating.  She is in the employ of Yashida, who requests the man who saved his life at Nagasaki to do him a service before his death.* That would be in the form of relinquishing his mutant-powers to him.  Makes sense—he's dying and wants to live forever, while Logan is living forever and hates it.  Nobody's happy, so why don't we switch each other's green grass.  Well, despite his oft-professed existential pain, the mutant either has a change of heart or he just knows how to position it and says that he would never curse someone with his everlasting powers, so, thanks but no thanks.  

Easy for him to say, he's living forever.

Yeah, I know Frank Miller likes it, but I never "bought" the
"Claws-stops-samurai sword" variation of Rock/Scissors/Paper.

Yashida dies (thanks, Wolverine!), distressing his family, including daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) who is attacked and threatened with kidnapping at her father's very public funeral.  So much for stealth.  At this point, it becomes a chase between the forces trying to kidnap Mariko (but who?) and some mysterious forces behind it all.  Oh.  And fights.  And chases.  And Logan gets hurt.  And fixes himself, because that's what he does, even if it undermines any sort of tension that he actually might get killed.

To give it some exotic Japanese flavor, part of a chase takes place in...an arcade?

What Claremont and Miller cooked up in their mini-series was okay, if slightly uneventful.  But without the Mariko-Logan back-story of the original tale, what Mangold and his writers have done is complicate things...a lot, drag in a standard Marvel villain, Viper (played by Svetlana Khodchenkova) (or Madame Hydra, as she was occasionally known and they dress her up in the customary cut-away latex thing the character always seemed to wear) and basically start from scratch, occasionally waving at the original story.  The whole thing feels convoluted and clunky and only brings some surprises if you've actually read the comic books—standard movie-goers just get the usual twists and turns that they can see coming a mile away.  Mangold does try and bring something to the fights, but, with a PG-13 rating expected for the thing, there's only so much slashing that can be done in anything more than a suggestive fashion. As with the other X-men/Wolverine movies, you aren't shown the cleavage that happens when the SNIKT! hits the fan. For all the talk of the character's bad-assery, the violence that his powers implies and the fan-boys want to see will always be ham-strung by the movie ratings system.

Despite Jackman's performance (and he'll always be associated with this role no matter how many musicals he'll do) this one doesn't feel fresh or fun, recycling a lot of material, but more so.  That centerpiece fight on top of a bullet-train is the same sort of thing we've seen before—and recently in James Bond, Spider-man and The Lone Ranger—but the same stuff is being done, just faster and less impactful.  Despite the constant threat of falling off or de-capitation (for Wolverine, everything will just heal), how can you make a fight  on a bullet-train dull?

Stick around as the credits roll out, though, for a couple of essential appearances—one of which is very surprising—that will lead into X-Men: Days of Future Past, which will attempt to unite the original X-men films with the "First Class" ret-conning to smooth out some of the two series continuity issues.  

Really, does it matter? How about just concentrating on making a better movie, like the First Class formula-blaster was?

The Wolverine (2013) is a Cable-Watcher.

Okay, I REALLY don't buy the claws stopping the Silver Samurai's sword.
("The Silver Samurai??")

* Wait a second here.  Wolverine saves HIS life at Nagasaki, and pulls him all the way to Japan to do this?  I know he's an international crime-lord and all, but that's really against any "pay-back" principle or criminal code of conduct I've ever heard of.  "You saved my life, so to repay you, I'm going to ask you to save it again."  Oh.  Well!  When you put it THAT way!

Disney's The Lone Ranger

...A Cloud of Dust...
or
Depp in the Heart of Texas

The last time "The Lone Ranger" hit the big screen (1981's The Legend of the Lone Ranger, directed by cinematographer William A Fraker), it hit with a resounding thud.  It's not that the story wasn't any good, or that the basic idea isn't ripe for story-telling—it's just that the movie was dull, dull, dull, even as it was trying to be more "politically correct," giving John Reid's "Indian companion," Tonto, a bit more respect and hewing a little closer to a generically Native culture.

That was then.  This is now.  John Ford made the first modern Western in Stagecoach.  Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah made the "post-modern" Western in the 60's.  Then, after post-modernism came death.  People stopped making Westerns entirely, with hold-outs like Eastwood and Costner and Kasdan and Harris, the tropes of the genre falling into use in, cop movies and martial arts and space fantasy films.  But the form stayed pretty much dead and buried.  Given the history of the form, and with its emphasis on the spirit world, resurrection of dead men, and its manic quality (especially as its de rigeur for the creatures these days) maybe Gore Verbinski's film of The Lone Ranger (now Disney's) is the first zombie Western.

It fits.*  One of the themes galloping through this one is that "nature is out of balance," what with the "Wild" West being invaded by iron horses, the presence of "spirit horses," villains who will eat the hearts of their victims and manically carnivorous jack-rabbits out on the plains.  Zombies, okay.  But it's a bit of a Frankenstein monster, as well, made up of parts of what has gone before.  The final credits say that it was filmed "from Moab to Monument Valley," mostly Utah, and its true, with shots in Zion, Arches National Park, and the Monuments (looking slightly different from the time John Ford filmed them—the calved spires seem to have been digitally erased—although Verbinski has taken a lot of Ford's specific angles several times in the film). 

Verbinski's The Lone Ranger on the left; Ford's The Searchers on the right

But it seems like Nature isn't the only one with the problem.  The Lone Ranger is a Western out of balance, tipping from side to side and waving its arms frantically while standing on a line between olde Westerns and the post-modern varieties, with full-stops at the Leone era** and the silent era of comedic Westerns, specifically Buster Keaton's The General (not technically a Western, but go with me here) in the film's final bursts of energy.  The movie veers from queasy nastiness to whimsy to outright comedy and slapstick, without taking a break for water.  The villains are played absolutely straight, from Tom Wilkinson's rail baron to his nasty co-hort, Butch Cavendish  (a greasily unrecognizable David Fichtner), while the heroes are bumblers with good intentions, like Armie Hammer's rube of a Ranger,*** and top-billed (above the character and movie title) Johnny Depp's bizarre take on Tonto—well, it's bizarre for Tonto, but not for Depp, as this "Indian companion" would line up well with his other pasty-faced odd-balls like Edward Scissorhands and Barnabas Collins.  And, in action, his Tonto acts more like the Sam character in Benny & Joon, there's some Chaplin, but a lot of Buster Keaton in his stone-faced, article-challenged Tonto (the make-up for which is inspired by a painting by Kirby Sattler entitled "I Am Crow," which is neither authentic or historically accurate, but it looks distinctive, which suits Depp's purposes, I suppose). 

The movie runs on two parallel tracks of revenge—the Ranger, John Reid's, and Tonto's—as the two end up joining forces to deal with the guys who ambushed the Ranger's brother and posse, and the guys who wiped out Tonto's village, for which he feels responsible.  It's a little late in the game to plead weariness of the revenge scenario—it seems like every movie hero has to have a personal grudge as a pilot light, rather than to "do what they gotta do" through some sense of altruism.  Possibly that heroic quality is passé or considered foolish in today's culture, or maybe there's no sense of audience involvement if it isn't seen why the protagonists stand up for what's right.

But, it spends most of its running time moseying through origin stories and the whittling away at the uneasy alliance between Reid and Tonto.  Then, once things get going, there's an extended chase sequence featuring the two trains involved in the driving of the golden spike uniting the nation's railways, an "Indiana Jones" type of marathon that explores everything that you can possibly do with two trains running on occasionally parallel tracks (when did they find time to lay all that extra track, one wonders?).  The sequence would make the silent comedians gape, and propelled by variations of "The William Tell Overture," provides a lot of entertainment.  It's fun for quite awhile and Verbinski constructs some Rube Goldbergian scenarios that are, once or twice, ingenious.

But, instead of coming at the nick of time, it comes a might too late.  The focus there at the end comes after a lot of wandering aimlessly through the desert, looking for something to do.  Granted, its not as dull as the 80's attempt to put the spurs to the franchise, and in parts its entertaining, if one isn't looking for native axes to grind**** or is approaching the material with an already jaundiced eye.  One wonders if it was worth doing, or whether "The Lone Ranger" should be allowed to pass into legend, a relic of the thrilling days of yesteryear.

The Lone Ranger is a Rental.

My favorite appearance of Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels as

The Lone Ranger and Tonto.

Kind of reminds me of how the movie plays them.*****

* Yeah, but one can see that as a strain running through Verbinski's work, especially considering the "Pirates" movies and Rango, where folks are coming back from the dead, or at least the crossing back from whatever spirit-world seems to fit the project.

** Composer Hans Zimmer does a lot of riffing off Ennio Morricone, the most notes taken from For a Few Dollars More (with its tinkling chime contrasting with a heavy-handed forward momentum theme), but also in the comedic grace notes that follow Tonto's shenanigans with a punctuating trill that Leone used for Eastwood's "Man with No Name" in A Fistful of Dollars.

*** Hammer is introduced like Jimmy Stewart's Ransom Stoddard in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the "duded" pilgrim who stands out far too much in the rough West, in a suit so formal he's mistaken for a missionary...by a missionary.  It's one of his better performances, showing that he's at his best, comedically, despite (and maybe because of) his blandly handsome looks, in a way that's similar to Cary Elwes. 

**** Most of the talk is focused on Depp and his "white-face" portrayal of Tonto and how authentic it is (not very), which with the existing suspicions people have of the character as demeaned and inferior, has been mostly negative, because, like skin color, its very easy to see and remark upon with what one thinks of as authority.  One wonders if such a rehabilitation is possible, given the character's man-servant past, like Robinson Crusoe's "Friday," or The Green Hornet's "Kato" (although it certainly helped if Bruce Lee was in the role, bringing the character up several notches just on ability and charisma—should we mention that Brit "The Green Hornet" Reid is a descendant of The Lone Ranger?), and whether its even worth it to right the past's wrongs.  The alternative is to stay in place, and be content—although grousing—with the way things were and just leave it aside.  I think it says something that Depp thought Tonto was the more interesting character to play, as for authentic...is anything Depp does very authentic?  Short answer: No.  As for the whole racial thing, I thought the best line was Depp's Tonto griping about the ranger being a "stupid white man," and the Chinese railroad workers grinning and nodding in agreement at him—he's just another American...to them.  Now, that's some funny ethnic humor there.

**** It also is inherently racist as it paints Tonto in a bad light, obviously Natives are gluttonous. (*cough*)

Monsters University

Crossing the Line
or
Big Monsters on Campus

They're ba-ack.  The monsters who regularly hide in your childhood closets to go bump in the night have returned.  And the whole premise of Monsters University is to show how Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James Sullivan (John Goodman) first bumped into each other in the first place.  It was a given in the first film (and one of its unstated charms) that a one-eyed puke-green bi-ped and a shaggy polka-dotted blue-green beast became friends in the first place.  M.U. feels the need to explain this monstrously odd color in the first place.  You just know that at some story-meeting, the Pixar geeks leaned back and said "they probably met in college."

Which leads to the question, what sort of college would that be?  Knowing that we, as an audience, had already suffered through the entire course-load at Hogwarts, M.U. was a good bet for movie-goers.  There are all sorts of easy ironies for a place of learning that specializes in scaring the tar out of you (just as there was in the "Potter" series), and the ways that faculty and staff can exert their own forms of terror can make for a fairly seamless story-line (Helen Mirren is brought in—seemingly the only Britisher not to appear in the "Potter" movies—as the dragony dean of studies).  And the writers have a good time expanding on the differences between Mike and Sully.  Mike has all the scary potential of a rubber ball, and his struggles through the "scare" curriculum makes him more of an over-achiever than he already is (one can easily see him pulling one-nighter's until his one eye is blood-shot, but they don't go there).  Sully has it easy—he's a legacy student and doesn't put much effort into it, until his own back is against the wall.  Both are campus mis-fits of a sort; they can't get into the fraternity lorded over by Johnny Worthington (Nathan Fillion) and can only get into the scary "animal house" of losers that are the nerds on campus.  Once all this is established, the story writes itself, as if by rote.

Ever taught at a University?  It looks kinda like this.

And that's the problem with Monsters University.  The basic concept does some stretching, but then it's "pixilate by the numbers."  Everything looks great-nobody makes a movie look as good as Pixar, whether it's a natural setting as in their Brave, or the unnatural one here, and the nuances of character draw from classic animation as well as a few wrinkles that Pixar tosses in.  But the studio's sequels (excepting the "Toy Story" series) have a sameness that feels like coasting, as opposed to the daring ideas like Ratatouille and Up.  The best of the Pixar films expand the horizons and stretch the form.  One like this one are more insular and shrink the potential and the possibilities.  At least it's better than Cars 2, which, basically, ran around in circles, as race-cars are wont to do.

The preview for the next Disney factory movie shows it's about airplanes.  *Sigh* It does not bode well.

Monsters University is a Rental.

One of the little details that makes me love Pixar:
A "traditional" styled map of Monsters U.