Looper

Killing Time
or
Maybe You; Möbius

The trouble with time-travel movies is the really good ones (that is, the plausible ones—if such a thing exists) require a flow-chart to make any sense, and once you're doing that, you take a lot of the fun out of it.  That would be the problem with going back in time—you'd be spending so much time making sure you didn't disturb anything and cleaning up after oneself that you'd hardly have any time reliving the past in the present if you hope to have any future.  As one of the characters says "This time-travel crap, it fries your brain like an egg."

Fortunately, Rian Johnson (who made the rather precious Brick, and the entirely commendable The Brothers Bloom) has already done the muck-work for Looper, a tough-as-nails-time-travel noir set in the year 2044, where thirty years hence (2072) time-travel will be invented...and instantly made illegal.  Well, if time-travel is outlawed, only outlaws will have time-travel, and so organized crime uses it—not to increase the fortunes, but to dispose of their garbage.  "You can't dispose of a body in the future," narrates Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the long explanatory opening voice-over).  "I dispose a body that technically doesn't exist."  The future-hoods (dressed like Leone gunfighters) kidnap a "disposable," throw a hood over his head, hog-time him in a vest lined with silver bars, and toss him in the time machine, where he quickly appears in 2044, is just as quickly "whacked" and the silver mined as payment by the executioner, called a "looper"—local-time kids, who are given rich rewards, a steady cache of drugs, and rental of a woman of his choice.  They live like sociopathic kings in a Karl Rove dreamscape, where the meek don't inherit nuthin'—the middle class roaming the streets, pushing shopping carts, while the killers drive jet-cycles.  Overseeing this mob is Abe (Jeff Daniels), recruited from the future to manage the loopers and keep them in line, which include a rather draconian retirement policy (don't these guys read their hiring contracts?) that forces them to "retire" their older selves when they are sent back in time for disposal—you get your gold-watch at the start of your career and a gold lined cement overshoes at the end.  

That's the set-up.*  Things get complicated, when Joe stands in his chosen field, waiting for the body-to-be to show up on the blood-tarp, and when it does, there's no hood, and when he looks into his target's eyes, they're his.  Joe has to kill himself from the future.

You know that already.  You've seen the set-up, read the poster.** But the implications, why that is, why "Old Joe" shows up with no hood, and what comes next...and next...and next...and then back...then next, would be revealing any of the surprises the film has in store.  It's enough to say that, in surface detail, it's quite an ingenious little ride, and the plot-holes are kept cleverly out of sight and out of mind, and one has to assume a lot, such as evidently time-travel only exists as a form of going back to the past, and not forward into the future, as one of the characters does it "the old-fashioned way."  And one has to accept a lot of "fuzzy mechanism" mumbo-jumbo for things happening to Joe that ultimately affects "old Joe"—for instance the rather painful form of communication between the two, that is further demonstrated in the extreme by another looper (played by Paul Dano), which is just a damned clever device, but also grisly to the queasy point.

Lots of violence...in some interesting forms, and one of the alarming things is how fast people get shot in 2044—you appear(BOOM!), and Johnson is doing some very clever things with the camera these days that aren't so derivative of other directors.  That's good.  His sense of timing in editing is still as razor sharp as it has always been, and he's not afraid to mess with aspect-ratios for effect.  The ideas are good, and one thing Johnson has always had is a clever way with dialogue, which is where Looper shines, time after time.

Looper is a Matinee.  And it might be worth seeing again some time.


* ...except for one little tidbit of information that some of us have mutated to have telekinesis, but it doesn't amount to much—"no superhero stuff." says Joe  "We can float quarters.  That's it."  Yeah, but...  It wouldn't BE there if it wasn't necessary.  And it is, but only semi-so.

** And if anybody is wondering why JoGo-Levitt looks weird in this movie, it's because he's been given a prosthetics make-over so he has Willis' nose, eyes, lip-line, and theinning hair and does a rather inspired Willis-routine throughout the movie, especially in an interview with Abe where the resemblance and mannerisms are uncanny. 

Super

"The Weed of Crime Bears Bitter Fruit"
or
"Boltie!  NO!"

There will be four major super-hero movies coming out this Summer (starting with Thor next week, Green Lantern, X-Men: First Class, and Captain America: The First Avenger), plus a smattering of graphic novel adaptations and such.  Next year, The Avengers, Spider-man, Batman and Superman movies will be released.  Comic Books are hot in the movies because they're easily digestible, easy to adapt, and they skew young in the audience demographics.

It's just too bad that so many of them are terrible, and they've created a lazy back-lash of "Oh, I'm so sick of super-hero movies" to any blogger who can put two words together.  Sure, you're sick of them.  Too much of anything gets dull after awhile. 

So, stop going to them.  That's not so hard.  With great power comes great responsibility.  Super-hero movies have a lot of power right now and you're responsible.

Meanwhile, there is an antidote to all this nefarious meta-human poisoning, a tonic to the wish-fulfillment fantasy that the genre unquestioningly presents: Super, written and directed by James Gunn, former Troma writer-director.  Notice that it doesn't say "Super-hero," as that label doesn't really apply—it stops just short of the "hero" as the "vigilante" aspect of the crime-fighter takes center-stage along with its brother-in-arms, revenge.

Frank D'Arbo (Rainn Wilson) is a short-order cook/man-child and the best thing that ever happened to him was marrying Sarah Helgeland (Liv Tyler), a waitress at the diner who's just come out of re-hab and is trying to get her life back in order.  Things are fine (at least from Frank's perspective) until Sarah runs off with Jacques (Kevin Bacon), a sleazy drug-dealer and then Frank melts down.  Despairing, angry and confused he's inspired by a religious station's superhero program "The Holy Avenger" (played by a smirking Nathan Fillion) and by having his brain "touched by the finger of God," to set his spinning-out-of-control back on track by taking on a vigilante role as The Crimson Bolt—his only weapons being his innate sense of "right" (no drug-dealing, no pedophilia, no butting-in in line) and a large pipe-wrench.  There are no fancy moves, no elegant acrobatic abilities pulled off with ease, just a schlumpfy guy in a leotard blundering into situations and clocking people with a big spanner.  Realistic, right down to the cranium-cracking that such action produces.  It's funny, but also slightly cringe-inducing as you see the damage that such blunt trauma can produce.  At that point, the "heroism" aspect becomes secondary to the thuggish behavior such actions create—the line between "do-gooder" and freakish assault becomes blurred and squishy.

Squishy being the operative word here.  Gunn is from Troma, the cheerily exploitative grind-house that's created such films as The Toxic Avenger, so no holds are barred in the presentation of violence with its resulting blood-splatter and meat-manufacturing.  When "The Bolt" increases his armory with guns, pipe-bombs and accelerant, things turn explosively ugly.  And that's where Super has it all over such juvenile exercises in juvie crime-fighting glorification as Kick-Ass.  However much that film tried do disguise its brutishness with smooth moves and well-choreographed stunt-work, it played fast-and-loose with the consequences of such actions, making it all 'look cool" and distracting from the carnage.  There's nothing smooth about this film; it's down and dirty and doesn't even look heroic so much as desperate and geekish, the results of adrenaline mixed with no skill whatsoever.  There's more danger in Super than anything simulated in Kick-Ass.

Things get complicated.  "The Bolt" starts to attract attention from the press and the local police, particularly one detective (Gregg Henry) who puts one and one together and connects the addled D'Arbo with the increased attacks around town.  Then, "The Bolt" gains a side-kick, the cute chick Libby (Ellen Page) at the comics store where he does his research.  A comics junkie, she also has a hyper-intense fantasy jones that makes her latch onto D'Arbo's crusade with an unhealthy zeal, becoming his junior partner, Boltie.  It's an unhealthy relationship, as Frank tries to mentor Libby ("That's inappropriate, Boltie!") in her adrenal-rush to take things too far.  And they go too far, to the point where Super jumps the genre line to become more like Taxi Driver than a super-hero film.

Super is not rated, simply because it wants to skirt the issue of taming the gore and present its message uninhibited by catering to the unfathomable whims of the MPAA.  So, the violence is squishy and upsetting, the language is pervasive ("Oh, maaan!  The Bolt-mobile is kinda fucked up!") and the places it goes only occurring to those who are seriously aware of the psychological twistedness of the genre (like Alan Moore).  It may look funny and goofy, but caution is advised if you're easily traumatized, or holding out for a hero.  Super isn't playing games or taking hostages.

Super is a rental.  Shut up, Crime! 

"This is how you fight crime...sit here and wait for it to happen?  It's so BORING!!"

Monsters Vs. Aliens (3-D)

"The Ginormica Monologues"

It's the perfect wedding day for Sally Murphy (voice of Reese Witherspoon, cracked on the boil): she has the perfect dress, the perfect church, and the perfect groom in fat-headed weatherman Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd). But it's all in the timing. Just after a little pre-nuptial spat about honeymooning in Paris or Fresno, the bride-to-be gets squashed by a meteorite. At the altar, everyone comments that she's positively glowing...but...glowing green! And she goes from meteoric to all metaphoric, by growing enormously, dwarfing her puny groom and scientifically smashing the church to splinters. I kept waiting for the parents to say "our little girl's grown up!" but no such luck.* Pretty soon, the Army led by General W.R. Monger (a gruff Kiefer Sutherland, having fun) fires hypodermics in her butt and Gulliver her to the ground, where she awakens in one of those cavernous U.S. installations we only wish we had with a bunch of other monsters Monger's captured since the atomic testing days of the 50's. There's the Missing Link (Will Arnett), a Blob named B.O.B. (Seth Rogen in a bit of typecasting), and the insane Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), as well as a giant Japanese moth creature called Insectizoid. Kept prisoners by the government, they are finally called out as a last resort when Aliens, led by the evil Galaxhar (Rainn Wilson, like you've never heard him) attack the U.S. ("...they only seem to ever attack here,"** intones a Brokawed-paletted news anchor) after humiliating the President (Stephen Colbert...typecasting again).

Dreamworks and the directors (Conrad Vernon andRob Letterman of "Shrek 2" and "Shark Tale," respectively) do a nice job of plumbing the envelope of the monster-crowd giving us versions of the Mothra, the Fly, the Blob, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and the 50 ft. Woman, and instilling the politically correct message that these aren't monsters but "special" people...er, things...entities (whetever). Indeed, the entire movie plays like a therapy session for Sally to embrace her empowerment and not to see her change as an accident of Nature, so much as...a happy accident of Nature. Hey, empowerment is empowerment even if you do go up 30 dress-sizes.

The animation? Extraordinarily simplistic in a weird way. Sally looks like one of those big-eyed Keane children, and most of the men seem to be variations of Nixon (except for Derek, who looks uncannily like Conan O'Brien). The monsters are varying body-types and primary colors, so you can tell who's who when they're flitting across the screen (which they do a lot). Still, there is good planning going on, so one is never at a loss for where one is, and where the danger lies. In a totally made-up universe that can be a problem. And the 3-D effects are impressive, starting with a Dreamworks logo gag (heh), and a gratuitous paddle-ball sequence, although the 3-D-ness, sometimes comes off as having the dimensions of a pop-up book. Still, the process has come a long way, and is frequently, deliberately eye-popping. It's not enough to recommend seeing it in theaters, though, ao hopefully when it comes to DVD, they'll include the 3-D version, with glasses.

"Monsters vs. Aliens" is a Rental

* ...and I'll bet the attendess threw puffed rice, (badum-bump!)

** Personally, I think it has to do with our Immigration Policy. "Okay, you can destroy the Golden Gate Bridge...once, but promise you'll never do it again and we'll consider granting you amnesty."