MONDOmagazine

Delgo
Directed by Marc F. Adler and Jason Maurer
Fathom Studios, 2008

By Miles Baker

Opening in theatres today, Delgo is a fantasy-set CGI-animated epic about post-colonialism for children.

After the Nohrin empire uses up all their natural resources, they send out search parties to find a new place to live. They find the Lockni, a family-oriented, spiritual people that look like lizards (the Nohrin look like fairies), who welcome them with open arms.

Before long the Nohrin occupy Lockni, until the King of Nohrin comes in and is like “Oh, sorry dudes, that was totally my sister going too far and occupying you. I’m totally going to banish her now. Sorry about killing all those people, but we’re going to stay.” So an uneasy peace and buckets of racism are left between the two peoples.

Now, years later, the film centres on Delgo (Freddie Prinze Jr.), a Lockni boy whose parents were killed in the occupation, and Princess Kayla (Jennifer Love Hewitt) of the Nohrin. Of course they overcome their hatred of each other’s species to fall in love and help defeat the King’s sister and save the day.

The biggest problem with Delgo is that it will pick up an interesting or good idea, and then drop it so that Chris Kattan can pretend he’s funny as the obligatory and unnecessary comic relief. For example, one of the films central protagonists, Val Kilmer’s Bogardus, is introduced by his gambling addiction. This is interesting. I like my hero with a side of character flaws. However, after the first 20 minutes this is never mentioned again, nor are any similar traits explored in this character. The rest of the movie, he’s a cookie-cutter good guy.

The worst of the dropping-the-ball problems are the film’s central themes about togetherness and racism. The film spends a lot of time making sure that the Lockni and Nohrin people are presented as neither good nor bad peoples. This same treatment isn’t given to any other races in the movie. There are three other races, each presented as stupid, slobbering, and murderous monsters. They’re sentient, they’re just as valid as the Lockni or Nohrin, and they’re presented as simply evil.

This seems like an incredible oversight on the part of the writers. Someone during production should have pointed out that they forgot their own message somewhere along the way.

Also, I’m sorry, but the Nohrin empire is totally evil and this is never talked about. They use up the Earth, the court is filled with corruption, and they started a war over land that wasn’t theirs. The only redeeming quality of this civilization is that they fly dragons and flying dragons is cool.

And the resolution is that colonialism is okay if it happened a few years ago, which I’m pretty sure is wrong. Like, morally wrong. Like, we shouldn’t show this movie to kids. Don’t show this movie to children.

Punisher: War Zone
Dircted by Lexi Alexander
Lionsgate, 2008

By Miles Baker

The best thing about Punisher: War Zone is that it feels like a Garth Ennis comic. There’s lots of exciting violence, some over-the-top humour, lots of cocaine use, a little bit of sentiment, then some more exciting violence.

Punisher: War Zone starts years after Frank Castle has adopted the Punisher persona, smartly avoiding his simple and uninteresting origins. Minutes into the film he’s spraying bullets into the bodies of gangsters and you know you’re in good hands. The violence is brutal and not shy about showing it. Head explode, necks snap, arms break – it’s visceral in a good way. Thankfully, the action is generally well-shot and edited. You can actually tell what’s happening in the fight sequences, which is sadly a rarity in today’s action films.

Then the film staggers a bit during the second act. You see, during the awesome violence of the first 20 minutes of blood shed, Frank kills an undercover FBI agent. Feeling guilty, and that his mission has gone too far, Frank takes a time out from all the things you went to see the movie for to stalk the FBI agent’s family and make amends. The scenes that try to humanize Frank are the weakest part of the movie, but it’s not all bad. There a couple of notable scenes where the sentiment is awkward and clumsy and missing a couple of shots. However, there are a few moments that I found surprisingly touching. A big part of why these moments land is Ray Stevenson as Frank Castle. He lands the look and feel of this character perfectly.

Dominic West as Billy Russoti/Jigsaw is also worth talking about. West is a great and charming actor, and it shows here. Fans of Tim Burton’s Batman will feel like they travelled back in time because his Jigsaw is extraordinarily like Jack Nicholson’s Joker. The effectiveness of this choice fluctuates greatly from scene to scene. There are times when his comedic, almost hammy approach is devilishly entertaining but it can also slip into cliche. Ultimately, I think a darker approach to match Stevenson’s would have been the better choice.

That being said, I think this movie is worth the price of admission. You get your money’s worth.

The part of me who took cultural studies is disgusted that I like this movie. Where violence solves anything and women are used as hostages for our super-masculine hero to save and visible minorities are all criminals. In social science terms, it’s a nightmare.

So, yes, it glamorizes violence and, no, women don’t have any interesting roles, but did you see when the Punisher punched right through that guy’s face? I rest my case.

Special thanks go to Alexander B. Huls of the REEL Addict for hooking me up with the advance screener.

So pale, so TEEN.

Twilight
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
Goldcrest Pictures, 2008

By Allana Mayer

Twilight. Yes, I went to see it. On opening night. Of my own volition, at full ticket price, knowing there was a high probability of having to tit-punch my way through a gaggle of snot-faced high-schoolers screaming, crying, clutching movie memorabilia and popcorn bags to their underdeveloped chests.

No, I’ve never read the books. I had never even heard of the damn series until two weeks ago. My interest wasn’t ironic – I was genuinely curious, though painfully skeptical. Nowadays, when everybody knows within minutes about everything that has ever happened, how could a book series with a Harry Potter-sized fanbase have passed by me, unnoticed, for so long? (I’ve never read the Harry Potter books, for the record.) But, I used to read Christopher Pike, so how bad could this be? And sometimes, when I’m in the right mood, throngs of screaming fans can be funny.

But I made one crucial error: choosing the midnight screening. I actually wanted the theatre to be swarmed, but of course all the teenyboppers had obeyed curfew and gotten home by eleven. So, the screening had maybe thirty people, only two of whom looked under twenty (and could, coincidentally, be identified as goths). The other people seemed like they had read the books despite its age rating, and were there to indulge a guilty pleasure. Disappointing, because it meant I had very little to distract me from the actual film.

Twilight is terrifying.

They each get their own shot in the prom scene.

It’s not that it was cheesily bad – it’s that it was so blatantly empty of anything approaching original content or form. The filmmakers’ equipment basically consisted of a cool-blue lens filter and a tonne of makeup – you’d swear the special effects consisted of vaseline on the lens.

The “chemistry” that drives the books, according to legions of fans, was translated for film by simply having a pretty young girl sit beside a pretty young boy. In what passes for “character development,” they essentially stare at each other heavily for two hours. At their first meeting, in which he glares at her in revulsion/fascination (which we later learn is due to his “hunger” – ew), the entire audience cracked up.

The few creepily passionate lines in a movie otherwise devoid of dialogue, are obviously culled straight from the book – lines no fan would allow the filmmakers to compromise on. The amount of pandering to diehards is apparent, and obviously came at the expense of any coherent whole for the uninitiated. Not that there’s much in the area of story to sacrifice.

The extravagantly affected slow-motion entrance of the vampire teens into the cafeteria, the quick shaky-cam cuts as our pretty girl character is surrounded by males in a parking lot, the visual acknowledgement of every character with a speaking role in the final prom scene (yes, of course it ends with prom) – all are brainless and by-the-book. The unjustified emotional displays (she throws her phone in a rage after her first day of school, which was fabulous in all respects but the aforementioned creepy boy encounter), and hokey montages (I get it! They talked all night!), not to mention the eight million “hey maybe a sequel is coming” moments, force me to conclude that director Catherine Hardwicke is a robot programmed with the syllabus of Hollywood Filmmaking 101. Twilight is a black hole of substance and style.

Twilight ultimately felt like it was made by a fanatic fifteen-year-old girl and that is exactly why I’m certain it’s destined to be a success.

Quantum of Solace
Directed by Marc Forster
MGM, 2008

By Leo K. Moncel

I feel badly for director Marc Forster and the writing team charged with bringing Bond back again. The Bond property is so familiar to audiences that the task of reinventing the Bond series is tantamount to being asked to reinvent the hamburger. If the new recipe is too different, we’ll complain it’s not a burger at all. If the recipe goes unchanged, we’ll tell you we’re sick of hamburgers and ask what we paid $12.50 for. Those of us who were so delighted with Casino Royale as a departure from form were hoping for more of the same this round. The paradox is, if new director Marc Forster (Stranger Than Fiction) followed the mold of Royale too closely, he’d actually risk pissing us off by dishing out more of the same. Perhaps trying to avoid said pitfall, Quantum of Solace emerges as a bit of a compromise. In many ways the film is a step back towards the larger, classic Bond flicks, yet there’s enough of the Royale texture in this picture to create a genuine conflict of styles. At times the conflict produces some satisfying results and at other times things get ugly.

Quantum of Solace gets going when MI6 realizes they’ve been infiltrated by the Quantum group, a syndicate that wasn’t even on their radar. James Bond is dispatched to Haiti to learn what he can about the Quantum group, but privately he stays preoccupied with finding the man responsible for the death of Vesper (from Casino Royale), a lost love that seems to be weighing more heavily on Bond’s heart than he’d care to admit. In Haiti, Bond crosses paths with Camille, the belle of a shifty fellow named Dominic Greene, who seems to be in bed with some rough characters in Bolivia. Investigating Greene, Bond’s actions inevitably fly off the handle; judged as a loose cannon, he’s dismissed from MI6. Bond even antagonizes the CIA who are in the midst of cutting deals with Greene, earning him some more bullets in his direction. Bond and Camille uncover a large conspiracy in Bolivia that threatens a people and environment.  Meanwhile Bond continues to be plagued by the loss of Vesper.

The plot is far more complicated in detail and includes one character who is nearly extraneous, existing only to squeeze a couple of character moments out of Bond. Craig, as Bond, doesn’t seem to bring the same level of commitment to the role this time around. There are a few reactions and line deliveries he does take in wonderfully unexpected directions, but for much of the film it seems he’s slogging his way through action sequences or dry exposition he doesn’t really want to be involved in. The supporting players are not exceptional either. Olga Kurylenko does a one-note strong-but-hurt performance and Mathieu Amalric has decided to “play a villain,” which is poison for a role that could have been more. Dame Judi Dench, contrarily, is razor sharp returning as M.

Your motivation is to run holding a gun.

All in all though, it’s not an actor’s movie, and nor does it need to be. Like any good Bond film, it succeeds in large part on the strength of its action sequences. So of course it’s really vexing when an action sequence tanks. There are three crucial sequences that are destroyed by the same obvious and massive flaw — extraneous crosscutting! While one pivotal moment is occurring, our attention is being drawn equally and simultaneously towards an action of no consequence (the horse race and the opera). The result? We cannot invest in the action of significance. In the final use of conspicuous crosscutting, both moments are significant and each moment gets undercut by the technique.

Where the film succeeds is in its engagement with the contemporary and the real. When James Bond travels to Haiti, it really looks like a third world country, from the congested streets to the rundown courtyards to the ugly drapes at the cheap hotel. The message of the film, though delivered somewhat ham-fistedly in the characters’ dialogue, is sober and relevant. We are not in the old Bond world where the Russians were the bad guys and with enough guts and guns a sharp cookie like Bond could put them in their place. The new sphere of global relations is a convoluted, ugly realm where it’s nigh on impossible to keep your hands clean.

Let’s hope, for the next kick at the can, the creative team stays focused on the larger realities they seem to understand well. And honestly, it wouldn’t hurt them to give Forster or whoever settled on having those crosscut sequences in the fine cut the boot.

Batman has never looked so young or like he might change hair colour and become a Super Saiyan.

Batman: Gotham Knight
Directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, Futoshi Higanshide, Toshiyki Kubooka, Hiroshi Morioka, Jong-Sik Nam, Shoujirou Nishimi
Warner Premier, 2008

By Miles Baker

When I first heard that the next straight-to-video Batman animation project would be six interconnected stories each done by a separate anime production studio, I was not all that impressed. Some of the interpretations of the character looked off, and any attempt to adapt Batman into manga has been greeted by a collective sigh and shake off the head by fans of Batman and manga.

But here, it worked.

Here’s why, they got talented guys who know the character to write the segments. Guys who have worked on Batman in the comics, or in other animation projects, or on the Nolan films. What they show us is how many different types of stories you can tell with Batman and Gotham City. And, for me, that helps sell why different studios should be on this project, because each story is so different.

Written by Josh Olson, the first segment “Have I Got a Story for You” is probably the weakest of the bunch, focusing on three kids as they each tell outlandish stories to each other about Batman until he, of course, shows up. The animation, I thought, was the weakest in this segment; there just seemed to be fewer frames than there should be per second. The story has been done before, and this one didn’t do that much new.

Next up was Greg Rucka’s segment “Crossfire.” As a big fan of his and Ed Brubaker’s Gotham Central, I was excited to see Dectective Crispus Allen of the Major Crimes Unit from that series in this short. Allen didn’t disappoint, as he was as mistrustful of the Dark Knight as ever while caught between mob gun fire. We also get to see more about Ramirez, the snitch detective, that might make you understand her character a little more than in Dark Knight. 

In “Field Test” the highlight was watching Bruce Wayne take centre stage with a couple of really great scenes between him and Lucius Fox and Bruce playing detective during a golf game against a mobster. This story was great for showing what a cocky, yet amazing asshole Bruce Wayne is or can be when he needs to be. This is another stand out for me.

Batman as seen in "Field Test." He's pretty dreamy in this one. Maybe too dreamy.

“In Darkness Dwells” by Dark Knight screenwriter David S. Goyer is a chasing monsters story featuring Killer Croc and the Scarecrow. It’s definitely the most trippy of the bunch, complete with Arkham Asylum inmates sacrificing a Cardinal in a pit of flames. Other than that, it’s a lot of fighting and some fucked up visuals as Batman fights the Scarecrow’s nerve gas.

My favourite of the bunch was Brian Azzarello’s “Working Through Pain,” which sees a wounded Batman trying to make his way out of the sewers flashbacking to Bruce Wayne’s journey to become Batman. In this story, Bruce meets a woman named Cassandra who tells him about how pain — physical, emotional, spiritual – can be managed and put in its place. I really liked this story because it shows you another path Bruce could have gone down, one that would have been more healthy, but he refuses.

Capping it all off was “Deadshot,” featuring the character of the same name. This was a good conclusion, if only because it actually had Batman conquering something. It’s mostly a solid action sequence, and a bit of emotional resolution.

In all, it’s a pretty entertaining package and will probably scratch that Bat-itch you got after seeing The Dark Knight. It’s even kind of in continuity with it, if continuity is your thing.

Robert Downey: Our Generation's Al Jolson

Tropic Thunder
Directed by Ben Stiller
Dreamworks Pictures, 2008

By Rachel West

I’m often suspicious of free preview screenings thrown by the studios and distributors. I’ve seen my share of the great (Into the Wild) and the not-so-great (Vantage Point). It’s always a gamble on whether the movie will be worth the time spent sitting in the darkened theatre, with a mix of special guests, contest winners, and the occasional members of the press. But a free movie is a free movie, right? But my suspicions were confirmed with a free screening of the new Ben Stiller vehicle, Tropic Thunder.

Stiller splits his time behind and in front of the camera as Tugg Speedman, part of a group of hot actors shooting a war film on location in the jungles of Vietnam. The all-star cast for this modern Platoon boasts Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), a hardcore Australian method actor who has undergone controversial “skin tinting” procedures in order to play African-American Sgt. Lincoln Osiris, and Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) who is best known for his comic skills and multiple-role performances in low-brow comedies. Rounding out the cast is Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), an up and coming actor more concerned with his side projects like his Alpa Chino Chinos line of pants and pushing his energy drink, Booty Sweat. Nerdy young actor Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) rounds out the jungle cast.

Part satire and part slapstick, Tropic Thunder can’t seem to pick a direction to follow. At times it is a tongue-in-cheek satire of Hollywood phonies, and at other times it is nothing more than fart jokes and pratfalls. Much like the film within a film, it’s completely lost.

Tugg Speedman, a washed-up actor who hasn’t had a hit since Scorcher III, is so involved in filming and out-shining his five-time Academy Award winning co-star Kirk, that he fails to realize his crazy director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) has dropped the cast into a real, live war zone in the poppy fields of the Golden Triangle. What Tugg imagines to be a guerilla-style film shoot turns into a hotbed of action against drug runners. It’s “reel” guns versus real guns. With the help of the on-set special effects guy who has rigged movie explosives, and the on-set writer (Nick Nolte), the band of actors manages to hold their own. They might be up against trained guerillas, but as Lazarus points out, they’re trained actors.

Joining the cast of fakes is a bunch of A-List stars in cameos and supporting roles. Everyone from Jon Voight to Lance Bass pops up on screen at one time or another, with a slick Matthew McConaughey as Tugg’s all-star agent, determined to deliver his top star a Tivo, come Hell or high water. The real scene stealer here is Tom Cruise. Yes, that Tom Cruise. And he’s genuinely funny, in a non-couch jumping, Scientology-rhetoric spewing way. Almost unrecognizable under a bald cap, pudgy skin, and ample arm and chest hair, Cruise has the best expletive-filled lines in the film as Les, the billionaire mogul who is producing Tropic Thunder.

Stiller has already proven that he is a competent director, even if it has been several years since his last stab at directing with 2001’s Zoolander, and his on screen antics are par for the course. Jack Black outdoes himself with what might be his most obnoxious performance to date. Luckily, Black shares the screen with Robert Downey Jr., who is on a roll this year after turns in Iron Man and the less widely seen Charlie Bartlett. While there has been mild controversy over his character in the film — a white actor essentially performing in Blackface — his performance is not meant to be seen as a racist stereotype, but a satirical look at those intense method actors who will go to any length to get into their character (think Daniel Day-Lewis) and believe that they can be molded into any role. Downey Jr. is the cause of many of the films laughs, and like a true method actor, seems to have been absorbed into his role as “a guy playing another guy”, to quote Kirk Lazarus.

As an action-comedy, Tropic Thunder isn’t a bad way to recover from the summer heat waves in an overly-air conditioned theatre, but don’t go looking for anything more than a chance to escape and give your brain a break. The film-within-a-film gets an A for its all-star cast, but the overall experience is a C at best.

Tropic Thunder opens August 15th in wide release.

Young People Fucking
Directed by Martin Gero
Maple Pictures, 2008

By Madeleine Sims-Fewer

With its racy subject matter and a title few would be prepared to say out loud, Young People Fucking was bound to attract attention from all angles. Being a Canadian movie just adds to the allure. A quirky, biting comedy, Young People Fucking follows five typical pairings through their atypical sexual encounters one fateful night. The film revs into action immediately, lubricated with slick dialogue and snappy editing, pulling you into the fray in the first minute. We are introduced to The Friends, who are looking to escape their past failed relationships in a night of drunken sex — with each other.

Then there’s The Couple, who are easily sidetracked and seem like they may never get around to doing the deed; The Exes, who provide the softer, subtler notes of the film in their night of reminiscence; The First Date, between a player and a seemingly innocent co-worker; and The Roommates, who share an unlikely ménage-a-trois (sort of). The film guides the audience through the different stages of sex, including foreplay, the midpoint, and post-coital pillow talk. Never did I realize that sex involved so much talking. I don’t just mean the occasional instructions: these couples have fully fledged conversations during sex. It is not unrealistic however, and proves to be one of the film’s few triumphs. The steady stream of dialogue keeps the audience from noticing the potholes. Coupled with the agile editing, YPF rarely loses your attention.

The film suffers a little in the first half from a few poor performances, most notably from the Friends, who punctuate each line delivery with a flailing hand gesture, and the Exes, who act as if they are reading auto cues. But the acting is solid overall, with sensitive turns from Kristin Booth and Josh Dean (who resembles a young Steve Buscemi).

The biggest problem with the film is that it doesn’t quite live up to its title. The actual sex is dry, uninspired, and void of any of the poignancy that made films such as Shortbus and Sleeping Dogs Lie so groundbreaking. Every couple is heterosexual, and since when did “young people” translate to “incredibly gorgeous thin people”? Not one of the characters is ugly, pudgy, or has birth marks in weird places, and all of the women have sex with full make-up on. This detracts somewhat from the intended reality of the film, even though they are all very nice to look at.

The most laughs are garnered by the Roommates, who are definitely the strangest (cookie dough anyone?), though surprisingly also the most human of the lot. Some of their dialogue is truly hilarious, and there is one moment involving a hand and a derrière that is worth waiting for.

Though I enjoyed it at the time, and laughed at how silly people can be when it comes to bedroom antics, looking back Young People Fucking was a little hollow: all fuss and no finish.

But why would he hold the button like that? I can't see his face...

The Dark Knight
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Warner Bros. 2008

By Doug Nayler

And here it is. After three years of sweaty, mouth-breathing anticipation, it’s here. The Dark Knight arrived in theaters this Friday weighed down with enough baggage to nearly crush it to death on site.

It’s hard to be a highly anticipated movie; to be a highly anticipated comic book movie must be almost insufferable. Each and every nerd the world over is turning his/her dewy eyes towards the screen this weekend expecting nothing less than the Batman film; the film that finally gets it right.

And imagine how crushed, how disappointed the entire Internet is going to be come Monday morning if The Dark Knight isn’t absolutely everything they’ve ever wanted to see from Batman ever? An unimaginable tide of people with too much free time (like myself) would start writing their precocious little reviews (like myself) explaining how hurt, misled, and sexually assaulted they feel at having been so disappointed. Christopher Nolan would become a Joel Schumacher pariah times ten, because unlike Schumacher, people actually believed that Nolan could make it happen.

Luckily for Chris Nolan, Warner Brothers, DC Comics, and Heath Ledger’s restless ghost’s publicist, The Dark Knight is very good. And while it may not be the Batman movie to end all movies, it is no slouch. There is lots here for the casual fan, the diehard virgin-for-life fan, and even the pretentious holier-than-thou art-film nerd. In fact, the only group I feel that won’t be satisfied with this film would be children, because they would just be traumatized.

But making The Dark Knight too disturbing for children to handle is just one of a large list of good decisions made here. The most obvious one is to continue doing what made Batman Begins so much more interesting than the standard superhero fare. So, Gotham continues to be a city with a plausable, familiar problem with corruption and organized crime in which a completely insane man in a bat suit follows his compulsion to clean up the streets. The Dark Knight really just builds upon the last film by creating the Joker as a distorted mirror image of Nolan’s Batman. What sort of man would have the same compulsion towards chaos that Batman has towards order? How would a man have to be to actually get up every morning and be the Joker? It is these questions that effectively drive The Dark Knight. And, as everyone already knows, Ledger’s performance does quite a lot to make this fascinating.

Heath Ledger’s absurdist vaudeville take on the Joker is menacing, at turns darkly hilarious, but never too campy. This is because every time the Joker is in the room, he brings with him an impending sense that things are going to turn very bad very quickly. If I had somehow avoided the massive media clusterfuck memorial Ledger love-in that preceded this film’s release (By the way, did you know he was dead?), and gone into this film not knowing he played the Joker, I never would’ve guessed. Nothing in how the character spoke, looked, or carried himself resembled the Ledger I’ve seen in any other of his films. There is only the Joker, laughing and dancing as he hopes to see the city tear itself apart at his feet.

Ledger’s performance is not the only one of note, however. Aaron Eckhart’s transition takes him from beloved Great White Hope D.A. Harvey Dent to Two-Face, a damaged shell of a man with nothing left but hate in his heart. Gary Oldman also shines as Lt. Gordon, beginning to realize what he stands to lose in Gotham’s escalating war. Unlike the psychopathic, nothing-else-matters drive of Batman and the Joker, these two men want to be normal people with families and homes. In a film filled with duality, Dent and Gordon keep their relationship just as involving as one hopes it would be.

And this brings me to my greatest criticism of the film, and one that will be equally difficult to overcome in any sequels that follow: the problem lies right with the character of Batman. Once Bruce Wayne becomes Batman (a journey given all its due attention in Batman Begins), then it’s really only a question of sticking it out, and finding nifty gadgets that help him do the job better.

While we watch Dent and Gordon torn to shreds in front of our eyes, Batman has almost no personal journey outside of the mechanics of the plot. And even when something (withheld for spoiler purposes) large happens that you think would greatly effect Batman, the emotional fallout is given very short shrift. With a villain so energetic and fascinating that he lights up the screen whenever he appears upon it, and two excellent supporting characters tackling such huge emotional weight, Batman’s daring-do and sleuthery strangely starts to pale in comparison. At no time does Batman (and though I do love Bale, his ‘Batman’ voice sounds even more like Disney’s The Beast here than in Begins) seem to truly have to reconsider who he is as a person. Batman’s existence is only ever threatened by outside forces, not his own internal conflict. And because of this, the audience often finds itself in the strange situation where the man in the giant batsuit with the grappling gun and matchless martial arts skill is the least interesting person in the scene. A problem I’m sure Tim Burton would understand.

So, though I was extremely impressed with The Dark Knight, it is for this reason primarily that I can’t go so far as to call it the Batman movie we’ve all been waiting for. It is, however, the Joker movie. Which is good enough for me.

The Happening
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Spyglass Entertainment, 2008
By Madeleine Sims-Fewer

The trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s newest thriller was pleasantly intriguing. With haunting imagery and a strong cast, what could go wrong? I had also heard that this latest venture was free of any groan-inducing twists that you saw coming an hour before Shyamalan intended. Could this be the film that lends mortar to a crumbling career? Sadly not.

After seeing the film in it’s entirety, I would hazard a guess that writer/director/producer Shyamalan wrote a rough draft, intending to hire researchers, story editors, and all the people that could bring it up to the standard that a million dollar movie should rise to. But then he got a strong case of Lay-zee, figured he could do his own research, on the web, and you know, what’s really the point of a casting director anyhow? Since M. Night was also the producer, there was no one to stop him. So we arrived at The Happening, whose title is incredibly fitting if, like me, you are a fan of irony.

The opening scene is more hilarious than haunting: Central Park comes to a standstill and a young college student stabs herself with her own hairpin, forcing her friend to react with what could only be described as boredom. And so begins a film in which the actors seem to have less of a clue as to what they are reacting to than the audience does. As chaos ensues, we focus on the few central characters who will be followed throughout the film. Mark Wahlberg plays science teacher Elliot Moore, who never uses his knowledge to any effect throughout the film, which prompts me to believe that he could have been a garbage man without changing the script much. As soon as the words ‘terrorist attack’ are uttered, he leaves the city with his scattered, troubled wife (Zooey Deschanel), a fellow teacher (John Leguizamo), and his daughter.

After the rambling plot hints at an affair between Elliot’s wife and a coworker, and bumps blindly around for a while, we arrive at the cause of the attacks. The plants on earth are releasing a poison that induces a suicidal state in any human who breaths it in [Editor's note: normally I would consider this a spoiler, but I loathe Shyamalan enough to let it slide]. Why plants wouldn’t simply release a poison that kills humans directly is beyond me, but it does make for some very funny shots of people starting lawn mowers and lying in front of them, or tempting lions with their limbs.

The fact that the wind is the main villain in this film was decidedly problematic and not in the least bit scary. Coupled with close-ups of Wahlberg and Deschanel in which they seem to be searching for some scrap of direction rather than a place to hide, this film was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Wahlberg and Deschanel, who are best when in comedic roles, suffer hugely from the lacklustre script, and resort to making wide-eyed, nostril-flaring stares.

The script, which is stunted from lack of research, becomes preposterous in its placement of plot devices, intended to forward the action (such as a conveniently-placed radio they just happen to find in a field), and its poor excuse for a subplot in the love scenes between the two protagonists, which are distracting at best, and for the most part utterly hokey.

Nonsensical parallels are drawn between the human deaths and the bee crisis, and everything is sloppily summed up as ‘something we will never truly understand’. Something I will never truly understand is how M. Night Shyamalan still has a job.

Kung Fu Panda
Directed by Mark Osborne, John Stevenson
Dreamworks Pictures 2008

By Caesar Martini

When I first heard about this movie, I was totally jacked about it. I mean, a CGI kung fu fighting panda? With other kung fu critters that fight according to their respective animal styles? Sign me up! Then I started seeing previews and it all seemed underwhelming. I worried about the over-the-top wackiness of Jack Black, the lack of story, and the lack of awesome kung fu moves that the trailers kept showing me.

Man, I was SOOOOOOO wrong! KFP is a bastion of awesomeness from start to finish! The movie opens with a comical and heavily stylized 2D animated scene, so effective that if the whole movie were animated in this style, I would have been happy. In fact, if someone at Dreamworks is reading this, do me a solid and make a whole movie in that wicked 2D style. And if you could have it hand-delivered to my house by a brigade of supermodel strippers, that would be swell, thanks.

After that opening scene, the standard CGI animation takes over and the movie begins. It’s the story of Po (Black), a tubby panda who works in his dad’s noodle shop, but who is obsessed with kung fu. Unfortunately he knows about as much kung fu as my grandma. His heroes are the Fearless Five [Ed. Note: Not to be confused with hip hop legends the Furious Five], a group of kung fu fighters who live in a mountain temple overlooking Po’s village. One of the Five is to be selected as the Dragon Warrior, which I understand is an ultimate badass kung fu mofo of some sort. When Po goes to watch the ceremony, he is somehow selected as the Dragon Warrior, much to the annoyance of everybody.

Po strives to learn kung fu from his new teacher, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), but he is clumsy and hopeless and running out of time. One of Shifu’s old students has escaped prison and is on his way to claim the Dragon Warrior title for himself by force.

Everything in KFP gels amazingly well. Jack Black’s voice is blended perfectly with Po’s mannerisms and expressions. I can’t recall the last time I saw a 3D animated movie where the voice went along so well with the visuals of the character. It was really amazing. And Po is so geeky and eager it’s impossible not to like him. In fact, all the characters matched up very well with the stars who voiced them; it was solid vocal casting all around.

And the directing is really fun. The animation is impressive and the kung fu scenes are enjoyable to watch. I really enjoyed the slow-motion moments that were occasionally inserted into the action scenes. It provided an extra source of coolness (and humour) in an already pretty damn cool movie.

My only complaint is that the Fearless Five don’t really have enough screen time. Why pay all these famous actors to supply voices for characters that are criminally underused? Seth Rogen (Mantis) has like, three lines in the whole movie, and Jackie Chan (Monkey) has maybe two. There definitely needed to be some more fighting and dialogue from the Fearless Five.

Otherwise, fantastic movie. It’s entertaining and doesn’t derive its jokes from an onslaught of pop-culture references, like so many other CGI efforts. KFP is the best CGI movie I’ve seen in at least a year.

“I love KUNG FUUUUUUUUUUU!!!”

Sex and the City
Directed by Michael Patrick King
2008, New Line Cinema

By Madeleine Sims-Fewer

Sitting in the packed cinema, inhaling estrogen fumes from all sides, I felt a little out of place. Yes, I am a woman, and yes, I have seen every episode of Sex and the City (though as a self-proclaimed feminist I pretend otherwise). I had no giggly gaggle of friends to share the experience with, only my notepad and a box of vegetarian dumplings, which I closed tight after one woman felt the need to shout, “Eew, what’s that smell?” (I’d like to point out that she was chomping on a cholesterol castle of a burger.) Travelling in packs must be what makes the film enjoyable, because if it weren’t for the rows of pointy heels I would have had to negotiate past on my way to the door, I would have walked out.

From the opening credits, Sex and the City is a fluffy, consumer product that cannot stand out as its own movie. The theme song shimmers through the speakers, prompting applause from the audience, but it is the revamped, Fergie-styled song that takes over, with her signature bark and tacky lyrics that make the film reminiscent of an episode of The Hills. Carrie’s voice-over sums up the series in a few quips, bringing us up to date and making it clear that this is a film for fans only. It doesn’t have two legs to stand on, let alone a pair of Manolos to walk in.

Then we get down to business, back in the lives of our four protagonists four years after the show gave them the happy endings we should have accepted and moved on from. Carrie’s relationship with Big still has an air of the high school about it, Charlotte is annoyingly happy with her cute daughter and perfect sex life, Miranda is cranky with a husband who, quite frankly, you can hardly blame for cheating on her, and Samantha…well, she just wants to have sex.

The film plods along, dragging its heels through mundane writing and a plot that misses the point of the show. There is no structure, no stakes or character progression, nothing to pull you in, unless you are already a fan of the series. For dramatic effect, it should have started with the wedding of Carrie and Big, but for some reason it starts pretty much where the show left off, but with a time lapse where not much seems to have happened. When big dramatic scenes are set up, like Miranda finding out that Steve has cheated, the writers avoid all the juicy dramatic details that the audience wants to see and conveniently skip to the aftermath. This happens several times, and it feels like an episode that has been chopped up and scaled down for daytime television.

The actors aren’t given much to work with, yet happily some of them do quite well. Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon give solid performances displaying depth and range. However, the fact that this was written, filmed, and acted like a TV show is patently obvious, especially in the more emotional scenes, where what should have been sensitive close ups reveal hammy facial expressions that you can let go in your living room, but in the cinema just make you squirm. Jennifer Hudson as Carrie’s assistant is utterly superfluous, turning in an embarrassingly earnest performance and saying lines like “my very own Louis Vuitton” with a wide-eyed enthusiasm that would be embarrassing for any Oscar winner.

Inevitably there will be a sequel, if not two. I just hope that the writers can throw away the fashion jargon in favour of the witty dialogue that peppered the original series and gave it so much flavour. Why, I ask, did they not just make season seven? Ahh yes, bigger paychecks.

The Strangers
Directed by Bryan Bertino
Rogue Pictures, 2008

By Rachel West

At first glance, the poster for The Strangers seems an odd choice — Liv Tyler, her eyes vacant, standing rigidly in an ordinary living room, and essentially not doing much of anything. It is not until closer inspection that a barely visible masked figure reveals itself in the shadows of the image. The very basis of the plot is also revealed: what is taken for granted as ordinary and familiar suddenly becomes terrifying.

Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman star as Kristin and James, your average couple on a romantic weekend getaway at an isolated cabin in the woods. Apparently these people have never seen Cabin Fever or Evil Dead. Their romantic weekend is off to a rocky start as a marriage proposal doesn’t go quite as planned and James sees fit to leave Kristin alone in the house while he gathers his thoughts on a drive.

After an odd knock at the door 20 minutes in, Kristin is terrorized by repeated banging on the door and windows, and the chilling sound of wind chimes on the porch knocking about. Tormented and terrorized by a strange trio of masked characters, the reunited James and Kristin go through the usual horror motions of locking the doors, hiding in back rooms, and fighting for their lives.

Borrowing heavily stylistically from the new French horror (as witnessed in High Tension and Inside), The Strangers slowly builds up momentum through gentle pacing and simple shots. There are no jarring cuts or inverted angles designed as cheap shock techniques. Instead the mysterious masked invaders simply appear out of the shadows, creeping behind the characters, only to disappear back into the darkness when their presence is sensed. The randomness of their attack, as well as their random appearances in the home and in the woods outside, creates an atmosphere of a terrifying unknown. Their movements are unpredictable, inasmuch as a recycled film genre can be. The “home invasion” horror story is nothing new.

There is much to be desired in The Strangers when it comes to motive and character development. While we are given unnecessary background details on Kristin and James, the far more intriguing masked invaders are barely seen, let alone their motives explained. Unlike both the original German and recent English remake of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (another brutal look at a random home invasion) the perpetrators of violence in those films have their motives clearly defined from the first scene — they are just into torture for fun. The Strangers leaves the audience wondering what the motivation behind these brutal attacks actually is.

Horror conventions aside, The Strangers still manages to make even the veteran horror buff jump in a few places, thanks in part to Liv Tyler, who has been absent from the big screen for a while. Tyler’s believable portrayal of Kristin is what gives the film its “it could happen to anyone” feel as she hits all her marks, without being overly dramatic or screechy. On the other hand, Scott Speedman’s wooden performance lacks any kind of real emotion as his facial expressions appear as rigid as the masks that hide the killers’ identities.

The Strangers is a decent-enough film, and coming in at under 90 minutes, it’s not long enough to waste your time in a darkened theatre, sharing the experience with a dozen or so strangers.