Warm Bodies (2013)

Warm Bodies is a fun little mash-up of a film that’s part indie romance, part zombie-apocalypse flick, and part Shakespeare. I’m not kidding. It’s surprisingly charming.

The movie begins by introducing us to a dissatisfied young man (Nicholas Hoult) whose thoughts we get via voice-over. He’s bored, lonely, and looking for a little more from his existence. The kicker is that he’s dead. A victim of a vaguely-recalled zombie-apocalypse scenario, our young hero is, in fact, a shuffling and groaning animated corpse. He doesn’t say much out loud. He doesn’t even remember his name, though he’s pretty sure it began with an R (but what’s in a name, right?). R spends most of his time mindlessly roaming an abandoned airport with other zombies (he’s made a sort of bachelor pad out of a grounded plane), some of whom he kind of interacts with. He has a “best friend,” M (Rob Corddry). They sit together at the airport bar, stare at empty glasses, and moan. Sometimes, they get hungry, and then hunt down the living—whom they eat, especially the brains. It’s not a bad, for unlife—but R wants more.

Then “more” crosses his path in the form of Julie (Teresa Palmer), who is cute, blonde, and equally dissatisfied – but happens to be a living, breathing human. She’s the daughter of the gung-ho leader of the local zombie fighting movement (an unusually toned-down John Malkovich), and on a foray into zombie territory for medical supplies, she and her fellows are ambushed by R, M, and their brain-hungry brethren. Somehow, R is smitten, and, in a fit of unusually human feeling, brings Julie back to his plane instead of eating her.

What follows is a delightful sequence in which the two, communicating using short phrases, gestures, and R’s record collection (J: “What’s with all the vinyl? Couldn’t find an iPod?” R: “Better…sound…”) strike up a very unlikely relationship. Where this relationship goes and the effects it has on each of them and their worlds is part of the fun of the movie, so I will stop summarizing here. But if the names “R” and “Julie” aren’t triggering some associations for you by now, march back to your high school lit class and demand a refund.

A certain amount the charm of Warm Bodies comes from the script itself (penned by director Jonathan Levine and based on a novel by Isaac Marion, unread by me), which pokes sly fun at all the genres involved. R bemoans the slow pace of zombie movement, for example, and the music is used in such obvious romantic-soundtrack fashion that characters actually comment on it. Plus, there’s that Shakespeare play lurking in the background. But the acting also deserves a lot of credit. Hoult brings to R some of the geeky charm that John Hughes heroes used to exhibit, and there’s something both sweet and practical about Palmer’s Julie. Surely a girl’s standards might be a tad different after an apocalypse. And as the obligatory best friends, Corddry and Analeigh Tipton provide solid, eccentric support for Hoult and Palmer respectively.

One of the great surprises of the film, though, is that it allows itself to be smart. Zombies onscreen have always been metaphors of some kind – for communists, say, or consumerism – and there’s some of that here. Notice how both R’s fellow undead and Julie’s zombie-fighter comrades seem rather mindlessly fixated, and notice how the same thing might be a cure for each side. And notice what the movie does with the idea of real connection – zombies who can ignore each other while literally bumping into one another (in an airport, no less!) versus something as simple as a handshake. These are things, however, that occurred to me after the fact, which is to say that Warm Bodies does have space for some subtlety – which is to also say that this is a well-made film for something that’s basically light entertainment.

This is not a perfect film – a few clichés sneak in, and the truly evil dead (skeletons called “Bonies”) aren’t always well-served by their CGI composition – but it’s certainly more than I would have expected from a “zombie romantic comedy.” It’s got heart and, ahem, brains. And, yes, it is a comedy. I certainly don’t want to spoil anything – I’ll just leave you to consider what might have to be reworked in a classic tragedy when one of the protagonists starts off dead…

Marley (2012)

Marley is an interesting documentary because it conveys not so much the narrative of a life, but an impression. Of course, it doesn’t hurt any that the life in question is that of music icon Bob Marley. What the film does well, though, relying mostly as it does on interviews and historical footage, is manage to be simultaneously about a man and an icon. Do we get to know Bob Marley through this film? Not in any real new way, no. But we do get a feeling for what it was like to know him.

Whatever agenda Marley might have, it wears lightly. There is no obvious “message.” There is no voice-over narration. When explanations are needed, they appear as on-screen text. The bulk of the film comprises anecdotes and reminiscences from a surprising number of Marley’s contemporaries, colleagues, and family. In some cases, people who you can be sure would not speak to each other in real life both spoke to the same documentarian. There is also little frame. The film opens with a nod to the slave trade, but there is a refreshing lack of what-iffing and influence charting at the end. The scope of the documentary is the span of Bob Marley’s years on earth. Marley seems to want to let its subject’s life speak for itself, in the voices of people who shared it.

And that life itself is plenty interesting. Bob was born in 1945 in rural Jamaica to a white father (called “Captain,” but with no obvious military credentials) and black mother. In a deeply race-conscious society, this background put young Marley on the boundary of a struggle between racial and economic groups. Early in life, he seems to have felt left out of this battle; later, after he embraces Rastafarianism, Marley almost comes to seem himself above it. The man that emerges from the stories and music presented here is one who has no use for divisions. “One Love” is his song and his creed and, if we can believe what we see here, his ambition. Music for Bob was a passion and a mission. He made money – and gave a lot of it away. He bought a huge house in an upper-class neighborhood  - and opened it to all and anyone who would abide by his Rasta standards. Watching this, I felt as though I was watching the antidote to every “True Hollywood Story” episode I saw as a teenager.

It is exactly this kind of unconcern that makes Marley both so compelling and so remote. I couldn’t help but feel that everyone interviewed – friend, former bandmate, lover, or child – was a little in awe of Bob while he lived. An unapologetically spiritual man, Marley lived by strict lifestyle standards. Yet he also fathered eleven children by seven mothers. A Rastafarian woman interviewed notes, “Was [Bob] faithful? Faithful to Jah? Yes. Faithful to any one woman? No.” And yet, even years later, every woman we see onscreen who was involved with him in life still lowers her eyes and blushes a little when she speaks of him. He had charm, and conviction. To see him perform (which the film wisely lets us do, a lot) is to see a man in near-religious ecstasy. Whether he was onstage before 100 or 100,000 people, Marley was always before Jah. His music was his faith lived out. Before a benefit concert he was to headline in Jamaica in 1976, Marley’s house was shot up by a gunman, wounding Marley and two others. Many saw the violence as a result of Jamaica’s violent political party divisions, wherein Marley had friends on each side. Each side claimed the other was to blame, but, in a taped interview, Bob himself has a bigger conflict in view: asked who he says did it, he replies, “the Devil.” Marley, a bullet-hole in his arm, did the show anyway. Two years later, he did another Jamaican show, got the leaders of both political parties up on stage to shake hands, and prayed over them. The Devil lost that round.

Part of the Marley legend is, of course, his early death. Convinced by bad advice not to pursue treatment for melanoma in its early stages, Bob let cancer claim him at age 36, just as his popularity peaked. The film shows him performing almost until the end, which came after last-ditch holistic efforts at a clinic in Germany failed him. Onscreen, we see that even the frail, dying Marley could still cast a spell over those who cared for him. He was who he was, right until the end. For his funeral in Jamaica, mourners lined the streets. Under the closing credits, we hear people from nations around the world sing along with Marley’s music. Everyone, it seems, knows the words. It’s a tribute both powerful and somehow understated, and – I think, at least – just the sort of remembrance Bob Marley would have wanted.

I’ve known and enjoyed Marley’s music for years, but knew little about his life. Marley gave me some facts I did not know (his ancestry, and that he lived in Delaware for a while! Represent!), but more than that it gave me respect for the power of a life. This film has little to nothing of the exposé about it, and seems to have been met with goodwill by those involved. It’s a chance to get a fuller feeling for a man too often known for the number of shirts his image decorates on any given beach weekend. It’s a chance to remember that even icons have friends and lovers and conflicted kids. If nothing else, it’s a chance to spend two-plus hours soaking up the soulful music and presence of Robert Nesta Marley.

The Avengers (2012)

     Well, here it is: the monster at the end of the book. The slow ramp-up to The Avengers began back in 2008, with a sneaky little post-credits scene added to the surprisingly wonderful Iron Man in which superspy Nick Fury comes to talk to Tony Stark about “the Avengers initiative.” From then on, the Avengers movie showed quite a bit of initiative, as each Avenger-to-be received his own movie or sequel (Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor) or, as in the case of Fury and his fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, small parts in one or more of those films. The bad news for the franchise was that middle films were of varying quality. The good news is that the payoff film featuring the full complement of Avengers hearkens back to the beginning, having much in common with Iron Man in terms of tone and quality. The Avengers is good, smart fun.

     The plot concerns, as all superhero supergroup movies must, a potential world-wide catastrophe. The alien demigod Loki (Tom Hiddleston) returns from exile to deep space and snatches a powerful blue cube called the Tesseract (last seen in Captain America) from S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. With the Tesseract, Loki (still carrying a chip on his shoulder from his defeat in Thor) plans to open a portal to a faraway galaxy and let invading aliens have their way with earth, which they will then give to the power-hungry “god” to rule. To combat this demonic (divine?) threat, Nick Fury calls together the various superheroes S.H.I.E.L.D. has been tracking throughout their previous exploits. These include playboy genius Tony Stark, a/k/a Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), genetically-modified supersoldier Captain America (Chris Evans), Loki’s more noble demigod brother Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) – a quirky physics expert who literally has a monster of a temper. Also suiting up are two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents – martial artist/interrogation expert Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), codenamed the Black Widow, and master archer/sniper Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), known as Hawkeye. Together, these heroes actually stand a chance of stymying Loki’s evil scheme – provided, that is, they can all get along. It turns out that the biggest threat to the Avengers may be the Avengers themselves – after all, that’s a lot of super-egos in one room (or, rather, one flying aircraft carrier…but I digress…).

     The plot itself, actually, is pretty thin stuff, and in the Tesseract The Avengers has a classic sci-fi MacGuffin (that thing everyone must have, or else). The film succeeds because screenwriter/director Joss Whedon keeps the focus where he knows it’s more interesting: on the Avengers as characters. It’s tempting to think of The Avengers as a sort of comic-book version of Ocean’s Eleven, where each member of a team brings special skills to bear on a caper. And while this isn’t wrong, there’s a way in which The Avengers really plays more like the comic-book version of MTV’s early The Real World seasons: what in the world happens when you put this group of people together? The strength of this strategy (in addition to the fact that unity-from-squabbling is a trope Whedon does well) is that it keeps each Avenger from simply being a function—the strong man, the tech whiz, etc.—and allows them to have real motives, quirks, vices, and virtues. The movie takes time to introduce and actually explore each character, and allows them to act as they really might, not just as the plot requires. Yes, this movie ends with a Really Big Battle wherein the Avengers take on Loki’s alien hordes (and what I can only describe as “armored flying prehistoric fish of death.” I’m not kidding.), but by then we have come to know enough about the characters to understand who’s who, why they’re doing what they are, and why we should care about them. The film also has time for real thoughts. Like Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, it philosophizes in a low-grade way, here about the nature of freedom and the virtues of teamwork. Much has been made of Joss Whedon’s helming this film, and he does turn out to be the perfect choice. Whedon has always excelled at elevating genre pieces above their conventions, and it’s that gift, more than any sort of stunning originality, that he brings to The Avengers.

    Well, OK – that gift and a gift for snappy dialogue. Fans of the sort of left-turn wisecracks and cultural references Whedon sprinkled throughout earlier outings like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Serenity will find much to love here as well. And it helps that he has a troupe of actors –particularly Downey, Jackson, and Ruffalo – who have a way with verbal timing (Whedon’s penchant for movie-reference epithets especially suits Downey’s Tony Stark). The acting in The Avengers is solid across the board, no doubt helped by the fact that almost all involved have tried out these characters before. Downey is beautifully glib as Stark; Hemsworth is the right mix of cocky and noble as Thor; Evans brings suitably old-fashioned matinee-idol earnestness to “Cap;” and Jackson once again brings an iron edge to Nick Fury, who I would call “no-nonsense” except that he spends the entire film putting up with all manner of nonsense. An exception to this returning-gig rule is Ruffalo, who took over the Banner/Hulk role from Edward Norton, who in turn took it over from Eric Bana. Ruffalo, mostly known for indie film work, brings a kind of understatement to the part that both suits a man literally trying to keep part of himself under wraps and plays nicely off the more in-your-face performances of, say, Downey and Hemsworth. Also worthy of mention once again is Hiddleston’s work as Loki, who is one of the more Shakespearean comic book villains. By turns menacing, insufferable, and even sympathetic, Loki is a suitably complex foil to a complex group of do-gooders—and who better than a god of chaos to sow discord in an already troubled alliance? Hiddleston’s got some game, and I wish his Loki many happy sequel returns, as this one surely was. Renner, close on the heels of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol adds nicely to his action-hero resume as the deadly Hawkeye, and, as Ms. Romanoff, Johansson gets to prove (as Sarah Michelle Gellar, Summer Glau, and Eliza Dushku have before her) that you never, never, never want to mess with the women in a Joss Whedon project.

     A small question is how well this film stands on its own. The Avengers is surely a richer experience for those who have knowledge of the earlier lead-in movies (who will, among other things, have more understanding of the small roles played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Stellan Skarsgard, and Clark Gregg). Since I’ve seen a number of those, I can’t say. I don’t think, however, that they are required viewing. The events are explicable (or inconsequential) enough to get by on, and the characters more than speak for themselves. In some cases, pulling the heroes together to compete for screen time forces the culling of unnecessary elements that marred the earlier films (the half-baked demigod-earthling romance from Thor, for example, is not missed, and Tony Stark is allowed to get thoughtful but not to wallow in his vices). Well-acted, smarter than average, and thoroughly entertaining, The Avengers is the first “big” action movie of summer 2012, and it’s a home run. 

Source Code (2011)

Source Code is an entertaining science-fiction thriller that remembers to get its appeal from the fiction side. The science aspect is preposterous, but it serves as a gateway into a tense and thought-provoking story. Source Code not only raises the pulse, but raises issues similar to those raised by Inception and The Adjustment Bureau. It’s the sort of sharp little mind bender that once bore the Rod Serling stamp.

The movie begins with a man (Jake Gyllenhaal) awakening from a nap on a commuter train to Chicago. This is unsettling to him, since he believed he was serving a tour in Afghanistan. He is sure his name is Captain Colter Stevens. So why does the cute woman across from him (Michelle Monaghan) keep calling him Sean? As he tries to get to the bottom of this, the train is the victim of a bombing, and the man dies.

And comes to in a small, military-looking compartment. On a screen before him is a woman in uniform called Godwin (Vera Farmiga), who does in fact address him as Capt. Stevens. It turns out that the train is an invented reality, cobbled together from the memories of actual train passengers, who actually died in an actual bombing. Stevens has been chosen to enter into this reality in the place of a passenger and locate the bomber, who has threatened to strike again. If Stevens can find the bomber, this future attack can be averted. The invented reality, called the Source Code, comprises the last eight minutes of the train’s run. Eight minutes is apparently all you get—but once you’re sucking memories out of dead people’s brains and inserting soldiers into them, I suppose one number is as good as another.

What follows is something like an action-film version of Groundhog Day, with Stevens reliving the same eight minutes over and over until he can ferret out the bomber. Along the way he also tries to figure out how exactly he got into that compartment—and begins to develop feelings for the people on the train. If he finds the bomber, he can save them, can’t he? No, Goodwin explains – the Source Code is just a recreation; it’s in the past. But if Stevens can himself change that recreation (prevent the train bombing), how past is it, really?

Source Code’s director is Duncan Jones, whose first film, Moon, also featured a man trying to work out the kinks of an implausible reality. Both Jones and writer Ben Ripley are smart enough to tread lightly over the scientific background of the Source Code and focus on its emotional impact. The movie operates in the fine old sci-fi tradition of “What if?” What if you could try again and again to get things right? What if possibilities exist in something more than the abstract, and what if your choices mean a lot more than you think at the time? And isn’t it worth doing something a little illogical if you can make a real difference, even to yourself? The questions matter here more than the science that props them up. Source Code, like many a mind-bending film, is more emotionally than logically satisfying. I found it more meaningful afterwards to talk about what the movie explored than to talk about its plot.

This is Gyllenhaal’s movie to carry, and he does so ably. The actor’s natural likability serves him well as he takes Stevens through the steps from befuddled everyman to fate-fighter on a mission, and he is believable as both victim of circumstance and hero. Monaghan likewise contributes an effortless appeal. Her character may not be given much depth, but we see why Stevens would want to save her. Farmiga creates a more human version of the Military Suit than is often seen in these situations. The always dependable Jeffrey Wright also is on hand as the resident scientist, who explains the quantum mumbo-jumbo around the Source Code with enough conviction to help suspend disbelief (at least for a while).

There isn’t much filler to Source Code. It gets into the story, tells it, and takes it to its end with little fluff or fanfare. The repeated situations are not allowed to become too tiresome (sometimes we just see Stevens reporting on an attempt), and what drama there is arises from what we already know. The film probably wants to be more profound than it actually is, but in some ways that just ups the emotional ante. Source Code is a competently-made thriller with a little bit of thought behind it. Given some of the lackluster fare common in the action market these days, there are many more frustrating ways to spend a little time. Just ask Colter Stevens…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011)

And here, at last, is the end. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 brings to a close the ambitious and beloved Harry Potter franchise, the big-screen incarnation of J. K. Rowling’s unimaginably popular bestselling books. The Potter films have become a cultural phenomenon unlike anything else, a strange hybrid of book and screen and richly realized world and fan affection. As cultural and social happenings, they are amazing. As films, they have mostly been less so. The refrain cannot be avoided here: No, this movie is not as “good,” not as rich, not as moving as its printed source. No Potter movie has been. But Deathly Hallows 2 does manage to work its own kind of movie magic. The series goes out on a high note, with a film which is appropriately exciting and involving, and even a little cathartic.

That this is “part 2” is no joke. The film literally takes up where its predecessor left off. The villainous Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, still sans nose) has acquired the Elder Wand, the most powerful tool known to wizards, and is intent on using it to track down and kill Harry Potter. Meanwhile, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, now old enough for action-hero stubble) and his trusty pals Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) are racing to discover and destroy the magical horcruxes, enchanted objects in which Voldemort has stashed bits of his soul. If all the horcruxes are destroyed, Voldemort has no protection against ordinary death, which the good-guy wizards would like him to experience. Harry, however, is short on allies: the Voldemort-resisting Order of the Phoenix has been decimated, and his old haven, Hogwarts School, is in the icy grip of the distasteful Severus Snape (Alan Rickman). The plot is thus a fairly straightforward quest: can Harry and his friends discover and remove the horcruxes before Voldemort finds them?

How the quest unfolds is old news to fans of the books, and is best left unrevealed to those few moviegoers who have not read them. It is to the filmmakers’ credit that Deathly Hallows 2 gets in the necessary information to make the quest understandable while still keeping the pace taut enough to get the pulse racing. Screenwriter Steve Kloves (all Potter movies but one) and director David Yates (the last three films) know their way around this material by now. Gone are the long slow stretches of doubt-filled wandering that plagued Deathly Hallows 1. This is an action movie through and through, with set pieces to rival anything served up by Mr. Bond or the proto-Avengers lately. A roller-coaster ride through the depths of a magical bank and the final battle in Hogwarts are particularly well-done. As always, the Potter films work best when they diverge from the books a little, and Deathly Hallows 2 does so in a few well-timed places – most notably Harry’s final showdown with Voldemort. The speech Rowling gives Harry at that point makes for great reading, but would be a snoozer onscreen; the more kinetic approach here is the right one for a film.

All the usual Potter gang of actors is here again, including some we haven’t seen in a while. Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson have all literally grown into their roles, and they are in fine form here. Of course they outstripped their characters in age a long time ago, and a refreshing aspect of the movies’ graduation to full-action mode is that Radcliffe, et. al. can drop the pretense of being schoolkids in any way. These are young adults on a serious mission, each with their strengths – and that goes for the actors as well as their characters. I doubt any of them are destined to be acting heavyweights – but they know these people by now, and gamely see through their fates to the end. Stop and consider how lucky the franchise has been to be able to keep all three leads for eight films over so many years.

The films have also been lucky in the supporting starpower they’ve attracted. Almost all of the high-watt actors who’ve been on board get curtain calls here: Fiennes, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Jim Broadbent, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Helena Bonham Carter, John Hurt, Jason Isaacs, Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Julie Walters, and Warwick Davis (who actually gets two). The movie even finds space for two newcomers: Kelly Macdonald as a ghost with special secrets, and a somewhat underused (naturally) Ciaran Hinds as a different Dumbledore. Deathly Hallows 2 lets each of these players have a little final fun with their characters, whether it’s Fiennes and Bonham Carter chewing the scenery as the baddies, Smith getting to show real glee at doing magic, or some well-placed profanity from Walters as a Weasley who’s had enough. The film also explains at last why an actor of Rickman’s talent was hired apparently to do little more than dress in Puritan drag and clip his sentences for eight films. Apparently.

Much has been made of the increasing darkness of the last few Potter films, and the same can be said here. Especially in the final battles, the palette is so drained as to be almost black and white (interesting in light of the finality of the good-evil battle), and the gloom that hangs over the picture helps increase the sense of urgency. Dark, too, are the events. Even before some beloved characters meet their book-ordained ends, the body count is awfully high for what began as a kids’-movie franchise. Yet if Deathly Hallows 2 doesn’t skimp on the violence and tragedy, it also doesn’t skimp on the deeper themes of its source material. That love, loyalty, and selflessness will always win over their opposites has been a motif of these movies from the beginning, and that outlook comes to full fruition here. Deathly Hallows 2 is a grown-up Potter film, but it still has a pure heart. Here, at least, fidelity to the books is an asset. The characters, good and bad, earn their fates, and we root for Harry and company not just because the plot demands it, but because of the choices they make. The resolutions here are genuinely satisfying.

The two best things that can be said about Deathly Hallows 2 are that it gets in what is necessary from its epic source, and that it is a decently entertaining movie in its own right. Mr. Potter has not always fared as well against film adaptation as he has against Voldemort’s minions, but in Deathly Hallows 2 he holds his own. Not only is this a fine farewell to the whole Potter gang, but it is a nicely-crafted couple of hours of film. It gives us a little of everything we love about Harry Potter films: excitement, action, mystery, humor, love, wonder, and, yes, magic. Dare I say it left me wanting a little more? That in itself isn’t bad for the eighth movie in a series. So long, Harry Potter; as with any good hero, it’s great to see you go out on top.

Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a reminder that there is nothing wrong with the romantic comedy as such. The genre has become so overpopulated with half-baked efforts that it’s easy to forget how fun they can be when done well. After all, many a “rom-com” was written by people with names like Shakespeare, Austen, and Wilde. Crazy, Stupid, Love doesn’t play in those leagues, of course, but it does rise above the herd of “date movies” thanks to above average writing and acting. This is genre done well.

The plot, as to be expected, concerns a set of people who all move through various combinations of the states listed in the title (and that is a list, right, given those commas?). The most time is spent with Cal (Steve Carell), whose wife Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him at the end of a dinner date that she wants a divorce. She’s had an affair with a co-worker (Kevin Bacon), and sees this as a sign that things are over. Cal is floored, but decides to give Emily what she wants. Back at home, Cal and Emily’s 13-year-old son Robbie (Jonah Bobo) is pining after his 17-year-old babysitter, Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who herself has a crush on Cal. Also in the story’s orbit are Jacob (Ryan Gosling), a smooth ladies’ man, and Hannah (Emma Stone), a witty law student who’s the one girl that won’t buy Jacob’s lines. The crushed Cal starts drinking in the bar Jacob prowls, and, after one too many nights of overhearing the sad-sack man’s drunken laments, Jacob decides to teach Cal how to re-enter the dating pool. Meanwhile, both Robbie and Jessica up their games to try and woo the objects of their crushes, and Jacob and Hannah wonder how their meeting might have gone differently.

How all these plotlines ultimately come together is best left for you to discover, as the movie has a few silly but satisfying surprises up its sleeve. Are they ridiculous? Yes, but not more so than those dreamed up by the authors mentioned in my first paragraph. It is to the script’s great credit that none of the characters here are idiots, as is often the case in these films. They make ill-advised choices from time to time, but they are allowed to be real, thinking, people. They have motives beyond the necessities of the plot: Emily is restless, Cal is well-meaning, Robbie is romantic, etc., etc. Even the Bacon character is seen to be a pretty stand-up guy put in an odd situation. Crazy, Stupid, Love also steals a page from the Scream playbook by letting the characters in on the jokes of the genre (Cal, as the skies open up on him after a bad moment, sighs, “What a cliché…”). Directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa have resumes including Bad Santa and I Love You, Phillip Morris, so they know a thing or two about going for the unconventional. That sensibility goes to good use here, spicing up the usual romantic formula. With a heavier hand, some of the behavior in the movie (especially Jacob and Cal’s in pick-up mode) would be downright off-putting – but the directors keep it light. It’s also worth noting that not everything gets tied up as neatly as in some lesser comedies – the happy endings are not over the top here.

What really helps elevate the film, though, is the casting. Cal is the kind of guy Carell can play with ease, equal parts amusing and annoying, silly and charming. He’s believable as the frumpy dad and as the “retrained” serial dater, and lets us see when Cal realizes he’s gone a little astray. Emily is also the sort of role Moore handles well, and, though she seems to recycle some schtick here (enough with the stammering and teary expressions, already!), she’s a fine foil/match for Carell. Stone is plenty spunky as Hannah, and Bobo and Tipton are wonderfully earnest and awkward teenagers. It’s Gosling who’s the ringer here, though, perfectly embodying both Jacob’s bravado and his real emotions when they surface. Gosling has range; this is a guy I last watched play, in Lars and the Real Girl, a man who literally couldn’t stand to be touched, and yet he seems perfectly natural here as a Don Juan type. I was left wanting to seek out more of his performances. An especially nice supporting turn comes from Marisa Tomei as the first of Cal’s post-break-up conquests. It’s refreshing to see a romantic comedy peopled with real actors, doing real acting. Credit writer Dan Fogelman with giving them mostly good things to say (and really, who hasn’t thought what Robbie thinks of The Scarlet Letter?).

Crazy, Stupid, Love isn’t a perfect movie. It feels a little long, and some parts of the timeline are hard to follow. It is, however, a reminder of how fun this sort of movie can be when there’s real talent and thought involved. It’s also blissfully low on outright raunch in this post-Apatow/Hangover age. More crazy and less stupid makes this movie pretty easy to love.

Thor (2011)

Thor has always struck me as an odd addition to the company of superheroes because, well, he’s Thor, for crying out loud – the Norse god of thunder. What business does a god have mixing in with the likes of Tony Stark and Peter Parker? And how is this fair? What sort of criminal element really poses a threat to a deity? The new movie version of Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh, does actually find a way to solve the second problem by realizing that a hot-tempered god might be his own worst enemy (albeit with some company by film’s end). It has a harder time, however, with that first problem. The god stuff and the earthly-hero stuff never quite gel. Thor feels like two movies uncomfortably shoehorned into one.

One movie concerns goings-on in Asgard, here imagined as a far-off planet home to god-like beings and fabulous art direction. Asgard is ruled by the “All-Father” Odin (Anthony Hopkins, in full-bore regal mode). Odin has been grooming his sons, the boisterous warrior Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the sly magician Loki (Tom Hiddleston), to become leaders of men, er, gods, er, whatever. On the eve of elder son Thor’s accession to the throne, however, he defies his father’s wishes and pays a belligerent visit the gods’ perennial enemies the Frost Giants (who all look rather like the demonic cousins of the Blue Man Group) – renewing the age-old war between them. Furious at his son’s arrogance and lack of control, Odin banishes Thor from Asgard to “Midgard” (Earth, lucky us) until he can learn a little humility. Thor’s trademark divine weapon (a hammer called Mjollnir) follows him, landing embedded in rock and only to be pulled out by one who can rightfully wield it.

Here the second movie kicks in. Thor finds himself in modern-day New Mexico, where he is literally run into by an energetic young astrophysicist named Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Jane, assisted by her mentor Dr. Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard) and intern Darcy (Kat Dennings), has been tracking cosmic disturbances by charging around the desert in a van (I like to think of this as the Gram Parsons method of physics research). When she meets a man who seems to have come from one of these disturbances, Jane is both fascinated and, well, disturbed. The guy looks awfully human (and cute) to be from beyond…and yet he seems to know stuff…For his part, Thor just wants to get his hammer back before the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., led by the nigh-unflappable Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) spirit it away, or before the Frost Giants make a move back at Asgard, where Loki has gotten an upgrade in royal standing - for better or worse.

This all sounds like pretty silly stuff, and on a certain level it is. Thor pays its dues with the kind of winks and chuckles we associate with modern comic-book movies (Thor’s method of ordering more coffee, for example), but the surprising thing is that Branagh finds a way to play most of it straight. This is the most earnest superhero movie I’ve seen in a while, and it may well be that this is due to an Englishman being at the helm. Perhaps it takes a European to do (literal) mythology without trying to debunk it. The whole thing has a kind of “Masterpiece Theater” feel to it. This is real heroics – no metaphors needed.

The Asgard storyline is, after all, truly Wagnerian stuff, and Branagh, who is famous for his Shakespeare films, seems to be more at home with the gods of war and royal intrigue. Yes, much of this material is pitched at a Shakespeare-Company level where everything is Really Important, but there is real emotional resonance to this half of the story. It’s in Asgard that the deeper themes come up – parental expectations, brotherhood, loyalty, and so forth. The shiny armor and shimmering CGI bridges can’t obscure the mythic roots of the tale. There’s a reason people still study this stuff, and if Thor sends a few kids scurrying to the myth section of the local library, all to the better.
On Earth, however, the movie falters. Gods are notoriously one-dimensional, known by their jobs or attributes. But what’s a workable strategy in Asgard is less successful in New Mexico. Jane is spunky, Darcy is funny, Dr. Selvig is smart, and that’s about it (though at least Mr. Skarsgard is allowed to play genuinely Nordic for a change). The script aims at a romance between Jane and Thor, but it never really takes off. This is not the actors’ fault. Ms. Portman and Mr. Hemsworth smile and cuddle gamely, but there’s nothing really written for them. They feel for each other because the plot demands it, nothing more—which is a problem for some later story developments.

Neither Thor as a character nor Mr. Branagh as a director are known for subtlety, and so in that sense this is a good pairing. Thor is a big, bright (at least in 2-D), loud, shiny summer movie about a big, loud, shiny guy, er, god. What subtlety is to be found sneaks in through the a few of the performances. Mr. Hiddleston is especially worthy of note as Loki, who is as conflicted as Thor is brash. Idris Elba is interesting but underused as the oracular warrior Heimdall, who dresses like an Academy Award and speaks like Gandalf. And it’s been fun to watch Mr. Gregg add shades to Coulson over the course of several films. Others are fare less well. Colm Feore growls appropriately as the king of the Frost Giants, but he’s buried under tons of make-up and saddled with the decidedly un-terrifying name of “Laufey.” Equally stymied are a quartet of actors playing Thor’s adventuring buddies, including Jaimie Alexander as the obligatory Valkyrie type, and the always-welcome Ray Stevenson as the Falstaffian Volstagg. These characters never register as much more than “Thor’s pals.” As for Thor himself, Mr. Hemsworth hits (hammers?) just the right notes. His Thor is capable of being a lout, but never completely loses our sympathy. He also understands the key to the fish-out-of-water scenes, which is that Thor must never know he’s funny. It’s a fine star turn, and Thor is charismatic enough to be welcome back in the Avengers group-pic and the inevitable Thor sequels.

Thor is the rare comic-book movie that could actually benefit from a little more running time, to fill out its thinner elements. The end result is a little too choppy and incomplete to be perfect – some fun disparate scenes, but not a great movie. It also tries a little too hard to push the upcoming Avengers film (Selvig has a colleague who worked with “gamma rays” and disappeared! Oho! That government archer is played by Jeremy Renner! Wonder who he is?). Overall, though, it delivers an entertaining kick-off to the “big movie” season. There’s some good old fashioned Saturday-afternoon-matinee wonder here. Thor is not exactly fit for the gods, but it’s not too bad for a mortal outing.