Locke (2013)

Locke is a strange film. That’s not a criticism. I guarantee that you have never seen anything else like it. It focuses on one actor who stays (except for a brief opening shot) entirely in one location, even though that location moves. The location is the inside of a nicely-equipped BMW, traveling to London from a site roughly two hours north. The actor is Tom Hardy, who plays the title character, Ivan Locke. Locke is a construction foreman who, in the late evening before an important job, takes a phone call. In London, a woman with whom Locke had a one-night stand months ago is giving birth to a child – Locke’s child. Locke, a diligent, competent worker and devoted family man, decides that he must be there for this birth, tossing all else to the wind. The film follows him on his journey more or less in real time as he uses the hands-free cell phone in his car to communicate about his decision to his boss, coworkers, family, and the mother of the child.

This is the sort of thing that is often described as “high concept,” but it is part of Locke’s appeal that it makes the concept seem perfectly ordinary. In today’s ultra-connected society, after all, a businessman phoning nonstop while he drives is nothing unusual. Given the list of contacts he scrolls through, it probably isn’t unusual for Ivan Locke, either. What is unusual is the particular situation he is in, the way in which he chooses to respond to it, and his reasons for doing so. It is best to leave the revelation of those things to the film itself. I will only note that Locke, like any master builder, starts from a carefully-laid plan but finds that he must deviate from it as circumstances warrant, and also that his reasons for heading to London lie farther back in his past than a few months.

90 minutes in a car may not seem like all that much fun, but Locke is engrossing throughout its running length. Writer-director Steven Knight is better known for the first half of that title, and for good reason. Locke is a textbook example of how to reveal character and plot entirely through dialogue and detail. This is especially impressive when you realize that only one actor involved—Hardy—is visible. The other characters exist only as voices, but each is distinct and fully realized. There is, of course, only so much plot to be had here, but Knight allows events to unspool at a pace that builds suspense without ever seeming unrealistic. There is no melodrama here—no cheap shots or cut corners. And the dialogue can be just plain good, with just enough poetry to remind us that this is a constructed work of art. Listen, for example, to Locke’s rhapsodizing about “the piece of the sky we will steal” with a well-made skyscraper, or his wife’s noting how the concrete Locke tracks home hardens into stone footprints on the floor. The visual touches in the movie don’t quite match the verbal ones—Knight probably fades in and out of a few too many shots of headlights and taillights, for example—but the ones that hit home, such as the shots of Locke’s GPS screen with blank spaces ahead and Locke’s particular use of his rearview mirror—only enhance what is written.

The movie’s strongest asset, understandably, is Tom Hardy. Locke is a chance for Hardy to essentially put on a clinic, and he does. I’ve seen Hardy play everything from an aggrieved spy to an alien to a comic-book terrorist, and one thing his performances all have in common is a kind of solidity. However outlandish whatever is going on around him is, Hardy always seems to belong. That quality serves him very well in Locke. All Hardy has to work with is the upper half of his body, and yet Ivan Locke emerges as a complete character, complete with motives and, yes, even body language. The things to praise about this performance are many. There is, for example, the way the calmness in Locke’s voice is never quite matched by an equal calmness in his eyes, or the slight difference in tone Hardy uses when Locke is speaking something he’s rehearsed rather than something off the cuff, or Hardy's expressions on the occasions when Locke cannot speak at all. It’s not the least of the compliments I can give the actor that he simply held my attention, all alone, for an hour and a half in a theater. Those on the other end of the phone have less to carry, of course, but their contributions are still important. Ruth Wilson, as Locke’s wife, proves to be the emotional opposite to her measured, deliberate husband. Tom Holland and Bill Milner, as Locke’s sons, have some gut-wrenching exchanges with their father. The most fun, however, is had by Andrew Scott (most famous as Sherlock’s creepy-crazy Moriarty) as the good-hearted but high-strung subordinate Locke trusts with continuing the construction job in his absence.

I saw Locke two days ago, and the film has stayed with me. It’s a thought-provoking piece of work, for both (to steal a distinction from the late Roger Ebert) what it is about, and how it is about it. The concept never overwhelms the characters, and the characters find themselves in interesting places. There are existential questions here (the dialogue name-drops Waiting for Godot) about what makes a person who they are, and how much change is possible or acceptable. There are social questions here about the ways we are connected to each other, and how those connections can be strained or pay off in trying situations. Finally, there are moral questions here as we see Locke struggle to do good and do right, and have to face the fact that those may not be the same things, or even mean the same things to different people. Locke is well-written, nicely shot, and very well-acted. It’s a construction of which its meticulous title character would be proud. If you can, I recommend letting it steal a piece of your time. 

Noah (2014)

      Darren Aronofsky’s Noah is three different movies at once. It’s a kind of film everyone’s making these days – the sci-fi/fantasy adventure – wrapped around a kind of film everyone used to make – the Biblical epic – itself wrapped around a kind of film hardly anyone makes – the kind that deals with real, deadly serious questions of religion and the human condition. That these three don’t always coexist seamlessly is not really a surprise; the surprise is that they mesh as well as they do. I’ve seen Noah described as weird, epic, flawed, ambitious, fantastic, and scary. It is, in its way, all of these things. It also offers over two hours of riveting cinema.

     Noah of course has its roots in the Book of Genesis. The bare outline of the story is familiar and simple: dismayed at the wickedness of humanity in the generations after Adam and Eve, God decides to start over. A great flood will cover the earth, destroying all life. A man named Noah and his family are tasked with building an ark to contain enough of every animal to repopulate the world after the waters subside. This they do. Biblical narrative, however, is famously spare, and to fill out the story, Aronofsky and his co-screenwriter Ari Handel have dipped into a number of traditions. One is the Jewish literature of midrash – writings by rabbis which attempt to fill the frustrating gaps and bridge the puzzling inconsistencies of the scriptural text. The filmmakers have said, in fact, that they see their film as belonging in its own way to the midrashic tradition. At the same time, however, Noah also partakes deeply of cinematic tradition, absorbing the work of artists such as DeMille, Kurosawa, James Cameron, and Peter Jackson. This is not, in other words, a Bible storybook put in motion. Noah is, instead, an attempt to bring the story of God’s flood and Noah’s clan’s survival to cinematic life, with all of life’s ups and downs and tragedies and deep questions.

     So it is that we are treated to a tale of two clans: the line of Cain (the first murderer) and the line of Seth. Cain’s line, led in this generation by Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone) has systematically despoiled the earth for raw materials, building a great industrial civilization at Creation’s expense. Seth’s line consists at this point of Noah (Russell Crowe), his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), and their sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japeth (Leo McHugh Carroll). Filling out the edges of the family are Ila (Emma Watson), an orphan rescued and raised by Noah, and Noah’s wizard-like grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins). This clan lives close to the land, gathering plants to eat and protecting what parts of creation they can. In a dream, the Creator (the movie’s only name for a ruling deity) warns Noah of the impending destruction of the world by water. Aided by narcotic tea cooked up by Methuselah, Noah has a further vision setting out the nature of the ark he must construct to survive the deluge. He is helped in this task by the Watchers, a troop of fallen angels whose punishment is to have been encased in the rock and mud of the earth they loved too much. Noah is opposed, naturally, by Tubal-cain and his followers, who rather understandably fail to see the fairness is the Creator’s sparing of only one human family. Adding tension are some intra-family squabbles in the Noah clan. Shem and Ila seem made for each other – but what of the other two sons? Are they to have families after the flood? As Noah comes to increasingly despair of the wickedness of the Cain tribe, the answer seems more and more negative. By the time the family enters the ark, in fact, Noah is actively planning the end of his own line, telling his youngest son he will be “the last man.” However, other forces are at play, including a vengeful, stowaway Tubal-cain and the magic operations of Methuselah.

     At this point it may sound like there is, as critic Joe Bob Briggs used to say, too much plot getting in the way of the story. In fact, these many plotlines all serve as variations on a theme, a series of concentric circles around the idea of justice. Should the Watchers be punished for giving divine knowledge to humankind? Should the descendants of Cain really pay for their wicked use of Creation with their lives? And if something in human nature is to blame, why should anyone – even the less wasteful Noah – escape? Why does the Creator “speak” in visions to Noah, but to no other men? Is Noah being used as an instrument of wrath, or of mercy? The film tracks Noah as he becomes increasingly angry at his own kind, and his desire to save creation gives way to a related desire to eradicate the humans he sees as creation’s enemy. Against Noah’s principled zealotry, the movie pits Tubal-cain’s humanist pragmatism (he sees the Creator’s gift to humanity as dominion over Creation, and fails to understand why humans made in a god’s image should not behave in godlike ways) and Naameh’s earthy optimism (it is she who pushes for wives for all the sons, and believes in life itself as good). Caught in the middle are Noah’s children, who must decide when to follow their father, and when to go their own ways.

     There is a lot of substance to Aronofsky and Handel’s script, but in the end it’s deeper than it is smart. Some of the dialogue is a bit tin-eared, and many narrative beats will be predictable to those with some knowledge of cinematic rather than Biblical lore. Like the Creator Noah follows, Noah speaks more powerfully in images than in words. Aronofsky has always been a very visually-oriented director, and much of what makes Noah compelling is in what is literally up there on the screen. A mythic tale like that of Noah and his clan, set in a nebulous scriptural prehistory, gives the director full license to embrace a sort of magical realism, in which fountains and forests sprout from a single seed, hordes of animals march freely into the ark and curl up in ready-made pens, stone-bodied angels clomp about like Ray Harryhausen creations lit from within by sparklers, and the forbidden fruit beats like a living heart. At the same time, the world of Noah is dirty and violent and replete with the depravity of desperate people. These are men and women of myth, but they exist as real men and women –by turns faithful, doubtful, hopeful, vengeful, awful, and beautiful. A film like DeMille’s The Ten Commandments gives us something of the grandeur of Biblical narrative; Aronofsky’s Noah seems more intent on showing us something of the narrative’s humanity.

     After the visuals, the movie’s greatest assets are its characters. They are few, of course, but this allows those who are filled out to actually achieve some resonance. Winstone’s Tubal-cain, for example, is no stock villain. He’s a ruthless man, to be sure, but his concerns are quite fair: why does the Creator choose to kill some of those creatures made in his image and spare others? Like Noah, he wishes to survive – he is simply willing to go to different lengths to do so (it is in keeping with Aronofsky’s visual style that Noah and Tubal-cain often mirror each other in look and manner - variations on a theme again). Connelly likewise is allowed to make Naameh not some long-suffering spouse, but an equal and differing personality to her husband’s, also willing to do unusual things to pursue her vision of the future. Also of note is Lerman as the conflicted Ham, who respects his father, but not all of his father’s ways. The mystical, eccentric Methuselah is a role very much up Hopkins’s alley, and he makes the most of it (the character’s curmudgeonly nostalgia for the ripe berries now mostly missing from a despoiled world provides some of Noah’s few real moments of comic relief). Noah is Crowe’s movie, however. He must essentially play Noah as three men – the hopeful, pre-vision family man; the ark-builder driven by conviction and divine fiat; and the mournful, guilt-wracked survivor of what is essentially world-wide genocide, looking for consolation. This is not an easy journey, but Crowe has long excelled at principled men backed into tight spots, and he uses that to great advantage as Noah. Noah is not a nice man, nor even really a holy one – but Crowe plays him as someone who wants to be a good man, even as he comes to fear that good men are an impossibility. It’s a riveting performance. After all – what would it be like to really be in Noah’s shoes, in the moment, letting millions die while you and your family float to safety? What would it really feel like to be deeply and seriously tasked with responsibility by the Creator of all that is?

     When the film focuses on these human aspects of the Noah tale, it captivates, and these moments make it easier to forgive some of its more indulgent ones (the protracted battle for the ark, for example…but, then, wouldn’t those outside fight to get in? Wouldn’t you?). The movie is about something (which is always admirable), and is about it in a way that often goes for broke (which is its own kind of admirable). Noah’s visuals provoke comment, and its themes provoke thought. It is not a movie for everyone’s taste, and, despite the omnipresence of cuddly Noahs in nursery décor, it is not a movie for young children. For those inclined to struggle with a good story, however, Noah represents an intriguing voyage.

PS – I should say something about the midrashic nature of the film. I believe I’m plain above that Noah takes liberties with the straight Biblical account – some sanctioned by Judeo-Christian lore and tradition, some not. All film adaptations of texts, whatever their genre, make changes simply as a matter of shifting from written to visual storytelling. This is true for scriptural adaptations as well as fictional ones – as true of The Ten Commandments as Ben Hur. I distinctly recall a Jewish professor of mine in graduate school explaining to a Christian questioner that his tradition taught him to argue with and struggle with the scripture. Aronofsky,  a “cultural Jew” by upbringing, has put Noah in that tradition. It adds and interprets, but it does so in a deeply serious way. Midrash was done in an attempt to maintain the integrity of scripture, because the rabbis were uncomfortable with the ideas of gaps and inconsistencies in their sacred text. Obviously, the answers were there to be found, and could illuminate the message rather than obscure it. Aronofsky’s film proposes his own questions and answers about the story of Noah, but, I believe, in a way that he feels highlights and deepens the wisdom and challenge of the Genesis account. Nothing in the film, for example, questions the existence of the Creator, nor the fact of His judgment – rather, the film and its characters wrestle with the nature of the Creator and His judgment. The film depicts Noah in some ways he is not often shown, and some are disturbing. But a story of a world-drowning flood, and of a God who would despair of His own creations is, by nature, disturbing. Noah goes to the heart of that disturbance, and looks for meaning and, ultimately, hope there. That it does so with some of the trappings of a Hollywood blockbuster will strike some as remarkable and others as unfortunate. Both are legitimate responses, with their own justifications. For the record, however, I fall in the former camp. 

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.