When I was a kid, I worked for Dickie Dee Ice Cream, pedaling one of those white ice cream carts around the south end of Oshawa, where I was more the neighbourhood mobile nutrition centre than the floating dessert vendor. My favourite product was the grape Blockbuster, one of three flavours of a Creamsicle™-type ice cream bar.
But say the word blockbuster to me now, and I tend to think of the big popcorn movies that come out in the summer, what the industry types called the tent-pole movies (not sure if they still do or not).
This year, Iron Man led off the pack, opening at the beginning of May and doing quite well. Let’s hope that the inevitable sequel(s) maintain the same quality as this one.
The next big movie was the Narnia sequel, which I haven’t seen. The trailers for Narnia 2 give me the impression that the movie is much of the same as the first one, so I’ll probably skip it. It’s nice to see fantasy epics returning to the big screen in the wake of the LOTR trilogy, but the first one felt like a Harry Potter retread rather than a source of Rowlings’s scribbles.
This past weekend, I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (hereafter shortened to Indy 4). This movie was as entertaining as Iron Man was, and it’s a worthy addition to the franchise. I went in hoping it would be better than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and at least as good as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Fortunately, there’s no Jar-Jar Binks to be seen. Dr. Jones fist-fights his way on and off trucks, sneaks into booby-trapped ruins, and still manages to teach archeology to classes filled with enamored young women. The movie doesn’t drag, with godless Russian commies taking the place of the Nazis of the earlier films, and the movie is kind-hearted in its treatment of the characters in the world of the 1950’s. It’s not a documentary, so the plot holes are pretty easy to ignore—it’s pure, escapist fun intended to allow you to put the world aside for 120 minutes of adventure, which is how I define the summer popcorn movies.
There are a few other movies I am looking forward to seeing this summer.
Three high-profile superhero movies promise to make comic-con crowds dress up as more than just Imperial storm troopers this summer. The new Batman movie, featuring the late Heath Ledger, is coming out, as is a sequel to the excellent Hellboy movie.
I’ve only seen one trailer for The Incredible Hulk, so I haven’t decided whether it’s something to see (the 60’s TV cartoon is still the best Hulk experience, hands down, with a rockin’ theme song).
Tropic Thunder looks like fun: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. playing war-film actors stuck in a real war. With a supporting cast that includes Steve Coogan and Nick Nolte, this should be a lot of fun. Downey plays a white actor who dons blackface to get a role, which has generated some controversy, but I’m sure it’s more a source of comedic gold than something racist. I saw posters at the theatre this weekend, and Downey’s makeup cracks me up. I hope the movie’s as funny as that poster….
There’s an Adam Sandler movie coming out—to come out in prime-time, it must be pretty good by Sandlerian standards. He plays an Israeli agent who just wants to style hair in New York. So… he’s a martial arts expert with a funny accent. You Don’t Mess with The Zohan may be my guilty pleasure this summer. Or it may be two hours wasted.
One controversial comedy is on its way: Mike Myers’s The Love Guru. Hindu organizations are up in arms over this movie’s portrayal of their religion, which will undoubtedly drive ticket sales up for the first weekend. The first trailer was the most unfunny thing I’ve seen in a long time, to the point that I was shocked they would put it out in the first place. The second trailer was actually funny, so I’ll probably end up seeing this one. Guru is a throwback to the politically-incorrect movies of Peter Sellers, such as The Party or The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, where he impersonated people of other races. Today, that type of racial comedy is somewhat risky, with the unwritten rule being that you have to be from the ethnic group being mocked in order to mock a group of people. Still, in a world where Larry the Cable Guy’s white-trash, homophobic, xenophobic semi-routines have propelled him into making a series of what could be called next generation Pauly Shore movies, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to see a white guy from Scarborough play a South Asian man. Still, the true test of a comedy is whether it’s funny or not. I have my doubts.
I may actually go to the theatre to see a Uwe Boll movie for the first time ever. Postal is getting decent reviews from the blogosphere, and it features the mighty Dave Foley, one of my favourite comic actors.
Surprisingly in the testosterone-soaked world of the blockbuster, the movie generating the most mainstream press these days is a chick-flick, Sex in the City, starring the ubiquitous Sarah Jessica Parker. Not my cup of tea since I don’t collect shoes or purses, but at least I have an excuse to ignore infotainment shows for the next few months….
Monday, May 26, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Robert Downey Jr is Iron Man, Ozzy
I actually went to see a movie on opening night last week: Iron Man. I’m not a fan of opening nights, generally—on Friday nights, movie theatres are crowded, fanboys are high on carbs, small children are screaming.
If I think a movie is likely to disappear within a week of release (either it’s really horrible or it has such a limited release nobody knows about it), I’ll go to a matinee that weekend. For the movies that seem to have enough buzz that I’m sure they’ll be around for weeks or months, I wait until at least the 2nd weekend to catch a matinee. Or I wait until the movie goes to the 2nd-run houses here in the city.
Iron Man is well worth the annoyance of going to a multiplex on Friday night in the city’s heart. The two morons who shouted out what they thought were funny things at the beginning of the movie eventually got into the flick and shut up—it was that good.
Robert Downey Jr. makes the movie work—he charms the audience with his portrayal of Tony Stark, a character with the same wild streak he has. The best casting decision of the popcorn movie season is casting Downey in this movie. They took the X-Men approach in casting good actors (as opposed to casting the prettiest people they could find), so the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges fill out the cast. They also got around the faceless superhero problem seen in the Spiderman movies by showing Tony Stark inside the costume (making the costume another foil for Stark’s wit).
The script was written not as a fanboy superhero movie, but as a character-based action flick featuring a protagonist who happens to become a superhero. The filmmakers (Marvel Studios in their first step away from collaborations with movie studios) were smart enough to realize that the drawing power of the comic book heroes is not the fighting and explosions (as cool as they may be) but the writing. DC may have created some of the iconic superheroes of the 1950’s and 60’s, but Marvel was king in the 70’s because they caught the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate mood and created flawed and complex heroes. Spiderman, the X-Men, the Hulk, even the bland Fantastic Four, all had their doubts, fears, prejudices. The Superman comic bored me when I was a kid, frankly. An invincible hero saves the world—you knew a chunk of kryptonite was just waiting around the corner.
Where superhero movies succeed or fail is not in how spectacular the effects are or how many villains they fight at the same time—it’s the writing, stupid. Are the characters interesting? Is the story compelling? Most of the time, Hollywood gets it wrong and thinks the visual spectacle is more important. Maybe it is to some people, but the power of storytelling is stronger than that of the visceral thrill. Compare the tepid stories and weak characters in the Fantastic Four movies to the stronger choices made in the telling of the X-Men or Spiderman, or, similarly, Superman Returns to Boredom versus Batman Begins to Not Suck.
So… Iron Man moves to the top of my favourite superhero movies list. Sadly, it displaces one of the best Channel 101 series I’ve ever seen….
If I think a movie is likely to disappear within a week of release (either it’s really horrible or it has such a limited release nobody knows about it), I’ll go to a matinee that weekend. For the movies that seem to have enough buzz that I’m sure they’ll be around for weeks or months, I wait until at least the 2nd weekend to catch a matinee. Or I wait until the movie goes to the 2nd-run houses here in the city.
Iron Man is well worth the annoyance of going to a multiplex on Friday night in the city’s heart. The two morons who shouted out what they thought were funny things at the beginning of the movie eventually got into the flick and shut up—it was that good.
Robert Downey Jr. makes the movie work—he charms the audience with his portrayal of Tony Stark, a character with the same wild streak he has. The best casting decision of the popcorn movie season is casting Downey in this movie. They took the X-Men approach in casting good actors (as opposed to casting the prettiest people they could find), so the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges fill out the cast. They also got around the faceless superhero problem seen in the Spiderman movies by showing Tony Stark inside the costume (making the costume another foil for Stark’s wit).
The script was written not as a fanboy superhero movie, but as a character-based action flick featuring a protagonist who happens to become a superhero. The filmmakers (Marvel Studios in their first step away from collaborations with movie studios) were smart enough to realize that the drawing power of the comic book heroes is not the fighting and explosions (as cool as they may be) but the writing. DC may have created some of the iconic superheroes of the 1950’s and 60’s, but Marvel was king in the 70’s because they caught the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate mood and created flawed and complex heroes. Spiderman, the X-Men, the Hulk, even the bland Fantastic Four, all had their doubts, fears, prejudices. The Superman comic bored me when I was a kid, frankly. An invincible hero saves the world—you knew a chunk of kryptonite was just waiting around the corner.
Where superhero movies succeed or fail is not in how spectacular the effects are or how many villains they fight at the same time—it’s the writing, stupid. Are the characters interesting? Is the story compelling? Most of the time, Hollywood gets it wrong and thinks the visual spectacle is more important. Maybe it is to some people, but the power of storytelling is stronger than that of the visceral thrill. Compare the tepid stories and weak characters in the Fantastic Four movies to the stronger choices made in the telling of the X-Men or Spiderman, or, similarly, Superman Returns to Boredom versus Batman Begins to Not Suck.
So… Iron Man moves to the top of my favourite superhero movies list. Sadly, it displaces one of the best Channel 101 series I’ve ever seen….
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