Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

*1/2 out of ****

Let’s wind the clocks back about eight years: Marvel had just given us a little surprise hit called Iron Man, which was good fun, but it wasn’t going to even touch the DC/Warner Brothers Batman epic due that July, The Dark Knight. What happened? 

Today, the Disney-owned Marvel Studios releases multiple movies a year, which are connected by taking place in the same universe as that first Iron Man movie. I don’t think that any of them are great, but nearly all of them know how to have a good time. Meanwhile DC/Warner seems to be under the impression that they need to take their dark and serious shtick that made Christopher Nolan’s self-contained Dark Knight Trilogy so successful and apply it to the universe-building business model that makes Marvel a blockbuster powerhouse.

If you don’t count a failed launch via The Green Lantern, this started with the financial success of 2013’s Man of Steel – a movie I loathed for sucking all the charm out of Superman. It continues now with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, where Batman’s inclusion fits into director Zack Snyder and co-writer David S. Goyer’s grim world more than Superman does. I wish I could say that this makes the new movie an improvement, but, for so many reasons, it doesn’t.

Like Man of Steel, the movie begins on a strong note, this time revisiting the most sordid section of Man of Steel where we see the partial destruction of Metropolis from Bruce Wayne’s point of view as one of his company towers is crumbling in the collateral damage of a fight between Superman and General Zod. The look on Wayne’s face says everything I would assume a common citizen to think of Superman, who sure picked a bad day to reveal himself to the world.

Cut to present, where the young industrial billionaire Lex Luthor is attempting to influence a political movement against Superman while hoping to access restricted alien technology found during the events of the last movie. Meanwhile, Superman is hypocritically disapproving of Batman’s violent ethics when fighting crime. Batman starts hatching a plan to destroy the Kryptonian strongman for being a threat to the human race. More subplots ensue.

I gave the first chunk of this movie every ounce of my attention in order to make sense of its convoluted plotting until I surrendered in a state of bored confusion. There are gorgeous moments, quite often in segments that turn out to be dream sequences and I wonder if Snyder is using them because he embraces any opportunity show his talents at abstract imagery.

The story is under the influence of conflicting minds and the business obligation to establish future DC Universe installments, which I’m hoping will never happen - if they’re to be anything like this movie’s blatant, gloomy allegories for fighting terrorism –a theme I grew tired of seeing in escapist cinema a long time ago.

Ben Affleck is a very good Bruce Wayne/Batman and Henry Cavill is still a good looking Superman, even if he has yet to discover the character; Amy Adams is a great actress who continues to make a terrible Lois Lane; Gal Gadot, as Wonder Woman, barely makes an impression in the monotonous finale; and Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor possesses most of this film’s personality: An eccentric, loud, pseudo-intellectual force of destruction with no clear motive.

When talking movies with friends, I’ve often defended Zack Snyder for his unique visual style, which felt lost in Man of Steel, but feels slightly recovered in this movie. Sadly, the common criticism of Snyder having a superficial understanding of substance, storytelling, and how to make action scenes engaging is adding up in ways that make him look really shallow in my eyes now.

A lot of fanboys - and girls - are split on Snyder's work with films like Watchmen and 300, but I enjoyed them during a golden time for Warner, when they treated their comic book properties, through DC, as worlds of their own that each promised a compelling story through rich filmmaking. This was also true of V For Vendetta, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.  

The studio that took the comic book movie to its greatest cinematic heights has sacrificed so many things that matter in entertainment. Despite the #1 opening weekend at the box office, they may be about to pay the price. I, like so many others, will not be going back to see Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice again.

But you don't need to take my word for it...

10 Cloverfield Lane

*** out of ****

While the 2008 film Cloverfield was only so appreciated, I was in awe of its then-unconventional existence as a disaster movie that managed to be filmed in secrecy, thanks to a cast of relative no-names who didn’t draw attention and a production style that hid the scale of its special effects budget. Its Blair Witch approach to a monster attack movie felt like a re-invention of the genre. Sadly many movies inspired to take on the found-footage approach didn’t manage to improve on the believability of a protagonist in peril who insists on filming everything.

None of this applies to 10 Cloverfield Lane, which is not a found footage film, nor is it much of a sequel. Producer J.J. Abrams insists that when you see the name “Cloverfield,” you need to think of it as part of an “anthology” series of movies that share a similar theme.

Like the last movie, it was made in secrecy, but this time the cast is more reputable, the setting is rural, the atmosphere is claustrophobic and the filmmaking style is skillfully traditional.

The lovely Mary Elizabeth Winstead takes the lead as a young woman who, after a car accident while traveling down a country road, wakes up in a subterranean room chained to a pipe. She then meets her captor, played by the great John Goodman who reveals to her that she is in a large fallout shelter of his design and that he saved her from the accident shortly before world-ending events took place. After being unchained, she meets one other guest in the shelter – played with the subtle versatility of John Gallagher Jr. who is a local farm worker. Despite the home-like comforts in the space, both are under the strict untrusting standards of a socially awkward man who has clearly been waiting most of his life for apocalyptic events.

Reasonably, the two young guests of this scary old guy share some doubt that he is telling the truth about the horrors outside and the movie that follows is a wonderful suspense machine starring a heroine trying to find clarity as to what source of danger is more threatening: Above or below?

Like many artists working under Abrams’ guidance, Dan Trachtenberg’s first feature film has a loosely structured story that acts heavier than it really is, but the characters and atmosphere are wonderfully bold from its seductive beginning to its somewhat hackneyed climax.

10 Cloverfield Lane is still very effective entertainment with well-written dialogue from first-time feature screenwriters Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken –with the help of Whiplash writer/director Damien Chazelle. The performances are also potent - particularly from Goodman who may be doing his creepiest work since Barton Fink.

This isn’t a major accomplishment but it follows in the tradition of thoughtful B-movie thrillers from another era and its slow pace is justified throughout its relatively short runtime. Considering how much garbage studios normally dump at the beginning of the year, this is yet another decent movie for the start of 2016. I wouldn’t mind if Abrams has another Cloverfield entry planned for the near future.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

**1/2 out of ****

As a movie fanatic, there is something deadly about feeling aware that I am sitting in a theater watching a movie. The seductive quality of a good movie distracts me from my popcorn, soda, and some jerk texting away on their phone. The inept jaw-dropping embarrassment of a bad movie can do the same. It’s when a movie stands in the middle with a generic sense of purpose and almost no sense of identity that my awareness of time and space in the real world take hold and I wonder what I’ll be doing after it’s over –aside from figuring out how to review it.

Journalist, Kim Barker’s book, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been loosely adapted into a loosely funny feature called Whiskey Tango Foxtrot starring Tina Fey –who also produced the film. Like a lot of Tina Fey vehicles, this one is compelled by tough subject matter but aims for the safety of the broad appeal she’s always managing to win.

Fey’s character is a journalist who jumps at the opportunity to work as a war correspondent in Afghanistan near the end of 2003, leaving a life and relationship on hold. What is supposed to be a three-month job turns into a three-year experience of intense reporting aided by hard drinking.

Margot Robbie and Martin Freeman both play reporters who simultaneously scare and seduce Fey’s character with the dangerous version of journalism they embrace. At the same time, she’s given wise advice by her Afghan guide who recognizes her addiction to reckless risk-taking.

The guide is played by Christopher Abbott, who along with Alfred Molina does good work in this film with an Afghan character but this seems like the wrong kind of movie to continue the longstanding tradition of failing to employ middle-eastern actors in roles written for them. Hell, “Iron Man” did a better job in this area.   

Glenn Ficarra and John Requa may have been responsible for writing the lowbrow masterpiece Bad Santa, but their turn as directors-for-hire hasn’t proved to be anything worth their time. They shoot the film with competent realism but first-time screenwriter Robert Carlock (TV’s 30 Rock) has created a bunch of material that seems tailored for Fey’s keeping-it-together comedy shtick and tries to focus the humor toward the after-hours debauchery of eccentric journalists as if the R-rated depravity substitutes for the endless missed opportunities of political satire. The combined ingredients of this movie just don’t gel.

Jon Stewart’s 2014 film Rosewater may not have been a great film, but it was driven with more determination and thematic focus from a comedian finding a meaningful way to tackle the threatening anti-comedy of our world’s troubles.

Despite its heavy language and racy scenes, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a rather banal experience that let me know how low its ambitions were quite early on - and it fulfilled them as it only inspired a steady flow of chuckles combined with tension that lacks any real sense of dread. As I feel no sense of satisfaction or outrage, I would say that “WTF” does not live up to its title.

Zootopia

*** out of ****

I just had a very fun time seeing the latest superbly animated family film from Disney and I’m trying very hard to not analyze it too deeply. Zootopia is the studio’s first movie to seem self-conscious about their longstanding tradition in creating anthropomorphic animal worlds. Along with 2011’s Rango and 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it’s also one of the few child-aimed films I’ve seen to take place in an alternate world containing whimsical non-human characters who experience situations inspired by dark crime fiction.

The movie enjoys the cute sight of different animal species living and working together in a human-like society, except they all seem to be acknowledging a pre-historic time of primitive animal behavior that fuels a lot of unspoken prejudice amongst one another.

An idealistic country rabbit named Judy Hopps (voice of Ginnifer Goodwin) travels to the big city of Zootopia to be the first of her species to join the large-animal-dominated police force. Immediately marginalized and tasked with parking patrol, she encounters a sly fox named Nick Wild (voice of Jason Bateman) whose life of con-artistry angers her until she realizes that his street smarts may be useful in solving a perplexing case that no one in the police force is willing to take on.

The humor of the standard buddy detective mystery applied to a cartoon animal world is enough to keep this movie entertaining through good voice acting and excellently expressive character animation. It’s late into the film when the plot becomes a little overstuffed with a device that’s thought provoking but unclear in its allegory.

Unlike the well thought-out world created for Pixar’s excellent Inside Out, Disney Animation’s Zootopia can be read-into in various ways with various results, but it ultimately wants to teach kids of different backgrounds to appreciate one another’s differences. If a movie from the Disney machine can do this, captivate audiences with eye candy and make stupid references to The Godfather and Breaking Bad, then I suppose I can get behind it.

As some people have applied apocalyptic theories to Pixar’s Cars, I couldn’t help but wonder when the human race met its dark end in the world of Zootopia but they never touch on it.