Marvel Says "Fuck It," Releases AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON Trailer A Week Early

This is why I love Marvel.

On Tuesday they announced that the first trailer for Avengers: Age Of Ultron would premiere during next week's episode of Agents Of SHIELD.  Then on Wednesday, a low res copy leaked on Vimeo and started getting passed around the internet by assholes with no sense of propriety or patience.  Most studios would have started throwing down cease and desist orders in an attempt to get every copy of the trailer pulled offline, but Marvel is smart enough to know when the genie is out of the bottle.  So, after a cheeky tweet blaming Hydra for the leak, they leaned into the skid and simply released an HD version of the trailer themselves, thus undercutting the shithead leakers and once again commandeering the superhero movie conversation everywhere.  What's that DC?  You finally figured out a game plan?  That's adorable.

Check this shit out:

DAMN.

The first film fairly reveled in the pure joy of seeing all the heroes finally come together for the first time, and while I'm sure there will still be plenty of humor and fun in this second outing (it is Joss Whedon after all) it's also clear that Earth's Mightiest Heroes are going to end up in some pretty dark places.  That Hulkbuster armor has me virtually vibrating with excitement and James Spader sounds appropriately menacing as the big bad.  

Plus there's still nary a sign of The Vision!  He's the character I'm easily most excited to see, as I'm incredibly curious to see exactly how his creation and his relationship with Stark and Ultron will play out.  I also appreciate the small tastes we're getting of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, particularly the sort of vapor-trail approach to the latter which easily differentiates him from Fox's iteration of the same character in Singer's X-Men films.

And that creepy-as-fuck Pinocchio song?  As my wife said upon watching it for the first time (and then once again immediately afterwards), that's just so Joss it hurts.

These next six months are going to be unbearable.

Podcast Episode 34: JOHN RAMBO Is A Small Wonder

And thus concludes our Epic Rambo Rewatch.

The fourth entry, titled John Rambo or simply Rambo depending upon which version of the Blu-ray you're watching, is most notable for being the least Rambo of all the Rambo movies.  There aren't many hallmarks of this franchise but the most recognizable of them, namely a scene in which Rambo slowly takes out a group of enemies in an enclosed space one at a time as well as the presence of an on-the-nose power ballad over the closing credits, are conspicuously absent in this (perhaps) final go around.  It's therefore hard not to walk away from this movie feeling like Rambo/Stallone accidentally wandered into some semi-generic action film.  Julie Benz will try your patience as she spends most of the first half of the film blandly monologuing, although every time her dickhead fiance wanders into frame the potential for unintentional comedy skyrockets.  (I'm looking at you, awkwardly staged boat scene.)  And Stallone's desire to legitimately educate the audience about the plight of the Burmese people while simultaneously portraying the military as virtual caricatures of evil is so blunt that it's kind of astounding.  It's as if he's trying overly hard to justify the violence that Rambo will visit upon these bastards later on.  But stick around because the last 20 minutes is a glorious melee of CG blood and guts as Rambo rips throats, cuts off heads and shoots guys so severely that they simply explode into a completely liquid state.  It's awesome.

I'm really happy with the say this whole revisitation played out, as it gave me the chance to honestly re-evaulate the Rambo franchise for the first time in a decade.  I discovered that Rambo III was much better than it gets credit for, while First Blood Part II is kind of an overhyped snore.  I'm can't wait to dig into the next franchise on our docket, Terminator.

A note on this week's podcast: We spend a bunch of time talking about Marvel's plans for Avengers 3 and beyond, name the idea that most of the current Avengers may not actually appear in that film and the possibility of Sony, in a fit of desperation, finally allowing Spider-Man to play in the Avengers sandbox.  As I was posting this podcast last night the news broke concerning Robert Downey Jr's deal to appear in Captain America 3, signaling the beginning of Marvel's Civil War storyline.  I'll have more thoughts about this later, but I stand by everything we talked about in the podcast and I think our positions are pretty fairly validated by this latest development.

Also, fair warning: The section where we watch 80's sitcoms of our youth is a little uneven from an audio perspective.  The TV audio is a little quiet and our reactions are pretty loud.  Be glad that I edited that section down a bit, particularly the moment from the Small Wonder pilot where the son gropes his robot sister and says, "She even feels like a girl," which literally sent us screaming out of the room in horror.  It's a wonder we didn't break the microphones.



Next Week: Brad Pitt drives a tank in Fury and hopefully also The Terminator.

Podcast Episode 11: To The End Of The Line With CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

"To build a better world sometimes means tearing the old one down."

You guys, I think Marvel might just be unstoppable.

Captain America: The First Avenger is without question my favorite of Marvel's Phase One movies, not counting The Avengers itself which is a movie that I will watch anytime, anywhere.  (I think the Avengers movies will be historically viewed more as punctuation marks to each phase of Marvel's slate.)  I have no real history with Captain America, save for an irrational fondness for Albert Pyun's terrible adaptation from the early 90's.  In truth, that probably has less to do with Matt Salinger's Steve Rogers and more to do with President Ronny Cox.  But I love the classic WWII pulp adventure of The First Avenger and Chris Evans is so great in large part because he understands that the heart of the character lies in Skinny Steve, a beacon of honesty and morality who's always willing to face impossible odds in order to do the right thing.  The fact that Evans has got great comic timing, he oozes charisma and he looks believable dispatching a horde of Hydra soldiers is just the icing on the cake.

Iron Man 3 set a pretty high bar when it kicked off Phase Two.  Thor: The Dark World did an admirable job meeting that challenge.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier clears it.  Handily.

This is not just the best Marvel movie (it probably is) or one of the best all-time comic book movies (it definitely is); this is just a flat out great movie.  In fact, I'm convinced that if you took away the superhuman elements, the shield, the wing suit, the villain trapped in the computer and the cryogenically preserved killer with the robot arm and simply made Steve Rogers an upstanding, accomplished soldier shining a light on a world of shadow and subterfuge, you'd still have a helluva flick on your hands.  Cap is "the man out of time," but rather than waste time on his confusion over pop culture references or modern technology (Avengers already handled this perfectly) writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely choose instead to dwell upon the inevitable clash between Steve's mid-century idealism and our modern surveillance, complete with its love of drones and its tendency to sidestep due process in the name of security and convenience.  There's a fundamental flaw within the system that only Steve is willing and able to correct; Steve knows that while S.H.I.E.L.D. may have their heart in the right place, they're doing a big thing badly and he's ready to burn the whole thing down if necessary.  It's a great throwback to the conspiracy/spy thrillers of the 1970's, stuff like Three Days Of The Condor and The Parallax View.  That they also managed to snag Robert Redford for a key role creates an unspoken authenticity which elevates every scene that he's in.

Of course some of those old school thrillers have a tendency to become so opaque that they start to drag after a while. The Winter Soldier never drags.  In fact, it quite literally puts the "thrill" back in "thriller."  (I can't believe I said that either.)  The action comes hard and heavy, whether it's Cap single-handedly taking down a Quinjet, dispatching a boat load of Algerian assassins or hunting down his best friend turned sworn enemy. But this isn't just meaningless combat; each set piece has clear physical and emotional stakes and the Russo brothers smartly favor wide angle shots that really let the audience see what's happening, a note that feels obvious but is increasingly less so in modern cinema.  This film is many things, but boring simply ain't one of them. 

It's not that I can't wait to see this movie again. It's that I can't wait to see this movie ten more times.

Bart and Jamie give their own two cents in Episode 11 of the podcast, but it's all largely positive (and unapologetically spoilery).  At this point I think we're all pretty much in the tank for Marvel, but I'm totally okay with that reality and I continue to count down the days until I get to see Burt Macklin and Uhura team up with a gun-toting raccoon and a talking tree to fight off legions of alien baddies.  We also speculate on Winter Soldier's impact on ABC's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. show and for what it's worth, this week's episode proved Jamie totally correct and me totally wrong.  That they passed up such a perfect opportunity to connect the Agents with what will certainly be their biggest hit of the year in a way that costs them absolutely nothing only reinforces my belief that Marvel is still flailing around a bit when it comes to that show.  Bart and I also chat about the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and pray that Michael Bay will eventually leave the icons of our childhood unmolested.  At this point, that seems unlikely.

Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes, or on Soundcloud if that's easier.

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Title: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Director: Joe Russo, Anthony Rus
Starring: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan, Emily VanCamp, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo
Year Of Release: 2014
Viewing Method: Theatrical IMAX - Jordan's Reading

THOR: THE DARK WORLD Is A Funny And Frenetic Course Correction

"Why are there so many shoes here?"

Flying in the face of all logic and history, the various franchises in Marvel's cinematic universe only seem to get better with each installment.  (Not counting Iron Man 2, which would easily be the weakest of the Phase One films were it not for the the lethal combination of Rockwell and Rourke.)   It's a rare sight to be sure, and if this trend continues then I suspect that by the time Avengers 3 rolls around, my head will simply explode from too much awesome.

The first Thor was problematic at best.  Bart and I talked about it while recording my second podcast episode (coming soon!) and I think it's the kind of movie that might actually hold up better on repeat viewings because you can really latch onto the stuff that works (a.k.a. most of the Asgard stuff) and then go make a sandwich during the stuff that doesn't (a.k.a. all of the Earth stuff).  But that film totally nailed the single most important thing it had to do right: Chris Hemsworth is absolutely perfect as Thor, so good that you're willing to stick with him through a middling plot on the promise that you'll get to see him in a better story somewhere down the road.  Thor: The Dark World delivers on that promise.

What's most striking is the film's easy confidence.  In his first adventure, Thor is presented as a sort of buffoonish frat boy, someone who wants all the adventure and glory of being king without the burdens of responsibility that come with the crown.  It's all about his journey from arrogant fool to wise leader, and the fact that said journey felt half-baked and played second fiddle to Agent's Coulson's New Mexico Adventure was one of my main sources of frustration.  But when we catch up with Thor here, he's not only fought off Loki's Chitauri army in New York, he's also put down chaos and uprisings across many worlds and once again brought peace to the Nine Realms.  But he no longer takes any joy from battle, recognizing it instead as a solemn duty.  Gone are the days of Thor (both the character and the franchise) rushing around haphazardly trying to find himself while learning not to be such an ass.  Instead of robbing Thor of his mighty hammer Mjolnir, this film allows him to wield it with instinctive ease, as if the hammer were truly an extension of his own body.  This Thor is a leader of men.  Nay, a leader of gods.

The story is still pretty bare bones, but at least this one has some gravitas: Malekith, leader of the Dark Elves who literally predates the universe, wants to wipe out all of existence an supplant it with his own using a swirling MacGufifn called the Aether.  He was almost successful 5,000 years ago when the Nine Realms were last in total alignment, but he was defeated by Odin's father Bor.  Now the Realms are once again about to align and Malekith is back to finish the job.  So it's your basic "stop the bad guy with the super weapon" plot, and in truth Christopher Eccleson is tragically wasted as Malekith, a villain who's virtually devoid of all personality short of pure menace.  But at least this time the fate of the entire universe hangs in the balance, which is a fair step up from the fate of Random New Mexico Town.  Not only that, but we actually get to visit at least four or five of the Nine Realms, which really broadens the scope of the story while setting the stage for some of the larger, more cosmic moves that Marvel will be making with next year's Guardians Of The Galaxy.

Whatever the story may lack in originality, it makes up in sheer execution.  In fact, I often had to remind myself that I was watching director Alan Taylor's big screen debut.  I'm a fan of his work on Game Of Thrones and that surely helped prepare him for the sort of heightened reality of a superhero franchise that largely revolves around palace intrigue.  Whereas before everyone was trying their damnedest to make everything sound Shakespearean, now they're able to breathe a bit and let the elaborate sets and costumes do the work.  Taylor absolutely runs circles around Kenneth Branagh, although it probably helps that every third shot isn't a Dutch angle.  But Taylor also manages to make the earthbound stuff interesting as well.  There's a fabulous blending of sci-fi and fantasy here, and while that concept was vaguely discussed in the first Thor, here it's actually executed with a deft touch, until you've got a bunch of physicists using homemade inventions to battle an invading force powered by an ancient mystical artifact.  That's fucking cool.  The action sequences are a huge step up both in terms of quality and quantity.  In fact, the film virtually bounces along from one set piece to the next, but each one is exceedingly well staged both physically and emotionally; every battle has clear stakes and some kind of hook or setting that sets it apart from all the rest, whether it be something simple like a throne room sword fight or something extremely elaborate, like the film's final battle that hinges upon the use of some really fun Portal-esque physics.

But it's not all just a battle royale.  For all its dour marketing, this movie is funny!  Really funny!  And I'm not even counting poor Stellan Skarsgard, who's been largely relegated to a pantsless clown here.  It helps that the cast all seems a bit more comfortable in their own skin this time around, so we can get more character based humor, as opposed to the first film's zany fish-out-of-water stuff.  One of my favorite jokes (aside from a quick but excellent cameo halfway through the film) is a simple, throwaway bit where Mjolnir is zooming around the sky trying to catch up with Thor as he's teleported from location to location.  That by itself is pretty entertaining, but at one point it whips past Kat Dennings' Darcy, (greatly improved this time around) who calls out after it and once again butchers the hammer's name.  In fact, I think she calls it "Meow Meow."  It's dumb, but it slayed me.

The Dark World has its problems to be sure, but they're mostly minor quibbles.  The Naked Selvig stuff is absurdly broad and really toes the line of annoyance.  Anthony Hopkins doesn't sleepwalk through the film so much as he just seems annoyed to be there.  It might not be quite so jarring were it not for Rene Russo, whom you'd be forgiven for having no memory of in the first film.  Last time she was essentially a grieving prop, but Russo has turned Queen Frigga into a smart, ass-kicking lady in a film full of smart, ass-kicking ladies.  We finally get a sense of what she really means to both Odin and Thor, but it's Frigga's relationship with Loki that's really heartbreaking and provides even more layers for an already complex character.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but Russo might be the sneaky star of this movie.

I can't believe I've gotten this far without talking about Loki.  Hiddleston deserves a lot of credit, as I think there was a serious danger of Loki-fatigue after his role in Avengers.  But the character is given a really wonderful arc as Thor's semi-willing partner in crime that allows him to grow a bit and perhaps even reclaim some of his soul without ever losing his trademark mischievous guile.  You never quite trust Loki, but you do empathize with him a bit.  Part of that comes from the writing, but mostly it's the quiet humanity that Hiddleston brings to the role.  There's a scene about halfway through where Thor visits him in prison and while at first Loki's cell appears immaculate and well furnished, Thor instantly realizes that it's just another one of his brother's trademark illusions and demands Loki show his true self.  The trickster does, revealing a trashed cell and the distraught demi-god lying crumpled in the corner.  It's a simple but strong moment for both characters, proving that Thor has learned from the past ("Are you ever not going to fall for that?") and that Loki might be more scared and petulant child than evil overlord.  Loki's a character that seemed destined for stagnation, but instead he's only gotten more interesting with each outing.  If Marvel announced a Loki film tomorrow...well that's a terrible idea, but I might still show up just for Hiddleston.

And then there's Lady Siff and The Warriors Three.  Aside from the brief but excellent prison break sequence in the first half, they still don't seem to know what to do with these guys.  In fact, they all disappear halfway through the film, except for Hogun who actually bows out in the first ten minutes.  It's a real shame, as they all manage to do some pretty solid work in their short screen time.  Zachary Levi is a huge swashbuckling upgrade from the wooden Josh Dallas.  It's easy to see why they wanted him the first time around and I left the theater wishing there was an Errol Flynn biopic in development somewhere.  Jaimie Alexander really connects with Hemsworth and makes Lady Siff feel more and more like the warrior woman that Thor is supposed to end up with.  In fact, I was sure they were laying the groundwork for the demise of Jane Foster late in the film.  The romance angle was pretty rushed the first time around and it's not much more fleshed out here, coasting almost entirely on the charm of Portman and Hemsworth.  At this point I think that's the best we're going to get out of this franchise.

Still, this is a vast improvement over the first Thor.  With no more Iron Man movies on the horizon and no plans for Mark Ruffalo to get a standalone Hulk film, that leaves Thor and Captain America as the only Avengers with established franchises.  Winter Soldier looks like it could be the best Marvel film yet and I expect that Cap will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting for Phase Two.  But a week ago Thor felt like simply another cog in the Marvel machine, something to tide me over until the surefire madness of Guardians Of The Galaxy.  (Wait till you get a load of that post-credit stinger!)

Now I'm genuinely excited to see where this franchise goes.




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Title: Thor: The Dark World
Director: Alan Taylor
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Christopher Eccleston, Rene Russo, Kat Dennings, Stellan Skarsgard, Zachary Levi, Jaimie Alexander
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Theatrical - AMC Boston Common (2D)

Joss Whedon's Latest Is Truly MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING #IFFB

"When I said I would die a bachelor, I never thought I would live to be married."

During my freshman year of college, I had a required non-credit course called Playreading Aloud in which a a bunch of hungover theater majors (the class was held Friday mornings and for most of us it was the only class of the day) were gathered together to simply read classic plays out loud with no preparation.  I think the idea was to get us comfortable with the cold readings while simultaneously making sure we were all familiar with a basic theater curriculum.  Nobody took the class very seriously since there were no grades and no homework and while it certainly made for some entertaining moments here and there, the "performances" never went beyond the basic words on the page.  It wasn't really the kind of thing I'd make an audience sit through.

That basically sums up Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.

Full disclosure: I love me some Whedon.  I discovered Buffy The Vampire Slayer in the seventh grade and while I admit that I was lured in because Sarah Michelle Gellar is really hot, I stuck around because the writing totally blew me away.  Whedon's ultra-clever patter falls squarely in my wheelhouse along with the likes of Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet..  And as maddening as it can be at times (coughSERENITYcough) I have to respect the guy's penchant for abruptly killing off beloved main characters.  It's a ballsy maneuver that most writers/showrunners rightly approach with great trepidation, but the feeling that no one is safe creates an atmosphere of real danger that most films/TV shows lack.  I know there are those that find his directing style to be flat and uninspired, but it's never really bothered me one way or another.  I heard plenty of complaints that Serenity looked "cheap", but The Avengers certainly proved that the guy can handle scope.  The battle of New York is a fight for the fate of the entire world that's confined to a few city blocks and yet it feels like one of the most epic sequences in any comic book film to date.

Back to Much Ado.  The whole movie was essentially a lark for Whedon.  He filmed it in his own home over the course of 12 days while he was in post for The Avengers.  It seems that Whedon frequently holds informal readings with some of his favorite actor friends, similar to my ill-scheduled college class, and Much Ado was conceived directly from these get togethers.  Thusly, the cast is made up almost entirely of familiar faces from Whedon's myriad of past television and film projects, save for newcomer Jillian Morgese who Whedon apparently "discovered" while she was doing Avengers background work.  Morgese and her onscreen love interest Fran Kranz were both in attendance at the IFFB screening and in the Q&A afterwards Kranz admitted that the low-key production was so fast that they never really got the chance for any full blown rehearsals.

Unfortunately it shows.  Alexis Denisof's Benedick is shallowness personified - not the character, but the performance itself.  He's all awkward posturing and cartoonish facial expressions.  It reeks of someone who's being asked to perform Shakespeare's rich language on the fly and therefore never gets beyond the simplest surface reading of the text.  It certainly doesn't help that he's tragically over-matched by Amy Acker's complex and engaging Beatrice.  Unlike Denisof, she's able to convey heaps of emotion with the slightest of glances.  Beatrice feels like a real person, while Benedick is a caricature at best, which makes their eventual pairing all the more baffling.  The trio of villains played by Sean Maher, Riki Lindhome and Spencer Treat Clark (a.k.a. Bruce Willis's kid from Unbreakable) simply don't work and make next to no sense, arriving in handcuffs and immediately being allowed to roam Leonato's house unaccompanied for no particular reason.  Reed Diamond and Clark Gregg each have some excellent moments between them while Kranz and Morgese make the best of their anachronistic love story.  (It's hard at times not to feel like Leonato is essentially selling off his daughter to a friend of a friend and it's more than a little off-putting in the modern setting.)  From a comedy perspective, Nathan Fillion and Tom Lenk unsurprisingly kill as constables Dogberry and Verges.  Their completely inept attempts at interrogation produce some of the film's funniest moments that don't involve people throwing themselves down stairs while attempting to eavesdrop.  Extra kudos to Lenk, whose ratio of laughs to lines of dialogue is probably the most lopsided (in a good way) of anyone in the cast.

But despite its modest entertainment value, I walked away from the movie with a bad taste in my mouth, feeling like the whole thing was just a tremendous missed opportunity.  Don't get me wrong, I love that Whedon is willing to do down and dirty projects like Dr. Horrible seemingly on a whim, but Much Ado just feels like a bunch of friends half-assing it in Whedon's amazing Santa Monica home.  If the script had been a Whedon original, or even his own adaptation of Shakespeare's story, that might fly.  But you just can't phone in Shakespeare.  The results lack any kind of depth and don't bring anything new to the table, either for the script or for Whedon himself.

At the same time, I wonder if that really matters for this film.  Our theater was packed with die-hard Whedonites (including one girl who was inexplicably dressed like Kaylee from Firefly) who would audibly squee with excitement whenever another member of Joss's familiars showed up.  The audience was just happy to see one of their favorite faces on the screen and let their brains connect the dots back to whatever Whedon character the actor had previously portrayed.  I'm therefore forced to ask: is this movie ever going to be seen by an audience that isn't stacked in Whedon's favor?  The film will get a limited release that will expand in the coming weeks, but it almost certainly won't be playing at your local AMC multiplex.  It is, after all, a black and white Shakespeare adaptation starring a collection of largely unfamiliar TV actors.  The only real star power driving the film is Whedon himself.  Granted his fans are the kind that are willing to go out of their way to seek out his latest opus, but will anyone else?  And if the answer is no, then maybe it's fine that Whedon is essentially preaching to the converted here.  By all accounts, he and his friends had a blast shooting the movie and I'm sure that most of his acolytes will enjoy the movie well enough.  I wish I could count myself among them, but this is easily my least favorite of his projects to date.  (Season one of Dollhouse is probably a bigger creative misstep, but at least it's redeemed by a top notch second season.)

That's not to say Much Ado About Nothing was a wholly unenjoyable experience.  I admit that I laughed heartily throughout the movie, but in the end it tragically lives up to its title - a tale told by a decent director, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Title: Much Ado About Nothing
Director: Joss Whedon
Starring: Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Fran Kranz, Jillian Morgese, Reed Diamond, Clark Gregg, Nathan Fillion, Riki Lindhome, Sean Maher, Tom Lenk
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Independent Film Festival Boston