Sci Fi Squared

Super 8

Flock to the Angelika all you like, folks (I know I do), but the simple truth is this; man cannot live on sterling indies alone. They may be soulful, organic, deeply satisfying dishes, but we all need to tuck into a sugary, summer-days-driftin'-away confection every now and then--albeit a well-made one. Super 8 is just that, an Event picture with a capital E that doubles as a piquant, sweetly nostalgic ode to the art of the analog home movie. It's appropriate that Steven Spielberg's producing; the movie pays homage to many of his hot-months milestones, including Close Encounters, ET, and The Goonies, and is worth mentioning in the same breath as those minor classics. Director JJ Abrams has proved a fiercely talented celluloid pop artist from the very beginning, but here he outdoes himself. This is one of the best films of the year.

Abrams gives us a refreshing respite from this summer's seemingly endless parade of superheroes, pirates, and talking animals, putting a group of startlingly real, incredibly likable tweens at the center of his story. Yes, adults hover around the periphery--deputies and sheriffs here, abusive parents there, etc. etc. But this movie really belongs to Joe (Joel Courtney) and Charles (Riley Griffiths) and their many friends, who are in the midst of filming an amateur zombie flick on the titular device when they witness a mysterious train accident. The crash is followed by a plethora of supernatural occurrences-hundreds of dogs go missing, car generators vanish, radio frequencies go haywire-and while the local law searches frantically for ever-elusive evidence, the kids also search for an explanation of what they saw, uncovering a military conspiracy, and, oh yeah, an alien on the loose. And they film the whole thing--production value is production value, after all.

Putting a bunch of 13-year-olds at the helm of a blockbuster is tres risky, but, in this case, it's a decision that pays dividends. Courtney is the best male child actor I've seen in some time-he delivers his lines with great truth and clarity, and his expressions are laced with an angelic innocence that can't be bought. On the flip side, Elle Fanning shows beyond-her-years grit as the self-sufficient "actress" he falls in love with. As a director, Abrams smartly steps back and just lets these kids be kids. Their interactions unfold with such unforced, good-humoured grace that I have to wonder of some of the scenes were improvised. These children are portrayed warts-and-all; they lie and curse and steal and even commandeer a car. Yet they are also quick-witted, wide-eyed, and loyal to a fault. But notice how the director's love for them shines through in every frame. The explosions pop and the gunshots fly--to say Abrams is good with action scenes is like noting that Picasso was fairly skilled with a paintbrush-but this movie is about them. You root for them from scene one--and, by extension, for the movie.

When people complain that mainstream releases have "lost something" these past few decades, they're probably referring to that sense of wonder, that feeling that you've been lifted out of your solitary confinement of space and time and body and into a new world so beautiful you come back down grinning ecstatically and wiping the stardust from your sleeve. To watch Super 8 is to remember how you felt when Rick stood on the runway with Ilsa, when Obi Wan shouted "Use the force, Luke!", when ET defied gravity and Elliot defied his wildest dreams. And to watch Super 8 is to feel it all again. Here's a film about a group of children united by a love of good ol'-fashion movie magic that instills in us their precious sense of youthful, cinema-crazed wonder. It's good enough to give you your faith back in movies, or make you a believer if you aren't already. It's a film that's already come to mean a lot to me, and if non-cinephiles won't be quite as moved by it as I was, I can promise this; they'll still enjoy the hell out of it. If you give even 1/10th of a damn about my critical opinion, you'll run, not walk, to Super 8. A

PS. Stick around for the credits. You won't be sorry.

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The Tree of Life

People have this movie critic thing all wrong. The chief question a critic should concern him or herself with answering is not "should I see this movie?", but "what am I seeing?" What is the filmmaker attempting to do here? How do they do it? Is there technical mastery to be appreciated? Intellectual fecundity to be savored? What lurks just behind the visages of the actors and the veneer of the scenery that could lead audience to a better appreciation of this picture? Conversely, what's hiding in plain sight that abuses cinema, that extracts false emotions, endeavours to create cheap sensations, serves to diminish our human experience instead of enhance it?

So many motion pictures of recent years are so aesthetically uninspired and ideologically vacuous that they collapse under such intense questioning. On the flip side, Tree of Life is so dense-complex and simple, epic and intimate, horrifying and moving, insipid and inspiring, magical and maddening-that it renders even the most profound inquiries trite and ridiculous. I do not know how Terence Malick accomplished what he has accomplished here. I'm not entirely sure what he has accomplished. I cannot even answer basic questions regarding the picture's plot, characters, and storytelling structure. It resists categorization and criticism; Roger Ebert was correct in deeming it a "cinematic prayer", and you just can't give a prayer a letter grade.

I will say this; there are moments in this movie that rank among the most astonishing ever captured by a camera. As it attempts to link a fractured Texas family (Brad Pitt is the brooding patriarch, Jessica Chastain the loving wife) to nothing less than the creation of our planet, Malick, a deliberate, intensely visual hermit-god of a filmmaker, creates a few precious moments that serve to widen our very view of the world and our place in it. There are times, particular in the opening half hour, where it feels as if he's discovered something new and wonderful about our relationship to time and space, something you can't say about most new releases in the age of Something Borrowed. There are also long stretches of maddening passivity, of mazes of metaphors trapped inside other metaphors, of ponderous, exasperating exegesis and examination of What It All Means. There is an utterly indescribable ending that takes us directly into Malick's haunted brain and then leaves us there, directionless and exhausted and frustrated.

"Suffer into wisdom", Aeschylus said, and Terry Malick seems to agree. How can I recommend a film that's often so obtuse and spacey that the act of watching it becomes almost physically painful? Yet how can I urge you to stay away from a picture that, when it works, works so well as to give us a little glimpse into the hidden clockwork of the universe itself? I bet you know by now if Tree of Life is for you. If not, watch some of Malick's earlier work, particularly the masterful Thin Red Line, and see if you're ready for his latest, twice as sprawling and ambitious. Ask yourself how important things like narrative and action are to your moviegoing experience. Steel yourself for a deeply emotional experience, whether that emotion be agitation or awe. And, if you do see the thing, don't watch it, don't try to figure it out as it happens--just let it wash over you. No grade

I Travel Through Time: 'First Class', 'Midnight in Paris'

Midnight In Paris

Every critic has their soft spot. Mine has a name; Woody Allen. My almost religious identification with the man's cinematic output razes even the most remote possibility of objectivity. I saw right through Celebrity and Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Scoop, but because of my celluloid alter ego, I found them hugely enjoyable and reviewed them accordingly, despite their obvious faults and the negative critical consensus. So, when I say there's a great new Woody Alllen picture out, I probably sound like the boy who cried wolf, but hey, listen; this one really is great. Allen's been tinkering with pleasant but peripheral little five-finger exercises for the better part of a decade now. Here's an all-out concerto. Midnight In Paris is his most optimistic work, a movie of boundless wit and unforced effulgence that ranks among his all time best. The Woodman Returneth.

The enchanting premise plays like a fairy tale for cultured adults--Gil (Owen Wilson), a hangdog Hollywood hack looking to venture into serious prose, heads to Paris with his hapless fiance, Inez (Rachel McAdams). Tired of passing his nights on the Seine with her pushy parents (Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy) and their grandiloquent wannabe tour guide (Michael Sheen), he wanders the city streets looking for a drink, only to be picked up by a mysterious cabbie who whisks him away to the Gay Paree of the 20's, where Gertrude Stein held court, Hemingway prepared A Moveable Feast, and Picasso played painter and potentate all at once. He meets each and every one of them, along with Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a luminescent muse whom he falls for hard and fast.
While Allen does take the time to play a few cosmic pranks on his artistic ancestors (in his universe, Gil gets Luis Bunuel's career off the ground, and thwarts one of Zelda Fitzgerald's countless suicide attempts), Midnight is really about Gil's journey, and its a pleasure meandering through the Roaring Twenties alongside him--he's one of Allen's deepest, most honest screen creations. He's the token "Woody Allen Character", yes, but he's so much more than that. He represents the hopeless romantic in all of us, and embodies the doubts and delights of just about every modern writer. Allen feels Gil in his bones, and thus gives him really crackling dialogue, smooth as champagne but also twice as biting. Wilson, quietly uncorking heretofore hidden reserves of emotional depth and clarity, relishes every word. He centers the picture, making the experience meaningful and enjoyable even for those who can't tell The Sun Also Rises from New Moon.

I won't deny, though, that it takes on a few extra dimensions for more literate members of the audience. Sly jabs at Cole Porter and Salvador Dali get the gut-busting laughs they deserve, but something else sticks with you; Allen's genuine love of the era he's portraying. He may point out their foibles for a well-earned chuckle here and there, but his deep, deep admiration for them shines through in every frame.

A few rebuttals to the criticisms already being leveled against the picture. No, Inez is not underwritten. It's an unforgiving portrayal, yes, but Gil's flight of fancy wouldn't be so enchanting if there wasn't something extreme for him to flee from. Yes, the final modern-day scenes are highly unrealistic and sudden. This is comedy. The characters get what they deserve, good or bad. And hell no, the real-life figures aren't portrayed with even the slightest sandgrain of accuracy. That would have been all wrong for this movie. They are shamelessly romanticized, exactly as we'd like to remember them. That's what makes this dream world both affecting and addictive.

And in the end, addiction is what Allen is exploring--nostalgia as a drug, as a form of dependency. In the movie's final half-hour, where Gil begins to travel further and further back through time, he comes to realize that the best of times is never now. Escape ceases to be escape when it becomes permanent. This is a message pertinent not just to Gil and people like him, but relevant to the movies themselves. The cinema is a world of wish fulfillment, of dreams coming true. But these dreams should supplement our lives, not define them. While we're on the subject, I must admit that Midnight In Paris was a dream come true for me--a work of truth and beauty and great compassion from my most beloved artist. A.

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X-Men: First Class

That scene is in X-Men: First Class. You know, the kind that needs to be retired from all franchise films for at least a decade. What scene, you ask? Well, let's say there was a really successful superhero picture called Man Who Runs and Jumps Through Hoops N' Stuff. Well, after a couple sequels of steadily decreasing quality, MWRAJTHNS (that would be its acronym) would get a prequel, about how said Man Who Runs and Jumps Through Hoops N' Stuff was once just little Billy from the block. In the final half-hour of said prequel, a supporting character would witness little Billy's ethereal powers and say something to the tune of "You know....they should call you.....(insert pause the size of a Subway footlong)....MAN WHO RUNS AND JUMPS THROUGH HOOPS N' STUFF (heavy percussive music goes here.)" I can count on one hand the number of prequels in which this gambit has worked. Casino Royale. There. I've counted.

Ok. I'm putting away the snarkiness. This film deserves my scrutiny, yes, but not my venom. It doesn't insult my intelligence. It doesn't truly waste my time. It isn't lugubrious or self-important. It sincerely tries to entertain. At times it does. If this sounds like faint praise, it is; here's a movie that never crashes and burns, but doesn't quite get off the ground, either. It just sort of hovers there, like Banshee in his first attempt at flight.

Banshee, you ask? He's one of the young superhumans who joins a hastily assembled, CIA-backed team of mutants led by a young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his best friend/future arch-nemesis, Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender). Their stated mission: avert the Cuban Missile Crisis. But carefully concealed modus operandiabound; Xavier's undertakes the mission as a gesture of goodwill from mutants to their homo sapien counterparts, and Erik is out for blood; Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), former Nazi and murderer of Erik's beloved mother, is the brains behind the current crisis.

A globe-trotting superhero revenge pic is an inspired concept, and flashing back to examine the trials and triumphs of the first generation of mutants isn't a bad idea either--at this stage in its life, the franchise could use a rejuvenated sense of discovery. What's disappointing is how little director Matthew Vaughn does with the idea. I really would've loved it if the picture had a From Russia With Love vibe, with the mutants using their respective powers to engage in some down-to-the-wire-international espionage. Instead, we are treated to a truly bizarre vision of superheroes in the swingin' fifties and sixties-X-Men meets Don Draper. This is certainly the only comic-book adaptation ever to feature a pit-stop in Wayne Newton-era Vegas and the line "That's a really groovy mutation." The second half of the picture mercifully cuts down on the cheap nostalgia, but it also damn near does away with the entire period-superhero-picture concept. The X-Men spend a total of maybe five minutes averting an international crisis; they waste the rest of the last half-hour shooting big balls of energy at each other and flying in circles, actions that would have the same effect in any other decade. "X-Men goes 007" is a fantastic starting point, but the final result is shockingly subpar.

With one exception; Fassbender's Erik/Magneto. Fassbender portrays his avenging anti-hero as a figure of Shakespearean sound and fury, and rightly so; Magneto is one of the most complex figures in comic book literature, a man whose evil streak is borne not of a disposition to cruelty but of an unstinting belief in the overall weakness of good. His quest for vengeance provides most of the movie's honest thrills, and I kept wishing that First Class was his story and his alone.

'There's hope for the sequel' is perhaps the best complement I can pay this shaky first installment. It assembles a uniformly excellent cast in the service of a risky conceit---one so risky it seems even the filmmakers were afraid of it. If they would just trust their vision a little, this birth-of-the-hero-at-the-turn-of-the-century idea would soar. It's my sincere hope that this First Class comes back for a reunion and shows us what they've learned since their first go-round. C+.