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Out in Theaters: PRINCE AVALANCHE

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“Prince Avalanche” 
Directed by David Gordon Green
Starring Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsh, Lance LeGault, Joyce Payne
Comedy, Drama
94 Mins
R

 

Prince Avalanche starts slow, aims lows and won’t make any dough. It’s a pretentious channeling of Terrence Malick, infected with self-importance and devoid of any meaning. Attempts to pull an “Emperor’s New Clothes” gag, Green’s film openly mocks you if you don’t “get it”. But it’s clear, there is nothing to get here, little to take away and zero to cherish. The equivalent of an imitation Jackson Pollock, this is a festering pile of trash wrapped up with fancy names and presented as craft. From the childish performances to the wandering story, and all along the gimmicky art-house road, this is a bad movie that made me jealous of the people storming out in the middle of it.

To get a grasp on what exactly makes Prince Avalanche so bad, first comprehend what it could have been. The combination of director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express), Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch screams comedy gold. Even the trailer presented this as a quirky comedy about two offbeat guys doing goofy things – nothing could be more misleading.

In reality, this is the story of Alvin (Rudd) and Lance (Hirsh) – two strange, moody, unlikable blue-collar workers who do the most boring job in the world: hammer posts into the side of the road. How do I know it’s the most boring job in the world? Because Green spends a good tenth of his movie showing us just exactly how boring it is to hammer in post after post on the side of the goddamn road. But does this make good filmmaking? Do I even have to tell you “no”?

Living together out of a tent in the woods, they run into weird situations like Hirsh beating off in the middle of the night and Lance getting dumped via snail mail and getting super-duper bummed about it. While events like these and the Odd Couple-in-the-woods living situation could make for good comedy beats, every attempt at comedy is eyebrow raising and wildly disappointing. It’s awkward in all the wrong ways and excuses this faltering comedy with attempts to “get deep”. An unnamed truck driver (Lance LeGault) gets a slight raise from the corner of the lip, but that’s the extent of our comedic enjoyment in a film that’s as confused as a Saturday night bag-lady and as funny as watching Grandma die.

More important, and more devastating, than the misfired attempts at comedy, is the lacking sense of fluidity between events and total absence of any driving sense of stakes. Without either, the film never even stood a chance at getting us the least bit invested in the trials and tribulations of these characters. If anything, we can’t stand them.

Lance is off-putting and childish and Alvin is a solitary type who seems to be slipping off his rocker in the most introverted and banal of ways. A moment where Alvin finds an abandoned house in the woods and goes about an impromptu game of “house” is most likely the moment where it all starts to come undone. A random elderly woman wanders into the scene (a local who was in no way a part of the production nor a character scripted in the story) and becomes a focal point for what seems like a lifetime, but is probably about five minutes. As this complete sidetracking indicates, there is simply no importance to anything. Instead, everything Green does feels as trivial as an extended Vine video. There’s no connective tissue, no fibers linking one scene to the next, and the backbone, if there even is one, is so bent with scoliosis that the only humane option is to put it to a long and wakeless sleep.

With a production schedule that only lasted a few weeks, it’s clear that little prep work was involved in storyboarding as well as with the performances, which come off as hackneyed and adolescent. Being immature and acting immature are two separate entities – one that Green, Hirsch and Rudd fail to delineate here. You don’t go to a playground to watch kids run around and yell at each other for fun much like you don’t go to the movies to watch actors saunter and tear around like children. You go to experience character, to be sucked into a story, to feel something. Prince Avalanche fails on all counts.

With the appeal of watching a book mildew, the film is basically to adults what Where the Wild Things Are was to children – confusing, stilted and just plain, off. Don’t take that as an attack on Where the Wild Things Are, just a well-deserved critique that that movie was very clearly not meant for kids. The dark themes and tragic, mature elements went over their heads and the meaning was lost on that younger generation. This, similarly, takes aim at an intended audience (adults in this case) and misses wildly. If anything, this is a movie for kids. But even more so, it seems like a film made for none. If you are however interested in good actors performing poorly, not doing anything of interest and then doing a lot more of nothing, than this is most surely the film for you.

I don’t doubt there will be droves of art-film enthusiasts lining up to put in their two-cent defense of Green’s latest but I can’t foresee any conclusion that would sway my strong distaste for this dead-on-arrival “film”.  It’s the worst case scenario of “artsiness” and someone has to hold art film’s feet to the fire when they fail… and fail this one has. Green proves that being both smug and dull are a lethal combination and results in a film that I, for one,  couldn’t wait to end.

F

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Out in Theaters: ELYSIUM

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“Elyisum”
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Starring Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga, Diego Luna, Wagner Moura, William Fichtner and Emma Tremblay
Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
109 Mins
R

 

At times prone to bluntness, Elysium packs wads of conventional sci-fi action amidst a ravaged view of the future. Nailed together with biting political satire, it’s a savage message board that hammers home director Neill Blomkamp‘s cynical ethos. Offering a glum look at an Earth spoiled by overpopulation and rampant authoritarianism, Blomkamp has perfected his signature sardonic voice and here uses his ruminations on wealth inequality as entertaining, and meaningful, ammunition.

Expanding on the political edge he utilized in District 9, here Blomkamp shifts from apartheid to global health, convicting the duplicitous members of the elite for their crimes against humanity as a whole. As much a pot-shot at the one percent as a sci-fi actioner, this caliber of blockbuster is of the rare intellectual breed, emboldened by Blomkamp’s knack for world building. Overflowing with sly wit and stylish cinematography, Elysium is a meaningful addition to a genre that is as much about prognosticating events to come as it is about action.

Hugging Earth’s atmosphere, Elysium is an asylum for the über-rich, an omnipresent symbol of wealth inequality – a mere 12-minute shuttle ride away. Beneath the veneer of a presidency, the wheel-shaped space station is run by merciless and ambitious defense autocrat, Delacourt (Jodie Foster) – an ends-justify-the-means type with a power-hungry streak. Elysium is the equivalent of a country club in space. A verdant spread of manicured grass and sparkling lakes, teeming with ivory-pillared mansions and palm trees, its appeal is in its exclusivity. Also, machines that can heal any and every affliction, from busted bones to blown-up, hollowed-out faces. While it can’t quite bring anyone back to life, it can do pretty much anything else.

But the citizens of Elysium keep these coveted machines and their sculptured paradise lifestyle to themselves. Making disparaging commentary about the pauper life of the Earthling, they live a sheltered fantasy that acts as the envy of every child back on Earth’s surface. When Earth folk hop aboard pirated shuttles and head towards the alluring omnipresent utopia lingering always on Earth’s horizon, their unblinking execution is seen as acceptable measures to ensure that Eden goes unspoiled.

Back on Earth, we meet Max (Matt Damon) as a child, shot in amber-toned retrospect. An orphan raised by Spanish nuns, Max dreams of someday going to Elysium. When he meets fellow orphan Frey (Alice Braga), Max makes a promise that he will someday buy a pair of tickets to the hovering space Arcadia. But Max’s turn to a life of crime split the two apart, only to reunite years later right before Max is dosed with a terminal amount of radiation. His only option for survival: the machines harbored on Elysium.

While many of the story beats to follow have been seen before (the platonically-grounded romance, the hunt for the last-man-standing, kidnapped loved ones used as collateral, and a series of escalating showdowns), they shine because the world around them is so fleshed out.

For example, Sharlto Copley‘s primal gun-for-hire, Kruger, may be little more than a broadly colored action trope but his character is an allusion to the corruptible power of wealth and the lows that those in power will stoop to ensure they stay in power. In backroom arbitrations, Delacourt employs Kruger’s shady tactics, the exact brand of at-all-costs methodologies that Blomkamp belittles. The lengths to which these characters will go to either ensure their position or work their way up the ladder is troubling, yet credible, in a world where greed is rewarded and power, a thing to be seized.

While the characters themselves are somewhat admittedly thinly written, they serve their purpose as foundations upon which the house of cards is built. As pieces building towards a darkly satirical judgment on disproportional fiscal distribution, they stack up nicely. Working with archetypes to spell out a crystal clear proletariat message, Blomkamp is a fighter – an auteur staging the last remaining vestige of a fractured and defeated Occupy campaign.

Because of his refusal to go quietly, Elysium becomes an exciting and powerful metaphor that packs as much message as it does punch. Though some may take shots at Blomkamp for over-ripening the overtly present politicking seeping from Elysium, his satirical tongue gives the film a startling sense of real-world application that few recent blockbusters dare to engage in. Blomkamp’s heavy-handed musings may be too forceful for the enchanted drones but it is gospel for the disenfranchised brigades of the modern workforce.

By bringing his distrustful and partially misanthropic eye back into focus, Elysium proves that District 9 was no chance occurrence. Like his characters, Blomkamp is a daring hostile who’s willing to burn the gates of the industry while manipulating its hyper-violence to his advantage. In sum, he’s solidified his place as a maverick filmmaker. While some might think that having the wealthiest citizens hoard life-saving machines is a plot MacGuffin of sorts, we have only to turn to current global wealth inequalities to realize that this is already manifesting itself in our own current state of affairs.

As mentioned earlier, one of the most important elements of the sci-fi genre is its willingness to predict what is to come. To this point, it’s interesting to examine how our perception of the future has changed. Putting our shifting cosmology under the microscope, the future has transformed drastically from the 1980s to the modern day. Compare the shiny tech-explosion seen in Back to the Future with its instant-food microwaves and hover-boards to more recent fare.

With films like Elysium, Looper, and Dredd, the future is a grimy place – bleak, crowded and hostile. As a reflection of our global fears, its seems that our minds have collectively turned towards issues of overpopulation, inequality and authoritarianism. The future is no longer a promised land; it’s a hellhole.

With globalization constantly accelerating yearly, the Earth is transforming. Accordingly, it’s no surprise that Spanish is the common denominator language in the film, nor is it a surprise that police work has been transferred over to affection-less AIs. It’s a world veering from empathy into a pit of enforced entropy – literally, hell on earth.

But to discuss Elysium without mentioning the gorgeous cinematography by Trent Opaloch would be to skirt a major attraction of the film. Hovering shots of Earth glimpsed from the space station aim to incite regret, to fuel second-guessing and deserve to be seen in the theater. The set design is equally enviable with Blomkamp’s hawk-eyed attention to detail and overwhelming use of practical effects and set pieces that make this world feel like a lived in, and much reviled, place.

With metaphors as explosive as the beautifully realized action, Elysium is a breathless experience with outbreaks of genius. Prone to coercive measures, Blomkamp pokes the rubble of the future and churns the ash towards our face. Subtlety is not his game, nor should it be. He knows he is onto something here and dares to execute it candidly without the common glaze of apathy. There may be moments of stumbling, particularly in the character development department but it’s nothing than can’t be fixed by an exoskeleton mech-suit. Problems notwithstanding, Blomkamp has again made a rare film that is as purely awesome as it is meaningful.

B+

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Out in Theaters: WE'RE THE MILLERS

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“We’re The Millers”
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
Starring Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Will Poulter, Emma Roberts, Ed Helms, Nick Offerman, Kathryn Hahn, Mark L. Young
Comedy, Crime 
110 Minutes
R

 

Filler entertainment for sure, We’re the Millers is caught somewhere in between the hard-R, cuss-laden adult comedy and your run-of-the-mill, PG-13 family comedy with a soul. It stokes enough laughs to keep the engine churning for its 110 minute run time but when all is said and done, it’s just another comedy kept buoyant by chuckles with little living behind the curtain, sloppily saddled with a moral message far out of its natural reach. You won’t walk out regretting what you’ve seen but you’ll be hard pressed to remember it by name a year down the line.

Proving that he knows how to milk a good laugh, director Rawson Marshall Thurber is no stranger to comedy. Back in 2004, he directed the much revered (at least by this guy and his high school buddies) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. In case you are wondering, yes, that is the movie you’re thinking of. Apparently the world just forgot about the most unnecessarily tacked on post-colon fragment of all time in the whole “A True Understory Story” bit but trust me (and IMDB), it’s part of the name.

While Thurber was the solitary writer behind the laugh riot that was Dodgeball, We’re the Millers has an exorbitant six writers. If writing duties were shared evenly, that calculates to about 18 minutes from each scribe. No wonder the film feels so tonally jarring, rocking back and forth between sweet and sour, shmaltzy and irreverent. When you finally feel like you have a read on Thurber’s voice, it turns on a dime from lewd to sentimental and back again. Like an amusement park ride that spins more than it moves forward, the result is dizzying, disorienting and may make you wanna puke.

Theexalted Dodgeball also had Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and a pre-pariah Lance Armstrong working for it while We’re the Millers rests on the comedic shoulders of Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston. Sudeikis was a pleasant surprise in Horrible Bosses but he’s still something of an unproven talent while Aniston has largely played the same girl next door with boy issues every since her role as Rachel on Friends. She certainly did break character in Horrible Bosses as the pushy sexual deviant boss, which ultimately resulted in one of the biggest breaths of fresh air in her entire career. For some of her onscreen time in this, she captures a similarly charmless aura but, about halfway through, descends to the flippant level we’ve come to expect of her.

And although this isn’t Sudekis’s first rodeo, it is essentially his first go-around as the leading man. As a supporting character, Sudekis thrives with his bohemian dude-isms. He’s that silent bomber that swoops in and steals the laugh but here, he owns the pony show and is happy to try and strike at all the bells and whistles. Even in moments where the film stagnates, he satisfying leads the cast with his easygoing, quip-laden energy and eager beaver physical comedy.

Sudekis plays the role of David Clark, a 30-something burn out drug dealer working for his nerdy-college-buddy-turned-pot-kingpin (Ed Helms). When David gets robbed by a fuzzy-haired pack of hoods, he is enlisted to carry a smidge and a half of pot (read two hundred pounds) over from the dusty lawlessness of Mexico. In an attempt to be inconspicuous, he employs stripper neighbor, Rose (Aniston), apartment twerp/dork/loser/virgin, Kenny (Will Poulter), and hood-rat hobo with an iPhone 5, Casey (Emma Roberts) to impersonate a hapless, all American family on an RV vacation. Naturally, the border guards wouldn’t suspect a pink polo-sporting family to be smuggling tens of millions of dollars worth of sweet, sticky ganja across the heavily guarded US border.

There are moments of stitch-inducing laughs peppered throughout but it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is a minor experience in a minor film. Nonetheless, there are moments that really got a rise out of me, such as an impromptu learning-to-kiss seminar that is gruelingly awkward as well as various asides from Sudekis, spoken or even just mouthed, but two days after watching the film and the effects have already mostly washed off. Regardless of its relative levity and how easy it is to write off, it was a film that I didn’t feel bad snickering at alongside the audience exploding in a cacophony of laughter around me. In terms of the immediate experience of having a good time at the movies, We’re the Millers accomplishes that goal.

What I did have an issue with is the shoehorning in of moral lessons surrounding the troubles of drug dealing. There’s a sort of implied agreement that if you’re going to see a stoner comedy about a sourpatch burnout slinging bags of weed with names like “Fucking Awesome” and “Alaska Thunderfuck” then you don’t really have any moral credo against the illicit substance. We don’t need to be told that drug dealing is bad and, by extension, don’t need to see our hero turn away from it in order to understand that he’s actually a good guy.

There was never a “Cheech and Chong Turn Narcs!” for a reason just as Pineapple Express didn’t end with James Franco and Seth Rogen swearing off the substance forever. It’s an unnecessary turning point for a film that already is trying to stand for the importance of the family. Being a comedy with a little bit of a message is one thing. Being a moral guard of the US War on Drugs is quite another. Had they just stuck by the idea that things are better in twos, or threes, or fours, it could have had enough of a sugarcoat to satisfy the older demographics but instead it tilts too far into preachy, moral guardianship. By the end, two is two too many ethical judgments for this comedy to cram in.

But, let’s not get too down on it. It’s a fun movie right? That’s the point, right? Surely, but it’s also the reason why I won’t be prancing through town singing its praises. I thought the ongoing Scotty P. “You know what I’m sayin'” gag was hilarious, I laughed a lot when Kenny was in the throes of a kiss gangbang and even Jennifer Aniston hit more than she missed (even if she should retire stripping from her resume as soon as possible). But in the end, it’s not much more than throwaway entertainment that’ll see a meager return on its investment, have a quick HBO run and disappear into the same discount bin that Horrible Bosses lingers in today a mere two years after its release.

C+

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Out in Theaters: THE SPECTACULAR NOW

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“The Spectacular Now”
Directed by James Ponsoldt
Starring Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley, Brie Larson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bob Odenkirk
Comedy, Drama
95 Mins
R

What do you get when you fold an affable high school comedy into a serious meditation on heredity and real-world relationships? Apparently a winning formula as The Spectacular Now manages to merge comedy and drama seamlessly. Instead of the competing comedic and tragic elements compromising each other’s effectiveness, both sides benefit from the inclusion of the other and result in a film that’s both genuinely funny and emotionally meaningful. Relative newcomer Miles Teller (Project X) lights up the screen as Sutter Kelly and the many relationships he surrounds himself with are earnest but guarded, bitter yet sweet – much like the film itself.

The film opens within a somewhat retread formula as Sutter responds to a college application asking him to recount the most difficult challenge he has had to overcome. Even though his Dad is out of the picture, Sutter has mostly skated through life with semi-charmed naivety. As far as he sees it, being a white-collar, middle-class child of a single parent hasn’t been particularly hard for him. However, we eventually learn though that this is only the impression he wants to give off. Instead of searching himself to truly discover the hardships of his life, he slams out a half-hearted essay on getting over his recently ex-girlfriend, Cassidy, played by Brie Larson (United States of Tara). Playing the part of the jester has become his calling card so it’s no wonder that he can’t take a question about personal challenge seriously.

In the process of moving on from this generic “he’s cool, she’s cool” high school relationship, Sutter falls deep into an alcoholic stupor. After a night of particularly heavy drinking, Sutter wakes up disoriented and car-less in Aimee Finnicky’s lawn. Unlike Sutter, Aimee Finnicky, played by Shailene Woodley (The Descendants), is not popular. She agrees to help him find his car and they strike up an unlikely relationship. Unlike the superficial sexual scourging of his past, Sutter surprises himself with how gentle and earnest his relationship with Aimee is. Finding similarly wounded souls in each other,  they begin to reveal their unlicked wounds that have caked up over the years.

It’s not like we haven’t seen the formula of ‘popular boy who dates an unpopular girl and ends up falling in love with her’ before but it’s never been quite like this. Instead of the cheap, formulaic third-act revelation of “You only dated me because of blank?!” or “First Name Last Name, you broke my heart”, this leads to something far more genuine and poignant on every front. Instead of an easy escape, director James Ponsoldt straps his characters in and sets them on an emotional crash course within their respective families. Since we genuinely feel for these injured and innocent characters, we want them to succeed, we want them to find happiness and we want them to grow, making it all the more difficult when we see them falter and stall out.

With the late high school setting, breezy comic sensibility and similar visual palette, I felt like I was in store from some kind of Superbad knock-off and couldn’t shake the fact that Sutter looked like a lab experiment crossbreed of Fred Savage and Shia LaBeaouf matched with Jonah Hill‘s voice (see the film and you’ll know exactly what I mean.) But as the film opened up its story to something larger than the transitory high school setting, it presented a whole other realm of storytelling potential. With this, it seizes that opportunity to become more than just low-brow comedy or story-boarded dramatics and captures a rare potency.

Whereas the first act thrives off of Sutter’s comedic timing and the second on the Woodley and Teller’s chemistry, as the film charges into its final act, Ponsoldt tips the film into more challenging territory. As the threads keeping Sutter’s life together unwind, the performances step to the forefront and both Teller and Woodley handle the emotional gravitas with careful footing.

Piggy-backing on her critically acclaimed performance in The Descendents, Woodley is a rock. She steps inside of Aimee, embodying her easily won-over plain Jane with original flair. After being overlooked for Oscar gold for her last solid effort, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her name on many prognosticators’ lips this season.

As our tour guide through this whole venture, Sutter is an uncharacteristically complex teenager. Ponsoldt isn’t afraid to step into the shadows and strip Sutter of his saccharine veneer and reveal the wounded, frightened child abandoned by his daddy. When forced to face his demons, even when the result is ugly, Teller demonstrates his full commitment to Sutter’s character and presents a rounded and bold-blooded man-child stabbing holes in his own chrysalis.

Proving again that he can juggle sincerity and comedy, Ponsoldt does it even more effectively here than he did with his last effort Smashed. Where he could easily have descended into preaching or easy-outs, he chooses the difficult road because it more genuinely suits his characters and his story. As Sutter and Aimee race closer towards graduation, the film shifts towards a more philosophical approach, tackling what, exactly, this “spectacular now” means. Living life in the moment is Sutter’s excuse for his incessant slacking and glossy lifestyle but upon meeting his deadbeat dad (Kyle Chandler), he realizes that maybe growing up is a necessary evil after all.

Dodging the stuffy trappings of many coming-of-age tales by reworking their stereotypes to its benefit, The Spectacular Now eclipses expectation. Instead of avoiding clichés entirely, Ponsoldt uses them to his advantage. And while the framework for the genre has clearly already been established, it rarely results in something this good and all around meaningful. It joins the ranks of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Superbad as timeless films about the difficulty of transition and the promise of human connection while carving out enough of a name for itself to be remembered years down the line.

A-

————–——-For my interview with director James Ponsoldst, click here. ————-——––

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Documentary Dossier: BLACKFISH

by Posted in Documentaries, Out in Theaters
“Blackfish”
Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Documentary, Drama
90 Mins
PG-13

A documentary thrives on three elements: diligent research, visceral impact and well-structured organization. Going down that list, Blackfish can take solace in a big black check through each. Although I wasn’t as knotted up as the woman wiping a torrent of tears from her eyes for a good 75 percent of the film sitting next to me, the weighty subject matter, hard hitting questions and inviting narrative structure make this a documentary that is not to be missed.

Documenting the life of a single killer whale who takes his genus name all too seriously, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite invites us to explore not the life of a monster but the journey of a tormented soul. In true documentarian fashion, Cowperthwaite takes us to the beginning of the story so that we can better understand the perceived transformation of one docile creature into a man-eating beast.
At the mere age of two, Tilikum is chased down by a flock of seamen working as orca-capturers in nearby Puget Sound. Cordoned off from his mother and roughly hauled into restraints, the young Tilikum jolts in self-aware terror. All the while, his family surrounds the sidelines, separated from their children by fishermen’s nets, wailing away in obvious displays of affectionate grief. In these moments, Cowperthwaite begins to trace the deep-seeded emotional complexity of the Orca species while winning over our sympathies and our curiosities.

Bringing in a neurologist to examine the structure of an orca brain, we’re told that the orca limbic system (an neurological structure linked to emotion) is far more complex and advanced than those found in humans. Because the limbic system is connected to emotional response, this shows an unparalleled emotional complexity residing within the orca species. Research going above and beyond like this, matched with well-timed placement within the film, makes the ensuing ordeal all the more horrifying.

Since the young orcas are the only ones suitable to capture (as shipping costs are quite obviously the first and only concern) there is no regard for the larger, elder ones. Those caught in the nets are sliced open, stuffed with rocks and tied to anchors. Their unsightly (and considerably illegal) corpses are then sent discreetly to the bottom of the ocean. Cowperthwaite has somehow uncovered video evidence of this sad state of affairs and her superlative ability to seek out and appropriately harness this footage is unmatched.

What Cowperthwaite was not able to get footage of, she has broadcast with animated recreation. Rendering the capture of Tilikum in post-amateur animation is not strictly a necessity but it adds a narrative course that if missing would invoke a sense of lost chronology.  Under a self-imposed weight of incumbency, Cowperthwaite revels in fierce levels of detail, revealing and recreating all that she can. In this perseverance to disseminate the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Blackfish stands out from amongst the documentary crowd.

The young but fast growing Tilikum is next sent to Canada to perform at Sealand of the Pacific, where he spends the majority of his time in a 20 foot by 30 foot pool shared with two other foreign orcas who take to chastising and bullying him. They often “rake” his blubbery exterior – essentially stripping his flesh into bloody ribbons with their teeth. As Tilikum suffers, his captors grow rich. As his “cellmates” rake his flesh, his captors rake in the money. The bottom-of-the-barrel standards are shockingly poor and we watch helplessly; mystified and dazed in a stupefied horror.

When one Sealand trainer slips into the tank, she is brutalized and murdered with eyewitness accounts placing responsibility on the male bull with whom we are already familiar: Tilikum. Seizing the opportunity to make some money on the way out, Sealand of the Pacific ships the dangerous orca off to the Disney World of ocean parks; Seaworld. These are the conspicuous beginnings of a whale, which has now wracked up a body count of three to perform to this day and yet continues to perform.

In an attempt to peek behind the curtain, Cowperthwaite shifts her focus onto the corporate structure of SeaWorld and their backwater tactics of secrecy, collusion, and irresponsibility. This is an organization that knowingly deceives park-guests, employees, and advocacy groups, asserting that orcas in no way pose a threat to their trainers. In some regard, they’re right, as there are no documented cases of orca-on-human violence documented in the wild. In captivity however, the number of assaults are staggering. The real shock is not in the data though but in the willingness of the corporate giant to sweep it under the rug.

In this wheelhouse of misinformation, only disaster can follow. Taking the accounts of various former SeaWorld trainers, Cowperthwaite correctly points out how they, nor their captive animals, are the ones to blame. These trainers are passionate about the animals they work with and are deceived into participating in a tremendously vicious cycle where they must literally put their lives on the line if they wish to continue working with the animals.

From SeaWorld’s perspective, there is no need for concern about employees’ safety regardless of the fact that they’re working with 5000 pound giants. Furthermore, all responsibility from a resulting “accident” should rest solely on human error. Even though their claim is blatantly preposterous and illegitimate, they continue to dictate the circumstances of work expectations and, after accidents, courtroom dealings. Regrettably, it took the death of a renowned coworker, Dawn Brancheau, to bring the issue into the limelight.

But even advocates for humane treatment of the captured orcas and the neglected trainers don’t have a tangible solution in mind. The problem is set and in a self-perpetuating cycle. These domesticated orcas have no place to go, as they cannot be released into the wild without an ardent rehabilitation regiment, while their caged interactions are barefaced ticking-time-bombs. It’s a problem without an obvious solution and one that seems to be charging onward.

What Cowperthwaite manages to do best with Blackfish is to not demonize her subject Tilikum. While this could have been a field day for euthanizing the undeniably violent creature, it is instead a case for his defense. As one advocate rightfully says, “How would you feel if you were trapped in a bath tub for 20 years?” Both provocateur and informant, Blackfish highlights out the blood in the water and invites the sharks to swarm. While Cowperthwaite doesn’t strictly call for an up-in-arms boycott of SeaWorld, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt. As both a moral defense of its subject, an intelligent debasing of the SeaWorld corporation and an elegantly made piece of film, Blackfish walks on water.

A-

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Out in Theaters: CRYSTAL FAIRY

by Posted in Out in Theaters

“Crystal Fairy”
Directed by Sebastián Silva
Starring Michael Cera, Gaby Hoffmann, Juan Andrés Silva, José Miguel Silva, Agustín Silva
Adventure, Comedy
98 Mins
R

Michael Cera is on a tear. He absolutely ripped up the screen in his raunchy, self-caricaturing bit part in This is The End, he was one of the best parts of the new season of Arrested Development and here he goes to bat with a new persona – a jagged narcissist with acid wit and a penchant for substance-induced mood swings. His largely unlikeable character is hung with the reactive humor Cera has always brought to the table but instead of his familiar coy and breathless delivery, here he is affronting, biting and plain old mean.

We meet Cera’s Jaime at a party in Chile, chomping through brews, slugging down lines of blow and making a general ass of himself. He’s got the charm of a cactus and his prickly nature drives him from one engagement to the next, offending and putting off the mostly Chilean crowd with his brash Americano ways. As for why exactly he’s plopped down in Chile, he’s not a student or even a teacher working abroad, he’s just another reason Americans get a bad name internationally. Jaime reveals the  true intention of his international journey boils down to a special plant called San Pedro, better known as peyote.

In the grasp of an alcohol and cocaine cocktail, Jaime meets Crystal (Gaby Hoffmann) dancing with arm-slinky, air-grabbing moves, looking like a stoned fool, another American making an ass of herself. But her’s is a different jackassery: she’s an exemplar of the unshaven granola clump, proud of her pit hair and open spiritual convictions. Mocking her in the wings of the dance floor, Jaime’s bitter persona seems to skip a beat and he winds up inviting her along for his quest. Exchanging numbers, Jaime gives Crystal the low down on their arrangements and tells her to meet them the next morning.

After a late night spent making beans and rice for transsexual prostitutes (don’t ask), Jaime wakes with a brooding hangover, being called up to by Chilean friend Champa (Juan Andrés Silva) awaiting in the street below. Gathering Champa’s brothers, they embark on a ride up north to hunt down the mystical cactus, but a phone call from Crystal confirms Jaime’s suspicions that he was a little too faded the night prior. Although Jaime totally wants to blow her off, Champa’s good guy sensibilities insist that Jaime swallow his pride and follow up on his promise to include the eponymous Crystal Fairy. What follows is a clash of sly-tongued titans.

In one corner, Jaime wants what he wants. He’s the caliber of fella who will steal his beloved cactus from an kindly older woman if need be. He’ll mock Crystal’s abundant body hair, slowly degrading her with his sandpaper snide comments. Crystal is all about sharing, caring and opening up. As she tries to get to the root of Jaime’s cutting animosity towards her, she runs into brick wall after brick wall, dismissed and degraded by his nonchalant dismissal of everything she stands for.

Preparing to launch into a full blown, 14-hour drug trip together, relations between Crystal and Jaime couldn’t be more strained. Jaime can’t even handle sharing a task as simple as cutting thorns off the cactus with the frumpy Crystal nor will he participate in her yoga sessions and even dumps the “spirit stone” she provides him. He won’t buy her new age philosophy, a fact he’s glad to throw in her face. 

As harsh and callous as he is, Cera is as hysterical as he is committed to his character. Out in left field, this version of the funnyman shows a diversity that has escaped him for a majority of his career. Ditching traditional Hollywood comedy and going on a limb like this shows that Cera has broken the box and is now reforming it into something new and far more interesting.

As Crystal, Hoffman is perfection. We’ve all met this new-age spirit in all their mumbo-jumbo slinging glory and we’ve all been irritated by their condensing manner and fax-spiritual jive. And while Crystal’s act is off-putting, it’s also dipped in truth and topped with character. She’s more than another version of a hippie-dippy cloaked in flowy clothing, dipped in flowery patterns and a late stage reveal gives us all a reason to sympathize with her boggled outlook. 

Director Sebastián Silva has based this story on an experience of his own and tells it with riotous but compassionate understanding. It’s funny for much of the same reasons that hanging out with your friends is funny. The laughs come naturally, and don’t feel like jokes are retrofitted one-liners hashed out by a team of writers in some remote room. Why? Because they were largely unscripted, with most of Jaime’s swings and dings straight from the twisted mind of Cera.

Crystal Fairy is Silva’s answer to indie comedy. Rather than getting wound up in dramatic, Silva lets his talented stars loose to dust comedy in generous handfuls. Mixed against broken English and a foreign landscape, Jaime and Crystal’s battle of wits is extremely digestible indie fare that exits on top with a wistful note.

B

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Out in Theaters: BLUE JASMINE

by Posted in Out in Theaters

“Blue Jasmine”
Directed by Woody Allem
Starring Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins, Andrew Dice Clay, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K., Peter Skarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg
Drama
98 Mins
PG-13

In the aftermath of Blue Jasmine, the thing that people will be talking about most is Cate Blanchett‘s performance – a role for which she is assured an Oscar nomination. But while Blanchett is busy giving her powerhouse turn as titular Jasmine, Mr. Woody Allen is in the back corner shamelessly plagiarizing. This accusation rings true as the characters, beats, themes, and plots are pulled straight from the pages of Tennessee William‘s A Streetcar Named Desire. Those unfamiliar with the iconic play – or the Marlon Brando film – will be more willing to engage with the material on different terms but Allen’s project seems to have been the result of a little too much glancing at his neighbor’s work and we can’t help but mark him down for it. This fact does not, however, take away from the considerable work from Blanchett’s corner.

Playing an uppity socialite, Blanchett harnesses the manic hysterics of a character crippled by her own snobbish worldviews. Even though Allen has not put himself in front of the camera for much of his recent work, we all know that Allen still remains on the screen – just in another form. As Midnight in Paris injected star Owen Wilson with a more whimsical and charmed version of Allen, Blanchett’s Jasmine is Allen’s neurosis and angst cranked up until the dials break. She is a self-critical, self-loathing masochist, bottled up and shaken until she can’t help but pop, lashing at the the world around her just for existing.

Throughout her life, Jasmine is a woman who has come to define herself by her wealth so when her investment scourge husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), is sent to jail and stripped of his fortune, Jasmine not only loses a husband, but more importantly, her affluence. In her eyes, she may as well have been executed. Jasmine has spent her life building up this ideologies of herself, formulating a persona who is “engaging” and “attractive” even though she would be hard pressed to understand these terms outside of a dictionary. She’s a fake, a phony and her entire bio is a blatant fabrication. Even her name is contrived – having changed it from Jeannette to the more perfumed and “elegant” Jasmine in order to become a more eligible bachelorette.

Her impending “poverty” (which is still accompanied by custom Louis Vuitton luggage) inspires her to exile herself from New York, an alternative superior to becoming a high-class saleswoman, which in her mind is the equivalent of some lower-class social pariah – a bug to be stepped on. So Jasmine flees New York for San Francisco to the one person who will take her: her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins).

From minks and jewels to a pullout couch at her sister’s place, Jasmine keeps her hoity-toity superiority in tow even in the midst of her existential crisis. Even scraping rock bottom, Jasmine keeps her veneer, refusing help from anyone, but we can see the shallow act for what it is. Jasmine is a mirror for the one-percenters, a shell of wealth that begs questions of self-sufficiency in a patriarchal pyramid of more, more, more. To communicate this idea, Allen ratchets up his iconic neurosis to a paralyzing degree and Blanchett is crippled by her inability to cope “without”. As Batman is the symbol of justice, she is the iconoclast and definitive “crazy, rich bitch”.

When not dressing down those around her, she’s chattering away to herself. From the very first scene, Blanchett is revealed to be unhinging, blabbering on and on to what seems like a close friend but turns out to be a unfortunate neighbor. We wonder if Jasmine is Allen’s ironic, self-critical hand at work – mocking his own wealth and manic compulsions – or if he’s trying to unhinge an international pathos: a continuum where greed begets greed and wealth is an object of desire in and of itself.

While Allen’s intent here is more unclear than it is in most of his other work, this fact may be explained by the fact that this is also his most heavily borrowed film. The themes, characters, and tone are pulled straight from A Streetcar Named Desire making this one of Allen’s few films utterly ineligible for the screenwriting nod, which his work has become so accustomed to. While there is no inherent problem with building on, or borrowing from, themes from other works, Blue Jasmine is so directly congruent to William’s play that entire characters and relationships feel more plagiarized than reinvented.

You pity sister Ginger, whose life is hijacked by Jasmine’s overbearing presence and disillusioned megalomania, much like you pity Stella. Ginger sees herself as inferior to Jasmine – a relationship that her crooked, older sibling fights to preserve – and so excuses Jasmine’s selfish behavior while letting her own life hit the fan. Poor Ginger and ex-husband Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) were even duped by Hal to invest their life savings in his Ponzi-scheming dealings. It’s the loss of this nest-egg that leads to their eventual divorce and yet Ginger goes on defending her elder sister.

Another character torn right from the book of Steetcar is Chili (Bobby Cannavale). You already know him as he is Brando’s Stanley down to his wife-beater tank-top, lower-class European roots, and penchant for sudden violent outbursts. It’s a wonder that he doesn’t belt out, “Ginger!!!!” in the middle of a dark night but a scene in the grocery store where Ginger works is a close equivalent as he’s publicly begging her forgiveness.

Continuing down the checklist, Jasmine’s romantic interests further the parallels to Streetcar. Like Blanche before her, Jasmine is an attractive, if past her prime, woman so she earns the attention of the local townspeople. None, however, are up to her lofty standards. On a few occasions, she mutters to herself, repeating her character’s important through-line – that she’s looking for “something substantial.” While she never fleshes out what exactly she means by this, her battling with romantic inadequacies only serve to fulfill the ideology that “something substantial” only comes in the form of wealth. When she meets a politician-in-the-making with the trappings of old-money in Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard), she sees a way out in much the same way that Blanche does in Mitch. Regardless of the swooning character differences, both barrel towards the same inevitable conclusion.

Even though the film delivers some full-bellied laughs and is anchored by Blanchett’s knock-em-dead performance, it feels too borrowed to herald as “the return” to Allen’s heights. There’s no denying that Allen is aware of the many resemblances to William’s work but he fails to deviate far enough from the path to make this anything more than minor Woody. It’s worth watching, especially if you’re unfamiliar with William’s work as this definitely serves as an ample introduction, but it won’t change the stratosphere. If you are trying to discover early Oscar-nominated performances in their theatrical run though, be sure to catch this as Blanchett is nothing less than a shoe-in.

B-

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Out in Theaters: FRUITVALE STATION

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“Fruitvale Station”
Directed by Ryan Coogler
Starring Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray, Ariana Neal
Biography, Drama
90 Mins
R

*Warning: Spoilers follow. If you are unfamiliar with the true-life 2009 San Francisco Fruitvale Station event, don’t read on.*

As the lights pull up on Fruitvale Station, there wasn’t a dry eye in the theater. No one was hustling to get out first. Cell phones weren’t clicking on left and right. For once, everyone was somber, respectful and obviously moved by what they had just seen. In fact, in the midst of the moments where the film goes mute, lingering on lost moments, you could have heard a pin drop. That palpable, humbling silence is proof of the magnetizing power of Ryan Coogler‘s first feature film. Like Muhammad Ali, he floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.

Opening with real cell phone footage of the 2009 San Francisco Fruitvale Station incident -in which a motionless, handcuffed 22-year old African American, named Oscar Grant, is shot in the back and killed by a police for no evident reason – we’re jolted into the tragedy to unfold. Rather than make us uncomfortable hostages to another “important story,” the hovering camerawork and winning, congenial tone invite us into the fold.  
Ex-jailbird, Oscar is a member of a loving, supportive family. He’s got the good fortune of a loving daughter and a forgiving baby-mama but he just can’t seem to get his act together. Trying to internalize Oprah’s mantra that “it takes 30 days to form a habit”, he’s seeking a new life that won’t result in a third prison sentence and further in more time spent away from his little girl.

Taking a real-world event and transforming it from just another tragedy to shake our heads at into a visceral theatrical experience, Coogler has done more than the average filmmaker. He has made a film with a razor sharp point that grabs us by the neck, pats us on the head, and then sits us down for a talk about why daddy is gone.

Speaking of his intentions behind the film, Coogler claims, “I wanted the audience to get to know this guy, to get attached, so that when the situation that happens to him happens, it’s not just like you read it in the paper, you know what I mean? When you know somebody as a human being, you know that life means something.” In this goal, Coogler has succeed tremendously.

The merciless gunning down of a two-time felon like Oscar Grant, played here with sterling commitment by Michael B. Jordan, is easily overlooked in the grand scheme of national calamities. We live in a world peppered with headlines of worldwide manhunts, massive bombings, increasing firearm massacres and counts upon counts of gang violence. In a way, we’ve become so accustomed to the shit that we don’t bother to notice another dump in an ocean stained brown. From the distant confines of our living rooms, it’s easy to shrug off these horror stories and go about our daily lives. It isn’t even entitlement, it’s Psycology 101. If we were to break down over every single case of injustice across the globe, mulling over each and every catastrophe, we wouldn’t make it to the supermarket without melting into a full-blown nervous wreck. We don’t get bogged down because we can’t. We blunt ourselves because the abominations of reality are too abundant to process.

But when it’s in our cities, in our towns, in our families, there is nothing more emotionally crippling than the loss of someone who’ve known and loved. This is Coogler’s aim; to introduce us to a man and see the resulting devastation when he is ripped away as hostilely and abruptly as a Brazilian wax. Like a top spinning and spinning and spinning and then woefully split onto its side, the true life affair is reeling with life and then suddenly, harrowingly still. We feel this resounding loss deep in our souls, shaken from our apathetic sidelines. But instead of trying to rub our noses in our indifference, Coogler has respectfully set out to present us with the full package that is Oscar Grant – the good with the bad.

Does Coogler reach too far trying to make Oscar a relatable character? Maybe, but, in all honesty, isn’t that the point? I never knew the man outside the context of the film but I feel like I got to know someone here. Whether he was an invention or not, I cared about him and it made it that much more devastating when he is gunned down like a dog in the street.

The point is, this could have happened to any of us. Coogler’s not trying to turn Oscar into a martyr or a saint, he’s just a normal guy in shitty circumstances. Do these so-called circumstances have to do with him being black? Most certainly. In this, Coogler cuts to the heart of an unsettling cultural epoch that accepts racial stereotyping as commonplace police methodology. Driving the film into something more than a mere biopic, Coogler’s is a stinging indictment holding the cruel reality of a modern police force where racism has come to fester and thrive up to the light.

Fleshing out what feels so much like a true recounting of events, Jordan is a sensation. He commits fully to his role, disappearing into it with warm familiarity. A prison-bound scene in which he demands a hug from his mother is especially affecting and could earn Jordan an Oscar nom on its own. As Oscar’s loving but stern mother, Octavia Spencer is a powerhouse – throttling between a strong matriarch and a grieving mother who’s life force is sapped by the loss of her baby child. As she weeps over him, it’s impossible to not feel a lump growing like a balloon in your throat.

But Fruitvale Station doesn’t bank on the brand of weepy, sentimental tearjerkers that leaves you with the bad taste of manipulation. It’s something entirely different and entirely beautiful – a genuinely power, superbly acted trainwreck spilling over with throbbing purpose. Even for those not absolutely spellbound, it would take an incredible degree of jaded indifference to shrug this powerful experience off.

A

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Out in Theaters: THE TO DO LIST

by Posted in Out in Theaters
“The To Do List”
Directed by Maggie Carrey
Starring Aubrey Plaza, Bill Hader, Johnny Simmons, Alia Shawkat, Sarah Steele, Scott Porter, Rachel Bilson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Andy Samberg, Donald Glover, Connie Britton, Clark Gregg
Comedy, Romance
104 Mins
R

 

A little slow on the upkeep, The To-Do List is Aubrey Plaza and Maggie Carey‘s answer to the strain of 90s comedies probing sexual exploration. This time around, the placeholders are flipped on their heads, as this enterprise of intimacy is from the perspective of a real, live 21st century woman.

Subverting the framework by having the female protagonist on the hunt for man-bod (rather than the boilerplate convention of bumbling dudes trying to shake off their v-cards) frames the film in a new kind of light – a post-sexual, pro-Planned Parenthood brand of soft light that gently makes you look better than you are. Going so far as to demarcate it as a feminist effort though feels juvenile and a distinction that only the most staunch of conservatives would bother discerning. There just isn’t that sort of agenda at play here. It’s meant for simpleton, oafish fun and in that regard and that regard alone, it works.  Plaza and Carrey do run aground issues, and let their film flop flaccid, when they expect us to acknowledge this familiar mold for something that it’s not: fresh.

 

As an awkward parable on the confusion of first sexual experiences, The To-Do List is gross, crude, and often funny, but very much derived from past efforts. From behind the two-way mirror, this is, no doubt, the girl’s version of American Pie. Hunting for clues of sexual transcendence, working her way up the pyramid of carnal deeds, Plaza’s Brandy is essentially an amalgamate of Jason Bigg‘s painfully hapless Jim Levenstein mixed with a hormone-enraged Napoleon Dynamite. Brandy’s deadpan delivery and chronic poor timing are obvious derivations of these past comedy behemoths, but she’s also stirring over with the same crude, monotonous angst and strange sexuality that constitutes her character April Ludgate on Parks and Recreations.

While April is an underachiever by nature, Brandy is a top-of-the-charts perfectionist. As a self-described girl who needs no introduction, Brandy’s academic aspirations have stood in the way of her social standings, evident by the fact that even the principal helps to whisk her offstage in the midst of her Valedictorian speech. With the pressures of high school cooling and a pre-college summer to boot, this cumming-of-age story takes aim at Brandy’s unexplored nether-regions. Terminally a planner, Brandy presumes the road to sexual success is a carefully coordinated ladder of erotic conquests, which she labels: the to-do list – hence the title.

 

Much of the comic gold is buried in Plaza’s distant sexuality and her view of intercourse as homework. In sum, it’s girls gone mild. Her butterfingered advances are painful at times with a repeating gag of her freeze-framed sexual “triumphs” serving as the comedic apex of the film. It doesn’t hurt that Plaza is surrounded by seasoned comics like Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse but a straight-laced Clark Gregg, as Brandy’s conservative father, scores the biggest laughs.

Hader is on a welcomed autopilot as Brandy’s bemused boss (a pool manager who can’t swim) just as Samberg works well in his hastily laid character bit as a small-town, narcissistic rocker. Mintz-Plasse continues to work his slightly lisping, majorly out-of-touch, pre-hipster clown as Scott Porter fills the square box of the Goldilocks, hot dude who is apt to pop his shirt off. Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development is a disappointment as the loose but lovable best friend while partner in crime Wendy (Sarah Steele) represents the reason why we thought girls had cooties in the first place. All of the high school stereotypes are there in broad, familiar sketches – hackneyed characters picked from a buffet of other comedies. 

Like most so-called “funny” movies, when the laughs do stop coming – particularly in the emotionally stalled, third-act woes – the film goes limp. In spite of these droopy moments, the shot-callers have managed an acceptable ratio of funny bits to keep us from pulling out too soon.

Even though it’s dressed in a modge-podge of genre clichés, the breezy 90s settings, and the jokes derived from the inimitable hallmarks of that generation, gives enough life to hum happily along with. Continuing to blaze the trail of the strong female-lead comedy, this first time writer-director seems to waltz around all the bases too easily, knowing where to mine for laughs but leaving the rest a mess. In a way, she flaunts her virgin status rather than wrapping it up in plastic. The plot jumps and writing are as bumbling as Plaza’s lead character but you can tell that Carey has had these jokes bouncing around in her brain for a while until she finally just had to pop.

Penis jokes aside, you can’t shake the feeling that this is indie comedy d’jour – a palatable, if forgettable, entry to that erectly popular, sex-ed genre. Before romping around in the sheets with Plaza and Co., be sure to note that this is a shower, not a grower. Still its little-engine-that-could personality might manage to break free of the restrictive wrapper around it. And with Plaza at the lead, Brandy’s frigid procedural approach to romance makes this sex-as-math comedic soaked in backdoor sniggers.

C+

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Out in Theaters: THE WOLVERINE

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“The Wolverine”
Directed by James Mangold
Starring Hugh Jackman, Rila Fukushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Brian Tee, Hal Yamanouchi, Will Yun Lee, Ken Yamamura, Famke Janssen
Action, Adventure, Fantasy
126 Mins
PG-13

The Wolverine is as good a movie about Wolverine that audiences will probably ever get. While that sentiment comes saddled with a huge qualifier, I’d go so far as to claim that it’s a pretty good movie on its own terms. I dare say it might have been a great movie if directed by Darren Aronofsky.

 

As you may already know, Aronofsky was originally designed to direct this sixth Hugh Jackman-led X-Men film but when the devastating 2011 Tōhoku tsunami hit Japan, he backed out due to a projected major production delay (ironically enough moving onto a movie about impending giant waves: Noah). Even without his physical presence on set, the film carries on with his signature fingerprints. Displaying themes of isolation and madness amidst a particularly genre-defying and soul-rummaging performance from Hugh Jackman, this is (until late in the third act) the least cartoonish superhero movie to date.

We’ve been lead to believe that we know Wolverine before – having been presented his lackluster, but nonetheless enjoyable, origin story in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Where that fell short, this bone-bleached view really digs into his character by stripping away the mutant world around him and plopping him in the midst of a modern samurai story. In prior installations, Wolverine has been a player in a massive web of mutant characters occupying the X-universe – though his importance is more similar to a queen than a pawn, or even a knight. But this is truly Logan’s story. It’s the story of a Ronin – a samurai without a master. In stark contrast to prior outings, he is the only “superhero” on display, even though that ubiquitous label may not suffice in this case study. We’re mixing more with Logan than Wolverine here – the daring, rogue outcast rather than the metal-clawed animal.

Unlike Wolverine’s introduction in Origins, this installment does better than frantic doggy paddling while fishing for Logan’s inner suffering. While his adamantium-laced body could have easily sunk, Logan manages to swim – in full, fluid strokes. It’s always a treat to see a project that intends to do more than barely keeping afloat. Six films later, Logan feels as fresh and timely as ever because this particular iteration more closely resembles a passion project than a cash-grab. Upon inspecting the pieces that went into this, it is clear why.

Based on Wolverine’s beloved Japanese story arc, Oscar-winner Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) is behind the first draft, James Mangold, accolade-dressed director of Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma, sits in the captain’s chair, and Hugh Jackman as Logan is as committed to the role as ever. While a talent-mash doesn’t always result in success, this is more than just a sum of parts. Their acute commitment to novelty has inspired something largely unique that actually delivers on the promise to do something new. Though it does stray from the bold course coming into the home stretch, the willingness to ground this in a different culture, a different country and a different cage makes it an experimental success.

The film starts with a harrowing vignette in which Logan, a prisoner at a WWII Japanese war base, saves a young Japanese soldier, Yasida (Hal Yamanouchi), from incoming B52 bombers. With commanders performing traditional harakiri around them as a nuclear warhead detonates silently in the distance, the scene is measured in subtlety, foreshadowing motifs of the horror of war, the explosive shock of sudden desolation, and survivor’s guilt.

Waking from this flashback, Logan encounters the only thing really tethering this story to the previous X-Men entries: Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). Logan’s dreamy, introspective chats with Jean help flesh out the man he is and the internal battles he’s fighting. He’s a man who has sworn off violence, struggling with the animalistic urges that have driven him in the past. Considering that this story takes place after the events of X-Men: Last Stand, where Jean transforms into Phoenix, becomes a major mutant mind-terrorist and is killed by a remorseful Wolverine, we’re weary of her presence in the film, but soon learn that she is really just a mirror into Logan’s soul. As an ethereal guiding presence, Jean functions as a proxy to Logan’s conscious rather than a character with her own motive. In reality, Logan is truly alone.

Living amongst grizzly bears, blanketed in snow, and using evergreen trees as scratching posts, Logan is holed up in a graveyard of whiskey bottles, his unkempt beard and seedy appearance speaking volumes about his decaying fortitude. Shying away from the world at large, his attempts to go incognito run dry when his rage breaks lose in a bar fight and red-haired Japanese warrior, Yukio (Rila Fukushima), drags him out of his self-created hellhole to face fortune and glory all the way over in Japan.

Dumpster-rummaging, nightmare-driven exposition like this helps set the groundwork for Wolverine’s journey, which takes him from the backwoods of Canada to the towering megalopolis of Tokyo. At the behest of Yashida, the soldier he once saved turned tech-guru, now on his deathbed, Logan is wary to join but when he does, he’s a fish-out-of-water in Japan. With Japanese-based set design that calls attention to the ideas of old conflicting with new – tradition against innovation – Toyko is a living, breathing platform that serves to magnify Logan’s isolation.

Caught in a time warp where wounds heal and faces never age, Logan is haunted not by death but by life. Having lived hundreds of years already, Logan welcomes the idea of putting an end to his suffering but when Yashida unexpectedly offers to rid Logan of his eternal nature, Logan begins to realize that his gift might be worth keeping after all. Let’s just say that things don’t quite go that way and things aim towards the Spiderman 2 route where old Peter Parker stops being so adept at wall climbing.

Stripped of his powers and forced to experience life as an everyman, this is the story of the man behind the muttonchops, the bones beneath the metal-casings but that doesn’t mean there aren’t the requisite action sequences. Trust me, they’re there.

Instead of the building-smashing, chaotic entropy of recent superhero fare, the spectacles are honed in on traditional Japanese warfare – the art of the katana. Logan’s initial disregard for the time-honored Japanese sword later plays into the overarching themes of respect but, on a purely popcorn level, it makes for some great swordplay sequences. With a hierarchy that sets close quarters skills above gun blazing carnage, this is more of a samurai film than a superhero movie. Even the commercially succulent, bullet train-top sequence introduces the idea of stasis as victory – a riff on the old notion that the tortoise can beat the hare. In these regards, The Wolverine takes far more notes from The Last Samurai than The Dark Knight.

Even from a visual standpoint, The Wolverine doesn’t contain the bleak imagery of gritty affairs as Ross Emery frames everything in a splendor of picturesque Japanese vistas. In these choices, X-Men remains the boldest superhero franchise still breathing. Had Fox had the decency to stick by McQuarrie’s script – in which Wolverine was the only mutant, and axed Svetlana Khodchenkova‘s poison ivy-esque Viper, they would have really had something on their hands. But with blood on his claws, stumbling through a mob of broken English, Logan’s battle with the consequences of immortality is entirely watchable. Top that off with perhaps the best mid-credits scene in the history of credit scenes (one that actually is an important and meaningful scene, far superior to the weakening teasers from the Marvel camp) and you have a reason to go to the theaters this weekend.

B-