When I heard they were making a Men In Black sequel to be released a decade after the last one, I was nervous. When I heard the budget was well over what the last film made domestically, I was very nervous. When I heard it involved time travel, and they took a long break after filming the scenes in the present to figure out a script for what happens in the past, I was extremely nervous. When I combined all of this information with the fact that the last sequel is pretty unequivocally terrible… well, I was petrified. However, perhaps due to some unexplainable alien forces, Men In Black 3 comes together as a pleasant diversion, complete with clever characters, decent one-liners, and a satisfying ending (to the series?).

A psychotic one-armed alien named Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) has escaped from jail with one mission: kill Agent K. Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) quickly realizes what is occurring and attempts to speak openly with Agent J (Will Smith) for the first time… but no dice. When K suddenly disappears and the entire world seems to think he died 40 years ago, J realizes that Boris must have learned to time travel, went to the past, and killed Agent K. With alien invasion immiment, J takes the only possible route available to save the world: travel back in time, save young K (Josh Brolin), defeat Boris the Animal, and come back where everything will hopefully be right as rain. Along the way, he gets help from Andy Warhol (Bill Hader) and an alien named Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg) who can see things others cannot.

It’s impossible to talk about why this film is enjoyable without emphasizing how unenjoyable Men In Black 2 was. Perhaps it is merely the lowered expectations that made this film fun: it followed a horrific sequel and the trailer for this one was abysmal (why did they put the worst line from the fine– “I have no problem pimp slapping the shiznit out of Andy Warhol!”– as the money one-liner at trailer’s end?). Without question, it is still scattershot, with many jokes not really working, characters set up and never really followed through upon, and bits with potential squandered. Although the CGI looks better than it did in the trailer, several sequences still have half-baked effects, including a couple of bizarre sequences in which Rick Baker easily could have created the same effect with practical makeup. Some of the actions flirts with incoherence, in particular a sequence riding what appear to be gyroscope motorcycles, and the usual troubles with time travel logic do pop up at the end. If you really *want* to hate this movie, you’ll find reason to.

However, if you merely *expect* to hate this movie, or if you’re the rare soul super excited for this film from the trailer, you’ll find plenty of pleasure. Jemaine Clement balances gross and funny beautifully as the villainous Boris– after the last film’s horrendously lame villain, here’s a worthy adversary to our heroes. Michael Stuhlbarg, who is good in literally everything he has ever been in, provides a stunning amount of pathos with his character, who is blessed and cursed with a very powerful gift he cannot control. His first two scenes are the most enjoyable of the film, twisting wit and science fiction as capably as anything from the first film. Sonnenfeld uses the 3D surprisingly well, zooming his camera up, down, and through building and creating sequences at great heights which exploit the effect. Most importantly, Smith and Brolin have easy chemistry, much as Smith and Jones did, so even when the writing lets them down, we are engaged. Instead of leaving the film with the flaws in mind, I left happy about how good most of it was. While that sounds like a backhanded compliment, I mean it sincerely– the first film is one of my favorite studio films of the 1990s, and the fact that I left the theater smiling meant, against insurmountable odds, they did enough right to make it a worthwhile venture.

Battleship:

Films set on the ocean are defined by waiting. Boats travel slowly. They turn slowly. Missiles and torpedos approach their destination slowly. You wait for impact, you wait to see if the ship or sub will hold, you wait for attack, you wait for food, you wait for land. Unless the characters leave the boat or there are a series of swashbuckling pirate attacks, your ocean film cannot be exciting the way a typical action film is– it can be a tense psychological thriller, but not a whizbang roller coaster ride. Peter Berg’s Battleship is a boring film in an exciting film’s clothes: it has CGI and explosions, but it also has dull characters waiting dully for dull things to happen. Battleship could’ve been awesome if it embraced silliness, but it tried to be… good. *shudder*

After four lengthy sequences proving to us that Taylor Kitsch’s character is a talented screw up with huge potential if he’d just grow up (punctuated by speeches from various actors explaining this aloud to Kitsch four times), we get to the ships. While having the alien missiles look like the pegs from the board game is a nice touch, the sad reality is very little happens. The studio spent countless money on showing an attack or two on land– both of which steal heavily from the Transformers films– but no characters of note reside there. The characters are all… waiting. They force the game’s grid into the plot in an exceptionally boring scene, and they manipulate the emotions of the audience by introducing real vets into the battle, who literally pop up during an inspirational moment on a battleship out of nowhere like the Munchkins emerging from the bushes in Munchkinland. Since I have undying respect for the troops, I’ll forgive the ones who were conned by Peter Berg to degrade themselves in this ineffective Navy commercial for the sole purpose of conjuring sympathy from an audience that couldn’t care less about the scripted characters.

The movie had some potential too. I still believe, with the right script, Taylor Kitsch could be a credible lead in a film. Brooklyn Decker certainly shows plenty of charm and charisma as his girlfriend– compared to most supermodels on screen, she is earnest and seemingly Midwestern. She has a good career ahead of her playing Mark Wahlberg’s wife in action films. There is an impressive continuous shot taken as a boat sinks that The Avengers’ continuous shot effectively rendered pointless, but nevertheless serves as a high mark for the film’s visual competence. Finally, a sensational moment that reveals what Battleship could have been: a legless war veteran punches a CGI alien so hard that its teeth fly out. It’s a surreal and preposterous moment, but it’s also thoroughly memorable and fun. When the rest of the movie disappears from memory, that will remain. It wanted so badly to be a good action movie, but it was doomed from inception. In one scene, some actors work hard to move a thousand-pound shell across the boat, so the camera spins and the music blares in a vain attempt to disguise the fact that grown men moving extremely slowly cannot be and never will be exciting. It serves as a nice moment symbolic of the film on the whole.

The Dictator:

After the blissful Borat and the horrendous Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen makes his first foray into non-mockumentary filmmaking with The Dictator, a film that, shockingly, follows a foreigner’s travels to America, where the culture differences astound everyone. Sacha Baron Cohen hopes to both shock audiences with envelope-pushing humor and satirize some of America’s many flaws and hypocrisies. The key difference between Borat and Bruno was the satire– Borat was a focused film with a specific satirical target (xenophobia), whereas Bruno was all over the place to the point where, as you watch a penis twirl like a helicopter blade on the camera, you wonder if Borat was as focused as you remember it. The Dictator has more focus (it covers much of the same ground as Borat), but it still undercuts its own intelligence with easy witless shock humor– for every hysterical sequence, there are two that are head-shakingly facile.

A North African dictator (Cohen) goes to the UN to explain himself in order to avoid a full-blown invasion of his dictatorial regime. While there, his #2 (Ben Kingsley) plots his murder– his trademark beard is removed, but he escapes otherwise unharmed. However, since this is America, nobody recognizes a foreigner without a beard, so now the dictator is just another immigrant without papers. A hippie girl (Anna Faris) gives him work as he plans to reveal to the world the plot against him. Meanwhile, he learns how to love blah blah blah– look, outside of the fact that the main character is genocidal, it’s pretty standard stuff. It even ends with a big speech from the main character about what he’s learned, albeit a very funny speech in which America is unknowingly compared to a dictatorship.

The satirical stuff in the film works wonders. A terrific sequence in a helicopter with American tourists listening to scary-sounding Arabic with a few English words taken out of context is funny– they talk about wanting to see the fireworks above Yankee Stadium, but all they hear is Yankee Stadium and explosion noises. A birth in the back of a store, in which a ruthless dictator has to deliver a very understanding hippie couple’s baby, also provides some great one-liners and moments (not to mention the best vagina-cam since Talk To Her). The best bit of shock humor involves a specialty made Nintendo Wii game for dictators in which you’re at the Munich Olympics killing Jews. However, most of the shock humor involves the dictator calling people names– he refers to black people as “sub-Saharans” and Anna Faris’ character as a hairy lesbian or a boy more times than I could count. There are also the pre-requisite penis jokes, weird sex jokes, etc… if Cohen and director Larry Charles could ditch the easy stuff and go for a straight satire, there’s potential for brilliance there. However, the temptations for going broad are too strong, and at this point, Cohen may not have any more fresh foreigners-are-weird! comedy left in him. It’s a vast improvement over Bruno… but The Dictator never becomes merciless. It’s a hit-and-miss affair.

Headhunters:

Funny that it took a Swedish film to give me the artfully executed laughs and suspense that I hope for in a Hollywood summer thriller. Headhunters, directed by Morten Tyldum, deserves to be a box office smash, and while audiences will undoubtedly attend the inevitable American remake, this one boasts enough sex, intrigue, violence, and dark humor to titillate any average moviegoer who seeks it out. While it showcases the steely good looks and cold intensity of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones, the real star is Aksel Hennie– as the art thief in over his head, he gives easily one of the best performances of the year to date. I wouldn’t dare spoil the surprises in store, but several scenes are hilarious, macabre, and emotional… sometimes in the same scene. It’s Coen Brothers meets Guy Ritchie on a Scandinavian vacation. If that doesn’t entice you, you’re a lost cause.

Dark Shadows:

It’s easy to envision the pitch (“Johnny Depp plays a vampire!”) causing studio heads to salivate, and apparently the source material is a cult favorite, but in the Tim Burton adaptation of Dark Shadows, there isn’t any substance pulsing through its veins. The opening fifteen minutes, which tell the history of the Collins family, the witch Angelique (Eva Green), and the man who shuns her, Barnabas (Johnny Depp), is a fairly straight-forward and compelling set-up, complete with gorgeous cinematography, production design, and music. While the technical elements remain sterling, the “story” quickly devolves into hokey fish-out-of-water humor– they spent $150 million on this film, and for at least one day, hundreds of people were committed to filming a scene in which Johnny Depp is confused by what paved roads are. This is utterly baffling to me. Most of the rest of the film plays like an SNL sketch, but not a particularly awful one, just an utterly forgettably bland one. The more you think about the film, its hacky dialogue, and its total contempt for character arc and development (one character turns into a werewolf with literally no warning and no explanation), the more you’ll dislike it, but don’t worry– you won’t remember the details long enough after leaving the theater for this to happen.

Get the Gringo:

There are few cinematic pleasures quite like watching a top-notch tough guy actor exact revenge upon his enemies. All Get the Gringo had to be was a retread of Payback set in Mexico, full of rough violence and Mel Gibson sneering, and it would’ve been incredibly fun. Instead, the first hour or so languishes in a sea of inaction and dull voiceover narration. After an opening sequence in clown masks for no apparent reason, the thoroughly uninteresting and undeveloped main character, played by Gibson, is thrown into a Mexican jail. He befriends a young Mexican boy (the kid from The Sitter) and plots his escape. And plots. And plots. I’d have no problem with all the waiting if the characters were complex and interesting, which they aren’t, or if the dialogue was fun and noirish and quippy, which it isn’t. They even have the always-awesome Peter Stormare in the film, and they don’t even let him ham it up! There is a fun sequence once Gibson finally leaves the prison, but by then, it’s too late to save. They should’ve gotten Get The Gringo a better script.

If this review is incomprehensible, you have to forgive me– The Avengers just turned me into a ten-year-old boy again, and my ability to properly organize my ideas has been shattered. Joss Whedon, the writer/director of Avengers, has pulled off the impossible: he took characters from multiple franchises, dealt with studio notes, actor’s egos, audience expectations, and what must’ve been a shoestring budget for how epic and expensive the film looks… and he turned it into the greatest superhero film of all time. It is more epic and ambitious than any comic book film to date, while still emotionally investing an audience in its fully realized characters. This will make a billion dollars worldwide and sets an impossibly high bar for every other film coming this summer. From script to cinematography to editing to costuming to special effects to acting, The Avengers represents the full potential of big-budget cinema being fulfilled. It’s magical to behold.

Without revealing much, the plot revolves primarily around elements established in the previous Marvel films. SHIELD, an espionage agency, has gotten ahold of The Tesseract, a cosmic energy cube of unspeakable power. When Loki (Tom Hiddleston) steals the Tesseract and threatens to use it to take over the world, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), head of SHIELD, attempts to assemble a group of superheroes to work as a team to save Earth. Among them: Captain America (Chris Evans), the unfrozen super-soldier of the World War Two era; Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), the billionaire in the super metallic suit; Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Norse god of thunder; Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), highly skilled Russian spy turned American agent; Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), the best marksman in the world; and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who turns into the green rage monster known as The Hulk when angry. However, this gathering of superheroes is full of ego and personal vendetta, making their success seem unlikely.

Whedon has captured these characters. He manages to toe so many lines here: he makes it seem iconic yet personal, funny yet tense, effects-driven yet character driven. Each character has a clearly defined arc, and we see the characters grow and change through action not exposition (usually a problem in comic book films). Captain America only knows how to follow orders and lead fellow soldiers– the modern world and the unstable styles and egos of the others puts him in an uncomfortable place. Iron Man hates following orders, period, and doesn’t feel like a hero. Thor is wrecked with guilt over introducing Loki to Earth in the first place, as every human being that dies at his hands is Thor’s cross to bear. Hawkeye and Black Widow, who seem on the surface to be far less interesting characters, are each given compelling human angles to play, and their skill in battle is incredibly impressive while a constant reminder of what a toll these types of battles take on “normal” humans– even the most skilled people in the world couldn’t take down the forces at play here.

And then there’s The Hulk. I’m not sure even how to express my overwhelming joy over how absolutely right they got The Hulk. The previous films have struggled with how to balance the two sides of the Hulk– you have to properly nail the struggle with letting loose the inner monster, but you also have to nail the fun of watching someone’s green id smash the hell out of people. The Hulk will almost certainly emerge as everyone’s favorite in the film, not because it’s the best special effect in the film (it is) or so infinitely superior looking to the previous Hulk films (it is)… it’s because they properly strike that balance. The Hulk is both scary and utterly hilarious. It helps that Mark Ruffalo is by miles the best Bruce Banner to date; he’s a clearly nervous and vulnerable nerd who still carries credibility to his threat. The decision to make the Hulk motion-capture also has paid off in spades– the movement is gorgeous, the facial expressions nuanced. I lost count of how many times my audience cheered at something the Hulk did.

The other performances are all up to par as well. Robert Downey Jr., whose shtick we are all overly familiar with by now, fits into the proceedings flawlessly, dropping one-liners and derogatory nicknames like a robot Sawyer from LOST. He also has new gadgets on display and a couple of big moments of emotion and vulnerability that he nails. Chris Hemsworth is sometimes hard to relate to since, well, Thor isn’t human, but the struggle between brothers is like watching fine Shakespeare– it was the best part of the Thor film and was a pleasure to see again now. Scarlett Johansson made the young woman next to me at the film overjoyed at seeing a woman kick such serious ass and be one of the boys while not losing femininity– I feel like most women will love her inclusion, and she’s not an eyesore for the fellas either. She manages to make Black Widow interesting among gods and superhumans– no small feat. Same for Jeremy Renner, who admittedly has the least to do, but he carries himself with such swagger that I can’t wait to see him inevitably carry his own franchises.

The two other performances that left me giddiest were Tom Hiddleston and Chris Evans. Playing a villain this big, especially as such a young actor, can’t be easy, and at times in the Thor film, Loki wasn’t given much to do other than whine and send others to do his bidding. Here, Hiddleston puts himself on the level of the other great supervillain performances (McKellen, Molina, Ledger)– Loki gets to show off not just his power of manipulation, but also his sheer POWER. When he’s at his peak, he’s hard to stop. Slow, sure, but stop? Not likely. Wielding his bag of tricks and an awesome scepter powered by the Tesseract, Loki is a malevolent wannabe dictator who still clearly suffers from issues of inadequacy caused by his brother. Hiddleston balances both the grandeur and the sniveling envy beautifully. And Captain America… he’s the earnest do-gooder, which can be enormously boring in a film like this. Yet Evans sucks you in with his earnestness. I got goosebumps on several occasions during The Avengers, but a few notable goosebumpy moments came as a result of watching Cap in action. Here is the perfect manifestation of a character I loved growing up. You watch Evans as Cap, and you feel the surge of patriotism you’re supposed to feel. It’s magnificent. (Note: when writing this review, I went back and re-read it before publishing, and saw that in the second paragraph, I wrote that Captain America was played by “Steve Rogers”… if that’s not the sign of a great performance, I don’t know what is.)

The performances wouldn’t mean a thing without the story though, and while some deride the story in The Avengers as being “fun”– when did that become a dirty word?– it took exceptional craftsmanship to make it as fun as it is. Note how we see numerous scenes in which two of the central characters interact, and these duo scenes all build up toward a scene in which the heroes are all in a room bickering at each other, tossing accusations. I literally sat watching this scene with my mouth open… *this* is what the backstage drama of an actual superhero team looks like. The build makes the audience response earned. Similarly, towards the end, we watch our heroes individually fighting villains, and then in pairs, and then finally we see them all working together against the forces of evil in a long continuous shot that might already have its position locked in as my favorite shot of 2012. It brought out my inner child. It made me feel like I was a kid on the sidelines of the battle watching these heroes risk their lives and fight for ME. It’s funny, it’s dramatic, it’s exciting. Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography is gorgeous in this film, making heavy use of low angle shots to help with the epic feel, and combined with Alan Silvestri’s rousing score, you can’t help but feel surges of pride and joy. Even shots of the characters donning their costumes feel instantly iconic– they even managed to make Loki’s outfit look awesome instead of costumey! Every element of the film’s design, performance, and composition creates the impression that what you’re watching you may never get to see in a film again. It’s bold adventurous filmmaking: you don’t need your movie to be dark or gritty for it to be ambitious. Anyone who watches this film’s third act or notes the character relationship build in the first two acts can’t tell me with a straight face this film is “simple” or “fun” in a snide manner.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be writing this review. It’s tough for me when a superhero movie goes so right for me to do my best to objectively criticize immediately after seeing something so epic execute so deftly and stick the landing. I’ll say that if you’re looking for this film to perfectly tie in to the events of the previous films (in particular, the stuff surrounding Hulk), it doesn’t– but that merely puts it in the same boot as any other franchise that’s dealt with reboots and sequels. Other criticisms:… there’s a shot of Cobie Smulders with a cut on her head where the cut looks fake. Seriously, when a movie is done this well, and I’m trying to find imperfections, it comes to this. I’ve been able to criticize the Iron Mans, the Batmans, the Spidermans, the X-Mens (though X2 is the closest film to perfect of the bunch)– all these characters I love in movies where I can still earnestly note imperfection while loving the film. This one has me legitimately struggling. Perhaps when I see it again. Which I will. Many times.

This is the type of movie that makes me want to write movies. It should fan the flame of passion in anyone who loves the action genre or the comic book genre or the sci-fi genre to try to buck up and do better, to reach farther, to write wittier. It’s a reminder that in a world that is far too eager to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a piece of mostly computer-generated entertainment, there are still people who care about story and maximizing their dollars spent. Most importantly, this film is a game changer. It very well may break the all-time record for biggest box office, and landing in the top two of all-time domestic and worldwide box office seems likely as well. Much like The Dark Knight spun the table towards “darker hero fims,” The Avengers has defiantly spun it right back. With clever writing, developed characters, exceptional visual storytelling, and the right man at the helm, you can make earnest fun entertainment that captures the magic of cinema without needing gritty realism or darkness. I would be unsurprised if DC execs see this film, green light loads of scripts for smaller DC characters, and urge Zack Snyder to mention other DC heroes in next year’s Superman film in hopes of getting the ball rolling on a Justice League blockbuster. They are years and years away of making that happen, if at all, whereas Avengers 2 is a virtual lock for 2016 or so. The fact that The Avengers happened on a screen at ALL was a huge improbability– the fact that it’s pure magic unlikelier still. Joss Whedon and company: tip of the cap. Enjoy the massive bonuses coming your way, you’ve earned them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put on my Hulk hands, go outside, and pretend like I’m in The Avengers. Ten-year-old Russell smash.

Safe:

In the first ten minutes of Safe, we jump back and forth on the film’s narrative timeline five different times. I sighed, nervous that this meant the film was doomed to be a sloppy mess, but as it wore forward, I found Boaz Yakin’s direction skillful and Statham’s performance perhaps his most vulnerable to date. Even though it’s obvious where the film is headed, it’s not a brainless action-fest– at least for the first 45 minutes or so. As the plot moves forward towards its inevitable one-versus-many conflict, it’s only natural that the film devolves into gunfights, as Statham engaging in solely hand-to-hand combat against two mobs and the entire NYPD would stretch the suspension of disbelief of even the biggest Statham aficionado. A shame, really: the first half of Safe is among the best work of Statham’s career. The last half is noisy and cluttered (a villain is introduced with maybe twenty minutes left), but much of the film is a wildly enjoyable B-movie, with Statham in top form and the always-awesome James Hong as a Chinese gangster. For fans of the action genre, Safe is a safe bet.

The Pirates: Band of Misfits

Aardman Animations, the studio behind Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, and the new film The Pirates: Band of Misfits, belongs on the Mount Rushmore of animated feature film. They cram more gags, visual and verbal, into his films than any filmmakers working today. The Pirates is probably the least of their feature-length efforts– it’s the most slight in stakes and the least ambitious in action sequences (outside of a terrific chase involving a bathtub). However, it’s still a cracking good time, with hilarious characters, gorgeous animation, and a scene-stealing deadpan monkey. I knew I would enjoy it from the opening shot, in which a sign is held up to tell the audience the setting, and as the camera pans back, we get a brief glimpse of the man holding the sign, who embarrassedly looks around. This is classic Aardman, the throwaway visual gag, both breaking the 4th wall and immediately drawing us into the style of the piece. Also classic Aardman: making a film better than 95% of everything else out. Even the least of their work would be the best of other studios. Anyone who doesn’t like The Pirates can walk the plank. (Sidenote: the British title “The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!” is an infinitely superior title to the bland American version.)

I hesitate to say that Judd Apatow is ruining cinematic comedy, but there’s certainly a troubling trend on display here in The Five-Year Engagement, the latest collaboration from Forgetting Sarah Marshall creators Jason Segel and Nick Stoller. Much like the superior films Apatow directed or produced (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, the aforementioned Sarah Marshall, its spinoff Get Him To The Greek, and last year’s hit Bridesmaids), it is too long, full of unrelated scenes that don’t serve the narrative and likely belong as a DVD extra. Sadly, in this outing, the unrelated scenes are the sole source of humor, with comedians like Chris Parnell and Brian Posehn waltzing away with every scene while Segel and his co-star Emily Blunt wallow in misery. We, unfortunately, wallow with them– it’s a dreary, draggy affair whose positive qualities are canceled out by poor pace, awkward storytelling, and a sparsity of laughs.

Tom (Segel) is a chef in San Francisco with a thriving career. He’s known Violet (Blunt), a psych student applying for grad schools, for a year now. He asks her to marry her, and she says yes. However, when the only school she gets accepted to is Michigan, he quits his job and tags along to Ann Arbor. Violet has the time of her life, with her impressed professor (Rhys Ifans) and her new friends (Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart). Tom goes stir crazy, with no one to talk to but a fellow bored husband (Parnell) and the eccentric boss of the local bagel shop where he works (Posehn). Tom and Violet fail to communicate with one another, and things fall apart, leading us to wonder if they’ll ever get back together. Maybe you’ll wonder instead what I was wondering: when will this couple break up already?

Starting with the positive, the film is not without laughs. Actors like Chris Parnell, Brian Posehn, and Kevin Hart don’t know how to be unfunny. Parnell in particular has such a strong track record playing this type of emasculated man that his mere appearance on screen had me laughing immediately. Jacki Weaver, Mimi Kennedy, and David Paymer do good work as the cloying parents– Weaver does a spin on her character from Animal Kingdom here that threw me into giggles a number of times. Chris Pratt and Alison Brie are delightful as the B couple, the goofier love story that runs parallel to the main pair. Although the editor lets some of their scenes drag needlessly long, they are incredibly charming. Pratt, from this performance and his instant-classic character on Parks & Recreation, is going to soon be a staple in these types of films, and Alison Brie is the next Amy Adams– expect her to have leads in three or four years in films just like this one.

Blunt, however, doesn’t fare as well. She is fair game and tries hard, but her sense of humor isn’t naturally warm and earnest– she strikes me as being perfect for roles a young Nicole Kidman or other icy actresses might play, but on many occasions I wondered if switching Alison Brie into the main role would’ve served the film better. Segel does his big goof routine per usual, but he doesn’t give himself as charming a character to play here as he did in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Tom is a passive aggressive martyr, who is so obsessed with being the “nice guy” that he absolutely wrecks his life for several years and grows horrifyingly bitter. While it may be true to what happens often in life, no one in the audience will care to watch it unless they believe the couple, and Segel and Blunt simply failed to get me on board.

The real reason this marriage doesn’t work, however, is Nick Stoller. If Stoller had any say at all over what footage went in and out of this film– and let’s assume after two notable comedy hits that he did– he should have told someone, “Keep this under 100 minutes, period.” A movie about lengthy suffering shouldn’t turn into an audience suffering lengthily. If the audience is sitting there going, “I want the camera to stay on Brian Posehn and Chris Parnell,” then your movie isn’t getting the job done. In previous Apatow films that worked, we were presented with flawed but vulnerable protagonists whose story we were invested in, so if the film spent an extra twenty minutes lingering on the supporting characters as they ad-lib, we forgave them since (a) the ad-libs were funny, and (b) since we care about the main storyline, we still feel like the time we are spending in the theater is worth the while. The Five-Year Engagement achieves point A, but point B doesn’t come close. There’s a better movie somewhere in this mess– ignoring the current trend of comedies could have helped The Five-Year Engagement be far more engaging.

Thanks, everyone.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-long-and-late-movie-show/id498789655

Stop what you’re doing right now. Ask yourself, “Have I seen Cabin In The Woods yet?” If you haven’t, remedy this problem immediately—race out, buy tickets, and see the film that is to date the best film of 2012. You don’t have to be a horror fan to see it (though I’m sure it would help). You don’t have to like Joss Whedon. You don’t have to think Chris Hemsworth is hot. You have to like movies that are fun, original, and brave… and you have to trust me when I tell you that the trailers don’t even come close to showing this film’s true colors. So many people have told me Cabin in the Woods looks like your average dime-a-dozen teens-slaughtered-in-the-woods flick, when nothing could be farther from the truth. The biggest problem with Cabin in the Woods is that there is no way to tell your friends what it’s about without ruining some of the surprise—it is a movie that will be completely reliant not on word of mouth, but on the phrase “trust me.” And trust me: Cabin in the Woods is going to go down as one of the most fun, exciting, and well-executed films of 2012. Within is a totally spoiler-free review.

I will not reveal how the movie begins, because the film has such an unconventional beginning that I found myself squirming in my seat with excitement after the first couple of minutes. I will tell you the main plotline: Dana (Kristen Connolly) is getting ready for a vacation. Curt (Chris Hemsworth) and his friends know of a cabin that a family member recently purchased that they’ll go party at for a weekend, away from cell phones, computers, and every other part of the rat race. Coming along is Curt’s girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison), their stoner buddy Marty (Fran Kranz), and Curt’s hunky friend Holden (Jesse Williams), who seems like a perfect match for the sexually tentative Dana. While driving out, they encounter a menacing gas station attendant who warns them that getting out to the cabin isn’t the problem… it’s coming back. They dismiss the ravings of this seemingly insane old codger and head on toward their vacation. What they find when they get there I will leave you to discover. DO NOT LOOK AT IMDB TO SEE WHO ELSE IS IN THIS FILM.

Why am I ranting and raving and using all caps to try to prevent spoilers? Because we live in a society of instant gratification—if we want a movie spoiled, we can Google it: someone has spilled the beans via a script review or a preview screening. Studios are more than happy to spoil their own films themselves, by putting the biggest, funniest, and most expensive moments directly into the trailer. This practice is beyond infuriating, as the purpose of a trailer should be to lure an audience, to say, “Did you like this? Then you’ll love everything that we’re NOT showing you!” If Psycho was released today, spoilers would have splashed all over the internet and we would’ve seen Janet Leigh’s murder in the trailer. If The Crying Game was released today, Jaye Davidson’s penis would have its own Twitter parody account. It is now routine practice to show clips from the final half hour of the film in the trailer. Funny how most of my favorite films of 2012—The Grey, 21 Jump Street, and now Cabin In The Woods—don’t begin to hint at what their film achieves in the trailer. This film in particular uses primarily clips from the first act of the film, and maybe flashes of imagery from the second. The third act is, and will hopefully continue to be, a mystery until a viewer sees the film in its entirety.

Here’s what little I can tell you about the film: it has exploded the way you will look at the cabin-horror-movie genre forever. The performances are strong, resilient, physical and witty. The special effects are predominantly practical with a few notable CGI exceptions, but holy lord, the CGI moments are worth it. There is at least one death that had my audience laugh, gasp, groan, laugh again, and cheer, in that order, due to an unexpected weapon. There are plenty of masterfully executed jump-scares, along with perfectly timed comedic relief of suspense. I laughed beginning to end, and when I wasn’t laughing, I was sitting in my chair wondering how a script like this made it in this form from page to screen, and how a movie studio decided to go ahead with distributing a film knowing full well they’d be unable to market it. There is so much in the last half, maybe even two-thirds of the film, that would be absolutely dynamite in a contemporary trailer, and they’ve done the right thing and shown restraint. Bravo to everyone involved—this is an example of how movies should be written, filmed, edited, and marketed in an ideal world. I realize I’ve given you very little concrete information to hang your hat on when I tell you that Cabin In The Woods is not only the best film in the first four months of 2012 but a movie you absolutely must see on Friday to save yourself from horrible spoiler-filled human beings and publications. All I can tell you is… trust me.

The reason I see movies that I expect to be terrible is the vain hope that I will be pleasantly surprised. Very often, an ad campaign can let a film down, or perhaps a film is just borderline unmarketable to a wide audience. Few trailers in recent memory made me wince harder than The Three Stooges. It’s so distinctly old-school irony-free slapstick that intertwining references to iPhones and Jersey Shore made the film seem like a desperate ploy to capitalize on the brand name. It couldn’t please me more to report that the film is actually quite charming. In a world where films are full of shock humor instead of jokes and irony instead of warmth, here is a fresh-faced, irony-free film for kids full of witty humor and puns dispersed within the slapstick. The impressions of the original trio are spot-on, and the Farrellys have achieved their goal of capably introducing the Stooges to contemporary audiences. It’s still a strain to make work in a feature length format, but it has plenty of laughs and, more importantly, heart.

In the first of three “short films” compiled into this 90-minute duration (each one complete with classic Stooges title card), Sister Mary Mengele (Larry David) receives a duffel bag with three babies. Each baby sports peculiar if iconic hair. When people come to the orphanage looking for children to adopt, the sisters (among them Jane Lynch, Jennifer Hudson, and the voluptuous Kate Upton) hope that someone will relieve them of the burden of the troublesome young stooges, Moe, Larry, and Curly. When the rich Mr. Harter (Stephen Collins) comes looking for a child, he adopts Moe, separating him from the pack. Yet when Mr. Harter asks Moe what he wants more than anything, he says to be with his two friends Curly and Larry… so he’s returned to the orphanage at once. Flash forward to the Stooges as adults: Moe played by Chris Diamantopoulos, Larry played by Sean Hayes, and Curly uncannily played by Will Sasso. The orphanage falls into financial trouble, and the Stooges go forth into the world in search of raising the money to save the orphanage in the second and third short. Sofia Vergara and Craig Bierko hire them—but they may be in for more than they bargained for.

Outside of the Mengele reference (which did make me laugh), this film doesn’t have the jokes for adults peppered in that most contemporary children’s films contain. There’s eye candy in the form of Sofia Vergara and Kate Upton, sure—but the character in the film don’t ogle their breasts. Breasts only serve as another part of one’s body for a stooge to accidentally step on, punch, or throw things in between—they live in a sexless world. While much of the contemporary material (an extended Jersey Shore riff in particular) may prove dated sooner rather than later, it works surprisingly well as catharsis; even though we know these guys are in on the joke, we get to see Snooki poked in the eye and Ronnie have his head thrown in the microwave, and the parallels between the Stooges and modern-day stooges are clear. All of the violence is cartoonish and punctuated with silly sound effects to keep the film as far from the realm of realism as possible.

Yet the heart the film contains is absolutely real. The Farrellys clearly have a deep love for the Stooges, seen in this film and their body of work alike. They manage to pull off what the trailers don’t come close to hinting at: the Stooges, while simpletons, are full-blooded characters with feelings who we very naturally grow to care about over the course of the narrative. I can’t help but compare the film to the recent American Reunion. American Reunion was painfully self-aware about the prior existence of their characters—the Stooges re-establishes their characters, seamlessly blending references the older crowd will get while creating bits a new crowd will enjoy. American Reunion was so hungry to bathe itself in nostalgia for the franchise that they forgot to write jokes or give their characters arc. The Three Stooges is nothing but wall-to-wall jokes, delivered in buckshot method: fire as many as possible as the audience, knowing some are likely to hit. Bierko, David, and Vergara are fair game victims for the Stoogery, but the Farrellys and the gifted impressionists delivering the performances are who really shine. The Three Stooges is warm, earnest, and fun—the jokes don’t all work, and the plot is extremely loose at best, but the pace is quick and breezy. It won’t be for everyone, but I’d gladly say hello (hello, hello) to a sequel.

High-concept macho action flicks are my bread and butter. If you had pitched me “Die Hard plus Con Air in space,” I would’ve put it right at the top of my must-see list for 2012. Unfortunately, Lockout is far from Die Hard– it’s even far from Con Air. The script puts all of its energy into generating wisecracks for Guy Pearce and never creates characters for us to *care* about. James Mather and Stephen St. Leger create a series of incomprehensible action sequences and special effects that look less realistic than most HD video games. While it remains a passable diversion due to the crackling spirit Guy Pearce gives the hero role, Lockout never became the action-packed guilty pleasure I wanted it so desperately to become. Instead of blasting off, Lockout remains sadly down to earth.

Snow (Guy Pearce) is an ex-CIA operative accused by the head of the Secret Service (Peter Stormare) of murdering his CIA partner during a blown mission and absconding with a suitcase. When captured, he passes the suitcase off to his partner Mack (Tim Plester). Meanwhile, the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace) is on a fact-finding mission to MS-One, the world’s first space station serving as a maximum security prison. There have been rumors that the deep sleep they put prisoners in causes dementia and psychosis. When interviewing one particularly insane inmate (Joseph Gilgun), he breaks free and lets loose all of the prisoners, who take the space station hostage. Snow is given a choice: go to MS-One to rescue the president’s daughter or go to MS-One as a prisoner once the situation has been handled. Snow at first refuses, but when he’s informed Mack is being held on MS-One as well, he has a change of heart. So to speak.

Guy Pearce is working his damndest to make Snow a John McClane-esque hero defined by his wisecracking and “coolness,” and his delivery is spot-on– the movie made me laugh out loud several times, and Pearce is a believable badass. However, his character never changes. He’s a selfish egomaniac when he begins and he’s a selfish egomaniac when it ends. They hint once at the briefest moment of selflessness, but then they immediately bury it under a thick layer of irony and one-liners. The best heroes might be reluctantly thrown into a mission, but they must begin to believe in it. There has to be a sense of change within your main character, or your film feels flat and arc-less. Maggie Grace has even less to do in the secondary role, essentially relegated to shrill smug damsel in distress. The villains have a sense of relationship and arc, and Joseph Gilgun has tons of fun hamming it up in a way that makes Daniel Day-Lewis look like Steven Wright, but there’s really not anything to be done to save the film’s story.

So that leaves us with action and special effects, right? Many a film has been saved from corny dialogue and flat characters by slick kinetic visuals and ingenuity. Unfortunately, the first major directorial gig for Mather and Leger has been fumbled in a pretty notable way. They do admirably ape some of their producer Luc Besson’s imagery and editing techniques, but there’s nothing remotely new here. I could pinpoint the moment I knew the film wouldn’t be special– very early on, Guy Pearce hops on a souped-up futuristic motorcycle that seems to go 200-300 miles per hour. Accompanied by the poorest CGI imaginable in a 2012 major studio release, he makes a cell phone call (which is perfectly audible on both ends, inexplicably) while weaving in and out of traffic. It’s like someone pointed a digital camera at someone playing LOCKOUT: THE VIDEO GAME on Playstation 2. The spaceship fights later in the film are even worse. We’re left, at the end of the film, with a funny likable hero with no cool fights to engage in, no cool special effects surrounding him, and no memorable journey to embark upon. I suppose the title, which otherwise makes no sense, must refer to Pearce’s character being locked out of a better film.