Tag / movies

by hereandsphere

MEEK AT THE MOVIES : THE WOLVERINE ( 2.5 STARS )

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^ Hugh Jackman as The Wolverine in film of same name

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The Wolverine onscreen always was the more intriguing of the X-Men lot. As an enigmatic outsider with a tortured past and tacit persona, he had character and depth, something few of the skimpily sketched circus anomalies in Dr. Xavier’s menagerie could offer. If you draped a poncho across his back and put a six shooter in his hand he’d not be unlike a young Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s ‘Man with No Name’ trilogy. And now that I come to think of it, the man who plays Logan, (a.k.a the Wolverine), Hugh Jackman, and Eastwood, if of a similar age, look and sound somewhat alike. I’m not sure if their politics or tastes in furniture are akin, but that’s beside the point.

Given the “cool” factor, it’s no surprise that the immortal mutant with a metal reinforced skeleton and rapier sharp retractable blades in his wrists got his own franchise. The first installment, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” didn’t exactly wow, but back-story, up til “last we left off,” tends to do that. Here we find ourselves in time after the last X-Men chapter (“X-Men: The Last Stand”); Logan is living (and looking) like a vagrant in the Yukon and depressed about the death of his beloved Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, who continually comes to him in dream sequences). He’s got a grizzly bear as neighbor; but before we get to all that, there’s the important rewind back to Nagasaki during World War II when Logan saves one of his captors from “the bomb.” That benefactor went on to become a wealthy industrialist and now, on his death bed, would like Logan to pay him one final visit.

What’s the best way to get the Wolverine to come see you ? Send a school girl with ninja capabilities and a sea full of sass. And that’s exactly what happens. No one, and it’s all grizzled men in the near-arctic township, seems to take exception to the pixie-ish Yukio (Rila Fukushima), lithe and red mopped with popping cheekbones, until, in a seedy bar, she unsheathes her samurai sword and lets them all know she’s no cute plaything. That’s enough to get Logan to Tokyo, where Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi) has ulterior plans for the feral mutant. In the simmering kettle of arcane machinations, there’s a plot afoot to assassinate Yashida’s daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto); his oncologist (Svetlana Khodchenkova) freakishly looks like a Victoria Secret model ; and there’s always some guy running along the rooftops with a bow and arrow in hand.

Yes there are other mutants in the game. Yukio, it seems (and fuzzily so) has the power to foresee, and there’s the Viper, who has a nasty tongue and then some. But mostly this is a lovers-perhaps-to-be on-the-run movie, as Logan and Mariko take flight to the now tranquil harbor of Nagasaki. Double dealings come at them from all sides and to make things interesting, Logan loses half of his powers.

James Mangold, who has done everything from “Walk the Line” to “Copland” and “Knight and Day,” smartly delves deep into the human element. Jackman’s given more to work with since the last busy outing (loss and love) and the two women, while sleek and elegant eye candy, harbor both vulnerable and intrepid pistons behind their reserved exterior. Mangold, going back to “Heavy,” has always had an eye for full bodied female characters; and while Khodchenkova’s bedside floozy is razor thin, the sisterly pair are complex and compelling. But this is a summer movie, and a blockbuster franchise at that, so there must be the crash-crash, bang-bang — and plenty of that comes and sometimes confusingly so. Logan’s final challenge inside a Yashida corporate stronghold is noisy, long and predictable, but thankfully after that, there is a quieter, more revealing moment. One that reveal and charms. To be continued, I’m sure.

— Tom Meek / Meek at the Movies

by hereandsphere

MEEK AT THE MOVIES —- The Hunt (2.5 STARS)

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If you’ve seen Sam Peckinpah’s masterfully macabre “Straw Dogs” (let’s all please agree to forget the far inferior recent remake) then you’re already up to speed on what happens in “The Hunt” : quiet European hamlet; a mindful and reserved intellect with a complex past; slow constant simmer; sexual tension; strong reactions based on false assumptions; and a gentlemanly hunt in the woods serving as a ruse for a deeper more perverse game at hand.

Though the arc, ambiance and elements of the two films bear many acute similarities, the context and articulation could not be further apart. Mads Mikkelsen — whom most US viewers know as Hannibal in the self-titled NBC TV series, or as the European bad-ass who bashed in Bond’s balls in “Casino Royale” — plays Lucas, a quiet man trying to gain some degree of custody of his teen son in the aftermath of a bitter divorce. As a caregiver/instructor at a nursery school, he’s pretty well liked and respected by his peers and his charges — by some, perhaps a little too much. Tow-headed Klara (Annika Wedderkopp) takes his kindness for something more and, after a failed furtive kiss, which Lucas quickly and sternly rebuffs, she becomes angry and tells her parents (who happen to be Lucas’s best friends) and the school head, in vague terms, that Lucas did something to her. Then later, after Klara catches a glimpse of smut on her brother’s iPad and the adults try to further educe from her what exactly transpired, it only takes a few dark slanted inferences for the toxic charge of pedophilia to erupt.

The film directed by Dane Thomas Vinterberg (“The Celebration”), a Dogme 95 compatriot of Lars con Trier, leverages its remote Danish townlet setting where justice is administered by elected elders and enforcement, when needed, comes from somewhere afar, so as the rumor billows and emotions flare. There’s a heated call for immediate action–one that will not wait for outside mitigation– as slices of vigilante retribution begin to rain on the accused. Lucas’s son stands by him, as does his new girlfriend, an immigrant cafeteria worker who’s fearful of losing her job and being deported; but in the end Lucas must stand alone against the amassing throng, and boldly so, not unlike Dustin Hoffman’s nebbish in Peckinpah’s bloody classic.

The niggling to “The Hunt” can’t be put onto Mikkelsen or any of the actors, who are sharp and heartfelt in their roles. Mikkelsen’s rendering of internal turmoil, malaise and depressed entrapment, dutifully echoed by the grim, washed-out primal atmosphere etched by Vinterberg, drives the film with purpose. Still, the logic and the obvious questions not asked by normally rational minds both undermine the overall effort. The premise of a town turned inward by accusation and mob justice is a piquant one, it’s just too bad Vinterberg didn’t bring a more spirited dog to the fight.

—- Tom Meek / Meek at the Movies

by hereandsphere

MEEK AT THE MOVIES : THE HEAT ( 2 1/2 **)

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“The Heat” is funnier than it should be. Part of that’s because director Paul Feig has a way of taking flimsy ideas and strong comedic actors and creating lightning in a bottle. He did it with Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig in “Bridesmaids” and does so again here. If there’s any doubt that it’s more the actors than Feig, I’ll simply point to McCarthy’s recent woeful outing in “Identity Theft.” It’s not so much what he does with the material but the chemistry he educes between his stars and how they build something infectious from thin setups.
The premise behind “The Heat,” which was shot in in our glorious city of Boston — though it doesn’t look so much like the Boston that you and I know — is pretty much the same old comedic cop-buddy story that was popularized by Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in “48hrs,” and, later, by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the “Lethal Weapon” series. Except that here, the oddball pairing is women, and the focus is more on the funny than the dark and grim — hough people do get shot in the head aplenty, and blood does spurt.

Sandra Bullock puts in a willing and able effort as FBI Special Agent Ashburn, bouncing from nerd to sex pot and even to drunkard. Ashburn’s a by-the-book agent seeking a promotion, but ego, arrogance and lack of people-skills stand in her way. To get ahead she’s got to nab a faceless drug king in Boston and to do so, she must accomplish it with the aid of a portly and potty-mouthed detective (McCarthy) with less people skills than herself. McCarthy’s Mullins takes a longtime to warm up to, because like her hacker role in “Identity Theft,” she’s insensitive, over-bearing and uses the F-word to qualify everything. It almost tanks the movie early on, but the friction with Bullock’s straight lace heats up fast.
Mullins is one mean dog, there are few perps on the street or colleagues in her precinct that are willing or able to tangle with her. It’s her brother (Michael Rappaport), who’s a small fish in the local drug trade that is her Achilles-heel wound of sensitivity.

The silly hi-jinks mostly come when Mullins and Ashburn wind up in some nightspot. One scene has the pair at an upscale club where they are trying to bug an underling of the drug lord. They have to sex-it-up to get close (“You’re the hottest woman over forty,” a slick-haired baddie notes of Bullock), and later the duo bond in an Irish dive bar where Bullock and McCarthy dance poorly to lost 90s classics, down gallons of shots and form a conga line of septuagenarians.

The funniest kicks however come from Mullins’s family. The “Bahston” accent is right on, the house is decorated with velour dunking/homerun/touchdown Jesus paintings, and SNL legend Jane Curtin plays the tough-as-nails matriarch. The whole drug lord angle is just an excuse for Mullins to make jokes about Ashburn’s un-used loins and Ashburn to respond with lines like “that is a gross misrepresentation of my vagina.” What’s not to like about Felix and Oscar toting guns and fueled by estrogen? It ain’t heavy, and it ain’t sharp, but it is funny and Feig does it all on a half a tank of gas.

— Tom Meek / Meek at the Movies