Shark Night 3D

SHARK NIGHT 3D

** SPOILERS **

Shark Night 3D is the bottom feeder of the summer; a low-rent, excruciating-to-endure violation of the sacred trust between movies and audiences. Whereas last year's glorious Piranha 3D was a lasciviously bloody and absurdly entertaining monster-fish-massacre spectacle, Shark Night 3D chooses to zig where Piranha 3D zagged at every opportunity, delivering the polar opposite of a good time at the movies watching murderous fish wage war on stupid humans. The good news for every other movie of 2011 is that the lowest bar has now been set and can be easily hurdled no matter how lousy your movie is.

Shark Night 3D wouldn't exist at all if Piranha 3D weren't successful. Shark Night calculatedly apes Piranha's tropes without at all understanding how or why Piranha worked. The first and most important mistake is Shark Night 3D is inexplicably and foolishly rated PG-13. That right there slices the belly of the beast and lets the guts fall right out. Kids and childish adults, Shark Night has no sex, no boobs (except for a couple of brief teases from behind), and no nudity besides a bare-assed shot of a naked dude. Thanks, jerks. There is nothing even remotely equal to this epic, Oscar-worthy sequence of art, beauty and pleasure that should be preserved forever in the Smithsonian. Shark Night didn't even fucking try.

All right, so there are no naked ladies in this lake full of killer sharks, but at least there are amusingly bloody murders, right? Nope. Unlike how the piranha were omni-present throughout Piranha 3D, shown early and gleefully often, Shark Night cheaps out by not showing a shark for nearly an hour - as if there was supposed to be some mystery to there being sharks in the waters of Lake Redneck, Louisiana where the movie is set. Once the movie's cast of college-age simpletons is introduced, it takes forever for them to even make it to the million dollar lake house that the rest of the movie is set in. Shark Night wastes like, half an hour, showing the dummies just going to the lake house. Isn't it fun to watch a group of chums motorboat to a lake house? No.

Sara Paxton stars as PG-13 Riley Steele, without a lot up top. Katherine McPhee from American Idol substitutes as PG-13 Kelly Brook. There's another chick who's kind of like Jessica Szohr, and then a bunch of dudes. There's a wisecracking nerdy guy who was in Avatar, and a jock dude whose main character trait is that "he spray tans his junk." One of the dudes, a "nerd" who turns out to be the hero, thinks he's Aquaman because he dives into the water over and over despite knowing there are a shitload of killer sharks in the water. 

The noblest character turns out to be the black guy, a star athlete on his way to the NFL and in love with the girl who isn't Paxton or McPhee. Guess who the racist sharks attack first? The sharks may not actually have killed the black guy first - the first kill is his girlfriend, also a minority - but a shark bites his arm off so he can never play football again. The black guy then goes insane and then - I shit you not - goes hunting for the sharks with a spear, killing a hammerhead mano e sharko. And then a few minutes later, he decides to commit suicide and lets himself get eaten by a shark. What. The. Fuck?

Did I mention these characters were stupid? After the black guy gets his arm bitten off, the kids go into hysterics and are unable to call for help. You see, all the way out there in the lake, their cell phones don't work. But, uh, it's a multi-million dollar lake house. Wouldn't the house have a land line? No? Hey wait, on the wall next to the doors are ADT security boxes. Why don't they just press the Alarm and call for help? Because they're stupid. They're not just stupid, but histrionic. During the interminably long periods between shark attacks, we are subjected to the overbearing melodrama of the characters loudly and tearfully bemoaning the unfairness of it all. When most of them get killed by sharks, at least it shuts them up.

How did sharks get in a lake to begin with? Two sets of characters offer the half-assed explanation that "hurricanes" and "rising tides" brought the sharks into these waters. Apparently there are 46 different types of sharks in the lakes, though we are treated to only a handful of the unsightly CGI creatures. In a series of forehead-slapping reveals, we discover that the local rednecks are in fact behind all of the shark murders in these waters. They may even have bred the sharks, it's not really clear. 

The rednecks' master plan: to use high def cameras attached to the sharks' bellies to record them murdering people so they can sell the videos to the black market. (Sharks with frickin' cameras; what, they didn't go for sharks with frickin' laser beams?) You see, Shark Week is the biggest annual event on basic cable so - get this - the rednecks figured a segment of the Shark Week audience would just love to watch real people eaten by sharks. And the rednecks wouldn't go to prison over this how? Also, these are dirt-poor redneck fishermen in the Gulf post-Katrina and post-BP oil spill, but they somehow had the budget to fund this operation, breed sharks, and attach them with expensive HD cameras (how do they change the batteries?), all on the speculation that they might get a buyer for their shark snuff films!

There's also a lot of backstory between Paxton and the main redneck, Scarface, whom she had the hots for three years ago ("three years ago" comes up a lot as a time frame. A lot happened "three years ago"). All of these shark murders were sort of just an elaborate revenge plot by Scarface to eventually have Paxton eaten by a shark. But who cares? Who motherfuckin' cares? Shark Night 3D is not just a complete waste of time, but at the inflated 3D prices, Shark Night bites you thoroughly in the ass where your wallet is.

The Debt

THE DEBT

** SPOILERS **

In 1965, three Mossad secret agents participated in a secret mission to kidnap an at-large Nazi war criminal. Portrayed in their youth by Sam Worthington, Marton Csokas, and Jessica Chastain, this mission would be the defining point in the lives of the three agents, the ramifications of which would still be felt over 30 years later, when they are in their December of their years and played by Ciaran Hinds, Tom Wikinson, and Helen Mirren. The emotional core of The Debt lies with Rachel Singer, the character shared by Chastain and Mirren. Their target, Dieter Vogel (Jesper Christensen), "The Surgeon of Birkenau", hides in plain sight as a gynecologist in East Berlin. Posing as a newlywed with Worthington, Chastain investigates Vogel as his patient. James Bond would raise an eyebrow at Chastain's spy game of literally spreading her legs so her target could get to know her privately. Csokas calls the shots of the operation, and yet when Chastain's assassination attempt on Vogel fails, the three bungle their kidnap attempt, exposing the details of their relationships and inner selves to the savvy and sinister Vogel, who is always listening in on them while tied up in their apartment. When Vogel escapes and nearly murders Chastain, the three make a pivotal choice to lie to their superiors in Israel and claim they killed Vogel. This lie stands for over thirty years, until Vogel resurfaces in the Ukraine, threatening to expose them all. The Debt is a tense, riveting Cold War thriller with some terrific performances, specifically from Chastain and Mirren as Rachel Singer. The realities of being a secret agent are presented as grim and bleak, hardly exotic or glamorous. Violence is matter of fact; despite several scenes of Csokas and Worthington training in hand to hand combat, it's Rachel Singer who endures all of the violence. Both Chastain and Mirren engage in brutal, bloody fights with Dieter Vogel. The climactic knife fight between Mirren and the ancient Vogel is top of the line if you want to see senior citizens stab each other to the death. "The Debt" seems to be a bit of a misnomer; a title such as "Three Jews and a Nazi in an Apartment" may be more accurate, though perhaps inappropriate.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

** SPOILERS **

With a solemn straight face, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the prequel that details how mankind fostered its own destruction by genetically enhancing a super intelligent ape named Caesar who would eventually replace humanity with his own kind. Utilizing astounding visual effects by WETA and a motion capture performance by Andy Serkis to create photo-realistic apes and an emotionally resonant chimpanzee protagonist, Rise is a well-constructed science fiction parable far superior to the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes from 2001. In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, you will believe monkeys can take over the world. Except... c'mon, man! They're monkeys! I cannot take this shit seriously. They're monkeys! Look! Caesar's wearing a red sweater! Look at him eating CGI Chips Ahoy cookies! Even as Caesar suffers brutal treatment in the monkey gulag at the hands of Draco Malfoy (monkeys are the worst kind of Mudblood), we know Caesar is gradually planning to take over the world. Cheering Caesar on makes no sense to me. But then, there are no humans to root for either. The only humans in the picture who aren't money-grubbing dimwits or sadistic monkey-abusers are James Franco and Frieda Pinto. Franco is the super duper genius who uses his research in apes as a means to cure the Alzheimer's of his father John Lithgow. Franco brings Caesar home and raises him like his son, despite how as Caesar gets smarter and more uncontrollable, he starts terrorizing the jerk neighbor next door. (Why the neighbor didn't pack up his family and move when he and Caesar brawled around the neighborhood is his own foolish monkey business. Later, Rise uses the neighbor as the delivery system for the monkey virus that eradicates mankind.) Franco sure loves Caesar, beyond all reason, and probably more than he loves Pinto, who has no character and nothing to do besides look beautiful and utter one warning about how it's right to fear chimpanzees. How right she was. When the apes go AWOL and attack San Francisco in the action packed third act (utilizing - ahem - guerrilla warfare tactics), the pathetic response of the San Francisco Police Department was embarrassing. They bent right over and took it from the apes. The SFPD was a disgrace to our species. But what're you gonna do? In the end, the apes just wanted it more.

Conan The Barbarian

CONAN THE BARBARIAN

** SPOILERS **

Sweet Barbarian Love

The new Conan the Barbarian re-imagines us back into a hazy prehistory of swords and sorcery taking place "after Atlantis fell" and before... everything else. On the continent of Hyboria, a child was literally "born in battle" to a tribe of Cimmerian barbarians, the battle conveniently happening around his birth and subsequent heartbreaking death of his barbarian mother. This child would become Conan (pronounced "Cone-IN" like O'Brien and not "Cone-NAN"), whom we observe as a feral youth more adept at killing groups of gruesome man-monsters than most of the adult barbarians in his tribe. Though not prone to outward displays, Conan's father Corin the Barbarian (Ron Perlman) is particularly proud of his hellboy of a son.

In a Lord of the Rings-esque prologue, we are informed by narrator Morgan Freeman(!) that in a pre-prehistory there exists an ancient mask of evil that was broken into shards and hidden by the different barbarian tribes, so that no one person would be able to wield its evil power. Wouldn't you know it, one person, the evil Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang) has almost all of the pieces now and is missing just the one shard hidden by the Cimmerians. Zym and his freaky deaky sorceress daughter Marique (Rose McGowan, costumed with the finger knives of Freddy Krueger and the forehead of Christina Ricci) slaughter the Cimmarians and take the last shard of the death mask, giving Corin the Barbarian a Golden Crown for his troubles (Conan is the second movie this summer to reference Game of Thrones in this manner).

Young Conan escapes and spends the next 20 years maturing into the ripped, chiseled and jacked form of Jason Momoa, who portrayed Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones. Like Drogo's wife Daenerys Targaryen, Conan spends his barbarian days roaming around Hyboria freeing slaves. In particular, Conan prefers freeing harems of sexy, topless female slaves, massacring their slavers, and then throwing sexy orgies for his band of barbarians (don't call them Team Coco). Conan is a popular guy, and has earned the loyalty of his sidekick Ukafa (Bob Sapp, playing Djimon Hounsou from Gladiator). What Conan really, really wants, though, is to kill Khalar Zym and avenge his father. All the best barbarians have daddy issues. However, one can't blame Conan for how easily distracted he was from his Life's Mission of Vengeance by all the sexy slave girls. For 20 years.

While Conan was out in the world making his bones and boning slave girls, Khalar Zym was having a particularly frustrating 20 years. Even though he has the death mask, he needs the pure blood of some race of sorcerers to make the mask do what he wants it to do: resurrect his dead sorceress wife. Even though his daughter is the spitting image of his wife, has the same magic powers, and seems down to do it with her daddy, Zym rebuffs her. No, it's the dead wife he wants. The pure blood he needs belongs to Tamara (Rachel Nichols), the screaming-est sexy priestess in all the land. Seriously, Tamara screams longer and louder than Kim Basinger did in Batman. Finally, after 20 fucking years, Khalar Zym locates Tamara in the only monastery in Hyboria, but she gets away with the help of Conan. 

Tamara learns hanging with Conan means being tied up often and listening to his terse barbarian orders like, "Sit!" and "Be quiet!". When she changes costumes, Conan assures her, "You look like a harlot." This is all barbarian foreplay, you see. They escape Hyboria via Ukafa's yacht but Khalar Zym's men still find and attack them. (Conan memorably kills an evil female archer by chucking a spear right through her babymaker). Yet, even this gruesome violence is also merely barbarian foreplay, all leading to Conan bringing Tamara to his secret love shack in the caves of some island. Thus Conan gets to the real meat of things as Tamara experiences sweet, gentle, tender barbarian love.  

For a sweaty, fury-ridden, bloodthirsty killing machine, Conan the Barbarian is surprisingly well-versed in the tender arts of love. Conan is no Khal Drogo, who only knew how to rape from behind and had to be coached by Daenerys into learning simple sex positions like missionary and cowgirl - oh no, Conan knows all of that and more! Who would have ever guessed Conan the Barbarian would be such a kind, considerate lover? His secret love nest has a bed that all but vibrates coin-operated, complete with luxurious pillows, sheets that no doubt are made of two thousand thread count, and the whole shebang is candle-lit to best accentuate Conan's gleaming buttocks, as if forged from fire and ice like the steel of his father's broadsword. Oh, and Nichols looks good naked too, in the split seconds of afterthought the camera focuses on her.

After the tender, sweeping acts of barbarian love, the last half hour of Conan the Barbarian is a requisite blur of senseless, frenzied action. The morning after, Tamara is kidnapped by Khalar Zym, Conan gives chase to the aptly-named Skull Cave, Conan fights off a multi-tentacled kraken of some sort, Conan kills the evil father and daughter combo, destroys the death mask, saves Tamara, and barbarian justice is restored to Hyboria.  The movie as a whole is bursting with blood and viscera on the screen, yet is bloodless at heart.

In the original 1982 Conan The Barbarian, when Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan is asked, "What is best in life?", he replied, "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women." Jason Momoa's Conan would agree with the first two, but when it comes to this new Conan, lamentations is not what he's hearing from the women. Conan the Barbarian 2011 delivers all the loud, ultra-violent, CGI and 3D-enhanced, nonsensical wholesale slaughter expected, but Momoa makes bloody sure to spread that sweet, sweet barbarian love. 

Friends With Benefits

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

** SPOILERS **

I Know Who I Want To Take Me Home

Justin Timberlake is an attractive, twentysomething, "emotionally unavailable" new media art director in Los Angeles. Mila Kunis is an attractive, twentysomething, "emotionally damaged with more issues than Magnum P.I. can solve" "headhunter" in New York City. At the beginning of the frank, sexy, and terrific Friends With Benefits, Timberlake and Kunis are simultaneously dumped harshly by their respective significant others (Emma Stone and Andy Samberg). Kunis recruits Timberlake to relocate to NYC as the new art director for GQ, prominently product-placed. They form a fast friendship based on easy comfort and their mutual proclivity for snappy repartee.

Timberlake and Kunis are obviously attracted to one another, no matter how much they claim they aren't. But they both wish to avoid messy emotional entanglements (he much more than she, really), so they strike a deal: to be sexual partners only and friends always, no more than that. "I wish they'd make a movie about what happens after 'happily ever after'," Kunis muses while watching her favorite rom com. "They did. It's called porn," Timberlake replies. And thus, they get all porn-y with each other, starting with the happily ever after as if beginning a meal with dessert. Though the inevitable outcome of this questionable sex-only arrangement is never in doubt, in Friends With Benefits, the joy is in the journey.

Enlivening a savvy, relevant script as rat-a-tat as Kunis' laughter, Timberlake and Kunis sell all of their witty banter, even the cliches, with confident gusto. They can't even pipe down long enough to have sex without continuing their jibber-jabber throughout. ("You two bicker like an old married couple," Jenna Elfman, Timberlake's older sister, wryly observes when the NY-based movie takes a sun-kissed vacation in LA.) It's refreshing to hear young people in a romantic comedy parry with real wit and cleverness as opposed to pandering to non-existent laugh tracks with smug sitcom one-liners. 

Friends With Benefits is a movie that extols the coolness of pint-sized 1990's rapping munchkins Kriss Kross and mines the Semisonic (not Third Eye Blind, Timberlake finally learns in an amusing runner) one hit wonder "Closing Time" for profound emotional significance. Timberlake is apparently paid in the high seven figures to be art director for GQ, and the magazine is so flush with cash, it provides Timberlake with a furnished, multi-million-dollar apartment. (GQ's gay sports editor, Woody Harrelson, commutes from New Jersey via the same antique speedboat Sean Connery used to escape from SPECTRE in From Russia With Love.)

Timberlake also seems to be "headhunter" Kunis' only client, yet she dwells in a huge SoHo loft. Kunis' mother, a welcome Patricia Clarkson, playfully taunts Kunis with the identity and ethnicity of her absent father and disappears on international trips despite having no visible means of income. Timberlake meets Kunis when she jumps on the baggage claim conveyor belt, managing to not get detained by airport security. Whether Timberlake and Kunis are in New York having private conversations on the roof of 30 Rock or in LA having private conversations on the Hollywood sign, realism is in short supply. Yet somehow it all works, the movie powered by the mega-watt charisma of Kunis and Timberlake.

Even when falling victim to obvious third act plot machinations (break them apart to put them back together for the romantic finish) and the pat explanation of Timberlake's reticence towards relationships he learned via the life mistakes confessed by his father Richard Jenkins, who suffers from Alzheimer's, Friends With Benefits still manages to earn their sweetly sappy, flash-mob happy ending. Justin Timberlake was a key player in The Social Network, the 21st century incarnation of Citizen Kane. Smart and wise, new school but old-fashioned at heart, Friends With Benefits may well prove to be the When Harry Met Sally for this generation.

Cowboys and Aliens

COWBOYS AND ALIENS 

** SPOILERS **

It is the Old West, the time of cowboys. One cowboy, Daniel Craig, wakes up in the middle of nowhere, with no shoes, no memory of how he got there, and some newfangled sorta doohickey attached to his wrist. No one who meets him is particularly curious about the doohickey, and nor is Craig so much. It's just there. At some point, it'll do something, and when it does, it's not particularly interesting. This sums up Cowboys and Aliens. There's all this stuff in the movie, sit through it and things will happen like explosions and gun fights, and when it does, it's not particularly interesting or worth closer examination. There are certainly aliens, and they're considerably less interesting than the cowboys.

There's a mystery to who Craig is that isn't a mystery because half of the dusty Old West town of Absolution run by ornery cattle baron Harrison Ford knows who Craig is. Ford is an ex-Mexican War colonel who is feared by everyone in the town but it turns out his bark is worse than his bite and he isn't such a bad guy after all. When aliens strafe the cowboys in their insect-like ships and pilfer a bunch of them with their spacey version of the claw game, Craig and Ford giddy up after the aliens. James Bond and Indiana Jones together at last, and in a neat visual cue, Craig dons a white shirt and black vest as a nod to Han Solo.

Providing constant distraction is the quizzical presence of the anachronistically beautiful Olivia Wilde. Wilde flutters in and out of Craig's line of sight prodding him with lines like, "You know who you are!" Wilde seems to exist to provide wide-eyed, lovingly lit reaction shots - until we find out who and what Wilde really is (not a cowboy), at which point all the exposition she's been withholding comes pouring out as a lot of vague nonsense. Wilde does however get reborn naked in a funeral pyre like Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, but Daenerys had dragons, so advantage Daenerys. (While I'm at it, Khal Drogo dumping molten gold on Viserys Targaryen's head > James Bond dumping molten gold on random alien's head.)

Craig has to remember how the aliens captured him and his favorite prostitute Abigail Spencer in the first place (I liked how the cowboys pronounce "whore" as "hooer".) Ford is out to rescue his arrogant whelp of a son, Paul Dano. The running joke of Craig beating up Dano is the only source of humor in the picture. Ford comes to realize he cares for his son's brave and loyal Native American companion Adam Beach more than his real son, and he's the only one who seems to learn a lesson. I'm not sure what Craig got out of his tussles with alien invaders in the end. He didn't even get to keep his wrist thingy. No, Wilde took that when she set out to destroy the aliens' ship - killing herself and taking the aliens with her was her master plan all along!

The aliens are unsightly CGI grotesques, their designs apparently borrowed from the JJ Abrams house of monster ideas. And get this - the aliens are on Earth because they want gold! Gold! Thar's gold up in thar hills, says the aliens! It's a shame the aliens didn't do a giddy prospector dance when they found gold. When Wilde blows up their ship, a bunch of aliens were on the ground massacring the cowboys, but they are seemingly forgotten about when the cowboys claim victory.

Why does this movie exist? Why is there Cowboys and Aliens? I haven't the faintest idea. Regardless, Cowboys and Aliens is one hundred percent as the title advertises. There are cowboys. There are aliens. If the title were slightly tweaked to Cowboys vs. Aliens, it would be even more accurate. So here we are. Cowboys and Aliens. Yes sir. Something tells me the inevitable porn parody, Reverse Cowgirls and Aliens, will be a lot more satisfying.

Crazy, Stupid, Love

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE

** SPOILERS **

Crazy, Stupid, Love is a very pleasant surprise - a smart, warm, engaging treatise about love and finding your "soulmate" featuring terrific performances and some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments. Steve Carell is a married but downtrodden man suddenly faced with a divorce from the only woman he has ever loved (or slept with), Julianne Moore, who committed adultery with her co-worker Kevin Bacon. Their 13 year old son Jonah Bobo "is in love" with his willowy but fetching 17 year old babysitter Analeigh Tipton, who in turn has a schoolgirl crush on Carell. Meanwhile, Emma Stone is a young law student naive about her own romantic potential and initially rebuffs the smooth come-ons of slick ladykiller Ryan Gosling. Convenience of plot finds Carell in the same sexy hotspot Gosling frequents, repeatedly lamenting the end of his marriage to every woman, waitress, and bartender in sight. ("I'm a cuckold!", Carell laments, sounding an awful lot like his co-worker Ed Helms in The Office.) Gosling both takes pity on Carell and tires of his endless complaining; he takes Carell under his wing and becomes Carell's Obi-Wan Kenobi on how to be a better dresser and how to pick up women. (Though Obi-Wan never slapped Luke Skywalker in the face so often - maybe he ought to have.) Gosling's mentoring sessions with Carell do contain some valuable advice for men: "never" wear New Balance sneakers, don't own a velcro wallet, don't sip from the little straw in your drink, "be better than the GAP!", and your whole wardrobe can be redone "with like, 16 items". Gosling's methods on seducing women are more questionable since, let's face it, 90% of his "charm" is because he looks like Ryan Gosling. (100% of women would agree.) Gosling, however, is unsurprisingly a very unhappy person deep down, until Stone suddenly reciprocates his sexual interest while undergoing a relationship crisis late in the story. Stone and Gosling each find more depth and tenderness with each other than they ever suspected; their scenes together evolve from sexy verbal jousting to real sweetness and intimacy. Meanwhile, Carell finds new success with women and increases his sexual conquests ninefold, yet still pines for his soulmate and wife Moore. Plentiful comedy emerges from Bobo's teenage harrassment of Tipton, bombarding her with text messages and embarrassing her with broad declarations of love at her school.  In the end, all of the characters' paths intersect in a very funny farcical convergence that could be over the top but Crazy, Stupid, Love earns it because of the care the filmmakers take with the characters. All of the actors shine in making their characters feel honest and true. However, Carell and Moore apparently send their son to the most lenient middle school ever, especially in regards to the school allowing Carell's family drama to usurp their graduation ceremony. 

Captain America: The First Avenger 3D

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER 3D

** SPOILERS **

"I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."

Captain America: The First Avenger excitingly re-imagines World War II as fought within the Marvel Comics Universe and accomplishes two neat tricks simultaneously: It opened up the history of the cinematic Marvel Universe, synching up with the details established in Iron Man and Thor while doing so much more seamlessly than the laboriousness that sunk the second act of Iron Man 2. More importantly, Captain America introduced moviegoers to Steve Rogers, the purest, noblest hero in the Marvel Universe.

Chris Evans, who was once the only bright spot in the Fantastic Four films, eschews his usual cocky swagger to seize the spotlight as a true leading man. Sporting a slight era-appropriate Brooklyn accent and at first Benjamin Buttoned with CGI into a scrawny twerp before physically transforming into his jacked, superheroic form, Evans truly makes you believe in Captain America. That the audience comes to believe in Captain America at the same time Steve Rogers starts to believe in himself is part of the fun.

The Marvel-fied version of the 1940s is a joy to behold - a wonderland of era-appropriate costume and production design jumbled with outrageous technology courtesy of Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), the father of Tony Stark, the future Iron Man. Tony would be aghast to see his father in this age; a smooth-talking playboy with all the best wonderful toys, including hover cars and even the original android Human Torch sealed in an airless chamber on display at his World's Fair. Turns out Tony is chip off Howard Stark's block after all.

Stark's counterpart in technology is Hydra, a secret society within the Third Reich devoted to the scientific, mystical, and world conquering pursuits of their leader the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving). The Red Skull is a warped Nazi attempt at creating a super soldier, and he is in possession of the Tesseract (the Cosmic Cube to comics readers), stolen from Odin's trophy case in Thor. The Red Skull schemes to use the Tesseract's otherworldly power to conquer everyone and everything on Earth. ("And he can do it!", believes his frightened underling Dr. Zola, played by Toby Jones.) 

Thrust into all this, unsuspectingly at first, is Steve Rogers, a stereotypical 90 lb weakling who wants nothing more than to fight for his country and make a difference. Rogers' insistence on joining the Army despite five rejections gets him noticed by the kindly Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) as a guinea pig for a top secret Super Soldier project that transforms Rogers into a perfect human specimen. From there, the newly promoted Rogers, dubbed "Captain America", is sent - where else? - to tour across America in musical stage shows clad in a garish costume (his classic comic book threads) to stump for war bonds ("The Star Spangled Man with a plan").

Despite "knocking out Hitler over 200 times" in propaganda films (even The Red Skull tells Cap he's a fan of his films), a rotten tomatoes reception from actual soldiers in the front lines to the Star Spangled Man in tights forces Rogers to re-evaluate what he should really be doing with his abilities. Captain America formally joins the fight and becomes the super soldier he was always meant to be, smashing Hydra's plans with the help of his very own group of Inglorious Basterds, the Howling Commandos (who are without Nick Fury, who is black and the leader of SHIELD in the future).

The first half of Captain America is the most interesting, with the focus squarely on Steve Rogers' character and everyone doubting he has the right stuff to be a (super) soldier, especially Colonel Tommy Lee Jones, who headed the wartime precursor of SHIELD. (My favorite scene in the the movie was Tommy Lee Jones interrogating Toby Jones while eating a steak.) By the time Rogers becomes Captain America, the movie begins dutifully tearing through a checklist of Events That Must Occur: Cap has to get his circular "vibranium" shield, Cap has to watch his best friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) die, Cap has to end up frozen in ice at the end so he can reawaken in the 21st century just in time to be in The Avengers.

As if realizing 2/3rds of the movie has passed and they've barely scratched the surface of what needs to happen to enable the Marvel Movie Master Plan, Captain America suddenly accelerates, blazing through Cap's wartime adventures in a dizzying montage of action and explosions while setting up all the pieces at breakneck pace so that Cap can be frozen in ice for the coda set in our time that assembles The Avengers. Rogers' sweet romance with the beauteous and bountiful Agent Carter (Hayley Atwell) ends sadly in perfunctory fashion ("I had a date."). It's kind of a shame; more fun Captain America movies could have been set in the terrific Marvel World War II era, but Marvel killed that golden goose for what they hope will be The Avengers' golden egg. 

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

CONAN O'BRIEN CAN'T STOP

** SPOILERS **

On The Road Again, I Can't Wait To Have My Own Show Again

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is a fantastic, honest, and gut-bustingly hilarious time machine back to the spring and summer of 2010 - When No Coco Was Allowed On TV. Picking up a few weeks after the debacle with NBC that lead Conan to vacate his dream job hosting The Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop follows the bearded ex-talk show host as he sorts through the festering anger from his treatment by NBC, hits the road to connect with his fans (often to his exhausted chagrin), and fills that void within himself that constantly demands to perform and receive approval from an audience.

"I might be a fucking genius, or I might be the biggest dick who ever lived," Conan assesses himself at one point, and there's ample evidence for both sides of the argument. He is kind of a dick to his loyal staff who stood by him post-Tonight Show and hit the road with him on his "Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television" live tour. But Conan is a good-natured sort of a dick, demanding excellence from himself and the people who surround him - mostly by punching them. "Why am I always punching everyone?" Conan asks randomly. Perhaps it's because he's a dick, but also because Conan was still so very angry at the way NBC treated him in the final weeks of his tenure. Gallows humor, biting observations laced with sadness and bits of barely contained fury, comprise the jokes that blaze out of Conan's brain. 

Conan Can't Stop takes us from the germ of the idea to create a variety musical road show to the maturation of the sold out show as Conan tours around the country with his staffers and the erstwhile Tonight Show Band (now Jimmy Vivino and the Basic Cable Band). Conan's tour hits big cities like New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Boston, and even tiny podunk towns like Eugene, Oregon ("Nobody lives here!" Conan fears). I'm glad to say I attended Conan's Boston homecoming show at the Wang Center for the Performing Arts, but a personal blow-away highlight of Conan Can't Stop is from the Seattle show where special guest Eddie Vedder sang The Who's "Baba O'Riley". We meet Conan's many big time showbiz friends, like Jack White, Jon Hamm, and Jack McBrayer from 30 Rock - whom Conan is absolutely, hilariously savage to when mocking him as a hillbilly. We also meet a bunch of people who are well-wishing strangers to Conan. When they gather in his backstage areas before the shows, an exhausted and irritated Conan still compulsively feels the need to perform and entertain them. Conan's pure talent, which is on display in its rawest form in the documentary, is undeniable, both as a comedian and as a surprisingly talented musician with a deep love of bluegrass and rockabilly music.

It's touching to see how devoted Conan's talented writers, staff members, band members, and his ever-ready sidekick Andy Richter are to him. In fact, we learn Conan really has a second sidekick besides Andy; his "long-suffering" assistant Sona Movsesian. Sona dutifully absorbs Conan's constant ribbing and threats to fire her; she is always by his side whether her boss is on top of his game or sprawled like a dead eyed zombie on a couch too-small for his lanky 6'4" frame. A big laugh comes at the Bonnaroo Festival, when Conan on stage holds 40,000 sweaty concert goers in the palm of his hand and Sona assures him, "You were like Hitler up there!" Later, when the drained, ready-for-this-tour-to-end Conan is assured it's almost over, he quips, "That's what they told Anne Frank." While Sona takes Conan's lickings and keeps on ticking, Andy Richter proves once more to be Conan's secret comedy weapon, his personal WMD always blasting the perfect scathing quips and japes at just the perfect moments. ("Oh good! It's miserable again!")

Looking back now at that grueling, joyful, electric summer on the road and knowing that Conan does have his own show again - on TBS, which he hilariously scoffed at when first approached with the idea - it's reassuring that Conan's own words to his fans at the end of his Tonight Show proved true: "If you work really hard and you're kind, good things will happen." Good things do happen to good people. There is such a thing as a happy ending - and a new beginning - for Conan O'Brien. And now he can talk to Megan Fox again, because Conan has his own show again.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON 3D

** SPOILERS **

3D Autobots Wage Their Battle to Destroy the Evil Forces of 3D Decepticons

Transformers: Dark of the Moon opens with a joke, a rather entertaining knee-slapper the movie tells with a somber straight face: that America's space race of the 1960s which culminated with the Apollo 11 mission was a response to an Autobot ship crashing on the dark side of the moon (spare us your Pink Floyd jokes) in 1961. Neil Armstrong's "one small step for man..." was a giant leap into the mangled remains of the spacecraft ("the Ark", which was the name of the Autobot ship that brought the Transformers to Earth in the 1984 cartoon). Director Michael Bay has fun channeling Oliver Stone, matching JFK's first ten minutes nearly shot-for-shot, mixing archive footage of John F. Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, and Richard Nixon with stand-in actors, sometimes in the same frame. This revisionist history lesson turns out to be a gas, but it doesn't take long at all for Dark of the Moon to slam-bang right into its patented brand of Bayhem.

Four years have passed since the events of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. With the Decepticons dormant since the Fallen fell, the Autobots have basically become robot G-men on wheels, spearheading worldwide "secret missions" (as secret as giant robots blowing everything up can be) the government publicly denies sending them on. Though sometimes the Autobots go off reservation. As their long time liaison Josh Duhamel says, "the Autobots are like teenagers", they like to go out at night once in a while. On one of Optimus Prime's nights sneaky-sneaking around Chernobyl, he discovers something that pisses him off: a device from the Ark, long believed lost when the Ark exploded after leaving Cybertron during the war. The humans Optimus has been protecting and died once for already have been lying to him all this time. 

Soon, Optimus is moonwalking aboard the Ark and finds his predecessor as Autobot Leader, Sentinel Prime. Sentinel had left Cybertron with new technology he invented and the Decepticons wanted that would have ended the Cybertronian Wars. Optimus witnessed the Ark destroyed, but no, somehow it ended up billions of miles away, crashed on Earth's moon. Optimus revives Sentinel's spark using the fabled Autobot Matrix of Leadership (waited for "The Touch" to start playing. Didn't happen) and we discover with delight that Sentinel Prime has the familiar voice of Leonard Nimoy. (Nimoy was the voice of Galvatron in 1986's Transformers: The Movie, but Optimus and Galvatron never shared screen time so this was a nerdy treat.) Sentinel was guarding his secret new technology, a Space Bridge, which "defies [human] physics", but that's cool, since talking, transforming robots also defy physics, logic, and all kinds of other rationality.

Meanwhile, our hero Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), college graduate and two-time savior of the world, is having troubles. Dumped in-between movies by his former girlfriend, Mikaela (Megan Fox), Sam is... doing pretty damn well. He's shacked up with Carly, another incredibly hot girl far beyond his league, played by British model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Carly conveniently lives in a warehouse with ceilings high enough to accommodate Sam's other ride, Bumblebee, and she's way cool with Sam's other robot friends, though the little annoying ones are not allowed to crash indoors. But Sam can't find a job in this economy, despite being a Medal of Honor winner, with a hilarious photo taken with President Obama to prove it. What Sam really wants is to continue working with the Autobots as their, aptly described, "Decepticon bad luck magnet", but the new National Security Chief Frances McDormand has shut him out. Despite all he's done, McDormand dismisses Sam as "just a messenger". Man, did that cut Sam deep.

In a laborious series of seemingly disconnected events full to the brim with this franchise's brand of inane comedy, Sam's antics turn out to be intricately connected to what's happening with the Transformers. Sam goes to work for John Malkovich's software company while Carly finds gainful employment for a McDreamy boss, Patrick Dempsey, who mainly pays her to pour herself into the tightest dresses possible and pose for photographs with him and his prized car collection. Sam and McDreamy hate each other, and there's little doubt when it comes to McDreamy, there's more than meets the eye. One of Sam's new co-workers turns out to be Laserbeak, the coolest new Decepticon, a bird of prey who can transform into any piece of office equipment. Laserbeak is on a rampage killing humans who were keeping the Great Secret of Why NASA Shut Down The Space Program And Never Returned to the Moon (lucky for Buzz Aldrin, who cameos and meets the Autobots with wide-eyed wonder, he was spared being murdered by Laserbeak). 

What is the Great Secret? Hard to say, exactly. Dark of the Moon lost me with its confusing details. (Luckily, I never gave a shit anyway.) Mainly, McDreamy's company has been collaborating with the Decepticons for decades and they stole most (but not all - why?) of the Pillars that make the Space Bridge from the Ark. Then they were responsible for shutting down all further lunar missions. The Decepticons were doing this with the humans in a wildly forward-thinking scheme, despite their leader Megatron being frozen in stasis underneath the Hoover Dam until 2007, as we witnessed in the events of the first Transformers. And yet, Megatron, who lumbers around with obvious brain damage, which he covers up with a tattered shawl, takes full credit for this plan all along. Well, of course he would. Never mind that making sense. Soon, the Decepticons activate the Space Bridge and bring legions of ugly, interchangeable gun metal grey Decepticons to invade and hold Earth hostage. The Decepticons demand the humans renounce and banish the Autobots. Someone even says "the Autobots don't have a ship" when we just saw Optimus Prime use a ship to go to the moon like an hour before! 

The Decepticons also engineered events so that Optimus would find and revive Sentinel Prime. Why do they want this? Because Sentinel Prime was also a Decepticon collaborator all along! Sentinel and Megatron struck a deal before he left Cybertron. But then why did the Deceptions attack the Ark and cause it to crash land on our moon? Sentinel's heel turn was actually foreshadowed early in the movie via Wheelie and his ugly little sidekick watching an episode of Star Trek on TV, "the one where Spock went nuts". Sentinel even utters Spock's most famous words, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few", but Sentinel perverted Spock's credo into a dreadful metaphor for human slavery. (Sentinel also got it backwards: there are many more humans than there are Transformers.) After reviving Sentinel, Optimus bends the knee and offers Sentinel the Matrix of Leadership, but Sentinel refused it. Why? Is Sentinel evil, misguided, or just a crazy old robot coot? Probably all of the above.

While all that's going on, McDreamy reveals his McSteamy evilness and takes Carly hostage. They hole up in that bastion of evil, Trump Tower in Chicago (excellent product placement), and watch helplessly as the Deceptions tear Chi-town a new one. (With all of those gigantic robot ships blowing up Gotham City, Batman wisely decided to stay out of it. But the League of Shadows must have been high-fiving and going apeshit.) Sentinel activates the Space Bridge to fulfill the master plan, to bring the planet Cybertron into Earth's atmosphere (defies the laws of physics, indeed)! When the titanic planet Cybertron materializes beside our tiny blue orb, in a visual startlingly similar to the series finale of Smallville, what Earth needed most wasn't Optimus Prime but Tom Welling's Superman to fly up there and push Cybertron away.

Sam leads a rescue mission into Chicago, with his old robot-killing buddies Duhamel, Tyrese (it takes almost 2 hours for him to show but man, was I glad to see Tyrese!), a slew of soldiers, and the Autobots, in tow. "I'll kill you," Sam promises McDreamy when he absconds with Carly. "We'll kill them all!" Optimus Prime declares before rolling into Chicago. And they make good on those gruesome threats. Boy, do they. Dark of the Moon's third act of all-out destruction in Chicago is the most viscerally satisfying sustained action Michael Bay has delivered in his Transformers trilogy. Bay goes for broke: Decepticons kill Autobots, Autobots kill Decepticons, Decepticons kill humans, humans kill Decepticons, humans kill humans. It's a blood and energon bath. 

The score card tallies impressively for the good guys: Sam and Duhumel personally kill Starscream, though they really should have died in the process instead of emerging unscathed. Humans and Autobots tag team the destruction of Shockwave, the Decepticon cyclops who controls the robot version of the worms from Dune. Optimus Prime is busiest of all; despite Sentinel cutting off his arm Darth Vader-style, Optimus finally unleashes his inner Clint Eastwood. Optimus executes Megatron and pops a cap in Sentinel Prime - like a boss! One shall stand, two shall fall. As for Sam, he finally experiences the joy of murder when he does what all men have wanted to do for years and crushes McDreamy with his bare hands. When Sam and the Autobots are finally done killy-kill killing, the movie just stops, with Optimus Prime's voice over putting all that carnage into perspective, or something. 

Though Dark of the Moon's visual effects are the best of the franchise, with the Transformers themselves looking the sharpest they've ever looked and fighting each other more coherently than ever, the coolest action didn't necessarily involve CGI robots colliding. The sequence where Duhamel leads his strike team to fly across Chicago wearing "wing suits", as they thrillingly soar past and between skyscrapers and evade Deception missiles and lasers, is a jaw dropper. Also amazing was the building-falling-over sequence, as our human heroes scramble not to plummet to their deaths, sliding down the sides of buildings and evading Decepticon interlopers. 

In Real D 3D, Dark of the Moon's action was astounding. People raved about Avatar (not me) and its 3D, but Dark of the Moon was the best live-action 3D movie spectacle I've ever seen. The colors were bright throughout the movie. The picture clarity was ideal. The movie looked beautiful. And the action was unreal to behold. Bay embraced 3D with stunning (and sexy) results, delivering eye-popping moments like Sam launched out of Bumblebee in mid-transformation, hanging in mid-air, and then landing back inside Bumblebee. For once, 3D really delivered above and beyond (proven low) expectations.

When it comes to physical comedy, Shia LaBeouf is the new, but much angrier and unhinged, John Ritter. In what he promised is his final outing as the star of Transformers, LaBeouf delivered a tour de force performance. He's like the Tasmanian Devil; a whirlwind of laughter, fury, fists-flying, and even gob-spitting. One can joke how Optimus Prime is irreplaceable, but it'll be an enormous challenge for whomever inherits Transformers from Michael Bay to find someone who can anchor these overblown spectacles the way LaBeouf has with his manic, what is he doing?, style of acting.

Megan Fox's departure left a Megan Fox hole in Transformers that Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and her curves were game to fill. Bless her. Huntington-Whiteley easily slides into the sexy girlfriend role and acquits herself with winsome warmth and vulnerability. Most importantly, fuckability, the main virtue Michael Bay cast her for. Huntington-Whiteley seemed not to mind Bay's camera sliding on the floor behind her, aimed straight up at her sumptuous posterior, as Fox reportedly did.  In referencing her absence, Fox got off surprisingly easy; Wheelie just said "she was mean", compared to how he humped her leg and called her a "crazy bitch" in Revenge of the Fallen. Sam's mother still remembers Fox fondly as a "world-class hottie".

Still, I missed Megan Fox. The big difference between Fox and Huntington-Whiteley, besides their hair color, accents, and the length of their surnames, is that Fox's character Mikaela was never a damsel in distress. She never needed rescuing or to be dragged by the arm across an exploding battlefield. When the Decepticons were about to execute Bumblebee, Carly urged Sam to stay safe and not save him. This is in stark contrast to how in the first Transformers, Mikaela strapped a damaged Bumblebee to a tow trick and they zipped around blasting Decepticons. In Rosie's defense, she does get a piece of business where she cons Megatron into thinking his new buddy Sentinel Prime will betray him, which leads to Megatron's doom. So that's something. But in the final analysis, Rosie, you're lovely, but sorry, Megan Fox rules.

Nearly everyone else from the prior Transformers returned for Dark of the Moon, including Julie White and Kevin Dunn as Sam's goofball parents, Glenn Morshower as "General Morshower", and still the reigning world champion of Transformers scenery chewing, John Turturro as Agent Seymour Simmons. Challenging Turturro's status are newbies Malkovich, McDormand, Alan Tudyk as Turturro's bizarrely violent gay assistant, and Ken Jeong, boldly carrying any charges the movie may spark of racism and homophobia onto his shoulders as the crazy Asian guy whom Malkovich catches seemingly having gay sex with LaBeouf in a men's room stall. By the third act, Turturro and McDormand, whose characters are ex-lovers, seemingly just go into business for themselves and compete in trying to crack the other up.

Now that Michael Bay has delivered arguably his best Transformers film (for sure, it isn't his worst) and he and Shia LaBeouf are expected to walk away from the franchise, where does Transformers go from here? Can the franchise get even bigger, louder, more spectacle-laden? Should it? Perhaps the logical next step is to scale down. The Autobot and Decepticon characters have played second fiddle to the human characters for three straight films. Maybe Transformers 4 could simply be an intimate character study - Optimus Prime and Megatron sitting at a diner, talking, trading wits. Hey, is Woody Allen interested in directing Transformers? Woody, have your people call Optimus Prime's people.

Green Lantern

GREEN LANTERN

** SPOILERS **

How Hal Jordan Learned to Stop Worrying and Love His Power Ring

Green Lantern is the story of how the first human member of the Green Lantern Corps, Hal Jordan, finally grows a set. It introduces a cosmic scope to comic book superhero movies, proudly thumping a wild concept where 3,600 super powered space aliens sporting identical jewelry defend the universe against "evil" and mete out "justice" at the behest of blue skinned, white haired dwarves styling themselves as The Guardians of the Universe. Yet instead of non-stop high-flying space adventure, the entire movie gets grounded by the craven emotional issues of handsome Ryan Reynolds. Perhaps the wise words of Stone Cold Steve Austin would have helped Hal Jordan: "Fuck Fear, Drink Beer."

The Hal Jordan I recall from my days of reading DC Comics was a macho, swaggering, fearless, alpha male. That Hal Jordan was a superheroic version of Chuck Yaeger who wore his fighter jet around his finger. In Green Lantern, Ryan Reynolds' Hal Jordan is a talented screw up of a hotshot test pilot who watched his daddy die when his fighter jet blew up in a fireball. (The villain Hector Hammond's father Tim Robbins later dies in a fireball explosion. If you're a dad in a Green Lantern movie, avoid exploding fireballs.) Watching his father's grisly death as a boy still made him want to be a test pilot like his old man, but flashbacks haunt him while he's in the air, and his derring-do fighter jet heroics forced him to crash his expensive jet plane.  

Hal Jordan is a disappointment to nearly everyone. His glamorous girlfriend/boss/fellow fighter jet pilot Carol Ferris (Blake Lively) is disappointed in him. His brothers are disappointed in him. When the craziest thing ever happens and "a dying purple alien" named Abin Sur (Temura Morrison) gives Jordan a Power Ring fueled by willpower (will color code: green) that turns him into Green Lantern and rockets him to the planet OA, his fellow Green Lanterns are also disappointed in him. Hal Jordan's also a disappointment to himself, moping around his apartment whenever he finds a spare moment. There's no reason to go against the overwhelming attitude the movie has towards Hal Jordan, so count the audience in as being disappointed in him as well.

On OA, Hal Jordan is introduced to his fellow Green Lanterns. These include comic book fanboy favorites like the fish man Tomar-Re (voice of Geoffrey Rush), the Green Lantern of Exposition, and a massive warthog man named Kilowog (voice of Michael Clarke Duncan), the drill sergeant of the Green Lantern Corps who says the word "poozer" a lot. Foremost among Green Lanterns is Sinestro (Mark Strong, letting the pink make up, Spock ears and contact lenses color his foul mood), hailed as "The Greatest of the Green Lanterns". Sinestro is the de facto leader of the Corps by virtue of his having a British accent, the most intimidating stare, and for giving the most speeches to the assembled masses of motley aliens in green. 

Kilowog and Sinestro take ample liberties to beat up on their newest recruit. Kilowog calls this "training". Jordan is so disheartened by his first visit to OA and every Green Lantern telling him he sucks that he "quits" the Corps. What does quitting the Green Lantern Corps mean? Absolutely nothing, because Hal Jordan still kept the ring, Power Battery, and the skintight uniform pulsing with tendrils of emerald energy. What did we learn on OA? That Hal Jordan can't take a little hazing.

So none of the Green Lanterns are impressed with Hal Jordan, despite seeing him naked (the dude's eight pack has an eight pack). Speaking of naked Green Lanterns, Sinestro mourns Jordan's predecessor Abin Sur, who was his mentor and friend. (Heartwarming solidarity between pink and purple Green Lanterns.) Abin Sur's body was captured by the US Government and held in a private lab. Why the Government chose to build a lab right in front of the Stargate is beyond explanation. Sleaze ball scientist Hector Hammond (a well-cast Peter Saarsgard) is recruited by G-Men to examine Abin Sur's naked Green Lantern corpse and provide an autopsy.

Hammond's first discovery of note: Abin Sur apparently has no genitals. Second discovery of note: a second alien entity, a piece of Parallax, was inside this alien eunuch and soon Hector Hammond is possessed, granted psionic powers, and is mutated into a deformed, yellow-eyed freak by Parallax. Check out the big brain on Hector! (We never find out what happens to Abin Sur's corpse. It just disappears from the movie, like JFK's brain. You'd think the Green Lantern Corps would want to honor Abin Sur by burial in the graveyard of Green Lanterns Hal Jordan flies past on OA, but apparently not.)

What is Parallax? Green Lantern's space mythology posits that it's an alien smoke and ash cloud which preys on the fear of living beings (fear color code: yellow). Parallax has been loosed from its space imprisonment and is coming to destroy OA. I'm not clear on space geography but apparently the planet Earth is in the way of Parallax's trajectory to OA, so it'll destroy Earth first. Parallax eats your fear and kills you, whether you're a Green Lantern or not. Sinestro tries to rally the Guardians to stop Parallax, but the Guardians refuse to even admit they are too scared shitless to do anything. Later, when Sinestro leads an assault on Parallax and watches it suck his best and brightest green buddies to yellow pieces, Sinestro figuratively craps his green pants. No one was more frightened at that moment than Sinestro - why didn't Parallax attack him then? Instead, Sinestro loses all faith in the Green Lantern Corps and pleads with the Guardians to create a yellow Power Ring to "fight fear with fear." The Guardians, billions of years immortal which equals billions of years of being idiots, acquiesce. 

In a way, Green Lantern is a movie about horrible bosses who don't tell their employees how to do their jobs. The Guardians absolutely suck. They're worse than the Jedi Council, who had no idea for ten years that the Emperor of the Sith was living in the building across the street from their Jedi Temple. Sinestro has a couple of private meetings with the Guardians urging them to take action - any action - against Parallax. It turns out Parallax is - surprise! - a former Guardian who got seduced by the yellow light of fear. (What a shock considering how often we were shown the missing pillar in the Guardians' circle of very tall pillars.)

Of course, the stupid Guardians make completely the wrong call: despite knowing what can happen if subjected to the yellow light of fear, the Guardians make a yellow Power Ring anyway. What could possibly go wrong?* Late in the movie, Hal Jordan pleads with the Guardians for help to save Earth from Parallax. They flat out tell him no, but Jordan still asks for permission to let him save Earth alone. Wait, didn't he quit? Apparently, no one took his "quitting" seriously. But why does Jordan need the Guardians' permission to do his job as a Green Lantern?

Parallax is no better a boss than the Guardians. Why would it be? It used to be one of them. When Parallax  gets to Earth, it attacks its flunky Hector Hammond, screaming, "You've failed me!" How? Parallax never even told Hammond what its plan was! How did Hammond fail Parallax? Hammond didn't even have time to ask before Parallax sucked him yellow and dry. Billions of years immortal, Parallax is also billions of years stupid like its former blue buddies. When Hal Jordan finally mans up, overcomes his fears, and takes on Parallax in the too-brief third act showdown, the swirling cloud of black ash dreadlocks follows Jordan into space and falls for the oldest space trick in the book: the ol' getting sucked into the sun's gravitational pull gambit. Parallax: What a dummy. (By the way, Hal Jordan is also a dick for destroying a satellite as it lured Parallax into space. Now millions of people won't be able to use their cell phones or watch TV!)

The good news of Green Lantern is that the abilities of the Power Rings are fully explored. The rings are powered by the wearer's will but are dependent on his imagination to make constructs. Jordan's first construct (and last, the neat-o KO punch to Parallax) is his ever-popular trademark giant green boxing glove. Jordan evolves from basic creations like brick walls and swords (Sinestro chastises him for his lack of creativity) to bad ass weapons like gatling guns and... even bigger gatling guns. Sinestro conjured up a ringed shield that looked suspiciously like the one hefted by a certain star-spangled Avenger who also has a movie due out later this summer. That slick ladies' man Jordan even manifested an emerald necklace for Carol Ferris. She was probably less impressed when it inevitably de-materialized.

And yet, there isn't enough ring-slinging, cosmic derring-do in Green Lantern. Two thirds of the movie is spent on Earth treading water as Hal Jordan mopes around and sorts out his new dual identity as a superhero. Green Lantern makes his first public appearance saving the employees of Ferris Aircraft from a helicopter disaster, sort of like Superman did in Superman: The Movie. And like Superman, Green Lantern takes his best girl out at night and explains his powers and his green-itude to her, only Carol leaves disappointed by his admission as a craven quitter. Credit Carol Ferris for having the common sense to immediately realize Hal Jordan is the Green Lantern; she knows that face and his rippled physique well enough so that no painted-on domino mask or coalescing green energy can fool her. 

Jordan also has time to bond with his sidekick Tom "Pieface" Kalmaku (Taika Waititi). In - how does one put this? - the least heterosexual movie scene between two dudes since Paul Walker and Vin Diesel ate peel and eat shrimp together in The Fast and the Furious, Tom shows up at Jordan's apartment and begs Jordan, fresh out of bed wearing PJ pants and a wifebeater, to "Show it to me!" "Show it to me! Show it to me, Hal! Whoa! Green!" Yes yes, Tom meant he wanted to see the ring and the Green Lantern costume, but any Power Ring could suss out the subtext. Ring-a-ding-ding!

It's no mystery as to why Ryan Reynolds was cast as Hal Jordan. He's a good looking guy, the chicks dig him, the guy's a stud! Reynolds is actually ideal for this uncertain, frightened letdown of a Hal Jordan. Hal could be great but he constantly needs motivational talks or an asskicking to get him to do anything worthwhile. As a hotshot fighter pilot-slash-high-powered corporate executive, Blake Lively sure is pretty. She's so pretty, isn't she? So pretty. Even when Lively's not on screen, the movie makes sure to regularly remind us how pretty she is by showing us newspaper clippings with pictures of her looking so pretty.

Green Lantern's underwritten characters slog through the movie playing through their rote one-dimensional relationships. Lively has nothing to do except scold Hal Jordan and then support him with "you can do it, you can overcome all your fears" cheerleading while crying over what a loser he is when he flies off in a wisp of green. (She does, however, come up with the novel idea of launching missiles at Parallax, the swirling black cloud of fear. And the missiles worked!) Saarsgard preens and mugs as Hammond, but even with his big head, Hammond is no brainiac in the villainy department. Hammond just wants to do Carol Ferris and is jealous of Hal Jordan for looking like Ryan Reynolds. Tim Robbins and Angela Bassett play their generic Senator and Government Agent roles forgettably. The dialogue is trite. No one says anything interesting. Every character is locked in rigidly to the movie's generic, color-by-numbers origin plotline. 

The fun of Green Lantern was somehow lost in that wormhole between Earth and OA. Despite the finest in computer generated wizardry at their disposal to bring the aliens and dazzling powers and emerald constructs of Green Lantern to cinematic life, four credited screenwriters and director Martin Campbell manage what the most evil cosmic forces in DC Comics couldn't: snuff the gee-whiz enjoyment out of Green Lantern's light. Like Parallax does with yellow fear, Green Lantern sucked the joy out of being green.

* The epilogue: During the closing credits, we see Sinestro place the yellow Power Ring on his finger and become... well, Sinestro, but wearing the yellow uniform of the yet-unnamed Sinestro Corps. While obviously setting up the hoped-for sequel, it makes no sense why Sinestro would wear the yellow ring at this point. When Hal Jordan destroyed Parallax all by himself, Sinestro (who showed up at the end of the fight with Tomar-Re and Kilowog to save Jordan's life but too late to actually help Jordan fight Parallax) was so impressed and gung ho with Jordan, he lead the pro-Green Lantern Corps rally on OA. Jordan, the greenest (ahem) recruit, killing the Greatest Threat OA Ever Faced, just validated the awesomeness of willpower and the bad assery of the Green Lanterns! Why would Sinestro suddenly get curious yellow? Doesn't make sense.

Super 8

SUPER 8

** SPOILERS **

"Mint."

What fun it is to make a movie! The most exhilirating moments of JJ Abrams' Super 8 involve the film's main characters, a group of middle school-age friends, banding together in the summer of 1979 to shoot a zombie movie in their Ohio small town. Invoking what must be vivid memories from his own youth, Super 8 projects a childhood filled with wonder, tragedy, adventure, young love, and discovery most of us didn't have but those of us who were weened on Steven Spielberg films feel like we had in our collective imaginations.

I love Steven Spielberg's movies more than the next guy, unless that next guy is JJ Abrams. Super 8 is a loving homage to all things classic-Spielbergian. Familiar elements and even whole action sequences from Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, and The Goonies are cheerfully and meticulously woven by Abrams into his film. The trouble with Super 8 comes when its confident, nostalgic Steven Spielberg-ness yields to disruptive, uncertain JJ Abrams-ness. 

When the young filmmakers, including The Girl They Like, shoot late at night in a train depot outside of their town, their worlds are suddenly upended by a violent train explosion that releases... something... into their midst. The train disaster is Explosion Porn. It might well be the most horrific, graphic, action sequence in a movie this year. The sequence is relentless, goes on for what feels like forever, and Abrams presents the fiery devastation with almost maniacal intensity. (That the five children survive such a catatastrophe completely unharmed is the first of many conceits we are asked to accept.)

Soon, strange happenings pile up in their little corner of (white) Americana. (There is one black person in the whole movie. He is a scientist but guess what? He dies - but not before he pulls a gun on a bunch of white kids.) Townspeople go missing, dogs scatter out of town in all directions, power outages become increasingly commonplace, and electronic devices mysteriously vanish. The investigation by the local deputy, Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights, is stonewalled by the US Air Force, which has all but commandeered the town and soon evacuates it and turns it into a war zone.

What is the Super 8 Secret?  It's an alien, and like E.T., it wants to go home. But unlike the cuddly E.T., the alien is a big, gruesome, multi-limbed CGI creature that looks like re-purposed concept art from Abrams' previous hits Cloverfield and Star Trek. The alien, its reveal, and the circumstances surrounding its existence let all the air out of the Super 8 balloon. The alien creates more questions than Super 8 is willing to answer: Why did it kidnap townspeople? Why did it smash up parts of the town when it wanted to stay hidden so it could rebuild its spaceship? What did the Air Force learn from it after holding it in captivity for 20 years? Why am I not actually interested in any of the answers?

Super 8 is "mint" when the young filmmakers - chubby writer/director/tyrant-in-training Charles (Riley Griffith), pyrotechnics enthusiast Cary (Ryan Lee), future Method actor Martin (Gabriel Basso), and our charismatic hero, model-builder/makeup artist Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) - are simply immersed trying to make their zombie movie, having loud, passionate arguements about "character motivations" and "production values". The budding relationship between Joe Lamb and the troubled Alice, played etherially by Elle Fanning, is handled gently and sweetly. The young cast is honest and excellent. An almost-unrecognizable David Gallagher from 7th Heaven provides welcome comic relief as the stoner dude who works at the local camera store ("No one develops film overnight, asshole.") and has the hots for Charles' sister AJ Michalka.

At its best moments, Super 8 is a wonderful film about youth, love of movies, friendship, and hard-earned understanding between father and son and father and daughter. Except it has a rotten CGI alien monster in it. Stay through the closing credits to watch the terrific, utterly hilarious super 8 zombie movie the kids made. It's worlds better than Super 8's bewildering third act.

X-Men: First Class

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

** SPOILERS **

 Groovy, Baby

Set in 1962 during the turbulent days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, X-Men: First Class daringly and thrillingly melds colorful comic book superhero action with the panache of Sean Connery's James Bond movies along with the wink-wink political incorrectness of Mad Men. The result of this jazzy Marvelous mashup is the coolest, swingingest, grooviest superhero movie of all-time.

At its core, First Class is about the bromance gone tragically wrong between telepath Charles Xavier and master of magnetism Erik Lensherr, the Martin Luther King and Malcolm X of mutantkind. Portrayed in the December of their years by Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan, Charles and Erik are energically embodied as studly young chaps by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. Together, Charles and Erik lead the first team of mutants to save the world from the Cuban Missile Crisis (a fact seemingly omitted from our history books). A long time ago, they used to be friends.

McAvoy charms as Xavier, a brilliant, cocksure youth with a lustrous head of hair, the full use of his legs, and driven by eternal optimism. McAvoy's desire in taking the role was to depict old Professor X as the opposite of the sexless, wheelchair-confined saint in the previous X-Men movies. What fun to watch Charles trading on his smarts and wit to pick up girls at Oxford, beguiling them with his theories on genetic mutation of all things. (Charles may have been the man who coined the word "groovy".) As the future Magneto, Fassbender is properly conflicted, equally driven by his desire for revenge from the tragedy of his childhood in a Polish concentration camp while forming his greater world view about the role of mutants in the world. Xavier believes in acceptance and co-existence between human and mutant. Magneto, separation and domination. When the pivotal moment that paralyzes Xavier for the rest of his life occurs, it's truly a devastating shock.

And yet, First Class' heart beats just as strongly for the friendship between Xavier and Mystique, who were inseparable confidants since childhood, and how their lifelong friendship shattered over their increasingly opposing worldviews. In a mainstream movie star-making turn, Jennifer Lawrence is a knockout as a sexy and volatile Mystique. Lawrence finally shows us what makes Mystique tick; how she's driven by her lifelong insecurities as a mutant who can look like anyone but will never be accepted for her true blue, scaly appearance. (A brief moment when Mystique shapeshifts into the body of Rebecca Romijn brought the house down.) When Erik successfully seduces her and Mystique rejects her oldest friend Charles, choosing to stand beside Magneto in the end, it colors the entire X-Men saga as we know it with genuine loss and a grand sense of personal tragedy.

Among First Class' geeky revelations: it's Mystique who came up with the idea of codenames, and she personally names "Professor X" and "Magneto". We discover the secret of Mystique's genetics that allow her to age so slowly, she may well be immortal. Her genes are so potent, Dr. Hank McCoy injecting himself with a "cure" gleaned from her blood cells turns him into a furry blue Beast. Hey, what is it with blue people in X-Men, anyway? Mystique, Beast, Nightcrawler. They're basically their own Blue Man Group. All that's missing is Tobias Funke from Arrested Development saying "I just blue myself".

First Class positively revels in the flower power of youth, as Charles and Erik go on an entertaining worldwide recruitment drive to find the inaugural crop of what will become known as the X-Men (and the Brotherhood of Mutants). In one of the greatest cameos in movie history, one muttonchop-sporting, cigar-chomping potential X-Man tells Charles and Erik to "go fuck yourselves". Along with Mystique as their ring leader, the first class of X-Men are: Nicholas Hoult as the Beast, Caleb Landry Jones as Banshee, Lucas Till as Havok, Zoe Kravitz as Angel (a different one), Edi Gathegi as Darwin (who?). They're thinly but sufficiently sketched characters, and we bond with them as they bond with each other, getting drunk at the CIA compound they demolish while showing off their mutant powers. Even better is a breakneck training montage at the X-Mansion showcasing the hilarious methods by which Xavier trains his X-Men, like defenestrating Banshee to get him to fly.

For villains, First Class offers us the Hellfire Club led by Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, the best Bond villain who was never in a Bond movie. Bacon is an odious scream as the evil Shaw, a long-lived mutant who used to be the Nazis' happiest concentration camp kommendant and is responsible for Erik Lensherr becoming Magneto. Now living in the lap of sleek 1960s luxury, Shaw is busy manipulating the Superpowers into the Cuban Missile Crisis and certain worldwide Armageddon. January Jones from Mad Men is right at home in the 1960s as Shaw's telepathic and diamond-skinned White Queen, the lingerie-clad Emma Frost. Frost boasts two mutant powers, as if trying to compensate for Jones lacking the ability to convey basic human emotion in her acting. Their henchmen are Azazel, basically an evil red version of the teleporting Nightcrawler from X2: X-Men United, and Riptide, an evil Asian guy who breaks wind. Whatever, at least neither of them are Toad.

X-Men: First Class joyfully recreates the early 1960s with gorgeous costumes, stunning production design, and even stylishly throwback closing credits. First Class also raises eyebrows as with its unabashed political incorrectness. Buxom women, including Lawrence, Jones and Rose Byrne as Moira McTaggert, flaunt their charms in lingerie, miniskirts, and go-go boots. (The camera lovingly lingers more than once on Frost's milky curves and Mystique's blue moon.) There's a moment that's stunning in its rude audacity when Bacon attempts to woo the young X-Men to his side, asks them if they'd choose to live as "slaves" and the camera whooshes over to Darwin, the black guy in the group. Moments later, who joins Bacon's evil Hellfire Club? Angel and Darwin, the two minorities, leaving the Caucasian X-Men on side of right. The first X-Man to die? Darwin.

At well over two hours, X-Men: First Class hurtles along with confidence and boundless energy. Like the best Bond movies, it's a globe-spanning lark, pure escapist entertainment. Even with the personal drama between its core characters and the grander themes of the price of tolerance and acceptance ("mutant and proud" becomes Mystique's mantra) which are the hallmark of X-Men, First Class never lags on the X-Factor: Fun. It's a bona fide success for the Marvel team up of director Matthew Vaughn (fresh off his superhero gangbusters Kick-Ass) and producer Bryan Singer (director of X-Men and X2: X-Men United). Singer and Vaughn prove themselves the dynamic duo of X-Men. Here's hoping when it comes time to churn out welcome sequels, their collaboration doesn't go the way of their cinematic counterparts Xavier and Magneto.

The Hangover, Part II

THE HANGOVER, PART II

** SPOILERS **

"It happened again."

When terrorists invaded an airport in Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Bruce Willis has a meta moment where he asks the audience, "How can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?" The Hangover, Part II knows the honest answer: Because the first movie made a butt-ton of money. Once again, the same thing does happen to the same guys twice; before Ed Helms' wedding to Jamie Chung in Thailand, he, Bradley Cooper, and Zach Galifinakis - the Wolfpack - find themselves in a demolished Bangkok hotel room (the same hotel Leonardo DiCaprio stayed in at the start of The Beach?) unable to remember the debauchery of the night before. ("What is wrong with you guys?" asks Sasha Barrese, the wife of their buddy Doug. Doug - the eternally bemused Justin Bartha - is once again left out of the chaos, but this time he's conscious and relaxed at their beach resort, so he's good.) In Doug's place as the missing member of the Wolfpack (who's also missing a member) is Mason Lee as Chung's little brother Teddy. Also back is Ken Jeong as Mr. Chow, his tiny mushroom penis heralding the arrival of the rest of him.  Bangkok is a terrific setting for Part II, lending an air of beauty, danger and the truly bizarre even Las Vegas can't match. The plot moves in grim lockstep with the first movie's; to their credit Cooper and Helms are gung ho in keeping the pace and energy of Part II hurtling along, battling against the constant deja vu. Cooper seemed determined to have a ball making this sequel no matter what and practically wills everyone else to do the same. The bewildered bad boy camraderie of the Wolfpack carries the day, but the quips in Part II aren't nearly as memorable or quotable as its predecessor's. Galifianakis offers moments of his patented inspired lunacy, but there are just as many moments of the Wolfpack together where Galifiankis looks disinterested at the arbitrariness of the proceedings. (My favorite joke of the whole movie, however, involved a speedboat running aground but Galifianakis dropping the anchor anyway.) The montage of photos of the night they can't remember playing over the end credits was even raunchier and funnier than the first movie's. Still, The Hangover was lightning in a bottle. In trying to recapture that lightning, The Hangover, Part II pulls out all the stops: they found the most exotic bottle and performed exotic rain dances in the most exotic beach during an exotic torrential thunderstorm, but try as they might, no lightning, just sparks.