Superman & Batman: Apocalypse

SUPERMAN & BATMAN: APOCALYPSE

Following the comic book's storyline, Superman & Batman: Apocalypse picks up right where Superman/Batman: Public Enemies left off, with some dialogue about President Lex Luthor's impeachment before a mysterious spacecraft crash lands in Gotham City harbor. The spacecraft brings Kara Zor-El to Earth, re-introducing Supergirl to the DC Universe (and the DC Animated Universe). What follows is a largely enjoyable adventure of epic scope involving Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Big Barda of The New Gods waging war, at first with each other and then against Darkseid of Apokolips, for the soul of the innocent but immensely powerful Girl of Steel.  Apocalypse has its share of retarded plotting stemming right from the story penned originally by Jeph Loeb; the worst of which involves an army of Doomsdays invading Paradise Island before being wiped out by Superman's heat vision (why didn't he think of that instead of getting killed in 1992 when facing only one Doomsday?) Knowledge of obscure DC comics characters is required to understand who Harbinger, Big Barda, or even the Female Furies and Granny Goodness are, as Apocalypse has little interest in filling in blanks.  The characterizations are also suspect, especially when Wonder Woman and the Amazons attack Superman in order to bring (i.e. kidnap) Supergirl to Paradise Island "for her own protection". The shoddiness of the plot is more than compensated for by the action, however. The battle between Wonder Woman, Big Barda, and the Female Furies on Apokolips is terrific, but it's topped by the fantastic superbrawl between Darkseid, Superman and Supergirl in Smallville. The two Kryptonians and the dark New God unleash their full fighting prowess. Apocalypse does absolute justice to their awesome powers - this conflagration was tailor-made for animation and would be prohibitively expensive in live action. Especially thrilling was Superman's Superspeed tornado punches on Darkseid and Supergirl's acrobatic prowess and aerial fighting style. Despite the clunky, on-the-nose dialogue they're given, the voice cast is top notch, with Tim Daly and Kevin Conroy returning as Superman and Batman, while Summer Glau lends her voice to a troubled but loveable Supergirl. Andre Braugher's voice as Darkseid feels too Earthbound for the Despot of Apokolips, especially for anyone with fond memories of Darkseid's gravelly voice in the 1980's Super Powers cartoon. The animation attempts to replicate the late Michael Turner's uber-sexy art style, especially with the female characters, with questionable results. By and large, Superman & Batman: Apocalypse is an epic and satisfying DC Universe superhero geek out.

Teenage Paparazzo

TEENAGE PAPARAZZO

** SPOILERS **

Teenage Paparazzo features a famous celebrity examining and trying to understand the phenomenon of the paparazzi through the eyes of the youngest paparazzo in Hollywood. That famous celebrity is Adrian Grenier, star of Entourage and the silver screen (including a multiple award-winning short film called Across the Hall), who takes an interest in a street-wise 14 year old blond moppet named Austin, the aforementioned teenage paparazzo. Grenier points his documentary cameras at the boy, his parents, and the men and women who make their living stalking the streets of Los Angeles looking for famous people to photograph. What results is an entertaining and savvy glimpse into celebrity and the cultural obsession with celebrity worship.

Using Austin as its subject matter, Teenage Paparazzo finds an interesting hook into the somewhat secretive cabal of the paparazzi, while also aptly questioning how a life of pounding the streets of LA at all hours of the day and night adversely affects a bright and driven teenager, as it must, despite the "thousands of dollars" Austin presumably earned for his work. Teenage Paparazzo doesn't find any new answers to why the fame and misadventures of celebrities fascinate the general public so, but perhaps this is because there aren't any new answers besides the obvious.

Teenage Paparazzo ramps up when Grenier himself takes up a camera and chases down fellow celebrities for photographs; this enables him to gain the respect and camraderie of the initially suspicious paparazzi Austin calls his peers, although getting stepped on, literally, was the price he paid. Grenier's storytelling is thoughtful, even-handed, and decidedly not negative; he chooses not to condemn Austin's parents for letting their son basically run wild on the dangerous streets of Los Angeles, allowing the viewer to decide for themselves how appropriate their parenting is. Grenier also makes clear Austin's household is loving and supportive, though highly unorthodox, and there's a great deal of admiration expressed for Austin's hustle and initiative.

Teenage Paparazzo widens its scope in its second half as it grapples with the cultural demand for celebrity worship via magazines like US Weekly. (There's a big laugh when Grenier is caught by paparazzi buying cameras for his excusion as a paparazzo - "He buys cameras! He's just like us!"). As a star of his magnitude, Grenier also able to round up and procure plenty of face time with many of the paparazzi's favorite usual suspects, including Lindsay Lohan, Eva Longoria, and Paris Hilton (who really should learn to not keep calling a 14 year old boy "sexy"). Alternately, Jaleel "Steve Urkel" White's presence as an interviewee is a head scratcher. Grenier and Hilton have fun playing with the paparazzi, staging dates and beach excursions, further blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

In the end, Grenier admirably accepts responsibility for the heavy role he played in turning Austin into a celebrity himself via making Teenage Paparazzo about him (although Austin was already gaining fame over the Internet and was offered a reality show on E!). It's shocking when the documentary leaps "a year later" to find an older Austin, less shaggy, and looking a bit like a tomboy Carey Mulligan. A wiser Austin seems have grown out of the frenetic need to parasite off of the famous, and he seems to have shed the desire to become famous himself. Still, living in Los Angeles, surrounded constantly by the famous and wealthy, one has to wonder how long until he's bitten once more by that paparazzi bug. At the very least, it seems like there's room for Austin in Adrian Grenier's entourage.

Never Let Me Go

NEVER LET ME GO

** SPOILERS **

Never Let Me Go is wonderfully directed by Mark Romanek and impeccably acted by Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield. I hated it. A science fiction tale set from 1978-1994 and wrapped in stoic British manners and repression, Never Let Me Go opens as Mulligan narrates her life as an organ donor, bred along with many others like her in a closed society run like a private school. They exist to provide their organs at the behest of the state when they reach adulthood; after three donations, they typically reach "completion" - they die. The first section of Never Let Me Go contains some of the finest performances by child actors I've ever seen from Izzy Meikle-Small, Ella Purnell, and Charlie Rowe as the younger versions of Mulligan, Knightley, and Garfield. (This is marred a bit by the lack of resemblance between the latter two to their adult counterparts. The children for the most part even acted circles around the more famous adults.) Mulligan's ability to cry on demand is astounding: over and over, always perfect streams down her cheeks with perfect bulbs of tears dripping down. The reveal comes early what these children's destinies are, bluntly stated, as are many of the themes and feelings between the characters later on in the picture. Little bits of information are doled out that in the world of this movie, cancer has been cured as a result of these medical breakthroughs.  As they grow into adulthood still largely innocent of the world, Mulligan, Knightley and Garfield struggle not just with the physical toll being donors takes on them, but in trying to make sense of their brief, awful lives. Knightley in particular must make amends for the wrongs she has done to Mulligan in denying her love and happiness. An unintentionally but morbidly funny moment is when Knightley "completes" on the operating table; the surgeons suddenly pack up their tools and gear and hit the bricks, leaving her gaping open corpse laying there, probably for the janitor to gather up and chuck down the garbage chute. Even the evil organ harvesters in Turistas were more considerate. Together, Mulligan and Garfield attempt in vein to obtain a deferral from donation and completion because they have "true love", foolishly hoping such a "deferral" even exists. Their dilemma somewhat echos the Replicants' desire in Blade Runner to have more life. Never Let Me Go has absorbing moments but the overall effect conveyed is excruciating misery and hopelessness.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

** SPOILERS **

"Money is a bitch that never sleeps."

Set during the economic collapse of 2008, roughly the same time that Barack Obama was elected President and Sasha Grey was giving lonely rich men a girlfriend experience, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps trumpets the return of Michael Douglas as 1980's slickster Gordon Gekko, and the return of Gekko to relevance. Hawking his life story of wealth and incarceration while speaking to young Wall Street hopefuls as a means to pay the rent for his midtown high rise apartment, Douglas still oozes charm and oily promise as he plots his way into the $100,000,000 trust fund he left his daughter, the unfortunately named Winnie Gekko, played by Carey Mulligan. Mulligan is engaged to Shia LaBeouf, an up and coming, idealistic young millionaire trader. LaBeouf tries to earn Douglas' favor both to reunite Mulligan with her father and to exact revenge on Josh Brolin, the current king of Wall Street, for destroying the company LaBeouf works for. Director Oliver Stone has a lot to say about the real-life financial collapse of Wall Street and much of what he does say is on the nose (including images of dominoes falling and a final shot of a bubble floating into the sky, not bursting - what, no house of cards or Jenga tower collapsing?). The scenes of the backdoor dealings by the heads of the major Wall Street magnates purposefully echos the criminal stylings of The Godfather, right down to the presence of Eli Wallach. There's some interesting commentary on the future of investing, with the movie championing green energy and research into fusion as the way of the future. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is really an old fashioned story about payback, who wins and who loses when you play with men's lives for all-or-nothing stakes. Gekko's true motives are kept on the back burner for most of the movie until he triumphantly returns to greasy-topped billionaire form at the end, once more a made man. (Charlie Sheen cameos as Bud Fox, Gekko's ambitious protege in the original Wall Street, and we're amused but not surprised at how poorly he turned out.) With a PG-13 rating instead of its predecessor's R, Money Never Sleeps is considerably less lurid about the sex, drugs and power incredible wealth brings, but that was a story for another era. Instead, this new Wall Street features performances from Douglas, LaBeouf, and Mulligan of genuine emotional power as they resolve their familial issues. (Douglas is moving when he bares his soul to his daughter in a rare unguarded moment of vulnerability. Mulligan is a gold medal winner at turning on the waterworks and crying on demand). In the end, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps argues that greed is still good today, and even a Gekko can change his spots, just a little.

Community 2x1 - "Anthropology 101"

I watched the entire NBC comedy block of premieres and I thought overall, Community killed everything.

The third act where "Jeff Learns About Respect" and Chang does a riff on Norman Osborne/The Green Goblin* (Donald Glover waking up in Spider-Man pajamas was brilliant) was the weakest act but it was preceded by about a million comedic hand grenades. The best of which was pretty much the entire second act blowing through a Jeff/Britta relationship and wedding storyline in the worst possible manner, preceded by the nastiest French kiss makeout between two attractive people I may have ever seen. 

Not only did they blow through Jeff/Britta as a couple in one act, they did it by simultaneously demolishing the study group before putting it back together. 

There isn't enough love in this world for Alison Brie and her beautiful reaction shots. Nor is there enough of her reaction shots in this world.

Plus Betty White drank her own pee and sang a Toto song with Abed and Troy at the end.

They're back, baby! Now, we go to school!

Before the episode was the experimental Community "Twittersode" setting up the season 2 premiere.

Jeff, Abed, Troy, Britta, Annie, Shirley, Pierce, Starburns, Dean Pelton, Senior Chang and Annie's Boobs the monkey are all Tweeting between 7pm-8pm Eastern time setting up the first class of the new semester.

And it actually is funny. Read them here:

http://twitter.com/​​​​BackoftheHead/​​​​greendale

This being Twitter, you have to read from the bottom up, and the Twittersode officially starts with Annie:

@AnnieEdisonGCC OMG I HAVE THE LAZIEST MOST DISORGANIZED INATTENTIVE FRIENDS ON THE PLANET // #NBCCommunity

But there's funny stuff before that even.

* Yes, I realize now it was Gollum:

@kenjeong Thank you all for the kind comments! Good Smeagol always helps. #Gollumchang #MyPrecious 

The Town

THE TOWN

** SPOILERS **

"My Sunny Days..."

The Town is an entertaining, well-made, crowd-pleasing crime thrillah, with terrific performances from a talented cast, all steeped in local Bahston colah. In his sophomore directing effort, Ben Affleck creates a Boston-based version of Heat; a story of bank robbers, the lawmen trying to catch them, and the women who fall for them. If it falls short of Heat (Michael Mann's LA-based epic) or The Departed (the Boston crime epic directed by Martin Scorsese), it's because The Town isn't so much a love letter to Boston or Boston crime but a love letter from director Ben Affleck to the actor Ben Affleck.

Affleck, who co-wrote The Town, casts himself in the lead role as the Most Noble Bank Robber in Boston. In the pulse-pounding Cambridge bank robbery that opens the picture, Affleck and his crew take bank manager Rebecca Hall hostage when they make their escape. His ticking time bomb of a best friend Jeremy Renner wants Hall rubbed out lest she is able to identify them to the FBI. Affleck, who was so gentle and compassionate with Hall during the bank robbery because deep down, he's just a really nice guy who wants to change, becomes smitten with the lovely Hall. He starts to romance her and entertain the idea of "getting out of Bahston for the first time in my life" and not be a bank robber anymore. What better way to do it than with the love of the girl whose bank he robbed?

Though her new fellah knows a lot about the punishments for larceny and felony offenders (because he says he watches "a lot of CSI and Bones", big laugh), Hall is too distracted by Affleck's broad shoulders, square cleft jaw, and "aw shucks, I'm just a Townie who breaks rahcks for a livin', I can't believe I get to be with a girl like you" demeanor to realize he's part of the crew that robbed her bank. There's a subplot about Hall noticing the Fighting Irish tattoo on the back of Jeremy Renner's neck that the movie belabors but nothing comes of it. The resolution to their relationship takes the expected turn when Hall finally realizes her new boyfriend is the very same guy who held her up at gunpoint and traumatized her. The final moments between them is a swipe right out of Heat, when Ashley Judd spoke in code on the phone to Val Kilmer, confirming she still loves him but telling him to walk away because the cops are waiting to spring a trap.

Besides being a charming local boy who's sweet to the ladies, Affleck is also a master of crime. He's the brilliant strategist of his crew, he's a master of disguise, and he's certified to drive any vehicle, including city buses. Affleck operates by Grand Theft Auto video game rules where he can enter any vehicle at any time and immediately drive it away, usually right in front of the cops staring right at him. In his closet, Affleck has uniforms from every city agency: Boston Police, MBTA, EMTs, etc. I think had a cowboy costume and an astronaut suit in there too, in case he and his crew ever want to take down NASA. When not wearing uniforms illegally, Affleck favors jackets and hoodies from every local Boston sports team, laying it on real thick that he's Boston through and through ("The Sox got rocked!"). 

Affleck has a complex back story riddled with secrets. He was abandoned by his mother at the age of six, which is a funny story all the old Townies like to tell; how little Ben wandered around Charlestown looking for his missing ma when she was dead of a drug overdose. He could have been a pro hockey playah but he washed out. His father Chris Cooper is in the clink and has to "die five times before he can get out". Affleck also is the reason Jeremy Renner spent nine years in prison for killing a man; he did it to save Affleck's life. Slinking around the local bahs as a prostitute and drug mule is Blake Lively as Renner's sister. She used to be Affleck's girl and has a kid who isn't Affleck's whom Renner seems to think Affleck should help raise anyway, though Affleck disagrees. Affleck's father worked as a bank robber for the local crime lord/florist Pete Postlethwaite, who won't let Affleck walk away from this life of crime; The Town makes it very clear who the real bad guy is (not Ben).

In the traditional sense, the real hero of The Town is Jon Hamm as the FBI lawman trying to nail Affleck and his crew. Hamm creates a crime fighting action hero version of Don Draper from Mad Men, complete with a shot of him in his suit drinking whiskey in his office. (My TV bias will show as I found myself firmly rooting for Hamm and his partner Titus Welliver, the Man in Black from Lost.) Compared to knowing every last little thing about Affleck, we find out nothing about Hamm besides that he's the lead FBI agent on the case of Affleck's crew. Still, Hamm is intelligent enough in the movie to anticipate Affleck's movements and coerce Lively to turn informant for the FBI. Hamm manages to play the two women in Affleck's life against him but still comes up empty.

Hamm's great victory is taking down Jeremy Renner with a hail of gunfire on Boylston Street outside of Fenway Park, but Affleck eludes his grasp. The whole movie seems to build towards Hamm and Affleck having at it for all the marbles but this moment never materializes. We instead have to settle for Hamm's only face to face confrontation with Affleck where Affleck cooly rebuffs Hamm's intimidation attempt and turns the tables on the Feds, strutting out of the JFK building scott free. Oh, that Ben. How do you like dem apples?

Though I had no idea, even as a native Bostonian, that Charlestown is "the bank robbery capital of America", the city of Boston itself is showcased wonderfully in The Town. The physical moments of the characters make geographic sense according to how the city is laid out, which isn't often the case with movies set in Boston. Hamm, to his credit, makes no attempt at the Bahston accent, representing the hundreds of thousands of people who live in the city but don't speak like that. Almost every other actor affects the infamous local accent and Lively has a few moments where I absolutely had no idea what she was saying. I found myself reaching for a non-existent remote to turn the subtitles on during Lively's scenes. The bank robberies, especially the grand finale of taking down "the cathedral of Bahston", Fenway Park, for $3-million, are staged thrillingly.

There sure doesn't seem to be a point to being a bank robber from Charlestown. Affleck and his crew meticulously plan out their heists with sophisticated methods (torching their getaway cards, bleaching the banks' shelves to destroy DNA) and get away with hundreds of thousands of dollars, but no matter how much they steal, they still seem to be poor Townies eating and drinking in the same dive bahs in Chahlestown. We see Renner blow his money on strippers and booze. Meanwhile, noble Affleck becomes a modern day Robin Hood who gives all of his money to Hall to help the poor children of the Town have a new ice skating rink. Affleck clearly and understandably saw there was no point in robbing banks until he's incarcerated or shot dead. 

And yet, Affleck's story, by all rights, should have ended with him six feet undah at the hands of the lawman Hamm, not forlornly pining for Hall while watching the sun set over the banks of Dawson's Creek. Affleck gets a second chance at a better life, but does he deserve one? In another town, one not made by Ben for Ben, justice would have been served.

Easy A

EASY A

** SPOILERS **

The best and, really, the only reason to see Easy A is for Emma Stone, who delights in her first leading role. Stone plays Olive, the (rumored to be) most promiscuous girl in her school - rumors she started herself unwittingly, then later as favors to the needy, then later for modest payment usually in the form of gift cards to various chain stores, then still later to continue proving a point she no longer believes in which becomes a burden. Easy A is loosely based on "The Scarlett Letter" (the novel and the original movie, not the crappy "Demi Moore version where she takes a lot of baths"). But it also, to its detriment by drawing the direct comparisons, directly references various high school movies from the 1980's complete with footage: The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Can't Buy Me Love, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Say Anything. All of which are superior to Easy A. Proving herself a bona fide leading lady, Stone is just terrific; this is mainly because she's the smartest and best written (though endearingly flawed) person of her age in the movie. The rest of the young cast don't have the chops and aren't written to be the equal of Stone in intelligence or wit, not even Aly Michalka from Hellcats as her best friend nor chipmunk-looking Amanda Bynes playing the same crazy Christian Mandy Moore played in Saved!, but not nearly as well. The adults in the audience, especially Stone's parents played by Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci fare much better. Their scenes with Stone are the funniest in the movie. Tucci draws the biggest laugh when he asks their young black adopted son, "Where are you from, originally?" Malcolm McDowell as the principal gets a big laugh when he declares his mission is "to keep the girls off the pole and the boys off the pipe" but he and Thomas Hayden Church as Stone's favorite teacher are underutilized when they could have contributed many more zingers. My big issue with Easy A was that it didn't really contain a lesson or message. Aside from being much funnier, Mean Girls - the gold standard of modern teen movies - directly addressed and instructed its young audience on how to treat each other and themselves. There was a genuine message. Besides "lying is bad", Easy A lacked a greater theme, unless you glean from it that the current young generation's great legacy is its inability to create anything original of value despite all of their technology at hand. (Hayden Church points this out.) Any schoolchildren thinking they can now just watch Easy A instead of reading "The Scarlett Letter" and pass a test on the novel will be sorely disappointed.