Django Unchained

I made a deal with my wife this year, in regards to what movies we would see in the theater.  You see, we've attended a Best Picture marathon at our local movieplex for the past few years, cramming nine movies into two days, and we've always had a few that we were re-watching.  That's fine when you're at home, in the mood for a particular flick.  It's draining when you're in hour 8 of a marathon.  As such, we made a deal to not see anything in theaters that we thought would be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.  For my wife, that meant putting off a viewing of Argo.  For myself, it meant postponing the gory joy of Quentin Tarantino's latest film.  It was a mature choice, I suppose, but I was so happy to finally scratch my Django itch this past weekend.

The Django Unchained trailer really covers the basics.  Like so many other Tarantino movies --- Kill Bill, especially --- the premise is fairly simple.  A bounty hunter in pre-American Civil War times, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), enlists a slave, Django (Jamie Foxx) to help him out on a bounty assignment.  As it turns out, Django is a natural when it comes to killing people.  What a happy coincidence!  Working with Schultz allows Django to earn his freedom, but his ultimate goal is to find his wife.  He doesn't know who owns her, but Schultz agrees to help his new friend find his lost love.  Of course, there are some twists and turns down that road, usually involving racist white people and gore, but that sums things up pretty nicely.

Okay, there are bad black guys, too.  It's a complex film.

It's a good thing that I feel silly summarizing the plot in detail, because I have a lot to say about everything else in Django Unchained.  While I have some concerns about Tarantino's writing and direction, the man has a knack for getting great work from his actors.  I honestly think this is my favorite performance by Jamie Foxx --- of course, if you don't count Ray or Collateral, there's not much competition.  He was understated at times, but was able to rise to whatever level of silliness or violence the script demanded.

Violence and a silly suit --- in the same scene!  Levels!

His character was a little light on depth, though.  That may be because this movie --- which is definitely about Django's journey --- was dominated by Christoph Waltz.  Do you remember those awkward, slightly philosophical monologues that Uma Thurman sometimes delivered in Kill Bill?  Waltz takes that same sort of material and makes it magical.  I don't know if it is his voice or his natural charm, but Waltz is the best thing to happen to Tarantino's movies since Sam Jackson.  I was also impressed by Leonardo DiCaprio's heel turn as the primary villain. 

He doesn't need the hammer here.  With that grin, even flowers would look threatening

I've always liked DiCaprio, but his role selection over the past few years has bored me.  Playing a character with no regard for human life was a nice change of pace, and he was convincingly nasty.  Samuel L. Jackson was also (unsurprisingly) good as DiCaprio's right-hand slave.  Jackson swims through his profanity-laced dialogue, but what makes his performance stand out are the moments that he spends one-on-one with other characters.  Look at his face:

That is not the look of a slave.  That is the look of an evil bastard who loves to manipulate, and that is why this was a standout role for Jackson.  Like most Tarantino movies, the cast is substantially large, but those four are the major players.  Kerry Washington was fine as Django's wife, but her role was reactionary, so it was hard to like much about her.  Don Johnson had a better part, as one of the many racist white people that needed killing, but it's not like he had to do much in his role.  Walton Goggins made a welcome appearance as a henchman.  Goggins is quickly becoming one of my favorite villains, thanks to his work in Justified, but his caveman-brow and so-laid-back-it's-sinister Southern drawl make him a scene-stealer regardless of his medium.  Here, he played tough very well (as expected) and gave a truly fantastic frightened howl (less expected).  I'm not exactly sure why James Remar had a dual role, since his characters were never revealed to be brothers, but it's nice to see him get back to his bad guy roots, instead of all this bland authority figure crap he's been putting out lately.  The rest of the cast was essentially a series of cameos.  The ones that paid off fairly well were Jonah Hill, M.C. Gainey, and Bruce Dern; none of them did anything special, but they played their familiar parts well enough.  The rest were surprisingly brief.  Amber Tamblyn looked out a window, Franco Nero was there to pass on the legend (he was the original Django), and Ato Essandoh died poorly.

And then there is the hillbilly family, which consisted of Tom Savini, Robert Carradine, Zoe Bell, and Ted "Jesus Christ Superstar" Neeley, among others.  I don't know if they had a line between them.  Of course, Quentin Tarantino had to cast himself in a small role.  While his Australian accent was horrible, his character's fate was hilarious, so I'm counting this as one of his better bit roles.

Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed Django Unchained, and it is definitely a Quentin Tarantino movie.  If you don't already like his fast-talking and (occasionally) brutally gory films, Django will not change your mind.  Similarly, if you're already on board with Tarantino, I can't imagine Django disappointing.  In terms of dialogue, there are more than enough actors here that are capable of delivering QT's lines well.  Pairing Waltz and Jackson in the same film --- even though they didn't interact much --- was a lot of fun to watch, because you can tell that their dialogue was written specifically for them.

"What can I say?  I'm his muse."

Tarantino always has a strong vision of what he wants from each scene, and that is true in Django Unchained.  The story was nothing special --- it's a Spaghetti Western with racism --- but the script and the performances made it extremely entertaining.

Since this is a Western and a Quentin Tarantino film, I should probably take a moment to address the level of gore and violence in Django Unchained.   Simply put, it is awesome and abundant. 

...and this is only a small taste of the exploding blood packs in this film

I love the fact that Tarantino is sticking to actual fake blood, instead of adding CGI blood in post-production.  QT is currently the leader in fake blood usage in modern films, and the ridiculous excess of it always makes me smile.  To put it another way: if you don't like gore, this is not the movie for you.

To put it another way, *slowly licks Leo's hand*

The gunfighting is done well, and there are plenty of shootout scenes --- particularly toward the end.  More important than the quantity is the quality.  These scenes are violent, and they occasionally have repercussions (although not really).  I also have to admit that Foxx and Waltz looked pretty damn cool most of the time, which is about 60% of any good Western.

This still alone is better than American Outlaws

There are three problems I have with Django Unchained.  The first is that the movie is too damn long.  Tarantino loves to hear himself talk, so I suppose it is no surprise that he can't seem to cut out much from his films.  That's not a huge problem, but this story could have been twenty or thirty minutes shorter and still been awesome.

He could have cut the scenes where they shopped for drapes, for example

My next issue was how well Tarantino built up a large cast of villains and then dispatched most of them with little more than an afterthought.  The most obvious example of this was the hillbilly family; the cast was noteworthy and Sam Jackson built them up like the damn bogeymen for slaves (which would seem to make them extra-extra-scary), but the payoff never came.  You can make the same argument about almost all of the slavers in this film, but that was the instance that bothered me the most.  The most irritating aspect of this film is convoluted plan to retrieve Django's wife.  The script went to great pains to justify this roundabout attack, but the direct approach ("Hello, can I buy your slave?") seems too reasonable to have been dismissed as something not worth trying.

Are any of those issues critical flaws?  Not for me, although the last one still bothers me, even days after watching it.  Django Unchained does so many things right that its missteps barely matter.  And I haven't even mentioned the amazing soundtrack!  Ennio Morricone.  Western.  'Nuff said.  I went into this with extremely high expectations, and I loved every minute of it.  The violence was ample, the dialogue was funny and clever, and the villains (especially Sam Jackson) had depth.  It's not perfect, but I find the imperfections pleasantly interesting. 

Here's the song from the opening credits, which also happens to have been the song from the original Franco Nero Django:

Alien

There is never a bad reason to revisit the Alien franchise.  I've seen them all, every single Alien (the original, -s, -³, Resurrection, vs. Predator and vP: Requiem) and almost all of them are worth seeing, even if they're utter crap.  For whatever reason, as I waited to for a suitable time to go see Prometheus, I realized I hadn't watched the first two movies in almost a decade.  I can honestly do without the rest of the series (although AvP:R was pretty amusing), but those two are examples of greatness that do not often come along in science fiction.

Like curly hair and over-the-head headsets

I doubt I have anything too original to add to the chorus of positive reviews for Alien.  That won't stop me from reviewing it, but it does make outlining the plot in detail seem a bit unnecessary.  In short, some glorified intergalactic truckers on the spaceship Nostromo are forced (economically, not physically) to investigate a distress signal deep in Nebraska (AKA "middle-of-nowhere") space.  The signal comes from an alien vessel, and the aliens that sent it are long dead.  However, in the process of determining that fact, the crew of the Nostromo also accidentally encounter the creatures that killed off the aliens.  Worse, they bring one onto the ship with them and continue their voyage home.  Hence the tagline, "In space, no one an hear you scream."

"...Unless you have radios in your space suits, that is"

There's quite a bit more to it that just that, but explaining science fiction plots typically leads me to over-explaining them because I tend to find the little details in these movies fascinating.  And for people who enjoy reading into the production values of sci-fi movies, Alien is a treat.  Unlike just about every space flick before this one (Star Wars may be the earliest example I can think of for this), the spaceship and crew are not flawlessly clean; this is a universe where space travel has been around for a while, and there are spaceship equivalents of rust buckets.  This isn't a film that relies on special effects or fancy production values to succeed, but the unspoken history that the production design implies --- for the ship, for the spacesuits, for the alien species and crashed ship, etc. --- is very cool. 

Implication of the crew's appearance: fashion peaked in 1979

The acting in Alien is quite good for something that, on paper, amounts to a genre mish-mash.  I didn't realize it until I started browsing through their filmographies, but most of the cast in this film was fairly unknown at the time of its release; while many of the actors had been working for ten or fifteen years, they primarily played small character roles.  That means that the highest-profile actor in Alien is John Hurt, who received some award nominations the year before for his work in The Midnight Express.  As far as his performance goes, it was fine until it was rudely interrupted by his impending death.

Less erotic than it looks

Isn't that cool, though?  It's not something that a modern audience would think twice about, what with Sigourney Weaver starring in three other Alien pics, but having Hurt play the first victim is on par with Janet Leigh's surprise death in Psycho or Drew Barrymore's in Scream; you just don't expect the most well-known actor in the film to exit that early.  Thankfully, the non-Hurt cast is pretty respectable, so you don't really miss Hurt's gravelly voice too much as you're being sucked into this movie.  Obviously, Weaver is the star; she does a very good job here, assuming the lead as she makes smart and hard decisions and takes control when she has to.  This was her first major role, and she was pretty bad-ass for a lady with awful hair.  Tom Skerritt was definitely the second most likable and logical character in the film; Skerritt has never really wowed me as an actor, but he has always played authority figures well, even before he started going gray.  Yaphet Kotto, who I generally like, starts out the film utterly annoying, but he more than redeems himself by the end, playing up his fear and machismo as much as his small role would allow.  Harry Dean Stanton was Kotto's partner in crime, and he gave a typical Stanton performance.  He wasn't outstanding, but he always adds a bit of world-weariness to any role he's given.  Probably the best supporting character, though, was played by Ian Holm.  Already a veteran British Shakespearean actor by this point, Holm had yet to make much of an impression in an American film.  What I like about his performance is that it is subtle...until it suddenly isn't.

Tapioca and marbles: not key elements in "subtle"

Then he gets honest-to-goodness action scenes and a pretty fantastic special effects scene.  His character's reveal is a shock the first time you view it (unless you're familiar with the sequels, I suppose), and I really liked how his character acquiesced to certain things early on, but was still such a sinister company man at heart.  The only actor I didn't really care for was Veronica Cartwright, who more or less represented what Scott hoped the audience was feeling.  In other words, she whimpered and yelped a lot.

While I do like the acting in Alien, this is definitely not a film that relies heavily on a power performance.  This is a mood piece, more than anything else.  This was only the second film to be directed by Ridley Scott, but his direction is what makes this film so fantastic.  If Alien was simply a science fiction film, we would still be talking about Ridley Scott's team pre-production team.  I loved the look and feel of the ship, I liked the alien planet, and the futuristic tech on display (mostly in the form of the android) was very cool.  Of course, the best part of the production was the design of the xenomorph (AKA the titular alien).  How awesome is this thing?

It looks like a shark-person made with the sexy time to some demon scorpion and then covered their love-spawn in Nickelodeon Gak.  This alien is one of the most visually impressive creatures to ever hit the big screen, and that's even before seeing it in action.  When you combine the fantastic production with practical effects --- as good as it looks, most of the special effects are made with puppets and creativity --- this movie becomes something more.  It moves from "cool idea" to "cool movie," and that's still disregarding what actually happens in the film.  With Scott's talent for building suspense, you wind up with something truly special.  And when I reference the suspense in this film, I'm not talking about "Don't go into the basement, dumbass!"  I'm not even talking about "Wait for it...wait for it...wait for it...oh, it's only the cat ---- KNIFE IN THE FACE!"  I'm talking about a pervasive sense of dread that few horror films come close to matching.  Scott slowly reveals more and more about the alien menace, but still keeps the audiences off-guard.  The alien changes its appearance and the way it attacks throughout the film, so you're never quite sure what to expect.

Except death.  You always expect death

One of the things that I like best about Alien, though, is the immorality of The Corporation.  It's one thing to make a monster movie, but adding duplicity and cutthroat capitalism changes the threat from a simple (although dangerous) external one, to a two-front war, where the characters have to watch their backs, too.  Most movies would be happy to have just one of these layers, which is another reason Alien is such an interesting watch.

This is only the second or third time I have sat down to watch Alien, and it impresses me more and more each time.  I love when films transcend their genres, so the way Alien combines awesome sci-fi with horror just blows me away.  When watching movies with my friends, we often skip over this film in favor of the louder and more action-packed Aliens, but Ridley Scott's direction has won me over.  I am finally convinced that this is the best Alien movie.  Everything about it, from the slow reveal of the title in the opening credits to the genuinely shocking chest-burst scene, all the way to the fourth act scares is wonderful.

What a rip-off!  They did the same thing in Spaceballs!

I don't even mind the stupidity of the characters risking their lives for a cat or the fact that the iconic egg image on the movie poster doesn't resemble the actual eggs in the film very much.  This is a complex story with good, old-fashioned special effects and a slow-burning story that effectively amps up the terror in the plot.  And that's all it's about.  There are no distractions --- how many other filmmakers would have horned in a romantic subplot here? --- because this is all about dread and terror, and Alien does what it does so very, very well.

The Third Man

The first time I sat down to watch The Third Man, I was struck by how incongruous the soundtrack was.  It's a fine soundtrack and I like the main theme, but it just didn't feel like it matched the film at all.  When I think of film noir, the zither is not an instrument that comes immediately to mind.

Over the years, as I've watched and re-watched The Third Man, I've grown to enjoy the contrast of tone the zither provides in this film.  Regardless of how much you like the soundtrack, though, you have to admit that scoring this movie with a zither was a distinctive choice.

Holly Martin (Joseph Cotten), a none-too-successful writer of American Western dime store novels, has just arrived in post-World War II Vienna to meet up with his childhood friend, Harry Lime.  Harry has offered Holly a job, which is good because he has just about zero dollars.  Unfortunately, Harry died just the other day; he was killed by a car when crossing the street.  After the funeral, Holly is approached by someone claiming to be a friend of Harry's, who offers to pay for Holly's flight home.  Similarly, the local British MPs seem keen to ship Holly back home, too.  Since he has no money and no prospects for making any, Holly is ready to leave --- he just wants to commiserate with Harry's grieving girlfriend, Anna (Alida Valli), first and get a clear picture of his pal's later life.

Commiserate, be a creeper --- to-may-toe, to-mah-toe

When he's at Anna's apartment, which is where Harry was leaving when he died, Holly starts to smell a rat.  Harry's pal who offered Holly a way home had said that he and another man had carried a dying Harry out of the street and that Harry's last wish had been to make sure Holly and Anna were taken care of.  But the superintendent of Anna's building caught the aftermath of the accident from his window and claimed that Harry had obviously died instantly and that there had been a third man helping remove the body from the street.  Why would anyone go out of their way to lie about this?  Unless, of course, Harry's death was not an accident at all...!  With that thought, Holly takes it upon himself to uncover the conspiracy surrounding Harry's death and find that third man.

"You're probably not the third man, but I'd like to do some more inspecting"

For the most part, I don't think the acting in The Third Man is anything terribly special.  Nobody is bad, but there is only one truly great character in this film.  Unfortunately, that character is not Holly; thus, Joseph Cotten's acting here takes a back seat to the thankless task of propelling the plot.  Cotten turns out a solid performance --- aside from his unfortunately cartoonish drunk scene --- but his innocent character was never intended to be the focus of this film.

Tip to appear drunk: Don't maintain the flawless quaff

I liked Alida Valli quite a bit more; her best moments are when she is at her coldest, but I also appreciated how well she played a character that does not follow traditional movie logic.  While those two have the most screen time, the star of the film is, without a doubt, Orson Welles.  He is a blast to watch, whether it be when he is being charming and enigmatic or just a soulless douchebag.

Or a cross between the two

It's funny; when I think of Orson Welles, I think of him primarily as a director.  That isn't an insult to his acting ability, but I think his history as a maverick filmmaker generally overshadows his acting work.  The Third Man is a great example of just how good Welles can be as an actor, especially a key supporting character.  Welles famously referred to his part in this film as an almost absentee part, but I think that is selling him short; yes, the buildup to his appearance definitely eases his job, but Welles gave perhaps the quintessential amoral performance (pre-1950, at the very least) here.  The rest of the cast is completely decent, but not spectacular.  Trevor Howard plays an uptight English military man quite well and I will admit that it took me a few viewings to recognize Bernard Lee (of James Bond fame) as an underling.  I also enjoyed the myriad European character actors that popped up in this movie --- most of whom were comically evil-looking --- but none of them really stood out for me more than any other.

What does stand out, though, is the direction of Carol Reed.  Reed, along with his cinematographer Robert Krasker, made one of my favorite movies to just...watch.  Sure, there are probably too many angled shots, but they are all framed gorgeously; I (obviously) haven't been to post-WWII Vienna, but they captured an interesting blend of majesty and rubble.

The Third Man is, quite simply, one of the most visually alluring films I have ever seen.  I love when a director adds little bits of flair to imply intent, and this movie is absolutely brimming with examples.  Thanks to the importance of those shots, there are many moments that have become iconic, and deservedly so.

Gorgeous.  Simply gorgeous.  Even if he is peeing.

Some have proposed that The Third Man was at least partially directed by Orson Welles, with Carol Reed simply maintaining the official credit; while I think it is obvious that Reed was heavily influenced by Welles, what I see in this film --- the fantastic cinematography, the boring leading man, and the directorial intent --- are natural progressions of what I've seen in his earlier work.  And, of course, his choice for the soundtrack was brilliantly subversive.  Did Welles have a hand in the direction of this movie?  I doubt it.  Still, there are worse things than being suspected of being too Wellesian, right?

The Third Man is, for me at least, one of the best film noirs ever made.  Exactly what separates it from, say, The Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity?  I think that boils down to just two scenes.  The first is the Ferris wheel scene.  Aside from being a great image, this scene also has a fantastic monologue from Orson Welles, one which has been referenced a number of times since, even in two separate episodes of Law & Order. 

Moral: all ants need to die, and die horribly

The other iconic sequence is the chase scene in the sewers of Vienna.  It is a combination of the lack of dialogue, the fantastic cinematography, and some high-quality suspense that makes this sequence work, but oh, does it work!

This film also bucked tradition by being filmed on location --- which was still decades away from being a standard practice --- and sticking with an ending that isn't exactly all wine and roses.  For all these reasons and more, I highly recommend this movie.  The only thing keeping it from being a perfect "10" in my book is the fact that the main characters are not terribly interesting.  Even with that as an obstacle, this is one of the true cinema greats.

And check out this cool The Third Man poster made by some random dude on the interweb!  It's good stuff.

Find more here

The Avengers (2012)

Over the past decade, I (well, okay, we) have been blessed and cursed with the success of the comic book movie.  A sub-genre that was once scorned and ridiculed --- and rightly so, for the most part --- was given new life with the successful launches of the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises.  Since those days, we have seen some great comic book movies (The Dark Knight) and some truly awful ones (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), along with a scattering of less traditional/costume-free entries (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World).  The true test of comic book movies, though, comes from how true they can stay to their roots.  I'm not arguing that movies should adhere to the ridiculous continuity of their pulped roots; I'm saying that the logic and tone of the source material is essential to a good adaptation.  One of the most common occurrences in comics is the cross-over; characters from one comic make a guest appearance in another, hopefully impressing new readers and gaining new fans.  Until recently, each comic book movie series took place on its own, in an isolated bubble.  Starting in 2008, though, Marvel Studios began to plan for a Marvel Movie Universe, where their superhero films would all occur in the same general time and place, eventually leading up to a huge team-up movie, The Avengers.  It's a simple idea, but it was also pretty damn risky.  It meant launching multiple movie franchises and having them all be successful enough to encourage the development of The Avengers, where characters require no origin stories and the film can focus on huge special effects.  Is comic book publishing logic enough to make an entertaining movie?  In a word, "yes."

In two words, "Hell, yes"

I don't feel like explaining the plot of The Avengers in detail.  It's not a bad story, but I'm going to go with a "simpler is better" attitude here.  A desperate and petty demigod, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has stolen a tesseract.  What the hell is a tesseract?  Well, here, it looks like a glowing cube, but can apparently do all sorts of things. 

Like make Loki give nasty grins

Loki manages to use this cube to open a doorway in space, allowing aliens to invade Earth because...well, I mentioned the desperation and pettiness, right?  Well, Earth has been through quite a lot over the past few summers, as chronicled in the documentaries Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger; in other words, Earth has some heroes available to defend it. 

Namely, Triangle Man and Person Man

And that's pretty much the plot.

Do you really need more than that in your action movie?  The Avengers does what it sets out to do; it combines a bunch of superheroes in a movie and gives them a suitably intimidating enemy to fight.  The acting in the film is not terribly dramatic, but it's pretty good for what it is.  Robert Downey, Jr is still great as the egotistical and charming Tony Stark (AKA Iron Man).  If this film leaned on any one character in particular, it was Iron Man.  Luckily, Downey is still enormously entertaining in this role.  Chris Evans showed a little bit more range as Captain America this time around, thanks to larger doses of humor and smaller doses of melodrama than in his own movie. 

...and lots and lots of posing

Chris Hemsworth is still fine as Thor, but he spent most of his time here fighting or standing in the background.  The big surprise in The Avengers was how awesome Mark Ruffalo was as the Hulk.  Ruffalo was less tragic than his Hulk movie predecessors, and that went a long way toward making him more fun to watch.  Of course, the most awesome Hulk stuff happened thanks to CGI, but Ruffalo set the stage for it well by making his character seem downright reasonable.

Above: realizing how much better 13 Going on 30 would be with a Hulk

But The Avengers are not made up solely of characters who have headlined their own films.  The group also includes the marksman archer Hawkeye (Jeremey Renner) and the super-spy Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).  Renner is okay --- it's hard to justify an archer on a team with Thor --- but this role doesn't have enough meat for him to really do much with.  Johansson was considerably less impressive.  Granted, her character was utilized decently, even if she seems way out of her class in the battle scenes; still, the character was boring.  She doesn't carry a lot of scenes on her own, though, so that and her tight pleather outfit more or less balances the defects in her character.

ScarJo, in her biggest action scene.  Even she doesn't buy it.

What about the rest of the cast of thousands?   Samuel L. Jackson finally got to be onscreen for more than a few minutes as Nick Fury and...honestly, I wanted to see him be a bigger bad-ass.  It's not a big deal, but I was hoping for at least one scene where he does something that made my jaw drop; he wasn't bad, but he wasn't jaw-droppingly good, either.  I enjoyed Tom Hiddleston as Loki, even if he was a touch whiny.  Clark Gregg had his most important part and surprisingly wound up being the heart of The Avengers.  It was a little melodramatic as a plot device, but Gregg very likable here.  The rest of the recognizable cast was fine, but contributed little.  Colbie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgard, and Gwyneth Paltrow had the most to do, although only Paltrow was particularly likable.  And if you like playing "spot the actor," you will enjoy looking for Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton, and Alexis Denisof.

The key to the success of The Avengers came from screenwriter/director Joss Whedon.  Whedon has been able to deliver some great lines for many years, but this is easily the best script he has produced to date (that landed on the big screen, anyway).  It might be a little light on emotion, but what little heart it has is taken advantage of fully.  This is a very well-paced action movie, with enough downtime to allow for humor, but enough seriousness to not wind up a Last Boyscout clone.  The secret appears to be how well he times his beats; Whedon did a great job playing with audience expectations, even when it was only slightly.  I have never really thought of him as an actor's director --- I suppose I thought of him as a story-first sort of guy --- but I loved how he had all these heroes portrayed.  The characters butted heads in a believable way and worked together in a way that made sense, too.  Surprisingly, the least likable hero in the film (Black Widow) fell into Whedon's historical comfort zone (strong female leads), but that was a small price to pay for how well he handled the movie's headliners.  I was also impressed with some of the action scenes.  There is one in particular, which shows each Avenger doing their thing in turn, as the camera pans from one hero to the next, that was just awesome to watch on the big screen.

First and foremost, though, The Avengers is an action movie.  And that is an understatement.  Free of boring origin stories or emotional investment, this film was able to provide action scene after action scene, many of which could have been the cool climax to a lesser movie.

 Each scene wowed, but the final battle, which took up a substantial portion of the movie, was thoroughly awesome.  This didn't have to be the case; wanton destruction does not necessarily make a movie fun or exciting (Transformers: Dark of the Moon, I'm looking at you).  But The Avengers was both.  I think it is because each hero had multiple occasions to do something cool; with so many characters swaggering onscreen without interfering with each other, the audience gets scene after scene of characters taking turns at awesomeness.  I should also point out how fantastic the Hulk looked in this movie.  This isn't the first time somebody has created a CGI Hulk, but this was the first time that they used full motion capture; I don't know how much of a difference it made, but his face did look pretty Ruffalo-like.

Remember that time Mark Ruffalo was shot with lasers?

Even better than the motion capture was the general attitude of the Hulk in this movie.  I don't want to spoil it for anyone by over-explaining it, but the Hulk almost stole the show.  To put it another way, The Avengers does such a good job rehabilitating the Hulk character that I can't wait for another Hulk movie.

The Avengers is, of course, not blemish-free.  It is a big, dumb action movie, after all.  The general plot of the first half was a little weak; "get captured" is rarely a step in an excellent scheme.  The aliens were a little generic.  I would have liked to see more types of alien attackers, but I suppose they were all essentially faceless henchmen.

Literally faceless

Hawkeye and Black Widow never really justified their inclusion in this story.  I don't think either character was far off from fitting in, but neither really clicked, either with each other or the rest of the cast.  The post-credits reveal of the behind-the-scenes villain might have made a handful of comic fans titter, but it was nowhere near enough to get the average moviegoer excited.  Are any of these problems enough to seriously dent the fun factor of this movie?  Not really.  Of course, an action movie is only as good as its villain, and Loki wasn't quite dastardly enough for my tastes.  Still, Hiddleston played the part well and made him evil to a satisfying degree.

Another flaw: when was Hawkeye in Inception?

How good is The Avengers?  I would argue that it is the best pure action movie to come out in at least a decade.  Please feel free to disagree with that statement; I have put some serious thought into it already and am primed for a fight.  Chances are, you already know how much you will enjoy The Avengers.  Fans of action movies and comic book flicks will be in love.  No matter how good you think it will be, you're underestimating it.  If you're on the fence, this is one of the most pleasurable summer popcorn flicks ever.  If you are tired of soulless comic book movie adaptations, then this Frankenstein's monster made of the wet dreams of every marketing team everywhere will not change your mind.  It is what it is, and it's possibly the best of what it is.  I normally have to take a few grains of salt when sitting down to enjoy a comic book flick, but The Avengers is so much fun that I fully expect it to join the illustrious ranks of Die Hard and Predator in my action movie library.  In other words, I'm planning to watch this a few dozen more times and expect to love it every time.

Drive

It is easy for the casual film fan to dismiss Drive without seeing it.  A character, identified only as The Driver in the credits, moonlights as a getaway driver for criminals.  The star is Ryan Gosling, a heartthrob just starting to come into his own with three extremely successful movies in 2011, as well as the subject of one of the internet's more peculiar obsessions.  Hot actor + getaway driving = An ode to Burt Reynolds, right?  At the very least, Drive sounds like it should be a Fast and the Furious-type movie.  Heads up, people: if you walk into Drive with those sort of expectations, you will be thoroughly confused and maybe even upset.

An actual reaction to Drive

Here's the expectations you should have with Drive: it stars an actor that has (so far) avoided dumb action or pretty boy roles, directed by a man known for making weird movies with fantastic lead actor performances.  Fair enough?

Drive opens with The Driver (Gosling) ready to take part in a heist.  He doesn't help with the crime, he doesn't carry a gun, he doesn't talk to the people he's driving --- he drives.  And he's the best at what he does.  When he's not acting as a wheelman, The Driver is still driving.  He's a part-time movie stuntman that works in a garage and cruises Los Angeles to relax.  He doesn't say much, though.  He just stares and waits for awkward pauses to fill most of his conversations whenever he can.  Thanks to a little luck, The Driver winds up befriending his neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan) and her son, Benicio. 

Hey girl.  Miming masturbation with a water bottle in a hallway?  Classy.

Their friendship is quiet and a little awkward, but ultimately chaste.  A week later, Irene's jailbird husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), is released from prison and comes home.  Now, you might assume that the aggressive Standard is going to become the antagonist at this point, because he is clearly suspicious of The Driver.  But no.  The newly freed Standard apparently owes a lot of money to some violent people for protecting him in prison; his wife and son will pay the price if he doesn't commit a particular robbery soon.  The Driver can't have that, so he offers to do what he does best: drive.  Not because it's a job, not because he wants to, but because he needs to protect Irene and Benicio, and it soon becomes apparent just how far he is willing to go for a few moments of kindness.

There are many things that make Drive stand out from most films, but what caught my attention first was the intentionally minimalist portrayal of The Driver.  He barely speaks, and when he does, his responses are typically odd.  He is fairly free of personality and emotions.  And yet, The Driver is so impossibly calm that you start to anticipate the moment where he just explodes. 

And that definitely happens

Ryan Gosling turns in a strong, silent-type performance that is reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name.  The only difference is that Eastwood's Man was obviously dangerous at all times (and that makes him cool) and Gosling's Driver is cool with danger bubbling underneath.  I was very impressed with Gosling.  It's always nice to see acting with subtle layers and to play such an impassive role (at times, his face was almost a Michael Myers mask of blankness) and then flip a switch to being so passionate --- and do that convincingly --- was a pleasure to watch.

...and stare at, and with.

Carey Mulligan was very sweet as Irene, and I thought she did a pretty good job.  It was a timid role, and those can come across as wimpy or clingy, but I liked how well she balanced Gosling's character.  Oscar Isaac is good at playing heels, and he's as unlikable as ever here.  Christina Hendricks looked naturally busty and a little trashy; I wasn't too impressed by her acting, but she is a key part in one of the most jaw-dropping moments in the film.  Bryan Cranston shows up to play a small part; I like Cranston and understand how hard it must be to find good film roles that fit him, but I think he's better than the half-dozen supporting roles he churned out this year.  I was happy to see Ron Perlman playing a character that was not placed in the Middle Ages.  Perlman's not a fantastic actor, but his ugly mug and gruff voice make any character plausibly tough.  My favorite performance in Drive, though, definitely belonged to Albert Brooks.  I normally hate Brooks, but he was absolutely fantastic here.  I would have liked his work from the first half of the movie alone, but his soothing, reasonable voice contrasted so beautifully with his actions in the second half that I was simply blown away.  You wouldn't think it, but his character wound up being more frightening than Perlman's.

...but not as frightening as Driver's mask

That Drive has so little dialogue should come as no surprise to fans of director Nicolas Winding Refn.  His last film, Valhalla Rising, featured a lead actor with zero lines and no attempts to communicate.  The stunning use of the soundtrack (so warm...so lush...so...oddly 80s) also fits in with his established modus operandi.  In fact, most of what you notice of the direction in Drive has shown up, from time to time, in Refn's admittedly difficult filmography.  What makes his work here so impressive is that Refn managed to make a compelling story with confusing but plausible emotions without ditching his distinctive style. 

The camera work was good, the way the shots were framed was gorgeous, the lighting was effective, and his direction of Gosling was great.  Refn's best work on Drive, though, was in how effectively he builds tension.  The car chases in this movie are not just excuses to show crashes or goofy stunts; they are intelligently played chess matches, with all the deliberation that implies.  The scenes where The Driver is waiting --- for someone to get into his car, for a helicopter to pass, whatever --- were the most taut moments I saw on film this year.  The silence on screen was so intense that The Driver's gloves were audibly distracting, and when gunshots shatter the silence, well...that was awesome.

Still, you can definitely make some good arguments that Drive was over-hyped by critics this year.  The pacing is unusual and awkward.  The main character is barely relatable as a human for most of the movie.  He wears an awesome, but ridiculously recognizable jacket at all times; the jacket is never ditched, even after its is covered in blood, and the scorpion stitching is never explained.

Like Driver is going to explain anything to you

In fact, a lot of things are left out of Drive.  When Irene gets the news that Standard is being released from prison, Refn cuts away so the audience doesn't hear the news.  Obviously, we find out moments later, but little choices like that can add up to annoy an audience.  The violence is abrupt and excessive; aside from some truly gruesome moments, Drive also contains the best head-splattering gunshot I have seen outside of a Tom Savini movie.  And yet, some of the deaths were surprisingly played down.  Film critic types can also point out similarities to other filmmakers, with the most apt comparison being to Jean-Pierre Melville.

I get all of those complaints.  I really do.  But they don't matter.  Drive doesn't ape anyone's style, it is the logical result of many years of Nicolas Winding Refn's film evolution, and it is easily his most entertaining and accessible film.  I loved the pacing and the awkwardness and the ridiculousness of The Driver; his character is, in many ways, absolutely unbelievable, but I loved his style.  Drive sets the audience up to expect one type of movie, but quickly switches gears (see what I did there?) to provide almost the antithesis of the typical car chase film --- and then the shit hits the fan and The Driver starts hitting people, again upsetting expectations.  This is definitely the best movie-as-art film I have seen from the past few years, and it just happens to be one of the coolest, too.  The only thing keeping it from a ten in my book is the fact that I've only seen it once so far.