Captain America: The First Avenger

What a difference a couple of decades makes!  When I was growing up in the 80s, the concept of a super-hero movie just didn't make sense to me; I actually refused to see Tim Burton's Batman in the theater because the only Batman I knew was Adam West, and I didn't want to see that on the big screen --- of course, that was long before I discovered the joys of shark repellant.  The 90s didn't help matters much, with Batman and Robin, the Dolph Lungren Punisher, and all the douchebags in my age group that dressed up as The Crow every damn year for Halloween.  Perhaps the least impressive super-hero movie of the time was the never-released-in-American-theaters and filmed-in-Yugoslavia Captain America.

Two words: rubber ears.

So, when it was announced that Captain America would get another chance at a movie as Marvel Studios builds up to The Avengers in 2012, I was a little nervous.  Sure, I liked the last few Marvel Studios movies --- Iron Man 2, Thor, and X-Men: First Class --- but a patriotically-themed super-hero movie could easily get hokey.  Oh, and I wasn't too impressed with director Joe Johnston's last movie, either.  Can Captain America: The First Avenger beat the odds and be yet another fun and successful comic book movie in the summer of 2011?

World War II is in full swing, and every able-bodied American man is joining the armed forces.  Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is not able-bodied --- he's been deemed 4F and is the personification of the old Charles Atlas ads --- but he keeps reapplying for the Army in the hopes that he will allowed to squeak through and risk his life, like all the other men.  After all, if every man he knows, including his buddy Bucky (Sebastian Stan), has the right to go to war, why can't he?  This perseverance catches the attention of Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who selects Rogers for an experiment.  He is allowed to train with some elite soldiers for the right to receive a highly experimental treatment and (possibly) become a new breed of soldier.  Through his positive attitude, bravery, intelligence, and perseverance, Steve Rogers was selected for the experiment, which took a man that looked like this:

...and turned him into a heaping bowl of hunk:

Judging from that scientist's gaze, Rogers grew more than muscles.

While the experiment was a success, Erskine was assassinated by a sneaky Nazi, taking his secret super-soldier formula to the grave.  I wouldn't have thought that a government-funded program would allow one person to keep all the secrets exclusively in his noggin, but origin stories are funny like that, sometimes.  Seeing that he is the only result from a very expensive military program, Rogers is not allowed to fight in the war; instead, he is forced to put on a gaudy costume and promote war bonds as Captain America. 

Captain America: sellout

That can only last so long, of course, since there is a war going on and there are bad guys to fight.  And I'm not talking about your average, run-of-the-mill evil Nazis, either; the bad guys in this movie want to destroy everything and create a new world order.

Is this the future?

Obviously, that can't be allowed to happen.  Despite the strength of the Allied Forces, it is ultimately up to Captain America and his new Army buddies to save the world from destruction at the hands of the nefarious Red Skull (Hugo Weaving).  Why only them?  Apparently, saving the world is a lower priority than you might think.

A lot of people were skeptical when Chris Evans was cast in the iconic (and fairly humorless) lead role of Captain America.  Since nobody has ever seen Sunshine, where he has a dramatic role, the fear was that Evans would be his goofy, sarcastic self, a la Ryan Reynolds.  I am happy to say that Evans did a good job in the lead role.  He was brave, earnest, and loyal; he basically took all the heroic parts in a war movie and rolled them up into one character.  Hugo Weaving was suitably dastardly as Red Skull; I don't know if I would say that he out-eviled the Nazis in this movie, but he came close.  His character's grand scheme didn't make a ton of sense to me, but everyone agreed that he was insane, so I'll let that slide.  I wasn't the biggest fan of his red-faced makeup --- I would have gone for a bumpier, burn victim look --- but I thought they did a good job with the makeup that implied that his Hugo Weaving face was a mask.

Odd...why didn't Weaving have a romantic interest?

The rest of the supporting cast was fine, but those two set the standard.  Hayley Atwell was pretty good as Roger's rough-and-tumble love interest, Peggy Carter, and she was happily never a damsel in distress.  Tommy Lee Jones was very good as the tired, crotchety colonel in charge of the super soldier experiment.  I was surprisingly moved by a look he gave of utter despair toward the end of the film; maybe that's just his sad face, but you rarely see tough guy actors look that vulnerable.  Stanley Tucci did a good job making the selection of Rogers seem rational, which was a bigger hurdle than you might think.  Sebastian Stan was okay as Rogers' buddy, but I thought Dominic Cooper was surprisingly likable as genius industrialist Howard Stark.  There are some other recognizable actors in the movie --- Samuel L. Jackson, Toby Jones, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, and a few others --- but they played relatively small and generic parts, with the exception of Jones (an evil scientist) and Jackson (reprising his Nick Fury role).

Director Joe Johnston has a tendency of making movies set in the past, oftentimes romanticizing the idea of heroism, which actually makes him a pretty good fit for this film.  The goal of this movie was to make Captain America look cool and give him a grand enough task to make him a legend in this prequel to theMarvel super-hero movies that are set in modern times.

Hmm...that's a good start, but too subtle.

Johnston keeps a good pace throughout the film, wisely choosing to focus on pre-transformation Steve and a few choice, defining battles for Captain America, instead of bogging him down in a number of lesser battles.  I like a lot of choices he made here, especially the chaste romance between Cap and Peggy.

...although, the chaste bit might have been her doing.

Heroes that are squeaky-clean boy scouts can be tough to sympathize with or care about, because they're not terribly realistic.  Johnston chose to portray Captain America as less of a do-gooding patriot, instead focusing a lot of time and effort on Steve Rogers hating bullies.  I thought this movie handled all the typical war scenes well and had several moving this-is-a-war-movie-and-men-don't-cry-but-seriously-OMG-I'm-tearing-up-here moments.  I am generally a sucker for moments like those, but this movie was surprisingly good at them.

As much as I liked a lot of this movie, I had some small complaints.  First of all, this movie has a metric ton of CGI, especially with pre-transformation Steve Rogers.  While I think this was done pretty well, there were some moments where the head of Chris Evans didn't seem to fit the body, or where his height seemed inconsistent.  Not a huge deal, and it was impressive overall, but I still noticed it.  I also wasn't a huge fan of his costume.  It looked better than the 1990 movie version did, but I preferred this getup:

I realize that a super-hero with an established colorful costume needs to wear it at some point, but I just thought the blend of costume and practical clothing was a cool visual.  Perhaps my biggest gripe with Captain America: The First Avenger was its use of minor players.  This movie is filled to the brim with characters that are clearly meant to reference important characters in the comic character's history.  Unfortunately, since they are so many and time is so limited, these characters wind up being largely charmless.  Even Bucky, who plays an important role in the development of our hero, is not particularly likable.  They weren't bad actors or characters, they just never felt important.

But those are minor complaints.  This movie is filled with action that, while not terribly plausible, is very entertaining.  This film had heart and character, and it made Captain America look cool while fighting with a shield.  Oh, and the teaser trailer for The Avengers after the credits was a geeky thrill.

While I was researching pictures for this post, I stumbled across a brilliant blog, titled Hitler Getting Punched.  I like when a title explains everything I need to know about a website.  Check it out.

I also happened across this officially commissioned painted poster that was given to the cast and crew of the movie:

 I love retro movie posters.  The artist maintains his own blog about his comic art, called The Self-Absorbing Man.  Pretty cool stuff.

The Wolfman (Unrated)

Hollywood and the American public have a short memory.  That's a good thing, since Hollywood loves to remake films.  Sometimes it works, like with Dawn of the Dead (2004), The Maltese Falcon (1941), or Batman (1989).  Sometimes it fails spectacularly, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) or Psycho (1998).  Most of the time, though, remakes fail to leave any mark on the public consciousness ("Jeff Daniels was in a King Kong remake?  The Dumb and Dumber guy?"), and usually deservedly so.  The Wolfman is a remake of the 1941 movie, The Wolf Man, which starred Lon Chaney Jr. in his signature role.  This time, the ill-fated Lawrence Talbot is played by Benicio del Toro.  Will his interpretation be the one that we remember, or will it fade into obscurity over time?

You know a character is going to be a fun-loving party dude when his first scene has him playing Hamlet on the stage, despite being at least ten years older than the character.  That is where we find Lawrence Talbot in 1891 London, just before he is informed of his brother's disappearance by Gwen (Emily Blunt), who is engaged to he missing brother.  His brother lived on their family estate with their father, so Lawrence boards a train for his home town of Blackmoor; on the train Lawrence encounters a stranger (Max von Sydow), who wants to give Lawrence a fine cane with a silver wolf's head for the handle.  Lawrence refuses the kind offer, only to jerk himself awake the next moment, alone in the compartment.  But look...!  The cane is where the man was sitting.  Or was he?  The mystery will remain forever unsolved, because this scene was apparently cut from the theatrical version and has no bearing on the core plot.  Thanks for showing up, Max. 

Lawrence arrives home and greets his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins), who is a weird guy.  Think latter day Ted Nugent meets that creepy, quiet guy who stares at people in the library.  The reason the two men are estranged has something to do with the suicide of Lawrence's mother (Christina Contes), although it's not clear exactly why.  Anyway, the missing Talbot brother has turned up dead, so Lawrence goes to the morgue and takes a look.  Apparently, his brother was delicious, because there's not much left of him.  Lawrence then returns to London to use this tragedy as fuel for his dramatic tendencies, the end.

"Hey, that's not how it goes!"  No kidding.  We all know that Lawrence is going to get bitten by a werewolf.  Just like all werewolf movies, there are going to be scenes where he is physically changing, but has no idea what's happening to him, and just like all werewolf movies, his werewolf self will attack some people, probably fatally.  That's the problem with remaking classic movies.  Even if the audience is not familiar with original film, they have been exposed to its plot elements in other films that were influenced by the original.  And since this is a serious film, you know just as certainly that the werewolf won't be playing basketball or singing along to "Werewolves of London." 

The Wolfman does a good job of staying true to the original material, for better or for worse.  Technically, this is a pretty good looking film.  The cinematography captures the creepy vibe that Gothic horror requires.  The action sequences are entertaining, filled with high-quality gore.  I don't know what this unrated version included that the theatrical did not, but I'm guessing it might involve some of the near-disembowelings.  The special effects, while good, sometimes feel out of place, though.  When Lawrence transforms into a werewolf, the transformation process looks like a character from Beowolf was transposed over Benicio del Toro.  Once he's fully transformed and in makeup, he looks great.  Unfortunately, having noticeable CGI in a movie set in the 1890s feels anachronistic.  That's not the only instance of that problem; the city of London looks fake at points, and the werewolves, when they run, appear surprisingly weightless.  Details like that add up quickly over two hours.

The acting and directing also have strong moments and weak ones.  Benicio del Toro is good in his werewolf persona, but his human self is awkward and uninteresting.  Anthony Hopkins does a good job with his nonverbal actions, coming across as someone who enjoys the thrill of the hunt, but I felt that he just mailed in the rest of his performance.  I'm pretty sure his explanation of his character would be "How about a jerk that is thinking about other things when you speak to him?"  Emily Blunt was fine, but she and del Toro never had the chemistry you need for a convincing love story.  That leaves Hugo Weaving, who played a Scotland Yard detective investigating the murders, as the only important part that was acted well.  You could (and should) blame director Joe Johnston for the film's acting problems, but he didn't do a bad job.  None of the acting (except maybe Hopkins) was bad, it was just very reserved.  I liked the way he told the story, even if I didn't particularly like the script.

I think the biggest obstacle to this film was setting it in Victorian England.  I understand that Gothic horror stories take place in the Victorian era, but it is a time very far removed from the present.  When the first wave of classic horror movies were made (Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Wolf Man), they were set about fifty years in the past, instead the120 years that now separate the present from Victorian times.  I think that time difference makes it more difficult to identify with the characters.  The best movies that use this time period are the ones that use the notoriously repressed Victorian emotions and show the passions that lay beneath the calm exterior.  So, basically, romances.  Modern horror movies set in this time period don't have the luxury of convincing love stories, and that is one of the main reasons that Bram Stoker's Dracula was underwhelming and why Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was so painful to watch.  The Wolfman is filled with characters that are humorless and devoid of passion, and that makes this visually attractive movie less than stellar.

This film is not devoid of quality.  I thought the action was well done (except for the final battle --- that was lame) and I liked how bloody it was.  This movie definitely had promise, but it was handicapped by the filmmakers' desire to stay true to the original.  It ended up being pretty predictable (which I can deal with in remakes) and the characters were left emotionally undeveloped (which is never a good choice).  When you add it all up, you are left with yet another forgettable Hollywood remake.