Monte Carlo

Sometimes, the studios get things right. I watched Monte Carlo with a smile on my face for almost the entire length of the movie. It is warm, it is fun, and it is my official selection as the feel-good movie of the year so far.

A recent high school graduate and two friends go to Paris where the grad is mistaken for a runaway heiress. She reluctantly carpes the diem and steps in to the heiress' life. This is hardly a new formula but Monte Carlo does it with style, never getting too sentimental or slapstick. Many things could have gone wrong making Monte Carlo, but it seems none of them did.

Selena Gomez plays the doppelganger/gangee, and was in last summer's feel good movie, Ramona and Beezus. Selena would appear to have a great future in romantic comedies. Her friends are played by Katie Cassidy, whom I've only seen in one other thing, and Leighton Meester, who seems to appear in every movie that Natalie Portman isn't in. Slow down, kid. They are both refreshing as the polar opposites who have their own adventures while participating in the impersonation. Again, they could have easily gone over the top, but showed restraint and elegance to help us take the movie seriously.

All-in-all, Monte Carlo - the movie - looks like a nice place to visit.

The enjoyment quotient of Monte Carlo might have been helped by one of the previews before the show.*  It was promoting a drama about a romance between Amy Adams and Jason Segal gone awry. Or did it? It's really a preview for a new Muppets movie and after Segal looks at the audience and asks in disbelief, "Are there Muppets in this movie?" all heck breaks loose. Could be fun. Definitely a good warm up for Monte Carlo.

1:44

* Yes, I realize that's redundant.

Midnight in Paris

I used to have a rule about Woody Allen movies. It was "Don't go see them." The rule was instituted while watching Deconstructing Harry in 1997, and it took years for me to go see another one. Several more years passed before I actually enjoyed one. Midnight in Paris more than makes up for all the Woody Allen dogs I've sat through over the years.

Owen Wilson plays a writer who doesn't realize he's going through a mid-life crisis. He's engaged to a woman of extremely limited vision, played to a T by Rachel McAdams. Her parents, extremely wealthy but infinitely declasse, have dragged the couple to Paris. He goes for a walk one night and - avoiding spoilers - stumbles into what can only be described as an adult Narnia. As his relationship whithers, his horizons expand.

Midnight in Paris could have been sponsored by the Paris Tourism Bureau, as the city is photographed in the best possible light and looks just gorgeous. There were many literary and cultural references that went over my head, but I caught enough to enjoy. I especially liked a scene where the writer, fiance and some friends are discussing something trivial, like wine or whatever, and when the camera pans around, you see they are standing in the front lawn of Versailles like it was the most ordinary place in the world.

Midnight in Paris is the antidote to the plethora of brainless movies we've seen lately. It is the best movie of the year, so far, for the thinking person.

1:30

Bad Teacher

Bad Teacher looks like it will be a typical redemption comedy. You know, somebody is on the wrong path, they hit rock bottom then get redeemed, usually with some public display of contrition and a happily ever after moment at the end. It's a genre; it's a formula.  Bad Teacher has none of it.

Cameron Diaz is amazing as a slacker with a teacher's license looking for a sugar daddy. She's shallow, insensitive, lazy and manipulative. And those are her good points. What I liked is that - I'll do this without a spoiler - she doesn't change over the course of the movie. It's more like she runs out of energy looking for what she desires and finds that what she has isn't so bad. Watching her go through the motions, being a jerk and making bad decisions is hilarious. But what I just described is only what makes Bad Teacher a good movie. What makes it a great movie is...

Lucy Punch. Lucy is an amazing comic sidekick. You've seen her before as the wicked stepsister in Ella Enchanted, the hapless lifestyle reporter on the short-lived TV show The Class or any of dozens of bit parts in TV and movies. Not really destined to be a lead actor, she dived into the part of the neurotically competitive straight-arrow teacher across the hall with gusto, not afraid to make with the crazy. And make with the crazy she does, giving us sight gags and punch lines in every scene. I am in awe.

Bad Teacher could easily get lost amidst all the other movies released in the summer season because it doesn't look like anything special, but if you're looking for some subversive laughs and nothing sweet or redemptive, seek out Bad Teacher.

1:28

Transformers 3

I don't know where to start on Transformers 3. I have so few good things to say about it but it seems rude to start with the bad. Hmm...

Let's start with the length. Transformers 3 is two hours and twenty six minutes long. Really. I suspect that every human being that made the decision to see the movie was not influenced at all by running time, so they could have saved a third or a quarter of the budget by making it 30-45 minutes shorter. Simple economics. And much more merciful to the viewer.

How about product placement? Every computer shown was a Lenovo; every router was a Cisco. Every beverage had a brand name showing and they even took us to the Mercedes Benz website. Enough.

The major badbots have a case of talking-villain syndrome. They each say too much of their plans to the good guys, to their henchbots or even when they talk to themselves. It's laughable. The screenwriter needs to take a remedial course in exposition. Oh, and who thought it was a good idea to have the badbot voiced by Leonard Nimoy quote dialog by Mr Spock?  Campy...

Then, there's Chicago. The last 45 minutes or so was an extended battle scene that essentially destroys downtown Chicago. The bad guys were implementing their final plan and could have set up shop anywhere on the planet, an unpopulated, defensible area maybe, but no, they chose Chicago for no apparent reason. Most of the sequence was just explosion-porn, which is fine, but too much is too much.

Here's something neither good nor bad. The leading lady, replacing Megan Fox, is basically a lookalike for Megan Fox. Since she's not playing the same character, they really didn't have to stick with the same image, but it's fine that they did. During the destroy-Chicago sequence, the leading lady went from wearing 4" heels to flats and back to heels sometimes in the same scene. The fact that I had enough time to focus on her footware says a little something about the Chicago sequence.

How about some good?  There is some good in Transformers 3.  The same leading lady with the heels does more to win the battle with her brain than all of the autobots and Army guys combined. The cheesecake in a Transformers movie turns out to be a good role model for young girls. Whoda thunk?

All-in-all, Transformers 3 is pretty much the movie that you have already imagined it to be, only longer, louder and less coherent. There is a place for such movies, but be cautious if you think this is the blow-'em-up movie for you.  It has none of the heart of the first one and might not even be as good as the second one (and the second one wasn't very good at all).

2:26; released in 3D; viewed in 2D

Green Lantern

I have had issues with movies based on comic books and graphic novels for some time. Neither translate to movies smoothly, but some turn out OK, at least comic books can. Green Lantern is based on a beloved, long-running comic book, but you couldn't tell based on the movie. It's very cliched, rather disjointed and kind of pro forma - it's supposed to be a big action-hero movie, and it is, but it's not very engaging.

1:44

Super 8

Well, there was a lot of running in Super 8, but not as much as I would expect in a JJ Abrams movie. Super 8 unfurls in a leisurely fashion, introducing the characters and situation slowly. I read that Abrams was trying for the feeling of an early Steven Spielberg movie and he succeeded, to a point.

Super 8 has received a lot of buzz - or maybe hype - but it's not a big movie. The train crash was ridiculously complicated yet non-fatal and the way the thing in the train behaved was inconsistent. No, Super 8 is a just decent little movie. The characters were nice, the acting was good and the movie is an adequate way to spend a hundred minutes, but it's not a movie for the ages and it won't be on the list of 2011's top popcorn movies.

1:44

Pre-impression of Super 8

I'm off to see Super 8 shortly. I predict a lot of running. Yep, running.

Super 8 was directed by JJ Abrams and if he has one trademark, it's running. He used it in his previous movies Mission: Impossible III* and Star Trek, and on his TV shows Alias, Lost and for all I know, Felicity. Extended, occasionally unnecessary tracking shots of people running in profile. While Jennifer Garner always looked good running for her life on Alias, the rest of the examples are somewhat mixed in effectiveness.

I predict running.

* Don't get me started on why the modern Mission: Impossible movies have nothing in common with the original TV series. For your own good, don't get me started.

Thor

Studios have been making a lot of movies based on comic books lately and, judging by the releases in the pipeline, they won't be stopping anytime soon. Thing is, the medium of motion pictures is not the optimum medium for a comic book story - a comic book is.

Thor is a prime example. Not a bad movie at all, but the superficiality of the story, the two-dimensional characters and over-the-top action scenes did nothing to draw me in to the movie. The part I liked the most was actually the CGI scenes of Odin's realm. They showed a beautiful golden city on a mountaintop - think Rome and Greece at their peaks, only bigger.

And what is with Natalie Portman being in every other movie made lately? I love her to death and she always does a great job, but take a breath, kid. Unfortunntely, in Thor, she had little chemistry with the he-man lead. That might have something to do with Thor being based on a comic book. She's much better in movies based on original screenplays. Black Swan, No Strings Attached anyone?

1:44

Fast Five

At last, a movie that delivers exactly what it promises. Fast Five doesn't promise a lot, but cars are chased, bullets whiz, biceps are flexed, bikinis are bikinied, and lots of things go BOOM! There's lots of attractive scenery in and around Rio de Janeiro, attractive people galore and lots of fun stunts.

Fast Five is the fifth movie in the The Fast and the Furious franchise, but I only saw numbers 1& 2, and I had no trouble keeping up. Among the elements Fast Five promises, a labyrinthine plot is not one of them. If you're looking for a fast paced movie that allows you to turn off half of your brain (or more) for two hours, I recommend Fast Five.

Two additional notes. First, the plot of the movie is pure caper. I remember reading apocryphal mentions a few years ago of a sequel to The Italian Job to be called The Brazilian Job. I wonder if someone appropriated the plot of the never-to-be-made Italian Job sequel for Fast Five. The two movies parallel each other in many regards, but that may just be a function of the caper movie genre.

Next, Elsa Pataky has a supporting role as a cop from Rio. Well known in her native Espana, she's only done a few projects in English, including Snakes on a Plane. Elsa has fabulous screen presence and only a bit of a Spanish accent, so it's hard to believe that American film makers don't employ her more often. Fools.

 2:01

Something Borrowed

Do not bother. Something Borrowed was sold as a romantic comedy but it's really of the romantic trainwreck ilk. Despite the promise of the commercials, it has few laughs in the first half and none in the second. But let's suppose you are interested in a romantic trainwreck movie - it's a real genre and sometimes the movies can be good - there are much better ones out there.

Among the other reasons to dislike Something Borrowed include logical problems with the story, miscasting, no chemistry between the leads, and characters so sterile you won't be able to garner any emotional attachment to the movie. There's also the matter of the movie being 20 minutes too long and having two false endings.

There is one redeeming quality to Something Borrowed: the always adorable Ginnifer Goodwin.  My advice?  Skip Something Borrowed - whether you want to see a romantic comedy or romantic trainwreck, you can find better examples of both.

1:47

Love and Other Drugs

I never got around to seeing Love and Other Drugs when it was in the theater last winter, so now that it's out on DVD - that was fast! - I gave it a watch.

From the previews, I see that it was a romantic comedy about a drug rep for Viagra. Oh, and after it left the theater, I heard it was the movie where Anne Hathaway gets naked. What could be bad?

Bait

and

Switch.

Love and Other Drugs isn't a romantic comedy, it's an occasionally humorous drama about a young woman with Parkinson's disease. Downer.

Anne looks good without her clothes, Jake Gyllenhaal proves he is a Movie Star, but Love and Other Drugs is a Love Story Drama. Even though we know she has Parkinson's, Anne really has Alimacgrawitis, the ailment named after Love Story star Ali MacGraw, whose character became more radiant and lovely the sicker she got.

If you want a modern illness drama, Love and Other Drugs will do fine - it's a decent movie - but if you want a nice romantic comedy, keep looking.

Hop

Hop is a fairly flat hybrid of live action & CGI about the Easter Bunny. There is nothing particularly interesting or special about Hop, in fact, I found a few things objectionable, but I'm known to be surly.

The versatile and shameless James Marsden plays a 30-ish slacker who is unfortunate enough to meet up with a slacker junior Easter Bunny. Kaley Cuoco (of The Big Bang Theory) gets second billing (for humans) but is in the movie far too little and wears far too conservative attire.

1:30

Talking at Movies

There are three kinds of people who talk during movies: people who just plain like to talk at movies; people who talk to their young children out of necessity; and people who talk at movies under the pretense of talking to their children.

Guess which of these heinous, selfish, no-good excuses for humans being sat down one seat away from me today (in an almost empty theater, no less) and talked almost non-stop for the entire* movie?

*I moved to a seat out of earshot about five minutes into the movie but I could still hear murmurs coming from that direction during quiet parts of the show.

Hanna

I went to see Hanna this afternoon, for the second time. Aside from that implied endorsement, here are a few things you need to know:

The title character is German, so her name is pronounced Honna. The lead actress is Saoirse Ronan, whose name is pronounced Sur-sha (if we believe the internet).

Although it looks like a spy movie and fully 3/4ths of the characters are current or former spies, it's not a spy movie. Hanna could be considered a full-tilt, balls to the wall action movie but it's really a coming of age movie. It's a character study about Hanna finding out who she is. Unlike your typical 17-year-old girl finding herself, Hanna is a killing machine.

Hanna has been raised by her father in seclusion in northern Finland. It's possible that she's never met another person and definitely no one her own age. She's never used electricity or heard music. Her father has raised her to be strong, independent and lethal. He drills her incessantly, repeating "Always be ready, even in your sleep," and "Adapt or die." That last mantra is really the theme of the movie.

The father never kept from Hanna that her mother was killed by a CIA officer named Marissa Weigler. That name sounds more ominous when said with a German accent. He trains Hanna to get revenge. After giving her lukewarm warnings about how dangerous it will be to start down the revenge path, he gives her a device that will attract the attention of American intelligence and allow her to come face to face with her mother's killer.  Really, he programmed her for this mission from infancy.  She had no choice.

The rest of the story is a cat & mouse game where the CIA peoples don't understand that they are the mice. Hanna has to travel across half of Europe to catch up to her father and she learns much about herself in the process.

Here's what I liked about Hanna. It ends up with a necessary confrontation but gets there in unexpected and leisurely ways, many of which you don't normally find in an action movie.

Director Joe Wright is highly talented, helming Pride and Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version) and The Soloist, and worked with Saoirse before, in 2007's Atonement, which netted her an Academy Award nomination for Supporting Actress. She was also fine in City of Ember (a terrible movie otherwise) and OK in The Lovely Bones.

Wright is so talented he couldn't resist showing off in Hanna. There is one scene that takes place with a single shot. The father steps off a bus, scoots across a lane of traffic, walks through the terminal, out the other side, down a long sidewalk, down an escalator, then gets into a fight with four spies in a large underground plaza, and then walks out. It's a three minute plus shot and it's beautiful, although unnecessary. Wright did it before in Atonement, with a much bigger wartime shot. I like the idea of continuous shots but this one seemed like showing off.

Much of Hanna involves Hanna seeing the outside world for the first time. When she escapes custody, she takes refuge in a rundown motel. The clerk turns on a light switch, which she finds mesmerizing. Same for the TV. She flips out when the phone rings. Much of this discovery is made with pounding techno music assaulting our ears so we get a hint of what she feels. Yet, Hanna adapts, as later in the movie she stops at an internet cafe and surfs as well as anyone.

There's another scene that I found remarkable yet it passes almost unnoticed. Her host in Berlin begins to make waffles and gets out a carton of eggs. Hanna asks for one, he tosses it to her, she catches it, cracks it open and swallows the contents in a single motion. It's a great scene that tells you almost everything you need to know about her yet it's over in a few seconds.

Although I'm raving about Hanna - perhaps not in ways the studio might approve of - there are a few downsides. Cate Blanchett, one of the best actresses working today, uses a clumsy southern accent while playing Marissa Weigler. Never mind that Hanna takes place in Europe, where she was one of a very few people speaking American, and that Cate is immediately recognizable as not being from the American south, the accent really gave no additional element to the character. It seemed like a distracting quirk more than anything else.  Her shoes and flossing fetishes were much more interesting.

Worst thing about Hanna, though, is that the studio put a spoiler in the commercials. When Hanna is captured, she turns the tables and kills a CIA officer and some guards. That's no spoiler - it's in the commercials. The scene is powerful, elegant, long and shocking. It would have been gasp-worthy if the idiots in marketing hadn't used it. It may well have been considered one of the best movie moments of 2011, if only it hadn't been shown to us before we even saw the movie.

Let's end on a positive note. I mentioned that Hanna is as much of a character study as it is an action adventure. In her travels, Hanna meets up with an English family, with the mother played by Olivia Williams, a favorite of mine and late of my beloved Dollhouse. It becomes apparent rather quickly that the mother is much more in tune with Hanna than her own daughter. Hanna senses it as well but also knows that she is well beyond needing a mother anymore. She has adapted.

1:43

Torchwood

For the last couple of weeks, I've been watching this ridiculously addictive TV show on DVD called

Torchwood. It was produced by the BBC from 2006 to 2009. It's a sci-fi adventure crossed with a

police procedural. I devoured each episode as fast the mail and Netflix streaming could deliver

them. 31 episodes were produced.

Cardiff, Wales, sits on a rift in time and space. Things pass through the rift unfettered. Torchwood

exists to fight aliens, protect humans and appropriate alien technology for use as weapons when

malevolent and predatory aliens make an appearance later this century.

The rift is a perfect sci-fi plot device. Need an alien? Got one. Need a monster? Here. Need a

doohickey to wreak havoc? It's over there. Need a romance with a babe from 1953? Here she

comes now. Want to send your own people back in time? Would you prefer World War I or II?

Torchwood is an independent agency located in an old tube station under Cardiff. Its leader is

Captain Jack Harkness, an action hero sent over by Central Casting. Jack is played by John

Barrowman, who is possibly the most handsome man in the history of, well, men. Jack is a

confident rogue and a fearless leader, as well as a mystery. It is established early on that he is

immortal, bouncing back to life shortly after he is killed, which happens frequently. That trait is

related to him being a former Time Agent, as Torchwood is a spin-off of the BBC's 2005 recreation

of Dr Who. I've never seen Dr Who, so I just went with it whenever references came up.

The heart of the show is Gwen, a former police constable who tracks down Torchwood in the first

episode. Where Jack is often amoral or just rude, Gwen is the conscience of the show and keeps the team

focused on helping humans more than exploring alien swag. Played by Welsh actress Eve Myles,

she is more than a little adorable, despite a David Lettermanesque gap between her front teeth.

Hey, it's the UK and hot is hot.

There are a few things you need to know about Torchwood. First, it has movie-quality visuals.

This must have been an incredibly expensive show to produce. The lighting is lush and beautiful,

and the action sequences are adrenalific. Cardiff looks like a dramatic, sexy city and I'm guessing

that in real life, it might not be.

Another thing, Torchwood is unbelievably bi. Except for Gwen, every character has sexual

congress with members of both genders at some point during the series run. It's kind of strange (although welcome) to see this degree of liberation and you'll never see it on American TV. Captain Jack, born

sometime after the year 5000, hints that attitudes will change in the future but that doesn't account

for the omnivorousness of the characters from this century.

Finally, the Welsh and English accents are a bit thick, so captions were helpful and necessary for me.

Barrowman, born in Scotland but raised in the US, certainly sounds American, but you can tell his

writers had no interest in making him be American. He talks like a Brit, based on phrasing and word choice, but without the accent. For example, he addressed a couple of people as "You lot," which no American would. We'd say "You," "You two," "You guys," or even "All Y'all," but we'd never say "You lot." Maybe it's intentional, as Jack has lived in the UK for centuries. Hard to say.

I'm not sure what the story is behind Torchwood's odd production history. There were two

13-episode seasons, followed by a five-episode season. That third season took place over five

action-packed days and probably cost as much to produce as an entire 13-ep season. It was even

aired in the UK on five consecutive nights, making it quite the broadcasting event. I understand that

Torchwood season four will air ten episodes sometime this summer. It will be interesting to see

where they take the show. After you save the world, what do you do next?