THOR: THE DARK WORLD

Hi honey, I'm home! After nearly a month's movie detox after the BFI London Film Festival, I'm back with a review of what is arguably the final in the long tail of summer blockbusters or the first in the holiday season - THOR: THE DARK WORLD aka THOR 2.

I've always found Thor to be one of the least exciting of the Marvel heroes - a quite literally ham-fisted hammer-wielding macho god improbably in love with an earthling astrophysicist, Jane Foster.  British luvvie Kenneth Branagh got around this portentous Norse nonsense in the first movie by injecting a sense of knowing camp and kitsch that nicely balanced the over-designed mythical space-world of Asgard and the usual Marvel over-loud over-long effects-heavy action sequence.  As much as Kenneth Branagh - champion of Shakespeare - was a left-field choice for THOR, somehow it just worked. Whereas Alan Taylor - mostly a TV director who works on dark character-led dramas - The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones - is also a left-field choice who kind of doesn't.  There's none of the kitsch comedy that Branagh brought to THOR in THE DARK WORLD, and the action sequences are dull, ill-conceived and just bizarre in their programming. But I wonder if the problem really lies in the script, penned by Marvel TV writer Chris Yost as well as Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (CAPTAIN AMERICA, which let's not forget benefited from the Joss Whedon running the slide rule over it.)

Their plot hinges on the conceit that the nine realms are about to enter a "convergence" - a planetary alignment that allows matter to pass between worlds or something.  An evil elf (I kid you not) plans to use some WMD called the Aether to cause interplanetary chaos at just this point. Problem is, that space-WMD has been magicked into Thor's girlfriend Jane, and when he takes her to Asgard for safe-keeping, the elves lay waste to his home planet.  He then teams up with his evil brother Loki to defeat the elf, which for reasons not entirely clear culminates in a huge battle in London complete with a seemingly mad Professor Selvig running around with no pants.

The problem with THOR: THE DARK WORLD is that Professor Selvig running round in his pants in pointless but also one of the funniest and most touching parts of the film.  Poor Natalie Portman has very little to do as Jane, basically fainting from the Aether and being rescued. Chris Hemsworth's Thor is all muscly and earnest but as little to do.  And you guessed it - Christopher Eccleston as the evil elf - is all heavy duty make-up, evil stare and, little to do.  The movie is hijacked  - thank the Norse gods - by the tricksy evil brother Loki played with delicious malevolent glee by Tom Hiddleston. He's the only actor given anything to get his teeth into, and is an absolutely magnetic presence - second only to Heath Ledger's Joker as the comic book evil villain par excellence. He injects the film with good humour, ambiguity and true charisma.  It's only a shame there isn't more of him.  I wanted more humour. I wanted more odd-couple comedy - more Thor getting jealous of Jane's human love interest - more of Thor getting on the Tube asking the way to Greenwich - but sadly this movie was too dark and gloomy and bang-shouty to let that in.

THOR: THE DARK WORLD is on release pretty much everywhere except Japan where it opens on February 1st 2014.

THOR 3D - a movie so dull it took me two weeks to work up the energy to review it

THOR is a super-hero movie so simplistic that it makes you feel like BATMAN BEGINS never happened.  I left the theatre bored and patronized.  Not to mention shocked that the director – Kenneth Branagh – who brought us intelligent and subtle readings of Shakespeare – was trading in such trite pastiche.  The movie neither challenges intellectually nor delights visually. It is – both in terms of style and content – an absolute zero.

The plot has two parts to it, but both are hackneyed and predictable. The first part is your typical Oedipal tale of familial jealousy and revenge.  Papa loves big brother (Thor) more than little brother, so little brother gets his revenge by framing big brother and having him exiled before usurping his father’s throne. This all takes place in a Norse superhero world peopled by buff gods in He-Man outfits but decorated by Trump.  There is an inter-world travel-ator which looks like a posh version of the Star Trek transporter and is, shock! horror! to comic book fans, guarded by a black god.  (The only shock I felt was why Idris Elba – so brilliant in The Wire – was slumming it in this dreck). This brings us to the second part of the story, which is basically your typical, predictable fish-out-of-water rom-com, as last seen in Disney’s THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG.  Aforementioned big brother gets exiled to earth where he meets a hot chick who just happens to be an astrophysicist. He learns how not to be an arrogant arse after one night’s deep and meaningful conversation on top of a camper van, and then buggers off to save his world.

The issue here is that the movie is cheap.  It looks cheap and it goes for cheap laughs. Thor is undoubtedly a camp character but then so is Batman. The problem here is that he is also one-dimensional, whereas Batman has nuance and conflict. Thor’s character “development” from idiot-jock to sensitive-hippie is boring because it doesn’t come by stages but rather at the flick of a switch. The  script-writers are simply uninterested in exploring the genre conventions in which they are operating, and to the post-modern viewer, the result is a movie that seems old clunky, simplistic and frankly, just not trying hard enough.  At worst, it feels like pastiche.  There is little point in discussing performances –for what hope do the actors have to dazzle when they are asked to be little more than cardboard cut-outs? Natalie Portman, as the love interest, Jane, simply has to swoon.  Chris Hemsworth, as Thor, simply has to be ridiculous and be-muscled. Anthony Hopkins, as Papa Odin, has to be austere. And poor Tom Huddlestone, used to much finer fair in British independent cinema, is reduced to twirling his pantomime moustaches as little brother, Loki. This cheapens the actors as much as it cheapens the audience. Poor show, all round. 

THOR is on release in all markets bar Japan where it opens on July 1st.

The Fast Jimmy Memorial DVD Review - DEFENDOR

Trailing in the shadow of KICK-ASS comes a low-budget flick called DEFENDOR - the directorial debut of writer/actor Peter Stebbings - that got a limited release in the US and goes straight to DVD in much of Europe next Monday. Woody Harrelson stars as a sweet guy suffering from the delusion that he is a super-hero called Defendor, who can fight evil villains a jar of angry wasps and a baseball bat. Naturally, he gets the shit kicked out of him, but not before he is rescued by/rescues a crack-whore called Kat (Kat Dennings - NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST). Before the inevitable third-act redemption, Kat plays to Defendor's delusions by making him think that her ex-boss/pimp is his arch-enemy, and the rest of the movie shows how Arthur/Defendor tries to navigate real-life crime-busting. This is inter-cut with footage of him going through therapy with his psychiatrist, played by an amused by sympathetic Sandra Oh (GREY'S ANATOMY).

Overall, the movie is an interesting watch because Woody Harrelson commits to the role and brings a sort of goofy charm to it that he hasn't had on screen since back in the days of CHEERS. The supporting cast is generally strong - particularly Elias Koteas as undercover cop Chuck Dooney. And the tech credits are particularly impressive for a low-budget venture: props to DP David Greene. But there are problems with the flick. In front of the camera, I had a tough time buying into Kat Dennings portrayal of the hooker with a heart of gold. In every film she makes she carries herself and speaks like a wise-ass hipster. This is fine for a film like  NICK AND NORAH but really jars in DEFENDOR. She just doesn't sound convincing as a girl who lives on the streets. The second problem is on the page - the script is too uneven in tone. Does Peter Stebbings want this to be a goofy comedy, poking gentle fun at Defendor? Or does he want this to be an emotional drama about too damaged and unlikely people finding a connection? Neither was committed to.

So, would I recommend DEFENDOR? Yes, it's good enough for DVD night and has an interesting approach to superhero movies. But for my money, if you really want to see a sensitive and beautifully acted examination of super-hero as delusion, check out SPECIAL.

Additional tags: Peter Stebbings, Clark Johnson, Lisa Ray, A C Peterson, Kristin Booth, Charlotte Sullivan, John Rowley, David Greene, Geoff Ashenhurst

DEFENDOR played Toronto and Whistler 2009 and went on limited released in the US and Brazil earlier this year. It is straight to DVD in the UK on September 9th.

CHARLIE BARTLETT - This Charming Man

CHARLIE BARTLETT is a charming and quirky teen comedy directed by sometime editor Jon Poll and written by debut feature writer Gustin Nash. It's a classic tale of teen fantasy - the class loser finds popularity by turning his disadvantages to his advantage. In this case, he dispenses advice and sells on the psycho-ceuticals prescribed to him by the many therapists his rich, troubled mother engages for him.

The film has a major flaw, and that is its unevenness of tone. On the one hand, it has a real sense of style, a quirky score, brutally funny one-liners and a healthy dollop of teenage wish fulfillment. But dispensing narcs to mentally sick kids is a serious business, and whenever the movie tries to grapple with that, it doesn't have the courage to follow it through and slips back into offbeat charm.

For all that, CHARLIE BARTLETT is definitely worth watching for Anton Yelchin's central performance as the troubled teen and Hope Davis' gloriously camp performance as his mother. Yelchin has real charisma in this film and displays great comic timing. (It's a shame he wasn't allowed to move beyond a stereotypical accent in his recent turn as Chekov in the new STAR TREK film.) Moreover, as in all the best teen fantasy movies, Charlie's troubles contain a grain of truth. Anyone who has irresponsible parents knows what it's like to act out and push for some boundaries.

CHARLIE BARTLETT played Tribeca 2007 and was released in 2008 in Canada, the US, Turkey, Singapore, Croatia, Australia, Russia, the UK, Italy, Germany, India, South Korea, Austria, Israel, Iceland and Mexico. It was released earlier this year in Japan and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

London Film Festival Day 5 - NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST is a charming romantic comedy about two music geeks who fall for each other over a night running around New York City looking for a secret gig. Yes, they both have toxic ex-es, but finally they stop being cute and get down to it so that we can all go home, our cockles warmed and what-not. It's not unentertaining, although the laughs are thinner than they should be, way too dependent on gross-out toilet humour, and the romance is incredibly forced. Such are the pitfalls of the genre.

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST is also a movie that, upon consideration, I think I despise. Everything about it is contrived to suck up whatever droplets of cool remain in the hipster movement and spit them out in bland commercial form for the mass market. I knew it was over for the indie rock movement when THE O.C. started merchandising mix CDs of Modest Mouse. This movie tries to ride the crest of the wave that combined the runaway success of JUNO and VAMPIRE WEEKEND but crashes on the roadblock of its own hypocrisy.

The movie opens with animated credits that are so desperate to be this year's JUNO it's painful to watch. And then we dive into the meet cute. Michael Cera plays the typical Michael Cera character - Nick - a nice guy geek who's being treated woefully by his domineering girlfriend (the disturbingly baby-faced Alexis Dziena). He makes her ueber-cool mix-CDs. She tosses them. Her friend Norah (Kat Dennings) picks them up. When Norah finally meets Nick his gay best friends put her in a wonderbra and wish her luck. We then get an hour of nonsense (but no actual discussion of cool bands, natch!) Clearly these characters are designed to be together and their ex'es are so godawful that there's no dramatic tension at all. When they do get together we get the most absurd sex scene in recent cinema. It takes place in a recording studio where Nick has the temerity to accuse Norah's dad of being a "hippie turned yuppie peddling...to the mass market."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Especially when you consider that the guy who directed this film started out making genuinely gritty indie movies like RAISING VICTOR VARGAS.

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST played Toronto and London 20078. It is currently on release in the US and opens in Iceland on December 5th. It opens on January 22nd in Australia and Germany; it opens in the UK on January 30th; in opens on February 13th in Italy; on February 20th in Finland and Sweden; on February 27th in Denmark; on March 4th in Belgium, Egypt, Argentina and the Netherlands and on March 11th in France.

THE HOUSE BUNNY - dazed and confused

Anna Faris is a very likeable and talented comedienne and it's great to see her get a truly starring role in the teen comedy THE HOUSE BUNNY. What a shame it is, then, to see her given such a weak and confused script. Worse still, because this movie is written by the team that brought us LEGALLY BLONDE. The LB movies managed to skillfully balance their love for seeing chicks in bikinis acting like ditzes with an empowerment message. But THE HOUSE BUNNY fails miserably.

The plot sees Elle, sorry, Shelley, tricked into leaving her idea of heaven - the Playboy Mansion. In her search for a feeling of community she becomes a Sorority Mother to the geekiest, most tragic girls on campus. She gives them an extreme makeover and before you know it, their sorority has become super-popular. Meanwhile, Shelley undergoes the reverse transformation, reading up so that she can impress do-gooding potential boyfriend Oliver. The final message of the film is very confused. On the one hand, you should act sexy because boys like to see skin and don't like brains. But then again, you should respect individuality and intellect. Sitting on the fence like that must've been really painful.

I think LEGALLY BLONDE worked because Elle was seeking acceptance on her own terms: she wasn't trying to convert the masses to her ditzy ways. Moreover, the supporting characters were all fairly normal. But in THE HOUSE BUNNY their is no anchor anywhere near reality. Most of the girls in the sorority are freaks - blunt piss-takes with no more subtelty than Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. All of which makes this no better than a weak LB rip-off with a confused message, too few belly-laughs and amateurish direction.

THE HOUSE BUNNY was released earlier this year in the US, Canada and Australia. It is currently on release in Singapore, Venezuela, France, Germany, Portugal, Russia, Brazil, Iceland and the UK. It opens next week in Egypt and on October 29th in the Philippines. It opens in Finland and Sweden on November 28th and in Belgium, Argentina, the Netherlands and Spain on December 17th. It opens in Denmark on January 9th.