A Justice League of Their Own

Director Zack Snyder can compose great cinematic shots.  I was reminded of this immediately as I watched the start of “Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.”  The film unfolds with the sequence of the Wayne family walking back from the movies on that fateful night when they are mugged and killed in front of young Bruce.  This all too familiar sequence, can’t filmmakers leave the Wayne family alone already, is exquisitely shot by Snyder in an almost mythic way.  Once both parents are killed we see Bruce running into a forest after the funeral proceedings only to have stumbled and fallen underground to where a plethora of bats fly and swirl around him.  He is then seen floating towards the top of this cave in a liberated trance.  His dark knight is seeping out into the world above.  I must say…for a few minutes…it was a true moment of exciting cinema.  The familiar was new again.  I was hooked.  At least for a brief time.

“Dawn of Justice” occasionally contains some thrilling moments like this striking beginning which makes it all the more frustrating when the movie isn’t working….which I’m afraid is far too often.  Snyder tries to construct a topical film about the need for heroes in capes as well as the toll the world can take from the destruction such heroes can leave in their wake.  This theme is introduced in the opening in which the ending of “Man of Steel” is revisited but now with the addition of Bruce Wayne’s (Ben Affleck) point of view.  Wayne’s building in Metropolis gets destroyed along with the lives of a number of his employees.  Needless to say….an urge to pick a fight with Superman (Henry Cavill) isn’t too bad an idea all of a sudden.  The seething Wayne now just needs to find a way to win.  And Superman who’s now being seen as a savior by people internationally is also getting flack from the likes of Government officials like Kentucky Senator Finch (Holly Hunter) who feel he needs to answer for his actions.  Enter Jesse Eisenberg’s all too jittery Lex Luthor who’s been plotting a way to bring down Supes for his own devious purposes and the arena for a showdown is almost set.  And boy does it take a long time before we get to see this supposed gladiator match of the ages.  And did I mention Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is around too.  And if that wasn’t enough Doomsday makes a cameo.  To say this movie goes big is most definitely an understatement.  It contains ludicrous dream segments as well.  Just stop already.

Like most all Snyder movies this film has a great artful sheen to it that makes everything look fantastic and when Superman and Batman finally do fight..…it’s clever and thrilling and well choreographed to boot.  But also like most Snyder movies our director forgoes character development, cohesive narrative and just an overall sense of fun for the sake of visual panache that is only occasionally gripping in a more emotional sense.  We don’t have time to really get to know the new characters either.  They’re to busy brooding and investigating.  And Snyder seems all too intent on keeping the tone as grim as possible.  About an hour and a half in I just wanted to go home and watch the giddily enjoyable “Ant-Man” instead.  Damn you DC.

Affleck, who got top billing here, smartly chooses to underplay an older and cockier Bruce Wayne and fitfully embodies a bulkier version of Batman that’s more in tune with Frank Miller’s more violent and imposing variation from “The Dark Knight Returns” circa 1985.  A scene towards the end where Batman explodes out of a wooden floor of a warehouse to take on a number of criminals is one of the best involving a live action version of the character.  The whirling camera tracking of the action following was also a fine touch.

Cavill, as he did in “Man of Steel” a few years ago, looks physically great as Superman but appears to be emotionally vacant underneath (I haven’t seen him really act since “The Tudors”) and I was also disappointed to see that the only difference between his take on Superman and Clark Kent is the likes of a plaid shirt and glasses (Christopher Reeve’s boyish awkwardness as Kent is sorely missed).  It’s the smaller roles like Jeremy Irons amusingly gruff take on Alfred and Laurence Fishburne’s wily bluster as Perry White that beg for more screen time and belong in a smarter and funnier film.  And Eisenberg also deserves special mention as young Lex.  At first I was taken aback by the broadness of the performance which made Jim Carrey’s work as the Riddler in “Batman Forever” seem subtle by comparison.  But as the film went along I started to get a sense of its inherent creepiness.  His creation of Lex as a blogger misanthrope who seems to thrive on conflict really pops in a couple of scenes including a standout moment where Lex accepts an award at a party and his chipper demeanor abruptly turns into a corporate tirade.  But towards film’s end his character is sidelined as Batman and Supes have their way with each other before taking on the atrocity of Doomsday. These guys just need to hug it out and get a room already.  But oh no….quaint misunderstandings and bombastic fisticuffs must ensue. 

DC is inevitably competing with Marvel here and this movie looks all too desperate to play catch up to Marvel’s progressing film success.  Snyder has thrown so much into the this convoluted mess that one begs for a more streamlined and less ambitious film.  And more importantly one that’s just fun to watch.

   

    

  

  

Spring Breakers

There was a period of time in a galaxy long, long ago when Robert De Niro was a great actor.  In films ranging from “Mean Streets” to “Raging Bull” he solidified himself as the one true heir to Brando, a method maniac who was as audacious a screen presence as he was cunning chameleon.  But if one starts to look closely at his rather lengthy CV it becomes more apparent that starting in and around the late 90s he began tapping into auto-pilot and the brave and challenging roles became few and far between.  Maybe he was trying to appeal to a different audience or maybe he got paid better to work more and act less or maybe it was paycheck grabs for his Tribeca funding.  It all reminds me of when Joe McHale (“Community” TV show) somewhat randomly did an impression of DeNiro’s agent at a White House Correspondence Dinner.  He mimed like he was an agent picking up a phone simply saying “he’ll do it” which elicited both a laugh and a moment of sadness from the DeNiro fan who wrote this review.

“Dirty Grandpa” is fuel to the fire for McHale’s case in point and an excuse for one of cinemas reigning icons to take a paid vacation via Atlanta.  The film casts DeNiro as Dick Kelly, a former special forces soldier long since retired, who has just lost his beloved wife and decides to get his soon to be married and aspiring lawyer son Jason (Zac Efron “Neighbors”) to drive him from Georgia to Daytona Beach Florida where he can mourn.  Or so he says.  Once Jason, en route to pick his grandpa up for the trip, happens to catch him on the couch naked and masturbating to porn on his big screen, one gets the sense that Grandpa Kelly has a different kind of trip idea in store.  Yet “Scent of a Woman” this is not.

Grandpa Kelly as it turns out just wants to get as much drinking, cursing, and fornicating in as he can while occasionally stopping to dispense pearls of wisdom to his emotionally repressed grandson whom he fears is about to get married to a woman he doesn’t love and start a career he’ll hate.  Jason also begins to fall for a girl on the Daytona quest who was his lab partner back in college during a time when he had an affinity for photography (honestly I can’t make this stuff up).   At least that’s what sense of narrative I was able to conjure from this doomed enterprise which makes less sense as it goes.  

DeNiro is shamelessly playing a cartoon version of an elder Travis Bickle within a comedic context which is nowhere near as amusing as it may sound.  And Efron is stuck in the thankless part of petulant worrywart to which he’s naturally ill-suited.  Efron’s casting in “Neighbors” worked since he was able to embody the ripped torso of a frat boy king while also mocking the lunkhead persona that goes with it.  His presence can be lazily charming at best but he lacks the darting intelligence and nuance of say a Jesse Eisenberg or Joseph Gordon Levitt who could play the part of Jason in their sleep (in a much better film I would like to think).  Not that either actor is buoyed by the material in this case.  With little to no structure the movie devolves into a series of muddled vignettes where the filmmakers are doing what they can to make each progressive scene more outrageous than the first throwing credibility and coherence out the window completely.  By the time Efron turns in his bed to the image of a protruding penis at the edge of the frame I was ready to call it a night.

The supporting cast fails to make much of an impression either with Aubrey Plaza being the sole exception.  The “Parcs and Rec,” actress lends her acerbic wit where she can as a sultry spring breaker with eyes on DeNiro and she comes close to establishing an interplay with him throwing out lines like “tear me open like I’m a social security check” among the more memorable (which I imagine was the result of her own improv).  But even she gets wasted within the unnerving constraints of an unfunny film that doesn’t know what to do with anyone involved. 

“Dirty Grandpa” is the ultimate awful DeNiro vehicle that is a culmination of all the bad movies he’s been involved with over recent years ranging from “Rocky and Bullwinkle” to most anything “Fockers” related.  But I still have hope he can turn it around and come back since in the right project he can still deliver (his poignant and funny dare I say Oscar nominated turn in David O Russell’s terrific “Silver Linings Playbook” really wasn’t that long ago).  If nothing else he just needs to work with Scorsese again to get all the magic back.