Director: James Gunn
Runtime: 121 minutes
Though there's not a pirate to be found in Guardians of the Galaxy (at least not of the Blackbeard variety), the word that kept popping up in my head during the credits was "swashbuckling." Without question the Marvel universe's cheekiest adventure to date, James Gunn's breezy adventure may go through the motions of plot, but it's rather winning when it comes to character dynamics. At once acknowledging its own silliness and genuinely caring about its rag-tag group of heroes, this comedic foray into space opera territory errs on the lighter side, for better and for worse (but mostly for better).
The film's whole feel is best summed up by the film's main character Peter Quill, as played by Parks and Recreation star Chris Pratt. He's slick, he looks the part, and he's got the whole roguishly handsome vibe going on, yet with just the right look in his eyes to let you know that things are never going to fall into outright despair. The film kicks off with young Quill's mother dying of cancer, yet barely a minute later he's abducted by a group of space rogues who train him to be an intergalactic thief.
And it's on one seemingly routine, Indiana Jones-like mission that Quill's life takes its pivotal turn and gets the story proper going. After stealing a mysterious metal orb from an abandoned planet (and rocking out to the mix tape on his cassette tape player), Quill finds himself targeted by multiple forces. Among them are the fierce warrior/assassin Gamora (a bright green Zoe Saldana), who wants the orb for her boss, and two bounty hunters looking to collect the sizable claim on Quill's head. Those assassins are Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper) and Groot (voice of Vin Diesel), and they happen to be an anthropomorphic raccoon and tree, respectively.
Of course, one thing leads to another, and everyone gets locked up in a floating space prison (as you do), falls in with fearsome warrior Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), and begrudgingly decides to work together. Turns out that orb is an ancient weapon, and Gamora's now former boss Ronan (Lee Pace) wants to use it to commit genocide. What happens next? Well, nothing terribly surprising, although that hardly ends up being a bad thing in this case.
Regarding plot and character, director Gunn and writer Nicole Perlman make no bones about the fact that they're creating a film designed to launch a franchise. So even though the "get the MacGuffin back from the villain" story largely goes through the motions, the pair compensate by placing focus on the mostly lighthearted bickering and bantering among the central quintet. This turns out to be a winning formula, as it's when the film is usually at its most purely enjoyable. Much of this also has to do with the nature of the characters. Rather than the usual Marvel demi gods and super humans, the Guardians are, for lack of better term, more down to Earth that your average heroes. They have their skills, but not to the point of being too different from the rest of their wild, dangerous universe.
The main cast all have a great deal of fun with their light-as-a-feather material, and Gunn even finds ways to work in some genuinely emotional moments without going into the thornier emotional complexities. Pratt makes for an endearing leader of this band of outlaws, and proves to be a surprisingly capable leading man in both comedy and sci-fi/adventure. Saldana, now launching her third major sci-fi franchise (after Avatar and Star Trek) is as fierce as ever, and makes Gamora a suitably level-headed character without turning her into a spoil sport or a nag. And Bautista, though initially a little shaky, nicely grows into his role as the vengeful and literally-minded Drax.
The real heart of the movie, however, belongs to its two entirely digital characters. Cooper does an exceptional job voicing the wily Rocket, and helps punctuate the close encounters with po-faced dramatics with perfectly calibrated doses of sarcasm and humor. Diesel as Groot has less to work with (the character's only means of communication is to say "I am Groot"), yet he turns these repeated declarations into appropriately varied expressions of the character's emotions (and thankfully, Rocket, the Han Solo to his Chewbacca, is always on hand to translate). Both characters are also superbly rendered by the visual effects artists, which only lends extra heft to impeccable voice work from both actors.
Despite some hints at deeper trauma or sadness in these characters, the overall approach is to keep everything buoyant and in forward motion. Even with its cardboard cutout of a plot, Gunn keeps it all moving, and the film ends up feeling about 10 or 15 minutes shorter than its actual length (2 hours). So much happens, yet Guardians hardly feels like it's going along too quickly for its own good.
Gunn and his behind the scenes team have also knocked it out of the park on the visual front. Guardians hops all over the galaxy, and the art design of the all the locales feels distinct and lived-in. And, like the recent X-Men film, the overall color palette is both more vibrant and more sophisticated than almost all of the other Marvel-based films in the last decade. Guardians of the Galaxy clearly succeeds when it comes to tone, but it's also worth noting the truly sincere level of care that went into the art direction, costume design, make-up, and visual effects. Tyler Bates' grand, soaring score is a bonus on top of the slick technical accomplishments on display.
All of the above, including the winks at the audience, is more than enough to offset the well-handled, yet wholly recycled plot. Guardians does work as a self-contained adventure, but it's also designed to spawn sequels. Unlike The Amazing Spider-Man (or TASM 2), Guardians knows how to make its "origin story" click. The plot is there to make sure that things don't get stagnant, yet it's left to the characters coming together as a bizarre team and family that really matters. It's utterly frivolous entertainment, despite the hints at deeper, dark emotions, yet it also sets up a thoroughly engaging world that offers a quite literal universe to explore. This quality is what elevates Guardians of the Galaxy above other fun-but-disposable fare. It may not sink its hooks into you, but it ultimately proves to be infectious on multiple levels, and makes the wait for the next adventure (2017) feel far too long.
Grade: B/B-
Directors: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Runtime: 100 minutes
By all accounts, The Lego Movie shouldn't work. On the surface, it seems like the evil twin of Pixar's Toy Story franchise: a calculated attempt at cashing in on a name brand without any legitimate cinematic effort. Yet even though there's no doubt that The Lego Movie will help boost sales of the famous toys, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller's film still stands tall as its own achievement. Rather than a cheap cash grab, The Lego Movie is a snappy, funny, and utterly delightful work with the right mix of broad appeal and actual cinematic smarts.
Though the story is full of cliches, including the prophecy-filled opening, Lord and Miller's script knows how to embrace and subvert cliches, rather than become weighed down by them. At its core, The Lego Movie is about an ordinary guy (Emmett, voiced by Chris Pratt), getting swept up in an adventure to save the world. Yet rather than settle for saccharine condescension, The Lego Movie has a little more going on under the surface, albeit not at first glance.
Even without the final act (which I'll leave unspoiled), this is still a constantly engaging, frequently hilarious joyride. The stellar voice cast, which also includes Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Will Ferrell, Alison Brie, and Morgan Freeman, are all perfectly on point with their delivery. Even when confined to the limited expressions of the digitally enhanced Lego figures, these characters really pop. Equally impressive is how Lord and Miller manage to make the film equally enjoyable for all ages, without ever stooping into crude or gross-out territory. Rather than pander, The Lego Movie focuses on a charming, and ultimately touching story about creativity and independence, with just the right touch of subversion.
The animation is just as impressive. The figures all look sleek and polished, yet the movement still has the feel of actual Lego bricks. It's a decision that feels both retro and refreshingly new. Above all, what makes The Lego Movie stand out is that it truly feels like a work of love, rather than a glorified advertisement. There are real characters, a real (albeit traditional) story, and even a brief flash of genuine emotional heft.
That's not to say that The Lego Movie hits the same highs as the best of the Pixar canon, but it's still and beautifully accomplished work of animation on all fronts. Once the story movies past the purposefully bland introduction, the whole project roars to life, and keeps the jokes and exciting set pieces coming with smart efficiency. Above all else, The Lego Movie is proof that, with the right levels of passion and care, commercial properties can function as their own enjoyable films. It's enough to make you forget that the whole project likely started as nothing more than a glorified commercial designed to make a few extra bucks.
Grade: B+
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Runtime: 157 minutes
It's difficult to write about Kathryn Bigelow's Osama Bin Laden drama Zero Dark Thirty after what's happened over the past few weeks. With the reviews, the controversies, and the responses to said controversies, what on earth is left to say? Well, let's start with the basics: it's a really damn impressive piece of film making that stands tall in a year filled with diverse narratives.
If you've missed any coverage of the film whatsoever, the story essentials are little more than the fictionalized account of the decade-long hunt to locate and kill Osama Bin Laden. And even though Bigelow's film, which reunites her with The Hurt Locker scribe Mark Boal, runs over 2.5 hours, Zero Dark Thirty knows how to make every moment count. Whereas The Hurt Locker truly was a character study, Zero is much more of a procedural set against our so-called War on Terror.
Yet even though the center of the story, Jessica Chastain's Maya, is often reserved and completely consumed by her job, Bigelow and Boal haven't forgotten to make her a character as well. When Maya first enters, she's practically a blank slate. Fresh off of the plane in Pakistan, Maya witnesses the much-discussed torture of a detainee. To answer the question of whether or not the film glorifies torture, I'll merely offer this much: Maya has no problem telling a detainee that giving honest answers will make his life easier, but she doesn't exactly look on with icy approval as she watches that detainee suffer at the hands of CIA agent Dan (Jason Clarke). What Bigelow and Boal have pulled off, along with Jessica Chastain's work in front of the camera, is one person's journey from being an outsider doing an uncomfortable job, to becoming unwavering in her determination to see everything through.
Where Zero Dark Thirty could have been simplistic, sugar-coated, and jingoistic, it is instead meticulous, blunt, and intense, without emotional manipulation. One could accuse the film of trying too hard to be objective, but that all gets blow away by the film's masterstroke: the raid on Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. Bigelow's strength comes from her ability to generate tension without going overboard, and the tactic pays off grandly here. The raid is intense, but not without the appropriate grimness (women shot and killed, children left crying and alone, etc...). Yet best of all is the treatment of Bin Laden's death. In different hands, such a moment would be completely overwrought. Bigelow and Boal, however, allow the death to unfold in a relatively anti-climactic fashion that couldn't be more fitting for the movie's tone and themes. Yes, the SEALs got the "bad guy," but what now? Where do they have to go next? What repercussions could this death have? Answering those questions would need a completely different film, yet it's important that Zero doesn't wrap everything up so neatly that it gives a sense of complete and total closure.
However, the film does allow the right level of closure for Maya. Chastain is mostly front and center here, and turns in another performance that capitalizes on her wide emotional range. As reserved as Maya often is, Chastain's work never feels lazy, and just because she's putting up a poker face doesn't mean she's not present. If anything, it means the exact opposite. Being present and listening is what Maya does in order to inch towards her goal, through every disappointment and disaster. The rest of the ensemble turn in perfectly convincing work, although few truly have much to work with. Stand outs from the supporting cast include the above-mentioned Clarke, as well as Jennifer Ehle as an older, more experienced operative.
But at the end of the day, the film is mostly a showcase for Chastain to quietly carry the film, and for Bigelow's extraordinary storytelling and atmosphere to shine through. The aesthetic may be roughly the same as The Hurt Locker, but there's no way to walk out of Zero Dark Thirty and think that she's made the same movie twice. The Hurt Locker used its characters to paint a portrait of various kinds of soldiers. With Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow moves a step up the ladder in terms of authority. She's looking at the people behind the scenes, the little pieces that have to be assembled before the troops undertake missions like the Abbottabad raid. In doing so, Zero Dark Thirty, which opens with audio from 9-1-1 calls on 9/11, feels applicable to a wider range of people, because of how it weaves in the broader implications of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It takes us from the moment of no return, all the way through an act of collective revenge, one that ellicits not cheers and grins, but solemn contemplation on what happened to us as a nation, and what we did, for better and for worse, because of those actions.
Grade: A/A-
