ROBIN HOOD

By casting Russell Crowe, the filmmakers are in hopes that the public will prefer a rugged he-man as the titular Robin Hood. Crowe, still an obvious body-builder at the gym in the off-time, is brawny enough to marshal an army. He also has the deadly thousand-yard stare to let you know that he’s pissed off, and in this case, in the mood for a revolution. This is the realistic rendering of the Robin of Locksley tale, alas, pivoting on the times prior to him becoming a folklore outlaw.

Notably the film is directed by Ridley Scott, and the marketing and finished product angle is to make this the “Gladiator” version of “Robin Hood.” But let’s not forget that Scott directed “Kingdom of Heaven,” which put some people into a three hour coma. Scott mimics the visual strategy of his earlier success, taking the gritty old-world terrain and desaturating the colors even further, while also using flickering candlelight as a seeming natural source.

But Scott’s serious-mindedness, along with screenwriter Brian Helgeland (whom wrote two overlong pics “Man on Fire” and “The Postman”), suck the juicy adventure out of the classic tale in favor of boring smart talk that stinks of “Kingdom of Heaven” waste. Kings and clergy have many verbose conversations on the meanings of politics, the servitude of the common peoples, and such. So much said about honor, justice, valor, nation’s pride. So obtusely strung together that minutes later you won’t remember who said what or care. There’s no time for Scott or Helgeland to include a scene of Robin stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Nor is there a swordfight.

The question remains as to whether you are the kind of moviegoer that can hang in there and wait for the exciting 20-minute finale, where cool bow-and-arrow stuff happens. The raiding and persecuting of the denizens of Nottingham has a cruel serpent suspense to it. Supremely, the climax is filmed in hyperspeed, with army men unleashed from watercraft boats, in a way that recalls the Normandy invasion that opens “Saving Private Ryan” (What the hell, why not?). Scott doesn’t skimp on the shots where you see a thousand arrows shot high in the air, only to plummet at lethal speeds at an army desperately raising their shields to protect their faces while the vertiginous camera bursts over the action.

The ending comes alive in a way that almost makes you forget what you had to slog through to get there. Crowe is more brooding than merry, and that’s alright (but it’s far from his best performance on film, he’s inward and glum). The Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen) is almost an afterthought. Robin’s Merry Men – four of them – are valorous but offered to make only a couple of amusing, ribbing remarks. Danny Huston does good work as the fallen King Richard the Lionheart, his majestic aplomb is bigger than anyone else’s and we admire his stature even if we don’t care for his methods of making examples out of lesser men.

Then there is Maid Marion, more here known as Marion Loxley, is played by Cate Blanchett (“Elizabeth,” “The Aviator”). Why studios, filmmakers and audiences have marveled in her over the years is a mystery to me. She lacks the very ability to express that quintessential quality called… emotion. When Robin enters her life at Nottingham, and is given hand to him by her father (Max von Sydow), she goes into cold, don’t-touch-me-or-I’ll-sever-your-manhood-mode. Somebody out there is defiantly angry with this review (I know, she’s supposed to be like that). But even when Marion kisses he-man Robin for the first time, she conjectures a melting heart look that still reminds one more of the Tin Man than of a blossoming woman swept away by the possibilities of love blazing on fire.

This is a busy, scene-shifting historical drama that offers few familiar pleasures, but Scott, a master of the zooming lens, does make the forests into an emerald-colored visual feast. But the speechifying gnaws on your patience. One has to fear if Scott puts out a future DVD of “Robin Hood: Super Deluxe Extended Edition with More Endless Speeches.” If that ever happens, I’ll go as far as to take back every mean thing I ever said about Kevin Costner’s “Prince of Thieves” which is looking better with every undeserved buck that Scott’s film will earn in box office receipts.

Go to the official site at http://www.robinhoodthemovie.com/

Grade: C-

JUST WRIGHT

Who out there wants to be Queen Latifah’s friend? Queen is so vivacious, and upbeat, with her eyes always popping up like a toaster machine. But Paula Patton is the girl that guys everywhere want to date because she’s cotton candy from head to toe. Common, the rapper turned actor, has to choose between the two and gingerly drive his charisma through Just Wright in a way that doesn’t make himself look like he’s trapped in a formula romantic comedy that he’s actually in. Common plays Scott McKnight, a fictional NBA star who falls in love fast but whose inconvenient on the court injury threatens both his career and his love life.
There are a fair number of readers out there who don’t know these actors. Well, you should know Queen Latifah because she starred in “Chicago” and “Living Out Loud,” is chubby but bubbly, and generally has a great zest of life on screen. Patton is a hot, yummy gams sight for sore eyes who just happens to have acting chops as seen in “Precious” and “Idlewild.” Common was in “American Gangster” and “Terminator: Salvation” and yet I don’t remember seeing him, he also had a one-note hitman role in “Date Night” and now is here, and you know what? He’s as fine as brown sugar.

As a chick flick romantic comedy “Just Wright” can be pretty decent, but the basketball stuff is subpar. Latifah is Leslie Wright, a physical therapist who goes from the standard medical building to the deluxe penthouse of Scott McKnight. Patton is, Morgan Alexander, the best friend who is beautiful but shallow like a Kardashian sister. McKnight dates Morgan for all the obvious good public image reasons, but after his injury, she steps out and Leslie Wright steps in. New chemistry is stirring but the movie forgets about half a dozen characters during this unlikely but engaging courtship. In the meantime, McKnight has only a few weeks of rehabilitation before he has to get back for the playoffs. This is a movie to careless to worry about loose ends.

I cared about the people on the screen – does that mean I cared more about the actors or the characters they were playing? I am still trying to figure that one out. The movie is cheerfully acted and competently directed. But while the screenplay has a pro forma film school structure, the dialogue is nevertheless amateurish. Yet the actors go through as much tongue-zinging as possible to make it fresher than what it is.

The boys out there in the audience won’t like that the movie doesn’t teach you nothing about behind the scenes basketball and training that we don’t already know. Scott McKnight is supposed to be a league superstar but in reality his moves on the court aren’t that good. He would get torched by Kobe Bryant or Chris Paul.

If you are not expecting art and lower your standards than this is nice and easy to watch movie. In a way it is more of a compliment than it sounds in relation to all the mean garbage we’ve been getting in theaters the last couple of months. Nobody gets hideously hurt, and for the intended criteria the characters try to be kind and not vindictive on purpose. This is the kind of entertainment that is an antidote to nihilism. And Common’s final apology and plea for forgiveness is one of the best deliveries I’ve ever seen, he should be teaching classes on how to be a babe magnet.

Go to the official site at http://www.foxsearchlight.com/justwright/

Grade: C+

IRON MAN 2

The opening episodes of Iron Man 2 are gripping, in holding us in anticipation, gripping especially during Tony Stark’s spectacular entrance (as Iron Man) where he is to deliver a speech at his grand expo on his outlook on world peace. Current world peace won’t last because there are cutaways to a number of questionable evil characters. Can the baddies serve up worthy action blockbuster havoc?

I kept waiting patiently – very patiently – for Mickey Rourke to do something terrific with his performance as Ivan Vanko, but it never happens. For all those who are fans of the cinema of agony, the ones who appreciated his extraordinary work in “The Wrestler,” it is a crushing letdown that his is the weakest drawn character in “Iron Man 2.” True Rourke followers were waiting for him to deliver something bold and genre-breaking, something diabolically twisted, something conjuring an astonishing level of evil never seen before. But his performance lacks juice probably because the character itself is a standard dry-bone villain. He has all the dimensions of Dolph Lundgren impersonating a Slavic robot.

That unfortunate news aside, it is still an ecstatic joy to see Robert Downey Jr. let it rip like a method actor on steroids as Tony Stark, the man inside Iron Man. The consummate actor must be enjoying the acme period of his career. “Tropic Thunder” and “Zodiac” were Oscar-worthy performances that earned him a nomination only for the former. And “Iron Man” and “Sherlock Holmes” are multi-million DVD sellers. But in film after film, he retains his indie edge with his cocky and flippant personality without flipping the finger, either. When he chews out a senator (played by wormy Garry Shandling) he does it with classic Downey SOB smart alec style, laid back but sharp with the tongue.

Running second in the joy department are those whooshing airborne scenes. You get the sense that Iron Man is travelling 100 mph with flying in the air, maybe it is 500 mph. Whatever the speed, Iron Man has the velocity of a missile. It is still far-fetched however that Stark can get from Malibu, California to Flushing, New York in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

There are the many secondary performances, and somehow, Gwenyth Paltrow lends the film the most heart as Pepper Potts, whom possesses the classiness of the 1950’s with a 2010 academic brain, becomes appointed to company CEO. Tony and Pepper have an unexpressed affection for each other. Pepper has to take upon herself all the stress of running a company while concurrently cleaning up Tony’s compromised public image. Their tension is obscure, at least to her, as Tony refuses to inform her about his dangerous blood toxicity levels (Where is Tony’s personal M.D.?).

And after it was told that Scarlett Johansson was not action blockbuster movie material, famously dissed by her own producers of the flop “The Island,” it must be sweet revenge for her to appear here. As Natasha, Stark’s sexy personal assistant, the more limber than ever Johansson is seen stunningly leather-clad – a martial arts vixen. Her showdown against a brigade of guards is among the film’s kick-ass highlights.

If you're not an avid comic book reader, you might not be sure as to why Samuel L. Jackson is in the picture, but if you cut out all the mumbo jumbo he’s basically Natasha’s supervisor. Don Cheadle (taking over from Terrence Howard) becomes Iron Man partner War Machine (the two of them are not drinking buddies), but the camaraderie is put on hold until Tony can cool his ego jets.

You may also question as to whether we are waiting for another sequel so Tony Stark can follow through on his dad’s legacy wishes (John Slattery as Howard Stark), which is never as resolved as it could have been. Dad speaks from beyond the grave via old company promo footage. It’s a subplot that could have been a way-y-y awesome major plot had it been followed through on – I kept thinking about the end to Alex Proya’s “Dark City” – but now we’re talking detours but that probably didn’t interest the producers behind “Iron Man 2.”

The Stark Expo, the arena for the final metallic showdown – is well, a blast and boost a second, but I was raising a logical question or two as to why Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell, as the second but more white collar villain), a snotty arms manufacturer who finances Ivan Vanko, had been given permission to deliver a presentation in the first place. Regardless, Jon Favreau (“Elf,” “Iron Man”) is a fantastic action director who expertly paces his actors through some plausible motions. Favreau, too, actually gives a damn or two about human vulnerability beneath all the explosive chaos.

It might be too harsh to call this a subpar sequel since the original set the bar so high, but… Really, it pains me as much to say that it is an inferior sequel as it is for you to hear it. But as you can probably gather there are many self-contained enjoyable moments to be had (perhaps one standing bravo and a half-dozen mild cheers) despite feeling that Iron Man has no worthy adversary and that the interpersonal conflicts are, um, a bit forced. And Downey makes anything better than it would have been had it starred without him.

Go to the official site at http://ironmanmovie.marvel.com/
 
Grade: B-

PLEASE GIVE

Chick flick has for some time now, maybe two decade’s worth, had a derogatory slant to it. Maybe it is because most of them, either starring the likes of Kate Hudson or Matthew McConaughey or maybe the two of them together, stink of moldy cheese. But if there exists one stable reliability to the genre it is writer-director Nicole Holofcener who has never made a bad feature. Her latest film is Please Give and once again Catherine Keener is her star subject.

During her career, Holofcener has made “Walking and Talking,” Lovely and Amazing” and “Friends with Money.” Her latest film opens with a graphic montage depicting the tragedy of mammograms. Not really a tragedy, that’s overstatement, but it takes a delicate beautiful thing and makes it, uh… makes you want to close your eyes at the indignity. These opening seconds are the least appealing element of the film. But maybe it was meant solely for the female audience to identify with (and not me). It used to be men that gave women a hard time in Holofcener movies, now you can add the doctor’s office.

Then there is the human consciousness. Kate (Keener) and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) are in the business of buying the vintage antiques of the recently deceased, sometimes buying apartments of the deceased. Kate and Alex live in a high-rise unit, next to a unit inhabited by the elderly Andra (Ann Guilbert). She is cared for by her granddaughters Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and Mary (Amanda Peet), who share a range of good and bad opinion of Kate and Alex, whom in essence, are bargain-hunters.

The fizz in Kate and Alex’s marriage is deflating their sense of worth. Perhaps the problem is that they share every waking minute together (can marriage and occupation co-exist?). They have an overweight and generally insecure teenage daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), whose self-esteem would boost if only somebody bought her a two-hundred dollar pair of jeans. But Kate doesn’t buy her jeans, or buy her skin care. Not when there are starving homeless people on the street. Alex could also step in and buy for his daughter, but he invests elsewhere too, in the lives of strangers.

This story is as much a marriage deconstruction as it is a portrait of the two granddaughters next door. Rebecca is an attractive and hard-working radiology technician who barely gets out to date (she prefers guys that are the cute type, like Thomas Ian Nicholas who plays Eugene), while Mary doesn’t date she does get around in various meaningless flings. But the story set-up is that Rebecca and Mary are neighbors to a married couple they don’t like because they look like they want to leech on their grandmother as soon as she passes.

Then the surprise is that Rebecca and Mary make friends with them, only it is made in a singularly paved way. Rebecca becomes closer to Kate, while Mary becomes closer to Alex and their daughter Abby. Defined by different avenues, each friendship becomes its own privatized confessional. Kate leaks out her guilt to Rebecca for what she does for a living. Alex pours out his frustrations on lack of excitement in his marriage to Mary. And Mary becomes Abby’s skin care specialist, and lousy advisor on beauty since to her beauty is skin deep and nothing else. Rebecca carries all the guilt between the two sisters. Seething is this unspoken rivalry between sensitivity and shallowness.

But all of this description fails to convey what a talented writer Holofcener is who cares too much about her characters to give them false objectives. Shall I reaffirm to you that the film ends in the humbling, realistic way it should end without being hammered with overblown dramatic ploys? What’s criterion is that Holofcener writes jokes worthy of Woody Allen in the 1970’s, but with a pro-feminist spark interpolated into it. She writes characters that are real and rounded, vulnerable and neurotic, smart and courageous – at least courageous for contemporary New Yorker types. And she finds varied and individual details in her characters. Holofcener puts the brains back in chick flicks and reinstalls the idea that at least a few chick flicks out there are made for the grown-up thinking person.

Go to the official site at http://www.sonyclassics.com/pleasegive/
Grade: B+