Short Take: "This Means War" and "Friends with Kids".

We get it, romance has evolved with the changing times and the movies have to adjust to the new ways in which people meet and fall in love, however this shouldn't mean that in the process we also must relinquish our human dignity, something that This is War not only suggests but encourages.
Tuck (Tom Hardy) and FDR (Chris Pine) are two CIA secret agents who are "grounded" after ruining a mission and spend their boring office time trying to meet women. Tuck is a romantic with old fashioned ways who recurs to online dating to meet someone, FDR is a playboy who beds a different woman every night. They accidentally end up setting eyes on the same woman, consumer marketing expert, Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) who by dating different men finds the perfect outlet to escape from her ex-boyfriend's shadow, try out her wilder sexual side and practice housekeeping. Where the movie suggests that Lauren is a hands on, ultra feminist woman, the plot and character development merely make her dalliances look like irresponsible promiscuity and of course, she is the only one getting accused of it, the guys and their jobs make them look like heroes who have earned the right to use their security clearance to harass the woman they think they're in love with. For all its misogyny, double standards and ultra conservative morality (you know who Lauren will pick from the very start) the film's greatest mistake is how utterly joyless it feels. Witherspoon seems to have forgotten how to be bubbly and charming, while Hardy and Pine hardly make for heroes worth pining for. The only war this movie declares is one against the intelligence and taste of its audience.

If you were one of those die-hard fans who were craving a Friends reunion, Friends with Kids should be the movie to dispel those wishes. Even if it's in no way associated to the popular TV show, the film works as a post-finale version of it, given that it un-creatively matches three women with three men to create the same dynamic as the series. Two of the couples are together and have started families, the single friends are those eternal bachelor (Adam Scott) and bachelorette (Jennifer Westfeldt) who seem to enjoy their "freedom" too much to lose it just to fit in with social norms.
In order to prove how awesome they are, the two friends decide to have a child and raise it without the typical family structure, of course their plan backfires as the movie conservatively reminds us that friends can't have sex and remain just friends, that children need two parents to be happy, that marriage is something we should all aspire to, and an assortment of other stereotypes that romantic comedies and dramas have helped perpetuate.
The problem at this point isn't whether they are right or not (morality and ethics aren't as universal as we'd think) but that movies like these pretend they will defy the conventional, only to become even more stilted and predictable themselves. The ending in Friends with Kids for example seems to be straight out of a cheesy 80s movie and the thing is that writer/director Westfeldt does not deliver it with a wink, she really thinks her movie is sincere.
More than a decade ago, Westfeldt brilliantly explored alternative sexual orientations in the wonderful Kissing Jessica Stein, if the characters in her new movie spent doing as much melancholy but hilarious soul searching as the characters in that one did, instead of screaming, cursing and dashing off dinner tables when upset we might've had our hands on a movie with some insight. Instead what we get are grownups who have replaced toys with wine, espresso machines and cursing to hide the fact that they are really nothing but kids.


Grades
This Means War ½
Friends With Kids *

Sucker Punch *

Director: Zack Snyder

Cast: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone

Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino, Oscar Isaac

Jon Hamm, Scott Glenn

You know how some people lament the state of the environment and then you see them throw their garbage on the sidewalk? Zack Snyder would be one of them.

His Sucker Punch is a pseudo-feminist allegory filtered by the mind and eyes of a horny geek who thinks that women's liberation fantasies are dressed, or rather undressed, in the same clothes that men demand they wear in society.

The film is filled with sleek setpieces, Amsterdam sex shop costumes and an esthetically interesting design which more than please its audience are meant to polish the director's own knob.

Sucker Punch is Snyder's first fully original screenplay and you can detect all his influences in the way he references Tarantino, anime, rock music, westerns and video games. The story follows Babydoll (Browning) a troubled teenager who's institutionalized by her evil stepfather after she accidentally kills her sister.

The film opens with an almost silent sequence in which Babydoll tries to save her sister, here Snyder proves he has a keen eye for creating suspense and scenes that recall comic books; but he still hasn't learned a single thing about subtleties and he scores this Dickensian opening with an emo cover of The Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).

At the Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, Babydoll realizes her stepfather has paid an evil orderly (Isaac) to have her lobotomized within five days.

On the day of her lobotomy, seconds before the orbitoclast hits her body, Babydoll withdraws into a world of her own inside her mind. Here she's an orphan who has been taken to a burlesque/brothel where she is to be sold to a mysterious man called "the High Roller" within the next few days.

In the brothel Babydoll befriends fellow dancers Sweet Pea (Cornish), Rocket (Malone), Blondie (Hudgens) and Amber (Chung) and devises a plan for all of them to escape before the High Roller arrives. In order to escape they have to collect five items and each time they are about to do so, the film turns once again into subfilm in which the characters travel to different worlds.

When they need to collect a lighter, the fantasy turns into a proto-medieval adventure complete with Lord of the Rings' like orcs and vintage aeroplanes.

With all these layers of different universes within other universes, the film soon feels like Inception done for emo girls having their first acid trip. Curiously that might be precisely what Snyder wanted audiences to feel.

Throughout the film he seems to be completely unaware that what he delivers with utmost excitement as a version of "girl power" is nothing but false empathy from his side.
The worrisome thing about Sucker Punch is that Snyder at all times seems to be convinced that he is indeed telling a story about women becoming free. The fantasy sequences are filled with male villains as if to acknowledge the fact that all female troubles are caused by men. Yet this can be questioned because the villains in said sequences are usually deformed versions of men, whether they be zombie like creatures, robots or demonic samurai, none are really "human".

None of these sequences contains a female villain, except for one where a mother dragon attacks the girls only after they hurt her male offspring. Is Snyder saying that women only turn against other women when there's a male figure in the middle?

What the director fails to see at all times, is that his attempts at saving women from men are being done by himself: a man who obviously thinks of women like we expect heterosexual men to.

These heroines don't even have real names, who needs them when they have such badass nicknames huh? Yet the issue is that Snyder gives them innocent sounding aliases that barely cover the fact that Blondie could've easily been called Big Tits and Rocket, well, let's not even go there...

Every time the movie attempts to say something important about misogyny, it just manages to become even more abusive and offensive towards women. However it's not entirely easy to condemn the film because doing so would be to give in towards generalizations about the way we think women think.

It would be easy to say that no woman in her right mind would try to save herself from a rapist by wearing outfits used by Japanese prostitutes. But what if they do? At least one or two might feel identified with this strange fantasy, right?

Hopefully not but Snyder might get away easily using such hypotheses like that in order to point out that gender inequality is owed to both genders equally.

If women are objectified by men, should they attempt to repel this by creating new versions of femininity that don't click with the status quo? Or should they lure them with their own sexual fantasies and like the praying mantis just chop their heads off when they come to close?

All of the female characters in Sucker Punch are constantly being threatened by murderers or rapists who use their weapons and genitalia to subjugate them and keep them imprisoned for as long as they see fit.

More than this disturbing aura of threat, what comes obvious at some point is that the film is truly a door into the director's head and we see how his ideas come to light through the most seemingly inconspicuous moments. For example, we are informed by this movie that women who leave their families instantly become whores and they will only find salvation after atoning for their sins at strip clubs.

Funny to think that the figure Snyder chooses as their guardian angel is a multipurpose old guy played by Scott Glenn in full David Carradine from Kill Bill mode. What Snyder lacks, that Tarantino more than makes up for, is a completely surreal vision of femininity.

While Uma Thurman's "Bride" chopped bodies and severed heads to get her daughter back, she was never really objectified sexually, yet Browning's Babydoll plans every move in battle as if they were exclusively meant to highlight her breasts or vagina.

Sucker Punch feels like a school paper on feminism done by a stoned teenager who fell asleep playing Final Fantasy and wrote the first thing he came up with in the morning.

Even more interesting is to see Snyder's own takes on his perception of the modern female psyche, apparently he thinks that women's periods make them feel like they're in a Bjork video, that their professional fantasies are choreographed by Britney Spears and that their biggest dream is to get rid of urbanity and go back to the country.

Funniest thing in the whole movie? The lobotomist is played by matinee idol John Hamm, giving Snyder the last completely envious of the quarterback, pathetically dorky laugh.

The Town ***

Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Ben Affleck, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall
Blake Lively, Chris Cooper, Titus Welliver, Slaine, Pete Postlethwaite

Who would've guessed that in his directing Ben Affleck would manifest all the straightforwardness he fails to present in his redundant work as a thespian? The Town is barely his second directorial effort and already he's developing what could be called a style. Of course Affleck's style is highly influenced, if not directly extracted, from the work of Clint Eastwood (the cinematography and sense of in-justice) and Martin Scorsese (the seductiveness of crime as a lifestyle) but with this and Gone Baby Gone he seems to have mastered what it takes to deliver a no-bullshit film in what can be referred to as a "classic style".
His film is straight out of this universe where crime is the only kind of life and the one everyone's trying to escape. Affleck plays Doug MacRay, a career criminal who falls in love with Claire (Hall), the bank manager he takes hostage after one of his gang's heists gets threatening.
In Claire, Doug sees the perfect way to atone for his sins while giving himself a second chance. Of course this threatens the stability of his gang as his friend James (Renner) begins to resent Doug for wanting to leave and they also end at the mercy of the local kingpin (Postlethwaite).
The Town has all the makings of a movie we've seen countless times, or at least to come from the same place where these movies have come from. There's also an FBI agent, keen on catching the criminals and even a femme fatale, in the shape of Lively's Krista, a woman who had an affair with Doug and is reluctant to see him move on.
It seems that every element and every character in the film are trying to drag Doug down with them and in a way it's fascinating to see how Affleck manages to make us sympathize with this character who is unarguably guilty of several crimes. Yet we find ourselves rooting for him to succeed in his relationship with Claire for example and in the bloody climax we still have an idea of him as some sort of hero.
The film boasts an impressive cast and all of them deliver efficient work. The seriously underrated Hall gives Claire the complexity needed to empathize with her even when she makes strange choices, Hamm is superb, even if nothing is really demanded of him other than to look heroic and use the hell out of his Superman looks and Cooper is fantastic in a single scene.
Renner gives the film's best performance as he creates a character that's as real as he's cinematic. James is one part Method acting, two parts hybrid between James Cagney and Richard Widmark. He's electrifying!
In the biggest setpieces he seems to be fueling the energy from within his body and you can not take your eyes off him even as he commits the most gruesome acts of violence.
It has to be said that Affleck is a master at action sequences, there isn't a single action scene in this movie that feels lacking or unnecessary. They are executed with such precision and stamina that you believe they are recreations of things we might've seen on the news.
If he fails a bit with the most intimate scenes, it only means that he's still finding his niche (there are several red herrings that feel more like plot holes than Hitchcockian techniques) but for all that matters, The Town is nothing if not promising.

Why Christina Hendricks Should Have an Emmy*

* Yes. I know the writers come up with those details.
No. I will not let go of the fact that she was robbed of her award.

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


Ben Affleck sure got himself an amazing ensemble for his second directorial effort (Look it's Hall! Look it's Renner! OMG Serena van der Woodsen!) and it makes sense he would want to show them off-hence the weird little squares with their pretty faces on them-but the poster would've been more effective with just that shot of the creepy, masked nuns.


Romain Duris and Vanessa Paradis are beautiful and even if I have no idea what this French film is about, I'm getting a sense of it by the fact that the poster is a sad ripoff of this.

Dying to see any of these movies?

Shrek Forever After **

Director: Mike Mitchell
Cast: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Antonio Banderas, Eddie Murphy
Jon Hamm, Julie Andrews, John Cleese

The best thing that can be said about the seeming last installment in the Shrek series is that nothing in it is cringe worthy.
More of an excuse to get cash out of children and their unwilling parents, than an actual movie, this chapter concentrates on Shrek's midlife crisis.
Despite having a perfect life, a loving wife, babies and loving friends he misses the days when he was just an ogre having fun and wreaking havoc.
The major issue with the film is that, well so do us.
After the refreshing experience that was the first one almost a decade ago, each subsequent film has been a painful pastiche of pop culture references, annoying scatological jokes and a ridiculous attempt to make fun of Disney movies while choosing to respect their parameters and actually accommodating to them.
In this one, when Shrek gets offered a whole day of old fashioned goodness by the conniving Rumpelstiltskin and while he injects the movie with the kind of madcap hilarity last seen in the original movie, nothing in this one justifies its existence.
Shrek discovers that the alternate universe he's in just makes him want to have his old life back and while trying to seduce Fiona all over again and trying to befriend Donkey for the first time only makes it obvious that those of us looking for great entertainment would be better off watching the DVD of the first movie.

The A-Team *1/2

Director: Joe Carnahan
Cast: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson
Sharlto Copley, Jessica Biel, Patrick Wilson, Brian Bloom
Gerald McRaney, Jon Hamm

There is nothing inherently evil about The A-Team besides the fact that it's so utterly disposable.
For almost two hours we are showered with incoherent action sequences, really bad writing, more of that flashy-leading-to-nowhere editing and a sad concept of what entertainment should be about.
Based on the 80's TV show, the plot follows the original premise as in how a group of clandestine army combat unit is framed for a crime they didn't commit, become federal fugitives and seek to clear out their name.
Nothing much about what the A-Team does makes much sense; they fly tanks, then drive those tanks out of lakes, have budget to create giant disappearing acts and several other preposterous actions.
The one thing they do get quite right is the casting. How Liam Neeson managed to keep a straight face with all the insane things the director asked him to do is testament to his outstanding thespian skills. He actually takes John "Hannibal" Smith, his character, seriously and his scenes have a strange resonance that cancel the ridiculousness going on around him.
Copley bursts with energy as the insane H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock and while Jackson lacks the intensity of the iconic Mr. T, he does a satisfying job.
Perhaps the saddest thing about The A-Team is that for all its loudness and show-off-ness when you leave the theater you might have no recollection of what you just saw.

I Want More!

...the season when I finally start loving it and now it's gone!

"There's no point Don".

From the moment "Mad Men" began, it was obvious that there would be an episode featuring JFK's assassination and the repercussions it would have on the characters.
However, I never expected it to be half as brilliant as "The Grown-Ups" was. Unless "Lost" has one helluva final season and Emmy voters get sudden geek nostalgia, it bagged a third consecutive win for them in the Best Drama category.
With this and last week's astounding "The Gypsy and the Hobo" the show finally transcended the "is it about anything?" veil it had cast over itself.
Now its relevance becomes obvious in a subtle way; when one of the characters asks reluctantly why is Lyndon Johnson President when nobody voted for him I couldn't help but think of the harsh political situation going on in my country.

The best thing about the episode was how they underplayed the whole event to show the passing of time and the fact that we never know what's around the corner.
Peter (Vincent Kartheiser) for example is so caught up with his work that he doesn't even notice what's going on in the TV set.
Director Barbet Schroeder knows we know what's going on, but doesn't let the characters become selfconscious about it.

When they do, it turns into something so chaotic and emotional that you can't believe it's hitting you in the way it does.

Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) for example was busy having an afternoon delight with Duck (Mark Moses) and their television wasn't even plugged in as the events unfolded.
The world does not stop moving just because you do is the message and this plays to an even greater effect when in the last scenes Betty (the brilliant January Jones) comes to terms with how this suddenness can not prevent her from living her life.

In the episode's most poignant scene, as Betty watches the news their maid Carla (Deborah Lacey) comes in, asks if anything has happened as Betty begins to sob and tells her the President is dead.
In a moment worthy of Norman Rockwell she sits down next to her employer-without being asked-and lights up a cigarette.
Very few moments in television have made me hold my breath like that did.

When Don (Jon Hamm) gets home he explains to his children the events "everything's going to be OK. We have a new President, we're all going to be sad for a little bit".
This ambiguous certainty becomes the episode's, and the decade some might say, central theme as all the characters begin to question their very existence.
After Betty unravels Don just says "you'll feel better tomorrow. You'll see."
This might not be true for any of them, but this show just made it clear its brilliance won't stop at nothing.

Big Emmy Love...

Color me surprised about the fact that this year's Emmy nominations don't suck (the winners always make sure to screw that up though...).
I'd remained skeptical about the fact that they expanded their top categories to fit six, or more, nominees. Because like Oscar, Emmy always makes sure to fill the slots with the stuff they love despite sanity and good taste ("Two and a Half Men"...really? It's finally gone though!)
As expected "Mad Men", "30 Rock" and "Grey Gardens" led the nominations in the Drama, Comedy and Made for TV movie respectively.
Now on to my favorite bits!
-"Flight of the Conchords" gets nominated for Best Comedy! Jermaine Clement gets in for Best Actor! Awesome!
-My favorite TV drama, "Damages" gets in for Drama Series and William Hurt gets a Supporting Actor nod! Glenn Close and Rose Byrne also get Actress and Supporting Actress nods...but where'e the fabulous Marcia Gay Harden?
-"30 Rock" supporting players and usual MVPs Tracy Morgan, Jack McBrayer and the brilliant Jane Krakowski get Supporting nominations! Why don't I get sick of the love for this show? Emmy has showered it with millions of nominations since it started and for once they feel appropriate!
- Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange get Actress nods for their fabulous work in "Grey Gardens". Go Drew!
- Jeanne Tripplehorn gets a Supporting Actress nomination for her limited, but pseudo iconic, work as Jackie O. in "Grey Gardens". I truly loved her scenes.
- Elizabeth Moss gets nominated for "Mad Men"!
- Vanessa Williams, the only actor still doing great work in "Ugly Betty" gets nominated for Supporting Comedy Actress. Lead star isn't and with reason, she's been getting from dull to duller.
- Jon Hamm and Tina Fey get double nominations in Lead and Guest categories. May they win them both!
There sadly was no love for the campy "True Blood", the fantastic "Battlestar Galactica" and more love for "United States of Tara" besides Toni Collette's nod.
May the best and NPH win!

The Day the Earth Stood Still *

Director: Scott Derrickson
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly
Jon Hamm, Jaden Smith, John Cleese, Kathy Bates, Kyle Chandler

If there's something sillier than remaking a classic Hollywood film, it might be doing so without a reason.
Director Scott Derrickson updated Robert Wise's underrated 1951 sci-fi classic about an alien named Klaatu (Reeves) who comes to Earth to warn about the impending destruction of the planet only to be met by bureaucrats and skeptical people.
Jennifer Connelly plays Helen Benson, the good hearted scientist who helps Klaatu in his mission and eventually becomes the only person who can help save the world.
Jaden Smith plays her stepson, left under her care after his father's death and who still has trouble dealing with Helen.
Klaatu warns them that the human species has done enough damage to the planet and he's representing a group of planets that has come to the agreement that Earth can only be saved once humans are gone.
His aid is the giant robot Gort (whose design is "inspired" by the original one) who becomes the subject of scientists' studies as they prepare for destruction.
While the original film was a timely allegory for the Cold War, Derrickson's version with his "green" message comes off looking forced and preachy.
The biggest problem is that Klaatu's mission is constantly changing, first he wants to destroy the planet then he doesn't, as if Derrickson doubts exactly what he wants to say with his movie.
He avoids taking stances and is afraid to say something too pessimist but also lacks the vision to deliver hope.
The film features some nice visual effects, that somehow still don't make the impact of the rudimentary ones used in the original and completely forgets to worry about character development.
Connelly does satisfying job, Hamm is sadly underused and Bates takes herself too seriously giving her performance slight strokes of camp.
Smith is utterly annoying, you often wonder why Helen puts up with his tantrums in the midst of world destruction, which shouldn't be a natural thought, but this is exactly what the film's dull pace give you time to think about.
The action sequences are dull, the plot tries to be complicated and deep when it's quite the opposite and unlike the original version you never really understand why is it called that way.
And when it comes to Reeves, you wonder if he also is CGI. His expression remains completely blank throughout the entire film (as with most of his filmography), he delivers his lines with absolutely no interest, as if he just learnt them phonetically.
It's never revealed exactly what planet Klaatu comes from, this movie however must've come straight from planet unnecessary.