The Lint Screen

If you’ve ever been to the zoo, you’ve probably seen apes do some amazing things like fling their poo or eat their own vomit. Do not be mislead. Although they may act like drunk frat pledges, they’re actually crafty critters– especially when you give them some drugs that turbo-goose their intellect.

Rise of The Planet of The Apes is a pretty terrific film; one of the better popcorn munchers of the summer. It’s a prequel, and like many of the prequels of the past few years, one of the better films in the franchise.

It stars James Franco as a brilliant pharmaceutical scientist working on a drug to battle Alzheimer’s disease, which his pappy has Pops is played by John Lithgow. Franco tests his experimental drug on apes. The apes get wicked smart and quite agitated. Do you see a bad moon rising?

I’m not much of a James Franco fan. He’s fine in this role, but is pretty vanilla overall. That isn’t so bad though since he’s playing support to some terrific computer generated ape actors and the phenomenal Andy Serkis who plays the hero ape, Caesar. Serkis brings this ape to wonderful human-like life. He’s the same guy who played Gollum in the Lord of The Rings flicks.

But the real stars here are the special effects and some slick direction by Rupert Wyatt from a smart screenplay by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. The score by Patrick Doyle is well done and pitch perfect for the action and emotion.

You also get to hear the famous command, “Get your filthy hands off me you damn dirty ape!” just not in Chick Heston’s golden baritone. Be on the lookout for Mr. Heston who does appear in this movie. Good stuff.

This is one fine film and a fun ride. Give it a go and chances are you’ll like it so much that you won’t fling poo at the screen.

Some film guru once stated that there are two types of movies: those stories about the human condition (timeless tales), and those that show you something you could never see otherwise (special effects extravaganzas).

Right now, you can see two prime examples of these movie types, each a standout in its particular weight class. For the human condition genre, we have the always scrappy Woody Allen weighing in with one of his best films of the past few decades: Midnight in Paris. And in the opposite corner, representing state of the art heavyweight special effects and 3-D whizbangery, Mr. over-the-top perennial heavyweight Michael Bay and his Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Both are worth seeing for different reasons.

I am a fan of the timeless tale human condition genre, and the simple premise of Midnight in Paris is one with real sticking power. Owen Wilson plays Gil, a successful Hollywood screenwriter who is miserable with his lot in life. He loves Paris, rainy nights and the romantic dream of writing the great novel. He yearns to be like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cole Porter and the posse of 1920′s artistic ex-pats who made Paris their home and playground. Gil is engaged to Inez, played by Rachel McAdams, a woman who was born into the finer things of life. Her parents are in Paris to help the couple make their wedding plans. Inez and her folks represent conformity, pragmatism, be-happy-with-what-you’ve-got-and-get-your-head-outta-the-cloudsism. They are the cold boot of reality kicking upside Gil’s silly romantic notions-filled head.

One night, Gil is alone on a contemplative stroll through the Paris streets. A clock strikes midnight, and a 1920′s auto rolls up and stops. The back door opens and Gil sees people in 1920′s dress slurping cocktails and laughing gayly. They invite him to join, and he does.

Off Gil goes to live it up with his heroes: Ernest, F. Scott, Zelda, Cole, Gertrude, Salvador, Pablo and more. He lives magically in his ideal period, the man out of time who finally finds his time. After a wild night, he is back to modern times and his modern life and modern problems. Like a junkie, once he’s had a taste of his pleasure-filled escape, he returns again and again to his midnight strolls that transport him back to his romanticized time.

Along the way, he falls in love– never a good idea for time travelers. And the happy couple have their own physics bending adventure with ironic and illuminating outcomes.

I’ll say no more than this is a charming, magical and lasting movie that uses imagination and the human condition as special effects to make a simple, yet profound point. And Owen Wilson is certainly not the Owen Wilson we saw in Marley & Me. Thank God.

Chalk one up for the Woodman and the human condition timeless tale with a dash of magic thrown in for good measure. This is a terrific film.

Which brings us to Transformers: Dark of the Moon. But before I get started, let me disclose my prejudices right up front.
1. I’m not a Michael Bay fan. His commercial work was great, his features work overblown.
2. I’m not a fan of big stupid special effects movies. For the most part, the stories are lame and the effects don’t stick in my memory banks.
3. I’m not a big fan of Shia LaBeouf. The guy doesn’t have much gravitas, soul, screen presence. He can act, but he’s like diluted vanilla.
4. Don’t much care for Transformers. This could be a result of having stepped on too many of the damn things when our kids played with them– a time when Transformers littered our house ready to transform from toys into implements of painful death.
5. I think most 3-D movies are gimmicks not worthy of the upcharge for the silly glasses required to view them

All these prejudices aside, I’m glad I saw this film. It was the coolest 3-D movie I’ve ever seen, and Michael Bay has some amazing camerawork. In a weird way, what makes Bay obnoxious in two dimensions makes him pretty spectacular in three. It’s like icing on top of frosting that somehow works for a visual feast worth attending.

The plot? Well, yeah, there’s a plot: an alien spacecraft crashes on the moon, N.A.S.A. alerts the White House and the next thing you know, J.F.K. initiates the space program to get a man on the moon to investigate before the Ruskies do. We all thought the moon mission was for pride, but it was to investigate the crashed alien spacecraft– why must our leaders always deceive us?

Yada blah blah yada and here we are in the present or near future and Autobots are helping our government and evil Decepticons (nasty Transformers who need a good talking to so that they’ll maybe straighten up and fly right!) want to take over our planet and the key to the whole shebang are some special rods that were on that spacecraft that crashed into the moon and well, Yada blah blah yada.

Yeah, there’s a plot and there’s some talented actors trapped in the plot: John Turturro, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Dr. McDreamy himself. Shia LeBeouf has him a hot new girlfriend, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and Michael Bay is more than happy to show us why she’s a star in the Victoria’s Secret catalog. The script does not develop her character any further than commentary from all perspectives that she’s a hottie. It doesn’t really matter, the humans serve only one purpose in this film: give some puny scale against which the mighty Transformers might dominate and intimidate.

And that’s where this film shines. The effects work is stunning. The 3-D shot composition, especially in master shots with tiny humans in foreground and massive Transformer and breathtaking vistas in background are what make this film worth forking over the extra bucks for the glasses.

If you cheap out and see the film in 2-D, be warned– you’ll only be magnifying the silliness of this affair.

The movie clocks in at over two and a half hours. It could have easily lost a half hour or forty-five minutes, but when you’re guorging yourself, what’s some extra cheese?

All in all, this film is worth sitting through for the amusement park adventure of the spectacular destruction of Chicago and some famous landmarks. Don’t expect much more than that, and you’ll enjoy your long, noisy ride.

Think of the saddest tearjerker movie you’ve ever seen, now prepare for it to become #2 on the soggy hankie list.

The documentary Inside Job is a must-see film about the financial meltdown that crippled the world thanks to the piggy greed of fat cat pin stripers on Wall Street and in the government.

When a country allows five financial lobbyists for every politician and $5 billion in annual lobbying funds, what else could we expect but the best politicians money can buy?

There’s plenty of evil bastards to blame: financial firm scumbags, shady politicians in the pockets of lobbyists and academics getting their palms greased to concoct and support the tools for raping the public to benefit the rich.

Inside Job brilliantly shows us how we’ve gotten to the place we are today–– with 1% of the nation’s population controlling 23% of its wealth.

There are heroes in this movie; people who spoke and wrote and questioned the madness that was going on, all to no avail. Reason lost out to greed; the greed of financial firms to gamble, the greed of politicians to allow the rules to change to protect the greedy and the greed of the public to actually believe they could get something for nothing (or next to nothing).

None of it would have been possible had the laws not been changed and had regulation been enforced. But it wasn’t. We let Alan Greenspan and the Wall Street goons lead us down an ideological path to the guillotines.

The fix was in–– the bastards won, our economy almost collapsed and the public bailed out all those responsible.

The saddest part of all is this: nothing’s really changed except that we’ve had our coffers raped. The rich are richer. Too big to fail is now super-sized too big to fail. Politicians are still funded shills for our corporate overlords.

Inside Job lays it all out and you can see many of the worst elements of our society on camera actually trying to support their cases. In the end, we’ve all been played for suckers, and while I’d love to say this is a movie that could never be made again, I’m afraid such is not the case.

As Charles Ferguson, the filmmaker said in his Academy Awards acceptance speech for best documentary, “Not one of these guys is in jail yet.” And the very same people responsible for much of the robbery are still empowered in government, still lobbying, still playing three card monty with bad debt. We can all sleep well knowing the foxes are guarding the hen house.

Cry, America. Cry enough to wring your hankie because your wallet’s already been wrung dry.

Sometimes a winning franchise needs to go backwards to go forward and give it a shot of adrenalin. Such was the case with the Batman and Star Trek series, and such is the case with the X-Men tales.

X-Men: First Class takes us to the origins of super-powered mutants. Like Christopher Nolan’s 2005 Batman Begins and 2009’s Star Trek by J.J. Abrams, this prequel is action-packed popcorn-munching good times. And like those two brilliant prequels, this is one of the best in the franchise.

The story in X-Men: First Class is rich, interesting, well acted and directed (by Matthew Vaughn of Layer Cake and Layer Cake fame). Learn about the early days of Professor X and Magneto, and what drove them apart. Hint: it wasn’t one lending his albums to the other and having them come back scratched (although that might make for a good sequel to this prequel).

The effects are cool but do not get in the way of a complex and satisfying character-driven story.

Not being an action comics fan, I didn’t know the beginning story of the mutants, how they came together and fell apart. It’s a classic tale of good and evil (oh, evil– why must you be so evil?). We’ve got Nazis, CIA spooks, Ruskies, JFK, government bureaucrats–– and those aren’t even the mutants!

For mutated wonders, there’s mind readers, a metal bender, shape shifter, chameleon, flier and fireball spitter, harness-energy-and-then-zap-it-back-at-you wonderdude and more. Plus January Jones, who had some kind of superpower but she doesn’t really need it because, well, she looks like January Jones and that’s strong enough stuff to stop Don Draper in his Florsheims.

There’s plenty of terrific performances by Kevin Bacon, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and a crew of up and comers who’ll be here soon enough.

I won’t get into details. Suffice to say this movie has a lot of charisma, energy and charm, and is certainly the best action adventure fare this year.

See it and believe in the power of fantastical stories again.

Here we go again–– an early entry into the summer big blockbuster season built on a successful multi-billion dollar franchise with an incredible cast including Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane. It’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tide!!! You’ve got great expectations, right?

Yep, and expectations are dashed to the rocks like the surf.

This rollicking adventures has lots of swashbuckling, sword fights galore, evil mermaids and more mascara than a New York runway during fashion week. Yet it bores.

If you have kiddies, you have no choice– you’ve got to fork over more booty to Disney. But if you’re an adult movie fan, save your money. This lightweight fare isn’t worth your time.

We’ve been there, done that and the bag of tricks feels empty. The plot is a convoluted tale of the search for the fountain of youth. The scriptwriters seemingly discovered energy drinks while writing this; the story is never ending.

And the uninspired Hans Zimmer soundtrack only adds to the tedium. It sounds like needledrop music from beginning to end.

Rob Marshall (Chicago, Nine) directs endless fight scenes with a deft hand for choreography, yet somehow this whole film lacks soul, humor, excitement and humanity.

Frankly, my dears, I just didn’t give a damn what happened next.

It’s a pity to spend so much money on big sets, lavish costumes, casts of hundreds, real star power, beautiful cinematography, cool special effects and end up with such precious little treasure. Unfortunately, it’ll make another billion. Cha-ching, maties!

After viewing this mess, I felt like pirates have robbed me of a couple hours of my life. Yawn.

Kristen Wiig is one of the most talented comic actors working. Her characters on Saturday Night Live are reason enough to tune-in, and her supporting roles in movies have been consistently excellent over the years. Her performance in Bridesmaids is also a winner, but unfortunately, this movie misses.

Kristen is partly to blame–– she co-wrote this film with Annie Mumolo, and the screenplay needed a lot of work. There are too many characters, not enough character development, too much story, and it goes on and on and on and on. It runs 2:05, few comedies can maintain that marathon distance.

This film’s not hateful, it’s just, well, unrealized and disappointing.

This is a movie with a couple inspired scenes and a lot of flabby storylines flapping on the screen. It’s a shame. There’s a lot of talent here (Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Melissa McCarthy, Jon Hamm and Ellie Kemper), including one of the funniest skit guys in the world, Tim Heidecker of Tim & Eric fame, who didn’t even got a line to read.

Oh well. It was an easy movie to pitch, I’m sure– a female The Hangover with Judd Apatow attached as producer. It should have been money. Instead, it’s a disappointing waste of talent.

Cue the trombones. Wah wah wahhhhhhh.