Tag: Mark Ruffalo

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Film Features Film/TV

Avengers: Endgame

J.K. Rowling was a godsend for the publishing industry. Her seven Harry Potter books, published from 1997 to 2007, shifted more than 500 million units worldwide for Scholastic, and taught a generation to love reading.

But in recent years, a question has arisen: Did Harry Potter really teach a generation to love reading, or did it just teach them to love Harry Potter?

When Warner Bros. came calling to J.K. Rowling in 2001, it would prove to be a fateful moment in film history. Film franchises were nothing new, but movie audiences were not expected to keep track of plots longer than a trilogy. Rowling’s dense plotting and expansive dramatis personae made Star Wars look like a family squabble. Like publishers before them, producers tried to reverse engineer the Potter magic. The only person to crack the problem was Kevin Feige, an associate producer on 2000’s X-Men who was hired to wring maximum value from Marvel Comics.

Robert Downey Jr. (above) faces his fate as Avengers: Endgame closes out the Marvel Decade.

Feige looked at an audience raised on Rowling’s serialized storytelling, and saw that Marvel’s rotating staff of underpaid fabulists had produced ample material to feed the formula. With Marvel’s most popular characters under the control of Sony, he turned to the Avengers to provide the spine of the 22-film story. The Marvel movies are literary adaptations, but they’re not high fantasy. A cool character on the cover is what moves comic book units. So is it with the Marvel films, which always choose character moments over coherent plotting. Crossovers are good cross marketing, which is why She-Hulk was briefly a member of the Fantastic Four, and why the Hulk is the co-star of Thor: Ragnarok.

Like Potter, the Marvel series milked the ending by splitting the finale into two movies. Deathly Hallows put most of its sentimental character beats in part one, then loaded on the action in part two. The final two Avengers attempted the reverse: Infinity War hewed to the model Joss Whedon had laid down, until the good guys lost. Endgame‘s first hour is about dealing with loss. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) throws himself into service. Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johansson) numbly keeps trying to superhero in a world beyond saving. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has hung up his super suit and had a baby with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) has made peace with his Hulk-nature and gone green full time. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) gets drunk. Then, five years after Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) snap heard ’round the universe, Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) escapes from the Quantum Realm with an idea. If you had “time travel” in the “How are they going to write their way out of THIS one?” pool, please collect your winnings.

Star Wars taught Generation X to love movies. Since the films were spaced three years apart, kids had to try other genres to find a fix to tide them over, thus expanding their tastes. But the average moviegoer sees four films in a theater annually, and Marvel has been averaging 2.5 movies per year for the last decade. There was no need to try other genres, because Marvel simply subsumed them. You want a paranoid thriller? Here’s Captain America: Civil War. Space opera? Guardians of the Galaxy. Endgame shuffles through genres in its three hour running time. It’s a Steven Soderberg heist film. It disses Back to the Future, then lifts the structure of Back to the Future Part II to create a kind of clip show of the Marvel Decade. And just when you thought we’d escape without a Marvel Third Act, everybody you’ve ever met fights everybody else. Surprise!

The real meat of the Marvel films is not the wham-bam, but the little character moments. Endgame delivers those by splitting its gargantuan cast into unexpected pairs. Hulk finds himself negotiating with The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) in the middle of a raging battle. As the time war escalates and cause and effect starts to go all loosey-goosey, secret acting weapon Karen Gillan as Nebula pairs off against her past self, and Tony Stark makes peace with his dead father.

To say Feige succeeded in his decadal quest to perfect the formula is like saying “the atomic bomb exploded.” It’s true, but it fails to convey the scale. Endgame‘s $350 million opening weekend is the most profitable three days in the 120-year history of the American movie theater industry. Is it actually good? Not as a movie — but it’s not designed to be a movie. It’s a series finale. It’s a last chance to hang out with your super friends. Its bladder-busting length will be much more digestible when consumed on the new Disney+ streaming service.

As the dust clears, Disney stands like Thanos astride Earth-616. They have won, but what kind of world is left behind? The House of Mouse’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox has led to 4,000 layoffs and dozens of projects which can’t be Potter-fied have been cancelled. For all intents and purposes, the theatrical film industry is now Disney and a few minor players. We will soon discover whether Marvel taught a generation to love movies, or just taught a generation to love Marvel.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Avengers: Infinity War

Doctor Who premiered November 22, 1963. It was an immediate hit, and over the years the hokey show about a time-traveling weirdo became a cultural touchstone. By 1983, the production team was at the height of its powers. The lead role was in the hands of the young and charismatic Peter Davidson, and the budgets were bigger than ever. In the post-Star Wars afterglow, the show finally made the jump to America. The BBC decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary with the greatest crossover event in television history: They would bring together all the actors who had ever played the Doctor for one universe-shattering adventure. After months of hype, “The Five Doctors” premiered on November 23, 1983. It was a disaster.

Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), newly minted beardo Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and supersoldier in perpetual distress Bucky Barns (Sebastian Sam) defend Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity Wars.

Getting the giant cast together was a nightmare of bruised egos and diva behavior. The most important actor, Tom Baker, pulled out late in the process, so writer Terrance Dicks had to rewrite around some clips of Baker salvaged from a scrapped episode. The ratings were good, but not significantly better than a normal week’s viewership.

Worst of all, “The Five Doctors” exposed the weaknesses that the show’s fanbase had learned to overlook. There were still great moments to come—in 1984, the series produced “The Caves of Androzani”, now regarded as an all time high—but viewership faltered, and before the decade was out, Doctor Who was cancelled. In the internet comment board fever swamps, this is what’s known as “jumping the shark.”

I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) get lost in space.

Picking up where Thor: Ragnarok left off, Avengers: Infinity Wars gets off to a strong start. Spaceships full of refugees from destroyed Asgard are intercepted by Thanos (Josh Brolin), who slaughters them and extracts the Infinity Stone from the Tesseract held by Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) narrowly escapes the destruction and rides the Rainbow Bridge, opened by Heimdal (Idris Elba) to Earth, where he warns Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Tony Stark (Robert Downy, Jr.) of Thanos’ plan to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of immense power that control Mind, Soul, Space, Time, Power, and Reality, and use them to destroy half of all life in the universe.

One thing Infinity War has going for it that other superhero movies have struggled with is a compelling villain. Brolin’s Thanos, until now a barely glimpsed, purple skinned mound of muscle, turns out to be surprisingly complex. He gets some fine scenes with his two adoptive daughters, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gilian, who has emerged as one of the best Marvel actors). Directors Anthony and Joe Russo are at their strongest when they take time to concentrate on pairs of characters, such as the doomed romance between Vision (Paul Bettany) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), or the science/magic rivalry between Stark and Strange. Chris Hemsworth’s Thor gets paired off with Rocket (Bradley Cooper) and teenaged Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), which makes for some pleasantly goofy comedy beats. But everything else seems rushed, thin, and worst of all, calculated for maximum fan service, such as when the Guardians of the Galaxy are introduced singing along to The Spinners’ “Rubberband Man”. Our heroes make a stand in Wakanda, but the snap Ryan Coogler brought to Black Panther is missing. The potentially touching reunion of Banner and Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johansson) is completely botched.

Thanos (James Brolin) seeks radical glove improvement. Also, genocide.

What ultimately sinks Infinity War is the unsolvable problem that sank “The Five Doctors”—the need to fit in references to 19 other Marvel movies. This is a film designed for superfans, and it could please many. But there inevitably comes a moment in long, episodic serials when the audience realizes that the catharsis they seek will never come. The demands of capitalism means there can never be a satisfying ending, and each installment of the story is reduced to a commercial for the next one. One way to read the ending of Infinity War is as a bold departure from formula. Another, more accurate way to read the ending is the plot equivalent of the moment in A Christmas Story when Ralphie uses his new Little Orphan Annie decoder ring to discover that the secret message is “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine”. It’s the moment when all of the superheroes team up to collectively jump the biggest, most expensive shark of all time.

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Film Features Film/TV

Thor: Ragnarok

Since superheroes first ventured onto screens, one name rises above all others. He was the single most influential figure in the development of the tone and character of the genre, and his name was not Thor — it was Adam West.

From 1966 to 1968, West played Batman on ABC. He was a hero to millions of children all over the world, and he was still remembered fondly and respected throughout Hollywood at the time of his death last summer at age 88. The real genius in West’s portrayal of the Caped Crusader was that he realized exactly how ridiculous the premise of Batman was. A millionaire dresses up as a bat to fight crime because his parents were killed? Not only that, but there are a bunch of other people whose life experiences have led them to obsessively play themed dress-up and try to take over the world, from whom this Batman must protect us? It’s ludicrous.

West managed to look like he was taking the whole thing seriously on the surface, and yet still wink at the audience. Okay, yeah. A bubble with the word “POW!” appears every time I punch this guy wearing a “HENCHMAN” shirt. Just go with it and have fun. West was magnetic on screen and was zealous about making sure the Batman he portrayed was a good guy, even if that sometimes meant making fun of how square that made him.

The 1960s Batman series was a product of its time. The comic book industry had been creatively neutered after the Seduction of the Innocent Congressional hearings decided violent comics were the cause of juvenile crime and the Comics Code Authority was established. West’s Batman, as wildly popular as it was, cemented the image of the comic book superhero as a joke for kids. It wasn’t until Frank Miller and Alan Moore’s work in the 1980s that costumed vigilantes began to be scary again. Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman cast Michael Keaton as a brooding PTSD case in an attempt to get as far as possible from West’s vision of the World’s Greatest Detective. But that’s exactly what makes an artist influential — all subsequent people working in the same field or genre have to respond to him or her. In the influence game, total negation is just as powerful as embrace and emulation.

Over the years, Batman got grittier and grittier. His darkness infected even Superman, replacing Christopher Reeve’s charismatic blue Boy Scout with Henry Cavill’s charisma-free brood-a-thon. On the Marvel side, the X-Men traded their yellow spandex for Burton-esque black leather. The grimdark trend crested with Christopher Nolan’s insanely paranoid The Dark Knight Rises. In 2014, the worm finally turned with Guardians of the Galaxy, which made the argument that saving the universe in tights should be fun again.

Cate Blanchett plays Hela, Thor’s estranged older sister in Taika Waititi’s heroically funny Thor: Ragnarok.

Which brings us to Thor: Ragnarok. Despite the hunky presence of Chris Hemsworth, the Thor films have easily been the weakest link in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But last year’s Ghostbusters reboot proved that Hemsworth has comedic chops to spare, so Marvel mastermind Kevin Feige hired Taika Waititi, a New Zealander whose What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople are two of the decade’s sharpest comedies, to take the franchise in a new direction.

In Thor: Ragnarok, Waititi lets Hemsworth go full Adam West. That’s not to say Hemsworth has adopted West’s glorious deadpan, but he has perfected the art of convincing the audience that we’re all in on the same joke. No longer a glowering tower of muscle, Thor now cracks wise and flashes lopsided smiles at the slightest provocation. When he and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) do schtick together, you believe they’re brothers.

Thor’s main job is to protect his home Asgard from Hela (Cate Blanchett), his estranged older sister who helped their father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) conquer the realm with violence before being banished as a threat to peace, but a pleasing subplot takes him to Sakkar, a garbage dump ruled by the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum, in fine form) where he is forced into battle against his fellow Avenger the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo).

As usual for these $100-million Marvel monstrosities, Thor: Ragnarok is busy and overstuffed, both visually and with characters. But it’s at its best when it’s being irreverent and meta — Waititi’s speciality. He recognized that the best thing that could happen to Thor is for the pendulum to swing back toward West.

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Film Features Film/TV

The Year in Film 2015

It’s fashionable to complain about how bad Hollywood movies have become. But from the perspective of a critic who has to watch it all go down, it’s simply not the case. At any given time in 2015, there was at least one good film in theaters in Memphis—it just may not have been the most heavily promoted one. So here’s my list of awards for a crowded, eventful year.

Worst Picture: Pixels

I watched a lot of crap this year, like the incoherent Terminator Genysis, the sociopathic San Andreas, the vomitous fanwank Furious 7, and the misbegotten Secret in Their Eyes. But those movies were just bad. Pixels not only sucked, it was mean-spirited, toxic, and ugly. Adam Sandler, it’s been a good run, but it’s time to retire.

Actually, I take that back. It hasn’t been a good run.

Most Divisive: Inherent Vice

Technically a 2014 release, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s ode to the lost world of California hippiedom didn’t play in Memphis until January. Its long takes and dense dialogue spun a powerful spell. But it wasn’t for everyone. Many people responded with either a “WTF?” or a visceral hatred. Such strongly split opinions are usually a sign of artistic success; you either loved it or hated it, but you won’t forget it.

Best Performances: Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay, Room

Room is an inventive, harrowing, and beautiful work on every level, but the film’s most extraordinary element is the chemistry between Brie Larson and 9-year-old Jacob Tremblay, who play a mother and son held hostage by a sexual abuser. Larson’s been good in Short Term 12 and Trainwreck, but this is her real breakthrough performance. As for Tremblay, here’s hoping we’ve just gotten a taste of things to come.

Chewbacca

Best Performance By A Nonhuman: Chewbacca

Star Wars: The Force Awakens returned the Mother of All Franchises to cultural prominence after years in the prequel wilderness. Newcomers like Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver joined the returned cast of the Orig Trig Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in turning in good performances. Lawrence Kasdan’s script gave Chewbacca a lot more to do, and Peter Mayhew rose to the occasion with a surprisingly expressive performance. Let the Wookiee win.

Best Memphis Movie: The Keepers

Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson’s film about the people who keep the Memphis Zoo running ran away with Indie Memphis this year, selling out multiple shows and winning Best Hometowner Feature. Four years in the making, it’s a rarity in 21st century film: a patient verité portrait whose only agenda is compassion and wonder.

Best Conversation Starter: But for the Grace

In 2001, Memphis welcomed Sudanese refugee Emmanuel A. Amido. This year, he rewarded our hospitality with But for the Grace. The thoughtful film is a frank examination of race relations in America seen through the lens of religion. The Indie Memphis Audience Award winner sparked an intense Q&A session after its premiere screening that followed the filmmaker out into the lobby. It’s a timely reminder of the power of film to illuminate social change.

Best Comedy: What We Do in the Shadows

What happens when a group of vampire roommates stop being polite and start getting real? Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement and Eagle vs Shark‘s Taika Waititi codirected this deadpan masterpiece that applied the This Is Spinal Tap formula to the Twilight set. Their stellar cast’s enthusiasm and commitment to the gags made for the most biting comedy of the year.

Best Animation: Inside Out

The strongest Pixar film since Wall-E had heavy competition in the form of the Irish lullaby Song of the Sea, but ultimately, Inside Out was the year’s emotional favorite. It wasn’t just the combination of voice talent Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, and Phyllis Smith with the outstanding character design of Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness that made director Pete Docter’s film crackle, it was the way the entire carefully crafted package came together to deliver a message of acceptance and understanding for kids and adults who are wrestling with their feelings in a hard and changing world.

It Follows

Best Horror: It Follows

The best horror films are the ones that do a lot with a little, and It Follows is a sterling example of the breed. Director David Robert Mitchell’s second feature is a model of economy that sets up its simple premise with a single opening shot that tracks a desperate young woman running from an invisible tormentor. But there’s no escaping from the past here, only delaying the inevitable by spreading the curse of sex and death.

Teenage Dreams: Dope and The Diary of a Teenage Girl

2015 saw a pair of excellent coming-of-age films. Dope, written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa, introduced actor Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a hapless nerd who learns to stand up for himself in the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Somewhere between Risky Business and Do the Right Thing, it brought the teen comedy into the multicultural moment.

Similarly, Marielle Heller’s graphic novel adaptation The Diary of a Teenage Girl introduced British actress Bel Powley to American audiences, and took a completely different course than Dope. It’s a frank, sometimes painful exploration of teenage sexual awakening that cuts the harrowing plot with moments of magical realist reverie provided by a beautiful mix of animation and live action.

Immortal Music: Straight Outta Compton and Love & Mercy

The two best musical biopics of the year couldn’t have been more different. Straight Outta Compton was director F. Gary Gray’s straightforward story of N.W.A., depending on the performances of Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. playing his own father, Ice Cube, for its explosive impact. That it was a huge hit with audiences proved that this was the epic hip-hop movie the nation has been waiting for.

Director Bill Pohlad’s dreamlike Love & Mercy, on the other hand, used innovative structure and intricate sound design to tell the story of Brian Wilson’s rise to greatness and subsequent fall into insanity. In a better world, Paul Dano and John Cusack would share a Best Actor nomination for their tag-team portrayal of the Beach Boys resident genius.

Sicario

Best Cinematography: Sicario

From Benicio del Toro’s chilling stare to the twisty, timely screenplay, everything about director Denis Villeneuve’s drug-war epic crackles with life. But it’s Roger Deakins’ transcendent cinematography that cements its greatness. Deakins paints the bleak landscapes of the Southwest with subtle variations of color, and films an entire sequence in infrared with more beauty than most shooters can manage in visible light. If you want to see a master at the top of his game, look no further.

He’s Still Got It: Bridge of Spies

While marvelling about Bridge of Spies‘ performances, composition, and general artistic unity, I said “Why can’t all films be this well put together?”

To which the Flyer‘s Chris Davis replied, “Are you really asking why all directors can’t be as good as Steven Spielberg?”

Well, yeah, I am.

Hot Topic: Journalism

Journalism was the subject of four films this year, two good and two not so much. True Story saw Jonah Hill and James Franco get serious, but it was a dud. Truth told the story of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes’ fall from the top-of-the-TV-news tower, but its commitment to truth was questionable. The End of the Tour was a compelling portrait of the late author David Foster Wallace through the eyes of a scribe assigned to profile him. But the best of the bunch was Spotlight, the story of how the Boston Catholic pedophile priest scandal was uncovered, starring Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing Spotlight all over the Oscars this year.

Had To Be There: The Walk

Robert Zemeckis’ film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who tightrope-walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, was a hot mess. But the extended sequence of the feat itself was among the best uses of 3-D I’ve ever seen. The film flopped, and its real power simply won’t translate to home video, no matter how big your screen is, but on the big screen at the Paradiso, it was a stunning experience.

MVP: Samuel L. Jackson

First, he came back from the grave as Nick Fury to anchor Joss Whedon’s underrated Avengers: Age of Ultron. Then he channeled Rufus Thomas to provide a one-man Greek chorus for Spike Lee’s wild musical polemic Chi-Raq. He rounds out the year with a powerhouse performance in Quentin Tarantino’s widescreen western The Hateful Eight. Is it too late for him to run for president?

Best Documentary: Best of Enemies

Memphis writer/director Robert Gordon teamed up with Twenty Feet From Stardom director Morgan Neville to create this intellectual epic. With masterful editing of copious archival footage, they make a compelling case that the 1968 televised debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal laid out the political battleground for the next 40 years and changed television news forever. In a year full of good documentaries, none were more well-executed or important than this historic tour de force.

Best Picture: Mad Max: Fury Road

From the time the first trailers hit, it was obvious that 2015 would belong to one film. I’m not talking about The Force Awakens. I’m talking about Mad Max: Fury Road. Rarely has a single film rocked the body while engaging the mind like George Miller’s supreme symphony of crashing cars and heavy metal guitars. Charlize Theron’s performance as Imperator Furiosa will go down in history next to Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Sigourney Weaver in Alien as one of the greatest action turns of all time. The scene where she meets Max, played by Tom Hardy, may be the single best fight scene in cinema history. Miller worked on this film for 17 years, and it shows in every lovingly detailed frame. Destined to be studied for decades, Fury Road rides immortal, shiny, and chrome.

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Film Features Film/TV

Spotlight

2015 has been a big year for movies about journalism. We’ve had a journalist try to get inside the mind of novelist David Foster Wallace in The End Of The Tour, a journalist get snookered by a manipulative psychopath in True Story, and superstar journalists fall for black propaganda in Truth. Director Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight is the best of the batch.

The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight team consisted of four investigative reporters: Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James), Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), and Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams). We first meet the team in 2001, as new editor Martin Baron (Liev Schreiber) takes over at the paper. Baron pushes the team of reporters, whose specialty is in-depth, long-form stories, to look into the long-simmering reports of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in the Boston area. As Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery) says, Baron is from out of town and Jewish and so has no preconceived notions about the church’s oversized role in Boston civic affairs. But once he gets Robinson and his team rolling, they methodically uncover a much bigger story than they set out to write: thousands of children, both boys and girls, who had been molested by Catholic priests all over the world, and the church’s sophisticated and pervasive efforts to bury the story and pressure the kids and their parents into lowball settlements and nondisclosure agreements.

Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, and Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight

Journalists used to be common heroes of films. Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, is a newspaper man, for example. But after hitting its peak in the 1970s with All The President’s Men, the stereotype of the crusading journalist slowly soured onscreen into the rumor-grubbing, ethically challenged hack. Spotlight is very much in the tradition of All The President’s Men, using the tricks of the police procedural to dramatize the often tedious job of the investigative reporter. Like a good episode of Law and Order, it’s the bit parts that make it work, such as Neal Huff as the manic advocate Phil Saviano. Michael Cyril Creighton is especially good as recovering victim Joe Crowley, who sums up the awful effect the predatory pedophiles had on the children’s long-term mental health: “It was the first time in my life anyone had told me it was OK to be gay. And it was a priest.”

Keaton, Ruffalo, and McAdams are all extremely good as the core of the reporting team, but the entire ensemble is strong, especially Schreiber, whose low-key portrayal of the editor Baron keeps you guessing right up until the story is published. McCarthy, who co-wrote the script with Josh Singer, manages to tell a dense story with a triple-digit cast of characters while maintaining tension and keeping the pace lively. There are a few missteps, like a late Christmas montage set to a children’s choir singing “Silent Night,” but the overall effect is tight and occasionally moving. For journalists and people who care about democracy and the value of open society, Spotlight is a master class on how things should be done.