Saddle Sore

You know that thing that seems like a really bad idea? Somebody's going through with something, and for the energy and attention and hype they are devoting to that project, you can't for the life of you understand why? That's pretty much my case with Disney's epic western, The Lone Ranger. All the elements for failure are here. With very few exceptions, nobody WATCHES westerns anymore. On top of that, the budget for this particular piece is so bloated ($215 million, not counting advertising) that it would have to be the highest grossing western ever JUST to be considered a success. Plus, Disney's attempts to push into the action-adventure genre in recent years have fallen flat creatively, and for every financially successful dip into the nostalgia pool (Oz the Great and Powerful) there have been far too many pricey belly flops (Prince of Persia, John Carter and the last Pirates flick, for example). Finally, there's a bunch of negative attention out there focused on the casting of Johnny Depp as Comanche sidekick Tonto, which essentially has the top-billed star performing the Native American variant of blackface. Can The Lone Ranger overcome all these issues by simply issuing the statement that it was from the same team that brought you Pirates of the Caribbean (director Gore Verbinski, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Depp)?

The short answer is no, it cannot.

Surrender is not an option.

Based on the character from the popular TV show and radio serials that first appeared way back in the 1930's, The Lone Ranger tells the origin of the man once known as John Reid (Armie Hammer), who returns home from college to Colby, Texas to become the new District Attorney. Unknowingly, he is aboard the same train as outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner), soon about to hang for his crimes against the Indian natives. But when Cavendish's gang breaks him out, kills several Texas Rangers (John's brother included) and leaves the young lawyer for dead, John must team up with eccentric Comanche Tonto (Depp) to avenge his family and bring law back to the untamed West as the masked outlaw known as The Lone Ranger

Hope you like him... he gets old fast.

Right from the start, we're assaulted with idiotic imagery, as the opening scene takes place in a San Francisco museum in the 1930's, where a young fan of the Lone Ranger meets an aged and demented Tonto (Depp in heavy makeup). There, Tonto begins to narrate the entire tale, a plot device so contrived and ill-conceived that I can't believe it made the final cut. Why not just go right into the story and action? Do we NEED to see that no matter what, the legend of the Ranger has endured? Isn't what you're about to show us going to do that? It's a lousy way to begin this whole experience, as I don't ever remember Pirates needing to remind us that the entire plot was written around a theme park ride.

The railroad: our first major environmental devastator.

This is just the beginning of Lone Ranger's problems, as that opening (and subsequent occasional story-breaking subplot) sets the tone for a movie that can't figure out what it wants to be. On one hand, it's light-hearted action-adventure, with classic cowboy gun play, colorful bad guys and even a bit of witty dialogue. On the other, it tries way too hard to overcome its lighter fare and attempts to show some authentic culture of the time. This includes a scene in which one of the bad guys (in this case, Barry Pepper's military officer) leads an army in the slaughter of an invading Comanche tribe. With bodies clogging up a river, it's a powerfully sad reminder of the atrocities committed in the name of "progress." And then, not twenty seconds later, Tonto tells a one-liner about a horse. It's this unevenness in theme and plot even within the confines of a single scene that mars much of the fun that could have been had with this western tale.

HBC with a gun leg? Are you sure Tim Burton didn't direct this bit?

And that's sad, because the film really does have its moments. Despite any niggling concerns about the quality of the production, this is a veteran team who have committed great acts of filmmaking in the past. This was especially true for the first Pirates of the Caribbean, and there are times during Ranger where you remember why you liked that swashbuckling adventure so much. The action is better than you might expect, culminating in an insanely epic - and surprisingly fun - battle atop, under and through racing train cars, set to an updated (but still classic-sounding) variant of Rossini's 'William Tell Overture.' Though the special effects are not always as sharp as they could be, at least they don't possess the cartoonish quality of a George Lucas adventure. It's easily some of Verbinski's best action work, and never feels overlong (which you couldn't say about any of Pirates' battles). There are also a slew of talented actors and interesting characters, though for the life of me I'm not sure how I feel about Ruth Wilson's mediocre performance. On the more positive side, Armie Hammer is as pleasant a lead as you can get. I wish he'd pick better projects (his last two were the terrible Mirror Mirror and the meh J. Edgar), but at least you can't say anything negative about his efforts or talent. He's supported by a bevy of charismatic villains in Fichtner, Pepper, and Tom Wilkinson as a corrupt business magnate (in Hollywood, is there any other kind?), who are a triple threat to the forces of justice. However, I wish we could have seen a bit more of Helena Bonham Carter's peg-legged (and bad-ass) brothel madam Red Harrington, who charms in a few scenes but is missing for almost the entirety of the movie. James Badge Dale meanwhile rounds out the cast (and is enjoying a pretty good career run presently) as John's brother.

Let's just get this trope out of the way.

But the film boasts two big stars. One is featured on the poster above; the other is not. One was in Pirates of the Caribbean; the other was not. One has a few moments of levity but is otherwise remarkable; the other is a horse who absolutely steals the show. Johnny Depp fails to attain the same level of entertainment he managed as Captain Jack Sparrow, which I wouldn't even bother mentioning if it weren't obvious they were trying to emulate the exact same process by making Tonto a wise-cracking, deranged and occasionally dangerous individual who is supposed to steal scenes and chew scenery. However, he doesn't do any of those things, despite wearing a dead bird on his head and wearing more makeup than KISS. His too-frequent motions to "feed" the bird get old after the first few minutes, and his monotonously-delivered dialogue doesn't show the same charisma we've come to expect from the actor. And his Native American routine (which I'm sure was meant to be endearing and honorable) never feels fully developed, as though he and the filmmakers never really took the time to nail down his characteristics. While it's certainly not as insulting as it could have been (especially when there are a few Native American actors in here that are great), there's no doubt that Depp was the wrong man for the job (seriously, the kid who plays his younger self has darker skin), brought in as box office padding and nothing more.

Guess who's better?

No, the star of The Lone Ranger turns out to be none other than Silver, the albino horse who can often be seen hanging out in trees or silently arguing with his human counterparts. Stories from the set overtly praise the abilities of Silver, and his on-screen antics certainly seem to prove these tales accurate. However, he doesn't stand out in all that many scenes, and even then as a comedic foil to the Ranger and even to Tonto's more lucid moments. Still, it's a sad day in the industry when a horse not only outperforms his human hosts, but does so with relative ease.

"I am the Law."

Sadly, despite a few glimmers of genuinely strong filmmaking, The Lone Ranger is everything you might have feared: it's a pretty, over-bloated, uneven, SFX-dependent, mediocre, and slightly racist epic that never deserves the attention that it attempts to demand. It's understandable why the marketing department for this film focused so hard on the "from the people who brought you Pirates" plan, as I'm sure the remaining fans of that franchise represented a significant percentage of those who actually showed up opening weekend. But Lone Ranger is no Curse of the Black Pearl. Its desire to resurrect the western genre is admirable, but better movies have been made in recent years (including True Grit and 3:10 to Yuma) that had far less a budget than the one used by Bruckheimer and crew. If he and his fellow producers had perhaps lowered their ambitions somewhat and put together a smaller, low-tech production with the crew and cast that they had, The Lone Ranger might have been a winner. As it is, it's just a mess we'll they'll be spending the next couple of weeks cleaning up.

Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse

They say that there's no such thing as bad press, because even negative actions mean that somebody is at least talking about it. And yet for over two years it seemed as though nothing positive was coming from the set of World War Z, the zombie apocalypse movie based on Max Brooks' novel of the same name. Rumors and stories of difficulties on set, ranging from going far over budget, to tension between director Marc Forster and star (and producer) Brad Pitt, to a Bulgarian police raid on a prop supply that turned up still-active firearms. Most famously was the hiring of first Damon Lindelof and then Drew Goddard to rewrite the entire third act, because otherwise the film would have no ending. All the images we were witness to painted a canvas of chaos and dissent, complicated further by trailers that made the zombies look more like swarming ants than the shuffling (or even more modern running) zeds that we've become familiar with. When all was said and done, just how mediocre could this particular adaptation turn out to be?

This is ALMOST as chaotic as July 4'th in Boston.

Actually, it turns out that World War Z isn't that bad. Sure, it's a straight disaster flick from the moment we see Philadelphia overrun by leaping, running, and definitely deadly virus carriers (Yes, my friends in Philly, yours is the first city to fall), but the story of former UN investigator Gerry Lane's (Pitt) mission to save the world at least makes the film a globe-trotting epic, leading the audience to South Korea, Israel and Cardiff (really?). Lane is a former UN investigator who is an expert at solving problems, and what government is left drafts him into leading a small team to uncover the start of this global pandemic so that it can be either cured or combated more effectively. In exchange, the government will keep his family safe. It's a race against time, and if he doesn't figure out where the virus started soon, Gerry may find himself with over six billion enemies wanting to take a bite out of him.

Aaaaaalmost...

There's one thing that keeps running through my mind as I see the zombies move about in World War Z: "These aren't zombies." In fact, they're arguably closer to the monsters in the excellent 28 Days Later, who were really just rabies sufferers. The "zombies" here display almost all the same symptoms: near-instantaneous infection from bite, insane sensitivity to sound, and swift, animal-like movement when pursuing their prey. Anybody who has seen the trailers can see the result, as they mainly swarm in huge groups like an unstoppable tidal wave of disease and death. The story is similarly generic, playing to the summer movie crowd with action and adventure and even a little character drama, dropping almost all of the political undertones that were to have been adopted from Brooks' novel. Possibly worst is that this is a one-man show. Brad Pitt is a great actor, but even he can't carry a zombie epic all by his lonesome. The third act does see him accompanied by a tough Israeli soldier called Segen (an excellent Daniella Kertesz), but most of his companions in the movie are either uninteresting (Mireille Einos as Lane's wife, Fana Mokoena as his boss), or here-and-gone characters who pass on important information before getting out of dodge (James Badge Dale, David Morse, Ludi Boeken). Movies like this are usually BUILT on its supporting cast, but Forster decided that this would be the Pitt Show, and all others were just a bite away from going out of style.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaalmost....

But what the film certainly lacks in originality, it actually somewhat makes up for in style. The film's budget may have overshot original estimations at about $200 million, but that money was certainly put to good use visually, with fluidly-moving zombies, gorgeous environments and well-paced action scenes. The only downside to this is that you've already seen most of what happens in the trailer, with monstrous masses piling down every street in Jerusalem and through the corridors of a 747. The zeds are genuinely SCARY at times, though those scares seem relegated to jumping out of the shadows unexpectedly and not due to their bloody natures. Still, they're effective, if not quite what we've come to expect from the shuffling meat-eaters of The Walking Dead or other fare. Finally, the third act is a whole other ballgame, and despite trading the previous hour and a half of open world and adventure for a claustrophobic, Resident Evil-like biological mystery, it has at times the best parts of the whole movie experience. Turns out the rewriting by Lindelof and Goddard was just what the movie needed, they crafted a satisfying (if blandly closed) finale to World War Z.

That's it! Enjoy the fireworks!

Coming out of this film, you might find yourself believing that there's a ton of potential here spoiled by audience and regional pandering. Comparing it to Max Brooks' book does it no favors, as the single-voiced perspective of the film is adapted from the novel in mere name only (seriously, am I the only one who thinks a faux documentary about a zombie apocalypse with interviews and "found" footage would be AWESOME?). It's especially difficult to reconcile the story here with rumors of the original draft, which some outlets shouted was the closest a zombie film might get to the Academy Awards. That movie is not World War Z, a decent but unspectacular action movie that relies on its special effects to bring in the Summer movie watchers. This perhaps isn't surprising considering it's from a director whose good (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger than Fiction) has since given way to bad (Quantum of Solace, Machine Gun Preacher). Still, Forster manages to make it work as a summer event movie, though it'll never reach the iconic status of the all-time greats. It's a fun movie, though one for which you could safely await a DVD release.

Fly the Friendly Skies

For over twenty years, Denzel Washington has been among the best actors in Hollywood, and for good reason. Cry Freedom; Glory; Malcolm X; Philadelphia; Crimson Tide; Courage Under Fire; The Preacher's Wife; Devil in a Blue Dress; The Hurricane; Remember the Titans; Training Day; Antwone Fisher; American Gangster; The Great Debaters; The Book of Eli; Safe House; if that list seems like a random mishmash of titles, it's because Washington seems perfectly at home whether he's playing a military man in an action thriller or a blue collar detective in a noire mystery or an angel in a romantic fantasy. That he will be remembered as one of the premiere black actors is almost a shame; his talent crosses color barriers, and hopefully history won't remember him as "just" a black actor but a wonderful performer overall. Sure, he's seen his share of mediocre movies (seriously, what actor doesn't have a list of embarrassments?), but he always manages to bring his "A" game to whatever project he's on, and raises the quality of the film by sheer force of will. That's certainly the case with Flight, which also has the distinction of being the first live-action film directed by Robert Zemeckis in over a decade.

"Not sure that's quite enough flattery"

William "Whip" Whitaker (Washington) is a veteran commercial airline pilot making a routine flight from Orlando to Atlanta when the plane he is captaining suddenly fails and goes into a dive with 106 people aboard. Through sheer skill and a just little luck, Whitaker manages to crash-land the plane and save most of the people aboard, proving himself a real American hero. But Whitaker has a problem; he's an alcoholic, and not only drank and did drugs in excess in the days leading up to the incident, but during the doomed flight itself as well. Alone that issue would be worth five years in jail, but with the crash suffering some fatalities, his problems might mean life in prison for the troubled aviator.

The movie that will make people stay at home this holiday season.

With an estimated 140 million people worldwide suffering some form of alcoholism, Flight makes itself much more accessible a tale of mental sickness than last year's Shame, which focused on much-disregarded sexual addiction. But while that NC-17 title brought a host of unique imagery in to tell its story, Zemeckis doesn't do nearly as well in Flight, which often gives us cliche and stereotypical ideas and characters in lieu of anything approaching actual feeling. I do have to give the director and screenwriter John Gatins some credit; Whip is an unrepentant jerk with an ego the size of Manhattan, and the filmmakers don't go out of their way to turn him into a saint or a misunderstood savant. They go out of their way to treat the disease of alcoholism with respect and honesty. But while it might be wholly realistic for such a stricken man to constantly renounce his problem and throw all the liquor in the house away only to buy it all back later, the scene becomes less tragic and more superfluous the more you show it on screen. Zemeckis obviously feels more at home in Uncanny Valley (it's ironic he's getting out of the 3D animation game just as it's really getting good) and doesn't have the same feel for real living actors as he did in the days of the Back to the Future trilogy, Forest Gump or even Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

"No more questions about Training Day, please."

But while Washington is partially sabotaged by his creative team, he responds by putting on one of his most impressive performances in years. As I stated before, Washington is simply one of the best, and you can see him undergoing this emotional roller coaster with each new scene, as one by one Whip alienates and shrugs off the advice and help offered by his friends and compatriots, including the (somewhat shoehorned) romance with a recovering drug addict (a surprisingly strong Kelly Reilly). But while Washington excels, the script wastes a vast ensemble cast that includes Reilly, John Goodman, Tamara Tunie, Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood, Brian Geraghty, Melissa Leo and an absolutely wonderful early scene by James Badge Dale. I don't know if this was a conscious decision, but the film insists on being all about Whip and only Whip, brushing aside the potentially interesting characters and extremely talented actors to the wings.

Cue rock anthem... now.

While he does his best to overcome overwrought material, Washington still can't make a mediocre Flight the Oscar favorite that many reviewers are calling it. He is still one of the best performers in Hollywood, and one of the few black men who can producers feel comfortable headlining a major motion picture without saddling him alongside a bigger white star. You can also look forward to seeing him nominated for another Academy Award this year, as both his work here and a dearth of sufficiently high-caliber performances this year all but guarantees him a nomination alongside Lincoln's Daniel Day Lewis and The Sessions' John Hawkes. I also wasn't bored with one minute of the two-plus hour film, so if you're okay with watching Washington commanding the screen with his usual panache for 139 minutes, then you might consider taking a flier on this one. Washington's too good an actor to make a really  BAD movie, but there's still better fare out that you can enjoy more.

Shames Me Not

Quick, what NC-17-rated film has had the highest financial gross since the creation of the rating in 1990? If you guessed the 1995 Paul Verhoeven title Showgirls, give yourself a pat on the back. It doesn't hurt that this particular title was been the only one with that NC-17 rating to get itself a wide release, as often filmmakers whose work get that rating will edit and change their films to try and appeal for a reduction to an R rating instead. R-rated films get to see wide release, more and better advertising and by those means a much larger potential audience, whereas one hampered by an NC-17 rating are often depicted as "niche" titles and play in New York and Los Angeles almost exclusively, with a little indie theatrical action around the country as it prepares for the upcoming awards shows. We're a long way away from 1969, when Midnight Cowboy became the only X-rated (before the porn industry stole that term) film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. These days, anything rated higher than R is considered too big a deal, and many millions of dollars end up being spent in the mad dash to appeal for that relatively more acceptable ceiling. This is why it's so refreshing to see that Shame did not undergo this same process, proudly (and perhaps a little foolhardily) wearing the adult-only patch as what director Steve McQueen called "a badge of honor, not a scarlet letter." Instead of going for leniency from a sometimes shockingly prudish ratings board in an attempt to make a film focused on sex addiction more marketable, McQueen and his crew stood by the content they had produced, confident that their storytelling methods were the only way to properly depict the issues within.

Are scarves for real? Are they a "thing" now?

Shame follows New York businessman Brandon (Michael Fassbender) as he goes through his everyday motions in New York City. From the very beginning we see that Brandon lives his life a little differently than most: between sex with random women, furious masturbation, a truly epic porn collection and even the hiring of prostitutes, Brandon seems to fill every open moment in his life with sexual fervor, and not entirely of his own volition. Obviously not comfortable with his situation, he generally avoids personal contact with others, with only married wannabe-womanizing boss David (James Badge Dale) the closest thing he has to a friend. He also ignores repeated attempts by his sister (Carey Mulligan) to make contact, not wanting to allow family back into his life. When she instead appears on his doorstep and having nowhere else to go, Brandon feels his already fragile life slipping past, and the dirty little secrets he's tried to keep hidden begin to make themselves more present and uncomfortable than they've ever been before.

One of many uncomfortable scenes in this film

Now, admit it: when you read the words "sex addiction" earlier, you chuckled a little bit, even if just on the inside. Today it seems like the word "addiction" is tossed around on a whim, but the truth is that as we learn more and more about how the human brain is wired, sex addiction is just another form of mental instability no different than alcoholism, compulsive overeating or drug addiction. When someone becomes addicted to alcohol, drugs or food (or anything, for that matter), the overriding drive behind them is the search for pleasure. Indulging in these habits causes the brain to feel so good that when those things are NOT in the system, it can cause depression and sadness, causing the afflicted to search out that great feeling once more. However, while people seem more understanding when it comes to alcohol or drug abuse (they probably know someone who suffers from those issues), sex addiction doesn't get the same respect in most circles as an actual illness. It's really no different however, as the human orgasm is among the most pleasurable feelings a person can obtain. It's no less reasonable to be infatuated with that as your emotional high as with other means, but the truth is that the idea just hasn't been around as long as other concepts. For that reason it may still be some time before sex addicts are treated on the same level as other sufferers.

"Cream in your coffee" of course takes on a whole new meaning

My whole reason behind that unexpected sociological ramble was that I was impressed how seriously Shame takes its subject matter. While the film is at times difficult to watch, it's obvious that McQueen and crew took their time making sure every detail was exactly what they wanted to portray, and accurate at that. Sex addiction is no joke, and there is very little to suggest that the cast and crew wished to do anything besides treat this problem as a real and valid issue that people face today. While there are some moments that feel a little forced (Brandon having sex with a woman in an alley underneath where someone has scrawled "fuck" on the wall, for instance), McQueen doesn't do anything without a reason. This has both positives and negatives, especially when he has Mulligan sing a painfully slow rendition of "New York, New York" that successfully transmits to the audience its intention but suffers from forcing the fake audience for whom she's performing to act like it was the greatest thing they had ever seen. There are moments throughout in which the story is a little TOO on point with its message, but thankfully these moments are few and are even balanced by truly great sequences, for instance a single-shot of Brandon running through the streets of New York just to blow off some steam.

This film likely won't get a Best Costume nomination...

If there's one more thing Shame does well, it's cementing Fassbender as one of the industry's rising stars. Fassbender has been around for a while, making his television debut in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, and running through innocuous smaller roles in 300, Inglourious Basterds and Jonah Hex before truly breaking out this year. Teaming up with McQueen for the first time since his acclaimed performance in 2008's Hunger, Fassbender forces himself into discussions as an obvious front runner for the Best Actor award in any award show going forward. Brandon walks that line between normal life and crippling addiction so finely, and I can't imagine any actor besides Fassbender being able to pull off the level of required subtlety to make that believable, let alone the arguably best performance by a male actor this year. Mulligan is perhaps not as inspired, but I believe that is because there wasn't enough of her. Some of the best scenes in the film feature interaction between Mulligan and Fassbender's siblings, but there could have been a few more scenes of that like to flesh out their past relationship. Her character, Cissy, is an emotionally juvenile free-spirit who is going through some issues of her own, not the least of which is an obvious codependency on others. Mulligan carries this nicely, and as I've never seen An Education this is the first instance in which I get why people appreciate her as an actress. While I do think there could have been more connecting these two interesting characters, that they have an obvious history which is not necessarily being shared is acceptable at least.

Proof that frowns are not a pretty thing

There are a few scenes in the film's late stages in which you might wonder as to how far Brandon's descent will take him, and there's one explicit and extensive sex scene which doesn't FEEL like it's faked. What results is more of the discomfort that you've felt for much of the film's run time, and it's unlikely that the great performances will ever tempt you to revisit this title anytime in the future. Still, Shame keeps hold on its credibility thanks mostly to the level of acting brought to the table by the film's exceptionally talented leads. Perhaps not destined to be one of the year's best, Shame still manages to propel itself near the top, debuting as the #9 film of 2011, just ahead of Fassbender's other 2011 titles X-Men: First Class and Jane Eyre. Michael Fassbender deserves to be a star. Thanks to this body of work on his resume, future years might see just that.