Open Letters Mothly: Now You See Me

All-star casts can be hit or miss. For every The Departed, The Expendables or Oceans 11, there is Mars Attacks or this year's absolutely horrid "comedy" Movie 43. To balance so many A-list personalities at once is a magic act in and of itself, and that is the perfect segue into Now You See Me, which has two former Oscar winners and three former nominees among its actors. It's magic act is nothing short of impossible, and that's what makes it so intriguing a premise for the big screen.

One year after four street magicians were plucked off the street by a mysterious benefactor, "The Four Horsemen" are headlining Las Vegas when they pull off the impossible: transporting a man across space and time to help them rob a bank in Paris. When the FBI gets involved and can find no way to see how they pulled it off other than "magic", the Horsemen are free to go. Now it's a race against time as the law tries to figure out how these seemingly harmless magicians are creating the impossible, and its a race against the clock to stop them from completing their final performance.

Now You See Me is directed by Louis Leterrier and stars Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Melanie Laurent, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman.

Click here for the full review at Open Letters Monthly.

Darkness Falls

I've been on more or less a hiatus the past two  weeks. A busy work schedule, not to mention plain old fatigue, has been gnawing on me, and between that and the string of blah releases recently the result I'm afraid has been me been neglecting Hello Mr. Anderson and my readers. Still, I couldn't imagine a better return to the site than reviewing possibly the most anticipated movie of the summer, The Dark Knight Rises. The finale to Christopher Nolan's take on the caped crusader has certainly earned it's "epic" label: at 165 minutes, it is the longest of his Batman trilogy, and borrows extensively from the comic book character's mythology in the formation of its story. In this third installment, the director took pages from one of the Batman's all-time great stories, 'Knightfall', which chronicled a hero driven to the point of both physical and mental exhaustion before being broken entirely. With Marvel having dominated the comic book film wars the past few years - Iron Man, Thor and of course The Avengers performing more impressively than DC's Superman Returns, Jonah Hex and Green Lantern - Nolan's films have been a light of hope for the company to somehow find their way back to the quality of storytelling for which they were once known. We're a long way from the "Bat-Nipple" sham that was Batman & Robin, and I was certainly of a mood to see this movie after spending this last weekend in the REAL inspiration for Gotham City, good old NYC.

You guessed it: he's Batman.

Set eight years after accepting the blame for the death of District Attorney Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, Batman has retired his cape and cowl. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has lived in seclusion, avoiding any public appearances both due to the physical trauma his body endured in his battle with Two Face and the Joker and his emotional instability following the death of childhood friend and former romantic interest Rachel Dawes. Gotham has enjoyed a modern Renaissance, with Dent's legacy ensuring that the city is free of the organized crime that had crippled its peace and prosperity in the previous decades. That all begins to change with the arrival of Bane (Tom Hardy), a brilliant, mysterious and deadly mercenary who has Gotham set in his sights, to bring chaos in his wake. What is Bane after? Why has cat burgler Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) targeted Bruce Wayne? And how are Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows involved? It's no wonder the thing stretches out to nearly three hours, as Nolan definitely needed that time to tell the whole story.

You'll wake up to an empty apartment... but it will be worth it.

This was to be the big one. The Dark Knight Rises was going to be bigger, more explosive and exciting than Marvel's The Avengers, being the end of Nolan and Bale's involvement with the storied franchise. It was far and away the most anticipated movie of the year for most people. Naturally this is where you start to pick up that The Dark Knight fails to live up to those impossibly high standards you have set. It's not so much that Nolan does anything particularly WRONG, not really. But there were several curious decisions made that - while not making TDKR as disappointing as Prometheus - seriously hinder the film's narrative flow. The movie starts off exciting with the introductions of Hardy's Bane and Hathaway's Catwoman, two major characters in the Batman universe who benefit from the amazingly talented actors who portray them. Hardy, nearly unrecognizable, has turned himself into a force of nature, and Hathaway masters all the angles of Selina Kyle, from her natural seductiveness to her brilliant strategic mind to her physical prowess. We even get to see a different side of Bruce Wayne, one that has been seriously affected by the battles and losses in his life. For Bale, it might not be as impressive as his turn in The Fighter, but his ability to invest himself fully into a role is nothing if not impeccable. And Nolan has always had a talent for drawing a lot of emotion out of his audiences with stellar visuals and explosive action.

Sure, he's not quite like the comic character, but Hardy's Bane is one of the best villains this year.

Unfortunately, even Nolan can't keep it up in a three-hour film, and when the film inevitably slows down for excessive plot exposition, you start to notice all the things that are wrong with The Dark Knight Rises. Like how Catwoman, despite her and Hathaway's many talents, still turns out to be kind of a one-dimensional character. Or Bane's ending, which is about as anti-climactic as one can get. Or Alfred's (Michael Caine) actions, which would never have happened in the comics. Or how Nolan ceases to focus on Batman for stretches at a time, turning the movie into the John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) show. They're great actors and do wonderful jobs, but the last time I checked the protagonist was supposed to be Bruce Wayne, not some orphan cop. Or hey, remember when the villain conspired to use a Waynetech invention to actually destroy Gotham City in Batman Begins? Well, expect to see that again! Or Batman's steadfast refusal to use guns, while having no qualms about using the machine guns and missiles on his new "Bat" flyer late in the film. Or how there's no reference to the Joker, who contrary to the first law of Batman movies did NOT die at the end of The Dark Knight? I understand that nobody can replace Heath Ledger's Joker at this point but I don't need an actor in makeup, just some sort of sign that he was loose in Gotham as all the craziness was going down. Or the film's surprising predictability. Don't even get me STARTED on Marion Cotillard's character. And that ENDING...!

This guy gets more attention than Batman...

One of the biggest complaints you will hear about films based on comic book characters is that you can't fully get into the story unless you already know all about the character in question. That has at least been partially true of Marvel's recent efforts, especially for The Avengers, which did have some moments that might have been confusing if you hadn't seen any of its predecessors. The irony of The Dark Knight Rises is that newcomers to the franchise will handily be able to follow along whether or not they've read the comic, so long as they've at least seen Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Even marginal Batman fans, however, may find themselves frothing at the mouth with all the liberties Christopher Nolan has taken with Gotham's favored son. At it's best, The Dark Knight Rises is a fun, exciting and entertaining thrill-ride with enough action, character development and intrigue to overcome its most glaring faults. It's the little things that will dig into your fun at the theater however, and there is no moment like that one Avengers scene of the collected heroes preparing for battle that will make you cheer and clap your hands in pure joy and exhilaration. TDKR is not that kind of movie, and doesn't try to be. Nolan's Batman is a character mired in darkness, ultimately alone in the battle against injustice. It's unquestionably his creation, and I'll say it's good enough to be the #9 film of 2012. That it could have - and perhaps SHOULD HAVE - been so much better is a shame, but Nolan's successes far outweigh his failures. His Batman epic, though now over, will be remembered as one of the best superhero series of all time, if not THE best. It's too bad it didn't finish better, but perhaps this was the ending Nolan's trilogy needed, if not necessarily the one it deserved.

Dancing lessons have since been cancelled.

Don't Stop Believing

When Journey to the Center of the Earth was remade as a 3D adventure film starring Brendan Fraser in 2008, I'm not sure box office experts realized what would come next. Here was a film rebuilt not only from an already classic 1959 release, but also an historic science fiction novel by the legendary Jules Verne. Top that off with the implementation of 3D tech (and mind you, this was a year before 3D actually got anywhere close to quality) and you had a film release with "Box Office Bomb" written all over it. But you can never underestimate the family film, and parents took their spawn to the theaters in droves for Journey, and while for the year it was no Hancock, Wall-E or Wanted in the blockbuster sense, the film was successful enough that a sequel was definitely a foregone conclusion. Four years later, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island has made its way to our shores (after a worldwide release tour), and what a difference time makes. Of course, the 3D has come a long way. I've dedicated whole posts to the changes the tech has seen the past few years, so we hardly need a reminder once again. There were other major changes, with 2008 stars Fraser and Anita Briem out of the picture and former professional wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson headlining a new cast. Johnson has been in front of some popular family films the last few years, and no matter how much some people would like to see him prosper as an action star, until bombs and explosions can match his earnings in fare such as The Game Plan or The Tooth Fairy, he's going to keep making these kid-friendly titles for the foreseeable future.

The casting on the new Blues Brothers sequel gets a bit out of hand.

Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson, reprising his earlier role here) is one of the few people in the world who believes that the literary works of Jules Verne are not the tales of fiction everyone believes, but in fact based on real life places and stories. Known as Vernians, the Anderson family has searched the world over to uncover those secrets. When Sean discovers a faint radio transmission, he and his stepfather Hank Parsons (Johnson) travel halfway around the world to investigate. Sean believes the signal originated from his grandfather Alexander (Michael Caine), who has spent much of his adult life searching for the Mysterious Island of Verne legend. Hank isn't so sure, and is tagging along to become closer with the boy he's trying to help raise. After hiring a helicopter pilot (Luiz Guzman) and his teenage daughter (Vanessa Hudgens) to fly them out to the coordinates, the four crash-land on an island that only a few people thought actually existed. They've discovered the Mysterious Island, but when trouble rears its ugly head, it will take all their wits to survive and escape the dangers the place presents.

Michael Caine, you've been voted off of the island.

I'm of two minds when I contemplate my time watching Journey 2. On one hand, I want to bash it like comedian Gallagher with so many watermelons, since the entire thing feels like a cheap adventure flick, and dumbed down to boot. Lacking any real coherent plot or character development, it's incredibly difficult to take the film even remotely seriously. There's no doubt in my mind that the producers of this film set out to make a widely-appealing adventure film for kids, and they broke no rules nor stretched any boundaries to make that happen. Then again... I have to admit that the kid in me (the one who likes Kix cereal) actually had a decent time in the theater, and it wasn't just because of the half-dozen mojitos I consumed in preparation. For all its obvious faults, Journey 2 does manage to trot out a few surprises to make the experience much more entertaining than it really should have any right to claim.

"'All your base are belong to us?' What kind of secret code is this?"

One of the biggest additions is also arguably the biggest thing on the screen. And no, I'm not talking about Journey 2's CGI lizards or bumblebees. Once known worldwide as "The Brahma Bull", Johnson remains as charismatic as his had been in his early wrestling days, and his good looks, easygoing attitude and charismatic smile will win audiences over every time. Able to switch between serious and embarrassing parental figure on a dime, he's also has the benefit of playing the film's most well-rounded character. He even gets to pull out a few hitherto unexpected talents in this film, but I'll leave those for you to discover. He's easily the film's #1 asset, stealing just about every scene with perfect comic timing, not to mention quality acting.

"So... come here often?"

It's a shame that the rest of the cast either is not as interesting or doesn't seem to have as much fun as Johnson. Hutcherson has been a recent standout in cinema, and many consider him the unsung hero of the vastly overrated The Kids are All Right. 2012 will prove to be a big year for the young actor, as he holds major roles in the much anticipated adaptation of The Hunger Games and the remake of Cold War classic Red Dawn. Here, Hutcherson displays that his least effort is still better than the average Shia LaBoeuf performance, though that's really not saying much. Suffice it to say he is tolerable, if not exactly proving himself leading man material. Worse is Vanessa Hudgens, another young actress who hasn't proven that she belongs outside of High School. Sure, she has a pretty face (and other... attributes), but the longer she relies on her physical "talents" to get by, the longer it will take for the rest of us to get what supposedly makes her so special. Michael Caine is really slumming it up here. I'm not sure Caine really cares what he does these days; if he does it really doesn't show in his resume for the past few years. He'll lend his voice or presence to just about anything, and he seems to be enjoying himself, but long gone are the leading roles that defined his once-noble career. And Luis Guzman is plain old comic relief, with every word he speaks intended to force laughter from audience members' lips. Sure, it's a bit forced, but there are some good moments (as the group tries to stealthily cross a field filled with giant eggs, Guzman quips "We are literally walking on eggshells"), and Guzman is a better performer than most people realize, with a comic timing approaching that of Johnson.

Wow, Indy really let himself go.

Of course, acting is not the draw of a movie like Journey 2; that would be the point of all those special effects that you've witnessed in the commercials and glimpsed on the movie posters. There are some nice visuals in the beginning, and the first images of the Mysterious Island are absolutely magical when beheld. Sadly, the honeymoon effect doesn't last long, and when it runs out you'll start wishing you hadn't shelled out the extra five bucks to see this film in 3D. Actually, the 3D is fine, but the special effects themselves cease to be incredible after a few scenes, as you will practically see the green screen the actors are pantomiming before. Too often, the film feels like a second-rate animated film with live actors plugged in, and it really diminishes the authentic feel you perceive early on.

I'm guessing they're not looking at Thumbelina.

While I would have loved it if the film could have infused a little more Verne mythos into the main story, I'm not sure it could have helped this title too much, as Journey 2 is far from smart enough to be considered a quality film. It's a dumbed-down film for kids, and director Brad Peyton and his financiers obviously had no illusions of making it otherwise. That said, at least it's a marginally fun one, though luck and the promise of even lesser releases in the future will be all that keeps it out of the year's worst list this coming December. For right now it's the #9 film of 2012. Please don't tell me you expected anything more.

Cobbled Together

Okay, I know I said I was done with the recommendation titles for a while, and my Horrible Bosses review was a step in that direction. But despite there being a bevy of titles awaiting me in the local theaters (A Better Life, Winnie the Pooh, Friends with Benefits, Captain America: The First Avenger), I was thwarted by my worst nemesis: my schedule. I just haven't had the time to get away this past week, and this nice little heat wave is certainly doing me no favors by confronting my departure from air conditioned environs with a solid wave of hot. No civilized creature should have to trek out in the open, and if you don't understand where I'm coming from I'm not sure you ever can (I got some choice scorchings while visiting family in Florida recently, so I think I have a good idea what amount of heat the human body can handle). It has been a terror, though hopefully a mix of lighter temperatures plus a more beneficial schedule will open up my out-of-the-apartment questing in the near future. Until then, it's another dip into the bag with 2003's Secondhand Lions. I briefly remember when this film was released, as it carried top-tier talent such as Michael Caine and Robert Duvall, not the mention a post-peak appearance by one-time Oscar nominee Haley Joel Osmet. But it was far from the center of my attention (as was the case for most people) and I didn't bother with it. Enter my friend Anne who recently has made it her duty to expand my cinematic horizons. And so this film makes its way back into my immediate perimeter, with a plot that includes drama, laughs and wildlife of both the two and four-legged variety.

Yeah, this is kinda what Florida was like...

When young Walter (Osmet) is forced by his absentee mother to spend the summer with her two uncles Hub (Duvall) and Garth (Caine) at their isolated Texas ranch, he is as miserable as they are to have him suddenly thrust on them without warning. Worse, his mother wants him to spy on her reclusive uncles, since it's rumored that the two are filthy rich my unknown means. Walter has been seeded to root out and discover where the two old men keep their money, but the boy doesn't want anything to do with his mother's treacherous ways. He just wants to get the summer over with, but before he does, he will learn the secret history of his family, a story his great uncles have never told anyone in decades.

The best friends a country bumpkin could have

Much of Secondhand Lions is not unlike a fairy tale, where a boy is transported to a magical land and learns much about life and living through the experiences he encounters. Such is as it is for Walter, whose uncles could hardly be called normal. Hub and Garth are an odd duo; they stake out their front porch with shotguns waiting to pepper the vehicles of traveling salesmen who would enter their property, build (and fly) antique biplanes and perform stunts, and purchase their own formerly-owned African animals to host a hunt on their land. That's interesting enough, but everything really gets your attention when Garth begins to tell Walter about their past, which are not all that different from the best parts of my favorite Tim Burton film Big Fish. Using parody of old-school comics like Prince Valiant, Garth tells of a much younger Hub who joins the French Foreign Legion and can battle thirty men at once. These flashbacks are hardly top of the line, but they are different enough from the rest of the film to be appropriately dream-like, which is good since we're never secure in the knowledge of whether they are accurate of fictional until the very end. Even the modern-day scenery has a bit of far-away land in it, as the ranch feels alien to any who've never lived in the middle of nowhere. This is especially true when the more fantastical creatures begin to inhabit the corn stalks.

Sure, my brother's English, but what else is new?

The cast are certainly a lively bunch, keeping in step with the constantly-shifting boundaries of the story. Osmet is a bit past his prime (odd to say about someone born seven years after me) and barely hanging on to the "cute kid" image that made him a household name in The Sixth Sense, made just four years earlier. His voice is starting to change, he's awkward in both right and wrong ways, and like it or not you likely won't see him in these roles anymore. At least he seems to be hanging around in the voice acting biz, hopefully ensuring that his career doesn't entirely emulate the Frankie Muniz route. Robert Duvall continues to prove himself as a compelling actor, as even a relatively lesser role here is beefed up by his not inconsiderable talents. Though he is portrayed as being larger than life, Hub never becomes so inhuman that he's unbelievable, which can be attributed to Duvall's ability to make any character remarkably human. Of all the characters, he is the one that best carries the film. Michael Caine might seem like an odd casting choice for the role of a Texan farmer, but then again, he's Michael Caine. His career choices might not have always been at their peak (I'm thinking On Deadly Ground, but there's plenty to choose from), but he's also fricking Michael Caine. He can act his ass off when he tries, and while he's not at his best here, he does do better than most actual American actors would have done in the same role. Acting as the film's narrator for much of the story, his steady tenor instills even more fairy tale into the story, which is probably why he was cast in the first place.

Arguing over who should get top billing on this production...

If there's fault with Secondhand Lions, it is the film's trend toward schmaltz as an art form, creating some of the stickiest sap known to man. This is I'm sure in part to the feature film inexperience of the man in charge, Tim McCanlies, who also wrote the screenplay. Known more as a television screenwriter, McCanlies has had few opportunities to stand out as a film director (anyone who can even name another McCanlies movie might be immediately congratulated and abandoned), and while his work here isn't at all bad, one must wonder if this is in fact the high water mark of his talent. Like Osmet's chances of another Academy Award nomination, McCanlies might never get any better than this, and while Secondhand Lions is GOOD, it's a title that is carried by the strengths of its cast and storytelling that greatly evokes a sense of wonder, while its intangibles feel a bit creaky and well-worn, like a bridge about to collapse beneath your feet. In the end, Secondhand Lions is not unlike the surprise the brothers receive when they open that animal-containing crate: good and a lot of fun, but not the way you imagined it would be. If you want a fun, cheap film to see, look no further.