Somewhere Alongside the Moonrise: The Grand Budapest Hotel

I still think Moonrise Kingdom should have been nominated for Best Picture.

Wes Anderson's 2012 nostalgic comedy was one of many casualties that Oscar season, which also saw Kathryn Bigelow and Ben Affleck (whose Argo took Best Picture) miss out on Best Director nominations. That year was... kind of a mess. It's almost as if people are ignoring little gems like this while overindulging on and celebrating David O. Russell and his admittedly good - but by no means groundbreaking or original - fare. Not that Anderson, the Texan director whose movies seem to run on whimsy and charm, is lacking in public attention. Though he's had a few bombs, Anderson has reached that point in his career where not only does the mere mention of his name elicit squeals of glee from fanboys and fangirls, but his films have also proven good, quirky and unique enough to draw in more mainstream audiences. And Moonrise Kingdom is one of his most inclusive, with all the nuttiness of Rushmore but more approachable at the same time.

Ralph Fiennes: one less great actor who hasn't worked with Anderson.

So can The Grand Budapest Hotel capitalize on that and become Wes Anderson's greatest work yet? Well, yes and no. Budapest is arguably one of Anderson's most artistic efforts, as his distinct style is all over the German locations and sets in which the film was shot. Whether it's opulently-colored models, creative camera techniques or unique character models, Anderson is at his glee-inducing best. His story of a legendary hotel concierge (Ralph Fiennes) falsely accused of murder and on the run from the law with his loyal lobby boy Zero (newcomer Tony Revolori) would make for a great thriller, if the screenplay (also written by Anderson) wasn't content to throw every humorous anecdote and amusing situation along the way to lighten the mood. The fact that Fiennes can talk about sleeping with older women in the same nonchalant tone in which he tells of the violent passing of a fellow prison escapee proves that he belongs in this director's pantheon of recurring performers, many of whom make their presences known.

I even liked Jude Law in this! Truly this Anderson is sacred!

And it's a great cast that the director has assembled here. Though there are a few returning actors that could have done more (no more than a small cameo for Bill Murray?), The Grand Budapest Hotel is surprisingly built upon its new talent, with the Anderson regulars filling out the smaller support roles. Fortunately, that new talent is headlined by Fiennes, who is simply put on of the best actors working today. Revolori also impresses, and the two make for an excellent pair, as the younger actor's innocent and eminently loyal sidekick plays beautifully against Fiennes' haughty, confident and charismatic leading man. And the cast is littered with excellence, Saoirse Ronan as Zero's dutiful but independent fiance to Tilda Swinton as a wealthy hotel patron, to Adrien Brody as her inheritance-seeking son to Willem DaFoe as his thinly-veiled violent sociopath of a lackey. Returning actors Edward Norton and Jeff Goldblum also find their marks as a police inspector and a by-the-book lawyer, respectively.

No, really, there's a funny story in here.

Budapest also carries an extra dose of the zaniness that makes Wes Anderson more than just a standard filmmaker, from his use of four distinct narrators (F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson, and yes, I'm including the girl with the book at the beginning) to the Mexico-shaped birthmark on one character's face to having a man named "Monsieur Chuck" (Owen Wilson) to the beautiful cakes designed so that the prison would not want to disturb them looking for concealed escape tools. The atmosphere that the director creates never feels stale, and while there are times that a scene feels a tad overlong, it's a rare occurrence, and usually is made up for by the kind of irreverent humor and witty dialogue that feels reminiscent of the golden age of spoken comedy.

That's a lot of flattened cakes.

Unfortunately, The Grand Budapest Hotel is SO MUCH like a Wes Anderson comedy that.... it never really takes that next step you might have been expecting after the magic that was Moonrise Kingdom. Much like how Django Unchained was Tarantino's sideways step from Inglorious Basterds, Budapest just doesn't feel that different from Moonrise, not in locale or story (which are obviously differing) but in tone and pacing. The humor is the same, and the character archetypes just FEEL as though they've got Anderson's hands all over them. Keep in mind, that's not a bad thing. I mentioned before how the story would make for a great thriller, and another director would have done just that. By subverting that story and combining it with his style of moviemaking, however, Anderson makes something undeniably, indelibly his. And like the excellent Django, that identifiabe voice is what makes The Grand Budapest Hotel the wonderful experience that it is.

Nope, nothing suspicious going on here!

And while that means that The Grand Budapest Hotel ultimately appeals a little more to diehard Anderson fans than the average moviegoing audience, it's still one of the best movies released so far in 2014. You never know where the story will go next, and it makes for an excellent quirky, lo-fi option if you're already tired out from the big-budget tentpoles films that are starting to make their way into theaters. If you haven't already gone out of your way to see this, now is the best time to make it happen. Just don't expect anything truly groundbreaking - by Anderson's standards, anyway - and you'll enjoy your time at the movies very, very much.

'Out of the Furnace' Burns Brightly

I didn't know this, but apparently the weekend after Thanksgiving is not particularly productive for the North American box office. Since it's usually such a slow weekend, movies released at this time tend to be few, with maybe one new release opening up and often failing to garner an audience when it does. Two years ago, it was the terrible The Warriors Way that was sacrificed to an early grave, while last year saw the critically praised but commercially panned Killing Them Softly (which I also consummately hated) diffuse all potential Oscar talk for Brad Pitt in 2012. This year, the sole national release for this weekend is Out of the Furnace, Scott Cooper's directorial followup to 2009's well-received country-singing Crazy Heart, a title many considered a decent pick for Academy Award potential. Does this mediocre release date (which guaranteed an early box office finish behind Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) mean that the studios and their celebrity producers (Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio, who had originally been labeled as director and actor) believe their film doesn't deserve that much faith?

A bit of fun before all the drama begins.

Out of the Furnace is a revenge thriller that pits Russell Baze (Academy Award-winner Christian Bale) - a normal, factory-working good man in Braddock, PA - against lowlife criminal and overall scumbag Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), an Appalachian hustler who is suspected of being responsible for the disappearance of Russell's brother Rodney (Casey Affleck). With there being only so much the law can do, Russell feels he is the only man who can find and punish the man responsible for separating him from his brother.

Gladiator gets a sequel 2000 years in the making.

This movie has two major strengths going for it: Cooper, and his amazing cast. As a sophomore director, Cooper has a lot to live up to, especially with praise for Crazy Heart being as great as it was. He has a natural aptitude for storytelling, and that's especially good when the story he actually tells differs in respects to what the trailers had brought a potential audience to expect. Now, it's not that the trailers lied, per se, but they do diverge quite widely from the tale Cooper actually brings to us. Considering how many trailers essentially give away the story of their respective titles, that Out of the Furnace surprises us with its twists and turns is just as much a key to victory as Cooper's overall talent. The director has a talent for capturing the perfect shot, and the imagery he evokes is that of a big-budget Winter's Bone due to its Appalachian, Rust Belt locale and depressed economic setting. He makes great use of his locale to establish his story (which he re-wrote from a script by Brad Ingelsby), and despite the dangers of a slow-burning plot (Killing Them Softly was terribly slow, to the point of boredom), the movie is never dull, keeping you entranced as you anxiously wait to see what happens next.

He's really going for that Oscar this year.

And as I mentioned, Cooper gets a huge boost from his all-star cast, especially concerning the (surprisingly limited) interplay between Bale and Harrelson. Harrelson's Harlan is a monster from the word go, and the film more than establishes him as a dangerous, evil human being (and setting the foundations for Best Supporting Actor nods, perhaps), more than worthy for a movie of this style. Meanwhile, Bale's Russell takes a lot longer to set up, while never losing sight of the idea that he is the epitome of good. That building of his character was necessary to keep Russell from stagnating, and despite some threats of cliche, Bale reminds everybody of the monumental talent he really is. Affleck meanwhile quietly puts forth one of his best performances, that of a youth troubled by war and falling into the trappings of debt and depression. Affleck has always been a good (sometimes better than big brother Ben) actor, but his turn in Furnace easily takes the top prize. Zoe Saldana also excels, though I found myself wishing they'd used her a bit more. After all, there's no doubt in my mind that one day this young talent will earn Academy Award nominations, and perhaps walk away with one as well. This was an excellent display of her skills (the scene with Bale on the footbridge is emotionally devastating) and she's absolutely destined for bigger things than Star Trek and Colombiana. Forest Whitaker, Sam Shepard and Willem Dafoe round out a fully engaging cast, one that really makes the best of their given material.

Spoiler: this is the best scene in the movie.

And that's a good thing, because the material they have to work with is... "meh". Cooper supposedly had his own upbringing in Appalachia in mind when he was retooling Ingelsby's screenplay, but the result is a LOT of universally cliched ideas. The major and minor themes - poverty, frontier justice, social treatment of combat veterans, legal jurisdiction battles, loneliness, emotional trauma, brotherhood - have been done before, in essentially this same format. No matter how good the actors are (and they are spectacular!), Cooper can't quite compel his movie to be more unique than it actually is. There were also some questionable decisions made for the final cut, as some scenes ran a little over-long and contained some questionably redundant material (I mean seriously, how many times to we need to be reminded that Russell is a good man?). But while the director really should have let someone else come in and tinker with his relatively disappointing script, he's a talented-enough artist to somewhat overcome those hurdles, while trusting his cast to do the heavy lifting in a tale that doesn't lack for suspense and authentic emotional toil.

Now, who's up for playing Old Yeller?

There's a surprisingly long setup, as the audience soon becomes fully accustomed to the slow burn that takes up the first 90 minutes of Out of the Furnace. That makes the swift final act a complete surprise, as Cooper had perfectly positioned his pawns for a quick checkmate. But despite feeling a little rushed, the movie actually benefits from this change of pace, and it actually makes for quite the exciting and appropriate conclusion to the tale. Still, it (and his minor, newbie-level mistakes) keeps his final product from becoming the awards juggernaut it ABSOLUTELY had the potential to be. Out of the Furnace is still tons better than the fare that usually comes out the weekend after Thanksgiving, and if you find yourself with a couple of hours to spend before the year's end, you can do a whole lot worse than giving Scott Cooper's latest effort a shot. Great actors, an up-and-coming director and not one boring moment make for a couple hours of sheer quality entertainment.

Thrill of the Hunt

I review over a hundred movies a year, and the fact that I still come nowhere close to seeing the majority of the world's cinema is somewhat humbling. Dismissing those that never actually reach our shores for distribution, there are still dozens of independent, foreign and limited-release features that - if they're very, VERY lucky - will appear in theaters for a week before vanishing. While some are deservedly worth the quick exit, it's still easy to miss an unexpected gem or an outstanding performance when this happens. That certainly appears to be the case for The Hunter, a 2011 Australian film that hit US theaters as The Hunger Games was making beaucoup bucks back in April. It never played in more than 17 theaters during its 10-week run, and was largely ignored by the movie-going public, who were more interested in seeing Marvel's The Avengers or Snow White and the Huntsman. But with award season about to hit and everybody posting their "Best of" lists, there's been some minor buzz over The Hunter's lead actor Willem Dafoe. I've been a fan of Dafoe since seeing him on VHS in Platoon, and he's probably one of the cinema's best and more under-appreciated character actors. The veteran is arguably the best part of many of his movies, from Shadow of the Vampire to Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy to Daybreakers. So since The Hunter was available on Netflix and I didn't really have the time to visit the theater, It was a no-brainer to check this out.

What The Hobbit is to New Zealand, The Hunter is to Tasmania.

Dafoe plays mercenary Martin David, an expert hunter sent into the wilds of Tasmania to hunt and obtain genetic material of the elusive Tasmanian Tiger, a creature thought to be extinct but allegedly sighted on two separate occasions. Getting his paycheck from military biotech company Red Leaf, he lands on the island under the guise of a University scientist studying Tasmanian devils. Forced to lodge with a single mother and her two inquisitive young children due to economic hardship in the area, Martin regularly forays into the forests in search of his prey. But even the lone wolf cannot keep from becoming involved with the people around him, even as he tries to keep his true purposes secret. Soon, Red Leaf loses faith in their operative and sends in their own man to "replace" him and get the job done, by any means possible.

"I'm huntin' Wabbits"

I said earlier that Willem Dafoe one of the best character actors in cinema. He easily proves it here with his morally-conflicted, largely silent protagonist, who is about as morose as antiheroes get without being outright annoying about it. In fact, it's a performance similar to that in George Clooney's The American, if you were to replace Clooney's excessive good looks and lady-killing energy with an aged, pockmarked facade. Dafoe's gradual development as a character is endlessly fascinating, as he slowly transforms from the loner who is here to get a job done and nothing else to an emotional and reluctant father figure to the family's young children. The actor puts forth some of his best work to date, and one can only hope that the perennial D-list actor can get some respect this award season. He might not present an actual threat to the likely trifecta of Daniel Day-Lewis, Denzel Washington or John Hawkes, but with organizations choosing not to recognize Anthony Hopkins' work in Hitchcock (though for the life of me I don't understand WHY), there's every chance the Academy could slot him in as a long-shot dark horse. After all, recent years have seen them do the same for Demian Bichir (A Better Life), Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) and Richard Jenkins (The Visitor), among others. Seeing him nominated for a third Oscar might also rejuvenate a career that certainly deserves it.

He, on the other hand, is hunting Velociraptors.

Actually, there are a number of parallels connecting The Hunter and The American, most notably the dedication to showing off the exotic locations. Longtime television director Daniel Nettheim is no Anton Corbijn when it comes to camera work, but he still does his best to capture the beauty of the Tasmanian wilds, using as many panning nature shots as he can get away with. Scenes may not have anything important occurring but still do tons to establish the region as its own distinct personality. And unlike The American, Nettheim takes the time to set the gulf between the work-starved loggers whose livelihoods depend on the forests and the environmentalist groups who fight to prevent deforestation. In doing so, the director creates a whole human ecosystem that has dramatic effects on the events it tells.

Is a kung-fu flick next on Dafoe's calendar?

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie can't keep up with one actor and a pleasant landscape. The story is full of holes and unexplained phenomena, and while their answers would not solve all the film's problems, they are still the most identifiable. The acting is a second, as while the cast includes the talented Sam Neill and Frances O'Connor, far too much emphasis is placed upon the annoying kids, played by Morgana Davies and Finn Woodlock. The adults by comparison are allowed to do far too little, with Neill especially wasted as little is done to explore his character's seemingly contradictory motives in any real detail. Finally, at the end of a film full of beautiful, almost artwork-like visuals, we are treated to a ridiculously cheap-looking CGI presentation that feels completely out of sync with everything we've already witnessed.

Nothing better to do...

The Hunter is not one of the best movies of last year. In fact, it's not even close. However, for one singular performance it's definitely worth a rental. Dafoe might be an extreme longshot for a Oscar spot that could easily go to Bradley Cooper, Hugh Jackman, Joaquin Phoenix, Richard Gere or Jamie Foxx, but you can't argue with his talent, or the energy he brings to this movie. If you're looking for something dark and philosophical, you could definitely do worse than this slow-burning thriller that will never bore you and at the end might leave you feeling as emotional as it did for me.

Discovering 'Nemo'

For the umpteen-millionth time; no, I'd never seen Finding Nemo before this past weekend. An early Pixar entry, Nemo was released well before my forays into animated movies. That's what makes Disney's recent trend of translating their animated titles to 3D for big screen release such a nice opportunity. They have already released The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast in 3D, and now that they're focusing on the more advanced animated pictures, I'll have the chance to not only see movies like Nemo that people are now constantly telling me are good, but also to see them on the big screen, the medium for which they were designed. I've already seen Monsters Inc in the theater, so I think I'll skip that particular conversion, but I'd love to go to the movies to see Ratatouille for the first time, and I'd gladly watch Wall-E, The Incredibles, and Up again were they to get the same treatment.

For those like me who have yet to see this, Finding Nemo follows young Nemo (Alexander Gould) and his overprotective father Marlin (Albert Brooks), two clownfish living in the great oceans. When Nemo is captured by humans and taken far away, Marlin searches the ocean for this son, helped by an absent-minded Pacific Blue Regal Tang named Dory (Ellen Degeneres) and a whole ocean of unique life. Meanwhile, Nemo finds himself in a dentist's office fish tank, alongside a number of other domesticated fish, and joins their leader Gil (Willem Dafoe) in their attempts to escape back into the ocean.

There's a whole ocean of life to explore.

I'm not sure what impresses me more; Finding Nemo's wonderful father/son story, or the fact that Pixar's method of mature storytelling has remained especially potent after all this time. Pixar tends not to treat the children who watch their movies like idiots, a saving grace when you consider how much Dreamworks tends to dumb down their content for mass consumption. In allowing mature themes (like the death of a spouse or the kidnapping of a child) to be the backbone of their animated features, Pixar makes their films so that both children and adults can appreciate. It really feels as though the studio puts as much effort into telling a film's story as it does making sure the animation is the absolute best, and that makes all the difference in the world. And their stories are so timeless that, should I have children of my own some day, I would gladly raise them on Pixar's animated movies.

"Mine?"

The animation studio has created a world undersea that feels absolutely ALIVE, and the creatures that inhabit it have a wide range of characteristics that play extremely well. Working with a wide variety of sources, director Andrew Stanton and his crew took pains to make sure every detail of the species they were committing to the big screen was accurate, while still making their characters unique and indistinguishable from one another. My personal favorites were the trio of sharks who had sworn off of eating their fellow sea creatures ("Fish are friends, not food"), but there are no weak characters for the entirety of the film. The voice cast finishes up by providing their usual excellence, with a cast that includes Brooks, DaFoe, Geoffrey Rush, Allison Janney and even Stanton himself in key roles. Degeneres however is a stand-out that really makes your heart tug. As an actress, she manages to take what could have been a one-note annoyance in Dory and make her performance absolutely heart-felt and essential to the story. There's a reason Degeneres became the first and only performer to win a Saturn award for a voice-only job, and seeing this I'm surprised she hasn't been approached for more roles in animated features.

"Stick with me, kid and you'll go places. Out the window, if you're lucky."

Of course, sometimes I have to remind myself that this movie DID come out in 2003, when computer-animated films were practically still in their infancy. While Stanton and his artists did a wonderful job animating the dozens of different animals that inhabit the world in and around the ocean, this was still a time when human animations were not quite at the same level. Additionally, one scene at the beginning that features a speeding boat at a distance feels extremely inferior to the otherwise-excellent animation. On the 3D side, it's actually surprising how little you notice the 3D elements once the film gets underway. There are some instances where you specifically notice pop, but more often the technology simply allows the viewer to melt into the oceanic landscape, rather than marvel at things coming out of the screen. That's a success, in my book, and well worth the extra ticket price to see it at the theater.

You'd better hope fish remain friends...

While it might not be quite as perfect as many of Pixar's more recent offerings, Finding Nemo manages tell a lively story, and sets it in a place as alien to many of its viewers as the vast reaches of space. And yet the animators still managed to make the whole thing feel absolutely human, exploring the father/son relationship in a way that is smart, heartbreaking, and oftentimes quite funny. It's easy to see how Pixar could go from this to some of their more recent creations. I still have a number of animated films from the last year on which to catch up, but I'm very, VERY happy I saw this on the big screen. If you have also successfully avoided seeing this before now, I encourage you to get out there and take the opportunity to see it in 3D while you can. I can't wait to see what Pixar does next, whether it be something brand new or a rehashing of the old. At this point, they can do little wrong by me.

Way Over the Rainbow

It's not often that a film gets blasted before a single soul ever sees it. Normally, a well-known piece of American literature (in this case Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars") would be at least respected by potential audiences and reviewers months in advance. And yet, thanks to what has been called a "lackluster" marketing drive by Disney and a $250 million budget routinely criticized by movie "experts", there is a good chance that you will not see John Carter on the big screen in the coming days. That would be a mistake, as no matter how much Disney might not know how to advertise a movie geared towards boys (after all, their entire business used to be solely appealing to girls) it doesn't change the fact that I had a ton of fun watching it this past weekend. Todd and I had a choice between this and Silent House (which I'll be reviewing next week), and we decided that we were more in the mood for a light-hearted adventure tale than a spooky horror flick. Sure, 3D hasn't always been kind to me. Sure, it's being released in March, and there's not much released during this particular month that is usually any good. But dammit, we wanted a mindless sci-fi action film, and we didn't care from where we got it.

Soon, he'll be adding Best Picture nominee Battleship to his resume.

When Confederate Civil War hero John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) finds himself mystically transported to Mars (known to the locals as Barsoom), he finds himself squarely in the middle of an inter-species conflict, as war rages between the cities of Zodanga, a warrior nation intent on destruction, and the peaceful, scientifically superior city of Helium. Somehow Zodanga's leader Sab Than (Dominic West) has gotten his hands on a weapon superior to anything Helium has been able to produce. Dominating his enemies, Sab Than is intent on conquering Helium, and taking the genius Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) as his bride. Asked to help, John Carter is searching for meaning in his life but nevertheless intent on returning to his little bit of nowhere in the American West and a substantial deposit of gold that awaits his return. In his way is the war, a tribe of green skinned aliens known as Tharks, and a mysterious sect known as the Holy Therns, who have their own plans for cities and people of Barsoom.

Yeah, yeah, she's hot... but can she ACT?

John Carter might not seem it at first, but sitting through it makes you appreciate the work of Burroughs, essentially one of the great-grandfathers of modern science fiction. First published in 1912, Carter's adventures have always enjoyed a pulpy feel to their telling, a method that translates to the big screen easily, even if this is the first time the tale has been told in such a visually spectacular way. Director Andrew Stanton, whose resume has mostly consisted of animated films Finding Nemo and Wall-E, does an excellent job in his live action debut, though perhaps not as well as his Pixar compatriot Brad Bird did with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. He's helped by the fact that most of the film is animated to begin with, with almost all the backgrounds, effects and most of the leading roles created in post-production. The design of the alien Tharks is especially realistic, helping John Carter sport the best visual effects since Avatar. Stanton also perfectly captures the intended fictional vision of Mars, a wasteland that despite looking completely barren manages to support life on a grand scale. Top it off with excellent 3D and a musical score by Michael Giacchino, and you've got a perfectly realized Barsoom, easily the most realistic-looking setting for a sci-fi film I've witnessed in a long time.

It's an early twentieth-century sci-fi story... of COURSE there's a dog!

Sadly, the story doesn't quite live up to the standards set by the special effects. Though I haven't read any of the original novels, I'm willing to bet that the quality of the story can partly be attributed to the fact that the tale itself turns one hundred this year, and certainly not everything could be included for fear of simply not getting better with age. Thankfully, this is all but solved with liberal doses of humor that are scattered evenly throughout the film. Unlike last week's Ghost Rider, the humor here is 100% intentional, so there's never that moment where you're laughing at what a farce the show has become. Sure, sometimes the humor goes a little over the top or takes the obvious route to a laugh for the expressed purpose of ending a scene, but no matter what the reason for use, John Carter never fails to be funny when called upon to do so.

"Okay, yeah... I can take them!"

Really, the only disappointing aspect of John Carter is in the acting. It's not the supporting cast that fails us, however. Drawing upon substantial talent like Dominic West, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds (who seems to appear in everything these days), James Purefoy and Bryan Cranston in live action roles, the people on the screen would appear to be as mighty as any seen in the past few years. Add in the vocal talents of Academy Award nominees Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church and Samantha Morton, and you really do have a cast to be reckoned with. Sadly, it doesn't matter how many excellent supporting actors you've collected when your leads are a pair of noodles just taken out of the water. Taylor Kitsch is at least decent, though I don't see anything beyond his rugged good looks that certify him as a star in the making. Sure, he COULD be the next Hugh Jackman, but Jackman was a theatrically-trained actor who can also sing and dance, regularly showcasing abilities surpassing his presence among the top action stars in Hollywood today. If Kitsch wants to make a name for himself, he'll have to take on a role (and soon) which requires more from him than a guttural regurgitation of simplistic dialogue. The worst however is Lynn Collins, who can at least state that her performance is better than the one she put forth in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. No, that's really not saying much. Perhaps it's partially the character's fault, as Dejah Thoris pretends to be a strong female role while being simultaneously disallowed the opportunity to explore that idea. I felt that the dog had better character development, not a good sign for this pretty but not talent-endowed actress.

Awww, he just wants a hug... of DEATH!

As I've said, the film has flaws. I would have loved to look more into the background of the Therns, a mystical race much like Star Trek's Q species, omnipotent space-faring people that manipulate world event not for evil, but because they can. Perhaps that can be explored in the future, as John Carter was always meant to be the beginning of a film franchise. Whether that happens or not will be decided by how much business it builds in the next few weeks, but in the meantime I seriously enjoyed this film, to the tune of #4 for 2012. Rarely last year did I witness an action film that was the match of what John Carter put before me (the only one surpassing it would have been Hanna, and that title wasn't blessed with the same level of amazing effects), and between this, Underworld: Awakening, The Hunger Games and The Avengers in the year's first half, it's turning into a good year for genre films. I for one was more than pleased to discover that catching this particular title on the big screen was indeed no mistake.