The Avengers Movie Review

Finally saw The Avengers with MD. It was either that or Mad Max: Fury Road, we opted for the Avengers, which had been out longer...and was more likely to disappear. Also, we were both tired of avoiding spoilers. And not in the mood for Mad Max. We did dinner first, and those sweet potato fries did not agree with me.

Anyhow..The Avengers...

MD: So what did you think?
Me: I liked the first movie better.
MD: Other than that?
Me: Busy movie. Way too busy. What did you think?
MD: Yep, busy movie. Too many characters. Too much action. Granted there's supposed to be too much action that's what these movies are about. You expect it. But it was trying too hard to be clever and coy, and had too many supporting characters that I didn't know or care about.
ME: Exactly.

Unlike MD, I was actually familiar with the Avengers and have read at various points the comics. I don't like the Avengers that much -- the comics to be fair are as busy as the movie. And the movie is fairly close to what I remember in the comics. So, we both went in with pretty low expectations.
( spoilers, albeit vague and mild spoilers )

Busy, busy movie. Too many characters. Too many sub-plots. Too many action scenes - which felt like you were watching a video game. It was fast. Hard to follow and head-ache inducing at times. (Also, people got bored and were pulling out their cell phones...during the action scenes.) Not enough humor or cohesion. The jokes felt forced and often fell flat. And, methinks, Whedon clearly needs to take a vacation from filmmaking and do a non-super hero flick. I could feel his exhaustion/burn-out watching this film -- it made me tired.

Overall rating? C-

Go rent X-men:Days of Future Past instead.

[As an aside, I know a lot of people were upset with Black Widow's arc, but I went into it not expecting all that much. There wasn't all that much in the first film. The comics weren't exactly known for their feminist content. The X-men, yes, the Avengers..not so much. So it was actually better than I thought it would be, but I went in with very low expectations. Weirdly, the most feminist of the Avenger's movies is possibly Captain America and Captain America: Winter Solider.]

[After the movie - took forever for the train to arrive. And there was an incident. Somebody got into a fight, and banged a guys head against the platform. People were screaming for help. And then someone got the cops, who took off running after the assailant, screaming 168, 168. There were 8 cops running after the guy. I didn't see the guy, I saw the cops. The only thing I did - was help one of the cops wave the C train to a stop, because the guy who got attacked was lying uncomfortably close to the edge of the platform, and there were people helping him that were halfway off the edge. I was worried they'd get hit by the train. The guy seemed to be okay, had a concussion.

Then about 20 minutes later, the F train...finally arrived. Texted MD about it - who said, she has a feeling this is going to a crazy summer in NYC. Lovely. I so need a vacation from this city. Hmmm...maybe a retreat to Vermont is called for?]

Memorial Day

On Friday, the Railroad had a ceremony honoring the veterans, and those who served and died in various wars. There was a little parade, bagpipes were played, and speeches made. As I stood there in the blazing sunlight, a soft wind rippling the flags in our hands and sitting at half mast on the pole...I remembered ages ago, sitting in my great uncle's living room as he attempted to tell us about his experience in the Battle of the Bulge, one of the worst battles of WWII.

I had recently returned from collecting ghost stories and legends in Wales. And I was regaling my family with stories from my trip. My Uncle immediately lit up and told me, that he too had been in Wales but in the 1940s, right before heading off to France and fighting in the War. It was hard to make out half of what he said, for one thing others were talking at the time...they began to quiet when they realized what we were talking about. And for another, My Uncle at the age of 80 some years, was death in one ear, and had troubles locating the right words. Syntax can be a problem at any age, but it becomes more so as you get older.

What I do remember from that conversation which took place over 20 years ago...is related below.

"I remember being hungry," he told me, as if no one else was there. Just him and me. "We had cans, but no can opener.
Must have forgotten it somehow. So we shot them open. Tricky. But not worried about anyone hearing. The gunfire was so loud they wouldn't heard it down in that bunker anyhow. We ate what was inside cold.

There were bodies everywhere. You couldn't really smell much." He seemed puzzled by that.

"I remember my hands shaking as I held the...gun," (I couldn't make out what he called it) " and firing into the dark. We were half blind anyhow. Couldn't see who we were firing at."

"It was cold. So cold. And no one slept.
We huddled there for hours, firing at shadows. Half death from the gunfire and the explosions."

"But mostly? I remember being hungry and cold, and afraid." Afterwards, on the way home, my parents discussed it with me. Apparently my Uncle had never told this story to anyone. Not his wife, not his kids. The room had gone dead quiet when we were talking. It was just him and me talking. Mainly him. My father, a frustrated historian, told me that the Battle of the Bulge was amongst the worst battles in the war, many died during it - it was harrowing.

Not long after that, I had a discussions with others about that Great War, the War to end all wars, yet it didn't, did it? My Grandmother's twin brother, a sensitive man, was an ambulance driver in the Great War and amongst the first inside the death camps at Aushwitz. It changed him. He was never the same afterwards...ended up drinking himself to death (I think, it's hard to remember what exactly happened). And a friend of my mother's told me that her husband had been amongst the first to rescue people from the camps...and he was still to this day, somewhat traumatized by the horrors he'd seen. That, it was unimaginable. The open graves. The stink.
All of it.

I've never heard a good story about war.
And I've seen first hand the scars it leaves on families. It scarred my Grandmother who had lost her twin brother to it. And it scarred my Uncle's family. And on Friday, there was a K9 dog named after a fallen service man in either Iraq or Afganistan, can't remember which, who had been blown apart by a bomb.

Last night, I watched the Avengers - a film that was packed with violence. After we left, my friend commented on how many civilians were killed in the movie. That you'd think - they'd want no part of these so-called heroes, The Avengers, after all that death. That wherever the Avengers went, there was lots of death afterwards. And the film had a heavy theme regarding WAR - violence merely creates more violence.

On this Memorial Day, I'm sorry, I just can't honor war, or the men and women who choose for whatever to engage in violence to prove a point or to win a goal or to solve a problem, but I do honor the poor souls forever scarred by it. I do honor the soliders who bravely enter it, trying to do the right thing by their beliefs, their families, their country -- who are tring to make the world better, and are so deeply scarred as a result. For violence scars us, changes us, remakes us. It is, unfortunately, deeply embedded in our culture - even though our stories, all our stories and histories advise strongly against it.

I hope for a day when we can fight for our beliefs and freedom without engaging in violence, and scarring both the earth and ourselves to obtain it. I hope for the day when we figure out another way, a way that does not end in death or destruction.

(no subject)

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Birdman and other reviews..

Everything I've watched this weekend, including the Avengers, seems to have the theme of feeling invisible or unimportant, and the need to, ahem, strut one's stuff. To matter. To make a difference somehow. Even if it's just making a legendary cocoa cola commercial. Of the one's I've seen, Birdman and Mad Men were by far the best.

1) The Academy Award Winning Film Birdman is a surrealistic film, starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, and Zach Galifanks. It takes you inside the New York theater world, and the psyche of a former blockbuster film star who has sunk his savings and everything he has into a Broadway play adaptation of Raymond Carver short stories. (Several years back, Robert Altman did a film adaptation of Raymond Carver entitled "Short Cuts". )

Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) used to portray "Birdman" - a comic book superhero in blockbuster movies. But he feels like he was a failure. Has a failed marriage. A daughter just out rehab, who he barely knows, and a stalled career. This is his comeback, his chance to prove that he is an actor. When the film begins, Thompson has just replaced the co-star with a highly touted Broadway Actor, portrayed by Ed Norton, and they are in the midst of previews. Things...well, don't go according to plan. And Thompson appears to be having visions of his alter ego, Birdman, who talks to him.

It's a rather funny film - I burst out laughing during several scenes, and moving in others. There's one scene- that well, had me rolling with laughter.

The focus though is on the idea of accomplishment, of whether creating something, a work of art defines who we are. Do we matter? Does the art matter? If no one likes it? What then?

There's a brilliant scene in the middle of the movie with a theater critic (theater critics as any New Yorker knows are the worst, they can kill a play, which is why many actors never read them). In the scene, the critic informs Thompson she is going to destroy his play, even though she hasn't seen it. Merely because she hates what he represents. That he isn't an actor, just a celebrity. He counters, grabbing a review she's been scribbling at the bar - what has she created? Anything? What is this critique? Just labels? Nothing constructive, nothing about structure, or how the story is built or what worked, or didn't? She's lazy, he tells her. A coward. She labels his work as less than art, not worthy, because it doesn't meet her standards. And informs him that he is entitled, cheap, a maker of cartoons. The cinematographer..warps her face in the image, and she herself feels like a caricature or cartoon in Thompson's eyes.

The film shows the dangers of wrapping one's ego in one's art, and yet, how do we separate the two? Ed Norton's character, Mike, can't get it up unless he's performing in front of a hundred people. It's only real when he's performing. His life is nothing off-stage. He feels that he is nothing, off stage.

Carver himself often wrapped himself up in his stories. And famously was edited to death by his editors, fighting them to keep phrases and words intact.

From Wiki:
Carver's editor at Esquire, Gordon Lish, was instrumental in shaping Carver's prose in this direction - where his earlier tutor John Gardner had advised Carver to use fifteen words instead of twenty-five, Lish instructed Carver to use five in place of fifteen. Objecting to the "surgical amputation and transplantation" of Lish's heavy editing, Carver eventually broke with him.

It's a layered film, that haunts long after the final credits roll. Playing with one's head.

Overall rating? A

[Almost want to write a meta on Mad Man and Birdman, if I had the time - I would.]

2. The film adaptation of the Broadway musical The Last Five Years details the decay of a five year romantic relationship between a successful novelist and a struggling actress. The reviews describe it as the anti-rom com. It stars Jeremy London (of SMASH) and Anna Kendrick (of Pitch Perfect and Into the Woods).

I found it to be a difficult movie to watch. My attention kept wandering during it, and it wasn't compelling. The characters weren't likable. The male lead, Jamie, was...self-absorbed and into his career and his fame. A textbook narcissist. Cathy barely exists outside of his needs. Cathy seems to slowly disappear, when he's on screen - as if she is just an object or someone to reflect his brilliance. He doesn't appear to hear her at all. She falls in love with his smile, his success, and aches for that something more, for love. Constantly searching for something more, something better - convinced she's found it in him, and perhaps her own success will follow. But alas, it doesn't. As he rises, she struggles, one rejection after another. And he's never quite there for her. When she has a shitty day, he tells her a story, a funny one - but doesn't listen to her day or her struggles, instead shrugging them off. And when she tells him how she feels invisible at his book promotion parties...and doesn't want to go through the humiliation again, he sings how she needs to be there for him. By the end of the story, which is told out of order, I was rooting for her to summarily dump him. Instead, as we know from the very beginning, he dumps her.

It has an interesting narrative style - Cathy's side is told in reverse chronological order, while Jamie's is told in chronological order. The film jumps back and forth between them - which is jarring, I think it may have worked better on stage. Their only overlap is the marriage duet in the middle, where they meet. Also the end, has an overlap of their first night and his final goodbye. He is a douchebag, though. At one point, while she's waiting for him to see her in Ohio, to support her, he's busy having an affair with another woman. And after he marries her, all he can think about is all the lovely ladies - and how great they look and how available.

Was a bit disappointed in it - I'd heard of it on NY1 On Stage - Theater Reviews. But it was less than stellar. Rotten Tomatoes appears to have liked it better than I did.
But the theme of falling in someone else's shadow and the hollowness of success...shines through. From the beginning you can tell the relationship is doomed, since the characters never sing a duet, instead they sing solos at one another...the other barely hearing it. And they appear to be more in love with the reflection of themselves in the other's eyes...than what is actually there.

[According Wiki - this was based on the writer's own failed marriage, and his ex-wife threatened to sue him, so he changed various songs and details, to make it less similar.
Writer's? Be careful about writing about yourself. You either come off pathetic or a douchebag.]

3) Broadchurch S2 - drug. I skipped to the end and just watched the last two episodes. Considering I was able to figure out the whole thing based on the last two episodes, and felt no need to go back and watch the rest -- probably says it all.
The court room scenes took me out of the story - they entered a lot into evidence that would have been thrown out in a US court, and the UK can't be that different.

Also, it never quite commented on the fact that both murders were accidental. Actually all three murders were accidental or involuntary manslaughter. There was no clear intent.
See? Having a criminal law background can be detrimental to watching criminal procedurals on television.

It also had a sense or flavor to it of futility. That you put all your energy into a career, but for what purpose? I remember a friend telling me ages ago...your career does not define you. I found it reassuring. I still do.