Shared Darkness

Buoyed by deservedly positive word-of-mouth, Fast & Furious 6 topped the box office this past weekend, with a $97 million opening weekend. Yet the sequel also represents something of a turning point for Universal’s brawny, lucrative franchise, as it pivots away from its roots in underground street-racing, micro-skirt ogling and barely concealed homoeroticism (well, OK, those last two still exist) and into a sort of revenge-tinged heist/criminal takedown series, in the vein of The Italian Job.

An important antecedent to the series highly worth checking out, however, is Gone in 60 Seconds. No, no, no… not the 2000 remake starring Nicolas Cage before he lost his battle with hairplugs and Angelina Jolie before she became more fully stabilized, but the original 1974 film from multi-hyphenate H.B. Halicki, which laid waste to almost 100 vehicles over the course of its sprawling centerpiece car chase. If the Fast & Furious franchise has been employment heaven for the small army of sound mixers, digital effects compositors and, yes, stunt drivers who help breathe life into its most gloriously over-the-top moments, Halicki’s movie is a throwback to the days of leaner, meaner, hands-on destruction — before genre cash-dashes became Hollywood studio tentpoles. I write more words about it over at Yahoo Movies, so click here to give it a read.

In 2007, when director J.J. Abrams first started putting together the cast for his reboot of the Star Trek franchise, much attention naturally focused on who would fill out the Lycra uniform of Captain James T. Kirk, embodied so uniquely by William Shatner in the sci-fi franchise’s previous incarnation. Chris Pine was eventually chosen, and minted a star — leading man roles followed in major studio releases like Unstoppable, This Means War, People Like Us and this December’s forthcoming Jack Ryan, opposite director Kenneth Branagh.

Another integral part of the 2009 Star Trek‘s huge success, though (it pulled in $258 million of its $386 million worldwide gross in the United States, best in the series), was in Zachary Quinto‘s casting as Spock. At the time best known for the buzzy small screen hit Heroes, Quinto would win praise for his carefully layered performance, serving as the emotional anchor of the film — a feat he repeats in this week’s Star Trek Into Darkness. There’s a certain track record for him serving as a film’s emotional and moral center, however. Quinto also largely fills that role in J.C. Chandor’s smart, tightly wound Margin Call, on which the actor also made his feature film debut as a producer. I write more words about all this over at Yahoo Movies, so click here for the read.

American moxie and folly are submitted to a mad spin cycle in this week’s The Great Gatsby, writer-director Baz Luhrmann’s characteristically lush and glitzy adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel — still an assigned reading classic for high school and college students across the United States, almost a century on. The Australian-born Luhrmann puts an energetic spin on the material.

His previous collaboration with Gatsby star Leonardo DiCaprio, 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, was a swoon-worthy hit with critics and young audiences alike, to the tune of a $147 million worldwide gross. But it’s the director’s 1992 big screen debut which remains arguably his most enduring treat, if one adjusts to scale for surprise and unexpected vitality. A hyper-stylized, wildly offbeat and culturally specific yet universally appealing comedy, Strictly Ballroom is a movie bristling with verve and youthful energy, and it clearly serves as a marker for the sort of sweeping, outsized ambitions that Luhrmann himself has subsequently pursued over the course of his career. I write more words about it over at Yahoo Movies, so click here to give it a read.

When Jon Favreau decided to step down as director after the first two Iron Man films (he still reprises his role as Tony Stark’s friend and one-time bodyguard, Happy Hogan), there was much hand-wringing amongst fans about what it meant for the future of the franchise. And when writer-director Shane Black signed on for Iron Man 3, some expressed skepticism.

Black’s only other directorial experience, after all, was 2005’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a snappy, noir-ish crime comedy starring Val Kilmer, a fresh Michelle Monaghan and… Iron Man himself, Robert Downey, Jr. That experience no doubt helped him seal the Iron Man 3 gig, but the $15-million-budgeted Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang — at the time barely more than a belated professional thank you from producer Joel Silver and distributor Warner Bros. for Black’s screenwriting work on the hugely profitable Lethal Weapon series — is more than just a quaint little curio. I write more words about the film and its charms over at Yahoo Movies, so click here for the fun little read.

An unapologetically bawdy blast of florid, drugged-out kidnapping, violence and steroid-addled dark comedy, the bizarre true crime tale Pain & Gain, Michael Bay‘s first non-Transformers flick since 2005, nudged out holdover Oblivion at the top of the weekend box office, pulling in just over $20 million. It’s part of the caffeinated wing of the “Idiots Behaving Criminally” subgenre, reminiscent in fits and starts of colorful movies like Savages, Domino, Wild Things, True Romance and Very Bad Things.

A somewhat smaller profile yet no less genuine antecedent highly worth checking out, however, is 1996’s Bottle Rocket, which not only served as the debut of director Wes Anderson, but also the first screen appearances of brothers Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson, the latter of whom penned the script along with Anderson. If male adolescence and indeed its extension into twentysomethinghood is a disorienting combination of bravado and insecurity, Bottle Rocket illustrates, in an amusingly idiosyncratic way, the deep feeling and fraternity attached to it all. I write more words about the similarities and differences between the films over at Yahoo Movies as part of a recurring new feature, so click here for the read.

All signs point to Tom Cruise‘s newest science-fiction action flick, Oblivion, a collaboration with Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski based on the latter’s unpublished graphic novel, making a significant splash at the box office this weekend. It’s a gorgeous-looking blend of several dystopian greatest hits, such as The Matrix, Total Recall and The Island. Yet Oblivion also echoes a few smaller movies. So for those seeking either a cinematic aperitif to Oblivion or a comfy home video capper to a sci-fi double-header, check out 2009’s Moon, the directorial debut of Duncan Jones, who earlier this year was announced as the director of the film adaptation of the Warcraft videogame series, taking over for Sam Raimi. I write more words about the similarities (and differences) between the two films as part of a new regular feature over at Yahoo Movies, so click here for the read.

Damn, not sure I’m going to have time to bang out a full, proper Super 8 review prior to opening day, actually (unless someone knows of a way to freeze time and space, in which case call me). But I caught it today, and really, really dug it. Amusingly, my good friend who caught it with me hated it. We didn’t come to blows, however. I think he just wanted more Kyle-Chandler-in-commando-mode, which the film definitely isn’t. It is what it is, and it wears all its narrative and technical inspirations unashamedly on its sleeve.

There wasn’t really a place to get into this in any sort of legit review of Just Go With It, but one of the more interesting things about the movie — apart from Nicole Kidman‘s hula dancing, and Dave Matthews ostensibly picking up a coconut with his butt cheeks through his pants — lies in its use of music.

Excepting the occasional diversions and quasi-artistic noodling to be found in the likes of Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish and Reign Over Me, the comedies of Adam Sandler have provided some of the most reliable and consistent studio commercial returns of the past decade — and mostly for Sony, where Sandler’s production company is housed. But both because they’re comedies — ringing up ticket sales instead of racking up little gold statuettes — and because Sandler still pads around in T-shirts and cargo shorts and doesn’t yet have a kid old enough to pimp out in his or her own projects, his clout goes under-reported. He wields it softly, in other words.

The fact is, though, a small fortune has to be spent on the soundtracks for Sandler’s comedies — music is used in goosing fashion throughout his movies, and frequently to quickly summon up a nostalgic feeling when the terrible direction of Dennis Dugan has made for some awkward juxtaposition of scenes. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony were doling out a healthy seven figures on music clearances alone for of his films, even though there’s typically no obvious soundtrack tie-in as with something like The Wedding Singer. In Just Go With It, there are no fewer than three dozen pop music cues, including a couple Police songs and a lot of newfangled mash-ups, the most intriguing of which might be the commingling of “Every Breath You Take” and Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars,” an Internet sensation from a couple years back. That’s not the only way to measure Hollywood power — getting whatever tunes, in variety and amount, one wants. But it is a handy indicator.

Full review to soon follow this week, but it’s worth noting that No Strings Attached — in addition to having the easy-on-the-eyes appeal of Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, the latter shirtless almost as much as in Spread — possesses the truth of a coarse exhalation. I tried to touch on this a bit in my review, but — word count and all — it was difficult to elucidate in such a necessarily cramped space. The movie’s plot, of course, charts the difficulties two pushing-thirtysomethings encounter when they try to make a go of mutual-use casual sex. It’s directed by Ivan Reitman and written by a woman, so while it flirts with vulgarity occasionally the tone is never really what one would call full-on gross-out/shock.

The problem with so many films charting the ups and downs of young adult relationships, however, is that they must fit within the confines of a PG-13 rating, which is patently ridiculous and runs counter to reality. Or, conversely, if the movies are R-rated (as is the case with No Strings Attached), they veer so heartily over to the other side of the road as to seem cheap and gimmicky in their language. Reitman, though, instinctively knows the value — the necessary weight, the appropriate moment of deployment — of profanity in this sort of context.

So when Emma, Portman’s character, seemingly screws up her chance with Adam, Kutcher’s character, after coming around and warming slowly to the notion of a relationship, and exhales, simply, “Fuck,” it is an at once funny and heartrending encapsulation of her weary, romantic hopelessness. Crocodile tears, or “Rats!” or other language that pussyfoots around this reality simply does not work. Thankfully, No Strings Attached isn’t attached to outmoded mainstream niceties.