Video review: "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"

I remember when it was first announced a couple of years ago that Ben Affleck would play Batman in the epic throwdown between him and Superman, the fanboys lit up the Web with their ire. Turns out he’s the best thing about “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

Indeed, he’s just about the only good thing.

The D.C. Comics folks, poring over the box office grosses of the last 15 years of Marvel movies, were desperate to get their super heroes back into flicks. Really, this film is the set-up to a bunch of Justice League and solo hero movies they have planned. That’s great, but they were in too much of a hurry to get the ball rolling that they don’t properly set up this universe.

“BvS” feels like it’s in too much of a hurry, even at 2½ hours.

The premise is that Batman/Bruce Wayne is enraged over the thousands of people killed during Superman’s fight with General Zod (as chronicled in “Man of Steel”) -- including some of his own employees -- and comes to view the boy in blue as too much of a threat to have around. Of course, he’s also being manipulated by Lex Luthor, here presented as a conniving boy billionaire played by Jesse Eisenberg, who knows of such things. Imagine his Mark Zuckerberg from “The Social Network” but (slightly) more malevolent.

Soon enough the boys are at each other’s throats. It’s a fight that by any reckoning should last two seconds or less, as Superman is an immortal demi-god with laser eyes and Batman is just a regular guy with determination and a good tailor. Director Zach Snyder and scriptmen Chris Terrio David S. Goyer labor to make their combat believable.

Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Jeremy Irons as loyal Wayne butler Alfred and Laurence Fishburne as Daily Planet editor Perry White are all pretty well wasted, showing up to move the plot along as needed and then disappearing for long stretches. The razzle-dazzle introduction of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman is a high point; I look forward to her having her own film.

If it weren’t for Affleck, I’d call the movie a total disaster.

He’s brooding and self-doubting and tragic. He shows us a Batman who’s aging and losing faith, so we understand when he lashes out with anger. Frankly, I’ll take Affleck over Christian Bale, Michael Keaton or any other actor who’s worn the pointy ears.

So call it just a partial disaster.

Bonus features are pretty meaty. Although there’s no commentary track, there are 11 making-of featurettes: “Uniting the World’s Finest,” “Gods and Men: A Meeting of Giants,” “The Warrior, The Myth, The Wonder,” “Accelerating Design: The New Batmobile,” “Superman: Complexity & Truth,” “Batman: Austerity & Rage,” “Wonder Woman: Grace & Power,” “Batcave: Legacy of the Lair,” “The Might and the Power of a Punch,” “The Empire of Luthor” and “Save the Bats.”

In addition to the usual versions on DVD, Blu-ray and 3D, there’s an “Ultimate Edition” – also available via digital retailers -- that contains about 30 minutes of new footage.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "The Man Who Knew Infinity"

The “Great Man” (or Woman) genre of cinematic biography falls into two subcategories. One is about a person of great import who is already well known to us. “The Theory of Everything,” about physicist Stephen Hawking, is a recent example of this sort.

“The Man Who Knew Everything” is the other kind: a look at a person whose accomplishments are celebrated within their field but virtually unknown to laypersons. These movies face an additional storytelling challenge, since not only do they have to satisfactorily explore that person’s life, but also justify to us why we should sit through an entire movie about them.

I feel comfortable in guessing that Srinivasa Ramanujan is not a name that falls easily from your lips. Like me, most people don’t keep lists of brilliant theoretical mathematicians memorized – let alone ones from India who died nearly a century ago.

Dev Patel (“Slumdog Millionaire”) plays the gentle soul, a self-taught man with no formal education who emerged from Madras to become a Fellow at Cambridge University in England, where he collaborated with his prickly mentor, G.H. Hardy, played by Jeremy Irons.

This movie is essentially the tale of their relationship, as it very slowly evolves from teacher/student conflict to co-equal friendship based on respect. Each man has prodigious gifts and limitations, which they intermesh in a sort of combat that transforms into a dance.

This was a wise move by writer/director Matt Brown, whose only previous credit (“Ropewalk”) was 15 years ago. The audience is obviously not going to grasp even the faintest complexities of the sort of computations these men explored – prime numbers and partitions – especially since they are dealing in “pure” math without any attempt at practical applications.

Essentially, the filmmaker has to make us feel the importance of this work without understanding it. It’s a largely successful effort, as we focus on the men and not the hieroglyphic-like scratchings (to us) they make on chalkboards and in journals.

We first meet Ramanujan in his native country, where he struggles to find employment despite his brilliance. He finally attains a position of accounting clerk for a local businessman, which at least allows him to bring his new bride, Janaki (Devika Bhise), and his mother (Arundhati Nag) to come live with him. It is an arranged marriage, and the three cautiously negotiate a web of responsibilities and resentments strewn between them.

But he yearns to publish and make his theories known to the world, believing that every mathematical idea is an expression of his patron Hindu god. Eventually his work comes to the attention of Hardy, who brings him to England.

The transition is painful. Hardy, an academic with few friendships or conviviality, makes little attempt to get to know Ramanujan on a personal level. He repeatedly chides him to complete the proofs that will prove to other, less gifted mathematicians that his theories are valid. The younger man feels chastened and constrained by not being able to let his imagination run wild, and be acknowledged.

The cultural assimilation is also difficult. A strict vegetarian and devout man, Ramanujan essentially becomes a hermit who locks himself inside his room in Charnal Lane, his health becoming increasingly worse. Meanwhile, Hardy struggles to convince his hoity-toity peers to accept the prowess of his protégé.

Both actors do a wonderful job of exploring their characters, but Irons in particular manages to bring layers of nuance that perhaps are not located in any screenplay. He gives these little bobs of the head and a distracted stare that help us feel the isolation he endures, which is perhaps not so different from that experienced by his Indian student.

It’s tough to make a crusty old academic emotionally resonant, but Irons gives Hardy a sort of homely grace.

The romantic aspect of the tale is not so effective, as Ramanujan and his bride have to carry on a relationship separated by years and thousands of miles. 

Ramanujan died at the age of 32, but his fantastical theories have been almost all been proven true and, according to the film’s postscript, are still being used today to understand the behavior of black holes. “The Man Who Knew Infinity” is an engaging portrait of a hidden genius.

Video review: "Margin Call"

One of the best movies of 2011 hardly anyone's seen, "Margin Call" is a fictionalized take on the collapse of a Lehman Brothers-type company at the precipice of the Great Recession. It's an insider's look at greed, hubris, and the willingness of an elite few to flush the entire economy down the drain, so long as they are the ones who get to decide when.

First-time writer/director J.C. Chandor makes an audacious debut with this taut potboiler, and he's got a killer cast to help him: Kevin Spacey, Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, Simon Baker and Jeremy Irons.

The entire story takes place during one night. After being laid off from his firm, an older worker tips off a young stock trader to evidence that the entire company is on the verge of plunging into a sea of red ink. The smart hotshot calls in his boss, who calls in his boss, and so on into the night.

It's a parade of human flaws and cavalier attitudes, as each person recognizes the imminent threat, and calculates how much personal exposure they have to the calamity.

Irons tops things off as the company CEO, who sees everything in the cold calculation of dollars and cents, and the human factor never enters the equation. Spacey, who has a knack for playing loathsome characters, is the floor boss who starts out as the film's villain and somehow ends up as its moral conscience.
Don't miss this tightly-told indie.

Video extras are good, though not blue-chip quality. Chandor and producer Neal Dodson team up for a feature-length commentary track. They also have a commentary available to accompany several deleted scenes.

The goodies are rounded out by a making-of featurette, photo gallery and behind-the-scenes snippets with cast and crew.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Margin Call"

At the beginning of "Margin Call," we meet a man we think must surely be the most loathsome creature ever to roam the Earth.

Sam Rogers is the head of the New York branch of a huge corporation that has just laid off 80 percent of its stock traders. Though he weeps openly for his dog dying of liver cancer, he spares not a moment's thought for the dozens of human lives he has just thrown into turmoil. Rallying the remaining troops, even forcing them to applaud themselves, Sam gives a speech:

"They were good people and they were good at their jobs. But you were better. Now they're gone. They are not to be thought of again."

Turns out, Sam is the hero and moral conscience of this story.

Sam is played by Kevin Spacey, who has a gift for portraying men lacking a moral compass. But as a devoted company man with 34 years of loyalty, even Sam is repulsed by what his bosses ask him to do to save the firm. Not because he's opposed to cutting throats when necessary, but because he's been around long enough to know if you slit too many of your customers' throats, nobody will buy from you again.

This edgy, terrific indie drama comes from first-time writer/director J.C. Chandor, making the sort of debut that bellows at the arrival of a major new talent.

He's helped, of course, by a dream cast that includes not only Spacey but Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, Simon Baker and Stanley Tucci. It would be easy to say that it's hard to screw up with a cast like that, but plenty of other films have had the talent but not the tools -- solid storytelling -- to bring it all together.

"Margin Call" does.

It's set about four years ago, at the beginning of the Great Recession, and the company in question is a not-too-thinly-veiled reflection of Lehman Brothers. A century-old firm known for never losing money on a deal, it calculates debt and risk on home mortgages like chips in a massive pile on a poker table, never considering that these are real people with real futures at stake. Until, that is, their cards come up wrong.

Chandor doesn't get too far into the thickets on the specifics of the bad debt that threatens to tip the company over. His film is more concerned with the personalities involved in rationalizing the sort of insane gamble that seemingly conservative firms took in pursuit of ever more profit.

Things get rolling when Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a senior risk analyst, is among those who get the axe. He's been working on something big, and before he takes his last walk out the door -- escorted by a beefy security goon -- he passes his findings on to a young hotshot, Peter Sullivan (Quinto).

Peter quickly puts it all together, and alerts his boss, who calls in Sam, who brings in his superior, and so on. It all plays out in the middle of one night, with ever-bigger executives flying in on the company helicopter. Just when you think the newest one is the worst yet, another guy swoops in (literally) to do him one better.

Bettany is very good as Will Emerson, Sam's number two guy who's closer in age to the young guns like Peter, but puts even Sam's cold-eyed calculations to shame. Will is utterly loyal to Sam ... as long as the percentages favor him.

John Tuld (Irons) is the last to arrive, and makes the biggest show of ruthlessness. If his underlings are willing to make other individuals suffer to earn the company a few dollars more, the CEO will happily flush all of Wall Street down the drain, as long as it's his hand on the handle.

"It's just money. It's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat," Tuld says.

With its tight bookends of a single location on one tumultuous night, and pressure cooker of a business setting, "Margin Call" resembles a stage play. It reminded me very much of "Glengarry Glen Ross" (in which Spacey also starred), about a bunch of real estate salesmen under the gun.

"Margin Call" takes place about 15 spaces up the corporate ladder, the suits are much more expensive, and the guns are big enough to blow a hole in the entire financial system.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "The Lion King 3D"

"The Lion King" was made a mere 17 years ago, but seems from a different era now. The following year, "Toy Story" would come out, and animation was never the same again.

Now being released in a 3D version, the renderings of animals has that clean, cutsie look that was a hallmark of Disney cartoons. If it were made today, Simba the lion would have textures and shadings and computer animators would've spent 10,000 hours getting every hair on his mane to look as lifelike as possible. And the movie wouldn't be nearly as good.

I'm a devotee of CG animation, but the re-release of "The Lion King" reminds us that, like Simba recalling his father's spirit out of the night sky, we don't have to let go of the past in order to move beyond it.

We are in the midst of a second golden age of animation, kicked off by 1989's "The Little Mermaid" and improved upon in 1991's "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin" the following year. But in 1994, the art form reached a watershed with "The Lion King."

Here was a "kiddie" flick that was big and grandiose and ambitious, a sprawling Shakespearean epic playing out on the African savannah. The king Mufasa, given indescribable depth and presence by the voice acting of James Earl Jones, seemed to step out of the papyri of a Greek tragedy.

It would be easy to surmise that Disney releasing a 3D version of "The Lion King" is a mere publicity stunt, a run-up to the Blu-ray version being issued on Oct. 4. Certainly, the 3D effects add little to the experience. The gorgeous landscapes of the lions' prideland pop out a little more, though inevitably everything looks a little dimmer than it ought to.

But for a mere cartoon, this movie is one that needs a huge canvas to do it justice. I've watched "The Lion King" on DVD on my big-screen TV with surround sound, and seeing it in a theater full of families was enthralling in a way home video cannot match.

With half the theater filled with small children, their din of cries and squawks soon faded as the film and I joined. (When my wife dropped her 3D glasses due to our squirmy 10-month-old and needed help retrieving them, she had to poke me several times to break the spell.)

A few new impressions on the movie:

I was surprised how much screen time is spent with young Simba (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) before Mufasa's death and the young cub's exile. My memory was that section was mere prologue, and the film spends most of its running time with him grown up and voiced by Matthew Broderick. In fact, the sections are about evenly split.

The songs, though not quite on the level of the magical "Beauty and the Beast," remain infectiously memorable. Even Jeremy Irons, playing conniving uncle Scar, fakes his way admirably through "Be Prepared" in the grand tradition of talk-singing. Jimmy Cagney and Rex Harrison would be proud.

After the success of Robin Williams voicing the genie in "Aladdin," Disney -- which previously used professional voice actors almost exclusively -- "The Lion King" ushered in the era of movie stars doing most of the characters. No complaints, given the quality of work here. Robert Guillaume is particularly affecting as crazy baboon/wise shaman Rafiki.

Nathan Lane, a Broadway song-and-dance man who got his break into movie stardom through "The Lion King," is still a hoot as meerkat Timon. He's primarily around as comic relief, but also throws in some sly, sophisticated humor: "Carnivores ... oy!"

The musical score by Hans Zimmer is the heartbeat of the movie. Without his rollicking beats and sweeping, lush strings, the film would lose much of its power. It won the Oscar that year, trumping contenders "Forrest Gump" and "The Shawshank Redemption," and deserved to.

Whatever the reasons behind it, seeing "The Lion King" on the big screen falls into the not-to-be-missed category.

4 stars out of four