Review: "Warcraft"

The record for movie adaptations of video games is just atrocious… and it’s not getting any better with the release of “Warcraft.” Fantasy movies don’t fare so well either, so it’s got the double whammy effect.

“Warcraft” has been in development for literally 10 years, when the World of Warcraft online game was just reaching its peak, with millions of people playing characters from a broad range of fantastical races and abilities. There are also some precursor strategy games, novels, collectible figures, replica weapons, and other offshoots of a multi-billion-dollar empire.

(And I know of which I speak. In the years B.K. – before kids – I was an 80 paladin/80 warlock/80 death knight/68 priest/59 rogue on the Kul Tiras realm of WoW.)

It’s not an overstatement to say that Warcraft is the first video game to become a cultural phenomenon. The movie, a $160 million extravaganza heavy on top-drawer CGI animation, became almost inevitable.

I wish it weren’t.

The movie has a slapdash, chaotic feel, as if the filmmakers were trying to stitch together footage shot during two or three different productions. There are continuity errors all over the place – one warrior is broken out of prison, given his armor back, and in the very next scene his armor is gone and he’s barefoot for some reason. Another major figure is revealed to be corrupted by dark magic… but when and how was he corrupted?

There’s missing backstory and motivations all over the place. We watch characters do things without understanding why.

Director Duncan Jones, a promising filmmaker who made the excellent “Moon” a few years ago, co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Leavitt, and I can only guess they were shackled by restrictions from Blizzard, the company behind Warcraft. I would posit they were given a checklist of story elements and characters and ordered to fit it all together somehow.

The story is set in the early days of the Warcraft mythology, when the bestial orcs first crossed over from their dying world into that of the humans, setting off battle. There are also quick nods to a few other races on the “Alliance” side of the game, notably elves and dwarves, but the Horde is just orcs. (Thankfully no pandas, at least!)

The orcs are a wonder to behold, painted with wondrous detail by the animators. They’re huge, seven feet tall and thick as oaks, with green skin and protruding tusks, and a vaguely American Indian style of adornment. A few of the nastier ones even have… other protrusions.

Toby Kebbell plays (through voice and motion-capture performance) the orc hero Durotan, a noble savage who fears for the plight of his people, including a newly born son. Their leader, Gul’dan (Daniel Wu), is a mighty wizard wielding a terrible green magic called Fel, which he uses to open a portal to the human world of Azeroth. But it requires a sacrifice of lives, not to mention poisoning the very land.

On the human side is Lothar (Travis Fimmel), commander of the forces of King Llane (Dominic Cooper), who’s called upon to resist the orcish invaders. He’s an odd hero; he seems more peckish than resolute.

Ben Foster plays Medivh, the stern magical guardian of the realm, who mostly broods in his lonesome soaring tower, occasionally dipping into a pool of blue goo to revive his powers. Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) is the classic exposition character, a wayward wizard who turns up whenever the plot needs explaining or moving along.

Somewhere in the middle is Garona (Paula Patton, in heavy green body paint), a half-breed orc who’s captured by Lothar and recruited to their cause. The two start exchanging jungle fever-type stares, though Garona helpfully warns him that he would be injured if he tried to lie with her.

Question: if this is the first time the orcs have crossed over into this world, how did a human breed with one of them years ago to create Garona? If you’re asking these sorts of questions, you’re thinking too hard to enjoy this movie.

“Warcraft” is a great-looking flick that should have been a lot more fun, and a lot less silly, than it is.

Review: "Need for Speed"

I like video games and I like cars and I like car racing video games and I certainly like movies, but I did not care for this movie based on a car racing video game.

The problem with "Need for Speed" is that it's a goofy flick with aspirations of being A Serious Drama, and those things don't really mix well. Much like the dreariest parts of the "Fast and Furious" franchise, whenever the characters aren't zipping around in souped-up machines, crashing and taunting each other, the movie gets stuck in neutral.

It is, in fact, much like a muscle car sitting in one place revving its engine very loudly: it seems kinda cool at first and certainly draws a lot of attention, but after a short time we get itchy to see the thing, y'know, go.

Aaron Paul, best known as the "bitch" guy from TV's "Breaking Bad," hasn't had much of a movie career -- though he had a strong supporting part in the indie drama "Smashed" from not long ago. He's got serious thespian chops, but this movie -- directed by Scott Waugh ("Act of Valor") with a screenplay by rookie George Gatins -- requires him to deliver a lot of ridiculous dialogue and smoldering stares that don't seem to have a whole heaping helping of intellect behind them.

I'm not saying Tobey Marshall is dumb, but he certainly acts pretty dumb.

Tobey runs a performance car shop in tiny Mount Kisco, New York (though Georgia and its ferocious film production tax credits stand in). His dad has recently died, the shop isn't doing well, but he's got an amiable crew of mechanics/best buds (Ramon Rodriguez, Scott Mescudi, Rami Malek, Harrison Gilbertson) to help pass the time.

They contrive to set up elaborate street racing events, including a guy monitoring traffic from a Cessna in the sky, though the cops are seemingly nowhere to be found. Tobey is the top dog on this little circuit, but he's never had a car good enough to make it to the Big Time, where here is defined as an annual underground race of supercars called the Deleon.

This race is organized by a secretive billionaire named Monarch (Michael Keaton), who reputedly was once a great racer himself but a bad ticker made him quit. Now he sits in a room full of tech gear, delivering daily vodcasts in which he encourages and/or rags on drivers, with an exclusive invite to the Deleon as catnip. Apparently, every single gearhead in the country tunes into Monarch, though law enforcement has not yet paid him any notice. Strange, that.

Here's where things get screwy. The prize for the winner of the Deleon is he gets to keep all the other racers' cars. Of course, if you've every actually played the Need for Speed games or seen any car movie ever, you know that most of the vehicles end up as smoking roadkill.

(Maybe Monarch got so rich because he never has to put up any prize money, and his only major expenses are Web hosting fees.)

The heavy is Dominic Cooper as Dino Brewster, a teen rival of Tobey's who stole his girl (Dakota Johnson) and made it out of their dink town to race on the Indy circuit, which of course begs the question of why he bothers with illegal street races that likely pay a small fraction of his legitimate racing income.

Whatever. Cooper is an appropriately sneering, contemptuous presence.

The Deleon actually ends up as largely an afterthought, as most of the film's running time is concerned with the initial face-off between Tobey and Dino, during which Very Bad Things happen, and then Tobey's race to drive across country in time to make it for Monarch's little to-do in California. The "race before the race" has all sorts of roadway encounters, including incompetent cops, murderous rednecks in trucks and a rescue off the end of a cliff that is just completely preposterous.

Imogen Poots plays Julia, a British car expert who tags along with Tobey for reasons that are never made entirely clear, other than just to have an adorable chick around. The movie's third main star is a special silver Ford Mustang, supposedly the car Carroll Shelby was working on with Ford before he died, which Tobey and his crew finish into a 234-mile-per-hour beast.

Of course, driving a custom-built car 3,000 miles across country at high speeds is a really great way to mess up the engine right before a big race, but "Need for Speed" is not the sort of movie to bother with verisimilitude. The 'Stang is pretty awesome, though I thought the '68 Gran Torino Tobey drives in the initial race even cooler.

The racing sequences are the best thing about the movie, as Waugh & Co. eschew over-the-top computer generated mayhem for practical car stunts, which give these scenes a certain amount of verve and heft.

The talkie parts, though, are so cumbersome, and eat up an astonishing portion of the film's overlong 140-minute run time.

At one point, Tobey and Dino finally have a face-off inside a hotel prior to their race, which involves lots of shoving and grappling and strained threats. "We'll settle this behind the wheel!" Tobey snarls, because that's where every car movie ends. All things considered, though, a punch in the nose would have been quicker, safer and more satisfying.

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Video review: "Captain America: The First Avenger"

“Captain America: The First Avenger” surprised me by not being awful. Fitfully entertaining in spurts, even. Coming off a summer of super-hero flicks that ranged from awful (“Green Lantern”) to pretty good (“Thor”), “Captain America” exceeded low expectations.

At 124 minutes, it's the rare summer blockbuster that doesn't seem like it's either in a dreadful hurry or languidly dragging its feet. The filmmakers take the time to set up the main character -- it's more than an hour in before Captain America debuts in a fight against the Nazis.

And yet the movie doesn’t dawdle; it simply takes its time establishing Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) as a weakling who gets a chance to stand up to bullies after being zapped with the Super Soldier Serum during World War II. Nazis being the biggest bullies of all, they soon get their comeuppance at the hands of Captain America and his indestructible shield.

Speaking of that iconic red, white and blue shield – could somebody explain why it returns to him after he throws it at bad guys? Yes, we learn it's vibranium, the rarest substance on earth, and can absorb any shock. Still doesn't explain the boomerang-ism.

The physical transformation of Rogers from 90-pound asthmatic to hulking super-human is an example of well-done CGI. And Hugo Weaving is excellent as baddie Red Skull, whose moniker isn’t just a nickname.

The movie kind of loses its way in the second half, though, and there’s an annoying romance with a British spy (Hayley Atwell) that’s a long, unnecessary slog. And the plot has to jump through a lot of unconvincing gymnastics so Rogers can be frozen in ice for convenient thawing 70 years later, when sequels and “Avengers” tie-ins are in the offing.

I can’t quite recommend “Captain America: The First Avenger,” but there’s potential there. This character has a future.

Disc features are scrawny on DVD – consisting of just a couple of making-of featurettes – but beef up for Blu-ray.

On Blu-ray, the filmmakers, including director Joe Johnston, team up for a feature-length commentary track. There are also a half-dozen or so making-of featurettes.

My favorite was the one about the evolution of the protagonist’s costume; they demonstrated the unfeasibility of the comic-book version of his duds by having him wear an exact replica of them during Captain America’s debut as a USO entertainer.

The Blu-ray also has deleted scenes and a digital copy of the movie.

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars out of four

Review: "Captain America: The First Avenger"

Just a short review tonight. Joe's handling the main review of "Captain America: The First Avenger" over at The Film Yap, so tune in there for a full take.

I was surprised that it wasn't that bad. Fitfully entertaining, especially the first half. A pretty decent villain in Red Skull played by Hugo Weaving, wearing an impressive/scary crimson get-up that looked like it was done through makeup rather than CGI. Kudos for old-school cinematic tricks.

I retain my same opinion of Chris Evans' acting abilities. (Short version: Wet paper bag > Evans trying to act his way out of.) But I was at least pleased that they kept his performance subdued, and matched the downbeat (or at least grounded) nature of the character from the comics. Steve Rogers is a weakling who was given a chance to stand up to bullies, and never forgot what it was like to be unable to defend yourself or your ideals. That's pretty much what we get onscreen.

At least they didn't have Evans reprise his slick, shallow turn as Johnny Storm from the "Fantastic Four" movies. We've already had one super-hero movie this summer where they tried to wrap the fable of a comic book character around an underwhelming actor's smirky star persona. And we all know how that turned out.

I enjoyed the lengthy origin story of Rogers, a "90-pound asthmatic," selected to be the subject of the Super Soldier experiment, not because of his physical qualities but who he is in his heart. Stanley Tucci has a nice, small role as the scientist who mentors him before turning him into a super-hero.

There's also a long section where Captain America gets sidetracked, and I enjoyed this part because it had a cynical, realistic quality -- if someone really did get zapped like Steve Rogers, this is how it probably would have played out.

The portrayal of Steve Rogers as a tiny, scrawny guy (this time they did use computer animation) remains authentically convincing. They even did something to Evans' face to make him look wan.

The love interest with a female British agent (Hayley Atwell) assigned to train his unit was hit-or-miss, and I wouldn't have missed it if they'd eliminated that character and entire storyline from the film. Why do these movies always have to give the hero a girl to be sweet on? Isn't having extraordinary powers and fighting some lunatic baddie over the fate of the world enough to build your plot on?

Tommy Lee Jones kinda phones in his performance as the gruff commander of the Strategic Scientific Reserve, Captain America's outfit. He does have a great throwaway line during a chase that's a real keeper.

Things sort of go wobbly in the second hour. I didn't appreciate director Joe Johnston and his screenwriters breaking into a montage to demonstrate Captain America's growing status as a war hero. It felt lazy and short-shrifted.

Lord knows I'm a literalist, but would have liked somebody to explain why Captain America's shield returns to him after he throws it at bad guys. Yes, we learn it's vibranium, the rarest substance on earth, and can absorb any shock. Still doesn't explain the boomerang-ism.

And the finale, where Captain American makes a brave sacrifice in the frozen tundra, left me scratching my head. Oh, stuff your spoiler complaints -- the movie is called "Captain America: The First Avenger," so we already know he returns in next summer's tent pole movie. And the first thing we see is some guys pulling his popsicle-ized tush out of the ice.

Although Nick Fury's been recruiting his team for so long, I'd hate to have been the first guy who joined. He's spent years waiting around in the club house for the gang to be assembled. Plus, isn't by definition Fury himself the first Avenger?

Anyway, without totally giving it away, Captain America is in a position where (he says) he can't stop something from happening. And then he proceeds to demonstrate that, in fact, he does have control over the situation. But instead of going back the way he came, he decides he's going to throw himself on the figurative grenade. Maybe you can figure it out, I can't.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "Tamara Drewe"

"Tamara Drewe" is a story about writers, and does a lovely job of depicting the interior worlds they inhabit, and the fragile egos that often accompany a lifetime spent mostly inside one's own head.

It's a comedy, but in that distinctly British mode that always involves a generous ladling of misery. It succeeds as a comedy of manners and observation, though it errs in presenting us with a wide array of interesting characters, and then selecting the least compelling among them to drive the story.

The film is based on a comic strip by Posy Simmonds that is essentially a modern take on Thomas Hardy's fourth book, "Far from the Madding Crowd." The screenplay by Moira Buffini even gifts us with a Thomas Hardy scholar, one of a half-dozen or so authors living at Stonefield, a writer's retreat in the idyllic (and fictional) village of Ewedown.

An inside joke is that the Hardy expert, who's been toiling away on a book about him for two years, spends much of his time convincing others that Hardy is not a dreadful bore.
"Tamara Drewe" is anything but dull.

Stonefield is the demesne of Nicholas Hardiment, a successful writer of crime novels all featuring the same hero, and his long-suffering wife Beth (Tamsin Greig), who manages the farm and the writers-in-residence, while bearing his numerous affairs. Nicholas is played by Roger Allam in a spot-on performance as a man who holds nothing but condescension for those around him, including his fans, but is smart enough to conceal it.

Storytellers are really liars and thieves, Nicholas sermonizes, and seems intent on proving his own platitude.

The guest writers are mostly would-be and wannabe authors, and one suspects Nicholas only keeps them around for the extra income. Glen, the Hardy scholar, is the only American in the group, and seems more interested in sticking his nose into Stonefield's ongoing passion plays than finishing his book. Glen is played by Bill Camp in a wondrous turn that lets the audience see him thinking.

Things are shaken up with the arrival of Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), a local girl who was mostly known for her impish sense of humor and huge nose. She's since had the nose bobbed into a cute lightly-freckled button, and has become a thriving columnist for a London newspaper.
The ostensible purpose of her return is to fix her family's old home up for sale, but there's clearly some puckish pride in showing off to the yokels how luminous she turned out.

All the men at Stonefield are instantly transfixed the moment Tamara climbs over the neighboring fence wearing short-shorts -- none more so than local handyman Andy Cobb (Luke Evans), who had a fling with her when they were teens. She hires Andy to renovate her home -- which used to belong to his family -- and maybe measure her personal drapes.

Things spin sideways when Tamara falls for Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), the drummer and songwriter for a famous rock band, Swipe. Soon the tiny town is atwitter over a famed musician residing in their midst. Andy, meanwhile, can't believe he lost out to a guy who wears makeup.

It's around this point that the plot takes an unexpected, and for me unappreciated, turn. Two 15-year-old girls (Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie), who had been acting as sort of the local Greek chorus commenting on the comings and goings and trystings of the main characters, suddenly jump into the driver's seat and speed off.

Things eventually get righted, but I kept yearning for the focus to return to the flighty Tamara, the drolly narcissistic Nicholas and the self-deprecating Glen. Instead, we spend an entire reel of film with the screechy, whiny, manipulative brats at the fore.

I don't hold it too much against the film, though, because director Stephen Frears ("The Queen") has such a great touch with his actors, that everything that comes before or after that wrong turn is such a delight. These characters are so vibrant, flawed and alive, I just loved spending time with them.

3 stars out of four

Review: "An Education"

I had never heard of Carey Mulligan before seeing "An Education." But I'm quite sure many people will know her name after her breakthrough performance in this film, one of the finest onscreen portrayals of 2009.

Mulligan has been in a few things, most notably one of the younger sisters in 2005's "Pride & Prejudice." But in her role as Jenny, a British teen girl who finds herself unexpectedly romanced by an older man, Mulligan blooms like a flower opening its petals to newfound light.

It's like watching Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," or Angelina Jolie in "Girl, Interrupted" -- you know you're witnessing the arrival of a major new acting talent.

I'm not quite over the moon about the movie as a whole, however.

It's based on the autobiographical novel by Lynn Barber, adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby and directed by Danish director Lone Sherfig. It's the sort of movie that's enjoyable for the excellent execution by the cast and filmmakers, and not because of the freshness of an innovative story.

As much as I was thrilled by Mulligan's performance, the film suffers for the predictability of its conclusion. Think of it as a well-worn path, expertly navigated.

It's 1961, and Jenny is a hard-working, smart girl of working-class origins whose entire life is ordered around getting into Oxford to study English. Her parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) follow her grades and extracurricular activities as if they have no other interests in life.

One rainy day she bumps into David (Peter Sarsgaard), a suave man about 20 years older who drives a sleek sports car and gives her a ride. He's intrigued by the witty girl so eager to discover the world -- especially France -- and arranges to bump into her again. Soon they're dating.

It's really interesting how David slyly ingratiates himself with Jenny's parents. If you just presented them with the idea of their beloved girl dating a man twice her years (and a Jew to boot), they would probably react with horror. But because David presents himself as smart, well-connected, affluent -- in other words, the epitome of their aspirations for Jenny -- they practically glom onto him.

The teachers (notably Olivia Williams) and headmistress (Emma Thompson) at Jenny's school assail her with warnings about throwing away her future, but she's enraptured by the opportunity to travel, wear fancy dresses and hobnob with David's chic friends (Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike).

There's a great scene where Jenny demands her instructors tell why she must spend the next few years doing something "hard and boring," if her only reward is a job like theirs that continues the drudgery. It's a rebel yell in lilting British tones, an outcry against Jenny's own situation and the societal limitations placed on mid-century women with brains and gumption.

Inevitably, Jenny's fling with David replaces her textbooks as her crucible of learning. She gets a hint of dark tidings when he and his pal steal a painting, revealing themselves as rogues who appreciate art for its monetary rather than spiritual value.

And without overtly giving away the ending ... well, think of the most obvious outcome possible, and you've got it.

Still, "An Education" is a worthwhile film because it will be remembered as Carey Mulligan's coming-out party. Audiences, like teachers, always revel when a star pupil announces herself.

3 stars