Video review: "Avengers: Age of Ultron"

As sequels go, “Avengers: Age of Ultron” delivered everything it had to.

It brought the gang of Marvel superheroes back together for another round of computer-generated mayhem and quips. It added some new wrinkles to the characters’ background stories and continuing evolution. A few new key super-powered folk were added to the mix. And a really crafty and charismatic villain emerged to steal the show.

The heavy here is Ultron, an artificial intelligence program created by Tony Stark aka Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) to protect the world, since they’re each anxious to get out of the caped crusader game. (Yes, I know neither one actually wears a cape; work with me, people!)

Ultron, menacingly voiced and motion-captured by James Spader, quickly decides that the Avengers themselves are the biggest thread to Earth. Thus their battle is joined, with Ultron jumping from robot body to body, like a virus that’s impossible to care.

Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Thor, (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) are here, too. The new kids are mutant siblings Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who have mind powers and super-speed, respectively.

The supes race about the world trying to contain Ultron’s misdeeds, with a few character-driven subplots to keep the human angle fresh. We learn Hawkeye isn’t just a deadeye loner, and that Banner and Widow have feelings for each other.

It’s a rip-roaring time, not quite as good as the original, but what is?

Extras include deleted scenes, several making-of featurettes, feature-length audio commentary track and a gag reel.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "Avengers: Age of Ultron"

No, it's not quite the same thrill as watching the first Avengers movie. Really, how could it be?

Marvel spent years putting together the first super-hero supergroup movie, patiently setting up characters in their own solo flicks. So finally seeing a bunch of mini-gods in spandex fighting for a common cause was the ultimate payoff.

We're built to like what's shiny and new, so anything after that is bound to be a letdown. Still, "Avengers: Age of Ultron" is a worthy successor, managing to layer in plenty of incredible action scenes while also exploring what the whole "hero" concept means to those behind the masks.

(I say "masks" pejoratively, since only Iron Man wears one, and only then because it's not wise to leave obvious holes in your armor. Most comic book heroes keep their identities concealed, but Hollywood prefers not to spend big bucks on pretty faces and then hide them.)

Writer/director Joss Whedon combines a fanboy's appreciation for the intricacies of super-hero mythology with a cineaste's head for fast-paced mayhem. The result is a fun, giddy movie that occasionally rambles off the narrative tracks, but always manages to land its emotional punches.

If you'll recall from last time, the gang -- Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.); Thor (Chris Hemsworth); Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson); Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner); and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) -- had successfully fought off an alien invasion led by Loki, Thor's wayward brother. Half of New York was destroyed in the process, but hey, that helped set up Marvel's "Daredevil" show on Netflix.

"Ultron" opens with the Avengers stamping out the last traces of Hydra, a Nazi holdover that had captured Loki's magical staff.  Instead of returning it to Thor's home world for safekeeping, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner -- that's Iron Man and Hulk's nerdy scientist alter egos, of course -- decide to use it to build an artificial intelligence capable of safeguarding Earth from all threats.

Alas, their creation, Ultron -- wonderfully voiced and motion captured by James Spader -- decides that the biggest threat to the planet is humans. So he sets about on a nefarious plan to wipe out the Avengers and the regular folks they protect.

The hard part about defeating Ultron is that he can replicate himself, so he creates an army of robots -- all variations on Iron Man's suit -- which means you have to destroy every one of them to eradicate his mind.

Adding spice to the mix are Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, wayward young mutants who become Ultron's apprentices. He can run as fast as a bullet, hence his code name Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). She's the trickier of the two, capable of telekinesis as well as a limited degree of mind control. Aptly named Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), she invades the inner psyche of each of the Avengers, forcing them to face their darkest fears.

The upshot of all of this is that being a hero isn't always that super. Stark and Banner in particular would like to hang up their mantles -- especially Banner, who can't control the Hulk and views his time in that form as a kind of madness. Black Widow is the only one who can calm him down, and that leads to the beginnings of a romance.

There's plenty of other cool stuff, too. We learn that Iron Man has a fail-safe option for when the Hulk goes berserk, and it's an even bigger iron suit that goes on top of his regular one, and comes with the absurd codename of "Veronica." We also get to meet the Vision (Paul Bettany), an artificial creation that ... well, best to discover on your own.

You can't put lightning back in a bottle, and you can't entirely recapture the spark of cinema's first super-hero team. But you can have a helluva good time trying.

Video review: "The Homesman"

If I were to measure "The Homesman" only by its two lead performances, I'd call it a home run deserving of multiple Academy Award nominations. Unfortunately, its story wanders this way and that, an open range Western that sometimes gallops, and sometimes stumbles.

Set in about 1850, the tale is of three pioneer wives who have gone mad on the lonely stretches of Nebraska. They need to be transported back to Iowa to be cared for by their families, but none of their husbands have the will or gumption to make the journey. So Mary Bee Cuddy volunteers to be their guardian and chaperone.

Mary Bee is played by Hilary Swank, in another signature performance of her career, and is a woman of immeasurable virtues. She runs her own farm and is, as one fellow says, "as good a man as any man in these parts." However, her soul is weighed down by her inability to find a husband, owing to her plain looks and bossiness.

Early in her journey she runs across George Briggs, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who also directed and co-wrote the screenplay. Briggs has been strung up for claim jumping, but Mary Bee cuts him down in exchange for his help getting the women back to Iowa.

Along the way they encounter the familiar array of threats from American Indians, rapacious bandits, con men and natural elements. Somehow, these two fiercely independent souls must find a way to trust one another.

Even though the script could've used a few more runs around the corral, "The Homesman" is worth a look if only to see these two master thespians plying their trade.

Bonus features are rather disappointing. The Blu-ray and DVD editions both carry the same three featurettes: "Story to Script," "Shooting the Film" and "19th Century Life."

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "The Homesman"

“The Homesman” exists somewhere in that netherworld between the Western and the anti-Western. It celebrates the austerity and grit of the mid-1800s, and the people who settled west of the Mississippi River; but also casts an unsparing, gimlet eye on the brutality of those times -- and those who made it so.

It’s the sort of movie full of horses and guns and stare-downs between desperate folks, but it’s not really about those things. There is little actual violence, and that which does transpire ill comports with the uses traditionally seen in this terrain of filmmaking.

Story-wise it kind of jags this way and that, like a drunken rider upon a lame horse, neither one too sure about the navigation. But it contains a brilliant performance by Hilary Swank, full of contradictory emotions and urges that nonetheless seem perfectly confined inside a character who feels urgent and alive.

And Tommy Lee Jones, who co-stars and also directed and co-wrote the film, isn’t half-bad himself. Not to mention an impressive supporting cast that includes the likes of Meryl Streep, Hailee Steinfeld, John Lithgow, James Spader and Tim Blake Nelson.

Based upon a book by Glendon Swarthout, the story concerns a journey from Nebraska to Iowa roundabouts 1850 to return three wives who have gone crazy on the lonely plains to their families back East. Their husbands are reluctant to leave their crops or children to make the long, arduous journey, so Mary Bee Cuddy (Swank) steps forward.

To all outward appearances, Mary Bee is a marvel. An educated woman from New York, she runs a prosperous claim including prime farmland, stock and a tidy house. She is active in her church and community – as much as one can be when you measure the distance to neighbors in miles – and respected by all. She is, as one forthright fellow puts it, as good a man as any man in these parts.

But there is an itchy desperation to Mary Bee, driven by the fact that she is 31 years old (firmly into spinsterhood), a mite bossy and “plain as an old tin pail,” to use a variation on a common refrain. As the story opens she essentially throws herself at a callow clod with whom she has lately been social. “Why not marry?” she proposes, going on to outline the financial benefits of a pairing, and we sense this not the first time such a speech has been given.

Rejected, Mary Bee agrees to oversee three women who have been more successful in getting married, but not in what comes after. Played by Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter and Grace Gummer, each has experienced extreme tragedy that has driven them over the edge, including the death of children, due to causes natural ... and otherwise.

The trio exists as ghostly, wordless figures of pity, though Jones and his co-screenwriters (Wesley A. Oliver and Kieran Fitzgerald) are careful to show glimpses of the cruel lives that made them so.

Her charges locked into a boxed wagon, Mary Bee begins her expedition but stumbles across a man sitting on a horse with a noose around his neck. He is George Briggs (Jones), a claim-jumper and man of constant wanderings. He agrees to assist Mary Bee in exchange for saving his life, and thus begins a volatile relationship built on distrust and resentment, but also a shared sense of solitariness.

Along the way they encounter the usual sorts of challenges – Indians, rapacious cowboys, bitter snows and stomachs shriveled from hunger. The real journey is in these two damaged people venturing toward a nexus where they can both abide. It would seem impossible; she has a despairing desire to be needed, while he holds his rootless freedom as his most cherished (and often only) possession.

I wish “The Homesman” had as coherent a sense of narrative as it does well-limned portraits of its main characters. Some of the encounters in the film, particularly in the second half, have little connective tissue with the themes and story that surround them. (One, a visit to an intended town that so far has only built a hotel, tries too transparently to borrow a page from “Unforgiven.”)

But Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones are well worth the price of admission on their own. In most Westerns the actions define the character, but here it’s the words, said and unsaid, that offer a peek inside distant souls.

Reeling Backward: "Pretty in Pink" (1986)

John Hughes' teen movies were bubble gum wrapped in shiny paper, containing a lot of sweet, juicy stuff with a bitter center. He told stories about teenagers not as how society saw them, but as how they saw themselves. He identified with the school misfits, but he understood the cool kids enough that he didn't dismiss their challenges as inconsequential.

The pop music cues, the likeable teen stars, the old-fashioned love triangle plot devices -- he used it all to draw in an audience of young people, ostensibly to entertain them, but really to show them a self-portrait that is flawed and glorious.

"Pretty in Pink" is an imperfect film with a pure heart. After the success of "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club," Hughes cast his personal ginger-haired muse, Molly Ringwald, in perhaps his most bleak and ambitious film to date.

I know some people might spit up at seeing "bleak" and "John Hughes" in the same sentence. But strip away the pop songs, the winsome actors and the puppy-dog love story, and the universe in which "PiP" is set is a pretty dreary one.

The school is divided along sharp lines into "richies," over-privileged offspring of wealthy families, and everybody else. The rich kids eat lunch inside in the cafeteria, while the students who are poor or rough around the edges are relegated to the outdoor rec area. It's self-imposed segregation, and there are people on both sides eager to enforce the invisible lines of division.

Heroine Andie (Ringwald) is the single child of Jack (Harry Dean Stanton), who works itinerantly but whose main vocation is staying in bed and feeling sorry for himself. His wife left him three years ago, and though he puts up a brave face for the daughter he adores, he's drowning. Andie pushes him to find full-time work and a purpose in life.

Andie is smart and, unlike Ringwald's previous roles in Hughes films, not a shrinking violent. When she's picked on my obnoxious richie girls (Kate Vernon and Gina Gershon), she fights back. Lacking funds, Andie makes her own clothes -- the source of the teasing -- with pink included in virtually every outfit.

She has a job working at a hip music store run by Iona, who's about twice Andie's age but acts as her big sister and coach. Iona has a different hairstyle every time we see her, starting with a spiked mohawk and growing more conservative as the movie goes on. She's played by Annie Potts, a charismatic and outgoing presence, virtually unrecognizable from her nerdy role in "Ghostbusters."

Andie's perpetual wingman is Duckie (Jon Cryer), the misfit of misfits, who's been her friend/hanger-on since childhood. Duckie is ravishingly in love with Andie, but to her face he makes a joke of it, talking about his undying love for her and unconditional devotion as a punchline. He dresses like a clown, with mismatched patterns and accessories, but deep down Duckie wants Andie to take him seriously.

Worlds collide when richie Blane (Andrew McCarthy) is smitten with Andie, eventually building up to a date for the prom. When Duckie realizes she's really going to go out with the enemy, he unloads on Andie, resulting in the movie's most famous line: "His name is Blane? That's a major appliance, that's not a name!"

The biggest problem with the film is that the Andie/Blane romance never really takes off. We only get to see them spend any substantive time together in two scenes: their disastrous first date, where they each visit the others' home turf and are in turn rejected by their friends, and a brief second fling where they sneak onto his horse riding club.

McCarthy's performance is ... discomforting. He smiles and stutters, trying to play a character who is inherently descent but pals around with loathsome toads like his best friend Steff, played with delicious malevolence by James Spader.  The idea is supposed to be that although Blane comes from a world where everything is taken for granted, he hasn't let it rub off on himself.

Honestly, Blane's creepy as all get out. In the film he has a serial-killer vibe, reminding me of Christian Bale in "American Psycho." His good manners and charm seem like a skillfully-constructed veil that I kept waiting to drop.

The plot wheezes and cranks to its conclusion: Blane gives into peer pressure to dump his girlfriend from "the wrong side," but they have a revelation at the prom, where Duckie, acting as her date and protector, urges her to go after Blane. As many people already know, the original ending has her choosing Duckie over Blane. But knowing that Duckie is the perpetual loser adds poignancy to his depiction.

I find the film more engaging for its little moments and its well-drawn characters than the story paces it puts them through. Spader, despite having fairly limited screen time, breathes life and subtlety into Steff that isn't immediately apparent. Steff had made numerous lecherous advances to Andie over the years and been rebuffed, and can't stand the idea of someone he sees beneath him as standing up to him.

Cryer has one outstanding scene as Duckie, where he lets down his guard of self-mockery, and steels himself to tell Andie how he really feels. But he loses his nerve and lets the other guy get his girl.

Indeed, the entire theme of the movie is about people reconciling themselves to the gap between their dreams and reality. "Pretty in Pink" may not be John Hughes' best film, but in some ways it is his most enduring. He loved to disguise his lessons as confections.

Video review: "Lincoln"

Daniel Day-Lewis gives a mesmerizing, nontraditional performance as the 16th president of the U.S. in “Lincoln,” a biopic that makes its own bold choice. In narrowing the scope of that epic life to focus on only a single month of Lincoln’s presidency, director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner manage to reveal something of the man’s enormity while upending our conceptions of him.

Start with the high-pitched, quavering voice Day-Lewis uses. By all accounts it matches contemporaneous descriptions of Lincoln’s actual speech, but runs counter to most depictions of him as deep-throated and steady. In a sense, the cast and filmmakers have to rip aside the legend of Lincoln to uncover the truth of him.

The story covers the push to the pass the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery, even as the Civil War reaches its bloodiest stage. Other key players in the tale include Mrs. Lincoln (Sally Field), whose mental anguish threatens her husband’s public life; their son Todd (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who yearns to prove himself in battle; and Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), the fiery emancipator who wants to go further than Lincoln and declare equality between the races.

The script is a little uneven at times, as Kushner offers too-clever winks to the audience as the characters reminisce about how they will be perceived in posterity. I think the reason the film didn’t fare better at the Academy Awards is that most people viewed it as a terrific performance with only a pretty-good movie around it.

That’s too harsh an assessment. Though it sometimes indulges in wonky political discussions, “Lincoln” strives to reach the essence of a great man, and largely succeeds.

Video extras are pretty good, though Spielberg maintains the unfortunate tradition of most high-profile directors in eschewing a commentary track.

The DVD comes with “The Journey to Lincoln,” a pretty standard making-of documentary. Upgrade to the two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo, and you add a featurette on the historical tapestry of Richmond, Va.

Go for the four-disc set and you add a host of goodies. There’s a feature all about Day-Lewis’ meticulous construction of his character, and three more featurettes about the production design and costumes, a shooting diary and John Williams’ Oscar-nominated music score.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Lincoln"

There exists a sweet spot for film biographies of pivotal American figures. Somewhere after enough time has passed following their death for some perspective to form on their life, but before their exploits and persona pass into legend, filmmakers have an opportunity to capture the essence of a great life.

For example, Martin Luther King Jr. belongs in the former category – his enormity, and the pain of his loss, is still too near. Older figures like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington have become so iconic that Hollywood has largely stayed away for many decades. They’re of the ages now, hence too remote to be truly examined.

Steven Spielberg’s grandiose “Lincoln” attempts to bypass this notion, and largely succeeds at doing so through a mesmerizing lead performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th, and many feel greatest, American president.

It’s a bold film that sidesteps the standard sort of hagiography, peering at Lincoln sideways and slantways, trying to get at the man behind the mythology. In the crafting of Spielberg, Day-Lewis and screenwriter Tony Kushner, the portrait that emerges is of a brilliant but isolated figure, who could enthrall the men he led while remaining a vexing riddle to them. They stare at Lincoln, recognizing his greatness but put off by their inability to truly fathom it.

In essence, the film pulls back the veil of history on Lincoln to reveal a man who was beloved but remained largely a mystery, even to his family and in some ways to himself.

Day-Lewis’ performance seems a little strange at first, especially the high, tremulous voice he employs for Lincoln’s soaring oratory. Perhaps it’s because it’s so at odds with the rumbling sonorous tones associated with prevailing fictional depictions of the president’s speech. Day-Lewis also holds his body at odd angles and moves in a strange hunched shuffle, evoking a decrepit bird of prey.

But after a slow start, the film gets moving and these affectations stop being distracting and start to seem part of the gestalt of Day-Lewis’ character construction. We cease thinking about the actor and his choices and submerge into the story of Lincoln.

Adapted from the Doris Kearns Goodwin book, “Team of Rivals,” the film concentrates on one month of his presidency: the lead-up in January 1865 to the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution ending slavery. For history buffs like myself it’s riveting stuff, full of inside stories and forgotten bits of lore. Though I fear casual audiences may occasionally be lost amid the vast sea of characters and wonky discussions of constitutional law.

(I think of one section where Lincoln, an accomplished lawyer, parses out the different legal interpretations of his Emancipation Proclamation, acknowledging that the Supreme Court would be within their rights to declare it unconstitutional.)

Speaking of all those other characters – it’s a tremendous supporting cast, including Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as their son Robert, David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward and James Spader, John Hawkes and Jackie Earle Haley as a trio of flimflam men brought in to round up votes. One of the film’s revelations is that Lincoln and his allies were not above skullduggery, including bribery and blackmail, to achieve their noble goals.

The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln is a troubled one, in which Abraham felt compelled to cede marital ground to the strong-willed Mary even as his armies marched inexorably deep below the Mason-Dixon Line. At one point he regrets not having her committed to a mental institution, and flogs her selfishness for creating problems for a man already bearing so much on his soul. “You may lighten this burden or render it intolerable, as you will,” he fumes.

Aside from Day-Lewis, the performance that really stands out is Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, a fiery Radical Republican who demanded not only total emancipation for the slaves but universal equality between the races – something even Lincoln resisted. It’s a strong portrait, a man who was heroic in his ideals but dastardly in his countenance.

Jones spits out his speech in clips and snarls, intimidating those around him like an angry alpha dog. When Stevens’ demands for harsh treatment of the post-war South threaten to tip both the passage of the amendment and the peace negotiations Lincoln is conducting in secret, the two men engage in a brooding contest of wills.

“Lincoln” is a spellbinding but imperfect film. Kushner’s screenplay is filled with several moments that seem constructed with a winking eye to how things will be perceived in the here and now. For example, Mary comments that she will be remembered only as the half-mad woman who provoked a president.

I also thought the coda about Lincoln’s assassination was included inappropriately. This movie was not intended as a comprehensive look at an entire life, but focuses on his leadership and vision, illuminated by a critical point in our nation’s history. Everyone knows the tragedy of his death, so including it feels like a ham-handed grasp for an unnecessary emotional crescendo.

Still, “Lincoln” aspires to much more than simple deification of its subject, opting to demystify Abraham Lincoln rather than merely exalt him. In aspiring to unwrap this puzzle of greatness, the film achieves some of its own.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Wall Street" (1987)

With the sequel, "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" arriving this week, I thought it time to take another look at the 1987 original. I hadn't seen Oliver Stone's Oscar-winning film (for Michael Douglas' bravura performance) since it came out in theaters.

Like the rest of Stone's oeuvre, it's about as subtle as a sledgehammer. But his filmmaking style is like heavy metal: When he hits the right chords, nobody plays with as much power or brash energy.

It's always fascinating what you remember from a film you saw once long ago. I had a clear memory of only two scenes: One is when slithery corporate raider Gordon Gekko (like I said, subtle) gives his "Greed is good" speech. That moment crystallized the perception of 1980s excess for decades to come.

The other involves Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), Gekko's ambitious young protege. Bud has started to become a high roller under Gekko's tutelage of insider information and manipulating stocks, and is looking at Upper East Side apartments.

The older real estate agent is quickly rushing him through a fabulous penthouse, registers his hesitation and decides the young man is out of his league. She calls him "kid," offers to show him something more downscale. Sheen has this great reaction where he tries to hide his resentment at her condescension, then casually orders, "Offer nine-fifty." Meaning, $950,000 (or about $1.8 million in today's dollars.) One senses he's buying the place just to impress her.

Other things slipped out of memory. Chief among those is Bud's affair with Darien, an ambitious interior designer played by Daryl Hannah. Despite her face appearing on the film's poster, I had completely forgotten she was even in it.

Watching the movie again, I see why: The Bud-Darien romance is the weakest thing in the movie, a totally flat and unbelievable pairing. Darien walks out the minute it appears Bud will no longer be able to support her lavish lifestyle, and we're happy to see her go.

The encounters between Charlie Sheen and his father Martin Sheen are as strong as I remember: Despite only a handful of scenes, the elder Sheen has a convincing, easy authority as Bud's father, an airline mechanic and union leader who sees right through Gekko's manipulations. He can't believe that his son makes more money than him, but is always borrowing cash to pay for lavish suits and a Manhattan apartment.

"There's no nobility in poverty anymore, Dad. One day you'll be proud of me, you'll see," Bud insists.
"It's yourself you gotta be proud of, Huckleberry," his dad advises.

I love that little nickname at the end, a combination of affection and paternal authority. Stone wrote the screenplay with Stanley Weiser, and if some elements like the portrayal of Darien don't measure up, it's still a thoroughly engrossing story with a lot of verve, sharp observation and smart dialogue.

Example: Gekko explains that he's just spent over $1 million to buy a seat on the New York Zoo board. "That's the thing you got to understand about WASPs: They love animals. They can't stand people."

Stone's timing with the original film was excellent, arriving right around the time of the big stock crash of '87. The sequel seems fortuitous as well, with the current economic downturn caused (in large part) by banks taking on too much bad credit.

I don't think "Wall Street" was an indictment of capitalism per se, but its excesses and the way unscrupulous people could cheat the markets. We're seeing that again today, where corporate executives accept -- demand, even -- lavish bonuses even as their companies are laying people off by the thousands.

The ideal of the meritocracy seems further away than ever, as long as people like Gordon Gekko are happy to game the system for their own benefit.

3.5 stars out of four