Review: "Black Widow"

We’re in an interesting phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) right now, somewhat adrift -- but also open to fresh possibilities.

A decade of carefully interlocking movies culminated with “Avengers: Endgame,” with a number of pivotal characters definitively dying (not just “ashed” and then came back a la the Infinity Stones.) Now they’re turning up in Disney+ streaming shows like “WandaVision” and “Loki” and, with “Black Widow,” the first post-“Endgame” feature film.

(As you may recall, it was supposed to be released more than a year ago, so absent COVID it would have been out months before those shows.)

How does the movie get around the death of Natasha Romanoff, aka the former Russian superspy Black Widow? That’s easy enough: the story is set five years ago, in the in-between space after “Captain America: Civil War” and before “Infinity War,” when she was on the lam from her own government.

This film is essentially an origin story/reexamination of the character, with star Scarlett Johansson getting a chance to show more color and shadings for Natasha. We saw bits and pieces of them in the movies, but they had to be squeezed in between the big story pieces and male dominance of the MCU.

These are really the best parts of “Black Widow” -- learning about how Natasha morphed from abandoned kid to international heroine, dealing with lingering family schism (more on that in a minute) and exploring her journey from tragedy to redemption. This is a character who has outwardly expressed impervious confidence while hiding enough self-loathing to fill a Dostoevsky novel.

The action scenes are plentiful -- a little too much so, imho -- and can get repetitive, bordering on dull. Of course, we’re dealing with all normal, if exceptional, humans here with a paucity of super powers on display. There’s a self-conscious acknowledgement of this, with someone mentioning to Natasha that she previously enjoyed protection because people were afraid to come after her and risk retaliation from one of the “big Avengers.”

I’m not a big Avenger? she wryly challenges.

Australian director Cate Shortland (“Lore”) comes from an indie background, which probably explains why her character scenes are so compelling and the fighting stuff is a little jumbled. The screenplay by Eric Pearson, with story by Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson, starts with Natasha as a disaffected preteen in 1995 living in Ohio as part of a family that’s just a spy op cover.

Rachel Weisz and David Harbour play their parents, and will turn up again in the more modern section. She was a brilliant scientist and he was the Red Guardian, a super-strong analogue to Captain America. Weisz does her woman-of-mystery thing to a T, and Harbour has fun playing a loud-mouthed blowhard always ready for fight, the guy who thinks he’s coaching the team when really he’s the mascot.

Florence Pugh is terrific as Yelena, Natasha’s long-lost kid sister, now an adept spy/badass herself. She harbors an ocean of resentment against her more famous sibling, and even coyly mocks the overplayed “superhero jump landing” thing (already dinged in the second “Deadpool”). She brings a jaded Gen Z cool to the table.

Of course, none of them are really related to each other, but they gradually come around to the idea that they’re the closest thing to a family any of them has.

The heavy is Ray Winstone as Dreykov, a Russian mastermind who has been building an army of all-female “Widows” assassins, for which Natasha set the mold. Back in her day they underwent psychological conditioning to break their will, but this new generation is chemically altered to obey. Olga Kurylenko turns up as an especially notable recruit.

I won’t argue that “Black Widow” is one of the best MCU movies. In fact, I’d put it toward the lower end of the pool with “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” It’s got a lot of elements that feel like retreads of earlier S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff, right up to a vertically enhanced headquarters called the Red Room.

But even if the blammo stuff is a little stale, Johansson gets a chance to flex thespian muscles in ways we hadn’t seen before for this character. Will there be another Black Widow movie, a la resurrection or more backstory stuff like this? We’ll see, but it was worth the wait for her to get a chance to shoulder her way past the boys to the front line.

Reeling Backward: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (2008)

No, we're not reeling back very far this week. The fifth installment of the Indiana Jones chronicle was supposed to come out in 2020, but has been pushed back to the following year. That gives us a chance to look back on the mightily controversial previous one, 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

It seems like it's been forever since that film, but if the schedule holds it will have only been 13 years since the last Indy movie, whereas it was 19 years between 1989's "The Last Crusade" and "Skull."

This seems like a good time to ruminate on the passage of time in film franchises and the aging process of actors.

There were a whole bunch of old jokes about the movie and in the movie, as star Harrison Ford was in his mid-60s when "Skull" was made. (The original trilogy roughly covered his 40s.) Pop culture was inundated with quips about him being the same age as Sean Connery was when he played Indiana Jones' doddering old dad in "Crusade."

In point of fact: Ford was several years older than Connery was, since in actuality the two actors are merely 12 years apart in age.

Ford will be 78 or 79 as they wrap up shooting of the sixth Indy movie, whose title is still a secret. Since all the movies have roughly tracked with the actor's actual age at the time they were made, it would seem the new one will be set in the 1970s.

Thanks to "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," the underrated TV series that ran from 1989 to 1993 (plus a few made-for-TV movies that were later re-edited into more serial episodes), the character's birth year is firmly established as 1899. Easy for me to remember, as it's also my paternal grandfather's.

George Hall played "Old Indy," the contemporaneous "host" of the TV show, who then would have been in his 90s. Notably, by then Indy had lost his right eye and wore a patch beneath wire-rim glasses. I'll be interested to see if this injury is explained in the new movie, sort of the way Ford's real-life chin scar was added into "The Last Crusade."

Astounding fact: When he stars in the next movie Ford will be older than Hall was when he played Old Indy.

Seeing "Skull" for the first time in many years, I was struck how frail Ford already appears to be in the action scenes. He actually moves around pretty well, including some jumps and swings he apparently executed himself. He even wriggles feet-first through a small opening between the cargo area of a truck and its cabin, looking relatively spry.

No, it's the punches where this Indy pulls his.

Old-school stunts have been a calling card of the Indiana Jones series, including plenty of fistfights. Punches are always accompanied by a signature sound effect that sounds more like a whiplash than the collision of flesh and bone.

Here we get the same aural crack while Ford's punching arms appear to be moving in slow motion. Indy's enemies -- the Russians this time -- still fly around the screen like they've been struck by a charging bull. The result is the fight scenes seem comically fake.

In general Indy subcontracts most of the heavy fighting to the greaser teenage character, Mutt Williams, in what is seen as Shia LaBeouf's breakout into adult roles. Of course (half-hearted spoiler warning here), about halfway through the movie it's revealed that Mutt is the son of Indy and his long-lost (or mislaid) lady love, Marian Ravenwood (Karen Allen, eternally radiant).

It's Mutt who takes on Irina Spalko, the sword-carrying scientist/kook played by Cate Blanchett in a torrid Ukranian accent that's just begging for a "moose and squirrel" reference. They duel with blades while each standing in the back of vehicles speeding through the Amazonian jungle in one of the film's signature scenes.

Spalko and Indy never exchange more than a few harsh words. Oh, I think she slaps him once.

Mutt first appears wearing EXACTLY the same outfit Marlon Brando did in "The Wild One," right down to the motorcycle and skewed riding cap. Once he and Indy start talking and he references his mother, I think most people guessed at his progeny. When Marian turns up as his mom, the cat's out of the bag and we're just waiting for the reveal to arrive. Mutt and Indy look nothing alike though there is a resemblance to Marian.

From this point on the movie (intentionally) becomes a hammy family sitcom, as the three exchange quips -- "Honey," "Daddy-O," "Junior" -- while fighting the rooskies and, in Mutt's case, literally swinging with the monkeys.

Ford's Indy has definitely mellowed at this point. He's not as excitable or egotistic. I enjoyed the part where they get caught in quicksand and Indy begins patiently explaining the difference between quicksand and a dry sandpit, emphasizing the difference in viscosity.

He's more pedantic professor than grim grave-robber these days.

Perhaps my favorite moment in the film is soon after meeting Mutt, when Indy tosses a line about having known "a lot of Marys" in his lifetime, and the young man leaps from the table, ready to fight a perceived insult of his mother. The Indiana Jones from "Raiders" or "Temple of Doom" would've quickly taken up the challenge, warranted or no.

Instead, he holds his place, looking directly but softly into the younger man's eyes. "You don't have to get sore all the time to prove how tough you are. Sit down. Please, sit down."

Pat Roach, the hulking wrestler who was Indy's punch-pal in the first three movies, had died in 2004 so Igor Jijikine was recruited to play the muscleman antagonist in this movie. He and Indy actually exchange a few good hits before the Russian is eaten alive by giant Amazonian ants. The CGI in this scene was attacked as hoky, but I think it still looks pretty good and certainly was fine compared to contemporary films.

With regard to the two biggest knocks against KotCS:

Yes, the "nuke the fridge" bit is ridiculous. Even if the blast didn't kill him the impact from traveling a few miles like being shot from a cannon would've. But plausibility has not been a hallmark of Indiana Jones movies.

I mean, in "Temple of Doom" an evil shaman reached into a dude's chest and pulled his heart out. Or take the scene where they're flying along in a mine cart, jump across a huge chasm and land exactly on the skinny rail lines on the opposite side.

Gimme the algorithms on that actually happening, perfesser.

On the space aliens revelation, I'm actually 100% fine with that. The film is set in the late 1950s, and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas explicitly said at the outset they wanted to do a science fiction  Indiana Jones flick. I mean, we see the incredibly elongated skull about halfway through the movie -- did you think thiswas going to end anywhere other than (not so) little spacemen?

Again, the first movies involved 1) the Lost Ark of the Covenant, 2) Evil demon magic, and 3) the actual frickin' Holy Grail. To those who loudly pshawed at lead fridges and aliens, I pshaw right back.

I'm genuinely curious what the forthcoming -- and, I've got to think, last -- Indiana Jones movie will hold. I can't imagine they'll try to present Indy as still being capable of even the scaled-down feats of KotCS. We've already heard Mutt won't be back, so is Indy going to recruit another stand-in for the boldest stunts?

They're also not going to kill him off, not without upsetting the established canon that has Indy living until at least the 1990s. There was a lot of talk a few years back about rebooting the franchise with Chris Pratt or someone else starring. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative, and perhaps even provided the final push needed for a fifth one starring Ford to get made.

Ford has joked about wanting to kill off all of his iconic characters, and he finally succeeded with two of them, Han Solo and Rick Deckard, just within the past few years. Curiously, he has never expressed similar thoughts about Indiana Jones, and in fact has been quite vocal about wanting to bring him back.

Indy's already older than his dad, so to speak, and is even senior to the eldest version of the character ever depicted. Whither Dr. Jones? Only time can tell, and how much can truly be left?

Video review: "Noah"

Darren Aronofsky is not the sort of filmmaker who punts.

He makes dizzyingly complex movies that charter a course through the interior minds of his characters, who often descend into madness or despair. He broke onto the scene with “Pi,” and more recent efforts include “The Wrestler” and “Black Swan,” both of which got the attention of Oscar voters.

For his latest effort Aronofsky literally reached back to his childhood and a poem he wrote about Noah, the Biblical savior who builds an ark to save his family and two of every creature on Earth from God’s destructive flood. Religious literalists may be offended by the modernist reimagining of scripture by Aronosfsky, who also co-wrote the script with Ari Handel.

In this version of the tale, Noah (Russell Crowe) is a temperamental eco-warrior, a vegetarian who carefully harvests the bounty of the land, as opposed to the meat-eating descendants of Cain, who mine for precious metals, wage constant wars, and worse.

He receives dream-visions from the Creator (the word “God” is never used) indicating He plans to destroy the world, and Noah is charged with saving all his creatures. In Noah’s interpretation, he, his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), their three sons and adopted daughter (Emma Watson) are merely caretakers for the animals, and are expected to die out afterward.

His enemy is Tucal-Cain (a snarly Ray Winstone), who thinks his right of free will includes displacing Noah and his clan from the ark. Lending a hand are the Watchers, golem-like giants made of stone who are actually the souls of fallen angels, trapped for helping the descendants of Adam and Eve.

Also hanging around is Noah’s grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), the last of the great Biblical patriarchs endowed with magical powers. A major subplot involves a rivalry between Noah and his middle son Ham (Logan Lerman), who resents that his father refuses to let them choose wives to take along on the ark.

“Noah” represents a bold vision, unintentionally goofy at times, but one still engaging and illuminating.

Extra features are a tad disappointing, especially if you buy the DVD version, which contains exactly nothing. Upgrade to the Blu-ray, and you add three making-of featurettes: “Iceland: Extreme Beauty,” “The Ark Exterior: A Battle for 300 Cubits” and “The Ark Interior: Animals Two by Two.”

Movie:

Extras:

Video review: "Rango"

I can't think of a movie I had more fun at so far in 2011 than "Rango," a loopy, occasionally psychedelic animated flick starring Johnny Depp as a bug-eyed lizard. A domesticated pet who lives in a terrarium and invents companions and theatrical productions to amuse himself, he's literally a chameleon, and not just when it comes to the shade of his pebbly skin.

He ends up lost in the Mojave and stumbles into the town of Dirt, populated by every manner of desert critter imaginable. Things are tough in Dirt -- there's a gang of tunneling thieves waiting on the edge of town, a local crime boss looking for newcomers to squish, and the rumor of a slithery gunslinger named Rattlesnake Jake heading back their way.

Through a combination of wild circumstance and his own even more far-fetched boasting, the lizard finds himself appointed sheriff of Dirt, dubbing himself Rango to better suit his new role. Of course, there are all those aforementioned troubles that he's now expected to tackle.

Although kids will surely enjoy it, "Rango" is really a cartoon for adults, stuffed with highbrow humor and sly pop culture references.

Please note, "Rango" hits video outlets on Friday, July 15.

Video features are quite impressive, and you don't have to spring for the top-of-the-line edition to get good stuff.

The DVD version includes both the theatrical version of "Rango" plus an extended cut. To accompany both versions is a feature-length commentary track by director Gore Verbinski and several of his key crew members. There's also a collection of 10 deleted scenes, including an alternate ending, and an educational short about desert animals.

Opt for the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack and you add a number of other goodies, including a digital copy of the film. There's also a virtual tour of Dirt, a doc about this first foray into feature-length animation by Industrial Light & Magic, and a picture-in-picture feature where you can watch the movie in storyboard form.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Rango"

A neon-colored, sun-baked fantasia that's part Western spoof and part surrealist jag through the desert with Johnny Depp as our theatrically unhinged, reptilian tour guide, "Rango" is anything but your standard kiddie animated flick.

It's hard to believe this is the same team behind those "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, which by the first sequel had devolved into formulaic schlock without a shred of story structure. But director Gore Verbinski, Depp and screenwriter John Logan have joined forces for one of the daffiest and most original animated features in a long, long time.

Maybe it's because "Rango," the story of a domesticated lizard who stumbles into a spaghetti Western, didn't issue forth from one of the animation giants like Disney/Pixar, DreamWorks or Blue Sky. It's a partnership between Nickelodeon, Verbinski's production company and George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic, a special effects outfit making its first foray into computer-generated cartoons.

All I can say is, based on everything from the dazzling details on the numerous critters' parched faces to the multihued splendor of the arid landscapes to the crisply-paced action scenes, the ILM gang has announced themselves with authority. The animation in "Rango" -- which doesn't fall back on any cheap 3-D tricks, by the way -- is as good as, or better, than anything Pixar and the gang are doing right now.

Depp voices the lonely lizard passing his days inside his terrarium, imagining himself up some friends for his theatrical productions, in a scene that recalls Jack Sparrow trapped in Davy Jones' Locker in "PotC: At World's End." The film is filled to the brim with references to other movies, including a drive-by homage to "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

After a mishap leaves him by the side of the road in the Mojave, our scaly friend with a penchant for changing identities as easily as he can shift colors winds up in the town of Dirt.

The townsfolk, comprising every manner of reptile, bird, arachnid and mammal native to the desert, are suffering through a horrid drought and an even worse funk. When our lizard friend accidentally sends a local marauder to boot hill, he's given the job of sheriff.

He dubs himself Rango, and quickly creates the persona of a Clint Eastwood-esque Man from Nowhere. Rango is delighted at his new status -- not to mention the attentions of Miss Beans (Isla Fisher), a local rancher who has a tendency to freeze up when flustered.

As he bedecks himself in increasingly flamboyant gunslinger garb and spins outrageous tales about killing the evil Jensen brothers with one bullet -- all seven of them -- we begin to wonder if the attention-craving Rango's noodle wasn't already cooked before he ever set a three-toed foot in the desert.

Of course, bigger challenges await. There's a local bully (Ray Winstone) in need of standing up to, a pack of tunneling varmint thieves on the outskirts of town led by a blind mole (Harry Dean Stanton), and a power-hungry Mayor (Ned Beatty) who appears to have been lifted directly out of "Chinatown," right down to the white 10-gallon hat and watery schemes of John Huston's iconic Noah Cross ... except now he's a turtle.

Even worse is the rumor of a dead-eye outlaw named Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) slithering back into town with the tumbleweeds.

It's a loopy, fun ride as we follow Rango on his (mis)adventures, including a posse hunt that culminates in an epic chase sequence complete with mounted bats and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" arranged for banjos. Even more unexpected is the hallucinogenic amusement of several dream-slash-vision-quest scenes so bursting with colors and freaky-deaky images, I half expected melting clocks to ooze onto the screen.

A wild mishmash of Sergio Leone and Salvador Dali with an all-critter cast, "Rango" is what happens when animators forget about borders and just ride off into whatever sunset their imaginations take them.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Edge of Darkness"

Mel Gibson, in his first starring role in eight years, is effective and believable as a tough Boston cop out for revenge after his daughter is murdered. But the plot is such a discombobulated mess, the movie comes across as a disjointed set of knife fights and pummeling of suspects.

Gibson plays Craven, a veteran detective who becomes unhinged when his only child is gunned down on his doorstep. His investigation leads to the castle-like headquarters of Northmoor, the mysterious corporation where she worked. The cryptic boss (Danny Huston) gives elusive answers to Craven's questions. Meanwhile, a British spook (Ray Winstone) is dispatched to deal with Craven, but ends up befriending him.

Director Martin Campbell ("Casino Royale") knows how to construct action scenes. But the script contains abrupt shifts in mood and tone. We never get to know Craven prior to his daughter's murder, so he only exists as a vehicle for revenge. And the strange interspersing of humorous moments severs any connection the audience might have developed for Craven's pain.

Mel Gibson still has the juice. But he's going to need better material than this for his cinematic rehabilitation.

"Edge of Darkness" is available on DVD and in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack that includes a digital copy of the film.

Extras are fair to middling. There are four deleted scenes totaling about five minutes. Watching them, one can see why they were left on the cutting room floor.

A nine-part set of featurettes contains a whole lot of glad-handing, but a few juicy tidbits are to be found. Gibson traces the film's roots to 17th century Jacobean revenge tragedies, in which the villains have names that describe their flaws and, as Gibson succinctly puts it, "everybody kills each other in the end."

Knowing he had a one-way-ticket, Craven's character was even supposed to pay for his own funeral, in a scene that was never shot.

Campbell describes the BBC miniseries he directed in the 1980s that formed the basis for this film. The TV version had more political overtones that were jettisoned.

Movie: 2 stars
Extras: 2.5 stars

Review: "Edge of Darkness"

"Edge of Darkness" is a strange, strange movie. Not a terrible one, though its good parts are scattered in a wilderness of discombobulated scenes and disjointed story elements.

Mel Gibson -- in his first starring role in eight years -- plays a familiar archetype, an old-school cop out for revenge after his child is kidnapped/murdered/raped. It's a forceful, effective performance; we believe Gibson as Craven, a Boston detective who becomes unhinged when his daughter Emma (Bojana Navakovic) is gunned down on the front steps of his house.

But unlike, say, last year's "Taken" with Liam Neeson in a similar movie, we never see Craven in any context other than revenge mode. He does not seem to exist as a person outside of roughing up suspects and hunting down clues.

We know he owns a nice house in Roslindale, because that's where the murder took place. Presumably he had a wife once, but she's never mentioned. Craven is a detective, and declines to take a leave of absence, but abandons his own duties (if he ever had any) to pursue his daughter's killers. No one in the chain of command ever questions why he's running around getting into knife fights and highway shoot-outs.

The investigation leads to the doorstep of a corporation called Northmoor, where his daughter worked, and then things really get weird.

In his interview with the Northmoor boss, Craven is immediately put off by the man's elusive answers and strange behavior. The boss is played by Danny Huston, who has been so typecast as the heavy that whenever he first appears onscreen in a film, the audience thinks to itself, "The villain has just arrived." Huston really should talk to his agent about doing a romantic comedy or something just to mix things up.

The strangeness deepens. Northmoor apparently is into some nasty business, with the government's tacit approval, and a spook named Jedburgh is dispatched to take care of things. Jedburgh (Ray Winstone) meets with Craven, talks to him, seems to like him -- while making it clear that he may be inclined to rub Craven out at some indeterminate point in the future.

Director Martin Campbell ("Casino Royale") and screenwriters William Monahan and Andrew Bovell based the film on an old British TV series that Campbell directed. Perhaps that explains the episodic flow of the action, with big events followed by weepy scenes where Craven imagines he's seeing his daughter, still a little girl.

The transitions are abrupt, and often arbitrary.

At one point Craven comes across a name associated with his daughter, goes to the man's house and starts beating the hell out of him. He stops hitting the guy, saying his daughter wouldn't approve, then remembers that she's dead and starts wailing away again.

The audience laughs, and our critical link to Craven's pain shatters in a moment of cheap humor. What's more, the guy he's beating up, who seems bewildered by this assault, then disappears with nary another reference to him.

For all we know, Craven had the wrong address and was pummeling a pharmacist.

As much as I was perplexed by the movie's strange fits, I was never bored by it. I enjoyed the running joke between Jedburgh and Craven that, "Everything's illegal in Massachusetts." Jedburgh, who for some reason is British, wryly suggests it's "payback for the Tea Party."

I doubt "Edge of Darkness" will herald Mel Gibson's return to stardom. He's still a convincing performer, in need of better material.

2 stars