Video review: "Avengers: Endgame"

“Avengers: Endgame” is the culmination of more than a decade of painstaking cinematic world-building. However you feel about the merits of the individual films of the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU), you have to be impressed by the way they coordinated multiple cast members and sets of filmmakers toward this moment.

It’s a great big sprawling movie that incorporates virtually every superhero, from Robert Downey Jr.’s now-venerable Iron Man to Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel, who was just introduced in her own movie earlier this year.

If this feels like end times, that’s because it is.

If you’ll recall at the end of last year’s “Avengers: Infinity Wars,” galactic madman Thanos (Josh Brolin) had succeeded in his quest to gather the all-powerful Infinity Stones from the corners of the galaxy and use them to snuff out half of all life in existence. We watched as billions of people disintegrated into black ash.

This story picks up a few weeks after, as the remnants of the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and other supers track down Thanos in a bid to reverse the apocalypse. They fail, and five years pass.
But then Ant-Man returns with an opportunity to travel through time, steal the Stones from earlier points in history, and make everything right again.

Needless to say, it doesn’t all go according to plan. Without giving anything solid away, suffice it to say that some of the heroes we thought dead return to life, some living ones meet their maker – and some of the deceased stay that way.

Despite being three hours long with literally dozens of characters to keep tabs on, “Avengers: Endgame” still manages to feel like a living, breathing story where we feel the consequences of having all this cosmic power unleashed – and humanity has to bear the brunt of that.

Even though this is definitively the finale for many of the heroes we’ve come to love, it’s also a new beginning as upstarts take their place: Falcon, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and more.

While some people are undoubtedly sick of comic book movies by now, I think I speak for many when I saw: if it’s this good, keep it coming.

Bonus features are quite expansive, and include an audio commentary track by the writers and directors, six deleted scenes, a gag reel and video introduction by directors Joe and Anthony Russo.

There are also seven documentary featurettes: “Remembering Stan Lee,” “Setting the Tone: Casting Robert Downey Jr.,” “A Man Out of Time: Creating Captain America,” “Black Widow: Whatever It Takes,” “The Russo Brothers: Journey to Endgame,” “The Women of the MCU” and “Bro Thor.”

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Video review: "Avengers: Infinity War"

If the first “Avengers” movie felt like a convergence, the point toward which years of disparate superhero film franchises had been building, then the third, “Avengers: Infinity Wars,” is the beginning of the end times.

I don’t say that to mean superhero flicks are on their way out. Anything but. You can take a look at the box office tallies for this movie, “Black Panther” and other recent iterations from the Marvel Comics Universe and know they’re going to keep making them until people stop going.

But my take is that in the hereafter fans of these movies will refer to the genre in terms of “before AIW” and “after AIW.”

This is a game-changing film that takes all our hopes and dreams bound up with the modern mythology of superheroes, and dashes them against the wall. The story arc of dozens of future movies will hinge upon this movie and its sequel, due out next May.

I won’t give anything away for the few people who haven’t seen it, but before “Avengers: Infinity War” came out it was a common parlor game to guess how many characters would die in it, and choose which ones. Afterward… let’s just say a lot of people making picks were right.

You know the story. World-beater Thanos (Josh Brolin) is coming to Earth to claim the last of the Infinity Stones, which will essentially render him all-powerful. His goal: to eradicate half the living beings in the cosmos so the others can prosper on the remaining resources.

This is more than just an Avengers movie, as almost every single hero of all the Marvel franchises make appearances -- the Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man, and so on. There’s too many characters to list, but Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) are the most pivotal.

The plot lines move through a number of smaller battles, culminating in a massive one in the hidden nation of Wakanda. On a number of occasions the heroes have a chance to sacrifice one of the Stones in order to prevent Thanos from collecting them all, and decide that the principle of protecting one life is more important than emulating their enemy’s behavior.

We’ll see how that works out for them.

“Avengers: Infinity War” is the culmination of the superhero cinematic adventure that’s been growing for more than two decades. Where things go from here, I can only wait to see.

Bonus features are good, not great. There’s a feature length commentary track by directors Anthony and Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely; a gag reel; four production documentary shorts totaling about a half-hour; and deleted and extended scenes adding another 10 minutes of footage.

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Review: "Avengers: Infinity War"

We’re 20 years and more than 50 movies into the renaissance of cinematic superheroes, when you count the various iterations of Marvel Comics and the handful of DC. It’s usually a time when middle age sets in, a sort of creative malaise where stars age out of their roles, studios grow covetous of their cash cows and the storytelling inevitably suffers.

Caution, and reliance on tried-and-true formula, becomes the name of the game.

Then here comes “Avengers: Infinity War” to blow everything up in ways we completely didn’t expect or, indeed, would have said could never happen if foretold to us. Watching it, I kept saying to myself, “Well, there’s no way they’re going to go there,” and then they went there, and then they want past there.

This is a dazzling, ambitious, overpowering film experience that gives bracing new life -- and some deaths -- to the superhero genre. This feels like a watershed moment, a paradigm shift. Wherever this type of filmmaking goes, from now on we’ll think of superhero movies in terms of “before” and “after” this film.

Here’s the unpleasantness: the earth-shaking nature of this movie makes it very, very difficult to review. If I were to even hint at half the stuff that happens in this movie, your mind would be blown. I will endeavor to do my best in the rest of this review not to commit any spoilers. I advise you to avoid conversations or social media posts from anyone you don’t trust in that regard.

Things pick up a couple years after the events of “Captain America: Civil War,” with the group cloven by internal strife and government interference. Thanos, the world-conquering villain who’s been alluded to in previous Marvel Cinematic Universe films, finally makes his big push on Earth -- and a number of other planets -- to gather the six Infinity Stones that will give him virtually unconquerable power.

Literally everybody in the MCU appears in this movie, or nearly so. Just listing the cast would take up the rest of this review, but it includes Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.); Norse god Thor (Chris Hemsworth); patriot/headman Captain America (Chris Hemsworth); Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman); Star Lord (Chris Pratt) and the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy crew, notably Gamora (Zoe Saldana), rebel adopted daughter of Thanos, muscleman Drax (Dave Bautista), raccoon pilot/warrior Rocket (Bradley Cooper), and tree creature Groot (Vin Diesel); sorcerer supreme Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch); super-spy Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson); Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen); robot sentinel Vision (Paul Bettany); teen supe Spider-Man (Tom Holland); and many, many more.

Josh Brolin plays Thanos, in an oddly emotive motion-capture CGI performance. He truly believes himself to be the universe’s savior, making the hard choices no one else is willing to. A vaguely purpleish titan with a craggy face and muscles big enough to beat the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) senseless, Thanos pursues ultimate power, and is willing to pay the ultimate price to obtain it.

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, who helmed the last two Captain America movies, from a script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, “Avengers: Infinity War” is an action-packed maelstrom that somehow manages to fit in enough little moments for the actors to let their characters’ essential nature shine through.

I often complain that movies these days ramble on too long, but at 2½ hours, this film flew by. Again, I really don’t want to give anything away, but when the credits started to roll, I truly couldn’t believe the film was going to end the way it does. I was left shocked, amazed, exhausted and spectacularly entertained.

Video review: "Spider-Man: Homecoming"

From a creative standpoint, Spider-Man is deep in middle age, debuting in Marvel Comics some 50-odd years ago. Even as a cinematic hero, Spidey is hardly a newbie, with seven films and three different sets of actors portraying the web-slinger since 2002.

But the latest iteration, “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” is very much a product of teenage angst. Its hero, Peter Parker, is a 15-year-old high school sophomore played by Tom Holland. He’s a pretty typical kid: he’s a nerdy brain on the academic all-stars team, pines for an unattainable senior girl (Laura Harrier) and has a close circle of like-minded friends, chiefly fellow geek Ned (Jacob Batalon).

Except for one thing: he’s also secretly Spider-Man, who sneaks off from school and the Queens apartment of his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) to fight low-level evildoers.

After getting a taste of Avengers action at the behest of Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Peter is eager to leave his dull school life behind and join the super-team full-time. But the invitation seems to have gotten lost in the mail, though Stark did give him a super-suit with a bunch of cool features to help him along.

Michael Keaton plays the villain, who’s not really at the center of the story. He plays the Vulture, aka blue-collar contractor-turned-criminal Adrian Toomes, who parlayed some of the alien technology that fell on Manhattan a few years ago into a thriving underground enterprise. He and Spider-Man run afoul of each other’s activities, with the professional antagonism eventually taking a decidedly personal turn.

Directed by Jon Watts from one of those screenplays-by-committee, “Spider-Man: Homecoming” can be rather uneven at times, with cockeyed action scenes and a little too much silliness for its own good.

But it energetically takes the hero back to his roots, without rehashing old creations myths. (Does anybody need to see that radioactive spider bite thing ever again?)

Holland may just be the best Spider-Man yet, giving us a teen in turmoil who just happens to be able to bench-press a bus.

Bonus features are quite expansive, starting with “The Spidey Study Guide” with all sorts of wiki-style info and clues about the web-head. There are also 10 deleted scenes and seven making-of featurettes, ranging on everything from storyboarding to creating the film’s oft-amazing stunts.

There is also a production photo gallery, a gag reel and more of those hilarious “Rappin’ with Cap” fake public service announcements featuring Chris Evans as Captain America, which were briefly glimpsed in the film.

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Review: "Spider-Man: Homecoming"

“He treats me like I’m a kid!”
“But you ARE a kid.”
“Yeah, but one who can stop a bus with his bare hands!”

The newest film iteration of the most popular hero in the Marvel catalogue, “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” is a lot like a real teenager. It’s uneven, running hot and cold, is more than a little neurotic, self-centered and even annoys you at times.

But the movie is also filled with a vibrancy that practically beams off the screen like a beacon.

I know, I know… it seems crazy to think this is the sixth Spider-Man movie in just 15 years -- plus a featured turn in the last Avengers flick -- with three different sets of stars and filmmakers.

But honestly, I’m not tired of it. Especially when “Homecoming” takes things in quite another direction. More than any other super-hero movie, this Spider-Man is unsure of himself, hesitant, even scared.

Speaking of the number 15, that factors heavily into this conception of the webslinger: that’s how old Peter Parker is supposed to be. Think about that for a moment. Consider what you were like at 15: your decision-making powers, your sense of responsibility, how able you were to resist temptation when it presented itself. Now imagine you can lift a tractor and dodge bullets.

Star Tom Holland was 20 when they shot this movie, but easily passes as a high school sophomore. He uses a tremulous voice and an expressive face to portray a kid struggling to find his place in the world alongside some very unique challenges. His yearning to belong, and to be something more, is palpable and affecting.

As the story opens, Peter is sneaking off from school and shunning any social engagement to work on “the Stark internship” -- the cover story he feeds to his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) and few friends, notably exuberant fellow nerd Ned (Jacob Batalon). That’s a reference to Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, who gave Peter a super-suit to upgrade his red-and-blue underwear. Robert Downey Jr. shows up a few times to mentor or berate, as needs be.

But after helping in the Avengers clash, future missions are not forthcoming. Peter’s texts and calls to Stark and his right-hand man, Happy (Jon Favreau), largely go unanswered. Instead of getting what he really wants -- an invitation to join the Avengers team -- Spidey spends his time fighting petty criminals in and around his home in Queens.

He runs afoul of Adrian Toomes, a blue-collar scrap man who stole some alien technology from the extraterrestrial attack depicted in the first Avengers movie and is turning it into powerful weapons he’s selling on the street. Played by Michael Keaton, Toomes also has his own winged flying suit -- Peter dubs him the Vulture -- and a crew of henchmen, including Bokeem Woodbine as a guy which a shockingly strong prosthetic fist.

It’s not one of the better villains in the Marvel movies, but the filmmakers have made a conscious choice to focus more on the guy behind the Spider-Man mask than concocting some world-beater threat. There’s also no J. Jonah Jameson, Daily Bugle or freelance photographer job.

There are girls, though, specifically two: Liz (Laura Harrier), a smart senior Peter has been crushing on for some time; and Michelle (Zendaya), a morose outsider who always seems to be hanging around the fringes with Peter and Ned, mocking them for their loser status while embracing her own. They’re all on the academic all-star team together (or quiz bowl, as they called it back in my day), so there are opportunities for trips and trysts.

Director Jon Watts nails the angst and turmoil of his protagonist. I wish his action scenes were better-staged, often seeming jagged and off-angle. The screenplay could use some tweaking and trimming, but with six (!) credited writers, we’re definitely wading deep into creation-by-committee territory here.

The movie is clever and full of self-aware humor, such as when they mock the famous upside-down kiss from the first movie. “Spider-Man: Homecoming” wisely doesn’t ignore the previous films, but acknowledges the hero’s mythological middle age while finding a new offshoot that’s young and fresh.

Video review: "Captain America: Civil War"

If it’s possible to enjoy a movie while simultaneously being disappointed by it, then that’s my take on “Captain America: Civil War.” The third in the series with fresh-faced Chris Evans as the revived World War II warrior in the ostensible lead role, what it really is is the third Avengers movie -- the one in which they’ve finally gotten on each other’s nerves enough to trade blows instead of quips.

I kid, I kid. The motivation for the conflict is that the U.S. government has decided to start registering and controlling super-powered beings. People are very nervous and angry about the collateral damage the Avenges incurred while saving the world (twice). This leads to a McCarthyite atmosphere where the lauded heroes are now mocked and feared.

Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), who’s been very ambivalent about continuing in his super-suit anyway, quickly signs on. But Cap argues the patriotic route, saying the Avengers should be free to make their own choices about what is best for the common good. Sides quickly form up, leading to an inevitable showdown.

Because the two heaviest hitters, the Hulk and Thor, are inexplicably nowhere in sight, it’s incumbent upon the filmmakers to bring in some scabs … er, I mean, add-on heroes … to round out the squads.

Many of them we’ve seen before, like Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and the Vision (Paul Bettany). Spider-Man shows up, rebooted for a second time with Tom Holland in the role, and Chadwick Boseman is a muscular presence as Black Panther, an African prince with some animalistic super-duds.

“Captain America: Civil War” contains thrills aplenty, but is miserly when it comes to surprises. You go into it knowing what you’re going to get, but also that you won’t get anything else.

Bonus features are as good as we’ve come to expect from the Marvel Comics adaptations.

There’s a feature-length commentary track with directors Anthony and Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely; deleted and extended scenes; gag reel; sneak peek at “Doctor Strange”; featurettes following the character development of Captain America and Iron Man leading up to civil war; and “United We Stand, Divided We Fall,” a feature-length making-of documentary.

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Review: "Captain America: Civil War"

"Captain America: Civil War” delivers everything you expect, and little more.

Oh, it’s a fun movie, with a grim undertone, the main attraction of which is we get to see super-heroes square off into sides and smack each other around. Marvel Comics did this from their very inception 50+ years ago because they knew fans loved to argue about who would win in a fight between two favorites, such as the Thing and Wolverine.

(Uh, the Thing, of course! H’doy!!)

This is the sort of movie that hits its marks, gives you the gleeful battles between supes, but doesn’t really challenge our expectations or raise the stakes. It belongs in the second tier of Marvel movies, along with both previous “Captain America” films.

The setup is based on a huge storyline Marvel did a while back that essentially engulfed all of their titles, in which the government decided to register and control all super-powered beings. Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) headed up the different factions, one in favor and the other opposed.

For narrative cohesion and budgetary purposes, here the civil war is restricted to just the Avengers and a few new recruits. (Hey, even a $200 budget and a 2½-hour running time can only encompass so much.)

Cap, being a law and order sort, would side with the government, you’d think, and freebooting billionaire Stark is a natural fit to lead the rebels. But it actually goes the other way, and directors Anthony and Joe Russo, plus screenwriters Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus -- all holdovers from “Captain America: The Winter Soldier -- spend a lot of time mapping out the psychological battle of wills between the two men.

Too much, really. If the movie has a flaw it’s that it’s too much talkie-talkie and not enough punchy-punchy. Though there is plenty of the latter, to be fair.

The plot is just a series of excuses to set up conflict. It starts with the premise that people worldwide are enraged by the innocent bystanders who have been killed while the Avengers were busy saving the world from one intergalactic threat or another. Many, including the U.S. secretary of defense (William Hurt), seem incapable of adding up the millions who otherwise would’ve been killed.

Stark, who’s been wobbly on staying in the super business, quickly signs on, while Cap trusts in the Avengers to make the right choices rather than bureaucrats. Sides quickly form up, with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the Vision (Paul Bettany) going with Stark and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) sticking to Cap.

(The big green guy is conspicuously absent, other than a brief shout-out, and Thor’s neither seen nor heard of.)

Three-on-three’s not really a very exciting fight, so other characters are pulled in, including Iron Man knockoff War Machine (Don Cheadle), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), fresh off his own movie, and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), fresh out of retirement.

The new guy on the block is Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), an African king with a feline super-suit. The new-ish guy is teen webslinger Spider-Man, now rebooted for the third time, with Tom Holland taking over the role of nerdy high-schooler Peter Parker. Both fellows will soon headline their own solo pictures, so you know they’re not in any serious danger.

The action centerpiece of the movie is a full-out battle between the two sides on an airport tarmac. It’s more about egos than anger, and with all the quipping we get the distinct sense punches are being pulled. Ant-Man plays an unexpectedly outsized role in the fight.

The bad guy’s a bit of a low-key dude, a non-super guy played by Daniel Brühl, who holds a lot of cards up his sleeve. He soon gains control of Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Captain America’s old war buddy, who had his mind seized by villainous forces long ago.

I enjoyed “Captain America: Civil War,” even if they’ve micro-sized the conflict for easier audience consumption. I wouldn’t call the movie lazy, but it seems to start with a presumption of limits -- places characters won’t go and things that aren’t going to happen. This movie entertains, but never surprises.

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.

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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 Judge"

One of my favorite pieces of obscure movie dialogue is from “Casablanca.” An old German married couple is practicing their halting English before leaving for America, and the husband asks her the time. “Liebchen, what watch?” “Ten watch.” “Such much?”

I thought of this while watching “The Judge,” a dramatic star vehicle for Robert Downey Jr., which he also produced. It has a solid premise and terrific performances by Downey and Robert Duvall (who deservedly earned an Oscar nomination for his work). But the movie is so overloaded with secondary characters and needless subplots the main dynamic is left weakened.

This is an ambitious film that suffers from a case of “such much.”

Downey plays Hank Palmer, a big-city attorney summoned back to his tiny backward Indiana hometown after the death of his mother. He and his dad, Joseph (Duvall), a prominent local judge, have never seen eye-to-eye, and it would seem that after the unpleasantness of the funeral they are both fully prepared to never speak again.

Then the judge is accused of deliberately running down the town miscreant – whom he sent to prison long ago – and Hank must defend him in court against a high-roller prosecutor (Billy Bob Thornton) brought in special to bring the elder Palmer down. The latter half or so of the movie is dominated by the trial, with all three actors spouting crackling dialogue and chewing the scenery. Good stuff.

But then there’s “the other.” An old flame of Hank’s (Vera Farmiga) now runs the local bar and seems to have an open window to his innermost psyche. His brothers are a cantankerous ex-pro baseball prospect and a feeble-minded boy/man who makes 8mm movies. Hank’s estranged daughter shows up for a visit. And a young town chick is looking for a hookup. And the prosecutor’s got a personal grudge against the Palmers. And it goes on.

Director David Dobkin and screenwriter Nick Schenk keep piling on the tertiary material, until the weight of it threatens to topple the delicate balance of volatile personalities that are the core of the film’s ample appeal.

“The Judge” is still worth watching, if only to see these veteran actors ply their craft. But when it comes to storytelling, sometimes having “such much” results in subtraction by addition.

Bonus features are merely adequate. The DVD has only a single featurette, “Getting Deep With Dax Shepard” (who has a small, funny part as an inept local attorney). Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack and you add a commentary track by Dobkin (so disappointing not to have Downey along for the ride!) plus deleted scenes with their own commentary.

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Review: "The Judge"

“The Judge” has all the hallmarks of a labor of love, and all the weaknesses. It features a couple of top-notch performances but it’s overlong and meandering, including a lot of stuff better left on the cutting room floor -- or better yet, in the screenwriters’ wastebasket.

The film stars Robert Downey Jr., who is the producer and put the project together with his wife, Susan, to create a legal drama in the vein of “The Verdict” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Unlike “The Verdict,” which was a character piece that should’ve won Paul Newman an Oscar, “The Judge” is more of a star vehicle for Downey to do what he does best.

We’ve seen him play this character for a while now, which is a variation on Downey’s own star persona -- super-smart guy, light-speed verbosity, can be alternately charming and bullying, a fundamentally good man who sometimes has to convince others, and himself, of that fact.

In this iteration he is Hank Palmer, a high-powered attorney who escaped his hated tiny hometown of Carlinville, Ind., but is called back after a tragedy, and then must deal with another. His opposite is his father, Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall), an upstanding local judge for the past 42 years who regards Hank as an unwanted guest. There’s obviously an ocean of bad blood between these two.

Nick Schenk wrote the screenplay, later fixed up by Bill Dubuque, from a story that director David Dobkin and Downey (uncredited) came up with. Dobkin is a curious choice, known entirely for comedies both good (“Wedding Crashers”) and not so much (“Fred Claus”).

I think Dobkin needed to stand up to his star/boss a little more, and reel in some of the more sprawling aspects of the story and Downey’s performance. Downey is an amped-up powerhouse of a performer, much in the vein of John Malkovich, and left to his own devices tends to chew up the scenery. He does enjoy a few quieter moments where he’s just reacting to people or circumstances, and those are his best in the movie.

(Full disclosure: I interviewed Dobkin and Downey for a local TV station at the Indianapolis premiere, and had to miss the first 10 minutes or so of the movie to do so.)

Duvall is just splendid, and his performance only seems to grow sharper as the movie goes on. Judge Palmer is cussed and cantankerous, and demonstrates little superficial love to his two other sons, Glen (Vincent D’Onofrio), a former baseball prospect gone to seed, and Dale (Jeremy Strong), the mentally impaired baby who spends most of his time fiddling with 8mm film. To Hank, he shows only open hostility.

Things grow more complicated when the judge is charged with running down a man on a bicycle with his car, and Hank is eventually brought in to defend him, after the local yokel attorney/antique dealer (Dax Shepard) proves spectacularly unequal to the task.

The last half of the movie is mostly taken up by the trial, as Hank faces off with a slick prosecutor brought in special from Gary named Dwight Dickham (an intimidating Billy Bob Thornton), who seems to bear some kind of grudge against the Palmers.

There’s a strong through-line of a narrative in “The Judge,” but also way too many unnecessary elements. We’ve got Hank hooking up with an old flame (Vera Farmiga), who adores Hank for all his faults, including “that hyper-verbal vomit thing you do” -- which is a much better description of this Downey trait than the one I gave above.

And there’s drama about the dashing of Glen’s major league dreams, the death of the judge’s wife, a nasty old criminal case that haunts the current proceedings, a visit from Hank’s daughter, a kittenish bartender at the local pub (Leighton Meester) who hooks up with him and is later revealed to be … well, it’s just creepy.

There’s a lot good going on in “The Judge.” But at 141 minutes it needed a serious editing trim and/or screenplay rethink to hone it down. The essence is a triangle story with Downey, Duvall and Thornton each supporting one leg, and you don’t really need anything beyond that to muddy things up.

Video review: "Iron Man 3"

After three outings plus an Avengers tie-in movie, Iron Man is showing his rust.

What once was a fun, zippy roller-coaster ride of a super-hero franchise has quickly devolved into a predictably dark-and-dreary phase. Much like with the last Batman movie, the man behind the mask has grown tired of wearing it, and spends much more time stewing in his personal pit of despair than battling bad guys.

Here Tony Stark is facing confidence problems in the wake of battling aliens, and suffers panic attacks. Robert Downey Jr. still has that rapscallion twinkle in his eye, but he has fewer opportunities to show off his motor-mouth charm.

 Lady love Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) is demanding that he give up the whole super-hero shtick. But with a mysterious terrorist named the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) blowing up stuff all over the world, that isn’t about to happen.

New director Shane Black and screenwriter Drew Pearce opt for the buffet approach to storytelling: throw in a little bit of everything, and hope people find something they like. The result is a hot mess of action scenes, male posturing and political plots.

It’s capped off by a ridiculous finale where Stark summons all forty-odd versions of the Iron Man suit to come fight for him, remotely controlled by computer. If he could do that, why didn’t he roll with an entire platoon of automaton Iron Men wherever he went?

“Iron Man 3” isn’t a bad movie, but clearly the red-and-gold avenger has lost much of his luster.
Video features are quite good, though you’ll have to go for the Blu-ray/DVD edition to get the best stuff. The DVD version has only a making-of documentary and a featurette about shooting the Air Force One scene.

Get the combo upgrade and you add a gag reel, deleted and extended scenes, and a feature-length commentary by writer/director Black and co-screenwriter Pearce. You also get a behind-the scenes sneak peek at “Thor: The Dark World” and an all-new short film featuring S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Carter (Hayley Atwell).

Along with a new TV show, another Captain America flick and the inevitable Avengers sequel, Marvel is building a whole super-universe.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "Iron Man 3"

"Iron Man" was a zippy, giddy take on the superhero genre, with Robert Downey Jr. as our over-caffeinated but charming stewardess on a cinematic zero-g flight into the stratosphere. Then there was "Iron Man 2" because, well, the laws of economics more or less demanded it, even if it offered audiences little more than an obligatory dark-n-dreary phase.

And then came "The Avengers," the harmonic convergence of several comic book movie franchises, proving that sometimes more is more. Unfortunately, it's left Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, with little reason to keep hanging around in his third solo outing.

Downey is back with that rapscallion twinkle in his eye, his nervous tics and motormouth line delivery revealing a man too smart to be comfortably constrained by the mortal limits of his fleshy cocoon. He quotes an anecdote that Albert Einstein only slept three hours a year, and it's clear from Stark's tone that he begrudges even that much time spent away from his gear-happy lair, tinkering away on never-ending improvements to his array of super-suits.

In his own imitable wobbly way, Stark/Downey is the steadying force that keeps the "Iron Man" movies together.

Unfortunately, director Shane Black, who co-wrote the screenplay with Drew Pearce, have come up with a story that's like a buffet line -- they couldn't really decide on a recipe, so they just threw in a little of everything.

Want more snappy banter between Stark and best friend/security wingman Happy (played by Jon Favreau, former director now demoted to sidekick)? It's there, tiredly. And relationship tensions between him and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), his lady love and now head cheese of Stark Industries? Ditto.

There's also some stuff about the after-effects of Stark's battles with critters from outer space in the Avengers flick, leading to one or two full-out panic attacks. It seems the uber-arrogant playboy/inventor/savior of mankind actually has confidence issues.

"Gods? Aliens? I'm a man in a can," he moans.

The world is being threatened by a mastermind terrorist named the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), who dresses like a pasha and speaks like a Mississippi Baptist preacher while setting off mysterious bombs that leave no trace of their mechanical origin. He being a movie villain, Mandarin has to do this live on TV, hacking every station in the country at once, simultaneously.

Worse yet, the Mandarin apparently has all these strange henchmen who sort of glow red from the inside, can make things extremely hot by touching them and heal amazingly fast.

A few new characters float around the edges. There's Maya (Rebecca Hall), a botanist and former Stark fling who's found a way to "hack the operating system of a creature's DNA," or something. And Aldrich Killian, who we see in a 1999 flashback looking homely and walking with a crutch, who later turns up as handsome as Guy Pearce.

Don Cheadle returns as Jim Rhodes, who wears an older version of Stark's suite and serves the U.S. government as War Machine ... wait, check that, they redub him Iron Patriot after the name tests better with focus groups.

There are a few exciting action sequences, but the overall effect is more discombobulating than exhilarating. Stark jumps from situation to situation, and -- thanks to some new technology -- from suit to suit so quickly, it never really feels like there are real consequences to the mayhem.

Late in the game, Stark narrates a lament about how many geniuses start out with great intentions, but then compromises and complications bring down their best efforts. It's an apt metaphor for super-hero movies, which start out with a cool premise and M.O. Then as time goes by, the mythology gets junked up with tertiary characters and subplots.

Maybe that's why in the comic book world, every so often they reboot a character by returning him or her to their roots, which are reimagined for a fresh start. With "Iron Man 3," they've taken this hardware as far as it can go.

Video review: "The Avengers"

Even if you're not a fan of superhero movies, you've got to appreciate "The Avengers" for its near-perfect execution of everything great about the genre.

Start with the obvious: instead of one person wielding super-awesome powers and abilities, this flick's got six: Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Black Widow, Captain American and Hawkeye. Four of them have already been featured in their own solo movies, so "The Avengers" represents one big honkin' pot of hero gumbo where they get thrown into the mix together.

Their investigable clashes result in a movie that's a helluva lot funnier than you'd expect.

Then add in a terrific villain, Thor's half-brother Loki, who has recruited a mysterious race of alien creatures to attack Earth at his behest. Loki snivels and pouts, boasts and taunts, and is wonderfully delicious to hate.

Finally, give credit to director Joss Whedon for delivering a film that's packed with action, but doesn't seem overwhelmed by computer-generated effects. The fight scenes are crisply and clearly staged, so even though the characters are doing extraordinary things they remain entirely comprehensible.

Just as movies based on comic books seem to have hit middle age, with many franchises falling back on reboots and tired storylines, "The Avengers" are hitting their stride.

The movie is available on home video in four iterations: a single-disc DVD, two-disc DVD combo pack, two-disc Blu-ray or four-disc "Super Set" with both formats.

Video features are good, though you have to pay for the higher-end sets to get the really good stuff. The DVD comes with a feature-length commentary track by Whedon, plus a making-of feature about assembling the team of heroes and the actors who played them.

The centerpiece of the Blu-ray edition is "A Second Screen Experience," an interactive database of images and video that take you deep in the Marvel Comics universe. Unfortunately, it's only accessible with a Blu-ray-equipped laptop computer, iPhone or iPad.
Other goodies bridge the gap. There's "Marvel One-Shoot: Item 47," an original short film, a featurette on the visual effects in the film, gag reel, deleted scenes and "Live To Rise" music video.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras:3 stars

Review: "The Avengers"

Critics are not supposed to be dispassionate – we are, after all, in the business of offering opinions – but there is an expectation of a certain level of restraint, of being the impartial observer as opposed to the slobbering fanboy. So I regret to inform you of my failing, a moment during “The Avengers” when my fist pumped the air jubilantly and I bellowed, “Oh, YEAH!!!”

Even worse: I do not regret my outburst.

The long-awaited superhero supergroup is finally assembled, and their film does not disappoint. It’s a smashmouth extravaganza of outsized proportions, six heroes reluctantly brought together to battle a deliciously hateful villain who’s got an army of hideous alien boogums in tow.

The fight scenes are frequent, frenetic and tremendously well-done. For once, the action is not sliced and diced into an incomprehensible flurry of edited morsels -- cinematic death by a thousand cuts. How wonderful it is to watch someone capable of doing things that are otherworldly, and yet it remains perfectly comprehensible.

In addition to battling the bad guys, the supes often tangle with each other. It’s a delicious carryover from the Marvel Comics universe, whose creators knew entire generations of kids grew up arguing over how a throw-down between Iron Man and Thor would play out.

Now we know. And it’s a helluva a lot of fun finding out.

Writer/director Joss Whedon does a yeoman’s job of balancing a sprawling cast of heroes, giving each of them enough scenes and character moments to make them register as more than CGI-assisted brawlers.
He’s helped by the fact that four of the six were previously featured in their own solo films. (Though the Hulk only partially counts, since two previous iterations of the green behemoth in the past decade – each starring a different actor than this movie – have been quasi-disowned.)

In case you weren’t up to speed already, here’s the roll call:

Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) is billionaire Tony Stark wrapped in a metal super-suit that allows him to fly and blow things up. A boozy rebel, Stark has a hard time playing well with others.

The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is brilliant scientist in self-imposed exile, because when angered he turns into a raging green beast of destruction. Ruffalo brings a brittle tension under the placid surface, forever worried about letting "the other guy" out.

Captain America (Chris Evans) is literally a bygone relic of long ago, a World War II Nazi-kicker who was frozen and revived. The sole successful result of the Super Soldier experiment, Captain represents the peak of human physical perfection, though he feels rootless in a strange new world.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is, literally, a god -- the Norse god of thunder. And he has the ego of a god, along with incredible strength, the weather at his command and a magic hammer made for smiting. He also views the Earth as his own private protectorate, and isn't terribly pleased when others start mussing it up.

The other two members of the team are, by definition, B-listers since they've only previously shown up as supporting characters in the other flicks. They're also regular humans with no special powers but their incredible skills: Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is a super-spy legend, pairing hand-to-hand combat skills with unparalleled subterfuge; Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is a master bowman whose quarrel always has some new tricks at the ready.

Loki, Thor's evil brother, returns from exile to seize the Tesseract, a mysterious object capable of limitless power. He plans to use it to open a portal to bring through the Chitauri, a chitinous alien race that ostensibly are his allies. Tom Hiddleston plays Loki with zest and glee, smiling and sneering.

Loki is also the reason for that "Oh, yeah!" moment -- you'll know it when you see it.

The movie is also surprisingly funny at times, with Stark providing most of the comic relief via snappy one-liners. After his fight with Thor: "No hard feelings, Point Break. You pack a mean swing."

What a way to kick off the summer. "The Avengers" is everything you've been hoping for, and more.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Due Date"

Let's not endure any illusions that "Due Date" is anything other than a raunchy updating of 1987's "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" from the director and breakout star of "The Hangover."

Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis play the Steve Martin and John Candy roles as, respectively, an uptight professional type trying to get home to his family and a wacky interloper who screws up his plans, steering him straight into road trip comedy territory.

Over time, the jerk realizes he's a jerk, and comes to accept his dim-witted, accident-prone traveling companion as his new best friend, embracing the chaos that's been introduced into his stale little life.

Todd Phillips, who directed and co-wrote the script (along with three other guys I don't feel like mentioning) adroitly sets up the big laughs, of which there are plenty. He really knows how to use Galifianakis' strange, beetle-brow peevish charm to comic effect.

My big problem with the movie is that I just didn't buy these two guys as real people. Since I don't believe them as legitimate characters who could exist in the real world, I didn't feel anything for them when the movie turns mushy and serious.

It's pretty obvious that Ethan Tremblay (Galifianakis) is a movie-made edifice. He's a wannabe actor heading to Hollywood who's colossally clueless about acting, and movies, and basic human interaction.

When asked if he knows who Shakespeare is, he insists that he's a pirate, and that it's pronounced "Shakesbeard." After mimicking Marlon Brando's opening speech in "The Godfather" (badly and inaccurately), Ethan demurs when asked if he wrote that, saying "the Mafia did."

"'Two and a Half Men' is the reason I wanted to become an actor," Ethan says without guile. "Especially the second season."

Ethan carries around a tiny pug dog named Sonny, has a prissy little walk like he's trying to balance a fresh egg between his thighs, and is toting his father's ashes cross-country.

Such a bizarre assortment of ticks strains credulity, but even the supposed straight man seems implausible.

As played by Downey, Peter Highman is an architect who's built a cathedral of ironic detachment around himself. When Ethan (or anyone) behaves in a way Peter thinks infringes on his sensibilities, his reaction is to do a dead-pan patter and project exasperation that such a thing could possibly happen to him.

He doesn't actually roll his eyes, but you can feel him doing it internally.

The set-up is that Ethan gets both of them thrown off the plane from Atlanta to Los Angeles by repeatedly mentioning the words "bomb" and "terrorist," and then Peter's insufferable attitude toward the flight crew does the rest. Having lost his ID, Peter can't even rent a car to get back home in time for the birth of his first child.

You can guess the rest yourself. Forced to share a car with Ethan, they proceed to get into one scrape after another, with Peter growing progressively vexed and Ethan perpetually oblivious to it.

The script borrows from "Planes, Trains" again and again. There's a bit where Ethan falls asleep at the wheel, and another where Peter looks over at Ethan and hallucinates him into a demonic figure. All that's missing is the "two pillows" joke.

I don't mind a clever tip of the hat to another, better movie. But "Due Date" steals so often and so shamelessly that, despite an abundance of genuinely funny moments, we're happy when the ride ends.

2.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Iron Man 2"

"Iron Man 2" was still fun, but just didn't have the polish of the 2008 summer hit. With only two years between films, the sequel was bound to feel slapdash and hurried-up.

Robert Downey Jr. returns as Tony Stark, brilliant billionaire owner of a multi-national corporation. Having outed himself as the man behind the Iron Man mask, Stark has been living it up, forcing evildoers into hiding and giving the high hat to congressional committees to boot.

But things are worrisome behind the glitzy veneer: The gizmo in Stark's chest that powers the super-suit and keeps his damaged heart pumping is slowly poisoning him. And Ivan Vanko, son of an old business partner of Stark's daddy, wants revenge for perceived injustices. Vanko builds his own super-suit complete with freaky power-whips, which he uses to nearly kill Stark.

Other players emerge from the periphery.

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is still talking about putting a team of super-heroes together. He plants Scarlett Johansson as Stark's secretary, whose skills go beyond Excel spreadsheets. Right-hand woman Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) still yearns for Stark's affections, and old buddy James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) is raring to become his super-suited sidekick.

Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) is some sort of Steve Jobs-meets-war profiteer competitor of Stark's who soon partners up with Vanko.

Watching "Iron Man 2" feels obligatory, like getting off a roller-coaster and climbing right back on again: Now that you know where the loops and drops are, it's not quite as thrilling.

The film is available in a two-disc DVD set, or a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. Extras are good on DVD, moving to fabulous with the combo.

The DVD includes a digital copy -- all too rare these days; usually studios reserve that for the Blu-ray. There's a feature-length commentary by director Jon Favreau, four deleted scenes, two making-of featurettes, and a music video.
The Blu-ray combo has all that, and tons more.

The first disc includes the "S.H.I.E.L.D. Data Vault" -- an interactive pop-up feature with behind-the-scenes goodies. There's also previsualization and animatics of the special effects.

Disc two includes an extensive making-of documentary, four more deleted scenes, four more featurettes, and a gallery of concept art.

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Iron Man 2"

This sequel was hyped as the dark-and-dreary Iron Man in which Tony Stark, having conquered the world in a red-and-gold super-suit, descends into the depths of inner turmoil.

Turns out it's more a milk chocolate coating of darkness. Stark's problems magically disappear about halfway through at the touch of a button. Bing! Oh well, this ain't Hamlet.

I mostly liked "Iron Man 2," but after the pure adrenaline kick of the first movie -- coupled with Robert Downey Jr.'s affable rake of a protagonist -- any follow-up was bound to be a comedown.

For those not up to speed: Brilliant billionaire/playboy Stark invented the Iron Man suit to escape from terrorists, and decided he liked the thrill. Rather than deal with the whole cumbersome alter-ego thing, Stark outed himself as a super-hero to all the world.

Fast forward six months, and tranquility has broken out all over the globe -- mostly because everyone's afraid to tangle with the golden boy. Stark haughtily refuses the government's attempt to appropriate his technology.

"I have successfully privatized world peace!" he declares at a freewheeling congressional hearing that even Joe "BFD" Biden might find a tad informal.

One guy who isn't thrilled is Ivan Vanko -- played by Mickey Rourke, chewing a heavy Cyrillic accent while looking decidedly un-Russian in long dreadlocks and gold teeth. Vanko's daddy co-created the energy technology behind the Iron Man suit along with Stark's pap, and isn't happy about getting kicked to the curb.

So Vanko fixes up his own power suit complete with energy whips, which he uses to nearly kill Stark at a grand prix in which he's driving.

(For comic book geeks, Rourke's character appears to be an amalgamation of the Crimson Dynamo and Blacklash villains.)

Vanko is defeated, but isn't down for long with the help of Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), a business competitor of Stark's who wants the top spot on the military-industrial complex pyramid.

Gwyneth Paltrow returns as Pepper Potts, Stark's right-hand woman and wannabe love interest, and Don Cheadle takes over (from Terrence Howard) the role of James Rhodes, Stark's best friend and liaison to the military.

New on the scene is Scarlett Johansson as Natalie Rushman, the mysterious new assistant at Stark Industries, who busts out a few nifty moves you couldn't draw up on a legal pad.

One-eyed Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who had a brief cameo at the end of the first flick, turns up again, still murmuring about putting together a team. Based on the speed at which Fury is gathering recruits, I can only imagine how long the clubhouse will take to build.

Director Jon Favreau has a good vibe for this material, somewhere between fanboy fetish for comic lore and recognizing the need to move the story along. With just two years between films, screenwriter Justin Theroux had to improvise on the fly, and as a result the plot often jumps from Point A to Point D without concerning itself much with B or C.

For example, the Stark-Rhodes relationship gets lost in the shuffle of finding some way to cram Rhodey into a modified version of the super-suit -- thus becoming War Machine, Iron Man's sidekick. It's hard to buy that Stark's oldest buddy, having stuck his neck out for him innumerable times, would acquiesce without a peep when his military bosses conspire with Hammer.

It's all a set-up, of course, for a showdown between the Iron Men and Vanko.

This duplication of suits summons a ponderable for the super-hero genre: What happens when super-powers reside not in the person but something they wear, which can be stolen or become obsolete? Stark himself reasons he's got a window of a few years to reign as top badass before the technological gap between his gear and everybody else's closes.

That's the problem with hardware, and movies that rely on it: What's cool today is scrap tomorrow.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "Sherlock Holmes"

"Sherlock Holmes" at least has the good manners to be honest about its intentions: It's an amped-up, action-packed take on the iconic British detective, with calm deductive reasoning and deerstalker hats jettisoned for lots of science nerd tech-talk, slo-mo explosions and knife fights.
It's "CSI: Victorian Age."

Guy Ritchie brings his distinctive feverish directing style to the Industrial Age crime procedural. Robert Downey Jr., as Holmes, likes to go about bare-chested and relishes getting into brawls, so he can map out his bone-crunching moves beforehand -- thus, we get to see his fights twice, first in slow time and then sped up.

This version of Holmes also possesses observational powers that border on superhuman; after a brief glance at a person, he can tell you everything about them from their occupation to their progeny. He can discern exact chemical compositions from odor or taste.

I don't necessarily object to this modernized version of Sherlock Holmes -- the conception of the sleuth as a charming gentleman, best exemplified by actor Basil Rathbone in a swath of midcentury films, had grown rather quaint. And Holmes' knowledge of martial arts and boxing are part of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories.

But Ritchie, Downey and a slew of writers seem so intent on branding their Holmes a bold departure, they forget to assemble a believable character.

Downey plays the detective as an obsessive scoundrel, who when he's not solving crimes goes into extended periods of torpor and pharmacological experimentation. The actor uses a clipped delivery designed to mask a middling British accent.

Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, Holmes' right-hand man and best friend. As the story opens, Watson is leaving their shared house and partnership to settle down with an eligible lady (Kelly Reilly), so there's a bit of tension between them.

Holmes' own romantic entanglement arrives in the form of Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), the only criminal ever to give Holmes the slip -- twice. She and Holmes play a cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship, with Irene's exact loyalties in doubt.

The plot is an utterly forgettable mishmash of black magic and science, with the mysterious Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) as the bogeyman. The story opens with Holmes and Watson catching Blackwood in the act of a dark sacrificial ritual, but he somehow survives his hanging execution to wreak havoc on London.

His plan is to enlist the aid of the Temple of the Four Orders, a variation on the old Masonic legends, in taking over the world.

The action scenes are quite a lot of fun, if a bit hard to follow at times. I especially liked Holmes' facing off with a giant French thug who actually gets to spout better one-liners than the hero.
This new "Sherlock Holmes" strives desperately to be new and fresh, and the strain of the effort shows.

2.5 stars

DVD review: "The Soloist"

I don't usually do this sort of thing. But if you're one of those people who skipped going to see "The Soloist" in theaters -- and judging by its modest box office receipts, that's most of you -- then you owe it to yourself to see this movie on video.

The best drama of the first half of 2009, "The Soloist" is not a crowd-pleasing film that hits the expected inspirational notes in its tale of two fractured souls. It's the story of a pair of men who are each in their own way damaged as humans, and find a bit of solace in their unexpected friendship.

But they do not fundamentally change as people. As the end credits roll, Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr., in a career-capping performance) is still a lonely newspaper columnist cut off from those around him, and Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx) is still suffering from schizophrenia, and playing his music on the streets.

What makes their journey indispensible is the exploration of how their friendship gives them a sense of meaning that allows them to carry on, despite their differing challenges. Lopez writes about Ayers in his column, and Ayers is allowed to deepen his passion for music.

The DVD arrives with a healthy set of extras. There's a 20-minute making-of documentary, five deleted scenes, a short featurette with the real Nathaniel Ayers and Steve Lopez, a look at the dire homeless situation in Los Angeles, and a short animated film about a woman who loses her home.

All of this is somewhat rote, although the commentary track by director Joe Wright is refreshing for his tendency to ramble on amusingly about what inspired him while shooting particular scenes. One interesting revelation is that while Wright encouraged his actors to improvise dialogue, Foxx's disjointed speeches and strange verbal associations were taken directly from Susannah Grant's screenplay.

Movie: B+
Extras: B