Review: "Midway"

What a good old-fashioned rip-roarer war picture. “Midway” is the sort of movie they made 40 to 60 years ago starring John Wayne or Henry Fonda and a bunch of other guys, but with modern CGI effects for the extravaganza air-and-sea battles.

I went in skeptical that famously schmaltzy conductor of disaster flicks, director Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day”), would deliver anything more than another soulless special effects showcase. But paired with screenwriter Wes Tooke, a rookie to feature film scripts, and a solid cast of square-jawed actors of varying fame, I left amazed and more than a little shook.

The aerial combat scenes are just flabbergastingly good. The pilots careen and yaw all over the screen, a concerto of impacts and explosions sounding all around them. There are plenty of dogfights with Japanese Zeroes, with cutaways to how it all looks from the ground.

Best of all are the bombing runs, as the Americans tip tail over nose and dive seemingly straight down vertically, the Japanese aircraft carriers blasting a storm cloud of flak into their faces, pulling up at only the very last moment. Their wingtips kiss the ocean surface before climbing again.

It’s like taking a ride on the world’s longest, deepest roller coaster ridden by yowling demons bound straight for the fiery furnaces of hell.

The story actually sets up the war in the Pacific beginning at Pearl Harbor and all through the important military developments before Midway, including the battle at Marshall Islands and the James Doolittle (Aaron Eckhart) raid on Tokyo. The last hour or so of the movie is the titular battle, which is generally regarded as the turning point of the war.

Like a lot of old-school war flicks, the action flips back and forth between the pilots and ship captains on the front lines with the commanders and intelligence boys back at HQ, and does a good job of seeing how one group played off the other.

Patrick Wilson is Edwin Layton, a dweeby intelligence officer who predicted the attack on Pearl, and now has to pluck up the courage to convince the top brass to rely on the info from his team, which includes military band members turned into codebreakers. Woody Harrelson (!) plays Admiral Chester Nimitz, put in charge of the Pacific effort while most of the fleet was sunken or smoking.

Ed Skrein is terrific as Dick Best, the prototypical hotshot cowboy pilot who flies like he doesn’t care about coming back. Then he’s placed in command and has to become the shepherd to a flock of green newbies. He’s got a sort of hunched-over, laconic rascal charm. Think Han Solo by way of Jersey.

Luke Evans is Wade McClusky, the by-the-book commander who clashes with Best, and Luke Kleintank is Best’s buddy, Clarence Dickinson, another crackerjack pilot. Dennis Quaid plays Vice Admiral William Halsey, Mandy Moore is Best’s wife, Anne, and Nick Jonas plays a puckish machinist who gets into the action.

Surprisingly, nearly all of the characters are actual historical figures. The Japanese commanders are even given plenty of scenes so we can size up the strategy from their side. Though this isn’t an “equal sides” type of film production along the lines of “Tora! Tora! Tora!”.

There's even a little ode to filmmaker John Ford, who happened to be on hand at Midway the day of attack, producing some seminal documentary footage.

The film’s a bit long at 138 minutes -- so many are these days, it seems. I long for a time when editors were powers in Hollywood and had agency to tighten, tighten, tighten. Today’s movies are like Robert De Niro’s out-of-shape scenes in “Raging Bull.” They still can pack a punch, but the flab is distracting.

Still, a few talkie scenes that run long and some clanky dialogue aside, “Midway” is a terrific piece of throwback entertainment that actually gets the history right.

Video review: "White House Down"

Big, dumb and fun – that’s the definition of what a good summer popcorn movie should be, and “White House Down” delivers on all counts. This big-budget thriller bombed hard at the box office, but now that it’s hitting video you’ve got the perfect chance to indulge in its schlocky charm.

Jamie Foxx plays President of the United States James Sawyer, in a thinly-veiled riff on our real-life POTUS. And Channing Tatum plays John Cale, a D.C. cop looking to break into the Secret Service. While on a job interview at the White House, it gets invaded by a pack of right-wing paramilitary types.

Cale gets to pose as Bruce Willis in the “Die Hard” movies, the lone do-gooder trapped in a confined space with nihilistic terrorists and a bunch of helpless captives – including his own young daughter (Joey King). Bloody mayhem ensues, and before long the wannabe guardian and the cat-cool president have teamed up to take out the bad guys.

Watching these two trade quips like a buddy-cop duo is both silly and sublime. Because the movie is in on the joke of how goofy it is, we’re invited to laugh along rather than at it.

To call the plot improbable is a compliment. It’s a totally absurd hodgepodge of gunfights and one-liners, culminating in a car chase around the White House grounds with RPGs flying hither and thither.

It may have all the plausibility of a teenager’s video game, but this movie is a total gas.

Video goodies are ample and lightweight, just like the movie. The DVD comes with four making-of featurettes, focusing on the two stars, supporting cast, stunts and director Roland Emmerich – a seasoned hand at flicks like this (“Independence Day”).

Opt for the Blu-ray version and you add a gag reel and nine more featurettes focusing on various aspects of production, including what it’s like to recreate the White House down to the smallest detail – and then blow it all up.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "White House Down"

I think I’ve put my finger on what this summer’s spate of movies has been sorely lacking: fun.

Everything’s so gosh darn dark. Iron Man’s wrestling with his psyche. Superman’s all angsty. Vin Diesel can’t spare a smirk. Heck, the new “Star Trek” flick put “Darkness” in the title. Even the comedies have seemed more a chore than a lark.

Count on Roland Emmerich, the auteur of disaster/action spectacle, to remind us what summer movies should be all about: goofy, cheeky, action-packed and silly. The man who launched his Hollywood career blowing up the White House in “Independence Day” now merely has terrorists invade it in “White House Down.”

And it’s up to one lone lawman to rescue the likable President, perforate the bad guys, save a cute kid and give an inside-man-turned-traitor his comeuppance -- preferably messily.

If this plot sounds overly familiar, that’s because we saw almost the exact same story in this spring’s “Olympus Has Fallen.” Which, come to think of it, was also one of the year’s most enjoyable cinematic jaunts.

Whereas “Olympus” was grim and tight, “Down” is giddy and loose. Emmerich and screenwriter James Vanderbilt infuse plenty of light moments and outright humor into the proceedings. Leads Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx take these soft pitches and gleefully wallop them over the wall, at times resembling a buddy-comedy duo.

You might think all the hoots would undermine the action sequences. But in acknowledging its own preposterousness, the movie invites us to laugh along with, rather than at, all the loopy plot points.

I’m not saying this is a dumb movie. But it is the sort that asks you to lower your suspension-of-disbelief shields and just go with it. For me, this happened right around the moment Tatum and Foxx were screaming around the White House grounds in the presidential limousine, terrorists chasing them in Hummers outfitted with machine guns, with more bad guys firing RPGs at them from the roof.

Absurd? Over-the-top? Fun as all get-out? Yes to all.

The set-up is that President James M. Sawyer (Foxx) is pushing a Mideast peace plan, and a lot of people are nervous. So when a bunch of mercenaries invade the White House, it seems much more motivated by vengeance than the $400 million in cash they’re demanding.

John Cale (Tatum) is an Army veteran and D.C. police sergeant who’s got a mind to join the Secret Service – mostly to impress his precocious tween daughter, Emily. He takes her to the White House for a tour while he has a job interview – which turns out to be with an old college flame (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who lets him down easy.

Emily is played by Joey King, whose mix of smarts, screen presence and moxie virtually guarantee greats things ahead. In one moment of extreme duress, Emily growls at a gunman, “Get away from me” – quite possibly the gutsiest character moment in the movie.

Michael Murphy plays the vice president, who’s a little overeager to take on the POTUS mantle, while Richard Jenkins is the humbler Speaker of the House, next in line. Jason Stenz is effective as the paramilitary leader, Jimmi Simpson has fun with the over-caffeinated computer hacker role, and Kevin Rankin is memorable as a loathsome skinhead baddie.

I also liked Nicolas Wright as the comic relief, an enthusiastic White House tour guide, and Lane Reddick as the by-the-book military man. James Woods shines as the grizzled Secret Service chief closing out his last week on the job.

If “Olympus Has Fallen” had a distinctive right-wing flavor, it’s hard to ignore an obvious but unobtrusive liberal tilt in “White House Down.” Foxx’s Sawyer is a thinly-veiled Obama substitute, a young academic with a cooler-than-thou attitude, flashy wife and Nicorette gum habit.

At one point Sawyer dons his favorite sneakers during their flight, and when one of the villains grabs his leg the president forcefully delivers a kick and a quip: “Get. Your. Hands. Off. My. Jordans!!”

Say what you will about Emmerich, but the man knows how to do popcorn movies right.

All I know is we’re almost at the year’s halfway point, and if you asked me to name my Top 10 List right now, it would include two ludicrous movies about the White House getting taken over. Hey, fun’s fun.

Review: "Anonymous"

"Anonymous" is being hyped as a conspiracy theory story, the gist being that William Shakespeare was not actually the author of all those flowery plays and sonnets. This is not a new idea, as Shakespeare was a commoner of humble schooling, and the Brits retain their class snobbery.

The most common theory I've heard is that his contemporary and fellow playwright, Christopher Marlowe, actually penned "Hamlet" and all the other great works. Marlowe is present in this movie as a minor antagonist, but he's not presented as Shakespeare's doppelganger.

Instead, it's nobleman Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, who allowed an actor named Shakespeare to be his frontman. This Oxfordian Theory is dismissed by most literary authorities as loony -- literally, Looney, after the English schoolteacher who came up with it.

But this film is not really about promoting an alternate theory of authorship so much as presenting an intriguing (if unlikely) scenario and seeing how it would play out. It makes for a ripping good story, whether or not it's factual.

For those offended at the idea of director Roland Emmerich taking liberties with the biography of a beloved artist, consider the long cinematic tradition of this M.O. Start with "Shakespeare in Love," which won a Best Picture Oscar for a wholly fictitious take on the Bard's love life. Or "Amadeus." Or "Lust for Life."

In some ways, crafting a fantasy out of the life of an artist is the ultimate tribute to their creativity.

And to those still doing a double-take from two paragraphs above -- yes, this sumptuous period piece is from the filmmaker behind "The Day After Tomorrow," "Independence Day," "2012" and other schlocky blockbusters. All I can say is the German director has traded in disaster flicks for straightforward drama, and takes to it like a duck to water.

Rhys Ifans plays Oxford, a haughty middle-aged lord who summons young Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto), a struggling young writer, to make him an offer.

(Interesting that they call themselves writers, rather than playwrights -- back in Elizabethan times, if you wrote for a living it was plays, or sonnets or poems. Books were too expensive to print to be the basis of a vocation. And newspapers and magazines were still a ways off.)

The earl desperately wants to see his work performed, but his station does not allow him the luxury of being an artist. His idea is to have Jonson pose as the author. Unfortunately, Jonson confides in his friend Will Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), a bumbling actor who cannot even write his own name.

Shakespeare suggests he serve as a further buffer between the mysterious nobleman, and jumps at an opportunity to become the most celebrated writer in London.

The story (screenplay by John Orloff) jumps back in forth in time to 40 years previously, when Oxford was a young lord who caught the eye of Queen Elizabeth (played by Joely Richardson as a young woman and by Vanessa Redgrave late in life). The later tale is dominated by a struggle over succession made by a couple of young lords, the Earl of Southampton and the Earl of Essex.

In both parallel stories it is the Cecil family of royal advisors, first William (David Thewlis) and then his son Robert (Edward Hogg) who act as Svengali to Elizabeth, manipulating her and twisting events to suit their purposes. Like many villains depicted from this era, they are Puritans who use religion as both shield and weapon.

It is true that "Anonymous" has a very large cast that can often be hard to keep track of. There are also several shocking revelations about hidden ties between various parties, which are as unlikely as someone else writing Shakespeare's plays but still have a delicious impact on their own.

Shakespeare himself remains a rather minor character, which is further evidence that Emmerich and Orloff see the whole Oxfordian Theory as a mere jumping-off point for a great story, rather than the crux of their movie.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "2012"

Prior to its release, people had great fun making sport of the trailers for "2012." That's because the previews fairly represented the film for what it is: A ridiculous, over-the-top disaster movie that exists as its own parody.

The producers got the last laugh. Though "2012" was a modest hit here in the U.S., it banked more than $600 million overseas.

Director Roland Emmerich ("The Day After Tomorrow," "Independence Day") is an old hand at disaster flicks, and piles on what audiences want: Big computer-generated scenes of mayhem, interrupted by weepy human moments where people clutch one another and despair at the earthquakes/tidal waves/meteors rolling in to wipe them out.

John Cusack plays a loser who gets a shot to play hero when he uncovers a conspiracy by world leaders to cover up the fact that the planet's continental plates are about to start smashing into one another, turning the Earth's surface into an upended jigsaw puzzle.

He gathers up his ex-wife and kids, facing gaping chasms, falling buildings, crashing airplanes and much more in their quest to survive.

It's tremendously silly stuff, but also terrifically entertaining if you don't take it too seriously.
Extra features vary widely according to the video format.

The DVD version comes with an alternate ending, deleted scenes, Adam Lambert's "Time for Miracles" music video, featurette on Emmerich's history with disaster flicks, and a commentary track by Emmerich and co/writer Harald Kloser.

Among other things in the commentary, they reveal that the role of the U.S. president was written as a woman, but when Barack Obama started doing well in the Democratic primaries they switched it to an African-American role, played by Danny Glover.

A single-disc Blu-ray version includes the commentary, alternate ending and a picture-in-picture feature of additional comments and footage with cast and crew.

The two-disc Blu-ray includes all the features listed above, plus several more.

There's a Mayan calendar including a horoscope function, featurettes covering the science behind the destruction, production design and actors' perspective, and a digital copy of the film.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "2012"

There's a scene in Roland Emmerich's "2012" where earthquakes are ravaging the face of the planet, and holy men are praying in the Sistine Chapel when a crack grows in the dome, splitting God's outstretched fingers away from Adam's.

I suspect audiences, or at least critics, are going to be equally divided over this outsized disaster flick.

For me, it was a big, dumb, thoroughly fun movie. If you go into it looking for serious social allegory -- as Emmerich was trying to do with the global warming-themed "The Day After Tomorrow" -- then you're probably going to regard this new film as a travesty that treats human lives with as much dignity as blips on a video game.

But poking fun at this movie is inane, since it exists as a parody of itself -- or at least its genre.

"2012" is essentially a special-effects smorgasbord of nearly every disaster movie ever made: Earthquakes! Volcanic eruptions! Titanic-like drownings! Explosions that must be outrun! Tsunamis! Buildings collapsing! Plane crashes! Car crashes! Jumping over chasms in a limo! Jumping over chasms in a Winnebago! Meteors! Puppies in peril!

We get to see Los Angeles slide into the ocean, the White House wiped out (a habit for Emmerich), and Las Vegas collapse into the burning maw of hell (which is probably where it was headed anyway).

About the only thing missing is for a certain lizard, 1,000 feet tall and seriously P.O.'d, to poke his head out of the ocean.

John Cusack plays Jackson Curtis, a failed writer and divorced dad, who stumbles across the mother of all government conspiracies: The American president (Danny Glover) and other world leaders have known for years that the Earth is on the brink of destruction. It seems some neutrinos or something from the sun are warming the planet's core, which will eventually cause the continental plates to start slip-sliding around and slamming into each other.

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the conscientious scientist advising the heads of state on how the human race is going to survive -- well, a small percentage of it, anyway. Oliver Platt is his bean-counting boss, only too happy to determine who gets to live and who must die. Of course, the ultra-rich are guaranteed a spot.

Jackson gathers up his clan, including ex-wife (Amanda Peet), estranged kids and even his competition, the smarmy stepdad (Thomas McCarthy). They must race through one ridiculous set of challenges after another (see Explosions! Eruptions! Drownings! etc.) to survive.

Plot? OK, here's the plot: Emmerich, who co-wrote the script with Harald Kloser, piles on huge computer-generated action sequences, then switches to a weepy humanist moment where somebody tries to reach their long-lost son/daughter/wife/colleague to whisper encouraging words, before the huge tidal waves and explosions roll in to snuff them out. Rinse and repeat.

I lost count of how many times a phone line went dead as the apocalyptic destruction overran somebody. Of course, one might wonder how the phones are still working when most of the planet's surface looks like it's been through a shredder.

But these sorts of ruminations are anathema to the pure cinematic roller-coaster ride that is "2012." The best of such rides have a sign saying you must be so tall in order to be allowed onboard. For this movie, the measurement is snobbishness: Those who insist on taking it seriously will be left behind.

3.5 stars