Pixels (2015)

“Pixels” has a ridiculously great premise that vibes perfect 1980s action/comedy: Aliens attack Earth using as weapons massive “live” incarnations of Atari’s best video games: Pac-Man, Centipede, Tetris, etc. Damn the result. Look, Director Chris Columbus (“Harry Potter” 1 and 2) handles the big VFX scenes with polish: Pac-Man tearing through NYC is too cool and when a soldier is de-pixelated, it scares like classic “Doctor Who." But away from the action, Pixels dies. A dead-eyed Adam Sandler plays an ex-arcade-child-king now miserable, but still chummy with his dork childhood pal (boring Kevin James), now the worst U.S. president ever. Assholes, both. A big joke: Sandler insults a White House intern by calling him “Blue Lagoon.” Because the guy has curly blond hair. I sat blinking. How old is that joke? Sandler and James blunder their way into saving Earth. This Earth doesn't deserve it. The trailer promised a celebration of us 1980s gamers. The movie flogs us as infants incapable of adult decisions. Like hygiene. Or parenting. Fuck every person involved. Last miserable kick: The sexism astounds. When another arcade dork (Josh Gad) sees his dream woman come to life, she cannot speak. Only smile and obey. Offensive. C-

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

(EDITED 20 May 2015. A second viewing has me even more enthralled with this movie. But some a huge correction to the below: It is without doubt the same Max Rockatansky in this film as Mel Gibson played. That's clear up front, and elsewhere. Which makes the lead of Charlize Theron's road Warrior Trucker all the more amazing. And the first appearance of The Wives is one of the great rug pulls of modern cinema. The first shot seems contrived and sexist, wet ladies in the desert, wearing gauze, maybe. College guys next to me whistled. Within moments they cringed and winced at the rage these ladies held. That's powerful film-making. I never touched on the wild religious implications of the film, the sick promise of Immortan Joe to his followers that if they die for him, Valhalla (heaven) awaits. Massive part of the story. It hits current wars of this day. Just epic. I don't know George Miller, only a few months younger my father, pulled this off. He has just crushed every young filmmaker working today. Epic. That certain Jedi film coming out later this year has a huge mountain to climb. A sequel.reboot has just set a new standard for action films, and how woman are to be seen on screen. Forever. And the energy on screen -- the feeling that anything can happen -- i just have to applaud.)


Days on, I’m still pumped with awe. I don’t know where to begin or if I’ll ever get everything I feel right now. “Mad Max: Fury Road” is the most daring, subversive summer action film to hit cinemas in years. God love George Miller. 

This is THE film we need now. In its jaw-dropping spectacle. Its energy. Its anger.

From trailers and posters galore, we expect rising Hollywood star Tom Hardy (“The DarkKnight Rises”) to take on the iconic Australian role of ex-cop Max Rockatansky played frighteningly wild-eyed, fierece by Mel Gibson 40 odd years ago and run with it. 

Hero. Savior. Bad ass driver and gunslinger. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

During a frenzied pre-credits opening salvo, hero Max is taken hostage, bound and masked, and in drops the true lead of this film -- the new Road Warrior for our time -- Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa. One-armed, armed, and driving a steam-punk tractor trailer straight out of hell and into freedom. Or hope. Or any place, but from where she came. 

This is an action film with women at the core. Not since “Alien” have we seen such a display. Theron makes Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley seem tame. Here, strong, blood, divisive, kick-ass women in a near-future world take back control of their lives and their world -- killed by men -- with ferocious force. Max has to keep up. This could have been called “Mad Women.” (Unlike “Alien,” Miller uses scant clothing to again burn genre.)

And the action -– the entire film is one chase with so little dialogue, you begin to forget to question if anyone can talk – has no peer. In an age where whole hours of something like “Avengers: Age of Ultron” is wall-to-wall CGI and impersonal robots and immortal heroes, Miller drops in real vehicles and teams of stuntmen and women and smashes everything together decadent glee. He smashes trucks through cars. Drops bikes off mountains. Throws tanks into a tornado, and lets them fall. He kills characters we have instantly fallen in love with minutes ago. 

Every frame of “Fury” is madness, glorious madness that feels as alive and pulsing as the first “Mad Max” in 1979, a film that plays like it had to be made or its director –- Miller –- might lose his f’n mind. 

(This also recalls the gonzo mad independent Australian films of the 1970s, such as “The Cars that Ate Paris,” where narrative coherence is slain by glorious visual chaos. And, yes, John Seale’s digital, handheld cinematography is Oscar worthy, inches from bloodied cheeks and oil-spewing motors. Also Oscar worthy: Nicholas Holt, breaking out from boring X-Men and childish movie star roles to play a crazed man riddled with tumors and a desire to die horrifically, so he can be reborn whole.) 

Before I get ahead of myself: We are back in the post-nuclear apocalypse desert of the “Road Warrior” and “Thunderdome,” although I don’t think “Fury” is exactly a sequel or a reboot from the previous films. It’s never specifically said that this Max is the same Max of the previous trilogy. His flashbacks -– violent, haunted acid trips of a man long past sanity -– match nothing told before. Miller has us work for info. He drops us in the middle of the action and makes us chase down the back stories, the detailed horrors of this world. 

One viewing is not enough. Furiosa’s task at the start of the film is to steal gasoline for her master, Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played the villain in “Mad Max,” but a fully different character). Joe is an obese tumor-stricken old man wearing a plastic muscle suit that bulks him to Hulk-size, with a horrifying oxygen mask of plastic, rubber, and animal teeth for a face. He is the leader of a desert cult that worships him as a god, and as he controls all water, food, fuel, and the blood supply, he will not be questioned. 

He also keeps five young women as sex slaves to breed his children. It is they who are Furiosa’s cargo as the film opens, she defying the order to steal petro as she carries these women to the “green place” of her lost youth. Within Joe’s tower cave, his “wives” have scrawled defiant phrases: “We are not your property!” 

The chase is set when Joe decides otherwise and sets out to get his “women” back, no matter who he has to kill to do so. (Even his underlings question his sanity.) That the “wives” are introduced as one-note barely-dressed supermodels is a tantalizing FU from Miller and his writers. In the sands, away from men, finding more women warriors and mentors, these young “hotties” explode in murderous revolt. Max can barely keep up. 

Oscar winner Theron rules the film with quiet intensity. Our action star for 2015. Hardy is her acting equal as a man lost and in desperate need of saving by these women before he loses his last thread of humanity. Epic does not do “Fury” justice. It is vital viewing as action spectacle and comment on our sexist age. 

I can’t think of another Hollywood summer film that has so upended my expectations to glorious effect. Miller has just writ the end of our male-dominated Marvel and D.C. summer era. Those films are made by business. This was made by burning need. A+

Suspicion (1941)

Subpar Alfred Hitchock still outpaces 90 percent of anything made in Hollywood 70 years ago or now. But romance-thriller “Suspicion” is a stiff. I swear Hitchcock was bored making it, because I was bored watching it, and that’s a tall order since “Suspicion” stars Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine. Apologies to the master and stars. History says morality-cop conservative censors –- Hays Code –- killed this tale before film was set to camera. I believe it. Plot: Wealthy gal Fontaine falls in love with wealthy party boy lothario (Grant) who turns out not to be rich, but a gambling, lying, thieving heel who gets away with such deeds because he’s Cary fuckin’ Grant. When hubby’s best pal –- who is wealthy -- eventually (a long eventually) turns up dead, wifey fears for her own life. Cue scariest glass of milk ever. Cue ... nothing happens. Look, some scenes rock -- that glowing milk, the play of shadows as a bird cage -- but this is a slog, and a sexist drudge as it plasters a heroine who must learn to keep her trap shut and not doubt her crap-o hubs. Because he’s Cary Grant. B-

The Blob (1958)

Steve McQueen is the world’s oldest teenager in “The Blob,” the corny, campy horror classic that opens with the funniest, catchiest theme song that I can recall. “Beware of The Blob, it creeps/ And leaps and glides and slides/ Across the floor/ Right through the door.” It’s a laugh riot. The movie is too, right from the start with McQueen playing 17 (!) calling a first-date gal named Jane (Aneta Corsaut) as “Jenny,” and getting away with it because he’s Steve Freakin’ McQueen. Anyway, meteor hits, a blob pops out, eats an old guy’s arm, and it’s on  -- laughs, goofy special effects, and punk teen kids saving the world when the cops won’t listen. Classic scene: The cinema! What’s hard as hell to take is the sexism: Every woman and girl is a helpless twit prone to hysterics and less brave than the 7-year-old brat in PJs prone to carrying around his teddy. Actually that’s the gist of the film: Those nightmare fantasies kids have about monsters coming true and no adult will believe them real. So honk the horns, and hold those ladies’ hands tight. B

Repulsion (1965)

Roman Polanski has done far more film-wise to make apartments the living embodiment of psychological hell on Earth than anyone alive, and saying his low-budget English-language debut “Repulsion” stands above “Tenant” or “Rosemary’s Baby” is one massive compliment. Catherine Denevue plays Carol, a manicurist living with her aloof sister in London, zombie shuffling to and from work, staring at sidewalk cracks, and from her bedroom to the loo, staring at the razor of sister’s (married) sugar daddy. She glazes out, does not talk, and fears the leers or touch of any man. In quick succession, a suitor comes on strong and her sister leaves for vacation, acts that push Carol off her ledge into shocking hallucinations and depraved acts. Carol has a past that purges out at the finale as we learn her hellish torture is not over by half. Polanski works with brimstone, fear, and one hell of an actress, laying the way for the nightmares of “Baby,” his horror masterpiece of stifled women. Sick irony or inevitable that Polanski had his own misogynistic demons to spew years later? A near-unbearable must-watch classic that left me gasping, and spawned the recent dark daughter of “Black Swan.” A+

The Lost World (1960)

“The Lost World” is some kind of crazy time capsule flick, a reminder how far most of America and the world has progressed since 1960. Here, a group of explorers led by a pompous professor (Claude Rains) jet to South America to claim what the prof calls “El Dorado,” a forgotten mountain where “dinosaurs” roam and dark-skinned cannibals screech and chase after good white folk. Among the heroes is a helpless, always shrieking lady (Jill St. John) who is repeatedly told a woman’s only place “is in the home” and her venturing outside is dangerous. She agrees. “150,000 years ago or today?,” the “Lost World” poster reads. That’s irony. Then and today, this is a Tea Party GOP’ers warped version of the world, as it was, is, and shall be forever. Hey, it’s an improvement over the 6,000 years thing, right? In the end, all of the white people survive, find wealth, and laugh. All the foreigners die, including the maybe gay guy. I cringed, winced, and, yes, laughed at the sexism and xenophobia, and the ancient special effects that have lizards with glued-on appendages “chasing” people. “Lost World” is accurate. C

Goldfinger (1964)

“Goldfinger” is arguably the high-point of Sean Connery’s run as James Bond, when the series stormed pop culture and the world. It’s also damn awkwardly dated as far as the women go as it plays with forced entanglement as foreplay. Take a breath, it is of its time period. The plot –- unlike later, unnecessarily busy Bond films -– is simple: Bond must track down gold smuggler Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) who has a perverse idea about knocking out Fort Knox so that he can take control of the world’s gold market. Or some such. Who cares? The bad guy’s pilot/dame is named Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman). And Bond’s first bed quest ends up smothered in gold paint. There’s also a mad granny with a machine gun, and that Aston Martin, plus Oddjob and the killer bowler hat. It’s camp entertainment delivered dead pan, and that’s missing in the newer run, for better and worse. Connery is effortless. Bond is Connery, and Connery is Bond, is there any argument? And as Goldfinger, Frobe is a plain-spoken man of evil, but a man. No disfigurement. No foamy outbursts. Just a snake. The crazy good music? That’s never been better. A-

Five Graves to Cairo (1943)

Billy Wilder’s World II spy drama “Five Graves to Cairo” starts off grim as hell: A Brit armored tank drives aimlessly through the Egyptian desert, its crew dead except for one man who falls from the vehicle onto the desert sand. John Bramble (Franchot Tone) stumbles and then crawls his way to a nearby town, to a hotel called the Empress of Britain. Recall, the Brits ruled this land, lock, stock and key. But the Brits scrammed. The Nazis are in, full force. The sun-stroked Bramble is certainly dead. Except the hotel owner (Akim Tamiroff) takes pity, and sets Bramble up as the dead-by-bombing waiter Davos. Bramble as Davos learns the latter was a Nazi spy, so now Bramble can play the espionage card triple against Rommel (Erich von Stroheim). This is a great yarn, suspenseful, fun, gritty, and full of the era’s patriotic Us-Against-Them/Country-First propaganda, up to a fault: See the damsel-in-distress (Anne Baxter) of the pic is -– SPOILER ALERT! -– doomed because she dares put family first. It smacks not so much of war-time tragedy, but a sexist streak absent from Wilder in lighter classics a la “Apartment.” B+

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (2011)

It’s too easy to pick on the “Twilight” films. What started out as an entertaining supernatural romantic fantasy for teenagers in 2008 quickly grew boring, trite, and, I can’t say this enough, cringingly anti-woman as we follow a Washington state high school girl (Kristen Stewart as Bella) fall enthralled to her century-old-stuck-as-a-teenager vampire fiance (Robert Pattinson as Edward) and yet remain mooned over –- literally –- by her werewolf best friend (Taylor Lautner as Jacob). 

The whole scenario is utterly ridiculous, but that’s fantasy, right? The screw? At every turn, and evermore increasingly here, Bella becomes less of a full-fledged intelligent human being that happens to be a woman, than a near mindless submissive girl robot. (Is there anything more ... boring?) She has absolutely no plan, thought, or choice outside of her devotion to her dreamy fang man, and ensuring his happiness. I mean, can she hold a job? I’m not certain. Bet she can vacuum. Bella might be the flattest main female character of a major Hollywood franchise ever put to film. Bella is the anti-Ripley.

This overlong film adapts the fourth book in the series, and only part of it as the studio knows how to ring a few more million dollars from smitten fans known as Twi-Hards. Here, Bella is 18 and ready to marry Edward for he won’t do the deed until they are wed, old-fashioned values and all, and she wants to do the deed. And become like him, a vampire. (That’s commitment.) They do marry, and director Bill Condon (“Gods and Monsters”) stages the wedding with romantic delirium –- forest, leaves, amazing dresses and tuxes that would make any romantic swoon, and there is camera work to die for. (That’s the great Guillermo Navarro as Director of Photography. He shot “Pan’s Labyrinth.”)

Condon and his writers then take us on the only-in-a-movie fantasy honeymoon in South America, on a private island, and there the trouble begins. Eddie -– can I call him that? -- is concerned he’ll hurt Bella during sex with his super-vampire strength, but she’s OK with getting hurt, up to the point where she becomes pregnant. Abnormally “Rosemary’s Baby” pregnant. For her love of Edward, Bella commits to baby, much to his woe, and the anger of Jacob, who, like Bruce Banner, is always angry.

By now ridiculing a “Twilight” movie equals crushing a 14-year-old girl’s spirit because she talks too much on the telephone with her friends. The movies are silly romance popcorn entertainment. I get it. And teenage girls like to talk on the phone. Some things cannot be changed. They are what they are. So, I went for comedy at this viewing, from the way Pattinson can’t hide his contempt for the material that is below him, to the way Lautner makes looking angry so painfully hilarious, and a scene in which Lautner and his extended family carry on a full-blown scream-fest squabble as werewolves, making for the worst voice-over live-action scene I can recall seeing in a Hollywood film of the modern era. 

I will say this, “Part 1” is splendidly art-directed. Toward the film’s end, as Edward’s vampire family prepares to square off for full-on CGI/wirework war against Jacob’s werewolf family, at the former’s house, all for the life of Bella and her Vambaby, I just loved the “Architecture Design” look of it all. The massive windows looking out into the endless trees. Drama? Pfft. This is a family that, facing attack, leaves their glass doors wide open. Military strategy? The family fails. Home buying? Absolute genius. 

Not genius, not by a long shot, is the arc of Bella’s story. Maybe I never will. I have griped before about Bella’s absolute lack of any life interest or counsel, and the befuddlement only continues here. She spends her pre-wedding night alone, except for a visit by Edward, who I suppose is only checking in on her. Control is so romantic. Almost stereotypical to a bad 1800s marriage, he has friends to celebrate with. She? None. Zip. Zero. Bella’s only friends, helping her along the way to the big day and the baby crisis are Edward’s family, his “sisters.” Her pop, her mom, all are kept at least at arm’s length, if not a few thousand miles apart. (At least the father is concerned. By telephone.)

Actually, sorry there’s one. Jacob, the heartbroken, mooning werewolf guy who shows up at Bella’s wedding and yo-yos from all smiles and hugs to throwing the girl around, violently shaking her, and screaming all within mere seconds. Luckily, ol’ Eddie is there to save her. He’s always there. I suppose we should all be thankful he is such a nice guy.

I keep wanting Bella’s policeman father to come in and get her out. Or, actually, for Bella to finally walk out on her own, wake up and save herself. Take up industrial engineering. Ride a bike cross country. Apply to, I don’t know, college, even community college. The last scene proves me wrong again. She remains ever flat and in love. And, I get it, or not, it is all fantasy, supernatural romantic fantasy. Not real at all. C-

This Means War (2012)

“This Means War” exists for one reason: Make college girls debate who’s hotter, the guy who was Kirk in the new “Star Trek,” or the Brit guy from “Inception.” My wife and I heard the chatter as the credits rolled. So, in a sense, “War” succeeds. Not for me. This ugly flick requires smart, self-assured actress Reese Witherspoon to play the fool, and she is no fool. The plot: Chris Pine (Kirk) and Tom Hardy (Brit guy) play “GQ” blowhard CIA agents both wooing a lonely commercial market researcher (Witherspoon) for sport. Lauren is so shocked that two men (!) would pay her amorous attention that she falls oblivious to each man’s outlandish lies and eerily perfect dates, so we in the audience snicker at what a slack-jawed, wide-eyed rube she is. Of course, Lauren learns the truth and forgives instantly. Toss in much nonsensical guns and chases, boom, movie! Try and get past the following: Pine’s lothario meets Lauren at a DVD rental store; the men stalk and spy on Lauren, and it’s meant to be funny; and Pine and Hardy spark hotter chemistry with each other than with Wiherspoon. Hmm. McG directs, without mercy. C-

Just Go With It (2011)

Looking for a film to signal a breakup with your S.O.? “Just Go With It.” And “The Break-Up.” Hey, both star Jennifer Anniston. Why does she choose such awful projects? Here she plays a single mom and receptionist/ assistant/Jiminy Cricket to a smug plastic surgeon (Adam Sandler) who fakes being married to bed marriage-wrecker college girls. When doc falls in love with one of his scores, he bribes Anniston to play his greedy ex-wife, and her kids to be his offspring. This is one of those con shell games where the lies pile high for no other reason than to keep the plot going, and I stopped caring who hooked up with whom. Everyone on screen is an idiot or cruel or both, and the women are made to be especially gullible. You can see Anniston’s dread, and when Nicole Kidman (!?!) pops by as a snob, you can see her regret. Dennis Dugan made the awful Sandler flick “Grown-Ups,” and this is just as sloppy. Sandler hates his audience. Anniston deserves better. Nick Swardson, a Sandler apprentice, plays a vile, dumb character as an extra F.U. to the paying suckers on ... date night. D+

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011)

Windi Murdoch has a mean right hook. Mess with husband Rupert and she will fuck you up. No joke. Awesome wife, she is. But movie producer? Not so much. Ms. Murdoch’s first foray into Hollywood is “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” a sufferable drama about four women suffering in modern day and 19th century China. What we learn: Friendships among women are good, sexism is bad, and foot-binding is really bad. Confession: I already knew all this going in.

The gist: In modern day Shanghai, successful businesswoman Nina (Li Bingbing) is set to move to New York when she learns estranged BFF Sophia (Gianna Junn) has been in a terrible accident. A distraught Nina rushes to the hospital to be by Sofia’s bedside. There, Nina finds a typed manuscript in Sophia’s belongings, an account of two women in 1800s China growing up and marrying in a society where women were mere son-bearing sex objects. I was never certain if the manuscript was fiction, or a historical record. I don’t care enough to know.

Director Wayne Wang (“The Joy Luck Club”) desperately wants us to care for these four women, but the heart just isn’t there. Nor the punch-in-the-gut drama. Riffing on “Godfather Part II” style editing, he cuts back and forth between past and present, making the audience work to keep up with what’s going on when, and who’s who, and giving us a clear choice in deciding which story is more boring. I vote for the modern tale as it was written fresh for the screen. It has female struggles that are just laughably bad, with high school drama galore and adult Sophia living in a “poverty” that half the modern world would kill to experience. The hokey English-written lines do not help.

The book, from which this film is based, focuses solely on the 1800s. Yet this historic portion is never allowed to dig deep. Yes, we see terrible sexism, and beatings, and cruel mothers-in-law, and it all happened to some one, but it has been played in a hundred other films. The editing does not help, denting emotional impact. Case in point, we witness a village massacre and the cold death of a child, but the scenes trip across the screen with a shrug, almost as if the script blankly stated “Insert Massacre Here.” The running villages scene could be stock footage for all I know. The music is standard issue, too.

Several unintended LOL moments derail this snoozer into distracting life: Hugh Jackman saunters on screen as a charismatic lounge singer because … I have no idea. Is he pals with fellow Aussie Rupert Murdoch? A woman near me yelled, “Oh, good! He’s gorgeous!” Worse still, the four women cross into each other’s time lines, because it’s … a trite liberal salute to women facing oppression throughout history? A stab at saying everything changes even as nothing changes? “Doctor Who” time travel? I have no idea. I burst out laughing, and others did near me, as two centuries-dead women with bound feet sipped coffee on an art deco high-rise patio. Not what Ms. Murdoch or Wang were going for, eh? D+

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)

Bella still can’t catch a break in “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.” The girl (Kristen Stewart) loves the glittery vampire (Robert Pattinson) with 1980s hair, but jealous werewolf boy (Taylor Lautner) is always lurking about. What’s a girl to do? This is the third chapter in the series, and it’s much of the same: Some evil vampire clan is out for Bella’s blood and she needs saving by her suitors, who are more than willing to oblige. Saving means controlling. Vampire guy rips engine cables out of Bella’s truck so she can’t drive anywhere. Werewolf guy dishes “romantic” one-liners that basically translate as “If I can‘t have you, no one will.” Both guys talk stalker, but are treated as heartthrobs. Creepily anti-woman, and from a woman's pen no less. “Eclipse” does score points with well-played, literal head-cracking vampire fights. Director David Slade (“30 Days of Night”) gives the action real blood, so to speak, but can’t lift the banal dialogue and wooden acting above unintended howls. When the two guys compare their own hotness, it plays like a bad spoof of “Brokeback Mountain.” C-

An Education (2009)

In early 1960s England, a 16-year-old girl named Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is wooed, romanced and whisked off to Paris and more by a much older man, 30-ish David (Peter Sarsgaard). It’s heaven to Jenny, who’s finishing a religious high school and looking forward to Oxford, then marriage and kids, and that’s it. (Certainly not a career.) With such a romance, it can’t end well, especially when Jenny learns David and his troupe of friends steal to pay the rent and jet to the Continent. Directed by Lone Scherfig and written by Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity”), the film is a stunner. And not just in acting, with Mulligan giving a magical debut, and Sarsgaard continually being a grade A star. It races past the possibly icky child molestation drama by tossing clichés and most expectations on their ears: Jenny’s parents approve, while her teachers rightfully vehemently disapprove, even as they show bigotry (David is a Jew). As with Jenny, who faces few to no choices in a sexist society, and makes mistakes in trying to (wouldn’t you?) break free, “Education” is a complicated joyful, heartbreaking film. A