Friday, November 8, 2013

Thor: The Dark World

When Thor came out in 2011, my interest in seeing it was only slightly more than my interest in seeing a torture horror movie, which is to say practically non-existent. However, I had heard some good things about it and when it hit Redbox, I plunked down a dollar to rent it. After watching it, I immediately felt stupid for having not seen it in the theater. A wonderful mix of superhero goofiness and Shakespearean intrigue, Thor worked far better than I expected. So naturally I determined early on not to let it's sequel get away from me.

While most sequels fail to live up to their predecessors, Thor: The Dark World comes from the rare breed of sequel that is actually better than it's first entry. This is especially surprising when you consider that, outside of The Avengers 2, known of the Phase One directors are coming back to direct Phase Two movies. What this means for the second entry in the Thor series is that Kenneth Branagh isn't guiding this one. That actually translates to less Palace Intrigue and more Big Fights, but surprisingly, this doesn't work against the movie like it should.

The film opens, as it's predecessor did, with the Asgardians defeating a powerful enemy, this time the Dark Elves, led by Malaketh. Doctor Who fans will take glee in seeing Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston as Malaketh, who aspires to send the Nine Realms back into darkness using a weapon called the Aether. Malaketh escapes from Odin's father and the Aether is hidden from him by the Asgardians. Eventually, the Aether is found by Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and Malaketh and his minions rise up to reclaim it and finish the job of sending the Nine Realms back into darkness. Naturally, it is up to Thor (Chris Hemsworth) to put an end to all of this.

I realized as I wrote the above summary that some of this sounds an awful lot like Lord of the Rings and maybe it does. Despite that, it's not something you think about as you actually watch the movie. Thor: The Dark World moves at a pretty good clip and is filled with some great one-liners. It brings back all of the major players of the first film, from Anthony Hopkins and Renee Russo as Thor's parents Odin and Frigia to Stellan Skaarsgard and Kat Dennings as Portman's sorta scientific colleagues Dr. Erik Selvig and Darcy, all of whom put in exactly the type of performance one would except of these actors. In fact, the only major player from the first film not in this is Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson, and that's because he's on TV right now. Though I would love to see him and the Agents of SHIELD team pop up in one of these films.

And then there's Loki.

Tom Hiddleston's Loki was the high point of the first film and, in many ways, of The Avengers as well. Point in fact, he's the best villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and probably a top ten--maybe even top five--movie villain period. This time Hiddleston gets to put a little more depth to Loki, playing him as more of a shade of grey than previously. Throughout the movie, the audience is never fully sure who's side Loki is on, and it makes for fascinating viewing. It also helps that he gets many of the best lines, too. The scene where he disguises himself as Captain America is a riot. No one in the movie can match him--not Eccleston, not Hemsworth, not Portman, not even Hopkins. How often can you say that? Hiddleston completely walks away with the movie, leaving the audience wanting more.

It is a given that The Avengers is the best movie in the MCU. Hower, Thor: The Dark World, while not quite as good, is not far behind. I admit to being concerned that the Phase Two movies would be major letdowns after what came before them, but so far, I'm loving what I'm seeing. Iron Man 3 had only a couple of minor missteps while this particular film does everything right. I'm looking forward to Captain America: The Winter Soldier now. My only regret was not seeing this in 3D last night, but that was on the theater. I'll gladly see Thor: The Dark World a second time. It's a movie well worth seeing, especially on the big screen.

Friday, November 1, 2013

And I Said What About Breakfast At Tiffany's...

There are movie stars and there are icons. Of course, there are movies where stars become icons. 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's is one of those movies.

The icon of which I speak, of course, is Audrey Hepburn. While she had done several excellent movies in the 1950s, Tiffany's Holly Golightly may well be the first vision anyone has of her. A well justified vision, at that.

Holly on the surface is a carefree, somewhat naïve girl on the loose in New York City. In reality, she's a call girl who manages to get $50 for the powder room for her clients and goes to see a jailed mobster every Thursday who gives her a "weather report". She meets Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a sometimes writer and a kept man. He moves in above her and is, like the audience, instantly fascinated with her. When he first meets her, she's only wearing a men's shirt as a night gown and practically flying about her apartment to get ready for her trip to Sing Sing. She transforms into her signature black dress and hat and off she goes.

It isn't fair to call Holly by the old cornball phrase "a hooker with a heart of gold", especially as she has a mean streak to her that is at times shocking. She plans to marry for money, ostensibly to help support her brother who is in the army. But this turns out to be a mere excuse as she is still intending to marry for money almost to the bitter end. But under all this scheming is, as Paul puts it in a short story he writes about her, a very lonely and very frightened girl. Holly's entire persona is a façade, the façade of a girl who married at 14 and then ran away to the big city, not entirely sure of what she was looking for. Of course, Paul's persona is phony, too, which ironically makes the two of them made for one another.

In the hands of lesser actors, these would be thoroughly unlikeable characters. But Hepburn comes off as sincere and at times heartbreaking. It's a beautiful performance, and one that set the tone for her other 60s films. You find yourself actively rooting for Holly throughout the film, whether or not you really should. It has been said that Truman Capote wanted Marilyn Monroe for the part and was angry that Hepburn got it instead. I've seen a few Marilyn Monroe movies and I just can't see her in this part. Hepburn owns the movie and she owns it pretty effortlessly.

As another interesting casting note, Steven McQueen was up for the part of Varjak but couldn't do it due to his commitment to Wanted: Dead or Alive. I love McQueen, but after seeing Peppard, I suspect that McQueen would have been dead wrong for the film. Peppard, like Hepburn, owns his character. Funny enough, he's the hooker with a heart of gold in this!

The duo are supported by quite a few good actors. Martin Balsam, probably most familiar today as the ill-fated Arbogast in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho or the foreman in 12 Angry Men, has a couple of good scenes as a cynical Hollywood agent who keeps calling Peppard "Fred Baby" and Hepburn "a phony but a real phony". Patricia Neal plays Peppard's mistress and comes off as a bit of a bitch. Most disturbing but heartbreaking of all is Buddy Ebsen as Doc Golightly, Holly's ex-husband. He admits to having married Holly when she was just 14 and wants her to come back to Tulip, Texas with him. He's something of a hillbilly, but he nails the part perfectly. So much so that the film led to his being cast as Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies a few short years later.

Of course, there's the elephant in the room, the most controversial character of the film: Mickey Rooney's absurd Mr. Yunioshi. Rooney is supposed to be playing a Japanese man and as such is given buck teeth and a ridiculous accent. This has caused some degree of consternation in more recent years with charges of racism being leveled against the film. I'm not convinced that's really the intention here. I'd like to think that Blake Edwards just wanted a good comic actor for the part and called on Rooney for it. In hindsight, he probably should have gotten an Asiatic actor for the part. I guess there's two questions that remain about this:

a)Would the character have been as funny in the hands of an actual Asiatic actor like Keye Luke or Phillip Ahn?
b)Would the character have been as funny if instead of being a cranky Japanese character, he was just a cranky tenant?

We'll never know the answer to those questions, but it's also important to note that Rooney isn't in the film much. He gets maybe a total of five minutes of screen time, so it's not like he's forever in our face. This isn't Birth of a Nation or a WWII anti-Japanese serial like 1943's The Batman. Besides, I tend to think there's more disturbing material in the film than Rooney. For instance, Doc being 30 or more years older than Holly and marrying her at age 14.

At the end of the day, Rooney is a blip on the film. You can always fast forward through his bits in you find them that offensive. But the movie itself, overall, is a masterpiece. Hepburn should have won the Oscar for this. It's probably the best movie I've seen Peppard in. It's funny, occasionally sad, beautifully shot, and immensely entertaining even if it has a little bit of a dark side just under it's skin. And it's the movie that turned Audrey Hepburn from a mere actress into a true icon. If nothing else, it's worth watching for that fact alone.