Robin Hood: ** (out of 4)

The most striking part about Robin Hood is that it wasn't actually that bad a movie. The movie was marketed as Gladiator 2: Sherwood Forest; this managed to offend me personally on several levels (I have a deep-seated hatred for the movie Gladiator; long story), and was almost as much of a turn-off for the rest of America - or, at least, those that aren't completely obsessed with Russell Crowe. But, while I'm not sure I can argue that this was any good, I can at least say that at least got an interesting movie this time.

Or at least we got part of an interesting movie.

This most recent version of the Robin Hood story is a "gritty" take on the legend, where a nobleman stands up to King John in defense of the people of Nottingham. It starts with 'Robin Longstride' participating in the siege of a French castle, and ends with Robin setting up shop in Sherwood Forest as an outlaw. (Mind, this was originally envisioned as being told from the perspective of the Sheriff of Nottingham; but I supposed that Crowe didn't want to be thought of as a "villain".) But in between, the story takes some fairly interesting paths, starting with the siege warfare itself, including some fairly plausible court politics, and headlined by the heading-towards-realistic portrayal of the horrible life of medieval peasants.

The acting was pretty good, all-told; Cate Blanchett was the movie's stand-out actor, portraying Maid Marion as a much more active person than the legends have generally offered to date (though I must admit, the riding-into-battle bit was a bit over the top). The action was well-done, well-choreographed, and seemed to be pretty true to the time frame. The soundtrack, the costumes, the casting - all were pretty good, as good as you could expect. All-in-all, I was pretty happy...

..or at least I was pretty fairly happy with the first half or two-thirds of the movie. But that all got ruined by a few obvious problems. Some of them were simply a bit ill-advised - a lot of time was spent setting up the "child's army" around Nottingham, for instance, which was barely utilized. But when it comes down to it, there were two things that dragged the movie down from a "pretty good" movie into "really pretty bad":

1. Everything surrounding the Magna Carta. Yes, the timing works out alright; but Robin Hood should not be associated with the nobility asserting their rights over the King.

2. The final battle and everything associated with it, especially the military tactics. It's bad enough that the French decided to invade at all; it was worse that they chose to land at the cliffs of Dover, and land in World War 2-style personnel deployment vehicles. But, frankly, the English shouldn't have had to even try hard to win that kind of battle. They had longbows and the high ground! Why would they send any of their troops down to do battle in that kind of situation?

Between those two points, the movie moved from being a fairly interesting, better-than-expected movie into something kindof embarrassing. Ridley Scott may have beaten my expectations, but that doesn't make it a good movie.

**

The Expendables (2010): ** 1/2 (out of 4) / * 1/2 (out of 4)

Seriously, Stallone and Schwarzenegger? You win, I'll see your movie - and that's before you toss in the other half dozen major action stars. But I'm not expecting anything besides excessive amounts of explosions and gratuitous violence.

As it turns out, the teaser trailer for The Expendables contained all of the information about the movie that anyone would ever need to know: major action stars mug for the camera, blow things up, occasionally interact with attractive women, and blow more things up, all in the style of a 1980s-style mercenary flick. That's it, that's the whole story. The plot was so bad as to be better off not existing. The characters were... no, they weren't characters, they were basic personas of action stars. The explosions were over-the-top and fairly constant. The violence was gratuitous and borderline racist. And every one of the action stars had their chance to shine/play to their type.

Yes, it was funny. Mostly, that humor was laughing at the absurdity of the action scenes and related dialogue; but there were a few inspired moments here and there, especially the scene with Bruce Willis, Stallone, and Schwarzenegger cursing at each other and generally carrying on silly.

Should you see the movie? Me, I'm happy I went, but I can't say that it was actually worth seeing; merely knowing that the movie existed was probably good enough. The anticipation was more fun than the reality, and honestly, I probably would have enjoyed seeing Scott Pilgrim again.

Still, it's probably worth pulling out the two-scale review. I had a fun time, but by any objective scale it was an awful movie. As is often the case, if you like this kind of thing, you'll be happy to see it; but at least this time you know whether you like this kind of thing.

** 1/2 (out of 4) / * 1/2 (out of 4)

Trailer note - while I can't necessarily fault the studio for knowing their audience, it was still quite a strange collection. The first trailers were for the new Narnia and Harry Potter movies, aiming at the younger crowd; the later trailers were for straight-up horror flicks, including the new Eli Roth flick and the next Saw. Is that what 80s action flick fans have become - torture-porn/fantasy-movie fans? Maybe so...

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: *** 3/4 (out of 4)

In short: Scott Pilgrim vs the World is a very good movie, especially if you're the kind of person who likes this kind of thing. But I can't figure out how to define what "this kind of thing" is.

There's always something special about going to a midnight movie release. The people in the theatre are willing to wait in line for hours in order to see something first. If comments are made during the movie, it's because they deserved to be made; if there is applause at the end, it's because it was well-deserved applause. Being around that much enthusiasm is a wonderful thing; being a part of that enthusiasm is even better.

And yeah, I was part of the enthusiasm for Scott Pilgrim. It wasn't so much the comic that did it, mind; I've only read each book once, and each took about twenty minutes, or about as much time as they were offered on screen. It wasn't even the atmosphere around the comic - an indie-manga-video-game-inspired book speaks to me even if I don't love the thing, I must admit. No, what inspired me here was my absolute love for all things Edgar Wright. His first two movies, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, are two of my top-ten favorite movies; and Spaced is a wonderful show in its own, special way. So far, Wright has done no wrong; and if he turns his attention to a property that I at least respect, well, who am I to argue?

It was with that baggage that I walked into Scott Pilgrim last night with sky-high expectations. And, while I can't say that all of my hopes were met, I did come out happy and impressed. It was great - but I have no idea who to recommend it to.

A short, not-very-helpful plot summary - Scott Pilgrim is a jobless 22-year-old slacker, living in Toronto, and playing in a band. He unexpectedly falls madly in love with the new girl in town, Ramona Flowers; she (shockingly) agrees to date him, but fails to warn Scott about the dangers, specifically her 7 Evil Exes that he must defeat in order to win her. Thus, the movie shifts from a straight-up manga romance to a Street-Fighter-esque video game - and then back and forth a few times, with some other genres mixed in along the way.

Edgar Wright is no stranger to the "action-romance" genre; Shaun is a romantic zombie flick, and Hot Fuzz is effectively a buddy-cop-romance (unconsummated, but wonderful for playing). What has made this sub-genre work for him has been his effective use of sketched-in-but-distinct characters. Yes, at least one character is given a proper story arc (Scott); and a few others get fuller arcs in the comic (Knives, Ramona, Envy, arguably Gideon). But most of the characters are just barely there; we're told names and ages, and most of them get a few lines, but otherwise there's not much depth there. That turns out not to matter; by the end of the movie, I wanted to know more about these people. Kim and Wallace, in particular, stood out as characters that could carry a movie on their own, and this without actually knowing a thing about them.

How about those major characters? Scott is, indeed, an ass; and in that I believe Michael Cera was well-chosen, because it's such a contrast to his normal roles. Ramona is shallow, but that's okay, given that this movie is about Scott's crush on the distant girl; and she is positively haunting. And Knives - oh, Knives! This is a 17-year-old girl growing up through heartbreak, and she shows it. Besides the idea that she's an interesting character (and both nuanced and potentially real, an interesting feat), she's also incredibly well acted and charming. The actress that plays her will be the breakout actor of the movie, if there is any justice. And... well, honestly, that's about it. Everybody else is secondary, if wonderful in their secondariness.

(I suppose there is arguably another character - Toronto, the snowy wasteland of young adults, clubs, movie shoots, and assorted Canadian-ness. It's an interesting mix between a mostly-unknown major city and a dark, underpopulated wilderness; and of course it's full of fighting and not-exactly-bright colors and parties and over-the-top, out-of-nowhere, video-game-y action. It's not a showy setting, but it's sketched together as well as any of the secondary characters; and it clearly has its own gravity in the world, with characters escaping from its grasp only to return years later. But, as with most cities-as-character discussions, the metaphor can only be stretched so far. Suffice it to say that it's interesting.)

Another thing that makes Scott Pilgrim distinct, and possibly revolutionary, is its use of background CGI. The effects are lifted straight from the comic book, with the door bell exclaiming "DING DONG" in bright letters on the screen, or movement lines flying from a strumming guitar. Of course, these are also building blocks of the video-game inspired world that the movie lives in; it's not enough that these elements are on screen for us to see, but the characters themselves comment on them too (even if they are perfectly happy to see people jumping dozens of feet into the air and hordes of enemies burst into coins on their death). But even while the viewer's attention is explicitly drawn to this visual style, it soon becomes a simple part of the background, and later subsumed into the larger story. It starts a little ostentatious, and ends up shockingly subtle; all in all, it just works at helping to portray the world. I hope this, if anything, is copied.

Finally, of course, there are the action scenes, and I was happy to see that these were just plain fun. I don't know that they're going to hold up very well on repeat viewings (except in allowing time to look at the small details of the CGI), but for a first viewing, it was a treat. Yes, the choreography is a bit ludicrous, and the stunt-doubles more obvious than usual; but so what? It captured the style of the comic (and its genre) perfectly, and it made me grin more often than not.

The audience loved the movie, cheering for both the opening Universal logo and for the ending credits. I have to say that I was as happy as them. I'm sure I'll keep picking at the movie over time, and I'm not likely to go out and see it again this weekend; but for now, this was a great movie experience, and something that should be supported.

*** 3/4

A few side-notes:

• It's really hard to not talk about the set pieces in great detail, because they're so good. The fights are distinct and interesting, and they're all full of blink-or-you'll-miss-it cutenesses.

• The video game version of Scott Pilgrim came out earlier this week for Playstation 3, and it's wonderful. Sure, it's pretty short and fairly shallow, but it feels like a well-written novelization of the movie. It plays like River City Ransom; the soundtrack consists of remarkably high-quality chip-tunes; and the video-game references are turned all the way up to something that I just love to see. It's fluffy, but really fun, and it's a wonderful companion piece, especially in how it allows us to see more of the set pieces I mentioned above. Plus, we got the cyborg drummer in there! Yay!

• The plot of the movie and the plot of the graphic novels upon which the movie is based are, while similar on their face, really quite different. The main difference is in time scale; the movie is told over a few days, while the book takes months or years to reach its conclusion. The main effect of this change is in Scott's relationship with Ramona; in the book there is a sense of a relationship building up over time, while in the movie it's all about the immediate "crush" phase of the relationship. This is important.)

• Based on the trailer showing before the movie, the marketing team around this movie really had no idea what kind of movie they were showing. There was no Tron trailer; instead we got romantic comedies, the new utterly-horrible-looking M Night Shyamalan movie, and Jackass 3D. This surprises me, because the television and other media marketing seemed to be so on-target (read: me).

• Early in the movie, a Nintendo DS Lite was shown being played without a cartridge in its main slot. After hemming and hawing for a few seconds, I was delighted to see that this was because they were playing a specific Gameboy Advance game in the other slot. The creators were paying attention. This made me happy.

• I have still not figured out who Ramona Flowers reminds me of in real life. I feel like I should be able to point at a friend and say "you're Ramona!", but I just haven't worked it out; and that tip-of-my-tongue longing for a name is likely to eat at me for weeks.

Despicable Me: ** 1/2 (out of 4)

The trailers of Despicable Me did little to inspire me with confidence. Yes, I like Steve Carell, and yes, those little yellow minion things were pretty cute; but the plot described by the trailers didn't seem very deep or interesting, and it all reminded me a bit too much of Shrek crossed with Inspector Clouseau. Still, after several weeks of nothing good to see (what, like I was supposed to see Twilight 3?), I had to see something. And so I decided to give Despicable Me a shot.

I can't say that I was blown away, but I was at least not disappointed.

Despicable Me is a nice, light, fluffy movie about a professional super- villain - emphasis on the "professional" - named Gru. Gru looks like the Penguin and has the managerial skills of... well, an archetypical Very Good Manager. He doesn't want to hurt anybody; he just wants to do cool (if evil) things (and maybe make a young child cry every now and then). He primarily does evil deeds in order to earn the money in order to do more evil things; and in the mean time, he employs a small army of yellow minions, who he knows by name and cares about individually, as well as a top-notch mad scientist.

It's ludicrous, of course, but it's played fairly straight; and that actually turns out to be the main reason that the movie was fun to watch.

The actual plot of the movie connects one of his schemes with his adoption of three young girls. This doesn't turn out to be a very deep or interesting story; at best, it strings together a bunch of cute, fairly pointless scenes that hint at a world more evil than Gru could make, but the movie sees no reason to explore this. This turns out okay; the movie's multiple levels of cuteness turn out to make up for quite a bit.

But really, it was the little minions that made the movie. They looked amusing in the trailers, sure; but given that they were interchangeable automatons, it was interesting to actually enjoy watching them on screen. They were cute, they were intelligent, and they were a little bit evil; but mostly, they looked like corporate employees that were actually having a good time. It worked for me. I look forward to seeing these characters again.

I was pretty fond of the animation, or at least was never particularly bothered by it. The art was stylized and smooth, but not particularly played for laughs in and of itself; and this was a good thing. Even the 3D was acceptable; I'm not sure that it really added a lot, but it didn't hurt, and I didn't feel exploited for having paid for it.

All of that said, I do recognize that I used words and phrases like "acceptable" and "not disappointed" a lot in this review. This movie was not great, but it was watchable and relatively fun. It may not be a movie that I'd be excited to go out and see again, but I'm happy enough that I saw it. If more kid's movies were like this, the world would be slightly more pleasant.

I went in with low expectations, and these expectations were surpassed. This still ends up with an average movie; but sometimes, average is fine.

** 1/2

In other news, the trailers for the other movies were horrible! Why are we subjecting the country's children to garbage like Alpha and Omega, Cats vs Dogs 2, or Smurfs? Even the Megamind trailer is pretty bad, though I suspect I'll at least see that one. sigh There's a reason I'm happy that this movie was average...

The A-Team: *** (out of 4) / ** (out of 4)

"A is for Action! A is for Adventure! A is for Mr. T!" - Nick at Nite

The movie version of The A-Team is, more-or-less, my introduction to the series. I have never seen an episode of the television show. As a kid, there was a good reason for this: Mom didn't want me to watch violent television shows, and I had other shows upon which to spend my listening-to-Mom capital (read: Transformers). But even after the show moved from prime-time/Saturday-morning fare into 1980s-retro-kitsch, I never sat down and saw any of it. I picked up its cultural cues, and I enjoyed the Nick at Nite commercials, but other than that... well, let's just say that I was a little bit saddened to find out that Mr. T's character had a name besides "Mr. T".

So yeah, I'm a little bit of an A-Team Newb; but I still went into the movie feeling like a bit of a fan. And, within this odd position, I was not disappointed.

Oh, sure, there was plenty in this movie to dislike, starting with the "pre-origin story" that was too long and included way too much exposition, and ending up with the silly ending where (spoilers?) the writers suddenly remembered that the A-Team is supposed to be "on the run" and not working directly with the US Government. The plot was over-complicated and foolish, the character motivations were sketchy at best, and the plot holes... oh, the plot holes! If ever there was a movie that wouldn't stand up to close scrutiny, this is it.

But for all of that, I only really grimaced a few times; the rest of the time I was grinning in some kind of maniacal glee. The explosions were so ludicrous and fun! The characters were so cheerfully over-the-top, reproducing the original heroes with incredible gusto while offering villains that were just strange in their villainy. The action set pieces were corny and felt like something that would have been done back in the 80s TV show (though perhaps they wouldn't have looked as good). And the catch-phrases, no matter how cheesy or clearly choreographed, were still fun. So, rather than enumerating the movie's flaws, my instincts are to defend the movie.

Oh, and it wasn't in 3-D. That's a plus. (Though the 3-D gag was pretty fun.)

This was a fun movie, but stupid. If you go in looking for a PG-13 version of a big, dumb-fun action movie, you'll probably be happy. But don't look too closely at the plot, characters, or anything else unless you want to ruin the fun.

*** / **

Side-note 1: the multi-rank system measures, in this case, "how much I liked it" versus "is this a good movie?". Usually I can get by with just one number, but that doesn't always work with movies like this. I may have come out of the movie with a huge grin, but that doesn't mean the movie is actually good.

Side-note 2: that scene with the tank and the parachutes? That's going to make an awesome Mythbusters episode.

Iron Man 2: *** (out of 4)

You can tell that the summer blockbuster season has begun when attending a movie during opening weekend requires you to stand in line for a significant period. From the perspective of an amateur reviewer, this is requires a shift in perspective; the review has to reflect the knowledge that almost everybody that is likely to see a given movie is likely to have either already seen the movie before the reviews can be published (or at least has heard a significant amount of media discussion of the movie's plot and how it did opening weekend). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does change the game. In my case, I assume that the reader has some idea of whether they're predisposed to see the movie in the first place; rather than try to convince the unconvinced, I'll talk about whether the movie accomplishes what it sets out to do (artistically).

Iron Man 2 is an interesting sequel, in that it spends much of its time directly following up to the events of the first movie. At the end of 2008's Iron Man, Tony Stark revealed to the world that he was, indeed, the titular superhero; and in so doing, he changed the world more than he had by creating the costume in the first place. Instead of just being a regular, mysterious superhero, the world now sees that the suit is merely technology; and, as always, technology is meant to be copied. And so the race is on to reverse-engineer the tech, with Stark in the middle; and while Tony loves the attention, it is putting pressure on him to succeed.

It's an interestingly low-key movie, all told. As in the first movie, there is never a sense that the world itself is in any particular danger; instead, we spend time arguing about defense contracts and personal vendettas. The stakes are still high, but it's a very personal movie, at least in the milieu of superhero stories. Lives are at stake, but only because they're in the way.

As before Robert Downey Jr steals the show. As his personal fame and global importance have increased, Tony Stark's arrogance and impulsive behaviour have grown to match. He feels the weight of the world on his shoulders, and refuses to show it to anybody; the only thing keeping him going is the knowledge that it would be even worse if he didn't. He is both introspective and horribly self-absorbed; when it comes down to it, he is his own worst enemy. This is written with more skill than in the original comics, where this struggle was seen through the prism of alcoholism; and it is certainly well-portrayed, based on the acting skill and background of Downey Jr. The first movie was not just a fluke; this is the role he was born for.

Surprisingly, Tony Stark was not the only well-defined character in the movie. Pepper Potts is a much more organic character this time through; instead of being primarily a foil for Tony's excesses, she is consistently competent, acting both as a personal assistant to Tony and a general manager for a large corporation. Last time we were told that she was an important part of Tony's life; this time, we're shown why.

Other characters are less well-defined. The weakest link is Scarlet Johansson, who turns in a fairly uninspired performance as Black Widow; she looks the part when necessary, but doesn't have the presence to carry the role when out of "costume" and is not given particularly good material to work with. Also weak was Justin Hammer, who, while well-acted by Sam Rockwell, was only shallowly characterized. Better were Vanko (an oddly subtle performance by Mickey Rourke, at least for a character out for revenge) and Happy Hogan (who is given something to do this time); somewhere in between were Nick Fury, Agent Coulson, and Colonel Rhodes (I think I liked Terrence Howard better than Don Cheadle, but both are good, and the bigger problem is that the writing was better for this character in the first movie).

So, that's the characters - how was the rest of the movie? Well, the main story was low-key, as previously mentioned; it was good, but not excellent, and seemed to consist more of a loosely-connected series of set pieces rather than a consistent story. As others have noted, the movie did seem a bit busy; some of the material could probably have been shifted to the side without hurting the overall story. That said, I'm not sure that I could easily identify which pieces should go; so maybe it's not so bad.

A few other points:

• There was some really bad science in there - really, really bad. Yes, I shouldn't worry about this much in a movie like this, but it made me cringe. No, you do not make new elements that way! Why did it have to be an element anyway? sigh

• The computer user interfaces looked interesting, for the most part. They helped get the idea across that Stark's technology was a few years ahead of everybody else's, without making it look like they were from outer space; this was a nice balance.

• Vanko's role was, overall, pretty sketchy. Most of the way through I liked this; the character seemed like a bit of a super-smart thug, and his desire for revenge didn't really extend to hurting bystanders all that much, both of which were at the very least interesting ideas. But it bothered me that he didn't have much of an end-game planned, or at least not much of a sensible one. If you're going to go with super-smart as a character trait, it's nice to follow through.

• The product placement made me snicker more than anything. Of course, this was true of the commercials and such as well. Am I really more likely to buy Sun/Oracle products now that they're associated with Iron Man?

• Do I really have to talk about the special effects? They were good, and well-integrated. The action set pieces were put together well. If you come for the spectacle, you'll be happy.

• Hooray for not being in 3-D!

So, all of that said - what's the overall verdict? Well, the movie does what it sets out to do, even if the details are questionable. I wasn't disappointed, but I also don't think it was as joyous and fun as the first movie. And I still want to see the next movie(s) in the series.

***

An aside, regarding the large Marvel Movie-verse - I really do like how this is playing out so far. The connections are there, and are clearly telegraphed, but don't need to be played out to be interesting; this feeds my fanboy tendencies, without requiring me to be an expert on decades of Marvel Universe background to understand what's going on. But, more interestingly, this is a new universe, something that hasn't been done before. Yes, all of the major beats are there from several versions of the Marvel-verse, but this time we're doing it without the Big Names: Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and probably others whose rights belong to other companies. This means that some paths can be pursued that are just not feasible in other incarnations; and even if the rights do revert to Marvel at some point, the characters will be coming into the game late. I like the mix-up, it's very Elseworlds-y.

How To Train Your Dragon (3D): ** 3/4 (out of 4)

The Path of the Fledgling Movie Reviewer seems to require seeing and reviewing about a movie a week. This has worked out fairly well so far; not only does it match my personal inclinations to go see movies, but most of the time there's no more than a single movie out in a given week that I want to see. But this gets harder as Summer Blockbuster Season begins; every now and then, I'm going to run into situations where there's one movie I want to see, and another that I should see. The first time I had to make this kind of decision this year, I chose to see Hot Tub Time Machine; it seemed like a better date movie, and I rather suspected that it wouldn't stay in theatres all that long. But even at the time, it was fairly obvious that I was going to have to see the competition at some point.

Happily, this last weekend's Big Release was A Nightmare On Elm Street, a movie that I am unlikely to ever see. This gave me the chance to see Dreamworks Animation's big-movie-of-the-year, How To Train Your Dragon.

Dragon is a solid workhorse of a movie from a film studio that is trying to make movies a cut above your average animated kiddie fare (and knows perfectly well that it can't compete with Pixar directly). It sets out to tell a standard coming-of-age story, set on an island where the people are Vikings and the only animals are sheep, fish, and a variety of dragons (being, of course, the natural enemy of Vikings). Within this framework the movie follows the formula pretty closely: the bumbling chieftain's son befriends a dragon, disappoints his father, impresses the girl, saves the day, and changes the world.

This may be a story that we've seen before, but it still feels pretty fresh. Most of the media seem to think that this has to do with its 3D work; me, I didn't see that. It wasn't that the animation was bad; it just seemed a bit bland to me, acting like the gimmick-3D work that is so popular at theme parks across the world. It didn't add anything except $3.50 to the cost of my movie ticket - which is, at least, better than making the movie actively worse.

No, what made the movie fresh was its sensible use of back-story, and specifically its sampling of what was apparently a complex ecology surrounding the dragons. We looked in detail at about a half dozen species of dragon during the movie; and we saw glimpses of another half-dozen or so. But there was a sense there that there were many more species of dragons, and that they might even be able to interact with each other in something resembling a sensible manner. I'm fond of the idea that there's more to a world than can be described in a single film, and that impression came across pretty nicely.

For all of that, though, I didn't come out of the movie particularly excited. The movie was worthwhile, but it still felt a bit bland; maybe it was the dodgy voice acting, or my fore-mentioned gripes with the animation, or or maybe the dragons just felt a tad under-characterized, but I just wasn't blown away. It was still above average, but I feel like it could have been a good movie if they'd just done... something. If I knew what. (And if I expected that they'd do it in the sequel, I'd be even happier, but alas...)

Dragon has held up pretty well at the box office, and will probably continue to hold up pretty well over the year. It may not be anything truly special, but it's a sold, worthwhile movie, and certainly Dreamworks' best animated movie since Kung Fu Panda. It's certainly good for kids, but even without kids you won't be wasting your time seeing it.

(And now I'll go back to waiting patiently for Peter Jackson's interpretation of the Temeraire novels. Those ought to be fun!)

** 3/4

Clash of the Titans (2010): * 3/4 (out of 4)

It's been a month since I saw the new version of Clash of the Titans, and I still haven't written up my review. This is pretty much because I didn't really have that much to say about it that hadn't already been said. But a few people have asked about it anyway, and I did take some reasonable notes, so perhaps it's worth writing up something.

The short version: this was a bad movie for all of the reasons that big summer movies are often bad. I look at it as a step down from last year's Terminator 4, a movie which had some potential but wasted it.

But why exactly does that movie come to mind? For starters, both movies suffered pretty badly from extremely poor decisions from on-high that changed the central flow of the film. In T4's case, it was the decision to focus on John Connor directly; in CotT's case, it was in the nature of the Perseus's quest and his relationship to the Gods. This is detailed in a CHUD article, which is fascinating and spoiler-heavy. If you've read this far, I recommend continuing on to that article as well.

But that's not really all of it. More to the point was a fundamental attempt to add darkness to an already gritty (if a bit wacky) storyline. In T4, this came at the expensive a consistent storyline and relevant characters; in Clash, it came at the expense of the pre-existing story and characters, especially when it came to motivations. Perseus's quest was changed so much from what it was supposed to be (vengeance instead of heroism) that it wasn't even fulfilled! This isn't quite as bad as the fact that T4 forgot to relate to its own subtitle, but it's close.

And then there's the issue of "villains". Zeus could have been an ambivalent villain here; instead, he was just badly characterized. This was similar to the way that that T4's Skynet almost had some sympathy delivered to it, but managed to mess it up at every turn. Shades of grey may be a good idea, but it doesn't work by just cutting back and forth between black and white.

Anyway. There's more to the analogy, but I shouldn't get too far in unless I want to start adding spoilers.

There are plenty of other things to rant about, but waiting a month has made me lose interest in pursuing them, though between them they definitely knocked a few points off of the final score. Yes, the Pegasus was useless; the idea of a pantheon of Gods was completely wasted; the "quest" was ludicrous; the Kraken was both over- and under-utilized; the random attack on the mechanical owl was nauseating; etc. But so what? Compared to the wrong-headedness of the movie itself, those points hardly rank.

There is one point worth harping on. Clash was the first movie I've seen in theatres in a while where 3D was an option but I did not use it. The reviews warned me off; and as far as I can tell, it was a good thing. I'm growing less and less enamored with 3D as the year progresses, and the fact that the studios are trying to shoehorn it into shaky-cam-action movies like this worries me for the future. We've gone past over-use of the gimmick, and into buzzword-compliance territory. It's really frustrating, and it's made worse because I know that it's making the studios obscene amounts of money. sigh

* 3/4

Pianomania: *** 1/2 (out of 4)

Roger Ebert, film critic extraordinaire, is a native of my home town. This fact offers a couple of small advantages. First of all, it's a fun little fact to mention at parties. Second, and much more useful, Ebert runs an annual film festival in my hometown. It's actually a fairly big deal, and it brings all sorts of people to central Illinois that would never otherwise consider it; but for all that, I hardly even took notice of it while I was there. Looking back, I regularly kick myself for not taking advantage of EbertFest while I was there; after all, now I have to drive for at least an hour to go to a proper movie festival.

I mention this because there's currently a film festival going on up in San Francisco. I did make it to one movie, and it turned out to be great. I may not quite know how to review it, but I figure it's worth trying.

Pianomania is a documentary about Stefan Knüpfer, a master piano tuner and technician that works for the Steinway corporation in Austria. The movie documents a year in his life, as he prepares a single piano for use in the studio recording of Bach's 'The Art of Fugue'. The work is painstaking and deeply collaborative; the tuning itself is as much art as the work that is to be played.

I went into the movie fairly blind, but it turned out that this topic appealed to me pretty deeply. I love stories about the heroic work of technicians; after all, as a sysadmin, these are My Kind Of People. While I may not have understood the details of what he was going, I could see the heart and devotion that Stefan was putting into his work, trying to help out and impress his client while also being willing to fight for his own position. The relative "status" of the parties involved was also clear - while the big performers are clearly "more important", they clearly depend on the work of their techs and support staff, and the truly good ones know how much they depend on it. So when that final performance sounds so amazingly perfect, the technician feels as much pride as the performer. I know that feeling, and it was well-captured and portrayed here.

(As a side benefit, the fact that the movie was in German connected me to the content even more. My old boss is German, and I recognized the turns of phrase and the idiosyncrasies between him and the master artists shown in this movie. I'm sure I giggled a bit more than most of the audience at a few pieces of dialogue, and I'm just as sure that I shivered more than them too...)

Outside of this, the technical presentation of the movie was excellent. While the film generally consisted of standard documentary fare mixed with a number of montages of the city of Vienna, there were several times where the camera was focused solely on the pianos themselves. Many of these shots were clearly extremely intricate to set up; just as clearly, Stefan was clearly working during these setups, so the fact that they were able to get them done without getting too much in the way is also quite impressive. The sound was also top-notch, but somehow that seemed less surprising; I got the impression that the filmmakers would have been embarrassed otherwise.

The movie was also interspersed with a number of comedic bits, surrounding a musical comedy troupe that Stefan worked with in his spare time. I'm loathe to spoil any of it, but... the closing bit was glorious, both in its humor, and in its true-to-life look at technician humor. It was this comedy that made me start to understand the technician's art in this case.

All told, Pianomania warmed my cold sysadmin heart. I highly recommend tracking it down, at least in a theatre with a good sound system.

*** 1/2

The Losers: * 1/2 (out of 4)

Vertigo started its 32-issue run of The Losers back in 2003, when I was an absolutely voracious comic book reader and collector. Oh, sure, by any reasonable measure I still am a voracious reader and collector; but back then, I was picking up 30-40 issues a month, and reading most of them. The Losers was actually a bit of a high point within that collecting; at the very least, it was something different than the normal fantasy and superhero stuff I was reading at the time. The book was essentially a boiled-down action movie series, told in a mostly episodic manner and focusing on the "good bits" without having to spend so much time on the details. This worked very nicely, because the reader was more than capable of filling in the details, while the artwork gave a nice framework upon which those details could flow. It was silly, it was over-the-top, and it worked.

Sadly, there wasn't enough detail left to convert the material back into a movie again.

The Losers is the first Big Dumb Action Movie of the summer (yes, it's April). It more-or-less tells the story of the comic's first story arc, with a bunch of character origins and the more interesting parts of the longer story tossed in for good measure. The characters are more stereotypes than people: the Roguish Leader With The Heart Of Gold, the Operations Expert, the Bad-Ass Sniper, the Assassin, the Computer Guy, and the Hot Ninja Chick. They're an ex-military unit that has been set up by their government, and they have to get revenge on the Big Bad Guy over it.

None of that bothers me; it was a good start for the comic, and it could have been a good start here. But it turns out that movie-watchers are less fond of ill-defined anti-heroes, and want details. And so most of the characters end up with back stories, families, and all the rest - thus taking them out of stereotype land, and into Characters We're Supposed To Care About. But, sadly, we don't exactly learn enough details to care; and most of those details tend to clash with what we're learning elsewhere. Instead of archetypes, the characters are sketched into caricatures.

But that's just a single example of the greater problem: having to add detail back in where it had been taken out before. Another example, perhaps more obvious to those that haven't read the books, is the visuals. As movie goers are getting used to, the scenes from the comic are essentially copied panel-by-panel; but frankly, the comic's art doesn't support that. The comic's art is also very archetypal, and (for the most part) minimalist. It's enough to set up the basic scenes and the characters themselves, but past that? When they start putting in details of their locales, it ends up looking wrong. Fake. Often silly.

(I should note that this did work well in the credits sequences. The motion-comic version of Jock's artwork was worthwhile, and I wish we could have had more of it.)

There were other problems. The movie couldn't really decide on a tone during its action sequences; this mostly means "more people should have been killed", and was probably caused by its PG-13 rating, but it still bothered me. The villain was just awful, in a "we haven't decided how evil to make him so we'll change from minute to minute" kind of way. I don't want to get into the Indian Kindof-Bad-Guys, but... shiver The movie ends on a "let's have a sequel" cliffhanger, which was foolish. And (perhaps a bit petty) I was annoyed that they didn't use the Glee version of "Don't Stop Believin'"; it would have dated the movie more effectively.

What I learned from this movie: when you boil down a genre to its basics, you can get a comic. When you boil down that comic into its basics, you get a cartoon. Too bad they weren't trying for a cartoon.

* 1/2