Swirl of WARCRAFT

I’m glad Warcraft exists, imperfect as it is, because Hollywood needs to take its mega-budgets into comparatively weird places from time to time. The result in this case is a big galumphing fantasy epic creating an impressively imagined world in which one could easily get lost. In fact, the filmmakers themselves appear to have lost themselves in it to such an extent that they’ve barely figured out a way to invite the rest of us in. This is the sort of fantasy storytelling that’s vividly artificial – taking style cues from Star Wars prequels’ and Hobbit movies’ sleek digital swooping – overflowing with jargon and unusual names, and with a dense and interconnected backstory that’s, at best, merely hinted. I found myself grateful that the film leans on some standard conventions of the genre, like color-coded good and evil and preoccupations with clans, lineages, and honor, because they were a great way to get my bearings. It’s both too much and not enough, a world whose details remain murky no matter the amount of exposition thrown about, but remains nice to look at in the same way a striking illustration on a genre paperback cover can be.

Based on a popular video game, Warcraft is a respectable effort at translating a clearly unwieldy mythos into something even remotely approaching a coherent two-hour feature film. It takes place in a peaceful kingdom of humans suddenly besieged by a new threat: orcs, shown here as hulking motion-capture performances of toothy muscle-bound giants. Mankind’s neighboring dwarves and elves and whatnots aren’t coming to the rescue, so it’s up to them to fight back the invading hordes. That’s typical fantasy material, but where it gets complicated for the better is in its attention to the lives of the orcs. Not just the mindless monsters you’d find in The Lord of the Rings and its imitators, many have nobility and high ideals, so much so that one principled chieftain (Toby Kebbell) starts to suspect the dark wizard (Clancy Brown) leading them into battle might not have their best interests at heart. This good orc is made a funhouse reflection of a warrior man (Travis Fimmel) who is tasked by the King and Queen (Dominic Cooper and Ruth Negga) to help stop this looming warfare before it gets worse.

That seems easy enough to comprehend, but try to keep up as each new scene adds a half-explained wrinkle. There’s a youthful magic man (Ben Schnetzer, looking for all the world like a LARPer lost on set) who quit his mystical training, but still sneaks around trying to solve the mystery of the orcs’ otherworldly power. There’s a small, tough lady orc (Paula Patton covered in green and sporting fetching tusks) who was a slave of the dark orc, but upon her capture by humans decides to help them with inside info. There’s a wizard (Ben Foster) who lives at the top of a gigantic tower and supposedly protects the land with his spells, although he doesn’t seem to be too concerned about the rampaging armies while he spends his time making a golem. I haven’t even mentioned the smooth-faced young soldier (Burkely Duffield) who desperately wants his warrior father’s approval, or the orc baby revived by the spirit of a deer, the pool of good blue magic, the pernicious influence of the bad green spell called The Fell, the giant eagles and wolves, the wall of lightening, the inky black-and-purple cube Glenn Close is hiding inside, and the towering portal to another realm powered by the souls of countless captives.

It is confusion – a mishmash of accents, intentions, ideas, motivations, tones, and haltingly introduced plot threads – but not for lack of trying. Writer-director Duncan Jones’s previous films, Moon and Source Code, were models of sci-fi clarity in the face of twisty high concepts, so I can only image the difficulty he and co-writer Charles Leavitt (In the Heart of the Sea) had wrangling the source material into shape here. The movie is broad and complicated, expensive and chintzy, deeply serious and exuberantly goofy, convincing and fake, exciting and risible. But it comes by its oddball jumble honestly. Besides, you don’t have to consult footnotes or a glossary to get the gist. Jones is effective at communicating the general thrust of the narrative impulses and gestures, even in scenes that might as well be performed in untranslated gibberish. (Maybe they already are.) The emotional stakes are clear enough from scene to scene, even if they’re buried under layers of gobbledygook, and are prone to shift without warning if that’s where the plot needs to go. Maybe devotees of the game would have better luck making heads or tails of it.

Figures travel hither and yon over the fantasy terrain, speaking in negotiations of grave importance and urgently communicating a flood of exposition. More focused on worldbuilding than building characters, the movie ends up telling convolutions in broad strokes, while the narrative plays out as only a slice of story, beginning with problems already in progress and ending without satisfying conclusions. But what I appreciated about Jones’s approach is the consideration he brings to the conflict’s two sides, even at the expense of denying the action sequences requisite bloodlust. This isn’t a standard good versus evil story. There are amongst orcs and humans alike those who ultimately have to fight against the worst of their own to accomplish peace. It’s a movie about our protagonists desperately trying to avoid war, and we watch as chaos erupts in action sequences wherein characters view the act of picking up their weapons as failure. They do what they must for the good of their people, even if their efforts are doomed to collapse for the movie’s waves of obligatory CG combat. There’s admirable effort in all this unfulfilling chaos.

No Business Like Show Business: HAIL, CAESAR!

There’s a zen saying that suggests, “The most dangerous thing in the world is to think you understand something.” This could be a good description for the outlook of any Coen brothers’ film, works invested in ambiguities and absurdities of human lives as reflected in the worldviews and systems that control them. One man’s belief is another man’s mystery, and Joel and Ethan Coen have made a career out of stories of existential crises told through oddball humor and offbeat suspense. Their latest is Hail, Caesar!, a film full of people who think they understand, having figured out deep reverence for some larger ideological force or another: the Bible, Das Kapital, Hollywood’s studio system. But where does that certainty get them? It’s the early 1950s, and a studio fixer (Josh Brolin) is heading into a day that’ll be full of complications to test many a person’s certainties, a straight-faced screwball panic, or maybe philosophical wrestling on laughing gas. Either way it’s a pip, but with typical Coen precision and deliberateness.

Sustained goofing on classic Hollywood, a day-in-the-life on the backlot not too far removed from Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont’s, the Coens follow Brolin’s studio suit from set to set wrangling stars, quelling complaints, and staving off controversy. The fictional Capitol Pictures is hard at work on several movies: a bathing beauty musical, a wordy melodrama, a dancing sailors movie, a singing cowboy picture, and a Biblical epic. Bopping between the films in progress we’re presented with a great imitation of Hollywood iconography: a little Robert Taylor here, some Esther Williams there, with Gene Kelly, Roy Rodgers, and others thrown in for good measure. It’s like a bleary Turner Classic Movies binge if you kept passing out and dreaming ridiculous connective behind-the-scenes tissue between disparate films. The Coens have fun conjuring up winking nods to historical references points, and mimicking the style of 50’s filmmaking. (Lap dissolves, rear projection, matte paintings and more show up.) It’s in love with its pastiche, but has enough distance to maintain an aloof absurdism.

Between fun sketches of films within the film we’re treated to a stew of behind-the-scenes silliness, wacky shenanigans that find increasingly offbeat expression on their way to some head-scratching conclusions. (“Accept the mystery,” as a character from the Coen’s great, maybe greatest, work A Serious Man might say.) Hail, Caesar! is set in motion when work on said Biblical epic is thrown into jeopardy when its star (played with daffy blockheaded charm by George Clooney) is kidnapped by two devious extras intent on delivering him to a clandestine meeting of Hollywood subversives in Malibu. This is, of course, the day’s biggest problem for Brolin’s harried studio middleman, who’s fielding a job offer from an aircraft manufacture, but can’t quite shake the fun of all this show business. He tries to keep the story quiet, even as ransom notes show up and there’s a dozen other problems needing his attention. Who ever said his job was easy?

This is the Coen’s fizziest man-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown story, like the better, more downbeat, though still plenty funny, Barton Fink or Serious Man or Inside Llewyn Davis played in a major key. Brolin scurries around dealing with an unmarried ingénue (Scarlett Johansson) whose pregnancy is a problem for her innocent image, a Western star (Alden Ehrenreich) who is an awkward fit for a drawing room drama by a fancy director (Ralph Fiennes), and competitive twin gossip columnists (Tilda Swinton) sniffing around the smell of scandal. A host of studio employees (played by the likes of Channing Tatum, Clancy Brown, Wayne Knight, and Frances McDormand, to name a few) scramble through the story, most getting a few amusing moments bouncing off Brolin’s clench-jawed determination. He’s grinding through the day, keeping total calamity at bay. Sure, a job overseeing airplane factories would be easier, but wouldn’t he miss the fun of racing around Los Angeles, dealing with all the kooks and their crisises?

In its meandering way, Hail, Caesar! takes the usual Coen delight in dialogue, peculiar turns of phrase, droll patter, looping repetition, dry sarcasm, airy eccentricities, and narrative dead-ends and cul-de-sacs. And all this, of course, serves only to reveal characters dancing over the deep abyss of uncertainty. Like a softer version of what their sharply cynical Burn After Reading did to the espionage game – turning paranoid thriller mechanics on their ear to amplify the absurdity and the impossibility of “making sense” – this film asks if cinema – with all its egos, pretentions, and petty gossip – is serious business. The answer is: not really. Show business is cut from some deeply silly cloth. But it’s no better than anyone else who claims to be doing important work – a priest, a rabbi, a pawn of the military-industrial complex, a studio stooge, a Communist. That round-up sounds like a cast list for a great joke, and that’s what the Coens try for here, staging scenes in which all the above, and more too, make themselves out to be figures of fun when they take themselves too seriously.

The film often feels slight, busy goofing around, doodling with silly details and funny performances, Roger Deakins’ brightly lit, primary color-popping cinematography letting wacky backstage antics and a variety of movie genres bleed off the backlot and into conversation with one another. But it picks up weight as it punctures windbags’ hot air and scoffs at those who are too sure they have the perfect understanding of anything – history, economics, politics, morality, you name it. Everyone’s spinning their own stories about how the world works, but their boats are easily rocked. Shouldn’t there always be room for doubt, like an actor delivering a passionate speech, but forgetting his closing line? The movies, this film seems to say, may be frivolous gossamer illusions, but isn’t anything we cling to in order to make sense of our lives? If we’re going to lose ourselves in soothing fictions, it may as well come from dazzling Technicolor fantasies lighting up the silver screen.

All Wet: SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER

Nickelodeon’s long-running series SpongeBob SquarePants is characterized by sweet, cheery cartoon surrealism. In recounting the bizarre adventures of a happy sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea, it has built a gentle world of nautical nonsense, non-sequiturs, asides, incongruous mixed media inserts, goofball slapstick contortions and silly voices. The show will do anything for a ridiculous sight gag or goofy sound effect, but loves its characters so earnestly and consistently that it rarely devolves into free floating weirdness. At the loveable center is SpongeBob himself. Created by Stephen Hillenburg and voiced by Tom Kenny, he’s one of the all-time great cartoon characters, a source of endless silliness springing forth from a supply of inexhaustible optimism. Even if a story is a dud, I still like this sponge.

In The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, the second big-screen outing for this TV world, the jokes aren’t as dense as they should be. But we’re talking about a cartoon that has been on the air since 1999, hasn’t been in theaters since 2004, and is accustomed to telling stories 10 or 11 minutes long. A bit of franchise fatigue should be expected. It sets in as series regular director Paul Tibbitt and screenwriters Glenn Berger and Jonathan Aibel, of the Alvin and the Chipmunks squeakquels, stretch a thin bit of plot to goof around for over 90 minutes. There’s not much there in terms of emotional investment or compelling story, but at least the time passes largely painlessly. It’s hard to dislike something so bright, chipper, and eager to please, even as I found myself wondering why this story was worth telling at all, let alone outside the confines of the show.

There’s really no reason the movie should work, or be as charming as it often manages to be. The characters aren’t as fresh as they once were, and their new film recycles storylines done better in their first film, and in some of the series’ classic episodes. (There’s even a totally unsuccessful attempt to recreate the magic of “The F.U.N. Song.”) Sponge Out of Water concerns yet another diabolical plot to steal the town of Bikini Bottom’s beloved top-secret Krabby Patty formula, zealously protected by Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) from his tiny megalomaniacal rival restaurateur, Plankton (Mr. Lawrence). It’s up to the loyal Krusty Krab fry cook SpongeBob to save the formula, a process that’s longer and more elaborate than TV would allow, with an epic food fight, angry mobs, magic, and time travel, culminating in a slapstick superhero parody that somehow doesn’t mention Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.

We get a great deal of hand-drawn zaniness that draws in all the series regulars – dim starfish Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke), fussy Squidward (Rodger Bumpass), squirrelly Sandy (Carolyn Lawrence) – and cameos from memorable supporting characters, with quick wordplay and rubbery gags. Eventually, it concludes with the gang washing ashore on the trail of a missing recipe. There on the beach, they interact with live action extras while rendered in 3D CG animation. This sidesteps one of my favorite running jokes in the series, representing SpongeBob out of water as an actual dry sponge on a stick waggled about by an obvious puppeteer. Making him and his friends exaggerated CG things walking around a beach is an okay bit of colorful nonsense, but seems a concession to something more ordinary and predictable than the usual SpongeBob tone.

I didn’t mind it too much, but it goes on far too long. The picture seems a little underpowered, burning bright with engaging zippy randomized cartoonishness, then losing steam the longer it runs. But where else will you see Antonio Banderas play a character named Burger Beard, an exaggerated pirate who just wants to start his own food truck? Or a cosmic dolphin named Bubbles? Or singing seagulls? Or a burger-shortage inspiring full-on Mad Max apocalyptic mob mentality? Or multiple hilarious montage parodies? Or repeated trips through a 2001 time-travel kaleidoscope wormhole set to an original Pharrell song? You’re never exactly sure what’s around the next corner in Sponge Out of Water, as much a sign of its desperation as its inspiration. It could’ve been more, but as a modestly effective bit of harmless superfluous silliness, it’s not so bad.

Self-defense: HOMEFRONT

If there’s one thing Breaking Bad taught us, it is to avoid injuring the pride of anyone involved in the meth business. But Jason Statham isn’t too worried about doing so in Homefront, especially when the meth-heads he’s dealing with are a skeletal Kate Bosworth and her brother, the local dealer named Gator who is played with satisfied teeth-gnashing and deep fried accent by the omnipresent James Franco. Too bad for all involved that, after Statham’s daughter (Izabela Vidovic) defends herself from Bosworth’s bully son on the playground by beating him up, the meth people won’t let the insult stand. Bosworth gets her brother to menace Statham, who is new to their small town in the backwaters of Louisiana. This leads to all manner of complications, including the revelation of Statham’s character’s undercover D.E.A. past, which is all the incentive Franco needs to call in the big guns. As it must, this means Statham is going to have to spring into action and punch people in creative and effective ways. Once he stabs a bad guy’s arm to a post and smashes a mason jar on the back of the guy’s head. Hey, you use what’s around you.

Statham has become one of our most reliable action stars, eking out an appealing B-movie career for himself. He’s now the kind of guy with tremendous affection from his core audience, who gets applause and attention simply for turning up. Even so, he’s not coasting. He’s hard at work being compelling. In a cameo in a big movie earlier this year he single-handedly made for the most exciting mid-credits teaser in a long time (and maybe ever). Something about his stubble-covered dome and virtuosic working of his smirk – from deadly serious all the way to happily serious – makes him an aerodynamic charmer, ready to leap into any conflict if it means saving himself, his mission, or those he cares about. He’s always a man with a code, and when that code breaks, duck. Unlike overly muscled action stars of the past, he’s lean and compact, like an average fit guy who can knock you senseless in no time at all.

Homefront isn’t one of his better efforts, but it’s often tense and gets the job done. The script, adapted from a book by Chuck Logan, is written by Sylvester Stallone. Yes, that Sylvester Stallone. He’s a man capable of churning out an effective actioner, even if he’s rarely cast as an everyman. Here he writes a part for his Expendables pal Statham that’s grounded in a sense of reluctant action. Here’s a guy retired from the force after a drug bust turned violent. He is called to punch, stab, scheme, and shoot his way to safety in order to keep a protected environment for his little daughter. Statham’s a guy who can do these things, but would rather not. They just leave him no choice. He’s personally insulted and assaulted, his tired slashed and cat kidnapped. That’s one thing. But threaten the safety of his daughter and watch out! It’s a clear cheap ploy for audience identification – the child-in-danger thing works every time, no matter how earned or unearned it is.

It raises the red meat knee-jerk vengeance quite well in a movie that’s frontloaded with exposition. If Stallone’s script tells you once it tells you three or four times every pertinent bit of plot information. Gator is dangerous. The town finds Statham suspicious. The sheriff (Clancy Brown) seems awfully buddy buddy with the meth operation. But for all this repetition, it’s strange to see characters drop in out of nowhere, like a gang of thugs who snarl at Statham on two separate occasions before he beats them all up, both times. Who are they? Who do they work for? Why are they angry? Where do they end up? Beats me. Same goes for the daughter’s teacher (Rachel Lefevre) who has a promising subplot dropped entirely after a couple of scenes. Other characters, like a welcome Winona Ryder who provides Franco access to a hitman, are nicely detailed, but ultimately exist to bumble the plot towards a conclusion.

It all builds to the shoot-‘em-up climax it continually foreshadows. Along the way, director Gary Fleder, who ten to fifteen years ago was a go-to guy for James Patterson and John Grisham adaptations or imitations, finds merely competent ways to make this interesting. It’s a watchable, straightforward and grungy B-movie all the way down the line, mostly worth it for Statham’s charmingly stoic loving father and the few passably exciting action beats, although there are fewer than you’d expect or like. You want to be on Statham’s side, not just for the plot’s sake, but for the sake of his persona. You just know that no matter the outcome, no matter the obstacle, even if said obstacle’s a middling thriller, Statham’s going to be okay. 

Where the Buffalo and Aliens Roam: COWBOYS & ALIENS

I don’t like Cowboys & Aliens, which is especially disappointing since I more or less loved, or I was at least ready to like, the individual pieces. It starts as a dusty Western with a mysterious stranger (Daniel Craig) riding into a small frontier town. This is well before the aliens show up. Now, you wouldn’t normally expect a Western to feature a scene in which UFOs swoop down from the sky and shoot up a town with laser beams and rope up some townsfolk for study and probing, but this is no normal Western. As that great title would have you know, this is going to be a genre mash-up. The concept makes sense to me. Why are alien invasion movies always set in either the present or the future? Aliens could just as well pop in on the 1800’s. After all, H.G. Welles wrote his War of the Worlds in 1898. The setting’s a nice change of pace.

That mysterious stranger I was talking about wakes up in the middle of the prairie in the opening scene to find a strange metallic device attached to his wrist and a bloody gash in his side. He’s confused about all this, mostly because he has no memory of how he got there and who he is. When he wanders into the nearby small town he’s confronted by a crusty sheriff (Keith Carradine) who matches the stranger’s face with the one plastered on a wanted poster hanging in the little jail. The town, ruled over by a vicious cattle baron (Harrison Ford), wants to quickly send the man to Santa Fe to face trial. But before they get a chance to do that, the aliens swoop down.

After the close encounter results in several missing persons, the town rounds up a posse to chase down the “demons” responsible. Since the stranger’s metallic device seems to respond to the demons in bursts of compatible weapon fire, he’s freed and invited along. Along with the cattle baron and the stranger ride the town’s preacher (Clancy Brown), bar owner (Sam Rockwell), the sheriff’s grandson (Noah Ringer), and a woman who knows more than she at first reveals (Olivia Wilde). There’s also a very sweet dog that trots along beside them the whole way through.

It’s a fairly standard Western concept playing out here. The town is wronged in some way, then a small group rides out to make things right. But, of course, instead of Native Americans, robbers, or black-hat gunmen causing trouble for the townsfolk, it’s aliens. Their design is awfully derivative, all bug-eyed and slimy, but the effects are convincing and the action is more or less what you’d expect. The cowboys ride up guns blazing and the aliens fight back with their superior firepower. Because the aliens seem to be advanced enough to travel through space but dumb enough not to think too terribly hard about strategy, this all boils down to a matter of brains (the cowboys) versus high-tech brawn (the aliens).

Even as I write all that, knowing full well the failure of execution, I find that set-up tantalizing. It’s a real shame the film feels so lifeless when it should be filled with a zip and energy. The cast is, for the most part, remarkably grizzled, tough and likable and director Jon Favreau, who’s made great popcorn fun in the past with two Iron Mans, Elf, and the underseen Zathura, has some fun introducing his one unexpected element into what is otherwise a fairly standard Western and even creates some occasionally striking images of clean, classic style. What’s surprising is how dull and rote the material feels. This is cowboys and aliens, for crying out loud! This is the stuff of a boy’s playtime, the wild combining of complete disparate genre elements into one energetic what-if scenario.

Why, oh why, then must Cowboys & Aliens feel so unenergetic? I think it must come down to the script level. Credited to six writers, some of them quite good, it has the unimaginative feel of a great, weird, original concept that has had all of its kooky edges and wacky sides sanded down by committee. What’s left is the kind of movie in which I could occasionally predict the lines right before they came out of characters’ mouths. Such rote, paint-by-numbers genre play is what confines the great film living within this one to dying a slow, painful death. The cast, the director, and the technicians try valiantly to pump excitement onto the screen but the script lets them all down.