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Tropic Thunder is a full frontal, comedy assault. It doesn’t just present jokes on the screen and then wait for you to laugh, it shoves comedy dynamite up your nose and then giggles while it lights the fuse. Ben Stiller has created a wicked satirical attack on Hollywood, one that pulls no punches and takes a weirdly dark journey deep into the heart of blockbuster filmmaking. Not everyone makes it out alive.
In fact, the occasional bit of death is pretty funny when done in this context. I guess I should explain that context. The film takes place in the jungles of Vietnam, where a hapless director has assembled a cast of spoiled actors in an attempt to make a fabulously expensive war picture. Things are going badly, the studio is riding his ass, and in a last ditch attempt to make his movie work before the whole thing implodes, he tries something desperate. He yanks his actors off the set and drops them off alone in the middle of the jungle with a copy of the script. He tells them there are cameras everywhere, gives them a map, and abandons them to survive the jungle, reach their objective, and in the process make the movie. It’s extreme guerilla style.
Things don’t exactly go to plan. Soon his spoiled group of actors find themselves embroiled in a real conflict with terrorist drug dealers, with hope fading fast. Surviving is only half the problem, convincing them the war they’re in is real, is the bigger challenge.
The movie is made by an all-star cast delivering… ok I’m going to say it and get torched… Oscar caliber performances. Alright, maybe not from Stiller. Stiller is playing the same character he always plays: Ben Stiller. But it works in this context, because the film needs an anchor on which to hang the rest of its insanity. Robert Downey Jr. is the ringleader of that madness, playing an Oscar-winning Australian actor named Kirk Lazarus. He’s so overly dedicated to his craft that he doesn’t know where his performances end and he begins. For the war picture we’re watching him make, he’s dyed his skin to play a black man, and what’s more he’s actually become a black man. Or rather the stereotypes associated with a black man. What’s baffling is that there’s nothing offensive about it, merely unbelievably convincing and painfully funny. RDJ runs away with every scene he’s in, and I mean it when I say he deserves an Oscar for what he’s done here. His performance is nearly on par with what Heath Ledger did as the Joker, though since it’s a comedy he’ll never get the kind of credit he deserves for it. There’s never a moment in the film where he’s recognizable as Robert Downey Jr., not even when he takes off his mildly racist prosthetics. It’s a great performance, an epic comedy performance, instantly iconic. Your friends will be running around shouting out Robert Downey Jr. quotes for the next ten years. Here’s my current favorite: “You never go full retard.” Trust me, it’s hilarious in context.
It’s not just Robert Downey stealing scenes though. Jack Black shows up and gives one of the best comedic performances of his career as a fat, jelly bean addicted actor who spends half the movie strapped to the back of a water buffalo whining for his mama. Judd Apatow regular Jay Baruchel has his coming out party in the jungle, as the only member of the bunch with any actual survival skills, and perhaps their only hope for escaping with extremities intact. Meanwhile that Tom Cruise cameo you’ve been hearing about, totally delivers. It’s a bit more than a cameo really and it’s maybe the best thing he’s done in nearly a decade. He’s shockingly hilarious and so good and so outside his comfort zone that it may take less discerning audiences a few minutes before they even figure out it’s him. Cruise isn’t the only great cameo either, the film is filled with huge Hollywood stars playing characters so totally against type it’s almost jarring when they show up on screen.
Tropic Thunder is at its best when it’s at its weirdest. When Kirk Lazarus is riffing on the Oscar process while getting lost in the jungle, or during the out of control intros for each character which at first you might mistake for previews, or when nearly naked Jack Black pulls a gun out of his crotch and goes batshit crazy on a pre-teen Vietcong in the psychotic pursuit of “jellybeans”. The movie works when it’s going completely nuts, it revels in going over the edge, and if only the entire thing could be spent going mad.
Unfortunately there are lulls. They happen in those spaces when the film is trying to get from point A to point B or from point C to point D. It’s a minor complaint really, you won’t remember them after you walk out of the theater. You’ll be too busy talking about what the hell was Tobey Maguire doing in this movie, or quoting some insanely inappropriate line from Lazarus. Still, the lulls exist and the film seems to exist only in two modes. Completely insane and out of control or flat out dull. The problem is likely Stiller’s script, which bumbles around at times as if it’s not sure what it’s trying to do. In key scenes the script smooths out and his actors run away with everything, making it easy to overlook a somewhat clunky story.
Because of gutsy, crazy performances from Downey, Black, Baruchel, Cruise and the rest, Tropic Thunder is a comedy phenomenon in the waiting. It’s the next Austin Powers or Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It’s the hardcore, horribly offensive, must see comedy of the summer. Be there if you want to know what the heck your friends are talking about.
A love letter to science-fiction films of old with a modern environmentalist message, WALL-E is another winning confection from Pixar, the folks who have made an art out of wrapping adult themes in childish whimsy and coming out with movies that please both elements. Starring a box shaped little robot with more than a passing resemblance to E.T., WALL-E is quite possibly the cutest Pixar hero ever, despite the fact that he's a trash compactor with eyes. A story centering on a wordless robot could be cold and uninviting, but not in Pixar's capable hands. Never has a robot been this compassionate: WALL-E's got heart.
The story of the film is deceptively simple. WALL-E (Waste Allocator Load Lifter - Earth Class) is the last of his kind, a robot created by the Buy-N-Large Corporation to clean up the piles of trash left on Earth by the conspicuous consumption of human beings. The humans themselves have evacuated the now-toxically trashed Earth for a Eden-like spaceship habitat called the Axiom (also created by BNL corp.), where they spend their days sipping meals out a cup and reclining on floating easy chairs. Though all his robotic compatriots have long since compacted their last, WALL-E continues plugging away at his job in an endearingly human way. He wakes up each day to the chime of a Macintosh starting up (score for the iFolks! Thanks Steve!) and heads out for another day among the trash heaps. He brings a battered coolie along with him to save the things he likes: a ping-pong paddle, a plastic dinosaur toy, a light bulb, a small seedling saved in an old boot. He ends each day in his home, watching an old video tape of Hello Dolly! - an important motif throughout the film.
Things change drastically for WALL-E the day EVE shows up. She is slick and futuristic and quite obviously a girl; WALL-E falls in love almost immediately. It turns out EVE has been sent from the Axiom to scan the earth for signs of habitable life. Their convincing courtship is done completely without dialogue, quite a feat for sound designer Ben Burtt who found a way to make ambient noise into recognizable words for WALL-E. Trying to impress the coolly modern EVE, WALL-E shows her the seedling he found, at which point EVE goes into a hibernation state and awaits the return of her spaceship. WALL-E, of course, cannot abide by his beloved EVE's status and hitches a ride into space to save her.
A bit disturbingly, all the humans on the Axiom have regressed to babyhood (enormously fat, with chubby extremities and little bone density) after 700 years of living up in space and drinking their meals through a straw. It seems that this may have been the aim of the BNL Corporation, who have instructed the ship's Computer Auto (Sigourney Weaver) to never let the humans return to Earth, even if it is found to be habitable once again. Though WALL-E's only aim on the Axiom is to find his beloved EVE, he finds himself wrapped up in a race to save the seedling he collected on earth from the treacherous tentacles of Auto. Along the way he meets a variety of robots, each with their own supposed job, all of which are related to cleaning up. It becomes clear that human consumption is what has trashed the earth and is now trashing Outer Space as well.
Though he is tiny and relegated to the dirtiest of the dirty jobs, WALL-E truly understands how to find value in sullied things and how to create magic out of useless objects. He is more human than the humans in that way and slowly, without preaching (he can't even talk), WALL-E begins to show them how to regain what they have lost through sloth and over reliance on technology. It's an environmentalist film, but also a poignant homage to simple joys in this era of iPods and digital everything.
Half of what is so enchanting about watching WALL-E, as in all Pixar films, is seeing how the filmmakers have created a working universe in which to play. There is no skimping here, no visible shortcuts. WALL-E himself has a million ways to express his emotions, from compacting into a box when he feels shy to wiggling his binocular-like eyes in awe when he first beholds EVE, all of which are related to physical, realistic components. That allegiance to authenticity allows the film to send its narrative to fantastic heights without seeming over the top or phony.
Like all previous Pixar films, the meaning of WALL-E is deeper and more profound than the merchandising opportunities found therein. It's a love story, yes, but it's also a story about staying true to your own heart in the blandly evil face of authority. It's a tale about saving the small things and cherishing the world you live in, no matter how imperfect its surface might seem. Andrew Stanton, who won an Oscar in 2004 for Finding Nemo, has certainly earned his place in the pantheon of animation pioneers, but with WALL-E, he has taken not only the art of animation, but the art of storytelling to new, unimaginable heights.
As a bonus, Pixar have affixed a Looney Tune-y short about an arrogant magician and his hungry rabbit to beginning of the WALL-E. Presto! is pure Looney Tunes and a fitting appetizer to the lovely film to follow.
Forget the great things you’ve heard about The Dark Knight. No matter how lavish the praise or how determined the hyperbole, it’s all understatement. The Dark Knight is I suppose the greatest superhero movie ever made, but it’s so far beyond the limited men in tights genre that attempting to compare it with movies like Spider-Man, Superman, or even Batman Begins is almost laughable. Director Christopher Nolan’s film trumps everything and everyone, including himself. It’s not just the best superhero movie ever made, it’s one of the best movies ever to show up in a theater.
More than a film about a man in a mask trying to stop the bad guy or save the innocent, it’s the story of a city and its people trapped between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Gotham City is at the center of everything while two men, each mad in their own way, fight to control the hearts and minds of its populace. The Joker (Heath Ledger) bursts onto the scene, and correctly pronounces himself the living embodiment of chaos. This is a man who cares for nothing and wants nothing, except to watch the world crumble around him. Nolan wastes no time explaining Joker’s origin, he is a force of nature and as such has always existed. Faced with pure chaos given form, the people of Gotham turn to selfish terror, and the Joker laughs gleefully as we watch them dance to his tune. Opposing him is Batman (Christian Bale), embodying the pursuit of single-minded justice and, hoping for the best in mankind, he seeks to inspire them to something better through living symbols like Gotham’s new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), or top cop Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman). In the end it doesn’t matter whether Batman captures Joker or Joker takes out Batman. What matters is which of them wins the battle for Gotham City’s soul.
The genius of Heath Ledger’s performance as Joker is that in a way, you’ll almost find yourself rooting for him to win. Let him burn it down, if only so we can see how he’ll make it happen. Ledger’s Joker is easily the best on screen villain since Star Trek II’s Khan, a performance unlike anything else you’ve seen. He is at once funny and terrifying. He’ll make you laugh at all the wrong moments, and then cringe in unspeakable terror at all the others. His peals of laughter bounce through the film, echoing long after the credits roll and leaving Joker’s mark not just on this movie, but on cinema. He’s an instant icon. The Oscar buzz for what Ledger has done is not premature. He drives the entire movie with his performance, embodying something so out of control and his own way so true, that the whirlwind of his mere presence destroys all comers.
What I’m getting at here is that most of what’s going on in The Dark Knight is mental. It’s not that there isn’t action, there’s plenty of it, but even when Batman is running around punching people in the head or racing through the streets on his incredible, visually stunning gadgets, it’s the psychology of what’s happening pushes the story. Because of that, the problems Nolan had directing some of the action sequences in Batman Begins, are utterly erased here. Batman lurks in the shadows dispatching bad guys with a single punch. There are no extended, complicated fight scenes for him to botch because quite frankly the movie doesn’t need them. There’s plenty of fighting, but it happens in quick encounters staged one after another with a kind of lyrical precision I haven’t seen in anything outside of the action-poetry in last year’s The Bourne Ultimatum. When Batman is forced into an extended showdown, it takes the form of a brutal, economical beating, with punches landed with vicious force and battles being waged by men who have made themselves blunt instruments. What makes the action so arresting is the force of will behind it, the philosophical battle driving it. You’ll be on the edge of your seat for every single moment, whether it’s a simple conversation at Bruce Wayne’s office, or a balls to the wall brawl inside a gangster-infested Hong Kong skyscraper.
Nothing is wasted, there’s not a minute in the film that doesn’t fit into a bigger, broader, deeper picture. That goes for everything, right down to the way Nolan filmed it. When you see it (and you will), settle for nothing less than IMAX. Portions of the film were shot in specifically in IMAX, but not as some gimmick. They play a key role in setting the tone of the story. Most interior scenes are shot using normal film, and when displayed in an IMAX theater, they use only a portion of the total, massive screen, thus conveying an intimate setting. Exterior shots, flyovers of the city and amazing, breathtaking chases are done using IMAX, stretching out to cover the entire, enormous IMAX canvas, conveying a tremendous sense of scope by rote of contrast. Gorgeous, dark, city flyovers are used to hammer home the size of the world Batman and Joker are operating in, and pummel the audience with the scale of this place and hopelessness of Batman’s task in guarding it. None of that will be quite so evident seen anywhere but in IMAX, and you owe it to yourself, perhaps more with this film than with any other in the history of the format, to see it in the best way possible.
The Dark Knight is both entertainment and art, slipped into a dark, gritty package. It marks a completely new direction for that which we’ve come to know as the superhero genre, here’s hoping others have the sense to follow it. Whether or not they do it’s unlikely anyone, including Nolan himself, will ever top what’s been accomplished here. It works on every level and no matter what I’ve said about it in this review, believe me when I tell you that I’m underselling it. Movies rarely get better than this. Check your gut before you go in, The Dark Knight is going to land a punch right in the middle of it. You won’t soon forget it.
Tropic Thunder is a full frontal, comedy assault. It doesn’t just present jokes on the screen and then wait for you to laugh, it shoves comedy dynamite up your nose and then giggles while it lights the fuse. Ben Stiller has created a wicked satirical attack on Hollywood, one that pulls no punches and takes a weirdly dark journey deep into the heart of blockbuster filmmaking. Not everyone makes it out alive.
